There is no need to speak of the happenings of the next few days, nor is it necessary to touch at any length upon the history of some of the weeks and months which ensued upon this crisis in John Lenox’s life, a time when it seemed to him that everything he had ever cared for had been taken. And yet, with that unreason which may perhaps be more easily understood than accounted for, the one thing upon which his mind most often dwelt was that he had had no answer to his note to Mary Blake. We know what happened to her missive. It turned up long afterward in the pocket of Master Jacky Carling’s overcoat; so long afterward that John, so far as Mary was concerned, had disappeared altogether. The discovery of Jacky’s dereliction explained to her, in part at least, why she had never seen him or heard from him after that last evening at Sixty-ninth Street. The Carlings went away some ten days later, and she did, in fact, send another note to his house address, asking him to see them before their departure; but John had considered himself fortunate in getting the house off his hands to a tenant who would assume the lease if given possession at once, and had gone into the modest apartment which he occupied during the rest of his life in the city, and so the second communication failed to reach him. Perhaps it was as well. Some weeks later he walked up to the Carlings’ house one Sunday afternoon, and saw that it was closed, as he had expected. By an impulse which was not part of his original intention—which was, indeed, pretty nearly aimless—he was moved to ring the doorbell; but the maid, a stranger to him, who opened the door could tell him nothing of the family’s whereabouts, and Mr. Betts (the house man in charge) was “hout.” So John retraced his steps with a feeling of disappointment wholly disproportionate to his hopes or expectations so far as he had defined them to himself, and never went back again.
He has never had much to say of the months that followed.
It came to be the last of October. An errand from the office had sent him to General Wolsey, of the Mutual Trust Company, of whom mention has been made by David Harum. The general was an old friend of the elder Lenox, and knew John well and kindly. When the latter had discharged his errand and was about to go, the general said: “Wait a minute. Are you in a hurry? If not, I want to have a little talk with you.”
“Not specially,” said John.
“Sit down,” said the general, pointing to a chair. “What are your plans? I see you are still in the Careys’ office, but from what you told me last summer I conclude that you are there because you have not found anything more satisfactory.”
“That is the case, sir,” John replied. “I can’t be idle, but I don’t see how I can keep on as I am going now, and I have been trying for months to find something by which I can earn a living. I am afraid,” he added, “that it will be a longer time than I can afford to wait before I shall be able to do that out of the law.”
“If you don’t mind my asking,” said the general, “what are your resources? I don’t think you told me more than to give me to understand that your father’s affairs were at a pretty low ebb. Of course, I do not wish to pry into your affairs—”
“Not at all,” John interposed; “I am glad to tell you, and thank you for your interest. I have about two thousand dollars, and there is some silver and odds and ends of things stored. I don’t know what their value might be—not very much, I fancy—and there were a lot of mining stocks and that sort of thing which have no value so far as I can find out—no available value, at any rate. There is also a tract of half-wild land somewhere in Pennsylvania. There is coal on it, I believe, and some timber; but Melig, my father’s manager, told me that all the large timber had been cut. So far as available value is concerned, the property is about as much of an asset as the mining stock, with the disadvantage that I have to pay taxes on it.”
“H’m,” said the general, tapping the desk with his eyeglasses. “H’m—well, I should think if you lived very economically you would have about enough to carry you through till you can be admitted, provided you feel that the law is your vocation,” he added, looking up.
“It was my father’s idea,” said John, “and if I were so situated that I could go on with it, I would. But I am so doubtful with regard to my aptitude that I don’t feel as if I ought to use up what little capital I have, and some years of time, on a doubtful experiment, and so I have been looking for something else to do.”
“Well,” said the general, “if you were very much interested—that is, if you were anxious to proceed with your studies—I should advise you
