Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net ON THE STAIRS by Henry B. Fuller Author of _Lines Long and Short_ BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1918 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY HENRY B. FULLER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED _Published March 1918_ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ AUTHOR'S NOTE This volume may seem less a Novel than a Sketch of a Novel or a Study for a Novel. It might easily be amplified; but, like other recent work of mine, it was written in the conviction that story-telling, whatever form it take, can be done within limits narrower than those now generally employed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ON THE STAIRS PART I I In the year 1873-- No, do not turn away from such an opening; I shall reach our own day within a paragraph or so. In the year 1873, then, Johnny McComas was perfectly willing to stand to one side while Raymond Prince, surrounded by several of the fellows, came down, in his own negligent and self-assured way, the main stairway of Grant's Private Academy. For Johnny was newer there; Johnny was younger in this world by a year or two, at an age when a year or two makes a difference; and Johnny had but lately left behind what might be described as a condition of servitude. So Johnny yielded the right of way. He lowered his little snub nose by a few degrees, took some of the gay smile out of his twinkling blue eyes, and waited with an upward glance of friendly yet deferential sobriety until Raymond should have passed. "How are you, Johnny?" asked Raymond carelessly. "I'm pretty well," replied Johnny, in all modesty. In the year 1916-- Yes, I told you we should reach our own times presently. In the year 1916, then, Raymond Prince was standing to one side, whether willing or not, while John W. McComas, attended by several men who would make their cares his own, came down the big marble stairway of the Mid-Continent National Bank. Raymond, who had his cares too, would gladly have been included in the company (or, rather, have replaced it altogether); but he saw clearly that the time was not propitious. McComas looked out through this swarm of lesser people, half-saw Prince as in a mist, and gave him unsmilingly an abstracted half-bow. "How do you do?" he mumbled impersonally. "I'm pretty well," returned Prince, in a toneless voice. But he was far from that, whether in mind or estate. Between these two dates and these two incidents lies most of my story. Be quite sure that I shall tell it in my own fashion. II