Chapter XI The Old Office
The office in La Salle Street was in an old-fashioned building, with heavily ornamented front. The room was large, high of ceiling, with a grate and a marble mantlepiece. It was on the first floor, after the short flight of iron steps leading from the pavement. Once it had been active with business, but now few clients found their way into its dingy precincts. Occasionally some old-timer would come in, but upon seeing Howard or Bodney, faces offensively young to him, would go out again, sighing over the degeneracy of the day. The young men had often advised a change of quarters, apartments in a steel building, but the Judge would not consent. The old room was sentiment’s heritage. Many a famous man had trod the rough carpet on the floor; many a time had the dry eye of the tired lawyer watered at the wit of Emery Storrs; and Ingersoll, warm with fellowship and wine, walking up and down, had poured out the overflow of his magic brain. How intellectual were its surroundings then, and now how different! The great advocate was gone, and in his stead sat the real-estate lawyer, emotionless, keen-eyed, searching out the pedigree of a title to a few feet of soil—narrow, direct, dyspeptic, money-dwarfed.
After leaving home, Howard went straightway to the down-town office, and there, amid the dust raised by the negro who was sweeping, he found Goyle, waiting for Bodney. “I have taken possession,” said Goyle.
“All right. And you are taking more dust than is good for you.”
“I don’t mind that. Where is Bodney?”
“He hadn’t got up when I left home. He was up all night with a sick friend, I believe, and is not likely to be down before the afternoon.”
Goyle looked at his watch. “I will come in again about three o’clock. How is business with you?” He did not get up.
“The business of waiting is good. It is about all a young lawyer need expect.” Howard sat down, telling the negro to leave off sweeping; and Goyle, leaning back, put his feet upon the window ledge. He was never in haste to leave. It was one of his sayings that he was looking for a soft seat, and he appeared now to have found one. He gazed out into the rumbling thoroughfare, at men of all ages passing one another, pushing, jamming, limping, some on crutches, some tottering, some strong of limb, all with eager faces. “Rushing after the dollar,” said Goyle.
“Or fleeing from necessity,” replied Howard.
“Yes, and hard pressed by the enemy. But they have made their enemy powerful—have built up their necessities. Once a shadow lay upon the ground, a harmless thing; but they breathed hot breath upon it and it became a thing of life, jumped up and took after them. I hate the whole scheme.” He waved his hand, and Howard sat looking at him—at the hair curling about his forehead, at his Greek nose; and he wondered why one so seemingly fitted for the chase should express such contempt for it. He spoke of it, and Goyle turned toward him with a cold smile. “You have heard,” said he, “of the fellow who would rather be a cat in hell without claws. Well, that’s what I am, and where I am when thrown out there.” He nodded toward the street, and then lazily taking out a cigarette, lighted it.
“I don’t believe that,” said Howard. “I believe that you are well fitted, except, possibly, by disposition. You lack patience.”
“Patience! It doesn’t admit of patience. Do those fellows out there look patient?”
“A man may run and be patient.”
“And he may also run and be a fool.”
“Or be a bigger fool and not run. I am a believer in the world—in man.”
“I’m not,” said Goyle. “I know that the world is a trap and that man is caught. Puppies play, but the old dog lies down. He knows that life is a farce.”
“The old dog lies down, it is true,” Howard replied, “but he dreams of his youth and barks in his dream.”
“And calls himself a fool when he awakes. It is the same with the old man. There comes a time when he loses confidence even in those who are nearest him.” Out of the sharp corner of his eye he shot a glance at Howard and saw his countenance change. An old man, shriveled and wretched, with feather dusters for sale, came shambling into the room. Goyle glanced at him, and when he was gone, turned to Howard and said: “Ask his opinion of the world. He is your old dog who dreamed and barked in his dream.”
“Goyle, I don’t like the position you take. My experience and my reading teach me better.”
Goyle glanced at him again. “Your reading, because what you read was written to flatter hope—to sell. Your experience is not ripe. It is not even green fruit. It is a bud. Oh, of course there are some old men, your father, for instance, who—”
“Well, what about him?”
“Nothing, only he is by nature fitted to smile at everything.”
Howard got up, went over to a bookcase, took down a book, put it back, went to the open door, and stood there looking at a doctor’s sign, just across the hall. Goyle got up with a yawn, came walking slowly toward the door, and Howard, hearing him, but without looking round, stepped aside to let him pass out. In the hall he halted to repeat that he would return during the afternoon.
“You have the privilege to come and go as often as you like, being George’s friend,” said Howard, “but, so far as you and I are concerned, I don’t think we are suited to each other.”
Goyle laughed and stepped back a pace or two. “Why, on account of my nonsense just now? That was all guff; I didn’t mean it. It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to condemn the whole of creation, and I talk that way when my mind is too dull to act. Why, I am going out now to knock an eye tooth out of the wolf.”
“And you didn’t mean what you said about old men?”
“Not a word of it.”
“Why did you happen to speak of my father?”
“Merely to refute what I had said about old men in general. Well, so long.”
Howard went into the doctor’s office, as musty a den as ever a fox inhabited. The physician was an old man, who had no future and who prescribed in the past. During the best years of his life he had dozed or talked under the influence of opium, so given to harmless fabrication when awake that it followed him into his slumber, snoring a lie; now cured of the habit but not of the evil it had wrought. When Howard entered the old man was reading a medical journal of 1849, and he glanced up disappointed to see the visitor looking so well. He had met Howard many a time, but his memory was short.
“Ah, come in, sir. Have a seat. You are—let me see.
“My office is just across the hall.”
“Yes, yes, I remember. You are in the—the brokerage business. And your name is—”
“I am trying to be a lawyer. Elbridge is my name.”
“Of course it is. I used to know your father—was called in consultation just before he died.”
“Then it must have been since I left the house this morning.”
“Ah, let me see. Elbridge—the Judge. I’m wrong, of course. It was Elsworth. How is your father?”
“That’s what I wanted to talk about, and I am sorry that you do not recall him more vividly. I wanted to ask your opinion.”
“Why, now I know him as well as I know myself. What is it you wish to consult me about? His health?”
“Well, I hardly know how to get at it. You know he has been a very busy man—working day and night for years; and I wanted to ask if a sudden breaking off isn’t dangerous—that is, not exactly dangerous, but likely to induce a change in disposition?”
The doctor looked wise, with his hand flat upon the medical journal, and as it had been printed in the drowsy afternoon of a slow day, seemed to inspire caution against a quick opinion.
“I hold, and have held for years,” said he, “that a complete revolution in a man’s affairs, sudden riches or sudden poverty—the er—the withdrawing of vital forces necessary to a continuous strain, is a shock to the system, and therefore deleterious. It is unquestionably a fact, not only known to the medical fraternity, but to ordinary observation, that incentive in the aged is a sort of continuance of youth, in other words, to make myself perfectly clear, the impetus of youth when unchecked, goes far into old age—when the pursuit has not been changed; and therefore a sudden halting is bad for the system. Is your father’s health impaired?”
“I can’t say that it is. He appears to be strong, but his temper is not of the best—toward me. Toward the others he is just the same.”
“Ah, not unusual in such cases. It so happened that a sudden change must have taken place in him, and as you were doubtless the first one to come in contact with him after the change, his—his displeasure, if I may be permitted the term, fell upon you.”
“But I was not the first one.”
“Um, a complication. I shall have to study that up a little. Perhaps I’d better see him.”
“Oh, no, don’t do that. It really amounts to nothing. I consulted you because you were well acquainted with him. And I am now inclined to think that I have made more of it than it really is. How are you getting along?” Howard asked, to change the subject.
“Never better, sir, I am pleased to say. Of course medicine has degenerated, splitting up into all sorts of specialties, but there are a few people who don’t want to be humbugged. Well, I am glad you called,” he added as Howard turned to go. “Give my regards to your father.”
Howard returned to the office, took up a book which held in closer affinity the laws of verse than the laws of the land, and lying down upon a leather lounge, was borne away by the gentle tide of a rhythmic sea.