The Cost Part 36

"You're acting like a lunatic. No business, I say--not for a week.

Absolute quiet, Mr. Dumont, or I'll not answer for the consequences."

"I see you want to drive me back into the fever," replied Dumont. "But I'm bent on getting well. I need the medicine I've had this morning, and Culver's bringing me another dose. If I'm not better when he leaves, I agree to try your prescription of fret and fume."

"You are risking your life."

Dumont smiled. "Possibly. But I'm risking it for what's more than life to me, my dear Sackett."

"You'll excite yourself. You'll----"

"On the contrary, I shall calm myself. I'm never so calm and cheerful as when I'm fighting, unless it's when I'm getting ready to fight.

There's something inside me--I don't know what--but it won't let me rest till it has pushed me into action. That's my nature. If any one asks how I am, say you've no hope of my recovery."

"I shall tell only the truth in that case," said Sackett, but with resignation--he was beginning to believe that for his extraordinary patient extraordinary remedies might be best.

Dumont listened to Culver's report without interrupting him once.

Culver's position had theretofore been most disadvantageous to himself.

He had been too near to Dumont, had been merged in Dumont's big personality. Whatever he did well seemed to Dumont merely the direct reflection of his own abilities; whatever he did ill seemed far more stupid than a similar blunder made by a less intimate subordinate--what excuse for Culver's going wrong with the guiding hand of the Great Man always upon him?

In this, his first important independent a.s.signment, he had at last an opportunity to show his master what he could do, to show that he had not learned the Dumont methods parrot-fashion, but intelligently, that he was no mere reflecting asteroid to the Dumont sun, but a self-luminous, if lesser and dependent, star.

Dumont was in a peculiarly appreciative mood.

"Why, the fellow's got brains--GOOD brains," was his inward comment again and again as Culver unfolded the information he had collected--clear, accurate, non-essentials discarded, essentials given in detail, hidden points brought to the surface.

It was proof positive of Dumont's profound indifference to money that he listened without any emotion either of anger or of regret to the first part of Culver's tale, the survey of the wreck--what had been forty millions now reduced to a dubious six. Dumont had neither time nor strength for emotion; he was using all his mentality in gaging what he had for the work in hand--just how long and how efficient was the broken sword with which he must face his enemies in a struggle that meant utter ruin to him if he failed. For he felt that if he should fail he would never again be able to gather himself together to renew the combat; either he would die outright or he would abandon himself to the appet.i.te which had just shown itself dangerously near to being the strongest of the several pa.s.sions ruling him.

When Culver pa.s.sed to the Herron coterie and the Fanning-Smiths and Great Lakes and Gulf, Dumont was still motionless--he was now estimating the strength and the weaknesses of the enemy, and miscalculation would be fatal. At the end of three-quarters of an hour Culver stopped the steady, swift flow of his report--"That's all the important facts. There's a lot more but it would be largely repet.i.tion."

Dumont looked at him with an expression that made him proud. "Thanks, Culver. At the next annual meeting we'll elect you to Giddings' place.

Please go back down-town and--" He rapidly indicated half a dozen points which Culver had failed to see and investigate--the best subordinate has not the master's eye; if he had, he would not be a subordinate.

Dumont waved his hand in dismissal and settled himself to sleep. When Culver began to stammer thanks for the promised promotion, he frowned.

"Don't bother me with that sort of stuff. The job's yours because you've earned it. It'll be yours as long as you can hold it down--or until you earn a better one. And you'll be loyal as Giddings was--just as long as it's to your interest and not a second longer. Otherwise you'd be a fool, and I'd not have you about me. Be off!"

He slept an hour and a half, then Pauline brought him a cup of beef extract--"A very small cup," he grumbled good-humoredly. "And a very weak, watery mess in it."

As he lay propped in his bed drinking it--slowly to make it last the longer--Pauline sat looking at him. His hands had been fat and puffy; she was filled with pity as she watched the almost scrawny hand holding the cup to his lips; there were hollows between the tendons, and the wrist was gaunt. Her gaze wandered to his face and rested there, in sympathy and tenderness. The ravages of the fever had been frightful--hollows where the swollen, sensual cheeks had been; the neck caved in behind and under the jaw-bones; loose skin hanging in wattles, deeply-set eyes, a pinched look about the nostrils and the corners of the mouth. He was homely, ugly even; except the n.o.ble curve of head and profile, not a trace of his former good looks--but at least that swinish, fleshy, fleshly expression was gone.

A physical wreck, battered, torn, dismantled by the storm and fire of disease! It was hard for her to keep back her tears.

Their eyes met and his instantly shifted. The rest of the world saw the man of force bent upon the possessions which mean fame and honor regardless of how they are got. He knew that he could deceive the world, that so long as he was rich and powerful it would refuse to let him undeceive it, though he might strive to show it what he was. But he knew that SHE saw him as he really was--knew him as only a husband and a wife can know each the other. And he respected her for the qualities which gave her a right to despise him, and which had forced her to exercise that right. He felt himself the superior of the rest of his fellow-beings, but her inferior; did she not successfully defy him; could she not, without a word, by simply resting her calm gaze upon him, make him shift and slink?

He felt that he must change the subject--not of their conversation, for they were not talking, but of their--her--thoughts. He did not know precisely what she was thinking of him, but he was certain that it was not anything favorable how could it be? In fact, fight though she did against the thought, into her mind as she looked, pitying yet shrinking, came his likeness to a wolf--starved and sick and gaunt, by weakness tamed into surface restraint, but in vicious teeth, in savage lips, in jaw made to crush for love of crushing, a wicked wolf, impatient to resume the life of the beast of prey.

By a mischance unavoidable in a mind filled as was his he began to tell of his revenge--of the exhibition of power he purposed to give, sudden and terrible. He talked of his enemies as a cat might of a mouse it was teasing in the impa.s.sable circle of its paws. She felt that they deserved the thunderbolt he said he was about to hurl into them, but she could not help feeling pity for them. If what he said of his resources and power were true, how feeble, how helpless they were--pygmies fatuously disporting themselves in the palm of a giant's hand, unconscious of where they were, of the cruel eyes laughing at them, of the iron muscles that would presently contract that hand and--she shuddered; his voice came to her in a confused murmur.

"If he does not stop I shall loathe him AGAIN!" she said to herself.

Then to him: "Perhaps you'd like to see Langdon--he's in the drawing-room with Gladys."

"I sent for him two hours ago. Yes, tell him to come up at once."

As she took the cup he detained her hand. She beat down the impulse to s.n.a.t.c.h it away, let it lie pa.s.sive. He pressed his lips upon it.

"I haven't thanked you for coming back," he said in a low voice, holding to her hand nervously.

"But you know it wasn't because I'm not grateful, don't you? I can hardly believe yet that it isn't a dream. I'd have said there wasn't a human being on earth who'd have done it--except your mother. No, not even you, only your mother."

At this tribute to her mother, unexpected, sincere, tears dimmed Pauline's eyes and a sob choked up into her throat.

"It was your mother in you that made you come," he went on. "But you came--and I'll not forget it. You said you had come to stay--is that so, Pauline?"

She bent her head in a.s.sent.

"When I'm well and on top again--but there's nothing in words. All I'll say is, you're giving me a chance, and I'll make the best of it. I've learned my lesson."

He slowly released her hand. She stood there a moment, without speaking, without any definite thought. Then she left to send Langdon.

"Yes," Dumont reflected, "it was her duty. It's a woman's duty to be forgiving and gentle and loving and pure--they're made differently from men. It was unnatural, her ever going away at all. But she's a good woman, and she shall get what she deserves hereafter. When I settle this bill for my foolishness I'll not start another."

Duty--that word summed up his whole conception of the right att.i.tude of a good woman toward a man. A woman who acted from love might change her mind; but duty was safe, was always there when a man came back from wanderings which were mere amiable, natural weaknesses in the male.

Love might adorn a honeymoon or an escapade; duty was the proper adornment of a home.

"I've just been viewing the wreck with Culver," he said, as Langdon entered, dressed in the extreme of the latest London fashion.

"Much damage?"

"What didn't go in the storm was carried off by Giddings when he abandoned the ship. But the hull's there and--oh, I'll get her off and fix her up all right."

"Always knew Giddings was a rascal. He oozes piety and respectability.

That's the worst kind you have down-town. When a man carries so much character in his face--it's like a woman who carries so much color in her cheeks that you know it couldn't have come from the inside."

"You're wrong about Giddings. He's honest enough. Any other man would have done the same in his place. He stayed until there was no hope of saving the ship."

"All lost but his honor--Wall Street honor, eh?"

"Precisely."

After a pause Langdon said: "I'd no idea you held much of your own stock. I thought you controlled through other people's proxies and made your profits by forcing the stock up or down and getting on the other side of the market."

"But, you see, I believe in Woolens," replied Dumont. "And I believe in it still, Langdon!" His eyes had in them the look of the fanatic.

"That concern is breath and blood and life to me, and wife and children and parents and brothers and sisters. I've put my whole self into it.

I conceived it. I brought it into the world. I nursed it and brought it up. I made it big and strong and great. It's mine, by heaven!

MINE! And no man shall take it from me!"

He was sitting up, his face flushed, his eyes blazing. "Gad--he does look a wild beast!" said Langdon to himself. He would have said aloud, had Dumont been well: "I'm precious glad I ain't the creature those fangs are reaching for!" He was about to caution him against exciting himself when Dumont sank back with a cynical smile at his own outburst.