Produced by Al Haines
Masterman and Son
by
W. J. DAWSON
_Author of "A Prophet in Babylon," etc._
NEW YORK ---- CHICAGO ---- TORONTO
Fleming H. Revell Company
LONDON AND EDINBURGH
Copyright, 1909, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue
Toronto: 25 Richmond St., W.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street
CONTENTS
PART ONE
ARCHIBOLD MASTERMAN
CHAPTER
I. THE MASTER-BUILDER
II. A DISCUSSION
III. THE BIG STRONG BEAST
IV. MRS. BUNDY
V. THE MAGIC NIGHT
VI. YOUNG LOVE
VII. ENTER SCALES
VIII. THE ACCUSATION
IX. THE CONTEST
X. THE FAREWELL
PART TWO
THE AMERICAN MADONNA
XI. NEW YORK
XII. MR. WILBUR MEREDITH LEGION
XIII. ADVENTURES OF AN INCOMPETENT
XIV. HE FINDS A FRIEND
XV. THE MILLIONAIRE
XVI. KOOTENAY
XVII. THE NEW LIFE
PART THREE
FATHER AND SON
XVIII. THE AMALGAMATED BRICK CO.
XIX. THE FEAR
XX. THE RETURN
XXI. THE VERDICT
XXII. MRS. BUNDY PHILOSOPHISES
XXIII. THE LAST HOME
XXIV. THE NEW WORLD
PART ONE
ARCHIBOLD MASTERMAN
I
THE MASTER-BUILDER
Archibold Masterman, tall, heavily-built, muscular, and on the wrong
side of fifty, was universally esteemed an excellent specimen of that
dubious product of modern commerce, the self-made man. At twenty he
was a day-labourer, at thirty a jobbing builder, at forty a contractor
in a large way of business. At that point may be dated the beginning
of his social efflorescence. It was then that he began to wear
broadcloth on week-days, and insisted on a fresh shirt every other day.
Hitherto careless of his appearance, he now took a quiet pride in
clothes, and discovered the uses of the manicure. A little later he
discovered that a man's position in society is judged by the kind of
house he lives in, and that it is social wisdom to pay a high rent for
a small house in a discreetly "good" locality, rather than a low rent
for a much better house in a deteriorated suburb. That was the year in
which he purchased Eagle House, a pompous, old-fashioned residence
standing in its own grounds in Highbourne Gardens.
Highbourne Gardens was one of those London suburbs which contrive to
preserve a faint aroma of gentility for many years after the real
gentlefolk have left it. It had many old houses of the plain and
specious order, inhabited a century ago by great London merchants. In
the floors of these houses might be found vast beams of some foreign
wood, hard enough to turn the keenest chisel; in the gardens at their
backs were copper beeches, mulberry trees, and an occasional cedar of
Lebanon. Modern London, with its vast invasion of mean streets,
stopped respectfully before the proud exclusiveness of Highbourne
Gardens. It was one of the last localities to have roads which were
marked "Private," guarded by locked gates, and to employ watchmen in
faded liveries, who dwelt in tiny sentry-boxes and at stated hours
collected the letters of the residents.
It was precisely the kind of neighbourhood for such a man as Archibold
Masterman to make his first social experiment, and he was quick to
recognise its advantages. Eagle House, Highbourne Gardens, was a
thoroughly respectable address; if it did not convey the impression of
social distinction, it clearly did imply solid competence, which was a
good deal better. Jones, the well-known city tailor, lived there, and
drove a pair of horses which any lord might envy; there were half a
dozen brokers who kept as good tables as any man in London; and there
was Loker, the famous manufacturer of soaps, whose rhymed
advertisements met the eye in every railway-carriage. According to the
views of Archibold Masterman, in his present stage of social
enlightenment, these illustrious persons composed a real aristocracy of
solid merit.
Above all, there was in Highbourne Gardens a church, at which most of
these prosperous persons were regular attendants, and Archibold
Masterman was shrewd enough to see that such a church was admirably
adapted to the plan of social advancement which he had in view. It was
not an Episcopal church, it was true; but that scarcely mattered in a
neighbourhood which was by long tradition Non-conformist. It was
enough for him that it contained the people he wished most to know, and
his first act on settling at Eagle House was to rent the most expensive
pew in the church which then chanced to be at liberty. The day when he
took possession of this pew was a red-letter day in his life. He was
conscious that he was well-dressed, and that he and his family were
favourably remarked. Loker, the soap manufacturer, took the collection
in his aisle, and when Masterman put a new five-pound note upon the
plate, he knew that he had created a sensation. When he left the
church, Loker shook his hand with great cordiality, and from that hour
his position was assured.
All this was, of course, many years ago. Since then he had played his
cards so well that he had become almost the best-known man in the
locality. He was certainly esteemed the wealthiest. He was a deacon
in the church, _vice_ Loker deceased, and he now trod the aisles with
the collection plate, and kept a jealous eye upon its contents. Among
the church folk his record for generosity stood high. Among the
younger men the story of his life had become a stimulating tradition.
There were two versions of this tradition. In the young men's
societies, and at their annual club dinner, he was accustomed to tell a
touching story of how he once did a piece of humble work which no one
else would touch, and found his fidelity rewarded by sudden promotion,
which gave him his first real chance in life. This story never failed
to arouse loud cheers, and when irate parents found their boys
unwilling to black their own shoes or weed the garden, they would cry,
"Remember Masterman." Among a few old cronies in the building trade,
in convivial moments, this tradition took a different form. To them he
boasted that he bought his first plot of land by issuing a cheque when
he had nothing in the bank, only borrowing the money just in time to
prevent discovery.
"It was a prison or a fortune," he was accustomed to remark. "And I
took the risk. I took the risk, and see what I am to-day." Whereat
his old cronies, particularly Grimes, a small builder in Tottenham, who
were all more or less under financial obligations to him, would applaud
him even more vigorously than the church young men.
The whole character of the man may be discerned in the incident. That
he should have risked a prison to make a fortune was nothing to be
ashamed of; although he had sense enough to know that it was not the
kind of story which would be received with acclamation by the church
young men. Therefore to them he gave a milder version, suited to their
innocence. But in his heart he was proud of his own daring, still
prouder of his triumph. His blood thrilled pleasurably whenever he
recalled that perilous and nearly fatal morning--his sudden decision to
buy the land whose speculative value none but he could recognise, the
bold bluff he practised on the sellers, the false cheque which he knew
put the handcuffs oh his wrists, the mad, breathless rush across London
to secure the money at any rate of interest from any kind of lender.
And then the ecstatic moment when, just ten minutes before the bank
closed, he had paid in the five thousand pounds which saved his credit.
In the end he had made twenty thousand pounds out of that land, and
from that moment he dated his prosperity. He had taken risks, and that
was to him the equivalent of heroism. Life was full of risks, and the
man who dared nothing was a coward. It was the simple philosophy of
the buccaneer, the pirate, the adventurer. Had he lived a hundred
years earlier and been bred to the sea, he would have gloried in the
black flag, and would have competed with Captain Kidd for terrifying
fame. The very joy of living lay in taking risks.
He had been taking risks ever since, although time and prosperity had
taught him caution and a more sober craft. Sometimes, and especially
since he had become a resident in Highbourne Gardens, he had resolved
to content himself with the kind of business which avoided speculative
perils, but the old instinct always proved too strong for him. Show
him an opportunity that offered the chance of great and sudden profit,
and he could no more help putting all he had in jeopardy to secure it
than can the old gambler refuse one more cast of the dice. But under
the chastenings of his new respectability he had become more and more
secretive in these dubious transactions. His own family never once
suspected them. All that they knew was that there were recurring
periods when he went about the house in grim silence, and sat up half
the night in the little room which he called his office. At such times
his face seemed to harden; new lines appeared about the eyes and the
firm mouth; but it always remained impassive and inscrutable. Some day
the cloud would lift suddenly; the grim toiler in the midnight office
came forth, jovial, loud-voiced, ten years younger; and there was a
period of joyous extravagance, a new pair of horses in the stable, a
conservatory added to the drawing-room, a large subscription to the
church funds, and the genial stir and tumult of dinner and lawn-tennis
parties. After a time the cloud rolled back again, but his friends
were alike ignorant of the causes that produced or the triumphs which
dissolved it.
So Masterman lived his life, and it was part of the man that the church
had come to occupy a considerable place in it. He felt that he owed it
gratitude, for had it not done much to forward his social ambitions?
He no longer moved in it humbly, as a man sedulous of notice; he had
long since become its undisputed king. The day was past when he was
grateful for the hand-shake of a Loker: it was his turn now to confer
the favours which he once had sought. It represented an essential
feature in his triumph. When the time came that he sought public
honours, which he meant to do, the church would prove a valuable factor
in his ambitions. He would then get back all that he had given it, in
willing service. It pleased him to think that the church itself would
turn out a good investment when that time came.
Not that he was destitute of all sense of religion; in his own way he
valued it, though not upon the grounds that were common with ordinary
pious folk. He thought it a good thing that men should have definite
views of truth, especially when their views encouraged them in the
belief that they would become in another world persons of as much
importance as they had been in this. As he understood the matter, it
was necessary for a man to have certain right beliefs in order that he
might become secure of the reversion of eternal happiness; and if that
were true, a man would be a fool who did not accept these beliefs.
Hence he was severely orthodox, and insisted on orthodoxy in his
family. He liked a good sermon, he liked good music, and it was part
of his pride that the Highbourne Gardens Church had both in all
excellence unapproachable by any of the lesser churches in the
neighbourhood. This was the limit of his apprehension as regards the
church. He recognised in it one of the great proprieties of life, a
kind of etiquette toward God which no moral human creature would refuse.
That he was moral, in the ordinary meaning of the word, there could be
no doubt. Long ago, when he was a mere day-labourer, he had indulged
in a week's drunkenness, and had learned once for all the lesson that
success in life is not compatible with insobriety. He had been
discharged from his employment, and had spent a miserable month in
hunting work with a damaged character. From that hour he was a
water-drinker. Life, having taught him this lesson, proceeded to teach
him a second, that the man who means to succeed must not meddle with
the coarser passions. He had come near to an entanglement with an evil
woman, and had issued from it with a fixed conviction that the
pleasures of passion were never worth the price men paid for them.
Here the original hardness of his nature served him, and this was soon
reinforced by the temper of ambition. Cool, shrewd, alert, he became
too much enamoured of success to stop for wayside pleasures; he knew
the more recondite joy of climbing over the shoulders of disabled men
to seize the prize which they had forfeited. In a word, it paid him to
be moral, and his temperament jumped with his self-interest.
But of morality in its higher forms of ethical ideals he knew nothing.
Deacon of a church as he was, he was still a pirate, a buccaneer, a
highwayman of commerce, thirsting for illicit adventure. There was a
grim humour in the situation of which he himself caught brief glimpses.
Like the bandit who makes a gift to the Virgin from his spoils, and
holds himself henceforth reconciled to heaven, so Masterman paid his
tithe to God, in the comfortable faith that no one had the right to
examine too closely the means by which it was obtained.
"A hypocrite," the shallow reader will exclaim, but no word would be
farther from the truth, for the real and only hypocrite is he who,
having light to see the highest things, deliberately uses them to serve
his lower instincts. Masterman did nothing of the kind. He simply had
no higher light. Not even a jury with a damaging verdict, or a judge
with a scathing allocution, could have convinced him that it was a
wrong time to write a bogus cheque in an emergency, when twenty
thousand pounds hung upon the chance of his deceit being undiscovered.
He would have done it again to-morrow, done it proudly, with a kind of
fearless, misguided heroism. Life was like that, he would have said;
you took your chances. And what he would have said and done at
thirty-five, he would have said and done at fifty. There was a hard,
unmalleable quality in the man that turned the edge of all those fine
ethics which the preachers uttered. It was their duty to utter them,
no doubt; it was what they were paid to do; but what did they know of
life? What did John Clark, the minister of Highbourne Gardens Church,
comfortably paid, and living in a good house, know of life as Masterman
had found it? He was like a child playing in the shallows; he had
never known deadly contest with tides, and waves, and tempests. So
Masterman listened to him with a kindly irony, and went upon his way
totally unmoved by any delicate displays of pulpit rhetoric.
Yet of late things had somewhat altered; he was conscious that there
was a changed atmosphere in the world. John Clark was preaching a
different kind of sermon, a bolder, plainer sermon, full of pungent
references to public evils and daily conduct. That would not have
mattered much, for Masterman was perfectly aware that he was John
Clark's master whenever he might choose to assert the rights of the
purse. But a much more pertinent and painful problem was gradually
rising in Masterman's own household. He had but two children, Helen
and Arthur, and upon the boy all his hopes were set. He had sent him
to Oxford, where he had done tolerably well; from the University he had
returned with a fund of new ideas which were to his father strange and
detestable. And among them was a vague socialism, which displayed
itself in vehement attacks on the common processes by which wealth was
acquired. There came a day when Masterman was aware, for the first
time, that he was face to face with a separate personality in his son,
which had its own springs of action and claimed its own liberty of
thought. And as the boy uttered his youthful diatribes, the father
began to wonder how much he knew about his own life, how far those
diatribes might be directed obliquely against himself.
He listened in silence, with a difficult good-humour. He never
attempted to retort. When he did speak, he meant to speak once for
all, but he would choose his time. He often wondered what he should
say; whether he would tell the boy with a brutal frankness all about
his methods of business, or leave him to discover a little at a time,
when he entered the office, as in due time Masterman meant that he
should. But whatever he said or did, he would act with finality when
the time came. There were means of bringing Arthur to heel as well as
John Clark.
The present trouble was that Arthur seemed greatly to approve John
Clark's teaching. He quoted it, amplified it, and insisted on its
rightness. And yet in all this the father knew quite well that his son
could intend no disloyalty to him. The boy's frank gray eyes had no
deceit in them. But they also flashed an unmistakable challenge on the
world. The father could not but admire the boy. He was no fool, he
often told himself with a bitter smile. Perhaps these new opinions of
his were, after all, mere froth; it might be wise to let him talk
himself out. Surely he must come to see life from the commonsense
point of view, which of course was Masterman's. So the father eagerly
debated, and once more the light burned late in the little office, and
as the days passed, his mouth grew grim and the lines deepened on his
face. Here was a problem much more difficult than buying land without
money, and it was not solved by mere daring.
So matters stood when John Clark preached his notorious sermon on
jerry-building, in which he accused without mercy the men who ran up
rotten buildings for the poor as thieves and assassins.
Archibold Masterman heard the sermon, and left the church with a
frowning face. For the rest of the Sabbath he shut himself up in his
office, and a heavy silence dwelt in Eagle House.
II
A DISCUSSION
It was in Masterman's office that the informal
meeting of some of the leading church officials
took place next day. The meeting had been
preceded by what was known as "a high tea,"
for the customary evening dinner was dispensed with
when deacons were the guests. This was done out
of deference to the inferior position of some of the
younger deacons, who had not yet attained the social
dignity of late dinners.
Masterman, however, took care that this substitutionary
meal did credit to his own social superiority.
Where the younger deacons were accustomed to
provide for the entertainment of their brethren plates of
exiguous ham, manifestly bought at the cookshop,
insufficient salads frugally overlaid with sliced eggs, and
a sparse variety of home-made cake and pastry,
Masterman spread a groaning table with a cold sirloin
of beef, a pair of fowls, and an entire ham, to say
nothing of thick cream and expensive fruits. Masterman's
coffee, too, was of a richness quite unapproachable
by the inferior decoctions of Beverley and Luke,
whose wives dealt at local shops, and were not above
using a certain detestable invention known as coffee
essence. Luke and Beverley also used gas fires in
their dining- and drawing-rooms, to save labour,
which was necessary when but one maid was kept;
whereas Masterman had a coal fire even in the hall,
and burned logs of wood in his living-rooms. Upon
Masterman's table there was also real silver of
undeniable price, and a vast silver urn; whereas Beverley
and Luke could pretend to nothing better than electro
imitations, which were not even silver-plated. So
that it was clear that though Masterman gave high
teas, they were scarcely distinguishable from evening
dinners; and if he was a deacon, he was by no means
a common deacon.
Arthur Masterman had long ago come to regard
those diaconal high teas with a kind of sombre
merriment. It amused him to remark his father's difficult
adjustment to a form of meal to which he was not
used; his conflict between condescension and
hospitality; his manifest, and not quite successful, effort to
modify his blunt, domineering outspokenness to the
sensitive susceptibilities of his guests. He was aware
also, with a sort of pride, how big his father seemed
beside these men. He loomed above them like some
vast cathedral front over huddled houses. They were
city dwellers all, and had never been anything else.
They had the precise, neat manners of men accustomed
to formal ways of life. Their talk rarely went
beyond the gossip of church affairs, or the recapitulation
of something in the morning's paper. But no one
could look at Archibold Masterman without a sense
of something primitive and massive in the man. The
heavy frame, the great breadth of shoulder, the
clean-shaven face with its firm lines, the eyes, clear,
watchful, dominating, with a certain almost vulpine
intensity and hardness--all these declared a man at all
times unusual, but most unusual in contrast with
these men, who bore in every feature the evidence
of how cities by mere attrition grind men down into
conventional similarities. That the boy should fear
his father was natural, for Archibold Masterman was
a man whose will was law; that he should not wholly
understand him was also natural, for a vast world
of experience lay between them: but his pride in him
was a genuine and steadfast feeling, all the more
remarkable because the father was uneducated, and
the son had drunk deep of the waters of Oxford
scholarship.
With the sister, Helen, the case was very different.
Arthur had inherited from his father the gift of
self-poise. He knew how to look at things with a single
eye, to meditate on them in silence, and to take up
an attitude of his own toward them. Helen's whole
nature was of lighter calibre. She was a girl easily
influenced by chance acquaintance, more ready to
enjoy life than to examine its underlying elements, in
all things more comformable to conventions. When
she came home from an expensive finishing-school,
she brought with her less her own character than a
character imposed upon her by her teachers. She took
her place in life with an instant alacrity of
adaptation; formed a dozen light-hearted friendships,
became popular for her vivacity and gaiety, and in her
heart thought her father dull. She had none of the
sense of his essential bigness that Arthur had. She
had no curiosity about him: he was simply an element
in the convenient furniture of her own life. She
sometimes wished him a little more polished, resented
his brusque manners, misunderstood his heavy silence,
and was inclined to be ironical about his social
ambitions. Yet these same social ambitions were the
chief common bond between them. Through them she
saw her road to a life that would gratify her vanity.
Somewhere, in the dim future, she discerned a golden
world, which she hoped to enter when her father's
force of character had broken down the barriers of
social caste. What her father's character really was, or
by what means he meant to reach that desirable golden
world, she did not ask. As long as the result was
reached, she had no curiosity about the process.
The last person in the family group to be remarked
is the mother. She sat at the end of the long table,
dispensing tea and coffee with an air of weary
assiduity. In her youth she had had some claim to beauty,
and there still clung to her a kind of tired elegance.
Her hair, once blond, had become almost white, and
lay in rippled fullness over a forehead much lined.
Her face was without colour, the eyebrows dark and
beautifully curved, the eyes gray and clear, with a
certain startled expression, as if life had presented to
her little else than a series of unforeseen surprises.
She was a very silent woman; silence was her
dominating quality, but it was enigmatic silence. Persons
of effusive and flamboyant manners found her silence
scarcely distinguishable from scorn; people of
vivacious temperament called it stolidity; the general
impression among her acquaintance was that it was
significant of a nature at once cold and colourless. They
were all wrong, however. And those were yet further
from the truth who confused her silence with placidity.
There were times when a sudden flash of fire in the
gray, watchful eyes witnessed to an inner heat. If
she spoke little, it was not because she felt little--it
was rather because she realised the total ineffectiveness
of language to express her thought. Helen had
characteristically never tried to understand her mother.
But as Arthur had grown older, and especially since
his return from Oxford, he had often found himself
speculating on the real nature of his mother's
character. He saw her, an apparent automaton, content
to fill an automatic place in life, making no claims
for herself, offering no opposition to the claims of
others, apparently desirous of squeezing herself into
a position of neglected insignificance; but he was acute
enough to know that all this self-effacement was
artificial. What were her real relations with his father?
Was she a woman simply overborne by his superior
weight? How much of her silence sprang from fear
of his heavy-handed judgments? But no sooner did
such thoughts visit him than the boy recoiled from
them with a sense of their indelicacy. Not to
speculate at times upon the relations of his parents was
impossible in one who was just at that stage of
observation when the entire area of life is an object of
intense curiosity; but to cherish or pursue such
thoughts was too much like violating a privacy which
both nature and custom had declared sacred. Yet of
one thing he was sure: his mother's native force of
character was not inferior to his father's, and her
silence rested on a deep-lying intensity of
temperament, not on apathy.
The meal pursued its common course of dullness.
Luke retailed some petty gossip about a family named
Vickars, who had recently joined the church; and
Beverley contrived to get upon his usual topic of fiscal
reform, producing as his own opinions the substance
of a leading article which had appeared in the
morning paper. No one took any notice of Beverley, but
Luke's topic of conversation proved more interesting,
especially to the only other deacon present, a middle-aged,
slightly gray man, with quick, crafty eyes, called
Scales. Scales kept the record of the seat-holders, and
felt that Beverley was intruding on his own peculiar
domain when he described the Hilary Vickars, the
new family which had joined the congregation.
"I know them very well," he remarked. "They
have only taken two sittings, and they are not the
sort of people who will add much strength to the
church. They live in a small house in Lonsdale
Road--one of your houses, sir," he added, turning to
Masterman.
"A very good class of people live in Lonsdale Road,
I believe," said Masterman drily.
"Oh yes, of course--I know that; and in the changing
conditions of the neighbourhood a street of houses
like Lonsdale Road is a great benefit to the locality.
But this Hilary Vickars only rents a part of a house,
I am informed, and that is what I meant when I said
he wouldn't add much strength to the church."
"Hilary Vickars," said Arthur. "Why, isn't he
a writer? I think I saw his name mentioned the other
day as the author of a novel which appeared this spring."
"Very likely," said Scales. "Now I think of it,
some one told me he wrote for the papers. I wonder
now if he couldn't give the church a write-up in _The
Weekly Journal_ some day?"
"In that case he might prove a greater accession
to the church than you imagine," said Beverley, who
was always glad to score a point against Scales, whose
assumption of authority he disliked.
Scales made no reply. He really had no information
about Hilary Vickars, beyond the fact that he
had taken a sitting in the church. As he never read
a book of any kind, nor a literary journal, he was
quite ignorant of Hilary Vickar's pretensions as a
writer. But since Beverley appeared to think Vickars
an acquisition of some value, he was eager to prove
the contrary. He remembered opportunely that it was
immediately after John Clark's sermon on jerry-building
that Vickars had applied for sittings, and
immediately said so, with a crafty glance at Masterman.
"Of course I don't know what other people think,"
he added, "but I consider that sermon an outrage."
Arthur flushed.
"Do you really?" he asked. "It seems to me that
to say that is to beg the whole question. The real,
and therefore the only, question is, Was it true?"
Masterman turned his heavy, frowning gaze on Arthur.
"We won't discuss that here," he said. "If you
are ready, gentlemen, we will adjourn to my office."
The men rose and left the room, Masterman leading
the way. When the office door closed, Masterman
at once began to speak.
"I don't propose to beat about the bush," he said;
"it isn't my way. You all know just why we are
here, and what the subject of discussion is. It's Clark."
The others remained silent.
"Have you nothing to say?" he asked, with a
sombre glance at Scales.
"We would all prefer to hear you first," said Scales.
"Have you any course to propose?"
"Yes, I have," said Masterman, in a formidable
voice. "I've had about enough of Clark. I know
he's a good preacher and all that, but he's greatly
changed. For weeks past he has been attacking people
from the pulpit. That's not the kind of thing we pay
him for, and it must stop. Unless it stops, either
he or I must leave the church, and it's for you to choose."
Thus bluntly adjured, the fountains of discussion
were at once open. Masterman lit a cigar, and sat
before the big writing-table, smoking stolidly. He
had shot his bolt, and was pretty sure of its effect.
He had the great advantage of having meditated on
his course with sober boldness. He knew very well
that he could do without the church better than it
could do without him. He did not wish to leave it,
but he had now reached a point in his career when
he was relatively indifferent to its advantages. It
would not hurt him much if he did join the rival
Episcopal church in the neighbourhood, which had
recently become quite popular under a new incumbent
of mellifluous voice and no particular convictions. It
might even help him socially--conceivably it might.
But that was a course which he did not mean to take
except under extreme pressure. It would certainly
have the aspect of defeat, and to be defeated by John
Clark was intolerable.
As he saw the matter, the issue was absolutely clear.
Clark could no longer hold his own if he should oppose
him. A church can always get a minister, but a
minister could not always get a church. If Clark should
recognise the weakness of his position, and amend his
ways--well, he was not vindictive, and he would accept
any reasonable compromise. No, he was neither
vindictive nor unreasonable, but he meant to have his way,
and the only question in debate was by what means he
should secure it.
To Beverley's cautious platitudes and Luke's halting
remonstrances he scarcely listened, but when at last
Scales began to speak, he was all attention. He knew
better than to place Scales in the category with Luke
and Beverley. Although his social position was not
much superior to theirs, yet he had by suavity and
some real ability insinuated himself into a place of
some authority in the counsels of the church. People
listened to him. He always spoke with gravity, and
with a certain air of deprecation, as of one who
admitted his humility, but was quietly aware of his
importance. And he usually knew exactly what to say
to influence opinion, for he had a habit of collecting
privately the opinions of other people before he
announced his own. Nothing sounds so like wisdom in
debate as for a speaker to give back in clear form the
half-articulated opinions of his audience, and in this
art Scales was an adept. Therefore Masterman
listened to him eagerly, when he began in his usually
non-committal voice to array reasons and suggest a course.
Open opposition would not do, he remarked. That
would in all probability stiffen Clark in his views,
and rally round him those who agreed with him. But
it was a known fact that Clark was about to pay a
long-projected visit to the Holy Land. Let them give
him a cordial send-off--they might even give him a
cheque toward his expenses. Then, when he was
gone, would be the time to call a special meeting to
inquire into the condition of the church. At such
a meeting people would speak freely, as they would
not if Clark were present. Of course no one could
prophesy exactly what might happen, but it would not
be surprising if a good deal of opposition developed
both to the minister and his views.
"Which means in plain words?" interrupted Masterman.
"That possibly he may not come back," said Scales
quietly.
"I will be no party to getting rid of the minister,"
said Beverley.
"Certainly not," said Scales. "But it is possible--I
only say it is possible, you know--that he may resign."
"Under compulsion, you mean?"
"Not at all. Simply in recognition of inevitable facts."
Masterman's grim mouth relaxed in a broad smile.
His eye rested on Scales with a glance of ironic
admiration. What a pity such a man was after all
only a superior clerk, with no opportunity to display
his diplomatic gifts except upon the narrow stage
of church affairs. Yet he was conscious too of a
curious element of repulsion which mingled with his
admiration of the clerk's astuteness. His mind, which
half an hour before had been filled with hot enmity
against the minister, now recoiled swiftly and inclined
to his defence, when he saw the kind of weapons
which Scales meant to use against him. He was a
man both by nature and by habit not delicate in his
use of means to attain an end; he could be both cruel
and unscrupulous upon occasion; but he had no taste
for deliberate perfidy, he had no capacity for
meanness, and he contemplated the narrow-shouldered,
suave-tongued clerk with a rising disgust.
"I don't like your plan," he broke forth loudly.
"That Holy Land scheme of yours, getting rid of
Clark and then attacking him, it's mean, it's too much
like tying a rope across a road to trip up a man in
the dark whom you dare not tackle openly."
"It's only a suggestion, sir," said Scales deferentially.
"It had better remain a suggestion, then."
He turned his back on Scales, and began to arrange
the papers on his desk. It was the signal that the
conference was over. Luke and Beverley soon left,
but Scales remained.
"I don't think you quite appreciate your own
position in this affair," Scales remarked.
"My position? What do you know of my position?"
"More than I cared to say before the others. I
would like to ask you a question."
"Ask away," Masterman retorted grimly.
"Well then, do you know the real reason why Clark
preached that sermon?"
"Oh, I suppose it was the expression of the
new-fangled socialism he professes."
"In part, yes. But there was a personal element,
too. Do you recollect a church you built at Orchard
Green about ten years ago?"
Masterman's face darkened, for he knew very well
what was coming. He had received more than one
letter lately from the trustees of Orchard Green Church,
who complained that the west wall of the edifice was
sinking, owing to imperfect foundations. It would
have to be rebuilt, and they naturally traced their
disaster to his bad workmanship. Hitherto he had
taken no notice of these letters. The people who
wrote them were not persons of any influence. They
had no legal claim upon him. Of course his work
had been properly certified by the architect at the
time of its completion, and in any case the lapse
of ten years made him immune from all responsibility.
Nevertheless, it was not an affair that
he cared to have generally known, and he was
startled at Scales' reference to the Orchard Green Church.
"Well," Scales continued, "it seems Clark has
friends at Orchard Green. When he went to see them
a little time ago, they told him that the walls of the
church were sinking. They had uncovered a part of
the foundations to discover the cause, and had found
instead of sound concrete a rotten mixture of
oyster-shells and road-gravel. Of course they told him that
you were the builder, and he came back raging. Then
he preached his sermon."
"And you disapproved his sermon?"
"Certainly--certainly," Scales replied in an eager voice.
"Even though his facts were right?"
"Ah! I couldn't agree to that, sir. And I'm sure
you wouldn't admit it."
Masterman threw away his cigar, lit another, and
stood regarding Scales with a sardonic eye.
Somehow the craft of the clerk did not appear to him the
admirable quality that it had seemed half an hour
earlier. To rob upon a large scale was one thing;
to cheat the mind into false conclusions was quite
another. The first he had done, and would do again;
but by a strange paradox this robber in action
remained honest in thought, and could not bring himself
to say the thing he did not mean. He felt again that
spasm of aversion to Scales, and with his aversion
there was mixed a strong curiosity to know just how
far the clerk's supple conscience would serve him, and
what was the part he wished to play.
He wheeled suddenly upon Scales, and broke into
a harsh laugh.
"Is that all you have to say?" he asked.
"Yes, that is all."
"Well, now listen to me. The facts about the
Orchard Green Church are all right. I admit them.
They wanted everything as cheap as could be; they
wanted me cheap; so I gave them cheap work just to
balance matters. Don't think that's an apology, for
it isn't. As for Clark, I don't object to his saying
anything he likes about the business, but I do object
to his saying it from a pulpit. He wants to injure me,
and so he can't complain if I get back at him. But
there's two ways of fighting a man--one's face to face,
and the other's by hitting him behind. I'm going to
fight honest. And do you know, Scales, much as I
dislike Clark, I really think I like him better than I
like you, after all."
"I fail to understand----" Scales began.
"Oh no, you don't; you're much too clever for that.
But if you do really want a little light, I'd have you
remember this--that Archibold Masterman was never
frightened yet by threats, and when he fights he fights fair."
III
THE BIG STRONG BEAST
The next morning Masterman wrote a letter to the overjoyed trustees of
the Orchard Green Church, offering to make good without cost all
defects of workmanship in the building which might be justly charged to
him. He was careful to explain that while they had no legal claim on
him, he regarded this work as a debt of honour.
He had just finished the letter when Arthur came into the office.
Arthur's manner was constrained and almost timid. Masterman, on the
contrary, was in his most jovial mood. He had just performed an act
which was not only good in itself, but wise and politic; for, of
course, he knew that his action toward the Orchard Green trustees would
become public, and would be quoted to his credit.
"Well," he began, "getting a bit tired of doing nothing? Not that I
grudge you your liberty, you know. I promised you a year to look
around, before you settle to your life-work, and I shall stick to my
bargain. But I confess it will be a glad day for me when I write
'Masterman & Son' over my doors."
"I'm very far from doing nothing, sir," he answered. "Oxford is one
world, and London quite another. I am learning every day a lot of
things Oxford never taught me."
"Of course you are. London's a big world, and the things it has to
teach are the things that count. Not that Oxford isn't worth while
too. It gives a man a start in life nothing else can give. That's why
I sent you there, you know."
"Yes, I know, father, and I am grateful to you."
"Nothing to be grateful for, my boy. I owed it to you." His face
softened with a musing look very unusual with him. "I got no kind of
start myself, you know," he continued. "At fifteen I was working in a
brickfield. When I went home at night, my father used to beat me. I
don't think I ever hated any one as I hated my father. One day I
struck back, and ran away from home. Queer thing--I was always sorry
for that blow. I used to lie awake at nights for weeks after,
wondering if I really hurt the old man. From that day to this I never
saw him any more. But I'm still sorry for that blow. Sons shouldn't
hit their parents, anyway. I ought to have let him go on beating me;
he'd got the habit, and I could have stood it all right. Well, well,
it's such a long time ago that I can hardly believe it ever happened."
He stopped suddenly, with a lift of the shoulders, as if he shook off
the burden of that squalid past. But the rude words had left the son
inexpressibly touched. A swift picture passed before his mind of a
gaunt boy toiling over heavy tasks, ill-paid, cruelly used, wandering
out into the world lonely and unguided, and a strong passion of pity
and of wonder shook his heart. Above all, those artless words, "Sons
shouldn't hit their fathers, anyway," fell upon him with the weight of
a reproach. Had he not already condemned his father in his thoughts?
He had known very well to whom Clark alluded in his sermon, and yet he
had approved. He had entered the office that morning with the fixed
intent of endorsing Clark's tacit accusation of his father. And now he
found himself suddenly disarmed. That old sense of something big about
his father came back to him with redoubled force. To start like that,
shovelling clay in a brickyard for twelve hours a day, and to become
what he was--oh! it needed a big man to do that, an Esau who was
scarcely to be judged by the standards of smooth-skinned, home-staying
Jacobs.
"I didn't know you had suffered all that, father. You never told me
that before."
"There's a sight of things I've suffered that I wouldn't like you to
know. But they were all in the day's work, and I don't complain. And
that's one thing I want to say to you, and I may as well say it now.
You've got a start I never had, and you won't suffer what I suffered,
but I want you to know that the world's a pretty hard place to live in
anyway. You can't go through it without being badly hurt somewhere.
You've got to take what you want, or you won't get it. Talking isn't
going to mend things: life's a big strong beast, and it isn't words but
a bit and bridle and a whip a man needs who is going to succeed. Now
you're at the talking stage, and I don't complain. You admire talkers
like Clark, and you think they are doing no end of good, don't you?
Well, you'll learn better presently. You'll find that the world goes
on much the same as it ever did, in spite of the talkers. I want you
to digest that fact just as soon as you can, and then you'll be ready
to step down into the thick of life where I am, and help me do the
things I want to do."
"But, father, is what Clark said concerning you true?"
"Do you want to discuss it with me?"
"No; I have no right to ask that."
"Yes, you have. I want you to join in the business when you're ready,
and you've a right to know what kind of business it is, and, if you
like to put it so, what kind of person your partner is."
"He is my father, and I love him. That is enough," said Arthur proudly.
"No, it isn't enough. I had a father, and I didn't love him. But as
to this business of Clark's. He found out something against me, and
instead of coming to me about it, he preached a sermon on it, and for
that I don't forgive him. Well, what was it he found out? No more
than this--that ten years ago I had to do a cheap job, and I did it
cheaply. My work has held together ten years, which is about all that
could be expected at the price. Now I'll tell you what I've done.
I've agreed to do the work over again for nothing. There's the letter
which I've just written. You had better read it."
Arthur took the letter, and read it slowly. His father had risen from
his desk, and stood watching him narrowly. Perhaps until that moment
he had never quite realised how much his heart was set on having his
son in the business with him. And he wanted above all things to win
the son's approval. Perhaps there was some underlying thought of this
kind in his mind when he wrote the letter. Not that he meant to alter
all the methods of his business to suit his son. Once in the business,
Arthur would learn what these were by imperceptible degrees, and would
grow accustomed to them. But just now the father's heart was wholly
set upon concession and conciliation. He remembered, with a rush of
tenderness, how he had long ago taught the boy to swim. He could still
see the slight, childish form shivering on the rock above the
swimming-pool. He had begun with threats, but had soon found them
useless. Then he had used persuasion and cajolery, until at last the
boy had slipt into the pool, and in a week was swimming with the best
of them. Well, it was like that now. If he could but cajole him into
the deep stream of life, that was enough; when the deep water heaved
beneath his feet, he would have to do what the others did in pure
self-defence.
"Well?" he said at last.
Arthur laid down the letter and turned a shining face upon his father.
"It is a noble letter, father. Forgive me that I misjudged you."
"That's all right, then."
"You have taught me a lesson. I shall not forget it."
"Oh! don't take it too seriously, my boy. It is only a small affair,
after all."
But each knew that it was not a small affair. In that moment these two
opposite natures were nearer together than they had ever been before,
and, although neither knew it, nearer than they would ever be again.
Arthur left his father with a strong sense of exaltation. The cloud of
misgiving concerning his father's methods of business had miraculously
dissolved. In the quick rebound of feeling he was inclined to judge
himself intolerant and unjust, and his father's image glowed before his
mind, endued with heroic virtues. He shuddered when he thought of his
father's youth, with its dreadful disabilities; he kindled with
admiring ardour when the thought of his father's triumph over a weight
of circumstance which would have crushed a weaker man. If some of the
mire of the pit yet clung to him, if in many things he was crude,
violent, narrow, it was not surprising; the marvel was that his faults
were not more numerous and more unpardonable. As Arthur went to his
room, he caught a vision of himself in the mirror of his wardrobe--a
slight figure admirably clothed, a face fresh and unlined, with white
forehead and close curling hair, the picture of youth delicately
nurtured, upon whom the winds of life had not blown roughly--and he was
filled with compunction at the contrast afforded by that other picture
of a poor drudging boy toiling in a brickfield and beaten by a drunken
parent. In spite of all his superficial superiorities, he seemed a
creature of small significance beside this Titanic father of his.
It was an exquisite spring morning, one of those mornings when London
draws her first fresh, unimpeded breath after the long, choking fogs of
winter. The lawn lay green beneath the window, presided over by a busy
thrush, who flirted his wings in the strong sunlight, and stopped at
intervals to address a long mellow note of rapture to the blue sky; the
japonica had hung the garden wall with crimson blossoms; the poplars
took the light upon their slender spires, till each burned with yellow
flame. Nature, unconquered by the gross antipathy of man, was invading
the brick Babylon, flinging brocades of light upon the beaten ways, and
filling them with the music of the pipes of Pan. Arthur could not
resist the call.
He felt a need of solitude. He had many thoughts that cried aloud for
readjustment. He stepped out in the blither air, and took his way to
Hampstead Heath. Soon the narrow streets were left behind, the long
hill rose above him, and his feet trod the furze-clad slopes, little
altered since the day when Roman legions camped upon their crests, and
eighteenth-century highwaymen concealed themselves among their hollows.
He walked far and fast, meditating much on life. It seemed a wonderful
thing to be alive, where so many generations of men had fought and
perished, to be for a little time sole possessor of a world that had
cast off such myriads of tenants; and there came to him, with an almost
painful wonder, the sense of the richness of his opportunity. He would
make his own life something worthy. It was true, as his father had
said, that he started at a point of vantage not given to every one. By
so much that he started higher, he must soar higher, go farther. But
in the midst of all his exultant thoughts there intruded his father's
terse picture of life as a big strong beast only to be mastered by bit
and whip and bridle. And at that thought the tide of exaltation began
to leave him. He walked more slowly, became listless, was conscious of
weariness. It no longer seemed an easy and a rapturous thing to live;
life rose before him as a menace.