Part 5

When I reached home and was about to undress for my bath and evening change, my daughter Helen knocked and entered. “Well?” said I.

She stood before me, tall and slim and golden brown--the colour is chiefly in her hair and lashes and brows, but there is a golden brown tinge in her skin; as for her eyes, they are more gold than brown, I think. Her dress reaches to her shoe-tops. With her hands clasped in front of her, she fixed her large, serious eyes upon me.

“I went to see James this morning,” she said; then seemed to be waiting--not in fear, but in courage--for my vengeance to descend.

I scowled and turned away to hide the satisfaction this gave me. At least there is one female in my family with a woman’s heart!

“Who put you up to it?” I demanded, sharply.

“Nobody. I heard the boys calling in the street--and--I went.”

I turned upon her and looked at her narrowly. “Why do you tell me?” I asked.

“Because not to have told you would have been a lie.”

She said this quite simply. I had never been so astonished before in my life. “And what of that?” said I--a shameful question under the circumstances to put to a child; but I was completely off my guard, and I couldn’t believe there was not an underlying motive of practical gain.

“I do not care to lie,” she answered, her eyes upon mine. I found her look hard to withstand--a new experience for me, as I can usually compel any one’s gaze to shift.

“You’re a good child,” said I, patting her on the shoulder. “I shall not punish you this time. You may go.”

She flushed to the line of her hair, and her eyes blazed. She drew herself away from my hand and left me staring after her, more astonished than before.

A strange person--surely, a personality! She will be troublesome some day--soon.

With such beauty and such fine presence she ought to make a magnificent marriage.

I was free to take up Walter and Natalie again. After dinner I said to him, as we sat smoking: “Have you spoken to Natalie? What does she say? What date did you settle upon?”

He looked sheepishly from Burridge to Ridley, then appealingly at me. I laughed at this affectation of delicacy, but I humoured him by sending them away. “What date?” I repeated.

He twitched more than usual before he succeeded in saying: “She refuses to decide just yet.”

“Why?” I demanded.

“She says she doesn’t want to settle down so young.”

“Young!” I exclaimed. “Why, she’s twenty-one--out three seasons. What’s the matter with you, that you haven’t got her half frightened to death lest she’ll lose you?” With all he has to offer through being my son and my principal heir he ought to be able to settle the marriage on his own terms in every respect--and to keep the whip for ever afterward.

“I don’t know,” he replied; “she just won’t. I don’t think she cares much about--about the marriage.”

This was too feeble and foolish to answer. There isn’t a more sensible, better-brought-up girl in New York than Natalie. Her mother began training her in the cradle to look forward to being mistress of a great fortune. I knew she, and her mother and father too, had fixed on mine as _the_ fortune as long ago as five years--she was only sixteen when I myself noted her making eyes at Jim and never losing a chance to ingratiate herself with me. Her temporising with Walter convinced me there was something wrong--and I suspected what. I went to see her, and got her to take a drive with me.

As my victoria entered the Park I began: “What’s the matter, Natalie? Why won’t you ‘name the day’? We’re old friends. You can talk to me as freely as to your own father.”

“I know it,” she replied; “you’ve always been _so_ good to me--and you are _so_ kind and generous.” There isn’t a better manner anywhere than Natalie’s. She has a character as strong and fine as her face.

“I’m getting old,” I went on, “and I want to see my boy settled. I want to see you my daughter, ready to take up your duties as head of my house.”

“Don’t try to hurry me,” she said, a trace of irritation in her voice. “I’m only twenty-one. I wish to have a little pleasure before I become as serious as I’ll have to be when I’m--your daughter.”

I noticed that she pointedly avoided saying “Walter’s wife.” This confirmed my suspicion. The habit of judging everything and everybody calmly and dispassionately has made me see the members of my own family just as I see outsiders. And I couldn’t blame her for balking at Walter, exasperating though it was to have her thus impede my plans.

“Is there anything wrong, Natalie?” I asked, gently. “Speak frankly to me--perhaps I can smooth it out.”

“Oh, thank you!” she exclaimed. It’s really delightful to see a person who can be warmhearted, yet stop short of indiscreet and dangerous sentimentality. “But,” she went on, “how can I tell _you_?”

“Is it Walter?” I asked, with a smile that invited confidence and guaranteed sympathy.

She was silent.

“Has he been disagreeable to you?”

“Oh, no!--he’s kindness itself. But--I don’t know--I simply can’t make up my mind to marry.”

She didn’t add “him,” but she let me see that she meant it. I saw the struggle that had been going on in her mind. She did not like him, to put it mildly. She longed to give him up. Every time she thought of him she felt that she must. Every time she thought of me and my fortune, and the position I would give my son’s wife, she felt that she couldn’t.

“Have you talked with your mother about this?” I knew what a clear-headed, far-sighted woman Matt Bradish’s wife was--she’s married off three children, all splendidly, not to speak of her catching Matt.

“If she doesn’t stop nagging me she’ll drive me to marry--somebody else,” said Natalie, her voice trembling with anger. “I’ll kick the traces, sure as fate.”

“But I’m sure you don’t care for this somebody else,” I said, positively. I knew the chap--a painter. I can’t conceive why people of our sort permit youths of that kind to roam among their marriageable daughters. Even a sensible, well-trained girl, with all youth’s disdain of poverty and adoration of wealth, has her foolish moments like the rest of us. “I’m sure you don’t,” I repeated.

“But at least I don’t--don’t--_dislike_ him.”

I was thoroughly alarmed. I saw that she was actually trying to goad me into anger against her; that she was riding for a fall; wished to force herself into a position where marriage with Walter would be made impossible. The poor child hadn’t the heart to refuse the prize which she lacked the stomach to take; she wished to make me snatch it from her. But the Bradish connection is far too important to my plans. I haven’t had my hand on my temper-rein for forty years without being able to control my feelings--when I wish. Besides, it was Walter that she practically said she disliked; and I can see how she might--I certainly shouldn’t love him if it were not my duty to do so.

“You’ve got your choice, my child,” said I, “of being married for your money or of marrying into as enviable a position as there is in New York. I _know_ you’re too sensible to let trifles obscure your judgment.”

“I simply _won’t_ be driven!” she retorted. “Why should I bother? I’ve got a little something in my own right.”

“Just enough to make you realise the possibilities of wealth,” I replied--“just enough to spur your ambition.” I began to watch her face keenly. “And you sha’n’t have to wait for your triumph,” I said, and I made an impressive pause before I slowly added: “I’m going to settle an annual income of a quarter of a million on you for life.”

I saw her face soften. The colour came and went in her delicate skin.

“I have tested you, Natalie,” I went on. “I know you are the woman I want as my daughter. It will make me happy to see you outshining them all, as you will. And I’ll make you absolutely independent of Walter--of me, even.”

She was looking at me with glistening eyes. I saw that I had thrilled her through and through. Profoundly to move a human being, one must touch his or her deepest passion--his or her particular form of vanity.

“Won’t you, Natalie?” I pleaded, “won’t you make me happy? Won’t you let me give you what your beauty and refinement demand?”

She looked at me sweetly--a look of surrender.

I knew I had won. Then her eyes were twinkling, and instantly I grasped the reason. We both burst out laughing. It certainly was amusing--a father wooing and winning for his son where all his son’s efforts had made his cause only more hopeless. And throughout, what a quaint reversal of old-established, generally accepted ideas of love and marriage! But--“Other times, other customs!”

I dropped Natalie at Mrs. Kirkby’s and went back to my study. I rang the bell and sent the answering servant for Walter. Presently I looked up from my work--he was standing before me, shifting his eyes from point to point, his body from leg to leg.

“You will marry on the sixteenth of April, at noon,” said I. “Get yourself ready.”

And I dismissed him with a wave of my hand.

It would be sheer madness for me to keep my apparent promise, made, in the heat of my earnestness, merely to save Natalie from her own folly, and therefore not really binding. To give her a quarter of a million a year absolutely and for life would be to invite disaster--no, to compel it. She’d be in the divorce courts ridding herself of Walter within two years.

She shall have the substance of my promise--I shall do everything for her. But she must not have the mere letter, which would injure her, would tempt her to wreck her life and my plans and the future of her children. It was wise to promise; it would be wrong to fulfil. No, I must retain full control, must keep my steadying hand firmly upon her. And, after all, what did I pledge?

I was careful to phrase it delicately, for I’m always extremely particular in my choice and use of words at crucial moments. I was careful to say, “an annual income of a quarter of a million.” All turns upon the word “an”--if it were “the,” my phrase would mean something entirely different.

I shall settle two hundred and fifty thousand on her on the day they marry--after the ceremony. I shall protest that a quarter of a million in all was what I meant--and I certainly did, though I don’t here deny that I may have meant for her to think I meant a quarter of a million a year. She will be--not in what you would call a pleasant state of mind. But what can she do? When she shall have calmed down, she’ll probably give me the benefit of the doubt, tell herself she misunderstood me, rail at herself for her folly, and then--behave herself.

True, she’s shrewd, and her parents, too. They’ll try legally to commit me _before_ the wedding. But surely I can circumvent them.

There’s “a way out.” There _always_ is!

IV

It was necessary for me to find, calculating liberally, about eight million dollars--the four millions definitely promised to my university, a quarter of a million to redeem my promise to Natalie, a million properly to set Walter and her going in an independent establishment, two millions to provide them with the income to maintain it, and about half a million for my own and my family’s regular annual expenses. Further, an investment of twelve millions that had been sending its seven per cent. securely and regularly for the past nine years was about to fall in through the payment of the debt it represented--I could write a volume on the harassments and exasperations of hunting investments. Finally, I was hoping that Aurora would marry Horton Kirkby, which might mean a million, perhaps several millions, more, if he should demand a dowry.

The situation commanded me to plan and carry through some new enterprise which would afford me a safe investment for my released twelve millions and in addition would net me enough to cover well the other demands upon me. Years ago--as soon as I had my first million put by--I resolved that I would never for any purpose whatsoever subtract a penny either from the principal or from the income of my fortune. Gifts of all kinds, expenses of all kinds, outgo of every description, must come from new sources of revenue; my fortune and its income and the surplus over the previous year’s outgo must be treated as a sacred fund of which I was merely the trustee. That rule has put me often in straits, has forced me to many money-making measures that in the narrow view would be called relentless. But to it the world owes my highest achievements, as a financier and industrial leader, and to it I owe the bulk of my fortune.

The brain earns in vain, however hugely, if the hands do not hoard; and, thanks to my rule, my hands have been like those valves which open only to pressure from without and seal the more tightly the greater the pressure from within.

I could not break my rule. Yet I must properly marry my children and must keep my promise to my university; and to have left twelve millions of capital idle would have been to show myself unworthy of the responsibilities of great wealth. I was thus literally driven to one of those large public services which are so venomously criticised by the small and the envious. Every action of no matter what kind produces both good and bad consequences. To wait until one could act without any unfortunate results to anybody would be to sit motionless, even to refrain from eating. The most that conscience demands is that one shall do only those things which in his best judgment will show a balance on the side of good.

I had long had my eye on certain mines and appendant manufactories situated at several points on two of my three lines of railway. They were doing well enough in a small way; but I knew that, combined under the direction of such a brain as mine, they would become immensely more profitable. I now saw no alternative to taking them and making them as valuable and as useful as they were clearly intended to be. In preparation for the _coup_ I withdrew from the directory of my third railway, substituting one of my unrecognised agents, himself a millionaire in a small way; and I put my stock in the names of others of my agents and did not deny the report that I had ceased to have any financial interest in the road. Thus I was in a position to alter its freight rates without the change being traced to me by those prying meddlers who are so active in their interference in other people’s business nowadays. When it was universally believed that I no longer had any connection with my third road, and that it had passed to a control hostile to me, I ordered it to give large secret rebates upon all freight of the kind I wished to affect.

The result was that the owners of those mines and factories, being compelled to ship by my two other railways, which stiffly maintained rates, were no longer able to compete. Their competitors, shipping by my third line, easily undersold them with the assistance of the secret rebate. They came in a stew and sweat to my two presidents and said that secret rebates by the third line were the cause of their impending ruin. My two presidents agreed with them and opened a fierce war of words upon my third president--him whom they and every one else thought hostile to me. He retorted with a sweeping denial of their charges. “It is nothing new in a world of self-excuse,” said he, “for incompetent business men to attribute their misfortunes to the wickedness of others instead of to the real source--their own incapacity and incompetence.” And so the sham battle raged by mail and newspaper interview. But--the mine and factory owners I was gunning for got nothing tangible out of it. Their competitors continued to undersell them; their business rapidly languished.

When I saw that they were in a sufficiently humble frame of mind I came to their relief. I sent word to them that, as I had a warm personal feeling for the towns dependent upon the prosperity of their works, I would take a hand in their languishing businesses if they wished and would do my utmost to maintain the apparently hopeless battle.

My offer was received with enthusiastic gratitude--as it should have been; for, while it is true that I had precipitated the crisis which their antiquated methods of doing business would have inevitably brought sooner or later, is it not also true that I have the right to do what I wish with my own? And are not those two railways, and the third, as well, my own? But for the present rampant spirit of contemptuous disregard for the rights of private property and the impudent intrusions into private business it would not have been necessary for me to disguise myself and act like a housebreaker in order to exercise my plain rights--yes, and do my plain duty; for can there be any question in any judicial mind that it is the duty of men of the commercial and financial genius which I possess to use it to bring the resources of the country to their highest efficiency?

After some negotiations I got control of the properties that I needed and that needed me. I agreed to pay altogether fifteen millions for a controlling share in them--about half what it would have cost me before I brought my rebate artillery to bear, but about twice what control would have cost had I battered away for six months longer. I might have accomplished my purpose much more cheaply; but I am not a hard man, and I do not flatter myself when I say that conscience is the dominant factor in all my operations. I felt that in the circumstances the owners were entitled to consideration and that to make my victory complete would be an abuse of power. It is hardly necessary to add that my generosity had its prudent side, as has all rational generosity. To have assailed the properties too long in order to get them cheap would have permanently impaired their value; to have wiped out the owners utterly would have caused a profound, possibly dangerous, public resentment against my class, too many members of which had been guilty of the grave blunder of using their power without regard to public opinion. But while prudence was a factor in my general settlement, the main factor was, as I have said, conscience. Not the narrow conscientiousness of ordinary men, which is three parts ignorance, two parts cowardice, and five parts envy--for is it not usually roused only when the acts of others are to be judged?

When my offer was accepted I organised a combination to take over the properties, and I paid for them with its guaranteed bonds and preferred stock. Then I countermanded the order for a heavy secret rebate against their products and, instead, issued an order for a small secret rebate in their favour--letting the public think I had by some secret audacious move regained control of my third railroad. The combination’s business boomed, its stock went up, and all that it was necessary for me to sell was eagerly bought. What with the bonds and the stocks I sold, I had gained control without its having cost me a penny. It is not vanity, is it, when I call that genius?

But control is not possession, and these properties are worth possessing. I must possess them. It is not just that so large a part of the profits of my labour--of my act of creation--should go to others.

I have anticipated somewhat. The operation took a considerable time, but not long in view of the great results. When one has my vast resources and my peculiar talents, men and events _move_, obstacles are blown up, roads are thrust swift and straight through the thickest tangles, and the objective is reached before feeble folk have got beyond the stage of debate and diplomacy. Still, nearly a year elapsed between the start and the finish, and many things happened which were the reverse of satisfactory--most of them, as usual, in my domestic affairs.

I had got the enterprise only fairly under way when the invitations for Walter’s wedding were issued. Natalie’s father had seen me several times and had shown his determination to intervene in the matter of her dowry by bringing up the subject at our business conferences whenever he could force the smallest opening. Like all my associates, from capitalist to clerk, he is in awe of me. I see to it that in the velvet glove there shall always be holes through which the iron hand can be plainly seen. That often saves me the exertion of using it. An iron hand, once it has an established reputation, is mightier when merely seen than when felt. He would always begin by some vague, halting reference to my promised generosity.

“A royal gift, Galloway!” he would say, enthusiastically. “You certainly are a king, much more powerful than those European figureheads.”

But he never had the courage to speak the exact sum, the “quarter of a million dollars a year,” that I saw in his hungry, glistening, hopeful, yet doubtful eyes. And I would not take the hint to discuss the gift further, but would put him off by showing how completely I was absorbed in the forming combination. Probably at the time he was letting his greed blind him into believing I would make as big a fool of myself as I had rashly promised and so was fearful of irritating me in any way. Two days before the wedding invitations went out he forced himself on me for lunch. I saw determination written in his face--determination to compel me to something definite about that “quarter of a million a year” for his daughter. So, at the first pause in the conversation, I played my card.

“Matt,” said I, “I really must arrange the formalities for that settlement on _our_ daughter. I’ll have my lawyer--will the latter part of the week do? He’s up to his eyes in the combination just now.”

Bradish looked enormously relieved. He could hardly keep from laughing outright with delight--the miserable old seller of his own children. “Oh, I wasn’t disturbing myself,” he replied; “your word’s good enough, though, of course, you’d--we’d--want the thing in legal shape--before the marriage.”

“Of course,” said I, waving the matter aside as settled, and beginning again on the affairs of the combination. I had let him into it on attractive terms and had put him on my board of directors. He revelled in these favours as the mere foretaste of his gains from the powerful commercial alliance he was making through his daughter.

Out went the invitations--and the first danger point was rounded.

On the following Sunday night I left suddenly in my private car for an inspection of the new properties. Every day of nearly two weeks was full to its last minute. When I returned to New York five days before the wedding, I was utterly worn out. I went to bed and sent for my doctor--Hanbury.