The Second Generation Part 36

The old president, impressed by his peculiar tone, looked up quickly.

"There is something in this that I don't understand," said he, searching Scarborough's face.

Scarborough was tempted to explain. But the consequences, should he fail to convince Hargrave, compelled him to withhold. "I hope, indeed I feel sure, you will be astonished in our young friend," said he, instead. "I have been talking with him a good deal lately, and I am struck by the strong resemblance to his father. It is more than mere physical likeness."

With a sternness he could have shown only where principle was at stake, the old man said: "But I must not conceal from you, senator, that I have the gravest doubts and fears. You have alienated the university's best friend--rich, powerful, able, and, until you exasperated him, devoted to its interests. I regard you as having--unintentionally, and no doubt for good motives--betrayed the solemn trust Hiram Ranger reposed in you." He was standing at his full height, with his piercing eyes fixed upon his young colleague's.

All the color left Scarborough's face. "Betrayed is a strong word," he said.

"A strong word, senator," answered Dr. Hargrave, "and used deliberately.

I wish you good day, sir."

Hargrave was one of those few men who are respected without any reservation, and whose respect is, therefore, not given up without a sense of heavy loss. But to explain would be to risk rousing in him an even deeper anger--anger on account of his friend Whitney; so, without another word, Scarborough bowed and went. "Either he will be apologizing to me at the end of three months," said he to himself, "or I shall be apologizing to Whitney and shall owe Tec.u.mseh a large sum of money."

Both Madelene and Arthur had that instinct for comfort and luxury which is an even larger factor in advancement than either energy or intelligence. The idea that clothing means something more than warmth, food something more than fodder, a house something more than shelter, is the beginning of progress; the measure of a civilized man or woman is the measure of his or her pa.s.sion for and understanding of the art of living.

Madelene, by that right instinct which was perhaps the finest part of her sane and strong character, knew what comfort really means, knew the difference between luxury and the showy vulgarity of tawdriness or expensiveness; and she rapidly corrected, or, rather, restored, Arthur's good taste, which had been vitiated by his a.s.sociations with fashionable people, whose standards are necessarily always poor. She was devoted to her profession as a science; but she did not neglect the vital material considerations. She had too much self-respect to become careless about her complexion or figure, about dress or personal habits, even if she had not had such shrewd insight into what makes a husband remain a lover, a wife a mistress. She had none of those self-complacent delusions which lure vain women on in slothfulness until Love vacates his neglected temple. And in large part, no doubt, Arthur's appearance--none of the stains and patches of the usual workingman, and this though he worked hard at manual labor and in a shop--was due to her influence of example; he, living with such a woman, would have been ashamed not to keep "up to the mark." Also her influence over old Mrs. Ranger became absolute; and swiftly yet imperceptibly the house, which had so distressed Adelaide, was transformed, not into the exhibit of fashionable ostentation which had once been Adelaide's and Arthur's ideal, but into a house of comfort and beauty, with colors harmonizing, the look of newness gone from the "best rooms," and finally the "best rooms" themselves abolished. And Ellen thought herself chiefly responsible for the change. "I'm gradually getting things just about as I want 'em," said she. "It does take a long time to do anything in this world!" Also she believed, and a boundless delight it was to her, that she was the cause of Madelene's professional success. Everyone talked of the way Madelene was getting on, and wondered at her luck. "She deserves it, though," said they, "for she can all but raise the dead." In fact, the secret was simple enough. She had been taught by her father to despise drugs and to compel dieting and exercise.

She had the tact which he lacked; she made the allowances for human nature's ignorance and superst.i.tion which he refused to make; she lessened the hardship of taking her common-sense prescriptions by veiling them in medical hocus-pocus--a compromise of the disagreeable truth which her father had always inveighed against as both immoral and unwholesome.

Within six months after her marriage she was earning as much as her husband; and her fame was spreading so rapidly that not only women but also men, and men with a contempt for the "inferior mentality of the female," were coming to her from all sides. "You'll soon have a huge income," said Arthur. "Why, you'll be rich, you are so grasping."

"Indeed I am," replied she. "The way to teach people to strive for high wages and to learn thrift is to make them pay full value for what they get. I don't propose to encourage dishonesty or idleness. Besides, we'll need the money."

Arthur had none of that mean envy which can endure the prosperity of strangers only; he would not even have been able to be jealous of his wife's getting on better than did he. But, if he had been so disposed, he would have found it hard to indulge such feelings because of Madelene.

She had put their married life on the right basis. She made him feel, with a certainty which no morbid imagining could have shaken, that she loved and respected him for qualities which could not be measured by any of the world's standards of success. He knew that in her eyes he was already an arrived success, that she was absolutely indifferent whether others ever recognized it or not. Only those who realize how powerful is the influence of intimate a.s.sociation will appreciate what an effect living with Madelene had upon Arthur's character--in withering the ugly in it, in developing its quality, and in directing its strength.

When Scarborough gave Arthur his "chance," Madelene took it as the matter of course. "I'm sorry it has come so soon," said she, "and in just this way. But it couldn't have been delayed long. With so much to be done and so few able or willing to do it, the world can't wait long enough for a man really to ripen. It's lucky that you inherit from your father so many important things that most men have to spend their lives in learning."

"Do you think so?" said he, brightening; for, with the "chance" secure, he was now much depressed by the difficulties which he had been resurveying from the inside point of view.

"You understand how to manage men," she replied, "and you understand business."

"But, unfortunately, this isn't business."

He was right. The problem of business is, in its two main factors, perfectly simple--to make a wanted article, and to put it where those who want it can buy. But this was not Arthur Ranger's problem, nor is it the problem of most business men in our time. Between maker and customer, nowadays, lie the brigands who control the railways--that is, the highways; and they with equal facility use or defy the law, according to their needs. When Arthur went a-buying grain or stave timber, he and those with whom he was trading had to placate the brigands before they could trade; when he went a-selling flour, he had to fight his way to the markets through the brigands. It was the battle which causes more than ninety out of every hundred in independent business to fail--and of the remaining ten, how many succeed only because they either escaped the notice of the brigands or compromised with them?

"I wish you luck," said Jenkins, when, at the end of two weeks of his tutelage, Arthur told him he would try it alone.

Arthur laughed. "No, you don't, Jenkins," replied he, with good-humored bluntness. "But I'm going to have it, all the same."

Discriminating prices and freight rates against his grain, discriminating freight rates against his flour; the courts either powerless to aid him or under the rule of bandits; and, on the top of all, a strike within two weeks after Jenkins left--such was the situation. Arthur thought it hopeless; but he did not lose courage nor his front of serenity, even when alone with Madelene. Each was careful not to tempt the malice of fate by concealments; each was careful also not to annoy the other with unnecessary disagreeable recitals. If he could have seen where good advice could possibly help him, he would have laid all his troubles before her; but it seemed to him that to ask her advice would be as if she were to ask him to tell her how to put life into a corpse. He imagined that she was deceived by his silence about the details of his affairs because she gave no sign, did not even ask questions beyond generalities. She, however, was always watching his handsome face with its fascinating evidences of power inwardly developing; and, as it was her habit to get valuable information as to what was going on inside her fellow-beings from a close study of surface appearances, the growing gauntness of his features, the coming out of the lines of sternness, did not escape her, made her heart throb with pride even as it ached with sympathy and anxiety. At last she decided for speech.

He was sitting in their dressing room, smoking his last cigarette as he watched her braid her wonderful hair for the night. She, observing him in the gla.s.s, saw that he was looking at her with that yearning for sympathy which is always at its strongest in a man in the mood that was his at sight of those waves and showers of soft black hair on the pallid whiteness of her shoulders. Before he realized what she was about she was in his lap, her arms round his neck, his face pillowed against her cheek and her hair. "What is it, little boy?" she murmured, with that mingling of the mistress and the mother which every woman who ever loved feels for and, at certain times, shows the man she loves.

He laughed. "Business--business," said he. "But let's not talk about it. The important thing is that I have _you_. The rest is--smoke!" And he blew out a great cloud of it and threw the cigarette through the open window.

"Tell me," she said; "I've been waiting for you to speak, and I can't wait any longer."

"I couldn't--just now. It doesn't at all fit in with my thoughts." And he kissed her.

She moved to rise. "Then I'll go back to the dressing table. Perhaps you'll be able to tell me with the width of the room between us."

He drew her head against his again. "Very well--if I must, I will. But you know all about it. For some mysterious reason, somebody--you say it's Whitney, and probably it is--won't let me buy grain or anything else as cheaply as others buy it. And for the same mysterious reason, somebody, probably Whitney again, won't let me get to market without paying a heavier toll than our compet.i.tors pay. And now for some mysterious reason somebody, probably Whitney again, has sent labor organizers from Chicago among the men and has induced them to make impossible demands and to walk out without warning."

"And you think there's nothing to do but walk out, too," said Madelene.

"Or wait until I'm put out."

His tone made those words mean that his desperate situation had roused his combativeness, that he would not give up. Her blood beat faster and her eyes shone. "You'll win," she said, with the quiet confidence which strengthens when it comes from a person whose judgment one has tested and found good. And he believed in her as absolutely as she believed in him.

"I've been tempted to resign," he went on. "If I don't everybody'll say I'm a failure when the crash comes. But--Madelene, there's something in me that simply won't let me quit."

"There is," replied she; "it's your father."

"Anyhow, _you_ are the only public opinion for me."

"You'll win," repeated Madelene. "I've been thinking over that whole business. If I were you, Arthur"--she was sitting up so that she could look at him and make her words more impressive--"I'd dismiss strike and freight rates and the mill, and I'd put my whole mind on Whitney. There's a weak spot somewhere in his armor. There always is in a scoundrel's."

Arthur reflected. Presently he drew her head down against his; it seemed to her that she could feel his brain at work, and soon she knew from the change in the clasp of his arms about her that that keen, quick mind of his was serving him well. "What a joy it is to a woman," she thought, "to know that she can trust the man she loves--trust him absolutely, always, and in every way." And she fell asleep after awhile, lulled by the rhythmic beat of his pulse, so steady, so strong, giving her such a restful sense of security. She did not awaken until he was gently laying her in the bed.

"You have found it?" said she, reading the news in the altered expression of his face.

"I hope so," replied he.

She saw that he did not wish to discuss. So she said, "I knew you would,"

and went contentedly back into sleep again.

Next day he carefully read the company's articles of incorporation to make sure that they contained no obstacle to his plan. Then he went to Scarborough, and together they went to Judge Torrey. Three days later there was a special meeting of the board of directors; the president, Charles Whitney, was unable to attend, but his Monday morning mail contained this extract from the minutes:

"Mr. Ranger offered a resolution that an a.s.sessment of two thousand dollars be at once laid upon each share of the capital stock, the proceeds to be expended by the superintendent in betterments. Seconded by Mr. Scarborough. Unanimously pa.s.sed."

Whitney reread this very carefully. He laid the letter down and stared at it. Two thousand dollars a share meant that he, owner of four hundred and eighty-seven shares, would have to pay in cash nine hundred and seventy-four thousand dollars. He ordered his private car attached to the noon express, and at five o'clock he was in Scarborough's library.

"What is the meaning of this a.s.sessment?" he demanded, as Scarborough entered.

"Mr. Ranger explained the situation to us," replied Scarborough. "He showed us we had to choose between ruin and a complete reorganization with big improvements and extensions."

"Lunacy, sheer lunacy!" cried Whitney. "A meeting of the board must be called and the resolution rescinded."

Scarborough simply looked at him, a smile in his eyes.

"I never heard of such an outrage! You ask me to pay an a.s.sessment of nearly a million dollars on stock that is worthless."

"And," replied Scarborough, "at the end of the year we expect to levy another a.s.sessment of a thousand a share."