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THE LAST PENNY

By Edwin Lefevre

Harper And Brothers Publishers

New York And London

1917

[Illustration: 0008]

[Illustration: 0011]




TO THE LAST PENNY




CHAPTER I

THOMAS LEIGH, ex-boy, considered the dozen neckties before him a long
time, and finally decided to wait until after breakfast.

It was his second day at home and his third day out of college. Already
his undergraduate life seemed far away. His triumphs--of personality
rather than of scholarship--lingered as a luminous mist that softened
the sterner realities and mellowed them goldenly. When one is young
reminiscences of one's youth are apt to take on a tinge of melancholy,
but Tommy, not having breakfasted, shook off the mood determinedly. He
was two hundred and fifty-five months old; therefore, he decided that no
great man ever crosses a bridge until he comes to it. Tommy's bridge
was still one long joy-ride ahead. The sign, “Slow down to four miles an
hour!” was not yet in sight. The selection of the necktie was a serious
matter because he was to lunch at Sherry's with the one sister and the
younger of the two cousins of Rivington Willetts.

In the mean time he had an invitation to spend the first half of July
with Bull Wilson's folks at Gloucester, a week with “Van” Van Schaick
for the cruise at Newport, as long as he wished with Jimmy Maitland at
Mr. Maitland's camp in the Adirondacks, and he had given a half promise
to accompany Ellis Gladwin to Labrador for big game in the fall.

He suddenly remembered that he was at his last ten-spot. There was the
Old Man to touch for fifty bucks. And also--sometime--he must have a
heart-to-heart talk of a business nature about his allowance. He and
his friends desired to take a post-graduate course. They proposed to
specialize on New York.

Mr. Leigh always called him Thomas. This had saved Mr. Leigh at least
one thousand dollars a year during Tommy's four at college, by making
Tommy realize that he had no doting father. At times the boy had sent
his requests for an extra fifty with some misgivings--by reason of the
impelling cause of the request--but Mr. Leigh always sent the check for
the exact amount by return mail, and made no direct reference to
it. Instead he permitted himself an irrelevant phrase or two, like,
“Remember, Thomas, that you must have no conditions at the end of the
term.”

Possibly because of a desire to play fair with a parent who had no sense
of humor, or perhaps it was because he was level-headed enough not to
overwork a good thing, at all events Tommy managed, sometimes pretty
narrowly, to escape the conditions. And being very popular, and knowing
that quotable wisdom was expected of him, he was rather careful of what
he said and did.

He knew nothing about his father's business affairs, excepting that Mr.
Leigh was connected with the Metropolitan National Bank, which was a
very rich bank, and that he continued to live in the little house on
West Twelfth Street, because it was in that house that Mrs. Leigh had
lived her seventeen months of married life--it was where Tommy was bom
and where she died. The furniture was chiefly old family pieces which,
without his being aware of it, had made Tommy feel at home in the houses
of the very wealthy friends he had made at college. It is something to
have been American for two hundred years. Family furniture reminds you
of it every day.

Tommy wondered, curiously rather than anxiously, how much his father
would allow him, and whether it would be wiser to argue like a man
against its inadequacy or to plead like a boy for an increase; then
whether he ought to get it in cash Saturday mornings or to have a
checking account at his father's bank. But one thing was certain--he
would not be led into reckless check-signing habits. His boy-financier
days were over. Those of his friends who had multi-millionaire fathers
were always complaining of being hard up. It was, therefore, not an
unfashionable thing to be. He surmised that his father was not really
rich, because he kept no motor, had no expensive personal habits,
belonged to no clubs, and never sent to Tommy at college more money than
Tommy asked for, and, moreover, sent it only when Tommy asked. Since his
Prep-school days Tommy had spent most of his vacations at boys' houses.
Mr. Leigh at times was invited to join him, or to become acquainted with
the families of Tommy's friends, but he never accepted.

Tommy, having definitely decided not to make any plans until after his
first grown-up business talk with his father, looked at himself in the
mirror and put on his best serious look. He was satisfied with it.
He had successfully used it on mature business men when soliciting
advertisements for the college paper.

He then decided to breakfast with his father, who had the eccentric habit
of leaving the house at exactly eight-forty a.m.

It was actually only eight-eight when Tommy entered the dining-room.
Maggie, the elderly chambermaid and waitress, in her twenty-second
consecutive year of service, whom he always remembered as the only woman
who could be as taciturn as his father, looked surprised, but served him
oatmeal. It was a warm day in June, but this household ran in ruts.

Mr. Leigh looked up from his newspaper. “Good morning, Thomas,” he said.
Then he resumed his _Tribune_.

“Good morning, father,” said Tommy, and had a sense of having left his
salutation unfinished. He breakfasted in a sober, business-like way,
feeling age creeping upon him. Nevertheless, when he had finished he
hesitated to light a cigarette. He never had done it in the house, for
his father had expressed the wish that his son should not smoke until he
was of age. Tommy's twenty-first birthday had come off at college.

Well, he was of age now.

The smell of the vile thing made Mr. Leigh look at his son, frowning.
Then he ceased to frown. “Ah yes,” he observed, meditatively, “you are
of age. You are a man now.”

“I suspect I am, father,” said Thomas, pleasantly. “In fact, I--”

“Then it is time you heard man's talk!”

Mr. Leigh took out his watch, looked at it, and put it back in his
pocket with a methodical leisureliness that made Tommy realize that Mr.
Leigh was a very old man, though he could not be more than fifty. Tommy
was silent, and was made subtly conscious that in not speaking he was
somehow playing safe.

“Thomas, I have treated you as a boy during twenty-one years.” Mr. Leigh
paused just long enough for Tommy to wonder why he had not added “and
three months.” Mr. Leigh went on, with that same uncomfortable, senile
precision: “Your mother would have wished it. You are a man now and--”

He closed his lips abruptly, but without any suggestion of temper or of
making a sudden decision, and rose, a bit stiffly. His face took on
a look of grim resolution that filled Tommy with that curious form of
indeterminate remorse with which we anticipate abstract accusations
against which there is no concrete defense. It seemed to make an utter
stranger of Mr. Leigh. Tommy saw before him a life with which his
own did not merge. He would have preferred a scolding as being more
paternal, more humanly flesh-and-blood. He was not frightened.

He never had been wild; at the worst he had been a complacent shirker
of future responsibilities, with that more or less adventurous desire
to float on the tide that comes to American boys whose financial
necessities do not compel them to fix their anchorage definitely. At
college such boys are active citizens in their community, concerned
with sports and class politics, and the development of their immemorial
strategy against existing institutions. And for the same sad reason of
youth Tommy could not possibly know that he was now standing, not on a
rug in his father's dining-room, but on the top of life's first hill,
with a pleasant valley below him--and one steep mountain beyond. All
that his quick self-scrutinizing could do was to end in wondering which
particular exploit, thitherto deemed unknown to his father, was to be
the key-note of the impending speech. And for the life of him, without
seeking self-extenuation, he could not think of any serious enough to
bring so grimly determined a look on his father's face.

Mr. Leigh folded the newspaper, and, without looking at his son, said,
harshly, “Come with me into the library.”

Tommy followed his father into the particularly gloomy room at the back
of the second floor, where all the chairs were too uncomfortable for any
one to wish to read any book there. On the small black-walnut table were
the family Bible, an ivory paper-cutter, and a silver frame in which was
a fading photograph of his mother.

“Sit down!” commanded the old man. There was a new note in the voice.

Tommy sat down, the vague disquietude within him for the first time
rising to alarm. He wondered if his father's mind was sound, and
instantly dismissed the suspicion. It was too unpleasant to consider,
and, moreover, it seemed disloyal. Tommy was very strong on loyalty. His
college life had given it to him.

Mr. Leigh looked, not at his son but at the photograph of his son's
mother, a long time it seemed to Tommy. At length he raised his head and
stared at his son.

Tommy saw that the grimness had gone. There remained only calm resolve.
Knowing that the speech was about to begin, Tommy squared his shoulders.
He would answer “Yes” or “No” truthfully. He wasn't afraid now.

“Thomas, the sacrifices I have made for you I do not begrudge,” said Mr.
Leigh, in a voice that did not tremble because an iron will would not
let it. “But it is well that you should know once for all that you
can never repay me in full. You are my only son. But--you cost me your
mother!”

Tommy knew that his mother had paid for his life with her own--knew it
from Maggie, not from his father. To Tommy love and loyalty were among
the undoubted pleasures of life. Recriminations he looked upon as
evidences of a shabby soul. He repressed the desire to defend himself
against injustice and loyally said, “Yes, sir!”

His father went on, “I have kept also an accurate account of what you
have cost me in cash.”

Mr. Leigh went to his desk and took from a drawer a small book bound in
morocco. He came back to the table, sat down, motioned Tommy to a chair
beside him, opened the book at the first page, and showed Tommy:

Thomas Francis Leigh, In acct. with William R. Leigh, Dr.

Tommy felt that he was at the funeral services of some one he knew. His
father seemed to hesitate, then handed the little book to Tommy. The
morocco cover was black--the color of mourning.

Mr. Leigh went on in the voice a man will use when he is staring not
through space, but across time: “Before you were born we were sure you
would be a boy. She formed great plans for you. It is just as well that
she did; it gave her the only happiness she ever got from you.” He
raised his eyes to Tommy's, and with a half frown that was not of anger,
said: “She was very extravagant in her gifts to you. She spent money
lavishly, months before you were born, on what she thought you would
love to have--large sums, all on paper, for we were very poor and had no
money whatever to put aside for the day when you should need it. She
told me many times that she did not wish you to have brothers or
sisters, because she already loved you so much that she felt she could
never love the others, and it would not be fair.” The old, old man
paused. Then he added, softly, “She had her wish, my son!”

Tommy felt very uncomfortable. His mother was coming to life in his
heart. What for years had been a faint convention was now dramatizing in
blood and tears before his very eyes. He felt more like a son than ever
before, and--this was curious!--more like a son to his own father. And
his own father continued in a monotone:

“But being a bookkeeper at a bank and being very, very poor, the only
inexpensive recreation I could think of was to keep your books for you.
So I debited you with every penny I spent for you. You will find that
the first item in that book was a lace cap which she bought for you at a
special sale, for $2.69. I didn't scold her for extravagance. Instead, I
gave up smoking. And--I have kept the cap, my son!”

Tommy looked down, that he might not see his father's face. He read the
first item. The ink was pale, but the writing was legible. It was as his
father had said. And there were other items, all for baby clothes. He
read them one after another, dully, until he came to:

    Doctor Wyman..................................$218.50

    Funeral expenses in full......................$191.15

The old man seemed to know, in some mysterious way, which particular
item Tommy was reading, for he said, suddenly, with a subtle note of
apology in his voice:

“I loved her, my son! I loved her! You cost me her life! You did not
do it intentionally. But--but I felt you owed me something, and so
I--charged you with the expense incurred. She would have--fought for
you; but I held it against you and I wrote it down. And I wrote it down,
in black and white, that in my grief I might have an added grief, my
son!”

Tommy looked up suddenly, and saw that his father was nodding toward
the photograph on the table, nodding again and again. And Tommy felt
himself becoming more and more a son--to both! He did not think
concretely of any one thing, but he felt that he was enveloped by a life
that does not die. That, after all, is the function of death.

Presently Mr. Leigh ceased to nod at the photograph and looked at Tommy.
And in the same dispirited monotone, as though his very soul had kept
books for an eternity, said:

“We talked over your life, my son. Months before you came she picked out
your schools and your college. It is to those that you have gone. She
had no social ambitions for herself. They were all for you. She wanted
you to be the intimate of those whom we called the best people in those
days. They are your friends to-day. I promised her that I would do as
she wished.” The old man looked at Tommy straight in the eyes. “You have
had everything you wished--at least, everything you ever asked me for. I
have kept my promise to her. And, my son, I do not begrudge the cost!”

The way he looked when he said this made Tommy exceedingly
uncomfortable. It was plain that Mr. Leigh was much poorer than Tommy
had feared. In some way not quite fully grasped, Tommy Leigh realized
that all his plans--the plans he really had not formed!--were brought to
naught. And when his father spoke again Tommy listened with as poignant
an interest as before, but with distinctly less curiosity.

“Her plans for you all were for your boyhood. After your graduation from
college I was to take charge of your business career, provide or suggest
or approve of your life's occupation. The day is here. I owe you
an explanation, that you may be helped to a decision following your
understanding of your position--and of mine!” He ceased to speak,
rose, took from the table the photograph of his wife, looked at it, and
muttered, “It is now between us men!”

He carried the photograph to his bedroom. He returned presently and,
looking at Tommy full in the face, said with a touch of sternness that
had been absent from his voice while the photograph was on the table:

“My son, when we married I was getting exactly eighteen dollars a week.
Your grandmother lived with us and paid the rent of this house, in
return for which she had her meals with us. When you were born I was
getting one thousand and forty dollars a year. This house--the only
house in which she lived with me--I kept after she died and after your
grandmother went away. I do not own it. It is too big for my needs--and
too small for my regrets. But I could not live anywhere else. And so I
have kept it all these years. My salary at the bank was raised to
fifteen hundred dollars when you were four years old, and later to
eighteen hundred dollars. For the last fourteen years my salary from the
bank has been twenty-five hundred dollars a year.”

Tommy felt as if something as heavy as molten lead and as cold as frozen
air had been force-pumped into his heart and had filled it to bursting.

“You have cost me, up to this day, a trifle over seventeen thousand
dollars. At school you cost me a little less than my salary. At college
you spent one thousand eight hundred and seventy-eight dollars for
your Freshman, two thousand and twelve dollars for your Sophomore, two
thousand one hundred and forty-six dollars for your Junior, and two
thousand three hundred and ninety-one dollars for your Senior year. Your
summer vacation expenses have added an average of four hundred dollars
a year to what you cost me since you were sixteen. But I have kept my
promise to her. I do not begrudge the cost!”

There was a subtle defiance' in the old man's voice, and also a subtle
accusation. To Tommy his father's arithmetic had in it something not
only incomprehensible, but uncanny. The old man looked as if he expected
speech from his son, so Tommy stammered uncomfortably:

“I