Part 15

She welcomed Beecher's arrival as that of an ally and made him the pretext of withdrawing from the general conversation. The moment he looked at her, he had the tact to perceive that any display of sympathy would be an offense. There was no trace left of the weak and desperate woman. Instead, he was aware of an immense change in her, a transformation that was moral, and looking into her eyes he could not realize that he had ever seen them weep.

"They'll force out Slade," said a voice.

"Where are you tonight?" she asked quietly.

"In Mrs. Craig Fontaine's box," he said.

"Mrs. Kildair is there, isn't she?"

"Yes." He hesitated, but did not deliver her message. The woman before him asked compassion from no one. In the commotion at his side he caught a phrase: "Wonder if Slade will kill himself too?"

"Do you like Fornez?" he said hastily, and despite himself he looked into her eyes to see what effect the remark had made.

"Very much," she said coldly, a little staccato. And then calmly, to end a subject that was disagreeable to her, she turned to the other. "Fornez has made a success, don't you think?"

Beecher left presently, oppressed by the hardness that he felt in her.

"There's a woman who will never have any pity," he thought as he left. Mr. Bloodgood, who remembered him with a malicious smile, shook his hand with extra cordiality.

"Did you give my message?" asked Mrs. Kildair as he took his place.

"It was wiser not," he said. Then all at once, struck by the fatigue in her face, he asked anxiously: "Are you very tired?"

"Yes, very," she said.

In this box, too, nothing had been spoken of except the drama, which at that moment was centered about John G. Slade. As nothing could possibly be known, every one arrived with a fresh rumor, and the burden of all was the annihilation of the Westerner. The sudden darkness came to her as a relief. She relaxed wearily in her chair and forced her mind to forget itself in the sudden access of gaiety from the stage.

This second act was a veritable triumph for Emma Fornez. In the scene of Don Jose's return she acted with such fine and natural primitive passion that all the constricted little feminine natures in the audience were stirred by the pulsing exhibition of an emotion they had carefully choked or reduced to mathematics, and, really moved, trembling in their imprisoned bodies, they applauded for the first time. Then suddenly they ceased--a little ashamed.

In descending the stairway to go behind the stage, Beecher perceived Miss Charters in the distance of the shifting crowd. He stopped, by a movement he did not analyze, to speak to a purely chance acquaintance, hoping that she would perceive him. Then he continued to the dressing-room of the prima donna.

Emma Fornez was in a state of frenzied delight.

"I have them, Teddy--I have them! Is it not so?" she cried, clapping her hands together as a child. She flung her arms about him, embracing him. In fact, she embraced every one--even Victorine, her maid.

"The house is wild with enthusiasm," he said, laughing.

"Aha! I made them sit up, didn't I--your cold women! It's the second act, Teddy--the second--you get them there. Bah! They don't even know what I did to them." All at once she stopped, seriously assuming a countenance of terror. "Oh, but the critics--what will the monsters say! They never like it when the audience is too enthusiastic."

"I saw Macklin applauding, Madame," said Spinetti, putting his head into the room.

"Angel!" cried Emma Fornez, and she embraced Spinetti. Then, knowing in herself that the day was won, she began to amuse her audience. "Do you know what the critics will write? I'll tell you. The audience was carried off its feet in the second act. They will praise the first. They will say the second was obvious, and they will praise the third act, because there I shall do a little trick to them--in the card scene. I shall be very noble--very tragic. I will make a little picture of death before my eyes--with all his bones rattling and his great big hollow eyes, and they shall see it on my face--so! And I'll look very steady--noble--profound--like a queen. See?--a thing which Carmen would nevere, nevere do, for she's a little wretch of an animal that would be frightened to death. But you will see they will all like it--it's their moral that you have to serve up to them."

"Third act--third act," came the running call from the flies. "All on the stage for the third act."

When Beecher entered the corridor, Miss Charters was only a short distance away. He was prepared for Lorraine as a companion, but he felt a sudden anger at the sight of Garraboy, who in turn, suddenly comprehending the aim of his partner's maneuvers, looked anything but pleased.

She nodded to him, holding out her hand.

"She is wonderful, Teddy, wonderful. Have you seen her? Is she pleased?"

"She is a great, great artist," he said with extra warmth. "She is pleased as a child."

The two men had nodded with that impertinent jerk of the head which in society conveys the effect of a bucket of water.

"Come and see me after the next act," she said, looking at him closely.

"If I can," he said hastily.

He went up the steps and from the tail of his eye saw her linger, watching him as he went. A little contrition, a sudden sympathy came to him, but he repressed it angrily, saying to himself between his teeth:

"Garraboy--how can she stand for that!"

When he returned to the box, Mrs. Kildair and Mrs. Fontaine were in the anteroom in low converse. He was suddenly struck with the look of age in Mrs. Kildair's face.

"But I assure you--I can go alone," she was saying.

"I would not allow it," said Mrs. Fontaine firmly. Then turning to Beecher she said, so as not to reach the others: "Teddy, as soon as the curtain is up, step out. Mrs. Kildair is not well. You will take her home. I have ordered the automobile. You can get back for the last act."

Mrs. Kildair made no further remonstrance--she was at the end of her tether.

"Sit here," she said to Beecher, sitting down on the couch. "I don't want to be noticed."

"You're ill!" he said alarmed.

"Yes, ill," she said mechanically.

At this moment the house became still. She rose with a return of energy and signaled him that she was ready. Five minutes later they were in the automobile fleeing uptown.

A moment of weakness was rare in her life, yet she comprehended it without seeking to delude herself.

"At twenty I should not even have trembled," she said to herself, sinking back into the cushioned seat and watching the lights of the streets flash past the window with a comforting emotion of speed. "Now it is different. Every life has one supreme opportunity--this is mine. I know it."

Had a woman been at her side instead of Beecher, she would have given her confidence in the terrible necessity for sharing the emotion that was too vital to her. As it was, she restrained herself, remaining silent by a last effort of her will, but her hand on the window-frame began a nervous syncopated beating, imitating the click of the fleeing rails which one hears on a railroad train.

"You are feeling better?" said the young man in a troubled voice.

"Open the window--just for a moment," she answered.

The sudden blast of cold air, damp as though laden with the tears of the city, terrified her with its suggestion of despair and defeat.

"No, no, shut it!" she said hurriedly.

He obeyed and then to distract her, began:

"I received your note, Rita, just before coming, McKenna--"

"No, no," she said, interrupting him, "that is nothing. Just let me be quiet a moment--get hold of myself."

But in a few moments she was forced to seek the stimulus of the air again, and she cried hurriedly, not concealing her agitation:

"Open, open quick!"

The crisis which she felt approaching with every block which fell behind was so immense, the stake so ardently coveted, so weakly feared, that she had in the last eternal waiting moments a sensation of vertigo, that swept down and seized her even as on the football field before the blowing of the whistle the stanchest player feels his heart lying before him on the ground. She opened her lips, drinking in the chill, revivifying draught, unaware of the strange impression her disordered countenance in the embrasure of the window made on the occasional passers-by.

"Better first in a village than second in Rome."

She found herself repeating the saying mechanically, without quite understanding how it had so suddenly leaped into her mind. Then, as the automobile turned into her street, and she felt that he was there waiting as he had promised, successful or ruined; that now in ten minutes all would be over, she would know; all at once, without that sense of humor which deserts us in great stress, she began to pray confusedly to some one immense, whom she had never understood, but one who seemed to hold all fates in the balancing of his fingers.

"Are you better? What shall I do? Shall I come up with you?" asked Beecher, totally in the dark.

"No, no--wait," she said hurriedly, as the machine ground to a stop. She did not rise at once, stiffening in her seat, grasping the arm of the young man until he winced under the contraction of her fingers.

"Good!" she said suddenly; and before he could prevent her she was out on the sidewalk. "No, no; stay in. Thanks, thanks a thousand times. I'll send you back."

Before he could protest, she shut the door firmly and nodded to the chauffeur.

The elevator boy was already at the swinging glass doors, holding them open for her entrance.

"Mr. Slade here, Jo?" she said instantly.

"Yes, ma'am; upstairs."

"How long?"

"About half an hour."

She entered the elevator and descended at the landing, waiting until it had disappeared.

"Now for it!" she said, pressing the bell. And by a last display of her will, she sent through her body a wave of cold resolution that left her outwardly impassive with a little touch of scorn on her lips.

*CHAPTER XVIII*

It is only in the supreme crisis of a colossal disaster that a nation, which fondly believes it elects its governing bodies, perceives its real masters, and then in the alarm and confusion of its apprehension, it does not recognize what it is shown. The group of ten men who were assembled at Gunther's, awaiting the arrival of Slade, either in themselves or through the influences they represented, could bring to their support over ten billions of capital. If it were possible to conceive of a master spirit who could unite these ten men, forgetting mutual jealousy and distrust, into one unanimous body with but a single object, in five years these ten men, without the impediment of law, could own every necessary newspaper and magazine in the country, operate every railroad, and, by the simple process of reinvesting their earnings annually, control every important industry, every necessary chain of banks, the entire food supply of the nation, and, at the cost of twenty million dollars every four years and by remaining unknown, control the necessary number of candidates in both political parties in matters essential to their financial interests. That such a coalition will remain a fantasy, is due to two factors: the human nature of such individuals and the human nature of multitudes which, were they successful, would find the corrective in massacre. When such a monetary alliance does take place, it is usually from the necessity, as they see it, of saving the country by the simple process of enriching themselves.

When Slade arrived, he entered by the separate entrance to Gunther's personal apartments, which were situated in a lower wing of the monstrous turreted granite structure which might have served for a miniature Bastile. One of the secretaries was at the door carefully scrutinizing all arrivals. The moment he entered, he was aware that his fate was not the only one that was under discussion.

The wing of the house was laid out in the form of a Maltese cross, with a square anteroom in the center, heavily spread with silk Persian rugs, and furnished with easy divans and upholstered chairs. Above was a skylight, now transformed into a vast reflector for the burst of electric lights.

Four entrances of equal height in heavy Florentine relief gave on this anteroom; from Gunther's private office, from the library, from the rooms of the private secretaries, and from the outer entrance by which Slade advanced. In the middle of the anteroom Gunther was seated at a small card-table, studiously engrossed in a game of solitaire. He was a medium-seized man who, without an effect of bulk, conveyed an instant impression of solidity, while the head, remarkable in the changed physiognomy of the present day, had the falcon-like, eerie quality, characteristic of the spreading eyebrows and deep-set glance of the American before the Civil War. Slow in movement, slow in speech, he was likewise slow in the deliberation with which his scrutiny left the face he was considering.

At the vigorous shock of Slade's coming, he completed a row of carefully laid cards and lifted his head.

"How do you do, Mr. Gunther?" said Slade, whose eye was instantly set on the half-opened doors leading into the library, from which sounds of altercation were issuing.

Slade's arrival seemed to surprise Gunther, who looked at his watch and said, without rising:

"You're ahead of time, Mr. Slade."

"Always like to look over the ground when there's a battle," said Slade, who in fact had intentionally effected a surprise.

"Sit down."

He motioned to the secretary, who, moving on springs, brought cigars and a light.

"I'll have to keep you waiting, Mr. Slade. There is a conference taking place."

Slade glanced from the library to the closed doors of the secretaries' room.

"How many conferences have you?"

Gunther turned over a card, studied it and carefully laid it down. It was his manner of settling a question he did not wish to answer.

Slade was not offended by the rebuff. Holding most men in antagonism, he had conceived a violent admiration for Gunther and as he was the man above all others whom he wished to impress, he imitated his taciturnity, turning his imagination on the probable groups behind the three double doors, which once had closed on a famous conspiracy in a palace of turbulent medieval Florence.

Gunther at this moment was probably the most powerful personal force in the United States, and, what was more extraordinary, in an era of public antipathy to its newly created magnates, enjoyed universal respect. As he showed himself rarely, never gave interviews, and surrounded himself by choice with that inciting element of seclusion which Napoleon by calculation adopted on his return from Italy, the public had magnified what it could not perceive. Even as royal personages of distinctly bourgeois caliber have been impressed on history by the exigencies of the kingly tradition as models of tact and statesmanship, so events and the necessities of the public imagination had combined to throw about the personality of Gunther an atmosphere of grandiose mystery. Just as it is true that what is a virtue in one man is a defect in another, the imagination he possessed was much less than he was credited with and his power lay in his ability to control it. For imagination, which is the genius of progress, in a banker approaches a crime.

His strength lay in being that inevitable man who results as the balance wheel of conflicting interests. For beyond the Stock Exchange, which is a purely artificial organization, the financial powers will always create what amounts to a saving check, around one inevitable personality, whom they can trust and about whom, in times of common danger, they can rally as to a standard. At this moment, the invested wealth of the country, frightened at the cataclysm which threatened it, had thrown its resources implicitly into the hands of this one man, who came forward at the psychological time to stop the panic, issuing his orders, and marshaling his forces with a response of instant obedience.

"What's going on here?" said Slade to himself. "And what's the proposition they're reckoning on squeezing out of me? I'd like to know what's going on behind those doors."

As though in response to his wish the doors of the secretaries' room swung, and a round, rolling little man of fifty, in evening dress, came hurriedly out, holding in his hand a slip of paper. He approached the stolid player with precipitation, and yet, obeying a certain instinct of deference, which showed itself despite his disorder, he waited until Gunther had completed a play he had in hand before blurting out:

"Mr. Gunther, this is the best we can do."

Gunther took the slip which was offered to him, glanced at it and returned it abruptly.

"Not sufficient," he said and took up his pack of cards.

The emissary, crestfallen and desperate, returned to the conference and at the opening of the door the sound of violent discussion momentarily filled the anteroom as a sudden blast of storm.

"I have it," said Slade, who had recognized Delancy Gilbert, of the firm of Gilbert, Drake & Bauerman, brokers and promoters of mining interests in Mexico, whose failure had been circulated from lip to lip in the last forty-eight hours. "I see that game. Gilbert's to be mulcted of his Osaba interests--for whom though? The United Mining, undoubtedly."

Five minutes later the doors of the library opened in turn and a military figure, gray, bent, with tears in his eyes, came slowly out, the type of convenient figureheads which stronger men place in the presidencies of subsidiary corporations. He likewise placed a sheet of paper before the financier, watching him from the corner of his eye, his white finger working nervously in the grizzled mustache.

"We've agreed on this, Mr. Gunther," he said desperately, in a voice shaken by suppressed emotion. "That's as far as we can go--and that means ruin!"

Gunther examined the sheet with slow attention, nodding favorably twice; but at a third column he shook his head and, seizing a pencil, jotted down a figure, carefully drawing a circle around it.

"That's what I must have," he said and returned to his solitaire.

The emissary hesitated, seemed about to argue, and then, with a hopeless heave of his shoulders, retired. Gunther frowned but the frown was called forth by an unfavorable conjunction of the cards. Not once had he seemed to notice the presence of Slade. In the same position the promoter could not have helped stealing a glance to witness the effect. Slade registered the observation, mentally admitting the difference.

"What does he keep me here for?" he thought, but almost immediately answered the question: "Effect on the others, of course. Well, let them pull their own chestnuts out of the fire."

In the last emissary he had recognized General Arthur Roe Paxton, President of the Mohican Trust, exploiter of certain Southern oil fields, equally involved in the Osaba speculation. The knowledge of the operations which were being discussed--which he readily divined were the surrender of important holdings--prepared him for the demands he must expect to meet.

At this moment Gunther swept the cards together, glanced at his watch, and pressed an electric button.

"Mr. Slade," he said, fixing his lantern-like stare upon the promoter, "I need not tell you that we are in a desperate situation, that it is time for action--decisive and immediate action."

Slade answered by an impatient jerking of his thumb, and, rising as he beheld the secretary returning from the private office where he had been sent by a look of Gunther's, said:

"I understand perfectly. If the gentlemen whom I am to meet understand the situation as well as I do, we shall have no trouble."

Gunther continued to study him thoughtfully, struck by the confidence of his attitude where desperation might have been expected. He seemed for a moment about to say something, but presently, giving a sign to his secretary, began thoughtfully to shuffle the cards.

In the private office a group of men were assembled about the long table. The disposition of Slade had been but an incident in the discussion which had been called to decide upon the methods to be pursued in coming to the support of the market, and the deliberation had left its marks of dissension. Slade, on entering, rapidly surveyed the group, perceived its discord, and divided it into its component interests.

"The United Mining is the key," he said, on recognizing Haggerty and Forscheim.

The group was like a trans-section of that conflicting America which seems to hold the destiny of types. Fontaine, one of the landed proprietors of the city, French of descent and aristocratic by the purifying experience of two generations, was next to Haggerty, a cross-grained, roughly hewn type of the indomitable Irish immigrant of the seventies, who had risen to power out of the silver mines of the eighties. Leo Marx, olive in tint, whispering in manner, thin-veined and handsome, represented the Jewish aristocracy that had ingrained itself in the great banking houses of New York; while Forscheim, leading spirit of five brothers, abrupt, too aggressive or too compliant, cunning and unsatisfied, was the Hebrew of speculation, the creator of the great corporation known as the United Mining.

Judge Seton B. Barton, representative of the great oil interests, was the grim Yankee, unrelieved by his modifying humor, implacable in small things as well as great, knowing no other interest in life except the passion of acquiring.

Kraus, an ungainly, bulky German-American, had not moved from the half-retreating position he had taken on seating himself. He answered with a short movement of his head, watching every one with covetous, suspicious eyes that glimmered weakly over the spectacles which had slipped to the bridge of his nose, never suggested a move, and gave his assent the last. He was the owner of a fortune estimated at three hundred millions, acquired in lumber holdings over a territory in the West which would have made another Belgium.

McBane, one of the strongest figures which the rise of the great steel industry had propelled into the public light, was a short, fussy, brisk little man, tenacious, agile, obstinate in opinion, while outwardly smiling with a general air of delighted surprise at his own success. He was the present active force in the group of steel magnates whose personal fortunes alone amounted to over three quarters of a billion.

Marcus Stone, president of the greatest banking force of the country, the Columbus National, was a middle-westerner, sprung from the hardy soil of Ohio, virile, deep-lunged, direct and domineering, agent of colossal enterprises, rooted in conservatism and regarding his vocation as an almost sacred call. He accounted himself a poor man; he was worth only three millions.

Rupert V. Steele, head of the legal firm of Steele, Forshay & Benton, corporation lawyers, was the type of the brilliant Southerner, adventuring into the Eldorado of New York as the Gascon seeks Paris or the Irishman the lure of London. He might almost be said to have created a new profession--the lawyer-promoter--and in his capacious, fertile head had been evolved the schemes of law-avoiding combinations that others received the credit for. In public he was one of the stanchest defenders of the Constitution and an eloquent exponent of the sanctity of the judiciary.