Part 3 (2/2)

He had given up buying books and periodicals; no new volumes to be seen in his room except works of travel (preferably guide-books) and grammars and dictionaries of foreign languages. For all such works of general uplift and inspiration as the intending tourist in Europe might expect to profit by, he depended on circulating libraries or the shelves of friends. I myself lent him a book of travels in the Dolomites, and scarcely know, now, whether I did well or ill. Raymond, in short, was silently, doggedly saving, with the intention of taking a trip--or of making a sojourn--abroad.

The cleavage came in James Prince's front parlor, one Sunday afternoon, and I happened to be present. A very few words sufficed. Raymond's father had picked up a thick little book from the centre-table, the only book in the room, and was looking back and forth between this work--an Italian dictionary--and Raymond himself.

”What do you expect to get out of this?” he asked.

”I expect to learn some Italian,” Raymond replied.

”Wouldn't French be more useful?”

”I know all the French I need.”

”Where do you expect to use your Italian?”

”In Italy. I didn't go to college.”

Impossible to depict the quality of Raymond's tone in speaking these five words. There was no color, no emphasis, no seeming presentation of a case. It was the cool, level statement of a fact; nor did he try to make the fact too pertinent, too cogent. An hour-long oration would not have been more effective. He had calmly taken off a lid and had permitted a look within. His father saw--saw that whatever Raymond, by plus or by minus, might be, he was no longer a boy.

”I know,” said James Prince, slowly. He was looking past us both and was opening and shutting the covers of the book unconsciously.

A day or two later, Raymond gave me the rest. His father had asked him how much money he had. Out of his sixty or seventy-five a month Raymond had set aside several hundreds; ”and I said I could make the rest by corresponding for some newspaper,” he continued. This was in the simple day when travel-letters from Europe were still printed and read in the newspapers, and even ”remunerated” by editors. Incredible, perhaps, in this day; yet true for that.

His father had asked him how long he intended to be away. Raymond was non-committal. He might travel for a year, or he might try ”living” there for a while--a long while. A matter of funds and of luck, it seemed. His father, without pressing him closely, offered to double whatever sum he had saved up. He appeared neither pleased nor displeased by Raymond's course. He felt I suppose, that the bank would hardly suffer, and that Raymond (whom he did not understand) might get some profit. Fathers have their own opinions of sons, which opinions range, I dare say, all the way from charitableness to desperation. In the case of my own son, I am glad to say, a very slight degree of charitableness was all the tax laid upon me. There were some distressing months of angularity, both in physique and in manners, at seventeen; then a quick and miraculous escape into trimness and grace. And my grandson, now at nine, promises to be, I am glad to state, even more of a success and a pleasure. As for Raymond, he had developed unevenly: his growth had gone athwart.

Possibly the ”world,” that vast, vague ent.i.ty of which his father's knowledge was restricted almost to one narrow field, might aid in straightening the boy out.

”Well, try it for a year,” his father said, not unkindly, and almost wistfully.

VI

When Johnny McComas heard of Raymond's resolve, he drew up his round face into a grimace. He thought the step queer, and he said so. But, ”Oh, well, if a fellow can afford it!” he added. And he did not explain just what meaning he attached to the word ”afford.”

But Johnny could see no valid reason for a fellow's giving the town the go-by at nineteen and at just that stage of the town's development.

Johnny was so made that the community which housed him was necessarily the centre of the cosmos; he himself, howsoever placed, was necessarily at the centre of the circle--so why leave the central dot for some vague situation on the circ.u.mference? And take this particular town: what a present! what a future! what a wide extension over the limitless prairie with every pa.s.sing month!--a prairie which merely needed to be cut up into small checkers and sold to hopeful newcomers; a prairie which produced profits as freely as it produced goldenrod and asters; a prairie upon which home-seekers might settle down under agents whose wide range, running from helpful cooperation to absolute flimflam, need leave no competent ”operator” other than rich.

”What are you going to get out of it?” asked Johnny earnestly.

Raymond attempted no set reply. Johnny, he recognized, was out for positive results, for tangible returns; his idea was to get on in the world by definite and unmistakable stages. Raymond never welcomed the idea of ”getting on”--not at least in the sense in which his own day and place used the expression. To do so was but to acknowledge some early inferiority. Raymond was not conscious of any inferiority to be overcome. Johnny might, of course, on this particular point, feel as he chose.

About this time old Jehiel Prince began to come more frequently to his son's house. He was yellower and grayer, and he was getting testy and irascible. He sometimes brought his lawyer with him, and the pair made James Prince an active partic.i.p.ant in their concerns. However, Jehiel was perhaps less unhappy here than in his own home. When there, he sat moodily alone, of evenings, in his bas.e.m.e.nt office; and Raymond, who was sometimes sent over with doc.u.ments or with messages, impatiently reported him to me as ”glum.”

”Poor old fellow! he doesn't know how to live!” said Raymond in complacent pity. He himself, of course, had but to a.s.semble all the bright-hued elements that awaited him a few months ahead to make his own life a poem, a song.

”I can do that,” he once said, in a moment when exaltation had briefly made him confidential.

Raymond never saw his grandmother--at least he never cared to see her.

Here, if nowhere else, he was willing to take a cue, and he took it from the head of the family. He thought that so many years of town life might have made her a little less rustic in the end: the York State of 1835 or of 1840 need not have remained York State so immitigably. And if there was a domestic blight on the house he was willing to believe that she was two thirds to blame: behind the old soul was a pack of poor relations. Particularly a brother-in-law--a bilious, cadaverous fellow, whom I saw once, and once was enough. He had been an itinerant preacher farther East, and he lived in a woeful little cottage along one of Jehiel's horse-car routes. His mournful-eyed wife was always asking help. He too had ”gone into real-estate,” and unsuccessfully. He was the dull reverse of that victorious obverse upon which Johnny McComas was beginning to s.h.i.+ne.

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