I was neither seeing nor hearing from the Ellerslys, father or son; but, as I knew why, I was not disquieted. I had made them temporarily easy in their finances just before that dinner, and they, being fatuous, incurable optimists, were probably imagining they would never need me again. I did not disturb them until Monson and I had got my education so well under way that even I, always severe in self-criticism and now merciless, was compelled to admit to myself a distinct change for the better. You know how it is with a boy at the “growing age”—how he bursts out of clothes and ideas of life almost as fast as they are supplied him, so swiftly is he transforming into a man. Well, I think it is much that way with us Americans all our lives; we continue on and on at the growing age. And if one of us puts his or her mind hard upon growth in some particular direction, you see almost overnight a development fledged to the last tail-feathers and tip of top-knot where there was nothing at all. What miracles can be wrought by an open mind and a keen sense of the cumulative power of the unwasted minute! All this apropos of a very trivial matter, you may be thinking. But, be careful how you judge what is trivial and what important in a universe built up of atoms.
However—When my education seemed far enough advanced, I sent for Sam. He, after his footless fashion, didn't bother to acknowledge my note. His margin account with me was at the moment straight; I turned to his father. I had my cashier send him a formal, type-written letter signed Blacklock & Co., informing him that his account was overdrawn and that we “would be obliged if he would give the matter his immediate attention.” The note must have reached him the following morning; but he did not come until, after waiting three days, “we” sent him a sharp demand for a check for the balance due us.
A pleasing, aristocratic-looking figure he made as he entered my office, with his air of the man whose hands have never known the stains of toil, with his manner of having always received deferential treatment. There was no pretense in my curt greeting, my tone of “despatch your business, sir, and be gone”; for I was both busy and much irritated against him. “I guess you want to see our cashier,” said I, after giving him a hasty, absent-minded hand-shake. “My boy out there will take you to him.”
The old do-nothing's face lost its confident, condescending expression. His lip quivered, and I think there were tears in his bad, dim, gray-green eyes. I suppose he thought his a profoundly pathetic case; no doubt he hadn't the remotest conception what he really was—and no doubt, also, there are many who would honestly take his view. As if the fact that he was born with all possible advantages did not make him and his plight inexcusable. It passes my comprehension why people of his sort, when suffering from the calamities they have deliberately brought upon themselves by laziness and self-indulgence and extravagance, should get a sympathy that is withheld from those of the honest human rank and file falling into far more real misfortunes not of their own making.
“No, my dear Blacklock,” said he, cringing now as easily as he had condescended—how to cringe and how to condescend are taught at the same school, the one he had gone to all his life. “It is you I want to talk with. And, first, I owe you my apologies. I know you'll make allowances for one who was never trained to business methods. I've always been like a child in those matters.”
“You frighten me,” said I. “The last 'gentleman' who came throwing me off my guard with that plea was shrewd enough to get away with a very large sum of my hard-earned money. Besides”—and I was laughing, though not too good-naturedly—“I've noticed that you 'gentlemen' become vague about business only when the balance is against you. When it's in your favor, you manage to get your minds on business long enough to collect to the last fraction of a cent.”
He heartily echoed my laugh. “I only wish I were clever,” said he. “However, I've come to ask your indulgence. I'd have been here before, but those who owe me have been putting me off. And they're of the sort of people whom it's impossible to press.”
“I'd like to accommodate you further,” said I, shedding that last little hint as a cliff sheds rain, “but your account has been in an unsatisfactory state for nearly a month now.”
“I'm sure you'll give me a few days longer,” was his easy reply, as if we were discussing a trifle. “By the way, you haven't been to see us yet. Only this morning my wife was wondering when you'd come. You quite captivated her, Blacklock. Can't you dine with us to-morrow night—no, Sunday—at eight? We're having in a few people I think you'd like to meet.”
If any one imagines that this bald, businesslike way of putting it set my teeth on edge, let him dismiss the idea; my nerves had been too long accustomed to the feel of the harsh facts of life. It is evidence of the shrewdness of the old fellow at character-reading that he wasted none of his silk and velvet pretenses upon me, and so saved his time and mine. Probably he wished me to see that I need have no timidity or false shame in dealing with him, that when the time came to talk business I was free to talk it in my own straight fashion.