The days stretched into weeks, weeks to months. It was September now.
John Carrington was almost convalescent.
He could walk now with a crutch from his bedroom to the veranda couch. The bone had knit, but the flesh was slow to heal.
And what a comfort his son had been to him through those months!
Sunny. Tireless. Capable. Ready to read if he wanted to be read to; to write letters when they had to be written; to amuse him with tales of his life and Elenore’s in Paris, when the pain was bad and time dragged.
And outside there was not a miner who did not speak boastingly of Mr. Ned. Even Yellow Dog, noncommittal Yellow Dog, sang his praises.
Only the miners at the Tray-Spot sneered. Only their wives flung a contemptuous laugh when young Carrington and the Colonel sped by out on long rides through the country.
These rides, in whose solitude one might think one’s own mind freely; and certain letters that went overseas addressed to one E. Carrington, to be held in Paris till called for, were the only relaxations in which young Carrington permitted himself an entire honesty of thought.
One morning Mr. Kipley came home jubilant.
“Strangers in town,” he announced. “Owner of the Tray-Spot, I guess, and a young fellow. Saw them driving with Richards.”
John Carrington rapped his crutch sharply against a chair.
“Now there’s going to be something doing,” he said, defiantly; and all the repressed activity of months rang in the words.
Young Carrington waved a hand airily in the direction of the other mine.
“The Tray-Spot shall cease from troubling,” he said, gayly, “and we’ll just gather you gently in.”
If anything stirred the stillness, it was the mocking laughter of the goddess of fate.
CHAPTER IV
The brownstone house on Madison Avenue suggested the solid and respectable affluence of its owner, Mr. Livingstone Wade, in that quieter old New York way which preceded Millionaire’s Row, and which, on account of that precedence, Mr. Livingstone Wade considered immeasurably superior.
Nor was this suggestion a mere exterior effect.
The somber elegance of its interior furnishings showed in every detail that Mr. Wade’s conservatism to earlier ideals was unfaltering.
The ormolu clock on the drawing-room mantel was flanked by a pair of tall vases, Sèvres, as a matter of course, standing equidistant with the precision of sentinels.
His pictures included a Landseer, a Meissonier, a Bouguereau, and some excellent copies of Raphael. He was fond of calling your attention to the fact that all of these gentlemen could draw, and that their figures “stood out.”
The books in his library showed a strong tendency to run in sets, with modern fiction conspicuously absent. And as for his dinner services, they were complete, and he considered odd sets of plates as a fad which had its origin in economy or inefficient housekeeping.
He rated l’art nouveau with nouveaux riches, considered impressionism as a cloak for defective draughtsmanship, declined to admit anything made as far west as Rookwood to the companionship of the Capodamonte and Meissen in his cabinets, and would have banished to his stables the most priceless Indian basket ever made.
West of New York he considered that the wilderness howled, impelled to such mournful vocalization by a dawning sense of its own abnormal crudities.
In business, however, Mr. Wade consented to compromise with the spirit of the times. No out-of-date methods characterized the bank of which he was president, nor, on the other hand, did any up-to-date crook contrive to outwit the keen-eyed, white-haired, thin-lipped old gentleman, who held himself as erect ethically as he did physically.
His wife, born a Van Dorn, christened in Grace Church and married in the same, had died at fifty-seven, childless – a course of conduct which Mr. Wade, while he preserved a high silence, felt as deeply as a European monarch might have done. It was not a mere personal question, but the continuation of the Wade line would have been for the good of the country at large.
As for his only nephew, he had done his duty by him. Not extravagantly, to spoil the young man, or delude him with unfounded hopes of heirship; but by a college course, Columbia bien entendu! and when he determined to become an architect, the Beaux Arts was naturally the only correct place.
When he read John Carrington’s letter, with its phrase “since you have no direct heir,” Mr. Livingstone Wade experienced a very primitive bitterness, which resolved itself into a determination to make his nephew heir to that particular piece of property at least; to recall him from Paris, and to insist upon his going out to Michigan and becoming thoroughly conversant with the mine as soon as possible.
Having begun the accomplishment of this design, Mr. Livingstone Wade began to feel a consciousness of benevolence in acting so generously toward the young man, which resulted, very naturally, in his regarding his nephew with more affection than even Mr. Wade himself would have thought possible.
As they sat together in the well-ordered library, Mr. Wade said to himself that he had done well.
“When the mine came to us with that tangle of collateral from the Riley failure, I found that it was paying dividends regularly; and Richards, the manager, wrote me that they could be doubled easily if he was allowed a free hand to cut down expenses and exercise his own judgment. He has done it, too, and the mine is a splendid property. And it is yours, my boy, when you have made yourself thoroughly conversant with it.” Mr. Wade’s tone was complacently benevolent.
“Do you mean that you want me to take a course in mining engineering?” said Hastings, and his voice was carefully expressionless.
“No,” said his uncle; “I want you to go out to the mine itself, put yourself in Richards’ hands, and get a good working knowledge of the proposition, so that Richards will know you are master. He wouldn’t try any tricks with me, because it is pretty well known that men who have tried have repented it; but with a young fellow like you, it’s different, of course. I shall not expect you to spend all your time there. Perhaps for a year or so you’d better stay on the ground. Then come East, open your architect’s office, and go West once a year on a tour of inspection.”
Hastings’ face cleared.
“It is more than good of you, sir. I’ll try to deserve it,” he said, frankly.
“There is only one condition,” Mr. Wade went on, “and your word is sufficient for that. You are not to sell the mine without my consent. The very fact that John Carrington is so anxious to get hold of it is one of the best points in its favor.”
“Carrington?” said Hastings, mechanically, wondering if the name so constantly in his thoughts had begun to repeat itself audibly.
“He is a – a boor – who owns the adjoining mine,” Mr. Wade classified him. “He offered to buy the Tray-Spot. Of course I declined. And he had the insolence to charge Richards with flooding his mine with water from ours, instead of pumping it to the surface. Threatened us with a lawsuit if we didn’t put in additional pumps. He said his men were not educated to the luxury of free baths as yet, and that swimming was an unpopular sport on the eleventh level.”
“But if it was true?” said Hastings.
“Of course it wasn’t,” said Mr. Wade, testily. “I wrote Richards, and he said Carrington was just trying to get hold of the mine, and wouldn’t stop at anything to do it, because his, the Star, is down so deep it is about worked out. Do you know,” Mr. Wade went on, “this John Carrington had the audacity to say that, since I’d never been West, he didn’t suppose I’d care to begin such trips at my age, and that, as I had no son, he should think a reasonable proposition to sell ought to interest me.”
Mr. Wade intended to suggest only John Carrington’s breach of good manners, but in spite