FATHER AND DAUGHTER
The winds of January had no better luck in shaking down the leaves of the scrub oaks on the Porter hillside than their predecessors of November and December. The snows came and went on the dull slopes, and the canna beds were little blots of ruin in the gray stubble. The house was a place of light and life once more, for Evelyn had obeyed her father's wish rather than her own inclination in opening its doors for frequent teas and dinners and once for a large ball. Many people had entertained for her; she had never been introduced formally, but her mother's friends made up for this omission; she went out a great deal, and enjoyed it. Many young men climbed the hill to see her, and many went to the theater or to dances with her at least once. The number who came to call diminished by Christmas; but those who still came, and were identified as frequenters of the house, came oftener.
Warry Raridan had raged at the mob, as he called it, which he seemed always to find installed in the Porter drawing-room; but he raged inwardly these days, save as he went explosively to Saxton for comfort; he had stopped raging at Evelyn. He was at work more steadily than he had ever been before, and wished the credit for it which people denied him, to his secret disgust. He had idled too long, or he had too often before given fitful allegiance to labor. Young women and old, who expected him to pass tea for them in the afternoons, refused to believe that he had experienced a change of heart. Those who had bragged of him abroad, and who now lured the eternal visiting girl to town to behold him, were chagrined to find that he was difficult to produce, and mollified their guests by declaring that Warry was getting more fickle and uncertain as he grew older, or took vengeance by encouraging the rumor that he and Evelyn Porter were engaged.
Wheaton called at the Porters' often, but he did not go now with Warry Raridan; he even took some pains to go when Raridan did not. He knew just how much time to allow himself between The Bachelors' and the Porter door bell in order to reach the drawing-room at five minutes past eight. He was now considered one of the men that went out a good deal in Clarkson; he was invited to many houses, and began to wonder that social enjoyment was so easy. It seemed long ago that he had been a leading figure in the ball of the Knights of Midas. Looking back at that incident he was sensible of its poverty and tawdriness; he had sacrificed himself for the public good, and the community shared in the joke of it.
Porter had an amiable way of darting out of the library in the evenings when he and Evelyn were both at home, to see who came in; not that he was abnormally curious as to who rang the door bell, though he enjoyed occasionally a colloquy with a tramp; but he was always on the lookout for telegrams, of which he received a great many at home, and he declared in his chaffing note of complaint that the people in the house were forever hiding them from him. He sometimes brought home bundles of papers and spent whole evenings digesting them and making computations. Without realizing that Wheaton was in his house pretty often, he was glad to know that his cashier came. When he found that Wheaton was in the drawing-room he usually went over to talk to him in the interim before Evelyn came down. Sometimes a bit of news in the evening paper gave him a text.
"I see that they've had a shaking up over at St. Joe. Well, Wigglesworth never was any good. They ought to have had more sense than to get caught by him. Well, sir, you remember he was offering his paper up here. We could have had a barrel of it; but when a man of his credit peddles his paper away from home, it's a good thing to let alone. When they figure up Wigglesworth's liabilities they will find that he has paper scattered all over the Missouri Valley, and I'll bet the Second's stuck. The last time I saw Wigglesworth he was up at the club one day with Buskirk. He'd been in to see me the day before. I guessed then that he was looking for help which they didn't think he was worth at home." And then, with a chuckle: "Our people," meaning his directors, "think sometimes we're too conservative, and I reckon I do lose a lot of business for them that other fellows would take and get out of all right; but I guess we make more in the long run by being careful. Banking ain't exactly stove polish or vitalized barley, to put up in pretty packages and advertise on the billboards."
Wheaton was honestly sympathetic and responsive along these lines. He admired Porter, although he often felt that the president made mistakes; yet he, too, believed in conservatism; it was a matter of temperament rather than principle. This mingling of social and business elements pleased and flattered Wheaton. He felt that his position in the Porter bank gave him a double footing in the Porter house. Porter usually ignored Evelyn's presence while he finished whatever he was saying. Then he would go back to his chair in the library, where he could hear the voices across the hall; but he never remained after he had concluded his own talk with Wheaton.
Sometimes, however, when there were other men in the house, Porter would come and stand in the door and regard them good-humoredly, and nod to them amiably, usually with his cigar in his mouth and the evening newspaper in his hand. When there was a good deal of laughing he would go over and gaze upon them questioningly and quiz them; but they usually felt the restraint of his presence. If they repeated to him some story which had prompted their mirth, he was wont to rebuke them with affected seriousness, or he would tell them a story of his own. He expected Evelyn to receive a great deal of attention. He liked to know who her callers were and where she herself visited, and it pleased him that she had called on all her mother's old friends, whether they had been to see her or not. He had a sense of the dignities and proprieties of life, and he felt his own prestige as a founder of the town; it would have been a source of grief to him if Evelyn had not taken a leading place among its young people.
The theater was the one diversion that appealed to him, and he liked to take Evelyn with him, and wanted her to sit in a box so that he might show her off to better advantage. He could not understand why she preferred seats in the orchestra; Timothy Margrave and his daughter always sat in a box, and young men were forever running in to talk to Mabel between the acts. Porter thought that this showed a special deference to the Margrave girl, as he called her, and for her father too, by implication, and he resented anything that looked like a slight upon Evelyn. He was afraid that she did not entertain enough, and since the girls who visited them in the fall had left, he had been insisting that she must have others come to see her. He had made her tell him about all the girls she had known in college; his curiosity in such directions was almost insatiable. He always demanded to know what their fathers did for a livelihood, and he had been surprised to find that so many of Evelyn's classmates had been daughters of inconspicuous families, and that the young women were in many cases fitting themselves to teach. He had pretty thoroughly catalogued all of Evelyn's college friends, and he suggested about once a week that she have some of them out.
Sometimes, after Evelyn's callers had gone, she and her father sat and talked in the library.
"I don't see what you young people can find to say so much about," he would say; or: "What was Warry gabbling about so long?"
She always told him what had been talked about, with a careful frankness, lest he might imagine that the visits of Wheaton or Warry, or any one else, had a special intention. She crossed over to the library one night after several callers had left, and found her father more absorbed than usual in a mass of papers which lay on the large table before him. He put down his glasses and lay back in his chair wearily.
"Well, girl, is it time to go to bed? Sit down there and tell me the news."
"There isn't anything worth telling; you know there isn't much information in the average caller." He yawned and rubbed his eyes and paid no attention to her answer. He had asked a few days before whether she cared to go to Chicago to hear the opera, and she had said that she would go if he would; and he now wished to talk this out with her.
"The Whipples are going over to Chicago for the opera," he ventured.
"But you're not getting ready to back out! You ought to be ashamed of yourself." She rose and went toward him menacingly, and he put up his hands as if to ward off her attack.
"But you can have just as much fun with the general as you could with me."
"No, I can't; and for another thing you need a rest. You never go away except on business; the fact is, you never get business out of your mind. Now, let me gather up these things for you." She reached for the array of balance sheets on his table, and he threw his arms over them protectingly.
"Please go away! I've spent all evening straightening these things out." She retreated to her chair, and he began rolling up his papers.
"You'd better go with the Whipples, and Mrs. Whipple will help you do your shopping. It doesn't seem to me that you have many clothes. You'd better get some more."
"You can't buy me off that way, father. Either you go or I don't." He turned toward her again when he had rolled his papers into a packet and fixed a rubber band around them. She knew, as she usually did after such approaches, that he wanted to say something in particular.
"You mustn't settle down too soon. You can't always be young, and you can easily get into a rut here."
"Yes, but I haven't had time yet; I've hardly got settled. I want to get acquainted at home before I go away. I'm afraid they still look on me as a pilgrim and a stranger here."
"But they're all nice to you, ain't they?" he demanded sharply.
"They are certainly as kind as can be," she answered. "I haven't a single complaint. I'm having just the time I wanted to have when I came home."
"I don't want to lose you too soon, girl." It was half a question. She wondered whether this could be what he had been leading up to.
"And I don't want you to lose me at all! I didn't come home after all these years to have you lose me."
"Oh, I don't mean right away," he said. "But sometime—sometime you will have to go, I suppose."
"I'm certainly not thinking of it." She was laughing and trying to break his mood; but he was very serious, and took a cigar from his pocket and put it in his mouth.
"You'll have to go sometime; and when you do, I want the right kind of a man to have you."
"So do I, father."
"You are old enough to understand that a girl in your position is likely to be sought by men who may—who may—well, who may be swayed somewhat by worldly considerations."
"Isn't that a trifle hard on me? I hoped I was a little more attractive than that, father."
"You know what I mean," he went on. "I guess we can tell that sort when they come around. I've had an idea that you might choose to marry away from here; you've been away a good deal; you must have met a good many young men, brothers of your friends—"
"Yes, I met them, father, and that was all there was to it."
"I shouldn't like you to marry away from here. I've been afraid you wouldn't like our old town. I guess we fellows that started it like it better than anybody else does; but I can see how you might not care so much for it." He waited, and she knew that he wanted her to disavow any such feeling.
"Why, I've never had any idea of wanting to live anywhere else! I don't believe I'd be happy away from here. It's home, and it always will be home. I hope we can stay and keep the old house here—"
She sat forward with her arms on the curved sides of the chair. He did not heed what she said. Older people have this way with youth when they are intent on the impression they wish to make and count upon acquiescence.
"I don't want you to sacrifice yourself for me out of any sense of duty; the time will come when it will be all right for you to go, and when it comes I want you to go to a man who's decent and square—" He paused as if trying to think of desirable attributes. "I don't care whether he's got much or not, but I like young men who know how to work for a living and who've got a little common sense. I guess we don't need any dukes or counts in our family; we've all been honest and decent as far as I know, and I reckon Americans are good enough for us. I don't know that what I've got would support one of those French counts more than a week or two." His eyes brightened as they met hers. The idea of a titled son-in-law amused him, and Evelyn laughed out merrily. She did not altogether like the turn of the talk, but she was curious to know what he was driving at.
"You understand I don't want to appear to dictate," he went on magnanimously. "I don't believe in that. Nobody knows as well as a girl whom she wants to marry. Sometimes girls make pretty bad breaks; but I guess most marriages are happy. Men are not all good, and there are some mighty foolish women, besides the downright wicked ones. I guess our young men in Clarkson are as good as there are anywhere. Most of them have to work, and that's good for them. I guess I appreciate family and that kind of thing as well as the next man, but it ain't everything." He was speaking slowly, and when he made a long pause here, Evelyn rose and went over to the open grate and poked in the ashes for the few remaining coals. He watched her as she stooped, noting, half consciously, the fine line of her profile, the ripple of light in her hair, the girlishness of her slim figure.
"No use of fooling with that fire," he said. She knew that he wished to say more, and she put the poker in its brass rack and rose and stood by the mantel.
"At my age, life gets more uncertain every day; I seem to be pretty sound, but I was sixty-four my last birthday, and if I'd been in the army they would have kicked me out of my job; but so long as I work for myself I suppose I'll hang on until I can't stand up in the harness any more."
"But that's a mistake, father," she put in. "Why shouldn't you take some rest now? If there's no other way, why not close out your interest in the bank and take things easier? You ought to travel; you've never been out of the country, and there are lots of things in Europe that you'd enjoy; the rest and change would do you a world of good. Can't we go this summer, and take Grant? It would be nice for us all to go together."
He shook his head with the deprecating air which men of Porter's type have for such suggestions. "It would be mighty nice, but I can't do it. Here's Thompson away, and no telling when he'll be back, and I have other things besides the bank to look after; more than you know about." She knew only vaguely what his interests were, for he never mentioned them to her; he believed that women are incapable of comprehending such things; and his natural secretiveness was always on guard. He even entertained a kind of superstition that if he told of anything he was planning he jeopardized his chances of success.
"No, I guess there ain't going to be any Europe for me just now. But I'd be glad to have you and Grant go." He had been side-tracked in his talk, and chewed his cigar while trying to find the way back to the main line. Then he broke out irrelevantly:
"Warry doesn't seem to settle down. We used to think Warry had great things in him, but they're mighty slow coming out."
"Well, he's still young," said Evelyn. "It takes a young man a long time to get a start these days in the professions." Her father looked at her keenly.
"I'm afraid it isn't lack of opportunity with Warry. If he'd ever get after anything in real earnest he could make it go; but he seems to fool away his time." He said this as if he expected Evelyn to continue her defense, but she said merely:
"It's too bad if he's doing that when he has ability." She walked back to her chair and sat down. She knew that Warry was really at work, but she was afraid to show any particular knowledge of him.
"It's one of the queer things to me that young fellows who have every chance don't seem to get on as well as others who haven't any backing. Now, all Warry had to do was to stay in his office and attend to business—or that's all he needed to do three or four years ago, when he set up to practise; but now everybody's given him up. A man who doesn't want an opportunity in this world doesn't have to kick it very hard to get rid of it. Other fellows, who never had any chance, are watching for the luckier ones to slip back. There are never any lonesome places on the ladder. Now, there's Wheaton—" He again examined Evelyn's face in one of those tranquil stares with which he made his most minute scrutiny of people. "Wheaton ain't a showy fellow like Warry, but he's one of the sort that make their way because they keep an eye open to the main chance. Jim came into the bank as a messenger, and I guess he's had pretty much every job we've got, and he's done them well." He had lighted his cigar and was talking volubly. "When Thompson played out and had to go away, we looked around for somebody on the inside who knew the run of our business to put in there to help me. None of the directors wanted to come in, and so we pulled Jim out of the paying teller's cage, and he's just about saved my back. Now, Jim's not so smart, but he's steady and safe, and that's what counts in business."
He leaned back in his chair and wobbled the cigar in his mouth.
"These young Napoleons of finance are forever chasing off to Canada with other folks' money; they're too brilliant. I tell 'em down town that it ain't genius we want in business, it's just ordinary, plain, every-day talent for getting down early and staying at your job. That's what I say. There was Smith over at the Drovers' National; he was a clear case of genius. They thought over there that he was making business by chasing around the country attending banquets and speaking at bankers' conventions. I guess Smith's essays were financially sound too, for Smith knew finance, scientific finance, like a college professor, and used to come to the clearing-house meetings and talk to beat the band about what Bagehot said and how the Bank of England did; but all the time he was spending his Sundays over in Kansas City, drumming up banking business by playing poker with the gentlemen he expected to get for his customers. He's running a laundry now on the wrong side of the Canadian border. Over at the Drovers' they ain't so terribly scientific now, and their cashier don't have an expense fund to carry him around the country making connections. Making connections!" he repeated, and chuckled. He had the conceit of his own wisdom, and while he was always generous in his dealings with his rivals, and had several times helped them out of difficulties, he rejoiced in their errors and congratulated himself on his foresight and caution.
"You oughtn't to laugh at the downfall of other people," said Evelyn; "it's wicked of you." But she was laughing herself at his enjoyment of his own joke, and was proud of the qualities which she knew had contributed to his success. He felt baffled that he had not fully concluded all he had intended to say about Wheaton and his merits, but he did not see his way back to the subject, and he rose yawning.
"I guess it's time to go to bed," he said, and he went about turning off the electric lights by the buttons in the hall. Evelyn went upstairs ahead of him, and kissed him good night at his door.
"You'd better go to the opera with the Whipples," he called to her over his shoulder, as he waited for her to reach her own door before turning off the upper hall light.
"Not a bit of it," she answered through the dark.
The novel with which Evelyn tried to read herself to sleep that night did not hold her attention, and after her memory had teased her into impatience, she threw the book down and for a long time lay thinking. She knew her father so well that she had no doubt of the current of his thought and his wish to praise James Wheaton and disparage Warry Raridan, and it troubled her; not because she herself had any well-defined preferences as between them or in their favor as against all other men she knew; but it seemed to her that her father had disclosed his own feeling rather unnecessarily and pointedly.
Suddenly, as she lay thinking and staring at the walls, life took on new and serious aspects, and she did not want it to be so. Because she had been so much away from home the provincial idea that every man that calls on a girl, or takes her to a theater in our free, unchaperoned way, is a serious suitor had not impressed her. She had expected to come home and enjoy herself indefinitely, and had idealized a situation in which she should be the stay of her father through his old age, and the chum and guide of her brother, in whom the repetition of her mother's characteristics strongly appealed to her. There had been little trouble or grief in her life, and now for the first time she saw uncertainties ahead where a few hours before everything had seemed simple and clear. She had felt no offense when her father spoke slightingly of Warry Raridan; she knew that her father really liked him, as every one did, and she would not have hesitated to say that she admired him greatly, even in his possession of those traits which betrayed the weaknesses of his character. She certainly had no thought of him save as a whimsical and amusing friend, a playmate who had never grown up.
It was true that he had made love to her, or had tried to; but she had no faith in his sincerity. She had first felt amused, and then a little sorry, when he had gone to work so earnestly. He took the trouble to remind her frequently that it was all for her, and she laughed at him and at the love-making which he was always attempting and which she always thwarted. Saxton did not come often to the house, but when he came he exercised his ingenuity to bring Raridan into the talk in the rare times that they were alone together. She knew why Saxton praised her friend to her, and it increased her liking for him. It is curious how a woman's pity goes out to a man; any suggestion of misfortune makes an excuse for her to clothe him with her compassion. It is as though Nature, in denying gifts or inflicting punishment, hastened to throw in compensations. Saxton asked so little, and beamed so radiantly when given so little; he received kindnesses so shyly, as if, of course, they could not be meant for him, but it was all right anyway, and he would move on just as soon as the other fellow came.
As for Wheaton, he was certainly not frivolous, and her father's respect for him and dependence on him had communicated itself to her. He was so much older than she; and at twenty-two, thirty-five savors of antiquity; but he was steady, and steadiness was a trait that she respected. He was terribly formal, but he was kind and thoughtful; he was even handsome, or at least so every one said.
She lay dreaming until the clock on the mantel chimed midnight, when she reached for the novel that had fallen on the coverlet, to put it on the stand beside her bed. A card which she had been using as a mark fell from the book; she picked it up and turned it over to see whose it was. It was John Saxton's.
"Father didn't say anything about him," she said aloud. She thrust the card back into the book and reached up and snapped out the light.