"Why are you afraid?"
"I am not afraid." She clasped her hands behind her, like his, looked
at him with laughing, level eyes; for he and she were of the same
height. "Not a bit."
"Why were you afraid?" he corrected. "You never were before."
She seemed to reflect. "No, I never was," she admitted. Her gaze
dropped and her color came.
"Neva," he said gently, "do you love me?"
She lifted her eyes, studied him with the characteristic half closing of
the lids that made her gaze so intense and so alluring. He could not
decide whether that gaze was coquetry, as he hoped, or simply sincere
inquiry, as he feared. "I do not know," she said. "I admire and
respect you above all men."
He laughed, carefully concealing how her words had stung him. "Admire!
Respect!" He made a mocking little bow. "I thank you, madam. But--in
old age--after death--is soon enough for that cold grandeur."
"I do not know," she repeated. "I had never thought about it until a
while ago--when you--when your expression--" She dropped her gaze
again. "I can't explain."
Coquetry or shyness? He could not tell. "Neva, do you love anyone
else?"
"I think--not," replied she, very low.
His eyes were like a tiger peering through a flower-freighted bush.
"You love Armstrong," he urged, softly as the purr before the spring.
She was gazing steadily at him now. "We were talking of you and me,"
rejoined she, her voice clear and positive. "If I loved you, it would
not be because I did not love some other man. If I did not love you it
would not be because I did love some other."
There might be evasion in that reply, but there could be no lack of
sincerity. "I beg your pardon," he apologized. "I forgot. The idea
that there could be such a woman as you is very new to me. A few
minutes ago, I made a discovery as startling as when I first saw
you--there at the Morrises."
"How much I owe you!" she exclaimed, and her whole face lighted up.
But his shadowed; for he remembered that of all the emotions gratitude
is least akin to love. "I made a startling discovery," he went on. "I
discovered you--a you I had never suspected. And I discovered a me I
had never dreamed of. Neva, I love you. I have never loved before."
She grew very pale, and he thought she was trembling. But when, with her
returning color, her eyes lifted to his, they were mocking. "Why, your
tone was even better than I should have anticipated. You--love?" scoffed
she. "Do you think I could study you this long and not find out at
least that about you?"
"I love you," he insisted, earnestly enough, though his eyes were
echoing her mockery.
"You could not love," affirmed she. "You have given yourself out little
by little--here and there. You have really nothing left to give."
A man of less vision, of slower mind would have been able to protest.
But Boris instantly saw what she meant, felt the truth in her verdict.
"Nothing left to give?" he repeated. "Do you think so?"
"I know it," replied she.
There are some words that sound like the tolling of the bells of fate;
those words of hers sounded thus to him. "Nothing left to give," he
repeated. Had he indeed wasted his whole self upon trifles? Had he lit
his lamps so long before the feast that now, with the bride come, they
were quite burned out? He looked at her and, like the vague yet vivid
visions music shows us and snatches away before we have seen more than
just that they were there, he caught a haunting glimpse of the beauty
supernal which he loved and longed for, but with his tired, blunted
senses could not hope to realize or attain.... The blasphemer's
fate!--to kiss the dust before the god he had reviled.... He burst out
laughing, his hearty, sensuous, infectious laughter. "I'm getting
senile," said he. With a flash of angrily reluctant awe, "Or rather,
you have bewitched me." He got ready to depart. "So, my lady of joy
and pain, you do not love me--yet?" he inquired jestingly.
She shook her head with a smile which the gleam of her eyes from their
narrow lids and the sweeping lashes made coquettish. "Not yet," replied
she, in his own tone.
"Well, don't try. Love doesn't come for must. To-morrow? Yes. A new
day, a new deal."
They shook hands warmly, looked at each other with laughing eyes, no
shadow of seriousness either in him or in her. "You are the first woman
I ever loved," said he. "And you shall be the last. I do not like this
love, now that I am acquainted with it." The sunlight pouring upon his
head made him beautiful like a Bacchus, with color and life glittering
in his crisp, reddish hair and virile, close-cropped beard. "I do not
feel safe when my soul's center of gravity is in another person." He
kissed her hand. "Till to-morrow."
She was smiling, coloring, trying to hide the smile; but he could not
tell whether it was because she was more moved than she cared to have
him see, or merely because his curious but highly effective form of
adoration pleased her vanity and she did not wish him to see it.
"To-morrow," echoed she.
He bowed himself out, still smiling, as if once beyond the door he might
burst into laughter at himself or at her--or might wearily drop his
merry mask. Her last look that he saw was covertly inquiring,
doubtful--as if she might be wondering, Is he in earnest, does he really
care, or was he only imagining love and exaggerating the fancy to amuse
himself and me?
Outside the door, he did drop his mask of comedy to reveal a face not
without the tragic touch in its somberness. "Does she care?" he
muttered. And he answered himself, "After all my experience! ...
Experience! It simply puts hope on its mettle. Do I not know that if
she loved she would not hesitate? And yet-- Hope! You Jack-o'-lantern,
luring man deeper and deeper into the slough of despond. I know you for
the trickster you are, Hope. But, lead on!"
And he went his way, humming the "March of the Toreadors" and swinging
his costly, showy, tortoise-shell cane gayly.
*XXI*
*A SENSATIONAL DAY*
When Fosdick, summoned by telephone, entered the august presence of the
august committee of the august legislature of the august "people of the
State of New York, by the grace of God free and independent," there
were, save the reporters, a scant dozen spectators. The purpose of the
committee had been dwindled to "a technical inquiry with a view further
to improve the excellent laws under which the purified and at last
really honest managements of insurance companies and banks had brought
them to such a high state of honest strength." So, the announcement in
the morning papers that the committee was to begin its labors for the
public good attracted attention only among those citizens who keep
themselves informed of loafing places that are comfortable in the cold
weather. Fosdick bowed with dignified deference to the committee; the
committee bowed to Fosdick--respectfully but nervously. There were five
in the row seated behind the long oak table on the rostrum under the
colossal figure of Justice. Furthest to the left sat Williams, in the
Legislature by grace of the liquor interests; next him, Tomlinson,
representing certain up-the-country traction and power interests; to the
right of the chairman were Perry and Nottingham, the creatures of two
railway systems. The chairman--Kenworthy, of Buffalo--had been in the
Assembly nearly twenty years, for the insurance interests. He was a
serious, square-bearded, pop-eyed little old man, most neat and
respectable, and without a suspicion that he was not the most honorable
person in the world, doing his full duty when he did precisely what the
great men bade. Since the great capitalists were the makers and
maintainers of prosperity, whatever they wanted must be for the good of
all. The fact that he was on the private pay rolls of five companies
and got occasional liberal "retainers" from seven others, was simply the
clinching proof of the fitness of the great men to direct--they knew how
properly to reward their helpers in taking care of the people. There
are good men who are more dangerous than the slyest of the bad.
Kenworthy was one of them.
The committee did not know what it was assembled for. It is not the
habit of the men who "run things" to explain their orders to
understrappers. Smelling committees are of four kinds: There is the
committee the boss sets at doing nothing industriously because the
people are clamoring that something be done. There is the committee the
boss sends to "jack up" some interest or interests that have failed to
"cash down" properly. There is the committee that is sent into doubtful
districts, just before election, to pretend to expose the other
side--and sometimes, if there has been a quarrel between the bosses,
this kind of committee acts almost as if it were sincere. Finally,
there is the committee the boss sends out to destroy the rivals of his
employers in some department of finance or commerce. This particular
smelling committee suspected it was to have some of the shortcomings of
the rivals of the O.A.D. put under its nostrils by its counsel, Morris;
it knew the late Galloway had owned the governor and the dominant boss,
and that Fosdick was supposed to have inherited them, along with sundry
other items of old Galloway's power. Again, the object might be purely
defensive. There had been, of late, a revival of popular clamor against
insurance companies, which the previous investigation, started by a
quarrel among the interests and called off when that quarrel was patched
up, had left unquieted. This committee might be simply a blindfold for
the eyes of the ass--said ass being the public with its loud bray and
its long ears and its infinite patience.
As Fosdick seated himself, after taking the oath, he noted for the first
time the look on all faces--as if one exciting act of a drama had just
ended and another were about to begin. Out of the corner of his eye he
saw Westervelt and Armstrong, seated side by side--Westervelt, fumbling
with his long white beard, his eyes upon the twenty-thousand-dollar
sable overcoat lying across Fosdick's knees; Armstrong, huge and stolid,
gazing straight at Fosdick's face with an expression inscrutable beyond
its perfect calm. "He's taking his medicine well," thought Fosdick. "For
Westervelt must have testified, and then, of course, he had his turn."
Morris, a few feet in front of him, was busy with papers and books that
rustled irritatingly in the tense silence. Fosdick watched him
tranquilly, as free from anxiety as to what he would do as a showman
about his marionette. Morris straightened himself and advanced toward
Fosdick. They eyed each the other steadily; Fosdick admired his
servant--the broad, intelligent brow, the pallor of the student, the
keen eyes of the man of affairs, the sensitive mouth. The fact that he
looked the very opposite of a bondman, at least to unobservant eyes, was
not the smallest of his assets for Fosdick.
"Mr. Fosdick," began the lawyer, in his rather high-pitched, but
flexible and agreeable tenor voice, "we will take as little of your time
as possible. We know you are an exceedingly busy man."
"Thank you, sir," said Fosdick, with a dignified bend of the head. A
very respectable figure he made, sitting there in expensive looking
linen and well cut dark suit, the sable overcoat across his knee and
over one arm, a top hat in his other hand. "My time is at your
disposal."
"In examining some of the books of the O.A.D.--you are a director of the
O.A.D.?"
"Yes, sir. I have been for forty-two years."
"And very influential in its management?"
"They frequently call on me for advice, and, as the institution is a
philanthropy, I feel it my duty always to respond."
Fosdick noted that a smile, discreet but unmistakably derisive, ran
round the room. Morris's face was sober, but the smile was in his eyes.
Fosdick sat still straighter and frowned slightly. He highly
disapproved of cynicism directed at himself.
"In looking at some of the books with Mr. Westervelt a while ago,"
continued Morris, "we came upon a matter--several items--which we
thought ought to be explained at once. We wish no public
misapprehensions to arise through any inadvertence of ours. So we have
turned aside from the regular course of the investigation, to complete
the matter."
Fosdick's face betrayed his satisfaction--all had gone well; Armstrong
was in the trap; it only remained for him to close it. Morris now took
up a thin, well-worn account book which Fosdick recognized as the chief
of Westervelt's four treasures. "I find here," he continued, "fourteen
entries of twenty-five thousand dollars each--three hundred and fifty
thousand dollars, in all--drawn by the President of the O.A.D., Mr.
Armstrong here. Will you kindly tell us all you know about those
items?"
Mr. Fosdick smiled slightly. "Really, Mr. Morris," replied he, with the
fluency of the well-rehearsed actor, "I cannot answer that question, as
you put it. Even if I knew all about the items, I might not recognize
them from your too scanty description."
"We have just had Mr. Armstrong on the stand," said the lawyer. "He
testified that he drew the money under your direction and paid it--the
most of it--in your presence to Benjamin Sigourney, who looked after
political matters for your company."
Fosdick's expression of sheer amazement was sincerity itself. He looked
from Morris to Armstrong. With his eyes and Armstrong's meeting, he said
energetically, "I know of no such transaction."
"You do not recall any of the _fourteen_ transactions?"
"I do not recall them, because they never occurred. So far as I know,
the legislative business of the O.A.D. is looked after by the legal
department exclusively. I have been led to believe, and I do believe
that, since the reforms in the O.A.D. and the new management of which
Mr. Shotwell was the first head, the former reprehensible methods have
been abandoned. It is impossible that Mr. Armstrong should have drawn
such amounts for that purpose. You must--pardon me--have misunderstood
his testimony."
"Let the stenographer read--only Mr. Armstrong's last long reply," said
Morris.
The stenographer read: "Mr. Armstrong: 'Mr. Fosdick explained to me that
the bills would practically put us out of business, except straight life
policies, and that they would pass unless we submitted to the blackmail.
As he was in control of the O.A.D., when he directed me to draw the
money, I did so. All but two, I think, perhaps three, of the payments
were made to Sigourney in his presence.'"
"That will do--thank you," said Morris to the stenographer.
There was a pause, a silence so profound that it seemed a suffocating
force. Morris's clear, sharp tones breaking it, startled everyone, even
Fosdick. "You see, Mr. Fosdick, Mr. Armstrong was definite."
"I am at a loss to understand," replied Fosdick, gray with emotion, but
firm of eye and voice. "I am profoundly shocked--I can only say that,
so far as I am concerned, no such transaction occurred. And I regret
exceedingly to have to add that if any such moneys were taken from the
O.A.D. they must have gone for other purposes than to influence the
Legislature."
"Then, you wish to inform the committee that to the best of your
recollection you did not authorize or suggest those drafts, and did not
and do not know anything about them?"
"I know nothing about them."
"But, Mr. Fosdick," continued Morris slowly, "we have had Mr. Westervelt
on the stand, and he has testified that he was present on more than half
a dozen occasions when you told Mr. Armstrong to draw the money, and
that on one occasion you yourself took the money when Mr. Armstrong
brought it from the cash department."
Fosdick stiffened as if an electric shock had passed through him. For
the first time he lowered his eyes. Behind that veil, his brain was
swiftly restoring order in the wild confusion which this exploding bomb
had made. There was no time to consider how or why Westervelt had
failed him, or how Morris had been stupid enough to permit such a
situation. He could only make choice between standing to the original
programme and retreating behind a pretense of bad memory. "I can always
plead bad memory," he reflected. "Perhaps the day can be saved--Morris
would have sent me a warning if it couldn't be." So he swept the faces
of the committeemen and the few spectators with a glance like an
unscathed battery. "I am astounded, Mr. Morris," said he steadily. "In
search of an explanation, I happen to remember that Mr. Armstrong was
recently compelled to relieve Mr. Westervelt from duty because of his
failing health--failing faculties." His eyes turned to Westervelt with
an apologetic look in them--and Westervelt was, indeed, a pitiful
figure, suggesting one broken and distraught. Fosdick saw in the faces
of committeemen and spectators that he had scored heavily. "I repeat,"
said he boldly, "it is impossible that any such transactions should have
occurred."
He was addressing Morris's back; the lawyer had turned to the table
behind him and was examining the papers there with great deliberation.
Not a sound in the room; all eyes on Fosdick, who was quietly waiting.
"Ah!" exclaimed Morris, wheeling suddenly like a duelist at the end of
the ten paces.
Fosdick startled at the explosive note in his servant's voice, then
instantly recovered himself.
"This letter--is it in your handwriting?" Fosdick took the extended
paper, put on his nose-glasses, and calmly fixed his eyes upon it. His
hand began to shake, over his face a dreadful, unsteady pallor, as if
the flame of life, sick and dying, were flaring and sinking in the last
flickerings before the final going-out.
"Is it your writing?" repeated Morris, his voice like the bay of the
hound before the cornered fox.
Fosdick's hand dropped to his lap. His eyes sought Morris's face and
from them blazed such a blast of fury that Morris drew back a step.
Morris was daunted only for a second. He said evenly, "It is your
handwriting, is it not?"
Fosdick looked round---at Westervelt, whose wrinkled hand had paused on
his beard midway between its yellowed end and his shrunken, waxen face;
at Armstrong, stolid, statuelike; at the reporters, with pencils
suspended and eyes glistening. He drew a long breath and straightened
himself again. "It is," he said.
Morris extended his hand for the letter. "Thank you," he said with
grave courtesy, as Fosdick gave it to him. "I will read--'Dear
Bill--Tell A to draw three times this week--the usual amounts and give
them to S.' Bill--that is Mr. Westervelt, is it not? And does not A
stand for Armstrong? And is not S, Sigourney, at that time the O.A.D.'s
representative in legislative and general political matters?"
"Obviously," said Fosdick, promptly and easily. "I see my memory has
played me a disgraceful trick. I am getting old." He smiled
benevolently at Morris, then toward Westervelt. "I, too, am losing my
faculties." Then, looking at Armstrong, and not changing from kindly
smile and tone, "But my teeth are still good."
"You now remember these transactions?"
"I do not. But I frankly admit I must have been mistaken in denying
that they ever occurred."
"I trust, Mr. Fosdick," said Morris, "your memory will not fail you to
the extent that you will forget you are on oath."
The muscles in Fosdick's spare jaws could be seen working violently.
Morris was going too far, entirely too far, in realism for the benefit
of the public. "Is it part of your privilege as examiner," said he,
with more than a suggestion of master-to-servant, "to insult an old man
upon his failing mind?"
"As none of these transactions was of older date than three years ago,"
replied Morris coldly, "and as the note bore date of only six months
ago--the week before Sigourney died--it was not unnatural that I should
be anxious about your testimony. We do not wish false ideas,
detrimental to the standing of so notable and reputable a man as
yourself, to get abroad."
A titter ran around the room; Fosdick flushed and the storm veins in his
temples swelled. He evidently thought his examination was over, for he
took a better hold on his coat and was rising from the chair. "Just a
few minutes more," said Morris. "In the course of Mr. Westervelt's
testimony another matter was accidentally touched on. We feel that it
should not go out to the public without your explanation."
Fosdick sank back. Until now, he had been assuming that by some
accident his plan to destroy Armstrong had miscarried, that Morris and
Westervelt, to save the day, had by some mischance been forced into a
position where they were compelled to involve him. But now, it came to
him that Morris's icily sarcastic tone was more, far more, arrogant and
insolent than could possibly be necessary for appearances with the
public. The lawyer's next words changed suspicion into certainty. "We
found several other items, Mr. Fosdick, which we requested Mr.
Westervelt to explain--payments of large sums to your
representatives--so Mr. Westervelt testifies they are--and to your
secretary, Mr. Waller, and to your son--Hugo Fosdick. He is one of the
four vice-presidents of the O.A.D., is he not?"
"He is," said Fosdick, and his voice was that of a sick old man.
"It was on your O.K. that one hundred thousand dollars were paid out to
furnish his apartment?"
"You mean the uptown branch of the O.A.D.?" said Fosdick wearily, his
blue-black eyelids drooped.
"Oh! We will inquire into that, later. But--take last year, Mr.
Fosdick. Take this omnibus lease, turning over to corporations you
control properties in Boston and Chicago which cost the O.A.D. a sum,
two per cent. interest on which would be double the rental they are
getting from you. Mr. Westervelt informs us that he knows you get
seventeen times the income from the properties that you pay the O.A.D.
under the leases they executed to you--you practically making the
leases, as an officer of the company, to yourself as another
corporation. My question is somewhat involved, but I hope it is clear?"
"I understand you--in the main," replied Fosdick. "But you will have to
excuse me from answering any more questions to-day. I did not come
prepared. My connection with the O.A.D. has been philanthropic, rather
than businesslike. Naturally, though perhaps wrongly, I have not kept
myself informed of all details."
He frowned down the smiles, the beginnings of laughter. "But the record
is sound!" he went on in a ringing voice. "The O.A.D. has cost me much
time and thought. I have given more of both to it than I have to purely
commercial enterprises. But moneymaking isn't everything--and I feel
more than rewarded."
"We all know you, Mr. Fosdick," said Morris, with an air of satiric
respect.
"I ask you to excuse me to-day," continued the old man, in his
impressive manner. "I wish to prepare myself. To-morrow, or, at most,
in two or three days, I shall _demand_ that you let me resume the stand.
I have nothing to conceal. Errors of judgment I may have committed.
But my record is clear." He raised his head and his eyes flashed. "It
is a record with which I shall soon fearlessly face my God!"
Josiah Fosdick felt that he was himself again. His eyes looked out with
the expression of a good man standing his ground unafraid. And he
smiled contemptuously at the faint sarcasm in Morris's cold voice,
saying, "That is quite satisfactory--most satisfactory."
The committee rose; the reporters surrounded Fosdick. He was courteous
but firm in his refusal to say a word either as to the testimony he had
given or as to that he would give. A dozen eager hands helped him on
with his coat, and he marched away, sure that he was completely
reestablished--in the public esteem; his self-esteem had not been shaken
for an instant. The good man doubts himself; not the self-deceiving
hypocrite. There was triumph in the long look he gave Morris--a look
which Morris returned with the tranquil shine of a satisfied revenge, a
revenge of payment with interest for slights, humiliations, insults
which the old tyrant had put upon him. Long trafficking upon the
cupidity and timidity of men gives the ruling class a false notion of
the discernment of mankind and of their own mental superiority, as well
as moral. It was natural that Fosdick should believe himself above
censure, above criticism even. He returned to his office, like a king
upon whom the vulgar have sought to put indignities. His teeth fairly
ached for the moment when they could close upon the bones of these
"insolent curs."
It was not until he set out for lunch that another view of the situation
came in sight. As he was crossing Waller's office, he was halted by
that faithful servant's expression, the more impressive because it was
persisting in spite of hysterical efforts to conceal it and to look
serenely worshipful as usual. "What is it, Waller?" he demanded.
"Nothing--nothing at all, sir," said Waller, as with a clumsy effort at
pretended carelessness he tossed into the wastebasket a newspaper which
Fosdick had surprised him at reading.
"Is that an afternoon paper?"
Waller stammered inarticulately.