Part 29

A few days, and Barry decided that their luck was in the last tailings. Armstrong's final move produced results that made the former tempests seem mere fresh weather. The petty grafters and parasites he now dislodged in a body were insignificant as individuals; but each man had his coterie of friends; each was of a large group in each city or town, a group of people similarly dependent upon small salaries and grafting from large corporations. The whole solidarity burst into an uproar. Armstrong was getting rid of all the honest men; he was putting his creatures in their places, so that there might be no check on the flow of plunder from the pockets of policy holders into his own private pocket. The man was the greediest as well as the most insolent of thieves! This was the cry in respectable circles throughout the country--for his "victims" were all of "good" families, were the relatives, friends, dependents of the leading citizens, each in his own city or town.

"Don't you think you'd better stop until things have quieted down a bit?" asked Barry, when the work was about half done.

"Go right on!" said Armstrong. "Tear up the last root. We must stand or fall by this policy. If we try to compromise now, we're lost. The way to cut off a leg is to cut it off. There's a chance to survive a clean cut, but not a bungle."

A fortnight, and all but a few of his personal friends in the board of directors resigned after the board had, with only nine negative votes, passed a resolution requesting him to resign. And finally, the policy holders held a national convention at Chicago, and appointed a committee of five to go to New York and "investigate the O.A.D. from garret to cellar, especially cellar."

"Now!" cried Armstrong jubilantly, when the telegram containing the news was laid before him.

On a Thursday morning the newspapers told the whole country about the convention, the committee, the impending capture of "the bandit." On Saturday toward noon, Armstrong got a note: "I am stopping with Narcisse. Won't you come to see me this afternoon, or to-morrow--any time?--Neva."

He read the note twice, then tore it into small pieces and tossed them into the wastebasket. "Not I!" said he aloud, with a frown at the bits of violet note paper. Through all those weeks he had been hoping for, expecting, a message from her--something that would help him to feel there was in this world of enemies and timid, self-interested friends, at least the one person who understood and sympathized. But not a word had come; and his heart, so hard when it was hard, and so sensitive when it was touched at all, was sore and bitter.

Nevertheless, it was he and none other who appeared at five that afternoon, less than a block from Narcisse's house; and he wandered in wide circles about the neighborhood for at least an hour before his pride could shame him into dragging himself away. At three the next afternoon he rang Narcisse's bell. The man servant showed him into her small oval gray and dull gold salon which Raphael once said was probably the most perfect room in the modern world. Adjoining it was a conservatory, the two rooms being separated only by an alternation of mirrors and lattices, the lattices overrun with pink rambler in full bloom--and in the mirrors and through the opposite windows Armstrong saw the snow falling and lying white upon the trees and the lawns of the Park. In the center of the room was an open fire, its flue descending from the ceiling, but so constructed that it and its oval chimney-piece added to the effect of the room almost as much as the glimpses of the conservatory, seen through the rambler-grown lattices. And the scent of-growing flowers perfumed the air. These surroundings, this sudden summer bursting and beaming through the snow and ice of winter, had their inevitable effect upon Armstrong. He was beginning to look favorably upon several possible excuses for Neva. "She may not have heard of my troubles," he reflected. "She doesn't read the newspapers, and people wouldn't talk to her of anything concerning me."

She came in hurriedly, swathed in a coat of black broadtail, made very simply, its lines following her long, slim figure. The color was high in her cheeks; from her garments diffused the freshness of the winter air. "I shouldn't have been out," she explained, "but I had to go to see some one--Mrs. Trafford, who is ill."

Then he noted that her face was thinner than when he last saw it, that the look out of the eyes was weary. And for the moment he forgot his bitterness over her "utter desertion" of him when he really needed the cheer only a friend, a real friend, one beyond the suspicion of a possibility of self-interest, can give; deserted him in troubles which she herself had edged him on to precipitate. "When did you come?" he asked.

"Yesterday--yesterday morning. You see I sent you word immediately."

He looked ironic. "I saw in the newspaper this morning that Raphael landed yesterday."

"He dined here last night," replied she.

He turned as if about to go. "I can't imagine why you bothered to send for me," he said.

She showed that she was astonished and hurt. "Horace," she appealed, "why do you say that? I read about all those troubles."

"So, you did know!" He gave an abrupt, grim laugh. "And as you were coming on to see Raphael, why, you thought you'd do an act of Christian charity. Well, I wish I could oblige, but really, I don't need charity."

She made no answer, simply sighed and drooped. When the country was ringing with denunciations of him, "He will see the truth now," she had said to herself, "now that the whole world is showing it to him instead of only one person and she a woman." Then, with the bursting of the great storm over his single head, she dismissed all but the one central truth, that she loved him, and came straightway to New York.

Well, here they were face to face; and as she looked at him in his strength and haughtiness, she saw in his face, as if etched in steel, inflexible determination to persist in the course that was making him an object of public infamy, justly, she had to admit. "The madness for money and for crushing down his fellow beings has him fast," she thought. "There isn't anything left in him for his good instincts to work on." She seated herself wearily.

"Let's talk no more about it," she said to him.

"You've been reading the papers?" he asked.

"Yes--I read--all."

"It must have been painful to you," said he with stolid sarcasm.

She did not answer. In this mood of what seemed to her the most shameless defiance of all that a human being would respect if he had even a remnant of self-respect, he was almost repellent.

"So," he went on, in that same stolid way, "you sent for me to revel in that self-righteousness you paraded the last time I saw you. Well, it will chagrin you, I fear, to learn that the _scoundrel_ you tried to redeem will escape from the toils again, and resume his wicked way."

"I wish you would go," she entreated. "I can't bear it to-day."

She was taking off her hat now, was having great difficulty in finding its pins; its black fur brought out all the beauty of her bright brown hair. The graceful, fascinating movements of her head, her arms, her fingers, put that into his fury which made it take the bit in its teeth.

"Are you and Raphael going to marry?" he demanded so roughly that she, startled, stood straight up, facing him. "Yes, I see that you are," he rushed on. "And it puts me beside myself with jealousy. But you would be mistaken if you thought I meant I would have you, even if I could get you. What you said the last time I saw you, interpreted by what you've done since, has revealed you to me as what I used to think you--a woman incapable of love--not a woman at all. You are of this new type--the woman that uses her brain. Give me the old-fashioned kind--the kind that loved, without question."

She blazed out at him--at his savage, sneering voice and eyes. "Without question," she retorted, "and whether he was on the right side or the wrong. Loved the man who won, so long as he won; was gladly a mere part of the spoils of victory--that was the feature of her the poets and the novel writers neglect to mention. But it was important. You like that, however--you who think only of fighting, as you call it--though that's rather a brave name for the game you play, as you yourself have described it to me and as the whole world now knows you play it. You'd have no use for the woman who really loves, the woman who would be proud to bear a man's name if she loved him, though it were black with dishonor, provided he said, 'Help me make this name clean and bright again.' Why should not a woman be as jealous of dishonor in her husband as he is of it in her?"

Narcisse entered, hesitated; then, seeing Armstrong hat in hand and apparently going, she came on. "Hello," said she, shaking hands with him. She took a cigarette from the big silver box on the table, lit it, held the box toward Armstrong. "Smoke, and cheer up. The devil is said to be dying."

"Thanks, no, I must be off," replied Armstrong. He took a long look round the room, ending at the rambler-grown lattices. He bowed to Narcisse. His eyes rested upon Neva; but she was not looking at him, lest love should win a shameful victory over self-respect and over her feeling of what was the right course toward him if there was any meaning in the words woman and wife.

When he was gone, Narcisse stretched herself out, extended her feet toward the flames. "What a handsome, big man he is," said she, sending up a great cloud of cigarette smoke. "How tremendously a man. If he had some of Boris's temperament, or Boris some of his, either would be perfect."

A pause, with both women looking into the fire.

"After you left us last night," Narcisse continued, "Boris asked me to marry him."

Neva was startled out of her brooding.

"I refused," proceeded Narcisse. Another silence, then, "You don't ask why?"

"Why?"

"Because he's in love with _you_. He told me so. He made quite an interesting proposition. He suggested that, as we were both alone and got on so well together and worked along lines that were sympathetic yet could not cross and cause clashes, that--as the only way we could be friends without a scandal was by marrying--why, we ought to marry."

"It seems unanswerable," said Neva.

"If you had been married, _and_ in love with your husband, I think I'd have accepted."

"What nonsense!"

"Not at all," replied Narcisse. "I don't trust any man, least of all a Boris Raphael; and I don't trust any woman--not even you. The time might come when you would change your mind. Then, where should _I_ be?"

"I'll not change my mind."

"That's beyond your control," retorted Narcisse. "But--when you marry, I may risk it."

Neva's thoughts went back to Armstrong. Presently she vaguely heard Narcisse saying, "I've got to put up a stiffer fight against this loneliness. Do you ever think of suicide?"

"I don't believe any sane person ever does."

"But who is sane? Solitary confinement will upset the steadiest brain." She gazed strangely at Neva. "Look out, my dear. Don't _you_ act so that you'll sentence yourself to a life of solitary confinement. Some people are lucky enough not to be discriminating. They can be just as happy with imitation friendship and paste love as if they had the real thing. But not you--or I."

"There's worse than being alone," said Neva.

Another silence; then Narcisse, still in the same train of thought, went on, "Several years ago we made a house for a couple up on the West Side--a good-looking young husband and wife devoted to each other and to their two little children. He lavished everything on her. I got to know her pretty well. She was an intelligent woman--witty, with the streak of melancholy that always goes with wit and the other keen sensibilities. I soon saw she was more than unhappy, that she was wretched. I couldn't understand it. A year or so passed, and the husband was arrested, sent to the 'pen'--he made his money at a disreputable business. Then I understood. Another year or so, and I met her in Twenty-third Street. She was radiant--I never saw such a change. 'My husband is to be released next month,' said she, quite simply, like a natural human being who assumes that everybody understands and sympathizes. 'And,' she went on, 'he has made up his mind to live straight. We're going away, and we'll take a nice, new name, and be happy.'"

Neva had so changed her position that Narcisse could not see her slow, hot tears that are the sweat of a heart in torment. To Narcisse, the reason for that wife's wretchedness was an ever-present terror lest the husband should be exposed. But Neva, more acutely sensitive, or perhaps, because of what she had passed through, saw, or fancied she saw, a deeper cause--beneath material terror of "appearances" the horror of watching the manhood she loved shrivel and blacken, the horror of knowing that the lover who lay in her arms would rise up and go forth to prey, a crawling, stealthy beast.

To understand a human being at all in any of his or her aspects, however far removed from the apparently material, it is necessary to understand how that man or woman comes by the necessities of life--food, clothing, shelter. To study human nature either in the broad or in detail, leaving those matters out of account, is as if an anatomist were to try to understand the human body, having first taken away the vital organs and the arteries and veins. It is the method of the man's income that determines the man; and his paradings and posings, his loves, hatreds, generosities, meannesses, all are either unimportant or are but the surface signs of the deep, the real emotions that constitute the vital nucleus of the real man. In the material relations of a man or a woman, in the material relations of husband and wife, of parents and children, lie the ultimate, the true explanations of human conduct. This has always been so, in all ages and classes; and it will be so until the chief concern of the human animal, and therefore its chief compelling motive, ceases to be the pursuit of the necessities and luxuries that enable it to live from day to day and that safeguard it in old age. The filling and emptying and filling again of the purse perform toward the mental and moral life a function as vital as the filling and emptying and refilling of heart or lungs performs in the life of the body.

Narcisse suspected Neva had turned away to hide some sad heart secret; but it did not occur to her to seek a clew to it in the story she had told. She had never taken into account, in her estimate of Armstrong, his life downtown--the foundations and framework of his whole being. This though, under her very eyes, to the torture of her loving heart, just those "merely material" considerations had determined her brother's downfall, while her own refusal of whatever had not been earned in honor and with full measure of service rendered had determined her salvation.

In the "Arabian Nights" there is the story of a man who marries a woman, beautiful as she in Solomon's Song. He is happy in his love for her and her love for him until he wakens one night, as she is stealing from his side. He follows; she joins a ghoul at a ghoul's orgy in a graveyard. Next morning there she lies by his side, in stainless beauty. Since her father's death, not even when Armstrong was before Neva and his magnetism was exerting its full power over her, not even then could she quite forget the other Armstrong whom she had surprised at his "business." She could no longer think of that "business" merely as "doing what everybody has to do, to get on." She had seen what "finance" meant; she could not picture Armstrong without the stains of the ghoul orgy upon him.

"And now," she thought despairingly, "he has broken finally and altogether with honor and self-respect; has flung me out of his life--forever!"

That night Narcisse took her to a concert at the Metropolitan. Her mind was full of the one thought, the one hatred and horror, and she could not endure the spectacle. The music struck upon her morbid senses like the wailing and moaning of the poverty and suffering of millions that had been created to enable those smiling, flashing hundreds to assemble in splendor. "I must go!" she exclaimed at the first intermission. "I can think only of those jewels and dresses, this shameless flaunting of stolen goods--bread and meat snatched from the poor. You know these women round us in the boxes. You know whose wives and daughters they are. Where did the money come from?" She was talking rapidly, her eyes shining, her voice quivering. "Do you see the Atwaters there with Lona Trafford in their box? Do you know that Atwater just robbed a hundred thousand more people of their savings by lying about an issue of bonds? Do you know that Trafford steals outright one-third of every dollar the poor people, the day laborers, intrust to him as insurance for their old age and for their orphans? Do you know that Langdon there robs a million farmers of their earnings and drives them to the mortgage and the tax sale and pauperism and squalor--all so that the Langdons may have palaces and carriages and the means to degrade thousands into dependence and to steal more and more money from more and more people?"

Narcisse's eyes traveled slowly round the circle, then rested in wonder on Neva. "What set you to thinking of these things?" she asked.

"What always sets a _woman_ to thinking?"

When they reached home, Narcisse broke the silence to say, "After all, it's nobody's fault. It's a system and they're the victims of it."

"Because one has the chance to steal--that's no excuse for his stealing," replied Neva, with a certain sternness in her face that curiously reminded Narcisse of Armstrong. "Nor is it any excuse that everyone is doing it, and so making it respectable. I'm going back home--back where at least I shan't be tormented by seeing these things with my very eyes."

On impulse, perhaps tinged with selfishness, Narcisse exclaimed, "Neva, why don't you marry Armstrong?"

"Because I don't trust him," replied she. "One may love without trust, but not marry."

"Yet," said Narcisse, "I'd marry Boris, though I never could trust him--never!"

"If you had been married, you wouldn't do it," replied Neva. Then, "But every case is individual, and everyone must judge for himself."

"You know best--about Armstrong."

"I should say I did!" exclaimed Neva bitterly. "There's no excuse for my folly--none!"

*XXXII*

*ARMSTRONG ASKS A FAVOR*

Neva, arranging to go West on the afternoon express, was stopped by a note from Armstrong:

"I hope you will come to my office at eleven to-morrow. I beg you not to refuse this, the greatest favor, except one, that I have ever asked."

At eleven the next morning she entered the ante-room to his office. He and his secretary were alone there, he walking up and down with a nervousness Morton had never seen in him. At sight of her, his manner abruptly changed. "I was afraid something would happen to prevent your coming," he said as they shook hands. He avoided her glance. "Thank you. Thank you." And he took her into his inner office. "I have an engagement--a meeting that will keep me a few minutes," he went on. "It's only in the next room here."

"Don't hurry on my account," said she.

"I'll just put you at this desk here," he continued, with a curious elaborateness of manner. "There are the morning's papers--and some magazines. I shall be back--as soon as possible. You are sure you don't mind?"

"Indeed, no," she replied, seating herself. "This is most comfortable."

There were sounds of several persons entering the adjoining room. "I'll go now," said he. "The sooner I go, the sooner I shall be free. You will wait?"

"Here," she assured him, wondering that he would not let his eyes meet hers even for an instant.

He went into the next room, leaving the door ajar, but not widely enough for her to see or to be seen. She took up a magazine, began a story. The sound of the voices disturbed her. She heard enough to gather that some kind of business meeting was going on, resumed the story. Suddenly she heard Armstrong's voice. She listened. He, all of them, were so near that she could hear every word.

"You will probably be surprised to learn, gentlemen," he was saying, loudly, clearly, "that I have been impatiently awaiting your coming. And now that you are here, I shall not only give you every opportunity to examine the affairs of the O.A.D., but I shall insist upon your taking advantage of it to the fullest. I look to you, gentlemen, to end the campaign of calumny against your association and its management."

Neva's magazine had dropped into her lap. She knew now why he had asked her to come. If only she could see! But no--that was impossible; she must be content with hearing. She sat motionless, eager, yet in dread too; for she knew that Armstrong had summoned her to his trial, that she was to hear with her own ears the truth, the whole truth about him. The truth! Would it seem to her as it evidently seemed to him? No matter; she believed in him again. "At least," she said, "he _thinks_ he's right, and the best man can get no nearer right than that."

If she could have looked into the next room, she would have seen two large tables, men grouped about each. At one were Armstrong and the five committee-men, and the lawyer, Drew, whom they had brought with them from Chicago to conduct the examination and cross-examinations. At the other sat a dozen reporters from the newspapers.

"I have told the gentlemen of the press," said Armstrong, "that my impression was that the sessions of the committee were to be public. It is, of course, for you to decide."

Drew rubbed his long lean jaw reflectively. "I see, Mr. Armstrong," said he, in a slow, bantering tone, "that you are disposed to assist us to the extent of taking charge of the investigation. Now, I came with the notion that _I_ was to do that, to whatever extent the committee needed leading."

"Then you do not wish the investigation to be public?" said Armstrong.

"Public, yes," replied Drew. "But I doubt if we can conduct it so thoroughly or so calmly, if our every move is made under the limelight."

"Before we go any further," said Armstrong, "there is a matter I wish to bring to the attention of the committee, which it might, perhaps, seem better to you to keep from the press. If so, will you ask the reporters to retire for a few minutes?"

"Now, _there's_ just the kind of matter I think the press ought to hear," said Drew. "_We_ haven't any secrets, Mr. Armstrong."

"Very well," said Armstrong. "The matter is this: The campaign against the O.A.D. and against me was instigated and has been kept up by Mr. Atwater and several of his associates, owners and exploiters of our rivals in the insurance business. In view of that fact, I think the committee will see the gross impropriety, the danger, the disaster, I may say, of having as its counsel, as its guide, one of Mr. Atwater's personal lawyers?"

"That's a lie," drawled Drew.

Armstrong did not change countenance. He rested his gaze calmly on the lawyer. "Where did you dine last night, Mr. Drew?" he asked.

"This is the most impertinent performance I was ever the amused victim of," said Drew. "You are on trial here, sir, not I. Of course, I shall not answer your questions."