“You can’t wait much longer, Gene. You must do the forcing.”
“You are certain you won’t hold it against me, Julie?” But even as he asked this apparently anxious question, Eugene smiled curiously in the dusk.
“Oh, Gene, how can you ask such a silly question! You practically run the business now. Besides, it’ll be better for Papa to resign. His health is declining every day. He’ll be glad, in the end.”
Again, Eugene smiled. They were now approaching the big white pile of Thomas’ home. They saw it against the dying brass of the western sky.
“He’ll be glad, in the end.” Eugene considered his wife’s words. It would be the end, the end for the Prescotts, father and son. He, Eugene, could depend upon Julia. She was with him. William had done his work well. He could expect from his children neither pity nor help.
The blaze of lights in the white house broke through the carriage windows. Julia turned to Gene. She stopped. Her mouth opened a little, and her brows drew together. She said: “Do you know, Gene, you look like that hateful Oliver! I’ve wondered for a long time whom you resembled. Now I see it. How nasty! How revolting!”
The coachman opened the door. Eugene did not reply. He said: “Here we are. Take my arm, sweet. It is slippery, here.”
CHAPTER LV
“How is Papa?” asked Barbara, as she removed little Billy’s bonnet and coat, and gave them to a waiting maid.
“Sleeping, or resting,” answered Ursula. She stood beside Oliver, who had placed his arm about her shoulders. She felt its affectionate pressure. Once, she had been comforted by his touch; now she could feel only the heavy sadness of remorse.
Oliver gently removed his arm. He had kissed Ursula’s withered cheek. Though he was filled with concern for her, he smiled. “I’ll glance in at him,” he said. “I shan’t disturb him, if he’s still asleep. Let him rest until dinner.”
Uneasily, Ursula watched him leave the room. Did he remind William of the latter’s own secret regret and shame? she wondered. But nothing could ever be revoked. She said to Barbara: “Let us go into the sitting-room, and have a little talk until dinner-time.”
Oliver moved silently towards the red and marble drawing-room. He stood on the threshold. Ursula had turned down the gas-lights on the wall, so that the monstrous reaches of the room were in semi-darkness. He saw William at a distance, sleeping. He slipped into the room, closer to William, and looked at the fallen face, the hanging hands, the sleeping attitude of desolation and abandon. He had forgiven, but he could not forget that this man had attempted to ruin him. Oliver quite understood why. William had expected so much for his daughters. Though, to William, Barbara was the least of his children, still he loved her, and she was his daughter. He could not accept the idea of Barbara’s wanting to marry him, Oliver, for whom he had developed such an inexplicable antipathy.
Oliver looked at his foster father with compassion. His eyes became stern. I shan’t let them destroy you, Father, he said in himself. I’ll stop them!
He stood there, and a certain ruthlessness tightened his face. It was then that William stirred, opened his eyes, and saw Oliver. In spite of the very dim light, he saw what there was to be seen in Oliver’s expression. He raised himself a little. He said: “Oh. Gene.” He was bemused from his sleep, and he thought it was Julia’s husband who stood there, near him.
Oliver went to a wall and turned up the lights. He turned. William was sitting bolt upright in his chair, blinking. “It’s Oliver,” said the young man, quietly. “Good evening, Father.”
William was staring at him, as if appalled. He could not speak. Oliver sat down near him, but not too near.
William almost whispered, hoarsely: “I thought you were Gene. Standing there. You looked like Gene—” He coughed.
“You were asleep,” said Oliver. “And then I startled you.” He tried to smile. “Were you expecting Gene?”
William put his hands over his eyes, drew them down over his face. He shook his head, as if trying to shake off something. He made himself say: “Yes. I was expecting Gene. And Julie. They were going out. They must have gone, not wanting to wake me.”
His voice dwindled away. Once again, he turned his head, stared at Oliver as at a ghost. “There was something about you—perhaps your expression,” he muttered. “It was like Gene.” He could not glance away. Fascinated, he narrowed his eyes. “I never saw it before,” he said, as if to himself. “But there it was.”
“No,” said Oliver. “It was just because you were just expecting Gene.” He was alarmed.
William was silent. His complex and turbulent mind churned with his thoughts. He was not a man who ever examined his motives, or his impulses. Vaguely, he now wondered whether he had not come to have a repugnance for Oliver because Oliver, even as a child, had reminded him of Eugene Arnold. Oliver, personally, had done nothing; Oliver had never done anything to hurt or wound him. Yet, he, William, had injured Oliver in return.
Knowing the terrible tenacity of William’s mind, Oliver’s alarm increased. He said, quickly: “I came to tell you before I told anyone else, even Barbie. Scott, Meredith & Owens have made me a junior partner. It will now be Scott, Meredith, Owens and Prescott. I thought you’d like to know, Father.”
“What?” muttered William. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t hear you, Oliver.”
Clearly, more loudly, Oliver repeated what he had said. Now William listened. He averted his head. Oliver waited. William weakly placed his elbow on the arm of his chair, and supported his cheek in his palm. In this position, his face was hidden from Oliver. He said, and his voice trembled: “I congratulate you, Oliver. But it’s no more than you deserve. ‘Scott, Meredith, Owens and Prescott.’ It—it has a good sound, Oliver.”
A good sound. William repeated that to himself. He could hardly see, he was so blinded and moved. He had said what he could. But how could he say: “Forgive me, for I didn’t know what I was doing? Forgive me, for all the years.”
“Thank you, Father,” said Oliver. “I knew it would please you.” He added: “It all came about because the old gentlemen thought I did such a good job before the Supreme Court, in Washington.”
“You’ll always do a good job, Oliver,” said William, painfully.
Again Oliver replied: “Thank you, Father.”
“I—I am proud of you,” said William.
Oliver could not answer.
William sighed, and the sound was almost a groan. “Oliver,” he said, “I haven’t much to leave you. I think you ought to know that. I’ve put everything into trust funds for my children. There are only a few thousands for you. It was wrong, cruelly wrong, I see that now. But, at the time, I didn’t think. It seems to me now that I never thought much at all.”
“You’ve done more for me than I can ever say,” said Oliver, quickly. “If I could live a thousand years, and could give them all to you, it wouldn’t be enough. I’ll never forget.”
He hesitated. Then he said with resolution: “Father, I’ve a strange thing to ask of you. I want to hear you say: ‘I trust you, Oliver.’”
William’s hand dropped.
“It seems to me, Oliver, that I’ve heard a lot of people asking me to ‘trust’ them.”
No doubt, thought Oliver, bitterly. He tried to make his voice light: “Well, I’m asking you, too. The only difference, perhaps, is that you could really trust me.”
William regarded him curiously in a short silence. “What is wrong, Oliver? Why do you ask me this?”
“There’s nothing wrong. I asked you only because it would make me glad to hear you say it.”
William shrugged. “Very well, though it’s very odd you should ask that question. Frankly, I never distrusted you, though I don’t suppose my trust is worth anything. All right, Oliver, I trust you.” He aroused himself. “Is Barbie here, and little Billy?”
“Yes. I came in alone, to tell you about the junior partnership. They, and Mother, are waiting for you. Shall I call them?”
Ursula flushed with embarrassment; Barbara straightened with affront. But Oliver smiled.
Oliver said, standing very near William, and speaking so low that only William heard: “I’ll never forget your saying that, Father. You couldn’t have said anything more kind, anything I’d want to hear more.”
Knowing of the deep antagonism between William and Barbara, Oliver usually spent, before going to the Prescott house with his wife, at least fifteen minutes in what Barbara would call, wryly, “a course in manners.” It was hard for Barbara, who had a forthright approach to and appreciation for reality, to have patience with a man who refused to face it. This had been the reason for the old hostility between father and daughter.
Barbara, still smarting from what she believed another affront to Oliver, was now in no condition to exercise pity. William liked to have little Billy at the dinner table. Sometimes, upon prompting from Oliver, Barbara permitted this. But tonight she curtly handed the baby over to a maid, with clear instructions that the child be kept out of sight until his parents were ready to go. William made no angry protest, as he usually did. He was too tired, and too shaken.
This was not enough for Barbara. During the dreary dinner, she fumed silently and kept giving her father dark glances, refusing, in the meantime, to let Oliver catch her eye. When dinner was nearly over, she said to her mother, but with an air of significance which captured William’s attention: “When Billy is old enough, he is going to Sunday school.”
William said, coldly: “You are going to let him be taught superstition?”
Barbara almost snorted. “‘Superstition,’ Papa! He is going, for his own sake, to be well grounded in religion. He’s got to learn that there is an authority beyond his own desires and childish wishes. He’ll learn that the church is the authority of God, his parents the sole authority in the household, and his teachers the unquestioned authority in school. This will give him a genuine feeling of safety, make him understand that he is only one atom in a world of people, and extremely unimportant in the large scheme of things. He must understand his unimportance, and that if he is to achieve any sort of personal distinction at all, he must do it by his own efforts, and within the frame of society as it is.”
“A very Spartan idea,” murmured Ursula, with a distressed glance at William, and a harsh glance at her daughter.
“There was something in the Spartan idea,” answered Barbara, belligerently. Her cheeks were flushed. “The Spartan children were, at least, not parasites upon their parents; they understood they had to stand alone and work and fight well for themselves, or perish. That is the inexorable law of nature.”
William’s face swelled dangerously with dark blood. Oliver, like a fencer, stepped smoothly into the impending quarrel. He said: “Barbara sounds rather formidable, and most unmaternal. Actually, she’s very gentle with Billy, and sometimes very sentimental.” Barbara glared at him, outraged. Ursula, seizing the advantage, rose and said: “Shall we leave the gentlemen to their coffee, Barbie?”
Barbara was not prepared to leave the gentlemen at all, until she had avenged Oliver. But her mother was standing, and had turned very pale. Barbara mutinously stood up and accompanied her mother out of the room. When they were safely in the drawing-room, Ursula said to her daughter: “Are you deliberately trying to hurt your father, Barbie, who has been so ill?”
Barbara did not reply at once. Then she said, steadily: “Yes. Yes. He hurt Oliver, tonight. Oliver saved me. If it had not been for Oliver, I’d have been as bad as Julie—or perhaps worse. You, yourself, ought to be grateful to him.”
In a strangely pent voice, Ursula said: “I think of nothing, nothing, but your father. He must be saved from the consequences of his own delusions.”
After a while, when the women had left, William asked Oliver to come upstairs to his rooms. Oliver, surprised, followed his father. William shut all doors with an oddly secretive and impatient air. It was as if he was embarrassed. He went to a dresser, opened it, unlocked a box concealed there, and brought out a small object wrapped in a piece of silk. He sat down near Oliver, the object in his hand. All at once he appeared ill and overcome with despair. He looked at Oliver a long time before he said, feebly: “I’ve got something here. It’s probably nonsense.” He paused. “I know you try to ‘spare’ me, Oliver. It doesn’t matter. Barbie’s a good girl. Yes, a good girl,” he added, with heaviness. “Like her mother. Sense. They both have sense. Oliver, you’ll take care of your mother, won’t you?”
“Of course.” Oliver was alarmed, but he smiled reassuringly. “You’re just tired, Father,” he said.
William stared before him. “Yes,” he said. “I’m tired. Yes, I suppose I’m tired.” He unwrapped the object, but he still concealed it with his hand. He coughed weakly. “I never told you—I never told anyone—very much about Dr. Cowlesbury. I tried to tell—It wasn’t any use. I couldn’t. There are some things a man can’t talk about.”
Oliver waited, while William fell into silence. But he maintained an attitude of composure and interest.
Then William stirred irritably. “It’s probably nonsense,” he repeated. “I always thought it was nonsense, even when I was with the old doctor. But still—” He opened his palm and let Oliver see what was in it. It was a beautiful small crucifix of gold and ivory, exquisitely carved and pierced. “The doctor’s,” said William. He held it out to Oliver, and Oliver took it. “He gave it to me,” William went on. “It was just before he died. He wanted me to have it. He was a Catholic.” William smiled faintly. “He said it was blessed, or something. It was for my children, he said.”
William stood up abruptly, and Oliver stood up, also. William eyed him almost irately. “It was what Barbie said,” William remarked. “She probably wouldn’t want it for little Billy, anyway. Children grow up—they haven’t time for—God. No one has. I don’t suppose anyone ever did, except people like the doctor.”
Oliver could not speak for a moment. He said: “Barbie’ll want it, for Billy. I’ll want it, for Billy. It will mean something to him, I know. Just as it means something to me.”
William was pleased. He forgot his embarrassment. But he said carelessly: “Well. It didn’t mean anything to me.” He looked at the crucifix in Oliver’s hand, and his face changed. “Well,” he repeated with a curious somberness.
He went as quickly as he could towards the door, and Oliver followed. William stood on the threshold for a moment, his back to Oliver, his head bent. “Forgive me,” he muttered. And then he walked away, even faster.
CHAPTER LVI
It was nine o’clock at night, on this evening in the middle of a cold and green April, but it was not dark behind the closely-shrouded windows of the offices of Scott, Meredith, Owens & Prescott. The hearth was heaped high with logs; the air simmered with the fumes of tobacco, the heat of the fire and the blazing gaslights on the panelled walls. There was even a fragrance of brandy in the atmosphere.
Nine old men, some of them very old indeed, were gathered in the large main office, and only one young man. That latter sat near the “three gray midgets,” as Messrs. Scott, Meredith, and Owens were known among the more disrespectful inhabitants of Andersburg. But “midgets” or not, these gentlemen compensated for their size by the vastness of their integrity, by their reputation, their combined wealth, and their formidable dignity. Amazingly alike in physical appearance, though not even remotely related by blood, they sat in their majesty, unperturbed, quiet and dominant, each small gray head erect, each pair of shoulders high and broad and firm, each little face a very replica of nobility. They dressed alike, in dark gray suits, with black silk ties adorned with black
pearl stick-pins, small shoes miraculously polished. They wore the rings of their universities too, but no other jewelry. Near them, of them, sat Oliver Prescott.
In comparison with all this patrician and solid elegance, the six other old men, in spite of their excellent clothing, appeared a somewhat untidy crew. There was, perhaps, something a little too florid about Dr. Banks, Mr. Leslie and Mr. Bassett, something too artificial about the saintliness of Judge Muehller, something too sly and wizened about Senator Whiscomb and Mr. Jenkins. Perhaps their disheveled air arose from a certain disorder which pervaded them, a disorder of minds beset by fear and concern, for Mr. Scott had just finished reading to them a letter from the Northwest Lumber Company of Seattle, Washington. Certainly, even Mr. Bassett’s and Dr. Banks’ high and ruddy color had faded; certainly, Judge Muehller’s atmosphere of martyred delicacy had been shaken; certainly, Mr. Leslie’s brutal posture had become flabby. As for the others, consternation and dismay had blurred their ancient outlines and changed them into the very portraits of impotent old men, still savage, but robbed of cogency.
Mr. Scott looked with stately satisfaction at the letter he had just read. His associates looked back at him mildly; the others glared at him, aghast. Oliver waited.
A long and panic-stricken silence followed the reading. The officers and directors of the Prescott Lumber Company could not even glance at one another; the old lawyers held their gaze. They dared not look away from him, it appeared. He might, in another moment, reach over to his desk and bring out another paper of doom.
Dr. Banks’ trembling hand passed over his white beard. He had trouble in finding his voice, and then he could only murmur: “Ridiculous. Impudent. Not to be taken seriously for a moment.” His voice dwindled away.
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