The Second Generation Part 37

Whitney had been tramping stormily up and down the room. As Scarborough uttered those last words he halted. He eyed his tranquil fellow-trustee, then seated himself, and said, with not a trace of his recent fury: "You must know, Scarborough, the mills have no future. I hadn't the heart to say so before Dr. Hargrave. But I supposed you were reading the signs right. The plain truth is, this is no longer a good location for the flour industry."

Scarborough waited before replying; when he did speak his tones were deliberate and suggestive of strong emotion well under control. "True,"

said he, "not just at present. But Judge Beverwick, your friend and silent partner who sits on the federal bench in this district, is at the point of death. I shall see to it that his successor is a man with a less intense prejudice against justice. Thus we may be able to convince some of your friends in control of the railways that Saint X is as good a place for mills as any in the country."

Whitney grunted. His face was inscrutable. He paced the length of the room twice; he stood at the window gazing out at the arbors, at the bees buzzing contentedly, at the flies darting across the sifting sunbeams.

"Beautiful place, this," said he at last; "very homelike. No wonder you're a happy man." A pause. "As to the other matter, I'll see. No doubt I can stop this through the courts, if you push me to it."

"Not without giving us a chance to explain," replied Scarborough; "and the higher courts may agree with us that we ought to defend the university's rights against your railway friends and your 'labor' men whom you sent down here to cause the strike."

"Rubbish!" said Whitney; and he laughed. "Rubbish!" he repeated. "It's not a matter either for argument or for anger." He took his hat, made a slight ironic bow, and was gone.

He spent the next morning with Arthur, discussing the main phases of the business, with little said by either about the vast new project. They lunched together in the car, which was on a siding before the offices, ready to join the early afternoon express. Arthur was on his guard against Whitney, but he could not resist the charm of the financier's manner and conversation. Like all men of force, Whitney had great magnetism, and his conversation was frank to apparent indiscretion, a most plausible presentation of the cynical philosophy of practical life as it is lived by men of bold and generous nature.

"That a.s.sessment scheme was yours, wasn't it?" he said, when he and Arthur had got on terms of intimacy.

"The first suggestion came from me," admitted Arthur.

"A great stroke," said Whitney. "You will arrive, young man. I thought it was your doing, because it reminded me of your father. I never knew a more direct man than he, yet he was without an equal at flanking movements. What a pity his mind went before he died! My first impulse was to admire his will. But, now that I've come to know you, I see that if he had lived to get acquainted with you he'd have made a very; different disposition of the family property. As it is, it's bound to go to pieces.

No board ever managed anything successfully. It's always a man--one man.

In this case it ought to be you. But the time will come--soon, probably--when your view will conflict with that of the majority of the board. Then out you'll go; and your years of intelligent labor will be destroyed."

It was plain in Arthur's face that this common-sense statement of the case produced instant and strong effect. He merely said: "Well, one must take that risk."

"Not necessarily," replied Whitney; he was talking in the most careless, impersonal way. "A man of your sort, with the strength and the ability you inherit, and with the power that they give you to play an important part in the world, doesn't let things drift to ruin. I intend, ultimately, to give my share of the Ranger-Whitney Company to Tec.u.mseh--I'm telling you this in confidence."

Arthur glanced quickly at the great financier, suspicion and wonder in his eyes.

"But I want it to be a value when I give it," continued Whitney; "not the worse than worthless paper it threatens to become. Scarborough and Dr.

Hargrave are splendid men. No one honors them more highly than I do. But they are not business men. And who will be their successors? Probably men even less practical."

Arthur, keen-witted but young, acute but youthfully ready to attribute the generous motive rather than the sinister, felt that he was getting a new light on Whitney's character. Perhaps Whitney wasn't so unworthy, after all. Perhaps, in trying to wreck the business and so get hold of it, he had been carrying out a really n.o.ble purpose, in the unscrupulous way characteristic of the leaders of the world of commerce and finance.

To Whitney he said: "I haven't given any thought to these matters." With a good-natured laugh of raillery: "You have kept me too busy."

Whitney smiled--an admission that yet did not commit him. "When you've lived a while longer, Arthur," said he, "you'll not be so swift and harsh in your judgments of men who have to lay the far-sighted plans and have to deal with mankind as it is, not as it ought to be. However, by that time the Ranger-Whitney Company will be wiped out. It's a pity. If only there were some way of getting the control definitely in your hands--where your father would have put it if he had lived. It's a shame to permit his life work and his plans for the university to be demolished. In your place I'd not permit it."

Arthur slowly flushed. Without looking at Whitney, he said: "I don't see how I could prevent it."

Whitney studied his flushed face, his lowered eyes, reflected carefully on the longing note in the voice in which he had made that statement, a note that changed it to a question. "Control could be got only by ownership," explained he. "If I were sure you were working with a definite, practical purpose really to secure the future of the company, I'd go heartily into your a.s.sessment plan. In fact, I'd--" Whitney was feeling his way. The change in Arthur's expression, the sudden tightening of the lips, warned him that he was about to go too far, that he had sowed as much seed as it was wise to sow at that time. He dropped the subject abruptly, saying: "But I've got to go up to the bank before train time. I'm glad we've had this little talk. Something of value may grow out of it. Think it over, and if any new ideas come to you run up to Chicago and see me."

Arthur did indeed think it over, every moment of that afternoon; and before going home he took a long walk alone. He saw that Charles Whitney had proposed a secret partnership, in which he was to play Whitney's game and, in exchange, was to get control of the Ranger-Whitney Company. And what Whitney had said about the folly of board managements, about the insecurity of his own position, was undeniably true; and the sacrifice of the "smaller morality" for the "larger good" would be merely doing what the biographies of the world's men of achievement revealed them as doing again and again. Further, once in control, once free to put into action the plans for a truly vast concern, of which he had so often dreamed, he could give Tec.u.mseh a far larger income than it had ever hoped to have through his father's gift, and also could himself be rich and powerful.

To the men who have operated with success and worldly acclaim under the code of the "larger good," the men who have aggrandized themselves at the expense of personal honor and the rights of others and the progress of the race, the first, the crucial temptation to sacrifice "smaller morality" and "short-sighted scruples" has always come in some such form as it here presented itself to Arthur Ranger. The Napoleons begin as defenders of rational freedom against the insane license of the mob; the Rockefellers begin as cheapeners of a necessity of life to the straitened millions of their fellow-beings.

If Arthur had been weak, he would have put aside the temptation through fear of the consequences of failure. If he had been ignorant, he would have put it aside through superst.i.tion. Being neither weak nor ignorant, and having a human pa.s.sion for wealth and power and a willingness to get them if he could do it without sacrifice of self-respect, he sat calmly down with the temptation and listened to it and debated with it. He was silent all through dinner; and after dinner, when he and Madelene were in their sitting room upstairs, she reading, he sat with his eyes upon her, and continued to think.

All at once he gave a curious laugh, went to the writing table and wrote a few moments. Then he brought the letter to her. "Read that," said he, standing behind her, his hands on her shoulders and an expression in his face that made his resemblance to Hiram startling.

She read:

"MY DEAR MR. WHITNEY: I've been 'thinking it over' as you suggested. I've decided to plug along in the old way, between the old landmarks. Let me add that, if you should offer to give your stock to Tec.u.mseh now, I'd have to do my utmost to persuade the trustees not to take it until the company was once more secure. You see, I feel it is absolutely necessary that you have a large pecuniary interest in the success of our plans."

When Madelene had read she turned in the chair until she was looking up at him. "Well?" she inquired. "What does it mean?"

He told her. "And," he concluded, "I wish I could be a great man, but I can't. There's something small in me that won't permit it. No doubt Franklin was right when he said life was a tunnel and one had to stoop, and even occasionally to crawl, in order to get through it successfully.

Now--if I hadn't married you--"

"Always blaming me," she said, tenderly. "But even if you hadn't married me, I suspect that sooner or later you'd have decided for being a large man in a valley rather than a very small imitation man on a mountain." Then, after a moment's thought, and with sudden radiance: "But a man as big as you are wouldn't be let stay in the valley, no matter how hard he tried."

He laughed. "I've no objection to the mountain top," said he. "But I see that, if I get there, it'll have to be in my own way. Let's go out and mail the letter."

And they went down the drive together to the post box, and, strolling back, sat under the trees in the moonlight until nearly midnight, feeling as if they had only just begun life together--and had begun it right.

When Charles Whitney had read the letter he tore it up, saying half-aloud and contemptuously, "I was afraid there was too big a streak of fool in him." Then, with a shrug: "What's the use of wasting time on that little game--especially as I'd probably have left the university the whole business in my will." He wrote Scarborough, proposing that they delay the a.s.sessment until he had a chance to look further into the railway situation. "I begin to understand the troubles down there, now that I've taken time to think them over. I feel I can guarantee that no a.s.sessment will be necessary."

And when the railways had mysteriously and abruptly ceased to misbehave, and the strike had suddenly fizzled out, he offered his stock to the university as a gift. "I shall see to it," he wrote, "that the company is not molested again, but is helped in every way." Arthur was for holding off, but Scarborough said, "No. He will keep his word." And Scarborough was right in regarding the matter as settled and acceptance of the splendid gift as safe. Whitney had his own code of honesty, of honor. It was not square dealing, but doing exactly what he specifically engaged to do. He would have stolen anything he could--anything he regarded as worth his while. On the other hand, he would have sacrificed nearly all, if not all, his fortune, to live up to the letter of his given word. This, though no court would have enforced the agreement he had made, though there was no written record of it, no witness other than himself, the other party, and the Almighty--for Charles Whitney believed in an Almighty G.o.d and an old-fashioned h.e.l.l and a Day of Judgment. He conducted his religious bookkeeping precisely as he conducted his business bookkeeping, and was confident that he could escape h.e.l.l as he had escaped the penitentiary.

CHAPTER XXII

VILLA D'ORSAY

Adelaide did not reach home until the troubles with and through Charles Whitney were settled, and Arthur and Dory were deep in carrying out the plans to make the mills and factories part of the university and not merely its property. When Scarborough's urgent cable came, Dory found that all the steamers were full. Adelaide could go with him only by taking a berth in a room with three women in the bottom of the ship.

"Impossible accommodations," thought he, "for so luxurious a person and so poor a sailor"; and he did not tell her that this berth could be had.

"You'll have to wait a week or so," said he. "As you can't well stay on here alone, why not accept Mrs. Whitney's invitation to join her?"

Adelaide disliked Mrs. Whitney, but there seemed to be no alternative.

Mrs. Whitney was at Paris, on the way to America after the wedding and a severe cure at Aix and an aftercure in Switzerland. She had come for the finishing touches of rejuvenation--to get her hair redone and to go through her biennial agony of having Auguste, beauty specialist to the royalty, n.o.bility and fashion, and demimonde, of three continents, burn off her outer skin that nature might replace it with one new and fresh and unwrinkled. She was heavily veiled as she and Adelaide traveled down to Cherbourg to the steamer. As soon as she got aboard she retired to her room and remained hidden there during the voyage, seen only by her maid, her face covered day and night with Auguste's marvelous skin-coaxing mask. Adelaide did not see her again until the morning of the last day, when she appeared on deck dressed beautifully and youthfully for the sh.o.r.e, her skin as fair and smooth as a girl's, and looking like an elder sister of Adelaide's--at a distance.

She paused in New York; Adelaide hastened to Saint X, though she was looking forward uneasily to her arrival because she feared she would have to live at the old Hargrave house in University Avenue. Miss Skeffington ruled there, and she knew Miss Skeffington--one of those old-fashioned old maids whose rigid ideas of morality extend to the ordering of personal habits in minutest detail. Under her military sway everyone had to rise for breakfast at seven sharp, had to dine exactly at noon, sup when the clock struck the half hour after five. Ingress and egress for members of the family was by the side door only, the front door being reserved for company. For company also was the parlor, and for company the front stairs with their brilliant carpet, new, though laid for the first time nearly a quarter of a century before; for company also was the best room in the house, which ought to have been attractive, but was a little damp from being shut up so much, and was the cause of many a cold to guests. "I simply can't stand it to live by the striking of clocks!"

thought Adelaide. "I must do something! But what?"

Her uneasiness proved unnecessary, however. Dory disappointed his aunt, of a new and interestingly difficult spirit to subdue, by taking rooms at the Hendricks Hotel until they should find a place of their own. Mrs.

Ranger asked them to live with her; but Adelaide shrank from putting herself in a position where her mother and Arthur could, and her sister-in-law undoubtedly would, "know too much about our private affairs." Mrs. Ranger did not insist. She would not admit it to herself, but, while she worshiped Del and thought her even more beautiful than she was, and just about perfection in every way, still Madelene was more satisfactory for daily companionship. Also, Ellen doubted whether two such positive natures as Madelene's and Adelaide's would be harmonious under the same roof. "What's more," she reflected, "there may be a baby--babies."

Within a fortnight of Del's return, and before she and Dory had got quite used to each other again, she fixed on an abode. "Mrs. Dorsey was here this afternoon," said she, with enthusiasm which, to Dory's acute perceptions, seemed slightly exaggerated, in fact, forced, "and offered us her house for a year, just to have somebody in it whom she could trust to look after things. You know she's taking her daughter abroad to finish. It was too good a chance to let pa.s.s; so I accepted at once."

Dory turned away abruptly. With slow deliberation he took a cigarette from his case, lighted it, watched the smoke drift out at the open window. She was observing him, though she seemed not to be. And his expression made her just a little afraid. Unlike most men who lead purely intellectual lives, he had not the slightest suggestion of s.e.xlessness; on the contrary, he seemed as strong, as positive physically, as the look of his forehead and eyes showed him to be mentally. And now that he had learned to dress with greater care, out of deference to her, she could find nothing about him to help her in protecting herself by criticising him.

"Do you think, Del," said he, "that we'll be able to live in that big place on eighteen hundred a year?"

It wasn't as easy for him thus to remind her of their limited means as it theoretically should have been. Del was distinctly an expensive-looking luxury. That dress of hers, pale green, with hat and everything to match or in harmony, was a "simple thing," but the best dressmaker in the Rue de la Paix had spent a great deal of his costly time in producing that effect of simplicity. Throughout, she had the cleanness, the freshness, the freedom from affectations which Dory had learned could be got only by large expenditure. Nor would he have had her any different. He wanted just the settings she chose for her fair, fine beauty. The only change he would have asked would have been in the expression of those violet eyes of hers when they looked at him.

"You wish I hadn't done it!" she exclaimed. And if he had not glanced away so quickly he would have seen that she was ready to retreat.

"Well, it's not exactly the start I'd been thinking of," replied he, reluctantly but tentatively.