“They were almost too successful, Mrs. Landray,” said Benson.
“Well, I shall see Virginia,” and Anna sighed again.
“I shall see Virginia, too,” muttered the lawyer, after Anna had taken her leave of him. “The little idiot cares for nothing but money!” and he turned back into his office again.
The house Benson occupied was on the north side of the public square. It was a two story frame structure having an ungenerous porch across the front. Everything about it spoke for a depressing utility, a meagre sufficiency. Its walls were mere husks which enclosed large barren rooms, which successfully resisted all attempts at adornment. A narrow strip of turf separated the house from the sidewalk, this was divided by a gravel walk which led from the gate to the front door; the edges of this path were bordered by whitewashed stones the size of a man's two fists.
Since his father's death, Benson had used the large double parlours as offices; a side door from the rear room, over which his modest sign was displayed, opened on Water Street; and by this door his clients came and went in steadily increasing numbers.
He had few pleasant memories of his boyhood to attach him to the place. His mother had died when he was a child; and his father, who had his own ideas about the rearing of children, had made his up-bringing stern and rigorous; he yet recalled the latter with greater awe than affection; indeed, a certain fear of the old pioneer had followed him into manhood.
He still remembered vividly his first trial; how glancing up from his brief, he had found his father's dark restless eyes fixed upon him; their coldly critical glance had filled him with something very like terror; and when he had spoken his voice faltered, and he had seen the shaven lips curl contemptuously; afterward, his father had said with that frank unsparing candour of his, “I suppose you can't help it that you are a fool, Jacob;” then he had added, “I always thought you took after your mother's folks; none of them ever amounted to much that I heard tell of.” But he had lived to reconsider this hasty judgment; he had seen his son grow steadily in men's esteem.
Old Jacob Benson had been a very rich man, his opportunities considered. The big brick warehouses on Front Street had been his, and for years he had been the principal merchant in the town.
On coming into this property, young Jacob had disposed of the store; and he was content to collect his rents from the warehouses without any speculative interest in the grain and produce they housed. He was studious and ambitious. He might have done many things with the fortune that was his, but he had preferred to remain in Benson where the very men who had distrusted his father, the men who had reason to remember him as hard and close, Had every liking for the son.
When Anna took her leave of him, the lawyer turned to his desk. He had scarcely settled himself at his work again, when a carriage drew up at the curb. Sam West was on the box, and Benson hurried into the street and was just in time to open the carriage door for Virginia.