Many men, possibly a majority, have sufficient equipment for at least a
fair measure of success. Yet all but a few are downright failures,
passing their lives in helpless dependence, glad to sell themselves for
a small part of the value they create. For this there are two main
reasons. The first is, as Norman said, that only a few men have the
self-restraint to resist the temptings of a small pleasure to-day in
order to gain a larger to-morrow or next day. The second is that few men
possess the power of continuous concentration. Most of us cannot
concentrate at all; any slight distraction suffices to disrupt and
destroy the whole train of thought. A good many can concentrate for a
few hours, for a week or so, for two or three months. But there comes a
small achievement and it satisfies, or a small discouragement and it
disheartens. Only to the rare few is given the power to concentrate
steadily, year in and year out, through good and evil event or report.
As Norman stepped into his auto to go to the office--he had ridden a
horse in the park before breakfast until its hide was streaked with
lather--the instant he entered his auto, he discharged his mind of
everything but the business before him down town--or, rather, business
filled his mind so completely that everything else poured out and away.
A really fine mind--a perfect or approximately perfect instrument to the
purposes of its possessor--is a marvelous spectacle of order. It is like
a vast public library constantly used by large numbers. There are
alcoves, rows on rows, shelves on shelves, with the exactest system
everywhere prevailing, with the attendants moving about in list-bottomed
shoes, fulfilling without the least hesitation or mistake the multitude
of directions from the central desk. It is like an admirably drilled
army, where there is the nice balance of freedom and discipline that
gives mobility without confusion; the divisions, down to files and even
units, can be disposed along the line of battle wherever needed, or can
be marshaled in reserve for use at the proper moment. Such a mind may be
used for good purpose or bad--or for mixed purposes, after the usual
fashion in human action. But whatever the service to which it is put, it
acts with equal energy and precision. Character--that is a thing apart.
The character determines the morality of action; but only the intellect
determines the skill of action.
In the offices of that great law firm one of the keenest pleasures of
the more intelligent of the staff was watching the workings of Frederick
Norman's mind--its ease of movement, its quickness and accuracy, its
obedience to the code of mental habits he had fixed for himself. In
large part all this was born with the man; but it had been brought to a
state of perfection by the most painful labor, by the severest
discipline, by years of practice of the sacrifice of small
temptations--temptations to waste time and strength on the little
pleasant things which result in such heavy bills--bills that bankrupt a
man in middle life and send him in old age into the deserts of poverty
and contempt.
Such an unique and trivial request as that of Josephine Burroughs being
wholly out of his mental habit for down town, he forgot it along with
everything else having to do with uptown only--along with Josephine
herself, to tell a truth which may pique the woman reader and may be
wholly misunderstood by the sentimentalists. By merest accident he was
reminded.
As the door of his private office opened to admit an important client he
happened to glance up. And between the edge of the door frame and his
client's automobile-fattened and carefully dressed body, he caught a
glimpse of the "poor little forlornness" who chanced to be crossing the
outer office. A glint of sunlight on her hair changed it from
lifelessness to golden vital vividness; the same chance sunbeam touched
her pale skin with a soft yellow radiation--and her profile was
delicately fine and regular. Thus Norman, who observed everything, saw
a head of finely wrought gold--a startling cameo against the dead white
of office wall. It was only with the second thought that he recognized
her. The episode of the night before came back and Josephine's penitent
yet persistent note.
He glanced at the clock. Said the client in the amusing tone of one who
would like to take offense if he only dared, "I'll not detain you long,
Mr. Norman. And really the matter is extremely important."
There are not many lawyers, even of the first rank, with whom their big
clients reverse the attitude of servant and master. Norman might well
have been flattered. In that restrained tone from one used to servility
and fond of it and easily miffed by lack of it was the whole story of
Norman's long battle and splendid victory. But he was not in the mood to
be flattered; he was thinking of other things. And it presently annoyed
him that his usually docile mind refused to obey his will's order to
concentrate on the client and the business--said business being one of
those huge schemes through which a big monster of a corporation is
constructed by lawyers out of materials supplied by great capitalists
and controllers of capital, is set to eating in enormous meals the
substance of the people; at some obscure point in all the principal
veins small but leechlike parasite corporations are attached,
industriously to suck away the surplus blood so that the owners of the
beast may say, "It is eating almost nothing. See how lean it is, poor
thing! Why, the bones fairly poke through its meager hide."
An interesting and highly complicated enterprise is such a construction.
It was of the kind in which Norman's mind especially delighted; Hercules
is himself only in presence of an herculean labor. But on that day he
could not concentrate, and because of a trifle! He felt like a giant
disabled by a grain of dust in the eye--yes, a mere grain of dust! "I
must love Josephine even more than I realize, to be fretted by such a
paltry thing," thought he. And after patiently enduring the client for
half an hour without being able to grasp the outlines of the project, he
rose abruptly and said: "I must get into my mind the points you've given
me before we can go further. So I'll not waste your time."
This sounded very like "Clear out--you've bored me to my limit of
endurance." But the motions of a mind such as he knew Norman had were
beyond and high above the client's mere cunning at dollar-trapping. He
felt that it was the part of wisdom--also soothing to vanity--to assume
that Norman meant only what his words conveyed. When Norman was alone he
rang for an office boy and said:
"Please ask Miss Halliday to come here."
The boy hesitated. "Miss Hallowell?" he suggested.
"Hallowell--thanks--Hallowell," said Norman.
And it somehow pleased him that he had not remembered her name. How
significant it was of her insignificance that so accurate a memory as
his should make the slip. When she, impassive, colorless, nebulous,
stood before him the feeling of pleasure was, queerly enough, mingled
with a sense of humiliation. What absurd vagaries his imagination had
indulged in! For it must have been sheer hallucination, his seeing those
wonders in her. How he would be laughed at if those pictures he had made
of her could be seen by any other eyes! "They must be right when they
say a man in love is touched in the head. Only, why the devil should I
have happened to get these crazy notions about a person I've no interest
in?" However, the main point--and most satisfactory--was that Josephine
would be at a glance convinced--convicted--made ashamed of her absurd
attack. A mere grain of dust.
"Just a moment, please," he said to Miss Hallowell. "I want to give you
a note of introduction."
He wrote the note to Josephine Burroughs: "Here she is. I've told her
you wish to talk with her about doing some work for you." When he
finished he looked up. She was standing at the window, gazing out upon
the tremendous panorama of skyscrapers that makes New York the most
astounding of the cities of men. He was about to speak. The words fell
back unuttered. For once more the hallucination--or whatever it
was--laid hold of him. That figure by the window--that beautiful girl,
with the great dreamy eyes and the soft and languorous nuances of golden
haze over her hair, over the skin of perfectly rounded cheek and
perfectly moulded chin curving with ideal grace into the whitest and
firmest of throats----
"Am I mad? or do I really see what I see?" he muttered.
He turned away to clear his eyes for a second view, for an attempt to
settle it whether he saw or imagined. When he looked again, she was
observing him--and once more she was the obscure, the cipherlike Miss
Hallowell, ten-dollar-a-week typewriter and not worth it. Evidently she
noted his confusion and was vaguely alarmed by it. He recovered himself
as best he could and debated whether it was wise to send her to
Josephine. Surely those transformations were not altogether his own
hallucinations; and Josephine might see, might humiliate him by
suspecting more strongly--... Ridiculous! He held out the letter.
"The lady to whom this is addressed wishes to see you. Will you go
there, right away, please? It may be that you'll get the chance to make
some extra money. You've no objection, I suppose?"
She took the letter hesitatingly.
"You will find her agreeable, I think," continued he. "At any rate, the
trip can do no harm."
She hesitated a moment longer, as if weighing what he had said. "No, it
will do no harm," she finally said. Then, with a delightful color and a
quick transformation into a vision of young shyness, "Thank you, Mr.
Norman. Thank you so much."
"Not at all--not in the least," he stammered, the impulse strong to take
the note back and ask her to return to her desk.
When the door closed behind her he rose and paced about the room
uneasily. He was filled with disquiet, with hazy apprehension. His
nerves were unsteady, as if he were going through an exhausting strain.
He sat and tried to force himself to work. Impossible. "What sort of
damn fool attack is this?" he exclaimed, pacing about again. He searched
his mind in vain for any cause adequate to explain his unprecedented
state. "If I did not know that I was well--absolutely well--I'd think I
was about to have an illness--something in the brain."
He appealed to that friend in any trying hour, his sense of humor. He
laughed at himself; but his nerves refused to return to the normal. He
rushed from his private office on various pretexts, each time lingered
in the general room, talking aimlessly with Tetlow--and watching the
door. When she at last appeared, he guiltily withdrew, feeling that
everyone was observing his perturbation and was wondering at it and
jesting about it. "And what the devil am I excited about?" he demanded
of himself. What indeed? He seated himself, rang the bell.
"If Miss Hallowell has got back," he said to the office boy, "please ask
her to come in."
"I think she's gone out to lunch," said the boy. "I know she came in a
while ago. She passed along as you was talking to Mr. Tetlow."
Norman felt himself flushing. "Any time will do," he said, bending over
the papers spread out before him--the papers in the case of the General
Traction Company resisting the payment of its taxes. A noisome odor
seemed to be rising from the typewritten sheets. He made a wry face and
flung the papers aside with a gesture of disgust. "They never do
anything honest," he said to himself. "From the stock-jobbing owners
down to the nickel-filching conductors they steal--steal--steal!" And
then he wondered at, laughed at, his heat. What did it matter? An ant
pilfering from another ant and a sparrow stealing the crumb found by
another sparrow--a man robbing another man--all part of the universal
scheme. Only a narrow-minded ignoramus would get himself wrought up over
it; a philosopher would laugh--and take what he needed or happened to
fancy.
The door opened. Miss Hallowell entered, a small and demure hat upon her
masses of thick fair hair arranged by anything but unskillful fingers.
"You wished to see me?" came in the quiet little voice, sweet and frank
and shy.
He roused himself from pretended abstraction.
"Oh--it's you?" he said pleasantly. "They said you were out."
"I was going to lunch. But if you've anything for me to do, I'll be glad
to stay."
"No--no. I simply wished to say that if Miss Burroughs wished to make an
arrangement with you, we'd help you about carrying out your part of it."
She was pale--so pale that it brought out strongly the smooth dead-white
purity of her skin. Her small features wore an expression of pride, of
haughtiness even. And in the eyes that regarded him steadily there shone
a cold light--the light of a proud and lonely soul that repels intrusion
even as the Polar fastnesses push back without effort assault upon their
solitudes. "We made no arrangement," said she.
"You are not more than eighteen, are you?" inquired he abruptly.
The irrelevant question startled her. She looked as if she thought she
had not heard aright. "I am twenty," she said.
"You have a most--most unusual way of shifting to various ages and
personalities," explained he, with some embarrassment.
She simply looked at him and waited.
His embarrassment increased. It was a novel sensation to him, this
feeling ill at ease with a woman--he who was at ease with everyone and
put others at their ease or not as he pleased. "I'm sorry you and Miss
Burroughs didn't arrange something. I suppose she found the hours
difficult."
"She made me an offer," replied the girl. "I refused it."
"But, as I told you, we can let you off--anything within reason."
"Thank you, but I do not care to do that kind of work. No doubt any kind
of work for wages classes one as a servant. But those people up
there--they make one _feel_ it--feel menial."
"Not Miss Burroughs, I assure you."
A satirical smile hovered round the girl's lips. Her face was altogether
lovely now, and no lily ever rose more gracefully from its stem than did
her small head from her slender form. "She meant to be kind, but she was
insulting. Those people up there don't understand. They're vain and
narrow. Oh, I don't blame them. Only, I don't care to be brought into
contact with them."
He looked at her in wonder. She talked of Josephine as if she were
Josephine's superior, and her expression and accent were such that they
contrived to convey an impression that she had the right to do it. He
grew suddenly angry at her, at himself for listening to her. "I am
sorry," he said stiffly, and took up a pen to indicate that he wished
her to go.
He rather expected that she would be alarmed. But if she was, she wholly
concealed it. She smiled slightly and moved toward the door. Looking
after her, he relented. She seemed so young--was so young--and was
evidently poor. He said:
"It's all right to be proud, Miss Hallowell. But there is such a thing
as supersensitiveness. You are earning your living. If you'll pardon me
for thrusting advice upon you, I think you've made a mistake. I'm sure
Miss Burroughs meant well. If you had been less sensitive you'd soon
have realized it."
"She patronized me," replied the girl, not angrily, but with amusement.
"It was all I could do not to laugh in her face. The idea of a woman who
probably couldn't make five dollars a week fancying she was the superior
of any girl who makes her own living, no matter how poor a living it
is."
Norman laughed. It had often appealed to his own sense of humor, the
delusion that the tower one happened to be standing upon was part of
one's own stature. But he said: "You're a very foolish young person.
You'll not get far in the world if you keep to that road. It winds
through Poverty Swamps to the Poor House."
"Oh, no," replied she. "One can always die."