hours of that night's morning. Let us dispense with quotation marks to
cover it.
You know what my education was. My uncle, whose heir I was supposed to
be, spared no expense to equip me for my life's work. He sent me to the
best schools in the North, and afterwards to the best schools in Europe.
Just at the beginning of the war, and because of it, I returned to
Virginia. I secured a commission in the engineer corps, but I soon
resigned it, because at the beginning of the war there was no earnest
work for the engineer corps to do, and I foolishly thought there never
would be. I enlisted as a private in the artillery, and before the end
of the war I was a captain.
A few months before the war ended, I married Mary. You, of course,
understand. Mary was the daughter of an ancient and honorable house, but
she was living as a dependent in the family of a very remote
relative--so remote that the kinship was rather mythical than real.
At that time I owned, or was supposed to own, my ancestral plantation,
Robinet. My uncle at his death had left it to me.
As a man abundantly able to provide for a wife, I asked Mary to marry
me, and to become the mistress of Robinet.
We were married about the time Fort Harrison fell into the enemy's
hands. I remember that I had to delay the wedding in order to bombard
Fort Harrison with my mortars, in preparation for the infantry assault,
which it was hoped might recover the works.
When that affair was over, and our lines were reconstructed, I got leave
of absence, and Mary and I were married.
I was foolish enough to believe, even in the autumn and winter of 1864,
that we of the South were certain to win the war. As I look back now and
consider the conditions then existing, I wonder at my own stupidity in
not seeing what the end must be. However, that would have made no
difference in any case. I must take Mary out of her condition of
dependence, by marrying her, and I did so.
When the end came, I went home for a little while. My uncle had died in
hopeless despondency. His estate, when I inherited it, was buried in
debt, and with the negroes no longer mine, the creditors clearly saw
that I could never pay out. They descended upon me in a swarm. There
was nothing for me to do but make complete surrender of my possessions
to them. These were sufficient to pay about forty cents on the dollar of
the hereditary debt.
As soon as disaster thus came upon me, I set out to find employment in
my profession, promising myself that I should soon be able to pay all
the debts of which I had been acquitted as a bankrupt.
I knew that I had as much of skill in my profession as a young man with
little practical experience could have. I saw that there must be a world
of work done by way of developing the resources of the country after
four years of paralyzing war. I thought there was pressing need of my
services and my skill, and I confidently counted upon quickly achieving
place and pay for myself.
I didn't know the ways of men then, but I soon found them out. Wherever
there seemed to be an opening for me, I found that Somebody's son got
the place, because Somebody could influence its bestowal.
Once I did get employment. There was a little stretch of railroad to be
built, by way of connecting one line with others. I applied for the
place of engineer, and was promptly informed that John Harbin had
already been appointed to it. You know John. You know what a blockhead
he is. I was graduated in the same class with him--he simply cheating
his way through. When I heard of his appointment, I was dumbfounded. I
knew that he simply could not do the work. He could not calculate a
curvature to save his life. As for the more difficult operations of
engineering, he was as helpless as a child.
I was curious to learn how he intended to get through with his task. I
soon found out. He sent for me and asked me to become his "assistant."
The pay he offered was barely sufficient to keep me alive. In brief, the
arrangement was that I should do the work while he drew the pay and got
the credit. That was because John Harbin's father was president of the
railroad that was making the extension, and John Harbin's father had no
purpose to let any good thing go out of the family.
I was rapidly getting my education in the ways of the world, and I was
paying a high price for it. For a few months I did the work of a
competent engineer on a salary that paid me less than a laborer's wage.
Finally I resigned in disgust and set out to find something better. I
tramped across country to every mine I could hear of--for in my studies
I had specialized in mining--but nowhere could I secure employment.
There was always some man with influence, where I had none, and always
the man with the influence got the place.
At last I tramped my way out here. I had made up my mind to ask no
longer for employment as an engineer. I applied to Davidson for a
miner's place only. At first he refused, after looking at my hands and
satisfying himself that I had had no experience in practical mining.
But, as they pay miners here only by output--a certain price per ton for
the coal a miner gets out--I persuaded him at last to let me go into a
heading with a pick and a shovel, and a package of blasting powder.
Then I wrote to Mary, telling her of my situation, and charging her that
she must from that day forth pay the cost of her living out of such
money as I could send her. In order that I might send her enough--for I
was determined that she should not be in any remotest way a dependent--I
instantly cut off all my personal expenses. I had my soldier blanket,
and my overalls. I needed no other clothes, for in the mine I always go
barefoot. I was well used to sleeping out of doors, so I slept on the
ground under the coal chutes. I took the job of cooking for a gang of
bachelor miners, who gave me my board for my services.
In that way I planned to send all of my wages to Mary. But I didn't
really know Mary. I thought of her always as a tenderly nurtured girl,
who must be shielded at all hazards against hardship of every kind; and
I meant so to shield her. But presently she revealed herself in another
character. You know how it was in the army. The gentlemen soldiers, the
men of good breeding, the men who had lived in luxury from childhood,
with servants to anticipate every need, real or fancied, were the
readiest to meet hardship, and to do hard work. You and I have seen
such men drudging, willingly and cheerfully, in the half-frozen mud of
the trenches, while other men, who had never known anything better than
a log cabin for a home, bacon and greens for dinner, and a bed of straw
to sleep upon, were almost in mutiny because of the hardships they must
endure as soldiers.
It is true that "Blood will tell," and it is as true with women as with
men. Blood asserted itself in Mary's case. Her answer was prompt to my
letter telling her I had taken work as a miner. She utterly repudiated
the thought that she was to go on living in idleness, while I should go
on toiling to furnish her the means of living so. I shall never forget
her words:
"I am coming to you quickly, Richard, to convert your miner's cabin into
a home. Where the husband is, the wife should be with all she knows of
helpfulness and cheer."
And she came. From that hour to this I have known what the word "home"
means, far better than I ever did in my life before. We have two
rooms--she built one of them, a little lean-to, with her own hands. And
her presence glorifies both of them.
"I am very glad, Dick."
That was all that Duncan could say. It was all there was need for him to
say.
XX
IN THE SUMMER TIME
Six months came and went before Duncan's work at the mine was done.
Then, in mid-July, he returned to Cairo and gave an account of his
stewardship. With Temple in control as superintendent and engineer, the
mine had become a richly paying property, and with Temple there, there
was no further need for Duncan's presence.
During that half year, Duncan had lived chiefly with the Temples in the
superintendent's house, which Mary Temple had quickly converted from a
barn-like structure, standing alone upon the face of the bald prairie,
into a home in the midst of a garden of flowers.
During his long stay at the mine, Duncan had made frequent visits to
Cairo. These were brief in duration, usually covering a Sunday, but each
visit gave Guilford Duncan two opportunities that he desired. He could
sit late on Saturday evening, discussing his plans with Captain Will
Hallam, and on Sunday he had opportunity to become more and more closely
acquainted with Barbara.
He made no formal calls upon her, and none were necessary. He simply
adopted the plan of remaining after the one o'clock Sunday dinner and,
little by little, Barbara came to feel that he expected her to join him
in the little parlor, after his cigar was finished. He seemed to like
the quiet conversations with her, while she regarded the opportunity to
talk with a man so superior in education, culture, and intellect, to any
other that she had known, as a privilege to be prized.
Their attitude toward each other at this time was peculiar. They were
good friends, fond of each other's society, and seemingly, at least,
they were nothing more. The fascination that Duncan had from the first
felt in Barbara's presence was still upon him, but he accepted it more
calmly now, and it soothed his natural restlessness, where at first it
had excited it.
To Barbara, Guilford Duncan's attitude seemed a gracious condescension,
which she did not dream that she deserved. She sometimes wondered that
this young man of rare quality, who was sure of a welcome wherever he
might go, should be content to sit with her throughout the Sunday
afternoons, instead of seeking company better fit to entertain him.
There were young women in Cairo who had been much more conventionally
educated than she--young women who had mingled in society in Chicago,
and in eastern cities. A few of them had even traveled in Europe--a
thing very rare among Americans, and especially among Western Americans
in the sixties. These young women knew all about operas and theaters.
They had heard great musicians play and great singers sing. They had
seen all the notable actors. They read the current literature of the
time--the lighter part of it at least--and above all, they were
mistresses of the "patter," which passes for brilliancy and sometimes
even for wit in fashionable life.
Guilford Duncan visited none of these, and Barbara could not understand.
"He is too tired, I suppose," was her reflection, "when he runs down to
Cairo for a Sunday rest. He doesn't want to see anybody or talk to
anybody. I can easily understand that. So he just sits here instead of
going out."
Barbara's explanation was obviously defective at one point. If Duncan
did not care to see people, if he was too weary for conversation, how
came it about that he stayed and talked gently, but constantly, with
her, instead of going to the rooms he had fitted up for himself since
prosperity had come to him? She had heard much of those rooms, of the
multitude of books that he had put into them, of the bric-a-brac with
which he had rendered them homelike and beautiful. They were in fact
very simple rooms, inexpensively furnished. But Duncan had devoted a
good deal of attention and an unfailing good taste to their furnishing
and adornment, and thus, by the expenditure of a very little money he
had managed to create a bachelor apartment which was the talk of the
town.
"He is alone when he goes there," the girl explained to herself, when at
last this question arose in her mind. "And I suppose he feels lonely.
But why doesn't he go somewhere, instead of just sitting here in our
little parlor or out in the porch?"
It was a riddle that she could not read, and for the present, at least,
Duncan would not offer her any help in solving it. He knew now that
Barbara Verne was the woman he loved--the only woman in all the world
who could be to him what a wife must be to a man of his temperament, if
two souls are to be satisfied.
But he saw clearly that Barbara Verne had no thought of that kind in her
mind--or, at least, no such conscious thought. She was accustomed to
think of herself as a very commonplace young woman, not at all the equal
of this very superior man, to whom everybody in Cairo paid a marked
deference. He understood Barbara as she did not at all understand
herself. He had looked upon her white soul and bowed his head in worship
of its purity, its nobility, its utter truthfulness. He knew the
qualities of a mind that had no just self-appreciation. He felt, rather
than knew, that no thought of his loving her--otherwise than as an elder
brother might love a little sister--had ever crossed her consciousness.
He felt that the abrupt suggestion of that thought would only shock and
distress her.
"I'll find a way of making others suggest it, after a while," he
resolved. "In the meanwhile----" He didn't finish the sentence, even in
his own mind. But what he did in that "meanwhile" was to see as much as
possible of Barbara, to talk with her impersonally, gently, and
interestingly, to win her perfect trust and confidence, and, so far as
possible, to make his presence a necessary thing to her. He paid her no
public attention of any kind. But he paid no public or private attention
to any other young woman. It was well understood that for a time he was
living at the mine and coming to Cairo only for brief visits of a
business character, at infrequent intervals. His neglect of society,
therefore, seemed in need of no explanation, while his unostentatious
intimacy with Barbara attracted no attention. The only person who ever
spoke to him about it was Mrs. Will Hallam.
"You are going to marry Barbara Verne, of course?" she half said, half
asked one day.
"If I can, yes," he answered.
"I'm very glad of that," and she said no more.
On his final return to Cairo, however, Duncan found himself expected in
what is called society. Society was destined to disappointment, for
Duncan went nowhere--except that he usually sat for some hours every
Sunday afternoon in the vine-clad porch of the house in which he took
his meals. Barbara's aunt often sat there with him. Barbara always did
so, in answer to what seemed to be his wish. He made no calls. He
declined all invitations to the little excursions on the river, which
constituted the chief social activities of the summer time. He gave it
out that he was too busily engaged with affairs to have time for
anything else, and that explanation seemed for a time to satisfy public
curiosity.
And that explanation was true. Guilford Duncan had begun to take upon
himself the duties of a leader--in an important way--in the work of
upbuilding which at that time was engaging the attention of all men of
affairs. He had accumulated some money, partly by saving, but more by
the profits of his little investments, and by being "let in on the
ground floor" of many large enterprises, in the conception and conduct
of which his abilities were properly appreciated by the capitalists who
undertook them.
Except as a legal adviser, he was no longer a man employed by other men
now. His relations with Will Hallam were closer than ever, but they were
no longer those of secretary, or clerk, or employee in any other
capacity. In many enterprises he was Hallam's partner. In all, he was
his legal adviser, besides being employed in a like capacity by one or
two railroad companies and the like. He had offices of his own, and
while he was still not at all rich, or a man who was reckoned a
capitalist, he was everywhere recognized as a young man of power and
influence, whose brains had brought him into close association with the
greater men of affairs, not only in Cairo, but in all parts of the
country, and especially in New York. For that great city had by this
time made itself completely the financial capital of the country, and
its controlling hand was felt in every enterprise of large moment
throughout the land.
XXI
AN INTERVIEW WITH NAPPER TANDY
For more than a year now Guilford Duncan had been diligently studying
those processes of upbuilding which were so rapidly converting the West
into an empire of extraordinary wealth and power. He had made many
suggestions that had commended themselves for immediate execution,
together with some that must wait for years to come. He had condemned
some projects that seemed hopeful to others, and he had induced
modifications in many.
All these things had been done mainly in his letters and reports to
Captain Will Hallam, but the substance of those letters and reports had
been promptly laid before others, especially before those great
financiers of the East, upon whom all enterprises of moment throughout
the country depended for the means of their accomplishment. In that way
Guilford Duncan had become known to the "master builders" as he called
these men, and had won a goodly share of their confidence. He was
regarded as a young man of unusual gifts in the way of constructive
enterprise--a trifle overbold, some thought, overconfident, even
visionary, but, in the main, sound in his calculations, as results had
shown when his plans were adopted. On the other hand, some projectors,
whose enterprises he had discouraged as unsound or premature, complained
that so far from being a visionary, he was in fact a pessimist, a
discouraging force that stood in the way of that "development of the
country" from which they hoped for personal gain of one kind or another.
There were little towns that aspired to become larger towns, and
stretches of undeveloped country in which Guilford Duncan was regarded
as an arch enemy of progress--almost as a public enemy. The reason for
this was the fact that he had advised against the construction of
railroads, from which the little towns concerned, and the stretches of
thinly peopled country between, had hoped to benefit, and his advice had
been accepted as sound by the financiers to whom the projectors looked
for the means of securing what they wanted.
Napper Tandy was Guilford Duncan's enemy from the hour in which Duncan
had forced that little branch railroad in the coal regions to haul
Hallam's coal on equal terms with his own. But Tandy had said nothing
whatever about that. He never published his enmities till the time came.
About the time of Duncan's return to Cairo, he added another to his
offenses against Tandy, in a way to intensify that malignant person's
hostility.
Tandy was scheming to secure a costly extension of this branch railroad
through a sparsely settled and thin-soiled region, in a way that would
greatly enrich himself, because of his vast property holdings there. He
had well-nigh persuaded a group of capitalists to undertake the
extension when, acting cautiously as financiers must, they decided to
ask Duncan to study the situation and make a report upon the project. He
had already studied the question thoroughly during his stay at the
mines, and was convinced that nothing but loss could come of the
attempt. The region through which the line must run was too poor in
agricultural and other resources to afford even a hope of a paying
traffic. The line itself must be a costly one because of certain
topographical features, and finally another and shorter line, closely
paralleling this proposed extension, but running through a much richer
country, was already in course of construction.
Tandy knew all these things quite as well as Guilford Duncan did. But
Tandy also knew many methods in business with which Duncan was not
familiar.
As soon as he was notified by the capitalists with whom he was
negotiating that they had employed Duncan to examine and report, and
that their final decision would be largely influenced by his judgment,
Tandy, with special politeness, wrote to Duncan, asking him to call at
his house that evening "for a little consultation on business affairs
that may interest both of us."
Duncan well knew that he had offended Tandy in the matter of the coal
cars, but as Tandy had made no sign, he could see no possible reason for
refusing this request for a business consultation. Moreover, Guilford
Duncan felt himself under a double responsibility. He felt that he must
not only guard and promote the interests of those who had employed him
to study this question, but that he was also under obligations to
consider carefully the interests involved on the other side. His
function, he felt, was essentially a judicial one. He knew one side of
the case. It was his duty to hear the other, and Tandy was the spokesman
of that other.
Duncan's reception at Tandy's house was most gracious. The gentlewomen
of the family were present to greet him, and Mrs. Tandy said, in
welcoming him:
"Sometimes I feel like hating business--it so dreadfully occupies you
men. But just now I am in love with business because it brings you to us
in our home. We have never before had the honor of even a call from you,
Mr. Duncan."
"I have given little attention to social duties, Mrs. Tandy," Duncan
began apologetically. "I have done next to no calling. You see----"
"Oh, yes, I know how it is. Mr. Tandy says you are the most 'earnest'
young man in Cairo, and of course we poor women folk understand that you
are too much engaged with what Mr. Tandy calls 'affairs,' to give any
time to us. But I am glad to greet you now, and to welcome you to our
home. Perhaps, some day, when you and Mr. Tandy and--and Captain
Hallam--have got all the things done that you want done, you will have
more time for social duties. Mr. Tandy tells me you have achieved a
remarkable success. He says you will soon be reckoned a rich man, and
that you are already a man of very great influence. Now, I shouldn't say
these things if I had any daughters to marry off. As I haven't any
daughters, of course I am privileged. But I seriously want to say that
you have won Mr. Tandy's regard in so great a degree that he is planning
to make you his partner and associate in all his enterprises. He says
you are to become one of our 'great men of affairs,' and that he means
to have you 'with him' in all his undertakings for the development of
our splendid western country."
When the voluble woman ceased, Guilford Duncan wondered whence she had
got her speech.
"Tandy could never have composed it," he was sure. "She must have done
it herself. But, of course, Tandy gave her the 'points.' She is a very
clever woman. I remember it was she who invited Barbara as a guest of
honor at some sort of a function three days after Barbara appeared at
the fancy dress ball. She had never noticed her before. That woman is of
a superior kind--in her way. I can't imagine a wife better 'fit' for a
man like Tandy. All the same I don't mean to let her 'take up' Barbara.
She's far too 'smart.' She isn't Barbara's sort."
"Now, I've ordered coffee and cigars for you gentlemen," said Mrs.
Tandy, as she arose to leave. "Of course you want to 'talk business,'
and when business is on the tapis we women folk must retire to our
rooms. Business is our greatest rival and enemy, Mr. Duncan. On this
occasion I not only take myself out of the way, but I have bidden my two
sisters remain in the dining room until you two gentlemen shall have
finished your talk. After that--perhaps ten o'clock will suit you--you
are to come into the dining room, if you are gracious enough, and have a
little supper."
Duncan bowed, in implication of a promise, which he was not destined to
fulfill.
When the gracious gentlewoman had left the room, Napper Tandy came at
once to the subject in hand.
"I'm more than glad, Duncan," he lyingly said, "that these financial
people have asked you to examine and report upon this scheme of
extension. You are so heartily in sympathy with every enterprise that
looks to the development of our western country, and your intelligence
is so superbly well informed that of course a project like this appeals
to you."
"It does not appeal to me at all, Mr. Tandy," answered Duncan with a
frankness that was the more brutal because it was his first word after
Mrs. Tandy's flattering appeal.
"I do not think well of the extension. It----"