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Wasted Day

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<h1> A WASTED DAY </h1> <h2> By Richard Harding Davis </h2> <hr /> When its turn came, the private secretary, somewhat apologetically, laid the letter in front of the Wisest Man in Wall Street. “From Mrs. Austin, probation officer, Court of General Sessions,” he explained. “Wants a letter about Spear. He’s been convicted of theft. Comes up for sentence Tuesday.” “Spear?” repeated Arnold Thorndike. “Young fellow, stenographer, used to do your letters last summer going in and out on the train.” The great man nodded. “I remember. What about him?” The habitual gloom of the private secretary was lightened by a grin. “Went on the loose; had with him about five hundred dollars belonging to the firm; he’s with Isaacs & Sons now, shoe people on Sixth Avenue. Met a woman, and woke up without the money. The next morning he offered to make good, but Isaacs called in a policeman. When they looked into it, they found the boy had been drunk. They tried to withdraw the charge, but he’d been committed. Now, the probation officer is trying to get the judge to suspend sentence. A letter from you, sir, would—” It was evident the mind of the great man was elsewhere. Young men who, drunk or sober, spent the firm’s money on women who disappeared before sunrise did not appeal to him. Another letter submitted that morning had come from his art agent in Europe. In Florence he had discovered the Correggio he had been sent to find. It was undoubtedly genuine, and he asked to be instructed by cable. The price was forty thousand dollars. With one eye closed, and the other keenly regarding the inkstand, Mr. Thorndike decided to pay the price; and with the facility of long practice dismissed the Correggio, and snapped his mind back to the present. “Spear had a letter from us when he left, didn’t he?” he asked. “What he has developed into, SINCE he left us—” he shrugged his shoulders. The secretary withdrew the letter, and slipped another in its place. “Homer Firth, the landscape man,” he chanted, “wants permission to use blue flint on the new road, with turf gutters, and to plant silver firs each side. Says it will run to about five thousand dollars a mile.” “No!” protested the great man firmly, “blue flint makes a country place look like a cemetery. Mine looks too much like a cemetery now. Landscape gardeners!” he exclaimed impatiently. “Their only idea is to insult nature. The place was better the day I bought it, when it was running wild; you could pick flowers all the way to the gates.” Pleased that it should have recurred to him, the great man smiled. “Why, Spear,” he exclaimed, “always took in a bunch of them for his mother. Don’t you remember, we used to see him before breakfast wandering around the grounds picking flowers?” Mr. Thorndike nodded briskly. “I like his taking flowers to his mother.” “He SAID it was to his mother,” suggested the secretary gloomily. “Well, he picked the flowers, anyway,” laughed Mr. Thorndike. “He didn’t pick our pockets. And he had the run of the house in those days. As far as we know,” he dictated, “he was satisfactory. Don’t say more than that.” The secretary scribbled a mark with his pencil. “And the landscape man?” “Tell him,” commanded Thorndike, “I want a wood road, suitable to a farm; and to let the trees grow where God planted them.” As his car slid downtown on Tuesday morning the mind of Arnold Thorndike was occupied with such details of daily routine as the purchase of a railroad, the Japanese loan, the new wing to his art gallery, and an attack that morning, in his own newspaper, upon his pet trust. But his busy mind was not too occupied to return the salutes of the traffic policemen who cleared the way for him. Or, by some genius of memory, to recall the fact that it was on this morning young Spear was to be sentenced for theft. It was a charming morning. The spring was at full tide, and the air was sweet and clean. Mr. Thorndike considered whimsically that to send a man to jail with the memory of such a morning clinging to him was adding a year to his sentence. He regretted he had not given the probation officer a stronger letter. He remembered the young man now, and favorably. A shy, silent youth, deft in work, and at other times conscious and embarrassed. But that, on the part of a stenographer, in the presence of the Wisest Man in Wall Street, was not unnatural. On occasions, Mr. Thorndike had put even royalty—frayed, impecunious royalty, on the lookout for a loan—at its ease. The hood of the car was down, and the taste of the air, warmed by the sun, was grateful. It was at this time, a year before, that young Spear picked the spring flowers to take to his mother. A year from now where would young Spear be? It was characteristic of the great man to act quickly, so quickly that his friends declared he was a slave to impulse. It was these same impulses, leading so invariably to success, that made his enemies call him the Wisest Man. He leaned forward and touched the chauffeur’s shoulder. “Stop at the Court of General Sessions,” he commanded. What he proposed to do would take but a few minutes. A word, a personal word from him to the district attorney, or the judge, would be enough. He recalled that a Sunday Special had once calculated that the working time of Arnold Thorndike brought him in two hundred dollars a minute. At that rate, keeping Spear out of prison would cost a thousand dollars. Out of the sunshine Mr. Thorndike stepped into the gloom of an echoing rotunda, shut in on every side, hung by balconies, lit, many stories overhead, by a dirty skylight. The place was damp, the air acrid with the smell of stale tobacco juice, and foul with the presence of many unwashed humans. A policeman, chewing stolidly, nodded toward an elevator shaft, and other policemen nodded him further on to the office of the district attorney. There Arnold Thorndike breathed more freely. He was again among his own people. He could not help but appreciate the dramatic qualities of the situation; that the richest man in Wall Street should appear in person to plead for a humble and weaker brother. He knew he could not escape recognition, his face was too well known, but, he trusted, for the sake of Spear, the reporters would make no display of his visit. With a deprecatory laugh, he explained why he had come. But the outburst of approbation he had anticipated did not follow. The district attorney ran his finger briskly down a printed card. “Henry Spear,” he exclaimed, “that’s your man. Part Three, Judge Fallon. Andrews is in that court.” He walked to the door of his private office. “Andrews!” he called. He introduced an alert, broad-shouldered young man of years of much indiscretion and with a charming and inconsequent manner. “Mr. Thorndike is interested in Henry Spear, coming up for sentence in Part Three this morning. Wants to speak for him. Take him over with you.” The district attorney shook hands quickly, and retreated to his private office. Mr. Andrews took out a cigarette and, as he crossed the floor, lit it. “Come with me,” he commanded. Somewhat puzzled, slightly annoyed, but enjoying withal the novelty of the environment and the curtness of his reception, Mr. Thorndike followed. He decided that, in his ignorance, he had wasted his own time and that of the prosecuting attorney. He should at once have sent in his card to the judge. As he understood it, Mr. Andrews was now conducting him to that dignitary, and, in a moment, he would be free to return to his own affairs, which were the affairs of two continents. But Mr. Andrews led him to an office, bare and small, and offered him a chair, and handed him a morning newspaper. There were people waiting in the room; strange people, only like those Mr. Thorndike had seen on ferry-boats. They leaned forward toward young Mr. Andrews, fawning, their eyes wide with apprehension. Mr. Thorndike refused the newspaper. “I thought I was going to see the judge,” he suggested. “Court doesn’t open for a few minutes yet,” said the assistant district attorney. “Judge is always late, anyway.” Mr. Thorndike suppressed an exclamation. He wanted to protest, but his clear mind showed him that there was nothing against which, with reason, he could protest. He could not complain because these people were not apparently aware of the sacrifice he was making. He had come among them to perform a kindly act. He recognized that he must not stultify it by a show of irritation. He had precipitated himself into a game of which he did not know the rules. That was all. Next time he would know better. Next time he would send a clerk. But he was not without a sense of humor, and the situation as it now was forced upon him struck him as amusing. He laughed good-naturedly and reached for the desk telephone. “May I use this?” he asked. He spoke to the Wall Street office. He explained he would be a few minutes late. He directed what should be done if the market opened in a certain way. He gave rapid orders on many different matters, asked to have read to him a cablegram he expected from Petersburg, and one from Vienna. “They answer each other,” was his final instruction. “It looks like peace.” Mr. Andrews with genial patience had remained silent. Now he turned upon his visitors. A Levantine, burly, unshaven, and soiled, towered truculently above him. Young Mr. Andrews with his swivel chair tilted back, his hands clasped behind his head, his cigarette hanging from his lips, regarded the man dispassionately. “You gotta hell of a nerve to come to see me,” he commented cheerfully. To Mr. Thorndike, the form of greeting was novel. So greatly did it differ from the procedure of his own office, that he listened with interest. “Was it you,” demanded young Andrews, in a puzzled tone, “or your brother who tried to knife me?” Mr. Thorndike, unaccustomed to cross the pavement to his office unless escorted by bank messengers and plain-clothes men, felt the room growing rapidly smaller; the figure of the truculent Greek loomed to heroic proportions. The hand of the banker went vaguely to his chin, and from there fell to his pearl pin, which he hastily covered. “Get out!” said young Andrews, “and don’t show your face here—” The door slammed upon the flying Greek. Young Andrews swung his swivel chair so that, over his shoulder, he could see Mr. Thorndike. “I don’t like his face,” he explained. A kindly eyed, sad woman with a basket on her knee smiled upon Andrews with the familiarity of an old acquaintance. “Is that woman going to get a divorce from my son,” she asked, “now that he’s in trouble?” “Now that he’s in Sing Sing?” corrected Mr. Andrews. “I HOPE so! She deserves it. That son of yours, Mrs. Bernard,” he declared emphatically, “is no good!” The brutality shocked Mr. Thorndike. For the woman he felt a thrill of sympathy, but at once saw that it was superfluous. From the secure and lofty heights of motherhood, Mrs. Bernard smiled down upon the assistant district attorney as upon a naughty child. She did not even deign a protest. She continued merely to smile. The smile reminded Thorndike of the smile on the face of a mother in a painting by Murillo he had lately presented to the chapel in the college he had given to his native town. “That son of yours,” repeated young Andrews, “is a leech. He’s robbed you, robbed his wife. Best thing I ever did for YOU was to send him up the river.” The mother smiled upon him beseechingly. “Could you give me a pass?” she said. Young Andrews flung up his hands and appealed to Thorndike. “Isn’t that just like a mother?” he protested. “That son of hers has broken her heart, tramped on her, cheated her; hasn’t left her a cent; and she comes to me for a pass, so she can kiss him through the bars! And I’ll bet she’s got a cake for him in that basket!” The mother laughed happily; she knew now she would get the pass. “Mothers,” explained Mr. Andrews, from the depth of his wisdom, “are all like that; your mother, my mother. If you went to jail, your mother would be just like that.” Mr. Thorndike bowed his head politely. He had never considered going to jail, or whether, if he did, his mother would bring him cake in a basket. Apparently there were many aspects and accidents of life not included in his experience. Young Andrews sprang to his feet, and, with the force of a hose flushing a gutter, swept his soiled visitors into the hall. “Come on,” he called to the Wisest Man, “the court is open.” <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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