Part 24

Although she had long had ready her answer to that inevitable question, she waited before replying. "Not to pull Atwater's chestnuts out of the fire for him," said she slowly. "Stop the attack. I've an instinct that evil will come of it--evil to us. Let Armstrong alone. If he's not managing his business right, what concern is it of yours? And if you try to get it, what if, instead of making money, you lose your reputation--maybe, more? What does Atwater risk? Nothing. What does Langdon risk? Nothing. What do you risk? Everything. That's not sensible, is it?"

"But I can't go back on Atwater," he objected in the tone that begs to be overruled. "Armstrong would attack me, anyhow, and I'd simply have both sides against me."

She turned upon him, amazed, terrified. "Do you mean to say you've got no hold on Atwater?" she exclaimed.

"I am a gentleman, dealing with gentlemen," said he, with dignity.

She made a gesture of contempt. "But suppose Atwater should prove not to be a gentleman--what then?"

"He'd hesitate to play fast and loose with me," Trafford now confessed. "He owes our allied institutions too many millions."

"Oh," she said, relieved. Then--"And what precaution has he taken against your deserting him?"

"None, so far as I know, except that he would probably join in Armstrong's attack. But, my dear, you entirely misunderstand. Atwater and I have the same interests. We----"

"I know, I know," she interrupted impatiently. "What I'm trying to get at is how you can induce him to come to an agreement with Armstrong. Can you think of no way?"

"I had never contemplated this emergency," he replied apologetically. His conduct now seemed to him to have been headlong, imbecile.

"You must do something this very night," said his wife. "There might be a change of plan on one side or the other. You must see that your position, unprotected among these howling beasts, is perilous."

At that, Trafford fell to trembling so violently that, ashamed though he was to have any human being, even his wife, see the coward in him, he yet could not steady himself. "I can offer Armstrong peace and a voice in our company. If he accepts, I can stop Atwater. I can frankly show him that I am not prepared to withstand an attack and that it is surely coming. He will not refuse. He won't dare. Besides--" He stopped suddenly.

"Besides--what?"

"It is upon me--upon my men--that Atwater relies to make the attack. He hasn't the necessary information--at least, I don't think he has."

Mrs. Trafford gave a long sigh of relief. "Why didn't you say that at first?" she cried. "All you have to do is to put Atwater off and make terms with Armstrong."

"Atwater is a very dangerous man to have as an enemy."

"But he's not a fool. He'll never blame you for saving yourself from destruction."

Neither seemed to realize how much of their secret thought--thought not clearly admitted even to their secret selves--was revealed in her using that terrible word, and in his accepting it.

He glanced at his watch. "I think I'll go now."

"Yes, indeed," said she. "This is the best time to catch them. They'll be dressing for dinner."

And he hurried away.

*XXVI*

*TRAFFORD AS DOVE OF PEACE*

As Trafford sprang from his cab at Armstrong's hotel, Armstrong was just entering the door. "Mr. Armstrong! Mr. Armstrong!" he cried, hastening after him.

The big, easy-going-looking Westerner--still the Westerner, though his surface was thoroughly Easternized--turned and glanced quizzically down at the small, prim-looking Trafford. "Hello! What do you want?"

"To see you for a few minutes, if it is quite convenient," replied Trafford, still more nervous before Armstrong's good-natured contempt.

"A very few minutes," conceded the big man. "I've a pressing engagement."

They went up to his apartment. As he opened the door, he saw a note on the threshold. "Excuse me," he said, picking it up, and so precipitate that he did not stand aside to let Trafford enter first. In the sitting room he turned on the light, tore open the note and read; and Trafford noted with dismay that, as he read, his face darkened. It was a note from Neva, saying that she had just got a telegram from home, that her father was ill; she had scrawled the note as she and Molly were rushing away to catch the train. He glanced up, saw Trafford. "Oh--beg pardon--sit down." And he read the note again; and again his mind wandered away into the gloom. Once more, after a moment or two, his eyes reminded him of Trafford. "Beg pardon--a most annoying message-- Do sit down. Have a cigar?"

"Not at present, thank you," said Trafford in his precise way, reminiscent of the far days when he had taught school.

"Well--what can I do for you?" inquired Armstrong, adding to himself, "This is Atwater's first move." But he was not interested; his mind was on Neva, on the note that had chilled him--"unreasonably," he muttered, "yet, she might have put in just the one word--or something."

Trafford saw that he had no part of Armstrong's attention. He coughed.

"If you can give me--" he began.

"Yes, yes," said Armstrong impatiently. "What is it? You can't expect me to be enthusiastic, exactly, about you, you know. I didn't expect anything of the others; but I was idiot enough to think you weren't altogether shameless--you, the principal owner of the Hearth and Home!" Armstrong's sarcasm was savage.

"You are evidently laboring under some misapprehension, Mr. Armstrong," cried Trafford, pulling at his neat little beard, while one of his neat little feet tapped the carpet agitatedly.

"Bosh!" said Armstrong. "I know all about you. Don't lie to me. What do you want? Come to the point!"

There was a pink spot in each of Trafford's cheeks. "I have been much distressed," said he, "at the confusion downtown, at the strained relations between interests that ought to be working together in harmony for the general good." Armstrong's frown hastened him. "I have come to see if it isn't possible to bring about good feeling and peace."

"You come from Atwater?"

"No--that is--Frankly, no."

Armstrong rose with a gesture of dismissal. "We're wasting time. Atwater is the man. Unless you have some authority from him, I'll not detain you."

"But, my dear sir," cried Trafford, in a ferment to the very depths now, because convinced by Armstrong's manner that he was not dealing with a beaten man but with one champing for the fray. "You do not seem to hear me," he implored. "I tell you I can make terms. In this matter Atwater is dependent upon me."

"You've come about the attack he's going to make on the O.A.D.?"

"Precisely. I've come to arrange to stop it, to say I wish to make no attack."

"You mean, you don't wish to be attacked," rejoined Armstrong with a cold laugh that made Trafford's flesh creep. "By the time Morris gets through with you, I don't see how you can possibly be kept out of the penitentiary. He has all the necessary facts. I think he can compel you to disgorge at least two thirds of what you've stolen and salted away. I don't see where you got the courage to go into a fight, when you're such an easy target. The wonder is you weren't caught and sent up years ago."

"This is strange language, very strange language," said Trafford in an injured tone, and not daring to pretend or to feel insulted. "I am surprised, Mr. Armstrong, that you should use it in your own house."

"I didn't ask you here. You thrust yourself in," Armstrong reminded him, but his manner was less savage.

"True, I did come of my own accord. And I still venture to hope that you will see the advantages of a peaceful solution."

"What do you propose?--in as few words as possible," said Armstrong, still believing Trafford was trying to trifle with him, for some hidden purpose.

"To call off our attack," Trafford answered, "provided you will agree to call off yours. To give you a liberal representation in our board of directors, including a member of the executive committee."

Armstrong was astounded. He could not believe that Trafford's humble, eager manner was simulated. Yet, these terms, this humiliating surrender of assured victory--it was incredible. "You will have to explain just how you happened to come here," said he, "or I shall be unable to believe you."

The pink spots which had faded from Trafford's cheeks reappeared. "It was my wife," he replied. "She heard there was to be a scandal. She has a horror of notoriety--you know how refined and sensitive she is. She would not let me rest until I had promised to do what I could to bring about peace."

Armstrong was secretly scorning his own stupidity. He had spent days, weeks on just this problem of breaking up the combination against him, of separating Trafford or Langdon from Atwater; and the simple, easy, obvious way to do it had never occurred to him, who dealt only with the men and disregarded the women as negligible factors in affairs. To Trafford he said, "You've not seen Atwater?"

"No, but I shall go to him as soon as I have some assurance from you."

Atwater--there was the rub. Armstrong felt that the time to hope had not yet come. Still he would not discourage Trafford. He simply said, "I can't give any assurance until I consult Morris."

"But, as I understand it--at least, his original motive was simply a political ambition. We can easily gratify that."

"He wants fireworks--something that'll make the popular heart warm up to him. He has a long head. He wants some basis, at least, in popularity, so that he won't be quite at the mercy of you gentlemen, should you turn against him."

"I see--I see," said Trafford. "He was counting on the reputation he would make as an inquisitor. Yes, that would give him quite a push. But--there ought to be plenty of other matters he might safely and even, perhaps, beneficially, inquire into. For instance, there is the Bee Hive Mutual--a really infamous swindle. I've had dealings with many unattractive characters in the course of my long business career, Mr. Armstrong, but with none so repellent in every way as Dillworthy. He has made that huge institution a private graft for himself and his family. He is shocking, even in this day of loose conceptions of honesty and responsibility."

"Have you any facts?"

"Some, and they are at Mr. Morris's disposal. But all he needs to do is to send for the books of the Bee Hive. I am credibly informed--you can rely on it--that the Dillworthys have got so bold that they do not even look to the books. The grafting in that company is quite as extensive and as open as in our large industrial and railway corporations--and, you know, they haven't profited by the lesson we in the insurance companies had in the great investigation."

"Your proposal will content Morris, I think," Armstrong now said. "As the Dillworthys aren't entangled with any of the other large interests, showing them up will not cause a spreading agitation." He laughed. "There's a sermon against selfishness! If old Dillworthy hadn't been so greedy, so determined to keep it all in the family, he wouldn't be in this position."

"There will be general satisfaction over his exposure," replied Trafford. "And it will greatly benefit, tone up, the whole business world."

"Really, it's our Christian duty to concentrate on the Busy Bee, isn't it?" said Armstrong sardonically. "Well-- Can you see Atwater to-night?"

"I'm going direct to his house. But where shall I find you? You said you had an engagement."

Armstrong winced as if a wound had been roughly set to aching. "I'll be here," he said gruffly.

"We might dine together, perhaps? Atwater may be able to come, too."

"No--can't do it," was Armstrong's reply. "But I'll be here from half past eight on."

Trafford, so much encouraged that he was almost serene again, sped away to Atwater's palace in Madison Avenue. The palace was a concession to Mrs. Atwater and the daughters. They loved display and had the tastes that always accompany that passion; they, therefore, lived in the unimaginative and uncomfortable splendor of the upper class heaven that is provided by the makers of houses and furniture, whose one thought, naturally, is to pile on the cost and thus multiply the profits.

But Atwater had part of the house set aside for and dedicated to his own personal satisfaction. With the same sense of surprise that one has at the abrupt transition of a dream from one phantasy to another resembling it in no way except as there is a resemblance in flat contradictions, one passed out of the great, garish, price-encrusted entrance hall, through a door to the left into a series of really beautiful rooms--spacious, simple, solidly furnished; with quiet harmonies of color, with no suggestions of mere ornamentation anywhere. The Siersdorfs had built and furnished the whole house, and its double triumph was their first success. With the palace part they had pleased the Atwater women and the crowd of rich eager to display; with the part sacred to Atwater, they had delighted him and such people as formed their ideas of beauty upon beauty itself and not upon fashion or tradition or outlay. Trafford was shown into a music room where Atwater was playing on the piano, as he did almost every evening for an hour before dinner. It was a vast room, walls and ceilings paneled in rosewood; there were no hangings, except at the windows valances of velvet of a rosewood tint, relieved by a broad, dull gold stripe; a few simple articles of furniture; Boris Raphael's famous "Music" on the wall opposite the piano, and no other picture; a huge vase of red and gold chrysanthemums at the opposite side of the room to balance the painting; Atwater at the piano, in a dark red, velvet house suit, over it a silk robe of a somewhat lighter shade of red, as the room was not heated.

"Business?" he said, pausing in his playing, with a careless, unfriendly glance at Trafford.

"I'll only trouble you a moment," apologized the intruder. His prim, strait-laced appearance gave those surroundings, made sensuous by Boris's intoxicatingly sensuous picture, an air of impropriety, of immorality--like a woman in Quaker dress among the bare shoulders, backs, and bosoms of a ballroom.

"Business!" exclaimed Atwater, rising. "Not in this room, if you please."

He led the way to a smaller room with a billiard table in the center and great leather seats and benches round the walls. "Do you play, Trafford? Music, I mean."

"I regret to say, I do not," replied Trafford.

"Then you ought to get a mechanical piano. Music in the evening is like a bath after a day in the trenches. Try it. It'll soothe you, put you into a better condition for the next day's bout. What can I do for you?"

"I've come about the O.A.D. matter. Atwater, don't you think we might lose more than we stand to gain?"

Atwater concealed his satisfaction. Since his talk with Armstrong, he had been remeasuring with more care that young man's character, and had come to the conclusion that he was entering upon a much stiffer campaign than he had anticipated. Atwater's dealings were, and for years had been, with men of large fortune--industrial "kings," great bankers, huge investors. Such men are as timid as a hen with a brood. They will fight fiercely--if they must--for their brood of millions. But they would rather run than fight, and much rather go clucking and strutting along peacefully with their brood securely about them. To manage such men, after one has shown he knows where the worms are and how they may be got, all that is necessary is inflexible, tyrannical firmness. Their minds, their hearts, their all, is centered in the brood; personal emotions, they have none--that is, none that need be taken into account. Atwater ruled, autocratic, undisputed. Who would dare quarrel with such a liberal provider of the best worms?

But Armstrong's personality presented another proposition. Here was a man with no fortune, not even enough to have roused into a fierce passion the universal craving for wealth. He had a will, a brain, courage--and nothing to lose. And he, still comparatively poor, had succeeded in lifting himself to a position of not merely nominal but actual power. The misgivings of Atwater had been growing steadily. The price of pulling down this man might too easily be far, far beyond its profits. "We shall have to come together for a finish fight sooner or later--if I live," reasoned Atwater. "But this is not the best time I could have chosen. He isn't deeply enough involved. He isn't helpless enough. I'm breaking my rule never to fight until I'm ready and the other fellow isn't."

Instead of answering Trafford's pointed and anxious question, Atwater was humming softly. "I can't get that movement out of my head," he broke off to explain. "I'm very fond of Grieg--aren't you?"

"I know about music only in the most general way. My wife----"

"You let your women attend to the family culture, eh?" interrupted Atwater. "You originally suggested this war on Fosdick and Armstrong. By the way, you heard the news this afternoon? Armstrong has thrown out the whole executive staff of the O.A.D.--at one swoop--and has put in his own crowd."

Trafford leaped in the great leather chair in which his small body was all but swallowed up. "Impossible!" he cried. "Why, such a thing would be illegal."

"Undoubtedly. But--how many years would it be before a court can pass on it--pass on it finally? Meanwhile, Armstrong is in possession."

"That completely alters the situation," said Trafford, in dismay. "Atwater, it would be folly--madness!--for us to go on, if we could make a treaty with Armstrong."

"I don't agree with you," said Atwater, with perfect assurance now that he saw that Trafford would not call his bluff by acquiescing. "Trafford, I'm surprised; you're losing your nerve."

"Using sound business judgment is not cowardice," retorted Trafford. "I owe it to my family, to the stability of business, not to encourage a senseless, a calamitous war."

Atwater shrugged his shoulders. "As you please. I feel that, in this affair, your wishes are paramount. But, at the same time, Trafford, I tell you frankly, I don't like to be trifled with. Nor does Langdon."

"Perhaps Morris and Armstrong might be induced to turn their attention elsewhere--say, to the Busy Bee. Would you not feel compensated by getting control there?"

"Not a bad idea," mused Atwater aloud. "Not by any means a bad idea." He reflected in silence. "If you could arrange that, it would be even better than the plan you ask me to abandon at the eleventh hour."

"Then you agree?" said Trafford, quivering with eagerness.

"If we can get the Busy Bee. I've had an eye on that chap Dillworthy, for some time."

"I am much relieved," said Trafford, rising. His face was beaming; there was once more harmony between his expression and the aggressive, unbending cut of his hair and whiskers.

Atwater looked at him sharply. "You've seen Armstrong," he jerked out.

Trafford hesitated. "I thought," he said apologetically, "it would be best to have a general talk with Armstrong first--just to sound him."

"I understand." Atwater laughed sarcastically. "And may I ask, if it wasn't the news of the upset in the O.A.D., what was it that set you to running about so excitedly?"

Trafford gave a nervous cough. "My wife--you know how refined and sensitive she is-- She got wind of the impending scandal, and, being very tender-hearted and also having a horror of notoriety, she urged me to try to find a peaceful way out."

"Petticoats!" said Atwater, with derision, but tolerant.

"Not that I would have--" Trafford began to protest.

"No apology necessary. I comprehend. I've got them in the house."

Trafford laughed, relieved. "The ladies are difficult at times," said he, "but, how would we do without them?"

"I don't know, I'm sure," said Atwater dryly. "I never had the good fortune of the opportunity to try it. What did Armstrong say, when you sounded him? I believe you called it 'sounding,' though I suspect-- No matter. What did he say?"

"I think you may safely assume the matter is settled. In fact, Armstrong has shown a willingness to make peace."

"Rather!" said Atwater, edging his visitor toward the door. "Good night," he added in the same breath; and he was rid of Trafford. He went slowly back to the piano, and resumed the interrupted symphony softly, saying every now and then, in a half sympathetic, half cynical undertone, "Poor Dillworthy! Poor devil!"

*XXVII*

*BREAKFAST AL FRESCO*

Armstrong sent Neva a prompt telegram of sympathy and inquiry. He got a telegraphed reply--her thanks and the statement that her father was desperately ill, but apparently not in immediate danger. He wrote her about the highly satisfactory turn in his affairs; to help him to ease, he tried to dismiss herself and himself, but at every sentence he had to stem again the feeling that this letter would be read where he was remembered as the sort of person it made him hot with shame to think he had ever been. He waited two weeks; no answer. Again he wrote--a lover's appeal for news of her. Ten days, and she answered, ignoring the personal side of his letter, simply telling how ill her father was, what a long struggle at best it would be to save him. Armstrong saw that nursing and anxiety were absorbing all her time and thought and strength. He wrote a humble apology for having annoyed her, asked her to write him whenever she could, if it was only a line or so.

Two more increasingly restless weeks, and he telegraphed that he was coming. She telegraphed an absolute veto, and in the first mail came a letter that was the more crushing because it was calm and free from bitterness. "In this quiet town," wrote she, "where so little happens, you know how they remember and brood and become bitter. What is past and forgotten for us is still very vivid to him and magnified out of all proportion. Please do not write again, until you hear from me."

Thus, he learned that his worst fears were justified. If she had shown that, in the home atmosphere again, she was seeing him as formerly, he could have protested, argued, appealed. But how strive against her duty to her sick, her dying father whose generous friendship he had ruthlessly betrayed and whose life he had embittered? He debated going to Battle Field and seeing Mr. Carlin and asking forgiveness. But such an agitating interview would probably hasten death, even if he could get admittance; besides, he remembered that Frederic Carlin, slow to condemn, never forgave once he had condemned. "He feels toward me as I'd feel in the same circumstances. I have got only what I deserve." No judgments are so terrible as those that are just.