HE was unaware of it, but none the less Stephen was on trial with Benson. The lawyer had neither the wish nor purpose to influence him in any particular, he seemed quite willing that the young fellow should develop in his own way and after his own fashion; and if it were a good fashion it would be well with him; if it were not a good fashion, it would not be so well with him. Yet no matter what Stephen did or failed to do for himself, within certain limits which were already clearly defined in his own mind, Benson intended to right in him the wrong he had done Virginia Landray. The least he would do would be to provide adequately for his future. So he settled down to watch Stephen drift; a thing Stephen was ready enough to do, for he was finding existence very pleasant in the little Ohio town; certain of its aspects rather amused him, but on the whole it was not lacking in culture and dignity, while the concerns of life were carried on with considerable zeal. He was regarded locally as Benson's heir; a thing he, too, believed when it occurred to him to speculate on the future.

In time the lawyer came to have a real and deep affection for the young fellow; he became more and more dependent as the weeks slipped by. He had not understood before how empty his life was; and as his affection for Stephen grew, he became less critical of him, until he finally ceased to watch him from any such impulse. But Gibbs was not so well satisfied with the situation. He, too, felt a fatherly interest in the young fellow. He was familiar with Benson's prejudices, and was conscious that if Stephen had been any one else the lawyer would have heartily disapproved of him. Gibbs wondered how long it would be until Benson reverted to his normal standards. He hoped there would be no disappointments in store for Stephen. One day alone with Benson in the office, he took occasion to say:

“Jake, what's Stephen going to do with himself? He ain't going around with his hands in his pockets all his life, is he?”

“Why shouldn't he, if he wants to, and if I want him to?” retorted Benson sharply.

“Well, you're rather down on idleness as a general thing, Jake; mighty little of it's entered into your experience.”

Personally, Gibbs had no illusions about industry, he considered it a fine thing, so long as it paid.

“The Bensons have always worked hard enough,” said the lawyer.

“That's not so true of the Landrays, he favours the Landrays,” and Gibbs chuckled.

“He is half Benson. Why shouldn't we enjoy now? I am glad enough to see some one who is gracefully idle; who seems to be able to do nothing without getting into mischief and making a mess of it.

“Well, he seems to have an infinite capacity in that direction. I've never heard him complain of not having an occupation. It ain't a thing he misses much, I should say,” said Gibbs.

If Gibbs could not rid himself of the conviction that Stephen should be thinking of his future, Virginia was very strongly of this same opinion, too. She had no faith in Benson, and his indifference in the case of Stephen she felt was fraught with disastrous possibilities for the latter. His strength and vigour, his very manhood would be sapped by his condition of dependence. From her, this feeling spread to Mrs. Walsh, and Harriett, and Elinor, and even to Mark Norton, who partook in some measure of all their prejudices, for he found that incessant reiteration sooner or later fastened them upon him.

Stephen's lack of all ambition was a blow to Elinor. She had more than liked him from the first, but Ben Wade had always been held up to her by Clara, as a shining example of what a young man should be; and Clara's convictions, which were always advanced with singular steadiness, never failed to impress her. If Wade was all Clara said, and she hoped Clara was not mistaken, surely Stephen's lack of all apparent ambition was anything but praiseworthy. She would have liked to rouse him, to have pointed out to him, that a young man who had leisure for afternoon calls, was in the nature of an innovation in Benson. She did not doubt that when she returned home this was one of the first things Clara would do, for Clara was the soul of uncompromising candour.

Of Ben Wade Stephen saw much. Wade's attitude was that of a lifelong friend who was resuming a merely interrupted intimacy, and in this light Stephen came to look upon him and to accept him. Wade possessed a wide popularity, but the liking in which he was held extended to no other member of his family. Wade himself did not appear to notice this, certainly he did not resent it. This struck Stephen as odd, and it was one of the things he admired his friend the less for. Another thing he was not slow to observe, was that he was very welcome at the Norton's; but he admitted that Ben could hardly be blamed for having made the most of his opportunities, whether professional or social.

Ben was also his aunt's lawyer, and it was from him that he came to know something of his aunt's affairs; that the sale of what had once been farm-land about the cottage, was her only source of revenue.

“She'll be in a bad way when she gets to the end of that,” said Wade rather indifferently.

“You mean she has nothing beyond, no investments, no income?” Stephen asked.

“Nothing that I know of. She's been selling off lots for the past ten years whenever she needed money; luckily she hasn't needed much.”

Wade's explanation was off hand enough, and Stephen was rather offended by it. He had all along been sensible of a certain callousness on the part of his friend, which Wade with all his shrewdness either could not hide, or else did not know existed. He wondered if this was not one of the results of those hard knocks he had probably received.

“I had an idea, I don't know where or how I got it, that Uncle Jake was my aunt's lawyer,” said Stephen.

“Used to be,” said Wade, jabbing the blade of his pen-knife into the arm of his chair. They were seated in his office, where Landray, in his idleness and lack of all occupation spent much of his time, since Wade, too, was cursed with a larger amount of leisure than was wholly satisfactory to him.

“He's a mighty interesting man—Mr. Benson, I mean—no matter who you are or what you are, sooner or later you're made to feel his importance. If you are a poor man, the time is certain to come when you'll house yourself in one of his tenements, with the privilege of handing over the rent each month to old Gibbs; if you are in business, it's pretty certain he can help or hinder your schemes. There is just one thing! Don't lock horns with him; those who do, go away crippled. He's a potent influence in the life here, Steve; perhaps we don't analyse or realize it, but he stands for the power that money gives; he is the first and last expression of that power to most of us.”

“But he's very simple and kindly,” suggested Stephen.

“I don't know, with so much to say in the affairs of his neighbours, he'd hardly dare to be autocratic; but he's a great lawyer, for a country lawyer, he's really a big man; there's no gainsaying that.” Wade spoke with enthusiasm. “When he takes a case now, he picks and chooses; his fighting days are over, and he is on the winning side or else out of it. He's always been most kind to me; first and last he's thrown quite a little practice my way.”

“You're an energetic fellow, Wade, and deserve to get on. They can't say enough about you at the Nortons.”

“They're mighty good to me there,” said Wade heartily. “You know, my people not being rich or important here has made a difference. There were those who were disposed to patronize me. I mighty soon let 'em know I wouldn't stand for that, but from the first, Mr. Norton and his family just let me know they were plain friendly.”

“Is Clara interesting?” asked Stephen insinuatingly. Clara he had not yet met.

Ben shot him a shrewd glance out of the corners of his eyes, then he centred his attention on the knife with which he was still jabbing the arm of the chair.

“Well, yes,” he said hesitatingly.

“Pretty?”

“Yes;” and the yes came slowly from between slightly smiling lips.

“She's younger than Elinor?”

“Yes—two years—you'll like her, Landray.” A slight but perceptible enthusiasm was betraying itself in his manner. This aggravated Stephen. Why should Wade want him to like Clara, and why shouldn't he?

“They're both nice girls,” said Wade.

Landray looked out of the window and said nothing. Wade now saw fit to change the subject.

“I heard from Reddy the other day—oh, yes, I told you.”

“I liked Reddy,” said Stephen.

“One would have thought that he'd have made fine practice for a lawyer,” said Wade, “but nothing of the sort has happened. The spirit of prophesy has gone wide of the mark in his case; he is so successful, in a moneyed sense I mean, that he's hardly gotten over the surprise of it. He can't repress a latent enthusiasm at the thought that he's Riley Crittendon, with several thousand head of choice beef cattle all his own. Perhaps I found him depressing because he's gotten ahead so quick.”

“But you'll find perhaps that your point of view will change with a little of the same kind of luck, Ben,” said Stephen.

Wade shook his head.

“No, I don't know that it will. I've always expected to succeed; I've been impatient that I should be kept out of my own; but by the same token, I won't feel any special enthusiasm when I come into it.”

When Wade had told him, as he had, that much as he despised society, still from motives that always bore upon professional gains, he found it well worth his while to keep in and do the right thing, Stephen was inclined to jeer. Then he made the discovery that he was curiously involved with Wade; and realized that in assuming the burden of his social destinies as he had done, that thrifty fellow was still doing only the right thing, and with an eye single to his future; that somehow he was to be made contributary to his success present and to come, and that it was something more than mere affection that had prompted him to claim an intimacy on the score of their boyish friendship.

“Every one wants to meet you, Steve,” he had once said.

“Why?” Stephen had asked.

“It's natural, ain't it? First and last, the Landrays have filled a pretty conspicuous place here, and then your relation to Mr. Benson makes you interesting; everybody thinks you'll come into a lot of his money one of these days, and they're none of them above wishing to get next to a potential millionaire.”

“What about your designs on me, Ben?”

“Oh, well, I guess whoever writes my epitaph will have to say, 'He never did anything for nothing.' At the least I shall expect to be your lawyer. My designs are no more sinister than that.”

Stephen laughed. He rather liked him for his candour. He felt that the best of Wade was his candour.

In spite of the social obligations with which he sometimes accused Wade, in the character of friend and mentor, with having loaded him up, he was oftener at the Nortons than at any other house in town.

It was Elinor who drew him thither; she had attracted him from the hour of their first meeting. There were times when he thought, when indeed he was quite sure, she liked him. There were also other times when he was equally sure she did not.

He even went so far as to suspect Wade in some degree with being responsible for the vicissitudes he suffered at her hands. He was quite sure she liked Wade; and Wade's relation with her, as well as with her father and mother, was that of a close and valued friend. He wondered if he had not a right to demand an explanation of Wade. He did not want to appear absurd, but if she was in any way bound to him, he felt that he should know it. He made elaborate plans to trap Ben into some sort of a confession on this point, but Wade, expert in evasions, was never trapped. When he avoided Wade and stole off to the Nortons by himself, he invariably found him there; sometimes playing cards with the banker, but more often with Elinor at the piano. Stephen rather despised men who sang, and the sound of Wade's clear tenor voice filled him with disgust.

“I haven't seen Wade in two days,” he told Elinor one night. “Do you know what's become of him?”

“He is out of town.”

“He's terribly energetic,” said Stephen.

“Don't you think he has done remarkably well, Stephen, for so young a man, and one who has had no help?” she asked.

“I can't quite agree to that. It seems to me that every one does help him; and those who don't, he uses whether they want to be used or not. Take your father, for instance, you can hardly deny that he has done what he could to push Wade; and even Uncle Jake seems inclined to go out of his way to advance his interests.” Stephen was not in a frame of mind to admire Wade.

“I think you overstate the importance of what others have done for him; his own people have never been able to help him at all, and now he is doing what he can for them; he is going to educate his brothers.”

“Well, he should be glad of the chance; I hope he don't make capital of that!”

“Evidently it hasn't made capital, as you call it, with you, Stephen. I didn't know you could be so ungenerous.”

“It isn't that, Elinor, but I am sure you never say the good things of me you find to say of him.”

“Perhaps you don't give me the occasion to.”

“Don't give you the occasion! I am just waiting to hear you launch out in commendation of me!”

“I don't mean—”

“You don't mean what?” he asked.

“I have no right to criticise you,” she said.

“I like that!” he laughed. “So I am a fit subject for criticism? Well, I want to be criticised. Come—it's a duty! Through neglect of the proper functions of criticism there is no telling how far wrong I may go. At home my uncle and Gibbs never say anything; affection must dull the sight terribly. I am sure you look at it differently, you are not blind to my imperfections.”

“Are you blind to mine?”

“You haven't any, Elinor. Beyond your unwillingness to point out to me where I fail, they are undiscoverable.”

“I am afraid you are not very serious, Stephen.”

“I am sure that if I had your opinion of me I should be serious enough. I can read whole volumes of adverse criticism in your eyes.”

“Do you really want me to tell you what I think?”

“I do indeed. I have always desired enlightenment on that one momentous subject, you will never know the speculation it has provoked me to.”

“But I have no right to judge you.”

“That is what we always say, but we judge just the same.”

“I wish you would take an interest in things, then, Stephen, in real things.”

“What are the real things that need my attention?”

“What are you going to do with your life?”

“My dear Elinor, I expect it will be what my life does with me.”

“I hate to see you drift so aimlessly.”

“You'd equip me with a purpose, a purpose such as Wade has—to use all his friends?”

“That is very unjust.”

“I'll grant that; well, yes, I am drifting, very much so.”

“I blame you for that attitude. Are you going to compel nothing, are you always going to drift?”

“And so you think I should display more activity; but what about, my dear Elinor? Point out the direction in which duty lies.”

“But I cannot direct you, you must see for yourself.”

“I wish you would direct me.”

She frowned and blushed slightly at this.

“I'd willingly resign all my independence to you, Elinor.”

“This is nonsense, Stephen,” she said quickly.

“You always put me off with that!” he said. “You know it's not nonsense! You know I am serious. Help me make something of myself—shall I tell you all this involves?” he reached out, but she avoided his hand. He drew back ruefully. There was a moment's silence, then he said:

“There's one thing I'd like to know, Elinor, it's about Wade. May I ask you?”

“About Ben, what about Ben?” she asked.

“Do you care for him?” he demanded eagerly.

“Yes, very much, but not as you have evidently been silly enough to suppose. How could you, Stephen! It is Clara he is interested in. You are not usually so dull.”

“Clara?”

“They are waiting until Ben can make a living. She is very young. I don't suppose mother would be willing she should marry even if Ben's practice was as large now as he seems to think it will be in two or three years.”

“Well, I think Ben might have told me that!” cried Stephen.

“I wonder he didn't,” said Elinor.

“Elinor, let me tell you—”

“Don't tell me anything, Stephen, I don't want to hear it!” she said determinedly, the colour coming into her face.

“Why not?”

“You are not in a position—” again she came to an abrupt stop. “To marry—you would say? Why not, Elinor?”

“Why, Stephen, what have you to offer a woman?”

“As much as any man—my love,” he said stoutly.

“A girl might accept that, and might not care to share the position you accept, of dependence;” but when she had spoken, she caught her breath with a little gasp of dismay. She had said not more than she felt, but much more than she felt she had any right to say. “I mean, Stephen, that while you may be satisfied with your relation with Mr. Benson, it might not be so satisfactory to the girl you marry; she would not wish to feel dependent.”

“She needn't, I don't feel dependent.”

“I wish you did Stephen; it would be the saving of you.”

“Thank you,” he laughed shortly, for he was taking a sense of hurt from her words.

“I wish you were not so devoid of ambition.”

“How do you know I am?” he asked. “And frankly, I don't feel my dependence, as you call it. Uncle Jake has never intimated that he felt it either; so why should I worry? None of you like my uncle; Aunt Virginia don't, I am aware of that; but I do appreciate his goodness to me, I try to repay it as best I can, in the way most satisfactory to him. I've told him I ought to be doing something. I know that; but I suppose there's no hurry; he don't seem to think so, anyhow.”

“But you can't be free on that basis, Stephen. Don't you see, if you displeased him—don't you see he will always control you?”

“Well, what of it? He is not unjust. He is the most absolutely fair minded man I ever knew, and kindness itself. Look how he tolerates old General Gibbs! But my aunt's prejudiced against him, and you reflect her feeling in the matter.”

“Aunt Virginia never says anything about Mr. Benson! I don't believe I ever heard her mention his name ten times in my life!”

“No, but she gives one more to think about by reason of what she leaves unsaid, than by what she says. I've known from the first that she didn't like him, and I tell you candidly, I think her attitude all wrong, and most unkind. She's making it so I can't go there with any degree of comfort; I'm always conscious of her feeling of hostility. I fancy she would like to see me break with Uncle Jake, but you know I never shall do that, he's been too good to me!”

“He has done nothing Aunt Virginia would not have done gladly if she could!”

“I am not making any comparisons,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “But this is not what we were speaking of a moment ago, Elinor.”

“I told you what I felt, and what I thought.”

“That my position of dependence was wholly displeasing to you. I've tried to make you see that I do not regard it as a position of dependence.”

“Not for yourself, perhaps, you are the best judge of that; but for another—I should feel that it was, and almost any girl would do the same. How could it be otherwise, Stephen?”

“You'll certainly provoke me to activity of some sort, Elinor; but heaven only knows how disastrous the results may be! I'll study law, and get Ben to take me into his office! How would Wade and Lan-dray look on a large gilt sign?”

“You are not serious.”

“Not in the sense that you are, but I began life seriously enough. The first year at school I thought I'd die of home-sickness. I was the most utterly wretched boy in the world; and then I adjusted myself to the situation. I decided, what was the use! I learned to take things as they were.”

“Don't you think it was needlessly hard of Mr. Benson to keep you away from Aunt Virginia?”

“How can you say he did that! It was circumstances that kept me away, that was all.”

“But during your vacations?”

“I was generally under a tutor then, for I don't mind telling you I was not especially brilliant; it took a lot of pushing to get me through, and my tutors led a dog's life of it trying to cram me with wisdom my mental stomach would reject. I fancy the scholarship of the Landrays was never their strong point.”

“You must have been very lonely all those years.”

“I was; and do you wonder that I feel for Uncle Jake as I do, that I resent any slighting thought of him? Why, he was the only one who ever came to see me!”

“But you must not be unjust to Aunt Virginia.” She was feeling a great pity for Virginia. If Ben's mission proved fruitful, Stephen would hold to his faith in Benson; gratitude and self-interest alike would sway him. “You know we are all devoted to Aunt Virginia here, and the least criticism of her—”

“Have I criticised her? You can't admire her more than I do. I only wish she and Uncle Jake hit it off better, I feel somehow placed between them, she makes me feel her dislike of him; I'm hurt by it!”

They were silent again, and then he said:

“You don't answer me, Elinor, I don't know how you feel toward me.”

“You must wait, something may happen.”

“But nothing can possibly happen to change my feeling for you.”

“You don't know, you may be wiser in a day or so; no, you must wait and see! I have no right to tell you, I have no right to even hint at anything—there! you must not ask me to explain—I can't!”