Part 2

Ned recoiled at the words, but his father threw him a quick smile. “That cuts a little, doesn’t it? I can’t help it. Ned, your mother and I have always loved you too well. I suppose it is one of the curses of this age—that ease and softness have made us a hysterical, sentimental people, and we love our children not wisely, but too well. I’ve sheltered you, instead of exposing you to the world. The war did not stiffen you—doubtless because you were one of the millions that never reached the front.”

Ned leaned forward. “That wasn’t my fault,” he said with fire. “You know that wasn’t my fault.”

“I know it wasn’t. The fact remains that you lost out. Let me go on. I’ve made it easy for you, always, instead of bitter hard as I should have done. I’ve surrounded you with luxury instead of hardship. You’ve never done an honest day’s toil on earth. You don’t know what it is to sweat, to be so tired you can’t stand, to wonder where the next meal is coming from, to know what a hard and bitter thing life is!

“A girl, thrown on the pavement. A working girl, you said—probably homely, certainly not your idea of a girl. Perhaps, in your heart, you think it wouldn’t have much mattered if you had killed her, except for the awkwardness to you. She was just one of thousands. You, my son, are Ned Cornet—one of our city’s most exalted social set, one of our fashionable young clubmen.”

His tone had changed to one of unspeakable bitterness. Ned leaned forward in appeal. “That isn’t true,” he said sharply. “I’m not a damned snob!”

“Perhaps not. I’m not sure that I know what a snob is. I’ve never met one—only men who have pretended to be snobs to hide their fear of me. Let me say, though, Ned—whatever her lot, no matter how menial her toil, your life could be spared much easier than hers. It would be better that you should be snuffed out than that she should lose one of her working hands. Likely you felt superior to her as you drove her home; in reality you were infinitely inferior. She has gone much farther than you have. She knows more of life; she is harder and better and truer and worth more to this dark world in which we live. The world could ill afford to lose her, a fighter, a worker. It would be better off to lose you—a shirker, a slacker!

“I’m not accusing you. God knows the blame is on my own head. For my part I sprang from the world of toil—never do I go out into that society in which you move but that I thank God for the bitter toil I knew in youth. The reason is that it has put me infinitely above them. Such soft friends as you have wither before my eyes, knowing well that they can not meet me on even grounds; or else they take refuge in an air of conceit, a pretense of caste, that deceives themselves no more than it deceives me. They talk behind my back of my humble origin—fearfully clothing their own nakedness with the garments of worthy, fighting men who have preceded them—and yet their most exalted gates open before my knock. They dare not shut their doors to me. They treat me with the respect that is born of fear.

“That toil, that hard schooling, has made me what I am and given me the highest degree possible of human happiness. I find a satisfaction in living; I am able to hold my head up among men. I have health, the adoring love of a wonderful woman; I give service to the world. I can see old age coming upon me without regret, without vain tears for what might have been, without fear for whatever fate lies beyond. I am schooled for that fate, Ned. I’ve got strength to meet it. My spirit will not be buffeted willy-nilly in those winds that blow between the worlds. I am a man, I’ve done man’s work, and I can hold my place with other men in the great trials to come.

“What those tests are, I do not know. Personally I lean toward an older theology, one mostly outworn now, one cast away by weak men because they are afraid to believe in it. It is not for me to say that Dante foresaw falsely. The only thing I can not believe is the legend over the door—‘Abandon Hope, ye who enter here.’ There is no gateway here or hereafter that can shut out Hope. I believe that no matter how terrible the punishment that lies within those gates, however hard the school, there is a way through and out at last.

“Hell is not the dream of a religious fanatic, Ned. I believe in it just as surely as I believe in a heaven. There must be some school, some bitter, dreadful training camp for those who leave this world unfitted to go on to a higher, better world. Lately souls have been going there in ever-increasing numbers. Let softness and self-indulgence and luxury continue to degenerate this nation, and all travel will be in that direction. My hope is yet, the urge behind all that I’m saying to you to-night, is that you may take some other way.”

His black eyes gleamed over the board. For the moment, he might have been some prophet of old, preaching the Word to the hosts of Israel. The long dining room was deathly still as he paused. Realizing that the intensity of his feeling was wakening the somber poetry within him, revealing his inmost, secret nature, he steadied himself, watching the upcurling smoke of his cigar. When he spoke again his voice and words were wholly commonplace.

“There is no force in heaven or earth so strong as moral force,” he said. “In the end, nothing can stand against it. If it dies in this land, Lord help us—because we will be unable to help ourselves. We can then no longer drive the heathen from our walls. With it, we are great—without it we are a race of weaklings. And with luxury and ease upon us, it seems to me I see it manifested ever less and less.

“Ned, there’s one thing to bring it back—and that is hardship. I mean by hardship all that is opposite to ease: self-restraint instead of license; service instead of self-love; devotion to a cause of right rather than to pleasure; most of all, hard work instead of ease. I’ve heard it said, as a thing to be deplored, that shirt sleeves go to shirt sleeves every three generations. Thank God it is so. There is nothing like shirt sleeves, Ned, to make a man—and hard-working, bunching muscles under them. And through my own weakness I’ve let those fine muscles of yours grow flabby and soft.

“Your mother and I have a lot to answer for. Both of us were busy, I with my business, she with her household cares and social duties, and it was easier to give you what you wanted than to refuse you things for your own good. It was easier to let you go soft than to provide hardship for you. It was pleasanter to give in than to hold out—and we loved you too much to put you through what we should have put you through. We excused you your early excesses. All young men did it, we told each other—you were merely sowing your wild oats. Then I found, too late, that I could not interest you in work—in business. You had always played, and you didn’t want to stop playing. And your games weren’t entirely harmless.

“This thing we’ve talked over before. I’ve never been firm. I’ve let you grow to man’s years—twenty-nine, I believe—and still be a child in experience. The work you do around my business could be done by a seventeen-year-old boy. You don’t know what it means to keep a business day. You come when you like and go when you like. In your folly you are no longer careful of the rights of other, better people—or you wouldn’t have driven as you did to-day. You can no longer be bright and attractive at dinner except under the stimulation of cocktails—nothing really vicious yet, but pointing to the way things are going. Ned, I want to make a man of you.”

He paused again, and their eyes met over the table. All too plainly the elder Cornet saw that his appeal had failed to go home. His son was smiling grimly, his eyes sardonic, unmistakable contempt in the curl of his lips. Whether he was angry or not the gray man opposite could not tell. He hoped so in his heart—that Ned had not sunk so low that he could no longer know the stirring urge of manly anger. A great depression drew nigh and enfolded him.

“This isn’t a theater,” was the calloused reply at last. “You are not delivering a lecture to America’s school children! Strangely, I feel quite able to take care of myself.”

“I only wish that I could feel so too.”

“You must think I’m a child—to try to scare me with threats of hell fire. Father, I didn’t realize that you had this streak of puritanism in you.”

His father made no reply at first. Ned’s bitter smile had seemingly passed to his own lips. “I suppose there’s no use of going on,” he said.

“By all means go on, since you are so warmed up to your subject,” Ned answered coldly. “I wouldn’t like to deprive you of the pleasure. You had something on your mind: what is it?”

“It was a real opportunity for you—a chance to show the stuff you’re made of. It wasn’t much, truly—perhaps I have taken the whole thing too seriously. Ned, I wonder if you like excitement.”

“Do I? You know how I love polo——”

“You love to watch! The point is, do you like excitement well enough to take a slight risk of your life for it? Do you care enough about success, on your own hook, to go through snow and ice to win it? A chance came to-day to make from fifty to a hundred thousand dollars for this firm; all it takes is a little nerve, a little endurance of hardship, a little love of adventure. I hoped to interest you in it—by so doing to get you started along the way that leads to manhood and self-respect. You carry this off successfully, and it’s bound to give you ambition to tackle even harder deals. It means contact with men, a whole world of valuable experience, and a world of fun to boot. It wouldn’t appeal to some of your cheap friends—but heaven knows, if you don’t take it up, I’m going to do it myself.”

“Go ahead, shoot!” Ned urged. He smiled wanly, almost superciliously at the enthusiasm that had overswept his father’s face. The old man’s eyes were gleaming like black diamonds.

It was a curious thing, this love of adventure and trial and achievement! The old man was half-mad, immersed in the Sunday-school sentiments of a dead and moth-eaten generation, yet it was marvelous the joy that he got out of living! He was one of an older generation, or he would never anticipate pleasure in projects that incurred hardship, work, responsibility, the silences of the waste places such as he knew on his annual fur-buying expeditions. His sense of pleasure was weird; yet he was consistent, to say the least. Now he was wildly elated from merely _thinking_ about his great scheme,—doubtless some stupid plan to add further prestige to the great fur house of Godfrey Cornet. Ned himself could not find such happiness in twice the number of drinks that were his usual wont.

“It’s simply this,” his father went on, barely able to curb his enthusiasm. “To-day I met Leo Schaffner at lunch, and in our talk he gave me what I consider a real business inspiration. He tells me, in his various jobbing houses, he has several thousand silk and velvet gowns and coats and wraps left on his hands in the financial depression that immediately followed the war. He was cussing his luck because he didn’t know what to do with them. Of course they were part of the surplus that helped glut the markets when hard times made people stop buying—stock that was manufactured during the booming days of the war. He told me that this finery was made of the most beautiful silks and velvets, but all of it was a good three seasons out of style. He offered me the lot of two thousand for—I’m ashamed to tell you how much.”

“Almost nothing!” his son prompted him.

“Yes. Almost nothing. And I took him up.”

His son leaned back, keenly interested for the first time. “Good Lord, why? You can’t go into business selling out-of-date women’s clothes!”

“Can’t, eh? Son, while he was talking to me, it occurred to me all at once that the least of those gowns, the poorest one in the lot, was worth at least a marten skin! Think of it! A marten skin, from Northern Canada and Alaska, returned the trapper around sixty dollars in 1920. Now let me get down to brass tacks.

“It’s true I don’t intend to sell any of those hairy old white trappers any women’s silk gowns. But this was what I was going to have you do: first you were to hire a good auxiliary schooner—a strong, sturdy, seaworthy two-masted craft such as is used in northern trading. You’d fit that craft out with a few weeks’ supplies and fill the hold with a couple of thousand of those gowns. You’d need two or three men to run the launch—I believe the usual crew is a pilot, a first and second engineer, and a cook—and you’d have to have a seamstress to do fitting and make minor alterations. Then you’d start up for Bering Sea.

“You may not know it, but along the coast of Alaska, and throughout the islands of Bering Sea there are hundreds of little, scattered tribes of Indians, all of them trappers of the finest, high-priced furs. Nor do their women dress in furs and skins altogether, either, as popular legend would have you believe. Through their hot, long summer days they wear dresses like American women, and the gayer and prettier the dresses, the better they like ’em. To my knowledge, no one has ever fed them silk—simply because silk was too high—but being women, red or white, they’d simply go crazy over it.

“The other factor in the combination is that the _Intrepid_, due to the unsettled fur market, failed to do any extensive buying on her last annual trading trip through the islands, and as a result practically all the Indians have their full catch on hand. The _Intrepid_ is the only trader through the particular chain of islands I have in mind—the Skopin group, north and east of the Aleutian chain—and she’s not counting on going up again till spring. Then she’ll reap a rich harvest—unless you get there first.

“The Skopin Islands are charted—any that are inhabited at all—easy to find, easy to get to with a seaworthy launch. Every one of those Indians you’ll find there will buy a dress for his squaw or his daughter to show off in, during the summer, and pay for it with a fine piece of fur. For some of the brighter, richer gowns I haven’t any doubt but that you could get blue and silver fox. As I say, the worst of ’em is worth at least a single marten. Considering your lack of space, I’d limit you to marten, blue and silver fox, fisher and mink, and perhaps such other freak furs as would bring a high price—no white fox or muskrat or beaver, perhaps not even ermine and land otter. Ply along from island to island, starting north and working south and west clear out among the Aleuts, to keep out of the way of the winter, showing your dresses at the Indian villages and trading them for furs!

“This is August. I’m already arranging for a license. You’d have to get going in a week. Hit as far north as you want—the farther you go the better you will do—and then work south. Making a big chain that cuts off the currents and the tides, the Skopin group is surrounded by an unbroken ice sheet in midwinter, so you have to count on rounding the Aleutian Peninsula into Pacific waters some time in November. If you wait much longer you’re apt not to get out before spring.

“That’s the whole story. The cargo of furs you should bring out should be worth close to a hundred thousand. Expenses won’t be fifteen thousand in all. It would mean work; dealing with a bunch of crafty redskins isn’t play for boys! Maybe there’d be cold and rough weather, for Bering Sea deserves no man’s trust. But it would be the finest sport in the world, an opportunity to take Alaskan bear and tundra caribou—plenty of adventure and excitement and tremendous profits to boot. It would be a man’s job, Ned—but you’d get a kick out of it you never got out of a booze party in your life. And we split the profits seventy-five—twenty-five—the lion’s share to you.”

He waited, to watch Ned’s face. The young man seemed to be musing. “I could use fifty thousand, pretty neat,” he observed at last.

“Yes—and don’t forget the fun you’d have.”

“But good Lord, think of it. Three months away from Second Avenue.”

“The finest three months of your life—worth all the rest of your stupid, silly past time put together.”

Almost trembling in his eagerness, the old man waited for his son’s reply. The latter took out a cigarette, lighted it, and gazed meditatively through the smoke. “Fifty thousand!” he whispered greedily. “And I suppose I could stand the hardship.”

Then he looked up, faintly smiling. “I’ll go, if Lenore will let me,” he pronounced at last.

III

The exact moment that her name was on Ned’s lips, Lenore Hardenworth herself, in her apartment in a region of fashionable apartments eight blocks from the Cornet home, was also wondering at the perverse ways of parents. It was strange how their selfish interests could disarrange one’s happiest plans. All in all, Lenore was in a wretched mood, savagely angry at the world in general and her mother in particular.

They had had a rather unpleasant half-hour over their cigarettes. Mrs. Hardenworth had been obdurate; Lenore’s prettiest pouts and most winsome ways hadn’t moved her a particle. The former knew all such little wiles; time was when she had practiced them herself with consummate art, and she was not likely to be taken in with them in her old age! Seeing that these were fruitless, her daughter had taken the more desperate stand of anger, always her last resort in getting what she wanted, but to-night it some way failed in the desired effect. There had been almost, if not quite, a scene between these two handsome women under the chandelier’s gleam—and the results, from Lenore’s point of view, had been absolutely nil. Mrs. Hardenworth had calmly stood her ground.

It was the way of the old, Lenore reflected, to give too much of their thought and interest to their own fancied ills. Not even a daughter’s brilliant career could stand between. And who would have guessed that the “nervousness” her mother had complained of so long, pandered to by a fashionable quack and nursed like a baby by the woman herself, should ever lead to such disquieting results. The doctor had recommended a sea voyage to the woman, and the old fool had taken him at his word.

It was not that Lenore felt she could not spare, for some months, her mother’s guiding influence. It was merely that sea voyages cost money, and money, at that particular time, was scarce and growing scarcer about the Hardenworth apartment. Lenore needed all that was available for her own fall and winter gowns, a mink or marten coat to take the place of her near-seal cloak, and for such entertaining as would be needed to hold her place in her own set. Seemingly the only course that remained was to move forward the date of her marriage to Ned, at present set for the following spring.

She dried her eyes, powdered her nose; and for all the late storm made a bewitching picture as she tripped to the door in answer to her fiancé’s knock. Lenore Hardenworth was in all probability the most beautiful girl in her own stylish set and one of the most handsome women in her native city. She was really well known, remembered long and in many places, for her hair. It was simply shimmering gold, and it framed a face of flowerlike beauty,—an even-featured, oval face, softly tinted and daintily piquant. Hers was not a particularly warm beauty, yet it never failed to win a second glance. She had fine, firm lips, a delicate throat, and she had picked up an attractive way of half-dropping firm, white lids over her gray, langourous eyes.

No one could wonder that Lenore Hardenworth was a social success. Besides her beauty of face, the grace of a slender but well-muscled form, she unquestionably had a great deal of ambition and spirit. She was well schooled in the tricks of her trade: charming and ingratiating with her girl friends, sweet and deeply respectful to the old, and striking a fine balance between recklessness and demureness with available men. It can be said for Lenore that she wasted no time with men who were not eligible, in every sense of the word. Lenore had her way to make in this world of trial and stress.

Long ago Ned had chosen her from among her girl friends as the most worthy of his courtship,—a girl who could rule over his house, who loved the life that he lived, whose personal appeal was the greatest. Best of all, she was the product of his own time: a modern girl in every sense of the word. The puritanism he deplored in his own parents was conspicuously absent in her. She smoked with the ease and satisfaction of a man; she held her liquor like a veteran; and of prudery she would never be accused. Not that she was ever rough or crude. Indeed there was a finesse about her harmless little immoralities that made them, to him, wholly adorable and charming. She was always among the first to learn the new dances, and no matter what their murky origin—whether the Barbary Coast or some sordid tenderloin of a great Eastern city—she seemed to be able to dance them without ever conveying the image of vulgarity. Her idea of pleasure ran along with his. Life, at her side, offered only the most delectable vistas.

Besides, the man loved her. His devotion was such that it was the subject of considerable amusement among the more sophisticated of their set. He’d take the _egg_, rather than the _horse-and-buggy_, they told each other, and to those inured in the newest slang, the meaning was simply that Lenore, rather than Ned, would be head of their house. The reason, they explained wisely, was that it spelled disaster to give too much of one’s self to a wife these days. Such devotion put a man at a disadvantage. The woman, sure of her husband, would be speedily bored and soon find other interests. Of course Lenore loved him too, but she kept herself better in hand. For all his modern viewpoint, it was to be doubted that Ned had got completely away from the influence of a dead and moth-eaten generation. Possibly some little vestige of his parent’s puritanism prevailed in him still!

Ned came in soberly, kissed the girl’s inviting lips, then sat beside her on the big divan. Studying his grave face, she waited for him to speak.

“Bad news,” he said at last.

She caught her breath in a quick gasp. It was a curious thing, indicating, perhaps, a more devout interest in him than her friends gave her credit for, that a sudden sense of dismay seemed to sweep over her. Yet surely no great disaster had befallen. There was no cause to fear that some one of the mighty arms on which they leaned for happiness—the great fur house of Cornet, for instance—had weakened and fallen. Some of the warm color paled in her face.

“What is it?” She spoke almost breathlessly, and he turned toward her with wakened interest.

“Nothing very important,” he told her casually. “I’m afraid I startled you with my lugubrious tones. I’ve got to go away for three months.”

She stared a moment in silence, and a warm flush, higher and more angry than that which had just faded, returned to her cheeks. Just for an instant there was a vague, almost imperceptible hardening of the little lines about her beautiful eyes.

“Ned! You can’t! After all our plans. I won’t hear of it——”

“Wait, dearest!” the man pleaded. “Of course I won’t go if you say not——”

“Of course I say not——”

“But it’s a real opportunity—to make forty or fifty thousand. Wait till I tell you about it, anyway.”

He told her simply: the exact plan that his father had proposed. Her interest quickened as he talked. She had a proper respect for wealth, and the idea of the large profits went home speedily and surely to her imagination, shutting out for the moment all other aspects of the affair. And soon she found herself sitting erect, listening keenly to his every word.