"I can understand your difficulties to some extent, Mr. Prime, and am not altogether without sympathy for you," began the lawyer gravely, after a short reflection. "The times are hard for everybody undeniably, and especially for young men in your position. It is a comparatively easy matter to draw a cheque to alleviate distress, but finding work for anybody to-day is next to impossible. However, as one can never tell what may turn up, let me ask you a blunt question. What are you fit for? What can you do?"
"Here again, sir, the world would tell you that I was fit for nothing except to play the lute beneath a lady's window. But if you will believe me, I am not without business knowledge. Gentleman as I am, I have long cherished an ambition to become a merchant prince (it is well to aspire high),—a genuine merchant-prince, however, and not the counterfeit article who accumulates millions for his children to squander. I have views upon the subject. I am an idealist, as I have told you, and there was a time when I thought my father very rich, and that I should be able to carry out my theories. Since then I have resolved to win back before I die the fortune he lost; and with a view to that I devote several hours in each day (if this should be breathed abroad, my reputation for consummate emptiness might suffer) to the study of exports and imports, markets and exchanges, and all that relates to commercial affairs. You asked me what I am fit for, Mr. Chelm. My father was a banker. I should like to follow in his footsteps. But supplicants cannot be choosers. Procure me a clerkship in any line of business, and I shall try to prove myself worthy of your patronage."
"Humph! I wish I could help you, with all my heart. But, frankly, I know of nothing at the moment. Bankers are discharging their clerks, not engaging new ones. I will make inquiries however, and see if it is possible to do anything for you. You have applied to all your friends in New York, you say, without avail?"
"Entirely. The few who have any faith in my professions are powerless to give me employment."
"Let me see: to-day is Wednesday. Can you call again on Saturday, Mr. Prime? Mind, I promise nothing. In fact, I have every reason to believe that I shall be unsuccessful."
The appointment thus made was due to my touching the electric bell in my office,—a signal agreed upon as an indication of my desire to assist any applicant for aid. Accordingly, when I entered Mr. Chelm's room after his visitor was gone, I was greeted with a bantering smile.
"How now, my fair philanthropist! What scheme have you to relieve the plight of this knight-errant?"
"In the first place," I said, "who is he? Do you believe his story? What sort of a person was his father?"
"Three questions in one breath! The last is the easiest to answer. This young man's father was one of the wealthiest bankers in New York fifteen years ago. I knew him well: a man who was the very soul of honor, shrewd and liberal in his business notions, and in his bearing the pattern of a finished gentleman,—one of your genuine aristocrats; and, like his son, a bit of a dandy. He came to grief, as so many of us do, through misplaced confidence. Certain parties whom he trusted implicitly made a wreck of his entire fortune. It was said at the time that he might have saved a large portion of it, had he been willing to take advantage of a legal technicality as against his creditors. But, as his son said, he preferred to remain honest. He died not many years ago, and left this boy very little, I fancy, but an untarnished name. Of the son I know really nothing. I have never seen him before. He is not unlike his father in appearance, and is even more fastidious in his dress. That may be from bravado, of course. What he says about gentlemen not having a fair chance in this country has a certain amount of truth in it."
"A great deal of truth, it seems to me," I answered.