XIV

Than Fred Norman no man ever had better reason to feel securely

entrenched upon the heights of success. It was no silly vaunt of

optimism for him to tell Lockyer that only loss of life or loss of mind

could dislodge him. And a few days after Dorothy had extinguished the

last spark of hope he got ready to pull himself together and show the

world that it was indulging too soon in its hypocritical headshakings

over his ruin.

"I am going to open an office of my own at once," he said to his sister.

She did not wish to discourage him, but she could not altogether keep

her thoughts from her face. She had, in a general way, a clear idea of

the complete system of tollgates, duly equipped with strong barriers,

which the mighty few have established across practically all the

highroads to material success. Also, she felt in her brother's manner

and tone a certain profound discouragement, a lack of the unconquerable

spirit which had carried him so far so speedily. It is not a baseless

notion that the man who has never been beaten is often destroyed by his

first reverse. Ursula feared the spell of success had been broken for

him.

"You mean," she suggested, with apparent carelessness, "that you will

give up your forty thousand a year?"

He made a disdainful gesture. "I can make more than that," said he.

"It's a second rate lawyer who can't in this day."

"Of course you can," replied she tactfully. "But why not take a rest

first? Then there's old Burroughs--on the war path. Wouldn't it be wise

to wait till he calms down?"

"If Burroughs or any other man is necessary to me," rejoined Fred, "the

sooner I find it out the better. I ought to know just where I--I

myself--stand."

"No one is necessary to you but yourself," said Ursula, proudly and

sincerely. "But, Fred--Are you yourself just now?"

"No, I'm not," admitted he. "But the way to become so again isn't by

waiting but by working." An expression of sheer wretchedness came into

his listless, heavy eyes. "Urse, I've got to conquer my weakness now, or

go under."

She was eager to hold on to the secure forty thousand a year--for his

sake no less than for her own. She argued with him with all the

adroitness of a mind as good in its way as his own. But she could not

shake his resolution. And she in prudence, desisted when he said

bitterly: "I see you've lost confidence in me. Well, I don't blame

you. . . . So have I." Then after a moment, violently rather than strongly:

"But I've got to get it back. If I don't I'm only putting off the

smash--a complete smash."

"I don't see quite how it's to be arranged," said she, red and

hesitating. For, she feared he would think her altogether selfish in her

anxiety. He certainly would have been justified in so thinking; he knew

how rarely generosity survived in the woman who leads the soft and idle

life.

"How long can we keep on as we're living now--if there's nothing, or

little, coming in?"

"I don't know," confessed she. She was as poor at finance as he, and had

certainly not been improved by his habit of giving her whatever she

happened to think was necessary. "I can't say. Perhaps a few months--I

don't know--Not long, I'm afraid."

"Six months?"

"Oh, no. You see--the fact is--I've been rather careless about the

bills. You're so generous, Fred--and one is so busy in New York. I

guess we owe a good deal--here and there and yonder. And--the last few

days some of the tradespeople have been pressing for payment."

"You see!" exclaimed he. "The report is going round that I'm ruined and

done for. I've simply got to make good. If you can't keep up a front,

shut up the house and go abroad. You can stay till I've got my foot back

on its neck."

She believed in him, at bottom. She could not conceive how appearances

and her forebodings could be true. Such strength as his could not be

overwhelmed thus suddenly. And by so slight a thing!--by an unsatisfied

passion for a woman, and an insignificant woman, at that. For, like all

women, like all the world for that matter, she measured a passion by the

woman who was the object of it, instead of by the man who fabricated it.

"Yes--I'll go abroad," said she, hopefully.

"Quietly arrange for a long stay," he advised. "I _hope_ it won't be long.

But I never plan on hope."

Thus, with his sister and Fitzhugh out of the way and the heaviest of

his burdens of expense greatly lightened, he set about rehabitating

himself. He took an office, waited for clients. And clients

came--excellent clients. Came and precipitately left him.

There were two reasons for it. The first--the one most often heard--was

the story going round that he had been, and probably still was, out of

his mind. No deadlier or crueler weapon can be used against a man than

that same charge as to his sanity. It has been known to destroy, or

seriously maim, brilliant and able men with no trace of any of the

untrustworthy kinds of insanity. Where the man's own conduct gives color

to the report, the attack is usually mortal. And Norman had acted the

crazy man. The second reason was the hostility of Burroughs, reinforced

by all the hatreds and jealousies Norman's not too respectful way of

dealing with his fellow men had been creating through fifteen years.

The worst moment in the life of a man who has always proudly regarded

himself as above any need whatever from his fellow men is when he

discovers all in a flash, that the timid animal he spurned as it fawned

has him upon his back, has its teeth and claws at his helpless throat.

For four months he stood out against the isolation, the suspicion as to

his sanity, the patronizing pity of men who but a little while before

had felt honored when he spoke to them. For four months he gave battle

to unseen and silent foes compassing him on every side. He had no spirit

for the fight; his love of Dorothy Hallowell and his complete rout there

had taken the spirit out of him--and with it had gone that confidence in

himself and in his luck which had won him so many critical battles.

Then--He had been keeping up a large suite of offices, a staff of

clerks and stenographers and all the paraphernalia of the great and

successful lawyer. He had been spreading out the little business he got

in a not unsuccessful effort to make it appear big and growing. He now

gave up these offices and the costly pride, pomp and circumstance--left

with several thousand dollars owing. He took two small rooms in a

building tenanted by beginners and cheap shysters. He continued to live

at his club, where even the servants were subtly insolent to him; he

could see the time approaching when he might have to let himself be

dropped for failing to pay dues and bills.

He stared at his ruin in stupid and dazed amazement. Usually, to hear or

to read about such a catastrophe as this is to get a vague, rather

impressive notion of something picturesque and romantic. Ruined, like

all the big fateful words, has a dignified sound. But the historians and

novelists and poets and other keepers of human records have a pleasant,

but not very honest way, of omitting practically all the essentials from

their records and substituting glittering imaginings that delight the

reader--and wofully mislead him as to the truth about life. What wonder

that we learn slowly--and improve slowly. How wofully we have been, and

are, misled by all upon whom we have relied as teachers.

Already one of these charming tales of majestic downfall was in process

of manufacture, with Frederick Norman as the central figure. It was only

awaiting his suicide or some other mode of complete submergence for its

final glose of glamor. In this manufacture, the truth, as usual, had

been almost omitted; such truth as was retained for this artistic

version of a human happening was so perverted that it was falser than

the simon pure fictions with which it was interwoven. Just as the

literal truth about his success was far from being altogether to his

credit, so the literal truth as to his fall gave him little of the

vesture of the hero, and that little ill fitting, to cover his naked

humanness. Let him who has risen to material success altogether by

methods approved by the idealists, let him who has fallen from on high

with graceful majesty, without hysterical clutchings and desperate

attempts at self-salvation in disregard of the safety of others--let

either of these superhuman beings come forward with the first stone for

Norman.

Those at some distance from the falling man could afford to be romantic

and piteous over his fate. Those in his dangerous neighborhood were too

busy getting out of the way. "Man falling--stand from under!" was the

cry--how familiar it is!--and acquaintances and friends fled in mad

skedaddle. He would surely be asking favors--would be trying to borrow

money. It is no peculiarity of rats to desert a sinking ship; it is

simply an inevitable precaution in a social system modeled as yet upon

nature's cruel law of the survival of the fittest. A falling man is

first of all a warning to all other men high enough up to be able to

fall--a warning to them to take care lest they fall also where footing

is so insecure and precipices and steeps beset every path.

Norman, falling, falling, gazed round him and up and down, in dazed

wonder. He had seen many others fall. He had seen just where and just

why they missed their footing. And he had been confident that with him

no such misstep was possible. He could not believe; a little while, and

luck would turn, and up he would go again--higher than before. Many a

lawyer--to look no farther than his own profession--had through

recklessness or pride or inadvertence got the big men down on him. But

after a time they had relented or had found an exact use for him; and

fall had been succeeded by rise. Was there a single instance where a man

of good brain had been permanently downed? No, not one. Stay--Some of

these unfortunates had failed to reappear on the heights of success.

Yes, thinking of the matter, he recalled several such. Had he been

altogether right in assuming, in his days of confidence and success,

that they stayed down because they belonged down? Perhaps he had judged

them harshly? Yes, he was sure he had judged them harshly. There was

such a thing as breaking a proud spirit--and he found within himself

apparent proof that precisely this calamity had befallen him.

There came a time--and it came soon--when he had about exhausted his

desperate ingenuity at cornering acquaintances and former friends and

"sticking them up" for loans of five hundred, a hundred, fifty,

twenty-five--Because these vulgar and repulsive facts are not found in

the usual records of the men who have dropped and come up again, do not

imagine that only the hopeless and never-reappearing failures pass

through such experiences. On the contrary, they are part of the common

human lot, and few indeed are the men who have not had them--and

worse--if they could but be brought to tell the truth. Destiny rarely

permits any one of us to go from cradle to grave without doing many a

thing shameful and universally condemned. How could it be otherwise

under our social system? When Norman was about at the end of all his

resources Tetlow called on him--Tetlow, now a partner in the Lockyer

firm.

He came with an air of stealth. "I don't want anyone to know I'm doing

this," said he frankly. "If it got out, I'd be damaged and you'd not

profit."

Rarely does anyone, however unworthy--and Fred Norman was far from

unworthy, as we humans go--rarely does anyone find himself absolutely

without a friend. There is a saying that no man ever sunk so low, ever

became so vile and squalid in soul and body, but that if he were dying,

and the fact were noised throughout the world, some woman somewhere

would come--perhaps from a sense of duty, perhaps from love, perhaps for

the sake of a moment of happiness long past but never equaled, and so

never forgotten--but from whatever motive, she would come. In the same

manner, anyone in dire straits can be sure of some friend. There were

several others whom Norman had been expecting--men he had saved by his

legal ingenuity at turning points in their careers. None of these was so

imprudent as uselessly to involve himself. It was Tetlow who

came--Tetlow, with whom his accounts were more than balanced, with the

balance against him. Tetlow, whom he did not expect.