I.--IN WHICH MR. POTTER PRESENTS THE SINGULAR DILEMMA OF WHITFIELD
NORRIS, MULTIMILLIONAIRE
I HAVE just returned from Italy--the land of love and song. To any who
may be looking forward to a career in love or song I recommend Italy.
Its art, scenery, and wine have been a great help to the song business,
while its pictures, statues, and soft air are well calculated to keep
the sexes from drifting apart and becoming hopelessly estranged. The
sexes will have their differences, of course, as they are having them in
England. I sometimes fear that they may decide to have nothing more to
do with each other, in which case Italy, with its alert and well-trained
corps of love-makers, might save the situation.
Since Ovid and Horace, times have changed in the old peninsula. Love has
ceased to be an art and has become an industry to which the male members
of the titolati are assiduously devoted. With hereditary talent for the
business, they have made it pay. The coy processes in the immortal
tale of Masuccio of Salerno are no longer fashionable. The Juliets have
descended from the balcony; the Romeos climb the trellis no more. All
that machinery is now too antiquated and unbusinesslike. The Juliets are
mostly English and American girls who have come down the line from Saint
Moritz. The Romeos are still Italians, but the bobsled, the toboggan,
and the tango dance have supplanted the balcony and the trellis as being
swifter, less wordy, and more direct.
There are other forms of love which thrive in Italy--the noblest which
the human breast may know--the love of art, for instance, and the love
of America. I came back with a deeper affection for Uncle Sam than I
ever had before.
But this is only the cold vestibule--the “piaz” of my story. Come in,
dear reader. There's a cheerful blaze and a comfortable chair in the
chimney-corner. Make yourself at home, and now my story's begun exactly
where I began to live in it--inside the big country house of a client
of mine, an hour's ride from New York. His name wasn't Whitfield Norris,
and so we will call him that. His age was about fifty-five, his name
well known. If ever a man was born for friendship he was the man--a
kindly but strong face, genial blue eyes, and the love of good
fellowship. But he had few friends and no intimates beyond his family
circle. True, he had a gruff voice and a broken nose, and was not
much of a talker. Of Norris, the financier, many knew more or less;
of Norris, the man, he and his family seemed to enjoy a monopoly of
information. It was not quite a monopoly, however, as I discovered when
I began to observe the deep undercurrents of his life. Right away he
asked me to look at them.
Norris had written that he wished to consult me, and was forbidden by
his doctor to go far from his country house, where he was trying to
rest. Years before he had put a detail of business in my hands, and I
had had some luck with it.
His glowing wife and daughter met me at the railroad-station with a
glowing footman and a great, glowing limousine. The wife was a restored
masterpiece of the time of Andrew Johnson--by which I mean that she
was a very handsome woman, whose age varied from thirty to fifty-five,
according to the day and the condition of your eyesight. She trained
more or less in fashionable society, and even coughed with an English
accent. The daughter was a lovely blonde, blue-eyed girl of twenty.
She was tall and substantial--built for all weather and especially
well-roofed--a real human being, with sense enough to laugh at my jokes
and other serious details in her environment.
We arrived at the big, plain, comfortable house just in time for
luncheon. Norris met me at the door. He looked pale and careworn, but
greeted me playfully, and I remarked that he seemed to be feeling his
oats.
“Feeling my oats! Well, I should say so,” he answered. “No man's oats
ever filled him with deeper feeling.”
Like so many American business men, his brain had all feet in the
trough, so to speak, and was getting more than its share of blood, while
the other vital organs in his system were probably only half fed.
At the table I met Richard Forbes, a handsome, husky young man who
seemed to take a special interest in Miss Gwendolyn, the daughter. There
were also the aged mother of Norris, two maiden cousins of his--jolly
women between forty-five and fifty years of age--a college president,
and Mrs. Mushtop, a proud and talkative lady who explained to me that
she was one of the Mushtops of Maryland. Of course you have met those
interesting people. Ever since 1627 the Mushtops have been coming over
from England with the first Lord Baltimore, and now they are quite
numerous. While we ate, Norris said little, but seemed to enjoy the
jests and stories better than the food.
He had a great liking for good tobacco, and after luncheon showed me the
room where he kept his cigars. There were thousands of them made from
the best crops of Cuba, in sizes to suit the taste.
“Here are some from the crop of '93,” he said, as he opened a box. “I
have green cigars, if you prefer them, but I never smoke a cigar unless
it crackles.”
I took a crackler, and with its delicious aroma under my nose we
went for a walk in the villa gardens. Some one had released a dozen
Airedales, of whom my host was extremely fond, and they followed at his
heels. I walked with the maiden cousins, one of whom said of Norris:
“We're very fond of him. Often we sing, 'What a friend we have in
Whitfield!' and it amuses him very much.”
And it suggested to me that they had good reason to sing it.
Norris was extremely fond of beautiful things, and his knowledge of both
art and flowers was unusual. He showed us the conservatories and his
art-gallery filled with masterpieces, but very calmly and with no
flourish.
“I've only a few landscapes here,” he said, “things that do not seem to
quarrel with the hills and valleys.”
“Or the hay and whiskers and the restful spirit beneath them,” I
suggested.
I knew that he had bought in every market of the world, and had given
some of his best treasures to sundry museums of art in America, but they
were always credited to “a friend,” and never to Whitfield Norris.
On our return to the house he asked me to ride with him, and we got into
the big car and went out for a leisurely trip on the country roads. The
farmer-folk in field and dooryard waved their hands and stirred their
whiskers as we passed.
“They're all my friends,” he said.
“Tenants and vassals!” I remarked.
“You see, I've helped some of them in a small way, but always
impersonally,” he answered, as if he had not heard me. “I have sought to
avoid drawing their attention to me in any way whatever.”
We drew up at a little house on a lonely road to ask our way. An Irish
woman came to the car door as we stopped, and said:
“God bless ye, sor! It does me eyes good to look an' see ye
better--thanks to the good God! I haven't forgot yer kindness.”
“But I have,” said Norris.
The woman was on her mental knees before him as she stood looking into
his face.
No doubt he had lifted her mortgage or favored her in some like manner.
Her greeting seemed to please him, and he gave her a kindly word, and
told his driver to go on.
We passed the Mary Perkins's school and the Mary Perkins's hospital,
both named for his wife. I had heard much of these model charities,
but not from him. So many rich men talk of their good deeds, like the
lecturer in a side-show, but he held his peace. Everywhere I could not
help seeing that he was regarded as a kind of savior, and he seemed to
regret it. Was he a great actor or--?
“It's a pity that I cannot enjoy my life like other men,” he
interrupted, as this thought came to me. “None of my neighbors are
quite themselves when they talk to me; they think I must be praised and
flattered. They don't talk to me in a reliable fashion, as you do. You
have noticed that even my own family is given to songs of praise in my
presence.”
“Norris, I'm sorry for you,” I said. “They say that you inherited a fair
amount of poverty--honest, hard-earned poverty. Why didn't you take
care of it? Why did you get reckless and squander it in commercial
dissipation? You should have kept enough to give your daughter a proper
start in life. I have taken care of mine.”
“It began in the thoughtless imprudence of youth,” he went on,
playfully. “I used to think that money was an asset.”
“And you have discovered that money is only a jackasset.”
“That it is, in fact, a liability, and that every man you meet is
dunning you for a part of it.”
“Including the lawyers you meet,” I said. “Oh, they're the worst of
all!” he laughed. “As distributors of the world's poverty they are
unrivaled.”
He smiled and shook his head with a look of amusement and injury as he
went on.
“Almost every one who comes near me has a hatchet if not an ax to grind.
I am sick of being a little tin god. I seem to be standing in a high
place where I can see all the selfishness of the world about me. No, it
hasn't made me a cynic. I have some sympathy for the most transparent of
them; but generally I am rather gruff and ill-natured; often I lose my
temper. I have had enough of praise and flattery to understand how weary
of it the Almighty must be. He must see how cheap it is, and if He has
humor, as of course He has, having given so much of it to His children,
how He must laugh at some of the gross adulation that is offered Him!
But let us get to business.
“I invited you here to engage your services in a most important matter;
it's so important that for many years I have given it my own attention.
But my health is failing, and I must get rid of this problem, which is,
in a way, like the riddle of the Sphinx. Some other fellow must tackle
it, and I've chosen you for the job. Mr. Potter, you are to be, if you
will, my trustiest friend as well as my attorney. For many years I have
been the victim of blackmailers, and have paid them a lot of money.”
“Poverty is a good thing, but not if it's achieved through the aid of a
blackmailer,” I remarked. “Try some other scheme.”
“But you must know the facts,” he went on. “At twenty-one I went
into business with my father out in Illinois. He got into financial
difficulties and committed a crime--forged a man's name to a note,
intending to pay it when it came due. Suddenly, in a panic, he went on
the rocks, and all his plans failed. He was up against it, as we
say. There were many extenuating circumstances--a generous man, an
extravagant family, of which I had been the most extravagant member; a
mind that lost its balance under a great strain. He had risked all on
a throw of the dice and lost. I'll never forget the hour in which he
confessed the truth to me. It's hard for a father to put on the crown of
shame in the presence of a child who honors him. There's no pang in this
world like that. He had braced himself for the trial, and what a trial
it must have been! I have suffered some since that day; but all of it
put together is nothing compared to that hour of his. In ten minutes I
saw him wither into old age as he burned in the fire of his own hell.
When he was done with his story I saw that he was virtually dead,
although he could still breathe and see and speak and walk. As I
listened a sense of personal responsibility and of great calmness and
strength came on me.
“I took my father's arm and went home with him and begged him not to
worry. Then forthwith I went to police headquarters and took the crime
on myself. My father went to paradise the next day, and I to prison. I
was young and could stand it. They gave me a light sentence, on account
of my age--only two years, reduced to a year and a half for good
behavior. My Lord! It has been hard to tell you this. I've never told
any one but you; not even my own mother knows the truth, and I wouldn't
have her know it for all the world. I cleared out and went to work in
California, in the mines. Suffered poverty and hardship; won success by
and by; prospered, and slowly my little hell cooled down. But no man can
escape from his past. By and by it overtakes him, and in time it caught
me. A record is a record, and you can't wipe it out even with righteous
living. It may be forgiven--yes, but there it is and there it will
remain.
“I didn't marry, as you may know, until I was thirty-four. My wife
was the daughter of a small merchant in an Oregon village. I had been
married about a year when the first pirate fired across my bows--a
man who had worked beside me at Joliet. I found him in my office one
morning. He didn't know how much money I had, and struck me gently,
softly, for a thousand dollars. It was to be a loan. I gave him the
money; I had to. Why? Well, you see, my wife didn't know that I was an
ex-convict, and I couldn't bear to have her know of it. I did not fear
her so much as her friends, some of whom were jealous of our success.
Why hadn't I told her before my marriage? you are thinking. Well, partly
because I honored my father and my mother, and partly because I had no
sense of guilt in me. Secretly I was rather proud of the thing I had
done. If I had been really guilty of a crime I should have had to tell
her; but, you see, my heart was clean--just as clean as she thought it.
I hadn't fooled her about that. There had been nothing coming to me.
Oh yes, I know that I ought to have told her. I'm only giving you the
arguments with which I convinced myself--with which even now I try to
convince myself--that it wasn't necessary. Anyhow, when I married it
never entered my head that there could be a human being so low that he
would try to fan back to life the dying embers of my trouble and use it
for a source of profit. It never occurred to me that any man would come
along and say: 'Here, give me money or I'll make it burn ye.'
“I foolishly thought that my sacrifice was my own property, and was
beginning to forget it. Well, first to last, this man got forty thousand
dollars out of me. He was dying of consumption when he made his last
call, having spent the money in fast living. He wanted five thousand
dollars, and promised never to ask me for another cent. He kept his
word, and died within three months, but not until he had sold his pull
to another scoundrel. The new pirate was an advertising agent of the Far
West. He came to me with the whole story in manuscript, ready to
print. He said that he had bought it from two men who had brought the
manuscript to his office, and had paid five thousand dollars for it. He
was such a nice man!--willing to sell at cost and a small allowance
for time expended. I gave him all he asked, and since then I have been
buying that story every six months or so. When anything happens, like
the coming out of my daughter, this sleek-looking, plausible pirate
shows up again, and, you see, I can't kick him out of my presence, as
I should like to do. He always tells me that the mysterious two are
demanding more money, so, like a bull with a ring in his nose, I have
been pulled about for years by this little knave of a man. I couldn't
help it. Now my nerves cannot endure any more of this kind of thing. My
doctor tells me that I must be free from all worry; I propose to turn it
over to you.”
“Then I shall wipe him off the slate,” I said. “They'll publish the
facts.”
“Poor man!” I exclaimed. “You've got one big asset, and you're afraid
to claim it. Nothing that you have ever done compares with that term in
prison. Your charities have been large, but, after all, their value is
doubtful except to you. The old law of evolution isn't greatly in need
of your money. But when you went to prison you really did something,
old man. The light of a deed like that shines around the world. Let it
shine--if it must. Don't hide it under a bushel.”
“But not for all I am worth would I have my father's name dishonored,
with my mother still alive,” he declared. “Now, as to myself, I am not
so much worried. I could bear some disgrace, for it wouldn't alter the
facts. I should keep my self-respect, anyhow. But when I think of my
wife and children I admit that I am a coward. They're pretty proud, as
you know, and the worst of it is they are proud of me. Their pride is my
best asset. I couldn't bear to see it broken down. No, what I want is to
have you manage this blackmail fund and keep all comers contented. What
money you need for that purpose will be supplied to you.”
“In my opinion you're unjust to the ladies of your home,” I remarked.
“How?”
“You should treat them like human beings and not like angels,” I said.
“It's their right to share your troubles. They'd be all the better for
it.”
“Please do as I say,” he answered. “You must remember that they're all
I've got.”
“Cheer up! I 'll do my best,” was my assurance. “But I shall ask you to
let me manage the matter in my own way and with no interference.”
“I commit my happiness to your keeping,” he answered.
“I wonder that you have got off so cheaply,” I said. “I should think
there might have been a dozen pirates in the chase instead of two.”
“Circumstances have favored me,” he explained. “I spent my youth in
Germany, where I was educated. I had been in America only six months
when my father failed. In those days I was known as Jackson W.
Norris. In California I got into a row and had my nose broken. I was a
good-looking man before that. Then, you see, it has been a rule of my
life to keep my face from being photographed. Of course, the papers have
had snap-shots of me; but no one who knew me as a boy would recognize
this bent nose and wrinkled face of mine. I have discouraged all manner
of publicity relating to me and kept my history under cover as a thing
that concerned no one but myself.”
I had requested that our ride should end at the railroad-station, and we
arrived there in good time for my train.
“I will ask Wilton, my pirate friend, to call on you,” he said.
“Let him call Friday at twelve with a note from you,” I requested.
Gwendolyn Norris and Richard Forbes were waiting at the station, the
latter being on his way to town.
“Going back? You ought to know better,” I said.
“So I do, but business is business,” he answered.
“And there's no better business for any one than playing with a fair
maid.”
“He knows that there's a tennis match this afternoon and a dance this
evening, and he leaves me,” the girl complained.
“I shall have to take a week off and come up here and convince you that
no man is fonder of fun and a fair maid,” said Forbes.
“I could do it in ten minutes,” I declared.
“But you have had practice and experience,” said Forbes.
“And you are more supple,” was my answer.
“I should hope so,” the girl laughed. “If all men were like Mr. Potter
the world would be full of old maids. It took him thirty years to make
up his mind to get married.”
“No, it took _her_ that long--not me,” I answered, and the arrival of
the train saved me from further humiliation.
On the way to town I got acquainted with young Forbes, and liked him. He
was a big, broad-shouldered athlete, two years out of college. The
glow of health and good nature was in his face. His blue eyes twinkled
merrily as we sparred for points. He had a full line of convictions,
but he didn't pretend to have gathered all the fruit on the tree of
knowledge. He was the typical best product of the modern wholesale man
factory--strong, modest, self-restrained, well educated, and thinking
largely in terms of profit and loss. That is to say, he was sawed and
planed and matched and seasoned like ten thousand other young men of
his age. His great need had been poverty and struggle and individual
experience. If he had had to climb and reach and fall and get up and
climb again to secure the persimmon which was now in his hands, he would
have had the persimmon and a very rare thing besides, and it's the rare
thing that counts. But here I am finding fault with a thoroughly good
fellow. It's only to clear his background for the reader, to whose good
graces I heartily recommend the young man. His father had left him well
off, but he had gone to work on a great business plan, and with rare
talent for his task, as it seemed to me.