One morning in December, Philip was sent down to Mr. Mavick's office
with some important papers. He was kept waiting a considerable time
in the outer room where the clerks were at work. A couple of clerks at
desks near the chair he occupied were evidently discussing some one and
he overheard fragments of sentences--“Yes, that's he.” “Well, I guess
the old man's got his match this time.”
When he was admitted to the private office, he encountered coming out in
the anteroom a man of striking appearance. For an instant they were face
to face, and then bowed and passed on. The instant seemed to awaken some
memory in Philip which greatly puzzled him.
The man had closely cropped black hair, black Whiskers, a little
curling, but also closely trimmed, piercing black eyes, and the
complexion of a Spaniard. The nose was large but regular, the mouth
square-cut and firm, and the powerful jaw emphasized the decision of the
mouth. The frame corresponded with the head. It was Herculean, and yet
with no exaggerated developments. The man was over six feet in height,
the shoulders were square, the chest deep, the hips and legs modeled for
strength, and with no superfluous flesh. Philip noticed, as they fronted
each other for an instant and the stranger raised his hat, that his
hands and feet were smaller than usually accompany such a large frame.
The impression was that of great physical energy, self-confidence, and
determined will. The face was not bad, certainly not in detail, and
even the penetrating eyes seemed at the moment capable of a humorous
expression, but it was that of a man whom you would not like to have
your enemy. He wore a business suit of rough material and fashionable
cut, but he wore it like a man who did not give much thought to his
clothes.
“What a striking-looking man,” said Philip, motioning with his hand
towards the anteroom as he greeted Mr. Mavick.
“Who, Ault?” answered Mavick, indifferently.
“Ault! What, Murad Ault?”
“Nobody else.”
“Is it possible? I thought I saw a resemblance. Several times I have
wondered, but I fancied it only a coincidence of names. It seemed
absurd. Why, I used to know Murad Ault when we were boys. And to think
that he should be the great Murad Ault.”
“He hasn't been that for more than a couple of years,” Mavick answered,
with a smile at the other's astonishment, and then, with more interest,
“What do you know about him?”
“If this is the same person, he used to live at Rivervale. Came there,
no one knew where from, and lived with his mother, a little withered old
woman, on a little cleared patch up in the hills, in a comfortable sort
of shanty. She used to come to the village with herbs and roots to sell.
Nobody knew whether she was a gypsy or a decayed lady, she had such an
air, and the children were half afraid of her, as a sort of witch. Murad
went to school, and occasionally worked for some farmer, but nobody knew
him; he rarely spoke to any one, and he had the reputation of being a
perfect devil; his only delight seemed to be in doing some dare-devil
feat to frighten the children. We used to say that Murad Ault would
become either a pirate or--”
“Broker,” suggested Mr. Mavick, with a smile.
“I didn't know much about brokers at that time,” Philip hastened to say,
and then laughed himself at his escape from actual rudeness.
“What became of him?”
“Oh, he just disappeared. After I went away to school I heard that his
mother had died, and Murad had gone off--gone West it was said. Nothing
was ever heard of him.”
The advent and rise of Murad Ault in New York was the sort of phenomenon
to which the metropolis, which picks up its great men as Napoleon did
his marshals, is accustomed. The mystery of his origin, which was at
first against him, became at length an element of his strength and of
the fear he inspired, as a sort of elemental force of unknown power.
Newspaper biographies of him constantly appeared, but he had evaded
every attempt to include him and his portrait in the Lives of Successful
Men. The publishers of these useful volumes for stimulating speculation
and ambition did not dare to take the least liberties with Murad Ault.
The man was like the boy whom Philip remembered. Doubtless he
appreciated now as then the value of the mystery that surrounded his
name and origin; and he very soon had a humorous conception of the
situation that made him decline to be pilloried with others in one of
those volumes, which won from a reviewer the confession that “lives
of great men all remind us we may make our lives sublime.” One of the
legends current about him was that he first appeared in New York as a
“hand” on a canal-boat, that he got employment as a check-clerk on the
dock, that he made the acquaintance of politicians in his ward, and went
into politics far enough to get a city contract, which paid him very
well and showed him how easily a resolute man could get money and use it
in the city. He was first heard of in Wall Street as a curbstone broker,
taking enormous risks and always lucky. Very soon he set up an office,
with one clerk or errand-boy, and his growing reputation for sagacity
and boldness began to attract customers; his ventures soon engaged the
attention of guerrillas like himself, who were wont to consult him.
They found that his advice was generally sound, and that he had not only
sensitiveness but prescience about the state of the market. His office
was presently enlarged, and displayed a modest sign of “Murad Ault,
Banker and Broker.”
Mr. Ault's operations constantly enlarged, his schemes went beyond the
business of registering other people's bets and taking a commission on
them; he was known as a daring but successful promoter, and he had a
visible ownership in steamships and railways, and projected such vast
operations as draining the Jersey marshes. If he had been a citizen
of Italy he would have attacked the Roman Campagna with the same
confidence. At any rate, he made himself so much felt and seemed to
command so many resources that it was not long before he forced his way
into the Stock Exchange and had a seat in the Board of Brokers. He
was at first an odd figure there. There was something flash about his
appearance, and his heavy double watch-chain and diamond shirt-studs
gave him the look of an ephemeral adventurer. But he soon took his cue,
the diamonds disappeared, and the dress was toned down. There seemed to
be two models in the Board, the smart and neat, and the hayseed style
adopted by some of the most wily old operators, who posed as honest
dealers who retained their rural simplicity. Mr. Ault adopted a middle
course, and took the respectable yet fashionable, solid dress of a man
of affairs.
There is no other place in the world where merit is so quickly
recognized as in the Stock Exchange, especially if it is backed by brass
and a good head. Ault's audacity made him feared; he was believed to
be as unscrupulous as he was reckless, but this did not much injure his
reputation when it was seen that he was marvelously successful. That
Ault would wreck the market, if he could and it was to his advantage, no
one doubted; but still he had a quality that begot confidence. He kept
his word. Though men might be shy of entering into a contract with Ault,
they learned that what he said he would do he would do literally. He was
not a man of many words, but he was always decided and apparently open,
and, as whatever he touched seemed to thrive, his associates got the
habit of saying, “What Ault says goes.”
Murad Ault had married, so it was said, the daughter of a boarding-house
keeper on the dock. She was a pretty girl, had been educated in a
convent (perhaps by his aid after he was engaged to marry her), and
was a sweet mother to a little brood of charming children, and a devout
member of her parish church. Those who had seen Mrs. Ault when her
carriage took her occasionally to Ault's office in the city were much
impressed by her graceful manner and sweet face, and her appearance gave
Ault a sort of anchorage in the region of respectability. No one would
have accused Ault of being devoted to any special kind of religious
worship; but he was equally tolerant of all religions, and report said
was liberal in his wife's church charities. Besides the fact that he
owned a somewhat pretentious house in Sixtieth Street, society had very
little knowledge of him.
It was, however, undeniable that he was a power in the Street. No other
man's name was oftener mentioned in the daily journals in connection
with some bold and successful operation. He seemed to thrive on panics,
and to grow strong and rich with every turn of the wheel. There is
only one stock expression in America for a man who is very able and
unscrupulous, and carries things successfully with a high hand--he is
Napoleonic. It needed only a few brilliant operations, madly reckless in
appearance but successful, to give Ault the newspaper sobriquet of the
Young Napoleon.
“Papa, what does he mean?” asked the eldest boy. “Jim Dustin says the
papers call you Napoleon.”
“It means, my boy,” said Ault, with a grim smile, “that I am devoted to
your mother, St. Helena.”
“Don't say that, Murad,” exclaimed his wife; “I'm far enough from a
saint, and your destiny isn't the Island.”
“What's the Island, mamma?”
“It's a place people are sent to for their health.”
“In a boat? Can I go?”
“You ask too many questions, Sinclair,” said Mr. Ault; “it's time you
were off to school.”
There seems to have been not the least suspicion in this household that
the head of it was a pirate.
It must be said that Mavick still looked upon Ault as an adventurer,
one of those erratic beings who appear from time to time in the
Street, upset everything, and then disappear. They had been associated
occasionally in small deals, and Ault had more than once appealed to
Mavick, as a great capitalist, with some promising scheme. They had,
indeed, co-operated in reorganizing a Western railway, but seemed to
have come out of the operation without increased confidence in each
other. What had occurred nobody knew, but thereafter there developed
a slight antagonism between the two operators. Ault went no more to
consult the elder man, and they had two or three little bouts, in which
Mavick did not get the best of it. This was not an unusual thing in
the Street. Mr. Ault never expressed his opinion of Mr. Mavick, but it
became more and more apparent that their interests were opposed. Some
one who knew both men, and said that the one was as cold and selfish as
a pike, and the other was a most unscrupulous dare-devil, believed that
Mavick had attempted some sort of a trick on Ault, and that it was
the kind of thing that the Spaniard (his complexion had given him this
nickname) never forgot.
It is not intended to enter into a defense of the local pool known
as the New York Stock Exchange. It needs none. Some regard it as a
necessary standpipe to promote and equalize distribution, others consult
it as a sort of Nilometer, to note the rise and fall of the waters and
the probabilities of drought or flood. Everybody knows that it is full
of the most gamy and beautiful fish in the world--namely, the speckled
trout, whose honest occupation it is to devour whatever is thrown into
the pool--a body governed by the strictest laws of political economy in
guarding against over-population, by carrying out the Malthusian
idea, in the habit the big ones have of eating the little ones. But
occasionally this harmonious family, which is animated by one of the
most conspicuous traits of human nature--to which we owe very much of
our progress--namely, the desire to get hold of everything within
reach, and is such a useful object-lesson of the universal law of upward
struggle that results in the survival of the fittest, this harmonious
family is disturbed by the advent of a pickerel, which makes a raid,
introduces confusion into all the calculations of the pool, roils the
water, and drives the trout into their holes.
The presence in the pool of a slimy eel or a blundering bullhead or a
lethargic sucker is bad enough, but the rush in of the pickerel is the
advent of the devil himself. Until he is got rid of, all the delicate
machinery for the calculation of chances is hopelessly disturbed; and no
one could tell what would become of the business of the country if there
were not a considerable number of devoted men engaged in registering
its fluctuations and the change of values, and willing to back their
opinions by investing their own capital or, more often, the capital of
others.
This somewhat mixed figure cannot be pursued further without losing its
analogy, becoming fantastic, and violating natural law. For it is
matter of observation that in this arena the pickerel, if he succeeds in
clearing out the pool, suddenly becomes a trout, and is respected as the
biggest and most useful fish in the pond.
What is meant is simply that Murad Ault was fighting for position, and
that for some reason, known to himself, Thomas Mavick stood in his way.
Mr. Mavick had never been under the necessity of making such a contest.
He stepped into a commanding position as the manager if not the owner of
the great fortune of Rodney Henderson. His position was undisputed, for
the Street believed with the world in the magnitude of that fortune,
though there were shrewd operators who said that Mavick had more chicane
but not a tenth part of the ability of Rodney Henderson. Mr. Ault had
made the fortune the object of keen scrutiny, when his antagonism was
aroused, and none knew better than he its assailable points. Henderson
had died suddenly in the midst of vast schemes which needed his genius
to perfect. Apparently the Mavick estate was second to only a few
fortunes in the country. Mr. Ault had set himself to find out whether
this vast structure stood upon rock foundations. The knowledge he
acquired about it and his intentions he communicated to no one. But the
drift of his mind might be gathered from a remark he made to his wife
one day, when some social allusion was made to Mavick: “I'll bring down
that snob.”
The use of such men as Ault in the social structure is very doubtful, as
doubtful as that of a summer tempest or local cyclone, which it is said
clears the air and removes rubbish, but is a scourge that involves
the innocent as often as the guilty. It is popularly supposed that the
disintegration and distribution of a great fortune, especially if it has
been accumulated by doubtful methods, is a benefit to mankind. Mr.
Ault may have shared this impression, but it is unlikely that he
philosophized on the subject. No one, except perhaps his own family, had
ever discovered that he had any sensibilities that could be appealed to,
and, if he had known the ideas beginning to take shape in the mind
of the millionaire heiress in regard to this fortune, he would have
approved or comprehended them as little as did her mother.
Evelyn had lived hitherto with little comprehension of her peculiar
position. That the world went well with her, and that no obstacle
was opposed to the gratification of her reasonable desires, or to her
impulses of charity and pity, was about all she knew of her power.
But she was now eighteen and about to appear in the world. Her mother,
therefore, had been enlightening her in regard to her expectations and
the career that lay open to her. And Carmen thought the girl a little
perverse, in that this prospect, instead of exciting her worldly
ambition, seemed to affect her only seriously as a matter of
responsibility.
In their talks Mrs. Mavick was in fact becoming acquainted with the mind
of her daughter, and learning, somewhat to her chagrin, the limitations
of her education produced by the policy of isolation.
To her dismay, she found that the girl did not care much for the
things that she herself cared most for. The whole world of society, its
strifes, ambitions, triumphs, defeats, rewards, did not seem to Evelyn
so real or so important as that world in which she had lived with her
governess and her tutors. And, worse than this, the estimate she placed
upon the values of material things was shockingly inadequate to her
position.
That her father was a very great man was one of the earliest things
Evelyn began to know, exterior to herself. This was impressed upon her
by the deference paid to him not only at home but wherever they went,
and by the deference shown to her as his daughter. And she was proud
of this. He was not one of the great men whose careers she was familiar
with in literature, not a general or a statesman or an orator or a
scientist or a poet or a philanthropist she never thought of him in
connection with these heroes of her imagination--but he was certainly
a great power in the world. And she had for him a profound admiration,
which might have become affection if Mavick had ever taken the pains
to interest himself in the child's affairs. Her mother she loved, and
believed there could be no one in the world more sweet and graceful
and attractive, and as she grew up she yearned for more of the motherly
companionship, for something more than the odd moments of petting that
were given to her in the whirl of the life of a woman of the world. What
that life was, however, she had only the dimmest comprehension, and it
was only in the last two years, since she was sixteen, that she began to
understand it, and that mainly in contrast to her own guarded life. And
she was now able to see that her own secluded life had been unusual.
Not till long after this did she speak to any one of her experience as
a child, of the time when she became conscious that she was never alone,
and that she was only free to act within certain limits.
To McDonald, indeed, she had often shown her irritation, and it was only
the strong good sense of the governess that kept her from revolt. It
was not until very recently that it could be explained to her, without
putting her in terror hourly, why she must always be watched and
guarded.
It had required all the tact and sophistry of her governess to make
her acquiesce in a system of education--so it was called-that had been
devised in order to give her the highest and purest development. That
the education was mainly left to McDonald, and that her parents were
simply anxious about her safety, she did not learn till long afterwards.
In the first years Mrs. Mavick had been greatly relieved to be spared
all the care of the baby, and as the years went on, the arrangement
seemed more and more convenient, and she gave little thought to the
character that was being formed. To Mr. Mavick, indeed, as to his wife,
it was enough to see that she was uncommonly intelligent, and that she
had a certain charm that made her attractive. Mrs. Mavick took it for
granted that when it came time to introduce her into the world she would
be like other girls, eager for its pleasures and susceptible to all its
allurements. Of the direction of the undercurrents of the girl's life
she had no conception, until she began to unfold to her the views of the
world that prevailed in her circle, and what (in the Carmen scheme of
life) ought to be a woman's ambition.
That she was to be an heiress Evelyn had long known, that she would
one day have a great fortune at her disposal had indeed come into her
serious thought, but the brilliant use of it in relation to herself,
at which her mother was always lately hinting, came to her as a
disagreeable shock. For the moment the fortune seemed to her rather
a fetter than an opportunity, if she was to fulfill her mother's
expectations. These hints were conveyed with all the tact of which her
mother was master, but the girl was nevertheless somewhat alarmed,
and she began to regard the “coming out” as an entrance into servitude
rather than an enlargement of liberty. One day she surprised Miss
McDonald by asking her if she didn't think that rich people were the
only ones not free to do as they pleased?
“Why, my dear, it is not generally so considered. Most people fancy that
if they had money enough they could do anything.”
“Yes, of course,” said the girl, putting down her stitching and looking
up; “that is not exactly what I mean. They can go in the current, they
can do what they like with their money, but I mean with themselves.
Aren't they in a condition that binds them half the time to do what they
don't wish to do?”
“It's a condition that all the world is trying to get into.”
“I know. I've been talking with mamma about the world and about society,
and what is expected and what you must live up to.”
“But you have always known that you must one day go into the world and
take your share in life.”
“That, yes. But I would rather live up to myself. Mamma seems to think
that society will do a great deal for me, that I will get a wider view
of life, that I can do so much for society, and, with my position, mamma
says, have such a career. McDonald, what is society for?”
That was such a poser that the governess threw up her hands, and then
laughed aloud, and then shook her head. “Wiser people than you have
asked that question.”
“I asked mamma that, for she is in it all the time. She didn't like it
much, and asked, 'What is anything for?' You see, McDonald, I've been
with mamma many a time when her friends came to see her, and they
never have anything to say, never--what I call anything. I wonder if in
society they go about saying that? What do they do it for?”
Miss McDonald had her own opinion about what is called society and its
occupations and functions, but she did not propose to encourage this
girl, who would soon take her place in it, in such odd notions.
“Don't you know, child, that there is society and society? That it is
all sorts of a world, that it gets into groups and circles about, and
that is the way the world is stirred up and kept from stagnation. And,
my dear, you have just to do your duty where you are placed, and that is
all there is about it.”
“Don't be cross, McDonald. I suppose I can think my thoughts?”
“Yes, you can think, and you can learn to keep a good deal that you
think to yourself. Now, Evelyn, haven't you any curiosity to see what
this world we are talking about is like?”
“Indeed I have,” said Evelyn, coming out of her reflective mood into
a girlish enthusiasm. “And I want to see what I shall be like in it.
Only--well, how is that?” And she held out the handkerchief she had been
plying her needle on.
Miss McDonald looked at the stitches critically, at the letters T.M.
enclosed in an oval.
“That is very good, not too mechanical. It will please your father.
The oval makes a pretty effect; but what are those signs between the
letters?”
“Don't you see? It is a cartouche, and those are hieroglyphics--his name
in Egyptian. I got it out of Petrie's book.”
“It certainly is odd.”
“And every one of the twelve is going to be different. It is so
interesting to hunt up the signs for qualities. If papa can read it he
will find out a good deal that I think about him.”
The governess only smiled for reply. It was so like Evelyn, so different
from others even in the commonplace task of marking handkerchiefs, to
work a little archaeology into her expression of family affection.
Mrs. Mavick's talks with her daughter in which she attempted to give
Evelyn some conception of her importance as the heiress of a great
fortune, of her position in society, what would be expected of her,
and of the brilliant social career her mother imagined for her, had an
effect opposite to that intended. There had been nothing in her shielded
life, provided for at every step without effort, that had given her any
idea of the value and importance of money.
To a girl in her position, educated in the ordinary way and mingling
with school companions, one of the earliest lessons would be a
comprehension of the power that wealth gave her; and by the time that
she was of Evelyn's age her opinion of men would begin to be colored by
the notion that they were polite or attentive to her on account of
her fortune and not for any charm of hers, and so a cruel suspicion of
selfishness would have entered her mind to poison the very thought of
love.
No such idea had entered Evelyn's mind. She would not readily have
understood that love could have any sort of relation to riches or
poverty. And if, deep down in her heart, not acknowledged, scarcely
recognized, by herself, there had begun to grow an image about which she
had sweet and tender thoughts, it certainly did not occur to her that
her father's wealth could make any difference in the relations of
friendship or even of affection. And as for the fortune, if she was, as
her mother said, some day to be mistress of it, she began to turn over
in her mind objects quite different from the display and the career
suggested by her mother, and to think how she could use it.
In her ignorance of practical life and of what the world generally
values, of course the scheme that was rather hazy in her mind was simply
Quixotic, as appeared in a conversation with her father one evening
while he smoked his cigar. He had called Evelyn to the library, on the
suggestion of Carmen that he should “have a little talk with the girl.”
Mr. Mavick began, when Evelyn was seated beside him, and he had drawn
her close to him and she had taken possession of his big hand with both
her little hands, about the reception and about balls to come, and the
opera, and what was going on in New York generally in the season, and
suddenly asked:
“My dear, if you had a lot of money, what would you do with it?”
“What would you?” said the girl, looking up into his face. “What do
people generally do?”
“Why,” and Mavick hesitated, “they use it to add more to it.”
“And then?” pursued the girl.
“I suppose they leave it to somebody. Suppose it was left to you?”
“Don't think me silly, papa; I've thought a lot about it, and I shall do
something quite different.”
“Different from what?”
“You know mamma is in the Orthopedic Hospital, and in the Ragged
Schools, and in the Infirmary, and I don't know what all.”
“And wouldn't you help them?”
“Of course, I would help. But everybody does those things, the practical
things, the charities; I mean to do things for the higher life.”
Mr. Mavick took his cigar from his mouth and looked puzzled. “You want
to build a cathedral?”
“No, I don't mean that sort of higher life, I mean civilization, the
things at the top. I read an essay the other day that said it was easy
to raise money for anything mechanical and practical in a school, but
nobody wanted to give for anything ideal.”
“Quite right,” said her father; “the world is full of cranks. You seem
as vague as your essayist.”
“Don't you remember, papa, when we were in Oxford how amused you were
with the master, or professor, who grumbled because the college was full
of students, and there wasn't a single college for research?
“I asked McDonald afterwards what he meant; that is how I first got my
idea, but I didn't see exactly what it was until recently. You've got
to cultivate the high things--that essay says--the abstract, that
which does not seem practically useful, or society will become low and
material.”
“By George!” cried Mavick, with a burst of laughter, “you've got the
lingo. Go on, I want to see where you are going to light.”
“Well, I'll tell you some more. You know my tutor is English. McDonald
says she believes he is the most learned man in eighteenth-century
literature living, and his dream is to write a history of it. He is
poor, and engaged all the time teaching, and McDonald says he will die,
no doubt, and leave nothing of his investigations to the world.”
“And you want to endow him?”
“He is only one. There is the tutor of history. Teach, teach, teach, and
no time or strength left for investigation. You ought to hear him tell
of the things just to be found out in American history. You see what I
mean? It is plainer in the sciences. The scholars who could really
make investigations, and do something for the world, have to earn their
living and have no time or means for experiments. It seems foolish as I
say it, but I do think, papa, there is something in it.”
“And what would you do?”
Evelyn saw that she was making no headway, and her ideas, exposed to
so practical a man as her father, did seem rather ridiculous. But she
struck out boldly with the scheme that she had been evolving.
“I'd found Institutions of Research, where there should be no teaching,
and students who had demonstrated that they had anything promising in
them, in science, literature, languages, history, anything, should have
the means and the opportunity to make investigations and do work. See
what a hard time inventors and men of genius have; it is pitiful.”
“And how much money do you want for this modest scheme of yours?”
“I hadn't thought,” said Evelyn, patting her father's hand. And then, at
a venture, “I guess about ten millions.”
“Whew! Have you any idea how much ten millions are, or how much one
million is?”
“Why, ten millions, if you have a hundred, is no more than one million
if you have only ten. Doesn't it depend?”
“If it depends upon you, child, I don't think money has any value for
you whatever. You are a born financier for getting rid of a surplus. You
ought to be Secretary of the Treasury.”
Mavick rose, lifted up his daughter, and, kissing her with more than
usual tenderness, said, “You'll learn about the world in time,” and bade
her goodnight.