A SPIRIT IN THE WOODS
Empires crack before they crumble, and the first cracks seem easily
mended--even as they have been mended before. A revolt in Gaul or Britain
or Thrace is little to be minded, and a prophet in Judea less. And yet
into him who sits in the seat of power a premonition of something
impending gradually creeps--a premonition which he will not acknowledge,
will not define. Yesterday, by the pointing of a finger, he created a
province; to-day he dares not, but consoles himself by saying he does not
wish to point. No antagonist worthy of his steel has openly defied him,
worthy of recognition by the opposition of a legion. But the sense of
security has been subtly and indefinably shaken.
By the strange telepathy which defies language, to the Honourable Hilary
Vane, Governor of the Province, some such unacknowledged forebodings have
likewise been communicated. A week after his conversation with Austen, on
the return of his emperor from a trip to New York, the Honourable Hilary
was summoned again to the foot of the throne, and his thoughts as he
climbed the ridges towards Fairview were not in harmony with the carols
of the birds in the depths of the forest and the joy of the bright June
weather. Loneliness he had felt before, and to its ills he had applied
the antidote of labour. The burden that sat upon his spirit to-day was
not mere loneliness; to the truth of this his soul attested, but Hilary
Vane had never listened to the promptings of his soul. He would have been
shocked if you had told him this. Did he not confess, with his eyes shut,
his sins every Sunday? Did he not publicly acknowledge his soul?
Austen Vane had once remarked that, if some keen American lawyer would
really put his mind to the evasion of the Ten Commandments, the High
Heavens themselves might be cheated. This saying would have shocked the
Honourable Hilary inexpressibly. He had never been employed by a
syndicate to draw up papers to avoid these mandates; he revered them, as
he revered the Law, which he spelled with a capital. He spelled the word
Soul with a capital likewise, and certainly no higher recognition could
be desired than this! Never in the Honourable Hilary's long, laborious,
and preeminently model existence had he realized that happiness is
harmony. It would not be true to assert that, on this wonderful June day,
a glimmering of this truth dawned upon him. Such a statement would be
open to the charge of exaggeration, and his frame of mind was
pessimistic. But he had got so far as to ask himself the question,--Cui
bono? and repeated it several times on his drive, until a verse of
Scripture came, unbidden, to his lips. "For what hate man of all his
labour, and of the vexation of his heart, wherein he hath laboured under
the sun?" and "there is one event unto all." Austen's saying, that he had
never learned how to enjoy life, he remembered, too. What had Austen
meant by that?
Hitherto Hilary Vane had never failed of self-justification in any event
which had befallen him; and while this consciousness of the rectitude of
his own attitude had not made him happier, there had been a certain grim
pleasure in it. To the fact that he had ruined, by sheer
over-righteousness, the last years of the sunny life of Sarah Austen he
had been oblivious--until to-day. The strange, retrospective mood which
had come over him this afternoon led his thoughts into strange paths, and
he found himself wondering if, after all, it had not been in his power to
make her happier. Her dryad-like face, with its sweet, elusive smile,
seemed to peer at him now wistfully out of the forest, and suddenly a new
and startling thought rose up within him--after six and thirty years.
Perhaps she had belonged in the forest! Perhaps, because he had sought to
cage her, she had pined and died! The thought gave Hilary unwonted pain,
and he strove to put it away from him; but memories such as these, once
aroused, are not easily set at rest, and he bent his head as he recalled
(with a new and significant pathos) those hopeless and pitiful flights
into the wilds she loved.
Now Austen had gone. Was there a Law behind these actions of mother and
son which he had persisted in denouncing as vagaries? Austen was a man: a
man, Hilary could not but see, who had the respect of his fellows, whose
judgment and talents were becoming recognized. Was it possible that he,
Hilary Vane, could have been one of those referred to by the Preacher?
During the week which had passed since Austen's departure the house in
Hanover Street had been haunted for Hilary. The going of his son had not
left a mere void,--that would have been pain enough. Ghosts were there,
ghosts which he could but dimly feel and see, and more than once, in the
long evenings, he had taken to the streets to avoid them.
In that week Hilary's fear of meeting his son in the street or in the
passages of the building had been equalled by a yearning to see him.
Every morning, at the hour Austen was wont to drive Pepper to the Ripton
House stables across the square, Hilary had contrived to be standing near
his windows--a little back, and out of sight. And--stranger still!--he
had turned from these glimpses to the reports of the Honourable Brush
Bascom and his associates with a distaste he had never felt before.
With some such thoughts as these Hilary Vane turned into the last
straight stretch of the avenue that led to Fairview House, with its red
and white awnings gleaming in the morning sun. On the lawn, against a
white and purple mass of lilacs and the darker background of pines, a
straight and infinitely graceful figure in white caught his eye and held
it. He recognized Victoria. She wore a simple summer gown, the soft
outline of its flounces mingling subtly with the white clusters behind
her. She turned her head at the sound of the wheels and looked at him;
the distance was not too great for a bow, but Hilary did not bow.
Something in her face deterred him from this act,--something which he
himself did not understand or define. He sought to pronounce the incident
negligible. What was the girl, or her look, to him? And yet (he found
himself strangely thinking) he had read in her eyes a trace of the riddle
which had been relentlessly pursuing him; there was an odd relation in
her look to that of Sarah Austen. During the long years he had been
coming to Fairview, even before the new house was built, when Victoria
was in pinafores, he had never understood her. When she was a child, he
had vaguely recognized in her a spirit antagonistic to his own, and her
sayings had had a disconcerting ring. And now this simple glance of hers
had troubled him--only more definitely.
It was a new experience for the Honourable Hilary to go into a business
meeting with his faculties astray. Absently he rang the stable bell,
surrendered his horse, and followed a footman to the retired part of the
house occupied by the railroad president. Entering the oak-bound sanctum,
he crossed it and took a seat by the window, merely nodding to Mr. Flint,
who was dictating a letter. Mr. Flint took his time about the letter, but
when it was finished he dismissed the stenographer with an impatient and
powerful wave of the hand--as though brushing the man bodily out of the
room. Remaining motionless until the door had closed, Mr. Flint turned
abruptly and fixed his eyes on the contemplative figure of his chief
counsel.
"Well?" he said.
"Well, Flint," answered the Honourable Hilary.
"Well," said Mr. Flint, "that bridge over Maple River has got loosened up
so by the freshet that we have to keep freight cars on it to hold it
down, and somebody is trying to make trouble by writing a public letter
to the Railroad Commission, and calling attention to the head-on
collision at Barker's Station."
"Well," replied the Honourable Hilary, again, "that won't have any
influence on the Railroad Commission."
"No," said Mr. Flint, "but it all goes to increase this confounded public
sentiment that's in the air, like smallpox. Another jackass pretends to
have kept a table of the through trains on the Sumsic division, and says
they've averaged forty-five minutes late at Edmundton. He says the
through express made the run faster thirty years ago."
"I guess that's so," said the Honourable Hilary, "I was counsel for that
road then. I read that letter. He says there isn't an engine on the
division that could pull his hat off, up grade."
Neither of the two gentlemen appeared to deem this statement humorous.
"What these incendiaries don't understand," said Mr. Flint, "is that we
have to pay dividends."
"It's because they don't get 'em," replied Mr. Vane, sententiously.
"The track slid into the water at Glendale," continued Mr. Flint. "I
suppose they'll tell us we ought to rock ballast that line. You'll see
the Railroad Commission, and give 'em a sketch of a report."
"I had a talk with Young yesterday," said Mr. Vane, his eyes on the
stretch of lawn and forest framed by the window. For the sake of the
ignorant, it may be well to add that the Honourable Orrin Young was the
chairman of the Commission.
"And now," said Mr. Flint, "not that this Crewe business amounts to that"
(here the railroad president snapped his fingers with the intensity of a
small pistol shot), "but what's he been doing?"
"Political advertising," said the Honourable Hilary.
"Plenty of it, I guess," Mr. Flint remarked acidly. "That's one thing
Tooting can't teach him. He's a natural-born genius at it."
"Tooting can help--even at that," answered Mr. Vane, ironically. "They've
got a sketch of so-called Northeastern methods in forty weekly newspapers
this week, with a picture of that public benefactor and martyr, Humphrey
Crewe. Here's a sample of it."
Mr. Flint waved the sample away.
"You've made a list of the newspapers that printed it?" Mr. Flint
demanded. Had he lived in another age he might have added, "Have the
malefactors burned alive in my garden."
"Brush has seen some of 'em," said Mr. Vane, no doubt referring to the
editors, "and I had some of 'em come to Ripton. They've got a lot to say
about the freedom of the press, and their right to take political
advertising. Crewe's matter is in the form of a despatch, and most of 'em
pointed out at the top of the editorial columns that their papers are not
responsible for despatches in the news columns. Six of 'em are out and
out for Crewe, and those fellows are honest enough."
"Take away their passes and advertising," said Mr. Flint. ("Off with
their heads!" said the Queen of Hearts.)
"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Flint; they might make capital out of
it. I think you'll find that five of 'em have sent their passes back,
anyway."
"Freeman will give you some new ideas" (from the "Book of Arguments,"
although Mr. Flint did not say so) "which have occurred to me might be
distributed for editorial purposes next week. And, by the way, what have
you done about that brilliant Mr. Coombes of the 'Johnstown Ray,' who
says 'the Northeastern Railroads give us a pretty good government'?"
The Honourable Hilary shook his head.
"Too much zeal," he observed. "I guess he won't do it again."
For a while after that they talked of strictly legal matters, which the
chief counsel produced in order out of his bag. But when these were
finally disposed of, Mr. Flint led the conversation back to the
Honourable Humphrey Crewe, who stood harmless--to be sure--like a bull on
the track which it might be unwise to run over.
"He doesn't amount to a soap bubble in a gale," Mr. Flint declared
contemptuously. "Sometimes I think we made a great mistake to notice him.
"We haven't noticed him," said Mr. Vane; "the newspapers have."
Mr. Flint brushed this distinction aside.
"That," he said irritably, "and letting Tooting go--"
The Honourable Hilary's eyes began to grow red. In former days Mr. Flint
had not often questioned his judgment.
"There's one thing more I wanted to mention to you," said the chief
counsel. "In past years I have frequently drawn your attention to that
section of the act of consolidation which declares that rates and fares
existing at the time of its passage shall not be increased."
"Well," said Mr. Flint, impatiently, "well, what of it?"
"Only this," replied the Honourable Hilary, "you disregarded my advice,
and the rates on many things are higher than they were."
"Upon my word, Vane," said Mr. Flint, "I wish you'd chosen some other day
to croak. What do you want me to do? Put all the rates back because this
upstart politician Crewe is making a noise? Who's going to dig up that
section?"
"Somebody has dug it up," said Mr. Vane:
This was the last straw.
"Speak out, man!" he cried. "What are you leading up to?"
"Just this," answered the Honourable Hilary; "that the Gaylord Lumber
Company are going to bring suit under that section."
Mr. Flint rose, thrust his hands in his pockets, and paced the room
twice.
"Have they got a case?" he demanded.
"It looks a little that way tome," said Mr. Vane. "I'm not prepared to
give a definite opinion as yet."
Mr. Flint measured the room twice again.
"Did that old fool Hammer stumble on to this?"
"Hammer's sick," said Mr. Vane; "they say he's got Bright's disease. My
son discovered that section."
There was a certain ring of pride in the Honourable Hilary's voice, and a
lifting of the head as he pronounced the words "my son," which did not
escape Mr. Flint. The railroad president walked slowly to the arm of the
chair in which his chief counsel was seated, and stood looking down at
him. But the Honourable Hilary appeared unconscious of what was
impending.
"Your son!" exclaimed Mr. Flint. "So your son, the son of the man who has
been my legal adviser and confidant and friend for thirty years, is going
to join the Crewel and Tootings in their assaults on established decency
and order! He's out for cheap political preferment, too, is he? By
thunder! I thought that he had some such thing in his mind when he came
in here and threw his pass in my face and took that Meader suit. I don't
mind telling you that he's the man I've been afraid of all along. He's
got a head on him--I saw that at the start. I trusted to you to control
him, and this is how you do it."
It was characteristic of the Honourable Hilary, when confronting an angry
man, to grow cooler as the other's temper increased.
"I don't want to control him," he said.
"I guess you couldn't," retorted Mr. Flint.
"That's a better way of putting it," replied the Honourable Hilary, "I
couldn't."
The chief counsel for the Northeastern Railroads got up and went to the
window, where he stood for some time with his back turned to the
president. Then Hilary Vane faced about.
"Mr. Flint," he began, in his peculiar deep and resonant voice, "you've
said some things to-day that I won't forget. I want to tell you, first of
all, that I admire my son."
"I thought so," Mr. Flint interrupted.
"And more than that," the Honourable Hilary continued, "I prophesy that
the time will come when you'll admire him. Austen Vane never did an
underhanded thing in his life--or committed a mean action. He's be'n
wild, but he's always told me the truth. I've done him injustice a good
many times, but I won't stand up and listen to another man do him
injustice." Here he paused, and picked up his bag. "I'm going down to
Ripton to write out my resignation as counsel for your roads, and as soon
as you can find another man to act, I shall consider it accepted."
It is difficult to put down on paper the sensations of the president of
the Northeastern Railroads as he listened to these words from a man with
whom he had been in business relations for over a quarter of a century, a
man upon whose judgment he had always relied implicitly, who had been a
strong fortress in time of trouble. Such sentences had an incendiary,
blasphemous ring on Hilary Vane's lips--at first. It was as if the sky
had fallen, and the Northeastern had been wiped out of existence.
Mr. Flint's feelings were, in a sense, akin to those of a traveller by
sea who wakens out of a sound sleep in his cabin, with peculiar and
unpleasant sensations, which he gradually discovers are due to cold
water, and he realizes that the boat on which he is travelling is
sinking.
The Honourable Hilary, with his bag, was halfway to the door, when Mr.
Flint crossed the room in three strides and seized him by the arm.
"Hold on, Vane," he said, speaking with some difficulty; "I'm--I'm a
little upset this morning, and my temper got the best of me. You and I
have been good friends for too many years for us to part this way. Sit
down a minute, for God's sake, and let's cool off. I didn't intend to say
what I did. I apologize."
Mr. Flint dropped his counsel's arm, and pulled out a handkerchief, and
mopped his face. "Sit down, Hilary," he said.
The Honourable Hilary's tight lips trembled. Only three or four times in
their long friendship had the president made use of his first name.
"You wouldn't leave me in the lurch now, Hilary," Mr. Flint continued,
"when all this nonsense is in the air? Think of the effect such an
announcement would have! Everybody knows and respects you, and we can't
do without your advice and counsel. But I won't put it on that ground.
I'd never forgive myself, as long as I lived, if I lost one of my oldest
and most valued personal friends in this way."
The Honourable Hilary looked at Mr. Flint, and sat down. He began to cut
a piece of Honey Dew, but his hand shook. It was difficult, as we know,
for him to give expression to his feelings.
"All right," he said.
Half an hour later Victoria, from under the awning of the little balcony
in front of her mother's sitting room, saw her father come out bareheaded
into the sun and escort the Honourable Hilary Vane to his buggy. This was
an unwonted proceeding.
Victoria loved to sit in that balcony, a book lying neglected in her lap,
listening to the summer sounds: the tinkle of distant cattle bells, the
bass note of a hurrying bee, the strangely compelling song of the
hermit-thrush, which made her breathe quickly; the summer wind, stirring
wantonly, was prodigal with perfumes gathered from the pines and the
sweet June clover in the fields and the banks of flowers; in the
distance, across the gentle foreground of the hills, Sawanec beckoned
--did Victoria but raise her eyes!--to a land of enchantment.
The appearance of her father and Hilary had broken her reverie, and a new
thought, like a pain, had clutched her. The buggy rolled slowly down the
drive, and Mr. Flint, staring after it a moment, went in the house. After
a few minutes he emerged again, an old felt hat on his head which he was
wont to wear in the country and a stick in his hand. Without raising his
eyes, he started slowly across the lawn; and to Victoria, leaning forward
intently over the balcony rail, there seemed an unwonted lack of purpose
in his movements. Usually he struck out briskly in the direction of the
pastures where his prize Guernseys were feeding, stopping on the way to
pick up the manager of his farm. There are signs, unknown to men, which
women read, and Victoria felt her heart beating, as she turned and
entered the sitting room through the French window. A trained nurse was
softly closing the door of the bedroom on the right.
"Mrs. Flint is asleep," she said.
"I am going out for a little while, Miss Oliver," Victoria answered, and
the nurse returned a gentle smile of understanding.
Victoria, descending the stairs, hastily pinned on a hat which she kept
in the coat closet, and hurried across the lawn in the direction Mr.
Flint had taken. Reaching the pine grove, thinned by a famous landscape
architect, she paused involuntarily to wonder again at the ultramarine of
Sawanec through the upright columns of the trunks under the high canopy
of boughs. The grove was on a plateau, which was cut on the side nearest
the mountain by the line of a gray stone wall, under which the land fell
away sharply. Mr. Flint was seated on a bench, his hands clasped across
his stick, and as she came softly over the carpet of the needles he did
not hear her until she stood beside him.
"You didn't tell me that you were going for a walk," she said
reproachfully.
He started, and dropped his stick. She stooped quickly, picked it up for
him, and settled herself at his side.
"I--I didn't expect to go, Victoria," he answered.
"You see," she said, "it's useless to try to slip away. I saw you from
the balcony."
"How's your mother feeling?" he asked.
"She's asleep. She seems better to me since she's come back to Fairview."
Mr. Flint stared at the mountain with unseeing eyes.
"Father," said Victoria, "don't you think you ought to stay up here at
least a week, and rest? I think so."
"No," he said, "no. There's a directors' meeting of a trust company
to-morrow which I have to attend. I'm not tired."
Victoria shook her head, smiling at him with serious eyes.
"I don't believe you know when you are tired," she declared. "I can't see
the good of all these directors' meetings. Why don't you retire, and live
the rest of your life in peace? You've got--money enough, and even if you
haven't," she added, with the little quiver of earnestness that sometimes
came into her voice, "we could sell this big house and go back to the
farmhouse to live. We used to be so happy there."
He turned abruptly, and fixed upon her a steadfast, searching stare that
held, nevertheless, a strange tenderness in it.
"You don't care for all this, do you, Victoria?" he demanded, waving his
stick to indicate the domain of Fairview.
She laughed gently, and raised her eyes to the green roof of the needles.
"If we could only keep the pine grove!" she sighed. "Do you remember what
good times we had in the farmhouse, when you and I used to go off for
whole days together?"
"Yes," said Mr. Flint, "yes."
"We don't do that any more," said Victoria. "It's only a little drive and
a walk, now and then. And they seem to be growing--scarcer."
Mr. Flint moved uneasily, and made an attempt to clear his voice.
"I know it," he said, and further speech seemingly failed him. Victoria
had the greater courage of the two.
"Why don't we?" she asked.
"I've often thought of it," he replied, still seeking his words with
difficulty. "I find myself with more to do every year, Victoria, instead
of less."
"Then why don't you give it up?"
"Why?" he asked, "why? Sometimes I wish with my whole soul I could give
it up. I've always said that you had more sense than most women, but even
you could not understand."
"I could understand," said Victoria.
He threw at her another glance,--a ring in her words proclaimed their
truth in spite of his determined doubt. In her eyes--had he but known
it!--was a wisdom that exceeded his.
"You don't realize what you're saying," he exclaimed; "I can't leave the
helm."
"Isn't it," she said, "rather the power that is so hard to relinquish?"
The feelings of Augustus Flint when he heard this question were of a
complex nature. It was the second time that day he had been shocked,
--the first being when Hilary Vane had unexpectedly defended his son. The
word Victoria had used, power, had touched him on the quick. What had she
meant by it? Had she been his wife and not his daughter, he would have
flown into a rage. Augustus Flint was not a man given to the
psychological amusement of self-examination; he had never analyzed his
motives. He had had little to do with women, except Victoria. The Rose of
Sharon knew him as the fountainhead from which authority and money
flowed, but Victoria, since her childhood, had been his refuge from care,
and in the haven of her companionship he had lost himself for brief
moments of his life. She was the one being he really loved, with whom he
consulted on such affairs of importance as he felt to be within her scope
and province,--the cattle, the men on the place outside of the household,
the wisdom of buying the Baker farm; bequests to charities, paintings,
the library; and recently he had left to her judgment the European baths
and the kind of treatment which her mother had required. Victoria had
consulted with the physicians in Paris, and had made these decisions
herself. From a child she had never shown a disposition to evade
responsibility.
To his intimate business friends, Mr. Flint was in the habit of speaking
of her as his right-hand man, but she was circumscribed by her sex,--or
rather by Mr. Flint's idea of her sex,--and it never occurred to him that
she could enter into the larger problems of his life. For this reason he
had never asked himself whether such a state of affairs would be
desirable. In reality it was her sympathy he craved, and such an
interpretation of himself as he chose to present to her.
So her question was a shock. He suddenly beheld his daughter transformed,
a new personality who had been thinking, and thinking along paths which
he had never cared to travel.
"The power!" he repeated. "What do you mean by that, Victoria?"
She sat for a moment on the end of the bench, gazing at him with a
questioning, searching look which he found disconcerting. What had
happened to his daughter? He little guessed the tumult in her breast. She
herself could not fully understand the strange turn the conversation had
taken towards the gateway of the vital things.
"It is natural for men to love power, isn't it?"
"I suppose so," said Mr. Flint, uneasily. "I don't know what you're
driving at, Victoria."
"You control the lives and fortunes of a great many people."
"That's just it," answered Mr. Flint, with a dash at this opening; "my
responsibilities are tremendous. I can't relinquish them."
"There is no--younger man to take your place? Not that I mean you are
old, father," she continued, "but you have worked very hard all your
life, and deserve a holiday the rest of it."
"I don't know of any younger man," said Mr. Flint. "I don't mean to say
I'm the only person in the world who can safeguard the stockholders'
interests in the Northeastern. But I know the road and its problems. I
don't understand this from you, Victoria. It doesn't sound like you. And
as for letting go the helm now," he added, with a short laugh tinged with
bitterness, "I'd be posted all over the country as a coward."
"Why?" asked Victoria, in the same quiet way.
"Why? Because a lot of discontented and disappointed people who have made
failures of their lives are trying to give me as much trouble as they
can."
"Are you sure they are all disappointed and discontented, father?" she
said.
"What," exclaimed Mr. Flint, "you ask me that question? You, my own
daughter, about people who are trying to make me out a rascal!"
"I don't think they are trying to make you out a rascal--at least most of
them are not," said Victoria. "I don't think the--what you might call the
personal aspect enters in with the honest ones."
Mr. Flint was inexpressibly amazed. He drew a long breath.
"Who are the honest ones?" he cried. "Do you mean to say that you, my own
daughter, are defending these charlatans?"
"Listen, father," said Victoria. "I didn't mean to worry you, I didn't
mean to bring up that subject to-day. Come--let's go for a walk and see
the new barn."
But Mr. Flint remained firmly planted on the bench.
"Then you did intend to bring up the subject--some day?" he asked.
"Yes," said Victoria. She sat down again. "I have often wanted to hear
--your side of it."
"Whose side have you heard?" demanded Mr. Flint.
A crimson flush crept into her cheek, but her father was too disturbed to
notice it.
"You know," she said gently, "I go about the country a good deal, and I
hear people talking,--farmers, and labourers, and people in the country
stores who don't know that I'm your daughter."
"What do they say?" asked Mr. Flint, leaning forward eagerly and
aggressively.
Victoria hesitated, turning over the matter in her mind.
"You understand, I am merely repeating what they say--"
"Yes, yes," he interrupted, "I want to know how far this thing has gone
among them."
"Well," continued Victoria, looking at him bravely, "as nearly as I can
remember their argument it is this: that the Northeastern Railroads
control the politics of the State for their own benefit. That you appoint
the governors and those that go to the Legislature, and that--Hilary
Vane gets them elected. They say that he manages a political
machine--that's the right word, isn't it?--for you. And that no laws can
be passed of which you do not approve. And they say that the politicians
whom Hilary Vane commands, and the men whom they put into office are all
beholden to the railroad, and are of a sort which good citizens cannot
support. They say that the railroad has destroyed the people's
government."
Mr. Flint, for the moment forgetting or ignoring the charges, glanced at
her in astonishment. The arraignment betrayed an amount of thought on the
subject which he had not suspected.
"Upon my word, Victoria," he said, "you ought to take the stump for
Humphrey Crewe."
She reached out with a womanly gesture, and laid her hand upon his.
"I am only telling you--what I hear," she said.
"Won't you explain to me the way you look at it? These people don't all
seem to be dishonest men or charlatans. Some of them, I know, are
honest." And her colour rose again.
"Then they are dupes and fools," Mr. Flint declared vehemently. "I don't
know how to explain it to you the subject is too vast, too far-reaching.
One must have had some business experience to grasp it. I don't mean to
say you're not intelligent, but I'm at a loss where to begin with you.
Looked at from their limited point of view, it would seem as if they had
a case. I don't mean your friend, Humphrey Crewe--it's anything to get
office with him. Why, he came up here and begged me--"
"I wasn't thinking of Humphrey Crewe," said Victoria. Mr. Flint gave an
ejaculation of distaste.
"He's no more of a reformer than I am. And now we've got that wild son of
Hilary Vane's--the son of one of my oldest friends and associates
--making trouble. He's bitten with this thing, too, and he's got some
brains in his head. Why," exclaimed Mr. Flint, stopping abruptly and
facing his daughter, "you know him! He's the one who drove you home that
evening from Crewe's party."
"I remember," Victoria faltered, drawing her hand away.
"I wasn't very civil to him that night, but I've always been on the
lookout for him. I sent him a pass once, and he came up here and gave me
as insolent a talking to as I ever had in my life."
How well Victoria recalled that first visit, and how she had wondered
about the cause of it! So her father and Austen Vane had quarrelled from
the first.
"I'm sure he didn't mean to be insolent," she said, in a low voice. "He
isn't at all that sort."
"I don't know what sort he is, except that he isn't my sort," Mr. Flint
retorted, intent upon the subject which had kindled his anger earlier in
the day. "I don't pretend to understand him. He could probably have been
counsel for the road if he had behaved decently. Instead, he starts in
with suits against us. He's hit upon something now."
The president of the Northeastern dug savagely into the ground with his
stick, and suddenly perceived that his daughter had her face turned away
from his, towards the mountain.
"Well, I won't bore you with that."
She turned with a look in her eyes that bewildered him.
"You're not--boring me," she said.
"I didn't intend to go into all that," he explained more calmly, "but the
last few days have been trying, we've got to expect the wind to blow from
all directions."
Victoria smiled at him faintly.
"I have told you," she said, "that what you need is a trip abroad.
Perhaps some day you will remember it."
"Maybe I'll go in the autumn," he answered, smiling back at her. "These
little flurries don't amount to anything more than mosquito-bites--only
mosquitoes are irritating. You and I understand each other, Victoria, and
now listen. I'll give you the broad view of this subject, the view I've
got to take, and I've lived in the world and seen more of it than some
folks who think they know it all. I am virtually the trustee for
thousands of stockholders, many of whom are widows and orphans. These
people are innocent; they rely on my ability, and my honesty, for their
incomes. Few men who have not had experience in railroad management know
one-tenth of the difficulties and obstructions encountered by a railroad
president who strives to do his duty by the road. My business is to run
the Northeastern as economically as is consistent with good service and
safety, and to give the stockholders the best return for their money. I
am the steward--and so long as I am the steward," he exclaimed, "I'm
going to do what I think is right, taking into consideration all the
difficulties that confront me."
He got up and took a turn or two on the pine-needles. Victoria regarded
him in silence. He appeared to her at that moment the embodiment of the
power he represented. Force seemed to emanate from him, and she
understood more clearly than ever how, from a poor boy on an obscure farm
in Truro, he had risen to his present height.
"I don't say the service is what it should be," he went on, "but give me
time--give me time. With all this prosperity in the country we can't
handle the freight. We haven't got cars enough, tracks enough, engines
enough. I won't go into that with you. But I do expect you to understand
this: that politicians are politicians; they have always been corrupt as
long as I have known them, and in my opinion they always will be. The
Northeastern is the largest property holder in the State, pays the
biggest tax, and has the most at stake. The politicians could ruin us in
a single session of the Legislature--and what's more, they would do it.
We'd have to be paying blackmail all the time to prevent measures that
would compel us to go out of business. This is a fact, and not a theory.
What little influence I exert politically I have to maintain in order to
protect the property of my stockholders from annihilation. It isn't to be
supposed," he concluded, "that I'm going to see the State turned over to
a man like Humphrey Crewe. I wish to Heaven that this and every other
State had a George Washington for governor and a majority of Robert
Morrises in the Legislature. If they exist, in these days, the people
won't elect 'em--that's all. The kind of man the people will elect, if
you let 'em alone, is--a man who brings in a bill and comes to you
privately and wants you to buy him off."
"Oh, father," Victoria cried, "I can't believe that of the people I see
about here! They seem so kind and honest and high-principled."
Mr. Flint gave a short laugh.
"They're dupes, I tell you. They're at the mercy of any political schemer
who thinks it worth his while to fool 'em. Take Leith, for instance.
There's a man over there who has controlled every office in that town for
twenty-five years or more. He buys and sells votes and credentials like
cattle. His name is Job Braden."
"Why," said Victoria, I saw him at Humphrey Crewe's garden-party."
"I guess you did," said Mr. Flint, "and I guess Humphrey Crewe saw him
before he went."
Victoria was silent, the recollection of the talk between Mr. Tooting and
Mr. Crewe running through her mind, and Mr. Tooting's saying that he had
done "dirty things" for the Northeastern. She felt that this was
something she could not tell her father, nor could she answer his
argument with what Tom Gaylord had said. She could not, indeed, answer
Mr. Flint's argument at all; the subject, as he had declared, being too
vast for her. And moreover, as she well knew, Mr. Flint was a man whom
other men could not easily answer; he bore them down, even as he had
borne her down. Involuntarily her mind turned to Austen, and she wondered
what he had said; she wondered how he would have answered her
father--whether he could have answered him. And she knew not what to
think. Could it be right, in a position of power and responsibility, to
acknowledge evil and deal with it as evil? That was, in effect, the gist
of Mr. Flint's contention. She did not know. She had never (strangely
enough, she thought) sought before to analyze the ethical side of her
father's character. One aspect of him she had shared with her mother,
that he was a tower of defence and strength, and that his name alone had
often been sufficient to get difficult things done.
Was he right in this? And were his opponents charlatans, or dupes, or
idealists who could never be effective? Mr. Crewe wanted an office; Tom
Gaylord had a suit against the road, and Austen Vane was going to bring
that suit! What did she really know of Austen Vane? But her soul cried
out treason at this, and she found herself repeating, with intensity, "I
believe in him! I believe in him!" She would have given worlds to have
been able to stand up before her father and tell him that Austen would
not bring the suit at this time that Austen had not allowed his name to
be mentioned for office in this connection, and had spurned Mr. Crewe's
advances. But she had not seen Austen since February.
What was his side of it? He had never told her, and she respected his
motives--yet, what was his side? Fresh from the inevitably deep
impressions which her father's personality had stamped upon her, she
wondered if Austen could cope with the argument before which she had been
so helpless.
The fact that she made of each of these two men the embodiment of a
different and opposed idea did not occur to Victoria until that
afternoon. Unconsciously, each had impersonated the combatants in a
struggle which was going on in her own breast. Her father himself,
instinctively, had chosen Austen Vane for his antagonist without knowing
that she had an interest in him. Would Mr. Flint ever know? Or would the
time come when she would be forced to take a side? The blood mounted to
her temples as she put the question from her.