Chapter 2

"You're a funny little pill, aren't you?"

The tiger sprang to the victoria step from loafing in front of a jeweller's window, and stiffened into a statue of himself. Madame was coming.

"Take Evelyn to the lift, Fitz," said she. But first she kissed Evelyn, and said that she was going to send for her soon, for a spree with Fitz.

They passed through the court-yard, Fitz carrying his hat like a gentleman and a man of the world, and into the dark passage that led to the famous elevator.

"Your mother's smart," said Eve.

"Can't you think of anything but how smart people are?"

"When I'm grown up," she said, "and am smart myself I'll think of other things, I dare say."

"Can you work the lift yourself? Hadn't I better take you up?"

"Oh, no," she said, and held out her hand.

They shook, she firmly, he with the flabby, diffident clasp of childhood and old age.

"You're a funny kid," said Fitz.

"You're rather a dear," said Eve.

She entered the elevator, closed the door, and disappeared upward, at the pace of a very footsore and weary snail.

Mrs. Burton was much cheered by Mrs. Williams's visit, as who that struggles is not by the notice of the rich and the mighty?

"My dear," she said, when Eve entered, "she is so charming, so natural; she has promised to give a tea for me, and to present me to some of her friends. I hope you like the boy--Fitz--Fritz--whatever his name is. It would be so nice if you were to be friends."

"He _is_ nice," said Eve, "ever so nice--but _so_ dull."

"What did you talk about?" asked Mrs. Burton,

"Really," said Eve, aged seven, "I forget."

III

Mrs. Burton had made a failure of her own life.

She had married a man who subsequently had been so foolish as to lose his money--or most of it.

Eve, who had ever a short memory, does not remember the catastrophe. She was three at the time of it. She was in the nursery when the blow fell, and presently her mother came in looking very distracted and wild, and caught the little girl's face between her hands, and looked into it, and turned it this way and that, and passed the little girl's beautiful brown hair through her fingers, and then began to speak violently.

"You sha'n't be shabby," she said. "I will make a great beauty of you. You've got the beauty. You shall ride in your carriage, even if I work my hands to the bone. They've bowled me over. But I'm not dead yet. Elizabeth Burton shall have her day. You wait. I'll make the world dance for you." Then she went into violent hysterics.

There was a little money left. Mrs. Burton took Evelyn to Europe, and began to teach her the long litany of success:

Money is God; We praise thee, etc.,

a very long, somewhat truthful, and truly degraded litany. She taught her that it isn't handsome is as handsome does, but the boots and shoes, after all. She taught her that a girl must dress beautifully to be beautiful, that she must learn all the world's ways and secrets, and at the same time appear in speech and manner like a child of Nature, like a newly opened rose. And she taught her to love her country like this:

"America, my dear, is the one place where a girl can marry enough money to live somewhere else. Or, if her husband is tied to his affairs, it is the one place where she can get the most for his money--not as we get the most for ours, for we couldn't live two minutes on our income in America--but where the most people will bow the lowest to her because she is rich; where she will be the most courted and the most envied."

The two mammas worked along similar lines, but for different reasons. Mrs. Burton strove to make Eve ornamental so that she might acquire millions; Mrs. Williams strove to Anglicize and Europeanize her son so that he might ornament those which were already his. Those little spread eagles, the corpuscles in his blood, folded their wings a trifle as he grew older, and weren't always so ready to scream and boast; but they remained eagles, and no amount of Eton and Oxford could turn them into little unicorns or lions. You may wonder why Fitz's father, a strong, sane man, permitted such attempts at denationalization upon his son and heir. Fitz so wondered--once. So wrote. And was answered thus:

... If you're any good it will all come out in the wash. If you aren't any good it doesn't matter whether your mother makes an Englishman out of you or a Mandarin. When you come of age you'll be your own man; that's been the bargain between your mother and me. That will be the time for you to decide whether to be governed or to help govern. I am not afraid for you. I never have been.

So Mrs. Williams was not successful on the whole in her attempts to make a cosmopolitan of Fitz. And that was just enough, because the attempts were those of an amateur. She had lived a furiously active life of pleasure; she had made an unassailable place for herself in the best European society, as at home. She had not even become estranged from her husband. They were always crossing the ocean to see each other, "if only for a minute or two," as she used to say, and when Fitz was at school she spent much of her time in America; and Fitz's short vacations were wild sprees with his father and mother, come over for the purpose. Mr. Williams would take an immense country house for a few weeks, with shooting and riding and all sorts of games thrown in, and have Fitz's friends by the dozen. But, like as not, Mr. Williams would leave in the middle of it, as fast as trains and steamers could carry him, home to his affairs. And even the little English boys missed him sorely, since he was much kinder to them, as a rule, than their own fathers were, and had always too many sovereigns in his pocket for his own comfort.

But Mrs. Burton's attempts to make a charming cosmopolitan of Eve met with the greater success that they deserved. They were the efforts of a professional, one who had staked life or death, so to speak, on the result. Where Mrs. Williams amused herself and achieved small victories, Mrs. Burton fought and achieved great conquests. She saved money out of her thin income, money for the great days to come when Eve was to be presented to society at Newport; and she slaved and toiled grimly and with far-seeing genius. Eve's speaking voice was, perhaps, Mrs. Burton's and her own greatest triumph. It was Ellen Terry's youngest, freshest voice over again, but with the naivest little ghost of a French accent; and she didn't seem so much to project a phrase at you by the locutory muscles as to smile it to you.

Mrs. Burton had, of course, her moments of despair about Eve. But these were mostly confined to that despairing period when most girls are nothing but arms and wrists and gawkiness and shyness; when their clear, bright complexions turn muddy, and they want to enter convents. Eve at this period in her life was unusually trying and nondescript. She announced that if she ever married it would be for love alone, but that she did not intend to marry. She would train to be a cholera nurse or a bubonic plague nurse--anything, in short, that was most calculated to drive poor Mrs. Burton frantic. And she grew the longest, thinnest pair of legs and arms in Europe; and her hair seemed to lose its wonderful lustre; and her skin, upon which Mrs. Burton had banked so much, became colorless and opaque and a little blotched around the chin. And she was so nervous and overgrown that she would throw you a whole fit of hysterics during piano lessons; and she prayed so long night and morning that her bony knees developed callouses; and when she didn't have a cold in her head she was getting over one or catching another.

During this period in Eve's life the children met for the second time. It was in Vienna. This time Mrs. Burton, as having been longer in residence, called upon Mrs. Williams, taking Eve with her, after hesitation. Poor Eve! The graceful, gracious courtesy of her babyhood was now a performance of which a stork must have felt ashamed; she pitched into a table (while trying to make herself small) and sent a pitcher of lemonade crashing to the ground. And then burst into tears that threatened to become laughter mixed with howls.

At this moment Fitz, having been sent for to "do the polite," entered. He shook hands at once with Mrs. Burton, whom he had never seen before, and turned to see how Eve, whom he vaguely remembered, was coming on. And there she was--nothing left of his vague memory but the immense eyes. Even these were not clear and bright, but red in the whites and disordered with tears. For the rest (Fitz made the mental comparison himself) she reminded him of a silly baby camel that he had seen in the zoo, that had six inches of body, six feet of legs, and the most bashful expression imaginable.

Mrs. Burton, you may be sure, did not lose the start that Fitz gave before he went forward and shook hands with Eve. But she misinterpreted it. She said to herself (all the while saying other things aloud to Mrs. Williams): "If he had only seen her a year ago, even a boy of his age would have been struck by her, and would have remembered her. But now! Now, he'll never forget her. And I don't blame him. She's so ugly that he was frightened."

But that was not why Fitz had started. The poor, gawky, long-legged, tearful, frightened, overgrown, wretched girl had not struck him as ugly; she had struck him as the most pathetic and to-be-pitied object that he had ever seen. I do not account for this. I state it. Had she been pretty and self-possessed he would have left the room presently on some excuse, but now he stayed--not attracted, but troubled and sorry and eager to put her at her ease. So he would have turned aside to help a gutter cat that had been run over and hurt, though he would have passed the proudest, fluffiest Angora in Christendom with no more than a glance. He began to talk to her in his plainest, straightest, honestest Ohioan. It always came out strongest when he was most moved. His mother's sharp ears heard the A's, how they narrowed in his mouth, and smote every now and then with a homely tang against the base of his nose. "Just like his father," she thought, "when some one's in trouble." And she had a sudden twinge of nostalgia.

Fitz lured Eve to a far corner and showed her a set of wonderful carved chess-men that he had bought that morning; and photographs of his friends at Eton, and of the school, and of some of the masters. He talked very earnestly and elaborately about these dull matters, and passed by the opportunities which her first embarrassed replies offered for the repartee of youth. And he who was most impatient of restraint and simple occupations talked and behaved like a dull, simple, kindly old gentleman. His method may not have left Eve with a dazzling impression of him; she could not know that he was not himself, but all at once a deliberate artist seeking to soothe and to make easy.

Eve did not enjoy that call; she enjoyed nothing in those days but prayer and despair; but she got to the end of it without any more tears and crashes. And she said to her mother afterward that young Williams seemed a nice boy--but so dull. Well, they were quits. She had seemed dull enough to Fitz. A sick cat may touch your heart, but does not furnish you with lively companionship. Fitz was heartily glad when the Burtons had gone. He had worked very hard to make things possible for that absurd baby camel.

"You may call her an absurd baby camel," said his mother, "but it's my opinion that she is going to be a very great beauty."

"_She!"_ exclaimed Fitz, thinking that the ugliness of Eve might have unhinged his mother's beauty-loving mind.

"Oh," said his mother, "she's at an age now--poor child! But don't you remember how the bones of her face--"

"I am trying to forget," said Fitz with a tremendous shudder for the occasion.

IV

Fitz did not take a degree at Oxford. He left in the middle of his last term, leaving many friends behind. He stood well, and had been in no especial difficulty of mischief, and why he left was a mystery. The truth of the matter is that he had been planning for ten years to leave Oxford in the very middle of his last term. For upon that date fell his twenty-first birthday, when he was to be his own man. He spent a few hours in his mother's house in London. And, of course, she tried to make him go back and finish, and was very much upset, for her. But Fitz was obdurate.

"If it were Yale, or Princeton, or Harvard, or Berkeley, or Squedunk," he said, "I would stick it out. But a degree from Oxford isn't worth six weeks of home."

"But aren't you going to wait till I can go with you?"

"If you'll go with me to-night you shall have my state-room, and I'll sleep on the coal. But if you can't go till to-morrow, mother mine, I will not wait. I have cabled my father," said he, "to meet me at quarantine."

"Your poor, busy father," she said, "will hardly feel like running on from Cleveland to meet a boy who is coming home without a degree."

"My father," said Fitz, "will be at quarantine. He will come out in a tug. And he will arrange to take me off and put me ashore before the others. If the ship is anywhere near on schedule my father and I will be in time to see a ball game at the Polo Grounds."

Something in the young man's honest face and voice aroused an answering enthusiasm in his mother's heart.

"Oh, Fitz," she said, "if I could possibly manage it I would go with you. Tell your father that I am sailing next week. I won't cable. Perhaps he'll be surprised and pleased."

"I _know_ he will," said Fitz, and he folded his mother in his arms and rumpled her hair on one side and then on the other.

* * * * *

Those who beheld, and who, because of the wealth of the principal personages, took notice of the meeting between Fitz and his father, say that Fitz touched his father's cheek with his lips as naturally and unaffectedly as if he had been three years old, that a handshake between the two men accompanied this salute, and that Williams senior was heard to remark that it had looked like rain early in the morning, but that now it didn't, and that he had a couple of seats for the ball game. What he really said was inside, neither audible nor visible upon his smooth-shaven, care-wrinkled face. It was an outcry of the heart, so joyous as to resemble grief.

There was a young and pretty widow on that ship who had made much of Fitz on the way out and had pretended that she understood him. She thought that she had made an impression, and that, whatever happened, he would not forget her. But when he rushed up, his face all joyous, to say good-by, her heart sank. And she told her friends afterward that there was a certain irresistible, orphan-like appeal about that young Williams, and that she had felt like a mother toward him. But this was not till very much later. At first she used to shut herself up in her room and cry her eyes out.

They lunched at an uptown hotel and afterward, smoking big cigars, they drove to a hatter's and bought straw hats, being very critical of each other's fit and choice.

Then they hurried up to the Polo Grounds, and when it began to get exciting in the fifth inning, Fitz felt his father pressing something into his hand. Without taking his eyes from Wagsniff, who was at the bat, Fitz put that something into his mouth and began to chew. The two brothers--for that is the high relationship achieved sometimes in America, and in America alone, between father and son--thrust their new straw hats upon the backs of their round heads, humped themselves forward, and rested with their elbows on their knees and watched--no, that is your foreigner's attitude toward a contest--they _played_ the game.

I cannot leave them thus without telling the reader that they survived the almost fatal ninth, when, with the score 3-2 against, two out and a man on first, Wagsniff came once more to the bat and, swinging cunningly at the very first ball pitched to him by the famous Mr. Blatherton, lifted it over the centrefielder's head and trotted around the bases and, grinning like a Hallowe'en pumpkin, came romping home.

At dinner that night Williams senior said suddenly:

"Fitz, what you do want to do?"

A stranger would have thought that Fitz was being asked to choose between a theatre and a roof-garden, but Fitz knew that an entirely different question was involved in those casually spoken words. He was being asked off-hand to state off-hand what he was going to do with his young life. But he had his answer waiting.

"I want to see the world," he said.

Williams senior, as a rule, thought things out in his own mind and did not press for explanations. But on the present occasion he asked:

"As how?"

Fitz smiled very youthfully and winningly.

"I've seen some of it," he said, "right side up. Now I want to have a look upside-down. If I go into something of yours--as myself--I don't get a show. I'm marked. The other clerks would swipe to me, and the heads would credit me with brains before I showed whether I had any or not. I want you to get me a job in Wall Street--under any other name than my own--except Percy"--they both laughed--"your first name and mamma's maiden name would do--James Holden. And nobody here knows me by sight, I've been abroad so much; and it seems to me I'd get an honest point of view and find out if I was any good or not, and if I could get myself liked for myself or not."

"Well," said his father; "well, that's an idea, anyhow."

"I've had valets and carriages and luxuries all my life," said Fitz. "I think I like them. But I don't _know_--do I? I've never tried the other thing. I'm sure I don't want to be an underpaid clerk always. But I am sure I want to try it on for a while."

"I was planning," said his father, "to take a car and run about the country with you and show you all the different enterprises that I'm interested in. I thought you'd make a choice, find something you liked, and go into it for a starter. If you're any good you can go pretty far with me pulling for you. You don't like that idea?"

"Not for now," said Fitz. "I like mine better."

"Do you want to live on what you earn?"

"If I can stand it."

"You'll be started with ten dollars a week, say. Can you do it?"

"What did grandpa start on?" asked Fitz.

"His board, two suits of clothes, and twenty-four dollars a year," said William senior with a proud ring in his voice.

"And you?"

"I began at the bottom, too. That was the old-fashioned idea. Father was rich then. But he wanted me to show that I was some good."

"Did grandpa pull for you, or did you have to find yourself?"

"Well," said the father diffidently, "I had a natural taste for business. But," and he smiled at his son, "I shouldn't live on what you earn, if I were you. You needn't spend much, but have a good time out of hours. You'll find yourself working side by side with other sons of rich men. And you can bet your bottom dollar _they_ don't live on what they can earn. Unless you make a display of downright wealth you'll be judged on your merits. That's what you're driving at, isn't it?"

So they compromised on that point; and the next morning they went downtown and called upon Mr. Merriman, the great banker. He and Williams had been in many deals together, and on one historic occasion had supported prices and loaned so much ready money on easy terms as to avert a panic.

"John," said Williams senior, "my son Fitz."

"Well, sir," said Merriman, only his eyes smiling, "you don't look like a foreigner."

"I'm not," said Fitz stoutly.

"In that case," said Merriman, "what can I do for you?"

"I want to be called James Holden," said Fitz, "and to have a job in your office."

Merriman listened to the reasons with interest and amusement. Then he turned to Williams senior. "May I drive him?" he asked grimly.

"If you can," said Fitz's father. And he laughed.

Finally, it was arranged that, in his own way, Fitz was to see the world.

V

Fitz's experiment in finding himself and getting himself liked for himself alone was a great failure. He had not been in Mr. Merriman's employ two hours before he found that he disliked long sums in addition, and had made friends with Wilson Carrol, who worked next to him. Indeed, Fitz made friends with everybody in the office inside of two weeks, and was responsible for a great deal of whispering and hanging out of back windows for a puff of smoke. Nobody but Mr. Merriman knew who he was, where he came from, or what his prospects were. Everybody liked him--for himself. Rich or poor, it must have been the same. His idea that character, if he had it, would tell in the long run proved erroneous. It told right away.

Wilson Carrol and half a dozen other clerks in the office were the sons of rich men, put to work because of the old-fashioned idea that everybody ought to work, and at the same time pampered, according to the modern idea, with comfortable allowances over and beyond their pay. With one or other of these young men for companion, and presently for friend, Fitz began to lead the agreeable summer life of New York's well-to-do youth. He allowed himself enough money to keep his end up, but did not allow himself any especial extravagances or luxuries. He played his part well, appearing less well off than Carrol, and more so than young Prout, with whom he got into much mischief in the office. Whatever these young gentlemen had to spend they were always hard up. Fitz did likewise. If you dined gloriously at Sherry's and had a box at the play you made up for it the next night by a chop at Smith's and a cooling ride in a ferry-boat, say to Staten Island and back. Saturday you got off early and went to Long Island or Westchester for tennis and a swim, and lived till Monday in a luxurious house belonging to a fellow-clerk's father, or were put up at the nearest country club.

Downtown that summer there was nothing exciting going on. The market stood still upon very small transactions, and there was no real work for any one but the book-keepers. The more Fitz saw of the science of addition the less he thought of it, but he did what he had to do (no more) and drew his pay every Saturday with pride. Once, there being a convenient legal holiday to fatten the week-end, he went to Newport with Carrol and got himself so much liked by all the Carrol family that he received and accepted an invitation to spend his long holiday with them. He and Carrol had arranged with the powers to take their two weeks off at the same time--from the fifteenth to the end of August. And during business hours they kept their heads pretty close together and did much plotting and planning in whispers.

But Mrs. Carrol herself was to have a finger in that vacation. The presence in her house of two presentable young men was an excellent excuse for paying off dinner debts and giving a lawn party and a ball. Even at Newport there are never enough men to go round, and with two whole ones for a basis much may be done. The very night of their arrival they "ran into" a dinner-party, as Carrol expressed it. It was a large dinner; and the young men, having got to skylarking over their dressing (contrary to Mrs. Carrol's explicit orders) descended to a drawing-room already full of people. Carrol knew them all, even the famous new beauty; but Fitz--or James Holden, rather--had, except for the Carrols, but a nodding acquaintance with one or two of the men. He felt shy, and blushed very becomingly while trying to explain to Mrs. Carrol how he and Wilson happened to be so unfortunate as to be late.

"Well," she said, "I'm not going to punish you this time. You are to take Miss Burton in."

"Which is Miss Burton?" asked Fitz, on whose memory at the moment the name made no impression.

"Do you see seven or eight men in the corner," she said, "who look as if they were surrounding a punch-bowl?"

"Miss Burton is the punch-bowl?" he asked.