On the Stairs | Page 3

which he
refused to undergo without loud protests. These protests often reduced
his wife to trembling and to tears. At such times she might hide an
elder sister--one on the pursuit of some slight dole--in a small back
bedroom, far from sight and hearing.
An ugly house, inhabited by unhappy people. Perhaps I should brighten
things by bringing forward, just here, Elsie, Jehiel's beautiful

granddaughter. But he had no granddaughter. We must let Elsie pass.
Yet a fresh young shoot budding from a gnarled old trunk would afford
a piquant contrast--has done so hundreds of times. Jehiel Prince
undoubtedly was gnarled and old and tough; a charming granddaughter
to cajole or wheedle him in the library, or to relax his indignant tension
over young men during their summer attendance on swing or hammock,
would have her uses. Yet a swing or a hammock would suggest, rather
than the bleak stateliness of Jehiel's urban environment, some fair,
remote domain with lawns and gardens; and Jehiel was far from
possessing--or from wanting to possess--a country-house. Elsie may be
revived, if necessary; but I can promise nothing. I rather think you have
heard the last of her.
James lived a few hundred yards from his father; his house bulked to
much the same effect. It was another symmetrical, indigenous box--in
stone, however, and not in brick. It had its mortgage. If this mortgage
was ever paid up, another came later--a mortgage which passed through
various renewals and which, as values were falling, was always
renewed for a lesser amount and was always demanding ready money
to meet the difference. In later years Raymond, with this formidable
weight still pressing upon him, received finally an offer of relief and
liberation; some prosperous upstart, with plans of his own, said he
would chance the property, mortgage and all, if paid a substantial
bonus for doing so.
The premises included a stable. I mention the stable on account of
Johnny McComas. He lived in it. Downstairs, the landau and the two
horses, and another horse, and a buggy and phaeton, and sometimes a
cow; upstairs, Johnny and his father and mother. Johnny could look out
through a crumpled dimity curtain across the back yard and could see
his father freezing ice-cream on a Sunday forenoon on the back kitchen
porch; and he could also look into one of Raymond's windows on the
floor above.
Every so often he would beg:--
"Oh, father, let me do it,--please!"

Then he would lose the double prospect and get, instead, a plate of
vanilla with a tin spoon in it.
Raymond, who had no mastering passion for games, sat a good deal in
his room, sometimes at one of the side windows; occasionally at the
back one, in which case Johnny was quite welcome to look. Raymond
had more desks than one, and books everywhere on the walls between
them. He had a strong bent toward study, and was even beginning to
dip into literary composition. He studied when he might better have
been at play, and he kept up his diary under a student lamp into all
hours of the night. He had been reading lately about Paris, and he was
piecing out the elementary instruction of the Academy by getting
together a collection of French grammars and dictionaries. He had
about decided that sometime he would go to live on that island in the
Seine near Notre Dame.
His father told him he was working too hard and too late--that it would
hurt his health and probably injure his eyes. His mother made no
comment and gave no advice. She was an invalid and thus had
absorbing interests of her own. Raymond kept on reading and writing.
Perhaps I should begin to sketch, just about here, his awakening regard
for some Gertrude or Adele, and his young rivalry with Johnny
McComas for her favor; telling how Johnny won over Raymond the
privilege of carrying her books to school, and how, in the end, he won
Gertrude or Adele herself from Raymond, and married her. Fiddlesticks!
Please put all such conventional procedures out of your head, and take
what I am prepared to give you. The school was a boys' school. There
was no Gertrude or Adele--as yet--any more than there was an Elsie.
Raymond kept to his books and indulged in no juvenile philanderings.
Forget all such foolish stereotypings of fancy.
As for the romance and the rivalry: when that came, it came with a vast
difference.
IV
Jehiel Prince was a capitalist. So was James: a capitalist, and the son of

a capitalist. They had some interests in common, and others apart.
There was a bank, and there were several large downtown
business-blocks whose tenants required a lot of bookkeeping, and there
was a horse-car line. There was a bus-line,