Chapter 13

He blamed Dumont and he blamed his wife for his plight--and there was some justice in both accusations. Twenty years before, he had come down to "the Street" a frank-looking boy, of an old and distinguished New York family that had become too aristocratic for business and had therefore lost its hold upon its once great fortune. He was neither a good boy nor a bad. But he was weak, and had the extravagant tastes and cynical morals to which he had been bred; and his intelligent brain was of the kind that goes with weakness--shrewd and sly, preferring to slink along the byways of craft even when the highway of courage lies straight and easy. But he had physical bravery and the self-confidence that is based upon an assured social position in a community where social position is worshiped; so, he passed for manly and proud when he was in reality neither. Family vanity he had; personal pride he had not.

In many environments his weakness would have remained hidden even from himself, and he would have lived and died in the odor and complacence of respectability. But not in the strain and stress of Wall Street. There he had naturally developed not into a lion, not even into a wolf, but into a coyote.

Wall Street found him out in ten years--about one year after it began to take note of him and his skulking ways and his habit of prowling in the wake of the pack. Only his adroit use of his family connections and social position saved him from being trampled to death by the wolves and eaten by his brother coyotes. Thereafter he lived precariously, but on the whole sumptuously, upon carcasses of one kind and another. He participated in "strike" suits against big corporations--he would set on a pack of coyotes to dog the lions and to raise discordant howls that inopportunely centered public attention upon leonine, lawless doings; the lions would pay him well to call off the pack. He assisted sometimes wolves and sometimes coyotes in flotations of worthless, or almost worthless, stocks and bonds from gold and mahogany offices and upon a sea of glittering prospectuses. He had a hand in all manner of small, shady transactions of lawful, or almost lawful, swindling that were tolerated by lions and wolves, because at bottom there is a feeling of fellowship among creatures of prey as against creatures preyed upon.

There were days when he came home haggard and blue in the lips to tell Leonora that he must fly. There were days when he returned from the chase, or rather from the skulk, elated, youthful, his pockets full of money and his imagination afire with hopes of substantial wealth. But his course was steadily downward, his methods steadily farther and farther from the line of the law. Dumont came just in time to save him, came to build him up from the most shunned of coyotes into a deceptive imitation of a wolf with aspirations toward the lion class.

Leonora knew that he was small, but she thought all men small--she had supreme contempt for her own sex; and it seemed to her that men must be even less worthy of respect since they were under the influence of women and lavished time and money on them. Thus she was deceived into cherishing the hope that her husband, small and timid though he was, would expand into a multi-millionaire and would help her to possess the splendors she now enjoyed at the expense of her associates whom she despised. She was always thinking how far more impressive than their splendor her magnificence would be, if their money were added to her brains and beauty.

Dumont had helped Fanshaw as much as he could. He immediately detected the coyote. He knew it was impossible to make a lion or even a wolf out of one who was both small and crooked. He used him only in minor matters, chiefly in doing queer, dark things on the market with National Woolens, things he indirectly ordered done but refused to know the details of beyond the one important detail--the record of checks for the profits in his bank account. For such matters Fanshaw did as well as another. But as Dumont became less of a wolf and more of a lion, less of a speculator and more of a financier, he had less and less work of the kind Fanshaw could do.

But Leonora, unaware of her husband's worthlessness and desperate in her calamities, sneered and jeered and lashed him on--to ruin. The coyote could put on the airs of a lion so long as the lion was his friend and protector; when he kept on in kingly ways after the lion had cast him off, he speedily came to grief.

As he stood looking helplessly up and down Broad Street he was debating what move to make. There were about even measures of truth and falsehood in his statement to Dumont--he did need two hundred thousand dollars; and he must have it before a quarter past two that day or go into a bankruptcy from which he could not hope to save a shred of reputation or to secrete more than fifty thousand dollars.

"To the New York Life Building," he finally said to the driver as he got into his hansom. Then to himself: "I'll have a go at old Herron."

He knew that Dumont and Herron had quarreled, and that Herron had sold out of the National Woolens Company. But he did not know that Herron was a man with a fixed idea, hatred of Dumont, and a fixed purpose, to damage him at every opportunity that offered or could be created, to ruin him if possible.

When the National Woolens Company was expanded into the huge conglomerate it now was--a hundred millions common, a hundred millions preferred, and twenty millions of bonds--Herron had devised and directed the intricate and highly perilous course among the rocks of law and public opinion in many states and in the nation. It was a splendid exhibition of legal piloting, and he was bitterly dissatisfied with the modest reward of ten millions of the preferred stock which Dumont apportioned to him. He felt that that would have been about his just share in the new concern merely in exchange for his stock in the old. When he found Dumont obdurate, and grew frank and spoke such words as "dishonor" and "dishonesty" and got into the first syllable of "swindling," Dumont cut him off with--

"If you don't like it, get out! I can hire that sort of work for half what I've paid you. You're swollen with vanity. We ought to have a young man in your position, anyhow."

Herron might have swallowed the insult to his pride as a lawyer. But the insult to his pride in his youth! He was fifty-seven and in dress and in expression was stoutly insisting that he was still a young man whom hard work had made prematurely gray and somewhat wrinkled. Dumont's insinuation that he was old and stale set a great fire of hate blazing; he, of course, told himself and others that his wrath was stirred solely because his sense of justice had been outraged by the "swindling."

Fanshaw entered Herron's office wearing the jaunty air of arrogant prosperity, never so important as when prosperity has fled. But Herron's shrewd, experienced eyes penetrated the sham. He had intended to be cold. Scenting a "hard-luck yarn" and a "touch" he lowered his temperature to the point at which conversation is ice-beset and confidences are frozen tight.

Fanshaw's nerve deserted him. "Herron," he said, dropping his prosperous pose, "I want to get a divorce and I want to punish Dumont."

Herron's narrow, cold face lighted up. He knew what everybody in their set knew of Fanshaw's domestic affairs, but like everybody else he had pretended not to know. He changed his expression to one of shock and indignation.

"You astound me!" he exclaimed. "It is incredible!"

"He told me himself not an hour ago," said Fanshaw. "I went to him as a friend to ask him to help me out of a hole. And--" He rose and theatrically paced the floor.

Herron prided himself upon his acute conscience and his nice sense of honor. He felt that here was a chance to wreak vengeance upon Dumont--or rather, as he put it to himself, to bring Dumont to an accounting for his depravity. Just as Dumont maintained with himself a character of honesty by ignoring all the dubious acts which his agents were forced to do in carrying out his orders, so Herron kept peace with a far more sensitive conscience by never permitting it to look in upon his mind or out through his eyes.

"Frightful! Frightful!" he exclaimed, after a long pause in which his immured and blindfold conscience decided that he could afford to support Fanshaw. "I knew he was a rascal in business--but THIS!"

There was genuine emotion in his voice and in his mind. He was strict to puritanic primness in his ideals of feminine morality; nor had he been relaxed by having a handsome wife, looking scarce a day over thirty behind her veil or in artificial light, and fond of gathering about her young men who treated him as if he were old and "didn't count."

"You are certain, Fanshaw?"

"I tell you, he hinted it himself," replied Fanshaw. "And instantly my eyes were opened to scores of damning confirmations." He struck his forehead with his open hand. "How blind I've been!" he exclaimed.

Herron shook his head sympathetically and hastened on to business.

"WE can't handle your case," he said. "But Best and Sharpless, on the floor above, are reliable. And I'll be glad to help you with advice. I feel that this is the beginning of Dumont's end. I knew such insolent wickedness could not have a long course."

Fanshaw drew Herron on to tell the story of his wrongs--the "swindling." Before it was ended Fanshaw saw that he had found a man who hated Dumont malignantly and was thirsting for vengeance. This encouraged him to unfold his financial difficulties. Herron listened sympathetically, asked ingeniously illuminating questions, and in the end agreed to tide him over. He had assured himself that Fanshaw had simply undertaken too large an enterprise; the advance would be well secured; he would make the loan in such a way that he would get a sure profit, and would also bind Fanshaw firmly to him without binding himself to Fanshaw. Besides--"It wouldn't do for him to go to the wall just now."

Arm in arm they went up to Best and Sharpless' to take the first steps in the suit. Together they went down-town to relieve Fanshaw of the pressure of the too heavy burden of copper stocks; then up to their club where he assisted Fanshaw in composing the breaking-off letter to Leonora.

XXII.

STORMS IN THE WEST.

While the Fanshaw-Herron storm was slowly gathering in Dumont's eastern horizon, two others equally black were lifting in the west.

In the two months between Scarborough's election and his inauguration, the great monopolies thriving under the protection of the state's corrupted statute-book and corrupted officials followed the lead of their leader, Dumont's National Woolens Company, in making sweeping but stealthy changes in their prices, wages, methods and even in their legal status. They hoped thus to enable their Legislature plausibly to resist Scarborough's demand for a revision of the laws--why revise when the cry of monopoly had been shown to be a false issue raised by a demagogue to discredit the tried leaders of the party and to aggrandize himself? And, when Scarborough had been thoroughly "exposed," business could be resumed gradually.

But Scarborough had the better brain, and had character as well. He easily upset their program and pressed their Legislature so hard that it was kept in line only by pouring out money like water. This became a public scandal which made him stronger than ever and also made it seem difficult or impossible for the monopolies to get a corruptible Legislature at the next election. At last the people had in their service a lawyer equal in ability to the best the monopolies could buy, and one who understood human nature and political machinery to boot.

Dumont began to respect Scarborough profoundly--not for his character, which made him impregnable with the people, but for his intellect, which showed him how to convince the people of his character and to keep them convinced. When Merriweather came on "to take his beating" from his employer he said among other things deprecatory: "Scarborough's a dreamer. His head's among the clouds." Dumont retorted: "Yes, but his feet are on the ground--too damned firmly to suit me." And after a moment's thought, he added: "What a shame for such a brain to go to waste! Why, he could make millions."

He felt that Gladys was probably his best remaining card. She had been in Indianapolis visiting the whole of February, Scarborough's second month as governor, and had gone on to her brother in New York with a glowing report of her progress with Scarborough's sister Arabella, now a widow and at her own invitation living with him in Indianapolis to relieve him of the social duties of his office. She was a dozen years more the Arabella who had roused her father's wrath by her plans for educating her brother "like a gentleman"; and Olivia and Fred were irritated and even alarmed by her anything but helpful peculiarities--though Scarborough seemed cheerful and indifferent enough about them.

It was a temperamental impossibility for Dumont to believe that Scarborough could really be sincere in a course which was obviously unprofitable. Therefore he attached even more importance to Arabella's cordiality than did Gladys herself. And, when the Legislature adjourned and Scarborough returned to Saint X for a brief stay, Dumont sent Gladys post-haste back to the Eyrie--that is, she instantly and eagerly acted upon his hint.

A few evenings after her return, she and Pauline were on the south veranda alone in the starlight. She was in low spirits and presently began to rail against her lot.

"Don't be absurd," said Pauline. "You've no right to complain. You have everything--and you're--free!"

That word "free" was often on Pauline's lips in those days. And a close observer might have been struck by the tone in which she uttered it. Not the careless tone of those who have never had or have never lost freedom, but the lingering, longing tone of those who have had it, and have learned to value it through long years without it.

"Yes--everything!" replied Gladys, bitterly. "Everything except the one thing I want."

Pauline did not help her, but she was at the stage of suppressed feeling where desire to confide is stronger than pride.

"The one thing I want," she repeated. "Pauline, I used to think I'd never care much for any man, except to like it for him to like me. Men have always been a sort of amusement--and the oftener the man changed, the better the fun. I've known for several years that I simply must marry, but I've refused to face it. It seemed to me I was fated to wander the earth, homeless, begging from door to door for leave to come in and rest a while."

"You know perfectly well, Gladys, that this is your home."

"Of course--in a sense. It's as much my home as another woman's house could be. But"--with a little sob--"I've seen my mate and I want to begin my nest."

They were side by side on a wide, wicker sofa. Pauline made an impulsive move to put her arm round Gladys, then drew away and clasped her hands tightly in her lap.

Gladys was crying, sobbing, brokenly apologizing for it--"I'm a little idiot--but I can't help it--I haven't any pride left--a woman never does have, really, when she's in love--oh, Pauline, do you think he cares at all for me?" And after a pause she went on, too absorbed in herself to observe Pauline or to wonder at her silence: "Sometimes I think he does. Again I fear that--that he doesn't. And lately--why doesn't he come here any more?"

"You know how busy he is," said Pauline, in a voice so strained that Gladys ought to have noticed it.

"But it isn't that--I'm sure it isn't. No, it has something to do with me. It means either that he doesn't care for me or that--that he does care and is fighting against it. Oh, I don't know what to think." Then, after a pause: "How I hate being a woman! If I were a man I could find out the truth--settle it one way or the other. But I must sit dumb and wait, and wait, and wait! You don't know how I love him," she said brokenly, burying her face in the ends of the soft white shawl that was flung about her bare shoulders. "I can't help it--he's the best--he makes all the others look and talk like cheap imitations. He's the best, and a woman can't help wanting the best."

Pauline rose and leaned against the railing--she could evade the truth no longer. Gladys was in love with Scarborough, was at last caught in her own toils, would go on entangling herself deeper and deeper, abandoning herself more and more to a hopeless love, unless--

"What would you do, Pauline?" pleaded Gladys. "There must be some reason why he doesn't speak. It isn't fair to me--it isn't fair! I could stand anything--even giving him up--better than this uncertainty. It's--it's breaking my heart--I who thought I didn't have a heart."

"No, it isn't fair," said Pauline, to herself rather than to Gladys.

"I suppose you don't sympathize with me," Gladys went on. "I know you don't like him. I've noticed how strained and distant you are toward each other. And you seem to avoid each other. And he'll never talk of you to me. Did you have some sort of misunderstanding at college?"

"Yes," said Pauline, slowly. "A--a misunderstanding."

"And you both remember it, after all these years?"

"Yes," said Pauline.

"How relentless you are," said Gladys, "and how tenacious!" But she was too intent upon her own affairs to pursue a subject which seemed to lead away from them. Presently she rose.

"I'll be ashamed of having confessed when I see you in daylight. But I don't care. I shan't be sorry. I feel a little better. After all, why should I be ashamed of any one knowing I care for him?" And she sighed, laughed, went into the house, whistling softly--sad, depressed, but hopeful, feeling deep down that she surely must win where she had never known what it was to lose.

Pauline looked after her. "No, it isn't fair," she repeated. She stayed on the veranda, walking slowly to and fro not to make up her mind, for she had done that while Gladys was confessing, but to decide how she could best accomplish what she saw she must now no longer delay. It was not until two hours later that she went up to bed.

When Gladys came down at nine the next morning Pauline had just gone out--"I think, Miss Gladys, she told the coachman to drive to her father's," said the butler.

Gladys set out alone. Instead of keeping to the paths and the woods along the edge of the bluff she descended to the valley and the river road. She walked rapidly, her face glowing, her eyes sparkling--she was quick to respond to impressions through the senses, and to-day she felt so well physically that it reacted upon her mind and forced her spirits up. At the turn beyond Deer Creek bridge she met Scarborough suddenly. He, too, was afoot and alone, and his greeting was interpreted to her hopes by her spirits.

"May I turn and walk with you?" he asked.

"I'm finding myself disagreeable company today."

"You did look dull," she said, as they set out together, "dull as a love-sick German. But I supposed it was your executive pose."

"I was thinking that I'll be old before I know it." His old-young face was shadowed for an instant. "Old--that's an unpleasant thought, isn't it?"

"Unpleasant for a man," said Gladys, with a laugh, light as youth's dread of age. "For a woman, ghastly! Old and alone--either one's dreadful enough. But--the two together! I often think of them. Don't laugh at me--really I do. Don't you?"

"If you keep to that, our walk'll be a dismal failure. It's a road I never take--if I can help it."

"You don't look as though you were ever gloomy." Gladys glanced up at him admiringly. "I should have said you were one person the blue devils wouldn't dare attack."

"Yes, but they do. And sometimes they throw me."

"And trample you?"

"And trample me," he answered absently.

"That's because you're alone too much," she said with a look of tactful sympathy.

"Precisely," he replied. "But how am I to prevent that?"

"Marry, of course," she retorted, smiling gaily up at him, letting her heart just peep from her eyes.

"Thank you! And it sounds so easy! May I ask why you've refused to take your own medicine--you who say you are so often blue?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "I've always suspected the men who asked me. They were--" She did not finish what she feared might be an unwise, repelling remark in the circumstances.

"They were after your money," he finished for her.

She nodded. "They were Europeans," she explained. "Europeans want money when they marry."

"That's another of the curses of riches," he said judicially. "And if you marry a rich man over here, you may be pretty sure he'll marry you for your money. I've observed that rich men attach an exaggerated importance to money, always."

"I'd prefer to marry a poor man," she hastened to answer, her heart beating faster--certainly his warning against rich suitors must have been designed to help his own cause with her.

"Yes, that might be better," he agreed. "But you would have to be careful after you were married or he might fancy you were using your money to tyrannize over him. I've noticed that the poor husbands of rich women are supersensitive--often for cause."

"Oh, I'd give it all to him. He could do what he pleased with it. I'd not care so long as we were happy."

Scarborough liked the spirit of this, liked her look as she said it.

"That's very generous--very like you," he replied warmly. "But I don't think it would be at all wise. You'd be in a dangerous position. You might spoil him--great wealth is a great danger, and when it's suddenly acquired, and so easily-- No, you'd better put your wealth aside and only use so much of it as will make your income equal to his--if you can stand living economically."

"I could stand anything with or from any one I cared for." Gladys was eager for the conversation to turn from the general to the particular. She went on, forcing her voice to hide her interest: "And you, why don't you cure your blues?"

"Oh, I shall," he replied carelessly. "But not with your medicine. Every one to his own prescription."

"And what's yours for yourself?" said Gladys, feeling tired and nervous from the strain of this delayed happiness.

"Mine?" He laughed. "My dreams."

"You are a strange combination, aren't you? In one way you're so very practical--with your politics and all that. And in another way--I suspect you of being sentimental--almost romantic."

"You've plucked out the heart of my mystery. My real name is non Quixote de Saint X."

"And has your Dulcinea red hands and a flat nose and freckles like the lady of Toboso?" Gladys' hands were white, her nose notably fine, her skin transparently clear.

"Being Don Quixote, I don't know it if she has."

"And you prefer to worship afar, and to send her news of your triumphs instead of going to her yourself?"

"I dare not go." He was looking away, far away. "There are wicked enchanters. I'm powerless. She alone can break their spells."

They walked in silence, her heart beating so loudly that she thought he must be hearing it, must be hearing what it was saying. Yes--she must break the spells. But how--but how? What must she say to make him see? Did he expect her to ask him to marry her? She had heard that rich women often were forced to make this concession to the pride of the men they wished to marry. On the other hand, was there ever a man less likely than Scarborough to let any obstacle stand between him and what he wanted?

The first huge drops of a summer rain pattered in big, round stains, brown upon the white of the road. He glanced up--a cloud was rolling from beyond the cliffs, was swiftly curtaining the blue.