The engagement was not one to be missed, at least by a young professional
man who had his way to make, his patients to assemble, in the fierce
struggle of Chicago. The occasion was innocent enough and stupid
enough,--a lecture at the Carsons' by one of the innumerable lecturers
to the polite world that infest large cities. The Pre-Aztec Remains in
Mexico, Sommers surmised, were but a subterfuge; this lecture was merely
one of the signs that the Carsons had arrived at a certain stage in their
pilgrimage.
They had come from Omaha five years before; they were on their way to New
York, where they would be due five years hence. From railroad law, Carson
had grown to the business of organizing monopolies. Some of his handiworks
in this order of art had been among the first to take the field. He was
resting now, while the country was suffering from its prolonged fit of the
blues, and his wife was organizing their social life. They had picked up a
large house on the North Boulevard, a bargain ready for their needs; it had
been built for the Bidwells, just before the panic.
A rapid glance over the rooms proved to Sommers that Mrs. Carson was as
clever a manipulator of capitalists as her husband. There were a few of the
more important people of the city, such as Alexander Hitchcock, Ferdinand
Dunster, the Polot families, the Blaisdells, the Anthons. There were also a
few of the more distinctly "smart" people, and a number who might be
counted as social possibilities. Sommers had seen something in a
superficial way of many of these people. Thanks to the Hitchcocks'
introduction, and also to the receptive attitude of a society that was
still very largely fluid, he had gone hither and thither pretty widely
during this past year. There were quieter, less pretentious circles than
this in which the Carsons aspired to move, but he had not yet found them.
Anything that had a retiring disposition disappeared from sight in Chicago.
Society was still a collection of heterogeneous names that appeared daily
in print. As such it offered unrivalled opportunities for aspiration.
Sommers had not come to the Carsons in the fulfilment of an aspiration.
Mrs. R. Gordon Carson bored him. Her fussy conscious manners bespoke too
plainly the insignificant suburban society in which she had played a minor
part. He came because Dr. Lindsay had told him casually that Louise
Hitchcock was in town again. He arrived late, when the lecture was nearly
over, and lingered in the hall on the fringe of the gathering.
Carson had some reputation for his pictures. There was one, a Sargent, a
portrait of the protagonist in this little drama of success, that hung in a
recess of the hall at the foot of the stairs. R. Gordon Carson, as the
great psychologist had seen him, was a striking person, an embodiment of
modern waywardness, an outcropping of the trivial and vulgar. In a sacque
coat, with the negligent lounging air of the hotel foyer, he stared at you,
this Mr. R. Gordon Carson, impudently almost, very much at his ease. Narrow
head, high forehead, thin hair, large eyes, a great protruding nose, a thin
chin, smooth-shaven, yet with a bristly complexion,--there he was, the man
from an Iowa farm, the man from the Sioux Falls court-house, the man from
Omaha, the man now fully ripe from Chicago. Here was no class, no race,
nothing in order; a feature picked up here, another there, a third
developed, a fourth dormant--the whole memorable but unforgivably ordinary.
Not far away, standing in the doorway of the next room, was Carson himself.
The great painter had undressed him and revealed him. What a comment to
hang in one's own home! The abiding impression of the portrait was
self-assurance; hasty criticism would have called it conceit. All the
deeper qualities of humanity were rubbed out for the sake of this one great
expression of egotism.
When the lecture was finished, a little group formed about the host; he was
telling his experience with the great master, a series of anecdotes that
had made his way in circles where success was not enough.
"I knew he was a hard customer," Sommers overheard him saying, "and I gave
him all the rope he wanted. 'It may be two years before I do anything on
your portrait, Mr. Carson,' he said.
"'Take five,' I told him.
"'I shall charge five thousand.'
"'Make it ten,' said I.
"'I shall paint your ears.'
"'And the nose too.'
"Well, he sent it to me inside of a year with his compliments. The fancy
struck him, he wrote. It was easy to do; I was a good type and all that.
Well, there it is."
He turned on an additional bunch of electric lights before the picture.
"Good, isn't it?" Miss Hitchcock exclaimed behind Sommers.
"Too good," he muttered. "I shouldn't have dared to hang it."
The girl's smooth brow contracted.
"Don't you think it was fine, though, his making up his mind out there in
Sioux Falls that what he wanted was pictures, and the best pictures, and
that he'd have Sargent do his portrait?"
"No more than it's fine for all the rest of these well-dressed men and
women to make up their minds that they want to be rich and luxurious and
important and all that."
Her face became still more puzzled.
"But it is fine! And the successful people are the interesting people."
"That has nothing to do with the matter," he returned dogmatically.
"Don't you think so?" she replied distantly, with a note of reproof in her
voice. He was too young, too unimportant to cast such aspersion upon this
comfortable, good-natured world where there was so much fun to be had. She
could not see the possessing image in his mind, the picture of the
afternoon--the unsuccessful woman.
"There is nothing honorable in wealth," he added, as she turned to examine
a delicate landscape. Her eyes flashed defiantly.
"It means--"
"All this," he moved his hand contemptuously. "Ah, yes, and a lot more," he
added, as her lip trembled. "It shows power and ability and thrift and
purpose and provides means for generosity and philanthropy. But it rots."
"What do you mean?"
"Because it turns the people who have it into a class that come to feel
themselves divinely appointed. Whereas it is all a gamble, a lucky gamble!"
"Not all wealth is a lucky gamble!" she retorted hotly.
Sommers paused, discomfited at the personal turn to the thought.
"I think the most successful would be the first to admit it," he answered
thoughtfully.
"I don't understand you," the girl replied more calmly. "I suppose you are
a socialist, or something of that sort. I can't understand such matters
well enough to argue with you. And I hoped to find you in another mood when
I came back; but we fall out always, it seems, over the most trivial
matters."
"I am afraid I am very blunt," he said contritely. "I came here to find
_you_; what do you want me to talk about,--Stewart's engagement to
Miss Polot? It was given the chief place in the newspaper this morning."
"Sh, sh!" Miss Hitchcock exclaimed cautiously. Little groups were moving in
and out of the rooms, and at that moment a pale-faced, slight young man
came up to Miss Hitchcock.
"May I offer my congratulations?" she said, turning to him with the smile
that Sommers's remark had caused still on her lips. The young man simpered,
uttered the requisite platitude, and moved away.
"Did you congratulate him on the Polot connection or on the girl?" the
young doctor asked.
"You don't know Estelle Polot! She is _impossible_. But Burton Stewart
has got _just_ what he wanted. No one thought that he would do as well
as that. You know they are _fearfully_ rich--she can't escape having a
number of millions. Don't you think a man of forty is to be congratulated
on having what he has been looking for for twenty years?"
Miss Hitchcock's neat, nonchalant enunciation gave the picture additional
relief.
"I don't see how he has the face to show himself. All these people are
laughing about it."
"It _is_ a bad case, but don't you believe that they are not envying
him and praising him. He is a clever man, and he won't let the Polot money
go to waste. He has taken the largest purse--the rest were too light."
Miss Hitchcock seemed to find infinite resources of mirth in the affair.
Other people drifted by them. Several of the younger women stopped and
exchanged amused glances with Miss Hitchcock.
"He's been attentive to all these," Miss Hitchcock explained to Sommers.
"The Polot money is very bad, isn't it?"
Miss Hitchcock shrugged her shoulders.
"It is current coin."
"The system is worse than the _dot_ and _mariage de convenance_.
There is no pretension of sentiment in that, at least. See him hanging over
the girl--faugh!"
"You _are_ crude," Miss Hitchcock admitted, candidly. "Let us move out
of this crowd. Some one will overhear you."
They sauntered into the dimly lighted hall, where there were fewer people,
and he continued truculently:
"I remember that side by side with the report of Miss Polot's engagement
was a short account of the starvation at Pullman, and another column was
headed, 'Nothing to arbitrate: Pullman says he has nothing to arbitrate.'
Did you see that the reporters carefully estimated just how much Miss
Polot's share of the plunder would be?"
"What you need is golf. I have been teaching papa at the Springs. It is a
great resource, and it increases your sense of humor."
"It doesn't seem to have rested you," Sommers answered. "You are tired or
worried."
"Worse yet!" she laughed nervously. "Clearly, you won't do. You must go
back to Marion."
She looked up at him from her low seat with brilliant, mocking eyes.
"I have thought of that. It would not be the worst thing that could happen.
Would _you_ think it possible--Marion?" he asked clumsily.
Her eyes did not fall, but rested steadily on his face. Under this clear
gaze his remark appeared to him preposterous. She seemed to show him how
precipitate, unformed,--crude, as she said,--all his acts were. Instead of
answering his question, she said gently:
"Yes, you are right. I _am_ worried, and I came here tonight to escape
it. But one doesn't escape worries with you. One increases them. You make
me feel guilty, uncomfortable. Now get me something thoroughly cold, and
perhaps we can have that long-promised talk."
When Sommers returned with a glass of champagne, a number of men had
gathered about Miss Hitchcock, and she left him on the outside,
intentionally it seemed, while she chatted with them, bandying allusions
that meant nothing to him. Sommers saw that he had been a bore. He slipped
out of the group and wandered into the large library, where the guests were
eating and drinking. A heavy, serious man, whom he had seen at various
places, spoke to him. He said something about the lecture, then something
about Miss Polot's engagement. "They'll go to New York," he ventured.
"Stewart has some position there, some family." He talked about the
Stewarts and the Polots, and finally he went to the dressing room to smoke.
Sommers had made up his mind to leave, and was looking for Mrs. Carson,
when he came across Miss Hitchcock again.
"The man you were talking with is quite a tragedy," she said unconcernedly,
picking up the conversation where she had dropped it. "I knew him when he
left college. He was an athletic fellow, a handsome man. His people were
nice, but not rich. He was planning to go to Montana to take a place in
some mines, but he got engaged to the daughter of a very wealthy man. He
didn't go. He married Miss Prudence Fisher, and he has simply grown fat.
It's an old story--"
"And a tragic enough one. We ought to change the old proverb, 'It is easier
for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a poor man to
marry a rich man's daughter.'"
"It ought not to be so, if the man were a man."
She dwelt upon the last word until the young doctor's face flushed. Then
with the sudden transition of mood, which so often perplexed Sommers, she
said gently, confidently:
"You are quite right. My journey did me no good. There were worries, and we
can't go away this summer. The business situation will keep papa here, and
he is so lonely without me that I hadn't the heart to suggest leaving him.
So we have taken a house at Lake Forest. I shall teach you golf at the new
Country Club, if you will deign to waste your time on us. You will see more
of these good people."
"You must think me--" Sommers began penitently.
"Yes, _they_ would say 'raw' and 'green.' I don't know. I must go
now."
A few minutes later, Sommers met Colonel Hitchcock in the dressing room. As
he was leaving, the old merchant detained him.
"Are you going north? Perhaps you will wait for me and let me take you to
the city. Louise is going on to a dance."
Sommers waited outside the room. From the bedroom at the end of the hall
came a soft murmur of women's voices. He hoped that Miss Hitchcock would
appear before her father took him off. He should like to see her again--to
hear her voice. Every moment some one nodded to him, distracting his
attention, but his eyes reverted immediately to the end of the hall. Men
and women were passing out, down the broad staircase that ended in front of
the intelligent portrait. The women in rich opera cloaks, the men in black
capes carrying their crush hats under their arms, were all alike; they were
more like every other collection of the successful in the broad earth than
one might have expected.
Sommers caught bits of the conversation.
"Jim has taken the Paysons' place."
"Is that so? We are going to York."
"--Shall join them in Paris--dinner last Friday--did you see _The Second
Mrs. Tanqueray_--our horses are always ill--"
It sounded like the rustle of skirts, the stretching of kid. There was
dulness in the atmosphere. Yet if it was dull, Sommers realized that it was
his own fault--a conclusion he usually took away with him from the feasts
of the rich which he attended. He lacked the power to make the most of his
opportunities. The ability to cultivate acquaintances, to push his way into
a good place in this sleek company of the well-to-do,--an ability
characteristically American,--he was utterly without. It would be better
for him, he reflected with depression, to return to Marion, Ohio, or some
similar side-track of the world, or to reenter the hospital and bury
himself in a quite subordinate position.
There was still an eddy of guests about the host and his wife near the
great portrait. They were laughing loudly. Carson's thin face was beaming.
Even Mrs. Carson's face had lost some of its tension. Sommers could watch
her manner from his position in the upper hall. She was dismissing a minor
guest with a metallic smile. 'To aspire to this!' he murmured
unconsciously. 'This, the triumph of success!'
"Still waiting?"
Miss Hitchcock was passing, her long wrap trailing lightly behind. Her eyes
glowed underneath a white mantilla.
"I am ready to go now," Sommers replied. "You are too tired for the dance."
"I must go--I can't bear to miss anything. It is stupid--but it is exciting
at the same time. Good-by. Remember, Lake Forest in a fortnight. And learn
to take it easily!"
She smiled and disappeared in the wake of Mrs. Porter. How easily she
seemed to take it! The man she married would have to be of the world, as
large a world as she could contrive to get. She would always be "going on."
Imaginatively, with the ignorance of a young man, he attributed to her
appetites for luxury, for power, for success. _He_ was merely an
instance of her tolerance. Really he was a very little thing in her cosmos,
and if he wished to be more, he would have to take an interest in just
this.
Colonel Hitchcock came out at last, in close conversation with old
Blaisdell. They were talking business. Hitchcock's kindly face was furrowed
and aged, Sommers noticed. The old merchant put his arm through the young
doctor's, and with this support Sommers received the intimate farewell from
Mrs. Carson.
Colonel Hitchcock ordered the driver to take them to the Metropolitan Club.
"Our talk may take us some time," he explained. "I have been trying to find
you for several days. I have something to ask you to do for me. You may
think it strange that I should go to you instead of to one of my old
friends. But it is something Isaac would have done for me. It is for my
boy."
The weariness of years was in his voice. As briefly and as simply as he
could, he stated the matter. Parker had disappeared; he had gone to New
York and there drawn heavily on his father. The journey which Colonel
Hitchcock had made with his daughter had been largely for the purpose of
finding Parker, and had failed. The boy was ashamed to come back. Now there
was a clew, but it seemed unwise for the father to follow it up himself.
"I don't understand the boy," Colonel Hitchcock concluded. "I'm afraid
everything I do is wrong. I get angry. I have no patience with his polo,
his spending so much money uselessly--he spends ten times as much money as
any man among my friends did at his age."
"You have ten times as much as any one of their fathers had," Sommers
protested with a smile.
"Well, then, I guess I had better stop, if that's what it means. He may
find there isn't so much after all. This panic is pushing me. _I_
can't leave Chicago another day. He should be here fighting with me,
helping me--and he is sneaking in some hotel, with his tail between his
legs."
He breathed heavily at the bitterness of the thought. Everything in his
life had been honorable, open to all: he had fought fair and hard and
long--for this.
"If it weren't for Louise and his mother, I would let him starve until he
was ready to come home. But his mother is ill--she can't be troubled."
"And you can't let him disgrace himself publicly--do something that would
make it hard for him to come back at all," Sommers suggested.
"No, I suppose not," the older man admitted, with a grateful glance. "I
can't refuse to help him, poor boy; perhaps I have made him weak."
Sommers offered to do what he could,--to hunt Parker up, get him on his
feet, and bring him back to Chicago. He would leave that night. They had
stopped at the club to finish their talk, and while Colonel Hitchcock was
writing some letters, Sommers drove to his rooms for his bag. It was nearly
midnight before he returned. As they drove over to the station, Colonel
Hitchcock said:
"I have told him the whole thing: how hard pressed I am; how his mother is
worrying and ill--well, I don't feel it will make much difference. He could
_see_ all that."
"You must remember that he has always had every inducement to enjoy
himself," the young doctor ventured. "He doesn't understand _your_
life. You sent him to a very nice private school, and whenever he failed
got him tutors. You made him feel that he was a special case in the world.
And he has always been thrown with boys and young men who felt _they_
were special cases. At college he lived with the same set--"
"His mother and I wanted him to start with every advantage, to have a
gentleman's education. At home he's seen nothing of extravagance and
self-indulgence."
Sommers nodded sympathetically. It was useless to discuss the matter. The
upright, courageous old merchant, whose pride was that he had never
committed one mean action in the accumulation of his fortune, could never
understand this common misfortune. He belonged to a different world from
that in which his son was to take his part. They turned to other
topics,--the business depression, the strike, the threatened interference
of the American Railway Union.
"Blaisdell, who is the general manager of the C. K. and G.," Colonel
Hitchcock remarked, "was saying tonight that he expected the Pullman people
would induce the A. R. U. to strike. If they stir up the unions all over
the country, business will get worse and worse. All we needed to make
things as bad as can be was a great railroad strike."
"I suppose so," Sommers responded. "Why won't the Pullman people consent to
arbitrate?"
The old merchant shook his head.
"They'd divide their twenty millions of surplus and go out of business
first. They say they're saving money on the strike. Did you ever know of
people with the whip-hand who had anything to arbitrate?"