"It's a pity to waste yourself that way. It's a punk game, kid, take it from me—they don't last! Where's your Broadway Bills of ten years ago? Stop an' think, kid. Where are they at?"
"My God," he muttered, as he passed down the broad stairway, "how many old fathers in New York is hidin' their feelin's behind a bold front, an' at the same time eatin' their hearts out with worry for their boys! An' folks callin' them good fellows!
"Money ain't everything in this here world, after all," he added, as his gaze traveled over the paintings and tapestries that lined the great hall.
Above stairs an uncomfortable atmosphere of constraint settled upon father and son. Both felt the awkwardness of the situation.
Young Carmody was a man with a heart as warm as his ways were wild. His was an impulsive nature which acted upon first impressions. Loving alike a fight or a frolic, he entered into either with a zest that made of them events to be remembered. He glanced across to where his father stood beside the table toying with a jade ink-well, and noted the unwonted droop of the shoulders and the unfamiliar gaze of the gray eyes in which the look of arrogance had dulled almost to softness—a pathetic figure, standing there in his own house—alone—unloved—a stranger to his only son.
The boy saw for the first time, not the banker, the dictator of high finance—but the man. Could it be that here was something he had missed? That through the long years since the death of his wife, the sweet-faced mother whom the boy remembered so vividly, this strange, inscrutable old man had craved the companionship of his son—had loved him?
At that moment, had the elder man spoken the word—weakened, he would have called it—the course of lives would have been changed. But the moment passed. Hiram Carmody's shoulders squared to their accustomed set, and his eyes hardened as he regarded his son.
"Well?" The word rang harsh, with a rising inflection that stung. The younger man made no reply and favored the speaker with a level stare.
"And you a Carmody!"
"Yes, I am a Carmody! But, thank God, I am only half Carmody! It is no fault of mine that I bear the Carmody name! At heart I am a McKim!"