Somewhere a Tree Grows. Welby Thomas Cox, Jr.

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СКАЧАТЬ brothers, was always letting her add to the number. It seemed to him that the more help there was, the less smoothly the household ran. But that did not concern him; his mind was saved for more important matters. There was no reason why it should concern him; could he not compel the dollars to flood in faster than she could bail them out?

      This brother and sister had come to New York fifteen years before, when he was twenty-two and she nineteen. They were from Albany, where their family had possessed some wealth and much social position for many generations. There was the usual "queer streak" in the Norman family—an intermittent but fixed habit of some one of them making a "low marriage." One view of this aberration might have been that there was in the Norman blood a tenacious instinct of sturdy and self-respecting independence that caused a Norman occasionally to do as he pleased instead of as he conventionally ought. Each time the thing occurred there was a mighty and horrified hubbub throughout the connection. But in the broad, as the custom is, the Normans were complacent about the "queer streak." They thought it kept the family from rotting out and running to seed. "Nothing like an occasional infusion of common blood," Aunt Ursula Van Bruyten (born Norman) used to say. For her Norman's sister was named.

      Norman's father had developed the "queer streak." Their mother was the daughter of a small farmer and, when she met their father, was chambermaid in a Troy hotel, Troy then being a largish village. As soon as she found herself married and in a position with whose duties she was unfamiliar, she set about fitting herself for them with the same diligence and thoroughness which she had shown in learning chamber work in a village hotel. She educated herself, selected not without shrewdness and carefully put on an assortment of genteel airs, finally contrived to make a most creditable appearance—was more aristocratic in tastes and in talk than the high mightiest of her relatives by marriage. But her son Fred was a Pinkey in character. In boyhood he was noted for his rough and low associates. His bosom friends were the son of a Jewish junk dealer, the son of a colored wash-woman, and the son of an Irish day laborer. Also, the commonness persisted as he grew up. Instead of seeking aristocratic ease, he aspired to a career. He had choice of several rich and well-born girls; but he developed a strong distaste for marriage of any sort and especially for a rich marriage. A fortune he was resolved to have, but it should be one that belonged to him. When he was about ready to enter a law office, his father and mother died leaving less than ten thousand dollars in all for his sister and himself. His sister hesitated, half inclined to marry a stupid second cousin who had thirty thousand a year.

      "Don't do it, Ursula," Fred advised. "If you must sell out, sell for something worthwhile." He laughed in his frank, ironical way. "Fact is, we've both made up our minds to sell. Let's go to the best market—New York. If you don't like it, you can come back and marry that fat-wit any time you please."

      Ursula inspected herself in the glass, saw a face and form exceeding fair to look upon; she decided to take her brother's advice. At twenty she threw over a multi-millionaire and married Clayton Fitzhugh for love—Clayton with only seventeen thousand a year. Of course, from the standpoint of fashionable ambition, seventeen thousand a year in New York is but one remove from tenement house poverty. As Clayton had no more ability at making money than had Ursula herself, there was nothing to do but live with Norman and "take care of him." But for this self-sacrifice of sisterly affection Norman would have been rich at thirty-seven. As he had to make her rich as well as himself, progress toward luxurious independence was slower—and there was the house, costing nearly fifty thousand a year to keep up.

      There had been a time in Norman's career—a brief and very early time—when, with the maternal peasant blood hot in his veins, he had entertained the quixotic idea of going into politics on the poor or people's side and fighting for glory only. The pressure of expensive living had soon driven this notion clean off. Norman had almost forgotten that he ever had it, was no longer aware how strong it had been in the last year at law school. Young men of high intelligence and ardent temperament always pass through this period. With some—a few—its glory lingers long after the fire has flickered out before the cool, steady breath of worldliness.

      All this time Norman has been dressing for dinner. He now leaves the third floor and descends toward the library, as it still lacks twenty minutes of the dinner hour.

      As he walked along the hall of the second floor a woman's voice called to him, "That you, Fred?"

      He turned in at his sister's sitting room. She was standing at a table smoking a cigarette. Her tall, slim figure looked even taller and slimmer in the tight-fitting black satin evening dress. Her features faintly suggested her relationship to Norman. She was a handsome woman, with a voluptuous discontented mouth.

      "What are you worried about, sis?" inquired he.

      "How did you know I was worried?" returned she.

      "You always are."

      "Oh!"

      "But you're unusually worried to-night."

      "How did you know that?"

      "You never smoke just before dinner unless your nerves are ragged. . . . What is it?"

      "Money."

      "Of course. No one in New York worries about anything else."

      "But this is serious," protested she. "I've been thinking—about your marriage—and what'll become of Clayton and me?" She halted, red with embarrassment.

      Norman lit a cigarette himself. "I ought to have explained," said he. "But I assumed you'd understand."

      "Fred, you know Clayton can't make anything. And when you marry—why—what will become of us!"

      "I've been taking care of Clayton's money—and of yours. I'll continue to do it. I think you'll find you're not so badly of. You see, my position enables me to compel a lot of the financiers to let me in on the ground floor—and to warn me in good time before the house falls. You'll not miss me, Ursula."

      She showed her gratitude in her eyes, in a slight quiver of the lips, in an unsteadiness of tone as she said, "You're the real thing, Freddie."

      "You can go right on as you are now. Only—" He was looking at her with meaning directness.

      She moved uneasily, refused to meet his gaze. "Well?" she said, with a suggestion of defiance.

      "It's all very natural to get tired of Clayton," said her brother. "I knew you would when you married him. But—Sis, I mind my own business. Still—why make a fool of yourself?"

      "You don't understand," she exclaimed passionately. And the light in her eyes, the color in her cheeks, restored to her for the moment the beauty of her youth that was almost gone.

      "Understand what?" He inquired in a tone of gentle mockery.

      "Love. You are all ambition—all self-control. You can be affectionate—God knows, you have been to me, Fred. But love you know nothing about—nothing."

      His was the smile a man gives when in earnest and wishing to be thought jesting—or when in jest and wishing to be thought in earnest.

      "You mean Josephine? Oh, yes, I suppose you do care for her in a way—in a nice, conventional way. She is a fine handsome piece—just the sort to fill the position of wife to a man like you. She's sweet and charming, she appreciates, and she flatters you. I'm sure she loves you as much as a girl knows how to love. But it's all so conventional, so proper. Your position—her money. You two are of the regulation type even in that you're suited to each other in height and figure. Everybody'll say, 'What a fine couple—so well matched!'"

      "Maybe СКАЧАТЬ