On the Stairs Part 17

"Of course."

"You would like to come with me?"

"Yes." Surely his own father could not help him to a future.

"Well, take your choice. What do you want? Bank?"

But Albert had heard something about banks. Bank clerks, in these close-knit days, when anybody who fell out of the lock-step was lost, were but a sort of financial militia. Even if he were pushed along with the friendliest zeal, it might be years before he reached the place and the end desired. Nor had he much more fondness for growing up under the eye of McComas than under that of his own father.

"Bank?" repeated McComas.

"No."

McComas grinned. It was the grin he used when greatly pleased.

"One of those Western concerns?"

"Yes," said Albert; "send me West."

When Raymond heard that Albert had cast in his lot with McComas and meant soon to leave for Colorado, he winced. Albert, to him, was still a boy, and this term in the West but another kind of schooling. "Just as his mother tried to influence him before," said Raymond to me bitterly, "so McComas will influence him now." And I could not deny that McComas had the whip hand. The unintermittency of business correspondence, the cogency of a place on the payroll....

No, it was not to be denied that Raymond had lost Albert finally.

And Althea went to the train, to see him off--as to another war.

V

"Finally"--perhaps I have used the word too soon.

I dropped in on Raymond, one evening, at his private hotel. It was about four months after Albert's departure for the West. His quarters seemed as snugly comfortable as ever, and as completely adapted to his ultimately discovered personality and its peculiar requirements. Raymond master of a big house! Raymond leading a public life!

But he himself was perturbed. It was a letter from Albert--it was two or three letters, in fact.

"He says he is going to marry her."

"Her?"

"Althea. Althea McComas."

Albert, in the West, had done well. He had taken hold immediately, decisively. The initiative which would never have developed under his father had been liberated during his war service and was now mounting to a still higher pitch among the mountains.

"He is going to do," McComas had told me, after the second month. "He is a wonder," he had said, later.

Be that as it may. McComas was doubtless inclined to the favorable view.

He had determined in advance that Albert was to succeed. Albert was meeting, successfully, known expectations of success--as a young man may.

"He started so well," said his father. "And now...."

"And now?"

"Now he wants to marry the daughter of a stable-boy!"

"Raymond," I said; "drop the 'stable-boy.' That was never true; and if it were it would have no relevancy here and now."

"I should say not! Why, Albert--"

"You have told him? He knows your--He knows the--the legend?"

"He does. And as you see, it makes no difference to him."

"Why should it? Why should he care for early matters that were over and past long years before he was born? He sees what he sees. He feels what he feels."

"He feels McComas."

"Why shouldn't he? Who wouldn't?"

Raymond relapsed into a moody silence. I saw, presently, that he was trying to break from it. He had another consideration to offer.

"And then," he began, "about--his mother. He must have understood--something. He must know--by now."

"Know?" I returned. "If he does, he has the advantage over all the rest of us. _I_ don't 'know.' _You_ don't 'know.' Neither does anybody else.

Another old matter--as well rectified as society and its usages can manage, and best left alone."

"Well, it's--it's indelicate. Albert ought to feel that."

"Raymond!" I protested. "We must leave it to the young to smooth over the rough old places and to salve the aching old sores. That's their great use and function."

"Not Albert's," he said stubbornly. "I don't want him to do it, and I don't want it done in that way."

Another silence. I could see that he was gathering force for still another objection.

"It's a desertion," said the undying egoist. "It's a piece of treachery.

It's a going over to the enemy."

"If you mean McComas, Albert went over months ago. And he doesn't seem to have lost anything by doing so," I ventured to add.

"This marriage would clinch it, would confirm it. I should lose him at last, and completely, just as I have lost--everything."

"Raymond," I could scarcely keep from saying, "you deceive yourself. You have really never cared for Albert at all. The only concern here is your own pride--the futile working of a will that is too weak to get its own way."

But I kept silence, and he continued the silence. Yet I felt that he was gathering force for the greatest objection of all.

"I have heard them spoken of," he said, after a little, "as--as brother and sister. For them to marry! It's unseemly."

"Raymond!" I protested again, with even more vigor than before. "Why must you say a thing like that?"

"The same father and mother--now. Living together--going about together as members of one family.... They did, you know."