Part 23

"If I could find some way of detaching Trafford from Atwater," Armstrong had said to her as he was explaining. "But," he had added, "that's hopeless. He's more afraid of Atwater than of anybody or anything on earth--and well he may be." Neva seized upon the chance remark, without saying anything to him. She knew the Traffords well, knew therefore that there was one person of whom his fear was greater than of Atwater, and whose influence over him was absolute. Early the following morning she called the Traffords on the telephone. Mrs. Trafford was in the country, she learned, but would be home in the afternoon. Neva left a message that she wished particularly to see her; at five o'clock she was shown into the truly palatial room in which Mrs. Trafford always had tea.

"Narcisse has just left," said Mrs. Trafford. "She's been rummaging for me in Letty Morris's rag bag--you know, my husband bought it. She has found a few things, but not much. Still, Letty wasn't cheated any worse than most people. The trash! The trash!"

Neva was too intent upon her purpose to think of her surroundings that day; but she had often before been moved to a variety of emotions, none of them approaching admiration or approval or even tolerance, by Mrs. Trafford's procession of halls and rooms in gilt and carving and brocade, by the preposterous paintings, the glaring proclamation from every wall and every floor and every ceiling of the alternately arid and atrocious taste of the fashionable architects and connoisseurs to whom Mrs. Trafford had trusted. As in all great houses, the beauties were incidental and isolated, deformed by the general effect of coarse appeal to barbaric love of the thing that is gaudy and looks costly.

"You aren't going to move into Letty's house?" said Neva absently. She was casting about for some not too abrupt beginning.

"Heavens, no!" protested Mrs. Trafford, in horror and indignation. "John bought it--some time ago. I don't know why." She laughed. "But I do know he wishes he hadn't now. He wouldn't tell me the price he paid. I suspect he found out that he had made a bad bargain as soon as it was too late. There's some mystery about his buying that house. I don't--" Mrs. Trafford broke off. Well as she knew Neva, and intimate and confidential though she was with her, despite Neva's reserve--indeed, perhaps because of it--still, she was careful about Trafford's business. And Neva and Letty were cousins--not intimates or especially friendly, but nevertheless blood relations. "I suppose he's ashamed of not having consulted me," she ended.

"How is Mr. Trafford?" asked Neva. "I haven't seen him for months. He must be working very hard?"

"He _thinks_ he is. But, my dear, I found the men out long, long ago, in their pretense of hard work. They talk a great deal downtown, and smoke and eat a great deal. But they work very little--even those that have the reputation of working the hardest. Business--with the upper class men--is a good deal like fishing, I guess. They spread their nets or drop their hooks and wait for fish. My husband is killing himself, eating directors' lunches. You know, they provide a lunch for the directors, for those that meet every day--and give them a ten- or twenty-dollar gold piece for eating it. It's a huge dinner--a banquet, and all that have any digestion left stuff themselves. No wonder the women hold together so much better than the men. If the men had to wear our clothes, what sights they would be!"

Neva returned to the business about which she had come. "They're having an investigating committee down there now, aren't they?"

"Not to investigate their diet," said Mrs. Trafford. "There'd be some sense in that. I suppose it's another of those schemes of the people who haven't anything, to throw discredit on the men who do the work of the world. Universal suffrage is a great mistake. Only the propertied class ought to be allowed to vote, don't you think so? Mr. Trafford says it's getting positively dreadful, the corruption good men have to resort to, with the legislatures and with buying elections, all because everybody can vote."

"I've not given the subject much thought," said Neva. "I heard-- Some one was talking about the investigating committee--and said it was the beginning of another war downtown."

Mrs. Trafford looked amused. "I didn't dream you had any interest in that sort of thing. I don't see how you can be interested. I never let my husband talk business to me."

"Usually I'm not interested," said Neva, now fairly embarked and at ease. "But this particular thing was--different. It seems, there are two factions fighting for control of some insurance companies, and each is getting ready to accuse the other of the most dreadful things. Mr. Atwater's faction is going to expose Mr. Fosdick's, and Mr. Fosdick's is going to expose Mr. Atwater's."

Mrs. Trafford's expression had changed. "Neva, you've got a reason for telling me this," said she.

"Yes," frankly admitted Neva.

"Why?"

"Because I thought you--Mr. Trafford--ought to be warned of what's coming."

"What _is_ coming?"

"I don't know all the details. But, among other things, there's to be a frightful personal attack on Mr. Trafford because he is one of Mr. Atwater's allies. Mr. Atwater thinks, or pretends, he can prevent it; but he can't. The attack is sure to come."

"They couldn't truthfully say anything against Mr. Trafford," said his wife, with a heat that was genuine, yet perfunctory, too. "He's human, of course. But I who have lived with him all these years can honestly say that he spends his whole life in trying to do good. He slaves for the poor people who have their little all invested with his company." Neva had not smiled, but Mrs. Trafford went on, as if she had: "I suppose you're thinking that sounds familiar. Oh, I know every man downtown pretends he is working only for the good of others, to keep business going, and to give labor steady employment, when of course he's really working to get rich, and-- Well, _somebody_ must be losing all this money that's piling up in the hands of a few people who spend it in silly, wicked luxury. Now, we have always frowned on that sort of thing. We--Mr. Trafford and I--set our faces against extravagance and simply live comfortably. He often says, 'I don't know what the country's coming to. The men downtown, the leaders, seem to have gone mad. They have no sense of responsibility. They aren't content with legitimate profits, but grab, grab, until I wonder people don't rise up.' And he says they will, though, of course, that wouldn't do any good, as things'd just settle back and the same old round would begin all over again. If people won't look after their own property, they can't expect to keep it, can they?"

"No," assented Neva. "Still--I sometimes wonder that the robbing should be done by the class of men that does it. One would think he wouldn't need to protect himself against those who claim to be the leaders in honesty and honor. It's as if one should have to lock up all the valuables if the bishop came to spend the night."

"There's the shame of it!" exclaimed Mrs. Trafford. "Sometimes Trafford tells me about the men that come here, the really fine, distinguished, gentlemanly ones--well, if I could repeat some of the things to you!"

"I should think," suggested Neva, "it would be dangerous to have business dealings with such men. If trouble came, people might not discriminate."

Mrs. Trafford caught the under-meaning in Neva's words and tone. She reflected a moment--thoughts that made her curiously serious--before replying, "Sometimes I'm afraid my husband will get himself into just that sort of miserable mess. He is so generous and confiding, and he believes so implicitly in some of those men whom I don't believe in at all. Tell me, Neva, are you sure--about that attack, and about Mr. Atwater's being mistaken?"

"There isn't a doubt of it," replied Neva. "Mr. Trafford ought not to let anything anyone says to the contrary influence him." And Mrs. Trafford's opinion of her directness and honesty gave her words the greatest possible weight.

"I'm ever so much obliged to you, dear," said she. "It isn't often one gets a proof of real friendship in this walk of life."

"I didn't do it altogether for your sake," replied Neva. "It seemed to me, from what I heard, that the men downtown were rushing on to do things that would result in no good and much harm and--unhappiness. I suppose, if evil has been done, it ought to be exposed; but I think, too, that no good comes of malicious and vengeful exposures."

"Especially exposures that tend to make the lower classes suspicious and unruly," said Mrs. Trafford.

Neva colored and glanced at the two strapping men-servants who were removing the tea table. But Mrs. Trafford was quite unconscious. A few years before, when the English foreign habit of thinking and talking about "lower classes" was first introduced, she had indulged in it sparingly and nervously. But, falling in with the fashion of her set, she had become as bold as the rest of these spoiled children of democracy in spitting upon the parents and grandparents. It no longer ever occurred to her to question the meaning of the glib, smug, ignorant phrase; and, like the rest, she did not even restrain herself before the "lower classes" themselves. It was a settled conviction with her that she was of different clay from the working people, the doers of manual labor, that their very minds and souls were different; the fact that they seemed to think and act in much the same way as the "upper classes" would have struck her, had she thought about it at all, as a phenomenon not unlike the almost human performances of a well-trained, unusually intelligent monkey. Indeed, she often said, without being aware of the full implication of the speech, "In how many ways our servants are like us!"

Neva went away, dissatisfied, depressed, as if she were retreating in defeat. She felt that she had gained her point; she understood Mrs. Trafford, knew that her dominant passion of spotless respectability had been touched, that the fears which would stir her most deeply had been aroused; Mrs. Trafford, worldly shrewd, would put her husband through a cross-examination which would reveal to her the truth, and would result in her bringing to bear all her authority over him. And she knew that Mrs. Trafford could compel her husband, where no force which Armstrong could have brought to bear downtown would have the least effect upon him. "I think I've won," Neva said to herself; but her spirits continued to descend. Before the victory, she had thought only about winning, not at all about what she was struggling for. Now she could think only of that--the essential.

Like almost all women and all but a few men, Neva was densely ignorant of and wholly uninterested in business--the force that has within a few decades become titanic and has revolutionized the internal as well as the external basis of life as completely as if we had been whisked away to another planet. She still talked and tried to think in the old traditional lines in which the books, grave and light, are still written and education is still restricted--although those lines have as absolutely ceased to bear upon our real life as have the gods of the classic world. It had never occurred to her that what the men did when they went to their offices involved the whole of society in all its relations, touched her life more intimately than even her painting. But, without her realizing it, the idea had gradually formed in her mind that the proceedings downtown were morally not unlike the occupation of coal-heaver or scavenger physically. How strong this impression was she did not know until she had almost reached home, revolving the whole way the thoughts that had started as Trafford's bronze doors closed behind her.

She recalled all Armstrong and others had told her about the sources of Trafford's wealth--Trafford, with his smooth, plausible personality that left upon the educated palate an after taste like machine oil. From Trafford her thoughts hastened on to hover and cluster about the real perplexity--Armstrong himself--what he had confessed to her; worse still, what he had told her as matter-of-course, had even boasted as evidence of his ability at this game which more and more clearly appeared to her as a combination of sneak-thieving and burglary. And heavier and heavier grew her heart. "I have done a shameful thing," she said to herself, as the whole repulsive panorama unrolled before her.

She was in the studio building, was going up in the elevator. Just as it was approaching her landing, Thomas, the elevator boy, gave a sigh so penetrating that she was roused to look at him, to note his expression.

"What is it, Thomas?" she asked. "Can I do anything for you?"

"Nothing--nothing--thank you," said Thomas. "It's all over now. I was just thinking back over it."

She saw a band of crape round his sleeve. "You have lost some one?" she said gently.

"My father," replied the boy. "He died day before yesterday. And we had to have the money for the funeral. We're all insured to provide for that. And my mother went down to collect father's insurance. It was for a hundred and twenty-five dollars. We'd paid in a hundred and forty on the policy, it had been running so long. And when my mother went to collect, they told her they couldn't get it through and pay it for about three weeks--and she had to have the money right away. So, they told her to go down to some offices on the floor below--it was a firm that's in cahoots with them insurance sharks. And she went, and they give her eighty-two dollars for the policy--and she had to take it because we had to bury father right away. Only, they didn't give her cash. They gave her a credit with an undertaker--he's in cahoots, too. And it took all the eighty-two dollars, and father was buried like a pauper, at that. I tell you, Miss Carlin, it's mighty hard." His voice broke. "Them rich people make a fellow pay for being poor and having no pull. That's the way we get it soaked to us, right and left, especially in sickness or hard luck or death."

Neva lingered, though she could not trust herself to speak.

"You wouldn't think," Thomas went on, "that such things'd be done by such a company as----"

"Don't!" cried Neva, pressing her hands hysterically to her ears. "I mustn't hear what company it was!"

And she rushed from the car and fled into her apartment, all unstrung. At last, at last, she not merely knew but felt, and felt with all her sensitive heart, the miseries of thousands, of hundreds of thousands, out of which those "great men" wrought their careers--those "great men" of whom her friend Armstrong was one!

Trafford reached home at half past six and, following his custom, went directly to his dressing room. Instead of his valet, he found his wife--seated before the fire, evidently waiting for him. "Is the door closed?" she said. "And you'd better draw the curtain over it."

"Well, well," he cried, all cheerfulness. "What now? Have the servants left in a body?" It had been a banner day downtown, with several big nets he had helped to set filled to overflowing, and the fish running well at all his nets, seines, lines, and trap-ponds. He felt the jolly fisherman, at peace with God and man, brimming generosity.

"I want to talk to you about that investigation," said his wife in a tone that cleared his face instantly of all its sparkling good humor.

"Whatever started you in that direction?" he exclaimed. "Don't bother your head about it, my dear. There'll be no investigation. Not that I was afraid of it. Thank God, I've always tried to live as if each moment were to be my last."

"Mr. Atwater is going to attack Mr. Fosdick, isn't he?"

Trafford showed his amazement. "Why, where did you hear _that_?"

"And he thinks Mr. Fosdick and his friends won't be able to retort," continued Mrs. Trafford. "Well, he's mistaken. They are going to retort. And you are the man they'll attack the most furiously."

Trafford sat down abruptly. All the men who are able to declare for themselves and their families such splendid dividends in cash upon a life of self-sacrifice to humanity, are easily perturbed by question or threat of question. Trafford, with about as much courage as a white rabbit, had only to imagine the possibility of being looked at sharply, to be thrown into inward tremors like the beginnings of sea-sickness.

"It don't matter," continued his wife, "whether you are innocent or not. They are going to hold you up to public shame."

"Who told you this?"

"Neva."

"She must have got it from the Morrises--or Armstrong."

"She came here especially to tell me, and she would not have come if she did not know it was serious."

"They sent her here to frighten me," said Trafford. "Yes, that's it!" And he rose and paced the floor, repeating now aloud and now to himself, "That's it! That's undoubtedly it."

"Tell me the whole story," commanded his wife, when the limit of her patience with his childishness had been reached. "You need an outside point of view."

She had told Neva she never permitted Trafford to talk business with her. In fact, he consulted her at every crisis, both to get courage and to get advice. He now hastened to comply. "It's very simple. Some time ago, a few of us who like to see things run on safe, conservative lines, decided that Fosdick's and Armstrong's management of the O.A.D. was a menace to stability. Armstrong and Fosdick had quarreled. It was Armstrong who came to us and suggested our interfering. I thought the man was honest, and I did everything I could to help him and Morris."

"Including buying Morris's house," interjected Mrs. Trafford, to prevent him from so covering the truth with cant that it would be invisible to her.

"That did figure in it," admitted Trafford, in some confusion. "Then, we found out they were simply using us to get control of the O.A.D. for themselves. So we--Atwater and Langdon and I--arranged quietly to drop them into their own trap. We've done it--that's all. Next week we're going to expose them and their false committee; and the policy holders of the O.A.D. will be glad to put their interests in the hands of men we can keep in order. Fosdick and Armstrong can't retaliate. We've got the press with us, and have made every arrangement. Anything they say will be branded at once as malicious lies."

"What kind of malicious lies will they tell?"

"How should I know?" And Trafford preened, with his small, precisely clad figure at its straightest.

"But you do know," said Mrs. Trafford slowly and with acidlike significance.

Trafford made no reply in words. His face, however, was eloquent.

"You've been hypnotized by Atwater," pursued Mrs. Trafford. "You think him more powerful than he is. And--he isn't in any insurance company directly, is he?"

"No."

"Mr. Langdon?"

"No--they keep in the background." Trafford's upper lip was trembling so that she could see it despite his mustache.

"Then you'll be right out in front of the guns. You--alone."

"There aren't any guns."

"I'm surprised at you!" exclaimed his wife. "Don't you know Horace Armstrong better than that!"

"The treacherous hound!"

"He has his bad side, I suppose, like everybody else," said Mrs. Trafford, who felt that it was not wise to humor him in his prejudices that evening. "His character isn't important just now. It's his ability you've got to consider."

"Atwater's got him helpless."

"Impossible!" declared Mrs. Trafford, in a voice that would have been convincing to him, had her words and his own doubts been far less strong. "You may count on it that there's to be a frightful attack on you next week. Neva Carlin knew what she was about."

"There's nothing they can say--nothing that anybody'd believe." His whiskers and his hair were combed to give him a resolute, courageous air. The contrast between this artificial bold front and the look and voice now issuing from it was ludicrous and pitiful.

Mrs. Trafford flashed scorn at him. "What nonsense!" she exclaimed. "I never heard of a big business that could stand it to have the doors thrown open and the public invited to look where it pleased. I doubt if yours is an exception, whatever you may think."

"But the doors won't be thrown open," he pleaded rather than protested. "Our private business will remain private."

"Armstrong is going to attack you, I tell you. He's not the man to fire unless he has a shot in his gun--and powder behind it."

"But he can't. He knows nothing against me." And Trafford seated himself as if he were squelching his own doubts and fears.

"He knows as much about the inside of your company as you know about the inside of his. You can assume that."

Trafford shifted miserably in his chair.

"What reason have you to suppose that as keen a man as he is would not make it his business to find out all about his rivals?"

"What if he does know?" blustered Trafford. "To hear you talk, my dear, you'd think I ran some sort of--of a"--with a nervous little laugh--"an unlawful resort."

"I know you wouldn't do anything you thought was wrong," replied his wife, in a strained, insincere voice. "But--sometimes the public doesn't judge things fairly."

"People who have risen to our position must expect calumny." He was of the color of fear and his fingers and his mouth and his eyelids were twitching.

"What difference would it make to Atwater and Langdon, if you were disgraced?" she urged. "Mightn't they even profit by it?"

At this he jumped up, and began to pace the floor. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" he cried. "To put suspicion in my head against these honorable men!"

"I want you to protect yourself and your family," she retorted crushingly. "The temptation to make a little more money, or a good deal more, ought not to lead you to risk your reputation. Look at the men that were disgraced by that last investigation."

"But they had done wrong."

"They don't think so, do they? How do you know what some of the things you've done will look like when they're blazoned in the newspapers?"

"I'm not afraid!" declaimed Trafford, fright in his eyes and in his noisy voice.

"No," said his wife soothingly. "Of course, you've done nothing wrong. You needn't tell _me_ that. But it's just as bad to be misunderstood as to be guilty."

During the silence which fell he paced the floor like a man running away, and she gazed thoughtfully into the fire. When she spoke again it was with a subdued, nervous manner and as if she were telling him something which she wished him to think she did not understand. "One day I was driving in the East Side, looking after some of my poor. There was a block--in the Hester Street market. A crowd got around the carriage, and a man--a dreadful, dirty, crazy-eyed creature--called out, 'There's the wife of the blood-sucker Trafford, that swindles the poor on burial insurance!' And the crowd hissed and hooted at me, and shook their fists. And a woman spat into the carriage." Mrs. Trafford paused before going on: "I get a great many anonymous letters. I never have worried you about these things. You have your troubles, and I knew it was all false. But----"

Her voice ceased. For several minutes, oppressive and menacing silence brooded over that ostentatious room. Its costly comforts and costlier luxuries weighed upon the husband and wife, so far removed from the squalor of those whose earnings had been filched to create this pitiful, yet admired, flaunting of vanity. Finally he said, speaking almost under his breath, "What would you advise me to do?"