CHAPTER IX.
THE YOUNG MAN WITH A PURPOSE.
Besides slamming the door, Mr. Heaphy had carefully locked it. Then he had opened the lid of his trunk and took out some neatly folded clothes. It was a dress suit, ready-made, but cut in the latest fashion. It had never before adorned Mr. Heaphy's person, except upon the occasion when he had tried it on. Why he possessed it, or why he possessed many other things, which did not show or to which he never referred, would have been a mystery. But Heaphy was something of a mystery himself, which may be sufficient excuse for an explanation later. He laid the clothing carefully out on the narrow little bed and sat on a chair at the desk. He half repented of the sudden decision he had made, and as there was an hour or more before he would have to begin to dress, he opened his geometry notes and turned the leaves slowly over with his thumb.
For some time he sat there trying to force his mind to work but there was one idea that he could not get rid of—Why did he not enjoy things? Why could he not go about life in the careless, happy fashion, after the manner of so many people about him? Even Hart seemed to be catching it,—he was being sought after, his friendship seemed to be desired. He was going to make a success. Poor Heaphy sighed. If there had been a feminine streak in his nature he might have wept.
There were many things, however, that the young man with a purpose did not bring into his reasoning. His life had been a most peculiar one, to explain which takes us back to his early youth. It had been spent in luxury. He had been born in a house with a large French mansard roof, and there were any number of beautiful cast-iron statues in the front yard before it—Dianas, Newfoundland dogs, and stags, not forgetting a spurty little fountain with a slimy green cherub.
It was a remarkable fact that Patrick Corse Heaphy's father had had one large regret when his son was born. It was that this small, gurgling, spluttering bunch of life would have to inherit the name of Heaphy. It would not have been so bad, Patrick's father reasoned within himself, if he were poor, but along with the red hair and the much-despised name, his son would one day inherit wealth, real estate, and the sole ownership of the Pliny Mills, where the elder Heaphy had begun his own successful career at the age of twelve.
Patrick's father had another secret also. He had envied the appearance of those members of the near-by country club, men of his own age, who rode stockily built little horses and drove tandems. Mr. Heaphy had sense enough to know that he would look ridiculous dressed in loose breeches and tight boots, and he felt sure that, if he ever drove a tandem, the leader would turn around and laugh at him; but he envied these people nevertheless, and would have given worlds to have been one of them. Of this of course he said nothing, not even to his wife. In fact Patrick's father had been a somewhat sensible, shrewd, uneducated snob.
Patrick's mother had become accustomed to her life of luxury only by degrees. Before little Patrick was born she had sat looking out of the window at a laundry-maid hanging up the wash in the latticed enclosure behind the house. She remembered the time when she had done just the same thing, a clothes-pin in her mouth, the way the laundry-maid was standing. Her knuckles had itched for the ridges of the scrubbing board, and she had craved cabbage and blue corned beef. Her strong-mindedness, however, had been shown by the way she stood out for "Patrick Corse" (her father's name) against "Clarence Alexander," proposed by her husband. And she had lived just long enough to see the result of her victory, for little Patrick was baptized out of a silver soap-dish in his mother's high-ceilinged room, two days before she died.
After Mr. Heaphy had laid his wife to rest beneath a magnificent pile of assorted granite, he had turned his attention to his only son.—"He should be a gentleman and have all his fancy spoke for."
Thus it might seem that young Patrick's path was to be one of roses; but he would have none of it.
The glass pilot-house affair that topped the mansard roof became stocked with Patrick's cast-off playthings. His greatest pleasure was digging in the garden or working with hammer and nails in the empty chicken-house behind the stable.
He was not pretty as a child; he had a broad flat face, a well shaped head, and a tangle of coarse red hair. When dressed in his velvet suit and leggings—like the children of the country-club people,—he looked awkward and uncomfortable, and, if the truth be told, at such times he was most unhappy. He had one or two odd habits. If he was puzzled, he scratched his head, and he walked in long strides with his arms hanging loose from his shoulders, like a laboring man. His hands and feet were large and heavy; there was no elasticity in his figure.
The day before Patrick's eleventh birthday an accident occurred on the railway, and poor Mr. Heaphy the elder had been a victim of the usual conflagration.
The funeral services were not impressive, nor was the scene at the reading of the will. At the reading it was shown that the Pliny Mills were sold. All the property had been given in trust for Patrick in the care of a well-known New York firm, and the income derived therefrom left—as the words ran—"To my son Patrick for educational and travelling expenses and the covering of expenditures that are necessary to the life of a private gentleman of means and leisure. It is my wish that he engage in no mercantile pursuit."
Mr. Heaphy’s cat was out of the bag at last. But Patrick, sitting there in an ill-fitting suit of black, swung his heavy feet and ran his fingers through his coarse red hair, unconscious of the amused glances of the lawyers. No one would have thought that the boy was grieving deeply.
And after this, Patrick, having no relatives, had been hustled off to boarding-school. Here he made no intimates, and only once had he attracted attention,—the time when he fought for one whole hour, with a dogged weeping courage, and had the school bully at a standstill.
There had grown upon him during these years—for he spent his vacations at the second master's house—a curious way of walking; he carried his head to one side and raised one shoulder higher than the other. Neither the school physician nor Patrick himself knew that his grandfather (Heaphy, the charcoal man) had carried his head and shoulders in that same way, and had been the strongest man in thirteen counties. No matter how Patrick dressed he had the appearance of a child of ambitious poverty.
And thus he had come to college, loving no one, trying hard for complete success; his only happiness, hard work,—and eaten up with ambition.
No wonder that this strange, unusual creature should feel bitter against the world. It did not believe in him, he thought, and he had begun to doubt himself—a most unhappy thing to do.
Money to Heaphy meant nothing. He did not know how to spend or how to enjoy it. At the mere scratch of a pen, he could have bought the best room in Witherspoon Hall; he could have hung it with tapestry and filled it with beautiful things.
It is not a remarkable fact that if a man does not know how to spend his income, there are plenty willing to teach him, and Heaphy could have held court and driven tandem, if he had so willed it, but the role of Aladdin held no attraction for him. He had no desire to stroke the lamp or to command the genii. But to return to the room in Edwards and leave this long digression. Looking up at his cheap little clock, Heaphy perceived that he had just time to run over to his eating club, if he did not wish to go supperless to the reception.
He had never been to a dance in his life, and had it not been for Hart's expressing his own determination to put in an appearance, he would never have thought of such a thing.
Heaphy had determined deliberately to make a friend of Newton Hart, and to win, if possible, his regard.
At about half-past nine Mr. Heaphy had completed his toilet and looked at himself in the glass. He had paid particular attention to his hair, but it stood stiff and straight in a red, wiry tangle that refused to remain parted. Around the narrow standing collar was a white satin tie, forsooth made fast with a palpable elastic band; and, to complete the tone, he had thrust a black silk handkerchief with a red border into his waistcoat.
With many misgivings he left the room and walked down the corridor, and knocked on Hart's door. There was no answer. His courage almost failed him for a moment, but at last he started alone across the campus for University Hall where the reception was being held.