During the years John spent at the various colleges, he attended at home and abroad, acquiring learning if not wisdom, his father kept on piling up riches, and patiently waiting for the young man to exhaust himself of his dreamy desires and to come back to earth, as he put it. But he always spoke of him with great pride, and if anyone referred to his son’s aimlessness, he would say: “John won’t play second fiddle to anybody--not even to me. And when I’m ready to quit, John will take my place--a better man than his old dad was.”
This was the man that John came to know as he had never known him before during their quiet chats in the sick-room. It was to this man, so practical in his every thought that it seemed as if there could not possibly be a chord in his being that would vibrate to romance, it was to this man that John unbosomed himself of his secret. He told him in detail of all that had happened, descanted, as only a lover can, of the beauty of the girl and wound up by saying: “I intend, dad, to make that girl my wife--if--if she will have me.”
“My boy, I am proud of you,” said his father. “You showed yourself a man. If she won’t have you, she’s no judge of what a man is--and the future generations of Mortons won’t be the losers. But if she is all you describe her to be, she knows a hawk from a hernshaw.”
John laughed at his father’s way of stating the case; but the words made him very happy. As time passed and but scant and unsatisfying news came from either Tyler or Don, he became very restless. He had received one letter from Helène which he treasured; but it contained what he took as merely a courteous acknowledgment of her gratitude. He took several flying trips to New York at his father’s request, but always returned distrait and unhappy. He wrote several heartfelt letters to the Comtesse, but received no replies.
Christmas came and with it a severe winter. It was a quiet and subdued Yule-tide for the Mortons. Old Dan Morton was failing fast. The shadow of the coming tragedy had fallen on the house. Before the New Year had arrived, the elder Morton lay dead in the stilled solemn room. The man who had been such a power in the world had no longer any power. Henceforth the forces of nature which he had conquered would deal with him in their own silent, resistless and inevitable fashion.