At this point Hollinger and Farson returned to the room. Hollinger
looked quickly at the position of the two, smiled placidly, and helped
himself to another cigar from the box on the table.
“Exchanging confidences?” he inquired.
“Miss Walters persists in acting all the time,” Brainard replied. “She
thinks this is a sequel to the play and wants me to hand over to her a
lot of money.”
“Sometimes,” Hollinger observed sententiously, “that’s the easiest way to
square things, isn’t it?”
Brainard looked at the fight-trust man in astonishment. Was he an
accomplice in a vulgar blackmail game?
“It’s not _my_ way,” he said sharply.
“Half a loaf when no part of the loaf is really yours is always more
enjoyable than a legal scrimmage over the whole loaf, it seems to me.”
“What do you mean?”
Hollinger threw himself into an easy-chair, lighted his cigar carefully,
and beamed at Brainard.
“Did it ever occur to you, my young friend,” he began, “that we four are,
so to speak, all in the same boat? We are all adventurers—of that noble
company of gentlemen and lady adventurers in life—to paraphrase the
quaint motto of the Hudson Bay Company. Now in the course of the
complicated tissue of adventure that happens to have brought us three
together from very unlike walks in life, you”—he thrust the glowing point
of his cigar towards Brainard,—“have proved to be the Star. You’re It!
You hold the bag, so to speak. You seem to have shared some of its
golden contents with our young friend here who wants to write plays, as
he tells me. I do not happen to want anything for myself. I am
perfectly disinterested in this case,—fortunately can afford to be. For
I have other and sufficiently fat fish frying in my own little pan. So I
can play the gracious rôle of Wisdom. . . . Why not be generous to the
lady who lost in this matter of the old Dutchman’s millions—you can
afford it—and nothing becomes a young unmarried Idealist more than
princely generosity with other people’s dollars.”
“But—” Brainard began.
“Pardon me—one moment—to finish clearing the ground. I don’t know the
precise manner in which you came into possession of Herbert Krutzmacht’s
money any more than I know exactly how he got it away from those who
wanted it. I presume the methods were not essentially unlike. It never
interests me, these details of acquisition,—to know just how our
plutocratic masters have raked together their pelf. But the method of
distribution does interest me tremendously. The rich usually show such
little capacity for imagination or daring in the disposal of their
wealth! However, that is another theme. . . . Now this lady, whose
slender talent as an actress I have had the honor of supporting, thinks
she has some cogent claim to the unearned increment of the deceased
Dutchman. Her idea is probably fantastic—most of our ideas about
‘rights’ are—but it is a fixed idea with her!” He leaned forward and
waved his cigar rhythmically to drive home his words. “Unless her idea
is adequately gratified, I am afraid she will be unhappy and make you
considerable trouble in the course of her effort to satisfy her quite
unreasonable desire. _Voilà tout_, as the French say. Or if you prefer
English, Better pay and forget, rather than save a few dollars and
regret, my friend.”
“You are a good anarchist,” Farson observed.
“Thank you for the explanation. I know that I am a practical man. If
our rich, our very rich citizens, would only recognize more frankly the
truth I have been stating, they would be happier and so would we others.
But they are very timid and conservative; they rarely get beyond
libraries, museums, and hospitals. All dull and comparatively useless
affairs!”
The fight-trust man sank back into his chair and smoked with half-closed
eyes.
“Your talk is interesting, Hollinger, as always,” Brainard remarked, “but
unfortunately this time I can’t follow your advice.”
“And why not?”
“Because it happens not to be my own money that Miss Walters desires.”
Hollinger waved one hand deprecatingly and murmured:
“A mere matter of words that.”
“No, I mean it! As I have been explaining to Miss Walters, I am really a
poor man—”
“Poverty is a relative matter—science has demonstrated that.”
“Everything of Krutzmacht’s I hold as trustee.”
“Sounds like Carnegie, or was it the Emperor William? . . . Pardon me,
that is another formula. We are all trustees, of course.”
Brainard paused and then resumed in a different tone:
“I have been over this matter with Miss Walters and explained my
position. I think she understands it quite well. If she can produce
proof that she was legally married to the late Herbert Krutzmacht—”
“You would not be as crude as that!” Hollinger exclaimed, opening his
eyes. “You know as well as the next man how purely accidental marriage
is—the ceremony I mean. The law fastens on that of course—it has to have
some nail to cling to—”
“As I told Miss Walters, the trouble with her, and I am afraid with you,
too, Hollinger, is that you can’t comprehend an honest man. I happen to
be a mere honest man.”
“Pray, don’t believe I doubted it.”
“Just plain, old-fashioned, vulgar honest,” Brainard continued irascibly.
“Neither of you seem to understand that simple fact. You proceed on two
false assumptions,—first that I am a crook and second that I am a
coward—I might add a third, that I am a fool. So long as these false
assumptions remain embedded in your mind, we simply can’t do business
together.”
He walked suggestively towards the door. Hollinger also rose, a little
wearily, a bored look on his face, and chucked his cigar into the
fireplace.
“I am sorry,” he said gently, “that we have succeeded in straining your
sense of humor. . . . The trouble with you virtuous people is that you
bristle so easily at the least touch. I should think that Virtue would
be more self-satisfying to its practitioners. Now I don’t bristle
because you assume that I am a petty blackmailer and am trying to get
money for Miss Walters in order to share with her. That’s what you
think—confess it!”
“It looks that way,” Brainard said.
“If it does, it doesn’t worry me in the least. I don’t waste our time
trying to prove to you that I am Honest and Disinterested, that I came
here to-night really out of friendly interest in you—to try with the aid
of my equable temperament and clear intelligence to avoid the mistakes
that are likely to occur when excessive desire meets excessive virtue.
But I have failed. You two will have to make up your accounts alone—or
with the vulgar assistance of the courts. Good luck to you. And good
night!”
He extended one hand to Brainard and the other to Farson.
“I will give myself the pleasure of setting you down at your hotel,” he
said to the actress, who was slowly and somewhat regretfully buttoning
her fur coat.
When Farson and the actress had left the room, Brainard detained
Hollinger and said contritely:
“I’m afraid I did suspect you of collusion with Miss Walters—I’m sorry,
for I have always liked you.”
“It’s very natural. You yourself must know how hard it is in this world
to be really disinterested without incurring unjust suspicions. However,
that’s nothing!”
“The trouble is I can’t understand you—never did!”
“I’m afraid I can’t return the compliment. I flatter myself that I
understand you thoroughly.”
“Do you remember that first time I met you—on the train, the Overland
Limited, going to California? You were in your compartment reading
_Paradise Lost_ with the help of a dictionary.”
The fight-trust man blushed slightly, probably at the mention of the
dictionary.
“You mean the occasion when that active young seeker for notoriety, the
special district attorney of San Francisco, was trying to put me in
state’s prison?”
“You were under bonds then, seventy-five thousand dollars of bonds. I
remember how awed I was at the size of your bonds!”
“Yes, I recall the occasion now,” the prize ring magnate said with a
pleasant smile. “I didn’t remember that was our first meeting—I meet so
many people everywhere—nor that I happened to be making the acquaintance
also of the famous puritan poet. . . . The trouble with you, my friend,
if you will permit me to indulge in a last bit of advice, is that you are
so terribly conventional in your judgments of character, in your
expectations of what people are to be. That is a very common limitation.
You expected to find in me a bloody and brutal bounder, smelling of
whisky and dazzling with diamonds. Instead you found an intelligent
gentleman, interested in literature and life. The prize ring, Mr.
Brainard, is as much an arena of Art in its way as the popular theater to
which you are devoting so much effort and such large sums of money. And
I was engaged in it as a business, as I am now engaged in the theatrical
business. A financier, even of the prize ring, is not obliged to dirty
himself with vulgar contacts. That explains the lofty idealism of some
of our most prominent citizens. You plan and dream from above—the
degrading associations are left to others, as doubtless you have already
learned in the management of your own properties. . . . Well, I must not
keep Miss Walters waiting below. Good night, my foolish Idealist! Good
luck and more wisdom to you before our next meeting.”
They descended to the hall which they found empty. Farson was getting
the actress a last cigarette. As they waited, Hollinger observed
musingly:
“You doubtless know about the marriage laws in California?”
“No, I don’t.”
“They are extremely,—what shall I say? Lax—liberal. You see our people
out there are so unconventional and accidental in their habit of life,
that the courts are forced to take the most liberal view of these
personal matters. And we are as a people chivalrous towards women—much
more so than you are here. So the courts are inclined to decide the
question of marriage largely on whether the woman ought to have been
married, rather than on the mere fact of the ceremony. That accounts for
the large number of posthumous wives and their claims that turn up after
the death of a rich man on the Coast.”
“Am I to regard this as a threat?” Brainard inquired.
“Bless you, my dear boy, don’t be so sensitive! Advice, just
impertinent, uncalled-for advice, which I am so fond of giving. I should
have left all that to Miss Lorilla’s lawyers—they are the proper persons
to expound the California statutes.”
“You don’t believe for one instant that Miss Walters was really married
to old Krutzmacht?” Hollinger shrugged his shoulders.
“_Quien sabe_? as the Mexicans say. I have no doubt she ought to have
been.”
“That is a very different matter.”
Hollinger again shrugged his shoulders. In the pause that followed,
Hollinger began to muse aloud softly, as if he were presenting a case to
himself:
“Her life has been typical. Born on a dreary little ranch, educated for
a few years in one of our national institutions for the stultifying of
youth, then deserted by her worthless father and forced to do something
for herself and her useless mother,—what is the answer to that? Chorus
girl. Twelve dollars a week and mother to support as well as herself and
no special talent or exceptional looks,—what is the answer to that?
Man.”
“Whom the girl in her gratitude tried to sell out when he was in a tight
place. No, I am afraid you can’t make out a very good case for charity!”
“Just what had Krutzmacht done for her? . . . Changed her job from a
dubiously respectable one to an undoubtedly disreputable one—and made her
work in his office besides. No, the balance is on her side of the
ledger. . . . Now she has matured,—oh, very much matured; has no
protector, and mother still to support as well as herself,—what is the
answer to that?”
“If you put your claim on the ground of social service, pure and simple,”
Brainard replied, “it might be considered, I suppose. But I don’t think
Miss Walters would accept charity.”
“Charity—justice—prudence? What’s the use of finding the right name? In
the last analysis they are all meaningless.”
“You forget they mean something to me.”
“She hungers for some of life’s goodies.” Hollinger resumed his musing,
ignoring Brainard’s reply. “But comparatively little would satisfy her—a
secure home somewhere in southern California for herself and that tough
relic of a parent, a little income, enough to assure permanent idleness.
Consider what a boon that would be to the stage in itself! Possibly
matrimony later on, why not? . . . As Krutzmacht’s residuary—er,
trustee,—that’s what you called it, I believe, you ought to provide
decently for his emotional lapses. . . . I put it to you now as a
Sentimentalist, Idealist, Lover of Great Ideas.”
“You would talk me into giving her everything I have,” Brainard laughed,
“if I could only once bring myself to accept your point of view.”
“And that is?”
“That life is merely a juggle of words.”
“Ah, you are too young. One cannot fight successfully against youth,
even with ideas!”
Miss Walters appeared, followed by Farson, and the conversation was at an
end. The actress looked at Brainard from beneath her flaring hat, and
her eyes had an unpleasant luster in them. No, mere charity would not
satisfy that “thirst for vengeance upon life!”
“Well, Mr. Wilkins,” she began with a heavy effort at irony, “it is
always sad for old friends to part. But in this case we may hope to meet
again before long.”
“I hope so!” Brainard replied politely. “Let me put you into the cab.”
Hollinger followed them slowly down the steps. At the very door of the
cab he lingered.
“In that brief visit which you made to the Coast did you ever come across
a rattler in operation? No! It makes a slight, but perfectly clear
noise first by way of warning—and then it strikes! Some women resemble
the rattler. Look out for the sting!”
“Thanks! I shall.”
“Oh!” the prize ring magnate sighed in farewell, “my poor Idealist, what
a lot of useless trouble you make for yourself and others!”