There were two boys in the street whom Maud liked; as she grew older she determined to marry one of them, but she found to her great disappointment they were both hot after Julie. Floyd Garrison, a pretty boy of an old American family, was very well brought up; Martin Steele was a mongrel, a brute, a ruffian, but there was something very likable about him. Maud looked on, watched them wrestling for the privilege of carrying Julie’s books when she came from school, with her maid. There were fist fights for her as children, rivalry as youths, and bitterness as men. But Maud wasn’t discouraged; Julie couldn’t marry both of them; there would be always one left for her. Then she had Tom Dillon in reserve; he was common, but she owned him; he was her slave.
Julie was afraid of Martin Steele; he had bad manners and a violent temper. He was always mussing up her hair, and winding her curls around his fingers. Floyd was too polite to do that. There was a party at Maud Ailsworth’s; Tom Dillon, that mischievous imp, put out the lights. The boy next to Julie kissed her, pressing her to him with terrible force; it was Martin. After that, he kissed her whenever he found her alone, and he managed it often. She liked his hot unboyish kisses.
2
The Garrisons had lived four generations in a little wooden house in East Twelfth Street, “a very pretty shanty” Martin called it, set back, with a garden, and a wooden fence to protect the lawn and flowers from passing vandals.
A portrait of the ancestor who founded the family fortune hangs today in our Museum. “Yan Geritsen, baker,” endowed with business sagacity, bought land under water in New Amsterdam for “thirty cents,” left it to his son, with orders not to sell. Succeeding generations drained and developed it. The name smelt of newly baked bread; it gradually evolved itself into Garrison. They were one of the fast disappearing families, who remained as they began—modest and thankful. They brought up their son with a sense of responsibility, as trustee for the coming son. There were no girls as far back as could be remembered; each family branch had one son. Floyd’s father, “Jimmy” Garrison, married a school marm. He became acquainted with her in Boston. She was very poor, but descended from the Aldens. Prudence Alden was a pale silent girl with a hidden fountain of irrepressible love in all its rare purity. Young Garrison’s friends couldn’t see what he saw in her.
Garrison had never been in business; he disliked the everlasting talk about money which was rapidly becoming God under the title of the “Almighty” dollar. He had many acquaintances and one faithful friend, Colonel Garland, a Southern gentleman, who had made a reputation “up North” as a corporation lawyer, when trusts were springing up over night like toadstools. The Colonel retained his sombrero, his soft accent, his passionate devotion to a few friends, and many women. When Jimmy Garrison put the administration of his estate into Colonel Garland’s hands, it was intact, just as his father had left it.
“Let us pull down those old hulks and build up warehouses,” said the Colonel. Garrison refused to consider that.
“The estate was not bought yesterday, for speculation. It has always brought us enough to live on modestly, and something over; if I get four per cent., I’m well satisfied.”
In time, modern buildings were erected on both sides of the Garrison “hulks,” which, although kept clean and in repair, had to be rented below the market value. Conservative policy has its good side; many went under in the frenzy of over-building. In such a young country the cult of silence, material rest, creative thought were as yet unknown; the man who did not create capital was considered an idler; Garrison continued to the end of his peaceful, worryless life, a gentleman.