Waller took the paper out of the basket, as if he were handling
something vile to sight, touch and smell. "These sensational sheets are
very impudent and untruthful," he said, as he gave it to his master.
Fosdick spread the paper. He sprang back as if he had been struck.
"God!" he cried. "God in heaven!"
In the committee room, after the first unpleasantness, all had been
smooth, and there was not to his self-complacent security of the divine
right monarch the remotest suggestion of impending disgrace. Now--from
the front page of this newspaper, flying broadcast through the city,
through the country, shrieked, "Fosdick Perjures Himself! The eminent
financier and churchman caught on the witness stand. Denies knowledge of
political bribery funds and is trapped! Evades accusations of gigantic
swindles and thefts."
Disgrace, like all the other strong tragic words, conveys little of its
real meaning to anyone until it becomes personal. Fosdick would have
said beforehand that the publication of an attack on him in the low
newspapers would not trouble him so much as the buzzing of a fly about
his bald spot. He would have said that there was in him--in his
conscience, in his confidence in the approval of his God--a tower of
righteous strength that would stand against any attack, as unimperiled
as a skyscraper by a summer breeze. But, with these huge, coarse voices
of the all-pervading press shrieking and screaming "Perjurer. Swindler!
Thief!" he shook as with the ague and turned gray and groaned. He sat
down that he might not fall.
"God! God in heaven!" he muttered.
"It's infamous," cried Waller, tears in his eyes and anger in his voice.
"No man, no matter how upright or high, is safe from those wretches."
Fosdick gripped his head between his hands. "It hurts, Waller--it
_hurts_," he moaned.
"Nobody will pay the slightest attention to it," said Waller. "We all
know you."
But Fosdick was not listening. He was wondering how he had been able to
delude himself, how he had failed to realize the construction that
could, and by the public would, be put upon his testimony. Many's the
thing that sounds and looks and seems right and proper in privacy and
before a few sympathetic witnesses, and that shudders in the full livery
of shame when exposed before the world. Here was an instance--and he,
the shrewd, the lifelong dealer in public opinion, had been tricked at
his own trade as he had never been able to trick anyone else in half a
century of chicane.
"I want to die, Waller," he said feebly. "Help me back into my office.
I can't face anybody."
Into Armstrong's sitting room, toward ten that night, Fosdick came
limping and shuffling. Even had Armstrong been a "good hater" he could
hardly have withstood the pathos of that abject figure. Being too
broadly intelligent for more than a spasm of that ugliest and most
ignorant of passions, he felt as if the broken man before him were the
wronged and he himself the wronger. "But this man made a shameful,
treacherous, unprovoked attempt to disgrace me," he reminded himself, in
the effort to keep a just point of view for prudence's sake. It was
useless. That ghastly, sunken face, those frightened, dim old eyes, the
trembling step-- If a long life of soul-prostitution had left Josiah
Fosdick enough of natural human generosity to appreciate the meaning of
Armstrong's expression, he might have been able to change his crushing
defeat into what in the circumstances would have been the triumph of a
drawn battle. But, except possibly the creative geniuses, men must
measure their fellows throughout by themselves. Fosdick knew what he
would do, were he in Armstrong's place. He clutched at Armstrong's hand
with a cringing hypocrisy of deference that made Armstrong ashamed for
him--and that warned him he dared not yet drop his guard.
"I've been trying to get you since three o'clock this afternoon," said
Fosdick. "I had to see you before I went to bed." He sank into a chair
and sat breathing heavily. He looked horribly old. "You don't believe
I deliberately lied about that money, do you, Horace?"
"Is it necessary to discuss that, Mr. Fosdick? Hadn't we better get
right at what you've come to see me about?"
"I've wired the governor. He don't answer. Morris refuses to see me.
Westervelt--it's useless to see him--he has betrayed me--sold me out--he
on whom I have showered a thousand benefits. I made that man, Horace,
and he has rewarded me. That's human nature!"
Armstrong recalled that, when he was winning over Westervelt by
convincing him of Fosdick's perfidy to him, Westervelt had made the same
remark, had cried out that he loaned Fosdick the first five hundred
dollars he ever possessed and had got him into the O.A.D. "It seems to
me, Mr. Fosdick, that recriminations are idle," said he. "I assume you
have something to ask or to propose. Am I right?"
"Horace, you and I are naturally friends. Why should we fight each
other?"
"You have come to propose a peace?"
"I want us to continue to work together."
"That can be arranged," said Armstrong.
"I hoped so!" Fosdick exclaimed. "I hoped so!"
"But," proceeded Armstrong, seeing the drift of the thought behind that
quick elation, "let us have no misunderstanding. You were permitted to
leave the witness stand when you did to-day because I wished you to have
one more chance to save yourself. That chance will be withdrawn if you
begin to act on the notion that my forbearance is proof of my weakness."
"All I want is peace--peace and quiet," said Fosdick, with his new
revived hope and craft better hid. But Armstrong saw that it was
temperamentally impossible for Fosdick to believe any man would of his
own accord drop the sword from the throat of a beaten foe.
"You can have peace," continued Armstrong, "peace with honor, provided
you give a guarantee. You cannot expect me to trust you."
"What guarantee do you want?"
"Control of the O.A.D."
Fosdick's feebleness fell from him. He sprang erect, eyes flashing,
fists shaking. "Never!" he shouted. "So help me God, never! It's
mine. It's part of my children's patrimony. I'll keep it, in spite of
hell!"
"You will lose it in any event," said Armstrong, as calm as Fosdick was
tempestuous. "You have choice of turning it over to me or having it
snatched from you by Atwater and Trafford and Langdon."
"Atwater!" exclaimed Fosdick.
"When I found you had arranged to destroy me," explained Armstrong, "I
formed a counter-arrangement, as I wasn't strong enough to fight you
alone."
"You sold me out!"
Armstrong winced. Fosdick's phrase was unjust, but since his talk with
Neva he was critical and sensitive in the matter of self-respect; and,
while his campaign of self-defense, of "fighting the devil with fire,"
still seemed necessary and legitimate, it also seemed lacking in
courage. If Fosdick had crept and crawled up on him, had he not also
crawled and crept up on Fosdick? "I defended myself in the only way you
left me," replied Armstrong. "I formed an alliance with the one man who
could successfully attack you."
"So, it is Atwater who has bought the governor--and Morris--yes, and
that ingrate, Westervelt!"
"However that may be," replied Armstrong, "you will be destroyed and
Atwater will take the O.A.D. unless you meet my terms." He was flushing
deep red before Fosdick's look of recognition of a brother in chicane.
He knew Atwater was simply using him, would destroy him or reduce him to
dependence, as soon as Fosdick was stripped and ruined. He felt he was
as fully justified in eluding the tiger by strategy as he had been in
procuring the tiger to defeat and destroy the lion that had been about
to devour him. Still, the business was not one a man would preen
himself upon in a company of honest men and women. And Fosdick's look,
which said, "This man, having sold me out, is now about to sell out his
allies," hit home and hit hard.
But he must carry his project through, or fall victim to Atwater; he
must not let this melting mood which Neva had brought about enfeeble his
judgment and disarm his courage. "If you refuse my offer," he said to
Fosdick, "the investigation will go on, and Atwater will get the O.A.D.
and take from you every shred of your character and much of your
fortune--perhaps all. If you accept my offer, the investigation will
stop and you will retire from the O.A.D. peaceably and without having to
face proceedings to compel you to make restitution."
"How do I know you can keep your bargain?"
"I have the governor and Morris with me," replied Armstrong, frankly
exposing his whole hand. "They, no more than myself, wish to become the
puppets of the Atwater-Langdon-Trafford crowd."
Fosdick reflected. Now that he knew the precise situation, he felt less
feeble. Before Armstrong explained, he had been like a man fighting in
a pitch dark room against foes he could not even number. Now, the light
was on; he knew just how many, just who they were; and, appalling though
the discovery was, it was not so appalling as that struggle in the pitch
dark. "You evidently think I'm powerless," he said at last. "But if
you press me too far, you will see that I am not. For instance, you
_need_ me. You must have me or fall into Atwater's clutches. You see,
I am far from powerless."
"But you forget," replied Armstrong, "you are heavily handicapped by
your reputation. A man who has to fight for his good name is like a
soldier in battle with a baby on his arm and a woman clinging to his
neck. How can you fight without losing your reputation? The committee
is against you. At Monday's session, if you let matters take their
course, all that Westervelt's books show of your profits from the O.A.D.
will be exposed--even the way you made it pay for the carpets on your
floors, for the sheets on your beds, for towels and soap and matches."
Armstrong would not have believed there was in Fosdick's whole body so
much red blood as showed in his face. "It's a custom that's grown up,"
he muttered shufflingly. "They all do it--in every big company, more or
less, directly or indirectly."
"True enough," said Armstrong. "But you'll be the only one on trial.
If you accept my offer, you'll be let alone. Cancel the worst of those
leases, settle the ugliest accounts, all at comparatively trifling cost,
and the public will soon forget."
"And what guarantee do you give that the agreement would be carried
out?"
"My pledge--that's all," replied Armstrong--and again he flushed. He
had avoided specifically giving his word to the Atwater crowd when he
formed alliance with them; still, his "my pledge" had a hollow, jeering
echo. "It's the only possible guarantee in the circumstances--and, as
you are solely responsible for the circumstances, Mr. Fosdick, I do not
see how you can complain."
Fosdick again reflected; the awful, deathly pallor, the deep scams, the
palsylike trembling came back. After a long wait, with Armstrong
avoiding the sight of him, he quavered, "Horace, I'll agree to anything
except giving up the O.A.D." There he broke down and wept. "You don't
know what that institution means to me. It's my child. It's my heart.
It's my reason for being alive."
"Yes, it has been a source of enormous profit to you, Mr. Fosdick," said
Armstrong calmly, for his own strengthening more than to get Fosdick
back to facts. "I appreciate how hard it must be to give up such a
source of easy wealth. But it must be done."
"You don't understand," mourned the old man. "You have no sentiment.
You do not _feel_ those hundreds of thousands, those millions of
helpless people--how they look up to me, how they pray for me and are
full of gratitude to me. Do you think I could coldly turn over their
interests to strangers? Why, who knows what might not be done with
those sacred trust funds?"
"If you persist in letting Atwater get control," said Armstrong, "I fear
those sacred trust funds will soon be larger by about two thirds of what
you regard as your private fortune. I do not like to say these things;
you compel me, Mr. Fosdick. It is waste of time and breath to cant to
me."
If Fosdick had had anything less at stake than his fortune, he would
have broken then and there with Armstrong. As it was, his prudence
could not smother down the geyser of fury that boiled and spouted up
from his vanity. "I must be mad," he cried, "to imagine that such
matters of conscience would make an impression on you."
Armstrong laughed slightly. "When a man is in the jungle, is fighting
with wild beasts, he has to put forward the beast in him. You tried to
ruin me--a more infamous, causeless attack never was made on a man. You
have failed; you are in the pit you dug for me. I am letting you off
lightly." And now Armstrong's blue eyes had the green gray of steel and
flashed with that furious temper which he had been compelled to learn to
rule because, once beyond control, it would have been a free force of
sheer destruction. "If you had not been interceded for, you would now
be a pariah, with no wealth to buy you the semblance of respect. Don't
try me too far! I do not love you. I have the normal instinct about
reptiles."
At that very moment Fosdick was looking the reptile. "Yes, I did try to
tear you down," he hissed. "And I'll tell you why. Because I saw your
ambition--saw you would never rest until you had robbed me and mine of
that which you coveted. Was I not right?"
Armstrong could not deny it. He had never definitely formed such an
ambition; but he realized, as Fosdick was accusing him, that had he been
permitted to go peacefully on as president, the day would have come when
he would have reached out for real power.
Fosdick went on, with more repression and dignity, but no less energy of
feeling, "I cannot but believe that God in His justice will yet hurl you
to ruin. You are robbing me, but as sure as there is a God, Horace
Armstrong, He will bring you low!"
Well as Armstrong knew him, he was for the moment impressed. The only
born monsters are the insane criminals; the monstrous among our powerful
and eminent and most respectable are by long and deliberate indulgence
in self-deception manufactured into monsters, protected from public
exposure by their position, wealth, and respectability. We do not
realize any more than they do themselves, that they have become insane
criminals like the monsters-born. There is a majesty in the trappings
of virtue that does not altogether leave them even when a hypocrite
wears them; also, Armstrong was more than half disarmed by his
new-sprung doubts whether he was wholly justified in meeting treachery
with treachery. He surprised Fosdick by breaking the silence with an
almost deprecating, "I said more than I intended. What you have done,
what I have done, is all part of the game. Let us continue to leave God
and morals--honesty and honor--out of it. Let us be practical,
businesslike. You wish to save your reputation and your fortune. I can
save them for you. I have given you my condition--it is the least I
will ask, or can ask. What do you say?"
"I must have time to think it over," replied Fosdick. "I cannot decide
so important a matter in haste."
"Quite right," Armstrong readily assented. "It will not be necessary to
have your decision before noon to-morrow. The committee has adjourned
until Monday. That will give us half of Saturday and Sunday to settle
the plans that hang on your decision."
"To-morrow noon," said Fosdick, sunk into a stupor. "To-morrow noon."
And he moved vaguely to the door, one trembling hand out before him as
if he were blind and feeling his way. And, so all-powerful are
appearances with us, Armstrong hung his head and did not dare look at
the pitiful spectacle of age and feebleness and misery. "He's a
villain," said the young man to himself, "as nearly a
through-and-through villain as walks the earth. But he's still a man,
with a heart and pride and the power to suffer. And what am I that I
should judge him? In his place, with his chances, would I have been any
different? Was I not hell-bent by the same route? Am I not, still?"
He walked beside Fosdick to the elevator, waited with him for the car.
"Good night," he said in a tone of gentlest courtesy. And it hurt him
that the old man did not seem to hear, did not respond. He wished that
Fosdick had offered to shake hands with him.
He went to Morris, expecting him at a club across the way, and related
the substance of the interview. Morris, who had both imagination and
sensibility, guessed the cause of his obvious yet apparently unprovoked
depression, guessed why he had been so tender with Fosdick.
Nevertheless he twitted him on his soft-heartedness: "The old
bunco-steerer hasn't disgorged yet, has he?--and hasn't the remotest
intention of disgorging. So, my tears are altogether for the policy
holders he has been milking these forty years." Then he added, "Though,
why careless damn fools should get any sympathy in their misfortunes
does not clearly appear. As between knaves and fools, I incline toward
knaves. At least, they are teachers of wisdom in the school of
experience, while fools avail nothing, are simply provokers and
purveyors to knavery."
*XXII*
*A DUEL AFTER LUNCH*
In the respectable morning newspaper the Fosdicks took in, the facts of
Josiah's latest public appearance were presented with those judicious
omissions and modifications which the respectable editor feels it his
duty to make, that the lower classes may not be led to distrust and
deride the upper classes. Thus, Amy, glancing at headlines in search of
the only important news--the doings of "our set"--got the impression
that her father had had an annoying lapse of memory in testifying about
something or other before somebody or other. But the servants took in a
newspaper that had no mission to safeguard the name and fame and
influence of the upper classes; probably not by chance, this newspaper
was left where its vulgar but vivid headlines caught her eye.
She read, punctuating each paragraph with explosions of indignation.
But when she had finished, she reread--and began to think. As most of
us have learned by experience in great matters or small, truth is
rubberlike--it offers small resistance to the blows of prejudice, and,
as soon as the blow passes, it straightway springs back to its original
form and place. Amy downfaced a thousand little facts of her own
knowledge as to where the money came from--facts which tried to tell her
that the "low, lying sheet" had revealed only a trifling part of the
truth. But, when she saw her father, saw how he had suddenly broken,
his very voice emasculate and thin, she gave up the struggle to deceive
herself. There is a notion that a man's family is the last to believe
the disagreeable truth about his relations with the outside world. This
is part of the theory that a man has two characters, that he can be a
saint at six o'clock in the morning and a scoundrel at six o'clock in
the evening, that he is honest at a certain street and number and a liar
and a thief at another street and number. But the fact is that
character is the most closely woven and homogeneous of fabrics, and,
though a man's family do not admit it publicly when the truth about him
is exposed, they know him all the time for what he really is. Amy knew;
her father's appearance, indicating not that he was guilty but that he
was found out and was in an agony of dread of the consequences, threw
her into a hysteria of shame and terror. She avoided the servants; she
startled each time the door bell rang; it might mean the bursting of the
real disgrace, for, in her ignorance of political conditions, she
assumed that arrest and imprisonment would follow the detection of her
father and probably Hugo in grave crimes. She dared not face any of the
few that called; she would not even see Hugo.
On Sunday morning came a note from Alois--a love letter, begging to see
her. She read it with tears flowing and with a heart swelling with
gratitude. "He does love me!" she said. "He must know we are about to
be disgraced, yet he has only been strengthened in his love." Though
the actual state of the family's affairs was vastly different from what
she imagined, though she would have been little disturbed had she known
that publicity was the only punishment likely to overtake persons so
respectable as Fosdick and his son, still the crisis was none the less
real to Amy. In such crises the best qualities of human nature rise in
all their grandeur and exert all their power. She sent off an immediate
answer--"Thank you, Alois--I need you-- Come at three o'clock. Yours,
Amy."
When he came, she let him see what she wanted; how, with all she had
valued and had thought valuable transforming into trash and slipping
away from her, she had turned to him, to the only reality--to the love
that welcomes the storm which gives it the opportunity to show how
strong it is, how firmly rooted. With his first stammering, ardent
protestations, she flung herself into his arms. "I have loved you from
the beginning," she sobbed. "But I didn't realize it until I looked
round for some one to turn to. You do love me?"
"I am here," he said simply, and there is nothing finer than was the
look in his eyes, the feeling in his heart. "And we must be married
soon. We must be together, now."
"Yes, yes--soon--at once," she agreed. "And you will take me away,
won't you? Ah, I love you--I love you, Alois. I will show you how a
woman can love." And never had she been so beautiful, both without and
within.
"As soon as you please," said he. He was not inclined to interrogate
his happiness; but he was surprised at her sudden and unconditional
surrender. He guessed that some quarrel about him with her father or
with Hugo had roused her to assert what he was quite ready to believe
had been in her heart all the time; or, it might be that she wished to
make amends for her father's having planned to send him away when honor
commanded him to stay and guard his reputation. Had the cause of her
hysteria been real, or had he known why she was so clinging and so
eager, he would not have changed--for he loved her and was never
half-hearted in any emotion. Though her money and her position were
originally her greatest attractions for him, his ideal of his own
self-respect was too high and too real for him to rest content until he
had forced love to put him under its spell.
When he left her she sent for Hugo and told him. Hugo went off like a
charge at the snap of the spark. "You must be mad!" he shouted. "Why,
such a marriage is beneath you--is almost as bad as your sister's. It's
your duty to bring a gentleman into the family."
She would not argue that; she would at any cost be forbearing with Hugo,
who must be in torture, if he was not altogether a fool--and sometimes
she thought he was. She restrained herself to saying gently, "You don't
seem to appreciate our changed position."
"What 'changed position'? What are you talking about?" demanded Hugo,
rearing and beginning to stride the length of the room.
She did not answer; answer seemed unnecessary, when Hugo was so
obviously blustering to hide his real state of mind.
"You mean father's testimony?" he said. "What rot! Why, nobody that is
anybody pays the slightest attention to that. Everyone understands how
things are in finance and how vital it is to guard the secrets from
lying demagogues and the mob. There isn't a man of consequence, of high
respectability, on Manhattan Island, or in big affairs anywhere in the
country, who wouldn't be in as difficult or more difficult a position,
if he happened to be cornered. Everyone whose opinion we care anything
about is in the game, and this attack on us is simply a move of our
enemies."
"Deceive yourself, if you want to," replied Amy. "But I know I can't get
married any too soon."
"And marrying a nobody, a mere architect, whose sister works for a
living. You haven't even the excuse of caring for him."
"Don't be too sure about that! In the last twenty-four hours I've
learned a great deal about life, about people. Everybody talks of love,
and of wanting love. But nobody knows what it really means, until he
has suffered. Oh, Hugo, don't be so hard! I need Alois!" And there
were tears in her eyes.
Hugo tossed his head; but he was not unimpressed. "I'm sorry to see you
so weak," said he in a tone that was merely surly and therefore, by
contrast, kindly. "Of course, it's none of _my_ business. But I don't
approve it, I want you distinctly to understand."
"You won't be disagreeable to Alois?"
"I don't blame _him_," said Hugo. "It's natural he should be crazy to
marry you. And, in his way, he isn't a bad sort. He's been about in
our set long enough to get something of an air." Hugo was thinking that
Amy had now lost young Roebuck, the only eligible in her train; that,
after all, since he himself was to be the principal heir to his father's
estate, she was not exactly a first-class matrimonial offering and might
have to take something even less satisfactory than Alois, if she
continued to wait for the husband he could warm to. "Go ahead, if you
must," was his final remark. "I'll not interfere."
This was equivalent to approval, and Amy, strengthened, moved upon her
father. To her astonishment, he listened without interest. She had to
say pointedly, "And I've come to find out whether you approve," before
he roused himself to respond.
"Do as you like," he said wearily, not lifting his eyes from the sheet
of paper on which he had been making aimless markings, when she
interrupted him.
"You wouldn't object if I married--soon?"
"Don't bother me," he flamed out. "Do as you please. Only, don't fret
me. And, no splurge! I'm sick. I want quiet."
Thus it came about that on the Thursday following the engagement, a week
almost to the hour from Fosdick's tumble into his own carefully and
deeply dug pit, Amy married Alois Siersdorf, "with only the two families
present, because of Mr. Fosdick's age and illness"; and at noon they
sailed away on the almost empty _Deutschland_.
Alois did not let his perplexity before Amy's astounding docility
interfere with his happiness. He saw that, whatever the cause, she was
in love with him, so deeply in love that she had descended from the
pedestal, had lifted him from his knees, had set him upon it, and had
fallen down meekly to worship. There were a few of "our people" on the
steamer--half a dozen families or parts of families, of "the push," who
were on their way to freeze and sneeze in the "warm" Riviera for the
sake of fashion. Alois was delighted that Amy was so absorbed in him
that she would have nothing to do with them--this for the first three
days. He had not believed her capable of the passion and the tenderness
she was lavishing upon him. She made him hold her in his arms hours at
a time; she developed amazing skill at those coquetries of intimacy so
much more difficult than the enticements that serve to make the period
of the engagement attractive. And he found her more beautiful, too,
than he had thought. She was one of those women who are not at their
best when on public or semipublic view, but reserve for intimacy a charm
which explains the otherwise inexplicable hold they get upon the man to
whom they fully reveal and abandon themselves.
And Alois, in love with the woman herself now rather than with what she
represented to his rather material imagination, surprised her in turn.
She had thought him somewhat stilted, a distinctly professional man,
with too little lightness of mind--interesting, satisfactory beyond the
prosy and commonplace and patterned run of men she knew; but still with
a tendency to be wearisome if taken in too large doses. She had to
confess that she had misjudged him. He was no longer under the nervous
strain of trying to win her, was no longer handicapped by a vague but
potent notion that he would get more than he gave in a marriage with
her. He revealed his real self--light-hearted, varied, most adaptable;
thoroughgoing masculine, yet with a femininity, a knowledge of and
interest in matters purely feminine, that made companionship as easy as
it was delightful.
They were in the full rapture of these agreeable surprises each about
the other when the representatives of "our set" began to insist upon
associating with them. Amy shrank from the first advances; this only
made the bored fashionables the more determined. Even in her morbidness
about the lost reputation and the menace of prison, she could not
deceive herself as to the meaning of their persistent friendliness. And
soon she was delighted by a third surprise. She found that Hugo had
been right, and she absurdly wrong, about public opinion. There might
be, probably was, a public opinion that misunderstood her father and
judged him by provincial, old-fashioned standards. But it was not _her_
public opinion. All the people of her set were more or less involved,
directly or through their relations by blood and marriage, in
enterprises that necessitated what in the masses--the "lower classes"
and the "criminal classes"--would be called lying, swindling, and
stealing; they, therefore, had no fault to find with Fosdick. Had he
not his fortune still? And was he not impregnable against the mob
howling that he be treated as a common malefactor? Where, then, was the
occasion for Phariseeism? Was it not the plain duty of respectable
people to stand firmly by the Fosdicks and show the mob that
respectability was solidly against demagogism, against attempts to judge
the upper class by lower class standards? Yes; that was the wise
course, and the safe course. Why, even the public prosecutor, a
suspiciously demagogical shouter for "equal justice"--respectability
appreciated that he had to get the suffrages of the mob, but thought he
went a little too far in demagogic speech--why, even he had shown that
the gentleman was stronger in him than the politician. Had he not,
after a few days of silence, come out boldly rebuking "the attempt to
defame and persecute one of the country's most public-spirited and
useful citizens, in advance of judicial inquiry"?
Amy was amazed that she had been so preposterously unnerved by what she
now saw was literally nothing at all, a mere morbid phantasy. But at
the same time, she was devoutly thankful that she had been deluded.
"But for that," said she to herself, "I might not have married 'Lois,
might have stifled the best, the most beautiful emotion of my life,
might have missed happiness entirely." This thought so moved her that
she rose--it was in the dead of night--and went into his room and bent
over him, asleep, and kissed him softly. And she stood, admiring in the
dim light the manliness and the beauty of his head, his waving hair, his
small, becoming blond beard.
"I love you," she murmured passionately. "No price would have been too
dear to pay for you."
Meanwhile Fosdick was settling to the new conditions with a facility
that admirably illustrated the infinite adaptability of the human
animal. The inevitable, however cruel, is usually easy to accept. It
is always mitigated by such reflections as that it could not have been
avoided and that it might have been worse. The more intelligent the
victim, the shorter his idle bewailings and the quicker his
readjustment--and Fosdick was certainly intelligent. Also, among
"practical" men, as youth with its ardent courage and its enthusiasms
retreats and old age advances, there is a steady decay of self-respect,
a rapid decline of belief that in life, so brief, so unsatisfactory at
best, so fundamentally sordid, anything which interferes with comfort,
personal comfort, is worth fighting for; where a young man will
challenge an almost fanciful infringement of his self-respect, an old
man will accept with a resigned and cynical shrug the most degrading
conditions, if only they leave him material comfort and peace.
To aid old Fosdick in making the best of it, the sensational but
influential part of the press each morning and each afternoon girded at
him, at Morris and at the authorities, asking the most impertinent
questions, making the most disgusting demands. Thus, the old man was
not permitted to lose sight or sound of the foaming-jowled bloodhounds
Armstrong was protecting him from. And when he gave full weight to the
fact that Armstrong was also saving him from the
Atwater-Langdon-Trafford crowd, he ceased to hate him, began to look on
him as a friend and ally.
Now that Fosdick and Armstrong were on a basis on which he was compelled
to respect the young man, each began to take a more favorable view of
the other than he had ever taken before. Rarely indeed is any human
being--any living being--altogether or even chiefly bad. If the evil is
the predominant force in a man's life, it is usually because of some
system of which he is the victim, some system whose appeal to appetite
or vanity, or, often, to sheer necessities, is too strong for the
natural instincts of the peaceful, patient human animal. And even the
man who lives wholly by outrages upon his fellow men lives so that all
but a very few of his daily acts are either not bad, or positively good.
The mad beasts of creation, high and low, are few--and they are mad.
All Fosdick's strongest instincts--except those for power and
wealth--were decent, and some of them were fine. It was not surprising
that, with so much of the genuinely good in him, he was able to delude
himself into believing there was reality behind his reputation as a
philanthropic business man.
The hard part of his readjustment was requesting those through whom he
had controlled the O.A.D. to transfer their allegiance to Armstrong. It
is a tribute to Armstrong's diplomacy--and where was there ever
successful diplomat who was not at bottom a good fellow, a sympathetic
appreciator of human nature?--it is a tribute to Armstrong's diplomatic
skill that Fosdick came to look on this transfer--and to hasten it and
to make it complete--as the best, the only means of checking that
"infamous Atwater-Trafford gang." He felt he was simply retreating one
step further into that shadow behind the throne of power in which he had
always been careful to keep himself pretty well concealed. He felt--so
considerate and delicate was Armstrong--that he would still be a power
in the councils of the O.A.D. He himself suggested that Hugo should
retire from the fourth vice-presidency "as soon as this thing blows
over."
The public knew nothing of the transfer. Even when one gang bursts open
the doors to fling another gang out, the public gets no more than a
hasty and shallow glimpse behind the facade of the great institutions
that exploit it and administer its affairs. It was not let into the
secret that for the first time in the history of the O.A.D. its
president did preside, and that he not only presided but ruled as
autocratically as Fosdick had ruled, as some one man always does rule
sooner or later in any human institution. But the
Atwater-Langdon-Trafford "gang" soon heard what was occurring, and, as
Armstrong had known that they must hear, he awaited results with not a
little anxiety. Of Trafford he was not at all afraid--Trafford's tricks
were the familiar common-places by which most men who get on in the
world of chicane achieve their success. About Langdon, he was somewhat
more unquiet; but Atwater was the one he dreaded. What was Atwater
doing, now that he realized--as he must realize--that he had been duped,
that Armstrong had used him to conquer Fosdick and was now facing him,
armed with Fosdick's weapons and with youth and energy and astuteness;
that Morris and the governor were not his tools, as he had been
imagining, but Armstrong's allies; that, instead of being about to
absorb the O.A.D., he might, should Armstrong force the fighting, lose
the great Universal, the greater Gibraltar Mutual, and the Hearth and
Home, which gathered in, and kept, the pennies of poverty?
A few days before the committee was to reassemble, Atwater telephoned
Armstrong, asking him to come to lunch with him. Armstrong accepted and
drew a long breath of relief. He knew that Atwater's agents had been
sounding both the governor and Morris, had "persuaded" little Kenworthy
to pretend to be ill, and to put off the reassembling of the committee.
So, this invitation, this request for a face-to-face talk, must mean
that neither the governor nor Morris had yielded.
When Armstrong and Atwater met, each looked the other over genially but
thoroughly. "I congratulate you, my young friend," said Atwater
heartily. "I can admire a stroke of genius, even though it cuts my own
plans."
No reference from Armstrong to the fact that Atwater had planned to
destroy him as soon as he had used him to get the O.A.D.; no reference
from Atwater, beyond this smiling and friendly hint, to the fact that
Armstrong had allied himself with Atwater ostensibly to destroy Fosdick,
and had shifted just in time to outgeneral his ally. Atwater was a
fine, strong-looking man of sixty and odd years, with the kindest eyes
in the world, and the wickedest jaw--in repose. When he smiled, his
whole face was like his eyes. He had a peculiarly agreeable voice, and
so much magnetism that his enemies liked him when with him. He was a
man of audacious financial dreams, which he carried out with dazzling
boldness--at least, carried out to the point where he himself could "get
from under" with a huge profit and could shift the responsibility of
collapse to others. He was a born pirate, the best-natured of pirates,
the most chivalrous and generous. He was of a type that has recurred in
the world each time the diffusion of intelligence and of liberty has
released the energy of man and given it a chance to play freely. Such
men were the distinction of Athens in the heyday of its democracy; of
Rome in the period between the austere and cruel republic of the
patricians and the ferocious tyranny of Caesardom; of Bagdad and Cordova
after the Moslems became liberalized and before they became degenerate;
of Italy in the period of the renaissance; of France after the
Revolution and before Friedland infatuated Napoleon into megalomania.
During the lunch the two men talked racing and automobile and
pictures--Atwater had a good eye for line and color. They would have
gone on to talk music, had there been time--for Atwater loved music and
sang well and played the violin amazingly, though he practiced only
about two hours a day, and that not every day. But they did not get
round to music; the coffee and cigars were brought, and the waiters
withdrew.
"What is your committee going to do, when it gets together, day after
to-morrow?" said Atwater, the instant the door closed on the head
waiter.
"You'll have to see Morris, to find out that," replied Armstrong.
Atwater smiled and waved his hand. "Bother!" he retorted. "What's your
programme?"
"Morris is the man to see," repeated Armstrong. "I wouldn't give up his
secrets, if I knew them."
"Our man up at Buffalo wires," continued Atwater, "that you have got
Kenworthy out of bed and completely cured. So, you are going on. And I
know you are not the man to wait in the trenches. Now, it happens that
Langdon and I have several matters on at this time--as much as we can
conveniently look after. Besides, what's to be gained by tearing up the
public again, just when it was settling down to confidence? I like a
fight as well as any man; but I don't believe in fighting for mere
fighting's sake, when there are so many chances for a scrimmage with
something to be gained. It ain't good business. The first thing we
know, the public is going to have some things impressed on it so deeply
that even its rotten bad memory will hold the stamp."
"I agree with you," said Armstrong. "I love peace, myself. But I don't
believe in laying down arms while the other fellow is armed to the
teeth, and hiding in the bushes before my very door."
"That means me, eh?" inquired Atwater cheerfully.
"That means you," said Armstrong. "And it isn't of any use for you to
call out from the bushes that you've gone away and are back at your
plowing."
"But I haven't gone away," replied Atwater; "I'm still in the bushes.
However, I'm willing to go.
"On what condition?"
"Give us the two first vice-presidents of the O.A.D. and the
chairmanship of the Finance Committee."
That meant practical control. Armstrong knew that his worst
anticipations were none too gloomy. "And if we don't?" said he.
"Our people have been collecting inside facts about the O.A.D., about
its management ever since you came on to take old Shotwell's place--poor
old Shotwell! If we are not put in a position where we can bring about
reforms in your management and a better state of affairs, we'll have to
take the only other alternative. We have the arrangements made to fire
a broadside from four newspapers to-morrow morning. And we've got it so
fixed that any return fire you might make would get into the columns of
only two newspapers--and one of them would discredit you editorially.
Also, we will at the same time expose your committee." Atwater set out
this programme with the frankness of a large man of large affairs to one
of his own class, one with whom evasions, concealments, and
circumlocutions would be waste of time.
Armstrong smiled slightly. "Then it's war?" he said.
"If you insist."
"You know we've got the governor and the attorney-general?"
"But we've got the press, practically all respectability, and a better
chance with the Grand Jury and the judges."
Armstrong gazed reflectively into space. "A good fight!" he said
judicially. "If I were a very rich man I should hesitate to precipitate
it. But, having nothing but my salary--and a _good, clean, personal_
record--I think I'll enjoy myself. I'll not try to steal the credit of
making the fight, Mr. Atwater. I'll see that you get all the glory that
comes from kicking the cover off hell."
"Speaking of your personal record," said Atwater absently. "Let me see,
you were in the A. & P. bond syndicate, in the little steel syndicate
last spring, in two stock syndicates a couple of months ago. Your
profits were altogether $72,356--I forget the odd cents. And they tell
me you've sworn to three reports that won't stand examination."
Armstrong lifted his eyebrows, drew at his cigar awhile. "I see you've
been looking me up," he said, unruffled apparently. "Of course," he
went on, "I shouldn't expect to escape an occasional shot. But they'd
hardly be noted in the general fusillade. The Universal has been a mere
shell ever since you used it, in that traction reorganization which
failed--I've got a safe full of facts about it. And Morris tells me he
can have mobs trying to hang Trafford and his board of directors for
their doings in the Home Defender."
Atwater smiled grimly. "I'm sorry to say, Armstrong, we'd concentrate
on you. Several of the strong men look on you as a dangerous person.
They don't like new faces down in this part of the town, unless they
wear a more deferential expression than yours does. Personally, I'd
miss you. You're the kind of man I like as friend or as foe. But I
couldn't let my personal feelings influence me or oppose the advice of
the leading men of finance."
"Naturally not," assented Armstrong.
"I've got to be off now," continued Atwater, rising.
"So have I," said Armstrong.
They went to the street door of the building, Atwater holding Armstrong
by the arm. There, Armstrong put out his hand. "Good-by, Mr. Atwater,"
he said; "I'll meet you at Philippi."
"Think it over, young man, think it over," said Atwater, a friendly, sad
expression in his handsome, kind eyes. "I don't want to see you come a
nasty cropper--one that'll make you crawl about with a broken back the
rest of your life. Put off your ambitions--or, better still, come in
with us. We'll do more for you than you can do for yourself."
"Thank you," replied Armstrong ironically.
"Consult with your people. The governor has almost weakened, and I'm
sure Morris will fall in line with whatever you do."
"You've got my answer," said Armstrong, unruffled in his easy good
nature. "And I'll tell you, Mr. Atwater, that if you do take the cover
off hell, I'll see that it isn't put on again until you've had a
look-in, at least."
"You know the situation too well to imagine you can win," urged Atwater.
"You must be thinking I'm bluffing."
"Frankly, I don't know," replied Armstrong. "As you will lose so much
and I so little, I rather believe you are."
"Put that idea out of your mind," said Atwater; and now his face,
especially his eyes, gave Armstrong a look full into the true man, the
reckless and relentless tyrant, with whom tyranny was an instinct
stronger than reason.
"I have," was Armstrong's quiet answer.
"Then--you agree?"
Armstrong shook his head, without taking his eyes off Atwater's.
Atwater shrugged his shoulders.
"Fallen women have been known to reform," said Armstrong. "But there's
no recorded case of a fallen man's reforming. I find nothing to attract
me, Atwater, in the lot of the most splendid of these male Messalinas
you and your kind maintain in such luxury as officials, public and
private. I belong to myself--and I shall continue to belong to myself."
Atwater's smile was cynical; but there was the cordiality of respect in
the hand clasp he abruptly forced on Armstrong, as he parted from him.
*XXIII*
*"THE WOMAN BORIS LOVED"*
At last Neva had made a portrait she could look at without becoming
depressed. For the free workman there is always the joy of the work
itself--the mingling of the pain which is happiness and the happiness
which is pain, that resembles nothing so much as what a woman
experiences in becoming a mother. But, with the mother, birth is a
climax; with the artist, an anti-climax. The mother always sees that
her creation is good; her critical faculty is the docile echo of her
love. With the artist, the critical faculty must be never so
mercilessly just as when he is judging the offspring of his own soul; he
looks upon the finished work, only to see its imperfections; how
woefully it falls short of what he strove and hoped. The joy of life is
the joy of work--the prize withers in its winner's hand.
After her first year under Raphael, Neva's portraits had been
successful--more successful, perhaps, than they would have been if she
had had to succeed in order to live. She suspected that her work was
overpraised; Raphael said not, and thought not, and his critical faculty
was so just that neither vanity nor love could trick it. But when she
finished the portrait of Narcisse--Narcisse at her drawing table, her
face illumined from within--her eyes full of dreams, one capable yet
womanly hand against her smooth, round cheek, the background a hazed,
mysterious mirage of fairylike structures--when this portrait was done,
Neva looked on it and knew that it was good. "It might be better," said
she. "It is far, far from best--even _my_ best, I hope. But it is
good."
She did not let her master see it until she had made the last stroke.
Theretofore he had always said some word of encouragement the moment he
looked at any of her work submitted to him. Now, he stood silent, his
eyes searching for flaws, instead of for merits. There was no mistaking
the meaning of that criticism; Neva thrilled until she trembled. It was
the happiest moment of her life.
"I guess you've hit it, this time," he said at length. "Worse work than
that has lived--on its merits."
"I'm afraid I'll never be able to do it again," she sighed. "It seems
to me an accident."
"And so it was," replied he. "So is all inspired work. Yes, it's an
accident--but that kind of accidents happen again and again to those who
keep good and ready for good luck." He turned and, almost forgetting
the woman in the artist, put his hand affectionately, admiringly, on her
shoulder. "And you--my dear--you have worked well."
"Not so well as I shall hereafter," replied she. "I've been discouraged.
This will put heart into me."
He smiled with melancholy. "Yes--you'll work better. But not because
you're less discouraged. This picture gives you pleasure now. Six
months hence it will be a source of pain every time you think of it.
There's a picture I did about twelve years ago that has stretched me on
the rack a thousand times. I never think of it without a twinge. Why?
Because I feel I've never equaled it since. They say I have--say it's
far inferior to my later work. But I know--and it galls."
The bell rang and presently Molly appeared with Raphael's
man-of-all-work carrying a large canvas, covered. "Ah--here it is!"
cried Boris, and when the two servants were gone, he said to Neva: "Now,
shut your eyes, and don't open them till I tell you."
A few seconds, then he cried laughingly, "Behold!" She looked; it was a
full-length portrait of herself. She was entering a room, was holding
aside a dark purple curtain that was in daring, exquisite contrast with
her soft, clinging, silver-white dress, and the whiteness of her
slender, long, bare arms. The darkness in which her figure, long and
slim and slight, was framed, the flooding light upon it as if from it,
the exceeding beauty of her slender face, of her dreaming, dazzled eyes,
all combining to suggest a soul, newly awakened from a long, long sleep,
and entering life, full equipped for all that life has for a mind that
can think and a heart that can love and laugh and weep-- It was Neva at
her best, Boris at his best.
He looked from the portrait to her, and back again. "Not right," he
muttered discontentedly. "not yet. However, I'll touch it up here."
Then to her, "I want a few sittings, if you'll take the trouble to get
out that dress."
She was gazing at his work with awe; it did not seem to her to be
herself. "It is finished, now," said she to him.
"It will never be finished," he replied. "I shall keep it by me and
work at it from time to time." He stood off and looked at it lovingly.
"You're mine, there," he went on. "All mine, young woman." And he took
one of her long brushes and scrawled "Boris" across the lower left
corner of the canvas. "It shall be my bid for immortality for us both.
When you've ceased to belong to yourself or anyone, when you shall have
passed away and are lost forever in the abyss of forgotten centuries,
Boris's Neva will still be Boris's. And men and women of races we never
dreamed of will stand before her and say, 'She--oh, I forget her name,
but she's the woman Boris loved.'"
A note in his mock-serious tone, a gleam in his smiling gaze made the
tears well into her eyes; and he saw them, and the omen put him in a
glow. In his own light tone, she corrected, "_A_ woman Boris
_fancied_."
"_The_ woman Boris _loved_," he repeated. "The woman he was never
separated from, the woman he never let out of his sight. There are two
of you, now. And I have the immortal one. What do _you_ think of it?"
"There's nothing left for the mortal one but to get and to stay out of
sight. No one that once saw your Neva would take much interest in
mine."
"It's a portrait that's a likeness," said he. "With you, the outside
happens to be an adequate reflection of the inside." And he smiled at
her simplicity, which he knew was as unaffected as it always is with
those who think little about themselves, much about their surroundings.
"I wish I could see it," she said wistfully.
"You can see it in the face of any man who happens to be looking at
you."
But she had turned to her portrait of Narcisse and was eying it
disdainfully. "I must hide that," she went on, "as long as yours is in
this room. How clumsy my work looks--how painstaking and 'talented.'"
She wheeled it behind a curtain.
"None of that! None of that!" he protested severely. "Never depreciate
your own work to yourself. You can't be like me, nor I like you. Each
flower its own perfume, each bird its own song. You are a painter born;
so am I. No one can be more."
"I know, I know," she apologized. "I'm not as foolishly self-effacing
as when you first took me in hand, am I?"
"You make a braver front," replied he, "but sometimes I suspect it's
only a front. Will you give me a sitting this afternoon?"
"I'll change to that dress, and tell Molly not to let anyone in."
She had been gone about ten minutes when the bell rang again. Boris
continued to busy himself with paints and brushes until he caught
Armstrong's voice. He frowned, paused in his preparations, and listened.
"Is Miss Genevieve at home?" Armstrong was saying.
To Boris's astonishment, he heard the old woman answer, in a tone which
did not conceal her dislike for the man she was addressing, "Yes, sir.
Go into the studio. She will be in shortly."
Armstrong entered, to find himself facing Raphael's most irritating
expression--an amused disdain, the more penetrating for a polite
pretense of concealment. "Come in, Mr. Armstrong," cried he. "But you
mustn't stay long, as we're at work."
"How d'ye do," said Armstrong, all but ignoring him. "Sorry to annoy
you. But don't mind me. Go right on." And he began to wander about
the room--Raphael had thrown a drape over his picture of Neva. The
minutes dragged; the silence was oppressive. Finally Armstrong said,
"Miss Carlin must be dressing."
"Beg pardon?" asked Boris, as if he had not heard.
"Nothing," replied Armstrong. "Perhaps I was thinking aloud."
Silence again, until Raphael, in the hope of inducing this untimely
visitor to depart, said, "Miss Carlin is getting ready for a sitting."
"You are painting her portrait?"
"Yes."
"That will be interesting. I'd like to see how it's done. I'll sit by
quite quietly. You won't mind me."
"I'm afraid you'll have to go," replied the painter. "I'd not be
disturbed, but a spectator has a disastrous effect on the sitter."
"I see," said Armstrong. "Well, I'll wait until she comes. Are you
just beginning?"
"No," replied Raphael curtly.
"Is that the portrait?" asked Armstrong, indicating the covered canvas.
Boris hesitated, suddenly flung off the cover.
"Ah!" exclaimed Armstrong, under his breath, drawing back a step.
He gazed with an expression that interested Boris the lover even more
than Boris the student and painter of human nature. Since the talk with
Atwater, Armstrong had been casting this way and that, night and day,
for some means, any means, to escape from the sentence the grandee of
finance had fixed upon him; for he had not even considered the
alternative--to strike his flag in surrender. But escape he could not
contrive, and it had pressed in upon him that he must go down, down to
the bottom. He might drag many with him, perhaps Atwater himself; but,
in the depths, under the whole mass of wreckage would be himself--dead
beyond resurrection. At thirty a man's reputation can be shot all to
pieces, and heal, with hardly a scar; but not at forty. Still young,
with less than half his strength of manhood run, he would be of the
living that are dead. And he had come to see Neva for the last time,
after fighting in vain against the folly of the longing--of yielding to
the longing, when yielding could mean only pain, more pain.
And now that he had weakly yielded, here was this creation of the genius
who loved her, to put him quite down. He was like one waking to the
sanity of reality from a dream in which he has figured as all that he is
not but longs to be. "Even if there had been no one else seeking her,"
he said to himself, "what hope was there for me? And with this man
loving her-- Whether she loves him as yet or not, she will, she must,
sooner or later." Beside the power to evoke such enchantment as that
which lived and breathed before him, his own skill at cheating and lying
in order to shift the position of sundry bags of tawny dirt seemed to
him so mean and squalid that he felt as if he were shrinking in stature
and Raphael were towering. At last, he was learning the lesson of
humility--the lesson that is the beginning of character.
"I'll not wait," said he, in a voice that smote the heart of Boris, the
fellow being sensitive to feeling's faintest, finest note. "Say,
please, that I had to go."
Raphael astonished himself by having an impulse of compassion. But he
checked it. "He'd better go," he said to himself. "Seeing her would
only increase his misery." And he silently watched Armstrong move
heavily toward the door into the hall. The big Westerner's hand was on
the portiere and his sad gray eyes were taking a last look at the
picture. The faint rustle of her approach made him hesitate. Before he
could go, she entered. She was not in the silver-white evening dress
Raphael expected, but in the house dress she was wearing when he came.
"I'm just going," Armstrong explained. "I shan't interrupt your
sitting."
"Oh, that's off for to-day," replied she. "Now that I've had the
trouble of changing twice on your account, you'll have to stop awhile.
Morning is better for a sitting, anyhow. We shouldn't have had more
than half an hour of good light."
Boris was tranquilly acquiescent. "To-morrow morning!" he said, with
not a trace of irritation.
"If you can come at noon."
"Very well."
He covered the picture, which had been quite forgotten by all three in
the stress of the meeting of living personalities. He had a queer
ironic smile as he pushed it back against the wall, took up his hat and
coat.
"You're not going," she objected.
His face shadowed at her tone, which seemed to him to betray a feeling
the opposite of objection. "Yes," said he--"since I can't do this, I
must do something else. I haven't the time to idle about."
She colored at this subtle reflection upon her own devotion to work.
All she said was, "At noon to-morrow, then. And I'll be dressed and
ready."
When he heard the outer door close Armstrong said, "I understand now why
you like him." He was looking at the draped easel with eyes that
expressed all he was thinking about Neva, and about Neva and Boris.
"You liked the picture?" she asked.
"Yes," he replied. And there he stopped; his expression made her glance
away and color faintly.
"What's the trouble?" she inquired with friendly satire. "Have you lost
a few dollars?"