Husband and wife did not speak while they were being driven across the
city to their home. That which lay between them was too heavy to be
touched upon at once in words. Several times the architect glanced
fearfully at his wife. She rested limply on the carriage cushion, with
closed eyes, and occasionally a convulsive tremor twitched her body.
The summer heat, which had raged untempered for weeks, had already
sapped her usual strength, and now her face had a bloodless pallor that
made the man wince miserably. When the cab stopped at the North Side
bridge, where a burly vessel was being pulled through the draw, Helen
opened her eyes languidly; once or twice she sought her husband's face,
which was turned blankly toward the crowded street. Her lips moved,
and then she closed her eyes again. As they got out of the cab, a
neighbor who was passing spoke to them and made a little joke, to which
Jackson replied pleasantly, with perfect self-control. The woman
leaning on his arm shivered, as if a fresh chill had seized her.
The children were spending the month in Wisconsin with Jackson's
mother, and so the two sat down to a silent dinner. When the maid had
come and gone for the last time, Hart looked furtively across the table
to his wife and said gently:--
"Won't you go upstairs, Nell? You don't look able to sit up."
She shook her head and tried to speak, but her voice was gone. Finally
she whispered:--
"Francis, you must tell me all about it,--everything!"
He frowned and said nothing, until she repeated, "Everything, you must
tell me!" and then he replied:--
"See here, Nell, you'd better drop this thing and not think of it
again. That man Pemberton, who has pestered the life out of me all
along, has made a row. He's an ill-tempered beast. That's all. And
he'll repent it, too! He can't do anything to me. It's a business
quarrel, and I don't want you to worry over it."
He was cool and assured, and spoke with the kindly authority of a
husband.
"No, Francis!" She shook her head wearily. "That can't be all. I
must know what it is--I must help you."
"You can't help me," he replied calmly. "I have told you enough. They
can't do anything. I don't want to go any further into that business."
"I must know!" she cried.
He was startled at the new force in her voice, the sign of a will
erecting itself with its own authority against him.
"Know what? What that fool Pemberton thinks of me? You heard enough
of that, I guess."
"Don't put me off! Don't put me away from you, now, Francis! If we
are to love each other, if we are to live together, I must know you,
all of you. I am in a fog. There is something wrong all about me, and
it gets between us and kills our love. I cannot--bear--it!"
Her voice broke into pleading, and ended in a sob. But controlling
herself quickly, she added:--
"Mr. Pemberton is a fair man, a just man. But if he's wrong, I want to
know that, too. I want to hate him for what he said to you."
"You would like to judge me, to judge your husband!" he retorted
coldly. "That is not the way to love. I thought you would believe in
me, all through to the end."
"So I shall--if you will tell me all the truth. I would go with you
anywhere, to prison if need be, if you would be open with me."
"We needn't talk of going to prison yet awhile!" he exclaimed in
exasperation.
He went to the sideboard, and pouring himself a glass of whiskey, set
the decanter on the table.
"They can't do anything but talk," he repeated. Then, warmed by the
liquor, he began to be more insolent, to speak defiantly.
"Pemberton's been after me from the start. He wanted Wright to get the
work in the first place, and he's tried to put every obstacle he could
in my way. It was first one thing and then another. He has made life
unendurable with his prying and his suspicions. But I won't stand it
another day. I'm going to Everett to-morrow and tell him that I shall
get out if Pemberton is to interfere with my orders. And they can't
lay a finger on me, I tell you! Pemberton can just talk!"
Helen had put her head between her hands, and she was sobbing. Every
hot word that he spoke drove conviction against him into her heart. At
last she raised her tear-stained face and cried out with a new access
of power:--
"Stop! Stop!"
Then she rose, took the decanter of whiskey, replaced it on the
sideboard, and seated herself by his side, putting her hand on his arm.
"Francis, if you care for me, if you want us ever to love each other
again, answer me honestly. Have you and that contractor done anything
wrong about the school?"
"You can't understand," he replied roughly, drawing his arm from her
touch. "You are making a great deal out of your own imagination."
"Answer me!" she said, in the same tense tone of pure will. "Have you
let that man Graves cheat the trustees,--do anything dishonest,--and
shut your eyes to it?"
"Pemberton claims he hasn't lived up to the specifications," the
architect admitted sullenly.
"And you knew it?"
"So he says."
There was a moment's silence between them while the vision of this
fraud filled their minds. She seemed to hesitate before the evil thing
that she had raised, and then she asked again, quickly:--
"Have you--did you make any money from it?"
He did not reply.
"Tell me, Francis!" she persisted. "Did this man give you anything for
letting him--cheat the trustees? Tell me!"
He was cold and careless now. This new will in his wife, unexpected,
so totally unlike her gentle, yielding nature, compelled him to reveal
some part of the truth. In this last resort her will was the stronger.
He said slowly:--
"If he got the school contract, there was an understanding that he was
to give me some stock in a corporation. It was involved with other
business."
"He was to give you stock?"
"Yes; stock in a hotel that he's been building--another piece of work."
"And he gave you this stock?"
"Some of it."
"What have you done with it?"
"Sold it."
"You have sold it?"
"Yes. It was a kind of bonus he gave me for getting him the contract
and for doing the plans for the hotel, too."
Further than that admission he would not go, and they left the subject
late at night. He was sullen and hard, and resented her new tone of
authority to him; for he had always counted on her acquiescence and
tenderness as his immutable rights.
In the morning this feeling of resentment was more firmly fixed. He
regretted that in a moment of weakness he had admitted what he had the
night before. When she came to him as he was preparing to leave the
house, and, putting her hands on his arms, begged him to talk with her
again before going to the office, he listened moodily and said that he
was pressed for time.
"Won't you go to them, to the trustees, to Everett, anyway, and tell
them everything you know? And give them that money--the money you got
from the stock?"
"That's a woman's plan! That would make a nice mess, wouldn't it? I
told you I got that as a bonus. I have worked a lot for this
contractor, and he offered me this chance to make some money in one of
his schemes. It's often done, something like that. You'd like to see
me get into trouble--be disgraced for good and all?"
"That can make no difference now," she answered quietly. "The disgrace
cannot be helped."
"What rot!" he sneered. "You make me out a thief at once. Suppose you
look at what some of your acquaintances do,--the good, rich people in
this town,--and find out how they make their money. Ask people how
Silas Stewart gets his rebates from the railroads. Ask any one about
the way Strauss grades his wheat."
"I don't want to know," she interrupted sadly. "That has nothing to do
with this matter."
He left her impatiently. They did not reopen the sore that evening,
nor the next day. Her face was set and stern, with a kind of dreary
purpose in it, which made him unhappy. He went out of the city on
business, and did not return for several days. When he came home no
mention was made of his absence, and for another week they lived
silently. The night before the children were to return from their
vacation with their grandmother, while husband and wife lay awake, each
troubled by the common thought, she spoke again.
"Francis," she said firmly, "we can't go on like this. The boys are
coming home to-morrow. They mustn't see us living this way. And it's
bad for you, Francis, and I can't stand it! I have been thinking it
over. I must go away with the boys. I shall go to uncle Powers's
house in Vernon Falls."
"You are going to leave me and take the children with you because you
think I am in trouble," he said accusingly.
"You know that isn't true. If you will only meet this trouble
honorably, like the man I loved and married, I will stay, and be with
you always, no matter what comes. Will you?"
"So you want to make conditions?"
"Just one."
"You had better go, then."
She turned her face to her pillow and wept in the dreary realization
that she could touch him in no way. The next day she telephoned her
mother to come to her, and when Mrs. Spellman arrived, she said
quietly:--
"Mother, I am going to Vermont, to the farm. It may be for a long
time. Will you come with me and the boys?"
Mrs. Spellman, who was a wise woman, took her daughter's face between
her hands and kissed her.
"Of course," she answered simply.
That day they made the necessary preparations for themselves and the
children. When the architect returned from his office and saw what was
going forward, he said to his wife:--
"So you are determined to leave me?"
"Yes, I must go unless--"
"I have seen Everett. They aren't going to do anything. I told you it
was all bluff on Pemberton's part."
She hesitated, uncertain what to think, and then she asked
searchingly:--
"Why aren't they going to do anything? What does it mean?"
"Oh, I guess the others have brought Pemberton to his senses," he
replied evasively. "At any rate, it's blown over, as I told you it
would."
"No, Francis! It isn't made right yet. You would be different if it
were. Somehow, from the beginning, when first there was talk of this
school, it has all been wrong. I hate it! I hate it! And the trouble
goes back of that, too. It starts from the very beginning, when we
were married, and began to live together. We have always done as the
others do all around us, and it is all wrong. I see it now. We can
never go on again in the same way--"
"What way? I don't understand you in the least," he interrupted.
"Why, just earning and spending money, trying to get more and more,
trying to get things. It's spoiled your work; it's spoiled you; and I
have been blind and weak to let us drift on like the others, getting
and spending, struggling to get ahead, until it has come to this, to
this,--something dreadful that you will not tell me,--something base
that you have done to make money. Oh, how low and mean it is! How
mean it makes men and women!"
"That's life," he retorted neatly.
"No, no, never! That wasn't what you and I thought before we married.
I wish you were a clerk, a laborer, a farm-hand,--anything, so that we
could be honest, and think of something besides making money. Let us
begin again, from the very beginning, and live like the common people
from day to day--live for your work, for the thing you do. Then we
should be happy. Never this way, not if you make millions, millions!"
"Well, I can't see why you are set on going away," the architect
answered, content to see her mind turn from the practical question.
"Tell me!" she exclaimed passionately. "Tell me! Is it all right with
that building? With that contractor? Are you honest? Are you an
honest man? Tell me, and I will believe you."
"I have said all that I am going to say about that matter," he answered
stubbornly.
"Then, Francis, I go!"
The next afternoon the architect met his family at the train and saw
them start, punctiliously doing all the little things that he could to
make their journey comfortable. He referred to their going as a short
vacation trip, and joked with the boys about the farm. Just before the
train started, while Mrs. Spellman settled the children in their
section, Helen walked up and down the platform with him. As the signal
for starting was given she raised her veil, revealing the tears in her
eyes, and leaning toward him kissed him. She put into his hands a
little card, which she had been holding clasped in her palm. He raised
his hat and stood on the platform until the long train had pulled out
of the shed. Then he glanced at the card in his hand, which read:--
"I shall wait for you to come to me when you really want me. H."
He crushed the card in his fist and threw it into the roadbed.
PART III
INTO THE RANKS
CHAPTER XXIV
As the architect had said to his wife, nothing of a serious nature was
to happen. In the end Everett Wheeler settled the matter. After the
first gust of passion it was clear enough that the trustees could not
have a scandal about the building. If the contractor were prosecuted,
the architect, the donor's nephew, would be involved; and, besides, it
was plain that Wheeler could not continue as trustee and assist in
ruining his cousin. When it came to this point, Pemberton, not wishing
to embarrass his associates, resigned.
Hart was to continue nominally as the architect for the school, but
Trimble was to have actual charge of the building henceforth, with
orders to complete the work as soon as possible according to the
original specifications. At first Graves had blustered and threatened
to sue if certain vouchers issued by Hart were not paid, but Wheeler
"read the riot act" to him, and he emerged from the lawyer's office a
subdued and fearful man. The calm lawyer had a long arm, which reached
far into the city, and he frightened the contractor so thoroughly that
he was content to be allowed to complete the contract. Whatever parts
of his work had been done crookedly, he was to rectify as far as was
possible, and Trimble was to see that the construction which remained
to be done came up to specification. As for the irrevocable, the bad
work already accepted and paid for, the lawyer said nothing.
Thus the man of the world, the perfectly cynical lawyer, had his way,
which was, on the whole, the least troublesome way for all concerned,
and avoided scandal. He was the calm one of the men involved: it was
his business to make arrangements with human weakness and frailty and
"to avoid scandal." That at all costs!
He made his cousin no long reproaches.
"We've nipped your claws, young man," he admonished him.
He was disappointed in Jackson. Privately he considered him a
dunderheaded ass, who had weakly given himself as a tool to the
contractor. In his dealings with men, he had known many rascals, more
than the public was aware were rascals, and he respected some of them.
But they were the men, who, once having committed themselves to devious
ways, used other men as their tools. For little, foolish rascals, who
got befogged and "lost their nerve," he had only contempt.
"How's your wife?" he asked bruskly. "That was a dirty blow she got
here the other day--straight between the eyes. I never thought she'd
come in here that afternoon."
"Helen has gone East with the boys and her mother,--to that place in
Vermont. She hasn't been feeling well lately, and she needs the rest."
"Oh, um, I see," the lawyer commented, comprehending quite well what
this journey meant. He was a little surprised that Helen should desert
her husband at this crisis. In his philosophy it was the part of a
woman who had character to "back her husband," no matter what he might
do, so long as he was faithful to his marriage oath. Jackson had been
a fool, like so many men; there was trouble in the air, and she had run
away. He would not have thought it of her.
Hart swallowed his humiliation before his cousin. He was much relieved
at the outcome of the affair; it released him from further
responsibility for the school, which had become hateful to him. He was
chiefly concerned, now, lest the difficulty with the trustees should
become known and hurt his reputation, especially lest the men in his
office, to whom he was an autocrat and a genius, should suspect
something. He began at once to push the work on the last details for
the hotel, with the hope of forcing Graves to deliver another block of
the "stock," which he argued was due him for his commission.
Now that the matter had been quietly adjusted without scandal, he was
inclined to feel more aggrieved than ever over his wife's departure.
"She might have waited to see how it turned out," he repeated to
himself, obstinately refusing her the right to judge himself except
where his acts affected her publicly. For some time he kept up with
acquaintances the fiction of Helen's "visit in the East"; he even took
a room at the Shoreham Club for the hunting season. But he soon
fancied that the people at the club were cool to him; fewer engagements
came his way; no one referred to the great building, which had given
him so much reputation; the men he had known best seemed embarrassed
when he joined them,--men, too, who would not have winked an eye at a
"big coup." The women soon ceased to ask about Helen; it was getting
abroad that there was "something wrong with the Jackson Harts." For it
had leaked, more or less, as such matters always will leak. One man
drops a word to his neighbor, and the neighbor's wife pieces that to
something she has heard or surmised.
So before the season was over Hart gave up his room at the club, where
his raw self-consciousness was too often bruised. Then, finding his
empty house in the city insupportable, he went to live with his mother
in his uncle's old home. There was a lull in building at this time,
due to the high prices of materials, but fortunately he could keep
himself busy with the hotel and a large country house in the centre of
the state, which often made an excuse for him to get away from the city.
Helen wrote to him from time to time, filling her letters with details
about the boys. She suggested that they should return to the city to
visit their grandmother during the Christmas holidays. She never
referred to the situation between them, apparently considering that he
had it in his power to end it when he would. He was minded often when
he received these letters to write her sternly in reply, setting forth
the wrong which in her obstinacy she was doing to herself and their
children. He went over these imaginary letters in his idle moments,
working out their phrases with great care; they had a fine, dignified
ring to them, the tolerant and condoning note. But when he tried to
write he did not get very far with them. Sometimes he thought of
writing simply, "I love you very much, Nell; I want you back; can you
not forgive me?" But he knew well that he could not merely say, "I
have done wrong, forgive me," if he would affect that new will in his
wife, so gently stern. Even if he could bring himself to confess his
dishonesty, that would not suffice. There was another and deeper gulf
between them, one that he could not clearly fathom. "From the very
beginning we have lived wrongly," she had cried that last time. "We
can never go on again in the same way." ... No, he was not ready to
accept her judgment of him.
Thus the winter wore away, forlornly, and early in April the first hint
of spring came into the dirty city. On a Sunday afternoon the
architect went to call on his old friend, Mrs. Phillips, who was one of
the few persons who gave him any comfort these days. He found her
cutting the leaves of an art journal.
"There's an article here about that German--the one we are all trying
to help, you know," she said, giving him a hand. "Yes, I have taken to
patronizing the arts; it's pleasanter than charities. I have graduated
from philanthropy. And you have to do something nowadays, if you want
to keep up."
She spoke with her usual bluntness, and then added a little cant in a
conventional tone:--
"And I think those of us who have the time and the position should do
something to help these poor artists who are struggling here in this
commercial city. People won't buy their pictures.... But what is the
matter with you? You look as if you had come to the end of everything.
I suppose it's the old story. That cold Puritan wife of yours has gone
for good. It's no use pretending to me; I knew from the start how it
would be."
"But I don't know whether she has gone for good," he muttered.
"You might as well make up your mind to it. Two people like you two
can't get along together."
"It isn't that," he protested. "We have been very happy until lately."
"Well, don't mope, whatever you do. Either go and eat your humble pie,
or arrange for a divorce. You can't go on this way much longer. Oh, I
know all your troubles, of course. Hasn't that pleasant brother-in-law
of mine been in here rehearsing that story about the school,--well,
what do you call it? And he seems to hold me responsible for the mess,
because I liked you, and gave you your first chance. I didn't corrupt
you, did I?"
The architect moved uneasily. The widow's levity displeased him, and
roused his anger afresh against the trustees.
"I don't know what rot Judge Phillips has been telling you, but--"
"Come," she interrupted him in his defence, "sit down here by me and
let me talk to you. You know me well enough to see that I don't care
what the judge says. But I have something to say to you."
She made a place for him on the lounge, and tossed him a pillow to make
him comfortable. Then, dropping her review on the floor, she locked
her fingers behind her head and looked searchingly at the man.
"I don't know what you have been up to, and I don't care. Harrison
always said I hadn't any moral sense, and I suppose I haven't of his
sort. You should have had your uncle's money, or a good part at any
rate, and it's natural that you should try to get all you can of it
now, I say. But you must have been stupid to let that old square-toes
Pemberton get in your way."
This cynical analysis of the situation was not precisely salve to the
architect's wound. He was not ready to go as far as the woman lightly
sketched. But he listened, for the sake of her sympathy, if for no
other reason.
"Now, as I said, there's no use moping around here. Pick right up and
get out for a few months. When you come back, people won't remember
what was the matter. Or, if you still find it chilly, you can go to
New York and start there. It's no use fighting things out and all
that. Bury them."
She paused to give emphasis to her suggestion,
"Let your wife play by herself for a while; it will do her good. When
she hears that you are in Europe, having a good time, she'll begin to
see she's been silly.... I am going over, too. I've got to rent
Forest Manor this summer. That Harris man went wrong the last time he
advised me, and got me into all sorts of trouble,--industrials.
Venetia pensions me! She won't go abroad, but she kindly gives me what
she thinks I ought to spend for the summer and advises me to go over.
I sail on the _Kronprinz_, the 20th."
The invitation to him was implied in the pause that followed. The
gleam in the man's eyes showed his interest in her suggestion, but he
made no reply.
"There's nothing to do in your business just now, as you said, and you
should give these talky people a chance to forget. We could have a
good time over there. You might buy some things and sell them here,
and make your expenses that way easily. You know all the nice little
places, and if Maida and her husband come over, we could take an auto
and do them. Think of Italy in May!"
She unclasped her hands and leaned forward, resting one arm on the
cushioned back of the lounge, and thus revealing a very pretty forearm
and wrist. Two little red spots of enthusiasm glowed in her cheeks.
What life and vitality at forty-three! the man thought, smiling
appreciatively into her face. For the first time she moved him
emotionally. He was lonely, miserable, and thoroughly susceptible to
such charm as she had.
"It would be awfully pleasant," he said at last, leaning toward her,
"to get away from this place, with you!" ...
His hand slipped to her beautiful arm. At that moment Venetia came
into the room, unnoticed by the two on the lounge. She stood for a
little while watching them, and then, with a smile on her expressive
lips, noiselessly withdrew.
"Well, wire for a passage to-morrow," Mrs. Phillips murmured....
There was nothing more, nothing that would have offended the most
scrupulous; for the architect, at least, was essentially
healthy-minded. In a lonely moment he might satisfy the male need for
sympathy by philandering with a pretty woman, who soothed his bruised
egotism. But he did not have that kind of weakness--the woman
weakness. A few minutes later he was leaving the room, saying as he
looked into Louise Phillips's brown eyes:--
"Yes, I think you are right. I need to get away from this town for a
while and rest my nerves."
"When you come back people will be only too glad to see you. They
don't remember their scruples long."
"There isn't anything for them to worry over."
"The _Kronprinz_, then."
In the hall he met Venetia, who was slowly coming down the stairs,
wrapped in a long cloak. She hesitated a moment, then continued to
descend.
"Hello, Venetia!" Hart called out.
She swept down the remaining steps without replying, her eyes shining
hotly. As she passed him, she turned and shot one word full in his
face,--"Cad!"
CHAPTER XXV
The girl's word was like a blow in the face. It toppled over any
self-complacency that had survived these last disintegrating months.
Was he as mean a thing as that? So little that a girl whom he had
always treated with jovial condescension might insult him, unprovoked?
Probably others, all those people whose acquaintance he valued, had a
like contempt for him, which they refrained, conventionally, from
expressing. At first he did not resent their judgment; he was too much
dazed.
In this plight he walked south on the avenue, without minding where he
was going, and then turned west, automatically, at Twenty-second
Street, walking until he came to the region of dance halls and flashy
saloons. In this unfamiliar neighborhood there was a glare of light
from the great electric signs which decorated the various places of
resort, and the street was crowded with men and women, who loitered
about the saloons and dance halls, enjoying the fitful mildness of the
April evening. At this early hour there were more women than men on
the street, and their dresses of garish spring colors, their loud,
careless voices, and air of reckless ease, reminded the architect
faintly, very faintly, of the boulevards he had loved in his happy
student years. In this spot of the broad American city coarse license
flourished, and the one necessity for him who sought forgetfulness was
the price of pleasure. The scene distracted his mind for the moment
from the sting of the girl's contempt.
He entered one of the larger saloons on the corner of an avenue, and
sat down at a small table. When the waiter darted to him, and,
impudently leering across the table into his face, asked, "What's
yours, gent?" he answered quickly: "Champagne! Bring me a bottle and
ice." His heavy spirit craved the amber wine, which, in association at
least, heartens man. At the tables all about him sat the women of the
neighborhood, large-boned and heavy creatures, drinking beer by
themselves, or taking champagne with stupid-looking rough men, probably
buyers and sellers of stock at the Yards, which were not far away. The
women had the blanched faces of country girls over whom the city has
passed like the plates of a mighty roller. The men had the tan of the
distant prairies, from which they had come with their stock. Their
business over, the season's profit obtained, they had set themselves to
deliberate debauch that should last for days,--as long as the "wad"
held out and the brute lust in their bodies remained unquenched.
Presently the waiter returned with the heavy bottle and slopped some of
the wine into a glass. The architect raised it and drank. It was
execrable, sweetened stuff, but he drank the glass at a draught, and
poured another and drank it. The girl's inexplicable insult swept over
him afresh in a wave of anger. He should find a way somehow to call
her to account....
"Say, mister, you don't want to drink all that wine by yourself, do
you?"
A woman at the next table, who was sitting alone before an empty beer
glass and smoking a cigarette, had spoken to him in a furtive voice.
"Come over, then," he answered, roughly pushing a chair to the table.
"Here, waiter, bring another glass."
The woman slid, rather than walked, to the chair by his side, and drank
the champagne like a parched animal. He ordered another bottle.
"Enjoying yourself?" she inquired politely, having satisfied her first
thirst. "Been in the city long? I ain't seen you here at Dove's
before."
He looked at her with languid curiosity. She recalled to him the
memory of her Paris sisters, with whom he had shared many a
_consommation_ in those blessed days that he had almost forgotten. But
she had none of the sparkle, the human charm, of her Latin sisters.
She was a coarse vessel, and he wondered at the men who sought joy in
her.
"Where do you come from?" he demanded.
"Out on the coast. San Diego's my home. But I was in Philadelphia
last winter. I guess I shall go back to the East pretty soon. I don't
like Chicago much--it's too rough out here to suit me."
She found Chicago inferior! He laughed with the humor of the idea. It
was a joke he should like to share with his respectable friends. They
drank and talked while the evening sped, and he plied her with many
questions in idle curiosity, touched with that interest in women of her
class which most men have somewhere in the dregs of their natures. She
chatted volubly, willing enough to pay for her entertainment.
As he listened to her, this creature of the swift instants, whose only
perception was the moment's sensation, he grew philosophical. The
other world, his proper world of care and painful forethought, faded
from his vision. Here in Dove's place he was a thousand miles from the
respectabilities in which he had his being. Here alone in the city one
might forget them, and nothing mattered,--his troubles, his wife's
judgment of him, the girl's contempt.
At last he had loosened that troublesome coil of things, which lately
had weighed him down, and it seemed easy enough to cut himself free
from it for good and walk the earth once more unhampered, like these,
the flotsam of the city.
"Come! Let's go over to Grinsky's hall," the woman suggested, noticing
the architect's silence, and seeing no immediate prospect of another
bottle of wine. "We'll find something doing over there, sure."
But he was already tired of the woman; she offended his cultivated
sensibilities. So he shook his head, paid for the wine, said good
evening to her, and started to leave the place. She followed him,
talking volubly, and when they reached the street she took his arm,
clinging to him with all the weight of her dragging will.
"You don't want to go home yet," she coaxed. "You're a nice gentleman.
Come in here to Grinsky's and give me a dance."
Her entreaties disgusted him. People on the street looked and smiled.
At the bottom he was a thoroughly clean-minded American; he could not
even coquette with debauch without shame and timidity. She and her
class were nauseating to him, like evil-smelling rooms and foul sights.
That was not his vice.
He paid for her admission to the dance-hall, dropped a dollar in her
hand, and left her. Then where to go? How to pass the hours? He was
at an utter loss what to do with himself, like all properly married,
respectable men, when the domestic pattern of their lives is disturbed
for any reason. So, vaguely, without purpose, he began to stroll east
in the direction of the lake, taking off his hat to let the night wind
cool his head. He found walking pleasant in the mild spring air, and
when he came to the end of the street he turned south into a deserted
avenue that was starred in the dark night by a line of arc lamps. It
was a dull, respectable, middle-class district, quite unfamiliar to
him, and he stared inquiringly at the monotonous blocks of brick houses
and cheap apartment buildings. Here was the ugly, comfortable housing
of the modern city, where lived a mass of good citizens,--clerks and
small business men with their wives and children. He wondered vaguely
if this was what his wife would have him come to, this dreary monotony
of small homes, each one like its neighbor, where the two main facts of
existence were shelter and food.
A wave of self-pity swept over him, and his thoughts returned to his
old grievance: if Helen had stayed by him all would have been well. He
wanted his children; he wanted his home, his wife, his neighbors, his
little accustomed world of human relationships,--all as it had been
before. And he blamed her for destroying his happiness, shutting his
mind obstinately to any other consideration, unwilling to admit even to
his secret self that his greed, his thirst for luxury, had aught to do
with the case. He had striven with all his might, even as the bread
winners in these houses strove daily, to get a point of vantage in the
universal struggle. Doubtless these humble citizens had their modicum
of content. But why should he, with his larger appetite, be condemned
to their level? The idea was utterly repugnant to him, and gradually
that heavy weight of depression, which the wine had temporarily lifted,
pressed on his spirits.
He must have walked many blocks on this avenue between the monotonous
small houses. In the distance beyond him, to the south, he saw a fiery
glow on the soft heavens, which he took to be the nightly reflection
from the great blast furnaces of the steel works in South Chicago.
Presently as he emerged upon a populous cross street, the light seemed
suddenly much nearer, and, unlike the soft effulgence from the blast
furnaces, the red sky was streaked with black. On the corners of the
street there was an unwonted excitement,--men gaping upward at the
fiery cloud, then running eastward, in the direction of the lake. From
the west there sounded the harsh gong of a fire-engine, which was
pounding rapidly down the car tracks. It came, rocking in a whirlwind
of galloping horses and swaying men. The crowd on the street broke
into a run, streaming along the sidewalks in the wake of the engine.
The architect woke from his dead thoughts and ran with the crowd. Two,
three, four blocks, they sped toward the lake, which curves eastward at
this point, and as he ran the street became strangely familiar to him.
The crowd turned south along a broad avenue that led to the park. Some
one cried: "There it is! It's the hotel!" A moment more, and the
architect found himself at the corner of the park opposite the lofty
building, out of whose upper stories broad billows of smoke, broken by
tongues of flame, were pouring.
There, in the corner made by the boulevard and the park, where formerly
was the weedy ruin, rose the great building, which Graves had finished
late in the winter, and had turned over to the hotel company. Its
eight stories towered loftily above the other houses and apartment
buildings in the neighborhood. The countless windows along the broad
front gleamed portentously with the reflection from the flames above.
At the west corner, overlooking the park, above a steep ascent of
jutting bay windows, there floated a light blue pennon, bearing a name
in black letters,--THE GLENMORE.
At first the architect scarcely realized that this building which was
burning was Graves's hotel, his hotel. The excitement of the scene
stupefied him. Already the police had roped off the streets beneath
the fire, in which the crowd was thickening rapidly. From many points
in the adjoining blocks came the shrill whistles of the throbbing
engines, answering one another. The fire burned quietly aloft in the
sky, while below there rose the clamor of excited men and screeching
engines. The crowd grew denser every moment, and surged again and
again nearer the building, packing solidly about the fire lines. Hart
was borne along in the current.
"They've pulled the third alarm," one man said in his ear, chewing
excitedly on a piece of gum. "There's more'n fifty in there yet!"
"They say the elevators are going still!" another one exclaimed.
"Where's the fire-escapes?"
"Must be on the rear or over by the alley. There ain't none this side,
sure enough."
"Yes, they're in back," the architect said authoritatively.
He tried to think just where they were and where they opened in the
building, but could not remember. A voice wailed dismally through a
megaphone:--
"Look out, boys! Back!"
On the edge of the cornice appeared three little figures with a line of
hose. At that height they looked like willing gnomes on the crust of a
flaming world.
"Gee! Look at that roof! Look at it!"
The cry from the megaphone had come too late. Suddenly, without
warning, the top of the hotel rose straight into the air, and from the
sky above there sounded a great report, like the detonation of a cannon
at close range. The roof had blown up. For an instant darkness
followed, as if the flame had been smothered, snuffed out. Then with a
mighty roar the pent-up gases that had caused the explosion ignited and
burst forth in a broad sheet of beautiful blue flame, covering the
doomed building with a crown of fire.
Hart looked for the men with the hose. One had caught on the sloping
roof of a line of bay windows, and clung there desperately seven
stories above the ground.
"He's a goner!" some one near him groaned.
Large strips of burning tar paper began to float above the heads of the
crowd, causing a stampede. In the rush, Hart got nearer the fire
lines, more immediately in front of the hotel, which irresistibly drew
him closer. Now he could hear the roar of the flame as it swept
through the upper stories and streamed out into the dark night. The
fierce light illumined the silk streamer, which still waved from the
pole at the corner of the building, untouched by the explosion. Across
the east wall, under the cornice, was painted the sign: THE GLENMORE
FAMILY HOTEL; and beneath, in letters of boastful size, FIREPROOF
BUILDING. Tongues of flame danced over the words.
The policeman at the line pointed derisively to the legend with his
billy.
"Now ain't that fireproof!"
"Burns like rotten timber!" a man answered.
It was going frightfully fast! The flames were now galloping through
the upper stories, sweeping the lofty structure from end to end, and
smoke had begun to pour from many points in the lower stories, showing
that the fount of flame had its roots far down in the heart of the
building. Vague reports circulated through the crowd: A hundred people
or more were still in the hotel. All were out. Thirty were penned in
the rear rooms of the sixth floor. One elevator was still running. It
had been caught at the time of the explosion, etc.... For the moment
the firemen were making their fight in the rear, and the north front
was left in a splendid peace of silent flame and smoke--a spectacle for
the crowd in the street.
Within the lofty structure, the architect realized vaguely, there was
being enacted one of those modern tragedies which mock the pride and
vanity of man. In that furnace human beings were fighting for their
lives, or, penned in, cut off by the swift flames, were waiting in
delirious fear for aid that was beyond the power of men to give them.
A terrible horror clutched him. It was his building which was being
eaten up like grass before the flame. He dodged beneath the fire line
and began to run toward the east end, driven by a wild impulse that he
could not control. He must do something,--must help! It was his
building; he knew it from cornice to foundation; he might know how to
get at those within! A policeman seized him roughly and thrust him
back behind the line. He fought his way to the front again, while the
dense crowd elbowed and cursed him. He lost his hat; his coat was half
torn from his shoulders. But he struggled frantically forward.
"You here, Hart! What are you after?"
Some one stretched out a detaining hand and drew him out of the press.
It was Cook, his draughtsman. Cook was chewing gum, his jaws working
nervously, grinding and biting viciously in his excitement. The fierce
glare revealed the deep lines of the man's face.
"You can't get out that way. The street's packed solid!" Cook bellowed
into his ear. "God alive, how fast it's going! That's your steel
frame, tile partition, fireproof construction, is it? To hell with it!"
Suddenly he clutched the architect's arm again and shouted:--
"Where are the east-side fire-escapes? I can't see nothing up that
wall, can you?"
The architect peered through the wreaths of smoke. There should have
been an iron ladder between every two tiers of bay windows on this side
of the building.
"They are all in back," he answered, remembering now that the
contractor had cut out those on the east wall as a "disfigurement."
"Let's get around to the rear," he shouted to the draughtsman, his
anxiety whipping him once more.
After a time they managed to reach an alley at the southwest angle of
the hotel, where two engines were pumping from a hydrant. Here they
could see the reach of the south wall, up which stretched the spidery
lines of a single fire-escape. Cook pointed to it in mute wonder and
disgust.
"It's just a question if the beams will hold into the walls until they
can get all the folks out," he shouted. "I heard that one elevator boy
was still running his machine and taking 'em down. As long as the
floors hold together, he can run his elevator. But don't talk to me
about your fireproof hotels! Why, the bloody thing ain't been burning
twenty minutes, and look at it!"
As he spoke there was a shrill whistle from the fire marshal, and then
a wrenching, crashing, plunging noise, like the sound of an avalanche.
The upper part of the east wall had gone, toppling outward into the
alley like the side of a fragile box. In another moment followed a
lesser crash. The upper floors had collapsed, slipping down into the
inner gulf of the building. There was a time of silence and awful
quiet; but almost immediately the blue flames, shot with orange, leaped
upward once more. From the precipitous wall above, along the line of
the fire-escape, came horrid human cries, and in the blinding smoke and
flame appeared a dozen figures clinging here and there to the window
frames like insects, as if the heat had driven them outward.
Cook swayed against the architect like a man with nausea.
"They're done for now, sure, all that ain't out. And I guess there
ain't many out. It just slumped, just slumped," he repeated with a
nervous quiver of the mouth. Suddenly he turned his pale face to the
architect and glared into his eyes.
"Damn you, you son of a bitch! Damn you--you--" he stammered, shaking
his fist at him. "There wasn't any steel in the bloody box! It was
rotten cheese. That's you, you, you!" He turned and ran toward the
burning mass, distracted, shouting as he ran: "Rotten cheese! Just
rotten cheese!"
But the architect still stood there in the alley, rooted in horror,
stupefied. High above him, in a window of the south wall, which was
still untouched by the fire, he saw a woman crouching on the narrow
ledge of the brick sill. She clung with one hand to an awning rope and
put the other before her eyes. He shouted something to her, but he
could not hear the sound of his own voice. She swayed back and forth,
and then as a swirl of flame shot up in the room behind her, she fell
forward into the abyss of the night.... A boy's face appeared at one
of the lower windows. He was trying to break the pane of heavy glass.
Finally he smashed a hole with his fist and stood there, dazed, staring
down into the alley; then he dropped backward into the room, and a jet
of smoke poured from the vent he had made.
In front of the hotel there were fresh shouts; they were using the
nets, now. The architect covered his face with his hands, and moaning
to himself began to run, to flee from the horrible spot. But a cry
arrested him, a wail of multitudinous voices, which rose above the
throb of the engines, the crackle of the fire, all the tumult of the
catastrophe. He looked up once more to the fire-eaten ruin. The lofty
south wall, hitherto intact, had begun to waver along the east edge.
It tottered, hung, then slid backward, shaking off the figures on the
fire-escape as if they had been frozen flies.... He put his hands to
his eyes and ran. He could hear the crowd in the street groaning with
rage and pity. As he ran he saw beside the park a line of ambulances
and patrol wagons ready for their burdens.
How long he ran, or in what direction, he never knew. He had a dim
memory of himself, sitting in some place with a bottle of whiskey
before him. The liquor seemed to make no impression on his brain; his
hand still shook with the paralysis of fear. He remembered his efforts
to pour whiskey into the glass without spilling it. After a time a
face, vaguely familiar, entered his nightmare, and the man, who carried
a little black bag such as doctors use, sat down beside him and shouted
at him:--
"What are you doing here? What do you want with that whiskey? Give it
to me. You have had all the booze that's good for you, I guess."
And in his stupor he said to the man tearfully:--
"Don't take it away, doctor. For heaven's sake don't take the whiskey
away! I tell you, I have killed people to-night. Eight, ten,
forty--no, I killed eight people. Yes, eight men and women. I see 'em
dying now. Give me the whiskey!"
"You're off your nut, man," the doctor replied impatiently. "You
haven't killed any one. You have been boozing, and you'll kill
yourself if you don't quit. Here, give me that!"
He remembered rising to his feet obediently and saying very solemnly:--
"Very well, my friend, I won't drink any more if you say so. But
listen to me. I killed a lot of people, eight of 'em, and I don't know
how many more besides--over there in a great fire. I saw 'em dying,
like flies, like flies! Now give me one more drink."
"All right, you killed 'em, if you say so."
"Don't leave me, doctor! It's a terrible thing to kill so many people,
all at once, like flies, like flies!"
And he burst into tears, sobbing and shaking with the awful visions of
his brain, his head buried in his arms.
CHAPTER XXVI
The next morning Hart found himself on a sofa in a bare, dusky room
that looked as if it was a doctor's office. He sat up and tried to
think what had happened to him overnight. Suddenly the picture of the
burning hotel swept across his memory, and he groaned with a fresh
sense of sharp pain. Some one was whistling in the next room, and
presently the door opened, and Dr. Coburn appeared in trousers and
undershirt, mopping his face with a towel. The architect recognized
him now, and knew that he was the one who had struggled with him in his
dreams.
"Hello, Jack Hart!" the doctor called out boisterously. "How are you
feeling? Kind of dopey? My, but you were full of booze last night! I
had to jam a hypodermic into you to keep you quiet, when I got you over
here. Do you get that way often?"
"Was I drunk?" the architect asked dully.
"Well, I rather think. Don't you feel it this morning?"
He grinned at the dishevelled figure on the sofa and continued to mop
his face.
"You were talking dotty, too, about killing folks. I thought maybe you
might have a gun on you. But I couldn't find anything. What have you
been doing?"
"It was the fire," Hart answered slowly, "a terrible fire. People were
killed--I saw them. My God! it was awful!"
He buried his face in his hands and shuddered.
"Shook you up considerable, did it? Your nerves are off. Here, wait a
minute! I'll fix you something."
The doctor went back into the inner room and returned presently with a
small glass.
"Drink this. It will give you some nerve."
The architect took the stimulant and then lay down once more with his
face to the wall. Before long he pulled himself together and drank a
cup of coffee, which the doctor had prepared. Then he took himself
off, saying that he must get to his office at once. He went away in a
daze, barely thanking the doctor for his kindness. When he had left,
Coburn began to whistle again, thinking, "There's something more'n
drink or that fire the matter with _him_!"
Hart bought a newspaper at the first stand. It was swelled with pages
of coarse cuts and "stories" of the "Glenmore Hotel Tragedy." On the
elevated train, which he took to reach the city, all the passengers
were buried in the voluminous sheets of their newspapers, avidly
sucking in the details of the disaster. For a time he stared at the
great cut on the first page of his paper, which purported to represent
the scene at the fire when the south wall fell. But in its place he
saw the sheer stretch of pitiless wall, the miserable figures on the
iron ladder being swept into the flames. Then he read the headlines of
the account of the fire. Seventeen persons known to have been in the
hotel were missing; the bodies of ten had been found. Had it not been
for the heroism of a colored elevator boy, Morris by name, who ran his
car up and down seven times through the burning shaft, the death list
would have been far longer. On the second trip, so the account ran,
the elevator had been caught by a broken gate on the third floor.
Morris had coolly run his car back to the top, then opened the lever to
full speed, and crashed his way triumphantly through the obstacle. It
was one of those acts of unexpected intelligence, daring, and devotion
to duty which bring tears to the eyes of thousands all over the land.
The brave fellow had been caught in the collapse of the upper floors,
and his body had not yet been found. It was buried under tons of brick
and iron in the wrecked building.
The newspaper account wandered on, column after column, repeating
itself again and again, confused, endlessly prolix, but in the waste of
irrelevancy a few facts slowly emerged. The Glenmore, fortunately, had
not been half full. It had been opened only six weeks before as a
family hotel,--one of those shoddy places where flock young married
people with the intention of avoiding the cares of children and the
trials of housekeeping in modest homes; where there is music twice a
week and dancing on Saturday evenings; where the lower windows are
curtained by cheap lace bearing large monograms, and electric candles
and carnations are provided for each table in the dining-room. Another
year from this time there would have been three or four hundred people
in the burning tinder box.
The fire had started somewhere in the rear of the second floor, from
defective electric wiring, it was supposed, and had shot up the rear
elevator shaft, which had no pretence of fireproof protection. The
east wall had bulged almost at once, pulling out the supports for the
upper three floors. It was to be doubted whether the beams,
bearing-walls, and main partitions were of fireproof materials. The
charred remains of Georgia pine and northern spruce seemed to indicate
that they were not. At any rate, the incredible rapidity with which
the fire had spread and the dense smoke showed that the "fireproofing"
was of the flimsiest description. And, to cap all, there was but one
small fire-escape on the rear wall, difficult of access! "The
Glenmore," so the Chicago _Thunderer_ pronounced, "was nothing but an
ornamental coffin."
Editorially, the _Thunderer_ had already begun its denunciation of the
building department for permitting a contractor to erect such an
obvious "fire-trap," and for granting the lessees a license to open it
as a hotel. There had been too many similar horrors of late,--the
lodging-house on West Polk Street, where five persons had lost their
lives, the private hospital on the North Side, where fourteen men and
women had been burned, etc. In all these cases it was known that the
building ordinances had been most flagrantly violated. There was the
usual clamor for "investigation," for "locating the blame," and
"bringing the real culprits before the Grand Jury." It should be said
that the _Thunderer_ was opposed politically to the City Hall.
In the architect's office there was an air of subdued excitement. No
work was in progress when Hart let himself into his private room from
the hall. Instead, the men were poring over the broad sheets of the
newspapers spread out on the tables. When he stepped into the
draughting-room, they began awkwardly to fold up the papers and start
their work. Cook, Hart noticed, was not there. The stenographer came
in from the outer office and announced curtly:--
"The 'phone's been ringing every minute, Mr. Hart." She looked at the
architect with mingled aloofness and curiosity. "They were mostly
calls from the papers, and some of the reporters are in there now,
waiting. What shall I say to 'em?"
"Say I am out of town," Hart ordered, giving the usual formula when
reporters called at the office. Then he went back to his private room
and shut the door. He dropped the bulky newspaper on the floor and
tried to think what he should do. There were some memoranda on the
desk of alterations which he was to make in a country house, and these
he took up to examine. Soon his desk telephone rang, and when he put
the receiver to his ear, Graves's familiar tones came whispering over
the line. The contractor talked through the telephone in a subdued
voice, as if he thought to escape eavesdropping at the central office
by whispering.
"Is that you, Hart? Where have you been? I've been trying to get you
all the morning. Say, can't you come over here quick?"
"What do you want?" the architect demanded sharply. The sound of the
man's voice irritated him.
"Well, I want a good many things," Graves replied coldly. "I guess we
had better get together on this business pretty soon."
"You can find me over here the rest of the morning," Hart answered
curtly.
There was a pause of several seconds, and then the contractor
telephoned cautiously:--
"Say, I can't leave just now. That Dutchman's in here pretty drunk,
and I don't want him to get loose. Come over, quick!"
"All right," the architect muttered dully, hanging up his telephone.
He was minded to refuse, but he realized that it would be best to see
what was the matter. Some plan of action must be decided upon. Meyer
was one of the officers and directors of the Glenmore Hotel
Corporation. The architect and a couple of clerks in the contractor's
office were the other dummies in this corporation, which had been
organized solely to create bonds and stock and to escape personal
liability.
Hart gathered up the memoranda on his desk, and telling the
stenographer that he was going out to Eversley to see the Dixon house,
he left the office. As he stepped into the hall, he met Cook, who had
just come from the elevator. He nodded to the draughtsman and hailed a
descending car.
"Say, Hart," Cook said in a quiet voice, "can I have a word with you?"
Hart stepped back into the hall and waited to hear what the draughtsman
had to say.
"I must have been pretty near crazed last night, I guess," Cook began,
turning his face away from the architect, "and I said things I had no
call to say."
"Come in," Hart murmured, unlocking the door to his private office.
"Of course, it wasn't my business, anyway," Cook continued, "to accuse
you, no matter what happened. But I saw a friend of mine this morning,
a man on the _Thunderer_, and he had just come from the city hall,
where he'd been to examine the Glenmore plans. He says they're all
right. Same as ours in the office. I can't understand what happened
to the old thing unless Graves-- Well, that's not our business."
There was a pause, while the two men stood and looked at each other.
Finally Cook added:--
"So I wanted to tell you I was wrong,--I had no call to talk that way."
"That's all right, Cook," the architect replied slowly. Somehow the
man's apology hurt him more than his curses. They still stood waiting.
Suddenly Hart exclaimed:--
"You needn't apologize, man! The plans are all right. But that
doesn't let me out. I knew what Graves was going to do with 'em. I
knew it from the start."
"What do you say?" the draughtsman demanded, bewildered.
"The hotel was a job from the start," Hart repeated.
There was another pause, which was broken by Cook.
"Well, I suppose after this you won't want me any more?"
"I suppose not," the architect answered in a colorless tone.
"All right; I'll go to-day if you say so."
"As you please."
And they parted. Cook was an honest, whole-souled man. It was best
that he should leave the office, Hart reflected, as he went down in the
elevator--best for Cook and for him too. The draughtsman's admiration
for him had been his daily incense, and it would be intolerable to see
him daily with this matter between them, even if Cook would stay.
Hart found Graves in his inner office, while a clerk held at bay a
roomful of men who wanted to get at the contractor. Graves looked
serious, but undisturbed, manifesting no more outward emotion than if
he had come from the funeral of a distant relative.
"It's a pretty bad mess, ain't it?" he said to the architect, offering
him a cigar. "I guess you were right. Those first story walls weren't
solid. They must have bulged and pulled the whole business down....
Of course the papers are hot. They always yap considerable when
anything happens. They'll spit fire a week or so, and then forget all
about it. Everything is straight over at the city hall so far.
There'll be the coroner's inquest, of course. But he won't find much.
The only danger is this cuss Meyer. He's been on a spree and is pretty
well shook up. If they get hold of him, and ask him questions at the
inquest, he's liable to tell all he knows, and more too. What I want
you to do is to take care of the Dutchman."
"What do you mean to do about the inquest?" Hart asked abruptly.
"Do? Well, the best thing for all of us who have been concerned with
the Glenmore is to be called out of the city for two or three weeks or
so. I have got to go to Philadelphia to-night or to-morrow, if I can
get away. Gotz will be here to go on the stand if they want to get
after the hotel corporation. They won't make much out of him. Now, if
you can take care of the Dutchman--"
"What do you mean?"
Graves looked at the architect critically before answering.
"Don't lose your nerve, Hart. It'll come out all right. I've seen my
lawyer this morning, and I know just what they can do with us, and it
ain't much. They can get after the building department, but they're
used to that. And they can bring a civil suit against the corporation,
which will do no harm. You keep out of the way for a while, and you
won't get hurt a particle. Take the Dutchman up to Milwaukee and drown
him. Keep him drunk--he's two-thirds full now. Lucky he came here
instead of blabbing to one of those newspaper fellers! Keep him drunk,
and ship him up north on the lakes. By the time he finds his way back,
his story won't be worth telling."
Hart looked at the big mass of a man before him, and loathed him with
all his being. He wanted to take him by one of his furry ears and
shake the flesh from his bones. The same impulse that had prompted him
to admit his guilt to Cook, the impulse to free his mind from the
intolerable coil of fraud, cost what it might, was stirring again
within him.
"Well?" Graves inquired.
"I am going to quit," the architect said, almost involuntarily. "I'm
sick of the business, and I shan't run away. You can look after Meyer
yourself--"
"Perhaps you're looking for some money, too?" the contractor sneered.
"No more of yours, I know that!" Hart answered, rising from his chair
and taking his hat. "I'm sick of the whole dirty job, and if they want
me to, I'll talk, too, I suppose."
"You damned, white-livered sneak! Ain't you got enough gut in you to
sit tight? You--"
But the contractor was swearing at the blank wall of his office.
When the architect reached the street he hesitated. Instead of taking
the train for Eversley, as he had intended to do, he got on an electric
car that ran far out into the northern suburbs. He kept saying to
himself that he wanted time to think, that he must think it all out
before he returned to his office. For he was not yet sure that it
would be best to stay and bear the brunt of the coming investigation,
as he had said to the contractor. He was not clear whether that would
do any good.
But he did not think. Instead, he brooded over the visions of the past
night, which beset him. When the car stopped he got out and walked
north along the lake shore, vaguely intending to reach Eversley in that
way. He was still trying to think, but he saw nothing clearly--nothing
but that terrible picture of the burning hotel, the dying men and
women. Thus he walked on and on, still trying to think, to find
himself....
CHAPTER XXVII
... He had been lying there long hours close to the warm earth that was
preparing for a new life. The thin branches of the trees rose bare and
severe between him and the blue sky, mementos of the silent winter.
The ground about their trunks was matted with dead leaves, through
which nothing green had yet pushed its way. Nevertheless, the earth
seemed yeasty with promise. The intense, unwonted heat of the April
days had broken the crust of soil and set the sap of life in motion
once more. The air was heavy with earthy odors,--a fragrant forecast
of Nature's regeneration. Deep down in the little ravines, and among
the pools of the meadowland beyond, frogs were croaking harshly,
filling the solitude of the still slumbering woods with the clamor of
awakening life. And through the brown tree trunks, above the tracery
of the topmost branches, over the flat fields, there swam the haze of
earliest spring--a vague atmosphere of renascence, the warm breath of
mother earth.
The man lay there, empty of thought, feeling remotely the mighty
movement of things around him--an inert mass in a vital world. The
odors of the earth stirred in him faintly old sensations of vivid
springtimes in his youth, when the ecstasy of the great world of sun
and sky and cloud, of distant fields and mounting uplands, had thrilled
his heart. He saw again the morning mist swimming above the little
Wisconsin lakes where he used to hunt, and felt the throb of joy for
the on-coming spring. And he remembered how this outer world had
spoken to him one day while he was sitting at his work in Paris.
Something imperceptible had crept into the room over the endless roofs,
and called to him in a low, persistent voice. Then he had listened,
joyously putting aside his task, and obeyed the invitation, wandering
idly forth into the germinating fields, which in some mysterious way
had purified his soul of all petty things. In his youth that
experience had come to him again and again, an impulse from beyond his
world, which had led him forth from himself, from the soil of living,
to fresh vigor and purity. Latterly there had come to him no call like
this; he had known no abandonment of self in the enveloping force of
Nature, no purification of spirit. The trees and the grass, the earth
and the sky, all the multitudinous voices of unconscious life, had not
spoken to him. Shut within himself, driven by the bitter furies of his
own little being, he had worked from season to season, forgetting the
face of Nature. True, he had lived the outdoor life of the world,
passed through the beautiful fields each season, just as he had gone to
the theatre or the opera. But the earth had not spoken to him, alone,
personally, out of her abundant wisdom, garnered through the limitless
years. For all the period of his maturity he had forgotten the great
mother of life.
Now, wrecked and bruised, he lay there on her breast, as a sick man
might lie in the silent room of a hospital and listen to the large
commotion of life without. He was content to rest there on the warm
earth, waiting and listening for the voice which should come from
beyond, content to forget himself,--a creature that had been
industriously shaped for eight busy years, a creature of the city and
of men, with a self that was his in part only, and was mixed with all
those others whom he had touched. That figure of deformity, made in
the strife of the city, he no longer recognized to be his. The richer
heart of youth, with its pictured hopes, the beauty of early days, came
back to him and blessed him.... The sun sank into the deepening blue
haze of the heavens; the thin shadows of the trees faded from the brown
earth; the south wind from the prairies began to rise, blowing
strongly, scented by the breeding land over which it had come. And as
the day drew to its close, the murmuring voices of re-created life
ascended from all parts of the earth with a strengthened note. The
tree-toads were chorusing in the damp hollows, and the spice of roots
and mould sucked out by the hot sun was descending once more in damp
fragrance to the earth. The moist, crumbling soil beneath the man's
body was opening itself--stirring, awakening, preparing, for the
gigantic tasks of renewal, of re-creation, of conception and birth. An
immense, powerful, impersonal life, the greatest Life of all, was going
forward all about him. In the midst of this large mystery he felt that
he was but an atom--an accident which counted for nothing.
That terrible vision of dying men and women no longer haunted the man's
mind. The catastrophe which had shaken him to the roots of his being
sank into its place behind the long procession of those acts, which had
made him what he was. Now, at last, he began to think coherently, to
see himself in the whole of his being, step by step, as he had come to
be. The old man's death and funeral rose before him, and he remembered
his restless preoccupation with the money so soon to be his, while
others sorrowed and prayed. Then came the will, which he had resented,
and the growing lust for the money that had slipped from his grasp.
Born of that lust, bred in envy and hot desire, was the will to
succeed. From the first day of his struggle for success there came
before his eyes the man Graves. The contractor's fat, bearded face was
the sordid image of his sin, familiar in its cupidinous look. It was
the image of that greed to which he had submitted himself, with which
he had consented to do evil. From the very hour when he had caught the
contractor's eye in the Canostota, and the two had committed fraud over
the weight of steel in an I-beam, there had set forth a long, long
train of petty dishonesties, which had created in him the vitiating
habit of insincerity. One by one he recalled the fraudulent works in
which he had had a part,--the school from which he had tried to steal
some of the money his uncle had denied him, and finally this hotel,
which had crumbled at the touch of fire. That was the strange,
dramatic climax of the story, fated so to be from the first petty lust
for money, from the first fraud.
Greed, greed! The spirit of greed had eaten him through and through,
the lust for money, the desire for the fat things of the world, the
ambition to ride high among his fellows. In the world where he had
lived this passion had a dignified name; it was called enterprise and
ambition. But now he saw it for what it was,--greed and lust, nothing
more. It was in the air of the city which he had breathed for eight
years.... In his pride he had justified knavery by Success. He had
judged himself mean and small merely because he had failed to cheat and
steal and trick "in a large way." Only the little and the weak need be
honest; to the strong all things were right--he had said glibly. Now,
for the first day since the strength of his manhood, he saw acts, not
blurred by his own passions, not shifting with the opinions of the day;
but he saw them fixed and hard,--living, human acts, each one in its
own integrity, with its own irrevocable fate; acts expressed in lowered
eyelids of consent, in shrugs, in meaningful broken phrases; acts
unprofessional, sharp, dishonest, criminal.
He lay in the gathering twilight, listened, and saw. And at last the
soul of the man, which had been long in hiding, came back, and flowed
into him once more. A deep, new longing filled his heart, a desire to
be once again as he had been before, to rise from his debasement and
become clean, to slough off this parasitic self into which he had grown
all these years of his strife in the city, to be born anew like the
springtime earth--such longings as come to men when they are sickened
with the surfeit of their passions.
... He knew now why his wife had left him. She had felt the leper
taint, which had been eating at his heart all the years of their
marriage, and had repudiated it. She had cried out against the mere
getting and spending of money, to which low ebb those lofty ambitions
of his youth had descended before her eyes. She had loved him as the
creator, the builder; and he had given her no visions, but only the
sensualities of modern wealth. "Let us begin again and live the common
life," she had cried out to him. "Let us live for work and not for
money." He had put her aside with contempt, and refused to open the
dark places of his life to her. Now he knew that she had done well to
leave him to his own day of judgment. And the first impulse in the
man's new soul was to go to her, humbly, and say to her: "You were
right. I have sinned against myself, against you, against life, all
along the way. Will you accept my repentance, and love me again from
the beginning, knowing now the truth?" Ardently he desired to hear her
answer; but his heart left him in doubt as to what that answer might
be. For he understood at last that he had never known this woman, who
had been his wife for eight years.
Nevertheless, despite this hunger of his heart for the woman he loved,
there rose in him slowly a purging sense of relief from crime and sin
committed. It had passed away, was put off from himself. Surely he
was to come once more into peace! The upspringing life of the
reincarnated earth chanted all about him but one song: "Here I leave my
uncleanness. Life is strong and good. There is, for all, forgiveness
and peace. Here I bury the filth of my deeds, and renew my hope."
Thus man rises again and again from the depths of his abasement; thus
springs in him a new hope, a vital, imperishable element, the soul of
his being; and he is prepared afresh for the struggle. Deep within him
there lies forever the unconquerable conviction of his power to rise,
to renew himself.
So, after the tempest of debauch, little men wake from their carnal
desires, and, leaving behind them the uncleanness of their flesh, go
forth into the pure morning, subdued and ashamed, yet irresistibly sure
that life is good and holds forgiveness and hope for them. With the
new day they will become like their dreams, clean and pure. Thus,
also, those larger men, not eaten by bodily lusts, those greater
sinners who are caught on the whirling spikes of bolder passions, who
are torn and twisted--these, also, return at certain hours to the soul
within them, and renew there the pure fire of their natures, so that
they may enter again the endless contest having hope and health. Thus,
above all, the great heart of things, the abundant mother of life, the
earth, renews herself eternally according to the laws of her being, and
comes forth afresh and undiminished for the business of living.
The mere lump of man lying there inert upon the ground felt this great
process of renewal all about him, and sucked in fresh life and health.
In like manner, years before, in his youth, he had gone down to the
sea, and there had known something of this mysterious sensation of
renewal. His body plunged in cool, black sea-water, he had drawn
through the pores of his flesh the elemental currents of life. He
longed now to escape again from men, to go down to the sea and touch
those waters washing in from their remote tidal courses up and down the
earth. By such means Nature cleanses and teaches man. Heedless of
man, unconcerned with his follies and vices, impersonal, irresistible,
majestic, she receives his head upon her breast, and renews within him
his spirit,--the power to battle, the power to live.
The fruitful earth holds in her bosom death and life, both together,
and out of her comes health. In like manner there lie in the heart of
man diverse instincts,--seeds of good and evil, ready to germinate.
For long seasons seeds of one kind burst forth in the soil of a man's
nature and thrive. Accident, the intricate web of fate, gives them
their fit soil, their heat, their germinating impulse. And the world
about them, seeing the fruit of these seeds alone, calls the man good
or bad, and thus makes its rude analysis of character, as something set
and fixed, stamped upon the soul forever. But in their own time other
seeds, perchance ripening late and slowly, come to their day of
germination, seeds of unlike nature, with diverse fruit. Such sprout
and send their life forth into the man, creating a new nature which the
world will not recognize as his. Thus it was happening with this man:
commingled in his heart and brain there had lain diverse seeds of many
kinds,--seeds of decay and seeds of life. Impulses of creative
purpose, of unselfish work--these had been long dormant; impulses of
lust and greed and deceit--these had grown rankly in the feverish life
of the city until they had flowered in crime. Now had come to him the
time of fate; the first harvest of his acts was garnered; and the new
seeds of his life were ready to wake from their sleep in the depths of
his being, to put forth their energies, their demands. Some great
shock--the agony of dying men and women--had quickened this new growth.
So happened the miracle of rebirth, hidden far away from all human
observation, first revealing itself in the consciousness of
purification and renewed health.
The song of the springtime earth rose ever upward, calming and healing
the man, who at last had caught its message. It said to him: "Another
sun, a new day, an earth ever fresh from the hand of God! Eternal
hope--the burial of the corrupt body with its misdeeds; health, and not
decay; life, and not death. For life is good. There is forgiveness
and renewal for all those who heed." ... Through the misty heavens
above the trees the stars glimmered faintly. Over the prairie, fields,
and woodland the night wind passed, soft, odorous, charged with the
breath of the earth in the conceiving time of life....
Under the starlight of the spring night there might be seen the figure
of a man walking southward toward the black horizon of the great city.
He walked neither fast nor slow, but steadily, evenly, as if urged by
one powerful purpose,--some magnetic end that set his nerves and his
muscles to the rhythm of action.
CHAPTER XXVIII
The architect had a long time to wait in Wheeler's office that morning.
The lawyer rarely came in before ten, so the stenographer said, looking
suspiciously into the man's white, unshaven face. She knew Hart quite
well, and she was wondering what was the matter with him--whether he
was in trouble or had been on a spree overnight. He sat in one of the
armchairs of the outer office provided for waiting clients, and,
absorbed in his own thoughts, stared at the square of green carpet
beneath his feet. When Wheeler finally entered, he threw a careless
glance at the seated figure and said blankly:--
"Come in here!"
The lawyer opened the door to his little office, where he had confessed
many a man, and without a word pointed to a chair beside his littered
desk. Then he sat down and waited, examining the architect's face with
his dispassionate eyes.
"Everett, I wanted to see you about something," Hart began. Then he
stopped as though surprised by his own voice, which sounded far away,
unfamiliar, and unused. The lawyer waited a moment for him to
continue, and then he asked in his indifferent manner:--
"So you wanted to see me?"
"Yes, I want to tell you something," Jackson began again.
The lawyer wheeled toward his desk, and picked up a little silver
letter-opener, which he fingered.
"About that fire?" he asked.
"Yes--that and other things."
Wheeler went to the door, closed it, and returning to his chair,
wheeled his face away from his cousin.
"Well, what about it?"
"You know--you saw it in the papers--how the Glenmore burned? It was
one of Graves's buildings, and I did the plans for him. Well, the
newspapers were right; there was crooked work. The plans were all
altered after they had been through the building department. Graves is
in with the whole gang over there. He has all the inspectors in his
pocket."
Then Hart paused again. He was not saying what he came there to tell.
His mind seemed strangely unreliant and confused. While he stumbled,
the frown on his cousin's face deepened into an ugly crease between the
eyes. It said as plainly as words, "What in hell do you come here for,
blabbing this to me?" Jackson, reading the look, caught himself and
continued more steadily:--
"But I didn't come here to talk of the fire. It's about the school.
Pemberton was right about that. It was crooked, too. I want to tell
you what I know about that."
Wheeler put down the letter-opener and rested his chin on the tips of
his fingers. The architect told his story slowly, without excitement,
trying to give all the details and the exact figures, busying himself
with being precise. The matter was complicated, and it led him to
speak again of the hotel and of other affairs, of his entire connection
with the contractor,--to tell the complete story of his business career
in the city. The lawyer did not try to stop him, although his face
betrayed no special interest or desire to comment.
"Well, the upshot of the matter is," Hart ended, "that I am through
with the whole business, Everett. I am going to get out of it somehow
and square what I can. And first, I wanted you to know the truth about
the school, and to take this for the trustees."
He laid on the desk a large, fat envelope, which he had filled that
morning from his safety deposit box.
"There's about thirty thousand there, in stocks and bonds and some
land. I thought I wouldn't wait to put it into cash," he explained.
"It's pretty nearly all I have got, Everett. Part of that stock in the
Glenmore which Graves gave me represented my legitimate commission on
the building, but I have put that in, too. You can force Graves to
make good the rest. I can figure out for you what he should pay. And
I'll do what I can to help you make him do the right thing. If you
can't get hold of Graves, why, I'm ready to give you my personal note
for the rest and pay it as soon as I can."
Wheeler poked the envelope on the desk without taking it up.
"Conscience money?" he remarked slowly. "I don't want your wad. I
wish you had chucked it in the river, done anything with it but brought
it here, fixed that matter up once, didn't I?"
Hart was able to realize the contempt, the ironical humor, with which
the lawyer's tone was charged, and his lips tightened. But he made no
reply. After the experiences of the last two days he cared little for
what his cousin might say or think. In some manner he had passed
completely outside of the world where such matters counted. He was for
the time dulled to all but a few considerations.
"Say," the lawyer iterated, "I thought we'd closed that little matter
for good. But I can tell you there's one person who'll be tickled," he
laughed disgustedly. "And that's old Pemberton. He thought you were a
scamp from the word go. Now he'll be well set up when the judge tells
him this. He'll take an irreligious pleasure in it."
Jackson said nothing, and the two men faced each other sombrely.
Finally the lawyer exclaimed:--
"So you lost your nerve!"
It had not presented itself to the architect in that way, and he winced
perceptibly as he replied:--
"Well, you can call it that. And I guess that if you had seen those
people dropping into that burning building, and known what I knew about
the way it was put together-- Well, what's the use of talking! I am
done with the whole thing--done with it for good."
The lawyer eyed him sharply, unsympathetically, curious, in a cold
manner, of the psychology of the man before him. Hart's sturdy body,
which was a trifle inclined to fleshiness, seemed to have shrunken and
to be loose in his clothes. The bones of his jaw came out heavily in
his unshaven face, and below his eyes the skin was black, shading into
gray. His tweed office suit was rumpled out of shape, and there were
signs of the muddy roads on his trousers and boots. Usually so careful
and tidy in dress, he seemed to have lost for once all consciousness of
his appearance.
Wheeler had never felt much respect for his cousin as a young man.
Then the lawyer considered him to be somewhat "light-weight," given to
feminine interests in art and literature, feeling himself to be above
his homely American environment. But since their uncle's death Jackson
had won his approval by the practical ability he had shown in pushing
his way in the Chicago world, in getting together a flourishing
business, and making a success of his profession. Now that there was
revealed to him the uncertain means by which this outward success had
been obtained, he reverted easily to his earlier judgment. The man was
really a light-weight, a weakling, he concluded. The lawyer despised
weaklings; they made the real troubles in this life. He could not see
to its depth the tragedy before him, even as the stern Pemberton might
have seen it. He merely saw another nasty mess, a scandal that would
probably get about the city, even if his cousin and the contractor
escaped the Grand Jury for this Glenmore affair. He had little use for
men who went wrong and "lost their nerve."
"Well," he said at last, "you needn't bother about that note just yet.
You'll have troubles enough for one while, I expect. I suppose I shall
have to take this, though,"--he tapped the fat envelope,--"and lay the
matter before the trustees. I'll let you know what they decide to do."
"All right," Hart answered. As he did not rise immediately from his
chair, the lawyer turned to his desk with an air of dismissal. When
the architect at last got wearily to his feet, Wheeler asked, without
looking up:--
"Have you seen that man Graves this morning?"
"No, I went to the bank and then came here the first thing."
"He was in here to see me late yesterday. He seemed afraid that you
might split on him in this Glenmore business."
Hart listened, his eyes looking over his cousin's head far out through
the office window, his mind concerned with other matters.
"Hadn't you better get out of the city for a few weeks?" the lawyer
suggested casually. "Take a vacation. You seem to need a rest, bad.
The papers'll quiet down after a while--they always do," he added
explanatorily.
As a matter of fact, he had promised the contractor that he would do
what he could to keep Hart from making any trouble. It was obviously
best for the architect to be out of sight for the present, in some safe
place where he could not be got at for awkward explanations.
"I've been thinking of going away for a few days," Jackson replied
slowly, a flush spreading over his pallid face. "I'm going on to the
Falls to see Helen. But I shan't hide, if that's what you mean. They
can find me when they want me. And I shall be back before long,
anyway."
Wheeler did not tell him that the coroner had already formed his jury,
and that the first inquiry into the Glenmore fire was to begin the next
day. If the architect had made up his mind to go to Vermont, it was
just as well that he should get away before he could be summoned by the
coroner.
"Well," he said, taking another look at his cousin, "whatever you do,
get your nerve together. Men like you shouldn't play with fire.
They'd better stick to the straight game."
The architect knew well enough what that meant. If he had been some
cunning promoter who had had the wit to swindle the public out of any
sum of money that ran into the millions, or if he had been some banker
who had known how to ruin the credit of an enterprise which he wished
to buy cheaply, Wheeler would have extended to him a cynical tolerance,
and if his honesty were questioned, would have admitted merely that
"there were stories about, of course--there always were stories when a
man was smart enough to make some money quick." But, unfortunately, he
belonged to the category of unsuccessful, petty criminals, and he "had
lost his nerve."
He realized all this, and yet in the wreck which he had made of his
life, he was indifferent to the world's injustice. What men thought or
said about him had marvellously little importance just now. This
crisis had wonderfully simplified life for him; he saw a few things
which must be done, and to these he was setting himself with a slow
will. His face, as he gazed down at his cousin, held new, grave lines,
which gave it a sort of manliness that it had not possessed before.
"You'd better see Graves before you leave, and get together on this
thing," Wheeler concluded. "You won't do any good by making a bad
matter worse and spreading the stink, you know."
"I can't see any use in talking with Graves," Jackson protested slowly.
"I saw him yesterday and told him my views. He made me the treasurer
of his company, and I was the architect for the building. If they get
me up and ask me questions--why, I shall tell what I know about it.
That's all there is to that."
"Well, we'll see about that when the time comes," the lawyer replied,
and then asked bluntly:--
"Are you going to tell Helen the whole story, too?"
"Yes. That's why I'm going down there." The architect's face turned
red with humiliation for the first time since he had begun his story.
"I suppose she'll have to know," Wheeler admitted softly. "It will cut
her pretty deep."
He was wondering whether she could forgive this weak fellow, crawling
back to her now, his courage gone, broken for life, as he judged. He
suspected that she might pardon him even now, though she had left him
inexplicably. She would forgive her husband when he was at the end of
his rope; she was made that way. The softness of character in such
women irritated him, for the moment. There were other women whom he
liked and admired less than her,--Mrs. Phillips was one,--who would not
tolerate a flabby sinner like this man. But to Helen, disgrace would
make little difference, perhaps would cause her to cling more closely
to the dishonored man. And he was sorry for it all, because he loved
the woman, and he could feel her tragedy, though he was impervious to
the man's.
"Women have bum luck sometimes," he reflected aloud. "They have to
take all the man's troubles as well as their own." Then he added not
unkindly: "You had better think well what it means to her and to the
children before you do anything to make matters worse. I'll keep an
eye on what goes on here and let you know if you're needed--if you can
do any good."
Neither offered to shake hands, and Hart went out of the office without
replying to the last remark. In the vestibule of the building he
hesitated a moment, as if to get his bearings, and then slowly walked
down the crowded street in the direction of his office. The city
sights were curiously foreign to him, as if he had come back to them
after a long period of absence. The jostle of human beings on the
pavement, the roar of the streets, were like the meaningless gyrations
of a machine. With a repugnance that weighted his steps, he turned in
at the door of his building and crowded into one of the cages that were
swallowing and disgorging their human burdens in the mid-forenoon. In
his office there had settled an air of listless idleness, now that
Cook, the mainspring of the place, was no longer at his post. Without
looking at the accumulated mail on his desk, Hart called the
stenographer and dictated to her some instructions for his partner,
Stewart, who had just landed in New York on his way home from a
vacation in Europe. The girl received his dictation with an offish,
impertinent glance in her eyes that said, "Something's wrong with this
place, I guess." When the architect had finished, she said:--
"Say, Graves was in here twice this morning and wanted me to let him
know as soon as you came in. He wanted to know where you were. What
shall I say to him?"
Hart thought a moment before replying. He did not wish to see the
contractor,--that was very clear,--and yet he was unwilling to seem to
run away, to avoid the man. Moreover, he realized vaguely since his
talk with his cousin that there was a certain claim in complicity.
There was trouble ahead for them both, surely, and Graves had his right
to be considered.
"If Mr. Graves calls, bring him in here," he said to the stenographer,
as he turned to his mail.
He had some final matters to attend to, and then he should take the
train. If the contractor came back before he got away, he would see
him. Half an hour later, while he was still tearing open his letters
and jotting notes for the answers, his door opened and Graves walked
in. He had less assurance than on the afternoon before; the strain of
the situation was beginning to tell even on his coarse fibre.
"So you've come to!" he exclaimed with an attempt to be at his ease,
taking a chair beside the desk.
"What do you want?" the architect demanded sharply.
"Say, did you see the papers this morning?" Graves asked, ignoring the
question.
Hart shook his head; he had no curiosity to know what the newspapers
were saying.
"They're making an awful kick, worse than I expected. It's mostly
politics, of course. They've got the mayor on the run already. He's
suspended the head of the department, and Bloom was a good friend of
mine. That'll scare the rest considerable. And then there's talk of
bringing civil suits against the hotel company and the officers
individually."
He paused to see what impression this news might make on the architect.
"They can't get much out of me," Hart answered quietly. "I turned over
to Wheeler pretty nearly every dollar I have got. That's on account of
the school business," he added, thinking the contractor would not
comprehend rightly his meaning. "It came out of the school and might
as well go back to the trustees."
Graves stared at him in disgust. He had had some idea of forcing the
architect to pay part of the expense of "keeping the City Hall quiet."
Now the man had outwitted him and put his money beyond his reach.
"So you've seen Mr. Wheeler?"
"Just come from there."
"He told you he'd help us out of this hole?"
"We didn't discuss it."
"I've seen to Meyer myself. He's where he can't do no harm. And I
guess it's all right over there,"--he pointed with his thumb in the
direction of the city hall,--"though it'll cost a sight of money if
those fellers lose their jobs. Now, if we keep quiet, they can't do
nothing but bring their suits for damages. I ain't afraid of that."
"I suppose not," Hart replied dryly. "It doesn't touch you. They're
all straw names in the corporation papers but mine, aren't they?"
"Just now there's this damned coroner," Graves went on, ignoring the
last remark. "The inquest begins to-morrow. He'll try to fix the
blame, of course, and hold some one to the Grand Jury. He's got to, to
quiet the papers."
"I suppose so," Hart assented wearily.
"But they've got nothing to go on if you only hold your tongue," Graves
ripped out incautiously. "And you've got to hold your jaw!"
The man's dictatorial manner angered the architect. He rose hastily
from his desk, gathering some papers and putting them into his bag.
"I told you yesterday, Graves, that I would have nothing more to do
with you in this Glenmore business. I don't see what you came in here
for. Let them go ahead and do what they can. I'll stand for my share
of the trouble."
"You--" Graves burst out. "You--"
"I've got an engagement now, Mr. Graves, and there's no use in our
talking this matter over any more."
He reached for his coat and hat.
"But I tell you, Hart, that you can't be a quitter in this business.
Didn't your cousin tell you that, too?"
"It makes no difference to me what he might say," Hart retorted
doggedly, holding open the door into the hall.
"I'll smash you, sure thing, if you do me up in this dirty way!"
The contractor crossed the room to where Hart stood, as if he meant to
strike then and there. Hart looked at him indifferently. The man
disgusted and irritated him; he wondered how he could ever have
submitted himself to him. He held the door open, and Graves passed out
into the hall, which was empty.
"I'll smash you!" he repeated, less loudly.
"All right!" the architect muttered. "I guess that won't matter much
now."
Graves kept by his side in the elevator, and followed him out into the
street.
"Say! Step over to Burke's place with me," he urged in a more
conciliatory tone.
"See here!" the architect answered, stopping on the sidewalk. "It's no
use talking, Graves, I've done with you and your methods. Can't you
see that? I don't intend to get you into trouble if I can help it.
But I don't mean to sneak out of this or tell any lies to save your
hide. I'm on my way out of the city now, to see my family, and shall
be away for a few days. Wheeler knows where I shall be, and he'll let
me know when I am wanted. They won't get around to me for some little
time yet, probably. If they summon me, why, I suppose I shall come
back."
The contractor, hearing that Hart was about to leave the city, felt
relieved for the moment. It would be easier to deal with his cousin,
the lawyer, who might be able to keep the architect from making a fool
of himself. So he walked on with Hart toward the station in a calmer
frame of mind. As if he realized the mistake he had made in trying to
bully his accomplice, he began to put forward his personal difficulties
apologetically.