It was eight o'clock, and the year as well as the day was in its
morning. The watch which young Carl Bristoll drew from his pocket was
very thin and exquisite, and he did not look at its face. Instead he
touched a delicate spring with his finger-nail and listened to the
tinkle of its low, silvery chime. This watch might have spoken the hour
to a blind man as well as to eyes as clear and engaging as those of its
present possessor.
In some Swiss shop, where for generations an hereditary skill of adept
fingers had come down from father to son, a master of his craft had
toiled long and lovingly over this thin disc of gold which epitomized in
its small circumference a perfection of accuracy and beauty. Because it
was a prince's plaything and because the young Titan of finance who
employed Carl Bristoll as his confidential secretary had brought it back
by way of an affectionate gift from his last trip to the Continent, the
lad prized it above other possessions. To young Bristoll, who was no
unwilling wage-earner, but a hero-worshiper in all the intensity of
strong youth, it had been as if an emperor had pinned on his breast the
insignia of personal regard.
He put the trinket back into his waistcoat pocket, and strolled to the
windows that gave off over the Drive and the Hudson. The softly arching
sky found its color echo in the blue of broad waters and beyond them the
Palisades were already beginning to show tenderly green and alluring in
spring's resurrection. Out in midstream lay the crouching hulk of a
battleship, and its somber gray was the one note that contradicted the
softness of the morning.
Bristoll turned his face again to the interior, where a flood of sun
from the broad window at the back filled the place with eastern light.
He never tired of that room, the library where his chief dispatched
those matters of more urgent business that pursued him even to his home.
It was a room that might have served a potentate as a council-chamber
with its treasury of almost priceless art, yet it reflected everywhere
the quiet of faultless taste and the elegance born of a restrained and
sure discernment.
"And all of it," Carl Bristoll murmured to himself, as he awaited the
coming of its master, "he made for himself in a scant ten years, and he
stands only at the threshold of his career!" That often repeated formula
was a sort of daily tonic with which his ambition reminded itself that
life holds no prize locked behind impossible barriers for him who has
the courage and resolution to grasp it. Yet had he been older he would
have added, "The impossible is only possible to the child of Destiny."
He heard a quiet movement behind him, and turned to find the butler
standing at his elbow with a tray of early mail, into which the
secretary plunged, separating the purely personal from those letters
which the great man saw only through his subordinate's eyes.
"I'm not at all sure, Mr. Bristoll, that the master will rise early,"
volunteered the servant. "He was with his sister until midnight, and
after that Mr. Paul came in and I heard him playing the piano, sir, as
late as three o'clock."
Carl laughed. "I had a call from him on the 'phone an hour ago," he
answered. "He spoke of a busy day ahead, and suggested an early start.
There are some men, Harrow, who find rest simply in changing the brain's
occupation."
"Yes, sir, quite so," admitted the butler dubiously. "Still, as the poet
says, sir, it's sleep that 'knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,' sir.
Sometimes I have apprehensions that the master will overtax his
strength."
"I didn't know, Harrow," smiled the secretary, "that you were a disciple
of the poets."
"Only, sir, in an unostentatious way," deprecated the man. "It has been
my good fortune to serve in families where such niceties have been
highly regarded, sir, and, I take it, advantageous associations reflect
themselves in one's tastes, sir. But--" he dropped his voice, and came a
step nearer--"but, sir, if you will pardon me, sir, I should like to ask
a question. You know, of course, that the master's sister arrived last
night from Europe?"
Bristoll nodded. He himself had not yet had the privilege of seeing the
young woman, the fame of whose loveliness had preceded her: a loveliness
which had enthralled men from the Irish Sea to Suez.
"Of course, sir, it's not for me to entertain opinions, but--" The
butler paused in evident embarrassment, and the secretary's eyes
narrowed a little.
"You are quite right, Harrow," he asserted shortly. "I can't see that
you are required to express any opinion."
"Of course, sir, I was only going to say--"
"Well--don't say it."
But, for all his obsequiousness, the admirable Harrow was a persistent
diplomat.
"No, sir, of course I sha'n't. I was only going to ask you--"
The secretary looked up with an impatient frown on a forehead shaped for
resolution.
"All right. Ask me and have it over."
"I was going to inquire, sir, whether you regard it likely that the new
mistress would--as I might say, sir--institute any sweeping changes of
régime in our _milieu_? Things have gone on very well, sir, as they
were." The interrogation carried a note of sharp anxiety: the
apprehension of a petty monarch who might face the fate of being
deposed.
"I don't know." The reply was curt, and Harrow with a bow said only,
"Yes, sir, thank you. I was just speculating on the possibilities, sir."
For a while there was silence in the library as Bristoll ran through
letter after letter, his hand racing over the stenographer's pad upon
which he reduced their purport to succinct notes. He always enjoyed
these responsible mornings with his chief because they were times of
intimate association with a mind that directed colossal operations, and
they savored almost of the importance of cabinet meetings.
Often, as he read the fluctuations of the ticker tape or glanced at
financial scareheads in the evening papers, he smiled knowingly with the
memory of a sentence spoken at the breakfast-table or an edict uttered
in this library, which had been the motive power behind the news; and
which to the world at large remained an unseen impulse.
Now Bristoll heard a quick step coming down the stairs with a
schoolboy's buoyant lightness and the whistling of a popular air. It
might have been a college sophomore arriving light-heartedly from his
cold plunge, rather than the Titan whose word in the Street was already
a thing which no one of the older money-kings could ignore.
Carl Bristoll rose, and Hamilton Burton broke off his whistling to smile
gaily as he clapped the younger man on the shoulder and inquired with a
voice remarkably soft and musical, "Well, how is our young Minister of
Finance this morning?"
Hamilton Montagu Burton stood an even six feet, and from a generous
breadth of shoulders, swung back in free erectness, he tapered to a trim
slenderness of waist and thigh. In the immaculate elegance of his dress
he justified his reputation as the best-clothed man in New York, even
while he retained the grace of a seeming carelessness. His eyes, though
he had slept a scant four hours, looked out clear-pupiled and tireless,
but it was the shape and carriage of the head that proclaimed mastery.
The pattern of brow and jaw and clean-cut lip and indomitable eye gave
that head an alert power which made it the head of one born to command.
The illuminating smile could give way to a sternness and a decision that
became ruthless in its dominance, and the eyes could harden like
diamonds as swiftly as they could melt.
Carl Bristoll laughed, and after the custom of badinage that had grown
up between them he made a bow of mock ceremony as he replied.
"Quite fit, Sire, and your Majesty's appearance proclaims you equally
so."
It was hardly the sort of greeting that the outsider might have
expected, but neither financier nor secretary was an ordinary type and
between them throve an excellent understanding.
As Bristoll read from his notes Hamilton Burton's face lost its smile
and became instantly attentive while his questions snapped out
clear-clipped and comprehensive.
It seemed that the brain was separated into many zones, each carrying
forward its separate functions without interference or confusion.
Through the channels of vision, hearing and quick independent thought,
varied propositions were at one time being absorbed while the master
instinct of coördination was weighing all and planning yet other
affairs.
"And now," announced the financier, when the stenographic notes had been
read and others written in swift adjudication of their problems, "the
rest can wait till we get down-town. There's Harrow calling us to
breakfast--and breakfast is an institution I particularly venerate." The
master of the establishment turned to the butler and inquired, "Hasn't
Miss Burton come down?"
"Miss Burton, sir," replied the man with a shade of uneasiness in his
voice, "sent word by her maid that she would breakfast in her room."
The naïve smile faded from Hamilton Burton's face and for an instant it
took on something of that aggressive set which men in the Stock-Exchange
had come to recognize as precursor of a frenzied day.
"Send word to my sister," he directed quietly, "that I insistently
request her to join us at breakfast. I must see her before I leave the
house." He strode with a resilient step about the room, pausing idly
before a favorite landscape here and prized bronze there. Patience was
one quality which Hamilton Burton had not spent great effort in
acquiring. It was his custom to let others adapt themselves to his
convenience, yet his eyes were unruffled as he smilingly turned to his
secretary. "'Serene I wait--with folded hands,'" he murmured.
But when Harrow returned it was as bearer of a message which marred the
serenity of this waiting.
"Miss Burton sends word, sir, that she will receive you in her boudoir
in a half-hour. She does not find it convenient to come down to
breakfast."
For a moment, Hamilton Burton remained standing and his gray eyes
flashed forebodingly, though the line of his lips was not deflected.
Then he led the way to the breakfast-room.
"Tell Miss Burton," he ordered shortly, "that we are awaiting her in the
breakfast-room. Say to her that I trust she will make the delay short."
Then as the butler turned, the master halted him again. "No," he
amended, "I'll send a note--give me a sheet of paper."
As the embarrassed servant laid a note-card by his plate, he hastily
scribbled:
"Dear Mary, While you are mistress of my house I shall expect you to
appear at the breakfast-table. The rest of the day is yours. This is
final. Mr. Bristoll and I are waiting and my time is not to be valued
lightly. Please do not tax my patience longer."
When Harrow had gone, Burton turned again to Bristoll, and with that
systematic quality which made his brain so versatile he dismissed the
annoyance for another matter.
"I want your opinion on the coffee," he said lightly. "It came from the
Jungus valley in Bolivia. Men who have drunk it there are not satisfied
with any other. In the local market it is costly and as an export it is
unattainable."
"Yet you have obtained it," smiled the secretary. "How?"
Burton laughed. "I wanted it," he announced briefly. "So I got it."
"Mr. Burton," the younger man spoke hesitantly, "you look very fit and
seem absolutely on edge, but I'm afraid you're rather overdoing things.
I don't mean any impertinence of suggestion, but the trout are jumping
in the mountain brooks just now. Can't you drop things for a few days
and climb into a flannel shirt--and rest? You could go somewhere where
the leaves are rustling in the woods and things are as God made them,
close to His immortal granite. I don't want to see you break yourself
down."
Hamilton Burton was looking at the percolator in which the Bolivian
coffee was bubbling as restively as the fires of the volcano at whose
base it grew from berry to lush plant and came again to berry. He was
balancing a spoon on his forefinger, and smiling with quiet amusement.
"Now that's very thoughtful of our young Minister of Finance." He spoke
softly as the fugitive smile played around the corners of his lips.
"Very thoughtful indeed, but the suggestion is, after all, unavailable."
He paused, and the smile died. "I don't think I've ever become
autobiographical with you, have I, Carl?"
The secretary shook his head. "But, of course, you know I should feel
honored at any time you did," he declared with whole-hearted and boyish
enthusiasm.
"Very well. Until I was sixteen years old I lived very close to
mountains built of God's immortal granite. Whenever I went out to do my
chores I barked my shins on God's immortal granite. Whenever I plowed I
had to do acrobatics to save as much of the plowshare as possible from
God's immortal granite. It's all very pastoral to talk about milk fresh
from the sweet-breathed cow, but for ten years I was lady's maid to two
singularly repulsive cows--and in time they cloyed upon me. Whenever
those Juno-eyed kine lowed for a drink of water, it was up to me to
hustle out and serve them--and I never got a tip for my service. To this
good day, Carl, the sight of a cow gives me cramps in the fingers and
melancholy in the soul. Henceforth I'll take my milk in hermetically
sealed jars from one of my own model dairies--and I'll try to forget
that its origin is--cows. That cream in the pitcher there came from a
farm of mine up in Westchester. Bulk for bulk, it costs me about the
same as old champagne, but it's mighty cheap compared to what that other
milk came to." He paused and gazed at the spoon balanced on a steady
forefinger.
"As for the whisper of the breeze through the silver birches, I've heard
it with chilblains on my feet and bruises on my heart and henceforth
when I want to see the shadows fall, I'll go and stand under Cheops'
pyramid or the Coliseum at Rome or some other edifice reared with human
hands as the monument to human achievement that helped to build the
world. When I die they'll once more lay me close to Nature's breast,
and, being dead, I sha'n't object--but until that time I'll stay
away--as far away as possible."
The financier ended his good-humored tirade and glanced up to meet the
frankly alarmed gaze of Harrow, who at that moment reappeared in the
door.
"Miss Burton says," announced the butler, his usual suavity shaken
beyond control, "that there is no answer to your note. She says you
already have her reply."
The coffee in the percolator was bubbling furiously, and the ice about
the grape-fruit was beginning to melt. Hamilton Burton rose abruptly
from his chair. "Please excuse me for a moment, Carl," he said in a low
voice. "I will go up and bring my sister down to breakfast."
The furnishing and decorating of Mary Burton's apartments had engrossed
her brother's interest for some weeks prior to her arrival and when in
answer to his rap a silvery voice said, "Come in," he stood on the
threshold of a boudoir as richly and tastefully detailed as a princess
of the blood royal could have asked.
But the girl, who sat indolently before her mirror, clad in a morning
negligée of exquisite delicacy, was so like a colorful and lustrous
pearl that one forgot her surroundings. Hamilton's eyes, the eyes that
could change so swiftly from implacability to disarming softness,
flashed into pride as he looked at her.
"Mary," he amiably began, "I think there must be some misunderstanding.
I asked you to come down."
The girl looked up with a serene smile. "Did they not then give you my
message?" she inquired softly. "I told them to say that I would
breakfast here."
The man's eyes narrowed and darkened. Something in his domineering
spirit bristled, as it always bristled under questioning or opposition.
"Why? You are fully dressed, are you not?"
"Assuredly."
"Then what reason can you have for refusing to come when I ask it? Is it
simply that you wish to defy me? I am not accustomed to being
disobeyed."
"Are you then so sure of obedience, _mon cher_?" She raised her gorgeous
eyes and laughed up at him with indulgent amusement. Her manner was that
of a young empress who regards any criticism of herself as an audacious
jest, so unprecedented as to be diverting. "Are you sure that you have
nothing yet to learn? I said I should not come down to the
breakfast-room--because I did not wish to come."
"You mean that you still refuse?"
"If you desire to call it that. I would not seem ungracious.... I should
prefer the word 'decline.'"
"Then that is reason enough why you _are_ coming."
Mary lifted her brows in incredulous amusement, but Hamilton Burton did
not smile in response. He came a step nearer her chair and said very
quietly: "While you are in my house I wish you to appear at the
breakfast-table. This morning is a good time to begin. Will you
accompany me on your own feet, or will you make your initial appearance
kicking those same feet, while I carry you down like a child in a
tantrum? There are about five seconds available for you to give the
question mature deliberation."
"Thank you, _cheri_." Her mirthful pupils were not flecked with
annoyance. "Five seconds are four seconds more than I need. I shall not
go either way."
Hamilton made no further comment. With the apparent ease of one taking
up a child from its cradle, he bent down and gathered her slender figure
in his arms, then, lifting her bodily from her chair, he turned toward
the door.
For an instant, she lay against his shoulder, too astounded for protest.
Then her satin slippers began beating a furious tattoo and her small
fists pummeling him as her cheeks flamed and her mismatched eyes burst
into indignant fire. These demonstrations her brother ignored as he
carried her in effortless fashion out into the broad hall and half-way
down the stairs. She had ceased to struggle by that time and was gasping
in wordless wrath. But at the turn of the stairway into the lower hall
he paused and stood still, while their eyes met and locked in a brief,
hot duel of wills.
"Now," he inquired calmly, "shall this be the manner of your first
appearance before my secretary and butler, or will you make the rest of
the journey on your own power?"
For the first time she recovered her voice. It was a wild mingling of
frustrated wrath and outraged dignity, and for once she found that her
fluency had forsaken her. She had been taught--Hamilton had seen to
that--that when she spoke others should obey. She had not yet learned to
bow to even his autocracy.
"_Ham!_" she exclaimed tensely, though even now she spoke in a cautious
voice so that no echo might reach other ears. "Put me down! How dare
you?"
He did not answer the question; instead he asked another.
"Will you enter as mistress of the house or will you go in kicking?"
During a long defiant pause, their eyes held, both pairs unwavering;
then the girl said quietly: "I'll go in myself."