1
BELLAIR regarded himself as an average man; and after all perhaps this
was the most significant thing about him. He was not average to look
at--the face of a student and profoundly kind--and yet, he had moved in
binding routine for five years that they knew of at Lot & Company’s.
His acquaintances were of the average type. He did not criticise them;
you would not have known that he saw them with something of the same
sorrow that he regarded himself.
Back of this five years was an Unknowable. Had you possessed exactly
the perception you might have caught a glimpse of some extraordinary
culture that comes from life in the older lands, and personal contacts
with deeper evils--the culture of the great drifters, the inimitable
polish of rolling stones. As a usual thing he would not have shown
you any of this. At Lot & Company’s offices, men had moved and talked
and lunched near and with him for years without uncovering a gleam of
a certain superb equipment for life which really existed in a darkened
room of his being.
Perhaps he was still in preparation. We have not really completed the
circle of any accomplishment until we have put it in action. Certainly
Bellair had not done that, since the Unknowable ended. He had made no
great friends among men or women; though almost thirty, he had met no
stirring love affair, at least in this period. He had done the most
common duties of trade, for a common reward in cash; lived in a common
house--moved in crowds of common men and affairs. It was as if he were
a spy, trained from a child, but commanded at the very beginning of his
manhood, not only to toil and serve in an insignificant post--but to
be insignificant as well. It was by accident, for instance, that they
discovered at Lot & Company’s that Bellair was schooled in the Sanscrit.
Before usual he was astir that Monday morning, but late at the office
for all that. A drop of consciousness somewhere between shoe-buttons,
and a similar trance between collar and tie. In these lapses a half
hour was lost, and queerly enough afterward the old purports of his
life did not hold together as before. A new breath from somewhere, a
difference in vitality, and the hum-drum, worn-sore consciousness given
to his work with Lot & Company, had become like an obscene relative,
to be rid of, even at the price of dollars and the established order
of things. It had been very clear as he drank his coffee that he must
give quit-notice at the office, yet when he reached there, this was not
so easy, and he was presently at work as usual in his cage with Mr.
Sproxley, the cashier.
The Quaker firm of Lot & Company was essentially a printing
establishment. During the first half of the period in which Bellair
had been connected, though he was not stupider than usual, he had not
realised the crooked weave of the entire inner fabric of the house.
Lot & Company had been established for seventy-five years and through
three generations. Its conduct was ordered now like a process of
nature, a systematised tone to each surface manner and expression. All
the departments were strained and deformed to meet and adjust in the
larger current of profit which the cashier had somehow bridged without
scandal for twenty-seven years. Personally, so far as Bellair knew,
Mr. Sproxley was an honest man, though not exactly of the manner, and
underpaid.
The cashier’s eyes were black, a black that would burn you, and
unquestionably furtive, although Bellair sat for two years at a little
distance from the cashier’s desk before he accepted the furtiveness,
so deeply laid and set and hardened were his first impressions. They
were hard eyes as well, like that anthracite which retains its gleaming
black edge, though the side to the draft is red to the core.
Mr. Sproxley’s home was in Brooklyn, an hour’s ride from the office--a
little flat in a street of little flats, all with the same porches,
brickwork and rusty numerals. An apartment for two, and yet Mr. and
Mrs. Sproxley had not moved, though five black-eyed children had come
to them. The cashier of Lot & Company was a stationary man--that was
his first asset.... A hundred times Bellair had heard the old formula,
delivered by firm members to some caller at the office:
“This is our cashier, Mr. Sproxley. He has been with us twenty-seven
years. We have found him the soul of honour”--the last trailing off
into a whisper--a hundred times in almost the same words, for the
Lots and the Wetherbees bred true. The visitor would be drawn off and
confidently informed that Mr. Sproxley would die rather than leave
a penny unaccounted; indeed, that his zeal on the small as well as
large affairs was frequently a disturbance to the office generally,
since everything stopped until the balance swung free. Bellair knew of
this confidential supplement to the main form, because he had taken
it into his own pores on an early day of his employment. The lift of
that first talk (in Bellair’s case it was from the elder Wetherbee,
an occasional Thee and Thou escaping with unworldly felicity) was for
Bellair sometime to attain a similar rock-bound austerity of honour....
Always the stranger glanced a second time at Mr. Sproxley during the
firm-member’s low-voiced affirmation of his passionate integrity.
Passing to the second floor, the visitor would meet Mr. Hardburg, head
of the manuscript and periodical department, for Lot & Company had
found a good business in publishing books of story and poetry at the
author’s expense. Here eye and judgment reigned, Mr. Hardburg’s, on all
matters of book-dress and criticism; yet within six or seven minutes,
the formula would break through for the attention of the caller, thus:
“Lot & Company is a conservative House--that’s why it stands--a House,
sir (one felt the Capital), that has stood for seventy-five years on
a basis of honour and fair dealing, if on a conservative basis. Lot &
Company stands by its agents and employés first and last. Lot & Company
does not plunge, but over any given period of time, its progress is
apparent and its policy significantly successful.”
Mr. Hardburg’s eyes kindled as he spoke--grey tired eyes, not at all
like Mr. Sproxley’s--but the light waned, and Mr. Hardburg quickly
relapsed into ennui and complaint, for he was a living sick man.
The impression one drew from his earlier years, was that he had
overstrained as an athlete, and been a bit loose and undone ever
since.... Now Mr. Hardburg would be called away for a moment, leaving
the stranger in the office with Miss Rinderley, his assistant. With
fluent and well directed sentences, this lady would outline the
triumphs of Mr. Hardburg from college to the mastery of criticism which
he was now granted professionally.
“But what we love best about him,” Miss Rinderley would say, glancing
at the enlarged photograph above his desk, “is the tireless way he
helps young men. Always he is at that. I have seen him talk here for
an hour--when the most pressing matters of criticism and editorial
responsibility called--literally giving himself to some one needing
help. Very likely he would miss his train for the country. Poor Mr.
Hardburg, he needs his rest so----”
The caller would cry in his heart, “What a superb old institution
this is!” and cover his own weaknesses and shortcomings in a further
sheath of mannerism and appreciation--the entire atmosphere strangely
prevailing to help one to stifle rather than to ventilate his real
points of view.
So the establishment moved. The groups of girls going up and down the
back stairs--to count or tie or paste through all their interesting
days--counted the heads of their respective departments as their
greatest men; spoke of them in awed whispers, in certain cases with
maternal affection, and on occasion even with playful intimacy on the
part of a few--but always as a master-workman, the best man in the
business, who expressed the poorest part of himself in words, and had
to be lived with for years adequately to be appreciated and understood.
Mr. Nathan Lot, the present head of the firm, was a dreamer. It was Mr.
Sproxley who had first told Bellair this, but he heard it frequently
afterward, came to recognise it as the accepted initial saying as
regarded the Head, just as his impeccable honour was Mr. Sproxley’s
and unerring critical instinct Mr. Hardburg’s titular association.
Mr. Nathan was the least quarrelsome man anywhere, the quietest and
the gentlest--a small bloodless man of fifty, aloof from business;
a man who had worn and tested himself so little that you would
imagine him destined to live as long again, except for the lugubrious
atmospheres around his desk, in the morning especially, the sense of
imperfect ventilation, though the partitions were but half-high to
the lower floor and there was a thousand feet to draw from. The same
was beginning in Jabez, the son, something pent, non-assimilation
somewhere. However Jabez wasn’t a dreamer; at least, dreaming had
not become his identifying proclivity. He was a head taller than
his father with a wide limp mouth and small expressionless brown
eyes--twenty-seven, and almost as many times a millionaire.
Jabez was richer than his father, who was the direct heir of the House
of Lot, but his father’s dreaming had complicated the flow of another
huge fortune in the familiar domestic fashion--Jabez being the symbol
and centre of the combination; also the future head of the House of Lot
and Company--up and down town.
Bellair wondered a long time what the pervading dream of the father
was. He had been in the office many months, had never heard the
senior-mind give vent to authoritative saying in finance, literature,
science or prints; and while this did not lower his estimate at all--he
was sincerely eager to get at the sleeping force of this giant. Mr.
Sproxley spoke long on the subject, but did not know. Mr. Hardburg said:
“I have been associated with Mr. Nathan for eleven years now. The
appeal of his worth is not eager and insinuating, but I have this to
say--that in eleven years I have found myself slipping, slipping into
a mysterious, _a different_ regard, a profounder friendliness--if one
might put it that way--for Mr. Nathan, than any I have known in my
whole career. The fact is I love Mr. Nathan. He is one of the sweetest
spirits I ever knew.”
Bellair was interested in dreamers; had a theory that dreaming was
important. When he heard that a certain child was inclined to
dreaming, he was apt to promise a significant future off-hand. He
reflected that even Mr. Hardburg had forgotten to tell him of the
tendency in Mr. Nathan’s case, but determined not to give up.... Once
in the lower part of the city, he passed the firm-head--a studious
little man making his way along at the edge of the walk. Bellair spoke
before he thought. Mr. Nathan started up in a dazed way, appeared to
recognise him with difficulty, as if there was something in the face
that the hat made different. He cleared his voice and inquired with
embarrassment:
“Are you going to the store?”
After Bellair had ceased to regret speaking, he reflected upon the word
“store.” The president of a great manufacturing plant, content to be
known as a tradesman--an excellent, a Quaker simplicity about that.
Bellair’s particular friend in the establishment was Broadwell of the
advertising-desk, a young man of his own age who was improving himself
evenings and who aspired to be a publisher. But even closer to his
heart was Davy Acton, one of the office-boys, who had been tested out
and was not a liar. A sincere sad-faced lad of fifteen, who lived with
his mother somewhere away down town. He looked up to Bellair as to a
man among men, one who had achieved. This was hard to bear on the man’s
part, but he was fond of the youngster and often had him over Sundays,
furnishing books of his own and recommending others. Davy believed in
him. This was the sensation.
The only voices that were ever raised in the establishment were those
of the travelling salesmen. The chief of this department, Mr. Rawter,
was loud-voiced in his joviality. That was _his_ word--“Mr. Rawter is
so jovial.”
When the roaring joviality of Mr. Rawter boomed through the lower
floor, old Mr. Wetherbee, the vice-president, would look up from his
desk, and remark quietly to any one who happened near, “Mr. Rawter is
forced to meet the trade, you know.” It was doubtless his gentle Quaker
conception that wine-lists, back-slapping and whole-souled abandonment
of to-morrow, were essentials of the road and trade affiliation.
From the rear of the main floor, back among the piles of stock,
reverberating among great square monuments of ledgers and pamphlets
were the jovial voices of the other salesmen, Mr. Rawter’s seconds, the
Middle-west man, and the Coast-and-South man--voices slightly muffled,
as became their station, but regular in joviality, and doubtless as
boom-compelling afield as their chief’s, considering their years.
Otherwise the elder Mr. Wetherbee--Mr. Seth--presided over a
distinguished silence for the main. His desk was open to the floor
at large. He was seventy, and one of the first to arrive in the
morning--a vice-president who opened the mail, and had in expert
scrutiny such matters as employment, salaries, orders and expenses
of the travelling men on the road. Mr. Seth was not a dreamer; at
least not on week-days--a millionaire, who gave you the impression
that he was constantly on his guard lest his heart-quality should
suddenly ruin all. The love, the very ardour of his soul was to _give_
away--to dissipate the fortunes of his own and the firm-members, but so
successfully had he fought all his life on the basis of considering the
justice to his family and his firm, that Lot & Company now relied upon
him, undoubting. Thus often a man born with weakness develops it into
his particular strength....
The son, Eben Wetherbee, was harder for Bellair to designate. He seemed
a different force, and called forth secret regard. A religious young
man, who always occurred to Bellair’s mind as he had once seen him,
crossing the Square a summer evening, a book under his arm, his short
steps lifted and queerly rounded, as if treading a low-geared sprocket;
toes straight out--the whole gait mincing a little. Eben was smileless
and a great worker. He had no more to do or say with his father during
working hours than any of the others.
Such was the firm: Mr. Nathan Lot and his son Jabez; Mr. Seth
Wetherbee and his son Eben, and Mr. Rawter who had been given a nominal
quantity of stock after thirty-five years’ service. In due course Mr.
Sproxley would qualify for this illumination.... And yet not all.
Staring down from the arch over the president’s door was a dour, white,
big-chinned face, done in oils long ago--almost yellow-white, the
black shoulder deadening away into the background; small eyes, wide
mouth, but firmly hung--grandfather to Mr. Nathan, but no dreamer;
great grand-sire to Mr. Jabez, but nothing loose-mouthed about the
face of this, the original Jabez Lot,--organising genius of the House,
and its first president, spoken of with awe and reverence; the first
millionaire of the family and builder of its Gramercy mansion....
Suddenly, it had come to Bellair that this was the spirit of the Store,
this picture was its symbol, that the slow strangulation of the souls
of all concerned had begun in that white head, the planting of this bed
of crooked canes.
2
One morning when Bellair was well into his third year with the
printing-firm, the silence was broken on the lower floor. He was
shaken that day into the real secret of the house. A certain Mr.
Prentidd had been in conversation with Mr. Rawter some moments. The
jovial voice of the head-salesman was without significance to those
near his partition--a part of the routine. Mr. Prentidd had invented
a combination ledger and voucher-file that was having some sale in
America, being manufactured and distributed by Lot & Company. Mr.
Rawter on a recent trip abroad had been empowered to dispose of the
English rights. The result, it now appeared, did not prove satisfactory
to the inventor. The voice of the latter was raised. One felt the
entire building subside into a quivering hush.
“I tell you, sir, I don’t trust you. I have heard in fact that the only
way you could hurt your reputation here in New York or on the road
would be to tell the truth.”
To Bellair there was something deeply satisfying in that remark of
the inventor’s--something long awaited and very good. He saw Mr. Seth
arise, his chin moving in a sickly fashion, a very old pathetic Mr.
Seth. He realised that Mr. Rawter had laughed--that something had
been burned from that laugh. Mr. Prentidd was hurried forth, and the
nullifying system began. Mr. Jabez emerged from his father’s office
and turning to Broadwell at the advertising-desk, said in a tone
universally penetrative:
“What a pity that Mr. Prentidd drinks. There are few men finer to deal
with when he is himself.”
Mr. Seth, in his chair again, sitting frog-like and gasping, remarked
to Mr. Sproxley across the distance: “I really must ask Mr. Prentidd to
come to us earlier in the day. He’s far too worthy a man to disgrace
himself in this way.”
Bellair wondered that the point of Mr. Prentidd’s remark seemed
entirely lost. As for himself he counted it worthy of regard. The
episode was but begun. The inventor returned immediately, just as
Mr. Rawter was stepping out. The two men met in the main corridor.
It appeared that Mr. Prentidd repeated a certain question, for the
head-salesman replied, the roundness of the joviality gone from his
voice:
“I tell you, Mr. Prentidd, the situation has changed. I could not
dispose of the English order at a better figure to save my soul. I
extracted every cent for you and for the House.”
“I don’t believe you. Other matters of the same kind do better. If you
speak the truth, you made a very bad bargain for yourself and what is
more important, for me----”
The least like an inventor imaginable, a most physical person, Mr.
Prentidd, with a fiery sense of his own rights and a manner as soft as
his voice was penetrating. He turned a leisurely look of scorn at Mr.
Rawter, half-stare and half-smile, then appeared to perceive the elder
Mr. Wetherbee for the first time. The old man arose. Bellair felt the
agony of expectancy far back among the stock-piles. The inventor shot
straight at the vice-president:
“You’re an old man. I’ll trust your word. You’re an old man and a
Quaker--yes, I’ll take your word. Your man, Rawter, says he could get
only seven and one-half cents’ royalty for me on my Nubian file from
England. I say it’s only half what I should get. Is it true--remember
you’re old. Is it true?”
Prentidd’s face had power in it, exasperation and the remains of a
laugh. It appeared that he was content to take a gambler’s chance and
close the ugly business on Mr. Seth’s word.
The old man’s eye roved. He looked sick and shaken. He found the eyes
of his son Eben which were full of terror and pity and hope.
“Answer me. Could Lot & Company get no more than fifteen cents
altogether on the English patents?”
Mr. Wetherbee’s lips moved. “That’s all we could get, Mr. Prentidd. I’m
sorry,” he said.
For an instant Mr. Prentidd stood there. It was evident that he had
expected a different answer. True to his promise to take the old man’s
word, however, he turned on his heel and walked out.
On the high sloping desk before Bellair’s eyes, a big ledger lay open.
He had turned during the talk to the transaction of Prentidd--Lot &
Company. The English disposal had been arranged for at twenty-five
cents the file, royalty. Apparently Mr. Prentidd had agreed upon an
even split, but Lot & Company had taken seventeen and the fraction.
Bellair was ill. The nausea crept down through his limbs, and up to
his throat. The thing had worked out before him with such surety and
clarity. The head of Mr. Sproxley moved about as if on a swivel, his
body in writing position still. Presently he stepped down from his high
stool, and came to Bellair’s side. Placing his pen behind his ear, he
lifted the ledger from under Bellair’s eyes, his lips compressed with
the effort. Then he placed it on his own desk to close it tenderly,
after which it was taken to its niche in the vault.
The office was silent. Just now Bellair’s eyes turned as if subtly
attracted to the place where Eben Wetherbee sat. The young man’s
smileless eyes, almost insane with apprehension and sadness, were
turned with extraordinary intent upon the place where his father sat.
Bellair’s followed. The old man sat plumped in his chair; he gulped,
tried to turn. His face looked as if he heard a ghost whispering. Yet
he seemed unable to trust himself, hardly daring to meet the eyes that
awaited. His hands lifted to the papers before him, but did not feel
properly. He seemed a man of eighty. Mr. Eben came forward at last and
asked Mr. Sproxley if he might look at the Prentidd transaction.
“It isn’t posted yet, Mr. Eben,” said the cashier.
* * * * *
At the side door at closing time, Bellair happened to pass a party of
young women coming down from the bindery. One was saying:
“... and Mr. Prentidd was quite helpless after the scene--so that they
had to call a taxi-cab for him. Isn’t it dreadful he drinks so?”
* * * * *
There was a personal result for Bellair, which he at no time
misunderstood.
“We have considered creating a position for you next to Mr. Sproxley,”
said the elder Mr. Wetherbee, the second morning following.
Bellair bowed.
“Since you have been with us less than three years, this is very good
comment on the character of your services and our hope for your future
with us----”
“What additional salary goes with the position?” Bellair had asked.
“If I followed my own inclination, it would be considerable. I have
been able to secure for you, however, but a slight increase----”
This was one of Mr. Seth’s little ways. He added hopes of fine quality.
There was a further point:
“You will at times handle considerable money and we must insist upon
your putting in trust for us the sum of two thousand dollars.”
“I haven’t two thousand dollars, Mr. Wetherbee,” Bellair said.
“Of course, we trust you. It is a form--a form, nevertheless, upon
which a valuable relation of this kind should be placed on a business
basis.”
Bellair repeated.
“But you have friends----”
“Not with two thousand dollars’ surety for me--no friend like that.”
“Banks insist upon this--among those employés who handle much money----”
“I know--but that amount cannot be arranged.”
“How much can you put in trust available to Lot & Company in event of
your departure----”
“I have slightly less than one thousand dollars----”
“Could you raise one thousand dollars?”
“With some effort.”
“Of course, it will draw interest for you----”
“I understand these affairs.”
The matter was referred to the next day when it was decided to accept
Bellair’s amount of one thousand dollars, which Lot & Company could
not touch without his consent, except in the event of his departure
with company funds; and which Bellair could not draw without written
statement from Lot & Company to the effect that he was leaving with a
balanced account.
Thereafter he was one with Mr. Sproxley in the financial management,
under the eye of Seth Wetherbee. One by one he learned the points of
the system. Wherever the accounts had run over a series of years, there
were byways of loot. These pilferings were not made at once, on the
same basis that a gardener does not cut asparagus for market from young
roots. The plants were encouraged to establish themselves. After that
the open market was supplied with a certain output, the rest belonging
to Lot & Company’s table. It frequently occurred to Bellair with a
sort of enveloping darkness that he had the institution in his power;
and with a different but equal force that he had a life position in
all naturalness; that his life would be spent with slowly increasing
monetary reward for juggling the different accounts--the field of
crooked canes which was the asparagus-bed of Lot & Company. He did not
like it. He was not happy; and yet he realised that the adjustments his
nature had already made to the facts, suggested an entire adjustment
later, the final easy acceptance.
3
Bellair had thought many times of getting out from under the die, but
it never came to him with quite the force as on that Monday morning,
after watching the _Jade_ fare forth from the Brooklyn water-front.
Something had turned within him as a result of that little pilgrimage,
something that spurred to radicalism and self-assertion. At no time had
Bellair credited himself with a fairer honesty than most men. He had
never given it a large part of thinking. Roughly he had believed that
to be honest is the common lot. The corruption in the office which he
could not assimilate had to do with extensive ramifications, its lying
to itself. The instant seizing upon Mr. Prentidd’s alleged weakness
on the part of the younger Lot and the elder Wetherbee; the action of
Mr. Sproxley with the ledger; the subtle will-breaking and spiritual
blinding of all the employés in a process that never slept and was
operative in every thought and pulse of the establishment--the extent
and talent of these, and the untellable blackness of it all, prevailed
upon Bellair with the force of a life-impression.
Bellair’s present devil was a kind of inertia. Granting that the
Unknowable had been charged with periods of intense action of several
kinds, the recent half-decade might be regarded as its reflex
condition. There is an ebb and flow to all things, and it is easier to
adjust Bellair’s years at Lot & Company as a sort of resting period for
his faculties, than to accept a constitutional inertia in his case, for
subsequent events do not quite bear that out. He doubtless belonged
to that small class of down town men who do their work well enough,
but without passion, who have faced the modern world and its need of
bread and cake, and who have compromised, giving hours in exchange for
essential commodities, but nothing like the full energies of their
lives. It is a way beset with pitfalls, but the unavoidable result of a
system that multiplies products and profits and minimizes the chances
for fine workmanship on every hand. Moreover in Bellair’s case there is
a philosophical detachment to be considered. The aims and purports of
the printing establishment were coldly and absolutely material. These
did not challenge him to any fine or full expenditure of his powers;
and if he had touched that higher zone of philosophy which makes a
consecration of the simplest and the heaviest tasks, he had at least
found it impracticable to make it work among the systems of Lot &
Company’s business.
The two years or more since he was made assistant cashier had brought
many further items and exhibits. He was now used on the left hand side
of the throne, developed in the darkness-department already overworked,
the eye of which was Mr. Seth and the hand, Mr. Sproxley. For as yet
Bellair believed that even Eben Wetherbee had only suspicions. This was
the bite of the whole drama. There were men in the building who would
have died for their conviction that the House was honest. You might
have told these men that Lot & Company was a morgue of conservatism;
that having existed under a certain policy for seventy-five years,
was the chief reason for its changing; that free, unhampered genius
never found utterance through that House--and any of a dozen clerks
would have laughed, spoken proudly of unerring dividends and uncanny
stability, granting the rest. But that Lot & Company was structurally
crooked was incredible except to the few who performed the trick.
Bellair knew, for instance, that his best friend in the office,
Broadwell, head of the advertising, was innocent....
Monday passed without his giving notice. He quailed before the
questions that would be asked. If it were not for the one thousand
dollars, he would have escaped with a mere “Good-night,” though
a panic would have started until the Company was assured of the
innocence of his departure. As for a panic, Lot & Company had that
coming, he thought. Now he knew that he would not be able to get his
surety-deposit until all was made certain in his regard by the firm....
Bellair wasn’t greedy, nor caught in any great desire for wealth. He
had fallen into the Down town Stream, but did not belong. Every month
had weakened him. He disliked to lose his beginnings toward competence;
all the subtle pressures of Lot & Company worked upon him not to
change. There was no other way open. He had been touched by the fear
of fear--a sort of poorhouse horror that dogs men up into the millions
and down to the grave. In a way, he had become slave to the Job. He
even had the suspicion that more men maim their souls by sticking to
their jobs than by any dissipation. This is the way to the fear of
fear--the insane undertow of modern materialism.
He had tried to find peace outside his work in music and different
philanthropies, but the people he met, their seriousness, perhaps more
than anything else, and the vanity of their intellectualism, aroused
his sense of humour. Bellair believed in the many, but was losing
belief in himself. Often he had turned back to evenings in the room,
and realised that the days were draining him too much for his own
real expression of any kind. Always he felt that Lot & Company was
too strong for his temper, that his edge was dulled in every contact.
From his depressions, he saw ahead only two ways--a life of this, or a
moment in which he had Lot & Company in his power unequivocably. The
last was poisonous, and he knew it. He would have to fall considerably
to profit by this sort of thing, but the inevitable conclusion of the
whole matter, was that the life with Lot & Company was slowly but
surely _getting him down_.
On Tuesday noon, Mr. Seth asked him to take to lunch a certain young
stationer from Philadelphia, named Filbrick. They were made acquainted
in the corridor. Passing out, Bellair and his companion met the smile
of Mr. Sproxley. Bellair began the formula of the cashier’s absolute
and autocratic integrity. He did not really hear himself, until he
reached this part:
“I happen to be in the financial department. Two or three times each
year, the whole office is thrown into a mess over some little strayed
account----”
He stopped. It was less that he was saying this, than that he had come
so far without a nudge from within. They had passed the big front
doors, and met the wind of the street before he realised how deep the
mannerism of the establishment had prevailed upon him. The process had
passed almost into fulfilment before the truth within him had stirred
from its sleep.... A very grey day. All through that luncheon he had
found himself at angles from his companion, in strategic hollows,
never in the level open. It wasn’t that he was different from usual,
but that he was watching himself more shrewdly. His inner coherence
was repeatedly broken, though the outer effects were not. He had never
perceived before with such clarity that a man cannot be square and
friendly to another man, when his mind and critical faculties are busy
appraising him, while his eyes and lips approved and assuaged. Bellair
that day realised his moral derangement--that he must be ripped open
and his displaced organs corrected once for all, if anything decent was
to come from him ever again.... He was still thinking in mid-afternoon,
in the very trance of these thoughts, when he happened to look into Mr.
Sproxley’s face. It seemed to him that there was a movement of most
pitiful activities back of the red and black of Mr. Sproxley’s eyes.
There was much mental roving on Bellair’s part that week; moments in
which the Monday morning abandon returned, and his self-amazement of
the Tuesday luncheon, upon discovering how deeply his thoughts were
imbedded in the prevailing lie. New York and the salary clutched him
hard at intervals; so that he saw something of what was meant to give
it up; also he saw that dreams are dreams.... Thousands of other young
men would be glad to do his work, even his dirty work.
He had just returned from lunch on Friday when he started, to perceive
the ruddy face and powerful frame of Mr. Prentidd darken the front
door--which he had not done since his voice was last raised. Bellair
was conscious of Seth Wetherbee hitching up his chair and a peculiar
gasping cough from the old man, but his own eyes did not turn from the
caller’s face--which moved slowly about, the pale little exchange-miss
behind the first barrier, attentive to catch the stranger’s eye and
answer his question. The inventor glanced slowly among desks and
doors. His eye sought Sproxley, and the furtive black eyes of the
latter shot down to his ledger as if crippled on the wing. His eyes
held Bellair and the young man felt the scorn of ages burn through
his veins--something new to his later life, yet deep in his heart,
something he had known somewhere before, as if he had betrayed a
good king, and his punishment had been to look that king in the eye
before he died. Bellair had never hated himself as at that moment,
and certainly never before felt himself identified body and soul with
modern corruption, as now with scorn like a fiery astringent in his
veins. The eyes of Mr. Prentidd finally settled upon the figure of Mr.
Seth Wetherbee, their rays striking him abeam as it were. The old man
hunched closer if anything, but did not raise his head.
The inventor was a physical person; his morals of a physical nature;
his Nubian file of the same dimension and method of mind--a strong
man who had to do with pain and pleasure of the flesh; his ideas of
possessions were of the world. He moved softly, a soft, dangerous
smile upon his lips, to the desk of the vice-president and jerked up
a chair. The old man had to raise his head. It was as if the scene of
three years ago was now to be continued, for Bellair saw the sorrowful,
lengthened face of Mr. Eben turn from his desk in the other room and
bend toward his father, whose face was intensely pathetic now in its
forced smile of greeting.
“You’re not looking well--in fact, you’re looking old, Mr. Wetherbee,
as if you would die pretty soon.”
“I’m not so strong as I was, Mr. Prentidd.”
Bellair couldn’t have done it, as the inventor did. Had the man stolen
and ruined him--he could not have pushed on after the pathos of that.
“You’re a dirty old man--and you’ll die hard and soon--for you lied to
me when I trusted you. I suppose you have lied to everybody, all your
life----”
Thus he baited Mr. Seth feature by feature, pointing out the disorder
of liver, kidney-puffs, the general encroachments of death, in fact.
Then he pictured the death itself--all of a low literary strength as
was Mr. Prentidd’s cold habit. The answer of Mr. Seth was an incoherent
helplessness, his lips moving but with nothing rational under the sun,
as if he had been called by some inexorable but superior being to an
altitude where he was too evil to breathe, and begged piteously to be
allowed to sink back and die. It was Mr. Eben who stopped it, coming
forward quietly, his steps rounded, his shoulders bent, his face
seeming brittle as chalk in its fixity. The thing that he said was
quite absurd:
“You really mustn’t, Mr. Prentidd. It is too much.”
The inventor turned to him. His look was that of a man who turns a
large morsel in his mouth.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he said with a slow laugh. “There is this
delicacy to old liars. Come give me my check--and I will go.”
“Your check----” Mr. Eben repeated.
“Yes, now--the check for the difference which your father’s lie cost me
three years ago. I have seen the English books----”
Now young Mr. Jabez Lot came forward:
“Of course, if there has been error or any breach of contract--of
course, you see a check off hand such as you ask is out of the
question----”
The elder Mr. Wetherbee sank back to his desk; and now the dreamer, Mr.
Nathan Lot, appeared with a frightened word of amelioration. Mr. Eben
stood by the caller to the last moment. The latter was not at his best
in this period--his threats and anger amounted to the usual result.
Lot & Company refused to deal further, referring him to its attorney.
The strangest part of it all was the gathering of three around Mr.
Seth Wetherbee’s desk--Mr. Jabez and his father with Mr. Eben. Yet the
concern of the Lots, father and son, had nothing to do with dangerous
exhaustion of the vice-president.
“We have beaten him,” the dreamer said softly.
“Yes, Mr. Jackson will do the rest,” said Mr. Jabez. Mr. Jackson was
the attorney.
Bellair, even with his training, had to take it slowly. “Beaten
him”--that meant that the money had not passed to Mr. Prentidd. It was
now with the law and the years--millions against a mere inventor. The
psychic slaughtering of the old vice-president did not count--nothing
of words counted. The firm had won, because the firm had not been
knocked down and its pockets rifled--that would have meant loss. Not
having been forced to pay, they had won.... Even as Bellair thought
this out in full, the system of salving had begun from all the
firm-heads for the benefit of those who heard. It was simply arranged
and stated.... Their worst fears were realised: Mr. Prentidd was
insane.... Mr. Seth went home early. Bellair knew that Mr. Eben had not
been able to turn all responsibility to Mr. Jackson.... That afternoon
Bellair reached his decision--in fact, he found it finished within him
after the scene.
Yet he could not walk out at once, since he must have the amount of
his surety, the item of interest and salary due. A certain project in
his mind prevented the possibility of waiting several days for this
amount to be detached from Lot & Company. Especially now after the
final scene, they would make themselves very sure of his accounts and
intentions. Late that Friday afternoon, it happened that considerable
cash came in after banking hours. Bellair’s custom was to put this in a
safety-vault until the following day. This time he held out the amount
of his deposit and two years’ interest, together with the amount of his
salary to date, locking up with the balance his order of release to the
account of the Trust company. He determined to write a letter to Nathan
Lot at once....
4
The City had a different look to him that night in his new sense of
detachment. There were moments at dinner in which he felt as if he were
already forgotten and out of place. Bellair had only known the one
landlady in his five years of New York; yet he knew this one no better
now than at the end of the first month. Perhaps there was nothing more
to learn. She was anæmic of body, and yet did prodigious tasks, very
quiet, very grey; and days to her were like endless rooms of the same
house, all grim and uniform. She had her little ways, her continual
suspicions, but all her faith was gone. Without church, without
friends, without any new thought or gossip, her view of the world was
neither magnified nor diminished, but greatly shortened, her eyes were
almost incredibly dim. There was nothing to love about her. She was not
excessively clean, nor excellent in cooking. She was like wax-work,
a little dusty, her mind and all. Bellair paid her for the week, and
added a present:
“Which I forgot on your birthday,” he said.
She held it in her hand. It did not seem hers. The apathy extended to
all that was not actually due; all expectancy dead.
“You mean you are giving this to me?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bellair,--perhaps you will want it some time again.”
He wrote the letter to Mr. Nathan, but decided not to mail it until
the last thing. He was restless over the irregularity in the money
affair--had to assure himself again and again that he was taking not a
cent that did not belong to him. The boarding-house was in the upper
Forties between Broadway and Sixth avenue, and though he usually turned
eastward for pleasure, this night he went among his own people, where
even a nickle was medium of exchange. A stimulant did not exactly
relieve his tension. His sense was that of loneliness, as he chose a
table in _Brandt’s_ indoor garden.
A mixed quartette presently broke into song behind him. Bellair’s
thoughts were far from song. He was not expectant of music that would
satisfy. Still something tugged him--again and again--until he really
listened, but without turning. It was the voice of the contralto
that was making an impression deep where his need was. There seemed
an endless purple background to it, like a night of stars and south
wind; the soft, deep volume rolled forth _for him_, and found itself
expressed without amazement or travail. He turned now. The one voice
was from the throat of a girl, just a girl, and though it was a gusty
November, she was still wearing her summer hat.
The face was merely pretty, but the voice was drama; flame of poppies
in the presence of a fabulous orchid. Bellair’s heart may have been
particularly sensitive to impression that night. The big brilliant
den known as _Brandt’s_ did not seem to have been cast into any
enchantment; and yet it was likely that Bellair knew as much about
music natively and by acquisition as any one present. In fact, he had
reached the state of appreciation which dares to enjoy that which
appeals and to say so, having endured for several winters a zeal which
rushed him from one to another musical event, intolerant of all save
classic symphonies. It wasn’t the music that held him now--a high
flowery operatic matter not particularly interesting nor well-done--but
the contralto was just a little girl, and the round girlish breast
which held nothing miraculous for the many, was sending forth tones
that quivered through Bellair, spine and thigh, and thrilling his mind
with a profound passion to do something for the singer--an intrinsic
and clean emotion, but one which made him ashamed. For an instant,
he felt himself setting out on the great adventure of his life, the
faintest aroma of its romance touching his senses; something akin to
his dreams in the prison of Lot & Company, and which he had not sensed
at all since his departure, until this instant. Quickly it passed; yet
he had the sense that this great romance had to do with the little
singer.
At once he wanted to take her from the other three; dreamed of working
for her, so that she might have the chance she craved. Of course,
she wanted something terribly; passionate want always went with such
a voice. He saw her future alone. Some vampire of a manager would
hear her. She would tie up--the little summer hat told him that. She
would tie up, and New York would take her bloom before the flower
matured--would take more than her little song. Here she was in
_Brandt’s_ already, and singing as if for the angels.
Bellair was four-fifths undiscovered country, as are all men but the
very few, who dare to be themselves. Already the world was calling
to him sharply for this first step aside from the worn highways of
the crowd. He had not been normal to-night, even in his room; and his
present adventure had already summoned forth all the hateful reserves
of his training, as Prentidd’s departure had started the lies through
the floors and halls of Lot & Company. His heart was calling out to the
little singer, that here was a friend, one who understood and wanted
nothing but to give; yet all that he had learned from the world was
beating him back into the crowd.
He saw that the music had hardly penetrated the vast vulgar throng.
New York is so accustomed to be amused, to dine to music and forget
itself in various entertainments, that the quartette barely held its
own against the routine of eating and drink and the voices of rising
stimulation. It was Bellair who started the little applause when the
first number was over. He hated to do it. The clapping of hands drew to
himself eyes that he did not care to cultivate, but it seemed the only
way just then to help her to make good.
The four of the quartette looked at him curiously, appraising his value
as a critic, perhaps. Was he drunk or really appealed to? Was he worth
considering? Applause at any price is dearly to be had. They took him
in good faith, since he was not without desirable appearance. The young
girl and the tenor arose and sang:
“_Oh, that we two were Maying----_”
The old song was a kind of fulfilment for Bellair, and preciously wrung
his heart. He had never been Maying; wasn’t sure what sort of holidays
were pulled off in regular Mayings; but he liked the song, and for all
he knew the familiar sentiment was evoked bewitchingly. Many others
now caught the thrall. These things are infectious. From hatred, he
came to love _Brandt’s_--as if he had come home, and had been long away
hungering--as if this were life, indeed.... They sang the last verse
again, and sat down for hurried refreshment. The four were very near.
The young girl caught Bellair’s eye, regarded him shyly for an instant,
and turned to whisper to the bass, who seemed in charge of the four.
“... Yes, but hurry back. We’ve got to pull out of here.”
Bellair wasn’t dangling. Never had he been more intent to be decent and
helpful. No one knew this. Even the girl was far from expectant. ...
She sat down beside him.
“Hello,” she said. “You don’t live in New York, do you?”
“Yes, why?”
“Oh, you looked so homesick--when we sang.”
Bellair’s heart sank.
“I think I was homesick. What may I order for you?”
“A little Rhine wine--it’s very good here--and a sandwich----”
The waiter was standing by. Bellair had to clear his voice before
ordering. He was distressed--up to his eyes in gloom that was general
and without name.
5
“Do you sing in other places to-night?”
“Oh, yes, we’re just beginning. We’re on Broadway at eleven.”
“Where?”
“First at _Pastern’s_, then at the _Castle_.”
These places were just without the orbit of extravagance. She knew her
answer was not exactly a stock-raiser, and added:
“But I expect to be on the road in the Spring----”
“Who with?”
She mentioned a light opera troupe that was just short of broad and
unqualified approval--like _Brandt’s_ and _Pastern’s_--an institution
as yet without that mysterious toppiness which needs no props and meets
sanction anywhere. These things are exactly ordered.
“But you are so good--you should be with people who would help you.”
She looked at him a little scornfully, something of weather and stress
under the summer hat. She decided to be agreeable. “They all say that,”
she said wearily.
“I’m sorry. I said just what I thought.”
“Study--a girl without a cent!” She lowered her voice: “Go with better
people--before one is invited? Swing to the top of the opera before one
is sufficiently urged?... Why, singing isn’t all. One must do more than
sing----”
“I don’t believe that----”
“You should try. Singing won’t get you across. You’ve got to act, for
one thing.”
He was relieved that she did not discuss the angel business, which is
forgotten in so few stories of struggle and failure.
“I tell you, all that one has to do is to sing--when one sings as you
do.”
“I have heard that many times,” she said bitterly, “from people not in
the fight. They didn’t come to New York on their nerve--as I did. I
made up my mind not to be afraid of wolves or bears or cars--to take
what I could get, and wait until somebody beckoned me higher. Meanwhile
_Pastern’s_ and the _Castle_ and here----”
“I wish I could do something for you.”
Her eyes gleamed at him.
“You need money?” he asked.
“I need money so terribly--that it’s almost a joke--but what do _you_
want?”
Bellair rubbed his eyes, and smiled a little. “I don’t know what’s the
matter with me, but I want to do something for you. At least, I did
want just that.”
“What happened?”
“It isn’t a thing to talk or think about, I’m afraid. One starts
thinking, and ends by wanting something--and I didn’t at first. What I
said at first I meant--nothing more nor less.”
Her lips tightened. “If you mean just that----”
It raked him within. He did not help her by speaking. Somehow he had
expected her to see that he had meant well. It was always a mystery to
him how anything fine could be expected of men, if women were not so.
“Of course, I have to understand,” she added. “I can do with a poor
room and poor food, but I can’t get anywhere without clothes.... I must
go now.”
“I want you to excuse me if I’ve given you the idea of my being rich.
I’m not, but I might help you some. How late do you work?”
“One o’clock.”
“Where are you last?”
“At the _Castle_.”
“And what time do you get there?”
“About eleven-thirty.”
“I’ll be there. Sing ‘_Maying_’ for an encore----”
She made believe that she trusted him.
“We’ll sing it at the _Castle_ the last thing,” she said, leaving
hastily.
No ease had come to him. His thoughts now were not the same as those
which had come during the singing. He tried to put them away. He didn’t
like the idea of giving her money. He knew that she didn’t expect to
see him again; also that if he did come she would accept the service of
a stranger, and give in return as little as she could. How explicit she
was, already touched with the cold stone of the world. He did want to
help her, and it had been pure at first. Talk as usual had broken the
beauty of that. Sophistication and self-consciousness had come; her
face changing more and more as the moments passed after the song. New
York had taught them each their parts. It had been her thought from the
first that he was looking for prey, but it had been very far from his.
Bellair was not without imagination. He saw himself following this
girl in a future time, playing the part he had despised in other
men--the dumb, slaving, enduring male; she continually expectant of
his services, petulant, unreasonable without them. For the first time
the question came to him: Is there not a queer sort of conquest in the
lives of such men?... She was for herself; had it all planned out, the
waiting, and what she would give on the way up, beside her song. It
would not be much; as little as possible, in fact; but as much as was
absolutely demanded. Bellair in the present state of mind seemed to
object to all this less than what she wanted of the world--praise and
fame.
“She’s just a little girl after all,” he muttered. “She ought to have
her chance.”
He added (easing the conception a little for his own peace) that she
was only franker and more outspoken than other women he had known; that
they all wanted money and place, and wanted men who could furnish such
things. Suddenly it occurred that the incident automatically supplied
the final break with Lot & Company and New York. He laughed aloud....
He might borrow enough in time to make up the amount he gave her for
morning, but that would certainly be a betrayal of the fiery urge that
had whipped him all week to cross over into a new life and burn the
last bridge.
He took his bags down to the station, arranging with the landlady
to have his goods stored for the present. After that he rambled, a
grateful freshness in the cool wind. His steps led through darker
streets, where he startled the misery from the faces of the forbidden
who took a chance on him. Their voices _would_ whine; they couldn’t
help it, and all they wanted in the world was money.... He was at the
_Castle_ before the quartette came.... They sang and Bellair dreamed.
He had never made pretence of other than the commonest lot; yet he
conned now an early manhood that made later years utterly common. He
followed the enticements of the sea, of the future, the singing-girl
never far away, the rest shadows and sadness.... He must do something
for her.... Rich natural tones winged forth from the breast of a maid,
from shoulders so delicate and white. He would make and keep her great;
here was something to do, to work for. It was like finding the ultimate
secret. He knew now what had been the matter all the time--nothing
to work for.... He would stand between her and all that he knew was
rotten--the crowds like this at the _Castle_, the blurred face of the
tenor which was both sharp and soft, the tired, tawdry soprano, the
stupid animal of a bass. And Bellair, in the magnanimity of his heart’s
effusion, included himself among the forces of destruction. He would
keep her from the worst of himself, by all means.... She kept her
promise, and arose with the tenor at last:
“_Oh, that we two were Maying----_”
... New York and all the rest reversed again in his mind. It wasn’t
rotten, but lavish to furnish everything for money--so much that men
and women were lost in the offerings, and did not know what to choose.
Yet it was man’s business to choose. Bellair listened as one across the
world; as if he had been gone a year and was thirsting and starving to
get back. He was literally longing for New York, with its ramifications
all about him--yet the thing he wanted, he could not touch. It was
like a sick stomach that infested his whole nature with desire, while
everything was at hand but the exact nameless thing desired.... She
was like a saint, as she stood there, her mouth so pure, her features
so pretty, her voice so brave and tireless--starry to Bellair, a
night-voice with depths and heights and dew-fragrance. She was coming
to him.
“You look just the same. I wouldn’t take you for a New Yorker.... Yes,
I am through for to-night.”
“I should think you’d love to sing,” he said.
The remark was fatuous to her. She didn’t know that a year ago Bellair
wouldn’t have dared to say anything so commonplace, but that he had
come back to this simplicity from the complication of classics she had
never heard of.
“Tell me, what do you want most?” he asked earnestly. “I don’t mean the
need of clothes. We’ve covered that----”
“I want all that a voice will bring.”
“Great salaries, noise wherever you go, a continual performance of
newspaper articles?”
“Yes.”
“A score of men praying for favours?”
She sipped warily.
“Don’t mind my question. It isn’t fair. But tell me, doesn’t it do
something to you--to get even a man like me going, for instance,--to
make him all different and full of pictures that haven’t anything to do
with the case?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
He stared at her. “You ought to. You do it. I’m not talking of art
or soul, or any of that stuff. That isn’t it. I mean just what
your singing amounts to in my case. It means New York, but not the
routine New York--possibly the New York that might be. It means
_Maying_--whatever that is----”
“You must have been drinking a lot, since I left _Brandt’s_,” she said
merrily.
He didn’t let it hurt him, and was miserable anyway. “The fact is, I
didn’t take a drink since Sixth avenue, until a moment ago.”
He saw that she was debating the vital matter of the evening--whether
he was a piker who must be shaken presently, or whether he would really
make good on his offer to help in the essentials of career.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Bessie Brealt.”
“And where could I find you, if I wanted to write?”
He noted her swift disappointment. There was positive pain in the air.
He knew well what she was thinking, though her sweet face covered well:
that he was about to promise to send the money to her, that ancient
beau business. She took a last chance, and mentioned a booking agency
that might answer for a permanent address.
“I’ll want to write--I feel that. And here, Bessie, if you don’t mind
my saying ‘Bessie,’ I can spare a hundred for that wardrobe. I’d like
to do some really big thing for you.”
He saw tears start to her eyes, but was not carried out of reason by
them. She had wanted the money fiercely and it had come.
“How are you going to get home?” he asked, to relieve the embarrassment.
She glanced up quickly.
“I don’t mean that I want to take you home,” he said, shocked by the
ugliness of the world that had called this explanation so hastily.
“My train needs me.... Say, Bessie, men haven’t supplied you with
altogether pleasant experiences so far, have they?”
“I’ll get a car home.”
He gave her his card.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Better let me get you a cab to-night. It’s late.”
She thanked him again.... At the curb, as the driver backed in, Bessie
put up her lips to him.
“... Dear singing-girl--I didn’t ask that.”
“It’s because you didn’t, I think. Really that’s it. Oh, thank you.
Good-night.”
Bellair beckoned another cab, and sank back into the dark. All the way
to the station, and through to the Savannah-Pullman, he was wrenching
himself clear from something like a passion to turn about to New York.
At the last moment, before the train moved, he recalled the letter to
Mr. Nathan, and hailed a station porter from the step.
“Please mail this for me,” he said, bringing up silver with the letter.