herself in a fever. She looked at him with the expression which used to
make his nerves vibrate. “You know that no human being ever was more to
another than I to you. But you can’t expect me to be just the same
as you are. I love _you_--not the false, base creature you picture. I
admire the way you love, but I could not love in that way. Thank God, my
love, my dear--I shall never be put to that test. For my love for you is
my--my all.”
“We are very serious about a mere supposition.”
Howard was laughing, but not naturally. “We take each the other far too
seriously. I’m sorry you idealise me so. Who knows--you might find me
out some day--and then--well, don’t blame me.”
Marian said no more, but late that evening she put her hands on his
shoulders and said: “You’re not hiding something from me--something we
ought to bear together?”
“Not I.” Howard smiled down into her eyes and kissed her.
His mood of reaction, of hysteria had passed. He was thinking how
little in reality she had had to do with his outburst. He had not been
addressing her at all, except as she seemed to him for the moment the
embodiment of his self-respect--or rather, of an “absurd,” “extremely
youthful” ideal of self-respect which he had “outgrown.”
XXV.
THE PROMISED LAND.
A woman with a powerful personality may absorb in herself a man of
strong and resolute ambition, may compel him to make her his career, to
feel that to get and to keep her is all that he asks from destiny. But
Marian was not such a woman.
She had come into Howard’s life at just the time and in just the way to
arouse his latent passion for power and to give it a sufficient initial
impetus. It was love for her that set him to lifting himself from among
those who work through themselves alone to the potent few who work
chiefly by directing the labour of others.
Once in this class, once having tasted the joy of power, Howard was
lost to her. She was unable to restrain or direct, or even clearly to
understand. She became an incident in his life. As riches came with
power, they pushed him to one side in her life. Living in separate parts
of a large house, leading separate lives, rarely meeting except when
others were present--following the typical life of New Yorkers of
fortune and fashion--they gradually grew to know little and see little
and think little each of the other.
There was no abruptness in the transition. Every day had contributed its
little toward widening the gap. There was no coolness, no consciousness
of separation; simply the slow formation of the habit of complete
independence each of the other.
His ambitions absorbed his thought and his time. To them he found her
very useful. The social side--forming and keeping up friendly relations
with the families whose heads were men of influence--was a vital part of
his plan. But he used her just as he used every and any one else whom
he found capable of contributing to his advancement; and, as she never
insisted upon herself, never sought to influence or even to inquire into
his course of action, she did not find him out.
She was in a vague way an unhappy woman. A discontent, a feeling that
her life was incomplete, perpetually teased her. He was distinctly
unhappy, often gloomy, at times morose. In her rare analytic moods she
attributed their failure to prolong the happiness of their courtship to
the hard work which kept him from her, kept them from enjoying the great
love which she assumed they felt each for the other. She would not and
could not see that that love had long disappeared, leaving a mask of
forms, of phrases and of impulses of passion to conceal its departure.
And to this view he outwardly assented, when she suggested it; but he
knew that she was deceiving herself as to him, and wondered if she were
not deceiving herself as to her own feelings.
Up to the time of the “Coal Conspiracy” and his attempt to put himself
straight with her, the idea of his love for her and of her oneness with
him had at least a hold upon his imagination. He then saw how far apart
they had drifted; and he dismissed from his mind even the pretense
that love played any part in his life. After that definite break with
principle and self-respect for the sake of his coal holdings, his
Wall Street friends and his newspaper career, the development of his
character continued along strictly logical lines with accelerating
speed. And it was accompanied by an ever franker, more cynical
acceptance of the change.
He could not deceive himself, nor can any man with the clearness of
judgment necessary to great achievement--although many “successful” men,
for obvious reasons of self-interest, diligently encourage the popular
theory of warped conscience. He was well aware that he had shifted from
the ideal of use _to_ his fellow-beings to the ideal of use _of_ his
fellow-beings, from the ideal of character to the ideal of reputation.
And he knew that the two ideals can not be combined and that he not
only was not attempting to combine them but had no desire so to do. He
despised his former ideals; but also he despised himself for despising
them.
His quarrel with himself was that he seemed to himself a rather vulgar
sort of hypocrite. This was highly disagreeable to him, as his whole
nature tended to make him wish to be himself, to make him shrink from
the part of the truckler and the sycophant which he was playing so
haughtily and so artistically. At times it exasperated him that he could
not regard his change of front as a deliberate sale for value received,
and not as the weak and cowardly surrender which he saw that it really
was.
* * * * *
On the day after Howard’s forty-fourth birthday Coulter fell dead at the
entrance to the Union Club. When Stokely heard of it he went direct to
the _News-Record_ office.
“I happen to know something about Coulter’s will,” he said to Howard.
“The _News-Record_ stock is to be sold and you and I are to have the
first chance to take it at three hundred and fifty--which is certainly
cheap enough.”
“Why did he arrange to dispose of the most valuable part of his estate?”
“Well, we had an agreement about it. Then, too, Coulter had no faith in
newspapers as a permanent investment. You know there are only the widow,
the girl and that worthless boy. Heavens, what an ass that boy is!
Coulter has tied up his estate until the youngest grandchild comes of
age. He hopes that there will be a son among the grandchildren who will
realise his dream.”
“Dream?” Howard smiled. “I didn’t know that Coulter ever indulged in
dreams.”
“Yes, he had the rich man’s mania--the craze for founding a family. So
everything is to be put into real estate and long-term bonds. And for
years New York is to be reminded of Samuel Coulter by some incapable
who’ll use his name and his money to advertise nature’s contempt for
family pride in her distributions of brains. I think even a fine tomb is
a wiser memorial.”
“Well, how much of the stock shall you take?” Howard asked.
“Not a share,” Stokely replied dejectedly. “Coulter couldn’t have died
at a worse time for me. I’m tied in every direction and shall be for a
year at least. So you’ve got a chance to become controlling owner.”
“I?” Howard laughed. “Where could I get a million and a half?”
“How much could you take in cash?”
“Well--let me see--perhaps--five hundred thousand.”
“You can borrow the million with the stock as collateral.”
“But how could I pay?”
“Why, your dividends at our present rate would be more than two hundred
thousand a year. Your interest charge would be under seventy-five
thousand. Perhaps I can arrange it so that it won’t be more than fifty
thousand. You can let the balance go on reducing the loan. Then I may
be able to put you onto a few good things. At any rate you can’t lose
anything. Your stock would bring five hundred even at forced sale. It’s
your chance, old man. I want to see you take it.”
“I’ll think it over. I have no head for figures.”
“Let me manage it for you.” Stokely rose to go. Howard began thanking
him, but he cut him off with:
“You owe me no thanks. You’ve made money for me--big money. I owe you
my help. Besides, I don’t want any outsider in here. Let me know when
you’re ready.” He nodded and was gone.
“What a chance!” Howard repeated again and again.
He was looking out over New York.
Twenty years before he had faced it, asking of it nothing but a living
and his freedom. For twenty years he had fought. Year by year, even
when he seemed to be standing still or going backward, he had steadily
gained, making each step won a vantage-ground for forward attack. And
now--victory. Power, wealth, fame, all his!
Yet a deep melancholy came over him. And he fell to despising himself
for the kind of exultation that filled him, its selfishness, its
sordidness, the absence of all high enthusiasm. Why was he denied the
happiness of self-deception? Why could he not forget the means, blot it
out, now that the end was attained?
His mind went out, not to Marian, but to that other--the one sleeping
under the many, many layers of autumn leaves at Asheville. And he heard
a voice saying so faintly, so timidly: “I lay awake night after night
listening to your breathing, and whispering under my breath, ‘I love
you, I love you. Why can’t you love me?’” And then--he flung down the
cover of his desk and rushed away home.
“Why did I think of Alice?” he asked himself. And the answer
came--because in those days, in the days of his youth, he had had
beliefs, high principles; he had been incapable of this slavery to
appearances, to vain show, incapable of this passion for reputation
regardless of character. His weaknesses were then weaknesses only, and
not, as now, the laws of his being controlling his every act.
He smiled cynically at the self of such a few years ago--yet he could
not meet those honest, fearless eyes that looked out at him from the
mirror of memory.
He was triumphant, but self-respect had gone and not all the thick
swathings of vanity covered him from the stabs of self-contempt.
“When I am really free, when the paper is paid for and I can do as
I please, why not try to be a man again? Why not? It would cost me
nothing.”
But a man is the sum of _all_ his past.
XXVI.
IN POSSESSION.
Stokely arranged the loan, and within six months Howard was controlling
owner of the _News-Record._ There was a debt of a million and a quarter
attached to his ownership, but he saw how that would be wiped out. Once
more he threw himself into his work with the energy of a boy. He had
to give much of his time to the business department--to the details of
circulation and advertising. He felt that the profits of the paper
could be greatly increased by improving its facilities for reaching
the advertiser and the public. He had never been satisfied with the
circulation methods; but theretofore his ignorance of business and
his position as mere salaried editor had acted in restraint upon his
interference with the “ground floor.”
As he had suspected, the business office was afflicted with the twin
diseases--routine and imitativeness. It followed an old system, devised
in days of small circulation and grudgingly improved, not by thought
on the part of those who circulated the paper, but by compulsion on
the part of the public. No attempts were made to originate schemes for
advertising the paper. The only methods were wooden variations upon
placards in the street cars and the elevated stations, and cards hung
up at the news-stands. As forgetting advertising business, they thought
they showed enterprise by a little canvassing among the conspicuous
merchants in Greater New York.
Howard had charts made showing the circulation by districts. With these
as a basis he ordered an elaborate campaign to “push” the paper in the
districts where it was circulated least and to increase its hold where
it was strong. “We do not reach one-third of the people who would like
to take our paper,” he told Jowett, the business manager. “Let us have
an army of agents and let us take up our territory by districts.”
The Sunday edition was the largest source of revenue, both because it
carried a great deal more advertising at much higher rates than did the
week-day editions, and because it sold at a price which yielded a profit
on the paper itself, while the price of the weekday editions did not.
News constituted less than one-fourth of its contents. The rest was
“feature articles,” as interesting a week late to a man in Seattle as on
the day of publication within a mile of the office.
“We get out the very best magazine in the market,” said Howard to
Jowett. “Are we pushing it in the east, in the west, in the south? Look
at the charts.
“We have a Sunday circulation of five hundred in Oregon, of one thousand
in Texas, of six hundred in Georgia, of two thousand in Maine. Why not
ten times as much in each of those states? Why not ten times as much as
we now have near New York?”
There was no reason except failure to “push” the paper. That reason
Howard proceeded to remove. But these enterprises involved large
expenditures, perhaps might mean postponement of the payment of the
debt. Receipts must be increased and the most promising way was an
increase in the advertising business.
Howard noted on the chart nineteen cities and large towns near New York
in each of which the daily circulation of the _News-Record_ was equal
to that of any paper published there and far exceeded the combined
circulations of all the home dailies on Sunday. This suggested a system
of local advertising pages, and for its working out he engaged one of
the most capable newspaper advertising men in the city. Within three
months the idea had “caught on” and, instead of sending useless columns
of New York “want-ads” and the like to places where they could not be
useful, the _News-Record_ was presenting to its readers in twelve cities
and towns the advertisements of their local merchants.
A year of this work, with Howard giving many hours of each day
personally to tiresome details, brought the natural results. The profits
of the _News-Record_ had risen to five hundred and forty thousand, of
which Howard’s share was nearly three hundred thousand. The next year
the profits were seven hundred and fifty thousand, and Howard had
reduced his debt to eight hundred thousand.
“We shall be free and clear in less than three years,” he said to
Marian.
“If we have luck,” she added.
“No--if we work--and we shall. Luck is a stone which envy flings at
success.”
“Then you don’t think you have been lucky?”
“Indeed I do not.”
“Not even,” she smiled, drawing herself up.
“Not even--” he said with a faint, sad answering smile. “If you only
knew how hard I worked preparing myself to be able to get you when you
came; if you only, only knew how life made me pay, pay, pay; if you only
knew--”
“Go on,” she said, coming closer to him.
He sighed--not for the reason of sentiment which she fancied, though he
put his arms around her. “How willingly I paid,” he evaded.
He went to his desk and she stood looking at him. There was still
the charm of youth, even freshness, in her beauty--and she was not
unconscious of the fact.
And he--he was handsome, distinguished looking and certainly did not
suggest age or the approach of age; but in his hair, so grey at the
temples, in the stern, rather haughty lines of his features, in the
weariness of his eyes, there was not a vestige of youth. “How he has
worked for me and for his ideals,” she thought, sadly yet proudly. “Ah,
he is indeed a great man, and _my_ husband!” And she bent over him
and kissed him on an impulse to a kind of tenderness which was now so
strange to her that it made her feel shy.
“And what a radical you’ll be,” she laughed, after a moment’s silence.
“What a radical, what a democrat!”
“When?” He was flushing a little and avoided her eyes.
“When you’re free--really the proprietor--able to express your own
views, all your own views. We shall become outcasts.”
“I wonder,” he replied slowly, “does a rich man own his property or does
it own him?”
For an instant he had an impulse of his old longing for sympathy, for
companionship. She was now thirty-six and, save for an expression of
experience, of self-control, seemed hardly so much as thirty. But with
the years, with the habit of self-restraint, with instinctive rather
than conscious realisation of his indifference toward her, had come a
chill perceptible at the surface and permeating her entire character. In
her own way she had become as self-absorbed, as ambitious as he.
He looked at her, felt this chill, sighed, smiled at himself. Yes, he
was alone--and he preferred to be alone.
XXVII.
THE HARVEST.
Through all his scheming and shifting Howard had kept the _News-Record_
in the main an “organ of the people.” Coulter and Stokely had on many
occasions tried to persuade him to change, but he had stood out. He did
not confess to them that his real reason was not his alleged principles
but his cold judgment that the increases in circulation which produced
increases in advertising patronage were dependent upon the paper’s
reputation of fearless democracy.
In the fourth year of his ownership he felt that the time had come for
the change, that he could safely slip over to the other side--the
side of wealth and power, the winning side, the side with offices
and privileges to distribute. His debt was so far reduced that he had
nothing to fear from it. A presidential campaign was coming on and was
causing unusual confusion, a general shift of party lines. And he had
put the _News-Record_ in such a position that it could move in any
direction without shock to its readers.
The “great battle” was on--the battle he had in his younger days looked
forward to and longed for--the battle against Privilege and for
a “restoration of government by the people.” The candidates were
nominated, the platforms put forward and the issue squarely joined.
The same issue had been involved in previous campaigns; but the
statement of the case by the party opposed to “government of, by and for
plutocracy” had been fantastic, extreme, entangled with social, economic
and political lunacies. And Howard had strengthened the _News-Record_ by
refusing to permit it to “go crazy.” Now, however, there was in honesty
no reason for refusing support to the advocates of his professed
principles.
But the _News-Record_ was silent. Howard and Marian went away to their
cottage at Newport, and he left rigid instructions that no political
editorials were to be published except those which he might send. There
he got typhoid fever and was at the point of death for two weeks.
Marian gave herself to nursing him, stayed close beside him, read books
and the newspapers to him throughout his convalescence. They were
more intimate than they had been for years. A feeling bearing a remote
resemblance to the love he had once had for her arose out of his
weakness and dependence and his seclusion from the instruments and
objects of his ambition. And she swept aside the barriers she had
erected between herself and him and returned, as nearly as one may, to
the love and interest of their early days together.
In the first week of September came Stokely with Senator Hereford, the
chairman of the “Plutocracy” campaign committee.
“I shall not annoy you with evasions,” said Hereford, “as Mr. Stokely
assures me that I may speak freely to you, that you personally are with
us. The fact is, our campaign is in a bad way, especially in New York
State, and there especially in New York City.”
“You surprise me,” said Howard. “All my information has come from the
newspapers which my wife reads me. I had gathered that the victory was
all but won.”
“We encourage that impression. You know how many weak-kneed fellows
there are who like to be on the winning side. We’ve been pouring out the
money and stand ready to pour it out like water. But these damned reform
ballot-laws make it hard for us to control the vote. We buy, but we fear
that the goods will not be delivered. Feeling is high against us. Even
our farmers and shopkeepers are acting queerly. And the other fellows
have at last put up a safe man on a conservative platform.”
Howard turned his face away. There was still the memory, the now
quickened memory, of his former self to make him wince at being included
in such an “us.”
“You can’t afford to keep silent any longer,” Hereford continued.
“You’ve done the cause a world of good by your silence thus far. You
have the reputation of being the leading popular organ, and your keeping
quiet has meant thousands of votes for us. But the time has come to
attack. And you must attack if we are to carry New York. You can turn
the tide in the state, and--well, we have a very high regard for your
genius for making your points clearly and interestingly. We need your
ideas for our editors and speakers as much as we need your influence.”
“I cannot discuss it to-day,” Howard answered after a moment’s silence.
“It would be a grave step for the _News-Record_ to take. I am not well,
as you see. To-morrow or next day I’ll decide. You’ll see my answer in
the paper, I think.” He closed his eyes with significant weariness.
Hereford looked at him uneasily. Just outside the door Stokely
whispered, “Don’t be alarmed. You’ve got him. He’s with us, I tell you.”
“I must make sure,” whispered Hereford. “I wish to speak to him alone
for a moment.”
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Howard,” he said as he re-entered the room. “I
forgot an important part of my mission. Our candidate authorized me to
say to you on his behalf that he felt sure you would see your duty; that
he esteemed your character and judgment too highly to have any doubts;
and that he intends to show his appreciation of the conscientious,
independent vote which is rallying to his support; in the event of his
election, he feels that he could not do so in a more satisfactory manner
than by offering you either a place in his cabinet or an ambassadorship
as you may prefer.”
As soon as Howard saw Hereford returning, he knew the reason. He had
never before been offered a bribe; but he could not mistake the meaning
of Hereford’s bold yet frightened expression. He kept his eyes averted
during the delivery of the long, rambling sentence. At the end, he
looked at Hereford frankly and said in his most gracious manner:
“Thank him for me, will you? And express my appreciation of so high a
compliment from such a man.”
Hereford looked relieved, delighted. “I’m glad to have met you, Mr.
Howard, and to have had so satisfactory an interview.”
Again outside the door, he muttered gleefully: “Yes, we’ve him.
Otherwise he would have had his servants kick me down stairs. Gad, no
wonder ---- is on his way to the Presidency, I had a sneaking fear that
this fellow might be sincere. But _he_ saw through him without ever
having seen him. I suppose two men of that stripe instinctively
understand each other.”
* * * * *
That was on a Sunday afternoon. On the following Wednesday, as Marian
came into Howard’s sitting-room with the newspapers, she laughed: “I’ve
been reading such a speech from your candidate, you radical! I must
say I liked to read it. It was so like you, your very phrases in many
places, the things you used to talk to me before you gave me up as
hopeless. Just listen.”
And she read him the oration--a reproduction of the Howard she first
saw, the Howard she admired and loved and had never lost. “Isn’t it
superb?” she asked at the end. “You must have written it for him. Don’t
you like it?”
“Very able,” was Howard’s only comment.
Marian continued to read the paper, glancing from column to column,
giving him the substance of the news. Soon she reached the editorial
page. He was stealthily watching her face. He saw her glance through a
few lines of the leader, start, read on, look in a terrified way at him,
and then skip abruptly to the next page.
“Read me the leader, won’t you?” he asked.
“My voice is tired,” she pleaded. “I’ll read it after awhile.”
“Please,” he insisted. “I’m especially anxious to hear it.”
“I think,” she almost stammered, “that somebody has taken advantage
of your illness. I didn’t want to tell you until I’d had a chance to
think.”
“Please read it.” His tone was abrupt. She had never heard that tone
before.
She read. It was an assertion of that which her Howard most disbelieved,
most protested against; a defense of the public corruption she had heard
him denounce so often; an attack upon the ideas, the principles, the
elements she had so often heard him eulogize. It was as adroit as it was
detestable, as plausible as it was unprincipled.
When she had done, there was a long silence which he broke. “What do you
think of it?”