Mr. Horace Boyce returned to Thessaly the next morning and drove at
once to his father’s house. There, after a longer and more luxurious
bath than usual, he breakfasted at his leisure, and then shaved and
dressed himself with great care. He had brought some new clothes from
New York, and as he put them on he did not regret the long detour to the
metropolis, both in going to and coming from Pittsburg, which had been
made in order to secure them. The frock coat was peculiarly to his
liking. No noble dandy in all the West End of London owed his tailor for
a more perfectly fitting garment. It was not easy to decide as to the
neckwear which should best set off the admirable upper lines of this
coat, but at last he settled on a lustreless, fine-ribbed tie of white
silk, into which he set a beautiful moonstone pin that Miss Kate had
once praised. Decidedly, the _ensemble_ left nothing to be desired.
Horace, having completely satisfied himself, took off the coat again,
went down-stairs in his velveteen lounging-jacket, and sought out his
father in the library, which served as a smoking-room for the two men.
The General sat in one chair, with his feet comfortably disposed on
another, and with a cup of coffee on still a third at his side. He was
reading that morning’s Thessaly _Banner_, through passing clouds of
cigar-smoke. His brow was troubled.
“Hello, you’re back, are you?” was his greeting to his son. “I see the
whole crowd of workmen in your rolling-mills decided last night not to
submit to the new scale; unanimous, the paper says. Seen it?”
“No, but I guessed they would,” said Horace, nonchalantly. “They can all
be damned.”
The General turned over his paper. “There’s an editorial,” he went on,
“taking the workmen’s side, out and out. Says there’s something very
mysterious about the whole business. Winds up with a hint that
steps will be taken to test the legality of the trust, and probe
the conspiracy that underlies it. Those are the words--‘probe the
conspiracy.’ Evidently, you’re going to have John Fairchild in your
wool. He’s a good fighter, once you get him stirred up.”
“He can be damned, too,” said Horace, taking a chair and lighting a
cigar. “These free-trade editors make a lot of noise, but they don’t
do anything else. They’re merely blue-bottle flies on a window-pane--a
deuce of a nuisance to nervous people, that’s all. I’m not nervous,
myself.”
The General smiled with good-humored sarcasm at his offspring. “Seems
to me it wasn’t so long ago that you were tarred with the same brush
yourself,” he commented.
“Most fellows are free-traders until it touches their own pockets, or
rather until they get something in their pockets to be touched. Then
they learn sense,” replied Horace.
“You can count them by thousands,” said the General. “But what of the
other poor devils--the millions of consumers who pay through the nose,
in order to keep those pockets full, eh? They never seem to learn
sense.”
Horace smiled a little, and then stretched out his limbs in a
comprehensive yawn. “I can’t sleep on the cars as well as I used to,”
he said, in explanation. “I almost wish now I’d gone to bed when I got
home. I don’t want to be sleepy _this_ afternoon, of all times.”
The General had returned to his paper. “I see there’s a story afloat
that you chaps mean to bring in French Canadian workmen, when the other
fellows are locked out. I thought there was a contract labor law against
that.”
Horace yawned again, and then, rising, poured out a little glassful of
spirits from a bottle on the mantel, and tossed it off. “No,” he said,
“it’s easy enough to get around that. Wendover is up to all those
dodges. Besides, I think they are already domiciled in Massachusetts.”
“Vane” Boyce laid down the paper and took off his eye-glasses. “I hope
these fellows haven’t got you into a scrape,” he remarked, eyeing his
son. “I don’t more than half like this whole business.”
“Don’t you worry,” was Horace’s easy response.
“I’ll take good care of myself. If it comes to ‘dog eat dog,’ they’ll
find my teeth are filed down to a point quite as sharp as theirs are.”
“Maybe so,” said the father, doubtfully. “But that Tenney--he’s got eyes
in the back of his head.”
“My dear fellow,” said Horace, with a pleasant air of patronage, “he’s a
mere child compared with Wendover. But I’m not afraid of them both. I’m
going to play a card this afternoon that will take the wind out of both
their sails. When that is done, I’ll be in a position to lay down the
law to them, and read the riot act too, if necessary.”
The General looked inquiry, and Horace went on: “I want you to call for
me at the office at three, and then we’ll go together to the Minsters.
I wouldn’t smoke after luncheon, if I were you. I’m not going down until
afternoon. I’ll explain to you what my idea is as we walk out there.
You’ve got some ‘heavy father’ business to do.”
Horace lay at his ease for a couple of hours in the big chair his father
had vacated, and mused upon the splendor of his position. This afternoon
he was to ask Kate Minster to be his wife, and of the answer he had
no earthly doubt. His place thus made secure, he had some highly
interesting things to say to Wendover and Tenney. He had fathomed
their plans, he thought, and could at the right moment turn them to his
advantage. He had not paid this latest visit to the iron magnates of
Pennsylvania for nothing. He saw that Wendover had counted upon their
postponing all discussion of the compensation to be given the Minsters
for the closing of their furnaces until after January 1, in order that
when that date came, and Mrs. Minster had not the money to pay the
half-yearly twelve thousand dollars interest on the bonds, she would be
compelled to borrow still more from him, and thus tighten the hold which
he and Tenney had on the Minster property. It was a pretty scheme, but
Horace felt that he could block it. For one thing, he was certain that
he could induce the outside trust directors to pass upon the question
of compensation long before January. And even if this failed, he could
himself raise the money which Mrs. Minster would need. This he would do.
Then he would turn around and demand an accounting from these scoundrels
of the four hundred thousand dollars employed in buying the machinery
rights, and levy upon the plant of the Thessaly Manufacturing Company,
if necessary, to secure Mrs. Minster’s interests. It became all very
clear to his mind, now he thought it over, and he metaphorically snapped
his fingers at Wendover and Tenney as he went up-stairs and once more
carefully dressed himself.
The young man stopped in the hall-way as he came down and enjoyed a
comprehensive view of himself in the large mirror which was framed
by the hat-rack. The frock coat and the white effect at the neck were
excellent. The heavy fur collar of the outer coat only heightened their
beauty, and the soft, fawn-tinted suède gloves were quite as charming
in the contrast they afforded under the cuffs of the same costly fur.
Horace put his glossy hat just a trifle to one side, and was too happy
even to curse the climate which made rubbers over his patent-leather
shoes a necessity.
He remembered that minute before the looking-glass, in the after-time,
as the culmination of his upward career. It was the proudest, most
perfectly contented moment of his adult life.
*****
“There is something I want to say to you before you go.”
Reuben Tracy stood at the door of a small inner office, and looked
steadily at his partner as he uttered these words.
There was little doing in the law in these few dead-and-alive weeks
between terms, and the exquisitely dressed Horace, having gone through
his letters and signed some few papers, still with one of his gloves
on, had decided not to wait for his father, but to call instead at the
hardware store.
“I am in a bit of a hurry just now.” he said, drawing on the other
glove. “I may look in again before dinner. Won’t it keep till then?”
“It isn’t very long,” answered Reuben. “I’ve concluded that the
partnership was a mistake. It is open to either of us to terminate it at
will. I wish you would look around, and let me know as soon as you see
your way to--to--”
“To getting out,” interposed Horace. In his present mood the idea rather
pleased him than otherwise. “With the greatest pleasure in the world.
You have not been alone in thinking that the partnership was a mistake,
I can assure you.”
“Then we understand each other?”
“Perfectly.”
“And you will be back, say at--”
“Say at half-past five.”
“Half-past five be it,” said Reuben, turning back again to his desk.
Horace made his way across the muddy high street and found his father,
who smelt rather more of tobacco than could have been wished, but
otherwise was in complete readiness.
“By the way,” remarked the young man, as the two walked briskly along,
“I’ve given Tracy notice that I’m going to leave the firm. I daresay we
shall separate almost immediately. The business hasn’t been by any means
up to my expectations, and, besides, I have too much already to do for
the Minster estate, and am by way, now, of having a good deal more.”
“I’m sorry, for all that,” said the General. “Tracy is a first-rate,
honest, straightforward fellow. It always did me good to feel that you
were with him. To tell you the truth, my boy,” he went on after a pause,
“I’m damnably uneasy about your being so thick with Tenney and that
gang, and separating yourself from Tracy. It has an unsafe look.”
“Tracy is a tiresome prig,” was Horace’s comment. “I’ve stood him quite
long enough.”
The conversation turned now upon the object of their expedition,
and when this had been explained to the General, and his part in it
outlined, he had forgotten his forebodings about his son’s future.
That son himself, as he strode along, with his head well up and his
shoulders squared, was physically an object upon which the paternal eye
could look with entire pride. The General said to himself that he
was not only the best-dressed, but the handsomest young fellow in
all Dearborn County; and from this it was but a mental flash to the
recollection that the Boyces had always been handsome fellows, and the
old soldier recalled with satisfaction how well he himself had felt that
he looked when he rode away from Thessaly at the head of his regiment
after the firing on Fort Sumter.
Mrs. Minster came down alone to the drawingroom to receive her visitors,
and showed by her manner some surprise that the General accompanied his
son.
“I rather wanted to talk with you about what you learned at Pittsburg,”
she said, somewhat bluntly, to Horace, after conversation on ordinary
topics had begun to flag.
The General rose at this. “Pray let me go into the library for a time,
I beg of you,” he said, in his courtly, cheery manner. “I know the way,
and I can amuse myself there till you want me; that is,” he added, with
a twinkle in his eye, “if you decide that you want me at all.”
Mrs. Minster bowed as the General went off. She did not quite understand
what this stout, red-faced man meant by being wanted, and she was
extremely anxious to know all that her lawyer had to tell her about the
trust.
What he had to tell her was eminently satisfactory. The directors
had postponed the question of how much money should be paid for the
shutting-down of the Minster furnaces, simply because it was taken
for granted that so opulent a concern could not be in a hurry about
a settlement. He was sure that he could have the affair all arranged
before December. As to other matters, he was equally confident. A year
hence she would be in vastly better condition, financially, than she
had ever been before. Under these assurances Mrs. Minster purred visible
content.
Then Horace began to introduce the subject nearest his heart. The family
had been excessively kind to him during the summer, he said. He had
been privileged to meet them on terms of almost intimacy, both here and
elsewhere. Every day of this delightful intercourse had but strengthened
his original desire. True to his word, he had never uttered a syllable
of what lay on his heart to Miss Kate, but he was not without confidence
that she looked upon him favorably. They had seemed always the best
of friends, and she had accepted from him attentions which must have
shadowed forth to her, at least vaguely, the state of his mind. He had
brought his father--in accordance with what he felt to be the courtesy
due from one old family to another--to formally speak with her upon the
subject, if she desired it, and then he himself, if she thought it best,
would beg for an interview with Miss Kate. Or did Mrs. Minster think it
preferable to leave this latter to the sweet arbitrament of chance?
Horace looked so well in his new clothes, and talked with such fluency
of feeling, and moreover had brought such comforting intelligence
about the business troubles, that Mrs. Minster found herself at the end
smiling on him maternally, and murmuring some sort of acquiescence to
his remarks in general.
“Then shall I bring in my father?” He asked the question eagerly, and
rising before she could reply, went swiftly to the door of the hall and
opened it.
Then he stopped with abruptness, and held the door open with a hand that
began to tremble as the color left his face.
A voice in the hall was speaking, and with such sharply defined
distinctness and high volume that each word reached even the mother
where she sat.
“_You may tell your son, General Boyce,”_ said this voice, _“that I will
not see him. I am sorry to have to say it to you, who have always been
polite to me, but your son is not a good man or an honest man, and I
wish never to see him again. With all my heart I wish, too, that we
never had seen him, any of us._”
An indistinct sound of pained remonstrance arose outside as the echoes
of this first voice died away. Then followed a noise of footsteps
ascending the carpeted stairs, and Horace’s empty, staring eyes had a
momentary vision of a woman’s form passing rapidly upward, away from
him.
Then he stood face to face with his father--a bleared, swollen,
indignant countenance it was that thrust itself close to his--and he
heard his father say, huskily:
“I am going. Let us get out of this house.”
Horace mechanically started to follow. Then he remembered that he had
left his hat behind, and went back into the drawing-room where Mrs.
Minster sat. The absence of deep emotion on her statuesque face
momentarily restored his own presence of mind.
“You have heard your daughter?” he said, his head hanging in spite of
himself, but his eyes keeping a strenuous scrutiny upon her face.
“Yes: I don’t know what has come over Kate, lately,” remarked Mrs.
Minster; “she always was the most curious girl.”
“Curious, indeed!” He choked down the sneer which tempted him, and went
on slowly: “You heard what she said--that I was dishonest, wicked. Where
she has suddenly got this new view of me, doesn’t matter--at least, just
at this moment. But I surely ought to ask if you--if you share it. Of
course, if I haven’t your confidence, why, I must lay down everything.”
“Oh, mercy, no! You mustn’t think of it,” the lady said, with animation.
“I’m sure I don’t know in the least what it all means. I never do know
with my daughters. They get all sorts of crazy notions. It makes my head
ache sometimes wondering what they will do next--Kate, especially. No,
you mustn’t mind her. You really mustn’t.”
The young man’s manner had gradually taken on firmness, as if under
a coat of ice. The glance which he still bent upon Mrs. Minster had a
novel glitter in it now.
“Then I am to remain your lawyer, in spite of this, as if it hadn’t
happened?”
“Why, bless me, yes! Why not? Girls will be girls, I suppose. At least,
that is the saying. But--oh, by all means! You must see me through this
dreadful trust business, though, as you say, it must all be better in
the end than ever before.”
“Good-day, Mrs. Minster. I shall continue, then, to hold myself at your
service.”
He spoke with the same grave slowness, and bowed formally, as if to go.
The lady rose, and of her own volition offered him her hand. “Perhaps
things will alter in her mind. I am so sorry!” she said.
The young man permitted himself a ghostly half-smile. “It is only when I
have thought it all over that I shall know whether I am sorry or not,”
he said, and bowing again he left her.
Out by the gate, standing on the gravel-path wet with November rain and
strewn with damp, fallen leaves, the General waited for him. The air had
grown chill, and the sky was spreading a canopy for the night of gloomy
gray clouds. The two men, without a word, fell into step, and walked
down the street together. What was there to say?
Horace, striding silently along with his teeth tight set, his head bowed
and full of fierce confusion of thought, and his eyes angrily fixed
on the nothing straight ahead, became, all at once, aware that his
office-boy was approaching on the sidewalk, whistling dolefully to suit
the weather, and carrying his hands in his pockets.
“Where are you going, Robert?” the lawyer demanded, stopping the lad,
and speaking with the aggressive abruptness of a man longing to affront
all about him.
“To Mrs. Minster’s,” answered the boy, wondering what was up, and
confusedly taking his hands out of his pockets.
“What for?” This second question was even more sharply put.
“This letter from Mr. Tracy.” The boy took a letter from the inside of
his coat, and then added: “I said Mrs. Minster, but the letter is for
her daughter. I’m to give it to her herself.”
“I’ll take charge of it myself,” said Horace, with swift decision,
stretching out his hand.
But another hand was reached forth also, and grasped the young man’s
extended wrist with a vehement grip.
“No, by God! you won’t!” swore the General, his face purpling with the
rush of angry blood, and his little gray eyes flashing. “No, sir, you
won’t!” he repeated; and then, bending a momentary glance upon the boy,
he snapped out: “Well, you! don’t stand staring here! Go and do your
errand as you were told!”
The office-boy started with a run to obey his command, and did not
slacken his pace until he had turned a corner. He had never encountered
a real general in action before, and the experience impressed him.
Father and son looked in silence into each other’s faces for an instant.
Then the father said, with something between a curse and a groan:
“My God! the girl was right! You _are_ a damned scoundrel!”
“Well, however that may be,” replied Horace, frowning, “I’m not in the
mood just now to take any cheek, least of all from you!”
As the General stared at him with swelling rage in his fat face, and
quivering, inarticulate lips, his son went on in a bitter voice, from
between clinched teeth:
“I owe this to you! to nobody else but you! Everything I did was done to
lift you out of the gutter, to try and make a man of you again, to put
you back into decent society--to have the name of Boyce something else
once more besides a butt for bar-keepers and factory-girls. I had you
around my neck like a mill-stone, and you’ve pulled me down. I hope
you’re satisfied!”
For a moment it seemed as if the General would fall. His thick neck grew
scarlet, his eyes turned opaque and filled with tears, and he trembled
and almost tottered on his legs. Then the fit passed as suddenly as
it had come. He threw a sweeping glance up and down the figure of his
son--taking in the elegant line of the trousers, the costly fur, the
delicate, spotless gloves, the white jewelled neckwear, the shining
hat, the hardened and angry face beneath it--and then broke boisterously
forth into a loud guffaw of contemptuous laughter.
When he had laughed his fill, he turned upon his heel without a word
and walked away, carrying himself with proud erectness, and thumping his
umbrella on the sidewalk with each step as he went.