The Beautiful and the Damned | Page 5

liberal allowance, judged
that this sum was sufficient for young Anthony's needs. Every
Christmas he sent him a five-hundred-dollar bond, which Anthony
usually sold, if possible, as he was always a little, not very, hard up.
The visits to his broker varied from semi-social chats to discussions of
the safety of eight per cent investments, and Anthony always enjoyed
them. The big trust company building seemed to link him definitely to
the great fortunes whose solidarity he respected and to assure him that
he was adequately chaperoned by the hierarchy of finance. From these
hurried men he derived the same sense of safety that he had in
contemplating his grandfather's money--even more, for the latter
appeared, vaguely, a demand loan made by the world to Adam Patch's
own moral righteousness, while this money down-town seemed rather
to have been grasped and held by sheer indomitable strengths and
tremendous feats of will; in addition, it seemed more definitely and
explicitly--money.
Closely as Anthony trod on the heels of his income, he considered it to
be enough. Some golden day, of course, he would have many millions;
meanwhile he possessed a raison d'etre in the theoretical creation of
essays on the popes of the Renaissance. This flashes back to the
conversation with his grandfather immediately upon his return from
Rome.

He had hoped to find his grandfather dead, but had learned by
telephoning from the pier that Adam Patch was comparatively well
again--the next day he had concealed his disappointment and gone out
to Tarrytown. Five miles from the station his taxicab entered an
elaborately groomed drive that threaded a veritable maze of walls and
wire fences guarding the estate--this, said the public, was because it
was definitely known that if the Socialists had their way, one of the
first men they'd assassinate would be old Cross Patch.
Anthony was late and the venerable philanthropist was awaiting him in
a glass-walled sun parlor, where he was glancing through the morning
papers for the second time. His secretary, Edward Shuttleworth--who
before his regeneration had been gambler, saloon-keeper, and general
reprobate--ushered Anthony into the room, exhibiting his redeemer and
benefactor as though he were displaying a treasure of immense value.
They shook hands gravely. "I'm awfully glad to hear you're better,"
Anthony said.
The senior Patch, with an air of having seen his grandson only last
week, pulled out his watch.
"Train late?" he asked mildly.
It had irritated him to wait for Anthony. He was under the delusion not
only that in his youth he had handled his practical affairs with the
utmost scrupulousness, even to keeping every engagement on the dot,
but also that this was the direct and primary cause of his success.
"It's been late a good deal this month," he remarked with a shade of
meek accusation in his voice--and then after a long sigh, "Sit down."
Anthony surveyed his grandfather with that tacit amazement which
always attended the sight. That this feeble, unintelligent old man was
possessed of such power that, yellow journals to the contrary, the men
in the republic whose souls he could not have bought directly or
indirectly would scarcely have populated White Plains, seemed as
impossible to believe as that he had once been a pink-and-white baby.

The span of his seventy-five years had acted as a magic bellows--the
first quarter-century had blown him full with life, and the last had
sucked it all back. It had sucked in the cheeks and the chest and the
girth of arm and leg. It had tyrannously demanded his teeth, one by one,
suspended his small eyes in dark-bluish sacks, tweeked out his hairs,
changed him from gray to white in some places, from pink to yellow in
others--callously transposing his colors like a child trying over a
paintbox. Then through his body and his soul it had attacked his brain.
It had sent him night-sweats and tears and unfounded dreads. It had
split his intense normality into credulity and suspicion. Out of the
coarse material of his enthusiasm it had cut dozens of meek but
petulant obsessions; his energy was shrunk to the bad temper of a
spoiled child, and for his will to power was substituted a fatuous
puerile desire for a land of harps and canticles on earth.
The amenities having been gingerly touched upon, Anthony felt that he
was expected to outline his intentions--and simultaneously a glimmer
in the old man's eye warned him against broaching, for the present, his
desire to live abroad. He wished that Shuttleworth would have tact
enough to leave the room--he detested Shuttleworth--but the secretary
had settled blandly in a rocker and was dividing between the two
Patches the glances of his faded eyes.
"Now that you're here you ought to do something," said his grandfather
softly, "accomplish something."
Anthony