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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