“Be sure I shall do all I can,” he said, warmly, as the two shook hands.
And when young Mr. Boyce went down the narrow stairway by himself, a few minutes later, having arranged that the partnership was to begin on the approaching 1st of December, he really fancied himself as a public-spirited reformer, whose life was to be consecrated to noble deeds. He was conscious of an added expansion of breast as he buttoned his fur coat across it, and he walked down the village street in a maze of proud and pleasant reflections upon his own admirable qualities.
CHAPTER X.—MR. SCHUYLER TENNEY.
Two or three weeks after the new sign of “Tracy & Boyce” had been hung upon the outer walls of Thessaly it happened that the senior partner was out of town for the day, and that during his absence the junior partner received an important visit from Mr. Schuyler Tenney. Although this gentleman was not a client, his talk with Horace was so long and interesting that the young lawyer felt justified in denying himself to several callers who were clients.
Mr. Schuyler Tenney, who has a considerable part to play in this story, did not upon first observations reveal any special title to prominence. To the cursory glance, he looked like any other of ten hundred hundreds of young Americans who are engaged in making more money than they need. I speak of him as young because, though there was a thick sprinkling of gray in his closely cut hair, and his age in years must have been above rather than below forty, there was nothing in his face or dress or bearing to indicate that he felt himself to be a day older than his companion. He was a slender man, with a thin, serious face, cold gray eyes, and a trim drab mustache. Under his creaseless overcoat he wore neat gray clothes, of uniform pattern and strictly commercial aspect. He spoke with a quiet abruptness of speech as a rule, and both his rare smiles and his occasional simulations of vivacity were rather obviously artificial. Meeting Mr. Schuyler Tenney for even the first time, and looking him over, you would not, it is true, have been surprised to hear that he had just planted a dubious gold mine on the confiding English capitalists, or made a million dollars out of a three-jointed collar-button, or calmly cut out and carried off a railroad from under the very guns of the Stock Exchange. If his appearance did not suggest great exploits of this kind, it did not deny them once they were hinted by others. But the chance statement that he had privately helped somebody at his own cost without hope of reward would have given you a distinct shock.
At the present moment, Mr. Tenney was publicly known as one of the smartest and most “go-ahead” young business men of Thessaly. Dim rumors were upon the air that he was really something more than this; but as the commercial agencies had long ago given him their feeble “A 1” of superlative rating, and nothing definite was known about his outside investments, these reports only added vaguely to his respectability. He was the visible and actual head of the large wholesale hardware house of “S. Tenney & Co.”
This establishment had before the war borne another name on the big sign over its portals, that of “Sylvanus Boyce.” A year or two after the war closed a new legend—“Boyce & Co.”—was painted in. Thus it remained until the panic of 1873, when it underwent a transformation into “Boyce & Tenney.” And now for some years the name of Boyce had disappeared altogether, and the portly, redfaced, dignified General had dwindled more and more into a position somewhere between the head book-keeper and the shipping-clerks. He was still a member of the firm, however, and it was apparently about this fact that Mr. Tenney had come to talk.
He took a seat beside Horace’s desk, after shaking hands coldly with the young man, and said without ceremony: