On the Stairs

by Henry Blake Fuller

Nothing much seemed to have happened—nothing that I, at least, should have taken the trouble to set down; but a good part of his fifteen pages, as he read them, seemed interesting and even important. I suppose this came from the way he did it. As early as thirteen he had the knack; then, and always after, he enjoyed writing for its own sake. I feel sure that his father did not quite approve this taste. His grandfather, who had had a lesser education and felt an exaggerated respect for learning, may have had more patience. He talked for years about endowing some college, but never did it; when the time finally came, he was far too deep in his financial worries.

James Prince, as I have noted, occasionally mentioned to Raymond his conviction that he was wasting his time with all this scribbling, and that so much work by artificial light was imperiling his eyesight.

"What good is it all going to do you?" I once heard him ask. His tone was resigned, as if he had put the question several times before. "I don't think I'd write quite so much, if I were you."

Raymond looked at him in silence. "Not write?" he seemed to say. "You might as well ask me not to breathe."

"At least do it by daylight," his father suggested, or counseled,—scarcely urged. "You won't have any eyes at all by the time you're thirty."

But Raymond liked his double student-lamp with green shades. He liked the quiet and retirement of late hours. I believe he liked even the smell and smear of the oil.

His father spoke, as I have reported; but he never took away the pen or put the light out. The boy seemingly had too strong a "slant": a misfortune—or, at least, a disadvantage—which a concerned parent must somehow endure. But he did take a more decided tack later on: he never said a word about Raymond's going to college, and Raymond, as a fact, never went. He fed his own intellectual furnace, and fed it in his own way. He learned an immense number of useless and unrelated things. In time they came to cumber him. Perhaps college would have been better, after all.

I never knew Raymond to show any affection for either of his parents; and he had no brothers and sisters. His father was an essentially kind, just man, and might have welcomed an occasional little manifestation of feeling. One day he told Raymond he had no heart. That was as far as emotion and the expression of emotion could carry him. Raymond's mother might have been kindly too, if she had not had herself. But a new doctor, a new remedy, a new draught from a new quarter—and her boy was instantly nowhere. Raymond's own position seemed to be that life in families was the ordained thing and was to be accepted. Well, this was the family ordained for him, and he would put up with it as best he might. But I kept on developing my own impression of him; and I see now just what that impression was going to be. Raymond, almost from the start, felt himself as an independent, detached, isolated individual, and he must have his little zone of quiet round him. Why in the world he should ever have married...!

I never knew him to show gratitude for anything given him by his parents. On the other hand, I never heard him ask them for anything. He possessed none of the little ingenuities by which boys sometimes secure a bit of pocket-money. If he wanted anything, he went without it until it was offered. Frankly, he seldom had to wait long.

Not that what came was always the right thing. He showed me his fountain-pen—one of the early half-failures—with some disdain. He always carried a number of things in his pocket, but never the pen. I myself tried it one day, and it went well enough; I should have been glad to have it for my own. But steel pens sufficed him; save once, when I saw him, in a high mood, experimenting fantastically with a quill one.