III
Meanwhile Albert pursued his studies. Though he had not so far to come for a short vacation as the McComas young men, he spent the short vacations at the school. He was at an awkward age, and Raymond, who could see him with eyes not unduly clouded by affection, felt him to be an unpromising cub. He was no adornment for any house, and no satisfying companion for his father. So he passed the Easter week among his teachers.
McComas too saw little of Albert. Those months with his mother were usually worked off at some distant resort, which his stepfather was often too busy to reach. Only once did he spend any of the allotted time in McComas's house. This was a fortnight in that grandiose yet tawdry fabric which had been sacrificed to business, and the occasion was an illness in the family (not Albert's) which delayed the summer's outing. McComas had accepted Albert with a large tolerance—at least he was not annoyed. In fact, the boy's mother, however she may have harassed Raymond, never (to do her justice) pushed Albert on her second husband. So, when the juncture arrived,—
"Why, yes," Johnny had said, "have him here, of course; and let him stay as long as you like. He doesn't bother me."
Well, Albert went ahead, doing his Latin, and groping farther into the dusky penumbra of mathematics. "Why?" he asked; and they explained that it was the necessary preparation for the university. Albert pondered. He began to fear that he must continue learning things he didn't want or need, so that he might go ahead toward learning other things he didn't want or need. He took a plaintive, discouraged tone in a letter to his mother; and she—making an exception to her rule—passed along the protest to McComas. She felt, I suppose, that he would give an answering note.
Johnny laughed. He himself cared nothing for study; and he was so happily constituted, as well as so constantly occupied, that he never had to take refuge in a book.
"Oh, well," he said, broadly, "he'll live through it all, and live it down. I expect Tom and Joe to. The final gains will be in quite another direction."
Raymond had heard the same plaint from Albert, and was less pleased. The boy was clearly to be no student, still less a lover of the arts. Raymond passed over all thought of old Jehiel, the ruthlessly acquisitive, and placed the blame on the other grandfather, who was now in an early dotage after a lifelong harnessing to the stock-ticker.