As may be imagined, the incident I have just related threw my life into a
tangle that would have floored a less persistent optimist and romanticist
than myself, yet I became fairly accustomed to treading what the old
moralists called the devious paths of sin. In my passion I had not
hesitated to lay down the doctrine that the courageous and the strong
took what they wanted,--a doctrine of which I had been a consistent
disciple in the professional and business realm. A logical buccaneer,
superman, "master of life" would promptly have extended this doctrine to
the realm of sex. Nancy was the mate for me, and Nancy and I, our
development, was all that mattered, especially my development. Let every
man and woman look out for his or her development, and in the end the
majority of people would be happy. This was going Adam Smith one better.
When it came to putting that theory into practice, however, one needed
convictions: Nancy had been right when she had implied that convictions
were precisely what we lacked; what our world in general lacked. We had
desires, yes convictions, no. What we wanted we got not by defying the
world, but by conforming to it: we were ready to defy only when our
desires overcame the resistance of our synapses, and even then not until
we should have exhausted every legal and conventional means.
A superman with a wife and family he had acquired before a great passion
has made him a superman is in rather a predicament, especially if he be
one who has achieved such superhumanity as he possesses not by
challenging laws and conventions, but by getting around them. My wife and
family loved me; and paradoxically I still had affection for them, or
thought I had. But the superman creed is, "be yourself, realize yourself,
no matter how cruel you may have to be in order to do so." One trouble
with me was that remnants of the Christian element of pity still clung to
me. I would be cruel if I had to, but I hoped I shouldn't have to:
something would turn up, something in the nature of an intervening
miracle that would make it easy for me. Perhaps Maude would take the
initiative and relieve me.... Nancy had appealed for a justifying
doctrine, and it was just what I didn't have and couldn't evolve. In the
meanwhile it was quite in character that I should accommodate myself to a
situation that might well be called anomalous.
This "accommodation" was not unaccompanied by fever. My longing to
realize my love for Nancy kept me in a constant state of tension--of
"nerves"; for our relationship had merely gone one step farther, we had
reached a point where we acknowledged that we loved each other, and
paradoxically halted there; Nancy clung to her demand for new sanctions
with a tenacity that amazed and puzzled and often irritated me. And yet,
when I look back upon it all, I can see that some of the difficulty lay
with me: if she had her weakness--which she acknowledged--I had mine--and
kept it to myself. It was part of my romantic nature not to want to break
her down. Perhaps I loved the ideal better than the woman herself, though
that scarcely seems possible.
We saw each other constantly. And though we had instinctively begun to be
careful, I imagine there was some talk among our acquaintances. It is to
be noted that the gossip never became riotous, for we had always been
friends, and Nancy had a saving reputation for coldness. It seemed
incredible that Maude had not discovered my secret, but if she knew of
it, she gave no sign of her knowledge. Often, as I looked at her, I
wished she would. I can think of no more expressive sentence in regard to
her than the trite one that she pursued the even tenor of her way; and I
found the very perfection of her wifehood exasperating. Our relationship
would, I thought, have been more endurable if we had quarrelled. And yet
we had grown as far apart, in that big house, as though we had been
separated by a continent; I lived in my apartments, she in hers; she
consulted me about dinner parties and invitations; for, since we had
moved to Grant Avenue, we entertained and went out more than before. It
seemed as though she were making every effort consistent with her
integrity and self-respect to please me. Outwardly she conformed to the
mould; but I had long been aware that inwardly a person had developed. It
had not been a spontaneous development, but one in resistance to
pressure; and was probably all the stronger for that reason. At times her
will revealed itself in astonishing and unexpected flashes, as when once
she announced that she was going to change Matthew's school.
"He's old enough to go to boarding-school," I said. "I'll look up a place
for him."
"I don't wish him to go to boarding-school yet, Hugh," she said quietly.
"But that's just what he needs," I objected. "He ought to have the
rubbing-up against other boys that boarding-school will give him. Matthew
is timid, he should have learned to take care of himself. And he will
make friendships that will help him in a larger school."
"I don't intend to send him," Maude said.
"But if I think it wise?"
"You ought to have begun to consider such things many years ago. You have
always been too--busy to think of the children. You have left them to me.
I am doing the best I can with them."
"But a man should have something to say about boys. He understands them."
"You should have thought of that before."
"They haven't been old enough."
"If you had taken your share of responsibility for them, I would listen
to you."
"Maude!" I exclaimed reproachfully.
"No, Hugh," she went on, "you have been too busy making money. You have
left them to me. It is my task to see that the money they are to inherit
doesn't ruin them."
"You talk as though it were a great fortune," I said.
But I did not press the matter. I had a presentiment that to press it
might lead to unpleasant results.
It was this sense of not being free, of having gained everything but
freedom that was at times galling in the extreme: this sense of living
with a woman for whom I had long ceased to care, a woman with a baffling
will concealed beneath an unruffled and serene exterior. At moments I
looked at her across the table; she did not seem to have aged much: her
complexion was as fresh, apparently, as the day when I had first walked
with her in the garden at Elkington; her hair the same wonderful colour;
perhaps she had grown a little stouter. There could be no doubt about the
fact that her chin was firmer, that certain lines had come into her face
indicative of what is called character. Beneath her pliability she was
now all firmness; the pliability had become a mockery. It cannot be said
that I went so far as to hate her for this,--when it was in my mind,--but
my feelings were of a strong antipathy. And then again there were rare
moments when I was inexplicably drawn to her, not by love and passion; I
melted a little in pity, perhaps, when my eyes were opened and I saw the
tragedy, yet I am not referring now to such feelings as these. I am
speaking of the times when I beheld her as the blameless companion of the
years, the mother of my children, the woman I was used to and should--by
all canons I had known--have loved....
And there were the children. Days and weeks passed when I scarcely saw
them, and then some little incident would happen to give me an unexpected
wrench and plunge me into unhappiness. One evening I came home from a
long talk with Nancy that had left us both wrought up, and I had entered
the library before I heard voices. Maude was seated under the lamp at the
end of the big room reading from "Don Quixote"; Matthew and Biddy were at
her feet, and Moreton, less attentive, at a little distance was taking
apart a mechanical toy. I would have tiptoed out, but Biddy caught sight
of me.
"It's father!" she cried, getting up and flying to me.
"Oh, father, do come and listen! The story's so exciting, isn't it,
Matthew?"
I looked down into the boy's eyes shining with an expression that
suddenly pierced my heart with a poignant memory of myself. Matthew was
far away among the mountains and castles of Spain.
"Matthew," demanded his sister, "why did he want to go fighting with all
those people?"
"Because he was dotty," supplied Moreton, who had an interesting habit of
picking up slang.
"It wasn't at all," cried Matthew, indignantly, interrupting Maude's
rebuke of his brother.
"What was it, then?" Moreton demanded.
"You wouldn't understand if I told you," Matthew was retorting, when
Maude put her hand on his lips.
"I think that's enough for to-night," she said, as she closed the book.
"There are lessons to do--and father wants to read his newspaper in
quiet."
This brought a protest from Biddy.
"Just a little more, mother! Can't we go into the schoolroom? We shan't
disturb father there."
"I'll read to them--a few minutes," I said.
As I took the volume from her and sat down Maude shot at me a swift look
of surprise. Even Matthew glanced at me curiously; and in his glance I
had, as it were, a sudden revelation of the boy's perplexity concerning
me. He was twelve, rather tall for his age, and the delicate modelling of
his face resembled my father's. He had begun to think.. What did he think
of me?
Biddy clapped her hands, and began to dance across the carpet.
"Father's going to read to us, father's going to read to us," she cried,
finally clambering up on my knee and snuggling against me.
"Where is the place?" I asked.
But Maude had left the room. She had gone swiftly and silently.
"I'll find it," said Moreton.
I began to read, but I scarcely knew what I was reading, my fingers
tightening over Biddy's little knee....
Presently Miss Allsop, the governess, came in. She had been sent by
Maude. There was wistfulness in Biddy's voice as I kissed her good night.
"Father, if you would only read oftener!" she said, "I like it when you
read--better than anyone else."....
Maude and I were alone that night. As we sat in the library after our
somewhat formal, perfunctory dinner, I ventured to ask her why she had
gone away when I had offered to read.
"I couldn't bear it, Hugh," she answered.
"Why?" I asked, intending to justify myself.
She got up abruptly, and left me. I did not follow her. In my heart I
understood why....
Some years had passed since Ralph's prophecy had come true, and Perry and
the remaining Blackwoods had been "relieved" of the Boyne Street line.
The process need not be gone into in detail, being the time-honoured one
employed in the Ribblevale affair of "running down" the line, or perhaps
it would be better to say "showing it up." It had not justified its
survival in our efficient days, it had held out--thanks to Perry--with
absurd and anachronous persistence against the inevitable consolidation.
Mr. Tallant's newspaper had published many complaints of the age and
scarcity of the cars, etc.; and alarmed holders of securities, in whose
vaults they had lain since time immemorial, began to sell.... I saw
little of Perry in those days, as I have explained, but one day I met him
in the Hambleton Building, and he was white.
"Your friends are doing thus, Hugh," he said.
"Doing what?"
"Undermining the reputation of a company as sound as any in this city, a
company that's not overcapitalized, either. And we're giving better
service right now than any of your consolidated lines."...
He was in no frame of mind to argue with; the conversation was distinctly
unpleasant. I don't remember what I said sething to the effect that he
was excited, that his language was extravagant. But after he had walked
off and left me I told Dickinson that he ought to be given a chance, and
one of our younger financiers, Murphree, went to Perry and pointed out
that he had nothing to gain by obstruction; if he were only reasonable,
he might come into the new corporation on the same terms with the others.
All that Murphree got for his pains was to be ordered out of the office
by Perry, who declared that he was being bribed to desert the other
stockholders.
"He utterly failed to see the point of view," Murphree reported in some
astonishment to Dickinson.
"What else did he say?" Mr. Dickinson asked.
Murphree hesitated.
"Well--what?" the banker insisted.
"He wasn't quite himself," said Murphree, who was a comparative newcomer
in the city and had a respect for the Blackwood name. "He said that that
was the custom of thieves: when they were discovered, they offered to
divide. He swore that he would get justice in the courts."
Mr. Dickinson smiled....
Thus Perry, through his obstinacy and inability to adapt himself to new
conditions, had gradually lost both caste and money. He resigned from the
Boyne Club. I was rather sorry for him. Tom naturally took the matter to
heart, but he never spoke of it; I found that I was seeing less of him,
though we continued to dine there at intervals, and he still came to my
house to see the children. Maude continued to see Lucia. For me, the
situation would have been more awkward had I been less occupied, had my
relationship with Maude been a closer one. Neither did she mention Perry
in those days. The income that remained to him being sufficient for him
and his family to live on comfortably, he began to devote most of his
time to various societies of a semipublic nature until--in the spring of
which I write his activities suddenly became concentrated in the
organization of a "Citizens Union," whose avowed object was to make a
campaign against "graft" and political corruption the following autumn.
This announcement and the call for a mass-meeting in Kingdon Hall was
received by the newspapers with a good-natured ridicule, and in
influential quarters it was generally hinted that this was Mr.
Blackwood's method of "getting square" for having been deprived of the
Boyne Street line. It was quite characteristic of Ralph Hambleton that he
should go, out of curiosity, to the gathering at Kingdon Hall, and drop
into my office the next morning.
"Well, Hughie, they're after you," he said with a grin.
"After me? Why not include yourself?"
He sat down and stretched his long legs and his long arms, and smiled as
he gaped.
"Oh, they'll never get me," he said. And I knew, as I gazed at him, that
they never would.
"What sort of things did they say?" I asked.
"Haven't you read the Pilot and the Mail and State?"
"I just glanced over them. Did they call names?"
"Call names! I should say they did. They got drunk on it, worked
themselves up like dervishes. They didn't cuss you personally,--that'll
come later, of course. Judd Jason got the heaviest shot, but they said he
couldn't exist a minute if it wasn't for the 'respectable'
crowd--capitalists, financiers, millionaires and their legal tools. Fact
is, they spoke a good deal of truth, first and last, in a fool kind of
way."
"Truth!" I exclaimed irritatedly.
Ralph laughed. He was evidently enjoying himself.
"Is any of it news to you, Hughie, old boy?"
"It's an outrage."
"I think it's funny," said Ralph. "We haven't had such a circus for
years. Never had. Of course I shouldn't like to see you go behind the
bars,--not that. But you fellows can't expect to go on forever skimming
off the cream without having somebody squeal sometime. You ought to be
reasonable."
"You've skimmed as much cream as anybody else."
"You've skimmed the cream, Hughie,--you and Dickinson and Scherer and
Grierson and the rest,--I've only filled my jug. Well, these fellows are
going to have a regular roof-raising campaign, take the lid off of
everything, dump out the red-light district some of our friends are so
fond of."
"Dump it where?" I asked curiously.
"Oh," answered Ralph, "they didn't say. Out into the country, anywhere."
"But that's damned foolishness," I declared.
"Didn't say it wasn't," Ralph admitted. "They talked a lot of that, too,
incidentally. They're going to close the saloons and dance halls and make
this city sadder than heaven. When they get through, it'll all be over
but the inquest."
"What did Perry do?" I asked.
"Well, he opened the meeting,--made a nice, precise, gentlemanly speech.
Greenhalge and a few young highbrows and a reformed crook named Harrod
did most of the hair-raising. They're going to nominate Greenhalge for
mayor; and he told 'em something about that little matter of the school
board, and said he would talk more later on. If one of the ablest lawyers
in the city hadn't been hired by the respectable crowd and a lot of other
queer work done, the treasurer and purchasing agent would be doing time.
They seemed to be interested, all right."
I turned over some papers on my desk, just to show Ralph that he hadn't
succeeded in disturbing me.
"Who was in the audience? anyone you ever heard of?" I asked.
"Sure thing. Your cousin Robert Breck; and that son-in-law of his--what's
his name? And some other representatives of our oldest families,--Alec
Pound. He's a reformer now, you know. They put him on the resolutions
committee. Sam Ogilvy was there, he'd be classed as respectably
conservative. And one of the Ewanses. I could name a few others, if you
pressed me. That brother of Fowndes who looks like an up-state minister.
A lot of women--Miller Gorse's sister, Mrs. Datchet, who never approved
of Miller. Quite a genteel gathering, I give you my word, and all
astonished and mad as hell when the speaking was over. Mrs. Datchet said
she had been living in a den of iniquity and vice, and didn't know it."
"It must have been amusing," I said.
"It was," said Ralph. "It'll be more amusing later on. Oh, yes, there was
another fellow who spoke I forgot to mention--that queer Dick who was in
your class, Krebs, got the school board evidence, looked as if he'd come
in by freight. He wasn't as popular as the rest, but he's got more sense
than all of them put together."
"Why wasn't he popular?"
"Well, he didn't crack up the American people,--said they deserved all
they got, that they'd have to learn to think straight and be straight
before they could expect a square deal. The truth was, they secretly
envied these rich men who were exploiting their city, and just as long as
they envied them they hadn't any right to complain of them. He was going
into this campaign to tell the truth, but to tell all sides of it, and if
they wanted reform, they'd have to reform themselves first. I admired his
nerve, I must say."
"He always had that," I remarked. "How did they take it?"
"Well, they didn't like it much, but I think most of them had a respect
for him. I know I did. He has a whole lot of assurance, an air of knowing
what he's talking about, and apparently he doesn't give a continental
whether he's popular or not. Besides, Greenhalge had cracked him up to
the skies for the work he'd done for the school board."
"You talk as if he'd converted you," I said.
Ralph laughed as he rose and stretched himself.
"Oh, I'm only the intelligent spectator, you ought to know that by this
time, Hughie. But I thought it might interest you, since you'll have to
go on the stump and refute it all. That'll be a nice job. So long."
And he departed. Of course I knew that he had been baiting me, his scent
for the weaknesses of his friends being absolutely fiendish. I was angry
because he had succeeded,--because he knew he had succeeded. All the
morning uneasiness possessed me, and I found it difficult to concentrate
on the affairs I had in hand. I felt premonitions, which I tried in vain
to suppress, that the tide of the philosophy of power and might were
starting to ebb: I scented vague calamities ahead, calamities I
associated with Krebs; and when I went out to the Club for lunch this
sense of uneasiness, instead of being dissipated, was increased.
Dickinson was there, and Scherer, who had just got back from Europe; the
talk fell on the Citizens Union, which Scherer belittled with an air of
consequence and pompousness that struck me disagreeably, and with an eye
newly critical I detected in him a certain disintegration, deterioration.
Having dismissed the reformers, he began to tell of his experiences
abroad, referring in one way or another to the people of consequence who
had entertained him.
"Hugh," said Leonard Dickinson to me as we walked to the bank together,
"Scherer will never be any good any more. Too much prosperity. And he's
begun to have his nails manicured."
After I had left the bank president an uncanny fancy struck me that in
Adolf Scherer I had before me a concrete example of the effect of my
philosophy on the individual....
Nothing seemed to go right that spring, and yet nothing was absolutely
wrong. At times I became irritated, bewildered, out of tune, and unable
to understand why. The weather itself was uneasy, tepid, with long spells
of hot wind and dust. I no longer seemed to find refuge in my work. I was
unhappy at home. After walking for many years in confidence and security
along what appeared to be a certain path, I had suddenly come out into a
vague country in which it was becoming more and more difficult to
recognize landmarks. I did not like to confess this; and yet I heard
within me occasional whispers. Could it be that I, Hugh Paret, who had
always been so positive, had made a mess of my life? There were moments
when the pattern of it appeared to have fallen apart, resolved itself
into pieces that refused to fit into each other.
Of course my relationship with Nancy had something to do with this....
One evening late in the spring, after dinner, Maude came into the
library.
"Are you busy, Hugh?" she asked.