There was one man in New York who thoroughly enjoyed the summer. Murad
Ault was, as we say of a man who is free to indulge his natural powers,
in his element. There are ingenious people who think that if the
ordering of nature had been left to them, they could maintain moral
conditions, or at least restore a disturbed equilibrium, without
violence, without calling in the aid of cyclones and of uncontrollable
electric displays, in order to clear the air. There are people also who
hold that the moral atmosphere of the world does not require the
occasional intervention of Murad Ault.
The conceit is flattering to human nature, but it is not borne out by the
performance of human nature in what is called the business world, which
is in such intimate alliance with the social world in such great centres
of conflict as London, New York, or Chicago. Mr. Ault is everywhere an
integral and necessary part of the prevailing system--that is, the system
by which the moral law is applied to business. The system, perhaps,
cannot be defended, but it cannot be explained without Mr. Ault. We may
argue that such a man is a disturber of trade, of legitimate operations,
of the fairest speculations, but when we see how uniform he is as a
phenomenon, we begin to be convinced that he is somehow indispensable to
the system itself. We cannot exactly understand why a cyclone should
pick up a peaceful village in Nebraska and deposit it in Kansas, where
there, is already enough of that sort, but we cannot conceive of Wall
Street continuing to be Wall Street unless it were now and then visited
by a powerful adjuster like Mr. Ault.
The advent, then, of Murad Ault in New York was not a novelty, but a
continuation of like phenomena in the Street, ever since the day when
ingenious men discovered that the ability to guess correctly which of two
sparrows, sold for a farthing, lighting on the spire of Trinity Church,
will fly first, is an element in a successful and distinguished career.
There was nothing peculiar in kind in his career, only in the force
exhibited which lifted him among the few whose destructive energy the
world condones and admires as Napoleonic. He may have been an instrument
of Providence. When we do not know exactly what to do with an
exceptional man who is disagreeable, we call him an Instrument of
Providence.
It is not, then, in anything exceptional that we are interested in the
operations of Murad Ault, but simply on account of his fortuitous
connection with a great fortune which had its origin in very much the
same cyclonic conditions that Mr. Ault reveled in. Those who know Wall
Street best, by reason of sad experience, say that the presiding deity
there is not the Chinese god, Luck, but the awful pagan deity, Nemesis.
Alas! how many innocent persons suffer in order to get justice done in
this world.
Those who have unimpaired memories may recollect the fortune amassed,
many years previous to this history, by one Rodney Henderson, gathered
and enlarged by means not indictable, but which illustrate the wide
divergence between the criminal code and the moral law. This fortune,
upon the sudden death of its creator, had been largely diverted from its
charitable destination by fraud, by a crime that would have fallen within
the code if it had been known. This fortune had been enjoyed by those
who seized it for many years of great social success, rising into
acknowledged respectability and distinction; and had become the basis of
the chance of social elevation, which is dear to the hearts of so many
excellent people, who are compelled to wander about in a chaotic society
that has no hereditary titles. It was this fortune, the stake in such an
ambition, or perhaps destined in a new possessor to a nobler one, that
came in the way of Mr. Ault's extensive schemes.
It is not necessary to infer that Mr. Ault was originally actuated by any
greed as to this special accumulation of property, or that he had any
malevolence towards Mr. Mavick; but the eagerness of his personal pursuit
led him into collisions. There were certain possessions of Mr. Mavick
that were desirable for the rounding-out of his plans--these graspings
were many of them understood by the public as necessary to the
"development of a system"--and in this collision of interests and fierce
strength a vindictive feeling was engendered, a feeling born, as has been
hinted, by Mr. Mavick's attempt to trick his temporary ally in a certain
operation, so that Mr. Ault's main purpose was to "down Mavick."
This was no doubt an exaggeration concerning a man with so many domestic
virtues as Mr. Ault, meaning by domestic virtues indulgence of his
family; but a fight for place or property in politics or in the Street
is pretty certain to take on a personal character.
We can understand now why Mr. Ault read the accounts of the Mavick ball
with a grim smile. In speaking of it he used the vulgar term "splurge,"
a word especially offensive to the refined society in which the Mavicks
had gained a foothold. And yet the word was on the lips of a great many
men on the Street. The shifting application of sympathy is a very queer
thing in this world. Mr. Ault was not a snob. Whatever else he was, he
made few pretensions. In his first advent he had been resisted as an
intruder and shunned as a vulgarian; but in time respect for his force
and luck mingled with fear of his reckless talent, and in the course of
events it began to be admitted that the rough diamond was being polished
into one of the corner-stones of the great business edifice. At the time
of this writing he did not altogether lack the sympathy of the Street,
and an increasing number of people were not sorry to see Mr. Mavick get
the worst of it in repeated trials of strength. And in each of these
trials it became increasingly difficult for Mr. Mavick to obtain the
assistance and the credit which are often indispensable to the strongest
men in a panic.
The truth was that there were many men in the Street who were not sorry
to see Mr. Mavick worried. They remembered perfectly well the omniscient
snobbishness of Thomas Mavick when he held a position in the State
Department at Washington and was at the same time a secret agent of
Rodney Henderson. They did not change their opinion of him when, by his
alliance with Mrs. Henderson, he stepped into control of Mr. Henderson's
property and obtained the mission to Rome; but later on he had been
accepted as one of the powers in the financial world. There were a few
of the old stagers who never trusted him. Uncle Jerry Hollowell, for
instance, used to say, "Mavick is smart, smart as lightnin'; I guess
he'll make ducks and drakes of the Henderson property." They are very
superficial observers of Wall Street who think that character does not
tell there. Mr. Mavick may have realized that when in his straits he
looked around for assistance.
The history of this panic summer in New York would not be worthy the
reader's attention were not the fortunes of some of his acquaintances
involved in it. It was not more intense than the usual panics, but it
lasted longer on account of the complications with uncertain government
policy, and it produced stagnation in social as well as business circles.
So quiet a place as Rivervale felt it in the diminution of city visitors,
and the great resorts showed it in increased civility to the small number
of guests.
The summer at Newport, which had not been distinguished by many great
events, was drawing to a close--that is, it was in the period when those
who really loved the charming promenade which is so loved of the sea
began to enjoy themselves, and those who indulge in the pleasures of
hope, based upon a comfortable matrimonial establishment, are reckoning
up the results of the campaign.
Mrs. Mavick, according to her own assertion, was one of those who enjoy
nature. "Nature and a few friends, not too many, only those whom one
trusts and who are companionable," she had said to Lord Montague.
This young gentleman had found the pursuit of courtship in America
attended by a good many incidental social luxuries. It had been a wise
policy to impress him with the charm of a society which has unlimited
millions to make it attractive. Even to an impecunious noble there is a
charm in this, although the society itself has some of the lingering
conditions of its money origin. But since the great display of the ball,
and the legitimate inferences drawn from it by the press and the
fashionable world, Mrs. Mavick had endeavored to surround her intended
son-in-law with the toils of domestic peace.
He must be made to feel at home. And this she did. Mrs. Mavick was as
admirable in the role of a domestic woman as of a woman of the world.
The simple pleasures, the confidences, the intimacies of home life
surrounded him. His own mother, the aged duchess, could not have looked
upon him with more affection, and possibly not have pampered him with so
many luxuries. There was only one thing wanting to make this home
complete. In conventional Europe the contracting parties are not the
signers of the marriage contract. In the United States the parties most
interested take the initiative in making the contract.
Here lay the difficulty of the situation, a situation that puzzled Lord
Montague and enraged Mrs. Mavick. Evelyn maintained as much indifference
to the domestic as to the worldly situation. Her mother thought her
lifeless and insensible; she even went so far as to call her unwomanly in
her indifference to what any other woman would regard as an opportunity
for a brilliant career.
Lifeless indeed she was, poor child; physically languid and scarcely able
to drag herself through the daily demands upon her strength.
Her mother made it a reproach that she was so pale and unresponsive.
Apparently she did not resist, she did everything she was told to do.
She passed, indeed, hours with Lord Montague, occasions contrived when
she was left alone in the house with him, and she made heroic efforts to
be interested, to find something in his mind that was in sympathy with
her own thoughts. With a woman's ready instinct she avoided committing
herself to his renewed proposals, sometimes covert, sometimes direct, but
the struggle tired her. At the end of all such interviews she had to
meet her mother, who, with a smile of hope and encouragement, always
said, "Well, I suppose you and Lord Montague have made it up," and then
to encounter the contempt expressed for her as a "goose."
She was helpless in such toils. At times she felt actually abandoned of
any human aid, and in moods of despondency almost resolved to give up the
struggle. In the eyes of the world it was a good match, it would make
her mother happy, no doubt her father also; and was it not her duty to
put aside her repugnance, and go with the current of the social and
family forces that seemed irresistible?
Few people can resist doing what is universally expected of them. This
invisible pressure is more difficult to stand against than individual
tyranny. There are no tragedies in our modern life so pathetic as the
ossification of women's hearts when love is crushed under the compulsion
of social and caste requirements. Everybody expected that Evelyn would
accept Lord Montague. It could be said that for her own reputation the
situation required this consummation of the intimacy of the season. And
the mother did not hesitate to put this interpretation upon the events
which were her own creation.
But with such a character as Evelyn, who was a constant puzzle to her
mother, this argument had very little weight compared with her own sense
of duty to her parents. Her somewhat ideal education made worldly
advantages of little force in her mind, and love the one priceless
possession of a woman's heart which could not be bartered. And yet might
there not be an element of selfishness in this--might not its sacrifice
be a family duty? Mrs. Mavick having found this weak spot in her
daughter's armor, played upon it with all her sweet persuasive skill and
show of tenderness.
"Of course, dear," she said, "you know what would make me happy. But I
do not want you to yield to my selfishness or even to your father's
ambition to see his only child in an exalted position in life. I can
bear the disappointment. I have had to bear many. But it is your own
happiness I am thinking of. And I think also of the cruel blow your
refusal will inflict upon a man whose heart is bound up in you."
"But I don't love him." The girl was very pale, and she spoke with an
air of weariness, but still with a sort of dogged persistence.
"You will in time. A young girl never knows her own heart, any more than
she knows the world."
"Mother, that isn't all. It would be a sin to him to pretend to give him
a heart that was not his. I can't; I can't."
"My dear child, that is his affair. He is willing to trust you, and to
win your love. When we act from a sense of duty the way is apt to open
to us. I have never told you of my own earlier experience.
I was not so young as you are when I married Mr. Henderson, but I had not
been without the fancies and experiences of a young girl. I might have
yielded to one of them but for family reasons. My father had lost his
fortune and had died, disappointed and broken down. My mother, a lovely
woman, was not strong, was not capable of fighting the world alone, and
she depended upon me, for in those days I had plenty of courage and
spirit. Mr. Henderson was a widower whom we had known as a friend before
the death of his accomplished wife. In his lonesomeness he turned to me.
In our friendlessness I turned to him. Did I love him? I esteemed him,
I respected him, I trusted him, that was all. He did not ask more than
that. And what a happy life we had! I shared in all his great plans.
And when in the midst of his career, with such large ideas of public
service and philanthropy, he was stricken down, he left to me, in the
confidence of his love, all that fortune which is some day to be yours."
Mrs. Mavick put her handkerchief to her eyes. "Ah, well, our destiny is
not in our hands. Heaven raised up for me another protector, another
friend. Perhaps some of my youthful illusions have vanished, but should
I have been happier if I had indulged them? I know your dear father does
not think so."
"Mother," cried Evelyn, deeply moved by this unprecedented confidence, "I
cannot bear to see you suffer on my account. But must not every one
decide for herself what is right before God?"
At this inopportune appeal to a higher power Mrs. Mavick had some
difficulty in restraining her surprise and indignation at what she
considered her child's stubbornness. But she conquered the inclination,
and simply looked sad and appealing when she said:
"Yes, yes, you must decide for yourself. You must not consider your
mother as I did mine."
This cruel remark cut the girl to the heart. The world seemed to whirl
around her, right and wrong and duty in a confused maze. Was she, then,
such a monster of ingratitude? She half rose to throw herself at her
mother's feet, upon her mother's mercy. And at the moment it was not her
reason but her heart that saved her. In the moral confusion rose the
image of Philip. Suppose she should gain the whole world and lose him!
And it was love, simple, trusting love, that put courage into her sinking
heart.
"Mother, it is very hard. I love you; I could die for you. I am so
forlorn. But I cannot, I dare not, do such a thing, such a dreadful
thing!"
She spoke brokenly, excitedly, she shuddered as she said the last words,
and her eyes were full of tears as she bent down and kissed her mother.
When she had gone, Mrs. Mavick sat long in her chair, motionless between
bewilderment and rage. In her heart she was saying, "The obstinate,
foolish girl must be brought to reason!"
A servant entered with a telegram. Mrs. Mavick took it, and held it
listlessly while the servant waited. "You can sign." After the door
closed--she was still thinking of Evelyn--she waited a moment before she
tore the envelope, and with no eagerness unfolded the official yellow
paper. And then she read:
"I have made an assignment. T. M."
A half-hour afterwards when a maid entered the room she found Mrs. Mavick
still seated in the armchair, her hands powerless at her side, her eyes
staring into space, her face haggard and old.