Madelene felt what lay behind that timid, subtle statement of the case. Her face shadowed. She had been picturing a life, a home, with just Arthur and herself; here was a far different prospect opening up. But Mrs. Ranger was waiting, expectant; she must be answered. “I couldn’t take him away from you,” Madelene said. “I’d only lose him myself if I tried.”
Tears came into Ellen’s eyes and her hands clasped in her lap to steady their trembling. “I know how it is,” she said. “I’m an old woman, and”–with an appeal for contradiction that went straight to Madelene’s heart–“I’m afraid I’d be in the way?”
“In the way!” cried Madelene. “Why, you’re the only one that can teach me how to take care of him. He says you’ve always taken care of him, and I suppose he’s too old now to learn how to look after himself.”
“You wouldn’t mind coming here to live?” asked Ellen humbly. She hardly dared speak out thus plainly; but she felt that never again would there be such a good chance of success.
It was full a minute before Madelene could trust her voice to make reply, not because she hesitated to commit herself, but because she was moved to the depths of her tender heart by this her first experience of about the most tragic of the everyday tragedies in human life–a lone old woman pleading with a young one for a little corner to sit in and wait for death. “I wish it weren’t quite such a grand house,” she said at last with a look at the old woman–how old she seemed just then!–a look that was like light. “We’re too poor to have the right to make any such start. But, if you’d let me–if you’re sure you wouldn’t think me an intruder–I’d be glad to come.”
“Then that’s settled,” said Mrs. Ranger, with a deep sigh of relief. But her head and her hands were still trembling from the nervous shock of the suspense, the danger that she would be left childless and alone. “We’ll get along once you’re used to the idea of having me about. I know my place. I never was a great hand at meddling. You’ll hardly know I’m around.”
Again Madelene had the choke in her throat, the ache at the heart. “But you wouldn’t throw the care of this house on my hands!” she exclaimed in well-pretended dismay. “Oh, no, you’ve simply got to look after things! Why, I was even counting on your helping me with my practice.”
Ellen Ranger thrilled with a delight such as she had not had in many a year–the matchless delight of a new interest. Her mother had been famous throughout those regions in the pioneer days for skill at “yarbs” and at nursing, and had taught her a great deal. But she had had small chance to practice, she and her husband and her children being all and always so healthy. All those years she had had to content herself with thinking and talking of hypothetical cases and with commenting, usually rather severely, upon the conduct of every case in the town of which she heard. Now, in her old age, just as she was feeling that she had no longer an excuse for being alive, here, into her very house, was coming a career for her, and it the career of which she had always dreamed!
She forgot about the marriage and its problems, and plunged at once into an exposition of her views of medicine–her hostility to the allopaths, with their huge, fierce doses of dreadful poisons that had ruined most of the teeth and stomachs in the town; her disdain of the homeopaths, with their petty pills and their silly notion that the hair of the dog would cure its bite. She was all for the medicine of nature and common sense; and Madelene, able honestly to assent, rose in her esteem by leaps and bounds. Before the end of that conversation Mrs. Ranger was convinced that she had always believed the doctors should be women. “Who understands a woman but a woman? Who understands a child but a woman? And what’s a man when he’s sick but a child?” She was impatient for the marriage. And when Madelene asked if she’d object to having a small doctor’s sign somewhere on the front fence, she looked astounded at the question. “We must do better than that,” she said. “I’ll have you an office–just two or three rooms–built down by the street so as to save people coming clear up here. That’d lose you many a customer.”
“Yes, it might lose us a good many,” said Madelene, and you’d never have thought the “us” deliberate.
That capped the climax. Mrs. Ranger was her new daughter’s thenceforth. And Madelene went away, if possible happier than when she and Arthur had straightened it all out between themselves the night before. Had she not lifted that fine old woman up from the grave upon which she was wearily lying, waiting for death? Had she not made her happy by giving her something to live for? Something to live for! “She looked years younger immediately,” thought Madelene. “That’s the secret of happiness–something to live for, something real and useful.”
“I never thought you’d find anybody good enough for you,” said Mrs. Ranger to her son that evening. “But you have. She’s got a heart and a head both–and most of the women nowadays ain’t got much of either.”
And it was that night as Ellen was saying her prayers, that she asked God to forgive her the sin of secret protest she had let live deep in a dark corner of her heart–reproach of Hiram for having cut off their son. “It was for the best,” she said. “I see it now.”
CHAPTER XX
LORRY’S ROMANCE
When Charles Whitney heard Arthur was about to be married, he offered him a place on the office staff of the Ranger-Whitney Company at fifteen hundred a year. “It is less than you deserve on your record,” he wrote, “but there is no vacancy just now, and you shall go up rapidly. I take this opportunity to say that I regard your father’s will as the finest act of the finest man I ever knew, and that your conduct, since he left us, is a vindication of his wisdom. America has gone stark mad on the subject of money. The day is not far distant when it has got to decide whether property shall rule work or work shall rule property. Your father was a courageous pioneer. All right-thinking men honor him.”
This, a fortnight after his return from Europe, from marrying Janet to Aristide, Viscount Brunais. He had yielded to his secret snobbishness–Matilda thought it was her diplomacy–and had given Janet a dowry so extravagant that when old Saint Berthe heard the figures, he took advantage of the fact that only the family lawyer was present to permit a gleam of nature to show through his mask of elegant indifference to the “coarse side of life.” Whitney had the American good sense to despise his wife, his daughter, and himself for the transaction. For years furious had been his protestations to his family, to his acquaintances, and to himself against “society,” and especially against the incursions of that “worm-eaten titled crowd from the other side.” So often had he repeated those protests that certain phrases had become fixedly part of his conversation, to make the most noise when he was violently agitated, as do the dead leaves of a long-withered but still firmly attached bough. Thus he was regarded in Chicago as an American of the old type; but being human, his strength had not been strong enough to resist the taint in the atmosphere he had breathed ever since he began to be very rich and to keep the company of the pretentious. His originally sound constitution had been gradually undermined, just as “doing like everybody else”–that is, everybody in his set of pirates disguised under merchant flag and with a few deceptive bales of goods piled on deck–had undermined his originally sound business honor.
Arthur answered, thanking him for the offered position, but declining it. “What you say about my work,” he wrote, “encourages me to ask a favor. I wish to be transferred from one mechanical department to another until I have made the round. Then, perhaps, I may venture to ask you to renew your offer.”
Whitney showed this to Ross. “Now, _there’s_ the sort of son I’d be proud of!” he exclaimed.
Ross lifted his eyebrows. “Really!” said he. “Why?”
“Because he’s a _man_,” retorted his father, with obvious intent of satirical contrast. “Because within a year or two he’ll know the business from end to end–as his father did–as I do.”
“And what good will that do him?” inquired Ross, with fine irony. “You know it isn’t in the manufacturing end that the money’s made nowadays. We can hire hundreds of good men to manufacture for us. I should say he’d be wiser were he trying to get a _practical_ education.”
“Practical!”
“Precisely. Studying how to stab competitors in the back and establish monopoly. As a manager, he may some day rise to ten or fifteen thousand a year–unless managers’ salaries go down, as it’s likely they will. As a financier, he might rise to–to _our_ class.”
Whitney grunted, the frown of his brows and the smile on his sardonic mouth contradicting each other. He could not but be pleased by the shrewdness of his son’s criticism of his own half-sincere, half-hypocritical tribute to virtues that were on the wane; but at the same time he did not like such frank expression of cynical truth from a son of his. Also, he at the bottom still had some of the squeamishness that was born into him and trained into him in early youth; he did not like to be forced squarely to face the fact that real business had been relegated to the less able or less honest, while the big rewards of riches and respect were for the sly and stealthy. Enforcing what Ross had said, there came into his mind the reflection that he himself had just bribed through the Legislature, for a comparatively trifling sum, a law that would swell his fortune and income within the next five years more than would a lifetime of devotion to business.
He would have been irritated far more deeply had he known that Arthur was as well aware of the change from the old order as was Ross, and that deliberately and on principle he was refusing to adapt himself to the new order, the new conditions of “success.” When Arthur’s manliness first asserted itself, there was perhaps as much of vanity as of pride in his acceptance of the consequences of Hiram’s will. But to an intelligent man any environment, except one of inaction or futile action, soon becomes interesting; the coming of Madelene was all that was needed to raise his interest to enthusiasm. He soon understood his fellow-workers as few of them understood themselves. Every human group, of whatever size or kind, is apt to think its characteristics peculiar to itself, when in fact they are as universal as human nature, and the modifications due to the group’s environment are insignificant matters of mere surface. Nationality, trade, class no more affect the oneness of mankind than do the ocean’s surface variations of color or weather affect its unchangeable chemistry. Waugh, who had risen from the ranks, Howells, who had begun as shipping clerk, despised those above whom they had risen, regarded as the peculiar weaknesses of the working classes such universal failings as prejudice, short-sightedness, and shirking. They lost no opportunity to show their lack of sympathy with the class from which they had sprung and to which they still belonged in reality, their devotion to the class plutocratic to which they aspired. Arthur, in losing the narrowness of the class from which he had been ejected, lost all class narrowness. The graduates from the top have the best chance to graduate into the wide, wide world of human brotherhood. By an artificial process–by compulsion, vanity, reason, love–he became what Madelene was by nature. She was one of those rare human beings born with a just and clear sense of proportion. It was thus impossible for her to exaggerate into importance the trivial differences of mental stature. She saw that they were no greater than the differences of men’s physical stature, if men be compared with mountains or any other just measure of the vast scale on which the universe is constructed. And so it came naturally to her to appreciate that the vital differences among men are matters of character and usefulness, just as among things they are matters of beauty and use.
Arthur’s close friend was now Laurent Tague, a young cooper–huge, deep-chested, tawny, slow of body and swift of mind. They had been friends as boys at school. When Arthur came home from Exeter from his first long vacation, their friendship had been renewed after a fashion, then had ended abruptly in a quarrel and a pitched battle, from which neither had emerged victor, both leaving the battle ground exhausted and anguished by a humiliating sense of defeat. From that time Laurent had been a “damned mucker” to Arthur, Arthur a “stuck-up smart Alec” to Laurent. The renewal of the friendship dated from the accident to Arthur’s hand; it rapidly developed as he lost the sense of patronizing Laurent, and as Laurent for his part lost the suspicion that Arthur was secretly patronizing him. Then Arthur discovered that Lorry had, several years before, sent for a catalogue of the University of Michigan, had selected a course leading to the B.S. degree, had bought the necessary text-books, had studied as men work only at that which they love for its own sake and not for any advantage to be got from it. His father, a captain of volunteers in the Civil War, was killed in the Wilderness; his mother was a washerwoman. His father’s father–Jean Montague, the first blacksmith of Saint X–had shortened the family name. In those early, nakedly practical days, long names and difficult names, such as naturally develop among peoples of leisure, were ruthlessly taken to the chopping block by a people among whom a man’s name was nothing in itself, was simply a convenience for designating him. Everybody called Jean Montague “Jim Tague,” and pronounced the Tague in one syllable; when he finally acquiesced in the sensible, popular decision, from which he could not well appeal, his very children were unaware that they were Montagues.
Arthur told Lorry of his engagement to Madelene an hour after he told his mother–he and Lorry were heading a barrel as they talked. This supreme proof of friendship moved Laurent to give proof of appreciation. That evening he and Arthur took a walk to the top of Reservoir Hill, to see the sun set and the moon rise. It was under the softening and expanding influence of the big, yellow moon upon the hills and valleys and ghostly river that Laurent told his secret–a secret that in the mere telling, and still more in itself, was to have a profound influence upon the persons of this narrative.
“When I was at school,” he began, “you may remember I used to carry the washing to and fro for mother.”
“Yes,” said Arthur. He remembered how he liked to slip away from home and help Lorry with the big baskets.
“Well, one of the places I used to go to was old Preston Wilmot’s; they had a little money left in those days and used to hire mother now and then.”
“So the Wilmots owe her, too,” said Arthur, with a laugh. The universal indebtedness of the most aristocratic family in Saint X was the town joke.
Lorry smiled. “Yes, but she don’t know it,” he replied. “I used to do all her collecting for her. When the Wilmots quit paying, I paid for ’em–out of money I made at odd jobs. I paid for ’em for over two years. Then, one evening–Estelle Wilmot”–Lorry paused before this name, lingered on it, paused after it–“said to me–she waylaid me at the back gate–I always had to go in and out by the alley way–no wash by the front gate for them! Anyhow, she stopped me and said–all red and nervous–‘You mustn’t come for the wash any more.’
“‘Why not?’ says I. ‘Is the family complaining?’
“‘No,’ says she, ‘but we owe you for two years.’
“‘What makes you think that?’ said I, astonished and pretty badly scared for the minute.
“‘I’ve kept account,’ she said. And she was fiery red. ‘I keep a list of all we owe, so as to have it when we’re able to pay.'”
“What a woman she is!” exclaimed Arthur. “I suppose she’s putting by out of the profits of that little millinery store of hers to pay off the family debts. I hear she’s doing well.”
“A smashing business,” replied Lorry, in a tone that made Arthur glance quickly at him. “But, as I was saying, I being a young fool and frightened out of my wits, said to her: ‘You don’t owe mother a cent, Miss Estelle. It’s all been settled–except a few weeks lately. I’m collectin’, and I ought to know.’
“I ain’t much of a hand at lying, and she saw straight through me. I guess what was going on in her head helped her, for she looked as if she was about to faint. ‘It’s mighty little for me to do, to get to see you,’ I went on. ‘It’s my only chance. Your people would never let me in at the front gate. And seeing you is the only thing I care about.’ Then I set down the washbasket and, being desperate, took courage and looked straight at her. ‘And,’ said I, ‘I’ve noticed that for the last year you always make a point of being on hand to give me the wash.'”
Somehow a lump came in Arthur’s throat just then. He gave his Hercules-like friend a tremendous clap on the knee. “Good for you, Lorry!” he cried. “_That_ was the talk!”
“It was,” replied Lorry. “Well, she got red again, where she had been white as a dogwood blossom, and she hung her head. ‘You don’t deny it, do you?’ said I. She didn’t make any answer. ‘It wasn’t altogether to ask me how I was getting on with my college course, was it, Miss Estelle?’ And she said ‘No’ so low that I had to guess at it.”
Lorry suspended his story. He and Arthur sat looking at the moon. Finally Arthur asked, rather huskily, “Is that the end, Lorry?”
Lorry’s keen, indolent face lit up with an absent and tender smile. “That was the end of the beginning,” replied he.
Arthur thrilled and resisted a feminine instinct to put his arm round his friend. “I don’t know which of you is the luckier,” he said.
Lorry laughed. “You’re always envying me my good disposition,” he went on. “Now, I’ve given away the secret of it. Who isn’t happy when he’s got what he wants–heaven without the bother of dying first? I drop into her store two evenings a week to see her. I can’t stay long or people would talk. Then I see her now and again–other places. We have to be careful–mighty careful.”
“You must have been,” said Arthur. “I never heard a hint of this; and if anyone suspected, the whole town would be talking.”
“I guess the fact that she’s a Wilmot has helped us. Who’d ever suspect a Wilmot of such a thing?”
“Why not?” said Arthur. “She couldn’t do better.”
Lorry looked amused. “What’d you have said a few months ago, Ranger?”
“But _my_ father was a workingman.”
“That was a long time ago,” Lorry reminded him. “That was when America used to be American. Anyhow, she and I don’t care, except about the mother. You know the old lady isn’t strong, especially the last year or so. It wouldn’t exactly improve her health to know there was anything between her daughter and a washerwoman’s son, a plain workingman at that. We–Estelle and I–don’t want to be responsible for any harm to her. So–we’re waiting.”
“But there’s the old gentleman, and Arden–_and_ Verbena!”
Lorry’s cheerfulness was not ruffled by this marshaling of the full and formidable Wilmot array. “It’d be a pleasure to Estelle to give _them_ a shock, especially Verbena. Did you ever see Verbena’s hands?”
“I don’t think so,” replied Arthur; “but, of course, I’ve heard of them.”
“Did you know she wouldn’t even take hold of a knob to open a door, for fear of stretching them?”
“She _is_ a lady, sure.”
“Well, Estelle’s not, thank God!” exclaimed Lorry. “She says one of her grandmothers was the daughter of a fellow who kept a kind of pawn shop, and that she’s a case of atavism.”
“But, Lorry,” said Arthur, letting his train of thought come to the surface, “this ought to rouse your ambition. You could get anywhere you liked. To win her, I should think you’d exert yourself at the factory as you did at home when you were going through Ann Arbor.”
“To win her–perhaps I would,” replied Lorry. “But, you see, I’ve won her. I’m satisfied with my position. I make enough for us two to live on as well as any sensible person’d care to live. I’ve got four thousand dollars put by, and I’m insured for ten thousand, and mother’s got twelve thousand at interest that she saved out of the washing. I like to _live_. They made me assistant foreman once, but I was no good at it. I couldn’t ‘speed’ the men. It seemed to me they got a small enough part of what they earned, no matter how little they worked. Did you ever think, it takes one of us only about a day to make enough barrels to pay his week’s wages, and that he has to donate the other five days’ work for the privilege of being allowed to live? If I rose I’d be living off those five days of stolen labor. Somehow I don’t fancy doing it. So I do my ten hours a day, and have evenings and Sundays for the things I like.”
“Doesn’t Estelle try to spur you on?”
“She used to, but she soon came round to my point of view. She saw what I meant, and she hasn’t, any more than I, the fancy for stealing time from being somebody, to use it in making fools think and say you’re somebody, when you ain’t.”
“It’d be a queer world if everybody were like you.”
“It’d be a queer world if everybody were like any particular person,” retorted Lorry.
Arthur’s mind continually returned to this story, to revolve it, to find some new suggestion as to what was stupid or savage or silly in the present social system, as to what would be the social system of to-morrow, which is to to-day’s as to-day’s is to yesterday’s; for Lorry and Dr. Schulze and Madelene and his own awakened mind had lifted him out of the silly current notion that mankind is never going to grow any more, but will wear its present suit of social clothes forever, will always creep and totter and lisp, will never learn to walk and to talk. He was in the habit of passing Estelle’s shop twice each day–early in the morning, when she was opening, again when the day’s business was over; and he had often fancied he could see in her evening expression how the tide of trade had gone. Now, he thought he could tell whether it was to be one of Lorry’s evenings or not. He understood why she had so eagerly taken up Henrietta Hastings’s suggestion, made probably with no idea that anything would come of it–Henrietta was full of schemes, evolved not for action, but simply to pass the time and to cause talk in the town. Estelle’s shop became to him vastly different from a mere place for buying and selling; and presently he was looking on the other side, the human side, of all the shops and businesses and material activities, great and small. Just as a knowledge of botany makes every step taken in the country an advance through thronging miracles, so his new knowledge was transforming surroundings he had thought commonplace into a garden of wonders. “How poor and tedious the life I marked out for myself at college was,” he was presently thinking, “in comparison with this life of realities!” He saw that Lorry, instead of being without ambitions, was inspired by the highest ambitions. “A good son, a good lover, a good workman,” thought Arthur. “What more can a man be, or aspire to be?” Before his mind’s eyes there was, clear as light, vivid as life, the master workman–his father. And for the first time Arthur welcomed that vision, felt that he could look into Hiram’s grave, kind eyes without flinching and without the slightest inward reservation of blame or reproach.
It was some time before the bearing of the case of Lorry and Estelle upon the case of Arthur and Madelene occurred to him. Once he saw this he could think of nothing else. He got Lorry’s permission to tell Madelene; and when she had the whole story he said, “You see its message to us?”
And Madelene’s softly shining eyes showed that she did, even before her lips had the chance to say, “We certainly have no respectable excuse for waiting.”
“As soon as mother gets the office done,” suggested Arthur.
* * * * *
On the morning after the wedding, at a quarter before seven, Arthur and Madelene came down the drive together to the new little house by the gate. And very handsome and well matched they seemed as they stood before her office and gazed at the sign: “Madelene Ranger, M.D.” She unlocked and opened the door; he followed her in. When, a moment later, he reappeared and went swinging down the street to his work, his expression would have made you like him–and envy him. And at the window watching him was Madelene. There were tears in her fine eyes, and her bosom was heaving in a storm of emotion. She was saying, “It almost seems wicked to feel as happy as I do.”
CHAPTER XXI
HIRAM’S SON
In Hiram Ranger’s last year the Ranger-Whitney Company made half a million; the first year under the trustees there was a small deficit. Charles Whitney was most apologetic to his fellow trustees who had given him full control because he owned just under half the stock and was the business man of the three. “I’ve relied wholly on Howells,” explained he. “I knew Ranger had the highest opinion of his ability, but evidently he’s one of those chaps who are good only as lieutenants. However, there’s no excuse for me–none. During the coming year I’ll try to make up for my negligence. I’ll give the business my personal attention.”
But at the end of the second year the books showed that, while the company had never done so much business, there was a loss of half a million; another such year and the surplus would be exhausted. At the trustees’ meeting, of the three faces staring gloomily at these ruinous figures the gloomiest was Charles Whitney’s. “There can be only one explanation,” said he. “The shifting of the centers of production is making it increasingly difficult to manufacture here at a profit.”
“Perhaps the railways are discriminating against us,” suggested Scarborough.
Whitney smiled slightly. “That’s your reform politics,” said he. “You fellows never seek the natural causes for things; you at once accuse the financiers.”
Scarborough smiled back at him. “But haven’t there been instances of rings in control of railways using their power for plants they were interested in and against competing plants?”
“Possibly–to a limited extent,” conceded Whitney. “But I hold to the old-fashioned idea. My dear sir, this is a land of opportunity–“
“Still, Whitney,” interrupted Dr. Hargrave, “there _may_ be something in what Senator Scarborough says.”
“Undoubtedly,” Whitney hastened to answer. “I only hope there is. Then our problem will be simple. I’ll set my lawyers to work at once. If that is the cause”–he struck the table resolutely with his clenched fist–“the scoundrels shall be brought to book!”
His eyes shifted as he lifted them to find Scarborough looking at him. “You have inside connections with the Chicago railway crowd, have you not, Mr. Whitney?” he inquired.
“I think I have,” said Whitney, with easy candor. “That’s why I feel confident your suggestion has no foundation–beyond your suspicion of all men engaged in large enterprises. It’s a wonder you don’t suspect me. Indeed, you probably will.”
He spoke laughingly. Scarborough’s answer was a grave smile.
“My personal loss may save me from you,” Whitney went on. “I hesitate to speak of it, but, as you can see, it is large–almost as large as the university’s.”
“Yes,” said Scarborough absently, though his gaze was still fixed on Whitney. “You think you can do nothing?”
“Indeed I do not!” exclaimed Whitney. “I shall begin with the assumption that you are right. And if you are, I’ll have those scoundrels in court within a month.”
“And then?”
The young senator’s expression and tone were calm, but Whitney seemed to find covert hostility in them. “Then–justice!” he replied angrily.
Dr. Hargrave beamed benevolent confidence. “Justice!” he echoed. “Thank God for our courts!”
“But _when_?” said Scarborough. As there was no answer, he went on: “In five–ten–fifteen–perhaps twenty years. The lawyers are in no hurry–a brief case means a small fee. The judges–they’ve got their places for life, so there’s no reason why they should muss their silk gowns in undignified haste. Besides–It seems to me I’ve heard somewhere the phrase ‘railway judges.'”
Dr. Hargrave looked gentle but strong disapproval. “You are too pessimistic, Hampden,” said he.
“The senator should not let the wounds from his political fights gangrene,” suggested Whitney, with good-humored raillery.
“Have you nothing but the court remedy to offer?” asked Scarborough, a slight smile on his handsome face, so deceptively youthful.
“That’s quite enough,” answered Whitney. “In my own affairs I’ve never appealed to the courts in vain.”
“I can believe it,” said Scarborough, and Whitney looked as if he had scented sarcasm, though Scarborough was correctly colorless. “But, if you should be unable to discover any grounds for a case against the railways?”
“Then all we can do is to work harder than ever along the old lines–cut down expenses, readjust wages, stop waste.” Whitney sneered politely. “But no doubt you have some other plan to propose.”
Scarborough continued to look at him with the same faint smile. “I’ve nothing to suggest–to-day,” said he. “The court proceedings will do no harm–you see, Mr. Whitney, I can’t get my wicked suspicion of your friends out of my mind. But we must also try something less–less leisurely than courts. I’ll think it over.”
Whitney laughed rather uncomfortably; and when they adjourned he lingered with Dr. Hargrave. “We must not let ourselves be carried away by our young friend’s suspicions,” said he to his old friend. “Scarborough is a fine fellow. But he lacks your experience and my knowledge of practical business. And he has been made something of a crank by combating the opposition his extreme views have aroused among conservative people.”
“You are mistaken, Whitney,” replied the doctor. “Hampden’s views are sound. He is misrepresented by the highly placed rascals he has exposed and dislodged. But in these business matters we rely upon you.” He linked his arm affectionately in that of the powerful and successful “captain of industry” whom he had known from boyhood. “I know how devoted you are to Tecumseh, and how ably you manage practical affairs; and I have not for a moment lost confidence that you will bring us safely through.”
Whitney’s face was interesting. There was a certain hangdog look in it, but there was also a suggestion–very covert–of cynical amusement, as of a good player’s jeer at a blunder by his opponent. His tone, however, was melancholy, tinged with just resentment, as he said: “Scarborough forgets how my own personal interest is involved. I don’t like to lose two hundred and odd thousand a year.”
“Scarborough meant nothing, I’m sure,” said Hargrave soothingly. “He knows we are all single hearted for the university.”
“I don’t like to be distrusted,” persisted Whitney sadly. Then brightening: “But you and I understand each other, doctor. And we will carry the business through. Every man who tries to do anything in this world must expect to be misunderstood.”
“You are mistaken about Scarborough, I know you are,” said Hargrave earnestly.
Whitney listened to Hargrave, finally professed to be reassured; but, before he left, a strong doubt of Scarborough’s judgment had been implanted by him in the mind of the old doctor. That was easy enough; for, while Hargrave was too acute a man to give his trust impulsively, he gave without reserve when he did give–and he believed in Charles Whitney. The ability absolutely to trust where trust is necessary is as essential to effective character as is the ability to withhold trust until its wisdom has been justified; and exceptions only confirm a rule.
Scarborough, feeling that he had been neglecting his trusteeship, now devoted himself to the Ranger-Whitney Company.
He had long consultations with Howells, and studied the daily and weekly balance sheets which Howells sent him. In the second month after the annual meeting he cabled Dory to come home. The entire foundation upon which Dory was building seemed to be going; Saint X was, therefore, the place for him, not Europe.
“And there you have all I have been able to find out,” concluded Scarborough, when he had given Dory the last of the facts and figures. “What do you make of it?”
“There’s something wrong–something rotten,” replied Dory.
“But where?” inquired Scarborough, who had taken care not to speak or hint his vague doubts of Whitney. “Everything _looks_ all right, except the totals on the balance sheets.”
“We must talk this over with some one who knows more about the business than either of us.” Then he added, as if the idea had just come to him, “Why not call in Arthur–Arthur Ranger?”
Scarborough looked receptive, but not enthusiastic.
“He has been studying this business in the most practical way ever since his father died,” urged Dory. “It can’t do any harm to consult with him. We don’t want to call in outside experts if we can help it.”
“If we did we’d have to let Mr. Whitney select them,” said Scarborough. And he drew Dory out upon the subject of Arthur and got such complete and intelligent answers that he presently had a wholly new and true idea of the young man whose boyish follies Saint X had not yet forgotten. “Yes, let’s give Arthur a chance,” he finally said.
Accordingly, they laid the case in its entirety before Arthur, and he took home with him the mass of reports which Scarborough had gathered. Night after night he and Madelene worked at the problem; for both knew that its solution would be his opportunity, _their_ opportunity.
It was Madelene who discovered the truth–not by searching the figures, not by any process of surface reasoning, but by that instinct for motive which woman has developed through her ages of dealing with and in motives only. “They must get a new management,” said she; “one that Charles Whitney has no control over.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s wrecking the business to get hold of it. He wants the whole thing, and he couldn’t resist the chance the inexperience and confidence of the other two gave him.”
“I see no indication of it,” objected Arthur, to draw her out. “On the contrary, wherever he directly controls there’s a good showing.”
“That’s it!” exclaimed Madelene, feeling that she now had her feet on the firm ground of reason on which alone stupid men will discuss practical affairs.
Arthur had lived with Madelene long enough to learn that her mind was indeed as clear as her eyes, that when she looked at anything she saw it as it was, and saw all of it. Like any man who has the right material in him, he needed only the object lesson of her quick dexterity at stripping a problem of its shell of nonessentials. He had become what the ineffective call a pessimist. He had learned the primer lesson of large success–that one must build upon the hard, pessimistic facts of human nature’s instability and fate’s fondness for mischief, not upon the optimistic clouds of belief that everybody is good and faithful and friendly disposed and everything will “come out all right somehow.” The instant Madelene suggested Whitney as the cause, Arthur’s judgment echoed approval; but, to get her whole mind as one gives it only in combating opposition, he continued to object. “But suppose,” said he, “Whitney insists on selecting the new management? As he’s the only one competent, how can they refuse?”
“We must find a way round that,” replied Madelene. “It’s perfectly plain, isn’t it, that there’s only one course–an absolutely new management. And how can Mr. Whitney object? If he’s not guilty he won’t object, because he’ll be eager to try the obvious remedy. If he’s guilty he won’t object–he’ll be afraid of being suspected.”
“Dory suggested–” began Arthur, and stopped.
“That you be put in as manager?”
“How did _you_ know _that_?”
“It’s the sensible thing. It’s the only thing,” answered his wife. “And Dory has the genius of good sense. You ought to go to Scarborough and ask for the place. Take Dory with you.”
“That’s good advice,” said Arthur, heartily.
Madelene laughed. “When a man praises a woman’s advice, it means she has told him to do what he had made up his mind to do anyhow.”
* * * * *
Next day Scarborough called a meeting of the trustees. Down from Chicago came Whitney–at the greatest personal inconvenience, so he showed his colleagues, but eager to do anything for Tecumseh. Scarborough gave a clear and appalling account of how the Ranger-Whitney Company’s prosperity was slipping into the abyss like a caving sand bank, on all sides, apparently under pressure of forces beyond human control. “In view of the facts,” said he, in conclusion, “our sole hope is in putting ourselves to one side and giving an entirely new management an entirely free hand.”
Whitney had listened to Scarborough’s speech with the funereal countenance befitting so melancholy a recital. As Scarborough finished and sank back in his chair, he said, with energy and heartiness, “I agree with you, senator. The lawyers tell me there are as yet no signs of a case against the railways. Besides, the trouble seems to be, as I feared, deeper than this possible rebating. Jenkins–one of my best men–I sent him down to help Howells out–he’s clearly an utter failure–utter! And I am getting old. The new conditions of business life call for young men with open minds.”
“No, no!” protested Dr. Hargrave. “I will not consent to any change that takes your hand off the lever, my friend. These are stormy times in our industrial world, and we need the wise, experienced pilot.”
Scarborough had feared this; but he and Dory, forced to choose between taking him into their confidence and boldly challenging the man in whom he believed implicitly, had chosen the far safer course. “While Mr. Whitney must appreciate your eulogy, doctor,” said he, suave yet with a certain iciness, “I think he will insist upon the trial of the only plan that offers. In our plight we must not shrink from desperate remedies–even a remedy as desperate as eliminating the one man who understands the business from end to end.” This last with slight emphasis and a steady look at Whitney.
Whitney reddened. “We need not waste words,” said he, in his bluff, sharp voice. “The senator and I are in accord, and we are the majority.”
“At least, Mr. Whitney,” said the doctor, “you must suggest the new man. You know the business world. We don’t.”
A long pause; then from Whitney: “Why not try young Ranger?”
Scarborough looked at him in frank amazement. By what process of infernal telepathy had he found out? Or was there some deep reason why Arthur would be the best possible man for his purpose, if his purpose was indeed malign? Was Arthur his tool? Or was Arthur subtly making tools of both Whitney and himself?
Dr. Hargrave was dumfounded. When he recovered himself sufficiently to speak, it was to say, “Why, he’s a mere boy, Whitney–not yet thirty. He has had no experience!”
“Inexperience seems to be what we need,” replied Whitney, eyes twinkling sneeringly at Scarborough. “We have tried experience, and it is a disastrous failure.”
Scarborough was still reflecting.
“True,” pursued Whitney, “the young man would also have the motive of self-interest to keep him from making a success.”
“How is that?” inquired Scarborough.
“Under the will,” Whitney reminded him, “he can buy back the property at its market value. Obviously, the less the property is worth, the better for him.”
Scarborough was staggered. Was Arthur crafty as well as able? With the human conscience ever eager to prove that what is personally advantageous is also right, how easy for a man in his circumstances to convince himself that any course would be justifiable in upsetting the “injustice” of Hiram Ranger’s will.
“However,” continued Whitney, “I’ve no doubt he’s as honest as his father–and I couldn’t say more than that. The only question is whether we can risk giving him the chance to show what there is in him.”
Dr. Hargrave was looking dazedly from one of his colleagues to the other, as if he thought his mind were playing him a trick. “It is impossible–preposterous!” he exclaimed.
“A man has to make a beginning,” said Whitney. “How can he show what there is in him unless he gets a chance? It seems to me, doctor, we owe it to Hiram to do this for the boy. We can keep an eye and a hand on him. What do you think, senator?”
Scarborough had won at every stage of his career, not merely because he had convictions and the courage of them, but chiefly because he had the courage to carry through the plans he laid in trying to make his convictions effective. He had come there, fixed that Arthur was the man for the place; why throw up his hand because Whitney was playing into it? Nothing had occurred to change his opinion of Arthur. “Let us try Arthur Ranger,” he now said. “But let us give him a free hand.”
He was watching Whitney’s face; he saw it change expression–a slight frown. “I advise against the free hand,” said Whitney.
“I _protest_ against it!” cried Dr. Hargrave. “I protest against even considering this inexperienced boy for such a responsibility.”
Scarborough addressed himself to Whitney. “If we do not give our new manager, whoever he may be, a free hand, and if he should fail, how shall we know whether the fault is his or–yours?”
At the direct “yours” Scarborough thought Whitney winced; but his reply was bland and frank enough. He turned to Dr. Hargrave. “The senator is right,” said he. “I shall vote with him.”
“Then it is settled,” said Scarborough. “Ranger is to have absolute charge.”
Dr. Hargrave was now showing every sign of his great age; the anguish of imminent despair was in his deep-set eyes and in his broken, trembling voice as he cried: “Gentlemen, this is madness! Charles, I implore you, do not take such precipitate action in so vital a matter! Let us talk it over–think it over. The life of the university is at stake!”
It was evident that the finality in the tones and in the faces of his colleagues had daunted him; but with a tremendous effort he put down the weakness of age and turned fiercely upon Whitney to shame him from indorsing Scarborough’s suicidal policy. But Whitney, with intent of brutality, took out his watch. “I have just time to catch my train,” said he, indifferently; “I can only use my best judgment, doctor. Sorry to have to disagree with you, but Senator Scarborough has convinced me.” And having thus placed upon Scarborough the entire responsibility for the event of the experiment, he shook hands with his colleagues and hurried out to his waiting carriage.
Dr. Hargrave dropped into a chair and stared into vacancy. In all those long, long years of incessant struggle against heartbreaking obstacles he had never lost courage or faith. But this blow at the very life of the university and from its friends! He could not even lift himself enough to look to his God; it seemed to him that God had gone on a far journey. Scarborough, watching him, was profoundly moved. “If at the end of three months you wish Ranger to resign,” said he, “I shall see to it that he does resign. Believe me, doctor, I have not taken this course without considering all the possibilities, so far as I could foresee them.”
The old president, impressed by his peculiar tone, looked up quickly. “There is something in this that I don’t understand,” said he, searching Scarborough’s face.
Scarborough was tempted to explain. But the consequences, should he fail to convince Hargrave, compelled him to withhold. “I hope, indeed I feel sure, you will be astonished in our young friend,” said he, instead. “I have been talking with him a good deal lately, and I am struck by the strong resemblance to his father. It is more than mere physical likeness.”
With a sternness he could have shown only where principle was at stake, the old man said: “But I must not conceal from you, senator, that I have the gravest doubts and fears. You have alienated the university’s best friend–rich, powerful, able, and, until you exasperated him, devoted to its interests. I regard you as having–unintentionally, and no doubt for good motives–betrayed the solemn trust Hiram Ranger reposed in you.” He was standing at his full height, with his piercing eyes fixed upon his young colleague’s.
All the color left Scarborough’s face. “Betrayed is a strong word,” he said.
“A strong word, senator,” answered Dr. Hargrave, “and used deliberately. I wish you good day, sir.”
Hargrave was one of those few men who are respected without any reservation, and whose respect is, therefore, not given up without a sense of heavy loss. But to explain would be to risk rousing in him an even deeper anger–anger on account of his friend Whitney; so, without another word, Scarborough bowed and went. “Either he will be apologizing to me at the end of three months,” said he to himself, “or I shall be apologizing to Whitney and shall owe Tecumseh a large sum of money.”
* * * * *
Both Madelene and Arthur had that instinct for comfort and luxury which is an even larger factor in advancement than either energy or intelligence. The idea that clothing means something more than warmth, food something more than fodder, a house something more than shelter, is the beginning of progress; the measure of a civilized man or woman is the measure of his or her passion for and understanding of the art of living.
Madelene, by that right instinct which was perhaps the finest part of her sane and strong character, knew what comfort really means, knew the difference between luxury and the showy vulgarity of tawdriness or expensiveness; and she rapidly corrected, or, rather, restored, Arthur’s good taste, which had been vitiated by his associations with fashionable people, whose standards are necessarily always poor. She was devoted to her profession as a science; but she did not neglect the vital material considerations. She had too much self-respect to become careless about her complexion or figure, about dress or personal habits, even if she had not had such shrewd insight into what makes a husband remain a lover, a wife a mistress. She had none of those self-complacent delusions which lure vain women on in slothfulness until Love vacates his neglected temple. And in large part, no doubt, Arthur’s appearance–none of the stains and patches of the usual workingman, and this though he worked hard at manual labor and in a shop–was due to her influence of example; he, living with such a woman, would have been ashamed not to keep “up to the mark.” Also her influence over old Mrs. Ranger became absolute; and swiftly yet imperceptibly the house, which had so distressed Adelaide, was transformed, not into the exhibit of fashionable ostentation which had once been Adelaide’s and Arthur’s ideal, but into a house of comfort and beauty, with colors harmonizing, the look of newness gone from the “best rooms,” and finally the “best rooms” themselves abolished. And Ellen thought herself chiefly responsible for the change. “I’m gradually getting things just about as I want ’em,” said she. “It does take a long time to do anything in this world!” Also she believed, and a boundless delight it was to her, that she was the cause of Madelene’s professional success. Everyone talked of the way Madelene was getting on, and wondered at her luck. “She deserves it, though,” said they, “for she can all but raise the dead.” In fact, the secret was simple enough. She had been taught by her father to despise drugs and to compel dieting and exercise. She had the tact which he lacked; she made the allowances for human nature’s ignorance and superstition which he refused to make; she lessened the hardship of taking her common-sense prescriptions by veiling them in medical hocus-pocus–a compromise of the disagreeable truth which her father had always inveighed against as both immoral and unwholesome.
Within six months after her marriage she was earning as much as her husband; and her fame was spreading so rapidly that not only women but also men, and men with a contempt for the “inferior mentality of the female,” were coming to her from all sides. “You’ll soon have a huge income,” said Arthur. “Why, you’ll be rich, you are so grasping.”
“Indeed I am,” replied she. “The way to teach people to strive for high wages and to learn thrift is to make them pay full value for what they get. I don’t propose to encourage dishonesty or idleness. Besides, we’ll need the money.”
Arthur had none of that mean envy which can endure the prosperity of strangers only; he would not even have been able to be jealous of his wife’s getting on better than did he. But, if he had been so disposed, he would have found it hard to indulge such feelings because of Madelene. She had put their married life on the right basis. She made him feel, with a certainty which no morbid imagining could have shaken, that she loved and respected him for qualities which could not be measured by any of the world’s standards of success. He knew that in her eyes he was already an arrived success, that she was absolutely indifferent whether others ever recognized it or not. Only those who realize how powerful is the influence of intimate association will appreciate what an effect living with Madelene had upon Arthur’s character–in withering the ugly in it, in developing its quality, and in directing its strength.
When Scarborough gave Arthur his “chance,” Madelene took it as the matter of course. “I’m sorry it has come so soon,” said she, “and in just this way. But it couldn’t have been delayed long. With so much to be done and so few able or willing to do it, the world can’t wait long enough for a man really to ripen. It’s lucky that you inherit from your father so many important things that most men have to spend their lives in learning.”
“Do you think so?” said he, brightening; for, with the “chance” secure, he was now much depressed by the difficulties which he had been resurveying from the inside point of view.
“You understand how to manage men,” she replied, “and you understand business.”
“But, unfortunately, this isn’t business.”
He was right. The problem of business is, in its two main factors, perfectly simple–to make a wanted article, and to put it where those who want it can buy. But this was not Arthur Ranger’s problem, nor is it the problem of most business men in our time. Between maker and customer, nowadays, lie the brigands who control the railways–that is, the highways; and they with equal facility use or defy the law, according to their needs. When Arthur went a-buying grain or stave timber, he and those with whom he was trading had to placate the brigands before they could trade; when he went a-selling flour, he had to fight his way to the markets through the brigands. It was the battle which causes more than ninety out of every hundred in independent business to fail–and of the remaining ten, how many succeed only because they either escaped the notice of the brigands or compromised with them?
“I wish you luck,” said Jenkins, when, at the end of two weeks of his tutelage, Arthur told him he would try it alone.
Arthur laughed. “No, you don’t, Jenkins,” replied he, with good-humored bluntness. “But I’m going to have it, all the same.”
Discriminating prices and freight rates against his grain, discriminating freight rates against his flour; the courts either powerless to aid him or under the rule of bandits; and, on the top of all, a strike within two weeks after Jenkins left–such was the situation. Arthur thought it hopeless; but he did not lose courage nor his front of serenity, even when alone with Madelene. Each was careful not to tempt the malice of fate by concealments; each was careful also not to annoy the other with unnecessary disagreeable recitals. If he could have seen where good advice could possibly help him, he would have laid all his troubles before her; but it seemed to him that to ask her advice would be as if she were to ask him to tell her how to put life into a corpse. He imagined that she was deceived by his silence about the details of his affairs because she gave no sign, did not even ask questions beyond generalities. She, however, was always watching his handsome face with its fascinating evidences of power inwardly developing; and, as it was her habit to get valuable information as to what was going on inside her fellow-beings from a close study of surface appearances, the growing gauntness of his features, the coming out of the lines of sternness, did not escape her, made her heart throb with pride even as it ached with sympathy and anxiety. At last she decided for speech.
He was sitting in their dressing room, smoking his last cigarette as he watched her braid her wonderful hair for the night. She, observing him in the glass, saw that he was looking at her with that yearning for sympathy which is always at its strongest in a man in the mood that was his at sight of those waves and showers of soft black hair on the pallid whiteness of her shoulders. Before he realized what she was about she was in his lap, her arms round his neck, his face pillowed against her cheek and her hair. “What is it, little boy?” she murmured, with that mingling of the mistress and the mother which every woman who ever loved feels for and, at certain times, shows the man she loves.
He laughed. “Business–business,” said he. “But let’s not talk about it. The important thing is that I have _you_. The rest is–smoke!” And he blew out a great cloud of it and threw the cigarette through the open window.
“Tell me,” she said; “I’ve been waiting for you to speak, and I can’t wait any longer.”
“I couldn’t–just now. It doesn’t at all fit in with my thoughts.” And he kissed her.
She moved to rise. “Then I’ll go back to the dressing table. Perhaps you’ll be able to tell me with the width of the room between us.”
He drew her head against his again. “Very well–if I must, I will. But you know all about it. For some mysterious reason, somebody–you say it’s Whitney, and probably it is–won’t let me buy grain or anything else as cheaply as others buy it. And for the same mysterious reason, somebody, probably Whitney again, won’t let me get to market without paying a heavier toll than our competitors pay. And now for some mysterious reason somebody, probably Whitney again, has sent labor organizers from Chicago among the men and has induced them to make impossible demands and to walk out without warning.”
“And you think there’s nothing to do but walk out, too,” said Madelene.
“Or wait until I’m put out.”
His tone made those words mean that his desperate situation had roused his combativeness, that he would not give up. Her blood beat faster and her eyes shone. “You’ll win,” she said, with the quiet confidence which strengthens when it comes from a person whose judgment one has tested and found good. And he believed in her as absolutely as she believed in him.
“I’ve been tempted to resign,” he went on. “If I don’t everybody’ll say I’m a failure when the crash comes. But–Madelene, there’s something in me that simply won’t let me quit.”
“There is,” replied she; “it’s your father.”
“Anyhow, _you_ are the only public opinion for me.”
“You’ll win,” repeated Madelene. “I’ve been thinking over that whole business. If I were you, Arthur”–she was sitting up so that she could look at him and make her words more impressive–“I’d dismiss strike and freight rates and the mill, and I’d put my whole mind on Whitney. There’s a weak spot somewhere in his armor. There always is in a scoundrel’s.”
Arthur reflected. Presently he drew her head down against his; it seemed to her that she could feel his brain at work, and soon she knew from the change in the clasp of his arms about her that that keen, quick mind of his was serving him well. “What a joy it is to a woman,” she thought, “to know that she can trust the man she loves–trust him absolutely, always, and in every way.” And she fell asleep after awhile, lulled by the rhythmic beat of his pulse, so steady, so strong, giving her such a restful sense of security. She did not awaken until he was gently laying her in the bed.
“You have found it?” said she, reading the news in the altered expression of his face.
“I hope so,” replied he.
She saw that he did not wish to discuss. So she said, “I knew you would,” and went contentedly back into sleep again.
* * * * *
Next day he carefully read the company’s articles of incorporation to make sure that they contained no obstacle to his plan. Then he went to Scarborough, and together they went to Judge Torrey. Three days later there was a special meeting of the board of directors; the president, Charles Whitney, was unable to attend, but his Monday morning mail contained this extract from the minutes:
“Mr. Ranger offered a resolution that an assessment of two thousand dollars be at once laid upon each share of the capital stock, the proceeds to be expended by the superintendent in betterments. Seconded by Mr. Scarborough. Unanimously passed.”
Whitney reread this very carefully. He laid the letter down and stared at it. Two thousand dollars a share meant that he, owner of four hundred and eighty-seven shares, would have to pay in cash nine hundred and seventy-four thousand dollars. He ordered his private car attached to the noon express, and at five o’clock he was in Scarborough’s library.
“What is the meaning of this assessment?” he demanded, as Scarborough entered.
“Mr. Ranger explained the situation to us,” replied Scarborough. “He showed us we had to choose between ruin and a complete reorganization with big improvements and extensions.”
“Lunacy, sheer lunacy!” cried Whitney. “A meeting of the board must be called and the resolution rescinded.”
Scarborough simply looked at him, a smile in his eyes.
“I never heard of such an outrage! You ask me to pay an assessment of nearly a million dollars on stock that is worthless.”
“And,” replied Scarborough, “at the end of the year we expect to levy another assessment of a thousand a share.”
Whitney had been tramping stormily up and down the room. As Scarborough uttered those last words he halted. He eyed his tranquil fellow-trustee, then seated himself, and said, with not a trace of his recent fury: “You must know, Scarborough, the mills have no future. I hadn’t the heart to say so before Dr. Hargrave. But I supposed you were reading the signs right. The plain truth is, this is no longer a good location for the flour industry.”
Scarborough waited before replying; when he did speak his tones were deliberate and suggestive of strong emotion well under control. “True,” said he, “not just at present. But Judge Beverwick, your friend and silent partner who sits on the federal bench in this district, is at the point of death. I shall see to it that his successor is a man with a less intense prejudice against justice. Thus we may be able to convince some of your friends in control of the railways that Saint X is as good a place for mills as any in the country.”
Whitney grunted. His face was inscrutable. He paced the length of the room twice; he stood at the window gazing out at the arbors, at the bees buzzing contentedly, at the flies darting across the sifting sunbeams. “Beautiful place, this,” said he at last; “very homelike. No wonder you’re a happy man.” A pause. “As to the other matter, I’ll see. No doubt I can stop this through the courts, if you push me to it.”
“Not without giving us a chance to explain,” replied Scarborough; “and the higher courts may agree with us that we ought to defend the university’s rights against your railway friends and your ‘labor’ men whom you sent down here to cause the strike.”
“Rubbish!” said Whitney; and he laughed. “Rubbish!” he repeated. “It’s not a matter either for argument or for anger.” He took his hat, made a slight ironic bow, and was gone.
He spent the next morning with Arthur, discussing the main phases of the business, with little said by either about the vast new project. They lunched together in the car, which was on a siding before the offices, ready to join the early afternoon express. Arthur was on his guard against Whitney, but he could not resist the charm of the financier’s manner and conversation. Like all men of force, Whitney had great magnetism, and his conversation was frank to apparent indiscretion, a most plausible presentation of the cynical philosophy of practical life as it is lived by men of bold and generous nature.
“That assessment scheme was yours, wasn’t it?” he said, when he and Arthur had got on terms of intimacy.
“The first suggestion came from me,” admitted Arthur.
“A great stroke,” said Whitney. “You will arrive, young man. I thought it was your doing, because it reminded me of your father. I never knew a more direct man than he, yet he was without an equal at flanking movements. What a pity his mind went before he died! My first impulse was to admire his will. But, now that I’ve come to know you, I see that if he had lived to get acquainted with you he’d have made a very; different disposition of the family property. As it is, it’s bound to go to pieces. No board ever managed anything successfully. It’s always a man–one man. In this case it ought to be you. But the time will come–soon, probably–when your view will conflict with that of the majority of the board. Then out you’ll go; and your years of intelligent labor will be destroyed.”
It was plain in Arthur’s face that this common-sense statement of the case produced instant and strong effect. He merely said: “Well, one must take that risk.”
“Not necessarily,” replied Whitney; he was talking in the most careless, impersonal way. “A man of your sort, with the strength and the ability you inherit, and with the power that they give you to play an important part in the world, doesn’t let things drift to ruin. I intend, ultimately, to give my share of the Ranger-Whitney Company to Tecumseh–I’m telling you this in confidence.”
Arthur glanced quickly at the great financier, suspicion and wonder in his eyes.
“But I want it to be a value when I give it,” continued Whitney; “not the worse than worthless paper it threatens to become. Scarborough and Dr. Hargrave are splendid men. No one honors them more highly than I do. But they are not business men. And who will be their successors? Probably men even less practical.”
Arthur, keen-witted but young, acute but youthfully ready to attribute the generous motive rather than the sinister, felt that he was getting a new light on Whitney’s character. Perhaps Whitney wasn’t so unworthy, after all. Perhaps, in trying to wreck the business and so get hold of it, he had been carrying out a really noble purpose, in the unscrupulous way characteristic of the leaders of the world of commerce and finance. To Whitney he said: “I haven’t given any thought to these matters.” With a good-natured laugh of raillery: “You have kept me too busy.”
Whitney smiled–an admission that yet did not commit him. “When you’ve lived a while longer, Arthur,” said he, “you’ll not be so swift and harsh in your judgments of men who have to lay the far-sighted plans and have to deal with mankind as it is, not as it ought to be. However, by that time the Ranger-Whitney Company will be wiped out. It’s a pity. If only there were some way of getting the control definitely in your hands–where your father would have put it if he had lived. It’s a shame to permit his life work and his plans for the university to be demolished. In your place I’d not permit it.”
Arthur slowly flushed. Without looking at Whitney, he said: “I don’t see how I could prevent it.”
Whitney studied his flushed face, his lowered eyes, reflected carefully on the longing note in the voice in which he had made that statement, a note that changed it to a question. “Control could be got only by ownership,” explained he. “If I were sure you were working with a definite, practical purpose really to secure the future of the company, I’d go heartily into your assessment plan. In fact, I’d–” Whitney was feeling his way. The change in Arthur’s expression, the sudden tightening of the lips, warned him that he was about to go too far, that he had sowed as much seed as it was wise to sow at that time. He dropped the subject abruptly, saying: “But I’ve got to go up to the bank before train time. I’m glad we’ve had this little talk. Something of value may grow out of it. Think it over, and if any new ideas come to you run up to Chicago and see me.”
Arthur did indeed think it over, every moment of that afternoon; and before going home he took a long walk alone. He saw that Charles Whitney had proposed a secret partnership, in which he was to play Whitney’s game and, in exchange, was to get control of the Ranger-Whitney Company. And what Whitney had said about the folly of board managements, about the insecurity of his own position, was undeniably true; and the sacrifice of the “smaller morality” for the “larger good” would be merely doing what the biographies of the world’s men of achievement revealed them as doing again and again. Further, once in control, once free to put into action the plans for a truly vast concern, of which he had so often dreamed, he could give Tecumseh a far larger income than it had ever hoped to have through his father’s gift, and also could himself be rich and powerful. To the men who have operated with success and worldly acclaim under the code of the “larger good,” the men who have aggrandized themselves at the expense of personal honor and the rights of others and the progress of the race, the first, the crucial temptation to sacrifice “smaller morality” and “short-sighted scruples” has always come in some such form as it here presented itself to Arthur Ranger. The Napoleons begin as defenders of rational freedom against the insane license of the mob; the Rockefellers begin as cheapeners of a necessity of life to the straitened millions of their fellow-beings.
If Arthur had been weak, he would have put aside the temptation through fear of the consequences of failure. If he had been ignorant, he would have put it aside through superstition. Being neither weak nor ignorant, and having a human passion for wealth and power and a willingness to get them if he could do it without sacrifice of self-respect, he sat calmly down with the temptation and listened to it and debated with it. He was silent all through dinner; and after dinner, when he and Madelene were in their sitting room upstairs, she reading, he sat with his eyes upon her, and continued to think.
All at once he gave a curious laugh, went to the writing table and wrote a few moments. Then he brought the letter to her. “Read that,” said he, standing behind her, his hands on her shoulders and an expression in his face that made his resemblance to Hiram startling.
She read:
“MY DEAR MR. WHITNEY: I’ve been ‘thinking it over’ as you suggested. I’ve decided to plug along in the old way, between the old landmarks. Let me add that, if you should offer to give your stock to Tecumseh now, I’d have to do my utmost to persuade the trustees not to take it until the company was once more secure. You see, I feel it is absolutely necessary that you have a large pecuniary interest in the success of our plans.”
When Madelene had read she turned in the chair until she was looking up at him. “Well?” she inquired. “What does it mean?”
He told her. “And,” he concluded, “I wish I could be a great man, but I can’t. There’s something small in me that won’t permit it. No doubt Franklin was right when he said life was a tunnel and one had to stoop, and even occasionally to crawl, in order to get through it successfully. Now–if I hadn’t married you–“
“Always blaming me,” she said, tenderly. “But even if you hadn’t married me, I suspect that sooner or later you’d have decided for being a large man in a valley rather than a very small imitation man on a mountain.” Then, after a moment’s thought, and with sudden radiance: “But a man as big as you are wouldn’t be let stay in the valley, no matter how hard he tried.”
He laughed. “I’ve no objection to the mountain top,” said he. “But I see that, if I get there, it’ll have to be in my own way. Let’s go out and mail the letter.”
And they went down the drive together to the post box, and, strolling back, sat under the trees in the moonlight until nearly midnight, feeling as if they had only just begun life together–and had begun it right.
* * * * *
When Charles Whitney had read the letter he tore it up, saying half-aloud and contemptuously, “I was afraid there was too big a streak of fool in him.” Then, with a shrug: “What’s the use of wasting time on that little game–especially as I’d probably have left the university the whole business in my will.” He wrote Scarborough, proposing that they delay the assessment until he had a chance to look further into the railway situation. “I begin to understand the troubles down there, now that I’ve taken time to think them over. I feel I can guarantee that no assessment will be necessary.”
And when the railways had mysteriously and abruptly ceased to misbehave, and the strike had suddenly fizzled out, he offered his stock to the university as a gift. “I shall see to it,” he wrote, “that the company is not molested again, but is helped in every way.” Arthur was for holding off, but Scarborough said, “No. He will keep his word.” And Scarborough was right in regarding the matter as settled and acceptance of the splendid gift as safe. Whitney had his own code of honesty, of honor. It was not square dealing, but doing exactly what he specifically engaged to do. He would have stolen anything he could–anything he regarded as worth his while. On the other hand, he would have sacrificed nearly all, if not all, his fortune, to live up to the letter of his given word. This, though no court would have enforced the agreement he had made, though there was no written record of it, no witness other than himself, the other party, and the Almighty–for Charles Whitney believed in an Almighty God and an old-fashioned hell and a Day of Judgment. He conducted his religious bookkeeping precisely as he conducted his business bookkeeping, and was confident that he could escape hell as he had escaped the penitentiary.
CHAPTER XXII
VILLA D’ORSAY
Adelaide did not reach home until the troubles with and through Charles Whitney were settled, and Arthur and Dory were deep in carrying out the plans to make the mills and factories part of the university and not merely its property. When Scarborough’s urgent cable came, Dory found that all the steamers were full. Adelaide could go with him only by taking a berth in a room with three women in the bottom of the ship. “Impossible accommodations,” thought he, “for so luxurious a person and so poor a sailor”; and he did not tell her that this berth could be had. “You’ll have to wait a week or so,” said he. “As you can’t well stay on here alone, why not accept Mrs. Whitney’s invitation to join her?”
Adelaide disliked Mrs. Whitney, but there seemed to be no alternative. Mrs. Whitney was at Paris, on the way to America after the wedding and a severe cure at Aix and an aftercure in Switzerland. She had come for the finishing touches of rejuvenation–to get her hair redone and to go through her biennial agony of having Auguste, beauty specialist to the royalty, nobility and fashion, and demimonde, of three continents, burn off her outer skin that nature might replace it with one new and fresh and unwrinkled. She was heavily veiled as she and Adelaide traveled down to Cherbourg to the steamer. As soon as she got aboard she retired to her room and remained hidden there during the voyage, seen only by her maid, her face covered day and night with Auguste’s marvelous skin-coaxing mask. Adelaide did not see her again until the morning of the last day, when she appeared on deck dressed beautifully and youthfully for the shore, her skin as fair and smooth as a girl’s, and looking like an elder sister of Adelaide’s–at a distance.
She paused in New York; Adelaide hastened to Saint X, though she was looking forward uneasily to her arrival because she feared she would have to live at the old Hargrave house in University Avenue. Miss Skeffington ruled there, and she knew Miss Skeffington–one of those old-fashioned old maids whose rigid ideas of morality extend to the ordering of personal habits in minutest detail. Under her military sway everyone had to rise for breakfast at seven sharp, had to dine exactly at noon, sup when the clock struck the half hour after five. Ingress and egress for members of the family was by the side door only, the front door being reserved for company. For company also was the parlor, and for company the front stairs with their brilliant carpet, new, though laid for the first time nearly a quarter of a century before; for company also was the best room in the house, which ought to have been attractive, but was a little damp from being shut up so much, and was the cause of many a cold to guests. “I simply can’t stand it to live by the striking of clocks!” thought Adelaide. “I must do something! But what?”
Her uneasiness proved unnecessary, however. Dory disappointed his aunt, of a new and interestingly difficult spirit to subdue, by taking rooms at the Hendricks Hotel until they should find a place of their own. Mrs. Ranger asked them to live with her; but Adelaide shrank from putting herself in a position where her mother and Arthur could, and her sister-in-law undoubtedly would, “know too much about our private affairs.” Mrs. Ranger did not insist. She would not admit it to herself, but, while she worshiped Del and thought her even more beautiful than she was, and just about perfection in every way, still Madelene was more satisfactory for daily companionship. Also, Ellen doubted whether two such positive natures as Madelene’s and Adelaide’s would be harmonious under the same roof. “What’s more,” she reflected, “there may be a baby–babies.”
Within a fortnight of Del’s return, and before she and Dory had got quite used to each other again, she fixed on an abode. “Mrs. Dorsey was here this afternoon,” said she, with enthusiasm which, to Dory’s acute perceptions, seemed slightly exaggerated, in fact, forced, “and offered us her house for a year, just to have somebody in it whom she could trust to look after things. You know she’s taking her daughter abroad to finish. It was too good a chance to let pass; so I accepted at once.”
Dory turned away abruptly. With slow deliberation he took a cigarette from his case, lighted it, watched the smoke drift out at the open window. She was observing him, though she seemed not to be. And his expression made her just a little afraid. Unlike most men who lead purely intellectual lives, he had not the slightest suggestion of sexlessness; on the contrary, he seemed as strong, as positive physically, as the look of his forehead and eyes showed him to be mentally. And now that he had learned to dress with greater care, out of deference to her, she could find nothing about him to help her in protecting herself by criticising him.
“Do you think, Del,” said he, “that we’ll be able to live in that big place on eighteen hundred a year?”
It wasn’t as easy for him thus to remind her of their limited means as it theoretically should have been. Del was distinctly an expensive-looking luxury. That dress of hers, pale green, with hat and everything to match or in harmony, was a “simple thing,” but the best dressmaker in the Rue de la Paix had spent a great deal of his costly time in producing that effect of simplicity. Throughout, she had the cleanness, the freshness, the freedom from affectations which Dory had learned could be got only by large expenditure. Nor would he have had her any different. He wanted just the settings she chose for her fair, fine beauty. The only change he would have asked would have been in the expression of those violet eyes of hers when they looked at him.
“You wish I hadn’t done it!” she exclaimed. And if he had not glanced away so quickly he would have seen that she was ready to retreat.
“Well, it’s not exactly the start I’d been thinking of,” replied he, reluctantly but tentatively.
It is not in human nature to refuse to press an offered advantage. Said Del: “Can’t we close up most of the house–use only five or six rooms on the ground floor? And Mrs. Dorsey’s gardener and his helpers will be there. All we have to do is to see that they’ve not neglected the grounds.” She was once more all belief and enthusiasm. “It seemed to me, taking that place was most economical, and so comfortable. Really, Dory, I didn’t accept without thinking.”
Dory was debating with himself: To take that house–it was one of those trifles that are anything but trifles–like the slight but crucial motion at the crossroads in choosing the road to the left instead of the road to the right. Not to take the house–Del would feel humiliated, reasoned he, would think him unreasonably small, would chafe under the restraint their limited means put upon them, whereas, if he left the question of living on their income entirely to her good sense, she would not care about the deprivations, would regard them as self-imposed.
“Of course, if you don’t like it, Dory,” she now said, “I suppose Mrs. Dorsey will let me off. But I’m sure you’d be delighted, once we got settled. The house is so attractive–at least, I think I can make it attractive by packing away her showy stuff and rearranging the furniture. And the grounds–Dory, I don’t see how you can object!”
Dory gave a shrug and a smile. “Well, go ahead. We’ll scramble through somehow.” He shook his head at her in good-humored warning. “Only, please don’t forget what’s coming at the end of your brief year of grandeur.”
Adelaide checked the reply that was all but out. She hastily reflected that it might not be wise to let him know, just then, that Mrs. Dorsey had said they could have the house for two years, probably for three, perhaps for five. Instead, she said, “It isn’t the expense, after all, that disturbs you, is it?”
He smiled confession. “No.”
“I know it’s snobbish of me to long for finery so much that I’m even willing to live in another person’s and show off in it,” she sighed. “But–I’m learning gradually.”
He colored. Unconsciously she had put into her tone–and this not for the first time, by any means–a suggestion that there wasn’t the slightest danger of his wearying of waiting, that she could safely take her time in getting round to sensible ideas and to falling in love with him. His eyes had the look of the veiled amusement that deliberately shows through, as he said, “That’s good. I’ll try to be patient.”
It was her turn to color. But, elbowing instinctive resentment, came uneasiness. His love seemed to her of the sort that flowers in the romances–the love that endures all, asks nothing, lives forever upon its own unfed fire. As is so often the case with women whose charms move men to extravagance of speech and emotion, it was a great satisfaction to her, to her vanity, to feel that she had inspired this wonderful immortal flame; obviously, to feed such a flame by giving love for love would reduce it to the commonplace. All women start with these exaggerated notions of the value of being loved; few of them ever realize and rouse themselves, or are aroused, from their vanity to the truth that the value is all the other way. Adelaide was only the natural woman in blindly fancying that Dory was the one to be commiserated, in not seeing that she herself was a greater loser than he, that to return his love would not be a concession but an acquisition. Most men are content to love, to compel women to receive their love; they prefer the passive, the receptive attitude in the woman, and are even bored by being actively loved in return; for love is exacting, and the male is impatient of exaction. Adelaide did not understand just this broad but subtle difference between Dory and “most men”–that he would feel that he was violating her were he to sweep her away in the arms of his impetuous released passion, as he knew he could. He felt that such a yielding was, after all, like the inert obedience of the leaf to the storm wind–that what he could compel, what women call love, would be as utterly without substance as an image in a mirror, indeed, would be a mere passive reflection of his own love–all most men want, but worthless to him.
Could it be that Dory’s love had become–no, not less, but less ardent? She saw that he was deep in thought–about her, she assumed, with an unconscious vanity which would have excited the mockery of many who have more vanity than had she, and perhaps with less excuse. In fact, he was not thinking of her; having the ability to turn his mind completely where he willed–the quality of all strong men, and the one that often makes the weak-willed think them hard–he was revolving the vast and inspiring plans Arthur and he had just got into practical form–plans for new factories and mills such as a university, professing to be in the forefront of progress need not be ashamed to own or to offer to its students as workshops. All that science has bestowed in the way of making labor and its surroundings clean and comfortable, healthful and attractive, was to be provided; all that the ignorance and the shortsighted greediness of employers, bent only on immediate profits and keeping their philanthropy for the smug penuriousness and degrading stupidity of charity, deny to their own self-respect and to justice for their brothers in their power. Arthur and he had wrought it all out, had discovered as a crowning vindication that the result would be profitable in dollars, that their sane and shrewd utopianism would produce larger dividends than the sordid and slovenly methods of their competitors. “It is always so. Science is always economical as well as enlightened and humane,” Dory was thinking when Adelaide’s voice broke into his reverie.
“You are right, Dory,” said she. “And I shall give up the house. I’ll go to see Mrs. Dorsey now.”
“The house?–What–Oh, yes–well–no–What made you change?”
She did not know the real reason–that, studying his face, the curve and set of his head, the strength of the personality which she was too apt to take for granted most of the time because he was simple and free from pretense, she had been reminded that he was not a man to be trifled with, that she would better bestir herself and give more thought and attention to what was going on in that superbly shaped head of his–about her, about her and him. “Oh, I don’t just know,” replied she, quite honestly. “It seems to me now that there’ll be too much fuss and care and–sham. And I intend to interest myself in _your_ work. You’ve hardly spoken of it since I got back.”
“There’s been so little time–“
“You mean,” she interrupted, “I’ve been so busy unpacking my silly dresses and hats and making and receiving silly calls.”
“Now you’re in one of your penitential moods,” laughed Dory. “And to-morrow you’ll wish you hadn’t changed about the house. No–that’s settled. We’ll take it, and see what the consequences are.”
Adelaide brightened. His tone was his old self, and she did want that house so intensely! “I can be useful to Dory there; I can do so much on the social side of the university life. He doesn’t appreciate the value of those things in advancing a career. He thinks a career is made by work only. But I’ll show him! I’ll make his house the center of the university!”
Mrs. Dorsey had “Villa d’Orsay” carved on the stone pillars of her great wrought-iron gates, to remind the populace that, while her late father-in-law, “Buck” Dorsey, was the plainest of butchers and meat packers, his ancestry was of the proudest. With the rise of its “upper class” Saint X had gone in diligently for genealogy, had developed reverence for “tradition” and “blood,” had established a Society of Family Histories, a chapter of the Colonial Dames, another of Daughters of the Revolution, and was in a fair way to rival the seaboard cities in devotion to the imported follies and frauds of “family.” Dory at first indulged his sense of humor upon their Dorsey or d’Orsay finery. It seemed to him they must choose between making a joke of it and having it make a joke of them. But he desisted when he saw that it grated on Del for him to speak of her and himself as “caretakers for the rich.” And presently his disposition to levity died of itself. It sobered and disheartened and, yes, disgusted him as he was forced to admit to himself the reality of her delight in receiving people in the great drawing room, of her content in the vacuous, time-wasting habits, of her sense of superiority through having at her command a troop of servants–Mrs. Dorsey’s servants! He himself disliked servants about, hated to abet a fellow-being in looking on himself or herself as an inferior; and he regarded as one of the basest, as well as subtlest poisons of snobbishness, the habit of telling others to do for one the menial, personal things which can be done with dignity only by oneself. Once, in Paris–after Besancon–Janet spoke of some of her aristocratic acquaintances on the other side as “acting as if they had always been used to everything; so different from even the best people at home.” Dory remembered how Adelaide promptly took her up, gave instance after instance in proof that European aristocrats were in fact as vulgar in their satisfaction in servility as were the newest of the newly aristocratic at home, but simply had a different way of showing it. “A more vulgar way,” she said, Janet unable to refute her. “Yes, far more vulgar, Jen, because deliberately concealed; just as vanity that swells in secret is far worse than frank, childish conceit.”
And now–These vanities of hers, sprung from the old roots which in Paris she had been eager to kill and he was hoping were about dead, sprung in vigor and spreading in weedy exuberance! He often looked at her in sad wonder when she was unconscious of it. “What _is_ the matter?” he would repeat. “She is farther away than in Paris, where the temptation to this sort of nonsense was at least plausible.” And he grew silent with her and shut himself in alone during the evening hours which he could not spend at the university. She knew why, knew also that he was right, ceased to bore herself and irritate him with attempts to make the Villa d’Orsay the social center of the university. But she continued to waste her days in the inane pastimes of Saint X’s fashionable world, though ashamed of herself and disgusted with her mode of life. For snobbishness is essentially a provincial vice, due full as much to narrowness as to ignorance; and, thus, it is most potent in the small “set” in the small town. In the city even the narrowest are compelled to at least an occasional glimpse of wider horizons; but in the small town only the vigilant and resolute ever get so much as a momentary point of view. She told herself, in angry attempt at self-excuse, that he ought to take her in hand, ought to snatch her away from that which she had not the courage to give up of herself. Yet she knew she would hate him should he try to do it. She assumed that was the reason he didn’t; and it was part of the reason, but a lesser part than his unacknowledged, furtive fear of what he might discover as to his own feelings toward her, were there just then a casting up and balancing of their confused accounts with each other.
Both were relieved, as at a crisis postponed, when it became necessary for him to go abroad again immediately. “I don’t see how _you_ can leave,” said he, thus intentionally sparing her a painful effort in saying what at once came into the mind of each.
“We could cable Mrs. Dorsey,” she suggested lamely. She was at the Louis Quinze desk in the Louis Quinze sitting room, and her old gold negligee matched in charmingly, and the whole setting brought out the sheen, faintly golden, over her clear skin, the peculiarly fresh and intense shade of her violet eyes, the suggestion of gold in her thick hair, with its wan, autumnal coloring, such as one sees in a field of dead ripe grain. She was doing her monthly accounts, and the showing was not pleasant. She was a good housekeeper, a surprisingly good manager; but she did too much entertaining for their income.
Dory was too much occupied with the picture she made as she sat there to reply immediately. “I doubt,” he finally replied, “if she could arrange by cable for some one else whom she would trust with her treasures. No, I guess you’ll have to stay.”
“I _wish_ I hadn’t taken this place!” she exclaimed. It was the first confession of what her real, her sane and intelligent self had been proclaiming loudly since the first flush of interest and pleasure in her “borrowed plumage” had receded. “Why _do_ you let me make a fool of myself?”
“No use going into that,” replied he, on guard not to take too seriously this belated penitence. He was used to Del’s fits of remorse, so used to them that he thought them less valuable than they really were, or might have been had he understood her better–or, not bothered about trying to understand her. “I shan’t be away long, I imagine,” he went on, “and I’ll have to rush round from England to France, to Germany, to Austria, to Switzerland. All that would be exhausting for you, and only a little of the time pleasant.”
His words sounded to her like a tolling over the grave of that former friendship and comradeship of theirs. “I really believe you’ll be glad to get away alone,” cried she, lips smiling raillery, eyes full of tears.
“Do you think so?” said Dory, as if tossing back her jest. But both knew the truth, and each knew that the other knew it. He was as glad to escape from those surroundings as she to be relieved of a presence which edged on her other-self to scoff and rail and sneer at her. It had become bitterness to him to enter the gates of the Villa d’Orsay. His nerves were so wrought up that to look about the magnificent but too palace-like, too hotel-like rooms was to struggle with a longing to run amuck and pause not until he had reduced the splendor to smithereens. And in that injustice of chronic self-excuse which characterizes all human beings who do not live by intelligently formed and intelligently executed plan, she was now trying to soothe herself with blaming him for her low spirits; in fact, they were wholly the result of her consciously unworthy mode of life, and of an incessant internal warfare, exhausting and depressing. Also, the day would surely come when he would ask how she was contriving to keep up such imposing appearances on their eighteen hundred a year; and then she would have to choose between directly deceiving him and telling him that she had broken–no, not broken, that was too harsh–rather, had not yet fulfilled the promise to give up the income her father left her.
After a constrained silence, “I really don’t need anyone to stop here with me,” she said to him, as if she had been thinking of it and not of the situation between them, “but I’ll get Stella Wilmot and her brother.”
“Arden?” said Dory, doubtfully. “I know he’s all right in some ways, and he has stopped drinking since he got the place at the bank. But–“
“If we show we have confidence in him,” replied Adelaide, “I think it will help him.”
“Very well,” said Dory. “Besides, it isn’t easy to find people of the sort you’d be willing to have, who can leave home and come here.”
Adelaide colored as she smiled. “Perhaps that _was_ my reason, rather than helping him,” she said.
Dory flushed. “Oh, I didn’t mean to insinuate that!” he protested, and checked himself from saying more. In their mood each would search the other’s every word for a hidden thrust, and would find it.
The constraint between them, which thus definitely entered the stage of deep cleavage where there had never been a joining, persisted until the parting. Since the wedding he had kissed her but once–on her arrival from Europe. Then, there was much bustle of greeting from others, and neither had had chance to be self-conscious. When they were at the station for his departure, it so happened that no one had come with them. As the porter warned them that the train was about to move, they shook hands and hesitated, blushing and conscious of themselves and of spectators, “Good-by,” stammered Dory, with a dash at her cheek.
“Good-by,” she murmured, making her effort at the same instant.
The result was a confusion of features and hat brims that threw them into a panic, then into laughter, and so made the second attempt easy and successful. It was a real meeting of the lips. His arm went round her, her hand pressed tenderly on his shoulder, and he felt a trembling in her form, saw a sudden gleam of light leap into and from her eyes. And all in that flash the secret of his mistake in managing his love affair burst upon him.
“Good-by, Dory–dear,” she was murmuring, a note in her voice like the shy answer of a hermit thrush to the call of her mate.
“All aboard!” shouted the conductor, and the wheels began to move.
“Good-by–good-by,” he stammered, his blood surging through his head.
It came into her mind to say, “I care for you more than I knew.” But his friend the conductor was thrusting him up the steps of the car. “I wish I had said it,” thought she, watching the train disappear round the curve. “I’ll write it.”
But she did not. When the time came to write, that idea somehow would not fit in with the other things she was setting down. “I think I do care for him–as a friend,” she decided. “If he had only compelled me to find out the state of my own mind! What a strange man! I don’t see how he can love me, for he knows me as I am. Perhaps he really doesn’t; sometimes I think he couldn’t care for a woman as a woman wants to be cared for.” Then as his face as she had last seen it rose before her, and her lips once more tingled, “Oh, yes, he _does_ care! And without his love how wretched I’d be! What a greedy I am–wanting his love and taking it, and giving nothing in return.” That last more than half-sincere, though she, like not a few of her sisters in the “Woman’s Paradise,” otherwise known as the United States of America, had been spoiled into greatly exaggerating the value of her graciously condescending to let herself be loved.
And she was lonely without him. If he could have come back at the end of a week or a month, he would have been received with an ardor that would have melted every real obstacle between them. Also, it would have dissipated the far more obstructive imaginary obstacles from their infection with the latter-day vice of psychologizing about matters which lie in the realm of physiology, not of psychology. But he did not come; and absence, like bereavement, has its climax, after which the thing that was begins to be as if it had not been.
He was gone; and that impetuous parting caress of his had roused in her an impulse that would never again sleep, would pace its cage restlessly, eager for the chance to burst forth. And he had roused it when he would not be there to make its imperious clamor personal to himself.
As Estelle was at her shop all day, and not a few of the evenings, Del began to see much of Henrietta Hastings. Grandfather Fuller was now dead and forgotten in the mausoleum into which he had put one-fifth of his fortune, to the great discontent of the heirs. Henrietta’s income had expanded from four thousand a year to twenty; and she spent her days in thinking of and talking of the careers to which she could help her husband if he would only shake off the lethargy which seized him the year after his marriage to a Fuller heiress. But Hastings would not; he was happy in his books and in his local repute for knowing everything there was to be known. Month by month he grew fatter and lazier and slower of speech. Henrietta pretended to be irritated against him, and the town had the habit of saying that “If Hastings had some of his wife’s ‘get up’ he wouldn’t be making her unhappy but would be winning a big name for himself.” In fact, had Hastings tried to bestir himself at something definite in the way of action, Henrietta would have been really disturbed instead of simply pretending to be. She had a good mind, a keen wit that had become bitter with unlicensed indulgence; but she was as indolent and purposeless as her husband. All her energy went in talk about doing something, and every day she had a new scheme, with yesterday’s forgotten or disdained.
Adelaide pretended to herself to regard Henrietta as an energetic and stimulating person, though she knew that Henrietta’s energy, like her own, like that of most women of the sheltered, servant-attended class, was a mere blowing off of steam by an active but valveless engine of a mind. But this pretense enabled her to justify herself for long mornings and afternoons at the Country Club with Henrietta. They talked of activity, of accomplishing this and that and the other; they read fitfully at serious books; they planned novels and plays; they separated each day with a comfortable feeling that they had been usefully employed. And each did learn much from the other; but, as each confirmed the other in the habitual mental vices of the women, and of an increasing number of the men, of our quite comfortable classes, the net result of their intercourse was pitifully poor, the poorer for their fond delusions that they were improving themselves. They laughed at the “culture craze” which, raging westward, had seized upon all the women of Saint X with incomes, or with husbands or fathers to support them in idleness–the craze for thinking, reading, and talking cloudily or muddily on cloudy or muddy subjects. Henrietta and Adelaide jeered; yet they were themselves the victims of another, and, if possible, more poisonous, bacillus of the same sluggard family.
One morning Adelaide, in graceful ease in her favorite nook in the small northwest portico of the club house, was reading a most imposingly bound and illustrated work on Italian architecture written by a smatterer for smatterers. She did a great deal of reading in this direction because it was also the direction of her talent, and so she could make herself think she was getting ready to join in Dory’s work when he returned. She heard footsteps just round the corner, and looked up. She and Ross Whitney were face to face.
There was no chance for evasion. He, with heightened color, lifted his hat; she, with a nonchalance that made her proud of herself, smiled and stretched out her hand. “Hello, Ross,” said she, languidly friendly. “When did _you_ come to town?” And she congratulated herself that her hair had gone up so well that morning and that her dress was one of her most becoming–from Paris, from Paquin–a year old, it is true, but later than the latest in Saint X and fashionable even for Sherry’s at lunch time.
Ross, the expert, got himself together and made cover without any seeming of scramble; but his not quite easy eyes betrayed him to her. “About two hours ago,” replied he.
“Is Theresa with you?” She gazed tranquilly at him as she fired this center shot. She admired the coolness with which he received it.
“No; she’s up at her father’s place–on the lake shore,” he answered. He, too, was looking particularly well, fresh yet experienced, and in dress a model, with his serge of a strange, beautiful shade of blue, his red tie and socks, and his ruby-set cuff-links. “Mr. Howland is ill, and she’s nursing him. I’m taking a few days off–came down to try to sell father’s place for him.”
“You’re going to sell Point Helen?” said Adelaide, politely regretful. “Then I suppose we shan’t see your people here any more. Your mother’ll no doubt spend most of her time abroad, now that Janet is married there.”
Ross did not answer immediately. He was looking into the distance, his expression melancholy. His abstraction gave Adelaide a chance to verify the impression she had got from a swift but femininely penetrating first glance. Yes, he did look older; no, not exactly older–sad, rather. Evidently he was unhappy, distinctly unhappy. And as handsome and as tasteful as ever–the band of his straw hat, the flower in his buttonhole, his tie, his socks–all in harmony; no ostentation, just the unerring, quiet taste of a gentleman. What a satisfactory person to look at! To be sure, his character–However, character has nothing to do with the eye-pleasures, and they are undeniably agreeable. Then there were his manners, and his mind–such a man of the world! Of course he wasn’t for one instant to be compared with Dory–who was? Still, it was a pity that Dory had a prejudice against showing all that he really was, a pity he had to be known to be appreciated–that is, appreciated by the “right sort” of people. Of course, the observant few could see him in his face, which was certainly distinguished–yes, far more distinguished than Ross’s, if not so regularly handsome.
“I’ve been looking over the old place,” Ross was saying, “and I’ve decided to ask father to keep it. Theresa doesn’t like it here; but I do, and I can’t bring myself to cut the last cords. As I wandered over the place I found myself getting so sad and sentimental that I hurried away to escape a fit of the blues.”
“We’re accustomed to that sort of talk,” said Adelaide with a mocking smile in her delightful eyes. “People who used to live here and come back on business occasionally always tell us how much more beautiful Saint X is than any other place on earth. But they take the first train for Chicago or Cincinnati or anywhere at all.”
“So you find it dull here?”
“I?” Adelaide shrugged her charming shoulders slightly. “Not so very. My life is here–the people, the things I’m used to. I’ve a sense of peace that I don’t have anywhere else.” She gazed dreamily away. “And peace is the greatest asset.”
“The greatest asset,” repeated Ross absently. “You are to be envied.”
“_I_ think so,” assented she, a curious undertone of defiance in her voice. She had a paniclike impulse to begin to talk of Dory; but, though she cast about diligently, she could find no way of introducing him that would not have seemed awkward–pointed and provincially prudish.
“What are you reading?” he asked presently.
She turned the book so that he could see the title. His eyes wandered from it to linger on her slender white fingers–on the one where a plain band of gold shone eloquently. It fascinated and angered him; and she saw it, and was delighted. Her voice had a note of triumph in it as she said, putting the book on the table beside her, “Foolish, isn’t it, to be reading how to build beautiful houses”–she was going to say, “when one will probably never build any house at all.” She bethought her that this might sound like a sigh over Dory’s poverty and over the might-have-been. So she ended, “when the weather is so deliciously lazy.”
“I know the chap who wrote it,” said Ross, “Clever–really unusual talent. But the fashionable women took him up, made him a toady and a snob, like the rest of the men of their set. How that sort of thing eats out manhood and womanhood!”
Just what Dory often said! “My husband says,” she answered, “that whenever the world has got a fair start toward becoming civilized, along have come wealth and luxury to smother and kill. It’s very interesting to read history from that standpoint, instead of taking the usual view–that luxury produces the arts and graces.”
“Dory is a remarkable man,” said Ross with enthusiasm. “He’s amazingly modest; but there are some men so big that they can’t hide, no matter how hard they try. He’s one of them.”
Adelaide was in a glow, so happy did this sincere and just tribute make her, so relieved did she feel. She was talking to one of Dory’s friends and admirers, not with an old sweetheart of hers about whom her heart, perhaps, might be–well, a little sore, and from whom radiated a respectful, and therefore subtle, suggestion that the past was very much the present for him. She hastened to expand upon Dory, upon his work; and, as she talked of the university, she found she had a pride in it, and an interest, and a knowledge, too, which astonished her. And Ross listened, made appreciative comments. And so, on and on. When Henrietta came they were laughing and talking like the best of old friends; and at Ross’s invitation the three lunched at the club and spent the afternoon together.
“I think marriage has improved Ross,” said Henrietta, as she and Adelaide were driving home together after tea–tea with Ross.
“Theresa is a very sweet woman,” said Adelaide dutifully.
“Oh, I don’t mean that–any more than you do,” replied Henrietta. “I mean marriage has chastened him–the only way it ever improves anybody.”
“No doubt he and Theresa are happy together,” said Adelaide, clinging to her pretense with a persistence that might have given her interesting and valuable light upon herself had she noted it.
“Happy?” Henrietta Hastings laughed. “Only stupid people are happy, my dear. Theresa may be happy, but not Ross. He’s far too intelligent. And Theresa isn’t capable of giving him even those moments of happiness that repay the intelligent for their routine of the other sort of thing.”
“Marriage doesn’t mean much in a man’s life,” said Adelaide. “He has his business or profession. He is married only part of each day, and that the least important part to him.”
“Yes,” replied Henrietta, “marriage is for a man simply a peg in his shoe–in place or, as with Ross Whitney, out of place. One look at his face was enough to show me that he was limping and aching and groaning.”
Adelaide found this pleasantry amusing far beyond its merits. “You can’t tell,” said she. “Theresa doesn’t seem the same to him that she does to–to us.”
“Worse,” replied Henrietta, “worse. It’s fortunate they’re rich. If the better class of people hadn’t the money that enables them to put buffers round themselves, wife-beating wouldn’t be confined to the slums. Think of life in one of two small rooms with a Theresa Howland!”
Adelaide had fallen, as far as could one of her generous and tolerant disposition, into Henrietta’s most infectious habit of girding at everyone humorously–the favorite pastime of the idle who are profoundly discontented with themselves. By the time Mrs. Hastings left her at the lofty imported gates of Villa d’Orsay, they had done the subject of Theresa full justice, and Adelaide entered the house with that sense of self-contempt which cannot but come to any decent person after meting out untempered justice to a fellow-mortal. This did not last, however; the pleasure in the realization that Ross did not care for Theresa and did care for herself was too keen. As the feminine test of feminine success is the impression a woman makes upon men, Adelaide would have been neither human nor woman had she not been pleased with Ross’s discreet and sincerely respectful, and by no means deliberate or designing disclosure. It was not the proof of her power to charm the male that had made her indignant at herself. “How weak we women are!” she said to herself, trying to assume a penitence she could not make herself feel. “We really ought to be locked away in harems. No doubt Dory trusts me absolutely–that’s because other women are no temptation to him–that is, I suppose they aren’t. If he were different, he’d be afraid I had his weakness–we all think everybody has at least a touch of our infirmities. Of course I can be trusted; I’ve sense enough not to have my head turned by what may have been a mere clever attempt to smooth over the past.” Then she remembered Ross’s look at her hand, at her wedding ring, and Henrietta’s confirmation of her own diagnosis. “But why should _that_ interest _me_,” she thought, impatient with herself for lingering where her ideal of self-respect forbade. “I don’t love Ross Whitney. He pleases me, as he pleases any woman he wishes to make an agreeable impression upon. And, naturally, I like to know that he really did care for me and is ashamed and repentant of the baseness that made him act as he did. But beyond that, I care nothing about him–nothing. I may not care for Dory exactly as I should; but at least knowing him has made it impossible for me to go back to the Ross sort of man.”
That seemed clear and satisfactory. But, strangely, her mind jumped to