John Palmer

“ They stood in wondering awe before John Wingfield, Knight, hung where he could watch the Eternal Painter at his sunset displays and looking at the "Portrait of a Lady" across the breadth of the living-room, whose neutral tones made a perfect setting for their dominant genius.
"I believe they are at home," said Jack, with a fond look from one to the other, when Firio came to say that everything was ready.
"Señor Jack," whispered Firio insinuatingly, "for the trail you wear the grand, glad trail clothes and the big spurs. I keep them shiny—the big spurs!" ”

“ Then he flushed as he had at sight of the figure in the drawing-room doorway. His look plainly said: "How much longer do you mean to harass me?" as if Jack's features were now no less the image of a hard and bitter memory than those of John Wingfield, Sr. Jack drew back hurt and dumb, in face of this anger turned on himself. At length, the Doge mustered his rallying smile, which was that of a man who carries into his declining years a burden of disappointments which he fears may, in his bad moments, get the better of his personal system of philosophy. ”

“ So that she had two husbands in the house; one dead and the other living! [44] The first had left her a fortune. The second spent it, and left herself and son destitute.
The town had not an old comic actor it esteemed more highly, except, perhaps, Palmer. The early life of John Palmer was full of disappointment; the latter end of trials; the middle, of some follies; but nothing more. When he was in hopes of employment in the theatre, he had been told to go for a soldier. Garrick would not have him; Foote pronounced his tragedy bad; but thought his comedy would do. ”

“ Peter eagerly bent forward. "You remember," he said softly, "a night upon the terrace at Highbury?"
Lady Mary looked at him, terror waiting to spring at her heart.
"I hardly know," Peter continued, "whether I still believe all that I believed at Highbury. It is all too insolent, and some of it is foolish and cruel. I have seen ugly and brutal things. I am beginning to see that there are no classes. Rank is nothing at all. There are only people."
Why did he talk like that to-night? It was intolerable.
"You are wrong," she cried out. "Wealth is nothing, and there are bad shoots in an old tree. ”

“ He act like a man believe himself the only god in the world when he in no danger, but when he get in danger he act like he afraid he got to meet some other god!"
"But Jack? Now, after Prather had gone?" persisted the father greedily.
"We glad the mole go. It sort of hurt inside to think a man like him. He make you wonder what for he born."
John Wingfield, Sr. half rose in a sudden movement, as if he were about to go, but remained in response to another emotion that was stronger than the impulse. ”

“ Time! time! The boy would never fall heir to undivided responsibility before he was forty. John Wingfield, Sr. was pleased with himself; pleased over a good sign; and he could not deny that he was pleased at the sudden change in Jack. For he saw Jack's eyes sparkling into his own; sparkling with comradeship and spontaneous gratification. Was the boy to be his in thought and purpose, after all? Yes, of course; yes, inevitably, with the approach of maturity. Gradually the flightiness of his upbringing would wear off down to the steel, the hard-tempered, paternal steel. ”

“ It was not in horse-flesh to gain much on his fast and hardened ponies. There was little chance that Jack could hold out against such odds as he must face, even if he had escaped an ambush. So they rode in desperation and in silence, each too certain of what was in the minds of the others to make pretence of a hope that was not in the heart.
Their only stop for rest was at Las Cascadas in the hot hours of midday. Darkness had fallen when they overtook a solitary horseman coming from Agua Fria. John Prather drew rein well to one side of the trail. ”

“ This feeling had first invaded him as at York he had seen his baggage mysteriously vanishing, by no act of his own, into a strange car which started off even as he himself was being wrapped in warm rugs for the race to Highbury. It was confirmed later, when, reaching his room with Marbury, he had found the things which had so swiftly vanished at York faultlessly spread for his evening wear. Peter was rapidly putting forth roots in this new soil. Every moment some unexpected thing appeared, to be at once included in his total impression of a new life, to become part of the common round. ”

“ I thought you called it the Free Lance."
"You can say what you like about plays in general."
Peter then and there resigned. But he was too good a pen to lose. His editor borrowed a gallery ticket from a London daily paper, and sent Peter to attend debates in the House of Commons as an impartial critic of Parliamentary deportment and intelligence. Three weeks shattered all Peter's fixed ideas of English public life. He forgot to detest the futility of the party game—as he had at the Oxford Union so persistently contrived to do—in sincere enjoyment of a perpetually interesting comedy. ”

“ Men found it hard to work in the fields while they waited on the crisis. John Wingfield, Sr. sat for hours under Dr. Patterson's umbrella-tree in moody absorption. He talked to all who would talk to him. Always he was asking about the duel in the arroyo which was fought in Jack's way. He could not hear enough of it; and later he almost attached himself to the one eye-witness of the final duel, which had been fought in Leddy's way. ”

“ For Peter they were slow days of agreeable idleness, as they glided from reach to reach of the quietest country in the world. Always there was the same circle of sky, with an idle mill and rows of grey-green [Pg 246] sedges; the quiet lapping of water and plod of the quanting. Tiny villages dropped past them, with square towers and clusters of small buildings. Upon the third evening of the cruise, Lady Mary picked up some London letters at Potter Heigham. One was from Lord Wenderby. She opened it and read:
"Lady Mary,—I hope you will not regard this as a breach of our contract. ”

“ They ought to be treated worse than rattlesnakes. But, as you said just now, all this don't help Will Cummins. But Will is all right, John. You know that as well as I do."
"I came up here to hear you say so. I've pretty near lost faith in God and man, I reckon."
"I lost faith in man long ago," answered Palmer, smiling sardonically. "If the fall of Adam and the curse of Cain are fables,—as they are, of course,—they are just as true as Æsop's fables, for all that. They hit off human nature. But man isn't all. I've never belonged to any church, as I've often told you. ”

“ Well, you see Joe is on a stint—two thousand before he gets Mamie. He had been making money on the side nights in boxing bouts. But Mamie stopped the fighting. She said she was not going to have a husband with the tip of his nose driven up between his eyes like a bull-dog's. And what do you imagine they are going to do with the two thousand? Buy a farm! Isn't that corking!"
John Wingfield, Sr. shrugged his shoulders, but did not express his feelings with any remark. It seemed to him that Jack must have been born without a sense of proportion. ”

“ It's all right, and you will find motoring beats pony riding."
"In some ways," Jack answered; and then he came a step nearer, his hand resting on the edge of the desk, as he looked into his father's eyes with glowing candor.
John Wingfield, Sr.'s eyes shifted to the pushbuttons and later to a paper on the desk, with which his fingers played gently. He realized instantly that something unusual was on Jack's mind.
"Father," Jack went on, "I want a long talk quite alone with you. When it is over I feel that we shall both know each other better; we can work together in a fuller understanding." ”

“ Everybody knows you were sent down from Gamaliel for being a Socialist."
"I am not a Socialist," Peter hotly protested.
Lady Mary's eyes were full of mischief: "You must have been sent down for being something."
"I'm nothing at all," said Peter.
"Are you quite sure?"
[Pg 195]
"The silliest person alive is more than a label."
Peter cursed himself. He had again delivered an apothegm. Why must he always be so heavily serious? Lady Mary was openly smiling.
"I'm afraid we're all going to be very silly at Highbury during the next few days. We've simply got to label ourselves for Antony's sake." ”

“ In answer to the query as to whether father had concluded to take an interest in the panorama now that he, Alfred, had decided to go with it, Palmer rolled off his reply so rapidly that Alfred could scarcely follow his words.
"I hope John will not be angry with me, I offered him first chance and held off until I almost lost the other fellow. John's all right but he's too conservative. He's afraid of his wife and he'll never make money as long as he continues in business in this town. This Dutchman, Jake, had the money, he is anxious to travel, he has never been outside of Bedford County. ”

“ His passion was a strong resolve that she should purely stand to be adored, not familiar, too delicate to catch at rudely for a possession.
His thoughts were shattered by a screaming in the street. Something extraordinary had happened. Peter moved to the window, and saw a newsboy rushing down from Piccadilly. Servants hurried from the doors, and bought the papers as he came. Peter at last heard the news, and saw the big black letters of the boy's fluttering bill. Wenderby had resigned. Peter turned impatiently away. These politics did not touch him. ”

“ Then he recalled Jim's letter saying that John Prather had gone to New York. Was this John Prather? He had no doubt that it was when the object of his scrutiny, with full face in view, stopped and leaned over the balcony just above the diamond counter. There was a mole patch on the cheek such as Jack remembered that the accounts of John Prather had mentioned. ”

“ Politics from within."
"Damn politics."
"I'll tell you what it is, Peter. It's the Spring."
"I want to get away from all this infernal talking," said Peter.
"You've discovered that some of it's a bit thin?"
"I'll tell you what I've discovered," said Peter savagely, "I've discovered that almost any damn fool can be intellectual."
"Try the stupid fellows who are always right."
"Who are they?"
"Latest definition of a Tory. Come and talk to the farm-labourers."
"Not yet. I'm going to live in the air."
"What will you do? Books?"
"I hate books."
"Come now, Peter, not all books," protested Marbury. ”

“ Lady Mary sadly shook her head.
"Your first word to me was of the Chief Whip," she reminded him.
Haversham was touched. He put his hand gently on his sister's arm.
"We do not belong to ourselves," he pleaded. "This act of yours is a public thing."
"I have a personal thing still left to do," she said. "Peter is coming to-night. You must leave him with me."
"That will be easy," he assured her. "They're all political people this evening. We shall go on afterwards to the House."
The talk at dinner was all of Wenderby's [Pg 258] resignation. ”

“ The intention, we repeat, was generous, and we protest with some indignation against Palmer’s bitter words: ‘The very worst use a man can make of himself is to stay up at Cambridge and work for the University.’ The truth is that University life did not suit him, and though he tried hard for ten years to believe that it did, the attempt ended in failure, and it is much to be regretted that it was ever made. ”

“ As Jack entered, whatever else may have been in his eyes, there was no moisture.
XXIV IN THE CITADEL OF THE MILLIONS John Wingfield, Sr. sat at a mahogany table without a single drawer, in the centre of a large room with bare, green-tinted walls. His oculist had said that green was the best color for the eyes. Beside the green blotting-pad in front of him was a pile of papers. These would either be disposed of in the course of the day or, if any waited on the morrow's decision, would be taken away by Peter Mortimer overnight. When he rose to go home it was always with a clear desk ”

“ They're here, waiting for the announcement to be made and—well, the water users' association is still in charge; but it won't be when Prather says the word."
"And you have no plans?" Jack asked.
"None."
"And the Doge?"
"None. What can the old man do? Though nobody exactly blames him, a good many aren't of a mind to consult him at all. The crisis has passed beyond him. Three or four men, good men, too, were inclined to have it out with John Prather; but that would have precipitated a general fight with Leddy's gang. The conservatives got the hot-heads to wait till you came. ”

“ Every sensation died in Peter. He stood in the darkness, hearing small noises of water, the light patter of soot dislodged from the chimney, the creak and rustle of a house deserted.
When his eyes were used to the dark, he moved towards a glimmer from the hall-door. He could not yet believe what he saw. He expected the silence of his dream to break. Mechanically he went through the house, standing at last under the eaves of Miranda's attic-room. ”

“ Soon after this came an event which, for the first time, gave John Wingfield, Sr. a revelation of the side of his son that had won Little Rivers and the interest of the rank and file of the store. Among Jack's many suggestions, in his aim to carry out his father's talk about the creative business sense the first night they were together, had been one for a suburban clubbing delivery system. It had been dismissed as fantastic, but Jack had asked that it be given a trial and his father had consented. Its basis was a certain confidence in human nature. ”