Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  “Of course I do. I know how you all talk about the chances you’ve given him — between you. And I know just what they were — to try his hand at being a lawyer’s clerk first, and a banker’s clerk afterwards, with no salary and—”

  “If he had stuck to either for a year he would have had a very different sort of chance,” interrupted the old gentleman. “I told him so. There was little enough expected of him, I’m sure — just to go to an office every day, as most people do, and write what he was told to write. It wasn’t much to ask. Take the whole thing to pieces and look at it. What can he do? What do most men do who must make their way in the world? He has no exceptional talent, so he can’t go in for art or literature or that sort of thing. His father wouldn’t educate him for the navy, where he would have found his level, or where the Admiral’s name would have helped him. He didn’t get a technical education, which would have given him a chance to try engineering. There were only two things left — the law or business. I explained all that to him at the time. He shook his head and said he wanted something active. That’s just the way all young men talk who merely don’t want to stay in-doors and work decently hard, like other people. An active life! What is an active life? Ranching, I suppose he means, and he thinks he should do well on a ranch merely because he can ride fairly well. Riding fairly well doesn’t mean much on a ranch. The men out there can all ride better than he ever could, and he knows nothing about horses, nor cattle, nor about anything useful. Besides, with his temper, he’d be shot before he’d been out there a year—”

  “But there are all sorts of other things, and you forget Hamilton Bright, who began on a ranch—”

  “Ham Bright is made of different stuff. He had been brought up in the country, too, and his father was a Western man — from Cincinnati, at all events, though that isn’t West nowadays. No. Jack Ralston could never succeed at that — and I haven’t a ranch to give him, and I certainly won’t go and buy land out there now. I repeat that his only chance lay in law or business. Law would have done better. He had the advantage of having a degree to begin with, and I would have found him a partner, and there’s a lot of law connected with real estate which doesn’t need a genius to work it, and which is fairly profitable. But no! He wanted something active! That’s exactly what a kitten wants when it runs round after its own tail — and there’s about as much sense in it. Upon my word, there is!”

  “You’re very hard on him, uncle Robert. And I don’t think you’re quite reasonable. It was a good deal the old Admiral’s fault—”

  “I’m not examining the cause, I’m going over the facts,” said old Lauderdale, impatiently. “I tried him, and I very soon got to the end of him. He meant to do nothing. It was quite clear from the first. If he’d been a starving relation it would have been different. I should have made him work whether he liked it or not. As it was, I gave it up as a bad job. He wants to be idle, and he has the means to be idle if he’s willing to live on his mother. She has ten thousand dollars a year, and a house of her own, and they can live very well on that — just as well as they want to. When his mother dies that’s what Jack will have, and if he chooses to marry on it—”

  “You seem to forget that he’s married already—”

  “By Jove! I did! But it doesn’t change things in the least. My position is just the same as it was before. With ten thousand a year Katharine Ralston couldn’t support a family—”

  “Indeed, I could! I’m Katharine Ralston, and I should be—”

  “Nonsense! You’re Katharine Lauderdale. I’m speaking of Jack’s mother. I suppose you’ll admit that she’s not able to support her son’s wife out of what she has. It would mean a great change in her way of living. At present she doesn’t need more. She’s often told me so. If she wanted money for herself, just to spend on herself, mind you — I’d give her — well, I won’t say how much. But she doesn’t. It’s for Jack that she wants it. She’s perfectly honest. She’s just like a man in her way of talking, anyhow. And I don’t want Jack to be throwing my money into the streets. I can do more good with it in other ways, and she gives him more than is good for him, as it is. People seem to think that if a man has more than a certain amount of money, he’s under a sort of moral obligation to society to throw it out of the window. That’s a point of view I never could understand, though it comes quite naturally to Jack, I daresay. But I go back. I want to insist on that circumstance, and I want you to see the facts just as they are. If I were to settle another hundred thousand dollars on Jack’s mother, it would be precisely the same thing, at present, as though I’d settled it on him, or on you. Now you say he wouldn’t take any money if I offered it to him.”

  “No. He wouldn’t, and I wouldn’t let him if he wanted to.”

  “You needn’t be afraid, my dear. I’ve no intention of doing anything so good-natured and foolish. If anything could complete Jack’s ruin for all practical purposes, that would. No, no! I won’t do it. I’ve given Kate Ralston a good many valuable jewels at one time and another since she married the Admiral — she’s fond of good stones, you know. If Jack chooses to go to her and tell her the truth, and if she chooses to sell them and give him the money, it will keep you very comfortably for a long time—”

  “How can you suggest such a thing!” cried Katharine, indignantly. “As though he would ever stoop to think of it!”

  “Well — I hope he wouldn’t. It wouldn’t be pretty, if he did. But I’m a practical man, my dear, and I’m an old fellow and I’ve seen the world on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean for over seventy years. So I look at the case from all possible points of view, fair and unfair, as most people would. But I don’t mean to be unfair to Jack.”

  “I think you are, uncle Robert. If you’ve proved anything, you’ve proved that he isn’t fit for a ranch — and so you say there’s nothing left but the law or business. It seems to me that there are ever so many things—”

  “If you’ll name them, you’ll help me,” said old Lauderdale, seriously.

  “I mean active things — to do with railroads, and all that—” Katharine stopped, feeling that her knowledge was rather vague.

  “Oh! You mean to talk about railroading. I don’t own any railroads myself, as I daresay you know, but I’ve picked up some information about them. Apart from the financing of them — and that’s banking, which Jack objects to — there’s the law part, which he doesn’t like either, and the building of them, which he’s too old to learn, and the mechanical part of them, such as locomotives and rolling stock, which he can’t learn either — and then there are two places which men covet and for which there’s an enormous competition amongst the best men for such matters in the country — I mean the freight agent’s place and the passenger agent’s. They are two big men, and they understand their business practically, because they’ve learned it practically. To understand freight, a man must begin by putting on rough clothes and going down to the shed and handling freight himself, with the common freight men. There are gentlemen who have done that sort of thing — just as fine gentlemen as Jack Ralston, but made of quite different stuff. And it takes a very long time to reach a high position in that way, though it’s worth having when you get it. Do you understand?”

  “Yes — I suppose I do. But one always hears of men going off and succeeding in some out-of-the-way place—”

  “But you hear very little about the ones who fail, and they’re the majority. And you hear, still more often, people saying, as they do of Jack Ralston, that he ought to go away, and show some enterprise, and get something to do in the West. It’s always the West, because most of the people who talk know nothing whatever about it. I tell you, Katharine, my dear, it’s just as hard to start in this country as it is anywhere else, though men get on faster after they’re once started — and all this talk about something active and an out-of-door existence is pure nonsense. It’s nothing else. A man may have luck soon or late or never, but the safest plan for city-bred men is to begin at a bank. I d
id, and I’ve not regretted it. Just as soon as a fellow shows that he has something in him, he’s wanted, and if he has friends, as Jack has, they’ll help him. But as long as a man hangs about the clubs all day with a cigarette in his mouth, sensible people, who want workers, will fight shy of him. Just tell Jack that, the next time you see him. It’s all I’ve got to say, and if it doesn’t satisfy him nothing can.”

  The old gentleman’s anger had quite disappeared while he was speaking, though it was ready to burst out again on very small provocation. He spoke so earnestly, and put matters so plainly, that Katharine began to feel a blank disappointment closing in between her and her visions of the future in regard to an occupation for John. For the rest, she would have been just as determined to marry him after hearing all that her uncle had to say as she had been before. But she could not help showing what she felt, in her face and in the tone of her voice.

  “Still — men do succeed, uncle Robert,” she said, clinging rather desperately to the hope that he had only been lecturing her and had some pleasant surprise in store.

  “Of course they do, my dear,” he answered. “And it’s possible for Jack to succeed, too, if he’ll go about it in the right way.”

  “How?” asked Katharine, eagerly, and immediately her face brightened again.

  “Just as I said. If he’ll show that he can stick to any sort of occupation for a year, I’ll see what can be done.”

  “But that sticking, as you call it — all day at a desk — is just what he can’t do. He wasn’t made for it, he—”

  “Well then, what is he made for? I wish you would get him to make a statement explaining his peculiar gifts—”

  “Now don’t be angry again, uncle Robert! This is rather a serious matter for Jack and me. Do you tell me, in real earnest, quite, quite honestly, that as far as you know the only way for Jack to earn his living is to go into an office for a year, to begin with? Is that what you mean?”

  “Yes, child. Upon my word — there, you’ll believe me now, won’t you? That’s the only way I can see, if he really means to work. My dear — I’m not a boy, and I’m very fond of you — I’ve no reason for deceiving you, have I?”

  “No, uncle dear — but you were angry at first, you know.”

  “No doubt. But I’m not angry now, nor are you. We’ve discussed the matter calmly. And we’re putting out of the question the fact that if I chose to give Jack anything in the way of money, my cheque-book is in this drawer, and I have the power to do it — without any inconvenience,” added the very rich man, thoughtfully. “But you tell me that he would not accept it. It’s hard to believe, but you know him better than I do, and I accept your statement. I may as well tell you that for the honour of the family and to get rid of all this nonsense about a secret marriage I’m perfectly willing to do this. Listen. I’ll invite you all — the whole family — to my place on the river, and I’ll tell them all what has happened and we’ll have a sort of ‘post facto’ wedding there, very quietly, and then announce it to the world. And I’ll settle enough on you, personally — not on your husband — to give you an income you can manage to live on comfortably—”

  “Oh!” cried Katharine. “You’re too kind, uncle Robert — and I thank you with all my heart — just as though we could take it from you — I do, indeed—”

  “Never mind that, child. But you say you can’t take it. You mean, I suppose, that if it were your money — if I made it so — Jack would refuse to live on it. Let’s be quite clear.”

  “That’s exactly it. He would never consent to live on it. He would feel — he’d be quite right, too — that we had got married first in order to force money out of you, for the honour of the family, as you said yourself.”

  “Yes. And it’s particularly hard to force money out of me, too, though I’m not stingy, my dear. But I must say, if you had meant to do it, you couldn’t have invented anything more ingenious, or more successful. I couldn’t allow a couple of young Lauderdales to go begging. They’d have pictures of me in the evening papers, you know. And apart from that, I’m devilish fond of you — I mean I’m very fond of you — you must excuse an old bachelor’s English, sometimes. But you won’t take the money, so that settles it. Then there’s no other way but for Jack to go to work like a man and stick to it. To give him a salary for doing no work would be just the same as to give him money without making any pretence about it. He can have a desk at my lawyer’s, or he can go back to Beman Brothers’, — just as he prefers. If he’ll do that, and honestly try to understand what he’s doing, he shan’t regret it. If he’ll do what there is to be done, I’ll make him succeed. I could make him succeed if he had ‘failure’ written all over him in letters a foot high — because it’s within the bounds of possibility. But it’s of no use to ask me to do what’s not possible. I can’t make this country over again. I can’t create a convenient, active, out-of-door career at a good salary, when the thing doesn’t exist. In other words, I can’t work miracles, and he won’t take money, so he must content himself to run on lines of possibility. My lawyer would do most things for me, and so would Beman Brothers. Beman, to please me, would make Jack a partner, as he has done for Ham Bright. But Jack must either work or put in capital, and he has no capital to put in, and won’t take any from me. And to be a partner in a law firm, a man must have some little experience — something beyond his bare degree. Do you see it all now, Katharine?”

  “Indeed, I do,” she answered, with a little sigh. “And meanwhile — uncle Robert — meanwhile—”

  “Yes — I know — you’re married. That’s the very devil, that marriage business.”

  He seemed to be thinking it over. There was something so innocently sincere in his strong way of putting it that Katharine could not help smiling, even in her distress. But she waited for him to speak, foreseeing what he would say, and did.

  “There’s nothing for it,” he said, at last. “You won’t take money, and you can’t live with your mother, and as for telling your father at this stage — well, you know him! It really wouldn’t be safe. So there’s nothing for it but — I hate to say it, my dear,” he added kindly.

  “But to keep it a secret, you mean,” she said sadly.

  “You see,” he answered, in a tone that was almost apologetic, “it would be a mistake, socially, to say you were married, and to go on living each with your own family — besides, your father would know it like everybody else. He’d make your life very — unbearable, I should think.”

  “Yes — he would. I know that.”

  “Well — come and see me again soon, and we’ll talk it over. You’ll have to consider it just as a — I don’t know exactly how to put it — a sort of formal betrothal between yourselves, such as they used to have in old times. And I suppose I’m the head of the family, though your grandfather is older than I am. Anyhow, you must consider it as though you were solemnly engaged, with the approval of the head of the family, and as though you were to be married, say, next year. Can you do that? Can you make him look at it in that light, child?”

  “I’ll try, since there’s really nothing else to be done. But oh, uncle Robert, I wish I’d come before. You’ve been so kind! Why did it rain yesterday — oh, why did it rain?”

  CHAPTER XVII.

  WHEN KATHARINE LEFT Robert Lauderdale’s house that morning, she felt that trouble had begun and was not to cease for a long time. She had entered her uncle’s library full of hope, sure of success and believing that John Ralston’s future depended only upon the rich man’s good will and good word. She went out fully convinced at last that he must take one or the other of the much-despised chances he had neglected and forthwith do the best he could with it. She thought it was very hard, but she understood old Lauderdale’s clear statement and she saw that there was no other way.

  She sympathized deeply with John in his dislike of the daily drudgery, for which it was quite true that he was little fitted by nature or training. But she did her best to analyze that unfitne
ss, so as to try and discover some gift or quality to balance it and neutralize it. And her first impulse was not to find him at once and tell him what had happened, but rather to put off the evil moment in which she must tell him the truth. This was the first sign of weakness which she had exhibited since that Monday afternoon on which she had persuaded him to take the decisive step.

  She turned into Madison Avenue as soon as she could, for the sake of the quiet. The morning sun shone full in her eyes as she began to make her way southwards, and she was glad of the warmth, for she felt cold and inwardly chilled in mind and body. She had walked far, but she still walked on, disliking the thought of being penned in with a dozen or more of unsympathizing individuals for twenty minutes in a horse-car. Moreover, she instinctively wished to tire herself, as though to bring down her bodily energy to the low ebb at which her mental activity seemed to be stagnating. Strong people will understand that desire to balance mind and body.

  She was quite convinced that her uncle was right. The more she turned the whole situation over, the clearer what he had said became to her. The only escape was to accept the money which he was willing to give her — for the honour of the family. But if neither she nor John would take that, there was no alternative but for John to go to work in the ordinary way, and show that he could be steady for at least a year. That seemed a very long time — as long as a year can seem to a girl of nineteen, which is saying much.

  Katharine had seen such glorious visions for that year, too, that the darkness of the future was a tangible horror now that they were fading away. The memory of a dream can be as vivid as the recollection of a reality. The something which John was to find to do had presented itself to her mind as a sort of idyllic existence somewhere out of the world, in which there should be woods and brooks and breezes, and a convenient town not far away, where things could be got, and a cottage quite unlike other cottages, and a good deal of shooting and fishing and riding, with an amount of responsibility for all these things equal in money to six or seven thousand dollars a year, out of which Katharine was sure that she could save a small fortune in a few years. It had not been quite clear to her why the responsibility was to be worth so much in actual coin of the Republic, but people certainly succeeded very quickly in the West. Besides, she was quite ready to give up all the luxuries and amusements of social existence — much more ready to do so than John Ralston, if she had known the truth.