only trying to make _you_ acquainted with _me_. I don't understand, as
I look at it, now that my eyes have opened, how a woman can live with a
man who kills hundreds, thousands with his railway, to make dividends,
or who lets thousands live in hovels and toil all the daylight hours and
half starve part of the year that he may have a bigger income. Oh, I
don't know the morals of it or the practical business side of it. And I
don't want to know. My instinct tells me it's wrong, _wrong_. And I
dare not have anything to do with it, Horace, or I'd become like those
women, those so-called respectable women, one sees driving every
afternoon in Fifth Avenue, with their hard, selfish faces. Ah, I see
blood on their carriage wheels, the blood of their brothers and sisters
who paid for carriage and furs and liveries and jewels. It would be
dreadful enough for the intelligent and strong--for men like you,
Horace--to take from the ignorant and weak to buy the necessities of
life. But to snatch bread and shelter and warmth and education from
their fellow beings to buy vanities-- It isn't American--it isn't
decent--it isn't brave!"
He saw that it would be idle to argue with her. Indeed, he began to
feel, rather than to see, that beneath her hysteria there was something
he would have to explore, something she was terribly in earnest about.
There was a long silence, she slowly calming, he hidden behind the mask
of that handsome, rugged face in which strength yielded so little for
grace. "Well, what are you going to do about it?" he said unemotionally.
"All I can," she replied. "I can refuse to live that sort of life, to
live on human flesh and blood. I know good people do it, people who are
better than I. And if it seems right to them, why, I don't judge them.
Only, it doesn't seem right to me. I wish it did. I wish I could shut
my eyes again. But--I can't. My father won't let me!"
He made a movement that suggested shrinking. But he said presently, "I
still don't see where I come in. In our business we don't get money
that way."
"How do you get it?" she asked.
He stared, stolid and silent, at the floor.
"You told me once that----"
"In some moods I say things I don't altogether mean.... I don't moon
about the miseries I can't possibly cure," he went on. "I don't
quibble; I act. I don't criticise life; I live. I don't create the
world or make the law of the survival of the fittest; I simply accept
conditions I could not change. As for this so-called stealing, even the
worst of the big men take only what's everybody's property and therefore
anybody's."
"It seems to me," said she, "the question always is, 'Does this property
belong to me?' and if the answer is 'No,' then to take it is--" She
paused before the word.
"To steal," he said bluntly.
She made no comment. Finally he went on: "Let us understand each other.
You refuse to marry me unless I abandon my career, and sink down to a
position of no influence--become a nobody. For, of course, I can't play
the game unless I play it under the rules. At least, I can think of no
way."
"I see I didn't express myself well," she replied. "I've not tried to
make conditions. I've simply shown you what kind of woman you were
asking to marry you--and that you don't want her--that you want only the
part of me that for the moment appeals to your senses. If I had married
you without telling you what was in my mind and heart would it have been
fair to you?"
He did not answer.
"Would it have been fair, Horace?"
"No," he said--a simple negative.
"You see that you do not want me--that you would find me more, far more,
of a drag on your career than I was before--a force pulling back instead
of merely a dead weight."
He was looking at her--was looking from behind his impenetrable mask.
He looked for a long time, she now meeting his gaze and now glancing
away. At last he said, with slow deliberateness: "I see that I came
seeking a mistress. Whether I want her as a wife, I don't know.
Whether she wants me as a husband--I don't know." He relapsed into
thought which she did not interrupt.
When he rose to go, he did not see how she flushed and trembled, and
fought down the longing to say the things that would have meant retreat.
"I feel," said he with a faint smile, "like a man who goes down to the
pier thinking he is about to take an outing for the day, and finds that
if he goes aboard he will be embarked for a life journey into new lands
and will never come back. I never before really grasped what marriage
means."
She had always been fascinated by his eyes, which seemed to her to
contain the essence of all that attracted and thrilled and compelled her
in the idea, man. As she stood touching the hand he extended, she had
never felt his eyes so deeply; never before had there been in them this
manly gentleness of respect and consideration. And her faltering
courage took heart.
"I am going back to New York," he said. "I want to look about me."
She looked straight and calm; but, through her hand, he felt that she
was vibrating like a struck, tense violin string. "Some men want a
mistress when they marry," she went on, smiling-serious, "and some want
a housekeeper, and some a parlor ornament, and some a mother for their
children. But very few want a wife. And I"--she sighed. "I couldn't
do anything at any of the other parts, unless I were also the wife."
"I understand--at last," he said. "Or rather, I begin to understand.
You have thought it out. I haven't--and I must."
She hoped he would kiss her; but he did not. He reluctantly released
her hand, gave her a lingering look which she had not the vanity or the
buoyance rightly to interpret, then gazed slowly round the gardens,
brilliant, alluring, warm. She stood motionless and tense, watching his
big form, his strong shoulders and forcefully set head as he crossed the
gardens, went down the walk and through the gate, to be hidden by the
hedge between the lawns and the street. When the last echo of his firm
step had ceased in her ears, she collapsed into the chair in which he
had sat, and was all passion and tenderness and tears and longings and
fears.
"He thinks me cold! He thinks me cold!" she cried. "Oh, Father, why
won't You let me be weak? Why can't I take less than all? Why can't I
trust him, when I love him so!"
*XXX*
*BY A TRICK*
By itself, Armstrong's insult to Fosdick in refusing to "take care of"
his son-in-law would have been of small consequence, unpleasant reminder
of his shorn power and rude check to his benevolent instincts though it
was. Fosdick was not likely, at least soon, to forget his lesson in the
wisdom of letting the big Westerner alone. Also, Armstrong was useful
to him--not so useful as a tool in the same position would have been;
still, far more useful than a representative of some hostile interest.
But this insult was the latest and the rashest of a series of similar
insults which Armstrong had been distributing right and left with an
ever freer, ever bolder hand. While he was "thinking over" Neva's plain
talk with him, he, by more than mere coincidence, was experimenting with
a new policy which was in the general direction of the one he had
adopted as soon as he got control of the O.A.D. It was a policy of
"anti-graft"; and once he had inaugurated it, once he had begun to look
about him in the O.A.D. for opportunities to stop the plundering, and
the pilfering as well, he had pushed on far beyond where he originally
intended to halt--as a strong man always does, whatever the course he
chooses.
Everyone belongs to some section or class. He may quarrel with
individuals in that class, he may quarrel with individuals in another
class, or with the whole of it; but he may not break with the whole of
his own class. Be he cracksman or financier or preacher or carpenter or
lawyer or what not, he must be careful not to get his own class, as a
class, against him. If he does, he will find himself alone,
defenseless, doomed. Armstrong belonged to the class financier; he had
been in finance all his grown-up life. He stood for the idea financier
in the minds of financiers, in his own mind, in the public mind. His
battles with his fellow-financiers, being within the class lines, had
strengthened him, had given him clear title to recognition as a power in
finance; he had been like the politician who fights his way through and
over his fellow politicians to a nomination or a boss-ship, like the
preacher who bears off the bishopric from his rivals, the doctor who
absorbs the patronage of the rich, the lawyer who succeeds in the
competition among lawyers for the position of chief pander to the
plutocratic appetite for making and breaking laws.
But this new policy of Armstrong's was a policy of war on his own class.
Cutting down commissions, cutting out "good things," lopping off
sinecures, bisecting salaries--why, he was hacking away at the very
foundations of the dominance of his class! No privileges, no
parasitism, no consideration for gentlemen, no "soft snaps," no
ornaments on the pay rolls--where were the profits to come from, the
profits that enabled the big fellows to fatten, that filled the crib for
their business and social hangers-on? Reform, economy, stoppage of
waste, all these were excellent to talk about; and, within limits that
recognized the rights of the dominant classes, even might be practiced
without offense, especially by a fellow trying to make a reputation and
judiciously doing it at the expense of financiers who had lost their
grip and so could expect no quarter. But to raise the banner of
"anti-graft" for a serious campaign-- Anarchy, socialism, chaos!
Armstrong had inaugurated and was pressing a war on his own class. And
for whose benefit? Not for his own; he wasn't enriching himself--and
therein was a Phariseeism, an effort to pose as a censor of his class,
that alone would have made him a suspicious character. He was fighting
his own class, was making traitorous, familicidal war for the benefit of
the common enemy--the vast throng of the people who hated the upper
classes, as everybody knew, and were impudently restless in their
God-appointed position of hewers of wood and drawers of water for the
financial aristocracy. Were not the people weakening dangerously in
reverence for and gratitude to their superiors, the great and good men
who provided them with work, took care of their savings for them,
supported the church that guarded their souls and the medical profession
that healed their bodies, paid all the taxes, undertook all the large
responsibilities--and did this truly godlike work, supported this
Atlantean burden, in exchange for a trivial commission that brought no
benefit but the sorrows of luxury? These were the ignoramuses Armstrong
was inflating, these the ingrates he was encouraging. Already he had
doubled the dividends of the O.A.D., had made them a seeming rebuke to
the other insurance companies. Competition--yes! But not the cutthroat,
wicked, ruinous competition that would destroy his own class, its
profits and its power. If he were permitted to persist, the clamor for
so-called "honesty" might spread from policy holders to stockholders, to
wage earners, to the whole mass of the wards of high finance. And they
might compel the upper class to grant them more money to waste in drink
and in wicked imitation of the luxury of their betters!
Armstrong was expelling himself from his own class--into what? Except
in finance, high finance, what career was there for him? He would be
like a politician without a party, like a general without an army, like
a preacher without a parish, like a disbarred lawyer. His reputation
would be gone--for morality is a relative word, and by his conduct he
was convincing the only class important to him as a man of action that
he had not the morality of his class, that he could not be trusted with
its interests. Every era, every race, every class has its own morality,
its own practical application of the general moral code to its peculiar
needs. The class financier, in the peculiar circumstances surrounding
life in the new era, had its code of what was honest and what dishonest,
what respectable and what disreputable, what loyal and what disloyal.
Under that code his new course was disloyal, disreputable, was
positively dishonest. It would avail him nothing, should other classes
vaguely approve; if his own class condemned, he was damned.
"A hell of a mess I'm getting into," reflected he, "with trying to play
one game by the rules of another." He saw his situation clearly, but he
had no disposition to turn back. "All in a lifetime!" he concluded with
a shrug. "I'll just see what comes of it. Anything but monotony." To
him monotony, the monotony of simply taking in and putting away for his
own use money confided to him, was the dullest of lives--and it was
beginning to seem the most contemptible--"like going through the pockets
of sleepers," said he to himself.
He saw the storm coming. Not that there were any clouds or gusty winds;
the great storms, the cyclones, don't come that way. No, his sky was
serene all round; everything looked bright, brilliant. But there was an
ominous stillness in the air--that dead, dead calm which fills an
experienced weather expert with misgivings. Before the great storms
that explode out of those utter calms, the domestic animals always act
queerly; and, in this case, that sign was not lacking. The big fellows
beamed on him, were most polite, most eager for his friendship. Not so
the little fellows--the underlings, both in the O.A.D. and in its allied
banks and in the institutions of high finance into which Armstrong
happened to go. At sight of him they became agitated, nervous, stood
aloof, watched him furtively.
But he went his new way steadily, as if he did not know what was
impending. It secretly amused him greatly to observe his directors.
The new board he had selected was composed of men of substantial
fortune, who were just outside high finance--business men, trained in
business methods. But they had been agitated by what they had seen and
heard and read of the financiers--of the vast fortunes quickly made, of
the huge mysterious profits, of the great enterprises where the
financier risked only other people's money, and stood to lose nothing if
the venture failed, kept all the profits if it succeeded. They longed
for these fairylike lands where money grew on bushes and the rivers ran
gold. And when they were invited into the directory of the O.A.D., they
thought they were at last sweeping through the gates from the real world
of business to the Hesperian Gardens of finance. As they sat at the
meetings, hearing Armstrong and his lieutenants give accounts of
economies and safe investments and profits for the policy holders, each
felt like a child who had been led to believe it was going to a
Christmas festival and finds that it has been lured into a regular
session of the Sunday school. Why, the honor and the director's fees
were all there was in it!
Then there were the agents, the officials, the staff of the company,
high and low, far and near. To the easy-going, golden days of finance
had succeeded these sober days of business. Instead of generosity, free
flinging about of the money that came in so easily, there was now the
most rigid economy--"regular, damn, pinch-penny honesty," complained
Duncan, the magnificent agent at Chicago. "I tell you frankly,
Armstrong, I'm going to get out. It isn't worth the while of a man of
my ability to work for what the company now allows."
"Sorry to lose you, old man," said Armstrong, "but we can't allow any
secret rake-offs."
It was Duncan who precipitated the cyclone. A cyclone at its start is a
little eddy of air which happens to be set whirling by a chance twist of
a sunbeam glancing from a cloud. Millions of these eddies occur every
hour everywhere. Only when conditions are just right does a cyclone
result, does the eddy continue to whirl, draw more and more air in
commotion, get a forward impulse that increases, until in an incredibly
short space of time destruction is raging over the land. The conditions
in the O.A.D. were just right. Armstrong was hated by the whole
personnel, at home and abroad, and hated as only the man is hated who
cuts his fellows off from "easy money." And he had not a friend.
Throughout high finance, he was hated and feared; at any moment, as the
result of his doings, some other big institution, all other big
institutions might have to adopt his policy. Directors, presidents,
officials great and small, all the recipients of the profits from the
system of using other people's money as if it were your own, regarded
him as a personal enemy. When Duncan said to one of his fellow agents,
"We must get that chap out," the right eddy had been started.
Within two weeks, Duncan was at the head of an association of agents
gathering proxies from the policy holders to oust the Armstrong regime.
Duncan and his fellow conspirators sent out a circular, calling
attention to the recent rise in the profits to policy holders. "It is
evident," said the circular, "that there has been mismanagement of our
interests, and that the present powers have been frightened into giving
us a little larger part of our own. We ought to have it all! Send your
proxies to the undersigned, that the O.A.D. may be reorganized upon an
honest, democratic basis. A new broom, a clean sweep!"
Duncan in person came to Armstrong with one of the circulars. "There's
nothing underhand about me," said he as he handed it to the president.
"Here's our declaration of war."
Armstrong glanced at it, smiled satirically. "You've sent copies to the
newspapers also, haven't you?" replied he. "As you couldn't possibly
keep the matter secret, I can't get excited about your candor." And he
tossed the circular on his desk.
"When you read it, you'll see we're fighting fair," said Duncan.
"I've read it," was Armstrong's answer. "One of my friends among the
agents sent me a copy a week ago--the day you drew it up."
Duncan began to "hedge." "I don't want you to have any hard feelings
toward me," said he. "All the boys were hot for this thing, and I had
to go in with them."
"You were displaced as general Western agent this morning," said
Armstrong tranquilly. "I telegraphed your assistant to take charge. I
also telephoned him a memorandum of what you owe the company, with
instructions to bring suit unless you paid up in three days."
"It ain't fair to single me out this way," cried Duncan. "It's
persecution."
"I haven't singled you out," said Armstrong. "I bounced the whole crowd
of you at the same time, and in the same way. You charge me with
extravagance. Well, you see, I've admitted the charge and have begun to
retrench."
Duncan's fat, round face was purple and his brown eyes were glittering.
"You think you've done us up," said he, with a nasty laugh. "But you're
not as 'cute' as you imagine. We provided against just that move."
"I see that your committee of policy holders to receive proxies are
dummies," replied Armstrong. "I know all about your arrangements."
"Then you know we're going to win."
Armstrong looked indifferent. "That remains to be seen," said he.
"Good morning."
When Duncan had got himself out of the room, Armstrong laid the circular
beside the one he himself had written and sent to each of the seven
hundred thousand policy holders. His circular was a straight-forward
statement of the facts--of how and why his policy of economy had stirred
up all the plunderers of the company, great and small. It ended with a
request that proxies be sent direct to him, by those who wished the new
order to persist and did not wish a return to the old order with its
long-standing and grave abuses. He compared the two circulars and
laughed at himself. "Mine's the unvarnished truth," thought he. "But
it doesn't sound as probable, as reasonable, as Duncan's lies. If the
policy holders do stand by me, it'll be because most people are fools
and hit it right by accident. Most of us are never so wrong as in our
way of being right. The wise thing is always to assume that the crowd
that's in is crooked."
If Armstrong had been a reformer, with the passion to reorganize the
world on his own private plan, and in the event of the world's failure
to recognize his commission as vice-regent of the Almighty, ready to
denounce it as a hopeless case--if Armstrong had been a professional
regenerator, those would have been trying days for him. The measures he
took that were the most honest and the most honorable were the very
measures that made the other side strong. He had weeded out a multitude
of grafters and had shown an inflexible purpose to weed out the rest;
and so he had organized and made powerful the conspiracy to restore
graft. He had attacked the men--the big agents--who were using their
influence with the policy holders to enable them to rob freely; and so
he had stirred up those traitors still further to cozen their victims.
He had cut down the enormous subsidies to the press, had cut off the
graft of the great financiers who were the powers behind the great
organs of public opinion; and so he had enlisted the press as an open
and most helpful ally of the conspirators. The policy holders were told
by agents--whom they knew personally and regarded as their
representatives--that Armstrong was the "thieving tool of the Wall
Street crowd"; the policy holders read in their newspapers that "on the
whole the O.A.D. would probably benefit by a new management selected by
the body of the policy holders themselves." It was ridiculous, it was
tragic. Armstrong laughed, with a heavy and at times a bitter heart.
"I don't blame the poor devils," he said. "How are they to know? I'm
the damn fool, not they--I who, dealing with men all these years, have
put myself in a position where I am appealing from the men who run the
people to the people, who always have been run and always will be."
Still, he began to hope against hope, as the proxies rolled in for
him--by hundreds, by thousands, by tens of thousands. Most of the
letters accompanying the proxies justified his cynical opinion that the
average man is never so wrong as when he is right; the writers gave the
most absurd reasons for supporting him, not a few of them frankly saying
that it was to the best interest of the company to leave the control to
the man who was in with the powers of Wall Street! But there were
letters, hundreds of them, from men and women who showed that they
understood the situation; and, curiously enough, most of these letters
were badly written, badly spelled, letters from so-called ignorant
people. It was a striking exhibit of how little education has to do
with brains. "I've always said," thought Armstrong, "that our rotten
system of education is responsible for most of the fools and all the
damn fools, but I never before knew how true it was."
And the weeks passed, and the annual meeting and election drew nearer
and nearer. Instead of Armstrong's agitation increasing, it disappeared
entirely. Within, he was as calm as he had all along seemed at the
surface. It was an unexpected reward for trying to do the square thing.
He was eminently practical in his morals, was the last man in the world
to turn the other cheek, was disposed to return a blow both in kind and
in degree. But he knew, also, that the calm he now felt was due to the
changed course, could never have been his in the old course.
On the morning of the great day, he stopped shaving to look into his own
eyes reflected in the glass. "Old man," said he aloud, "there's much to
be said for being clean--reasonably, humanly clean. It begins to have
compensations sooner than the preachers seem to think."
As Armstrong entered the splendid assembly chamber of the new O.A.D.
building, the first figure his eyes hit upon was that of Hugo Fosdick,
entering at the opposite door. To look at him was like hearing a good
joke. He was walking as if upon air, head rearing, lofty brow
corrugated, eyes rolling and serious, shoulders squared as if bearing
lightly a ponderous burden. Of all the trifles that flash and wink out
upon the expanse of the infinite, the physically vain man seems the most
trivial. The so-called upper classes, being condemned to think about
themselves almost all the time, furnish to the drama of life the most of
the low comedy, with their struttings and swellings and posings. Those
who in addition to class vanity have physical vanity are the clowns of
the great show. Hugo was of the clowns--and he dressed the part, that
day. He had on a tremendously loud tweed suit, a billycock hat of a
peculiar shade of brown to match, a huge plaid overcoat; he was wearing
a big, rough-looking chrysanthemum that seemed of a piece with his tie;
he diffused perfume like a woman who wishes to be known by the scent she
uses. As he drew off his big, thick driving gloves, he gazed grandly
around. His eyes met Armstrong's, and his haughty lip curled in a
supercilious smile.
"Did you come down in an auto?" some one asked him.
"No, not in an auto," he said in a voice intended to be heard by all.
"I drove down. I've dropped the auto--it's become vulgar, like the
bicycle. It was merely a fad, and the best people soon exhausted it.
There's no chance for individual taste in those mechanical things, as
there is in horses. Anyone can get together the best there is going in
automobiles; but how many men can provide themselves with well turned
out traps--horses, harness, the men on the box, just as a gentleman's
turnout should be?"
One of the Western men laughed behind his hand, and said, "Wot t' hell!"
But most of the assembly gazed rather awedly at Hugo. They would have
thought him ridiculous had he been presented to them as a
laugh-provoker; but, as he was presented as a representative of the "top
notch" of New York, they were respectfully silent and obediently
impressed.
And now, with Randall, a Duncan man, in the chair, the meeting
began--formalities, reading of reports to which nobody listened, making
of motions in which nobody was interested. Half an hour of this, with
the tension increasing. Duncan had dry-smoked three cigars, and the
corners of his fat mouth were yellow with tobacco stains; Hugo,
struggling hard for a gentleman's _sang froid_, had half torn out the
sweat band of his pot hat, had bit his lip till it bled. He was
watching Armstrong, was hating him and envying him--for the big
Westerner sat at the right of the chairman with no more trace of
excitement on his face than there is in the features of a bronze Buddha
who has been staring cross-legged into Nirvana for twenty-five
centuries.
Nor did he rouse himself when the election began, though a nervous
shiver like an electric shock visibly shook every other man in the room.
His lieutenants proposed his list of candidates; Duncan's men proposed
the "Popular" list; the voting began. Barry, for Armstrong, cast
sixty-two thousand four hundred and fifteen votes--the proxies that had
come in for Armstrong in answer to his appeal and also the uncanceled
proxies of those he had had since the beginning of his term. Duncan and
his crowd burst into a cheer, and in rapid succession nine of them cast
forty-three thousand and eleven votes. Then they turned anxious eyes on
Hugo. Armstrong, too, looked at him. He could not understand. Hugo's
name was not on the Duncan list of persons to whom the "new broom"
proxies were to be sent. Hugo, pale and trembling, rose. He fixed
revengeful, triumphant, gloating eyes upon Armstrong and addressed him,
as he said to the chairman, "For Mr. Wolcott here, I cast for the
Popular, or anti-Armstrong ticket, the proxies of ninety thousand six
hundred and four policy holders."
Armstrong looked at Hugo as if he were not seeing him; indeed, he seemed
almost oblivious of his surroundings, as if he were absorbed in some
tranquil, interesting mental problem. Silence followed Hugo's
announcement, and the porters brought in and piled upon the huge table,
over against the now insignificant bundles of Armstrong's proxies, the
packages which were the tangible demonstration of the overwhelming force
and power of his foes. As the porters completed their task, the
spectacle became so inspiring to Duncan and his friends that they forgot
their dignity, and gave way to their feelings. They yelled, they tossed
their hats; they embraced, shook hands, gave each other resounding slaps
upon the shoulders. Hugo condescended to join in their jubilations,
never taking his eyes off Armstrong's face. Armstrong and Barry and
Driggs sat silent, Armstrong impassive, Barry frowning, Driggs gnawing
his mustache. Armstrong's gaze went from face to face of these "policy
holders"; on each he saw written the basest emotions--emotions from the
jungle, emotions of tusk and claw. The O.A.D. with all its vast
treasures was theirs to despoil--and they were clashing their fangs and
licking their savage chops in anticipation of the feast. The vast
majority of the policy holders had been too indifferent to respond to
the appeal of either side--this, though the future of their widows and
their orphans was at stake! Of those who had responded, the
overwhelming majority had declared against Armstrong.
He had long known it would be so and had resolved to accept the "popular
mandate." But the gleam of those greedy eyes, the grate of that greedy,
gloating laughter, was too horrible. "I _can't_ let things go to hell
like this!" he muttered--and he leaned toward Driggs and said in an
undertone, "I've changed my mind. Carry out my original programme."
Driggs suddenly straightened himself, and his face changed from gloom to
delight, then sobered into alert calmness. Gradually the victors
quieted down. "Close the polls!" called Duncan. "Nobody else is going
to vote."
"Before closing the polls, Mr. Chairman," said Driggs, "or, rather,
before the proxies offered by Mr. Fosdick are accepted, I wish to ask
Mr. Wolcott a question." And he turned toward young Wolcott, a distant
relative and henchman of Duncan's and one of the three men in whose
names stood all the "new-broom" proxies.
"How old are you, Mr. Wolcott, please?"
Wolcott stared at him, glanced at Hugo, at Duncan, grinned. "None of
your business," drawled he. "I may say none of your damn business."
Driggs smiled blandly, turned to the chairman. "As a policy holder in
the O.A.D.," he said gently, "I ask that all the proxies on which the
name of Howard C. Wolcott appears be thrown out."
Duncan and Hugo sprang up. "What kind of trick is this?" shouted Duncan
at Armstrong.
Armstrong seemed not to be listening, was idly twisting his slender gold
watch guard round his forefinger.
"By the constitution of the association," proceeded Driggs, "proxies
given to anyone under thirty years of age or to any committee any of
whose members is under thirty years are invalid. I refer you to Article
nine, Section five."
"But Wolcott's over thirty," bawled Duncan.
"I'm thirty-one--thirty-two the sixth of next month," blustered Wolcott.
"I demand to be sworn."
Driggs drew several papers from his pocket. "I have here," he pursued,
"an official copy of Wolcott's application for a marriage license, in
which he gives the date of his birth. Also the sworn statement of the
physician who presided over his entrance into this wicked world. Also,
an official copy of Wolcott's statement to the election registrars of
Peoria, where he lives. All these documents agree that Mr. Wolcott is
not yet twenty-nine." Driggs leaned back and smiled benevolently at
Wolcott. "I think Mr. Wolcott's own testimony would be superfluous."
"This is infamous--infamous!" cried Hugo, hysterically menacing
Armstrong with his billycock hat and big driving gloves and
crimson-fronted head.
"Of all the outrages ever attempted, this is the most brazen!" shouted
Duncan.
"Mr. Chairman," said Driggs, in that same gentle voice, not unlike the
purring of a stroked cat, "I believe the Constitution is self-executing.
As I understand it, all the proxies collected for the Duncan-Fosdick
party are on the same form--the one authorizing Wolcott and two others
to cast the vote. Thus, the only legal votes cast are those for the
regular ticket."
"The election must be postponed!" Duncan screamed, waving his fists and
then beating them upon the table. "This outrage must not go on."
The chairman, Randall, had been a Duncan man. He now fled to the
victors. "There is no legal way to postpone, Mr. Duncan," he responded
coldly. "No other votes offering, I declare the polls closed. Shall we
adjourn until this day week, gentlemen, according to custom, so that the
tellers may have time to examine the vote and report?"
Armstrong spoke for the first time. "Move we adjourn," he said, rising
like a man who is weary from sitting too long in the same position.
Barry seconded; the meeting stood adjourned. Armstrong, followed by
Barry and Driggs, withdrew.
As soon as they had gone, Hugo blazed on Duncan. "You are responsible
for this!" he cried. "You damn fool!"
Duncan stared stupidly. Then, by a reflex action of the muscles rather
than as the result of any order from his dazed brain, his great,
fat-cushioned fist swung into Hugo's face and Hugo was flat upon his
back on the floor.
"Come on, boys," said Duncan. "Let's go have a drink and feel ourselves
for broken bones."
*XXXI*
*"I DON'T TRUST HIM"*
Armstrong was now the man of the hour, the one tenant of the public
pillories who was sure of a fling from every passer. The press shrieked
at him, the pulpit thundered; the policy holders organized into state
associations and threatened. Those who had sent him proxies wrote
revoking them and denouncing him as having betrayed their confidence.
Those who had given the Duncan crowd their proxies wrote excoriating him
for taking advantage of a technicality to cheat them out of their rights
and to gain one year more of power to plunder.
"It's a blistering shame!" cried Barry, wrought up over some
particularly vicious attack. "It's so infernally unjust!"
"I don't agree with you," replied Armstrong, as judicial as his friend
was infuriate. "The people are right; they simply are right in the
wrong way. They think I'm part of the system of wholesale, respectable
pocket-picking that has grown up in this country. You can't blame 'em.
And it does look ugly, my using that technical point to save myself."
"I suppose you wish you had stuck to your first scheme," said Barry,
sarcastic, "and had let the Duncan broom sweep the safes."
"No, I don't repent," replied Armstrong. "When I decided to save the
policy holders in spite of themselves, I knew this was coming. When you
try to save a mule from a burning stable, you're a fool to be surprised
if you get kicked."
"You're not going to pay any attention to these yells for you to
resign?" Barry asked, even more alarmed than he showed.
"No, I'll not resign," said Armstrong.
"Then you ought to do something, ought to meet these charges. You ought
to fight back." Barry had been waiting for three weeks in daily
expectation; but Armstrong had not moved, had given no sign that he was
aware of the attack.
"Yes, it is about time, I guess," said he. "Beginning to-day, I am going
to clean out of the O.A.D. all that's left of the old gang."
Barry looked at him as if he thought he had gone crazy. "Why, Horace,
that'll simply raise hell!" he said. "We'll be put out by force. You
know what everybody'll say."
Armstrong leaned back in his chair, put his big hands behind his head
and beamed on his first lieutenant. "It wouldn't surprise me if we had
to call on the police for protection before the end of next week."
"The governor'll be forced to act," urged Barry. "As it is, he's
catching it for keeping his hands off."
"Don't be alarmed. Morris understands the situation. We had a talk
last night--met on a corner and walked round in quiet streets for two
hours."
"He sent for you, did he?"
"Yes. He was weakening. But he's all right again."
"Well, I don't see the advantage in this new move, in making a bad
matter worse."
"The worse it gets, the quicker it'll improve when the turn comes,"
Armstrong answered. "I've got to get rid of the old gang--you know
that. They were brought up on graft. They look on it as legitimate.
They never'll be right again, and if a single one of them stays, he'll
rot our new force. So out they all go. Now, as it's got to be done,
the best time is right now, and have it over with. I tell you, Jim,"
and Armstrong brought his fist down on the desk, "I'm going to put this
company in order if I'm thrown into jail the day after I've done it!
But I ain't going to jail. I'm going to stay right here, and, inside of
six months, the crowd that's howling loudest for my blood will be
sending me proxies and praying that I'll live forever."
"I wish I could think so," muttered Barry gloomily.
"So you've lost confidence in me, too?" Armstrong said this with more
mockery than reproach. "It's lucky I don't rely on confidence in me to
get results, isn't it? Well, Jim----"
"Oh, I'll stand by you, Armstrong, faith or no faith," interrupted
Barry.
"Thanks," said Armstrong, somewhat dryly. "But I'm bound to tell you
that the result will be just the same, whether you do or not. If you
want to accept Trafford's offer that you have taken under consideration,
don't hesitate on my account."
Barry was scarlet. "It was on account of my family," he stammered. "My
wife's been at me to----"
"Of course she has," said Armstrong. "Don't say any more."
"She's like all the women," Barry insisted on saying. "She likes luxury
and all that, and she's afraid I'll lose my hold, and she knows how
generous Trafford is."
"Yes," drawled Armstrong. "This country is full of that kind of
generosity nowadays--generosity with other people's money."
"The women don't think about that side of it," said Barry. "They think
that as pretty much everybody's doing that sort of thing--everybody that
is anybody--why, it must be all right. And, by gad, Horace, sometimes
it almost seems to me I'm a fool, a dumb one, to stick to the
old-fashioned ways. Why be so particular about not taking people's
property when they leave it around and don't look after it themselves,
and when somebody else'll take it, if I don't--somebody who won't make
as good use of it as I would?"
"The question isn't whose property it is, but whose property it isn't,"
said Armstrong. "And, when it isn't ours, why--I guess 'hands off' is
honest--and decent." And then he colored and his eyes shifted, as if
the other could read in them the source of this idea which he had
thought and spoken as if it were his own.
"That's my notion, too," said Barry. "I suppose I'll never be rich.
But--" His face became splendidly earnest--"by heaven, Armstrong, I'll
never leave my children a dollar that wasn't honestly got."
"We're rowing against the tide, Jim. You can't even console yourself
that your children would rather have had the heritage of an honest name
than the millions. And if you don't leave 'em rich, they'll either have
to plunge in and steal a fortune or become the servants of some rich man
or go to farming. No, even independent farming won't be open by the
time they grow up."
"Well, I'm going to keep on," replied Barry. "And so are you."
Armstrong laughed silently. "Guess you're right," said he. "God knows,
I tried hard enough to turn my boat round and row the other way. But
she would swing back. Queer about that sort of thing, isn't it? I
wonder, Jim, how many of the men most of us look on as obscurities and
failures are in the background or down because there was that queer
something in them that wouldn't let them subscribe to this code of
sneak, stab, and steal? We're in luck not to have been trampled clean
under--and our luck may not hold."
A few days, and Barry decided that their luck was in the last tailings.
Armstrong's final move produced results that made the former tempests
seem mere fresh weather. The petty grafters and parasites he now
dislodged in a body were insignificant as individuals; but each man had
his coterie of friends; each was of a large group in each city or town,
a group of people similarly dependent upon small salaries and grafting
from large corporations. The whole solidarity burst into an uproar.
Armstrong was getting rid of all the honest men; he was putting his
creatures in their places, so that there might be no check on the flow
of plunder from the pockets of policy holders into his own private
pocket. The man was the greediest as well as the most insolent of
thieves! This was the cry in respectable circles throughout the
country--for his "victims" were all of "good" families, were the
relatives, friends, dependents of the leading citizens, each in his own
city or town.
"Don't you think you'd better stop until things have quieted down a
bit?" asked Barry, when the work was about half done.
"Go right on!" said Armstrong. "Tear up the last root. We must stand
or fall by this policy. If we try to compromise now, we're lost. The
way to cut off a leg is to cut it off. There's a chance to survive a
clean cut, but not a bungle."
A fortnight, and all but a few of his personal friends in the board of
directors resigned after the board had, with only nine negative votes,
passed a resolution requesting him to resign. And finally, the policy
holders held a national convention at Chicago, and appointed a committee
of five to go to New York and "investigate the O.A.D. from garret to
cellar, especially cellar."
"Now!" cried Armstrong jubilantly, when the telegram containing the news
was laid before him.
On a Thursday morning the newspapers told the whole country about the
convention, the committee, the impending capture of "the bandit." On
Saturday toward noon, Armstrong got a note: "I am stopping with
Narcisse. Won't you come to see me this afternoon, or to-morrow--any
time?--Neva."
He read the note twice, then tore it into small pieces and tossed them
into the wastebasket. "Not I!" said he aloud, with a frown at the bits
of violet note paper. Through all those weeks he had been hoping for,
expecting, a message from her--something that would help him to feel
there was in this world of enemies and timid, self-interested friends,
at least the one person who understood and sympathized. But not a word
had come; and his heart, so hard when it was hard, and so sensitive when
it was touched at all, was sore and bitter.
Nevertheless, it was he and none other who appeared at five that
afternoon, less than a block from Narcisse's house; and he wandered in
wide circles about the neighborhood for at least an hour before his
pride could shame him into dragging himself away. At three the next
afternoon he rang Narcisse's bell. The man servant showed him into her
small oval gray and dull gold salon which Raphael once said was probably
the most perfect room in the modern world. Adjoining it was a
conservatory, the two rooms being separated only by an alternation of
mirrors and lattices, the lattices overrun with pink rambler in full
bloom--and in the mirrors and through the opposite windows Armstrong saw
the snow falling and lying white upon the trees and the lawns of the
Park. In the center of the room was an open fire, its flue descending
from the ceiling, but so constructed that it and its oval chimney-piece
added to the effect of the room almost as much as the glimpses of the
conservatory, seen through the rambler-grown lattices. And the scent
of-growing flowers perfumed the air. These surroundings, this sudden
summer bursting and beaming through the snow and ice of winter, had
their inevitable effect upon Armstrong. He was beginning to look
favorably upon several possible excuses for Neva. "She may not have
heard of my troubles," he reflected. "She doesn't read the newspapers,
and people wouldn't talk to her of anything concerning me."
She came in hurriedly, swathed in a coat of black broadtail, made very
simply, its lines following her long, slim figure. The color was high
in her cheeks; from her garments diffused the freshness of the winter
air. "I shouldn't have been out," she explained, "but I had to go to
see some one--Mrs. Trafford, who is ill."
Then he noted that her face was thinner than when he last saw it, that
the look out of the eyes was weary. And for the moment he forgot his
bitterness over her "utter desertion" of him when he really needed the
cheer only a friend, a real friend, one beyond the suspicion of a
possibility of self-interest, can give; deserted him in troubles which
she herself had edged him on to precipitate. "When did you come?" he
asked.
"Yesterday--yesterday morning. You see I sent you word immediately."
He looked ironic. "I saw in the newspaper this morning that Raphael
landed yesterday."
"He dined here last night," replied she.
He turned as if about to go. "I can't imagine why you bothered to send
for me," he said.
She showed that she was astonished and hurt. "Horace," she appealed,
"why do you say that? I read about all those troubles."
"So, you did know!" He gave an abrupt, grim laugh. "And as you were
coming on to see Raphael, why, you thought you'd do an act of Christian
charity. Well, I wish I could oblige, but really, I don't need charity."
She made no answer, simply sighed and drooped. When the country was
ringing with denunciations of him, "He will see the truth now," she had
said to herself, "now that the whole world is showing it to him instead
of only one person and she a woman." Then, with the bursting of the
great storm over his single head, she dismissed all but the one central
truth, that she loved him, and came straightway to New York.
Well, here they were face to face; and as she looked at him in his
strength and haughtiness, she saw in his face, as if etched in steel,
inflexible determination to persist in the course that was making him an
object of public infamy, justly, she had to admit. "The madness for
money and for crushing down his fellow beings has him fast," she
thought. "There isn't anything left in him for his good instincts to
work on." She seated herself wearily.
"Let's talk no more about it," she said to him.
"You've been reading the papers?" he asked.
"Yes--I read--all."
"It must have been painful to you," said he with stolid sarcasm.
She did not answer. In this mood of what seemed to her the most
shameless defiance of all that a human being would respect if he had
even a remnant of self-respect, he was almost repellent.
"So," he went on, in that same stolid way, "you sent for me to revel in
that self-righteousness you paraded the last time I saw you. Well, it
will chagrin you, I fear, to learn that the _scoundrel_ you tried to
redeem will escape from the toils again, and resume his wicked way."
"I wish you would go," she entreated. "I can't bear it to-day."
She was taking off her hat now, was having great difficulty in finding
its pins; its black fur brought out all the beauty of her bright brown
hair. The graceful, fascinating movements of her head, her arms, her
fingers, put that into his fury which made it take the bit in its teeth.
"Are you and Raphael going to marry?" he demanded so roughly that she,
startled, stood straight up, facing him. "Yes, I see that you are," he
rushed on. "And it puts me beside myself with jealousy. But you would
be mistaken if you thought I meant I would have you, even if I could get
you. What you said the last time I saw you, interpreted by what you've
done since, has revealed you to me as what I used to think you--a woman
incapable of love--not a woman at all. You are of this new type--the
woman that uses her brain. Give me the old-fashioned kind--the kind
that loved, without question."
She blazed out at him--at his savage, sneering voice and eyes. "Without
question," she retorted, "and whether he was on the right side or the
wrong. Loved the man who won, so long as he won; was gladly a mere part
of the spoils of victory--that was the feature of her the poets and the
novel writers neglect to mention. But it was important. You like that,
however--you who think only of fighting, as you call it--though that's
rather a brave name for the game you play, as you yourself have
described it to me and as the whole world now knows you play it. You'd
have no use for the woman who really loves, the woman who would be proud
to bear a man's name if she loved him, though it were black with
dishonor, provided he said, 'Help me make this name clean and bright
again.' Why should not a woman be as jealous of dishonor in her husband
as he is of it in her?"
Narcisse entered, hesitated; then, seeing Armstrong hat in hand and
apparently going, she came on. "Hello," said she, shaking hands with
him. She took a cigarette from the big silver box on the table, lit it,
held the box toward Armstrong. "Smoke, and cheer up. The devil is said
to be dying."
"Thanks, no, I must be off," replied Armstrong. He took a long look
round the room, ending at the rambler-grown lattices. He bowed to
Narcisse. His eyes rested upon Neva; but she was not looking at him,
lest love should win a shameful victory over self-respect and over her
feeling of what was the right course toward him if there was any meaning
in the words woman and wife.
When he was gone, Narcisse stretched herself out, extended her feet
toward the flames. "What a handsome, big man he is," said she, sending
up a great cloud of cigarette smoke. "How tremendously a man. If he had
some of Boris's temperament, or Boris some of his, either would be
perfect."
A pause, with both women looking into the fire.
"After you left us last night," Narcisse continued, "Boris asked me to
marry him."
Neva was startled out of her brooding.
"I refused," proceeded Narcisse. Another silence, then, "You don't ask
why?"
"Why?"
"Because he's in love with _you_. He told me so. He made quite an
interesting proposition. He suggested that, as we were both alone and
got on so well together and worked along lines that were sympathetic yet
could not cross and cause clashes, that--as the only way we could be
friends without a scandal was by marrying--why, we ought to marry."
"It seems unanswerable," said Neva.
"If you had been married, _and_ in love with your husband, I think I'd
have accepted."
"What nonsense!"
"Not at all," replied Narcisse. "I don't trust any man, least of all a
Boris Raphael; and I don't trust any woman--not even you. The time
might come when you would change your mind. Then, where should _I_ be?"
"I'll not change my mind."
"That's beyond your control," retorted Narcisse. "But--when you marry, I
may risk it."
Neva's thoughts went back to Armstrong. Presently she vaguely heard
Narcisse saying, "I've got to put up a stiffer fight against this
loneliness. Do you ever think of suicide?"
"I don't believe any sane person ever does."
"But who is sane? Solitary confinement will upset the steadiest brain."
She gazed strangely at Neva. "Look out, my dear. Don't _you_ act so
that you'll sentence yourself to a life of solitary confinement. Some
people are lucky enough not to be discriminating. They can be just as
happy with imitation friendship and paste love as if they had the real
thing. But not you--or I."
"There's worse than being alone," said Neva.
Another silence; then Narcisse, still in the same train of thought, went
on, "Several years ago we made a house for a couple up on the West
Side--a good-looking young husband and wife devoted to each other and to
their two little children. He lavished everything on her. I got to
know her pretty well. She was an intelligent woman--witty, with the
streak of melancholy that always goes with wit and the other keen
sensibilities. I soon saw she was more than unhappy, that she was
wretched. I couldn't understand it. A year or so passed, and the
husband was arrested, sent to the 'pen'--he made his money at a
disreputable business. Then I understood. Another year or so, and I
met her in Twenty-third Street. She was radiant--I never saw such a
change. 'My husband is to be released next month,' said she, quite
simply, like a natural human being who assumes that everybody
understands and sympathizes. 'And,' she went on, 'he has made up his
mind to live straight. We're going away, and we'll take a nice, new
name, and be happy.'"
Neva had so changed her position that Narcisse could not see her slow,
hot tears that are the sweat of a heart in torment. To Narcisse, the
reason for that wife's wretchedness was an ever-present terror lest the
husband should be exposed. But Neva, more acutely sensitive, or
perhaps, because of what she had passed through, saw, or fancied she
saw, a deeper cause--beneath material terror of "appearances" the horror
of watching the manhood she loved shrivel and blacken, the horror of
knowing that the lover who lay in her arms would rise up and go forth to
prey, a crawling, stealthy beast.
To understand a human being at all in any of his or her aspects, however
far removed from the apparently material, it is necessary to understand
how that man or woman comes by the necessities of life--food, clothing,
shelter. To study human nature either in the broad or in detail,
leaving those matters out of account, is as if an anatomist were to try
to understand the human body, having first taken away the vital organs
and the arteries and veins. It is the method of the man's income that
determines the man; and his paradings and posings, his loves, hatreds,
generosities, meannesses, all are either unimportant or are but the
surface signs of the deep, the real emotions that constitute the vital
nucleus of the real man. In the material relations of a man or a woman,
in the material relations of husband and wife, of parents and children,
lie the ultimate, the true explanations of human conduct. This has
always been so, in all ages and classes; and it will be so until the
chief concern of the human animal, and therefore its chief compelling
motive, ceases to be the pursuit of the necessities and luxuries that
enable it to live from day to day and that safeguard it in old age. The
filling and emptying and filling again of the purse perform toward the
mental and moral life a function as vital as the filling and emptying
and refilling of heart or lungs performs in the life of the body.
Narcisse suspected Neva had turned away to hide some sad heart secret;
but it did not occur to her to seek a clew to it in the story she had
told. She had never taken into account, in her estimate of Armstrong,
his life downtown--the foundations and framework of his whole being.
This though, under her very eyes, to the torture of her loving heart,
just those "merely material" considerations had determined her brother's
downfall, while her own refusal of whatever had not been earned in honor
and with full measure of service rendered had determined her salvation.
In the "Arabian Nights" there is the story of a man who marries a woman,
beautiful as she in Solomon's Song. He is happy in his love for her and
her love for him until he wakens one night, as she is stealing from his
side. He follows; she joins a ghoul at a ghoul's orgy in a graveyard.
Next morning there she lies by his side, in stainless beauty. Since her
father's death, not even when Armstrong was before Neva and his
magnetism was exerting its full power over her, not even then could she
quite forget the other Armstrong whom she had surprised at his
"business." She could no longer think of that "business" merely as
"doing what everybody has to do, to get on." She had seen what
"finance" meant; she could not picture Armstrong without the stains of
the ghoul orgy upon him.
"And now," she thought despairingly, "he has broken finally and
altogether with honor and self-respect; has flung me out of his
life--forever!"
That night Narcisse took her to a concert at the Metropolitan. Her mind
was full of the one thought, the one hatred and horror, and she could
not endure the spectacle. The music struck upon her morbid senses like
the wailing and moaning of the poverty and suffering of millions that
had been created to enable those smiling, flashing hundreds to assemble
in splendor. "I must go!" she exclaimed at the first intermission. "I
can think only of those jewels and dresses, this shameless flaunting of
stolen goods--bread and meat snatched from the poor. You know these
women round us in the boxes. You know whose wives and daughters they
are. Where did the money come from?" She was talking rapidly, her eyes
shining, her voice quivering. "Do you see the Atwaters there with Lona
Trafford in their box? Do you know that Atwater just robbed a hundred
thousand more people of their savings by lying about an issue of bonds?
Do you know that Trafford steals outright one-third of every dollar the
poor people, the day laborers, intrust to him as insurance for their old
age and for their orphans? Do you know that Langdon there robs a
million farmers of their earnings and drives them to the mortgage and
the tax sale and pauperism and squalor--all so that the Langdons may
have palaces and carriages and the means to degrade thousands into
dependence and to steal more and more money from more and more people?"
Narcisse's eyes traveled slowly round the circle, then rested in wonder
on Neva. "What set you to thinking of these things?" she asked.
"What always sets a _woman_ to thinking?"
When they reached home, Narcisse broke the silence to say, "After all,
it's nobody's fault. It's a system and they're the victims of it."
"Because one has the chance to steal--that's no excuse for his
stealing," replied Neva, with a certain sternness in her face that
curiously reminded Narcisse of Armstrong. "Nor is it any excuse that
everyone is doing it, and so making it respectable. I'm going back
home--back where at least I shan't be tormented by seeing these things
with my very eyes."
On impulse, perhaps tinged with selfishness, Narcisse exclaimed, "Neva,
why don't you marry Armstrong?"
"Because I don't trust him," replied she. "One may love without trust,
but not marry."
"Yet," said Narcisse, "I'd marry Boris, though I never could trust
him--never!"
"If you had been married, you wouldn't do it," replied Neva. Then, "But
every case is individual, and everyone must judge for himself."
"You know best--about Armstrong."
"I should say I did!" exclaimed Neva bitterly. "There's no excuse for my
folly--none!"
*XXXII*
*ARMSTRONG ASKS A FAVOR*
Neva, arranging to go West on the afternoon express, was stopped by a
note from Armstrong:
"I hope you will come to my office at eleven to-morrow. I beg you not to
refuse this, the greatest favor, except one, that I have ever asked."
At eleven the next morning she entered the ante-room to his office. He
and his secretary were alone there, he walking up and down with a
nervousness Morton had never seen in him. At sight of her, his manner
abruptly changed. "I was afraid something would happen to prevent your
coming," he said as they shook hands. He avoided her glance. "Thank
you. Thank you." And he took her into his inner office. "I have an
engagement--a meeting that will keep me a few minutes," he went on.
"It's only in the next room here."
"Don't hurry on my account," said she.
"I'll just put you at this desk here," he continued, with a curious
elaborateness of manner. "There are the morning's papers--and some
magazines. I shall be back--as soon as possible. You are sure you
don't mind?"
"Indeed, no," she replied, seating herself. "This is most comfortable."
There were sounds of several persons entering the adjoining room. "I'll
go now," said he. "The sooner I go, the sooner I shall be free. You
will wait?"
"Here," she assured him, wondering that he would not let his eyes meet
hers even for an instant.
He went into the next room, leaving the door ajar, but not widely enough
for her to see or to be seen. She took up a magazine, began a story.
The sound of the voices disturbed her. She heard enough to gather that
some kind of business meeting was going on, resumed the story. Suddenly
she heard Armstrong's voice. She listened. He, all of them, were so
near that she could hear every word.
"You will probably be surprised to learn, gentlemen," he was saying,
loudly, clearly, "that I have been impatiently awaiting your coming.
And now that you are here, I shall not only give you every opportunity
to examine the affairs of the O.A.D., but I shall insist upon your
taking advantage of it to the fullest. I look to you, gentlemen, to end
the campaign of calumny against your association and its management."
Neva's magazine had dropped into her lap. She knew now why he had asked
her to come. If only she could see! But no--that was impossible; she
must be content with hearing. She sat motionless, eager, yet in dread
too; for she knew that Armstrong had summoned her to his trial, that she
was to hear with her own ears the truth, the whole truth about him. The
truth! Would it seem to her as it evidently seemed to him? No matter;
she believed in him again. "At least," she said, "he _thinks_ he's
right, and the best man can get no nearer right than that."
If she could have looked into the next room, she would have seen two
large tables, men grouped about each. At one were Armstrong and the
five committee-men, and the lawyer, Drew, whom they had brought with
them from Chicago to conduct the examination and cross-examinations. At
the other sat a dozen reporters from the newspapers.
"I have told the gentlemen of the press," said Armstrong, "that my
impression was that the sessions of the committee were to be public. It
is, of course, for you to decide."
Drew rubbed his long lean jaw reflectively. "I see, Mr. Armstrong,"
said he, in a slow, bantering tone, "that you are disposed to assist us
to the extent of taking charge of the investigation. Now, I came with
the notion that _I_ was to do that, to whatever extent the committee
needed leading."
"Then you do not wish the investigation to be public?" said Armstrong.
"Public, yes," replied Drew. "But I doubt if we can conduct it so
thoroughly or so calmly, if our every move is made under the limelight."
"Before we go any further," said Armstrong, "there is a matter I wish to
bring to the attention of the committee, which it might, perhaps, seem
better to you to keep from the press. If so, will you ask the reporters
to retire for a few minutes?"
"Now, _there's_ just the kind of matter I think the press ought to
hear," said Drew. "_We_ haven't any secrets, Mr. Armstrong."
"Very well," said Armstrong. "The matter is this: The campaign against
the O.A.D. and against me was instigated and has been kept up by Mr.
Atwater and several of his associates, owners and exploiters of our
rivals in the insurance business. In view of that fact, I think the
committee will see the gross impropriety, the danger, the disaster, I
may say, of having as its counsel, as its guide, one of Mr. Atwater's
personal lawyers?"
"That's a lie," drawled Drew.
Armstrong did not change countenance. He rested his gaze calmly on the
lawyer. "Where did you dine last night, Mr. Drew?" he asked.
"This is the most impertinent performance I was ever the amused victim
of," said Drew. "You are on trial here, sir, not I. Of course, I shall
not answer your questions."
Farthest from Drew and facing him sat the chairman of the committee, its
youngest member, Roberts of Denver--a slender, tall man, with sinews
like steel wires enwrapping his bones, and nothing else beneath a skin
tanned by the sun into leather. He had eyes that suggested the full-end
view of the barrel of a cocked revolver. "Speak your questions to me,
Mr. Armstrong," now said this quiet, dry, dangerous-looking person, "and
I'll put 'em to our counsel. Where _did_ you dine last night, Mr. Drew?"
Drew glanced into those eyes and glanced away. "It is evidently Mr.
Armstrong's intention to foment dissension in the committee," said he.
"I trust you gentlemen will not fall headlong into his trap."
"Why do you object to telling us where you dined last night?" asked
Roberts.
"I can see no relevancy to our mission in the fact that I dined with my
old friend, Judge Bimberger."
"Ask him how long he has known Judge Bimberger," said Armstrong.
"I have known him for years," said Drew. "But I have not seen much of
him lately."
"Then, ask him," said Armstrong to Roberts, "why it was necessary for
Mr. Atwater to give Bimberger a letter of introduction to him, a letter
which the judge sent up with his card at the Manhattan Hotel at four
o'clock yesterday afternoon."
Drew smiled contemptuously, without looking at either Armstrong or the
chairman. "It was not a letter of introduction. It was a friendly note
Mr. Atwater asked the judge to deliver."
"It had 'Introducing Judge Bimberger' on the envelope," said Armstrong.
"There it is." And he tossed an envelope on the table.
Drew sprang to his feet, sank back with a ghastly grin. "You see, we
have a very clever man to deal with, gentlemen," said he, "a man who
stops at nothing, and is never so at ease as when he is stooping."
"Ask him," pursued Armstrong tranquilly, "how much he made in counsel
fees from Atwater, from the Universal Life, from the Hearth and Home
Defender, last year."
"I am counsel to a great many men and corporations," cried Drew,
ruffled. "You will not find a lawyer of my standing who has not
practically all the conspicuous interests as his clients."
"Probably not," said Roberts dryly. "That's the hell of it for us
common folks."
"Ask him," said Armstrong, "what arrangements he made with Bimberger to
pervert the investigation, to make it simply a slaughter of its present
management, to----"
"Gentlemen, I appeal to you!" exclaimed Drew with great dignity. "I did
not come here to be insulted. I have too high a position at the bar to
be brought into question. I protest. I demand that this cease."
"Ask him," said Armstrong, "what he and Bimberger and Atwater and
Langdon talked about at the dinner last night."
"You have heard my protest, gentlemen," said Drew coldly. "I am
awaiting your answer."
A silence of perhaps twenty seconds that seemed as many minutes. Then
Roberts spoke: "Well, Mr. Drew, in view of the fact that the reporters
are present----"
Involuntarily Drew wheeled toward the reporters' table, wild terror in
his eyes. He had forgotten that the press was there; all in a rush, he
realized what those silent, almost effaced dozen young men meant--the
giant of the brazen lungs who would in a few brief hours be shrieking
into every ear, from ocean to ocean, the damning insinuations of
Armstrong. He tried to speak, but only a rattling sound issued from his
throat.
"As the reporters are present," Roberts went on pitilessly--he had seen
too much of the tragic side of life in his years as Indian fighter and
cowboy to be moved simply by tragedy without regard to its cause--"I
think, and I believe the rest of the committee think, that you will have
to answer Mr. Armstrong's grave charges."
Drew collected himself. "I doubt if a reputable counsel has ever been
subjected to such indignities," said he in his slow, dignified way. "I
not only decline to enter into a degrading controversy, I also decline
to serve longer as counsel to a committee which has so frankly put
itself in a position to have its work discredited from the outset."
"Then you admit," said Roberts, "that you have entered into improper
negotiations with parties interested to queer this investigation?"
"Such a charge is preposterous," replied Drew.
"You admit that you deceived us a few moments ago as to your relations
with this judge?" pursued Roberts.
Drew made no answer. He was calmly gathering together his papers.
"I suggest that some one move that Mr. Drew's resignation be not
accepted, but that he be dismissed."
"I so move," said Reed, the attorney-general of Iowa.
"Second," said Bissell, a San Franciscan.
The motion was carried, as Drew, head in the air, and features
inscrutably calm behind his dark, rough skin, marched from the room,
followed by several of the reporters.
"As there are two lawyers on the committee," said Roberts, "it seems to
me we had better make no more experiments with outside counsel."
The others murmured assent. "Let Mr. Reed do the questioning,"
suggested Mulholland. It was agreed, and Reed took the chair which Drew
had occupied, as it was conveniently opposite to that in which Armstrong
was seated. The reporters who had pursued Drew now returned; one of
them said in an audible undertone to his fellow--"He wouldn't talk--not
a word," and they all laughed.
"Now--Mr. Armstrong," said Reed, in a sharp, businesslike voice.
"I was summoned," began Armstrong, "as the first witness, I assume. I
should like to preface my examination with a brief statement."
"Certainly," said Reed. Roberts nodded. He had his pistol-barrel eyes
trained upon Armstrong. It was evident that Armstrong's exposure of
Drew, far from lessening Roberts's conviction that he was a bandit, had
strengthened it, had made him feel that here was an even wilier, more
resourceful, more dangerous man than he had anticipated.
"For the past year and a half, gentlemen," said Armstrong, "I have been
engaged in rooting out a system of graft which had so infected the
O.A.D. that it had ceased to be an insurance company and had become,
like most of our great corporations, a device for enabling a few
insiders to gather in the money of millions of people, to keep
permanently a large part of it, to take that part which could not be
appropriated and use it in gambling operations in which the gamblers got
most of the profits and the people whose money supplied the stakes bore
all the losses. As the inevitable result of my effort to snatch the
O.A.D. from these parasites and dependents, who filled all the
positions, high and low, far and near, there has been a determined and
exceedingly plausible campaign to oust me. Latterly, instead of
fighting these plotters and those whom they misled, I have been silent,
have awaited this moment--when a committee of the policy holders would
appear. Naturally, I took every precaution to prevent that committee
from becoming the unconscious tool of the enemies of the O.A.D."
Armstrong's eyes now rested upon the fifth member of the committee, De
Brett, of Ohio. De Brett's eyes slowly lowered until they were studying
the dark leather veneer of the top of the table.
"I think," continued Armstrong, "that I have gone far enough in
protecting the O.A.D. and myself and my staff which has aided me in the
big task of expelling the grafters. I have here----"
Armstrong lifted a large bundle of typewritten manuscript and let it
fall with a slight crash. De Brett jumped.
"I have here," said Armstrong, "a complete account of my stewardship."
De Brett drew a cautious but profound breath of relief.
"It shows who have been dismissed, why they were dismissed, each man
accounted for in detail; what extravagances I found, how I have cut them
off; the contrast of the published and the actual conditions of the
company when I became its president, the present condition--which I may
say is flourishing, with the expenses vastly cut down and the profits
for the policy holders vastly increased. As soon as your committee
shall have vindicated the management, the O.A.D. will start upon a new
era of prosperity and will soon distance, if not completely put out of
business, its rivals, loaded down, as they are, with grafters."
Armstrong took up the bundle of typewriting and handed it to Reed.
"Before you give that document to the press," he went on, "I want to
make one suggestion. The men who have been feeding on the O.A.D. are,
of course, personally responsible--but only in a sense. They are,
rather, the product of a system. No law, no safeguards will ever be
devised for protecting a man in the possession of anything which he
himself neglects and leaves open as a temptation to the appetites of the
less scrupulous of his fellow men. These ravagers of your property, of
our property, are like a swarm of locusts. They came; they found the
fields green and unprotected; they ate. They have passed on. They are
simply one of a myriad of similar swarms. If we leave our property
unguarded again, they will return. If we guard it, they will never
bother us again. The question is whether we--you--would or would not do
well to publish the names and the records of these men. Will it do any
good beyond supplying the newspapers with sensations for a few days?
Will the good be overbalanced by the harm, by the--if I may say so--the
injustice? For is it not unjust to single out these few hundreds of
men, themselves the victims of a system, many of them the unconscious
victims--to single them out, when, all over the land, wherever there is
a great unguarded property, their like and worse go unscathed, and will
be free to swell the chorus of more or less hypocritical denunciations
of them?"
"We shall let no guilty man escape," said Roberts, eying Armstrong
sternly, "not even you, Mr. Armstrong, if we find you guilty."
"If there is any member of the committee who can, after searching his
own life, find no time when he has directly or indirectly grafted or
aided and abetted graft or profits by grafting--or spared relatives or
friends when he caught them in the devious but always more or less
respectable ways of the grafter--if there is such a one, then--"
Armstrong smiled--"I withdraw my suggestion."
"We must recover what has been stolen! We must send the thieves to the
penitentiary!" exclaimed Mulholland.
"But you can do neither," said Armstrong.
"And why not?" demanded Reed.
"Because they have too many powerful friends. They own the departments
of justice here and at Washington. We should only waste the money of
the O.A.D., send good money after bad. As you will see in my statement
there, I have recovered several millions. That is all we shall ever get
back. However, I shall say no more. I am ready to answer any questions.
My staff is ready. The books are all at your disposal."
"I think we had better adjourn now," said Reed, "and examine the papers
Mr. Armstrong has submitted--adjourn, say until Thursday morning. And
in the meanwhile, we will hold the document, if the rest of the
committee please, and not give it to the press. We must not give out
anything that has not been absolutely verified."
"I can't offer the committee lunch here," said Armstrong. "We have cut
off the lunch account of the O.A.D.--a saving of forty thousand a year
toward helping the policy holders buy their lunches." And he bowed to
the chairman, and withdrew by the door by which he had entered.
"A smooth citizen," said Roberts, when the reporters were gone.
"Very," said De Brett, at whom he was looking.
"He's that--and more," said Mulholland. "He's an honest man."
"We must be careful about hasty conclusions," replied Roberts.
"He is probably laughing at us, even now," said De Brett.
Roberts turned the pistol-barrel upon him again. "We've got to be a
damned sight more careful about prejudice against him," said he.
And De Brett hastily and eagerly assented.
In the next room the man who "is probably laughing at us, even now" was
standing before a woman who could not lift her burning face to meet his
gaze. But he, looking long at her, thought he saw that there was no hope
for him, and shut himself in behind his stolidity of the Indian and the
pioneer.
"Well," he said, "you don't believe. I was afraid it'd be so. Why
should you? I hardly believe in myself as yet." And he turned to stare
out of the window.
She came hesitatingly, slid her arm timidly through his. She entreated
softly, earnestly, "Forgive me, Horace." Then in response to his quick
glance, "Forgive me, I won't again, ever."
"Oh," was all he said. But his tone was like the arm he put round her
shoulders to draw her close against his broad chest, the rampart of a
dauntless soul. And as with one pair of eyes, not his nor hers, but
theirs, they gazed serenely down upon the vast panorama of snow-draped
skyscrapers, plumed like volcanoes and lifting grandly in the sparkling
air.