I

EVEN IN American cities, which seem so much alike, where people seem all to be living the same lives, striving for the same things, thinking the same thoughts, there are still individuals a little out of tune with the times — there are still survivals of a past more loosely woven, there are disconcerting beginnings of a future yet unforeseen.

Coming out of the gray stone Court House in Pittsburgh on a dark November afternoon, Judge Hammersley encountered one of these men whom one does not readily place, whom one is, indeed, a little embarrassed to meet, because they have not got on as they should. The Judge saw him mounting the steps outside, leaning against the wind, holding his soft felt hat on with his hand, his head thrust forward — hurrying with a light, quick step, and so intent upon his own purposes that the Judge could have gone out by a side door and avoided the meeting. But that was against his principles.

“Good day, Albert,” he muttered, seeming to feel, himself, all the embarrassment of the encounter, for the other snatched off his hat with a smile of very evident pleasure, and something like pride. His gesture bared an attractive head — small, well-set, definite and smooth, one of those heads that look as if they had been turned out of some hard, rich wood by a workman deft with the lathe. His smooth-shaven face was dark — a warm coffee color — and his hazel eyes were warm and lively. He was not young, but his features had a kind of quick-silver mobility. His manner toward the stiff, frowning Judge was respectful and admiring — not in the least self-conscious.

The Judge inquired after his health and that of his uncle.

“Uncle Albert is splendidly preserved for his age. Frail, and can’t stand any strain, but perfectly all right if he keeps to his routine. He’s going to have a birthday soon. He will be eighty on the first day of December, and I shall be fifty-five on the same day. I was named after him because I was born on his twenty-fifth birthday.”

“Umph.” The Judge glanced from left to right as if this announcement were in bad taste, but he put a good face on it and said with a kind of testy heartiness, “That will be an — occasion. I’d like to remember it in some way. Is there anything your uncle would like, any — recognition?” He stammered and coughed.

Young Albert Engelhardt, as he was called, laughed apologetically, but with confidence. “I think there is, Judge Hammersley. Indeed, I’d thought of coming to you to ask a favor. I am going to have a little supper for him, and you know he likes good wine. In these dirty boot-legging times, it’s hard to get.”

“Certainly, certainly.” The Judge spoke up quickly and for the first time looked Albert squarely in the eye. “Don’t give him any of that bootleg stuff. I can find something in my cellar. Come out to-morrow night after eight, with a gripsack of some sort. Very glad to help you out, Albert. Glad the old fellow holds up so well. Thank’ee, Albert,” as Engelhardt swung the heavy door open and held it for him to pass.

Judge Hammersley’s car was waiting for him, and on the ride home to Squirrel Hill he thought with vexation about the Engelhardts. He was really a sympathetic man, and though so stern of manner, he had deep affections; was fiercely loyal to old friends, old families, and old ideals.

He didn’t think highly of what is called success in the world to-day, but such as it was he wanted his friends to have it, and was vexed with them when they missed it. He was vexed with Albert for unblushingly, almost proudly, declaring that he was fifty-five years old, when he had nothing whatever to show for it. He was the last of the Engelhardt boys, and they had none of them had anything to show. They all died much worse off in the world than they began. They began with a flourishing glass factory up the river, a comfortable fortune, a fine old house on the park in Allegheny, a good standing in the community; and it was all gone, melted away.

Old August Engelhardt was a thrifty, energetic man, though pig-headed — Judge Hammersley’s friend and one of his first clients. August’s five sons had sold the factory and wasted the money in fantastic individual enterprises, lost the big house, and now they were all dead except Albert. They ought all to be alive, with estates and factories and families. To be sure, they had that queer German streak in them; but so had old August, and it hadn’t prevented his amounting to something.

Their bringing-up was wrong; August had too free a hand, he was too proud of his five handsome boys, and too conceited. Too much tennis, Rhine wine punch, music, and silliness. They were always running over to New York, like this Albert. Somebody, when asked what in the world young Albert had ever done with his inheritance, had laughingly replied that he had spent it on the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Judge Hammersley didn’t see how Albert could hold his head up. He had some small job in the County Clerk’s office, was dependent upon it, had nothing else but the poor little house on the South Side where he lived with his old uncle. The county took care of him for the sake of his father, who had been a gallant officer in the Civil War, and afterward a public-spirited citizen and a generous employer of labor. But, as Judge Hammersley had bitterly remarked to Judge Merriman when Albert’s name happened to come up, “If it weren’t for his father’s old friends seeing that he got something, that fellow wouldn’t be able to make a living.” Next to a charge of dishonesty, this was the worst that could be said of any man.

Judge Hammersley’s house out on Squirrel Hill sat under a grove of very old oak trees. He lived alone, with his daughter, Margaret Parmenter, who was a widow. She had a great many engagements, but she usually managed to dine at home with her father, and that was about as much society as he cared for. His house was comfortable in an old-fashioned way, well appointed — especially the library, the room in which he lived when he was not in bed or at the Court House. To-night, when he came down to dinner, Mrs. Parmenter was already at the table, dressed for an evening party. She was tall, handsome, with a fine, easy carriage, and her face was both hard and sympathetic, like her father’s.

She had not, however, his stiffness of manner, that contraction of the muscles which was his unconscious protest at any irregularity in the machinery of life. She accepted blunders and accidents smoothly if not indifferently.

As the old colored man pulled back the Judge’s chair for him, he glanced at his daughter from under his eyebrows.

“I saw that son of old Gus Engelhardt’s this afternoon,” he said in an angry, challenging tone.

As a young girl his daughter had used to take up the challenge and hotly defend the person who had displeased or disappointed her father.

But as she grew older she was conscious of that same feeling in herself when people fell short of what she expected; and she understood now that when her father spoke as if he were savagely attacking someone, it merely meant that he was disappointed or sorry for them; he never spoke thus of persons for whom he had no feeling. So she said calmly:

“Oh, did you really? I haven’t seen him for years, not since the war.

How was he looking? Shabby?”

“Not so shabby as he ought to. That fellow’s likely to be in want one of these days.”

“I’m afraid so,” Mrs. Parmenter sighed. “But I believe he would be rather plucky about it.”

The Judge shrugged. “He’s coming out here to-morrow night, on some business for his uncle.”

“Then I’ll have a chance to see for myself. He must look much older. I can’t imagine his ever looking really old and settled, though.”

“See that you don’t ask him to stay. I don’t want the fellow hanging around. He’ll transact his business and get it over. He had the face to admit to me that he’ll be fifty-five years old on the first of December. He’s giving some sort of birthday party for old Albert, a-hem.” The Judge coughed formally but was unable to check a smile; his lips sarcastic, but his eyes full of sly humor.

“Can he be as old as that? Yes, I suppose so. When we were both at Mrs. Sterrett’s, in Rome, I was fifteen, and he must have been about thirty.”

Her father coughed. “He’d better have been in Homestead!”

Mrs. Parmenter looked up; that was rather commonplace, for her father. “Oh, I don’t know. Albert would never have been much use in Homestead, and he was very useful to Mrs. Sterrett in Rome.”

“What did she want the fellow hanging round for? All the men of her family amounted to something.”

“To too much! There must be some butterflies if one is going to give house parties, and the Sterretts and Dents were all heavyweights. He was in Rome a long while; three years, I think. He had a gorgeous time. Anyway, he learned to speak Italian very well, and that helps him out now, doesn’t it? You still send for him at the Court House when you need an interpreter?”

“That’s not often. He picks up a few dollars. Nice business for his father’s son.”

After dinner the Judge retired to his library, where the gas fire was lit, and his book at hand, with a paper-knife inserted to mark the place where he had left off reading last night at exactly ten-thirty. On his way he went to the front door, opened it, turned on the porch light, and looked at the thermometer, making an entry in a little notebook. In a few moments his daughter, in an evening cloak, stopped at the library door to wish him good night and went down the hall. He listened for the closing of the front door; it was a reassuring sound to him. He liked the feeling of an orderly house, empty for himself and his books all evening. He was deeply read in divinity, philosophy, and in the early history of North America.