For all this tolerance Mrs. Ellwell had the reputation with the broker and his companions, of being "a good woman" and a "good wife." And Ellwell considered that he had redeemed his note to propriety in marrying and having children, who become hampering things when a man is in a tight place. The servants gossiped, were insolent at times, but in such a household there were many pickings. The Middleton people, driving by at night within sound of the noise when the Four Corners was garishly lit, would repeat the family story and recall old Roper Ellwell, who lay in a green mound near his first church. But the broker, the "village magnate," as his daughters called him, was generous and free-handed in the parish. A "high liver" but "a good fellow" was his reputation; so it was considered a good thing for Middleton that the Ellwells had returned to the Four Corners.
From the serene frugal household of Roper Ellwell where the wife had fitted boys "in the classical tongues" for Camberton, the family had come to this uncertain state, feverish, like the fickle fluctuations of the stock market; now prodigal and easy, again in a panicky distress with dire fear of unknown depths of poverty and humiliation. Whatever happened—reckless, with a philosophy that did not embrace the morrow.
III
Roper second's set dined at Tony Lamb's in Camberton. For the most part they belonged to the same club, the A. Ω., and were congenial souls—young men, rich, from the great cities, who were taking the Camberton degree as a brevet in the social profession. In winter they could be found at the New York and the Boston hotels; in summer at the Bar Harbor hotels.
A few men of different stamp were left over from a previous college generation of A. Ω.'s, such as Jarvis Thornton, who had begun when a boy out of school to dine with his old schoolfellows at Tony Lamb's, and had kept it up from inertia and the loose liking of college fellowship, long after his way had parted from that of the present A. Ω.'s. Thornton had entered Camberton with all the distinction that a well-connected Massachusetts family, easy circumstances, and distinct scholarship would give. His course had been a gentle current of prosperity. He took first a high degree in the college, then a good degree in medicine. Now he was engaged in pushing forward some biological work on which he had already published a monograph and which had brought him membership in some learned societies.
One day at the beginning of the long vacation, Roper Ellwell and he found themselves alone at dinner. Young Ellwell was bored with the prospect of his own companionship for a lonely drive to the country.
"I say, Thornton," he threw out at random, "come down to our place over night. The cart will be round in a few minutes."
Thornton, flaccid from hot days in the laboratory, welcomed any proffered excuse for a loaf. So they jogged away in the soft evening, from the cropped green hedges and the red brick buildings of Camberton into the country turnpike, smoking and keeping a peaceful silence. After athletics and carts had been talked out there was not much to start fresh conversation with. Camberton slipped away, with its endless problems, its ambitious prods. Jarvis Thornton entered another atmosphere when the cart crunched the gravel of the drive at the Four Corners. The Ellwells were on the veranda. "Who are the Ellwells?" Thornton asked himself as he found a chair next the white dress of the daughter. "And why did I get myself into a family party for a day and two nights without knowing what to expect?"
He discovered an order of things he had never seen before in the rounds of his proper visiting list—the broker world. Ellwell had the possibilities of a gentleman, and in comparison with the three or four companions that he had with him this Sunday, his manners were distinguished. He was a Camberton man, he would have Jarvis Thornton understand, a classmate of Thornton's father, and if their paths had separated, Ellwell, nevertheless, had a position equal to the Thorntons. As for the others, they were clerks, who in one way or another had managed to get their seats—men with no great permanent stake in the community, the modern substitute for the condottiere class. The Four Corners gave them a place to eat and drink and play a long game of poker, which amusements satisfied their cravings for diversion. Jarvis Thornton was a mere young prig that had walked inadvertently their way; young Roper Ellwell joined the Sunday game, while Thornton was left with the women to pass the day. The Sunday went off quietly with a long drive in the afternoon. At dinner Thornton sat beside the elder daughter. There were stretches of silence, for the general talk and the table interested him more than his companion. The other men discussed business or scandal; old Ellwell told stories that were broad and fatuous, to which young Ellwell responded with heavy laughter. Ruby joked with an old-young man named Bradley, a broker, who had been winning in the day's game. As they came near the end of the long dinner Mrs. Ellwell excused herself. Thornton scrutinized his companion. The fumes of the place seemed to circulate about her unnoticed.