Ainslee's magazine, Volume 16, No. 3, October, 1905

His pictures included a Landseer, a Meissonier, a Bouguereau, and some excellent copies of Raphael. He was fond of calling your attention to the fact that all of these gentlemen could draw, and that their figures “stood out.”

The books in his library showed a strong tendency to run in sets, with modern fiction conspicuously absent. And as for his dinner services, they were complete, and he considered odd sets of plates as a fad which had its origin in economy or inefficient housekeeping.

He rated l’art nouveau with nouveaux riches, considered impressionism as a cloak for defective draughtsmanship, declined to admit anything made as far west as Rookwood to the companionship of the Capodamonte and Meissen in his cabinets, and would have banished to his stables the most priceless Indian basket ever made.

West of New York he considered that the wilderness howled, impelled to such mournful vocalization by a dawning sense of its own abnormal crudities.

In business, however, Mr. Wade consented to compromise with the spirit of the times. No out-of-date methods characterized the bank of which he was president, nor, on the other hand, did any up-to-date crook contrive to outwit the keen-eyed, white-haired, thin-lipped old gentleman, who held himself as erect ethically as he did physically.

His wife, born a Van Dorn, christened in Grace Church and married in the same, had died at fifty-seven, childless – a course of conduct which Mr. Wade, while he preserved a high silence, felt as deeply as a European monarch might have done. It was not a mere personal question, but the continuation of the Wade line would have been for the good of the country at large.

As for his only nephew, he had done his duty by him. Not extravagantly, to spoil the young man, or delude him with unfounded hopes of heirship; but by a college course, Columbia bien entendu! and when he determined to become an architect, the Beaux Arts was naturally the only correct place.

When he read John Carrington’s letter, with its phrase “since you have no direct heir,” Mr. Livingstone Wade experienced a very primitive bitterness, which resolved itself into a determination to make his nephew heir to that particular piece of property at least; to recall him from Paris, and to insist upon his going out to Michigan and becoming thoroughly conversant with the mine as soon as possible.

Having begun the accomplishment of this design, Mr. Livingstone Wade began to feel a consciousness of benevolence in acting so generously toward the young man, which resulted, very naturally, in his regarding his nephew with more affection than even Mr. Wade himself would have thought possible.

As they sat together in the well-ordered library, Mr. Wade said to himself that he had done well.

“When the mine came to us with that tangle of collateral from the Riley failure, I found that it was paying dividends regularly; and Richards, the manager, wrote me that they could be doubled easily if he was allowed a free hand to cut down expenses and exercise his own judgment. He has done it, too, and the mine is a splendid property. And it is yours, my boy, when you have made yourself thoroughly conversant with it.” Mr. Wade’s tone was complacently benevolent.

“Do you mean that you want me to take a course in mining engineering?” said Hastings, and his voice was carefully expressionless.

“No,” said his uncle; “I want you to go out to the mine itself, put yourself in Richards’ hands, and get a good working knowledge of the proposition, so that Richards will know you are master. He wouldn’t try any tricks with me, because it is pretty well known that men who have tried have repented it; but with a young fellow like you, it’s different, of course. I shall not expect you to spend all your time there. Perhaps for a year or so you’d better stay on the ground. Then come East, open your architect’s office, and go West once a year on a tour of inspection.”

Hastings’ face cleared.

“It is more than good of you, sir. I’ll try to deserve it,” he said, frankly.

“There is only one condition,” Mr. Wade went on, “and your word is sufficient for that. You are not to sell the mine without my consent. The very fact that John Carrington is so anxious to get hold of it is one of the best points in its favor.”

“Carrington?” said Hastings, mechanically, wondering if the name so constantly in his thoughts had begun to repeat itself audibly.

“He is a – a boor – who owns the adjoining mine,” Mr. Wade classified him. “He offered to buy the Tray-Spot. Of course I declined. And he had the insolence to charge Richards with flooding his mine with water from ours, instead of pumping it to the surface. Threatened us with a lawsuit if we didn’t put in additional pumps. He said his men were not educated to the luxury of free baths as yet, and that swimming was an unpopular sport on the eleventh level.”

“But if it was true?” said Hastings.

“Of course it wasn’t,” said Mr. Wade, testily. “I wrote Richards, and he said Carrington was just trying to get hold of the mine, and wouldn’t stop at anything to do it, because his, the Star, is down so deep it is about worked out. Do you know,” Mr. Wade went on, “this John Carrington had the audacity to say that, since I’d never been West, he didn’t suppose I’d care to begin such trips at my age, and that, as I had no son, he should think a reasonable proposition to sell ought to interest me.”

Mr. Wade intended to suggest only John Carrington’s breach of good manners, but in spite of himself his voice showed where the taunt stung. And Hastings had a sudden comprehension of his uncle’s sudden benevolence, which in its very humanness quickened him from his heavy sense of indebtedness for benefits received, into that warmer loyalty of the ties of blood, into that sense of inter-dependence which this was the first emergency to rouse.

He began to feel ashamed of the sense of injury he had had in the abrupt summons to quit Paris, to put away his chosen profession for a time. He began to feel ashamed of the lagging gratitude with which he had received a gift which would make him a rich man; of that involuntary wish that his uncle’s generosity had taken another form.

A realization of the loneliness of age bound him to the older man with bonds of sentiment stronger far, with warmhearted, generous youth, than all those the government has seen fit to issue.

But Carrington? Though there might be dozens of Carringtons who owned mines in the West.

“We’ll take Holliday’s car – he’s offered it to me time and again – and go out there. We can live on the car the few days I am here, and you’re young and can manage to make yourself comfortable afterward. I shall be proud to introduce you as my nephew, Laurence.” Mr. Wade was tasting victory in prospect, and the taste was palatable. “Carrington has only one son, and he’s daubing canvas in Paris.”

Then this was Elenore’s father. Hastings foresaw complications to come.

“Ned Carrington and his sister were two of my best friends in Paris, sir,” he said, firmly. “I knew their father was a mine owner somewhere in the West.”

“Has this young Carrington any business ability?” demanded Mr. Wade. His tone was quick and keen. He was getting at an important factor.

Hastings smiled in spite of himself.

“Not a scrap,” he said, amusedly, “but he’s a genius. He’ll be a new ‘old master’ one of these days.”

Mr. Wade’s countenance relaxed amiably.

“These erratic young fellows are always going to do wonders,” he said, indulgently. “For all the help he’ll be to his father, he might as well be a girl. One of these days you will be buying out John Carrington on your own terms.”

Nor did he dream that in the silence that followed, as he sat comfortably certain of the discomfiture of the man who had flung at him the two-edged taunt of age and childlessness, his nephew was saying to himself that surely Elenore’s father must be a reasonable man, that there must be some rational basis on which he and John Carrington could meet as friends. More, he saw himself with an assured income. Then could he not, by virtue of that future friendship, gain a remarkably valuable ally in that siege of the marvelous citadel – invulnerable, indeed, save to a certain small sportsman who bends his bow to no man’s dictation, and yet for love of valor, or from mere caprice, ranges himself at the unlikeliest moment with the besieging force, and wins with a single well-sped shaft?

Whatever emotions the arrival of Mr. Wade and his nephew at Yellow Dog excited in Richards, his outward attitude was one of bluff heartiness.

“You can’t stay on your car, though, Mr. Wade,” he said, decisively, looking over its comfortable appointments with an appraising eye. “The miners at the Star are too lawless. You’ll have to put up with the hotel.” (“About twenty-four hours of the Raegan House will start them for New York,” he thought, with grim humor.)

“Do you mean to tell me that they would dare attack a private car?” Mr. Wade demanded, aghast.

Richards shrugged his shoulders.

“There isn’t much they wouldn’t dare,” he said, coolly, wondering how thick it would be safe to pile it on, “but they’re more interested in people than property. The car’s safe enough as long as you aren’t in it, but if a stick of dynamite happened to drop under it some night when you were – ”

“What has made such bad feeling between the mines?” Hastings asked, quietly.

Richards’ eyes narrowed slightly.

“Miners take the tone of their manager,” he said, significantly.

Simple as question and answer were, antipathy quickened in that instant between the two men.

Richards resented a certain something in Hastings’ tone, and Hastings made up his mind that Richards was overplaying.

Mr. Wade was regretting with exceeding heartiness that he had come at all. Being blown to bits in this desolate-looking hole was furthest from his desire.

Trusting himself to the horrors of a wilderness hotel seemed about as hazardous an alternative. As for leaving his nephew in such a place, was it not virtually condemning him to a more or less lingering death? And Mr. Wade had grown amazingly fond of him during the last few months, in the companionship which had resulted from their many-times delayed expedition westward.

He was half inclined to make a formal tour of inspection, announcing Hastings as the future owner, and then take him back and let him open his architect’s office at once. But Mr. Wade hated retreat.

“Then I am sure that you have men equally vigilant in repelling any attacks upon property or persons,” Hastings said, smoothly. “However, it doesn’t matter to me. I should have to come to the hotel, anyway, later, when you have gone back, sir.”

“Going to stay with us a while?” Richards asked him.

“Permanently,” said Hastings, pleasantly.

Richards swung a questioning face toward Mr. Wade.