It was a relief to him to find how smoothly he and Deborah dropped back
into their old relations. It was good to get home those evenings; for in
this new stage of its existence, with its family of two, the house appeared
to have filled itself with a deep reposeful feeling. Laura had gone out of
its life. He glanced into her room one night, and it looked like a guest
room now. The sight of it brought him a pang of regret. But the big ship
which was bearing her swiftly away to "Paris in June" seemed bearing off
Roger's uneasiness too. He could smile at his former fears, for Laura was
safely married and wildly in love with her husband. Time, he thought, would
take care of the rest. Occasionally he missed her here--her voice,
high-pitched but musical, chatting and laughing at the 'phone, her bustle
of dressing to go out, glimpses of her extravagances, of her smart suits
and evening gowns, of all the joyous color and dash that she had given to
his home. But these regrets soon died away. The old house shed them easily,
as though glad to enter this long rest.
For the story of his family, from Roger's point of view at least, was a
long uneven narrative, with prolonged periods of peace and again with
events piling one on the other. And now there came one of those peaceful
times, and Roger liked the quiet. The old routine was re-established--his
dinner, his paper, his cigar and then his book for the evening, some good
old-fashioned novel or some pleasant book of travel which he and Judith had
read aloud when they were planning out their lives. They had meant to go
abroad so often when the children had grown up. And he liked to read about
it still. Life was so quiet over the sea, things were so old and mellow
there. He resumed, too, his horseback rides, and on the way home he would
stop in for a visit with Edith and her baby. The wee boy grew funnier every
day, with his sudden kicks and sneezes, his waving fists and mighty yawns.
And Roger felt drawn to his daughter here, for in these grateful seasons of
rest that followed the birth of each of her children, Edith loved to lie
very still and make new plans for her small brood.
Only once she spoke of Laura, and then it was to suggest to him that he
gather together all the bills his daughter had doubtless left behind.
"If you don't settle them," Edith said, "they'll go to her husband. And you
wouldn't like that, would you?"
Roger said he would see to it, and one evening after dinner he started in
on Laura's bills. It was rather an appalling time. He looked into his bank
account and found that Laura's wedding would take about all his surplus.
But this did not dismay him much, for money matters never did. It simply
meant more work in the office.
The next day he rose early and was in his office by nine o'clock. He had
not been so prompt in months, and many of his employees came in late that
morning. But nobody seemed very much perturbed, for Roger was an easy
employer. Still, he sternly told himself, he had been letting things get
altogether too slack. He had been neglecting his business again. The work
had become so cut and dried, there was nothing creative left to do. It had
not been so in years gone by. Those years had fairly bristled with ideas
and hopes and schemes. But even those old memories were no longer here to
hearten him. They had all been swept away when Bruce had made him move out
of his office in a dark creaky edifice down close under Brooklyn Bridge,
and come up to this new building, this steel-ribbed caravansary for all
kinds of business ventures, this place of varnished woodwork, floods of
daylight, concrete floors, this building fireproof throughout. That
expressed it exactly, Roger thought. Nothing could take fire here, not even
a man's imagination, even though he did not feel old. Now and then in the
elevator, as some youngster with eager eyes pushed nervously against him,
Roger would frown and wonder, "What are you so excited about?"
But again the business was running down, and this time he must jerk it back
before it got beyond him. He set himself doggedly to the task, calling in
his assistants one by one, going through the work in those outer rooms,
where at tables long rows of busy young girls, with colored pencils,
scissors and paste, were demolishing enormous piles of newspapers and
magazines. And vaguely, little by little, he came to a realization of how
while he had slumbered the life of the country had swept on. For as he
studied the lists and the letters of his patrons, Roger felt confusedly
that a new America was here.
Clippings, clippings, clippings. Business men and business firms, gigantic
corporations, kept sending here for clippings, news of themselves or their
rivals, keeping keen watch on each other's affairs for signs of strength or
weakness. How savage was the fight these days. Here was news of mines and
mills and factories all over the land, clippings sent each morning by
special messengers downtown to reach the brokers' offices before the market
opened. One broker wrote, "Please quote your terms for the following. From
nine to two o'clock each day our messenger will call at your office every
hour for clippings giving information of the companies named below."
The long list appended carried Roger's fancy out all over the continent.
And then came this injunction: "Remember that our messenger must leave your
office every hour. In information of this kind every minute counts."
Clippings, clippings, clippings. As Roger turned over his morning mail, in
spite of himself he grew absorbed. What a change in the world of
literature. What a host of names of scribblers, not authors but just
writers, not only men but women too, novelists and dramatists, poets and
muckrakers all jumbled in together, each one of them straining for a place.
And the actors and the actresses, the musicians and the lecturers, each
with his press agent and avid for publicity, "fame!" And here were society
women, from New York and other cities, all eager for press notices of
social affairs they had given or managed, charity work they had conducted,
suffrage speeches they had made. Half the women in the land were fairly
talking their heads off, it seemed. Some had been on his lists for years.
They married and wanted to hear what was said in the papers about their
weddings, they quarreled and got divorces and still sent here for
clippings, they died and still their relatives wrote in for the funeral
notices. And even death was commercialized. A maker of monuments wanted
news "of all people of large means, dead or dangerously ill, in the State
of Pennsylvania." Here were demands from charity bodies, hospitals and
colleges, from clergymen with an anxious eye on the Monday morning papers.
And here was an anarchist millionaire! And here was an insane asylum
wanting to see itself in print!
With a grim smile on his heavy visage, Roger stared out of his window.
Slowly the smile faded, a wistful look came on his face.
"Who'll take my business when I'm gone?"
If his small son had only lived, with what new zest and vigor it might have
been made to grow and expand. If only his son had been here by his side....