Schools and Schools
by
I
Old Jerome Warren lived in a hundred-thousand-dollar house at 35 East Fifty-Soforth Street. He was a down-town broker, so rich that he could afford to walk–for his health–a few blocks in the direction of his office every morning, and then call a cab.
He had an adopted son, the son of an old friend named Gilbert–Cyril Scott could play him nicely–who was becoming a successful painter as fast as he could squeeze the paint out of his tubes. Another member of the household was Barbara Ross, a stepniece. Man is born to trouble; so, as old Jerome had no family of his own, he took up the burdens of others.
Gilbert and Barbara got along swimmingly. There was a tacit and tactical understanding all round that the two would stand up under a floral bell some high noon, and promise the minister to keep old Jerome’s money in a state of high commotion. But at this point complications must be introduced.
Thirty years before, when old Jerome was young Jerome, there was a brother of his named Dick. Dick went West to seek his or somebody else’s fortune. Nothing was heard of him until one day old Jerome had a letter from his brother. It was badly written on ruled paper that smelled of salt bacon and coffee-grounds. The writing was asthmatic and the spelling St. Vitusy.
It appeared that instead of Dick having forced Fortune to stand and deliver, he had been held up himself, and made to give hostages to the enemy. That is, as his letter disclosed, he was on the point of pegging out with a complication of disorders that even whiskey had failed to check. All that his thirty years of prospecting had netted him was one daughter, nineteen years old, as per invoice, whom he was shipping East, charges prepaid, for Jerome to clothe, feed, educate, comfort, and cherish for the rest of her natural life or until matrimony should them part.
Old Jerome was a board-walk. Everybody knows that the world is supported by the shoulders of Atlas; and that Atlas stands on a rail- fence; and that the rail-fence is built on a turtle’s back. Now, the turtle has to stand on something; and that is a board-walk made of men like old Jerome.
I do not know whether immortality shall accrue to man; but if not so, I would like to know when men like old Jerome get what is due them?
They met Nevada Warren at the station. She was a little girl, deeply sunburned and wholesomely good-looking, with a manner that was frankly unsophisticated, yet one that not even a cigar-drummer would intrude upon without thinking twice. Looking at her, somehow you would expect to see her in a short skirt and leather leggings, shooting glass balls or taming mustangs. But in her plain white waist and black skirt she sent you guessing again. With an easy exhibition of strength she swung along a heavy valise, which the uniformed porters tried in vain to wrest from her.
“I am sure we shall be the best of friends,” said Barbara, pecking at the firm, sunburned cheek.
“I hope so,” said Nevada.
“Dear little niece,” said old Jerome, “you are as welcome to my home as if it were your father’s own.”
“Thanks,” said Nevada.
“And I am going to call you ‘cousin,'” said Gilbert, with his charming smile.
“Take the valise, please,” said Nevada. “It weighs a million pounds. It’s got samples from six of dad’s old mines in it,” she explained to Barbara. “I calculate they’d assay about nine cents to the thousand tons, but I promised him to bring them along.”
II
It is a common custom to refer to the usual complication between one man and two ladies, or one lady and two men, or a lady and a man and a nobleman, or–well, any of those problems–as the triangle. But they are never unqualified triangles. They are always isosceles–never equilateral. So, upon the coming of Nevada Warren, she and Gilbert and Barbara Ross lined up into such a figurative triangle; and of that triangle Barbara formed the hypotenuse.