"And he thinks Mr. Fosdick and his friends won't be able to retort,"
continued Mrs. Trafford. "Well, he's mistaken. They are going to
retort. And you are the man they'll attack the most furiously."
Trafford sat down abruptly. All the men who are able to declare for
themselves and their families such splendid dividends in cash upon a
life of self-sacrifice to humanity, are easily perturbed by question or
threat of question. Trafford, with about as much courage as a white
rabbit, had only to imagine the possibility of being looked at sharply,
to be thrown into inward tremors like the beginnings of sea-sickness.
"It don't matter," continued his wife, "whether you are innocent or not.
They are going to hold you up to public shame."
"Who told you this?"
"Neva."
"She must have got it from the Morrises--or Armstrong."
"She came here especially to tell me, and she would not have come if she
did not know it was serious."
"They sent her here to frighten me," said Trafford. "Yes, that's it!"
And he rose and paced the floor, repeating now aloud and now to himself,
"That's it! That's undoubtedly it."
"Tell me the whole story," commanded his wife, when the limit of her
patience with his childishness had been reached. "You need an outside
point of view."
She had told Neva she never permitted Trafford to talk business with
her. In fact, he consulted her at every crisis, both to get courage and
to get advice. He now hastened to comply. "It's very simple. Some time
ago, a few of us who like to see things run on safe, conservative lines,
decided that Fosdick's and Armstrong's management of the O.A.D. was a
menace to stability. Armstrong and Fosdick had quarreled. It was
Armstrong who came to us and suggested our interfering. I thought the
man was honest, and I did everything I could to help him and Morris."
"Including buying Morris's house," interjected Mrs. Trafford, to prevent
him from so covering the truth with cant that it would be invisible to
her.
"That did figure in it," admitted Trafford, in some confusion. "Then,
we found out they were simply using us to get control of the O.A.D. for
themselves. So we--Atwater and Langdon and I--arranged quietly to drop
them into their own trap. We've done it--that's all. Next week we're
going to expose them and their false committee; and the policy holders
of the O.A.D. will be glad to put their interests in the hands of men we
can keep in order. Fosdick and Armstrong can't retaliate. We've got the
press with us, and have made every arrangement. Anything they say will
be branded at once as malicious lies."
"What kind of malicious lies will they tell?"
"How should I know?" And Trafford preened, with his small, precisely
clad figure at its straightest.
"But you do know," said Mrs. Trafford slowly and with acidlike
significance.
Trafford made no reply in words. His face, however, was eloquent.
"You've been hypnotized by Atwater," pursued Mrs. Trafford. "You think
him more powerful than he is. And--he isn't in any insurance company
directly, is he?"
"No."
"Mr. Langdon?"
"No--they keep in the background." Trafford's upper lip was trembling
so that she could see it despite his mustache.
"Then you'll be right out in front of the guns. You--alone."
"There aren't any guns."
"I'm surprised at you!" exclaimed his wife. "Don't you know Horace
Armstrong better than that!"
"The treacherous hound!"
"He has his bad side, I suppose, like everybody else," said Mrs.
Trafford, who felt that it was not wise to humor him in his prejudices
that evening. "His character isn't important just now. It's his
ability you've got to consider."
"Atwater's got him helpless."
"Impossible!" declared Mrs. Trafford, in a voice that would have been
convincing to him, had her words and his own doubts been far less
strong. "You may count on it that there's to be a frightful attack on
you next week. Neva Carlin knew what she was about."
"There's nothing they can say--nothing that anybody'd believe." His
whiskers and his hair were combed to give him a resolute, courageous
air. The contrast between this artificial bold front and the look and
voice now issuing from it was ludicrous and pitiful.
Mrs. Trafford flashed scorn at him. "What nonsense!" she exclaimed. "I
never heard of a big business that could stand it to have the doors
thrown open and the public invited to look where it pleased. I doubt if
yours is an exception, whatever you may think."
"But the doors won't be thrown open," he pleaded rather than protested.
"Our private business will remain private."
"Armstrong is going to attack you, I tell you. He's not the man to fire
unless he has a shot in his gun--and powder behind it."
"But he can't. He knows nothing against me." And Trafford seated
himself as if he were squelching his own doubts and fears.
"He knows as much about the inside of your company as you know about the
inside of his. You can assume that."
Trafford shifted miserably in his chair.
"What reason have you to suppose that as keen a man as he is would not
make it his business to find out all about his rivals?"
"What if he does know?" blustered Trafford. "To hear you talk, my dear,
you'd think I ran some sort of--of a"--with a nervous little laugh--"an
unlawful resort."
"I know you wouldn't do anything you thought was wrong," replied his
wife, in a strained, insincere voice. "But--sometimes the public
doesn't judge things fairly."
"People who have risen to our position must expect calumny." He was of
the color of fear and his fingers and his mouth and his eyelids were
twitching.
"What difference would it make to Atwater and Langdon, if you were
disgraced?" she urged. "Mightn't they even profit by it?"
At this he jumped up, and began to pace the floor. "You ought to be
ashamed of yourself!" he cried. "To put suspicion in my head against
these honorable men!"
"I want you to protect yourself and your family," she retorted
crushingly. "The temptation to make a little more money, or a good deal
more, ought not to lead you to risk your reputation. Look at the men
that were disgraced by that last investigation."
"But they had done wrong."
"They don't think so, do they? How do you know what some of the things
you've done will look like when they're blazoned in the newspapers?"
"I'm not afraid!" declaimed Trafford, fright in his eyes and in his
noisy voice.
"No," said his wife soothingly. "Of course, you've done nothing wrong.
You needn't tell _me_ that. But it's just as bad to be misunderstood as
to be guilty."
During the silence which fell he paced the floor like a man running
away, and she gazed thoughtfully into the fire. When she spoke again it
was with a subdued, nervous manner and as if she were telling him
something which she wished him to think she did not understand. "One
day I was driving in the East Side, looking after some of my poor.
There was a block--in the Hester Street market. A crowd got around the
carriage, and a man--a dreadful, dirty, crazy-eyed creature--called out,
'There's the wife of the blood-sucker Trafford, that swindles the poor
on burial insurance!' And the crowd hissed and hooted at me, and shook
their fists. And a woman spat into the carriage." Mrs. Trafford paused
before going on: "I get a great many anonymous letters. I never have
worried you about these things. You have your troubles, and I knew it
was all false. But----"
Her voice ceased. For several minutes, oppressive and menacing silence
brooded over that ostentatious room. Its costly comforts and costlier
luxuries weighed upon the husband and wife, so far removed from the
squalor of those whose earnings had been filched to create this pitiful,
yet admired, flaunting of vanity. Finally he said, speaking almost
under his breath, "What would you advise me to do?"
Although she had long had ready her answer to that inevitable question,
she waited before replying. "Not to pull Atwater's chestnuts out of the
fire for him," said she slowly. "Stop the attack. I've an instinct
that evil will come of it--evil to us. Let Armstrong alone. If he's
not managing his business right, what concern is it of yours? And if
you try to get it, what if, instead of making money, you lose your
reputation--maybe, more? What does Atwater risk? Nothing. What does
Langdon risk? Nothing. What do you risk? Everything. That's not
sensible, is it?"
"But I can't go back on Atwater," he objected in the tone that begs to
be overruled. "Armstrong would attack me, anyhow, and I'd simply have
both sides against me."
She turned upon him, amazed, terrified. "Do you mean to say you've got
no hold on Atwater?" she exclaimed.
"I am a gentleman, dealing with gentlemen," said he, with dignity.
She made a gesture of contempt. "But suppose Atwater should prove not
to be a gentleman--what then?"
"He'd hesitate to play fast and loose with me," Trafford now confessed.
"He owes our allied institutions too many millions."
"Oh," she said, relieved. Then--"And what precaution has he taken
against your deserting him?"
"None, so far as I know, except that he would probably join in
Armstrong's attack. But, my dear, you entirely misunderstand. Atwater
and I have the same interests. We----"
"I know, I know," she interrupted impatiently. "What I'm trying to get
at is how you can induce him to come to an agreement with Armstrong.
Can you think of no way?"
"I had never contemplated this emergency," he replied apologetically.
His conduct now seemed to him to have been headlong, imbecile.
"You must do something this very night," said his wife. "There might be
a change of plan on one side or the other. You must see that your
position, unprotected among these howling beasts, is perilous."
At that, Trafford fell to trembling so violently that, ashamed though he
was to have any human being, even his wife, see the coward in him, he
yet could not steady himself. "I can offer Armstrong peace and a voice
in our company. If he accepts, I can stop Atwater. I can frankly show
him that I am not prepared to withstand an attack and that it is surely
coming. He will not refuse. He won't dare. Besides--" He stopped
suddenly.
"Besides--what?"
"It is upon me--upon my men--that Atwater relies to make the attack. He
hasn't the necessary information--at least, I don't think he has."
Mrs. Trafford gave a long sigh of relief. "Why didn't you say that at
first?" she cried. "All you have to do is to put Atwater off and make
terms with Armstrong."
"Atwater is a very dangerous man to have as an enemy."
"But he's not a fool. He'll never blame you for saving yourself from
destruction."
Neither seemed to realize how much of their secret thought--thought not
clearly admitted even to their secret selves--was revealed in her using
that terrible word, and in his accepting it.