Van Socum nodded. “I perfectly understand,” he answered. “Well, in any event I shall hope. And don’t forget, Mr. Carleton, the shining light. It’s most important. Good-by,” and a little hastily he passed from the room, with a certain satisfied feeling that verbal honors were at least easy, and that from the field of more practical warfare he had again returned a triumphant victor.
Left alone, Henry Carleton, smiling a little to himself, once more leaned comfortably back in his chair. As he sat there, the waning sunlight, slanting through the tall window, fell pleasantly upon him, lighting up the dark, black-bearded face, with the full red lips, and the keen and scrutinizing eyes. A noticeable man, in almost any company, he would have been, and justly so as well. Doing many things, he did them all with skill. And still, in spite of the activities in which he was actually engaged, his friends were wont to talk of the many other things he might have done—living his life over for him in retrospect, as people will—and it was significant of his many-sidedness to note the different views which different people held of him. Some said that the bar had been robbed of a great lawyer, others that the universities had lost a great teacher and instructor of youth, others still, like Mr. Van Socum, that the church alone should rightfully have claimed his great talents. No one, perhaps, had ever suggested that the stage had lost a great actor.
And now, not satisfied with the active benevolence that he had just displayed, Henry Carleton was passively showing the same praiseworthy spirit which actuated his every deed and word. His day’s work was done. It was ten minutes after five, and there seemed to be no possible reason why he should longer wait for the young man with whom he had made an appointment at five o’clock sharp. Adding to the fact that the young man was late, the further information that Henry Carleton felt tolerably sure he was coming to ask some sort of favor of him, we behold the heights to which it is possible for a man to rise.
Even patience, however, has its definite limits, and at a quarter past five Henry Carleton snapped his watch with a click, and had one hand already outstretched to close the top of his desk, when the clerk knocked, and opened the door far enough to announce Mr. Vaughan. Henry Carleton nodded, sighed, again leaned back in his chair, and relinquished the idea of getting the five-thirty home.
A moment later Arthur Vaughan entered the office with the rather breathless haste of the man who is thoroughly aware that to keep a great financier waiting for a quarter of an hour is an offense not lightly to be condoned. Indeed, about his whole manner, in spite of his thirty years, there was still something boyish and deprecating, the air of a man who is perhaps too modest, too slow to assert himself, yet who, if these be faults, is perhaps all the more likable for possessing them.
He came quickly forward. “I’m awfully sorry, Mr. Carleton,” he began, “I know I’m late; but really I couldn’t help it.”
There may have been something a little less cordial than usual in the manner in which Henry Carleton shook the young man’s proffered hand. Yet his voice, when he answered, was politeness itself. Early in life he had made it his invariable rule to treat every man who had once crossed the threshold of his office with complete and unvarying courtesy, until he had found out exactly what the visitor’s business might be. After that, there was of course room for wider discretion. And so now, “Don’t mention it,” he said; “a trifle late, perhaps, but never mind. And what may I be able to do for you, Mr. Vaughan?”
Once seated, Vaughan appeared to be even more ill at ease than before. His eyes were fixed on the floor. His hat revolved aimlessly and sheepishly enough between his nervous fingers. “Why,” he began, “why, the fact is, Mr. Carleton—you see what I wanted to tell you about—you see—” and then he came to a full and embarrassed stop.
Henry Carleton, through a long and varied experience, was nothing if not a shrewd reader of men. The same awkward hesitation, the same nervousness, the same half-cringing expression; he had seen them all displayed many times before by men who had sat there in the inner office in the selfsame seat which Vaughan was occupying now. And nine times out of ten it all meant but one thing. In the brief pause analysis and deduction in his mind were practically one. Vaughan’s manner showed embarrassment. Vaughan was a would-be literary man. All would-be literary men, in greater or less degree, were poor. Vaughan, presuming on a rather slight acquaintanceship, had come to borrow money. The whole matter was painfully plain.
And then, even at the very instant when Henry Carleton had sorrowfully, but with philosophy, arrived at this inevitable conclusion, Vaughan, drawing a long breath, at last found his tongue. “Why,” he said, speaking with a seeming boldness and hardihood which in reality were but the result of the most extreme embarrassment, “it’s like this, Mr. Carleton; I want to marry Rose.”