Fessenden walked slowly towards the rift in the great wall of rock
which marked the land entrance to the fjord. _Pocahontas_ was dancing
just beyond that narrow gate, but although his fingers tingled for
her sail, his step still halted; he knew that she would bring him
swiftly within range of the keen thumping of a typewriter, possibly
of more than one. He was dutifully and even deeply interested in his
father’s vast affairs, and there were nights when he went to bed with
the sensation that the Earth was his pillow; there were days when he
dared to hope the time would come when he could with pleasure embroider
the scenery with figures and puncture the silences of Nature with a
typewriter. But the time was not yet. Four days since he had awakened
his father at three in the morning, informed him that he was off for
a solitary tramp into Norway, and promised to return at the end of a
week. Conscience was driving him home sooner than he had intended,
for he had revelled in the stillness and solitude of his wild and
lonely tramp. He missed at first the friendliness of the Adirondacks,
the only other mountains he knew; but the harsh and terrible grandeur
about him companioned his mood--finally inspired him with a passionate
sense of gratitude. For he was in a desperate state of rebellion. The
philosophy he had invoked on the heels of Mr. Abbott’s revelation had
but deferred the inevitable moment. He did not doubt that the future
presented to him by his father would bring him power, but that future
was--he sincerely hoped--far distant, and at present he was little more
than a glorified clerk in training. His inheritance and his education
permitted him to grasp the stupendous details with a sufficient
facility, and there were moments when he was staggered and overwhelmed
with the thought of such world-manipulating power, at others
intoxicated with dreams of a future when himself should be a ruler of
many times the strength of any monarch in Europe. In such moments he
felt arrogant, and contemptuous of sovereigns who were but the tools
of a people or a cabinet, no matter what the euphemisms, longed for
the time to come when he could demonstrate to them the absolutism of
concentrated capital in the hands of an uncrowned ruler of a great
republic. But reaction under the lonely stars invariably chastened
him. What did he amount to now? Who would recognize in him more than
his famous father’s second? He was bursting with energy, with ambition
for himself and the United States, and, in spite of his father’s love
and sincere indulgence, he felt like a prisoner on parole. It is true
that when he had confided his cherished ideal, the great and beneficent
conception which was to have worked his fingers to the bone and made
him old in his youth, Mr. Abbott had waved his golden wand. A Western
desert hummed and echoed, and even now a huge building was rising on
its foundations, and the first of the world’s electricians, for a
yearly salary which made Fessenden’s head swim, had agreed to occupy
this building with a corps of assistants and work upon the idea which a
youth had conceived. The author of the idea felt no temptation to take
charge himself. The mere fact that more experienced genius could be
bought delivered him from the thrall of his ideal, although he still
took a scientific and patriotic interest in its accomplishment.
Robbed of this dream of immortality, he had dropped the curtain upon
his inner life and endeavored to fulfil his immediate destiny. As his
powers of concentration were very great, he had succeeded for a time.
During the fortnight before sailing, novelty and wonder had sustained
him, and for a time at sea the long conversations with his father
were agreeably varied by instructions in the science of yachting. But
Fessenden was Fessenden--a personality, a young man bursting with
precocious energy, ambition, independence. His reassertion was slow
but persistent, and during one sleepless night alone on deck the naked
truth confronted him that he was at the end of his endurance, that
however he might conform to his father’s wishes in the future, for the
present he must not only have an interval of personal liberty, but
arrange his nebulous ambitions and satisfy them. He restrained his
impatience until three o’clock, then awakened Mr. Abbott--who smiled
and slept again--and plunged without a guide into Norway.
He bathed in streams, he slept under the stars, he saw no one but
peasants, he hardly uttered a word for three days; and he was
completely happy. When he was not in mountain gorges he was in pine
forests; everywhere he had Nature in her magnificence, and he was
alone. For two days he refused to think--it was enough to forget,
to feel the freedom of the years when he believed himself innocent
of fortune, with a glorious and self-made future stretching through
infinite horizons. But on the evening of the third day he turned his
back on the scenery, sat down on the grass, and thought.
That the prospect before him was hateful and hideous he admitted
aloud, lest he should seem to blink any modicum of the truth. The
abstract fact that he was a rich man instead of a poor one dwindled
to comparative insignificance beside the million details which made
up the sum of that fact. Had he been the author of those details, his
inherited and financial instincts, so quick at college, would no doubt
possess him and obliterate the dreams of his youth. But that mountain
of particulars, massive and petty, had fallen upon him without a
moment’s warning, and he was not its illustrious author, but its future
custodian. The youth in him was rampant, and his strong vein of romance
unsatisfied. He admitted--again aloud--that he was as romantic as he
was practical. He would train to succeed his father, but meanwhile
would distinguish himself in his own manner. He would use the wealth at
his disposal, but the manner should be picturesque.
Without admitting that he intended to demand a period of liberty, his
imagination in the past weeks had toyed with many plans. At first, when
he learned of the more than thousands in his father’s employ, he had
been fired with the desire to ameliorate the lot of the working-man;
and in his enthusiasm had awakened his father from his afternoon nap
on deck and talked to him for an hour. Mr. Abbott, who revelled in the
very sound of Fessenden’s voice, and would have attempted to give him
the North Pole had he wanted it, listened indulgently; but when his
turn came to speak he was smiling grimly.
“My dear boy,” he had said, “what reason have I given you to think me
a fool? There are those who will tell you that the day must come when
the streets of our great cities will run red with blood, when not one
stone on Fifth Avenue will remain upon another; that, in short, the
great civil war between capital and labor can be delayed only until
a strong leader of organized labor arises who cannot be bought. I do
not go so far as to say that I--or you--can avert that calamity, for
our rotten municipal governments have destroyed the respect of the
thinking laboring man for authority, and these tremendous aggregations
of capital I have in hand, which will make the United States strong and
feared among nations, may be carried to an excess which will lessen
the chances of individual achievement and curtail personal liberty. If
rich men--that is to say, the manipulators--make fools of themselves,
and in their greed for wealth and power reduce wages and sow further
seeds of discontent, there is no telling what may happen. But although
I make no denial of my own greed for wealth and power, and although
these concentrations of many small industries into one huge enterprise
will double my fortune, I make no such mistake as that. I have always
maintained that a man may get rich and still share a certain portion
of his gains with his assistants; and my working-men all receive good
salaries, perquisites, heavy Christmas presents, and pensions in their
old age. I make no pretence at philanthropy. There is no man who needs
friends as the rich man does; there are no friends so valuable as an
army of employés. I know many of mine personally; at some time or other
I have managed to come into contact with most of them. They like me.
They are content. They never go on strike. They are the one formidable
bulwark against united labor in the country. When you return, I wish
you to go about among those men, show them your personal interest in
them as human beings, make them love you as much as they like me;
then, if an industrial war ever comes, you will make yourself their
leader and take whichever side you think wisest. But the thing to do
is to avert war and use that great following for another purpose.
Either with or without civil war the time must come for the reform
of municipalities, the reduction of state power, and, possibly, an
interval of benevolent despotism. There is the rôle I have cut out
for you; but meanwhile work with me to avert the worst calamity which
could visit this country--set it back a hundred years. My men are not
overpaid; they receive strict justice, that is all. I have harangued
for hours with almost every great employer in the country, appealing
to his common-sense, even his cupidity, but in most cases in vain. The
average rich man in the United States is lowly born. He has worked
himself up from the ranks. There never was a real democrat who was not
born an aristocrat. The risen plebeian is a tyrant, is insatiable in
his greed, glories in the thought of grinding the life out of thousands
of his own class, delights in the hatred and envy which are but another
signal of his success; in short, he is a damned fool, and deserves to
wake up and find his throat cut. I suppose all revolutions are the
result of stupidity. Ours, if it comes, will arise from no other cause
whatever. If you have the genius in you that I believe, you will avert
this war or control it. Now I will sleep again if you will permit me.”
The words had kept Fessenden awake all night, but after several days
his enthusiasm cooled. Again he was willing to take the helm whenever
the time came, and with all his energies; but the idea was his
father’s, not his. His young ego, uniquely developed, demanded creation.
During the last day of his tramp he had looked down twenty avenues
of possible greatness, and turned his back upon all. He was not
discouraged, for he knew that inspiration comes suddenly, even if it be
the final result of industrious raking. He was now returning to demand
a vacation of some months, during which he would tramp and study Europe
in his own way. But inspiration was closer than he knew, and although
he was to tramp Europe again and again with various and, in one case,
extraordinary results, there were to be intervening years.
As he jumped into his canoe and set his sail, he saw that the
_Alexandra_ was no longer the solitary inhabitant of the fjord. Not
half a mile from his father’s yacht was what looked to be a miniature
man-of-war. It was painted white, and had a heavily gilded figure-head.
In a few moments he was close enough to see the colors and design on
the standard. He whistled and experienced a glow of anticipation.
“The German Emperor! I hardly know whether I am more anxious to see
him or his yacht. Ours is the biggest in the world--of course!--his is
the most original; but that may only mean resource: he couldn’t get
the money voted any other way. The more I hear of Europe the rottener
it appears, with the exception of Germany. This man seems to be making
an American city out of Berlin, and to have plenty of sand all-round.
Some one has said of him that he is an autocrat with a Yankee head on
his shoulders; and, if that is the case, he may be worth studying for
future points.”
Nevertheless, when a half-hour later his father told him that the
Emperor had invited him to visit the _Hohenzollern_ the day of his
return, he sniffed with youthful Americanism.
“I don’t fancy waiting till I’m spoken to,” he announced--“for his
high-mightiness to introduce every subject. He may be interesting in
himself, but he is a monarch, and I have no use for any of them. They
are a burlesque in the end of the nineteenth century.”
“Tell that to William, if you like, and introduce what subjects
interest you--if you get a chance. He observes little formality up
here, and less with Americans. Now please go and exchange that sweater
and those pants--they are not trousers--for a suit of flannels.”