The Deluge Part 30

And he sat down, and buried his face and cried like a child--it was then that I measured the full depth of the chasm I had escaped. I made no such exhibition of myself, but when I tried to relight my cigar my hand trembled so that the flame scorched my lips.

"Ruined?" I said to Joe, easily enough. "Not at all. We're back in the road, going smoothly ahead--only, at a bit less stiff a pace. Think, Joe, of all those poor devils down in the mining districts. They're out--clear out--and thousands of 'em don't know where their families will get bread.

And though they haven't found it out yet, they've got to leave the place where they've lived all their lives, and their fathers before them--have got to go wandering about in a world that's as strange to them as the surface of the moon, and as bare for them as the Sahara desert."

"That's so," said Joe. "It's hard luck." But I saw he was thinking only of himself and his narrow escape from having to give up his big house and all the rest of it; that, soft-hearted and generous though he was, to those poor chaps and their wives and children he wasn't giving a thought.

Wall Street never does--they're too remote, too vague. It deals with columns of figures and slips of paper. It never thinks of those abstractions as standing for so many hearts and so many mouths, just as the bank clerk never thinks of the bits of metal he counts so swiftly as money with which things and men could be bought. I read somewhere once that Voltaire--I think it was Voltaire--asked a man what he would do if, by pressing a b.u.t.ton on his table, he would be enormously rich and at the same time would cause the death of a person away off at the other side of the earth, unknown to him, and probably no more worthy to live, and with no greater expectation of life or of happiness than the average sinful, short-lived human being. I've often thought of that as I've watched our great "captains of industry." Voltaire's dilemma is theirs. And they don't hesitate; they press the b.u.t.ton. I leave the morality of the performance to moralists; to me, its chief feature is its cowardice, its sneaking, slimy cowardice.

"You've done a grand two hours' work," said Joe.

"Grander than you think," replied I. "I've set the tiger on to fight the bull."

"Galloway and Roebuck?"

"Just that," said I. And I laughed, started up, sat down again. "No, I'll put off the pleasure," said I. "I'll let Roebuck find out, when the claws catch in that tough old hide of his."

XXVII. A CONSPIRACY AGAINST ANITA

On about the hottest afternoon of that summer I had the yacht take me down the Sound to a point on the Connecticut sh.o.r.e within sight of Dawn Hill, but seven miles farther from New York. I landed at the private pier of Howard Forrester, the only brother of Anita's mother. As I stepped upon the pier I saw a fine-looking old man in the pavilion overhanging the water. He was dressed all in white except a sky-blue tie that harmonized with the color of his eyes. He was neither fat nor lean, and his smooth skin was protesting ruddily against the age proclaimed by his wool-white hair. He rose as I came toward him, and, while I was still several yards away, showed unmistakably that he knew who I was and that he was anything but glad to see me.

"Mr. Forrester?" I asked

He grew purple to the line of his thick white hair. "It is, Mr. Blacklock,"

said he. "I have the honor to wish you good day, sir." And with that he turned his back on me and gazed out toward Long Island.

"I have come to ask a favor of you, sir," said I, as polite to that hostile back as if I had been addressing a cordial face. And I waited.

He wheeled round, looked at me from head to foot. I withstood the inspection calmly; when it was ended I noted that in spite of himself he was somewhat relaxed from the opinion of me he had formed upon what he had heard and read. But he said: "I do not know you, sir, and I do not wish to know you."

"You have made me painfully aware of that," replied I. "But I have learned not to take snap judgments too seriously. I never go to a man unless I have something to say to him, and I never leave until I have said it."

"I perceive, sir," retorted he, "you have the thick skin necessary to living up to that rule." And the twinkle in his eyes betrayed the man who delights to exercise a real or imaginary talent for caustic wit. Such men are like nettles--dangerous only to the timid touch.

"On the contrary," replied I, easy in mind now, though I did not anger him by showing it, "I am most sensitive to insults--insults to myself. But you are not insulting _me_. You are insulting a purely imaginary, hearsay person who is, I venture to a.s.sure you, utterly unlike me, and who doubtless deserves to be insulted."

His purple had now faded. In a far different tone he said: "If your business in any way relates to the family into which you have married, I do not wish to hear it. Spare my patience and your time, sir."

"It does not," was my answer. "It relates to my own family--to my wife and myself. As you may have heard, she is no longer a member of the Ellersly family. And I have come to you chiefly because I happen to know your sentiment toward the Ellerslys."

"I have no sentiment toward them, sir!" he exclaimed. "They are non-existent, sir--nonexistent! Your wife's mother ceased to be a Forrester when she married that scoundrel. Your wife is still less a Forrester."

"True," said I. "She is a Blacklock."

He winced, and it reminded me of the night of my marriage and Anita's expression when the preacher called her by her new name. But I held his gaze, and we looked each at the other fixedly for, it must have been, full half a minute. Then he said courteously: "What do you wish?"

I went straight to the point. My color may have been high, but my voice did not hesitate as I explained: "I wish to make my wife financially independent. I wish to settle on her a sum of money sufficient to give her an income that will enable her to live as she has been accustomed. I know she would not take it from me. So, I have come to ask you to pretend to give it to her--I, of course, giving it to you to give."

Again--we looked full and fixedly each at the other. "Come to the house, Blacklock," he said at last in a tone that was the subtlest of compliments.

And he linked his arm in mine. Halfway to the rambling stone house, severe in its lines, yet fine and homelike, quaintly resembling its owner, as a man's house always should, he paused. "I owe you an apology," said he.

"After all my experience of this world of envy and malice, I should have recognized the man even in the caricatures of his enemies. And you brought the best possible credentials--you are well hated. To be well hated by the human race and by the creatures mounted on its back is a distinction, sir.

It is the crown of the true kings of this world."

We seated ourselves on the wide veranda; he had champagne and water brought, and cigars; and we proceeded to get acquainted--nothing promotes cordiality and sympathy like an initial misunderstanding. It was a good hour before this kind-hearted, hard-soft, typical old-fashioned New Englander reverted to the object of my visit. Said he: "And now, young man, may I venture to ask some extremely personal questions?"

"In the circ.u.mstances," replied I, "you have the right to know everything.

I did not come to you without first making sure what manner of man I was to find." At this he blushed, pleased as a girl at her first beau's first compliment. "And you, Mr. Forrester, can not be expected to embark in the little adventure I propose, until you have satisfied yourself."

"First, the why of your plan."

"I am in active business," replied I, "and I shall be still more active.

That means financial uncertainty."

His suspicion of me started up from its doze and rubbed its eyes. "Ah! You wish to insure yourself."

"Yes," was my answer, "but not in the way you hint. It takes away a man's courage just when he needs it most, to feel that his family is involved in his venture."

"Why do you not make the settlement direct?" he asked, partly rea.s.sured.

"Because I wish her to feel that it is her own, that I have no right over it whatever."

He thought about this. His eyes were keen as he said, "Is that your real reason?"

I saw I must be unreserved with him. "Part of it," I replied. "The rest is--she would not take it from me."

The old man smiled cynically. "Have you tried?" he inquired.

"If I had tried and failed, she would have been on the alert for an indirect attempt."

"Try her, young man," said he, laughing. "In this day there are few people anywhere who'd refuse any sum from anybody for anything. And a woman--and a New York woman--and a New York fashionable woman--and a daughter of old Ellersly--she'll take it as a baby takes the breast."

"She would not take it," said I.

My tone, though I strove to keep angry protest out of it, because I needed him, caused him to draw back instantly. "I beg your pardon," said he. "I forgot for the moment that I was talking to a man young enough still to have youth's delusions about women. You'll learn that they're human, that it's from them we men inherit our weaknesses. However, let's a.s.sume that she won't take it: _Why_ won't she take your money? What is there about it that repels Ellersly's daughter, brought up in the sewers of fashionable New York--the sewers, sir!"

"She does not love me," I answered.

"I have hurt you," he said quickly, in great distress at having compelled me to expose my secret wound.

"The wound does not ache the worse," said I, "for my showing it--to _you_." And that was the truth. I looked over toward Dawn Hill whose towers could just be seen. "We live there." I pointed. "She is--like a guest in my house."

When I glanced at him again, his face betrayed a feeling of which I doubt if any one had thought him capable in many a year. "I see that you love her," he said, gently as a mother.

"Yes," I replied. And presently I went on: "The idea of any one I love being dependent on me in a sordid way is most distasteful to me. And since she does not love me, does not even like me, it is doubly necessary that she be independent."

"I confess I do not quite follow you" said he.