As he sat staring at the floor and looking somewhat shorn, yet a shorn
Samson, she watched him, her expression like a veil not thick enough to
hide the fact that there is emotion behind it, yet not thin enough to
reveal what, or even what kind of, emotion. Presently she went toward
the curtain behind which she had put her portrait of Narcisse. "I don't
think I've ever shown you any of my work, have I?" said she.
"No, but I've seen--almost everything."
"Why, you never spoke of it."
"No," he said. Then he added, "I've always hated your work--not because
it was bad, but because it was good."
She dropped her hand from the curtain she had been about to draw aside.
"Let me see it," said he. "All that doesn't matter, now."
She brought out the portrait. He looked in silence--he had hid himself
behind that impenetrable stolidity which made him seem not only
emotionless but incapable of emotion. When he took his gaze from the
picture, it was to stare into vacancy. She watched him with eyes
shining softly and sadly. As he became vaguely conscious of the light
upon the dark path and stirred, she said with irresistible gentleness,
"What is it, Horace?"
"Blues--only the blues," replied he, rousing himself and rising heavily
from his chair. "I must go. I'll end by making you as uncomfortable as
I am myself. In the mood I'm in to-day, a man should hide in his bed
and let no one come near him."
"Sit down--please," said she, touching his arm in a gesture of appeal.
She smiled with a trace of her old raillery. "You are more nearly human
than I've ever seen you."
He yielded to the extent of seating himself tentatively on the arm of a
chair. "Human? Yes--that's it. I've sunk down to where I think I'd
almost be grateful even for pity." The spell of good luck, of
prosperity without reverse, that had held him a mere incarnate ambition,
was broken, was dissolving.
She seated herself opposite, leaned toward him. "Horace," she said, "can
I help you?" And so soothing was her tone that her offer could not have
smarted upon the wound even of a proud man less humbled than he.
"It's nothing in which you could be of the slightest assistance,"
replied he. "I've got myself in a mess--who was ever in a mess that
wasn't of his own making? I jumped in, and I find there's no jumping
out. I might crawl out--but I never learned that way of traveling, and
at my age it can't be learned."
"Whatever it is," she said, very slow and deliberate, "you must let me
help you bear it."
In the silence that followed, the possible meaning of her words
penetrated to him. He looked at her in a dazed way. "What did you
say--just now?" he asked.
"No matter what it is," she repeated, "we can and will bear it
together."
"Does that mean you _care_ for me?" he asked, as if stunned.
"It means I am giving you the friendship you once asked," was her
answer, in the same slow, earnest way.
"Oh," he said. Then, as she colored and shrank, "I didn't mean to hurt
you. Yes, I want your friendship. It's all--it's more than I've the
right to ask, now. You did well to refuse me, when I wanted you and
thought I had something to give in return."
"You didn't want _me_," she replied. "You wanted only what almost any
man wants of almost any woman. And you had nothing to give me in
return--for, I don't want from any man only what you think is all a man
ought to give a woman, or could give her. I am like you, in one way. I
want all or nothing."
"Well--you'd get nothing, now, from me," said he with stolid bitterness.
"I'm done for. I wouldn't drag you down with me, even if you'd let me."
And he seized his hat and strode toward the door. But she was before
him, barring the way. "Drag me down!" she exclaimed. "A few months
ago, when you asked me to marry you--then you did want to drag me down.
The name of wife doesn't cover the shame of the plaything of passion.
Now----"
His stern face relaxed. He looked down at her doubtfully, longingly.
It seemed to him that, if he were to try now, if he were to ask of her
pity what she had denied to his passion in his strength and pride, he
might get it. The perfume of her bright brown hair intoxicated him; his
whole body was inhaling her beauty, which seemed to be flowing like the
fumes of ecstasy itself through her delicate, almost diaphanous
draperies of lace and silk and linen. She had offered only friendship,
but passion was urging that she would yield all if he would but ask.
All! And what would be the price? Why, merely yielding to Atwater. He
need not tell her until he had made terms with him, had secured
something of a future materially, perhaps a great future, for he could
make himself most useful to Atwater----
"No matter what it is," she said, "you can count on me."
--Yes, most useful to Atwater; and all would be well. Trick her into
marrying him--then, compromise with Atwater--and all would be well. He
thought he was about to stretch out his arms to take her, when suddenly
up started within him the will that was his real self. "I can't do it,"
he cried roughly. "Stand away from the door!"
"Can't--do--what?" she asked.
"Can't give in to Atwater." Rapidly he gave her an outline of the
situation. Partly because he abhorred cant, partly because he was
determined not to say anything sounding like an appeal for her
admiration and sympathy, he carefully concealed the real reasons of
pride and self-respect that forbade him to make terms with Atwater. "I
won't bend to any man," he ended. "I may be, shall be, struck down. But
I'll never kneel down!"
She seemed bewildered by the marshy maze of trickery through which his
explanation had been taking her. "It seems to me," she urged, "that if
you don't make terms with Mr. Atwater, don't return to what you
originally agreed to do, it'll mean disgrace you don't deserve, and
injury to the men who have stood by you."
"So it will," was his answer in a monotonous, exasperating way.
"Nevertheless--" He shrugged his shoulders--"I can't do it. I've
always been that way. I don't know, myself, till the test comes, what I
may do and what I may not do."
Her eyes lowered, but he thought he could see and feel her contempt.
She left the door, seated herself, resting her head on her arms. He
shifted awkwardly from one leg to the other. He felt he had
accomplished his purpose, had done what was the only decent thing in the
circumstances--had disgusted her. It was time to go. But he lingered.
She startled him by suddenly straightening herself and saying, or rather
beginning, "If you really loved me----"
He, stung with furious anger, made a scornful gesture. "Delilah!" he
cried. "It's always the same story. Love robs a man of his strength.
You would use love to tempt me to be a traitor to myself. Yes, a
traitor. I haven't much morality, or that sort of thing. But I've got
a standard, and to it I must hold. If I yielded to Atwater, I should go
straight to hell."
"Ah," she exclaimed, as if the clouds had suddenly opened, "then you are
right, Horace. You must not yield! Why did you frighten me? Why
didn't you say that before? Why did you pretend it was mere
stubbornness?"
"Because that's what it is--mere stubbornness. Stubbornness--that's my
manhood--all the manhood I've got. I grant terms--I do not accept
them."
His manner chilled, where his words would have had small effect. And it
conveyed no impression of being an assumed manner; on the contrary, the
cold, immovable man before her seemed more like the Armstrong she had
known than the man of tenderness and passion. Her words were braver
than her manner, and more hopeful, as she said, "You can't deceive me,
Horace. It must be that it is impossible to make honorable terms with
Atwater."
"As you please."
"You are, for some reason, trying to drive away my friendship. Your
pride in your own self-sufficience----"
"You force me to be perfectly frank," he interrupted. "My love for you
is nothing but a passion. It has been tempting me to play the traitor to
myself. I caught myself in time. I stand or fall alone. You would
merely burden and weaken me."
She sat still and white and cold. Without looking at her, he, in a
stolid, emotionless way, and with a deliberation that seemed to have no
reluctance in it, left her alone.
"Horace!" she cried, starting up, as the portiere dropped behind him.
The only answer was the click of the closing outside door. She sank
back, stared in a stupor at the shrine which the god had visited after
so many years--had visited only to profane and destroy.
*XXIV*
*NEVA SOLVES A RIDDLE*
Next morning she sent Boris a note asking him not to come until
afternoon. When he entered the studio he found her before the blazing
logs in the big fireplace, weary, depressed, bearing the unbecoming
signs of a sleepless night and a day crouched down in the house. "We
must go and walk this off," said he.
"No," replied she listlessly. "Nothing could induce me to dress."
He lit a cigarette, stretched himself at ease in a big chair opposite
her. "You have had bad news--very bad news."
"I feel as if I had been ill--on the operating table--and the cocaine
were wearing off."
"Armstrong?"
Her answer was the silence of assent.
"When you told Molly not to let anyone in, yesterday, you excepted him?"
"Yes."
"I thought it over afterwards and decided that must be so." Several
reflective puffs at the cigarette. Then, not interrogating, but
positively, "You care for him."
"Do I?" she said, as if the matter were doubtful and in any event not
interesting.
Boris drew a long breath. "That's why I've been unable to make a
beginning with you. I ought to have seen it long ago, but I didn't--not
until yesterday--not until I had solved the riddle of his being able to
get in."
"That's rather a strong conclusion from such a trifling incident."
"Proof is proof enough--to a discerning mind," replied he. A pause, she
staring into the fire, he studying her. "Strange!" he went on,
suspiciously abstract and judicial. "He's a man I'd have said you
couldn't care for."
"So should I," said she, to herself rather than to him.
He was more astonished and interested than he let appear. "There's no
accounting for caprices of the heart," he pursued. "But it's a fairly
good rule that indifference is always and hugely inflammatory--provided
it conveys the idea that if it were to take fire, there would be a flame
worth the trouble of the making."
She made no comment.
"And you came on here to win him back?"
"Did I?"
"A woman always does everything with a view to some man." He smiled in
cheerful self-mockery. "And I deluded myself into believing you thought
only of art. Yes, I believed it. Well--now what?"
"Nothing," she said drearily. "Nothing."
"You won, and then discovered you didn't care?"
"No." She made a gesture that suggested to him utter emptiness. "I
lost," she said, as her hands dropped listlessly back to her lap.
Boris winced. Usually a woman makes a confession so humiliating to
vanity, only to one whom, however she may trust and like him, she yet
has not the slightest desire to attract. Then he remembered that it
might have a different significance, coming from her, with her pride so
large and so free from petty vanity that the simple truth about a
personal defeat gave her no sense of humiliation.
"I don't know what to do next," she continued, thinking aloud. "I seem
to have no desire to go on, and, if I had, there doesn't seem to be any
path to go on upon. You say I care for him. I don't know. I only know
I seem to have needed him--his friendship--or, rather, my friendship for
him."
Boris smiled cynically. But her words impressed him. True friendship
was, as a rule, impossible between women and men; but every rule has
exceptions, and this woman was in so many other ways an exception to all
the rules that it might be just possible she had not fallen in love with
Armstrong's strength of body and of feature and of will. At any rate,
here was a wound, and a wound that was opportunity. The sorer the
heart, the more eagerly it accepts any medicine that offers. So Boris
suggested, with no apparent guile in his sympathy, "Why not go abroad
for a year--two years? We can work there, and perhaps--I can help you
to forget." Her expression made him hasten to add, "Oh, I understand.
I'm merely the artist to you."
"_Merely_ the artist! It's because you are 'merely the artist' that I
could not look on you as just a man."
Boris's smile was sardonic. "The women the men respect too highly to
love! The men the women revere too deeply for passion! Poor wretches."
The smile was still upon his lips as he added, "Poor, lonely wretches!"
But in his eyes she saw a pain that made her own pain throb in sympathy.
"We are, all, alone--always," said she. "But only those like you are
great enough to realize it. I can deceive myself at times. I can dream
of perfect companionship--or the possibility of it."
"But not with me?"
"I don't trust you--in that way," she replied. "I estimate your fancy
for me at its true value. You see, I know a good deal of your history,
and that has helped me to take you--not too seriously as a lover."
"How you have misread!" said he, and no one could have been sure whether
he was in earnest or not under the manner he wore to aid him in avoiding
what he called the colossal stupidity of taking oneself solemnly. "I'm
astonished at your not appreciating that a man who lives in and upon his
imagination can't be like your sober, calculating, bourgeois friends who
deal in the tangible only. Besides, since I've had you as a standard,
my imagination has been unable to cheat me. I've even begun to fear
I'll never be able to put you far enough into the background to become
interested again."
As he thus brought sharply into view the line of cleavage between their
conceptions of the relations of men and women, she drew back coldly. "I
don't understand your ideas there," said she, "and I don't like them.
Anyone who lives on your theory fritters away his emotions."
"Not at all. He makes heavy investments in education. He accumulates a
store of experience, of appreciation, of discrimination. He learns to
distinguish pearl from paste. It's the habit of women of your kind to
become offended if men tell them the honest truth.... Doubtless,
Armstrong----"
"Don't! I don't care to hear."
"You interrupt too quickly. I question whether women interest him at
all, he's so busy with his gambling. Sensible man, happy man--to have a
passion for inanimate things. What I was about to say is that you
women, with all your admiration for strength, are piqued and angered by
the discovery that a man who is worth while is stronger than any of his
passions, even the strongest, even love."
"When a woman gives, she gives all."
"Not a woman such as you are. And that's why I know you will recover,
will go on, the stronger and, some day, the happier for it. The broken
bone, when it has healed, is stronger than one that has never been
broken--and the broken heart also. The world owes its best to strong
hearts that have been broken and have healed." He let her reflect on
this before he repeated, "You should go abroad."
"Not yet--not just yet."
"Soon," said he. "It will be painful for you to stay here--especially
as the truth about him is coming out now."
"The truth!" she exclaimed. Her look, like a deer that has just caught
the first faint scent and sound of alarm, warned him he had blundered.
"Oh, nothing new," replied he carelessly. "You know the life of shame
they lead, downtown."
"But what of him?" she insisted. She was sitting up in her chair now,
her face, her whole body, alert.
"I hear he went too far--or put a paw on prey that belonged to some one
of the lions. So, he's going to get his deserts. Not that he's any
worse than the others. In fact, he's the superior of most of
them--unless you choose to think a man who has remnants of decent
instinct left and goes against them is worse than the fellow who is
rotten through and through and doesn't know any better." Raphael
realized he was floundering in deeper and deeper with every word; but he
dared not stop, and so went floundering on, more and more confused.
"You'll not sympathize with him, when the facts are revealed. It's all
his own fault."
A long pause, with him watching her in dread as she sat lost in thought.
Presently she came back, drew a long breath, said, "Yes, all and
altogether his own fault."
He felt enormously relieved. "Come abroad!" he cried. "Yours is simply
a case of a woman's being irritated by indifference into some emotion
which, for lack of another name, she calls love. Come abroad and forget
it all. Come abroad! Art is there, and dreams!
Paris--Italy--flowers--light--and love, perhaps. Come--Neva! Do you
want fame? Art will give you that. Do you want love?" Her quickened
breath, her widening, wistful eyes made him boldly abandon the pretense
that he was lingering with her in friendship's by-path, made him strike
into the main road, the great highway. "I will give you love, if you'll
not shut your heart against me. You and I have been happy together,
haven't we--in our work--happy many an hour, many a day?"
"Yes," she admitted. "I owe you all the real happiness I've ever had."
"Over there, with all this far away and vague--over there, you would
quite forget. And happiness would come. What pictures we would paint!
What thoughts! What dreams! You still have youth--all of the summer,
all of the autumn, and a long, long Indian summer. But no one has youth
enough to waste any of it. Come, Neva. Life is holding the brimming,
sparkling glass to your lips. Drink!"
As he spoke, he seemed Life itself embodied; she could not but feel as
if soft light and sweet sound and the intoxicating odor of summer were
flooding, billow on billow, into the sick chamber where her heart lay
aching.
"If I can," she said. And her glance made him think of morning sunbeams
on leaping waters. "If I can.... What a strange, stubborn thing a
sense of duty is!"
"You're really just as far from your father here as you would be there."
"I can't explain," said she. "I'll think it over."
And he saw he would have to be content with that for the present.
About eleven that night Armstrong, his nerves on edge from long,
incessant pacing of the cage in which Atwater had him securely
entrapped, was irritated by a knock at his door. "Come in!" he called
sharply.
He heard the door, which was behind him, open and close with less noise
than the hall boy ever made. Then nothing but the profound silence
again.
"Well, what is it?" he demanded, turning in his chair--he was sitting
before an open fire.
He started up, instantly recognized her, though her figure was swathed
in an opera wrap, and the lace scarf over and about her head concealed
her features without suggesting intent.
"I was at the opera," she began. "All at once--just before the last
act--I felt I must see you--must see you to-night. I knew you'd not
come to me. So, I had to come to you." And she advanced to the middle
of the room. As he made no movement toward her, said nothing, she flung
aside the scarf and opened her wrap with a single graceful gesture. She
was in evening dress, and the upturned ermine of the collar of her wrap
made a beautiful setting for those slender white shoulders, the firm
round throat, the small, lightly poised head, crowned with masses of
bright brown hair.
He took her hand. It was ice. "Come to the fire," said he.
"I'm cold--with fright," she explained. And then he noted how pale she
was. "It wasn't easy to induce the hall boy to let me up unannounced.
I told him you were expecting me."
She stretched one hand, one slender, round, bare arm toward the flames.
She put one foot on the fender, and his glance, dropping from the
allurement of the slim fingers, was caught by the narrow pale-gray
slipper, its big buckle of brilliants, the web of pale-gray translucent
silk over her instep----
"You've no business here," he said angrily. "You must go at once."
"Not until I am warm."
He looked as helpless as he was.
"Won't you smoke--please?" she asked, after a brief silence.
He took a cigarette from the box on the table, in mechanical obedience.
As he was lighting it, he felt that to smoke would somehow be a
concession. He tossed the cigarette into the fire. "You simply can't
stay here," he cried.
"I simply can't go," she replied, "until I am warm."
In his nervousness he forgot, lit a cigarette, felt he would look absurd
if he threw it away, continued to smoke--sullen, impatient.
"Ever since you left, yesterday," she went on, "I've been thinking of
what you said, or, rather, of how you said it. And to-night, sitting
there with the Morrises, I saw through your pretenses."
He turned upon her to make rude denial. But her eyes stopped him, made
him turn hastily away in confusion; for they gave him a sense that she
had been reading his inmost thoughts.
"Horace," she said, "you came to say good-by."
"Ridiculous," he scoffed, red and awkward.
"Horace, look at me."
His gaze slowly moved until it was almost upon hers, and there it
rested.
"You have made up your mind to get out of the world, if they defeat
you."
He laughed noisily. "Absurd! I'm not a romantic person, like your
friend Boris. I'm a plain man of business. We don't do melodramatic
things.... Come!" He took her scarf from the chair where she had
dropped it. "You must go."
For answer she slipped off the cloak, deliberately lined a chair with
it, and seated herself. "I shall stay," said she, "until I have your
promise not to be a coward."
He looked at her with measuring eyes. She was very pale and seemed
slight and frail; her skin was transparent, her expression ethereal.
But the curve of her chin, though oval and soft, was as resolute as his
own.
[Illustration: "'I felt I must see you--must see you at once.'"]
"You asked for my friendship," she continued. "I gave it. Now, the time
has come for me to show that my words were not an empty phrase....
Horace, you are in no condition to judge of your own affairs. You live
alone. You have no one you can trust, no one you can talk things over
with."
He nodded in assent.
"You must tell me the whole story. Bring it out of the darkness where
you've been brooding over it. You can trust me. Just talking about it
will give you a new, a clearer point of view."
"To-morrow--perhaps I'll come to you," he said, his voice hushed and
strained. "But you mustn't stay here. You've come on impulse----"
"Where her reputation's concerned a woman never acts on impulse. You
might not come to-morrow. It must be to-night." Her voice was as
strange as his had been, was so low that its distinctness seemed weird
and ghostly. "Come, Horace, drop your silly melodramatics--for it's you
that are acting melodrama. Can't you see, can't you feel, that I am
indeed your friend?"
He seated himself and reflected, she watching him. The stillness had the
static terror of a room where a soul is about to leave or about to enter
the world. It was not her words and her manner that had moved him,
direct and convincing though they were; it was the far subtler
revelation of her inmost self, and, through that, of a whole vast area
of human nature which he had not believed to exist. Suddenly, with a
look in his eyes which had never been there before, he reached out and
took her hand. "You don't know what this means to me," he said in a
slow, quiet voice. And he released her hand and went to lean his
forehead against the tall shelf of the chimney-piece, his face hidden
from her.
She did not interrupt his thoughts and his emotions until he was
lighting a fresh cigarette at the table. Then she said, "Now, tell
me--won't you, please?"
"It's a long story," he began.
"Don't try to make it short," urged she. And she settled herself
comfortably.
It took him an hour to tell it; they discussed it for an hour and a half
afterwards. Whenever he became uneasy about the time, she quieted him
by questions or comments that made him feel her interest and forget the
clock. At the last quarter before two, he rose determinedly. "I'm
going to put you into a cab," said he. "You have accomplished all you
came for--and more--a great deal more."
She made no attempt to stay on longer. He helped her into her cloak,
helped her to adjust the scarf so that it would conceal her face. They
were both hysterically happy, laughing much at little or nothing. He
rang for the elevator, then they dashed down the stairs and escaped into
the street before the car could ascend and descend again. At the corner
where there was a cab stand, he drew her into the deep shadow of the
entrance to the church, took both her hands between his. "It will be a
very different fight from the one I was planning when you came," said
he.
"And you'll win," asserted she confidently.
"Yes, I'll win. At least, I'll not lose--thanks to you, Neva." He
laughed quietly. "When I'm old, I'll be able to tell how once the sun
shone at midnight and summer burst out of the icy heart of January."
She nodded gayly. "Pretty good for a plain business man," said she.
Another moment and she was in the cab and away, he standing at the curb
watching with an expression that made the two remaining cabmen grin and
wink at each other by the light of the street lamp.
*XXV*
*TWO WOMEN INTERVENE*
"If I could find some way of detaching Trafford from Atwater," Armstrong
had said to her as he was explaining. "But," he had added, "that's
hopeless. He's more afraid of Atwater than of anybody or anything on
earth--and well he may be." Neva seized upon the chance remark, without
saying anything to him. She knew the Traffords well, knew therefore
that there was one person of whom his fear was greater than of Atwater,
and whose influence over him was absolute. Early the following morning
she called the Traffords on the telephone. Mrs. Trafford was in the
country, she learned, but would be home in the afternoon. Neva left a
message that she wished particularly to see her; at five o'clock she was
shown into the truly palatial room in which Mrs. Trafford always had
tea.
"Narcisse has just left," said Mrs. Trafford. "She's been rummaging for
me in Letty Morris's rag bag--you know, my husband bought it. She has
found a few things, but not much. Still, Letty wasn't cheated any worse
than most people. The trash! The trash!"
Neva was too intent upon her purpose to think of her surroundings that
day; but she had often before been moved to a variety of emotions, none
of them approaching admiration or approval or even tolerance, by Mrs.
Trafford's procession of halls and rooms in gilt and carving and
brocade, by the preposterous paintings, the glaring proclamation from
every wall and every floor and every ceiling of the alternately arid and
atrocious taste of the fashionable architects and connoisseurs to whom
Mrs. Trafford had trusted. As in all great houses, the beauties were
incidental and isolated, deformed by the general effect of coarse appeal
to barbaric love of the thing that is gaudy and looks costly.
"You aren't going to move into Letty's house?" said Neva absently. She
was casting about for some not too abrupt beginning.
"Heavens, no!" protested Mrs. Trafford, in horror and indignation.
"John bought it--some time ago. I don't know why." She laughed. "But I
do know he wishes he hadn't now. He wouldn't tell me the price he paid.
I suspect he found out that he had made a bad bargain as soon as it was
too late. There's some mystery about his buying that house. I don't--"
Mrs. Trafford broke off. Well as she knew Neva, and intimate and
confidential though she was with her, despite Neva's reserve--indeed,
perhaps because of it--still, she was careful about Trafford's business.
And Neva and Letty were cousins--not intimates or especially friendly,
but nevertheless blood relations. "I suppose he's ashamed of not having
consulted me," she ended.
"How is Mr. Trafford?" asked Neva. "I haven't seen him for months. He
must be working very hard?"
"He _thinks_ he is. But, my dear, I found the men out long, long ago,
in their pretense of hard work. They talk a great deal downtown, and
smoke and eat a great deal. But they work very little--even those that
have the reputation of working the hardest. Business--with the upper
class men--is a good deal like fishing, I guess. They spread their nets
or drop their hooks and wait for fish. My husband is killing himself,
eating directors' lunches. You know, they provide a lunch for the
directors, for those that meet every day--and give them a ten- or
twenty-dollar gold piece for eating it. It's a huge dinner--a banquet,
and all that have any digestion left stuff themselves. No wonder the
women hold together so much better than the men. If the men had to wear
our clothes, what sights they would be!"
Neva returned to the business about which she had come. "They're having
an investigating committee down there now, aren't they?"
"Not to investigate their diet," said Mrs. Trafford. "There'd be some
sense in that. I suppose it's another of those schemes of the people
who haven't anything, to throw discredit on the men who do the work of
the world. Universal suffrage is a great mistake. Only the propertied
class ought to be allowed to vote, don't you think so? Mr. Trafford
says it's getting positively dreadful, the corruption good men have to
resort to, with the legislatures and with buying elections, all because
everybody can vote."
"I've not given the subject much thought," said Neva. "I heard-- Some
one was talking about the investigating committee--and said it was the
beginning of another war downtown."
Mrs. Trafford looked amused. "I didn't dream you had any interest in
that sort of thing. I don't see how you can be interested. I never let
my husband talk business to me."
"Usually I'm not interested," said Neva, now fairly embarked and at
ease. "But this particular thing was--different. It seems, there are
two factions fighting for control of some insurance companies, and each
is getting ready to accuse the other of the most dreadful things. Mr.
Atwater's faction is going to expose Mr. Fosdick's, and Mr. Fosdick's is
going to expose Mr. Atwater's."
Mrs. Trafford's expression had changed. "Neva, you've got a reason for
telling me this," said she.
"Yes," frankly admitted Neva.
"Why?"
"Because I thought you--Mr. Trafford--ought to be warned of what's
coming."
"What _is_ coming?"
"I don't know all the details. But, among other things, there's to be a
frightful personal attack on Mr. Trafford because he is one of Mr.
Atwater's allies. Mr. Atwater thinks, or pretends, he can prevent it;
but he can't. The attack is sure to come."
"They couldn't truthfully say anything against Mr. Trafford," said his
wife, with a heat that was genuine, yet perfunctory, too. "He's human,
of course. But I who have lived with him all these years can honestly
say that he spends his whole life in trying to do good. He slaves for
the poor people who have their little all invested with his company."
Neva had not smiled, but Mrs. Trafford went on, as if she had: "I
suppose you're thinking that sounds familiar. Oh, I know every man
downtown pretends he is working only for the good of others, to keep
business going, and to give labor steady employment, when of course he's
really working to get rich, and-- Well, _somebody_ must be losing all
this money that's piling up in the hands of a few people who spend it in
silly, wicked luxury. Now, we have always frowned on that sort of
thing. We--Mr. Trafford and I--set our faces against extravagance and
simply live comfortably. He often says, 'I don't know what the country's
coming to. The men downtown, the leaders, seem to have gone mad. They
have no sense of responsibility. They aren't content with legitimate
profits, but grab, grab, until I wonder people don't rise up.' And he
says they will, though, of course, that wouldn't do any good, as
things'd just settle back and the same old round would begin all over
again. If people won't look after their own property, they can't expect
to keep it, can they?"
"No," assented Neva. "Still--I sometimes wonder that the robbing should
be done by the class of men that does it. One would think he wouldn't
need to protect himself against those who claim to be the leaders in
honesty and honor. It's as if one should have to lock up all the
valuables if the bishop came to spend the night."
"There's the shame of it!" exclaimed Mrs. Trafford. "Sometimes Trafford
tells me about the men that come here, the really fine, distinguished,
gentlemanly ones--well, if I could repeat some of the things to you!"
"I should think," suggested Neva, "it would be dangerous to have
business dealings with such men. If trouble came, people might not
discriminate."
Mrs. Trafford caught the under-meaning in Neva's words and tone. She
reflected a moment--thoughts that made her curiously serious--before
replying, "Sometimes I'm afraid my husband will get himself into just
that sort of miserable mess. He is so generous and confiding, and he
believes so implicitly in some of those men whom I don't believe in at
all. Tell me, Neva, are you sure--about that attack, and about Mr.
Atwater's being mistaken?"
"There isn't a doubt of it," replied Neva. "Mr. Trafford ought not to
let anything anyone says to the contrary influence him." And Mrs.
Trafford's opinion of her directness and honesty gave her words the
greatest possible weight.
"I'm ever so much obliged to you, dear," said she. "It isn't often one
gets a proof of real friendship in this walk of life."
"I didn't do it altogether for your sake," replied Neva. "It seemed to
me, from what I heard, that the men downtown were rushing on to do
things that would result in no good and much harm and--unhappiness. I
suppose, if evil has been done, it ought to be exposed; but I think,
too, that no good comes of malicious and vengeful exposures."
"Especially exposures that tend to make the lower classes suspicious and
unruly," said Mrs. Trafford.
Neva colored and glanced at the two strapping men-servants who were
removing the tea table. But Mrs. Trafford was quite unconscious. A few
years before, when the English foreign habit of thinking and talking
about "lower classes" was first introduced, she had indulged in it
sparingly and nervously. But, falling in with the fashion of her set,
she had become as bold as the rest of these spoiled children of
democracy in spitting upon the parents and grandparents. It no longer
ever occurred to her to question the meaning of the glib, smug, ignorant
phrase; and, like the rest, she did not even restrain herself before the
"lower classes" themselves. It was a settled conviction with her that
she was of different clay from the working people, the doers of manual
labor, that their very minds and souls were different; the fact that
they seemed to think and act in much the same way as the "upper classes"
would have struck her, had she thought about it at all, as a phenomenon
not unlike the almost human performances of a well-trained, unusually
intelligent monkey. Indeed, she often said, without being aware of the
full implication of the speech, "In how many ways our servants are like
us!"
Neva went away, dissatisfied, depressed, as if she were retreating in
defeat. She felt that she had gained her point; she understood Mrs.
Trafford, knew that her dominant passion of spotless respectability had
been touched, that the fears which would stir her most deeply had been
aroused; Mrs. Trafford, worldly shrewd, would put her husband through a
cross-examination which would reveal to her the truth, and would result
in her bringing to bear all her authority over him. And she knew that
Mrs. Trafford could compel her husband, where no force which Armstrong
could have brought to bear downtown would have the least effect upon
him. "I think I've won," Neva said to herself; but her spirits
continued to descend. Before the victory, she had thought only about
winning, not at all about what she was struggling for. Now she could
think only of that--the essential.
Like almost all women and all but a few men, Neva was densely ignorant
of and wholly uninterested in business--the force that has within a few
decades become titanic and has revolutionized the internal as well as
the external basis of life as completely as if we had been whisked away
to another planet. She still talked and tried to think in the old
traditional lines in which the books, grave and light, are still written
and education is still restricted--although those lines have as
absolutely ceased to bear upon our real life as have the gods of the
classic world. It had never occurred to her that what the men did when
they went to their offices involved the whole of society in all its
relations, touched her life more intimately than even her painting.
But, without her realizing it, the idea had gradually formed in her mind
that the proceedings downtown were morally not unlike the occupation of
coal-heaver or scavenger physically. How strong this impression was she
did not know until she had almost reached home, revolving the whole way
the thoughts that had started as Trafford's bronze doors closed behind
her.
She recalled all Armstrong and others had told her about the sources of
Trafford's wealth--Trafford, with his smooth, plausible personality that
left upon the educated palate an after taste like machine oil. From
Trafford her thoughts hastened on to hover and cluster about the real
perplexity--Armstrong himself--what he had confessed to her; worse
still, what he had told her as matter-of-course, had even boasted as
evidence of his ability at this game which more and more clearly
appeared to her as a combination of sneak-thieving and burglary. And
heavier and heavier grew her heart. "I have done a shameful thing," she
said to herself, as the whole repulsive panorama unrolled before her.
She was in the studio building, was going up in the elevator. Just as
it was approaching her landing, Thomas, the elevator boy, gave a sigh so
penetrating that she was roused to look at him, to note his expression.
"What is it, Thomas?" she asked. "Can I do anything for you?"
"Nothing--nothing--thank you," said Thomas. "It's all over now. I was
just thinking back over it."
She saw a band of crape round his sleeve. "You have lost some one?" she
said gently.
"My father," replied the boy. "He died day before yesterday. And we
had to have the money for the funeral. We're all insured to provide for
that. And my mother went down to collect father's insurance. It was for
a hundred and twenty-five dollars. We'd paid in a hundred and forty on
the policy, it had been running so long. And when my mother went to
collect, they told her they couldn't get it through and pay it for about
three weeks--and she had to have the money right away. So, they told
her to go down to some offices on the floor below--it was a firm that's
in cahoots with them insurance sharks. And she went, and they give her
eighty-two dollars for the policy--and she had to take it because we had
to bury father right away. Only, they didn't give her cash. They gave
her a credit with an undertaker--he's in cahoots, too. And it took all
the eighty-two dollars, and father was buried like a pauper, at that. I
tell you, Miss Carlin, it's mighty hard." His voice broke. "Them rich
people make a fellow pay for being poor and having no pull. That's the
way we get it soaked to us, right and left, especially in sickness or
hard luck or death."
Neva lingered, though she could not trust herself to speak.
"You wouldn't think," Thomas went on, "that such things'd be done by
such a company as----"
"Don't!" cried Neva, pressing her hands hysterically to her ears. "I
mustn't hear what company it was!"
And she rushed from the car and fled into her apartment, all unstrung.
At last, at last, she not merely knew but felt, and felt with all her
sensitive heart, the miseries of thousands, of hundreds of thousands,
out of which those "great men" wrought their careers--those "great men"
of whom her friend Armstrong was one!
Trafford reached home at half past six and, following his custom, went
directly to his dressing room. Instead of his valet, he found his
wife--seated before the fire, evidently waiting for him. "Is the door
closed?" she said. "And you'd better draw the curtain over it."
"Well, well," he cried, all cheerfulness. "What now? Have the servants
left in a body?" It had been a banner day downtown, with several big
nets he had helped to set filled to overflowing, and the fish running
well at all his nets, seines, lines, and trap-ponds. He felt the jolly
fisherman, at peace with God and man, brimming generosity.
"I want to talk to you about that investigation," said his wife in a
tone that cleared his face instantly of all its sparkling good humor.
"Whatever started you in that direction?" he exclaimed. "Don't bother
your head about it, my dear. There'll be no investigation. Not that I
was afraid of it. Thank God, I've always tried to live as if each
moment were to be my last."
"Mr. Atwater is going to attack Mr. Fosdick, isn't he?"