Sanford located Allen's apartment from the address Gorham had given him.
He stood before the entrance for several moments, regarding its
pretentious appearance and the aristocratic neighborhood.
"Gorham must have made a mistake," he muttered; "this can't be the
place."
But the handsome Gothic figures over the doorway corresponded with those
written upon the slip of paper, so he approached the elevator boy,
resplendent in his brass buttons.
"Does Mr. Allen Sanford live here?" he demanded.
"Yes, sir; eighth floor. What name shall I say, sir?"
"You needn't say any name,--I'll say it myself. I'm his father. Rents
must be cheaper than they used to be," he remarked to himself in the
elevator. "I guess the boy hasn't suffered much."
Allen had just risen from the window-seat after the painful revelry he
had indulged in since Patricia and Riley left him. The ringing of the
bell annoyed him. He was in no mood to see any one, and he resented the
intrusion. Then he threw the door open and saw his father standing
there. For a long moment he stood speechless with amazement, when his
face broke into a smile of welcome which touched the old man's heart.
"The pater!" he cried, and in another moment he had him grasped in his
arms with a grip which almost crushed him.
"What do you mean, you young reprobate," Sanford gasped, struggling to
escape. "I'm not a football dummy. Let me get my breath."
Allen dragged him into the room, unwilling to release him.
"The dear old pater," he cried again, depositing him in the great Morris
chair, and drawing back to regard him joyfully. "You've come just in
time. There are my trunks packed all ready to go to you. You said I'd
come back, and you were right. Oh, pater, I've made an awful mess of
things. You knew that I was no good, but I've had to find it out for
myself."
"Nothing of the sort," blubbered the old man, striving earnestly to
conceal the emotion which almost overcame him as a result of the boy's
welcome. "Any one who says you're no good will have to settle with me.
You're my son, that's what you are, and no Sanford was ever a failure
yet."
"Then you must keep me from being the first."
"Nothing of the sort;--why do you try to make me lose my temper? Gorham
says--"
"You've seen Mr. Gorham?" Allen interrupted, his heart leaping at the
sound of the name. "What did he say?"
"Never mind what he said," Sanford replied, remembering the injunction
laid upon him. Then he looked about him. "Gorham must have paid you a
good deal more than you were worth," he remarked significantly.
"He did," admitted Allen, and then divining what was in his father's
mind; "but not enough for this."
"You've run in debt, have you?" Allen noticed that the question did not
contain the usual sting. The old man would have rejoiced at this
opportunity to express his sympathy in the only way he knew how.
"Not yet. I sold my motor and some other things."
"Had to live like a gentleman, whatever your salary, didn't you?"
"I ought not to have done it," the boy admitted.
"Nothing of the sort," Sanford sputtered, again resorting to his
favorite phrase. "My son has to live like a gentleman,--that's what I
educated him for. Now help me off with my coat, and tell me all the damn
fool things you've been doing."
Their conference lasted well into the afternoon,--an afternoon filled
with surprises for them both. For the first time Allen found his father
an interested, sympathetic listener; for the first time Stephen Sanford
came to know his son. The boy made no effort to spare himself, though
eager for his father to realize that he had been earnest and
industrious, albeit the net results of this had been but failure. Mr.
Gorham had done so much for him, and he had tried to assimilate the
lessons both from his deeds and from his words; but instead he had seen
chimeras breathing fire at every turn, and had charged them quixote-like
to find them but windmills, harmful only to himself. He enlarged upon
the personal characteristics of the directors and the other business men
with whom he came in contact,--many of them well known to his
listener,--and Sanford marvelled at the accuracy of the boy's insight,
and the integrity of the portraits. Gorham was right,--Allen had
developed, and far beyond what he himself realized. He was now a man to
be reckoned with rather than a boy to be disciplined.
The old man's keen business sense also for the first time grasped the
tremendous scope of Gorham's gigantic project. There was no room left to
doubt the strength of the appeal of the absolute honesty of purpose
after listening to Allen's unconsciously irresistible testimony. In
words made pregnant by the simplicity of their utterance, he described
Gorham the man and Gorham the Colossus of the business world; he
pictured the waves of avarice and intrigue and discontent which he
thought he saw beating against the feet of this towering figure,
unheeded and unrecognized because so far beneath it; he told of his own
puny efforts to warn this giant of the storm which he thought he saw
approaching, but in doing this he had betrayed his own ignorance, and
had prepared the pit into which he himself had fallen.
"And the worst of it all is," Allen concluded, "that I can't see even
now where I was wrong; but if Mr. Gorham told me that Napoleon Bonaparte
discovered America I would know that, all previous statements to the
contrary, he was right."
"H'm!" ejaculated Sanford, eager to break over the injunction Gorham had
placed upon him. "I don't believe there's anything in what you've said
yet that you can't live down. Now I suppose if Gorham had told you that
we'd had our lunch, the fact that your father was starving to death
wouldn't be accepted as evidence worthy of consideration."
Allen laughed as he pulled out his watch, his mind easier and his heart
lighter than it had been for months.
"I had forgotten all about that, and it's after four o'clock. Come on
out with me, and I'll give you a revised version of the 'fatted calf'
story."
"You think it is the return of the prodigal father, do you?"
"I hope we are both prodigals, you dear old pater," Allen replied,
seriously; "I hope we both need each other so much that we never can
exist alone again."
"All right; but we'd better go easy with the calf, for I've accepted a
dinner invitation for us both to-night."
"You have?" Allen asked, disappointed that their visit was to be
interrupted. "Where?"
"At Gorham's."
"I couldn't go there again, pater," he protested quickly. "He's just
asking me because he wants you."
"No; he wants to talk with you, especially."
"With me?" Allen's face sobered. "He thinks he was harsh the other
night. I would rather not open up the whole subject again. There are
special reasons. Please go without me."
"You don't want to do anything which will make him think worse of you
than he does now, do you?"
"No," was the frank reply, into which a genuine note of sorrow entered.
"Then we'll dine with him, as he asks us to. Now lead on to that calf,
but make it a little one."
* * * * *
Allen found himself the only one at the dinner-table who seemed to be
laboring under any restraint. Eleanor and Alice were in better spirits
than he had seen them for months, Gorham was an ideal host, conversing
with Sanford and with Allen upon lighter topics in a way which seemed to
show entire forgetfulness of what had gone before. It seemed almost
heartless to the boy to find these friends, so dear to him, able to
conduct themselves in so matter-of-fact a manner while he was in the
grip of his own life tragedy. But he could not blame them. He had
assumed much which they had never granted. This last dinner together,
made possible by his father's presence in New York, was intended as a
lesson to him, and as Mr. Gorham had planned it, then it must be for his
good. He would play his part, and, concealing the pain it cost him, he
entered into the conversation with an abandon which surprised them all.
It was not until they had gathered in the library, whither Gorham had
especially invited them after the dinner was over, that the atmosphere
changed. Allen saw the expression on Gorham's face deepen into that
serious aspect which always signified matters of important moment.
"I find myself face to face with certain duties and responsibilities,"
Gorham began, "which appall me with their far-reaching significance, and
I have asked you, who are the nearest and dearest to me, to be witnesses
of my faithful performance of them, to the extent of my understanding."
Gorham paused, and seemed to deliberate before making his next
statement, unconscious of the tenseness of the silence which his words
had produced.
"First of all, it is my immediate intention to take such steps as are
necessary to bring about the disintegration of the Consolidated
Companies."
"But you can't do it," Sanford declared. "The corporation is solvent,
the directors and the stockholders will of course be against it, and you
will be powerless." "I have considered all that," Gorham replied,
quietly.
"What you say might be true six months from now, if the Executive
Committee succeed in wrenching my control from me; but to-day I have the
strength. The stockholders have invested because of their faith in me;
because of this same faith they will accept my statement that the
Companies' future is imperilled,--and the Government itself will help
me to accomplish my purpose."
"You are convinced, then, that the principles you built on are wrong?"
asked Sanford, unable to keep from showing some satisfaction in his
voice.
"No," Gorham replied, firmly. "The principles are right,--the wrong lies
in that human instinct which finds itself incapable of living up to its
best standard. I believed that my success had been due to a recognition
of my principle, when in reality it came from the simplest possible
expression of self-interest. If we go on, the Companies' continued
success means a growth beyond my control,--recent events show that it
has almost reached that point already,--and when once in the hands of
others, it can be nothing but a menace to the people.
"And now for the most humiliating confession of all: I myself have been
guilty of an exercise of my own self-interest as flagrant as any of my
associates, though in a different way. Their lust has been for gold,
while mine has been for a justification of an idea. My self-interest has
been less malignant in its possible effects, but it has been my
controlling influence none the less. With due humility, I confess that I
have attempted to assume a role which belongs to Providence, and that no
man has a right to do. I have been guilty of violating certain laws of
life, just as my associates have violated other laws which to me demand
observance; but I have recognized the tendency of things to gravitate
back to their natural positions before it is too late for me not to make
certain that they do so. In order to prevent this corporation from
becoming a great power for evil, and as a final evidence of the strength
which I still possess, I propose to force its dissolution."
"You have a big contract on your hands, Gorham," Sanford replied; "I
don't believe even you can do it."
"On Tuesday next," Gorham continued, "the Senate Committee will consider
a bill which is in reality an amendment to the Sherman Act, and is
intended to give the Government the power to discriminate between good
and bad trusts. The Consolidated Companies is to be cited as a case in
point, and they are depending upon me to advance the principal arguments
for the passage of the bill. All the other big interests are naturally
against it, and they are forcing the issue, hoping to compel the
Government to act against the Consolidated Companies, and thus call down
the wrath of the people upon trust legislation as a whole. If the masses
find that the one agency which has reduced their cost of living is
prevented from continuing its co-operative work, they will effectually
put a stop to further interference, and the other interests will be the
gainers."
"A clever game," Sanford exclaimed.
"But now I am convinced there are no 'good' trusts, as I have been
pleased to call them. Those combinations, like the Consolidated
Companies, which are really a benefit to the people to-day, may, as
again in the case of the Consolidated Companies, become their greatest
enemy to-morrow. I am prepared to say that all this talk--much of which
I have made myself--to the effect that combination effects economies of
which the public receives the benefit, is true only for a time. Just so
soon as the combinations become monopolies, amounts saved by the
economies simply go to swell the profits for the stockholders.
Competition must not be eliminated--it is the vital spark which keeps
alive the welfare of the country."
"You are going to say all this before the Senate Committee?"
"Yes, and more. I am going to use the Consolidated Companies as an
example, and urge immediate active enforcement of the Sherman Act
against all consolidations which aim at monopolies or the restraint of
trade. The Attorney-General said that this would mean an industrial
reign of terror. So be it. Even that is better than this gradual
strangling of the people's rights, which is now being carried on with
legislative approval. I shall at least have the satisfaction of
performing this one act in the interests of the people, even though I
must forego the continued administration of a corporation honestly
devoted to their welfare. This statement from me, and the position I
take regarding my own corporation, will go far toward defeating those
other malign interests which hope to gain by their attack upon me."
Allen's face had been a study while Mr. Gorham was speaking, and Alice
had particularly noted the varying emotions it expressed. She saw there
first the astonished incredulity at her father's determination to
dissolve the Companies; then the wonder as he heard Gorham state
conclusions which coincided with those he had arrived at earlier; and
finally the radiant joy as the realization came, not fully but in part,
that his own understanding of the situation had not been all at fault.
It needed only the words which Gorham added to make the world look
bright again. But it was to his father rather than to Allen that Gorham
addressed himself.
"And now, Stephen, as to this boy. You and I have done our best to make
him think the world is wrong side up; but I am more to blame because I
had the better opportunity to study his development, beneath my own
eyes. I taught him that imagination was an essential ingredient of a
successful business man, to enable him to grasp each situation as a
whole, and to conceive its dangers and its possibilities. Yet, when he
exercised that very quality, and came to me frankly with the results of
his efforts, I refused to recognize my own handiwork. I taught him my
altruistic creed, and then blamed him when he used it as his standard,
and was unhappy that those around him failed to measure up to it. Never
has a man been more blind than I. Never has a man settled back, so
self-satisfied, with so determined a conviction that because he willed
things to be so, then they were so. I have merged the white thread of my
new creed with the black one of the old business morals I first learned;
his pattern has been wholly woven from the white.
"My boy," he added, turning to Allen, "for the first time in my life I
ask a man's forgiveness. In the face of the greatest discouragements,
you have shown yourself true, and I congratulate you and your father
upon the future which you have before you. I want you to stay with me
until the Consolidated Companies has been placed in a position of safety
to itself and to its stockholders, then you may choose your own
career."
"No Sanford ever made a failure yet," Stephen proudly repeated.
"But, Mr. Gorham--" Allen began, surprised into confusion by the
unstinted praise; but Alice interrupted him.
"So this is my business creation!" she exclaimed, with satisfaction.
Allen looked first at her and then at Mr. Gorham. Then he smiled
consciously.
"While you are about it, Mr. Gorham," he said, impulsively, "I wish you
would disintegrate Alice and Mr. Covington."
A momentary shadow passed over the faces of all who knew what had
occurred.
"That dissolution took place last night," Mr. Gorham replied, quietly.
Alice's cheeks were flaming, but her smile was irresistible as she
spoke.
"I'll tell you all about it, Allen, if you'll come into the
conservatory."