"But," expostulated Tutt, "you know how dangerous it is to meddle with things like that. Our experience certainly shows that it's far wiser to let the law settle all doubtful questions than to try to guess what the final testamentary intention of a dead testator really was. Don't you remember the Dodworth case? A hypersensitive conscience cost our widowed client ten thousand dollars! I say, leave well enough alone."
"'Well enough'! 'Well enough'!" snarled Mr. Tutt. "Are you going to constitute yourself the judge of what is well enough for a young man's soul? I give you fair warning, Tutt: he's heard your side of it, but before he gets through he's going to hear mine as well!"
Samuel Tutt turned a faint pink in the region of his collar.
"Why, certainly, Mr. Tutt!" he stammered. "Do so, by all means!"
"You jolly well bet I will!" replied Mr. Tutt, jamming on his stovepipe.
Several days passed, however, without the subject being mentioned further, while the proper steps to probate the will were taken as usual. Payson Clifford's dilemma had no legal reaction. He had made up his mind and he was going to stick to it. He had taken the opinion of counsel and was fully satisfied with what he had done. Nobody was going to know anything about it, anyway. When the proper time came he would burn the Sadie Burch letter and forget Sadie Burch. That is, he thought he was going to and that he could. But—as Plautus says: "Nihil est miserius quam animus hominis conscius."
You see, Payson Clifford, having been sent to a decent school and a decent college, irrespective of whether his father was a rotter or not, had imbibed something of a sense of honor. Struggle as he would against it, the shadow of Sadie Burch kept creeping athwart his mind. There were so many possibilities! Suppose she was in desperate straits? Hadn't he better look her up, anyhow? No, he most definitely didn't want to know anything about her! Supposing she really had rendered some service to his father for which she ought to be repaid as he had sought to repay her? These thoughts obtruded themselves upon Payson's attention when he least desired it, but they did not cause him to alter his intention to get his hooks into his father's whole residuary estate and keep it for himself. He had, you observe, a conscience, but it couldn't stand up against twenty-five thousand dollars reinforced by perfectly sound legal arguments.
No, he had a good excuse for not being a gentleman and a sportsman and he did not purpose to look for any reasons for doing differently. Then unexpectedly he was invited to dinner by Mr. Ephraim Tutt in a funny old ramshackle house on West Twenty-third Street with ornamented iron piazza railings all covered with the withered stalks of long dead wistarias, and something happened to him. "Payson Clifford's Twenty-five Thousand Dollar Dinner." He had no suspicion, of course, what was coming to him when he went there,—went, merely because Mr. Tutt was one of the very few friends of his father that he knew. And he held towards the old lawyer rather the same sort of patronizing attitude that he had had towards the old man. It would be a rotten dinner probably followed by a deadly dull evening with a snuffy old fossil who would tell him long-winded, rambling anecdotes of what New York had been like when there were wild goats in Central Park.
The snuffy old fossil, however, made no reference whatever to either old New York or wild goats,—the nearest he came to it being wild oats. Instead he began the dreary evening by opening a cupboard on his library wall and disclosing three long bottles, from which he partially filled a shining silver receptacle containing cracked ice. This he shook with astonishing skill and vigor, meantime uttering loud outcries of "Miranda! Fetch up the mint!" Then a buxom colored lady in calico—with a grin like that which made Aunt Sallie famous—having appeared, panting, with two large glasses and a bundle of green herbage upon a silver salver, the old fossil poured out a seething decoction—of which like only the memory remains—performed an incantation over each glass with the odoriferous greens, smiled fondly upon the work of his hands and remarked with amiable hospitality, "Well, my son! Glad to see you!—Here's how!"
Almost immediately a benign animal magnetism pervaded the bosom of Payson Clifford, and from his bosom reached out through his arteries and veins, his arterioles and venioles, to the uttermost ends of his being. He perceived in an instant that Mr. Tutt was no ordinary man and his house no ordinary house; and this impression was intensified when, seated at his host's shining mahogany table with its heavy cut glass and queer old silver, he discovered that Miranda was no ordinary cook. He began to be inflated over having discovered this Mr. Tutt, who pressed succulent oysters and terrapin stew upon him, accompanied by a foaming bottle of Krug '98. He found himself possessed of an astounding appetite and a prodigious thirst. The gas lights in the old bronze chandelier shone like a galaxy of radiant suns above his head and warmed him through and through. And after the terrapin Miranda brought in a smoking wild turkey with two quail roasted inside of it, and served with currant jelly, rice cakes, and sweet potatoes fried in melted sugar. Then, as in a dream, he heard a soul-satisfying pop and Miranda placed a tall, amber glass at his wrist and filled it with the creaming redrose wine of ancient Burgundy. He heard himself telling Mr. Tutt all about himself,—the most intimate secrets of his heart,—and saw Mr. Tutt listening attentively, almost reverently. He perceived that he was making an astonishing impression upon Mr. Tutt who obviously thought him a great man; and after keeping him in reasonable doubt about it for awhile he modestly admitted to Mr. Tutt that this was so. Then he drank several more glasses of Burgundy and ate an enormous pile of waffles covered with maple syrup. "I'se in town, honey!" Mr. Tutt had grown several sizes larger—the whole room was full of him. Lastly he had black coffee and some port. It was an occasion, he asserted,—er—always goo' weather,—or somethin'—when goo' fellows got together! He declared with an emphasis which was quite unnecessary, but which, however, did not disturb him, that there were too few men like themselves in the world,—men with the advantage of education,—men of ideals. He told Mr. Tutt that he loved him. He no longer had a father, and, evidently relying on further similar entertainments, he wanted Mr. Tutt for one. Mr. Tutt generously assented to act in that capacity and as the first step assisted his guest upstairs to the library where he opened the window a few inches.
Presently, Payson did not know how exactly, they got talking all about life,—and Mr. Tutt said ruminatively that after all the only things that really counted were loyalty and courage and kindness,—and that a little human sympathy extended even in what sometimes seemed at first glance the wrong direction often did more good—made more for real happiness—than the most efficient organized charity. He spoke of the loneliness of age—the inevitable loneliness of the human soul,—the thirst for daily affection. And then they drifted off to college, and Mr. Tutt inquired casually if Payson had seen much of his father, who, he took occasion to remark, had been a good type of straightforward, honest, hard-working business man.
Payson, smoking his third cigar, and taking now and then a dash of cognac, began to think better of his old dad. He really hadn't paid him quite the proper attention. He admitted it to Mr. Tutt—with the first genuine tears in his eyes since he had left Cambridge;—perhaps, if he had been more to him—. But Mr. Tutt veered off again—this time on university education; the invaluable function of the university being, he said, to preserve intact and untarnished in a materialistic age the spiritual ideals inherited from the past.
In this rather commonplace sentiment Payson agreed with him passionately. He further agreed with equal enthusiasm when his host advanced the doctrine that after all to preserve one's honor stainless was the only thing that much mattered. Absolutely! declared Payson, as he allowed Mr. Tutt to press another glass of port upon him.
Payson, in spite of the slight beading of his forehead and the blurr about the gas jets, began to feel very much the man of the world,—not a "six bottle man" perhaps, but—and he laughed complacently—a "two bottle man." If he'd lived back in the good old sporting days very likely he could have done better. But he's taken care of two full bottles, hadn't he? Mr. Tutt replied that he'd taken care of them very well indeed. And with this opening the old lawyer launched into his favorite topic,—to wit, that there were only two sorts of men in the world—gentlemen, and those who were not. What made a man a gentleman was gallantry and loyalty,—the readiness to sacrifice everything—even life—to an ideal. The hero was the chap who never counted the