Princeton Stories

by Jesse Lynch Williams

The first was from his father. He had torn it open with his pen, as he would any other letter, and though he saw that it was several pages in length and knew intuitively that it would not be like any other letter he had ever read, he had deliberately rolled up the envelope to get a light for his pipe from the fire, and he had stretched out in the chair again as he was before, with his legs sprawled out in front and elbows resting on the arms, holding the letter before his face.

Then he had commenced to smoke very hard, and presently stopped rocking back and forth as he read the words written in that clear, even hand, without a flourish or a superfluous mark, words that had caused him to gnaw the mouth-piece of his pipe as they burned their way into him. And all the while he pictured to himself a tall figure in a smoking-jacket trimmed with white braid sitting up straight and rigid at his desk in the corner of the cosey inner room of the office in William Street, and recalled how once, when an absconding clerk had left a temporary cloud on the name of the firm, the old, steely eyes had flashed under the lowering brows as the old gentleman had taken his seat at the breakfast-table, where he ate nothing.

The letter sounded very like the governor. There was no mistaking its meaning. It was a succinct and comprehensive report of dissatisfaction at the younger Lawrence's methods, with a list of debts of filial affection and memoranda of overdraws on parental patience covering the last three years, and accompanied by a brief prospectus for the unpromising future. It was the sort of a letter he would have fancied a stately old gentleman like his father that was proud of his name writing to a son like himself that had disgraced it.

Only it would have been just as well, Lawrence thought, to have omitted that part of the letter. He was quite willing to admit most of the hard things his father said of him because they were facts, but this about dishonorable cowardice and the family name was going a little too far, and he told himself that he did not quite see how he could stand that from anyone. And he sat up straight and pressed hard on the arms of his chair and looked very like the indignant old Colonel who had written the words.

It was uncalled for, it was unjust, it was ridiculous. If his father would stop to think of things as they really were in this world, thought Lawrence, Ninety Blank, these little shortcomings of his would not appear a bit worse than those of some of the very same young men in town whose industry and clean business ability the Colonel so much admired, and whom he spoke of as the hope or flower or something of Manhattan's commercial supremacy or something.

It was merely that he happened to be indiscreet the last time he was having a good time. He had made a little too much noise, and the echo had reached a number of people in town. That was all. It was hard luck, but it did not amount to enough to become dramatic over. Merely because his great-grandfather did something and his grandfather was something was no reason, as far as he could see, why the Lawrences should have unique moral standards. The governor was certainly getting old.

Then he had carefully arranged the leaves of the letter in order, mechanically folded and put them in a pigeon-hole of the desk, and opened and spread out the other letter before him. But he did so unconsciously, for he was staring straight out ahead of him into the face of the future, which had expressionless features. His father had concluded with "Signify to me at once your intention of a complete change in your career, or, notwithstanding your nearness to graduation, I shall take you out of college and put you at work in Van Brunt's." That is not the way a boy likes to be written to.

"Oh, no, I don't think I'd do all that if I were you." He could not abide his father's tone when he spoke of taking him out of college or putting him at work, or doing anything with him. He was still young enough not to fancy being considered young.

And then the actuality of the situation occurred to him, and he was reminded that although twenty-one he had not a cent of his own, and that there was no place in the world to go to or a thing that he could do to make money enough to even pay his debts.

"Picture of a young man taken out of college because he is bad." He smiled broadly at himself in the glass over the mantelpiece. But it wasn't very funny.