Mr. Rackstraw looked sharply at him.
"Repeat that," he said. "I don't think I quite got it."
"All I ask is your consent to my engagement to your daughter."
"Young man," said Mr. Rackstraw, not without a touch of admiration, "I admire cheek. But there is a limit. That limit you have passed so far that you'd need to look for it with a telescope."
"You refuse your consent?"
"I never said you weren't a clever guesser."
"Why?"
Mr. Rackstraw laughed. One of those nasty, sharp, metallic laughs that hit you like a bullet.
"How would you support my daughter?"
"I was thinking that you would help to some extent."
"You were, were you?"
"I was."
"Oh?"
Mr. Rackstraw emitted another of those laughs.
"Well," he said, "it's off. You can take that as coming from an authoritative source. No wedding-bells for you."
Clarence drew himself up, fire flashing from his eyes and a bitter smile curving his expressive lips.
"And no Meredith ball for you!" he cried.
Mr. Rackstraw started as if some strong hand had plunged an auger into him.
"What?" he shouted.
Clarence shrugged his superbly-modelled shoulders in silence.
"Come, come," said Mr. Rackstraw, "you wouldn't let a little private difference like that influence you in a really important thing like this football match, would you?"
"I would."
"You would practically blackmail the father of the girl you love?"
"Every time."
"Her white-haired old father?"
"The colour of his hair would not affect me."
"Nothing would move you?"
"Nothing."
"Then, by George, you're just the son-in-law I want. You shall marry Isabel; and I'll take you into partnership in my business this very day. I've been looking for a good able-bodied bandit like you for years. You make Captain Kidd look like a preliminary three-round bout. My boy, we'll be the greatest combination, you and I, that the City has ever seen. Shake hands."
For a moment Clarence hesitated. Then his better nature prevailed, and he spoke.
"Mr. Rackstraw," he said, "I cannot deceive you."
"That won't matter," said the enthusiastic old man. "I bet you'll be able to deceive everybody else. I see it in your eye. My boy, we'll be the greatest-"
"My name is not Jones."
"Nor is mine. What does that matter?"
"My name is Tresillian. The Hon. Tresillian. I am the younger son of the Earl of Runnymede. To a man of your political views-"
"Nonsense, nonsense," said Mr. Rackstraw. "What are political views compared with the chance of getting a goalkeeper like you into the family? I remember Isabel saying something to me about you, but I didn't know who you were then."
"I am a preposterous excrescence on the social cosmos," said Clarence, eyeing him doubtfully.
"Then I'll be one too," cried Mr. Rackstraw. "I own I've set my face against it hitherto, but circumstances alter cases. I'll ring up the Prime Minister on the 'phone to-morrow, and buy a title myself."
Clarence's last scruple was removed. Silently he gripped the old man's hand, outstretched to meet his.
Little remains to be said, but I am going to say it, if it snows. I am at my best in these tender scenes of idyllic domesticity.
Four years have passed. Once more we are in the Rackstraw home. A lady is coming down the stairs, leading by the hand her little son. It is Isabel. The years have dealt lightly with her. She is still the same stately, beautiful creature whom I would have described in detail long ago if I had been given half a chance. At the foot of the stairs the child stops and points at a small, round object in a glass case.
"Wah?" he says.
"That?" said Isabel. "That is the ball Mr. Meredith used to play with when he was a little boy."
She looks at a door on the left of the hall, and puts a finger to her lip.
"Hush!" she says. "We must be quiet. Daddy and grandpa are busy in there cornering wheat."
And softly mother and child go out into the sunlit garden.
In Alcala
In Alcala, as in most of New York's apartment houses, the schedule of prices is like a badly rolled cigarette-thick in the middle and thin at both ends. The rooms half-way up are expensive; some of them almost as expensive as if Fashion, instead of being gone for ever, were still lingering. The top rooms are cheap, the ground-floor rooms cheaper still.
Cheapest of all was the hall-bedroom. Its furniture was of the simplest. It consisted of a chair, another chair, a worn carpet, and a folding-bed. The folding-bed had an air of depression and baffled hopes. For years it had been trying to look like a bookcase in the daytime, and now it looked more like a folding- bed than ever. There was also a plain deal table, much stained with ink. At this, night after night, sometimes far into the morning, Rutherford Maxwell would sit and write stories. Now and then it happened that one would be a good story, and find a market.
Rutherford Maxwell was an Englishman, and the younger son of an Englishman; and his lot was the lot of the younger sons all the world over. He was by profession one of the numerous employees of the New Asiatic Bank, which has its branches all over the world. It is a sound, trustworthy institution, and steady-going relatives would assure Rutherford that he was lucky to have got a berth in it. Rutherford did not agree with them. However sound and trustworthy, it was not exactly romantic. Nor did it err on the side of over-lavishness to those who served it. Rutherford's salary was small. So were his prospects-if he remained in the bank. At a very early date he had registered a vow that he would not. And the road that led out of it for him was the uphill road of literature.
He was thankful for small mercies. Fate had not been over-kind up to the present, but at least she had dispatched him to New York, the centre of things, where he would have the chance to try, instead of to some spot off the map. Whether he won or lost, at any rate he was in the ring, and could fight. So every night he sat in Alcala, and wrote. Sometimes he would only try to write, and that was torture.
There is never an hour of the day or night when Alcala is wholly asleep. The middle of the house is a sort of chorusgirl belt, while in the upper rooms there are reporters and other nightbirds. Long after he had gone to bed, Rutherford would hear footsteps passing his door and the sound of voices in the passage. He grew to welcome them. They seemed to connect him with the outer world. But for them he was alone after he had left the office, utterly alone, as it is possible to be only in the heart of a great city. Some nights he would hear scraps of conversations, at rare intervals a name. He used to build up in his mind identities for the owners of the names. One in particular, Peggy, gave him much food for thought. He pictured her as bright and vivacious. This was because she sang sometimes as she passed his door. She had been singing when he first heard her name. "Oh, cut it out, Peggy," a girl's voice had said. "Don't you get enough of that tune at the theatre?" He felt that he would like to meet Peggy.
June came, and July, making an oven of New York, bringing close, scorching days, and nights when the pen seemed made of lead; and still Rutherford worked on, sipping ice-water, in his shirt-sleeves, and filling the sheets of paper slowly, but with a dogged persistence which the weather could not kill. Despite the heat, he was cheerful. Things were beginning to run his way a little now. A novelette, an airy trifle, conceived in days when the thermometer was lower and it was possible to think, and worked out almost mechanically, had been accepted by a magazine of a higher standing than those which hitherto had shown him hospitality. He began to dream of a holiday in the woods. The holiday spirit was abroad. Alcala was emptying itself. It would not be long before he too would be able to get away.
He was so deep in his thoughts that at first he did not hear the knocking at the door. But it was a sharp, insistent knocking, and forced itself upon his attention. He got up and turned the handle.