The Deluge Part 10

Roebuck--have fired me if I had refused to sign?"

"Excuses, excuses, Walters," was Roebuck's answer, with a sad, disappointed look, as if he had hoped Walters would make a brighter showing for himself.

"How many times have you yourself talked to me of this eternal excuse habit of men who fail? And if I expended my limited brain-power in looking into all the excuses and explanations, what energy or time would I have for constructive work? All I can do is to select a man for a position and to judge him by results. You were put in charge to produce dividends. You haven't produced them. I'm sorry, and I venture to hope that things are not so bad as you make out in your eagerness to excuse yourself. For the sake of old times, Tom, I ignore your angry insinuations against me. I try to be just, and to be just one must always be impersonal."

"Well," said Walters with an air of desperation, "give me another year, Mr.

Roebuck, and I'll produce results all right. I'll break the agreements and cut rates. I'll freeze out the branch roads and our minority stock-holders, I'll keep the books so that all the expert accountants in New York couldn't untangle them. I'll wink at and commit and order committed all the necessary crimes. I don't know why I've been so squeamish, when there were so many penitentiary offenses that I did consent to, and, for that matter, commit, without a quiver. I thought I ought to draw the line somewhere--and I drew it at keeping my personal word and at keeping the books reasonably straight. But I'll go the limit."

I'll never forget Roebuck's expression; it was perfect, simply perfect--a great and good man outraged beyond endurance, but a Christian still. "You have made it impossible for me to temper justice with mercy, Walters," said he. "If it were not for the long years of a.s.sociation, for the affection for you which has grown up in me, I should hand you over to the fate you have earned. You tell me you have been committing crimes in my service. You tell me you will commit more and greater crimes. I can scarcely believe my own ears."

Walters laughed scornfully--the reckless laugh of a man who suddenly sees that he is cornered and must fight for his life. "Rot!" he jeered. "Rot!

You always have been a wonder at juggling with your conscience. But do you expect me to believe you think yourself innocent because you do not yourself execute the orders you issue--orders that can be carried out only by committing crimes?" Walters was now beside himself with rage. He gave the reins to that high horse he had been riding ever since he was promoted to the presidency of the great coal road. He began to lay on whip and spur.

"Do you think," he cried to Roebuck, "the blood of those five hundred men drowned in the Pequot mine is not on _your_ hands--_your_ head?

You, who ordered John Wilkinson to suppress the compet.i.tion the Pequot was giving you, ordered him in such a way that he knew the alternative was his own ruin? He shot himself--yet he had as good an excuse as you, for he, too, pa.s.sed on the order until it got to the poor fireman--that wretched fellow they sent to the penitentiary for life? And as sure as there is a G.o.d in Heaven, you will some day do a long, long sentence in whatever h.e.l.l there is, for letting that wretch rot in prison--yes, and for John Wilkinson's suicide, and for the lives of those five hundred drowned. Your pensions to the widows and orphans can't save you."

I listened to this tirade astounded. Used as I was to men losing their heads through vanity, I could not credit my own ears and eyes when they reported to me this insane exhibition. I looked at Roebuck. He was wearing an expression of beatific patience; he would have made a fine study for a picture of the martyr at the stake.

"I forgive you, Tom," he said, when Walters stopped for breath. "Your own sinful heart makes you see the black of sin upon everything. I had heard that you were going about making loud boasts of your power over your employers, but I tried not to believe it. I see now that you have, indeed, lost your senses. Your prosperity has been too much for your good sense."

He sighed mournfully. "I shall not interfere to prevent your getting a position elsewhere," he continued. "But after what you have confessed, after your slanders, how can I put you back in your old place out West, as I intended? How can I continue the interest in you and care for your career that I have had, in spite of all your shortcomings? I who raised you up from a clerk."

"Raised me up as you fellows always raise men up--because you find them clever at doing your dirty work. I was a decent, honest fellow when you first took notice of me and tempted me. But, by G.o.d, Mr. Roebuck, if I've sold out beyond hope of living decent again, I'll have my price--to the last cent. You've got to leave me where I am or give me a place and salary equally as good." This Walters said bl.u.s.teringly, but beneath I could detect the beginnings of a whine.

"You are angry, Tom," said Roebuck soothingly. "I have hurt your vanity--it is one of the heaviest crosses I have to bear, that I must be continually hurting the vanity of men. Go away and--and calm down. Think the situation over coolly; then come and apologize to me, and I will do what I can to help you. As for your threats--when you are calm, you will see how idle they are."

Walters gave a sort of groan; and though I, blinded by my prejudices in favor of Roebuck and of the crowd with whom my interests lay, had been feeling that he was an impudent and crazy ingrate, I pitied him.

"What proofs have I got?" he said desperately. "If I show up the things I know about, I show up myself, and everybody will say I'm lying about you and the others in the effort to save myself. The newspapers would denounce me as a treacherous liar--you fellows own or control or foozle them in one way and another. And if I was believed, who'd prosecute you and what court'd condemn you? Don't you own both political parties and make all the tickets, and can't you ruin any office-holders who lifted a finger against you? What a h.e.l.l of a state of affairs!"

A swifter or a weaker descent I never witnessed. My pity changed to contempt. "This fellow, with his great reputation," thought I, "is a fool and a knave, and a weak one at that."

"Go away now, Tom," said Roebuck.

"When you're master of yourself again, come to see me."

"Master of myself!" cried Walters bitterly. "Who that's got anything to lose is master of himself in this country?" With shoulders sagging and a sort of stumble in his gait, he went toward the door. He paused there to say: "I've served too long, Mr. Roebuck. There's no fight in me. I thought there was, but there ain't. Do the best you can for me." And he took himself out of our sight.

You will wonder how I was ever able to blind myself to the reality of this frightful scene. But please remember that in this world every thought and every act is a mixture of the good and the bad; and the one or the other shows the more prominently according to one's point of view. There probably isn't a criminal in any cell, anywhere, no matter what he may say in sniveling pretense in the hope of lighter sentence, who doesn't at the bottom of his heart believe his crime or crimes somehow justifiable--and who couldn't make out a plausible case for himself.

At that time I was stuffed with the arrogance of my fancied membership in the caste of directing financial geniuses; I was looking at everything from the viewpoint of the brotherhood of which Roebuck was the strongest brother, and of which I imagined myself a full and equal member. I did not, I could not, blind myself to the vivid reminders of his relentlessness; but I knew too well how necessary the iron hand and the fixed purpose are to great affairs to judge him as infuriated Walters, with his vanity savagely wounded, was judging him. I'd as soon have thought of describing General Grant as a murderer, because he ordered the battles in which men were killed or because he planned and led the campaigns in which subordinates committed rapine and pillage and a.s.sa.s.sination. I did not then see the radical difference--did not realize that while Grant's work was at the command of patriotism and necessity, there was no necessity whatever for Roebuck's getting rich but the command of his own greedy and cruel appet.i.tes.

Don't misunderstand me. My morals are practical, not theoretical. Men must die, old customs embodied in law must be broken, the venal must be bribed and the weak cowed and compelled, in order that civilization may advance.

You can't establish a railway or a great industrial system by rose-water morality. But I shall show, before I finish, that Roebuck and his gang of so-called "organizers of industry" bear about the same relation to industry that the boll weevil bears to the cotton crop.

I'll withdraw this, if any one can show me that, as the result of the activities of those parasites, anybody anywhere is using or is able to use a single pound or bushel or yard more of any commodity whatsoever.

I'll withdraw it, if I can not show that but for those parasites, bearing precisely the same relation to our society that the kings and n.o.bles and priests bore to France before the Revolution, everybody except them would have more goods and more money than they have under the system that enables these parasites to overshadow the highways of commerce with their strongholds and to clog them with their toll-gates. They know little about producing, about manufacturing, about distributing, about any process of industry. Their skill is in temptation, in trickery and in terror.

On that day, however, I sided--honestly, as I thought--with Roebuck. What I saw and heard increased my admiration of the man, my already profound respect for his master mind. And when, just after Walters went out, he leaned back in his chair and sat silent with closed eyes and moving lips, I--yes, I, Matt Blacklock, "Black Matt," as they call me--was awed in the presence of this great and good man at prayer!

How he and that G.o.d of his must have laughed at me! So infatuated was I that, clear as it is that he'd never have let me be present at such a scene without a strong ulterior motive, not until he himself long afterward made it impossible for me to deceive myself did I penetrate to his real purpose--that he wished to fill me with a prudent dread and fear of him, with a sense of the absoluteness of his power and of the hopelessness of trying to combat it. But at the time I thought--imbecile that my vanity had made me--at the time I thought he had let me be present because he genuinely liked, admired and trusted me!

Is it not amazing that one who could fall into such colossal blunders should survive to tell of them? I would not have survived had not Roebuck and his crowd been at the same time making an even more colossal misestimate of me than I was making of them. My attack of vanity was violent, but temporary; theirs was equally violent, and chronic and incurable to boot.

XII. ANITA

On my first day in long trousers I may have been more ill at ease than I was that Sunday evening at the Ellerslys'; but I doubt it.

When I came into their big drawing-room and took a look round at the a.s.sembled guests, I never felt more at home in my life. "Yes," said I to myself, as Mrs. Ellersly was greeting me and as I noted the friendly interest in the glances of the women, "this is where I belong. I'm beginning to come into my own."

As I look back on it now, I can't refrain from smiling at my own simplicity--and sn.o.bbishness. For, so determined was I to believe what I was working for was worth while, that I actually fancied there were upon these in reality ordinary people, ordinary in looks, ordinary in intelligence, some subtle marks of superiority, that made them at a glance superior to the common run. This ecstasy of sn.o.bbishness deluded me as to the women only--for, as I looked at the men, I at once felt myself their superior. They were an inconsequential, patterned lot. I even was better dressed than any of them, except possibly Mowbray Langdon; and, if he showed to more advantage than I, it was because of his manner, which, as I have probably said before, is superior to that of any human being I've ever seen--man or woman.

"You are to take Anita in," said Mrs. Ellersly. With a laughable sense that I was doing myself proud, I crossed the room easily and took my stand in front of her. She shook hands with me politely enough. Langdon was sitting beside her; I had interrupted their conversation.

"h.e.l.lo, Blacklock!" said Langdon, with a quizzical, satirical smile with the eyes only. "It seems strange to see you at such peaceful pursuits."

His glance traveled over me critically--and that was the beginning of my trouble. Presently, he rose, left me alone with her.

"You know Mr. Langdon?" she said, obviously because she felt she must say something.

"Oh, yes," I replied. "We are old friends. What a tremendous swell he is--really a swell." This with enthusiasm.

She made no comment. I debated with myself whether to go on talking of Langdon. I decided against it because all I knew of him had to do with matters down town--and Monson had impressed it upon me that down town was taboo in the drawing-room. I rummaged my brain in vain for another and suitable topic.

She sat, and I stood--she tranquil and beautiful and cold, I every instant more miserably self-conscious. When the start for the dining-room was made I offered her my left arm, though I had carefully planned beforehand just what I would do. She--without hesitation and, as I know now, out of sympathy for me in my suffering--was taking my wrong arm, when it flashed on me like a blinding blow in the face that I ought to be on the other side of her. I got red, tripped in the far-sprawling train of Mrs. Langdon, tore it slightly, tried to get to the other side of Miss Ellersly by walking in front of her, recovered myself somehow, stumbled round behind her, walked on her train and finally arrived at her left side, conscious in every red-hot atom of me that I was making a spectacle of myself and that the whole company was enjoying it. I must have seemed to them an ignorant boor; in fact, I had been about a great deal among people who knew how to behave, and had I never given the matter of how to conduct myself on that particular occasion an instant's thought, I should have got on without the least trouble.

It was with a sigh of profound relief that I sank upon the chair between Miss Ellersly and Mrs. Langdon, safe from danger of making "breaks,"

so I hoped, for the rest of the evening. But within a very few minutes I realized that my little misadventure had unnerved me. My hands were trembling so that I could scarcely lift the soup spoon to my lips, and my throat had got so far beyond control that I had difficulty in swallowing.

Miss Ellersly and Mrs. Langdon were each busy with the man on the other side of her; I was left to my own reflections, and I was not sure whether this made me more or less uncomfortable. To add to my torment, I grew angry, furiously angry, with myself. I looked up and down and across the big table noted all these self-satisfied people perfectly at their ease; and I said to myself: "What's the matter with you, Matt? They're only men and women, and by no means the best specimens of the breed. You've got more brains than all of 'em put together, probably; is there one of the lot that could get a job at good wages if thrown on the world? What do you care what they think of you? It's a d.a.m.n sight more important what you think of them; as it won't be many years before you'll hold everything they value, everything that makes them of consequence, in the hollow of your hand."

But it was of no use. When Miss Ellersly finally turned her face toward me to indicate that she would be graciously pleased to listen if I had anything to communicate, I felt as if I were slowly wilting, felt my throat contracting into a dry twist. What was the matter with me? Partly, of course, my own sn.o.bbishness, which led me to attach the same importance to those people that the sn.o.bbishness of the small and silly had got them in the way of attaching to themselves. But the chief cause of my inability was Monson and his lessons. I had thought I was estimating at its proper value what he was teaching. But so earnest and serious am I by nature, and so earnest and serious was he about those trivialities that he had been brought up to regard as the whole of life, that I had unconsciously absorbed his att.i.tude; I was like a fellow who, after cramming hard for an examination, finds that all the questions put to him are on things he hasn't looked at. I had been making an a.s.s of myself, and that evening I got the first instalment of my sound and just punishment. I who had prided myself on being ready for anything or anybody, I who had laughed contemptuously when I read how men and women, presented at European courts, made fools of themselves--I was made ridiculous by these people who, as I well know, had nothing to back their pretensions to superiority but a barefaced bluff.

Perhaps, had I thought this out at the table, I should have got back to myself and my normal ease; but I didn't, and that long and terrible dinner was one long and terrible agony of stage fright. When the ladies withdrew, the other men drew together, talking of people I did not know and of things I did not care about--I thought then that they were avoiding me deliberately as a flock of tame ducks avoids a wild one that some wind has accidentally blown down among them. I know now that my forbidding aspect must have been responsible for my isolations, However, I sat alone, sullenly resisting old Ellersly's constrained efforts to get me into the conversation, and angrily suspicious that Langdon was enjoying my discomfiture more than the cigarette he was apparently absorbed in.

Old Ellersly, growing more and more nervous before my dark and sullen look, finally seated himself beside me. "I hope you'll stay after the others have gone," said he. "They'll leave early, and we can have a quiet smoke and talk."

All unstrung though I was, I yet had the desperate courage to resolve that I'd not leave, defeated in the eyes of the one person whose opinion I really cared about. "Very well," said I, in reply to him.

He and I did not follow the others to the drawing-room, but turned into the library adjoining. From where I seated myself I could see part of the drawing-room--saw the others leaving, saw Langdon lingering, ignoring the impatient glances of his wife, while he talked on and on with Miss Ellersly. Her face was full toward me; she was not aware that I was looking at her, I am sure, for she did not once lift her eyes. As I sat studying her, everything else was crowded out of my mind. She was indeed wonderful--too wonderful and fine and fragile, it seemed to me at that moment, for one so plain and rough as I. "Incredible," thought I, "that she is the child of such a pair as Ellersly and his wife--but again, has she any less in common with them than she'd have with any other pair of human creatures?" Her slender white arms, her slender white shoulders, the bloom on her skin, the graceful, careless way her hair grew round her forehead and at the nape of her neck, the rather haughty expression of her small face softened into sweetness and even tenderness, now that she was talking at her ease with one whom she regarded as of her own kind--"but he isn't!"

I protested to myself. "Langdon--none of these men--none of these women, is fit to a.s.sociate with her. They can't appreciate her. She belongs to me who can." And I had a mad impulse then and there to seize her and bear her away--home--to the home she could make for me out of what I would shower upon her.

At last Langdon rose. It irritated me to see her color under that indifferent fascinating smile of his. It irritated me to note that he held her hand all the time he was saying good-by, and the fact that he held it as if he'd as lief not be holding it hardly lessened my longing to rush in and knock him down. What he did was all in the way of perfect good manners, and would have jarred no one not supersensitive, like me--and like his wife. I saw that she, too, was frowning. She looked beautiful that evening, in spite of her too great breadth for her height--her stoutness was not altogether a defect when she was wearing evening dress. While she seemed friendly and smiling to Miss Ellersly, I saw, whether others saw it or not, that she quivered with apprehension at his mildly flirtatious ways. He acted toward any and every attractive woman as if he were free and were regarding her as a possibility, and didn't mind if she flattered herself that he regarded her as a probability.

In an aimless sort of way Miss Ellersly, after the Langdons had disappeared, left the drawing-room by the same door. Still aimlessly wandering, she drifted into the library by the hall door. As I rose, she lifted her eyes, saw me, and drove away the frown of annoyance which came over her face like the faintest haze. In fact, it may have existed only in my imagination. She opened a large, square silver box on the table, took out a cigarette, lighted it and holding it, with the smoke lazily curling up from it, between the long slender first and second fingers of her white hand, stood idly turning the leaves of a magazine. I threw my cigar into the fireplace. The slight sound as it struck made her jump, and I saw that, underneath her surface of perfect calm, she was in a nervous state full as tense as my own.

"You smoke?" said I.

"Sometimes," she replied. "It is soothing and distracting. I don't know how it is with others, but when I smoke, my mind is quite empty."