"To tell the truth, I"m rather bored with doing nothing. And if I can be of any use to you in the business--"
"You"re ready to resume the partnership," his father concluded the sentence for him. "That was the foundation of it all; the old days when I did the "spieling" and you took in the dollars. How quick your little hands were! Can you remember it? The smelly smoke of the torches, and the shadows chasing each other across the crowds below. And to think what has grown out of it. G.o.d, Boyee! It"s a miracle," he exulted.
"It isn"t very clear in my memory. I used to get pretty sleepy, I remember," said the son, smiling.
"Poor Boyee! Sometimes I hated the life, for you. But there was n.o.body to leave you with; and you were all I had. Anyway, it"s turned out well, hasn"t it?"
"That remains to be seen for me, doesn"t it? I"m rather at the start of things."
"Most youngsters would be content with an unlimited allowance, and the world for a playground."
"One gets tired of playing. _And_ of globe-trotting."
"Good! Do you think you can make Worthington feel like home?"
"How can I tell, sir? I haven"t spent two weeks altogether in the place since I entered college eight years ago."
"Did it ever strike you that I"d carefully planned to keep you away from here, and that our periods of companionship have all been abroad or at summer places?"
"Yes."
"You"ve never spoken of it."
"No."
"Good boy! Now I"ll tell you why. I wanted to be absolutely established before I brought you back here. Not in business, alone. That came long ago. There have been obstacles, in other ways. They"re all overcome.
To-day we come pretty near to being king-pins in this town, you and I, Hal. Do you feel like a prince entering into his realm?"
"Rather more like a freshman entering college," said the other, laughing. "It isn"t the town, it"s the business that I have misgivings about."
"Misgivings? How"s that?" asked the father quickly.
"What I can do in it."
"Oh, that. My doubts are whether it"s the best thing for you."
"Don"t you want me to go into it, Dad?"
"Of course I want you with me, Boyee. But--well, frank and flat, I don"t know whether it"s genteel enough for you."
"Genteel?" The younger Surtaine repeated the distasteful adjective with surprise.
"Some folks make fun of it, you know. It"s the advertising that makes it a fair mark. "Certina," they say. "That"s where he made his money.
Patent-medicine millions." I don"t mind it. But for you it"s different."
"If the money is good enough for me to spend, it"s good enough for me to earn," said Hal Surtaine a little grandiloquently.
"Humph! Well, the business is a big success, and I want you to be a big success. But that doesn"t mean that I want to combine the two. Isn"t there anything else you"ve ever thought of turning to?"
"I"ve got something of a leaning toward your profession, Dad."
"My prof--oh, you mean medicine."
"Yes."
"Nothing in it. Doctors are a lot of prejudiced pedants and hypocrites.
Not one in a thousand is more than an inch wide. What started you on that?"
"I hardly know. It was just a notion. I think the scientific and sociological side is what appeals to me. But my interest is only theoretical."
"That"s very well for a hobby. Not as a profession. Here we are, half an hour late, as usual."
The sudden and violent bite of the brakes, a characteristic operation of that mummy among railroads, the Mid-State and Great Muddy River, commonly known as the "Mid-and-Mud," flung forward in an involuntary plunge the incautious who had arisen to look after their things. Hal Surtaine found himself supporting the weight of a fortuitous citizen who had just made his way up the aisle.
"Thank you," said the stranger in a dry voice. "You"re the prodigal son of whom we"ve heard such glowing forecast, I presume."
"Well met, Mr. Pierce," called Dr. Surtaine"s jovial voice. "Yes, that"s my son, Harrington, you"re hanging to. Hal, this is Mr. Elias M. Pierce, one of the men who run Worthington."
Releasing his burden Hal acknowledged the introduction. Elias M. Pierce, receding a yard or so into perspective, revealed himself as a spare, middle-aged man who looked as if he had been hewn out of a block, square, and glued into a permanent black suit. Under his palely sardonic eye Hal felt that he was being appraised, and in none too amiable a spirit.
"A favorite pleasantry of your father"s, Mr. Surtaine," said Pierce.
"What became of Douglas? Oh, here he is."
A clean-shaven, rather floridly dressed man came forward, was introduced to Hal, and inquired courteously whether he was going to settle down in Worthington.
"Probably depends on how well he likes it," cut in the dry Mr. Pierce.
"You might help him decide. I"m sure William would be glad to have you lunch with him one day this week at the Huron Club, Mr. Surtaine."
Somewhat surprised and a little annoyed at this curiously vicarious suggestion of hospitality, the newcomer hesitated, although Douglas promptly supported the offer. Before he had decided what to reply, his father eagerly broke in.
"Yes, yes. You must go, Hal," he said, apparently oblivious of the fact that he had not been included in the invitation.
"I"ll try to be there, myself," continued Pierce, in a flat tone of condescension. "Douglas represents me, however, not only legally but in other matters that I"m too busy to attend to."
"Mr. Pierce is president of the Huron Club," explained Dr. Surtaine.
"It"s our leading social organization. You"ll meet our best business men there." And Hal had no alternative but to accept.
Here William Douglas turned to speak to Dr. Surtaine. "The Reverend Norman Hale has been looking for you. It is some minor hitch about that Mission matter, I believe. Just a little diplomacy wanted. He said he"d call to see you day after to-morrow."
"Meaning more money, I suppose," said Dr. Surtaine. Then, more loudly: "Well, the business can stand it. All right. Send him along."
With Hal close on his heels he stepped from the car. But Douglas, having the cue from his patron, took the younger man by the arm and drew him aside.
"Come over and meet some of our fair citizens," he said. "Nothing like starting right."
The Pierce motor car, very large, very quietly complete and elegant, was waiting near at hand, and in it a prematurely elderly, subdued nondescript of a woman, and a pretty, sensitive, sensuous type of brunette, almost too well dressed. To Mrs. Pierce and Miss Kathleen Pierce, Hal was duly presented, and by them graciously received. As he stood there, bareheaded, gracefully at ease, smiling up into the interested faces of the two ladies, Dr. Surtaine, pa.s.sing to his own car to await him, looked back and was warmed with pride and grat.i.tude for this further honorarium to his capital stock of happiness, for he saw already in his son the a.s.surance of social success, and, on the hour"s reckoning, summed him up. And since we are to see much of Harrington Surtaine, in evil chance and good, and see him at times through the eyes of that shrewd observer and capitalizer of men, his father, the summing-up is worth our present heed, for all that it is to be considerably modified in the mind of its proponent, as events develop. This, then, is Dr. Surtaine"s estimate of his beloved "Boyee," after a year of separation.
"A little bit of a prig. A little bit of a cub. Just a _little_ mite of a sn.o.b, too, maybe. But the right, solid, clean stuff underneath.
And my son, thank G.o.d! _My_ son all through."