XXXI
PRATHER WOULD NOT WAIT
When he returned to the house, Jack found a letter that had come in thelate mail from Jim Galway:
"First off, that story you sent for Belvy," Jim wrote. "We've heard itread and reread, and the more it's worn with reading the fresher it getsin our minds. As I size up the effect on the population, we folks in theforties and fifties got more fun out of it than anybody except the folksin the seventies and the five-to-twelve-year-olds. Some of the thirteenand fourteen-year-olds were inclined to think at first that it wasn'tquite grown up enough for them, until they saw what fashionableliterature it was becoming. Then their dignified maturity limbered up alittle. Jack, it certainly did us a world of good. It seemed as if youwere back home again."
"Back home again!" Jack repeated, joyously; and then shook his head athimself in solemn warning.
"And those of us that don't take our meat without salt sort of neededcheering up," Jim went on. "Only a few days after I wrote you, the Dogeand Mary suddenly started for New York. Maybe he has looked you up." (The"maybe" followed an "of course," which had been scratched through.) "Andmaybe if he has you know more about what is going on here than we do. Wepractically don't know anything; but I've sure got a feeling of thatuncertainty in the atmosphere that I used to have before a cyclone when Ilived in Kansas. This Prather, that so many thought at first looked likeyou, has also gone to New York.
"He left only two days ago. Maybe you will run across him. I don't know,but it seems to me he's gone to get the powder for some kind of a blow-uphere. Jack, you know what would happen if we lost our water rights andyou know what I wrote you in my last letter. Leddy and Ropey Smith arehanging around all the time, and since the Doge went a whole lot offellows that don't belong to the honey-bee class have been turning up andputting up their tents out on the outskirts, like they expected somethingto happen. If things get worse and I've got something to go on and weneed you, I'm going to telegraph just as I said I would; because, Jack,though you're worth a lot of millions, someway we feel you're one of us.
"Very truly yours for Little Rivers,
"JAMES R. GALWAY.
"P.S.--Belvy said to put in P.S. because P.S.'s are always the mostimportant part of a letter. She wants to know if you won't writeanother story."
"I will!" said Jack. "I will, immediately!"
He made it a long story. He took a deal of pains with it in the veryrelief of something to do when sleep was impossible and he must count themoments in wretched impatience until his interview with the one personwho could answer his questions.
As he went down town in the morning the very freshness of the airinspired him with the hope that he should come out of his father's officewith every phantom reduced to a figment of imagination springing from theabnormality of his life-story; with a message that should allay Mary'sfears and soften her harshness toward him; with the certainty that thenext time he and his father sat together at dinner it would be in apermanent understanding, craved of affection. Mary might come to NewYork; the Doge might spend his declining years in leisurely patronage ofbookshops and galleries; and he would learn how to run the business,though his head split, as became a simple, normal son.
These eddying thoughts on the surface of his mind, however, could notfree him of a consciousness of a deep, unsounded current that seemed tobe the irresistible, moving power of Mary's future, the store's, hisfathers, Jasper Ewold's and his own. With it he was going into a gorge,over a cataract, or out into pleasant valleys, he knew not which. He knewnothing except that there was no stopping the flood of the current whichhad its source in streams already flowing before he was born. When thelast question had been asked his future would be clear. Relief was ahead,and after relief would come the end of introspection and the beginning ofhis real career.
But another question was waiting for him in the store. It was walking thestreets of his father's city in the freedom of a spectator who comes toobserve and not to buy. Crossing the first floor as he came to thecourt, Jack saw, with sudden distinctness among the many faces coming andgoing, a profile which, in its first association, developed on his visionas that of his own when he shaved in front of the ear in the morning. Hehad only a glimpse before it was turned away and its owner, a young manin a quiet gray suit, started up the stairs.
Jack studied the young man's back half amusedly to see if this, too, werelike his own, and laughed at himself because he was sure that he wouldnot know his own back if it were preceding him in a promenade up theAvenue. In peculiar suspense he was hoping that the young man would pauseand look around, as his father always did and shoppers often did, in asurvey of the busy, moving picture of the whole floor. But the young manwent on to the top of the flight. There he proceeded along the railing ofthe court. His profile was again in view under a strong light, and Jackrealized that his first recognition of a resemblance was the recognitionof an indisputable fact.
"Have I a double out West and another in New York?" he thought. "It givesa man a kind of secondhand feeling!"
Then he recalled Jim's letter saying that John Prather had gone to NewYork. Was this John Prather? He had no doubt that it was when the objectof his scrutiny, with full face in view, stopped and leaned over thebalcony just above the diamond counter. There was a mole patch on thecheek such as Jack remembered that the accounts of John Prather hadmentioned.
"I am as much fussed as the giant was at the sight of yellow!"Jack mused.
But for the mole patch the features were his own, as he knew them,though no one not given to more frequent personal councils with mirrorsthan Senor Don't Care of desert trails knows quite the lights and shadowsof his own countenance, which give it its character even more than doesits form. John Prather was regarding the jewelry display, where thediamonds were scintillating under the light from the milk glass roof,with a smile of amused contemplation. His expression was unpleasant toJack. It had a quality of satire and of covetousness as its owner leanedfarther over the rail and rubbed the palms of his hands together asgleefully as if the diamonds were about to fly into his pockets byenchantment.
All the time Jack had stood motionless in fixed and amazed observation.He wondered that his stare had not drawn the other's attention. But JohnPrather seemed too preoccupied with the dazzle of wealth to besusceptible to any telepathic influence.
"Great heavens! I am gaping at him as if he were climbing hand over handup the face of a sky-scraper!" Jack thought. It was time somethinghappened. Why should he get so wrought up over the fact that another manlooked like him? "I'll get acquainted!" he declared, shaking himself freeof his antipathy. "We are both from Little Rivers and that's a readyexcuse for introducing myself."
As he started across the floor toward the stairs, Prather straightenedfrom his leaning posture. For an instant his glance seemed to rest onJack. Indeed, eye met eye for a flash; and then Prather moved away. Hisdecision to go might easily have been the electric result of Jack's owndecision to join him. Jack ran up the stairs. At the head of the flighthe saw, at half the distance across the floor, Prather's back entering anelevator on the down trip. He hurried forward, his desire to meet andspeak with the man whose influence Jim Galway and Mary feared nowoverwhelming.
"Hello!" Jack sang out; and this to Prather's face after he had turnedaround in the elevator.
In the second while the elevator man was swinging to the door, Jackand Prather were fairly looking at each other. Prather had seen thatJack wanted to speak to him, even if he had not heard the call. Hisanswer was a smile of mixed recognition and satire. He made agesture of appreciative understanding of the distinction in theirlikeness by touching the mole on his cheek with his finger, whichwas Jack's last glimpse of him before he was shot down into thelower regions of the store.
"He did it neatly!" Jack gasped, with a sense of defeat and chagrin. "Andit is plain that he does not care to get acquainted. Perhaps he takes itfor granted that I am not friendly and foresaw that I would ask him a lotof questions about Little Rivers t
hat he would not care to answer." Atall events, the only way to accept the situation was lightly, his reasoninsisted. "Having heard about the likeness, possibly he came to the storeto have a look at me, and after seeing me felt that he had been libeled!"
But his feelings refused to follow his reason in an amused view.
"I do not like John Prather!" he concluded, as he took the next elevatorto the top floor. "Yes, I liked Pete Leddy better at our first meeting. Ihad rather a man would swear at me than smile in that fashion. It ismuch more simple."
The incident had had such a besetting and disagreeable effect that Jackwould have found it difficult to rid his mind of it if he had not had amore centering and pressing object in prospect in the citadel of thepush-buttons behind the glass marked "Private."
John Wingfield, Sr. looked up from his desk in covert watchfulness todetect his son's mood, and he was conscious of a quality of manner thatrecalled the returning exile's entry into the same room upon his arrivalfrom the West.
"Well, Jack," the father said, with marked cheeriness, "I hear you havebeen taking a holiday. It's all right, and you will find motoring beatspony riding."
"In some ways," Jack answered; and then he came a step nearer, his handresting on the edge of the desk, as he looked into his father's eyes withglowing candor.
John Wingfield, Sr.'s eyes shifted to the pushbuttons and later to apaper on the desk, with which his fingers played gently. He realizedinstantly that something unusual was on Jack's mind.
"Father," Jack went on, "I want a long talk quite alone with you. When itis over I feel that we shall both know each other better; we can worktogether in a fuller understanding."
"Yes, Jack," answered the father, cautiously feeling his way with aswift upward glance, which fell again to the paper. "Well, what is itnow? Come on!"
"There are a lot of questions I want to ask--family questions."
"Family questions?" The fingers paused in playing with the paper for aninstant and went on playing again. The soft hands were as white as thepaper. "Family questions, eh? Well, there isn't much to our family exceptyou and I and that old ancestor--and a long talk, you say?"
"Yes. I thought that probably this would be a good time; you could giveme an hour now. It might not take that long."
Jack's voice was even and engaging and respectful. But it seemed to fillthe room with many echoing whispers.
"I have a very busy day before me," the father said, still withoutlooking up. He was talking to a little pad at one corner of the greenblotter which had a list of his appointments. "Your questions are not soimperative that they cannot wait?"
"Then shall it be at dinner?" Jack asked.
"At dinner? No. I have an engagement for dinner."
"Shall you be home early? Shall I wait up for you?" Jack persisted.
"Yes, that's it! Say at nine. I'll make a point of it--in the library atnine!" John Wingfield, Sr.'s hand slipped away from the papers andpatted the back of Jack's hand. "And come on with your questions. I willanswer every one that I can." He was looking up at Jack now, smilinglyand attractively in his frankness. "Every one that I can, from the firstJohn Wingfield right down to the present!"
But the hand that lay on Jack's was cold and its movement nervous andspasmodic.
"Thank you, father. I knew you would. I haven't forgotten your wish thatI should bring all my doubts and questions to you," said Jack, happily.And in an impulse which had the devoutness of a rising hope he took thatcold, soft hand in both of his and gave it a shake; and the feel of theson's grip, firm and warm, remained with John Wingfield, Sr. while hestared at the door through which Jack had passed out. When he had pulledhimself together he asked Mortimer to connect him with Dr. Bennington.
"Doctor, I want a little talk with you to-night before nine," he said."Could you dine with me--not at the house--say at the club?Yes--excellent--and make it at seven. Yes. Good-by!"
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