Part 10

I had no difficulty in believing him, for Natalie’s experience with her dowry had no doubt put her in the proper frame of mind for any further change of plan I might happen to make. I patted him on the shoulder. “I promised your mother I’d forgive you,” said I, “and I’ll fulfil my promise to the letter. James is best off where he is, and, if you continue to try to please, your prospects shall remain as they are.”

He was overcome with gratitude and relief. But he was presently trying to look sorry. “I feel ashamed of myself,” he said.

“You can afford to,” I replied, drily. “It will cost you nothing. But I venture to suggest that instead of pretending to quarrel with good fortune, you would better be planning to deserve it.”

The two deaths--my wife’s and Ridley’s--coming so close together made a profoundly disagreeable impression upon me. My abhorrence of “the end,” to which I have referred several times, then definitely became a monomania with me. The thought of “the end” began to thrust itself upon me daily--or, rather, nightly. I have never been a happy man. Added to my natural incessant restlessness, which always characterises a creative intellect, and which has kept me as well as every one around me in a state of irritation, there is in me an absolute incapacity to live in the present; and to be happy, I have long since seen, one must live in the present. Occasionally, when my fame or my power or my wealth has been suddenly and vividly revealed to me in moments of triumph, I have lived in the present for a little while. But soon the future, its projects, its duties, its possibilities, have stretched me on the rack again. As for the much-talked-of happiness of anticipation, that is possible only to children and childish persons. When the battle is on--and when has the battle not been on with me?--the general is too busy to indulge in any anticipations of victory. He has hardly time even for anxieties about defeat.

I neglected to note, in its proper order, that my wife willed all her jewels--a value of eight hundred thousand dollars--to James. I consulted my lawyer and found that through carelessness, or, rather, through ignorance of the law, I had given her a legal title to them, a legal right to dispose of them by will. There was nothing for it but to make the best bargain I could. After some roundabout negotiations James declined my proposal that he accept a cash valuation on fair appraisement. He then indulged his passion for theatrical sentimentality and declined the legacy beyond a few trinkets worth hardly a thousand dollars, I should say, which had belonged to his mother in her girlhood and in the first years of her married life. These Helen persuaded him to divide with her. Aurora at first insisted on having part of the jewels; but I wished to keep them all for the direct succession, and so induced her to take two hundred thousand dollars for her claim--agreeing not to subtract it from her share under my will. As she is a satisfactory child, I consider the promise binding.

I sold my old palace for two and a quarter millions to a _parvenu_, dazzled by an accidental half a dozen millions and impatient to show them off before they vanished. While effecting the merger of my three railways, I made quadruple the balance of the cost of my new palace, by extinguishing one minority interest at forty-seven and creating another at one hundred and two. Given the capital, it is incomparably harder to build a palace than to make a score of millions. A very crude sort of man may get rich, but refinement and culture and taste and custom of wealth and a sense of the difference between dignity and ostentation are required to enable a man to demonstrate his fitness to possess wealth. I cannot expect my envious contemporaries publicly to admit that I have demonstrated my fitness. But--future generations will vindicate me in this as in other respects.

I kept a sharp look-out for a house for Walter--or, rather, for the hereditary principal heir of my line. Among the minority stockholders in one of my three railways was Edward Haverford, grandson of that Haverford who originated the secret freight rebate. By the very timid use of it natural in a beginner, and at a time when railway transportation was in its infancy, he had accumulated several millions. I doubt if he had any great amount of brains. I know that his grandson is as stupid as he is stingy. But he had a beautiful little palace in East Seventieth Street, near Fifth Avenue--an ideal home for a gentleman with expectations, the scion of a great family. In the “squeeze” incident to my extinguishing the minority existing before the merger, Haverford lost his fortune and was glad to dispose of his house to me for a million in cash. I established Walter and Natalie there and fixed their allowance from me at eight thousand a month. This is enough to enable them to live in easy circumstances with an occasional grant from me--a happy compromise between an independence that would be dangerous and a dependence that would, in an heir-apparent, seem undignified.

I have decided not to take them in to live with me when Helen is married. I could not endure the daily espionage of those who are to succeed me. They could not conceal from _my_ eyes their impatience for me to be gone. I shall keep them waiting many a year--seventy is not old for any man. For a man of my natural strength it is merely that advanced period of middle life when one must make his health his prime concern.

No, Helen shall stay on with me.

Her case is another instance of the folly of anticipating trouble. From the day she came to me with her confession that she had defied me by going to James at the crisis of his illness, I had been looking forward to a sharp collision with her. Naturally, I assumed that the trouble would come over her marriage. I pictured her falling in love with some nobody with nothing and giving me great anxiety if not humiliation; and, while my wife had a certain amount of capacity in social matters, especially in the last two or three years of her life, I appreciated that she had many serious shortcomings. Intellectually, she was so far inferior to Helen that I could not but fear the worst. I had been, therefore, impatient for her to find a suitable husband for Helen, and so put an end to the peril of a severe blow to my pride and plans. As I had a peculiar affection for Helen, it would have cut me to the quick had she married beneath her.

I was luckier than I hoped. My wife disappointed me by rising to the occasion. Old Mrs. Kirkby, having accepted the alliance with my family, proceeded to make the best of it. She took up my wife and Helen and put them in her own set--it seems to me the dullest in New York, if not in the world, but the most envied, and is beyond question composed of gentlefolk of the true patrician type. As my wife was careful that Helen should meet no one outside that set, and should go nowhere without herself or Mrs. Kirkby in watchful attendance, Helen was completely safeguarded against acquaintance, however slight, with any man of the wrong kind. So assiduous and careful was my wife--thanks, no doubt, to sagacious Mrs. Kirkby’s teaching and example!--that she even never permitted Helen to go either to Walter’s or to Aurora’s when there were to be guests, without first making a study of the list. This was a highly necessary precaution, for both Natalie and Aurora, being safely married, admitted to their houses many persons who were all very well for purposes of amusement, but not their social equals in the sense of eligibility to admission into an upper-class family with a position to maintain.

As everybody knows, the Kuypers are one of the best families in New York. When the original Kirkby was clerk in a Whitehall grocery before the Revolutionary War, a Kuyper kept the grocery--an eminently respectable business in those simple days. He had inherited it from his grandfather, and also a farm near where the Tombs prison now stands. The Kuypers have been people of means and of social and political and military and naval distinction for a century. About a year before my wife died she and Mrs. Kirkby fixed upon Delamotte Kuyper for Helen; and, although he was not rich, I approved their selection. With his comfortable income and what he will inherit and what I intend to leave Helen, they will be well established. In addition to family and position and rank as the eldest son in the direct line, he has the advantages of being a handsome fellow, a graduate of Groton, a student at Harvard and at Oxford, and one of those men who do all sorts of gentlemen’s pastimes surpassingly well. My wife was discreet in concealing her purpose from Helen--so discreet that, when the climax came, the poor child expected us to oppose the marriage. She had heard me and her mother comment often on Delamotte’s comparatively small fortune and expectations--large for an old New York family, but a mere nothing among the fortunes of us newer and more splendid aristocrats. A yachting trip in the Mediterranean, and the business was done.

The yachting trip was my suggestion.

I don’t recall ever having had a more agreeable sensation than when she came to me just after her return--poor Ridley was in the room, I remember. She threw her arms round my neck and said: “You dear splendid old father! How happy you have made me. There never was a luckier girl than I!”

That added half a million to what I’m leaving her in my will.

What a pity, what a shame that she’s a woman! She has my brains. She has my courage. She has a noble character--yes, I admire even her enthusiasms and sentimentalities. She has all the qualifications for the succession except one. There fate cheated me.

I have a sick feeling every time I think what might have happened had James remained in my family and been my principal heir. There’s not the slightest doubt that he would have upset all my plans as soon as I was gone. He would have done his best to recreate for my family the conditions of the old America which made “three generations from shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves” proverbial. How fortunate that he shouldered the blame for Walter’s boyish folly! How fortunate that I did not learn it at a time when I might have been tempted to take him back! I was indeed born under a lucky star.

A lucky star! And yet what have I ever got out of it?--I, who have spent my life in toil and sweat without a moment’s rest or happiness, sacrificing myself to my future generations. Sometimes I look at all these great prizes which I have drawn and hold, and I wonder whether they are of any value, after all. But, valuable or worthless, it was they or nothing, for what else is there beside wealth and power and position?

Nothing!

* * * * *

It is curious how the human mind works--curious and terrible. Seven months after my wife’s death, when we had put aside the mourning and had resumed our ordinary course of life, I suddenly began to think of her as I was shaving. “I wonder what brought _her_ into my mind?” said I to myself, and I decided that my face with the white stubble on its ridges had suggested my familiar black devil--“the end.” But one day several months later, as I was driving from my office to lunch at a directors’ meeting, I happened to notice the lower part of my face in the small mirror in the brougham.

My attention became riveted upon the line of my mouth, thin and firm and straight--with a queer sudden downward dip at the left corner.

“Strange!” said I to myself; “I never noticed _that_ before.”

Then I remembered I _had_ noticed it before, _once_ before and only once--the morning when I was shaving and thought of my wife and “the end.” I had noticed it then and--had I noticed it no morning since because it had disappeared? Or had it been there all along, and had my mind seen it and hidden the fact from me? When one has a well-trained, obedient mind, it can and will hide from him almost anything he would find disagreeable or inconvenient to know.

I tried to straighten that line, but, no matter how I twisted my mouth, the drop at the left corner remained. I caught sight of my eyes in the mirror and found myself staring into the depth of a Something which had thus trapped me into letting it mock me. When my carriage stopped at the Postal Telegraph Building, I was so weak that I could hardly drag myself across the sidewalk and into the elevator. As I was shaving the next morning I dared not look myself in the eyes. But there was the droop, and--yes--a droop of the left eyelid! I gave an involuntary cry--the razor cut me, and dropped to the floor. My valet rushed in. “I--I only cut myself,” I stammered, apologetically. For the first time in my life I was afraid of a human being, from pure terror of what he might see and think.

How I have suffered in the three weeks that have passed since then! Day and night, moment by moment, almost second by second, I find myself listening for a footstep. Now I fancy I hear it, and the icy sweat bursts from every pore; now I realise that I only imagined those stealthy, shuffling, hideously creeping sounds coming along the floor toward me from behind, and I give a gasp of relief.

What a mockery it all is! What a fool’s life I have led! When I am not listening, I am fiercely hating these people round me. They are listening, too--listening eagerly--yes, even my own children. I can see from their furtive glances into my face that they, too, have seen the droop in the line that was straight, the growing weakness in the eye that never quailed. It is frightful, this being gently waited on and soothingly spoken to and patiently borne with--as his gaolers treat a man who is to be shot or hanged next sunrise.

Yet I dare not resent it. I can only cower and suffer.

My crown is slipping from me. No, worse--it is I that am slipping from it. It remains; I, its master, must go. I--its master? How it has tricked me! I have been its slave; it is weary of me; it is about to cast me off.

It has been years since any one has said “must” to me. I had forgotten what a hideous word it is. And if one cannot resent it, cannot resist it! All to whom I have said “must” are revenged.

Every night for a week I have cried like a child. I put my handkerchief under my head to prevent the tears from wilting my pillow and revealing my secret to them as they keep the death-watch on me. Last night I groaned so loudly that my valet rushed in, turned on the electric lights, and drew back the curtains of my bed. When he saw me blazing at him in fury, he shrank and stammered: “Oh, sir, I thought----”

“Get out!” I shrieked.

I knew only too well what he thought.

* * * * *

On the following day--or was it the second day?--Gunderson Kuyper came to see me. Deaths in my family and in his, and other matters, chiefly--at least so I had imagined--my unwillingness to have Helen go away for a wedding trip, had delayed the marriage of my daughter and his son. Then, too, there had been some attempt on the part of his lawyer to find out my intentions in the matter of an allowance for Helen. But, feeling that this was a true love match which ought not to be spoiled by any intrusion of the material and the business-like, I had waved the lawyer off with some vague politeness.

I was completely taken by surprise when, with an exceedingly small amount of hemming and hawing for so aristocratic a despiser of commercialism as Gunderson Kuyper, he flatly demanded a joint settlement of five millions on his son and Helen!

It was particularly important that I should not be excited. The doctors had warned me that rage would probably be fatal. But in spite of this I could not wholly conceal my agitation. “You will have to excuse me, Mr. Kuyper,” said I. “You see what a nervous state I am in. Discussion about business would be highly dangerous. I can only assure you that, as Helen is my favourite child, she and, of course, her husband will be amply provided for. I must beg you not to continue the subject.”

“I understand. I am sincerely sorry.” The oily scoundrel spoke in tones of the most delicate sympathy. “We will postpone the marriage until your health is such that you are able to discuss it.” He rose and came toward me to take leave.

“Instead of quieting my agitation, you have aggravated it,” I said. “These young people have their hearts set on each other--at least I have been led to believe that your son----”

“And you are right, my dear Galloway,” he said--he patronises me, drops the “Mr.” in addressing me, and makes me feel too distant with him to drop it in return. “But as my son has less than fifteen thousand a year, he could not think of marriage with a woman brought up as your daughter has been--unless there were assurance of some further income. I am not in a position to make him an adequate allowance--I can only double his present income. He will, of course, inherit a considerable fortune at my death. But I feel it is only just that you should do your share toward properly establishing the new family.”

“I shall, I shall,” I said, feebly, trying to make him see how unfit I was for such a discussion. “Let them marry. Everything shall be looked after. Only leave me in peace. Do not disturb me with these mercenary----”

That word must have angered him, for his face whitened, and he said, with suppressed fury: “It is perfectly well known, Mr. Galloway, that you made no provision whatever for your other children, and that you keep your son on a beggarly allowance, considering your fortune and the social station which you are struggling to maintain. You have given your elder daughter nothing. I speak plainly, sir, because your dealings with your children and with Mr. Bradish’s daughter are matters of common gossip. I will permit no evasion, no screening behind illness. I must speak the only language you understand. It is a matter of indifference to us----”

“I had no idea the Kuypers were so--so thrifty,” said I, myself in a fury at this vulgar and insulting tirade.

“As I was saying,” he went on, “it is a matter of indifference to us whether my son marries your daughter or not. His mother and I consented only after he had made it plain to us that his happiness was involved. My consent was conditioned on your acting the part of an honourable and considerate father.”

“Our conceptions of a parent are evidently as wide apart as our conceptions of the feeling a young man should entertain toward a young woman he purposes to marry,” said I. “Your demand for five millions is preposterous. The honour of marrying my daughter should be--shall be--sufficient for your son--if I permit the marriage to go on.”

“Very well, sir. You may keep your daughter and your ill-got millions.”

“Strange that ill-got wealth should have such a fascination for you!”

“Everything is purified by passing to innocent hands,” he replied. “But--enough! I am ashamed that my temper should have degraded me to such a controversy with such a man. The longer we have had this matter under advisement the more nauseating it has become. I might have known that nothing but humiliation would result from even considering an alliance with a family whose head is notorious throughout the length and breadth of this land for chicanery, for impudent dishonesty, for theft----”

I heard no more. I was now dimly conscious that his purpose throughout had been, after a perfunctory attempt to arrange a settlement, to provoke a quarrel that would make the marriage impossible. At his last words I felt a pain shoot from my brain throughout my body--a pain so frightful that I straightway lost consciousness.

At last my stealthy, shuffling, creeping enemy had stolen up behind me and had struck me down.

When I came to myself on the third day, Helen was there. “Poor child!” I said, “your dream is over, but----”

“No! No!” she protested.

“Yes--I know your heart was set on that young fellow.”

“Everything is all right now that you are getting well,” she replied, and would not let me say anything more.

In two weeks I was well enough to go about again as before. I found that Delamotte had defied his father and was only waiting for me to consent. For Helen’s sake, I yielded. Why blame the boy? Why make my child wretched? Let them have the chance I never had. Or, did I have it and throw it away? No matter. To sacrifice them to revenge would be petty.

Petty! What is not petty to me, seated in front of The Great Fact?

I must rearrange my will properly to provide for Helen.

How small and repulsive it all is to me!--all that has seemed so stupendous these forty years. I am worn out. If I have not the courage to die, still less have I the courage to go on--or the interest. I want rest.

They tell me--what they always tell a man in my straits. But they know better--and so do I!

Nor do I care.

* * * * *

Too late! Too late! For now, not the poorest, greediest pedlar that cheats in rags for rags at the area-gate would change places with me.

Oh, vanity, how you have swindled me!

No doubt they think my mind is stunned. I have seen other men of my class stricken as I am. I have watched them in this frightful wait for the shaft they knew death had aimed and would not long delay. I know now why their eyes were dull, why their ears seemed not to hear. I know what they were thinking about. For, hour after hour, I too----

(_Here the manuscript ends_)

POSTSCRIPT

On the second day after James Galloway’s death, his eldest and outcast son called at the Galloway palace and asked for his brother Walter. Presently Walter, in dress and manner an ideal chief mourner and chief beneficiary, came down to him in the library. The dead man lay in a magnificent casket in the adjoining ball-room, which was half full of funeral flowers. They were scenting the whole house with stifling, suffocating perfume, sweet yet sickening.

“You came to see--father?” said Walter.

“No,” replied James. “I do not wish to be reminded. I am trying to forgive him.” Then he looked into his brother’s eyes with the keen, frank glance that is one of his many charms. “I’ve come to see you, to ask you what you intend to do about the will.”

Walter’s eyes shifted. “I don’t understand you,” he answered.

“I mean--do you intend to break it?”

There was a long silence. Walter’s upper lip, in spite of his efforts to control it, was twitching nervously. At length he said: “He is gone. It is his will. It contains his--life ambition. I think it would be wrong not to respect it.” He looked at his brother appealingly.

“Then I must warn you that, unless you break it and divide everything equally among his heirs, I shall make a contest.”

“But you consented, Jim!” pleaded Walter, recovering from his stupor.

“Consented--to what?”

“To--to my staying--where I was.”

“While he lived. I said nothing about afterward. If you won’t break the will, I shall. It will be easy enough. I can prove he made it in the belief that I had forged his name. I can prove--that--I didn’t.”

“But you know, Jim, he heard the truth years before he died.”

James smiled cynically. “_How_ do I know it?”

“I told you that mother told him on her death-bed.”

“Would any jury believe you, or believe that I believed you?”

Walter flushed and looked indignantly at his brother. “You offered to shield me for what I did when I was a boy. I was younger than you--hardly more than a child. Now you want to punish me after making me accept your offer. It ain’t like you, Jim!”

“More like father, ain’t it?” said James, sadly. “But--I can’t do otherwise, Walt. I’m only helping you to do what’s just--what’s merely decent.”

“You are trying to destroy our father’s life-work!”