I
CARRINGTON folded the document and thoughtfully balanced it on his palm.
What an ironical old world it was! There was a perpendicular wrinkle
about his nose, and his lips had thinned into a mere line which drooped
at the corners. The drone of a type-writer in the adjoining room sounded
above the rattle-tattle of the street below. Through the opened windows
came a vague breath of summer redolent of flowers and grasses; for it
was but eleven o'clock of the morning, and the smell of sun-baked brick
and asphalt had not yet risen through the air. Far beyond the smoking,
ragged sky-line Carrington could see the shifting, glittering river and
the great ships going down to the sea. Presently the ashes from his dead
cigar fell in a gray cascade down his coat and tumbled across his knees,
but he gave no heed.
Ironical old world indeed! Here, suddenly and unexpectedly, he found
himself upon the battle-field of love and duty, where all honest men
find themselves, sooner or later. To pit the heart against the
conscience, impulse against calculation! Heigh-ho! Duty is an implacable
goddess, and those who serve her most loyally are most ruthlessly
driven. She buffets us into this corner and into that, digs pitfalls for
the hesitant foot, and crushes the vacillating.
As all men will, Carrington set about to argue down his conscience; the
heart is so insistent a counselor. Why should he give up the woman he
loved, simply because duty demanded he should? After all, was not duty
merely social obligation? What was it to him that the sheep were
sheared? Was it right that he, of all men, should divide the house,
throw the black pall of dishonesty over it, destroy his own happiness
and hers, when so simple a thing as a match would crumble into
nothingness this monument to one man's greed and selfishness? The
survival of the fittest; if he put aside Self, who would thank him? Few,
and many would call him a fool or a meddler. So many voices spoke that
he seemed to hear none distinctly.
He alone had made these astonishing discoveries; he alone had followed
the cunningly hidden trail of the serpent. He could stop where he was
and none would be the wiser. To be sure, it was only a question of time
when the scandal would become public through other channels; but in that
event he would not be held responsible for bringing about the
catastrophe. Besides, the ways of the serpent are devious and many, and
other investigators might not come so close to the trail.
He had gone about his investigations without the least idea where they
would lead him. At the beginning he had believed that the guilty ones
were none higher than petty officials; but presently he found himself
going over their heads, higher and higher, until, behold! he was at the
lair of the old serpent himself. A client had carelessly dropped a bit
of information, and it had taken seed with this surprising result. Henry
Cavenaugh, millionaire promoter, financier, trust magnate, director in a
hundred money-gathering concerns; Henry Cavenaugh, the father of the
girl he loved and who loved him! Could it be he, indeed? It seemed
incredible.
It was not a case of misappropriation of funds, such as a man may be
guilty of when temporarily hard pressed. It was a bold and fraudulent
passing of dividends that rightfully belonged to the investors; of
wrongfully issuing statements of bolstered expenses, lack of markets,
long strikes (promoted by Cavenaugh and his associates!), insufficient
means of transportation. An annual dividend of seven per cent. on many
millions had been dishonestly passed over. The reports that there would
be no dividends encouraged a slump in the listed price of the stock, and
many had sold under par value, thereby netting to Cavenaugh and others
several millions. And the proof of all this lay in his hand!
It had been a keen hunt. Many and many a blind trail had he followed,
only to come back to the start again. All that now remained for him to
do was to pass this document on to the hands of the intrepid district
attorney, and justice would be meted out to the guilty.
Her father! The picture of him rose suddenly and distinctly in his mind.
Tall, powerfully built, a hooked nose, keen blue eyes, an aggressive
chin, a repellent mouth, Henry Cavenaugh was the personification of the
modern Croesus. Immutable in purpose, dogged in perseverance, a
relentless enemy, a Jesuit in that the end always justified the means,
he stood a pillar in the world of finance, where there is sometimes
justice but never any mercy. Thirty-five years before he had been a
messenger in a stock-broker's office. Of his antecedents nothing was
known until he broke one of the famous gold corners in the seventies,
when a handsome, ruddy-cheeked little Irishman bobbed up serenely from
nowhere in particular and claimed to be the great Cavenaugh's father.
But his proofs were not convincing, and when the son showed a decided
contempt for him, he gently subsided into oblivion and was heard of no
more. From time to time Carrington gathered a small crumb of information
regarding his sweetheart's grandfather; but whenever he broached the
subject, however tactfully, everybody concerned headed the conversation
for a different port.
Carrington had never laid eyes on the old gentleman, and, for all he
knew to the contrary, he might be a myth. He reasoned that in all
probability the grandfather was illiterate, uncouth, and rather an
awkward piece of family furniture to handle, when the family proper were
ingratiating themselves into the Chippendales of society. Unfortunately,
Mother Cavenaugh, good-hearted and amiable in her way, had been stung by
the bee of the climbers, and her one ambition was to establish herself
and daughters in society; and had not he, Carrington, come of an
aristocratic family (poor, it is true), the doors of the Cavenaugh manor
would never have opened to his knock. Even as it was, he was _persona
non grata_ to the millionaire, who was mad for a duke in the family.
Besides, Cavenaugh had his suspicions of any lawyer who grubbed outside
the breastworks.
Some doves circled above a church-spire a few streets over the way,
breaking the sunbeams against their polished wings. Finally they settled
on the slate roof and fell to strutting and waddling and swelling their
breasts pompously. Carrington opened and refolded the document, but he
did not take his eyes from the doves. What should he do? What ill wind
had blown this thing into his doorway? Nothing had warned him of the
impending tangle. Until two days ago Cavenaugh was at the other end of
the world, so far as his investigations at that time were concerned.
He struck a match. The sliver of pine flared palely in the sunshine,
writhed and dropped, black and charred, to the floor. He shrugged his
shoulders. Chivalry of this sort was not the order of the day. There was
something stronger than the voice of duty, something stronger than the
voice of the heart; it was the voice of pity, which urged its appeal for
the hundreds of men and women who had invested their all in the
Cavenaugh concerns. The thought of their ultimate ruin, should Cavenaugh
be permitted to pursue his course unchecked, bore heavily upon him. No,
he could not do it. He must fight, even if he lost his all in the
battle. It is a fine thing to right a wrong. All the great victories in
the world have been won for others than the victors. That Cavenaugh was
the father of the girl he loved must have no weight on the scales of
justice.
Resolutely he thrust the document into his coat pocket, closed his desk
and relighted his cigar. In that moment he had mapped out his plan of
action. That very night he would lay the whole thing very clearly before
the girl herself, and whatever decision she made, he would stand or fall
by it, for he knew her to be the soul of honor.
Poor girl! It was a heart-breaking business. How in the world should he
begin, and where should he stop? Ah, that was it! He would lay the
matter before her in a manner that would conceal the vital nearness of
the case, as if it were some client of his who was unknown to her. And
when she had judged the case, he would speak the bald truth. It would be
a cruel blow, but nevertheless he must deal it. She loved her father,
and after his own peculiar fashion her father loved her. She was the
only one in the family who could wheedle him out of a purpose; to the
rest of the family his word was law immutable. It was very hard, sighed
Carrington. For the father he had neither pity nor sympathy; there were
many ugly tales about his financial dealings; but his whole heart went
out unreservedly to the girl.
When Carrington had gone to Cavenaugh, his heart in his throat, to speak
to him relative to his daughter's hand, he unwittingly knocked off the
top of a volcano.
"Marry my daughter?" Cavenaugh roared, emphasizing his wrath and
disapproval with a bang of fist upon palm. "My daughter shall marry only
among her equals, not among her inferiors. A king is not good enough for
my Kate." There was another bang of the fist, decided and final. "A
lawyer? Not if I know myself. I wouldn't trust a lawyer out of sight,"
bluntly. "Kate shall marry a duke or a prince, if I can find one
suitable."
Carrington would have smiled had the moment been less serious.
"No man can possibly appreciate her worth more readily than I, sir," he
replied, "or love her more dearly."
"Love?" with a snort. "Twaddle out of story-books!"
"But you yourself love her."
"I'm her father," Cavenaugh returned complacently, adding a gesture
which had the effect of describing the fact that it was perfectly
logical for a father to love his daughter, but that it wasn't logical at
all for any other male biped to love her.
"I am sorry," said the disheartened suitor, rising. "I suppose that
after this unpleasant interview ..."
"Oh, you're a decent sort," interrupted Cavenaugh generously; "and if
you are of a mind to behave yourself hereafter, you will always find a
chair at my table. But my daughter is not for you, sir, emphatically
not. That is all, sir;" and Cavenaugh picked up his evening paper.
After such a rebuff, most young men would have given up; but Carrington
never gave up till there was no possibility of winning. Immediately
after the interview he went to the higher court with his appeal.
"Let us have patience," the girl whispered. "I'll undertake to bring him
to reason."
But Carrington went home that night without his love for the father
increasing any.
And so the matter stood at the present time. The affair had gone neither
forward nor backward.
Ah, were he less honest, how easily he could bring the old curmudgeon to
terms! There was that in his pocket which would open the way to the
altar, quickly enough. But Carrington was manly and honest to the core,
and to him blackmail stood among the basest of crimes. Many times during
the past forty-eight hours the tempter had whispered in his ear that
here was a way out of his difficulties; but the young man had listened
unmoved.
During the summer and autumn months of the year the Cavenaughs lived at
their country place over in New Jersey, and there Carrington spent the
week-ends. There were horses to ride, golf and tennis, and a Saturday
night dance at the Country Club. To be with the girl you love, even if
you can't have her, is some compensation. Cavenaugh never joined the
fêtes and sports of the summer colonists, but he offered no objections
to the feminine members of his household for selecting Carrington as
their escort for the week-ends. Indeed, by now he began to consider
Carrington as a harmless, sensible, well-groomed young man, who relieved
him of all the painful duties to the frivolous. If the colonists
insisted on coupling his daughter's name with Carrington's, let them do
so; when the proper moment came he would disillusionize them. For
himself, he always had some good old crony down to while away the dull
Sundays; and together they consummated plans that gave the _coup de
grâce_ to many a noble business galleon. This particular summer there
were no dukes or princes floating around unattached, and Cavenaugh
agreed that it was a commendable time to lay devices by which to ambush
the winter money.
There were nights when Cavenaugh did not sleep very well; but of this,
more anon.
Shortly after his determination to tell Kate half a truth, Carrington
left the office and made an early train into New Jersey. All the way
over to the Cavenaugh station he was restless and uneasy. The fatal
papers still reposed in his pocket. He had not dared to leave them in
the office safe; his partner, who had had no hand in the investigation,
might stumble across them, and that was the last thing in the world he
desired. He knew not exactly what to do with them; for they burned like
fire in his pocket, and seemed to scorch his fingers whenever he touched
them to learn if they were still there. A thousand and one absurd
suppositions assailed him. Supposing, for instance, there should be a
wreck; supposing he should be robbed; supposing he should leave his vest
on the links; and so forth and so forth. It was very depressing. If only
he stood in the open, unhandicapped; if only he might throw the gauntlet
at Cavenaugh's feet the moment they met!
Ah, if he had only attended to his own affairs! But he hadn't; and his
inquisitiveness had plunged him into a Chinese tangle from which there
seemed to be no exit. But there was an exit; only, if at that moment
Cassandra had whispered the secret into his ear, it would have appealed
to him as the most improbable thing under the sun. However, there are no
trustworthy Cassandras these sordid days; a single look into the future
costs a dollar; and as for Greek choruses, they trundle push-carts on
the East Side.
He had broken bread and eaten salt at Cavenaugh's table; and now it was
decreed that he must betray him. It was not a pleasant thought. And
still less pleasant was the thought of telling Kate (in a roundabout
fashion, it is true) that her father was not an honest man. According to
financial ethics, what Cavenaugh did was simply keen business instinct;
nothing more. If you or I should happen to bend an odd cornice of the
majestic pillar of law, we'd be haled off to the county jail forthwith;
but if we possessed the skill to smash the whole fabric or rather, to
continue the metaphor, the whole pillar, the great world would sit up
and admire us. What are old laws for, anyhow? Build you never so wisely
your law, there will always be some one to come along and tack on a nice
little amendment, subtly undoing in a moment what it took years of labor
to accomplish. In this instance, Cavenaugh had been careless; he had
forgotten to introduce his amendment. An infinitesimal grain of sand
will stop the best regulated clock. The infallible invariably die on the
heels of their first victory.
On leaving the train, Carrington espied the Cavenaugh station carriage.
The coachman was talking to a little wiry old man, whose gray eyes
twinkled and whose complexion was mottled and withered like a wind-fall
apple. Seeing Carrington draw nigh, the coachman touched his hat
respectfully, while the little old man, who was rather shabbily dressed,
stepped quickly around the corner of the platform. Evidently he did not
wish to be inspected at close range. Carrington threw his suit-case and
golf-bag into the carriage, and followed them. Thereupon the coachman
touched the horses lightly, and they started westward at a brisk trot.
"Who's your friend?" asked Carrington, who, though never familiar, was
always friendly toward his inferiors.
"He's no friend of mine, sir," answered the coachman, with well-bred
contempt. "Miss Cavenaugh directed me to drive you straight to the club,
sir."
"Very well," replied Carrington, lighting a cigar and settling back
among the cushions.
Immediately he forgot all about the shabby old man, and began to
inventory his troubles. He must hide the papers somewhere. All the
evidence he had, together with the names of the witnesses, was on his
person; for in making the whole he had prudently destroyed the numerous
scraps. If this document fell into alien hands, the trouble would double
itself. He puffed quickly, and the heat of the cigar put a smart on his
tongue. He had nothing to do but wait.
On the steps of the club's porte-cochère he was greeted by Miss
Cavenaugh, who was simply and tastefully dressed in white. If there was
a sudden cardiac disturbance in Carrington's breast, the girl's tender
beauty certainly justified it. The fresh color on her cheeks and lips,
the shining black hair that arched a white forehead, the darkly fringed
blue eyes, the slender, rounded figure, the small feet and shapely
hands, all combined to produce a picture of feminine loveliness
warranted to charm any masculine eye. Let the curious question
Cavenaugh's antecedents, if they were so inclined, thought Carrington;
here was abundant evidence of what a certain old poet called the
splendid corpuscle of aristocracy.
Her sister went by the sonorous name of Norah. She was seventeen, a bit
of a tomboy, but of the same build and elegant carriage that
distinguished Kate from ordinary mortals; only Norah's eyes were
hazel-tinted and her hair was that warm brown of the heart of a
chestnut-bur. She was of merry temperament, quick to like or to dislike,
and like her sister, loyal to those she loved. Both girls possessed that
uncommon gift in women, the perfect sense of justice. You never heard
them gossiping about anybody; and when a veranda conversation drifted
toward scandal, the Cavenaugh girls invariably drifted toward the
farther end of the veranda. All the men admired them; they were such
good fellows.
The mother of the girls was, as I have remarked, good-natured and
amiable, inclined toward stoutness, and a willing listener to all that
was going on. She considered it her bounden duty to keep informed
regarding the doings of her intimate friends, but with total lack of
malice. At this moment she occupied her favorite corner on the club
veranda, and was engaged in animated tittle-tattle. She nodded and
smiled at Carrington.
Norah was playing tennis. She waved her racket at the new arrival.
Carrington was her beau-ideal.
He hurried into the dressing-room and shortly returned in his golf
flannels. He was a sturdy chap, not at all handsome, but possessing a
countenance full of strong lines. He inspired your trust and confidence,
which is far better than inspiring your admiration.
"I am not going to play to-day," said Kate, "so I'll follow over the
course and watch you play. I haven't seen you for a whole week; and I
can't talk and play, too," smiling.
"Forward, then!" cried Carrington, beckoning to his caddy.
He played a nervous, fidgety game that afternoon. Every time he teed his
ball the document spoke from his pocket with an ominous crackle. There
was not one brilliant stroke to his credit. This puzzled the girl, for
only the previous week he had been runner-up in the annual tournament
for crack amateurs. He made the ninth hole indifferently, then turned to
the girl, smiling whimsically.
"You are not playing up to your form to-day, John," she observed.
"I admit it," he replied, tossing his club to the caddy, who, well
versed in worldly affairs, serenely shouldered the bag and made off
toward the club house. "My heart isn't in the game, Kate. The fact is,
I'm in a peck of trouble." He determined to tell her at once. There
might not be another opportunity like this.
"Why, John!" reproachfully.
"Oh, it came only yesterday. I haven't been hiding it. I'm in a kind of
pocket, and can't exactly see my way out. I want your advice; and you
must be the jury and judge rolled into one."
They were standing on a hill, and far away they could see the pale line
where the shimmering summer sea met the turquoise bowl of heaven.
"Tell me what your difficulty is, John, and I will judge it the best I
know how."
He never knew what a simple, beautiful name John was till it fell from
the lips of this girl. Many called him Jack; but only his mother and
this girl called him John. He motioned toward the sandbox, and they sat
down. The other players were well scattered about, out of hearing. He
made out his case skilfully enough, giving his plaintiff and defendant
fictitious names. The thing grew so real to him, as he went on, that
toward the end he rose to the dramatics. The girl listened, but with
never a glance at him. Rather her gaze roved over the dancing gray
waters and followed the lonely white sail that stood out to sea. And
when he reached the climax, silence of some duration fell upon them.
"Should this man be punished?" he asked at length.
"He is guilty; he has broken two laws, the civic and human. Oh, the poor
people!" pathetically. "They are never at peace; the wolf harries them,
and the jackal; they are robbed, beaten and spurned. They are like
sheep, not knowing how to fight. They arrest a man for his poverty; they
applaud him for his greed. It is all very wrong."
The sail fell under the shadow of a cloud, and they both watched it till
it flashed into the sunlight again.
"A woman's intuition is sometimes abnormally keen. You are strong enough
to fight such things without the advice of a woman. Is there not
something vital to me in all this? Is it not ... is it not my father,
John?"