The clerks in the Markley Mortgage Company office say that he fell into a moody way, and would come to the office and refuse to speak to anyone for hours. Also, as the big house often glowed until midnight for a dance of the socially impossible who used the Markley ballroom, rent free, as a convenience, John Markley grew to have a sleepy look by day, and lines came into his red, shaved face. He grew anxious about his health, and a hundred worries tightened his belt and shook his great fat hand, just the least in the world, and when through some gossip that his wife brought him from the kitchen he felt the scorn of an old friend burn his soul like a caustic, for many days he would brood over it. Finally care began to chisel down his flinty face, to cut the fat from his bull neck, so that the cords stood out, and, through staring in impotent rage and pain at the ceiling in the darkness of the night, red rims began to worm around his eyes. He was not sixty years old then, and he had lashed himself into seventy.
However his money-cunning did not grow dull. He kept his golden touch and his impotent dollars piled higher and higher. The pile must have mocked Isabel Markley, for it could bring her nothing that she wanted. She stopped trying to give big parties and receptions. Her social efforts tapered down to little dinners for the new people in town. But as the dinner hour grew near she raged—so the servants said—whenever the telephone rang, and in the end she had to give up even the dinner scheme.
As the dinner hour grew near she raged—so the servants said—whenever the telephone rang
So there came a time when they began to take trips to the seashore and the mountains, flitting from hotel to hotel. In the office we knew when they changed quarters, for at each resort John Markley would see the reporters and give out a long interview, which was generally prefaced by the statement that he was a prominent Western capitalist, who had refused the nomination for Governor or for Senator, or for whatever Isabel Markley happened to think of; and papers containing these interviews, marked in green ink, came addressed to the office in her stylish, angular hand. During grand opera season one might see the Markleys hanging about the great hotels of Chicago or Kansas City, he a tired, sleepy-faced, prematurely old man, who seemed to be counting the hours till bed-time, and she a tailored, rather overfed figure, with a freshly varnished face and unhealthy, bright, bold eyes, walking slightly ahead of her shambling companion, looking nervously about her in search of some indefinite thing that was gone from her life.
One day John Markley shuffled into our office, bedizened as usual, and fumbled in his pocket for several minutes before he could find the copy of the Mexican Herald containing the news of his boy's death in Vera Cruz. He had passed the time of life for tears, yet when he asked us to reprint the item he said sadly: "The old settlers will remember him—maybe. I don't know whether they will or not." He seemed a pitiful figure as he dragged himself out of the office—so stooped and weazened, and so utterly alone, but when he turned around and came back upon some second thought, his teeth snapped viciously as he snarled: "Here, give it back. I guess I don't want it printed. They don't care for me, anyway."
The boys in his office told the boys in our office that the old man was cross and petulant that year, and there is no doubt that Isabel Markley was beginning to find her mess of pottage bitter. The women around town, who have a wireless system of collecting news, said that the Markleys quarrelled, and that she was cruel to him. Certain it is that she began to feed on young boys, and made the old fellow sit up in his evening clothes until impossible hours, for sheer appearance sake, while his bed was piled with the wraps of boys and girls from what our paper called the Hand-holders' Union, who were invading the Markley home, eating the Markley olives and canned lobster, and dancing to the music of the Markley pianola. Occasionally a young travelling man would be spoken of by these young people as Isabel Markley's fellow.