VANE had six hundred francs left; and, taking the Holyhead mail, the next evening he was on board the City of Richmond at Queenstown as a steerage passenger. He had been troubled with no further thoughts of adventure in the Soudan; and was quite indifferent as to his own dénouement. He spent a great deal of the time at sea walking on the deck; as a steerage passenger he was allowed to walk aft as far as the foremast. The other steerage passengers looked upon him as an intellectual young gentleman; probably a scholar in reduced circumstances.
Eighteen thousand francs a year, Vane was thinking; this, at least, he must have, for his mother could not be sent elsewhere. Gold was then at a premium, and this sum meant four thousand a year in America. Just the insignificant fortune he had lost; but could his labor be worth so much? This problem had filled his mind, and kept his temper sane. One who has to earn his bread has little time to sigh for things less possible of attainment. The natural animal motive atones for any want of others; no one is a pessimist who has to work for his living. The young man smiled a little at the thought that he, too, was going to America to seek his fortune—not to improve his future, but to amend what remained of the past. This one obvious, clear duty was before him then. Afterwards, he might see what the world had left for him.
One day about sunset he was sitting on the deck, reading a favorite book of his—an old Florentine edition of Petrarca. As he turned the leaves, a broken rose fell from them. It was a book which they—the English girl and he—had often read together; and, having no Bible (for, like all Frenchmen and many young men, he was rather a skeptic in matters of religion), he had thrown her rose hastily between the leaves. He was surprised a little, now, at his own want of sentiment. But those times already seemed so far off! He looked at the flower a moment; then picked it up, and dropped it in the sea. The leaves scattered as it fell, and were soon lost in the broad wake of the steamer.
Vane landed in New York among five hundred other steerage passengers. Of course the papers did not take the trouble to report the coming of so insignificant a person; nor did he call upon any of his social acquaintances. His first visit was to his father’s grave; then he went to see, at their down-town offices, such of his father’s business friends and correspondents as he knew by name. He had written Mr. Peyton—the one from whom the news had come—to suspend all decisive steps until he came. Mr. Peyton—as indeed were all who had known his father—was very kind; and told him the first thing to do was to get appointed administrator of his father’s estate. This being done, he called a meeting of his father’s creditors. Mr. Peyton had advised him to offer a settlement of sixty cents on the dollar; but he did not accept this suggestion. He told the creditors of Mr. Peyton’s advice, and added that he could probably pay at least seventy cents. But, he continued, his desire was to pay in full. His only hope of so doing was to be allowed to hold his father’s investments for a time, manage them judiciously, and avoid forced sales. Would they give him three years?
They were few in number, all capitalists, and co-operators with his father; and they were pleased with something in the young man’s manner. All except one could easily spare the money; and to him Vane, with the consent of the other creditors, gave his dividend of seventy per cent., and received his acquittances in full. And that night the other creditors, at a directors’ dinner, agreed that, while they had done a very foolish thing, they were anxious to see what young Vane would make of it.
Young Vane took two small rooms in the oldest house of a down-town street, for which he paid two dollars a week. And that autumn, Vane, who a few months before had barely admitted that the name Bellefontaine had a civilized sound, might have been seen riding on the cow-catcher of a locomotive in Northern Wisconsin, and estimating the probable earnings from freight when the forests about him were cut. When he got his father’s affairs into such shape that they could be managed from New York, he procured a clerkship in a banking-house in that city at six hundred dollars salary. And then for a year, his life was monotonous routine without a day’s rest. He rose at seven, prepared his own breakfast of bread and fruit, and was at the bank before nine. He lunched on a sandwich; left the bank at five, and walked to the Park and back. At seven he dined on a steak and a pint of ale. And such of his evenings as were not occupied with the care of his father’s estate, this practical young man of business gave, not to newspapers and stock reports, but to mediæval history and Italian poetry. It was his safety valve. He sometimes thought of writing a book on the social and political history of the Florentine republic. He steadily refused all invitations of his capitalist friends to dinner or other entertainments. He could now live with two suits of clothes, and, to accept their invitations, he would need three; moreover, he secretly feared that he could not bear his present mode of life if he had even a glimpse of any other. Only while alone could he forget that he was alone in the world. John, who was in the same banking-house, was the only man he knew; and many an evening John left a dinner, or was late at a party, that he might sit for an hour in the little back room in Washington Place.
At the end of the first year Vane took a week’s vacation, walking in the Catskills. Every week he had a letter from Rennes; and frequently one from Dr. Kérouec, telling him of no change in his mother’s condition. When he returned from his vacation, he was called into the counting-room of the senior partner, and given a check for four hundred dollars in addition to his first year’s salary of six hundred; and, moreover, was promoted to a position of three thousand a year salary. That first year, Vane had spent three hundred and eighty dollars in board and lodging, and eighty more in pocket money. He had bought no clothing, having brought all he needed from France. His travelling expenses had been large, but these he had charged to the account of his father’s estate. This left him five hundred and forty dollars to the good.
Vane then went to Mr. Peyton and borrowed three thousand dollars on his own security. This three thousand he sent to Dr. Kérouec; and five hundred dollars of his earnings he invested in a life-assurance policy payable to Dr. Kérouec as trustee for his mother. He thus had forty dollars in his pocket at the beginning of his second year.
By this time some of his father’s railways were beginning to get out of shallow water. Vane watched them carefully; and by judicious management and successful sales, he was able, on the first of August, eighteen hundred and seventy-six, the end of the three years allowed him, to pay his father’s creditors their claims in full—four hundred and forty-seven thousand dollars, with interest for three years at six per cent. And over and above this, after paying Mr. Peyton, he had sixteen thousand dollars, which he might call his own. Early in August he sailed for Brittany, and spent a week with Dr. Kérouec at Rennes.
His mother’s hair was now white; she was quiet, but still hopelessly insane, nor did she even recognize him.
Vane was back again on the first of September. When he presented himself at the bank, he was offered a responsible position, and a salary of six thousand dollars a year, with a hint of partnership in the near future. He now removed to lodgings in Eighteenth Street; and on going home that night, for the first time in two years he burst into a fit of crying. This turn of hysterics was the prelude to a low fever, of which he lay five weeks ill.