[FOR SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS SEE PRECEDING PAGE]
XV--(_Continued_).
When Roebuck lived near Chicago, he had a huge house, a sort of crude
palace such as so many of our millionaires built for themselves in the
first excitement of their new wealth--a house with porches and
balconies and towers and minarets and all sorts of gingerbread effects
to compel the eye of the passer-by. But when he became enormously
rich, so rich that his name was one of the synonyms for wealth, so
rich that people said "rich as Roebuck" where they used to say "rich
as Croesus," he cut away every kind of ostentation, and avoided
attention more eagerly than he had once sought it. He took advantage
of his having to remove to New York, where his vast interests
centered; he bought a small and commonplace and, for a rich man, even
mean house in East Fifty-second Street--one of a row and an almost
dingy looking row at that. There he had an establishment a man with
one-fiftieth of his fortune would have felt like apologizing for. The
dishes on his table, for example, were cheap and almost coarse, and
the pictures on his walls were photographs or atrocious
bargain-counter paintings. To his few intimates who were intimate
enough to question him about his come-down from his Chicago splendors,
he explained that with advancing years he was seeing with clearer eyes
his responsibilities as a steward of the Lord, that luxury was sinful,
and no man had the right to waste the Lord's gifts that way. The
general theory about him was that advancing years had developed his
natural closeness into the stingiest avariciousness. But my notion is
he was impelled by the fear of exciting envy, by the fear of
assassination--the fear that made his eyes roam restlessly whenever
strangers were near him, and so dried up the inside of his body that
his dry tongue was constantly sliding along his dry lips. I have seen
a convict stand in the door of his cell and, though it was impossible
that anyone could be behind him, look nervously over his shoulder
every moment or so. Roebuck had the same trick--only his dread, I
suspect, was not the officers of the law, even of the divine law, but
the many, many victims of his merciless execution of "the Lord's
will." This state of mind is more common than is generally supposed,
among the very rich men, especially those who have come up from
poverty. Those who have inherited great wealth, and have always been
used to it, get into the habit of looking upon the mass of mankind as
inferiors, and move about with no greater sense of peril than a man
has in venturing among a lot of dogs with tails wagging. But those who
were born poor and have risen under the stimulus of a furious envy of
the comfortable and the rich, fancy that everybody who isn't rich has
the same savage hunger which they themselves had, and is ready to use
the same desperate methods in gratifying it. Thus, where the rich of
the Langdon sort are supercilious, the rich of the Roebuck sort are
nervous and often become morbid on the subject of assassination as
they grow richer and richer.
The door of Roebuck's house was opened for me by a maid--a manservant
would have been a "sinful" luxury, a manservant might be an assassin
or might be hired by plotters against his life. I may add that she
looked the cheap maid-of-all-work, and her manners were of the free
and fresh sort which indicates that a servant feels he or she should
get as high, or higher, wages, and less to do, elsewhere. "I don't
think you can see Mr. Roebuck," she said.
"Take my card to him," I ordered, "and I'll wait in the parlor."
"Parlor's in use," she retorted, with a sarcastic grin, which I was
soon to understand.
So I stood by the old-fashioned coat and hat rack while she went in at
the hall door of the back parlor. Soon Roebuck himself came out, his
glasses on his nose, a family Bible under his arm. "Glad to see you,
Matthew," said he, with saintly kindliness, giving me a friendly hand.
"We are just about to offer up our evening prayer. Come right in."
I followed him into the back parlor. Both it and the front parlor were
lighted; in a sort of circle extending into both rooms were all the
Roebucks and the four servants. "This is my friend, Matthew
Blacklock," said he, and the Roebucks in the circle gravely bowed. He
drew up a chair for me, and we seated ourselves. Amid a solemn hush,
he read a chapter from the big Bible spread out upon his lean lap. My
glance wandered from face to face of the Roebucks, as plainly dressed
as were their servants. I was able to look freely, mine being the only
eyes not bent upon the floor. It was the first time in my life that I
had witnessed family prayers. When I was a boy at home, my mother had
taken literally a Scriptural injunction to pray in secret--in a
closet, I think the passage of the Bible said. Many times each day she
used to retire to a closet under the stairway and spend from one to
twenty minutes shut in there. But we had no family prayers. I was
therefore deeply interested in what was going on in those countrified
parlors of one of the richest and most powerful men in the world--and
this right in the heart of that district of New York where palaces
stand in rows and in blocks, and where such few churches as there are
resemble social clubs for snubbing climbers and patronizing the poor.
It was astonishing how much every Roebuck in that circle, even the old
lady, looked like old Roebuck himself--the same smug piety, the same
underfed appearance that, by the way, more often indicates a starved
soul than a starved body. One difference--where his face had the look
of power that compels respect and, to the shrewd, reveals relentless
strength relentlessly used, the expressions of the others were simply
small and mean and frost-nipped. And that is the rule--the second
generation of a plutocrat inherits, with his money, the meanness that
enabled him to hoard it, but not the greatness that enabled him to
make it.
So absorbed was I in the study of the influence of his terrible
master-character upon those closest to it, that I started when he
said: "Let us pray." I followed the example of the others, and knelt.
The audible prayer was offered up by his oldest daughter, Mrs.
Wheeler, a widow. Roebuck punctuated each paragraph in her series of
petitions with a loudly whispered amen. When she prayed for "the
stranger whom Thou hast led seemingly by chance into our little
circle," he whispered the amen more fervently and repeated it. And
well he might, the old robber and assassin by proxy! The prayer ended
and us on our feet, the servants withdrew, then all the family except
Roebuck. That is, they closed the doors between the two rooms and left
him and me alone in the front parlor.
"I shall not detain you long, Mr. Roebuck," said I. "A report reached
me this evening that sent me to you at once."
"If possible, Matthew," said he, and he could not hide his uneasiness,
"put off business until to-morrow. My mind--yours, too, I trust--is
not in the frame for that kind of thoughts now."
"Is the Coal reorganization to be announced the first of July?" I
demanded. It has always been, and always shall be, my method to fight
in the open. This, not from principle, but from expediency. Some men
fight best in the brush; I don't. So I always begin battle by shelling
the woods.
"No," he said, amazing me by his instant frankness. "The announcement
has been postponed."
Why did he not lie to me? Why did he not put me off the scent, as he
might easily have done, with some shrewd evasion? I suspect I owe it
to my luck in catching him at family prayers. For I know that the
general impression of him is erroneous; he is not merely a hypocrite
before the world, but also a hypocrite before himself. A more
profoundly, piously conscientious man never lived. Never was there a
truer epitaph than the one implied in the sentence carved over his
niche in the magnificent Roebuck mausoleum he built: "Fear naught but
the Lord."
"When will the reorganization be announced?" I asked.
"I cannot say," he answered. "Some difficulties--chiefly labor
difficulties--have arisen. Until they are settled, nothing can be
done. Come to me tomorrow, and we'll talk about it."
"That is all I wished to know," said I. And, with a friendly, easy
smile, I put out my hand. "Good-night."
It was his turn to be astonished--and he showed it, where I had given
not a sign. "What was the report you heard?" he asked, to detain me.
"That you and Mowbray Langdon had conspired to ruin me," said I,
laughing.
He echoed my laugh rather hollowly. "It was hardly necessary for you
to come to me about such a--a statement."
"Hardly," I answered, dryly. Hardly, indeed. For I was seeing now all
that I had been hiding from myself since I became infatuated with
Anita, and made marrying her my only real business in life.
We faced each other, each measuring the other. And as his glance
quailed before mine, I turned away to conceal my exultation. In a
comparison of resources this man who had plotted to crush me was to me
as giant to midget. But I had the joy of realizing that man to man, I
was the stronger. He had craft, but I had daring. His vast wealth
aggravated his natural cowardice--crafty men are invariably cowards,
and their audacities under the compulsion of their insatiable greed
are like a starving jackal's dashes into danger for food. My wealth
belonged to me, not I to it; and, stripped of it, I would be like the
prize-fighter stripped for the fight. Finally, he was old while I was
young. And there was the chief reason for his quailing. He knew that
he must die long before me, that my turn must come, that I could dance
upon his grave.
As I drove away, I was proud of myself. I had listened to my death
sentence with a face so smiling that he must almost have believed me
unconscious; and also, it had not even entered my head, as I listened,
to beg for mercy. Not that there would have been the least use in
begging--as well try to pray a statue into life as try to soften that
set will and purpose. Still, another sort of man than I would have
weakened, and I felt--justly, I think--proud that I had not weakened.
But when I was once more in my apartment--in _our_ apartment--perhaps
I did show that there was a weak streak through me. I fought against
the impulse to see her once more that night; but I fought in vain. I
knocked at the door of her sitting room--a timid knock, for me. No
answer. I knocked again, more loudly--then a third time, still more
loudly. The door opened and she stood there, like one of the angels
that guarded the gates of Eden after the fall. Only, instead of a
flaming sword, hers was of ice. She was in a dressing gown or tea
gown, white and clinging and full of intoxicating hints and glimpses
of all the beauties of her figure. Her face softened as she continued
to look at me, and I entered.
"No--please don't turn on any more lights," I said, as she moved
toward the electric buttons. "I just came in to--to see if I could do
anything for you." In fact, I had come, longing for her to do
something for me, to show in look or tone or act some sympathy for me
in my loneliness and trouble.
"No, thank you," she said. Her voice was that of a stranger who wished
to remain a stranger. And she was evidently waiting for me to go. You
will see what a mood I was in when I say I felt as I had not since I,
a very small boy indeed, ran away from home--it was one evening after
I had been put to bed; I came back through the chilly night to take
one last glimpse of the family that would soon be realizing how
foolishly and wickedly unappreciative they had been of such a treasure
as I; and when I saw them sitting about the big fire in the lamp
light, heartlessly comfortable and unconcerned, it was all I could do
to keep back the tears of self-pity--and I never saw them again.
"I've seen Roebuck," said I to Anita, because I must say something, if
I was to stay on.
"Roebuck?" she inquired. Her tone reminded me that his name conveyed
nothing to her.
"He and I are in an enterprise together," I explained. "He is the one
man who could seriously cripple me."
"Oh," she said, and her indifference, forced though I thought it,
wounded.
"Well," said I, "your mother was right."
She turned full toward me, and even in the dimness I saw her quick and
full sympathy--an impulsive flash that was instantly gone. But it had
been there!
"I came in here," I went on, "to say that--Anita, it doesn't in the
least matter. No one in this world, no one and nothing, could hurt me
except through you. So long as I have you, they--the rest--all of them
together--can't touch _me_."
We were both silent for several minutes. Then she said, and her voice
was like the smooth surface of the river where the boiling rapids run
deep:
"But you _haven't_ me--and never _shall_ have. I've told you that. I
warned you long ago. No doubt you will pretend, and people will say,
that I left you because you lost your money. But it won't be so."
I was beside her instantly, was looking into her face. "What do you
mean?" I asked, and I did not speak gently.
She gazed at me without flinching. "And I suppose," she said,
satirically, "you wonder why I--why you--are repellent to me. Haven't
you learned that, while I may have been made into a moral coward, I'm
not a physical coward? Don't bully and threaten. It's useless."
I put my hand strongly on her shoulder--taunts and jeers do not turn
me aside. "What do you mean?" I repeated.
"Take your hand off me," she commanded.
"What did you mean?" I repeated, strongly. "Don't be afraid to answer
me."
She was very young--so the taunt stung her. "I was about to tell you,"
said she, "when you began to bluster."
I took advantage of this to extricate myself from the awkward position
in which she had put me--I took my hand from her shoulder.
"I am going to leave you," she went on. "I am ready to go at any time.
But if you wish it, I shall not go until my plans are arranged."
"What plans?" I demanded.
"That is no concern of yours."
"You forget that you are my wife," said I, my brain on fire.
"I am not your wife," was her answer, and if she had not looked so
young and childlike, there in the moonlight all in white, I could not
have held myself in check, so insolent was the tone and so hopeless of
ever being able to win her did she make me feel.
"You are my wife, and you will stay here with me," I reiterated.
"I am my own, and I shall go where I please, and do what I please,"
was her contemptuous retort. "Why won't you be reasonable? Why won't
you see how utterly unsuited we are? I don't ask you to be a
gentleman--but just a man, and be ashamed even to wish to detain a
woman against her will."
I drew up a chair so close to her that, to retreat, she was forced to
sit in the broad window seat. Then I seated myself. "By all means, let
us be reasonable," said I. "Now, let me explain my position. I have
heard you and your friends discussing the views of marriage you've
just been expressing. Their views may be right, may be more civilized,
more 'advanced,' than mine. No matter. They are not mine. I hold by
the old standards--and you are my wife--mine. Do you understand?" All
this as tranquilly as if we were discussing fair weather. "And you
will live up to the obligation which the marriage service has put upon
you."
She might have been a marble statue pedestaled in that window seat.
"You married me of your own free will--for you could have protested to
the preacher, and he would have sustained you. You put certain
conditions on our marriage. I assented to them. I have respected them.
I shall continue to respect them. But--when you married me, you didn't
marry a dawdling dude chattering 'advanced ideas' with his head full
of libertinism. You married a man. And that man is your husband."
I waited, but she made no comment--not even by gesture or movement.
She simply sat, her hands interlaced in her lap, her eyes straight
upon mine.
"You say, let us be reasonable," I went on. "Well, let us be
reasonable. There may come a time when a woman can be free and
independent, but that time is a long way off yet. The world is
organized on the basis of every woman having a protector--of every
decent woman having a husband, unless she remains in the home of some
of her blood relations. There may be women strong enough to set the
world at defiance. But you are not one of them--and you know it. You
have shown it to yourself again and again in the last forty-eight
hours. Further, though you do not know it, your bringing up has made
you more of a child than most of the inexperienced women. If you tried
to assert your so-called independence, you would be the easy prey of a
scoundrel or scoundrels. When I, who have lived in the thick of the
fight all my life, who have learned by many a surprise and defeat
never to sleep except sword and gun in hand, and one eye open--when I
have been trapped as Roebuck and Langdon have just trapped me--what
chance would a woman like you have?"
She did not answer, or change expression.
"Is what I say reasonable or unreasonable?" I asked, gently.
"Reasonable--from _your_ standpoint," she said.
She gazed out into the moonlight, up into the sky. And at the look in
her face, the primeval savage in me strained to close round that
slender white throat of hers and crush and crush until it had killed
in her the thought of that other man which was transforming her from
marble to flesh that glowed and blood that surged. I pushed back my
chair with a sudden noise that startled her; by the way she trembled,
I gauged how tense her nerves must have been. I rose and, in a fairly
calm tone, said: "We understand each other?"
"Yes," she answered. "As before."
I ignored this. "Think it over, Anita," I urged--she seemed to me so
like a sweet, spoiled child again. I longed to go straight at her
about that other man. I stood for a moment with Tom Langdon's name on
my lips, but I could not trust myself. I went away to my own rooms.
I thrust thoughts of her from my mind. I spent the night gnawing upon
the ropes with which Mowbray Langdon and Roebuck had bound me, hand
and foot.