On the Stairs | Page 7

had put the question several times before. "I don't
think I'd write quite so much, if I were you."
Raymond looked at him in silence. "Not write?" he seemed to say.
"You might as well ask me not to breathe."
"At least do it by daylight," his father suggested, or
counseled,--scarcely urged. "You won't have any eyes at all by the time
you're thirty."
But Raymond liked his double student-lamp with green shades. He
liked the quiet and retirement of late hours. I believe he liked even the
smell and smear of the oil.
His father spoke, as I have reported; but he never took away the pen or
put the light out. The boy seemingly had too strong a "slant": a
misfortune--or, at least, a disadvantage--which a concerned parent must
somehow endure. But he did take a more decided tack later on: he
never said a word about Raymond's going to college, and Raymond, as
a fact, never went. He fed his own intellectual furnace, and fed it in his
own way. He learned an immense number of useless and unrelated
things. In time they came to cumber him. Perhaps college would have
been better, after all.
I never knew Raymond to show any affection for either of his parents;
and he had no brothers and sisters. His father was an essentially kind,
just man, and might have welcomed an occasional little manifestation
of feeling. One day he told Raymond he had no heart. That was as far
as emotion and the expression of emotion could carry him. Raymond's

mother might have been kindly too, if she had not had herself. But a
new doctor, a new remedy, a new draught from a new quarter--and her
boy was instantly nowhere. Raymond's own position seemed to be that
life in families was the ordained thing and was to be accepted. Well,
this was the family ordained for him, and he would put up with it as
best he might. But I kept on developing my own impression of him;
and I see now just what that impression was going to be. Raymond,
almost from the start, felt himself as an independent, detached, isolated
individual, and he must have his little zone of quiet round him. Why in
the world he should ever have married...!
I never knew him to show gratitude for anything given him by his
parents. On the other hand, I never heard him ask them for anything.
He possessed none of the little ingenuities by which boys sometimes
secure a bit of pocket-money. If he wanted anything, he went without it
until it was offered. Frankly, he seldom had to wait long.
Not that what came was always the right thing. He showed me his
fountain-pen--one of the early half-failures--with some disdain. He
always carried a number of things in his pocket, but never the pen. I
myself tried it one day, and it went well enough; I should have been
glad to have it for my own. But steel pens sufficed him; save once,
when I saw him, in a high mood, experimenting fantastically with a
quill one.
He cared no more about his clothes than any of the rest of us. He never
laid any real stress on them at any time of life. He developed early a
notion of the sufficiency of interior furnishings; mere external
upholstery never quite secured his interest. I heard his father once or
twice complain of his looking careless and shabby. He waited with
equanimity until his father could take him to the clothier's. He asked
but one thing; that there should be no indulgence in sartorial novelties
at his expense. And I never met a sedater taste in neckties.
Three or four were hanging over the gas-jet, close to the window; they
were all dark blues or grays, and most of them frayed. He expected a
new one about Christmas; no hurry.

From that window, across the back yard, we saw Johnny McComas, in
a bright new red tie, busy at his own window. I waved my hand, and he
waved back. Raymond looked at him, but made no special sign. Johnny
was packing up his specimens and his postage-stamps, preparatory to
the family hegira, though neither of us knew.
VI
Raymond, who might have asked for almost anything, asked for
nothing. Johnny, who was in position to ask for next to nothing, asked
for almost everything. He was constantly teasing his parents, so far as
my observation went; and his teasing was a form of criticism. "You are
not doing the right thing by me"--such might have seemed his plaint.
He was beginning to spread, to reach out: acquisitiveness and
assimilativeness were to be his two watchwords. He hankered after the
externalities; he wanted "things." If it was only