It had remained for Nancy to inform me that I had married a woman with a

mind of her own. I had flattered myself that I should be able to control

Maude, to govern her predilections, and now at the very beginning of

our married life she was showing a disquieting tendency to choose for

herself. To be sure, she had found my intimacy with the Peterses and

Blackwoods already formed; but it was an intimacy from which I was

growing away. I should not have quarrelled with her if she had not

discriminated: Nancy made overtures, and Maude drew back;

Susan presented herself, and with annoying perversity and in an

extraordinarily brief time Maude had become her intimate. It seemed

to me that she was always at Susan's, lunching or playing with the

children, who grew devoted to her; or with Susan, choosing carpets and

clothes; while more and more frequently we dined with the Peterses and

the Blackwoods, or they with us. With Perry's wife Maude was scarcely

less intimate than with Susan. This was the more surprising to me since

Lucia Blackwood was a dyed-in-the-wool “intellectual,” a graduate of

Radcliffe, the daughter of a Harvard professor. Perry had fallen in

love with her during her visit to Susan. Lucia was, perhaps, the most

influential of the group; she scorned the world, she held strong views

on the higher education of women; she had long discarded orthodoxy

for what may be called a Cambridge stoicism of simple living and high

thinking; while Maude was a strict Presbyterian, and not in the least

given to theories. When, some months after our homecoming, I ventured

to warn her gently of the dangers of confining one's self to a

coterie--especially one of such narrow views--her answer was rather

bewildering.

“But isn't Tom your best friend?” she asked.

I admitted that he was.

“And you always went there such a lot before we were married.”

This, too, was undeniable. “At the same time,” I replied, “I have other

friends. I'm fond of the Blackwoods and the Peterses, I'm not advocating

seeing less of them, but their point of view, if taken without any

antidote, is rather narrowing. We ought to see all kinds,” I suggested,

with a fine restraint.

“You mean--more worldly people,” she said with her disconcerting

directness.

“Not necessarily worldly,” I struggled on. “People who know more of the

world--yes, who understand it better.”

Maude sighed.

“I do try, Hugh,--I return their calls,--I do try to be nice to them.

But somehow I don't seem to get along with them easily--I'm not myself,

they make me shy. It's because I'm provincial.”

“Nonsense!” I protested, “you're not a bit provincial.” And it was true;

her dignity and self-possession redeemed her.

Nancy was not once mentioned. But I think she was in both our minds....

Since my marriage, too, I had begun to resent a little the attitude of

Tom and Susan and the Blackwoods of humorous yet affectionate tolerance

toward my professional activities and financial creed, though Maude

showed no disposition to take this seriously. I did suspect, however,

that they were more and more determined to rescue Maude from what they

would have termed a frivolous career; and on one of these occasions--so

exasperating in married life when a slight cause for pique tempts

husband or wife to try to ask myself whether this affair were only

a squall, something to be looked for once in a while on the seas of

matrimony, and weathered: or whether Maude had not, after all, been

right when she declared that I had made a mistake, and that we were

not fitted for one another? In this gloomy view endless years of

incompatibility stretched ahead; and for the first time I began

to rehearse with a certain cold detachment the chain of apparently

accidental events which had led up to my marriage: to consider the

gradual blindness that had come over my faculties; and finally to wonder

whether judgment ever entered into sexual selection. Would Maude have

relapsed into this senseless fit if she had realized how fortunate she

was? For I was prepared to give her what thousands of women longed for,

position and influence. My resentment rose again against Perry and Tom,

and I began to attribute their lack of appreciation of my achievements

to jealousy. They had not my ability; this was the long and short of

it.... I pondered also, regretfully, on my bachelor days. And for the

first time, I, who had worked so hard to achieve freedom, felt

the pressure of the yoke I had fitted over my own shoulders. I had

voluntarily, though unwittingly, returned to slavery. This was what

had happened. And what was to be done about it? I would not consider

divorce.

Well, I should have to make the best of it. Whether this conclusion

brought on a mood of reaction, I am unable to say. I was still

annoyed by what seemed to the masculine mind a senseless and dramatic

performance on Maude's part, an incomprehensible case of “nerves.”

Nevertheless, there stole into my mind many recollections of Maude's

affection, many passages between us; and my eye chanced to fall on

the ink-well she had bought me out of the allowance I gave her. An

unanticipated pity welled up within me for her loneliness, her despair

in that room upstairs. I got up--and hesitated. A counteracting,

inhibiting wave passed through me. I hardened. I began to walk up and

down, a prey to conflicting impulses. Something whispered, “go to

her”; another voice added, “for your own peace of mind, at any rate.” I

rejected the intrusion of this motive as unworthy, turned out the light

and groped my way upstairs. The big clock in the hall struck twelve.

I listened outside the door of the bedroom, but all was silent within. I

knocked.

“Maude!” I said, in a low voice.

There was no response.

“Maude--let me in! I didn't mean to be unkind--I'm sorry.”

After an interval I heard her say: “I'd rather stay here,--to-night.”

But at length, after more entreaty and self-abasement on my part,

she opened the door. The room was dark. We sat down together on the

window-seat, and all at once she relaxed and her head fell on my

shoulder, and she began weeping again. I held her, the alternating moods

still running through me.

“Hugh,” she said at length, “how could you be so cruel? when you know I

love you and would do anything for you.”

“I didn't mean to be cruel, Maude,” I answered.

“I know you didn't. But at times you seem so--indifferent, and you can't

understand how it hurts. I haven't anybody but you, now, and it's in

your power to make me happy or--or miserable.”

Later on I tried to explain my point of view, to justify myself.

“All I mean,” I concluded at length, “is that my position is a little

different from Perry's and Tom's. They can afford to isolate themselves,

but I'm thrown professionally with the men who are building up this

city. Some of them, like Ralph Hambleton and Mr. Ogilvy, I've known all

my life. Life isn't so simple for us, Maude--we can't ignore the social

side.”

“I understand,” she said contentedly. “You are more of a man

of affairs--much more than Tom or Perry, and you have greater

responsibilities and wider interests. I'm really very proud of you.

Only--don't you think you are a little too sensitive about yourself,

when you are teased?”

I let this pass....

I give a paragraph from a possible biography of Hugh Paret which, as

then seemed not improbable, might in the future have been written by

some aspiring young worshipper of success.

“On his return from a brief but delightful honeymoon in England Mr.

Paret took up again, with characteristic vigour, the practice of

the law. He was entering upon the prime years of manhood; golden

opportunities confronted him as, indeed, they confronted other men--but

Paret had the foresight to take advantage of them. And his training

under Theodore Watling was now to produce results.... The reputations

had already been made of some of that remarkable group of financial

geniuses who were chiefly instrumental in bringing about the industrial

evolution begun after the Civil War: at the same time, as is well

known, a political leadership developed that gave proof of a deplorable

blindness to the logical necessity of combinations in business. The

lawyer with initiative and brains became an indispensable factor,” etc.,

etc.

The biography might have gone on to relate my association with and

important services to Adolf Scherer in connection with his constructive

dream. Shortly after my return from abroad, in answer to his summons, I

found him at Heinrich's, his napkin tucked into his shirt front, and a

dish of his favourite sausages before him.

“So, the honeymoon is over!” he said, and pressed my hand. “You are

right to come back to business, and after awhile you can have another

honeymoon, eh? I have had many since I married. And how long do you

think was my first? A day! I was a foreman then, and the wedding was at

six o'clock in the morning. We went into the country, the wife and I.”

He laid down his knife and fork, possessed by the memory. “I have grown

rich since, and we've been to Europe and back to Germany, and travelled

on the best ships and stayed at the best hotels, but I never enjoyed

a holiday more than that day. It wasn't long afterwards I went to Mr.

Durrett and told him how he could save much money. He was always ready

to listen, Mr. Durrett, when an employee had anything to say. He was a

big man,--an iron-master. Ah, he would be astonished if only he could

wake up now!”

“He would not only have to be an iron-master,” I agreed, “but a

financier and a railroad man to boot.”

“A jack of all trades,” laughed Mr. Scherer. “That's what we are--men

in my position. Well, it was comparatively simple then, when we had no

Sherman law and crazy statutes, such as some of the states are passing,

to bother us. What has got into the politicians, that they are indulging

in such foolishness?” he exclaimed, more warmly. “We try to build up a

trade for this country, and they're doing their best to tie our hands

and tear it down. When I was in Washington the other day I was talking

with one of those Western senators whose state has passed those laws.

He said to me, 'Mr. Scherer, I've been making a study of the Boyne Iron

Works. You are clever men, but you are building up monopolies which we

propose to stop.' 'By what means?'” I asked. “'Rebates, for one,'

said he, 'you get preferential rates from your railroad which give you

advantages over your competitors.' Foolishness!” Mr. Scherer exclaimed.

“I tell him the railroad is a private concern, built up by private

enterprise, and it has a right to make special rates for large shippers.

No,--railroads are public carriers with no right to make special rates.

I ask him what else he objects to, and he says patented processes. As if

we don't have a right to our own patents! We buy them. I buy them, when

other steel companies won't touch 'em. What is that but enterprise, and

business foresight, and taking risks? And then he begins to talk about

the tariff taking money out of the pockets of American consumers and

making men like me rich. I have come to Washington to get the tariff

raised on steel rails; and Watling and other senators we send down there

are raising it for us. We are building up monopolies! Well, suppose we

are. We can't help it, even if we want to. Has he ever made a study

of the other side of the question--the competition side? Of course he

hasn't.”

He brought down his beer mug heavily on the table. In times of

excitement his speech suggested the German idiom. Abruptly his air grew

mysterious; he glanced around the room, now becoming empty, and lowered

his voice.

“I have been thinking a long time, I have a little scheme,” he said,

“and I have been to Washington to see Watling, to talk over it. Well, he

thinks much of you. Fowndes and Ripon are good lawyers, but they are not

smart like you. See Paret, he says, and he can come down and talk to me.

So I ask you to come here. That is why I say you are wise to get home.

Honeymoons can wait--eh?”

I smiled appreciatively.

“They talk about monopoly, those Populist senators, but I ask you what

is a man in my place to do? If you don't eat, somebody eats you--is it

not so? Like the boa-constrictors--that is modern business. Look at

the Keystone Plate people, over there at Morris. For years we sold them

steel billets from which to make their plates, and three months ago

they serve notice on us that they are getting ready to make their own

billets, they buy mines north of the lakes and are building their plant.

Here is a big customer gone. Next year, maybe, the Empire Tube Company

goes into the business of making crude steel, and many more thousands of

tons go from us. What is left for us, Paret?”

“Obviously you've got to go into the tube and plate business

yourselves,” I said.

“So!” cried Mr. Scherer, triumphantly, “or it is close up. We are not

fools, no, we will not lie down and be eaten like lambs for any law.

Dickinson can put his hand on the capital, and I--I have already bought

a tract on the lakes, at Bolivar, I have already got a plant designed

with the latest modern machinery. I can put the ore right there, I can

send the coke back from here in cars which would otherwise be empty, and

manufacture tubes at eight dollars a ton less than they are selling. If

we can make tubes we can make plates, and if we can make plates we can

make boilers, and beams and girders and bridges.... It is not like it

was but where is it all leading, my friend? The time will come--is right

on us now, in respect to many products--when the market will be flooded

with tubes and plates and girders, and then we'll have to find a way to

limit production. And the inefficient mills will all be forced to shut

down.”

The logic seemed unanswerable, even had I cared to answer it.... He

unfolded his campaign. The Boyne Iron Works was to become the Boyne Iron

Works, Ltd., owner of various subsidiary companies, some of which were

as yet blissfully ignorant of their fate. All had been thought out as

calmly as the partition of Poland--only, lawyers were required; and

ultimately, after the process of acquisition should have been completed,

a delicate document was to be drawn up which would pass through the

meshes of that annoying statutory net, the Sherman Anti-trust Law. New

mines were to be purchased, extending over a certain large area; wide

coal deposits; little strips of railroad to tap them. The competition of

the Keystone Plate people was to be met by acquiring and bringing up

to date the plate mills of King and Son, over the borders of a sister

state; the Somersworth Bridge and Construction Company and the Gring

Steel and Wire Company were to be absorbed. When all of this should

have been accomplished, there would be scarcely a process in the steel

industry, from the smelting of the ore to the completion of a bridge,

which the Boyne Iron Works could not undertake. Such was the beginning

of the “lateral extension” period.

“Two can play at that game,” Mr. Scherer said. “And if those fellows

could only be content to let well enough alone, to continue buying their

crude steel from us, there wouldn't be any trouble.”...

It was evident, however, that he really welcomed the “trouble,” that

he was going into battle with enthusiasm. He had already picked out his

points of attack and was marching on them. Life, for him, would have

been a poor thing without new conflicts to absorb his energy; and he had

already made of the Boyne Iron Works, with its open-hearth furnaces, a

marvel of modern efficiency that had opened the eyes of the Steel world,

and had drawn the attention of a Personality in New York,--a Personality

who was one of the new and dominant type that had developed with such

amazing rapidity, the banker-dinosaur; preying upon and superseding the

industrial-dinosaur, conquering type of the preceding age, builder

of the railroads, mills and manufactories. The banker-dinosaurs, the

gigantic ones, were in Wall Street, and strove among themselves for

the industrial spoils accumulated by their predecessors. It was

characteristic of these monsters that they never fought in the open

unless they were forced to. Then the earth rocked, huge economic

structures tottered and fell, and much dust arose to obscure the

vision of smaller creatures, who were bewildered and terrified. Such

disturbances were called “panics,” and were blamed by the newspapers

on the Democratic party, or on the reformers who had wantonly assailed

established institutions. These dominant bankers had contrived to gain

control of the savings of thousands and thousands of fellow-citizens who

had deposited them in banks or paid them into insurance companies, and

with the power thus accumulated had sallied forth to capture railroads

and industries. The railroads were the strategic links. With these in

hand, certain favoured industrial concerns could be fed, and others

starved into submission.

Adolf Scherer might be said to represent a transitional type. For he was

not only an iron-master who knew every detail of his business, who kept

it ahead of the times; he was also a strategist, wise in his generation,

making friends with the Railroad while there had yet been time, at

length securing rebates and favours. And when that Railroad (which

had been constructed through the enterprise and courage of such men

as Nathaniel Durrett) had passed under the control of the

banker-personality to whom I have referred, and had become part of a

system, Adolf Scherer remained in alliance, and continued to receive

favours.... I can well remember the time when the ultimate authority

of our Railroad was transferred, quietly, to Wall Street. Alexander

Barbour, its president, had been a great man, but after that he bowed,

in certain matters, to a greater one.

I have digressed.... Mr. Scherer unfolded his scheme, talking about

“units” as calmly as though they were checkers on a board instead of

huge, fiery, reverberating mills where thousands and thousands of human

beings toiled day and night--beings with families, and hopes and fears,

whose destinies were to be dominated by the will of the man who sat

opposite me. But--did not he in his own person represent the triumph of

that American creed of opportunity? He, too, had been through the fire,

had sweated beside the blasts, had handled the ingots of steel. He was

one of the “fittest” who had survived, and looked it. Had he no memories

of the terrors of that struggle?... Adolf Scherer had grown to be a

giant. And yet without me, without my profession he was a helpless

giant, at the mercy of those alert and vindictive lawmakers who sought

to restrain and hamper him, to check his growth with their webs. How

stimulating the idea of his dependence! How exhilarating too,

the thought that that vision which had first possessed me as an

undergraduate--on my visit to Jerry Kyme--was at last to be realized!

I had now become the indispensable associate of the few who divided the

spoils, I was to have a share in these myself.

“You're young, Paret,” Mr. Scherer concluded. “But Watling has

confidence in you, and you will consult him frequently. I believe in the

young men, and I have already seen something of you--so?”...

When I returned to the office I wrote Theodore Watling a letter

expressing my gratitude for the position he had, so to speak, willed me,

of confidential legal adviser to Adolf Scherer. Though the opportunity

had thrust itself upon me suddenly, and sooner than I expected it, I was

determined to prove myself worthy of it. I worked as I had never worked

before, making trips to New York to consult leading members of this

new branch of my profession there, trips to Washington to see my former

chief. There were, too, numerous conferences with local personages, with

Mr. Dickinson and Mr. Grierson, and Judah B. Tallant,--whose newspaper

was most useful; there were consultations and negotiations of a delicate

nature with the owners and lawyers of other companies to be “taken in.”

Nor was it all legal work, in the older and narrower sense. Men who are

playing for principalities are making war. Some of our operations had

all the excitement of war. There was information to be got, and it was

got--somehow. Modern war involves a spy system, and a friendly telephone

company is not to be despised. And all of this work from first to last

had to be done with extreme caution. Moribund distinctions of right and

wrong did not trouble me, for the modern man labours religiously when he

knows that Evolution is on his side.

For all of these operations a corps of counsel had been employed,

including the firm of Harrington and Bowes next to Theodore Watling,

Joel Harrington was deemed the ablest lawyer in the city. We organized

in due time the corporation known as the Boyne Iron Works, Limited; a

trust agreement was drawn up that was a masterpiece of its kind, one

that caused, first and last, meddling officials in the Department of

Justice at Washington no little trouble and perplexity. I was proud of

the fact that I had taken no small part in its composition.... In short,

in addition to certain emoluments and opportunities for investment, I

emerged from the affair firmly established in the good graces of Adolf

Scherer, and with a reputation practically made.

A year or so after the Boyne Company, Ltd., came into existence I

chanced one morning to go down to the new Ashuela Hotel to meet a New

Yorker of some prominence, and was awaiting him in the lobby, when I

overheard a conversation between two commercial travellers who were

sitting with their backs to me.

“Did you notice that fellow who went up to the desk a moment ago?” asked

one.

“The young fellow in the grey suit? Sure. Who is he? He looks as if he

was pretty well fixed.”

“I guess he is,” replied the first. “That's Paret. He's Scherer's

confidential counsel. He used to be Senator Watling's partner, but they

say he's even got something on the old man.”

In spite of the feverish life I led, I was still undoubtedly

young-looking, and in this I was true to the incoming type of successful

man. Our fathers appeared staid at six and thirty. Clothes, of course,

made some difference, and my class and generation did not wear the

sombre and cumbersome kind, with skirts and tails; I patronized a tailor

in New York. My chestnut hair, a little darker than my father's had

been, showed no signs of turning grey, although it was thinning a little

at the crown of the forehead, and I wore a small moustache, clipped in

a straight line above the mouth. This made me look less like a college

youth. Thanks to a strong pigment in my skin, derived probably from

Scotch-Irish ancestors, my colour was fresh. I have spoken of my life as

feverish, and yet I am not so sure that this word completely describes

it. It was full to overflowing--one side of it; and I did not miss (save

vaguely, in rare moments of weariness) any other side that might have

been developed. I was busy all day long, engaged in affairs I deemed to

be alone of vital importance in the universe. I was convinced that the

welfare of the city demanded that supreme financial power should remain

in the hands of the group of men with whom I was associated, and whose

battles I fought in the courts, in the legislature, in the city council,

and sometimes in Washington,--although they were well cared for there.

By every means ingenuity could devise, their enemies were to be driven

from the field, and they were to be protected from blackmail.

A sense of importance sustained me; and I remember in that first

flush of a success for which I had not waited too long--what a secret

satisfaction it was to pick up the Era and see my name embedded in

certain dignified notices of board meetings, transactions of weight, or

cases known to the initiated as significant. “Mr. Scherer's interests

were taken care of by Mr. Hugh Paret.” The fact that my triumphs were

modestly set forth gave me more pleasure than if they had been trumpeted

in headlines. Although I might have started out in practice for myself,

my affection and regard for Mr. Watling kept me in the firm, which

became Watling, Fowndes and Paret, and a new, arrangement was entered

into: Mr. Ripon retired on account of ill health.

There were instances, however, when a certain amount of annoying

publicity was inevitable. Such was the famous Galligan case, which

occurred some three or four years after my marriage. Aloysius Galligan

was a brakeman, and his legs had become paralyzed as the result of an

accident that was the result of defective sills on a freight car. He

had sued, and been awarded damages of $15,000. To the amazement and

indignation of Miller Gorse, the Supreme Court, to which the Railroad

had appealed, affirmed the decision. It wasn't the single payment of

$15,000 that the Railroad cared about, of course; a precedent might be

established for compensating maimed employees which would be expensive

in the long run. Carelessness could not be proved in this instance.

Gorse sent for me. I had been away with Maude at the sea for two months,

and had not followed the case.

“You've got to take charge, Paret, and get a rehearing. See Bering,

and find out who in the deuce is to blame for this. Chesley's one, of

course. We ought never to have permitted his nomination for the Supreme

Bench. It was against my judgment, but Varney and Gill assured me that

he was all right.”

I saw Judge Bering that evening. We sat on a plush sofa in the parlour

of his house in Baker Street.

“I had a notion Gorse'd be mad,” he said, “but it looked to me as if

they had it on us, Paret. I didn't see how we could do anything else but

affirm without being too rank. Of course, if he feels that way, and you

want to make a motion for a rehearing, I'll see what can be done.”

“Something's got to be done,” I replied. “Can't you see what such a

decision lets them in for?”

“All right,” said the judge, who knew an order when he heard one, “I

guess we can find an error.” He was not a little frightened by the

report of Mr. Gorse's wrath, for election-day was approaching. “Say, you

wouldn't take me for a sentimental man, now, would you?”

I smiled at the notion of it.

“Well, I'll own up to you this kind of got under my skin. That Galligan

is a fine-looking fellow, if there ever was one, and he'll never be of

a bit of use any more. Of course the case was plain sailing, and they

ought to have had the verdict, but that lawyer of his handled it to the

queen's taste, if I do say so. He made me feel real bad, by God,--as if

it was my own son Ed who'd been battered up. Lord, I can't forget the

look in that man Galligan's eyes. I hate to go through it again, and

reverse it, but I guess I'll have to, now.”

The Judge sat gazing at the flames playing over his gas log.

“Who was the lawyer?” I asked.

“A man by the name of Krebs,” he replied. “Never heard of him before.

He's just moved to the city.”

“This city?” I ejaculated.

The Judge glanced at me interestedly.

“This city, of course. What do you know about him?”

“Well,” I answered, when I had recovered a little from the shock--for it

was a distinct shock--“he lived in Elkington. He was the man who stirred

up the trouble in the legislature about Bill 709.”

The Judge slapped his knee.

“That fellow!” he exclaimed, and ruminated. “Why didn't somebody tell

me?” he added, complainingly. “Why didn't Miller Gorse let me know about

it, instead of licking up a fuss after it's all over?”...

Of all men of my acquaintance I had thought the Judge the last to grow

maudlin over the misfortunes of those who were weak or unfortunate

enough to be defeated and crushed in the struggle for existence, and it

was not without food for reflection that I departed from his presence.

To make Mr. Bering “feel bad” was no small achievement, and Krebs had

been responsible for it, of course,--not Galligan. Krebs had turned up

once more! It seemed as though he were destined to haunt me. Well, I

made up my mind that he should not disturb me again, at any rate: I, at

least, had learned to eliminate sentimentality from business, and it

was not without deprecation I remembered my experience with him at the

Capital, when he had made me temporarily ashamed of my connection with

Bill 709. I had got over that. And when I entered the court room (the

tribunal having graciously granted a rehearing on the ground that it had

committed an error in the law!) my feelings were of lively curiosity

and zest. I had no disposition to underrate his abilities, but I was

fortified by the consciousness of a series of triumphs behind me, by

a sense of association with prevailing forces against which he was

helpless. I could afford to take a superior attitude in regard to one

who was destined always to be dramatic.

As the case proceeded I was rather disappointed on the whole that he

was not dramatic--not even as dramatic as he had been when he defied

the powers in the Legislature. He had changed but little, he still wore

ill-fitting clothes, but I was forced to acknowledge that he seemed to

have gained in self-control, in presence. He had nodded at me before the

case was called, as he sat beside his maimed client; and I had been on

the alert for a hint of reproach in his glance: there was none. I smiled

back at him....

He did not rant. He seemed to have rather a remarkable knowledge of the

law. In a conversational tone he described the sufferings of the man in

the flannel shirt beside him, but there could be no question of the fact

that he did produce an effect. The spectators were plainly moved, and

it was undeniable that some of the judges wore rather a sheepish look as

they toyed with their watch chains or moved the stationery in front

of them. They had seen maimed men before, they had heard impassioned,

sentimental lawyers talk about wives and families and God and justice.

Krebs did none of this. Just how he managed to bring the thing home

to those judges, to make them ashamed of their role, just how he

managed--in spite of my fortified attitude to revive something of that

sense of discomfort I had experienced at the State House is difficult to

say. It was because, I think, he contrived through the intensity of his

own sympathy to enter into the body of the man whose cause he pleaded,

to feel the despair in Galligan's soul--an impression that was curiously

conveyed despite the dignified limits to which he confined his speech.

It was strange that I began to be rather sorry for him, that I felt a

certain reluctant regret that he should thus squander his powers against

overwhelming odds. What was the use of it all!

At the end his voice became more vibrant--though he did not raise it--as

he condemned the Railroad for its indifference to human life, for its

contention that men were cheaper than rolling-stock.

I encountered him afterward in the corridor. I had made a point of

seeking him out, perhaps from some vague determination to prove that our

last meeting in the little restaurant at the Capital had left no traces

of embarrassment in me: I was, in fact, rather aggressively anxious to

reveal myself to him as one who has thriven on the views he condemned,

as one in whose unity of mind there is no rift. He was alone, apparently

waiting for someone, leaning against a steam radiator in one of his

awkward, angular poses, looking out of the court-house window.

“How are you?” I said blithely. “So you've left Elkington for a wider

field.” I wondered whether my alert cousin-in-law, George Hutchins, had

made it too hot for him.

He turned to me unexpectedly a face of profound melancholy; his

expression had in it, oddly, a trace of sternness; and I was somewhat

taken aback by this evidence that he was still bearing vicariously the

troubles of his client. So deep had been the thought I had apparently

interrupted that he did not realize my presence at first.

“Oh, it's you, Paret. Yes, I've left Elkington,” he said.

“Something of a surprise to run up against you suddenly, like this.”

“I expected to see you,” he answered gravely, and the slight emphasis he

gave the pronoun implied not only a complete knowledge of the situation

and of the part I had taken in it, but also a greater rebuke than if his

accusation had been direct. But I clung to my affability.

“If I can do anything for you, let me know,” I told him. He said

nothing, he did not even smile. At this moment he was opportunely joined

by a man who had the appearance of a labour leader, and I walked away.

I was resentful; my mood, in brief, was that of a man who has done

something foolish and is inclined to talk to himself aloud: but the mood

was complicated, made the more irritating by the paradoxical fact

that that last look he had given me seemed to have borne the traces of

affection....

It is perhaps needless to add that the court reversed its former

decision.

XVI.

The Pilot published a series of sensational articles and editorials

about the Galligan matter, a picture of Galligan, an account of the

destitute state of his wife and family. The time had not yet arrived

when such newspapers dared to attack the probity of our courts, but

a system of law that permitted such palpable injustice because of

technicalities was bitterly denounced. What chance had a poor man

against such a moloch as the railroad, even with a lawyer of such

ability as had been exhibited by Hermann Krebs? Krebs was praised, and

the attention of Mr. Lawler's readers was called to the fact that Krebs

was the man who, some years before, had opposed single-handed in the

legislature the notorious Bill No. 709. It was well known in certain

circles--the editorial went on to say--that this legislation had been

drawn by Theodore Watling in the interests of the Boyne Iron Works,

etc., etc. Hugh Paret had learned at the feet of an able master. This

first sight of my name thus opprobriously flung to the multitude gave

me an unpleasant shock. I had seen Mr. Scherer attacked, Mr. Gorse

attacked, and Mr. Watling: I had all along realized, vaguely, that my

turn would come, and I thought myself to have acquired a compensating

philosophy. I threw the sheet into the waste basket, presently picked it

out again and reread the sentence containing my name. Well, there were

certain penalties that every career must pay. I had become, at last,

a marked man, and I recognized the fact that this assault would be the

forerunner of many.

I tried to derive some comfort and amusement from the thought of certain

operations of mine that Mr. Lawler had not discovered, that would

have been matters of peculiar interest to his innocent public: certain

extra-legal operations at the time when the Bovine corporation was being

formed, for instance. And how they would have licked their chops had

they learned of that manoeuvre by which I had managed to have one of

Mr. Scherer's subsidiary companies in another state, with property and

assets amounting to more than twenty millions, reorganized under the

laws of New Jersey, and the pending case thus transferred to the Federal

court, where we won hands down! This Galligan affair was nothing to

that. Nevertheless, it was annoying. As I sat in the street car on

my way homeward, a man beside me was reading the Pilot. I had a queer

sensation as he turned the page, and scanned the editorial; and I could

not help wondering what he and the thousands like him thought of me;

what he would say if I introduced myself and asked his opinion. Perhaps

he did not think at all: undoubtedly he, and the public at large, were

used to Mr. Lawler's daily display of “injustices.” Nevertheless, like

slow acid, they must be eating into the public consciousness. It was an

outrage--this freedom of the press.

With renewed exasperation I thought of Krebs, of his disturbing and

almost uncanny faculty of following me up. Why couldn't he have remained

in Elkington? Why did he have to follow me here, to make capital out

of a case that might never have been heard of except for him?... I was

still in this disagreeable frame of mind when I turned the corner by my

house and caught sight of Maude, in the front yard, bending bareheaded

over a bed of late flowers which the frost had spared. The evening was

sharp, the dusk already gathering.

“You'll catch cold,” I called to her.

She looked up at the sound of my voice.

“They'll soon be gone,” she sighed, referring to the flowers. “I hate

winter.”

She put her hand through my arm, and we went into the house. The

curtains were drawn, a fire was crackling on the hearth, the lamps were

lighted, and as I dropped into a chair this living-room of ours seemed

to take on the air of a refuge from the vague, threatening sinister

things of the world without. I felt I had never valued it before. Maude

took up her sewing and sat down beside the table.

“Hugh,” she said suddenly, “I read something in the newspaper--”

My exasperation flared up again.

“Where did you get that disreputable sheet?” I demanded.

“At the dressmaker's!” she answered. “I--I just happened to see the

name, Paret.”

“It's just politics,” I declared, “stirring up discontent by

misrepresentation. Jealousy.”

She leaned forward in her chair, gazing into the flames.

“Then it isn't true that this poor man, Galligan--isn't that his

name?--was cheated out of the damages he ought to have to keep himself

and his family alive?”

“You must have been talking to Perry or Susan,” I said. “They seem to be

convinced that I am an oppressor of the poor.

“Hugh!” The tone in which she spoke my name smote me. “How can you say

that? How can you doubt their loyalty, and mine? Do you think they would

undermine you, and to me, behind your back?”

“I didn't mean that, of course, Maude. I was annoyed about something

else. And Tom and Perry have an air of deprecating most of the

enterprises in which I am professionally engaged. It's very well for

them to talk. All Perry has to do is to sit back and take in receipts

from the Boyne Street car line, and Tom is content if he gets a few

commissions every week. They're like militiamen criticizing soldiers

under fire. I know they're good friends of mine, but sometimes I lose

patience with them.”

I got up and walked to the window, and came back again and stood before

her.

“I'm sorry for this man, Galligan,” I went on, “I can't tell you how

sorry. But few people who are not on the inside, so to speak, grasp the

fact that big corporations, like the Railroad, are looked upon as fair

game for every kind of parasite. Not a day passes in which attempts are

not made to bleed them. Some of these cases are pathetic. It had cost

the Railroad many times fifteen thousand dollars to fight Galligan's

case. But if they had paid it, they would have laid themselves open to

thousands of similar demands. Dividends would dwindle. The stockholders

have a right to a fair return on their money. Galligan claims that there

was a defective sill on the car which is said to have caused the wreck.

If damages are paid on that basis, it means the daily inspection of

every car which passes over their lines. And more than that: there are

certain defects, as in the present case, which an inspection would not

reveal. When a man accepts employment on a railroad he assumes a certain

amount of personal risk,--it's not precisely a chambermaid's job. And

the lawyer who defends such cases, whatever his personal feelings may

be, cannot afford to be swayed by them. He must take the larger view.”

“Why didn't you tell me about it before?” she asked.

“Well, I didn't think it of enough importance--these things are all in

the day's work.”

“But Mr. Krebs? How strange that he should be here, connected with the

case!”

I made an effort to control myself.

“Your old friend,” I said. “I believe you have a sentiment about him.”

She looked up at me.

“Scarcely that,” she replied gravely, with the literalness that often

characterized her, “but he isn't a person easily forgotten. He may be

queer, one may not agree with his views, but after the experience I had

with him I've never been able to look at him in the way George does, for

instance, or even as father does.”

“Or even as I do,” I supplied.

“Well, perhaps not even as you do,” she answered calmly. “I believe you

once told me, however, that you thought him a fanatic, but sincere.”

“He's certainly a fanatic!” I exclaimed.

“But sincere, Hugh-you still think him sincere.”

“You seem a good deal concerned about a man you've laid eyes on but

once.”

She considered this.

“Yes, it is surprising,” she admitted, “but it's true. I was sorry

for him, but I admired him. I was not only impressed by his courage in

taking charge of me, but also by the trust and affection the work-people

showed. He must be a good man, however mistaken he may be in the methods

he employs. And life is cruel to those people.”

“Life is-life,” I observed. “Neither you nor I nor Krebs is able to

change it.”

“Has he come here to practice?” she asked, after a moment.

“Yes. Do you want me to invite him to dinner?” and seeing that she did

not reply I continued: “In spite of my explanation I suppose you think,

because Krebs defended the man Galligan, that a monstrous injustice has

been done.”

“That is unworthy of you,” she said, bending over her stitch.

I began to pace the room again, as was my habit when overwrought.

“Well, I was going to tell you about this affair if you had not

forestalled me by mentioning it yourself. It isn't pleasant to be

vilified by rascals who make capital out of vilification, and a man has

a right to expect some sympathy from his wife.”

“Did I ever deny you that, Hugh?” she asked. “Only you don't ever seem

to need it, to want it.”

“And there are things,” I pursued, “things in a man's province that a

woman ought to accept from her husband, things which in the very nature

of the case she can know nothing about.”

“But a woman must think for herself,” she declared. “She shouldn't

become a mere automaton,--and these questions involve so much! People

are discussing them, the magazines and periodicals are beginning to take

them up.”

I stared at her, somewhat appalled by this point of view. There had,

indeed, been signs of its development before now, but I had not heeded

them. And for the first time I beheld Maude in a new light.

“Oh, it's not that I don't trust you,” she continued, “I'm open to

conviction, but I must be convinced. Your explanation of this Galligan

case seems a sensible one, although it's depressing. But life is hard

and depressing sometimes I've come to realize that. I want to think over

what you've said, I want to talk over it some more. Why won't you tell

me more of what you are doing? If you only would confide in me--as you

have now! I can't help seeing that we are growing farther and farther

apart, that business, your career, is taking all of you and leaving me

nothing.” She faltered, and went on again. “It's difficult to tell you

this--you never give me the chance. And it's not for my sake alone, but

for yours, too. You are growing more and more self-centred, surrounding

yourself with a hard shell. You don't realize it, but Tom notices it,

Perry notices it, it hurts them, it's that they complain of. Hugh!”

she cried appealingly, sensing my resentment, forestalling the words

of defence ready on my lips. “I know that you are busy, that many men

depend on you, it isn't that I'm not proud of you and your success, but

you don't understand what a woman craves,--she doesn't want only to be a

good housekeeper, a good mother, but she wants to share a little, at

any rate, in the life of her husband, in his troubles as well as in his

successes. She wants to be of some little use, of some little help to

him.”

My feelings were reduced to a medley.

“But you are a help to me--a great help,” I protested.

She shook her head. “I wish I were,” she said.

It suddenly occurred to me that she might be. I was softened, and

alarmed by the spectacle she had revealed of the widening breach between

us. I laid my hand on her shoulder.

“Well, I'll try to do better, Maude.”

She looked up at me, questioningly yet gratefully, through a mist of

tears. But her reply--whatever it might have been--was forestalled by

the sound of shouts and laughter in the hallway. She sprang up and ran

to the door.

“It's the children,” she exclaimed, “they've come home from Susan's

party!”

It begins indeed to look as if I were writing this narrative upside

down, for I have said nothing about children. Perhaps one reason for

this omission is that I did not really appreciate them, that I found

it impossible to take the same minute interest in them as Tom, for

instance, who was, apparently, not content alone with the six which he

possessed, but had adopted mine. One of them, little Sarah, said “Uncle

Tom” before “Father.” I do not mean to say that I had not occasional

moments of tenderness toward them, but they were out of my thoughts much

of the time. I have often wondered, since, how they regarded me; how,

in their little minds, they defined the relationship. Generally, when I

arrived home in the evening I liked to sit down before my study fire and

read the afternoon newspapers or a magazine; but occasionally I went at

once to the nursery for a few moments, to survey with complacency the

medley of toys on the floor, and to kiss all three. They received my

caresses with a certain shyness--the two younger ones, at least, as

though they were at a loss to place me as a factor in the establishment.

They tumbled over each other to greet Maude, and even Tom. If I were an

enigma to them, what must they have thought of him? Sometimes I would

discover him on the nursery floor, with one or two of his own children,

building towers and castles and railroad stations, or forts to be

attacked and demolished by regiments of lead soldiers. He was growing

comfortable-looking, if not exactly stout; prematurely paternal, oddly

willing to renounce the fiercer joys of life, the joys of acquisition,

of conquest, of youth.

“You'd better come home with me, Chickabiddy,” he would say, “that

father of yours doesn't appreciate you. He's too busy getting rich.”

“Chickabiddy,” was his name for little Sarah. Half of the name stuck to

her, and when she was older we called her Biddy.

She would gaze at him questioningly, her eyes like blue flower cups, a

strange little mixture of solemnity and bubbling mirth, of shyness

and impulsiveness. She had fat legs that creased above the tops of the

absurd little boots that looked to be too tight; sometimes she

rolled and tumbled in an ecstasy of abandon, and again she would sit

motionless, as though absorbed in dreams. Her hair was like corn silk in

the sun, twisting up into soft curls after her bath, when she sat rosily

presiding over her supper table.

As I look back over her early infancy, I realize that I loved her,

although it is impossible for me to say how much of this love is

retrospective. Why I was not mad about her every hour of the day is a

puzzle to me now. Why, indeed, was I not mad about all three of them?

There were moments when I held and kissed them, when something within

me melted: moments when I was away from them, and thought of them. But

these moments did not last. The something within me hardened again,

I became indifferent, my family was wiped out of my consciousness as

though it had never existed.

There was Matthew, for instance, the oldest. When he arrived, he was to

Maude a never-ending miracle, she would have his crib brought into her

room, and I would find her leaning over the bedside, gazing at him with

a rapt expression beyond my comprehension. To me he was just a brick-red

morsel of humanity, all folds and wrinkles, and not at all remarkable in

any way. Maude used to annoy me by getting out of bed in the middle of

the night when he cried, and at such times I was apt to wonder at the

odd trick the life-force had played me, and ask myself why I got married

at all. It was a queer method of carrying on the race. Later on, I began

to take a cursory interest in him, to watch for signs in him of certain

characteristics of my own youth which, in the philosophy of my manhood,

I had come to regard as defects. And it disturbed me somewhat to see

these signs appear. I wished him to be what I had become by force of

will--a fighter. But he was a sensitive child, anxious for approval;

not robust, though spiritual rather than delicate; even in comparative

infancy he cared more for books than toys, and his greatest joy was in

being read to. In spite of these traits--perhaps because of them--there

was a sympathy between us. From the time that he could talk the child

seemed to understand me. Occasionally I surprised him gazing at me with

a certain wistful look that comes back to me as I write.

Moreton, Tom used to call Alexander the Great because he was a fighter

from the cradle, beating his elder brother, too considerate to

strike back, and likewise--when opportunity offered--his sister; and

appropriating their toys. A self-sufficient, doughty young man, with the

round head that withstands many blows, taking by nature to competition

and buccaneering in general. I did not love him half so much as I did

Matthew--if such intermittent emotions as mine may be called love. It

was a standing joke of mine--which Maude strongly resented--that Moreton

resembled Cousin George of Elkington.

Imbued with the highest ambition of my time, I had set my barque on a

great circle, and almost before I realized it the barque was burdened

with a wife and family and the steering had insensibly become more

difficult; for Maude cared nothing about the destination, and when I

took any hand off the wheel our ship showed a tendency to make for a

quiet harbour. Thus the social initiative, which I believed should have

been the woman's, was thrust back on me. It was almost incredible, yet

indisputable, in a day when most American women were credited with a

craving for social ambition that I, of all men, should have married

a wife in whom the craving was wholly absent! She might have had what

other women would have given their souls for. There were many reasons

why I wished her to take what I deemed her proper place in the community

as my wife--not that I cared for what is called society in the narrow

sense; with me, it was a logical part of a broader scheme of life; an

auxiliary rather than an essential, but a needful auxiliary; a means of

dignifying and adorning the position I was taking. Not only that, but

I felt the need of intercourse--of intercourse of a lighter and more

convivial nature with men and women who saw life as I saw it. In the

evenings when we did not go out into that world our city afforded ennui

took possession of me: I had never learned to care for books, I had no

resources outside of my profession, and when I was not working on some

legal problem I dawdled over the newspapers and went to bed. I don't

mean to imply that our existence, outside of our continued intimacy with

the Peterses and the Blackwoods, was socially isolated. We gave little

dinners that Maude carried out with skill and taste; but it was I

who suggested them; we went out to other dinners, sometimes to

Nancy's--though we saw less and less of her--sometimes to other houses.

But Maude had given evidence of domestic tastes and a disinclination for

gaiety that those who entertained more were not slow to sense. I should

have liked to take a larger house, but I felt the futility of suggesting

it; the children were still small, and she was occupied with them.

Meanwhile I beheld, and at times with considerable irritation, the

social world changing, growing larger and more significant, a more

important function of that higher phase of American existence the new

century seemed definitely to have initiated. A segregative process was

away to which Maude was wholly indifferent. Our city was throwing off

its social conservatism; wealth (which implied ability and superiority)

was playing a greater part, entertainments were more luxurious, lines

more strictly drawn. We had an elaborate country club for those who

could afford expensive amusements. Much of this transformation had been

due to the initiative and leadership of Nancy Durrett....

Great and sudden wealth, however, if combined with obscure antecedents

and questionable qualifications, was still looked upon askance. In spite

of the fact that Adolf Scherer had “put us on the map,” the family of

the great iron-master still remained outside of the social pale.

He himself might have entered had it not been for his wife, who was

supposed to be “queer,” who remained at home in her house opposite

Gallatin Park and made little German cakes,--a huge house which an

unknown architect had taken unusual pains to make pretentious and

hideous, for it was Rhenish, Moorish and Victorian by turns. Its

geometric grounds matched those of the park, itself a monument to

bad taste in landscape. The neighbourhood was highly respectable, and

inhabited by families of German extraction. There were two flaxen-haired

daughters who had just graduated from an expensive boarding-school in

New York, where they had received the polish needful for future careers.

But the careers were not forthcoming.

I was thrown constantly with Adolf Scherer; I had earned his gratitude,

I had become necessary to him. But after the great coup whereby he had

fulfilled Mr. Watling's prophecy and become the chief factor in our

business world he began to show signs of discontent, of an irritability

that seemed foreign to his character, and that puzzled me. One day,

however, I stumbled upon the cause of this fermentation, to wonder that

I had not discovered it before. In many ways Adolf Scherer was a child.

We were sitting in the Boyne Club.

“Money--yes!” he exclaimed, apropos of some demand made upon him by

a charitable society. “They come to me for my money--there is always

Scherer, they say. He will make up the deficit in the hospitals. But

what is it they do for me? Nothing. Do they invite me to their houses,

to their parties?”

This was what he wanted, then,--social recognition. I said nothing, but

I saw my opportunity: I had the clew, now, to a certain attitude he had

adopted of late toward me, an attitude of reproach; as though, in return

for his many favours to me, there were something I had left undone. And

when I went home I asked Maude to call on Mrs. Scherer.

“On Mrs. Scherer!” she repeated.

“Yes, I want you to invite them to dinner.” The proposal seemed to take

away her breath. “I owe her husband a great deal, and I think he feels

hurt that the wives of the men he knows down town haven't taken up his

family.” I felt that it would not be wise, with Maude, to announce my

rather amazing discovery of the iron-master's social ambitions.

“But, Hugh, they must be very happy, they have their friends. And after

all this time wouldn't it seem like an intrusion?”

“I don't think so,” I said, “I'm sure it would please him, and them. You

know how kind he's been to us, how he sent us East in his private car

last year.”

“Of course I'll go if you wish it, if you're sure they feel that way.”

She did make the call, that very week, and somewhat to my surprise

reported that she liked Mrs. Scherer and the daughters: Maude's likes

and dislikes, needless to say, were not governed by matters of policy.

“You were right, Hugh,” she informed me, almost with enthusiasm,

“they did seem lonely. And they were so glad to see me, it was rather

pathetic. Mr. Scherer, it seems, had talked to them a great deal about

you. They wanted to know why I hadn't come before. That was rather

embarrassing. Fortunately they didn't give me time to talk, I never

heard people talk as they do. They all kissed me when I went away, and

came down the steps with me. And Mrs. Scherer went into the conservatory

and picked a huge bouquet. There it is,” she said, laughingly, pointing

to several vases. “I separated the colours as well as I could when I got

home. We had coffee, and the most delicious German cakes in the Turkish

room, or the Moorish room, whichever it is. I'm sure I shan't be able to

eat anything more for days. When do you wish to have them for dinner?”

“Well,” I said, “we ought to have time to get the right people to meet

them. We'll ask Nancy and Ham.”

Maude opened her eyes.

“Nancy! Do you think Nancy would like them?”

“I'm going to give her a chance, anyway,” I replied....

It was, in some ways, a memorable dinner. I don't know what I expected

in Mrs. Scherer--from Maude's description a benevolent and somewhat

stupid, blue-eyed German woman, of peasant extraction. There could be no

doubt about the peasant extraction, but when she hobbled into our little

parlour with the aid of a stout, gold-headed cane she dominated it.

Her very lameness added to a distinction that evinced itself in a

dozen ways. Her nose was hooked, her colour high,--despite the years

in Steelville,--her peculiar costume heightened the effect of her

personality; her fire-lit black eyes bespoke a spirit accustomed to

rule, and instead of being an aspirant for social honours, she seemed to

confer them. Conversation ceased at her entrance.

“I'm sorry we are late, my dear,” she said, as she greeted Maude

affectionately, “but we have far to come. And this is your husband!”

she exclaimed, as I was introduced. She scrutinized me. “I have heard

something of you, Mr. Paret. You are smart. Shall I tell you the

smartest thing you ever did?” She patted Maude's shoulder. “When you

married your wife--that was it. I have fallen in love with her. If you

do not know it, I tell you.”

Next, Nancy was introduced.

“So you are Mrs. Hambleton Durrett?”

Nancy acknowledged her identity with a smile, but the next remark was a

bombshell.

“The leader of society.”

“Alas!” exclaimed Nancy, “I have been accused of many terrible things.”

Their glances met. Nancy's was amused, baffling, like a spark in amber.

Each, in its way, was redoubtable. A greater contrast between two women

could scarcely have been imagined. It was well said (and not snobbishly)

that generations had been required to make Nancy's figure: she wore a

dress of blue sheen, the light playing on its ripples; and as she stood,

apparently wholly at ease, looking down at the wife of Adolf Scherer,

she reminded me of an expert swordsman who, with remarkable skill, was

keeping a too pressing and determined aspirant at arm's length. I was

keenly aware that Maude did not possess this gift, and I realized for

the first time something of the similarity between Nancy's career and my

own. She, too, in her feminine sphere, exercised, and subtly, a power in

which human passions were deeply involved.

If Nancy Durrett symbolized aristocracy, established order and prestige,

what did Mrs. Scherer represent? Not democracy, mob rule--certainly. The

stocky German peasant woman with her tightly drawn hair and heavy jewels

seemed grotesquely to embody something that ultimately would have

its way, a lusty and terrible force in the interests of which my own

services were enlisted; to which the old American element in business

and industry, the male counterpart of Nancy Willett, had already

succumbed. And now it was about to storm the feminine fastnesses! I

beheld a woman who had come to this country with a shawl aver her head

transformed into a new species of duchess, sure of herself, scorning the

delicate euphemisms in which Fancy's kind were wont to refer to asocial

realm, that was no less real because its boundaries had not definitely

been defined. She held her stick firmly, and gave Nancy an indomitable

look.

“I want you to meet my daughters. Gretchen, Anna, come here and be

introduced to Mrs. Durrett.”

It was not without curiosity I watched these of the second generation as

they made their bows, noted the differentiation in the type for which

an American environment and a “finishing school” had been responsible.

Gretchen and Anna had learned--in crises, such as the present--to

restrain the superabundant vitality they had inherited. If their

cheekbones were a little too high, their Delft blue eyes a little too

small, their colour was of the proverbial rose-leaves and cream. Gene

Hollister's difficulty was to know which to marry. They were nice

girls,--of that there could be no doubt; there was no false modesty in

their attitude toward “society”; nor did they pretend--as so many silly

people did, that they were not attempting to get anywhere in particular,

that it was less desirable to be in the centre than on the dubious outer

walks. They, too, were so glad to meet Mrs. Durrett.

Nancy's eyes twinkled as they passed on.

“You see what I have let you in for?” I said.

“My dear Hugh,” she replied, “sooner or later we should have had to face

them anyhow. I have recognized that for some time. With their money, and

Mr. Scherer's prestige, and the will of that lady with the stick, in

a few years we should have had nothing to say. Why, she's a female

Napoleon. Hilda's the man of the family.”

After that, Nancy invariably referred to Mrs. Scherer as Hilda.

If Mrs. Scherer was a surprise to us, her husband was a still greater

one; and I had difficulty in recognizing the Adolf Scherer who came

to our dinner party as the personage of the business world before whom

lesser men were wont to cringe. He seemed rather mysteriously to have

shed that personality; become an awkward, ingratiating, rather too

exuberant, ordinary man with a marked German accent. From time to time

I found myself speculating uneasily on this phenomenon as I glanced down

the table at his great torso, white waist-coated for the occasion. He

was plainly “making up” to Nancy, and to Mrs. Ogilvy, who sat opposite

him. On the whole, the atmosphere of our entertainment was rather

electric. “Hilda” was chiefly responsible for this; her frankness was

of the breath-taking kind. Far from attempting to hide or ignore

the struggle by which she and her husband had attained their present

position, she referred with the utmost naivete to incidents in her

career, while the whole table paused to listen.

“Before we had a carriage, yes, it was hard for me to get about. I had

to be helped by the conductors into the streetcars. I broke my hip when

we lived in Steelville, and the doctor was a numbskull. He should be put

in prison, is what I tell Adolf. I was standing on a clothes-horse, when

it fell. I had much washing to do in those days.”

“And--can nothing be done, Mrs. Scherer?” asked Leonard Dickinson,

sympathetically.

“For an old woman? I am fifty-five. I have had many doctors. I would put

them all in prison. How much was it you paid Dr. Stickney, in New York,

Adolf? Five thousand dollars? And he did nothing--nothing. I'd rather be

poor again, and work. But it is well to make the best of it.”...

“Your grandfather was a fine man, Mr. Durrett,” she informed Hambleton.

“It is a pity for you, I think, that you do not have to work.”

Ham, who sat on her other side, was amused.

“My grandfather did enough work for both of us,” he said.

“If I had been your grandfather, I would have started you in puddling,”

she observed, as she eyed with disapproval the filling of his third

glass of champagne. “I think there is too much gay life, too much games

for rich young men nowadays. You will forgive me for saying what I think

to young men?”

“I'll forgive you for not being my grandfather, at any rate,” replied

Ham, with unaccustomed wit.

She gazed at him with grim humour.

“It is bad for you I am not,” she declared.

There was no gainsaying her. What can be done with a lady who will not

recognize that morality is not discussed, and that personalities are

tabooed save between intimates. Hilda was a personage as well as a

Tartar. Laws, conventions, usages--to all these she would conform when

it pleased her. She would have made an admirable inquisitorial judge,

and quite as admirable a sick nurse. A rare criminal lawyer, likewise,

was wasted in her. She was one of those individuals, I perceived, whose

loyalties dominate them; and who, in behalf of those loyalties, carry

chips on their shoulders.

“It is a long time that I have been wanting to meet you,” she informed

me. “You are smart.”

I smiled, yet I was inclined to resent her use of the word, though I

was by no means sure of the shade of meaning she meant to put into it.

I had, indeed, an uneasy sense of the scantiness of my fund of humour to

meet and turn such a situation; for I was experiencing, now, with her,

the same queer feeling I had known in my youth in the presence of Cousin

Robert Breck--the suspicion that this extraordinary person saw through

me. It was as though she held up a mirror and compelled me to look at my

soul features. I tried to assure myself that the mirror was distorted. I

lost, nevertheless, the sureness of touch that comes from the conviction

of being all of a piece. She contrived to resolve me again

into conflicting elements. I was, for the moment, no longer the

self-confident and triumphant young attorney accustomed to carry all

before him, to command respect and admiration, but a complicated being

whose unity had suddenly been split. I glanced around the table at

Ogilvy, at Dickinson, at Ralph Hambleton. These men were functioning

truly. But was I? If I were not, might not this be the reason for the

lack of synthesis--of which I was abruptly though vaguely aware between

my professional life, my domestic relationships, and my relationships

with friends. The loyalty of the woman beside me struck me forcibly as

a supreme trait. Where she had given, she did not withdraw. She had

conferred it instantly on Maude. Did I feel that loyalty towards a

single human being? towards Maude herself--my wife? or even towards

Nancy? I pulled myself together, and resolved to give her credit for

using the word “smart” in its unobjectionable sense. After all; Dickens

had so used it.

“A lawyer must needs know something of what he is about, Mrs. Scherer,

if he is to be employed by such a man as your husband,” I replied.

Her black eyes snapped with pleasure.

“Ah, I suppose that is so,” she agreed. “I knew he was a great man when

I married him, and that was before Mr. Nathaniel Durrett found it out.”

“But surely you did not think, in those days, that he would be as big

as he has become? That he would not only be president of the Boyne Iron

Works, but of a Boyne Iron Works that has exceeded Mr. Durrett's wildest

dreams.”

She shook her head complacently.

“Do you know what I told him when he married me? I said, 'Adolf, it is a

pity you are born in Germany.' And when he asked me why, I told him that

some day he might have been President of the United States.”

“Well, that won't be a great deprivation to him,” I remarked. “Mr.

Scherer can do what he wants, and the President cannot.”

“Adolf always does as he wants,” she declared, gazing at him as he sat

beside the brilliant wife of the grandson of the man whose red-shirted

foreman he had been. “He does what he wants, and gets what he wants. He

is getting what he wants now,” she added, with such obvious meaning

that I found no words to reply. “She is pretty, that Mrs. Durrett, and

clever,--is it not so?”

I agreed. A new and indescribable note had come into Mrs. Scherer's

voice, and I realized that she, too, was aware of that flaw in the

redoubtable Mr. Scherer which none of his associates had guessed. It

would have been strange if she had not discovered it. “She is beautiful,

yes,” the lady continued critically, “but she is not to compare with

your wife. She has not the heart,--it is so with all your people of

society. For them it is not what you are, but what you have done, and

what you have.”

The banality of this observation was mitigated by the feeling she threw

into it.

“I think you misjudge Mrs. Durrett,” I said, incautiously. “She has

never before had the opportunity of meeting Mr. Scherer of appreciating

him.”

“Mrs. Durrett is an old friend of yours?” she asked.

“I was brought up with her.”

“Ah!” she exclaimed, and turned her penetrating glance upon me. I was

startled. Could it be that she had discerned and interpreted those

renascent feelings even then stirring within me, and of which I myself

was as yet scarcely conscious? At this moment, fortunately for me, the

women rose; the men remained to smoke; and Scherer, as they discussed

matters of finance, became himself again. I joined in the conversation,

but I was thinking of those instants when in flashes of understanding my

eyes had met Nancy's; instants in which I was lifted out of my humdrum,

deadly serious self and was able to look down objectively upon the life

I led, the life we all led--and Nancy herself; to see with her the comic

irony of it all. Nancy had the power to give me this exquisite sense of

detachment that must sustain her. And was it not just this sustenance

she could give that I needed? For want of it I was hardening,

crystallizing, growing blind to the joy and variety of existence.

Nancy could have saved me; she brought it home to me that I needed

salvation.... I was struck by another thought; in spite of our

separation, in spite of her marriage and mine, she was still nearer to

me--far nearer--than any other being.

Later, I sought her out. She looked up at me amusedly from the

window-seat in our living-room, where she had been talking to the

Scherer girls.

“Well, how did you get along with Hilda?” she asked. “I thought I saw

you struggling.”

“She's somewhat disconcerting,” I said. “I felt as if she were turning

me inside out.”

Nancy laughed.

“Hilda's a discovery--a genius. I'm going to have them to dinner

myself.”

“And Adolf?” I inquired. “I believe she thought you were preparing to

run away with him. You seemed to have him hypnotized.”

“I'm afraid your great man won't be able to stand--elevation,” she

declared. “He'll have vertigo. He's even got it now, at this little

height, and when he builds his palace on Grant Avenue, and later moves

to New York, I'm afraid he'll wobble even more.”

“Is he thinking of doing all that?” I asked.

“I merely predict New York--it's inevitable,” she replied. “Grant

Avenue, yes; he wants me to help him choose a lot. He gave me ten

thousand dollars for our Orphans' Home, but on the whole I think I

prefer Hilda even if she doesn't approve of me.”

Nancy rose. The Scherers were going. While Mr. Scherer pressed my hand

in a manner that convinced me of his gratitude, Hilda was bidding an

affectionate good night to Maude. A few moments later she bore her

husband and daughters away, and we heard the tap-tap of her cane on the

walk outside....

XVII.

The remembrance of that dinner when with my connivance the Scherers

made their social debut is associated in my mind with the coming of the

fulness of that era, mad and brief, when gold rained down like manna

from our sooty skies. Even the church was prosperous; the Rev. Carey

Heddon, our new minister, was well abreast of the times, typical of the

new and efficient Christianity that has finally buried the hatchet with

enlightened self-interest. He looked like a young and prosperous man of

business, and indeed he was one.

The fame of our city spread even across the Atlantic, reaching obscure

hamlets in Europe, where villagers gathered up their lares and

penates, mortgaged their homes, and bought steamship tickets from

philanthropists,--philanthropists in diamonds. Our Huns began to arrive,

their Attilas unrecognized among them: to drive our honest Americans and

Irish and Germans out of the mills by “lowering the standard of

living.” Still--according to the learned economists in our universities,

enlightened self-interest triumphed. Had not the honest Americans and

Germans become foremen and even presidents of corporations? What greater

vindication for their philosophy could be desired?

The very aspect of the city changed like magic. New buildings sprang

high in the air; the Reliance Trust (Mr. Grierson's), the Scherer

Building, the Hambleton Building; a stew hotel, the Ashuela, took

proper care of our visitors from the East,--a massive, grey stone,

thousand-awninged affair on Boyne Street, with a grill where it became

the fashion to go for supper after the play, and a head waiter who knew

in a few weeks everyone worth knowing.

To return for a moment to the Huns. Maude had expressed a desire to

see a mill, and we went, one afternoon, in Mr. Scherer's carriage to

Steelville, with Mr. Scherer himself,--a bewildering, educative, almost

terrifying experience amidst fumes and flames, gigantic forces and

titanic weights. It seemed a marvel that we escaped being crushed or

burned alive in those huge steel buildings reverberating with sound.

They appeared a very bedlam of chaos, instead of the triumph of order,

organization and human skill. Mr. Scherer was very proud of it all, and

ours was a sort of triumphal procession, accompanied by superintendents,

managers and other factotums. I thought of my childhood image of

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, and our progress through the flames

seemed no less remarkable and miraculous.

Maude, with alarm in her eyes, kept very close to me, as I supplemented

the explanations they gave her. I had been there many times before.

“Why, Hugh,” she exclaimed, “you seem to know a lot about it!”

Mr. Scherer laughed.

“He's had to talk about it once or twice in court--eh, Hugh? You didn't

realize how clever your husband was did you, Mrs. Paret?”

“But this is so--complicated,” she replied. “It is overwhelming.”

“When I found out how much trouble he had taken to learn about my

business,” added Mr. Scherer, “there was only one thing to do. Make

him my lawyer. Hugh, you have the floor, and explain the open-hearth

process.”

I had almost forgotten the Huns. I saw Maude gazing at them with a new

kind of terror. And when we sat at home that evening they still haunted

her.

“Somehow, I can't bear to think about them,” she said. “I'm sure we'll

have to pay for it, some day.”

“Pay for what?” I asked.

“For making them work that way. And twelve hours! It can't be right,

while we have so much, and are so comfortable.”

“Don't be foolish,” I exclaimed. “They're used to it. They think

themselves lucky to get the work--and they are. Besides, you give them

credit for a sensitiveness that they don't possess. They wouldn't know

what to do with such a house as this if they had it.”

“I never realized before that our happiness and comfort were built on

such foundations;” she said, ignoring my remark.

“You must have seen your father's operatives, in Elkington, many times a

week.”

“I suppose I was too young to think about such things,” she reflected.

“Besides, I used to be sorry for them, sometimes. But these men at the

steel mills--I can't tell you what I feel about them. The sight of their

great bodies and their red, sullen faces brought home to me the cruelty

of life. Did you notice how some of them stared at us, as though they

were but half awake in the heat, with that glow on their faces? It made

me afraid--afraid that they'll wake up some day, and then they will be

terrible. I thought of the children. It seems not only wicked, but mad

to bring ignorant foreigners over here and make them slaves like that,

and so many of them are hurt and maimed. I can't forget them.”

“You're talking Socialism,” I said crossly, wondering whether Lucia had

taken it up as her latest fad.

“Oh, no, I'm not,” said Maude, “I don't know what Socialism is. I'm

talking about something that anyone who is not dazzled by all this

luxury we are living in might be able to see, about something which,

when it comes, we shan't be able to help.”

I ridiculed this. The prophecy itself did not disturb me half as much

as the fact that she had made it, as this new evidence that she was

beginning to think for herself, and along lines so different from my own

development.

While it lasted, before novelists, playwrights, professors and ministers

of the Gospel abandoned their proper sphere to destroy it, that

Golden Age was heaven; the New Jerusalem--in which we had ceased to

believe--would have been in the nature of an anticlimax to any of our

archangels of finance who might have attained it. The streets of our own

city turned out to be gold; gold likewise the acres of unused, scrubby

land on our outskirts, as the incident of the Riverside Franchise--which

I am about to relate--amply proved.

That scheme originated in the alert mind of Mr. Frederick Grierson, and

in spite of the fact that it has since become notorious in the eyes of

a virtue-stricken public, it was entered into with all innocence at the

time: most of the men who were present at the “magnate's” table at the

Boyne Club the day Mr. Grierson broached it will vouch for this. He

casually asked Mr. Dickinson if he had ever noticed a tract lying on the

river about two miles beyond the Heights, opposite what used to be in

the old days a road house.

“This city is growing so fast, Leonard,” said Grierson, lighting a

special cigar the Club kept for him, “that it might pay a few of us to

get together and buy that tract, have the city put in streets and sewers

and sell it in building lots. I think I can get most of it at less than

three hundred dollars an acre.”

Mr. Dickinson was interested. So were Mr. Ogilvy and Ralph Hambleton,

and Mr. Scherer, who chanced to be there. Anything Fred Grierson had to

say on the question of real estate was always interesting. He went on to

describe the tract, its size and location.

“That's all very well, Fred,” Dickinson objected presently, “but how are

your prospective householders going to get out there?”

“Just what I was coming to,” cried Grierson, triumphantly, “we'll get

a franchise, and build a street-railroad out Maplewood Avenue, an

extension of the Park Street line. We can get the franchise for next

to nothing, if we work it right.” (Mr. Grierson's eye fell on me), “and

sell it out to the public, if you underwrite it, for two million or so.”

“Well, you've got your nerve with you, Fred, as usual,” said Dickinson.

But he rolled his cigar in his mouth, an indication, to those who knew

him well, that he was considering the matter. When Leonard Dickinson

didn't say “no” at once, there was hope. “What do you think the property

holders on Maplewood Avenue would say? Wasn't it understood, when

that avenue was laid out, that it was to form part of the system of

boulevards?”

“What difference does it make what they say?” Ralph interposed.

Dickinson smiled. He, too, had an exaggerated respect for Ralph. We all

thought the proposal daring, but in no way amazing; the public existed

to be sold things to, and what did it matter if the Maplewood residents,

as Ralph said; and the City Improvement League protested?

Perry Blackwood was the Secretary of the City Improvement League, the

object of which was to beautify the city by laying out a system of

parkways.

The next day some of us gathered in Dickinson's office and decided that

Grierson should go ahead and get the options. This was done; not, of

course, in Grierson's name. The next move, before the formation of the

Riverside Company, was to “see” Mr. Judd Jason. The success or failure

of the enterprise was in his hands. Mahomet must go to the mountain, and

I went to Monahan's saloon, first having made an appointment. It was not

the first time I had been there since I had made that first memorable

visit, but I never quite got over the feeling of a neophyte before

Buddha, though I did not go so far as to analyze the reason,--that in

Mr. Jason I was brought face to face with the concrete embodiment of

the philosophy I had adopted, the logical consequence of enlightened

self-interest. If he had ever heard of it, he would have made no

pretence of being anything else. Greatness, declares some modern

philosopher, has no connection with virtue; it is the continued, strong

and logical expression of some instinct; in Mr. Jason's case, the

predatory instinct. And like a true artist, he loved his career for

itself--not for what its fruits could buy. He might have built a palace

on the Heights with the tolls he took from the disreputable houses of

the city; he was contented with Monahan's saloon: nor did he seek to

propitiate a possible God by endowing churches and hospitals with a

portion of his income. Try though I might, I never could achieve the

perfection of this man's contempt for all other philosophies. The very

fact of my going there in secret to that dark place of his from out

of the bright, respectable region in which I lived was in itself an

acknowledgment of this. I thought him a thief--a necessary thief--and

he knew it: he was indifferent to it; and it amused him, I think, to

see clinging to me, when I entered his presence, shreds of that morality

which those of my world who dealt with him thought so needful for the

sake of decency.

He was in bed, reading newspapers, as usual. An empty coffee-cup and a

plate were on the littered table.

“Sit down, sit down, Paret,” he said. “What do you hear from the

Senator?”

I sat down, and gave him the news of Mr. Watling. He seemed, as usual,

distrait, betraying no curiosity as to the object of my call, his lean,

brown fingers playing with the newspapers on his lap. Suddenly, he

flashed out at me one of those remarks which produced the uncanny

conviction that, so far as affairs in the city were concerned, he was

omniscient.

“I hear somebody has been getting options on that tract of land beyond

the Heights, on the river.”

He had “focussed.”

“How did you hear that?” I asked.

He smiled.

“It's Grierson, ain't it?”

“Yes, it's Grierson,” I said.

“How are you going to get your folks out there?” he demanded.

“That's what I've come to see you about. We want a franchise for

Maplewood Avenue.”

“Maplewood Avenue!” He lay back with his eyes closed, as though trying

to visualize such a colossal proposal....

When I left him, two hours later, the details were all arranged, down to

Mr. Jason's consideration from Riverside Company and the “fee” which

his lawyer, Mr. Bitter, was to have for “presenting the case” before

the Board of Aldermen. I went back to lunch at the Boyne Club, and to

receive the congratulations of my friends. The next week the Riverside

Company was formed, and I made out a petition to the Board of Aldermen

for a franchise; Mr. Bitter appeared and argued: in short, the procedure

so familiar to modern students of political affairs was gone through.

The Maplewood Avenue residents rose en masse, supported by the City

Improvement League. Perry Blackwood, as soon as he heard of the

petition, turned up at my office. By this time I was occupying Mr.

Watling's room.

“Look here,” he began, as soon as the office-boy had closed the door

behind him, “this is going it a little too strong.”

“What is?” I asked, leaning back in my chair and surveying him.

“This proposed Maplewood Avenue Franchise. Hugh,” he said, “you and I

have been friends a good many years, Lucia and I are devoted to Maude.”

I did not reply.

“I've seen all along that we've been growing apart,” he added sadly.

“You've got certain ideas about things which I can't share. I suppose

I'm old fashioned. I can't trust myself to tell you what I think--what

Tom and I think about this deal.”

“Go ahead, Perry,” I said.

He got up, plainly agitated, and walked to the window. Then he turned to

me appealingly.

“Get out of it, for God's sake get out of it, before it's too late. For

your own sake, for Maude's, for the children's. You don't realize what

you are doing. You may not believe me, but the time will come when these

fellows you are in with will be repudiated by the community,--their

money won't help them. Tom and I are the best friends you have,” he

added, a little irrelevantly.

“And you think I'm going to the dogs.”

“Now don't take it the wrong way,” he urged.

“What is it you object to about the Maplewood franchise?” I asked. “If

you'll look at a map of the city, you'll see that development is bound

to come on that side. Maplewood Avenue is the natural artery,

somebody will build a line out there, and if you'd rather have eastern

capitalists--”

“Why are you going to get this franchise?” he demanded. “Because we

haven't a decent city charter, and a healthy public spirit, you fellows

are buying it from a corrupt city boss, and bribing a corrupt board of

aldermen. That's the plain language of it. And it's only fair to warn

you that I'm going to say so, openly.”

“Be sensible,” I answered. “We've got to have street railroads,--your

family has one. We know what the aldermen are, what political conditions

are. If you feel this way about it, the thing to do is to try to change

them. But why blame me for getting a franchise for a company in the only

manner in which, under present conditions, a franchise can be got? Do

you want the city to stand still? If not, we have to provide for the new

population.”

“Every time you bribe these rascals for a franchise you entrench them,”

he cried. “You make it more difficult to oust them. But you mark my

words, we shall get rid of them some day, and when that fight comes, I

want to be in it.”

He had grown very much excited; and it was as though this excitement

suddenly revealed to me the full extent of the change that had taken

place in him since he had left college. As he stood facing me, almost

glaring at me through his eye-glasses, I beheld a slim, nervous,

fault-finding doctrinaire, incapable of understanding the world as it

was, lacking the force of his pioneer forefathers. I rather pitied him.

“I'm sorry we can't look at this thing alike, Perry,” I told him.

“You've said solve pretty hard things, but I realize that you hold your

point of view in good faith, and that you have come to me as an old

friend. I hope it won't make any difference in our personal relations.”

“I don't see how it can help making a difference,” he answered slowly.

His excitement had cooled abruptly: he seemed dazed. At this moment my

private stenographer entered to inform me that I was being called up on

the telephone from New York. “Well, you have more important affairs to

attend to, I won't bother you any more,” he added.

“Hold on,” I exclaimed, “this call can wait. I'd like to talk it over

with you.”

“I'm afraid it wouldn't be any use, Hugh,” he said, and went out.

After talking with the New York client whose local interests I

represented I sat thinking over the conversation with Perry. Considering

Maude's intimacy with and affection for the Blackwoods, the affair was

awkward, opening up many uncomfortable possibilities; and it was the

prospect of discomfort that bothered me rather than regret for the

probable loss of Perry's friendship. I still believed myself to have an

affection for him: undoubtedly this was a sentimental remnant....

That evening after dinner Tom came in alone, and I suspected that Perry

had sent him. He was fidgety, ill at ease, and presently asked if I

could see him a moment in my study. Maude's glance followed us.

“Say, Hugh, this is pretty stiff,” he blurted out characteristically,

when the door was closed.

“I suppose you mean the Riverside Franchise,” I said. He looked up at

me, miserably, from the chair into which he had sunk, his hands in his

pockets.

“You'll forgive me for talking about it, won't you? You used to lecture

me once in a while at Cambridge, you know.”

“That's all right--go ahead,” I replied, trying to speak amiably.

“You know I've always admired you, Hugh,--I never had your ability,”

he began painfully, “you've gone ahead pretty fast,--the truth is that

Perry and I have been worried about you for some time. We've tried

not to be too serious in showing it, but we've felt that these modern

business methods were getting into your system without your realizing

it. There are some things a man's friends can tell him, and it's their

duty to tell him. Good God, haven't you got enough, Hugh,--enough

success and enough money, without going into a thing like this Riverside

scheme?”

I was intensely annoyed, if not angry; and I hesitated a moment to calm

myself.

“Tom, you don't understand my position,” I said. “I'm willing to discuss

it with you, now that you've opened up the subject. Perry's been talking

to you, I can see that. I think Perry's got queer ideas,--to be plain

with you, and they're getting queerer.”

He sat down again while, with what I deemed a rather exemplary patience,

I went over the arguments in favour of my position; and as I talked,

it clarified in my own mind. It was impossible to apply to business an

individual code of ethics,--even to Perry's business, to Tom's business:

the two were incompatible, and the sooner one recognized that the

better: the whole structure of business was built up on natural, as

opposed to ethical law. We had arrived at an era of frankness--that was

the truth--and the sooner we faced this truth the better for our peace

of mind. Much as we might deplore the political system that had grown

up, we had to acknowledge, if we were consistent, that it was the base

on which our prosperity was built. I was rather proud of having evolved

this argument; it fortified my own peace of mind, which had been

disturbed by Tom's attitude. I began to pity him. He had not been very

successful in life, and with the little he earned, added to Susan's

income, I knew that a certain ingenuity was required to make both ends

meet. He sat listening with a troubled look. A passing phase of feeling

clouded for a brief moment my confidence when there arose in my mind an

unbidden memory of my youth, of my father. He, too, had mistrusted my

ingenuity. I recalled how I had out-manoeuvred him and gone to college;

I remembered the March day so long ago, when Tom and I had stood on the

corner debating how to deceive him, and it was I who had suggested the

nice distinction between a boat and a raft. Well, my father's illogical

attitude towards boyhood nature, towards human nature, had forced me

into that lie, just as the senseless attitude of the public to-day

forced business into a position of hypocrisy.

“Well, that's clever,” he said, slowly and perplexedly, when I had

finished. “It's damned clever, but somehow it looks to me all wrong. I

can't pick it to pieces.” He got up rather heavily. “I--I guess I ought

to be going. Susan doesn't know where I am.”

I was exasperated. It was clear, though he did not say so, that he

thought me dishonest. The pain in his eyes had deepened.

“If you feel that way--” I said.

“Oh, God, I don't know how I feel!” he cried. “You're the oldest friend

I have, Hugh,--I can't forget that. We'll say nothing more about it.” He

picked up his hat and a moment later I heard the front door close

behind him. I stood for a while stock-still, and then went into the

living-room, where Maude was sewing.

“Why, where's Tom?” she inquired, looking up.

“Oh, he went home. He said Susan didn't know where he was.”

“How queer! Hugh, was there anything the matter? Is he in trouble?” she

asked anxiously.

I stood toying with a book-mark, reflecting. She must inevitably come to

suspect that something had happened, and it would be as well to fortify

her.

“The trouble is,” I said after a moment, “that Perry and Tom would like

to run modern business on the principle of a charitable institution.

Unfortunately, it is not practical. They're upset because I have been

retained by a syndicate whose object is to develop some land out beyond

Maplewood Avenue. They've bought the land, and we are asking the city

to give us a right to build a line out Maplewood Avenue, which is the

obvious way to go. Perry says it will spoil the avenue. That's nonsense,

in the first place. The avenue is wide, and the tracks will be in a

grass plot in the centre. For the sake of keeping tracks off that avenue

he would deprive people of attractive homes at a small cost, of the

good air they can get beyond the heights; he would stunt the city's

development.”

“That does seem a little unreasonable,” Maude admitted. “Is that all he

objects to?”

“No, he thinks it an outrage because, in order to get the franchise, we

have to deal with the city politicians. Well, it so happens, and always

has happened, that politics have been controlled by leaders, whom

Perry calls 'bosses,' and they are not particularly attractive men. You

wouldn't care to associate with them. My father once refused to be mayor

of the city for this reason. But they are necessities. If the people

didn't want them, they'd take enough interest in elections to throw them

out. But since the people do want them, and they are there, every time

a new street-car line or something of that sort needs to be built they

have to be consulted, because, without their influence nothing could be

done. On the other hand, these politicians cannot afford to ignore men

of local importance like Leonard Dickinson and Adolf Scherer and Miller

Gorse who represent financial substance and' responsibility. If a new

street-railroad is to be built, these are the logical ones to build it.

You have just the same situation in Elkington, on a smaller scale.

“Your family, the Hutchinses, own the mills and the street-railroads,

and any new enterprise that presents itself is done with their money,

because they are reliable and sound.”

“It isn't pleasant to think that there are such people as the

politicians, is it?” said Maude, slowly.

“Unquestionably not,” I agreed. “It isn't pleasant to think of some

other crude forces in the world. But they exist, and they have to be

dealt with. Suppose the United States should refuse to trade with Russia

because, from our republican point of view, we regarded her government

as tyrannical and oppressive? or to cooperate with England in some

undertaking for the world's benefit because we contended that she ruled

India with an iron hand? In such a case, our President and Senate would

be scoundrels for making and ratifying a treaty. Yet here are Perry and

Tom, and no doubt Susan and Lucia, accusing me, a lifetime friend, of

dishonesty because I happen to be counsel for a syndicate that wishes to

build a street-railroad for the convenience of the people of the city.”

“Oh, no, not of dishonesty!” she exclaimed. “I can't--I won't believe

they would do that.”

“Pretty near it,” I said. “If I listened to them, I should have to give

up the law altogether.”

“Sometimes,” she answered in a low voice, “sometimes I wish you would.”

“I might have expected that you would take their point of view.”

As I was turning away she got up quickly and put her hand on my

shoulder.

“Hugh, please don't say such things--you've no right to say them.”

“And you?” I asked.

“Don't you see,” she continued pleadingly, “don't you see that we are

growing apart? That's the only reason I said what I did. It isn't that I

don't trust you, that I don't want you to have your work, that I demand

all of you. I know a woman can't ask that,--can't have it. But if you

would only give me--give the children just a little, if I could feel

that we meant something to you and that this other wasn't gradually

becoming everything, wasn't absorbing you more and more, killing the

best part of you. It's poisoning our marriage, it's poisoning all your

relationships.”

In that appeal the real Maude, the Maude of the early days of our

marriage flashed forth again so vividly that I was taken aback. I

understood that she had had herself under control, had worn a mask--a

mask I had forced on her; and the revelation of the continued existence

of that other Maude was profoundly disturbing. Was it true, as she said,

that my absorption in the great game of modern business, in the modern

American philosophy it implied was poisoning my marriage? or was it

that my marriage had failed to satisfy and absorb me? I was touched--but

sentimentally touched: I felt that this was a situation that ought to

touch me; I didn't wish to face it, as usual: I couldn't acknowledge to

myself that anything was really wrong... I patted her on the shoulder, I

bent over and kissed her.

“A man in my position can't altogether choose just how busy he will be,”

I said smiling. “Matters are thrust upon me which I have to accept, and

I can't help thinking about some of them when I come home. But we'll go

off for a real vacation soon, Maude, to Europe--and take the children.”

“Oh, I hope so,” she said.

From this time on, as may be supposed, our intercourse with both the

Blackwoods began to grow less frequent, although Maude continued to see

a great deal of Lucia; and when we did dine in their company, or

they with us, it was quite noticeable that their former raillery was

suppressed. Even Tom had ceased to refer to me as the young Napoleon

of the Law: he clung to me, but he too kept silent on the subject of

business. Maude of course must have noticed this, must have sensed the

change of atmosphere, have known that the Blackwoods, at least, were

maintaining appearances for her sake. She did not speak to me of the

change, nor I to her; but when I thought of her silence, it was to

suspect that she was weighing the question which had led up to the

difference between Perry and me, and I had a suspicion that the fact

that I was her husband would not affect her ultimate decision. This

faculty of hers of thinking things out instead of accepting my views and

decisions was, as the saying goes, getting a little “on my nerves”: that

she of all women should have developed it was a recurring and unpleasant

surprise. I began at times to pity myself a little, to feel the need of

sympathetic companionship--feminine companionship....

I shall not go into the details of the procurement of what became known

as the Riverside Franchise. In spite of the Maplewood residents, of the

City Improvement League and individual protests, we obtained it with

absurd ease. Indeed Perry Blackwood himself appeared before the Public

Utilities Committee of the Board of Aldermen, and was listened to

with deference and gravity while he discoursed on the defacement of a

beautiful boulevard to satisfy the greed of certain private individuals.

Mr. Otto Bitter and myself, who appeared for the petitioners, had

a similar reception. That struggle was a tempest in a tea-pot. The

reformer raged, but he was feeble in those days, and the great public

believed what it read in the respectable newspapers. In Mr. Judah

B. Tallant's newspaper, for instance, the Morning Era, there were

semi-playful editorials about “obstructionists.” Mr. Perry Blackwood

was a well-meaning, able gentleman of an old family, etc., but with a

sentiment for horse-cars. The Era published also the resolutions which

(with interesting spontaneity!) had been passed by our Board of Trade

and Chamber of Commerce and other influential bodies in favour of the

franchise; the idea--unknown to the public--of Mr. Hugh Paret, who

wrote drafts of the resolutions and suggested privately to Mr. Leonard

Dickinson that a little enthusiasm from these organizations might be

helpful. Mr. Dickinson accepted the suggestion eagerly, wondering why he

hadn't thought of it himself. The resolutions carried some weight with a

public that did not know its right hand from its left.

After fitting deliberation, one evening in February the Board of

Aldermen met and granted the franchise. Not unanimously, oh, no! Mr.

Jason was not so simple as that! No further visits to Monahan's saloon

on my part, in this connection were necessary; but Mr. Otto Bitter met

me one day in the hotel with a significant message from the boss.

“It's all fixed,” he informed me. “Murphy and Scott and Ottheimer and

Grady and Loth are the decoys. You understand?”

“I think I gather your meaning,” I said.

Mr. Bitter smiled by pulling down one corner of a crooked mouth.

“They'll vote against it on principle, you know,” he added. “We get a

little something from the Maple Avenue residents.”

I've forgotten what the Riverside Franchise cost. The sum was paid in a

lump sum to Mr. Bitter as his “fee,”--so, to their chagrin, a grand jury

discovered in later years, when they were barking around Mr. Jason's

hole with an eager district attorney snapping his whip over them.

I remember the cartoon. The municipal geese were gone, but it was

impossible to prove that this particular fox had used his enlightened

reason in their procurement. Mr. Bitter was a legally authorized fox,

and could take fees. How Mr. Jason was to be rewarded by the land

company's left-hand, unknown, to the land company's right hand, became a

problem worthy of a genius. The genius was found, but modesty forbids

me to mention his name, and the problem was solved, to wit: the land

company bought a piece of downtown property from--Mr. Ryerson, who was

Mr. Grierson's real estate man and the agent for the land company, for

a consideration of thirty thousand dollars. An unconfirmed rumour had it

that Mr. Ryerson turned over the thirty thousand to Mr. Jason. Then the

Riverside Company issued a secret deed of the same property back to Mr.

Ryerson, and this deed was not recorded until some years later.

Such are the elaborate transactions progress and prosperity demand.

Nature is the great teacher, and we know that her ways are at times

complicated and clumsy. Likewise, under the “natural” laws of economics,

new enterprises are not born without travail, without the aid of legal

physicians well versed in financial obstetrics. One hundred and fifty

to two hundred thousand, let us say, for the right to build tracks on

Maplewood Avenue, and we sold nearly two million dollars worth of the

securities back to the public whose aldermen had sold us the franchise.

Is there a man so dead as not to feel a thrill at this achievement?

And let no one who declares that literary talent and imagination are

nonexistent in America pronounce final judgment until he reads that

prospectus, in which was combined the best of realism and symbolism,

for the labours of Alonzo Cheyne were not to be wasted, after all. Mr.

Dickinson, who was a director in the Maplewood line, got a handsome

underwriting percentage, and Mr. Berringer, also a director, on the

bonds and preferred stock he sold. Mr. Paret, who entered both companies

on the ground floor, likewise got fees. Everybody was satisfied except

the trouble makers, who were ignored. In short, the episode of the

Riverside Franchise is a triumphant proof of the contention that

business men are the best fitted to conduct the politics of their

country.

We had learned to pursue our happiness in packs, we knew that the

Happy Hunting-Grounds are here and now, while the Reverend Carey Heddon

continued to assure the maimed, the halt and the blind that their

kingdom was not of this world, that their time was coming later. Could

there have been a more idyl arrangement! Everybody should have been

satisfied, but everybody was not. Otherwise these pages would never have

been written.