On the Stairs Part 5

"Don't make any mistake. Just have the big things right, and they'll overlook lots of the little ones."

"H'm," I said doubtfully. "I supposed it was just the other way. Lay a lot of stress on certain little things, and larger shortcomings won't bother them. Bring her a bunch of flowers to-day, and she'll help you deed away the house and lot to-morrow."

"Fudge!" said Johnny. "I mean the really big things. There's only two.

Ground to stand on and air to breathe."

"That is to say...?"

"A platform under her feet and an atmosphere about her. Well, she's got me to stand on and to surround her. She understands it. She likes it.

Nothing else matters much."

"Ah!" said I.

"I'm her bedrock, and I'm her--How do they say it? I'm her--envelopment, as those painting fellows put it."

"See here, Johnny," I protested; "Don't get anachronistic. We are only in 1884. That expression won't reach America for ten or fifteen years.

Have some regard for dates."

"It won't? Wasn't it in your friend's letter?"

"What friend?"

"Why, Prince; when he was in Paris. Didn't you read it to me?"

I remembered.

"Do you know," he went on, "I've been straight as a string--ever since.

And I'm going to keep so."

"I should hope so, indeed."

"Whatever I may have been before. But I think it's better for a young fellow to dash in and find out than to keep standing on the edge and just wonder."

"Well, I don't know, Johnny," I returned soberly. "I'm going to be married myself, next month. And I expect to go to my bride just as pure--"

"No preaching," said Johnny. "The slate's wiped clean. Adele's all right for me, and I'm all right to her."

He adjusted his hat, making the two sides of the brim level.

"We're going to move shortly," he stated. "The business can go on where it is, for a while, but we're going to live somewhere else."

Perhaps in the city itself, it appeared; perhaps in some suburb toward the north. But no longer in one to the west. Johnny was developing some such scent for social values and some such feeling for impending topographical changes as had begun to stir the great houses that were grouped about the Princes.

"So you're the next one?" he said presently. "It's the only life. Good luck to you. And who's going to see you through? Prince?"

"Yes--'my friend.' I'm glad you remember him."

"Oh yes; I can remember him when I try. But I don't try very hard or very often. Back in this country?"

"He is."

"What's he doing?" Johnny fixed his hard blue eyes firmly on me.

I was sorry to have no very definite answer. "He has been in the East lately. He'll be back here in time for me."

"Well," said Johnny darkly; and that was all.

IV

Raymond's "tower" was not static, but peripatetic. Early in his second summer abroad it was standing among the Dutch windmills for a brief season; and when he learned that I was to have a short vacation in England--the only quarter of the Old World I ever cared for--he left it altogether for a fortnight and came across from Flus.h.i.+ng to see me.

Two points immediately made themselves clear. Firstly, he was viewing the world through literature--through works of fiction in some cases, through guide-books in more. Everything was a spectacle, with himself quite outside as an onlooker; and nothing was a spectacle until it had been ranged and appraised in print. Secondly, if he was outside of things, America was still farther outside; it existed as a remote province not yet drawn into the activities and interests of the "world."

He seemed willing, even anxious, to make himself secondary, subordinate.

However he may have been on the Continent, here in England his desire to conform made him appear subservient and almost abject. My own unabashed and unconscious Americanism--the possible consequence of inexperience--sometimes embarra.s.sed him, and he occasionally undertook to edit my dealings with members of the older half of our race, even with waiters and cabmen. As for the more boastful, aggressive, self-a.s.sertive sort of Americanism, _that_ would make him tremble with anger and blush for shame.

I will say this in his behalf, however: he did not like England and was not at home there.

"The little differences," he observed, one day, "made more trouble than the big ones. A minor seventh is all right, while a minor second is distressing. I am happier among the Latins."

Yet I am sure that even among his Latins he took the purely objective view and valued their objects of interest according as they were starred and double-starred, or left unmarked in the comparative neglect of small print.

We saw together Canterbury and Cambridge and Brighton and a few other approved places. Through all these he walked with a meticulous circ.u.mspection, wondering what people thought, asking inwardly if he were squaring with their ideas of what conduct should be. Only once did I find him fully competent and sufficiently a.s.sertive. The incident occurred on a late afternoon, in a small side street just off the Strand, while I was casting about for one of those letter-pillars.

Raymond was approached, as was proper to the locality and the time of day, by a young woman of thirty who had a hard, determined face and who was clothed on with a rustling black dress that jingled with jet. I was near enough to hear.

"Good-afternoon," she said.

"Good-afternoon."

"Where," with marked expressiveness, "are you going?"

"I'm going to stand right here."

"Give me a drink."

"Couldn't think of it."

"Stand," she said, with sudden viciousness, "stand and rot!"

Raymond, after an instant's surprise, made a response in his unstudied vernacular. "Yes, _I'll_ stand; but you skip. Shoo!"

She was preparing some retort, but he waved both his hands, wide out, as if starting a ruffled, vindictive hen across a highway. At the same time he caught sight of a constable on the corner, and let her see that he saw--

"Constable!"--why, I am as bad as Raymond himself: I mean, of course, policeman.

But the London police are sometimes chary in the exercise of their functions. What really started the woman on her way was his next brief remark, accompanied by the hands, as before, though with a more decided shade of propulsion.

"Scoot!" She went, without words.