of smoke, he seemed to wake. He felt himself propelled away from the
vicinity of the bathhouse; low, excited exclamations beat upon his ears:
“Absolutely justified!”
“Horrible attempt to murder!”
“Get his nigger and things. Best for the present.” He impatiently shook
himself free from his small following.
“Did I kill him?” he demanded.
There was an affirmative silence.
In his wagon, driving rapidly toward Tubal Cain, a sudden sense of
horror, weakness, overtook him; the roadside rocked beneath his vision.
“Mordecai,” he said to his coachman, “I—I shot a man, derringered him.”
The negro was unmoved.
“Man 'at fool round you, he's bound to be killed!” he asserted. “Yes,
sir; he just throwed himself right away!”
Alexander Hulings wondered how John Wood-drop's daughter would be
affected. At least, he thought grimly, once more self-possessed, he had
put a stop to her laughter at his expense.
VIII
IN the weeks that followed he devoted himself energetically to the
finishing of the mansion in course of erection above Tubal Cain. It was
an uncompromising, square edifice of brick, with a railed belvedere on
the roof, and a front lawn enclosed by a cast-iron fence. On each side
of the path dividing the sod were wooden Chinese pagodas like those
he had seen at the Mineral Springs; masoned rings for flower beds, and
ferneries, artificially heaped stones, with a fine spray from concealed
pipes. Rearing its solid bulk against the living greenery of the forest,
it was, he told himself pridefully, a considerable dwelling. Within
were high walls and flowery ceilings, Italian marble mantels and tall
mirrors, black carved and gilded furniture, and brilliant hassocks on
thick-piled carpet.
The greater part of the labor was performed by the many skilled workmen
now employed in his furnaces and forges. He was utterly regardless of
cost, obligations; of money itself. Alexander had always been impatient
at the mere material fact of wealth, of the possession and the
accumulation of sheer gold. To him it was nothing more than a lever by
which he moved men and things; it was a ladder that carried him above
the unnoticed and unnotable. He could always get money, at need, from
men or iron; to debts he never gave a thought—when they fell due they
were discharged or carried forward.
His reason for finishing his dwelling with such elaboration was obscure.
Veneada had laughed at him, speaking of small Hulingses, but he harbored
no concrete purpose of marriage; there was even no dominant feminine
figure in his thoughts. Perhaps faintly at times he caught the odor of
a goya lily; but that was probably due to the fact that lilies were
already blooming in the circular conservatory of highly colored glass
attached to his veranda.
The greater part of the house was darkened, shrouded in linen. He would
see, when walking through the hall, mysterious and shadowy vistas,
lengthened endlessly in the long mirrors, of dusky carpet and alabaster
and ormolu, the faint glitter of the prisms hung on the mantel lamps.
Clocks would strike sonorously in the depths of halls, with the ripple
of cathedral chimes. He had a housekeeper, a stout person in oiled
curls, and a number of excessively humble negro servants. Alexander
Hulings got from all this an acute pleasure. It, too, was a mark of his
success.
He had, below, on the public road, a small edifice of one room, which
formed his office, and there he saw the vast number of men always
consulting with him; he never took them above to his house. And when
they dined with him it was at the hotel, newly built by the packet
station on the canal—functions flooded with the prodigal amounts of
champagne Hulings thought necessary to his importance.
Most of his days were spent in his road wagon, in which he traveled
to Pittsburgh, West Virginia, Philadelphia, where he had properties or
interests. In the cities of his associates he also avoided their homes,
and met them in hotels, discussed the terms of business in bars or
public parlors. With women of position he was at once indifferent
and ill at ease, constantly certain that he was not appearing to good
advantage, and suspecting their asides and enigmatic smiles. He was
laboriously, stiffly polite, speaking in complimentary flourishes that
sometimes ended in abrupt constraint. At this, afterward, he would
chafe, and damn the superior airs of women.
He had returned from such an expedition to Wheeling, and was sitting in
his office, when a vehicle pulled up before his door. Deliberate feet
approached, and John Wooddrop entered. The latter, Alexander realized
enviously, was an excessively handsome old man; he had a commanding
height and a square, highly colored countenance, with dose white
sideburns and vigorous silver hair. His manner, too, was assured and
easy. He greeted Alexander Hulings with a keen, open smile.
“Everything is splendid here!” he proclaimed. “I looked in that chafery
down stream, and the metal was worked like satin. Fine weather for the
furnaces—rain's ugly; a furnace is like a young girl.”
Hulings wondered—contained and suspicious—what the other wanted.
Wooddrop, though they passed each other frequently on the road, had
not saluted him since the completion of Glory Furnace. He thought for a
moment that already the older man was feeling the pinch of fuel scarcity
and that he had come to beg for timber. In such a case Alexander Hulings
decided coldly that he would not sell Wooddrop an ell of forest. In
addition to the fact that the complete success of one or the other
depended ultimately on his rival's failure, he maintained a personal
dislike of John Wooddrop; he had never forgotten the humiliation forced
on him long before, in the dining room of the packet, the Hit or Miss;
he could not forgive Wooddrop's preeminence in the iron field. The
latter was a legend of the manufacture of iron.
However, any idea of the other's begging privilege was immediately
banished by John Wood-drop's equable bearing. He said:
“I want to speak to you, Hulings, about a rather delicate matter. In a
way it is connected with my daughter, Gisela. You saw her, I believe, at
the Springs.”
Alexander Hulings somberly inclined his head.
“Of course,” Wooddrop continued, “I heard about the difficulty you had
with that Louisiana bravo. I understand you acted like a man of spirit
and were completely exonerated; in fact, I had some small part in
quashing legal complications. This was done not on your account, but
because of Gisela, who confided to me that she held herself in blame.
Mr. Hulings,” he said gravely, “my feeling for my daughter is not the
usual affection of parent for child. My wife is dead. Gisela—— But I
won't open a personal subject with you. I spoke as I did merely, in a
way, to prepare you for what follows. My daughter felt that she did you
a painful wrong; and I have come, in consequence, to offer you my good
will. I propose that we end our competition and proceed together, for
the good of both. Consolidated, we should inevitably control the iron
situation in our state; you are younger, more vigorous than myself,
and I have a certain prestige. Sir, I offer you the hand of friendly
cooperation.”
Alexander Hulings' gaze narrowed as he studied the man before him.
At first, he had searched for an ulterior motive, need, in Wooddrop's
proposal; but he quickly saw that the proposal had been completely
stated. Illogically he thought of black ringleted hair and glazed
muslin; he heard the echo of water dripping from a stone urn. Lost in
memories, he was silent, for so long that John Wood-drop palpably grew
impatient. He cleared his throat sharply; but Hulings didn't shift a
muscle. Alexander was thinking now of the order he had filled the
first summer at Tubal Cain, of his brutal labor and bitter, deferred
aspirations. His rise, alone, had been at the price of ceaseless
struggle; it was not yet consummated; but it would be—it must, and still
alone. Nothing should rob him of the credit of his accomplishment; no
person coupled with him might reduce or share his triumph. What he said
sounded inexcusably harsh after the other's open manner.
“Only,” he said, “only if the amalgamated industries bear my name—the
Alexander Hulings Ironworks.”
John Wooddrop's face darkened as he comprehended the implied insult to
his dignity and position. He rose, so violently thrusting back the chair
in which he had been sitting, that it fell with a clatter.
“You brass trumpet!” he ejaculated. “You intolerable little bag of
vanity! Will you never see yourself except in a glass of flattery or
intolerable self-satisfaction? It would be impossible to say which you
inspire most, contempt or pity.”
Strangely enough, Hulings didn't resent the language applied to him. He
gazed at Wooddrop without anger. The other's noise, he thought, was but
a symptom of his coming downfall. He was slowly but surely drawing the
rope about the throat of Wooddrop's industries.
“Absolutely the last time,” the other stuttered. “Now you can go to hell
on your own high horse! Blinded by your own fatuousness—don't see
where the country is running. You may impose on others, but I know your
business, sir; and it's as hollow as a tin plate stove. The times will
soon kick it in.”
John Wooddrop stamped away from Hillings in a rage.
IX
THAT evening Alexander Hulings wondered what Gisela had told her father;
he won-ered more vaguely what she had thought of him—what, if at all,
she still thought. He had had a formal room illuminated for his cigar
after dinner; and he sat, a small, precise figure, with dust-colored
hair and a somber, intent countenance, clasping a heavy roll of
expensive tobacco, in a crimson plush chair. The silence, the emptiness
about him was filled with rich color, ponderous maroon draperies, marble
slabs and fretted tulip-wood.
It suddenly struck him that, by himself, he was slightly ridiculous in
such opulence. His house needed a mistress, a creature of elegance to
preside at his table, to exhibit in her silks and jewels another sign
of his importance. Again, as if from the conservatory, he caught a faint
poignant perfume.
Gisela Wooddrop was a person of distinction, self-possessed and
charming. There was a subtle flavor in thus considering her father's
daughter—old Wooddrop's girl—and himself. He rose and walked to a
mirror, critically surveying his countenance; yes, it was well marked by
age, yet it was sharp in outline; his step was springy; he felt none of
the lassitude of increasing years.
He was in his prime. Many young women would prefer him, his house
and name, to the windy pretensions of youthful scapegoats. A diamond
necklace was a convincing form of courtship. There was no absolute plan
in his thoughts that night; but, in the dry romantic absorption of
the days that followed, a fantastic purpose formed and increased—he
determined to marry Gisela Wood-drop.
He had for this, he assured himself, some slight encouragement; it
was patent that her father had entirely misread the girl's intent in
suggesting an end to the hostilities which had made impossible any
social intercourse. She was interested in him; the duel with Sinnox had
captured her imagination. Women responded surprisingly to such things.
Then she had held that it had been partly her fault! Now it seemed to
him that he understood why he had built so elaborately since his return
from the Mineral Springs; unconsciously—all the while—it had been for
his wife, for Gisela.
There were great practical difficulties in the realization of his
desire, even in his opportunity to present his question; to see Gisela
Wooddrop long enough and sufficiently privately to explain all he hoped.
He was, too, far past the age of romantic assignations, episodes; he
could no more decorate a moonlit scene beneath a window. Alexander must
not count on adventitious assistance from emotional setting: his offer
could carry only its grave material solidity. Often he laughed curtly
at what momentarily seemed an absurd fantasy, a madness approaching
senility; then his pride would flood back, reassert the strength of his
determination, the desirability of Alexander Hulings.
X
THE occasion evaded him; the simplicity of his wish, of the bald
relationship between the Wooddrops and Tubal Cain, preventing it more
surely than a multiplication of barriers. He never considered the
possibility of a compromise with John Wooddrop, a retreat from his
position. Alexander thought of Gisela as a possible addition to his
dignity and standing—of the few women he had seen she possessed the
greatest attractions—and he gave no thought of a sacrifice to gain her.
She was to be a piece with the rest of his success—a wife to honor his
mansion, to greet a selected few of his friends, and wear the gold and
jewels purchased by the Hulings iron.
He made no overt attempt to see her, but waited for opportunity.
Meantime he had commenced to think of her in terms of passionless
intimacy. Alexander Hulings was a solitary man; except for his
industrial activity his mind was empty; and Gisela Wooddrop quickly
usurped the hours after dinner, the long drives through massed and
unscarred forests. He recalled her minutely—every expression that he
had seen, every variation of dress. Wooddrop's daughter was handsomely
provided for; but Alexander Hulings' wife would be a revelation in
luxury. In New York he bought a pair of India cashmere shawls, paying a
thousand dollars for them, and placed them on a chair, ready.
The weeks multiplied; and he got such pleasure from the mere thought
of Gisela sweeping through his rooms, accompanying him to Philadelphia,
shining beside him at the opera, that he became almost reluctant to
force the issue of her choice. He was more than customarily careful with
his clothes; his silk hats were immaculate; his trousers ranged in color
from the most delicate sulphur to astounding London checks; he had his
yellow boots polished with champagne, his handkerchiefs scented with
essence of nolette and almond. For all this, his countenance was none
the less severe, his aptitude for labor untouched; he followed every
detail of iron manufacture, every improved process, every shift in the
market.
The valley about Tubal Cain now resembled a small, widely scattered
town; the dwellings of Hulings' workmen extended to the property line of
the Blue Lump Furnace; roads were cut, bridges thrown across the stream.
The flutter of wings, the pouring birdsong and vale of green, that
Alexander had found had given place to a continuous, shattering uproar
day and night; the charging of furnaces, the dull thunder of the heavy
wagons of blooms, the jangle of shingling sledges and monotonous fall
of trip hammers, mingled and rose in a stridulous volume to the sky,
accompanied by chemical vapors, uprushing cinders and the sooty smoke of
the forges. A company store had been built and stocked, and grimy troops
of laborers were perpetually gathered, off shift, by its face.
Harmony itself, the station on the canal, had expanded; the new hotel,
an edifice of brick with a steep slate roof and iron grilling, faced a
rival saloon and various emporia of merchandise. An additional basin had
been cut in the bank for the loading of Alexander Hulings' iron on to
the canal boats.
He had driven to the canal—it was early summer—to see about a congestion
of movement; and, hot, he stopped in the hotel for a pint of wine in a
high glass with cracked ice. The lower floor was cut in half by a hall
and stairs; on the right the bar opened on the narrow porch, while at
the left a ladies' entrance gave way to the inevitable dark, already
musty parlor. The bar was crowded, and, intolerant of the least
curtailment of his dignity or comfort, he secured his glass and moved
across the hall to the stillness of the parlor.
A woman was standing, blurred in outline, at one of the narrow windows.
She turned as he entered; he bowed, prepared to withdraw, when he saw
that it was Gisela Wooddrop. She wore white muslin, sprigged in orange
chenille, with green ribbons, and carried a green parasol. Alexander
stood motionless in the doorway, his champagne in one hand and a glossy
stovepipe hat in the other. He was aware of a slight inward confusion,
but outwardly he was unmoved, exact. Gisela, too, maintained the turn of
her flexible body, her hands on the top of the parasol. Under her bonnet
her face was pale, her eyes noticeably bright. Alexander Hulings said:
“Good afternoon!”
He moved into the room. Gisela said nothing; she was like a graceful
painted figure on a shadowy background. A complete ease possessed
Alexander.
“Miss Wooddrop,” he continued, in the vein of a simple statement. She
nodded automatically. “This is a happy meeting—for me. I can now express
my gratitude for your concern about a certain unfortunate occurrence at
the Mineral Springs. At the same time, I regret that you were caused the
slightest uneasiness.”
She shuddered delicately.
“Nothing more need be said about that,” she told him. “I explained to
my father; but I was sorry afterward that I did it, and—and put him to
fresh humiliation.”
“There,” he gravely replied, “little enough can be discussed. It has to
do with things that you would have limited patience with, strictly an
affair of business. I was referring to your susceptibility of heart, a
charming female quality.”
He bowed stiffly. Gisela came nearer to him, a sudden emotion trembling
on her features.
“Why don't you end it?” she cried, low and distressed. “It has gone on
a long while now—the bitterness between you; I am certain in his heart
father is weary of it, and you are younger——”
She broke off before the tightening of his lips. “Not a topic to be
developed here,” he insisted. He had no intention, Alexander Hulings
thought, of being bent about even so charming a finger. And it was well
to establish at once the manner in which any future they might share
should be conducted. He wanted a wife, not an intrigante nor Amazon.
Her feeling, color, rapidly evaporated, and left her pallid, confused,
before his calm demeanor. She turned her head away, her face lost in
the bonnet, but slowly her gaze returned to meet his keen inquiry. His
impulse was to ask her, then, at once, to marry him; but he restrained
that headlong course, feeling that it would startle her into flight. As
it was, she moved slowly toward the door.
“I am to meet a friend on the Western packet,” she explained; “I thought
I heard the horn.”
“It was only freight,” he replied. “I should be sorry to lose this short
opportunity to pay you my respects; to tell you that you have been a
lot in my thoughts lately. I envy the men who see you casually, whenever
they choose.”
She gazed at him with palpable surprise gathering in her widely opened
eyes. “But,” she said breathlessly, “everybody knows that you never
address a polite syllable to a woman. It is more speculated on than any
of your other traits.”
He expanded at this indication of a widespread discussion of his
qualities.
“I have had no time for merely polite speeches,” he responded. “And I
assure you that I am not only complimentary now; I mean that I am not
saluting you with vapid elegance. I am awaiting only a more fitting
occasion to speak further.”
She circled him slowly, with a minute whispering of crinoline, her
gaze never leaving his face. Her muslin, below her white, bare throat,
circled by a black velvet band, was heaving. The parasol fell with a
clatter. He stooped immediately; but she was before him and snatched it
up, with crimson cheeks.
“They say that you are the most hateful man alive!” she half breathed.
“Who are 'they'.” he demanded contemptuously. “Men I have beaten and
women I failed to see. That hatred grows with success, with power; it is
never wasted on the weak. My competitors would like to see me fall into
a furnace stack—the men I have climbed over, and my debtors. They are
combining every month to push me to the wall, a dozen of them together,
yelping like a pack of dogs. But they haven't succeeded; they never
will!” His words were like the chips from an iron bloom. “They never
will,” he repeated harshly, “and I have only begun. I want you to see my
house sometime. I planned a great part of it with you in mind. No money
was spared.... I should be happy to have you like it. I think of it as
yours.”
All the time he was speaking she was stealing by imperceptible degrees
toward the door; but at his last, surprising sentence she stood
transfixed with mingled wonder and fear. She felt behind her for the
open doorway and rested one hand against the woodwork. A ribald clatter
sounded from the bar, and without rose the faint, clear note of an
approaching packet. Her lips formed for speech, but only a slight gasp
was audible; then her spreading skirts billowed through the opening, and
she was gone.
Alexander Hulings found that he was still holding his silk hat; he
placed it carefully on the table and took a deep drink from the iced
glass. He was conscious of a greater feeling of triumph than he had ever
known before. He realized that he had hardly needed to add the spoken
word to the impression his being had made on Gisela Wood-drop. He had
already invaded her imagination; the legend of his struggle and
growth had taken possession of her. There remained now only a formal
declaration, the outcome of which he felt almost certain would be in his
favor.
Again in his house, he inspected the silk hangings of the particularly
feminine chambers. He trod the thick carpets with a keen anticipation
of her exclamations of pleasure, her surprise at convenient trifle after
trifle. In the stable he surveyed a blooded mare she might take a fancy
to; he must buy a light carriage, with a fringed canopy—yes, and put a
driver into livery. Women liked such things.
At dinner he speculated on the feminine palate; he liked lean mountain
venison, and a sherry that left almost a sensation of dust on the
tongue; but women preferred sparkling hock and pastry, fruit preserved
in white brandy, and pagodas of barley sugar.
Through the open windows came the subdued clatter of his forges; the
hooded candles on the table flickered slightly in a warm eddy, while
corresponding shadows stirred on the heavy napery, the Sheffield,
and delicate creamy Belleek of his dinner service—the emblem of his
certitude and pride.
XI
IN October Alexander Hulings took Gisela Wooddrop to the home that had
been so largely planned for her enjoyment. They had been married in a
private parlor of the United States Hotel, in Philadelphia; and after
a small supper had gone to the Opera House to see “Love in a Village,”
followed by a musical pasticcio. Gisela's mother had died the winter
before, and she was attended by an elderly distant cousin; no one else
was present at the wedding ceremony except a friend of Gisela's—a girl
who wept copiously—and Doctor Veneada. The latter's skin hung in loose
folds, like a sack partially emptied of its contents; his customary
spirit had evaporated too; and he sat through the wedding supper neither
eating nor speaking, save for the forced proposal of the bride's health.
Gisela Wooddrop and Alexander Hulings, meeting on a number of carefully
planned, apparently accidental occasions, had decided to be married
while John Wooddrop was confined to his room by severe gout. In this
manner they avoided the unpleasant certainty of his refusal to attend
his daughter's, and only child's, wedding. Gisela had not told Alexander
Hulings what the aging Ironmaster had said when necessarily informed of
her purpose. No message had come to Alexander from John Wooddrop; since
the ceremony the Hulingses had had no sign of the other's existence.
Alexander surveyed his wife with huge satisfaction as they sat for the
first time at supper in their house. She wore white, with the diamonds
he had given her about her firm young throat, black-enamel bracelets on
her wrists, and her hair in a gilt net. She sighed with deep pleasure.