Robert Kimberly Part 26

"Your brother."

Kimberly spoke with resignation. "Charles always had the luck of the family."

A door opened and a butler entered the room. On seeing Kimberly he attempted to withdraw.

"Come in, Bell," said Alice. "What is it?"

"The juggler, Mrs. MacBirney; his a.s.sistant has telephoned they've missed their train."

"Oh, Bell!" exclaimed his mistress in indignant protest. "Don't tell me that."

"And it's the last out, till ten-thirty o'clock."

Alice's face fell. "That ends my evening. Isn't it _too_ exasperating.

Stupid jugglers!"

Kimberly intervened. "What train did he miss, Bell?"

"The seven-ten, sir, from town."

"Why don't you call up the division superintendent and ask his office to stop the eight-ten?"

Bell looked at his mistress. "I might do that, sir."

"Oh, can you?" cried Alice.

"You ought to have done it without being told, Bell," observed Kimberly.

"You've done such things before."

"Might I use your name, sir?"

"Use whatever is necessary to get him. And ask them to hunt up the juggler in the waiting-room and put him aboard. Who is he?"

"A China boy, sir, I understand."

"In that case, they could not miss him."

The butler left the room. "Do you think they will do it?" asked Alice anxiously.

"Don't give it further thought. We could get him out on a special if necessary."

Voices came from the front room. Alice started forward. "There are guests."

"By-the-way," added Kimberly, pointing to the card on his cover and that on his brother's, "you don't mind my correcting this mistake, do you?"

Alice looked very frankly at him, for the success of the dinner was keenly on her mind. "You will be of more a.s.sistance, Mr. Kimberly, if you will not make any change. Mrs. Nelson and Mrs. Morgan are my difficulties and I hoped you would solve them for me."

"By all means."

Dolly's voice was heard in the hall. "Where are you, Alice? Here are the McCreas, from town, and Doctor Hamilton."

They sat down fourteen at the table--the Kimberlys, De Castros, Nelsons, McCreas, Hamilton, Miss Venable, and Dora Morgan.

Alice was playing to the enemy and meant to demonstrate to the Nelson coterie that she needed no a.s.sistance from them to establish herself as a hostess at Second Lake. If she wished, on this occasion, for a great success it was hers. The dinner was good, and the moment that Nelson had a.s.sured himself of this he began good-naturedly to help things on.

A remark from some one about the gulf between law and justice gave him a chance. "Why a.s.sociate the two at all?" he asked lazily. "Law is strictly a game of the wits. It is played under the convention of an appeal to justice, but justice is invoked merely to satisfy the imagination. If people understood this there would be no complaint about a gulf between the two. We imagine justice; we get law.

Similarly, we imagine heaven; we get--what we deserve. If the imagination be satisfied, man will endure the sweat of Sisyphus; most of us suffer it in this world, anyway. Law and justice are like chemical incompatibles and there must be a gulf between them. And law is no better and no worse than other conventions of society. Who that studies human government in any form has ever been able to regard it otherwise than with contempt?"

"Certainly," interposed Fritzie Venable, with formal irony. "No one that takes care of the Kimberly interests at Washington."

"The Kimberly interests at Washington," returned Nelson with complaisance, "are so well behaved that they take care of themselves."

"Then I don't see what contempt you should have for this government,"

retorted Fritzie vigorously.

"Only that it affords him no adequate exercise for his ingenuity,"

suggested Arthur De Castro.

"I don't care," protested Fritzie; "I am an American and I won't have our government abused. I believe in sticking to your own."

"Well, if _we_ haven't stuck to our own, I should like to know who has?"

observed Charles Kimberly benevolently. "We've stuck for fifty years to our tariff builders, as Mustard would to a stot. MacBirney's farmers are doing the work for us now," he continued. "Our beet growers guard the sugar schedule at Washington. These wonderful Western States; lowest in illiteracy, highest in political sagacity! It is really a shame to take the money."

"I don't see how _you_ conscientiously can take it," declared Hamilton, appealing to Robert Kimberly.

"I do it by educating my conscience, Doctor," responded Robert Kimberly.

"Every one that takes the trouble to inquire knows I am a free trader.

I abstain from the Reform Club, but that is out of deference to my partners. I contribute to both campaign funds; to the one for our shareholders, to the other for my conscience; for as I say, personally I am a free trader."

"And a tariff beneficiary," added Arthur De Castro.

"Why not, Arthur? Wasn't it Disraeli who said sensible men are all of one religion? He might better have said, sensible men are all of one politics. It is true, we are tariff beneficiaries, but this country is doing business under a protective theory. We are engaged, as we were long before there was a tariff, in what is now a protected industry. We can't change our business because the government changes its economic policy.

"And if anybody _is_ to have protection here, Arthur, why shouldn't we?

Who has a better right to it? Our warrants of occupation were extorted from the Iroquois. We fought the Indian, we fought the French, we fought the English----"

"Was there anybody you didn't fight?"

"We put up our credit in Paris and Amsterdam for the colonies and for the Federal Government when the colonies and the Federal Government had none. Then along comes a little coterie of steel men in our own day,"

Kimberly tossed his head with disdainful impatience, "who make the toil of a hundred years look like a farce--out-Herod Herod in protection and pile up hundreds of millions while we are up to our armpits in mola.s.ses trying to grind out a mere living. Protection! We don't get half enough. Who has any better sanction for exercising that airy, invisible pressure of a tariff tax?" he demanded, lifting a gla.s.s of wine to the light.

"Picturesque old pirate," murmured Hamilton.

"And he needs the money," commented De Castro. "Why quarrel with him?"

"I am sure you will all pledge the sugar business," continued Kimberly, raising a refilled gla.s.s blandly, "and join me in welcoming anybody that wants to go into it. This is a free country, gentlemen."

"What do you use on compet.i.tors, the rack and dungeon?"