Puzzling over her seeming unconsciousness of the, to him, all-important fact that she was a woman and he a man, he decided that it must be a deliberately chosen policy, the result of things she had heard about him. He had always avoided talking of his conquests, though he appreciated that it was the quick and easy road to a fresh conquest; but it pleased him to feel that his reputation as a rake, a man before whom women struck the flag at the first sign from him, was as great as his fame for painting. And it seemed to him that, if Neva had heard, as she must, she could not but be in a receptive state of mind. "That's why she's on her guard," he concluded. "She's secretly at war with the old-fashioned notions in which she was bred."He could not long keep silent. "Has somebody been slandering me to my friend?" asked he abruptly, one day, after they had both been silently at work for nearly an hour.She paused, glanced at him, shook her head—a very charming head it was now, with the hair free about her temples and ears and in a loose coil low upon her neck. "No," said she, apparently with candor. "Why?""It seemed to me you were peculiar of late—distant with me.""Really, it isn't so. You know I'd not permit anyone to speak against you to me.""But—well, a man of my sort always has a lot of stories going round about him—things not usually regarded as discreditable—but you might not take so lenient a view."Her face turned toward her easel again, her expression unreadably reserved."Not that I've been a saint," he went on. "We who have the artistic temperament— What does that temperament mean but abnormal sensibility of nerves, all the nerves?""That is true," assented she.Then she was not so cold as she seemed! She understood what it was to feel. "Of course," he proceeded, "I appreciate your ideas on those subjects. At least I assume you have the ideas of the people among whom you were brought up."She was silent for a moment. Then she said, as if she were carefully choosing her words, "I've learned that standards of morals, like standards of taste, are individual. There are many things about human nature as I see it in—in my friends—that I do not understand. But I realize I deserve no credit for being what I am when I have not the slightest temptation to be otherwise."Silence again, as he wondered whether her remark was a chance shot or a subtle way of informing him that, if he were thinking of her as a woman and a possibility, he was wasting energy. "What I wished to say," he finally ventured, "was that I had the right to expect you to accept me for what I am to you. You cannot judge of what I may or may not have been to anyone else, of what others may or may not have been to me.""What you are to me," replied she earnestly, "I've no right, or wish, to go beyond that.""And," pursued he with some raillery, "don't forget we should be grateful for all varieties of human nature—the valleys that make the peaks, the peaks that make the abysses. What a world for suicide it would be, if human nature were one vast prairie and life one long Sunday in Battle Field.... What did you hear about me?""Nothing that interested me.""Really?" He could not help showing pique."Nothing that would have changed me, if I had believed.""I warned you it might be true," he interrupted."True or false, it was not part of the Boris Raphael I admire and respect."He shifted his eyes, colored, was silenced. He did not like her frank friendliness; he did not want her respect, or the sort of admiration that goes with respect. But he somehow felt cheap and mean and ashamed before her, had a highly uncomfortable sense of being an inferior before a superior. He was glad to drop the subject. "At least," reflected he, "the longer the delay, the richer the prize. She was meant for some man. And what other has my chance?"And, meanwhile, following his instinct and his custom, he showed her of his all-sided nature only what he thought she would like to see; time enough to be what he wished, when he should have got her where he wished—a re-creation for the gratification of as many sides of him as she had, or developed, capacity to delight.VIIA WOMAN'S POINT OF VIEWNarcisse, summoned by a telephone message, went to Fosdick's house. As she entered the imposing arched entrance, Amy appeared, on the way to take her dog for a drive. "It's father wants to see you," said she. "I'll take you to him, and go. I'd send Zut alone, but the coachman and footman object to driving the carriage with no one but him in it. Fancy! Aren't some people too silly in their snobbishness—and the upper class isn't in it with the lower classes, is it?""You don't begin to know how amusing you are sometimes," said Narcisse."Oh, I'm always forgetting. You've got ideas like Armstrong. You know him?""I've met him," said Narcisse indifferently. "You say your father wants to see me?"Amy looked disappointed. Her mind was full of Armstrong, and she wished to talk about him with Narcisse, to tell her all she thought and felt, or thought she thought and felt. "There's been a good deal of talk that he and I are engaged," she persisted. "You had heard it?""I never hear things of that sort," said Narcisse coldly. "I'm too busy.""Well—there's nothing in it. We're simply friends.""I'm sorry," said Narcisse.Amy bridled. "Sorry! I'm sureIcare nothing about him.""Then, I'm glad," said Narcisse. "I'm whatever you like. Is your father waiting for me?"Narcisse liked old Fosdick—his hearty voice, his sturdy optimism, his genial tolerance of all human weaknesses, even of crimes, his passion for the best of everything, his careless generosity. "It's fine," she often thought, "to see a man act about his own hard-earned wealth as if he had found it in a lump in the street or had won it in a lottery." He seemed in high spirits that morning, though Narcisse observed that the lines in his face looked heavier than usual. "Sorry to drag you clear up here about such a little matter," said he when they two were seated, with his big table desk between them. "I just wanted to caution you and your brother. Quite unnecessary, I know; still, it's my habit to neglect nothing. I'm thinking of the two buildings you are putting up for us—for the O.A.D. How are they getting on? I've so much to attend to, I don't often get round to details I know are in perfectly safe hands.""We start the one in Chicago next month, and the one here in May—I hope.""Good—splendid! Rush them along. You—you and your brother—understand that everything about them is absolutely private business. If any newspaper reporter—or anybody—on any pretext whatever—comes nosing round, you are to say nothing. Whatever is given out about them, we'll give out ourselves down at the main office.""I'll see to that," said Narcisse. "I'm glad you are cautioning us. We might have given out something. Indeed, now that I think of it, a man was talking with my brother about the buildings yesterday."Fosdick leaned forward with sudden and astonishing agitation. "What did he want?" he cried."Merely some specifications as to the cost of similar buildings.""Did your brother give him what he asked for?" demanded the old man."Not yet. I believe he's to get the figures together and give them to him to-morrow."Fosdick brought his fist down on the table and laughed with a kind of savage joy. "The damned scoundrels!" he exclaimed. Then, hastily, "Just step to the telephone, Miss Siersdorf, and call up your brother and tell him on no account to give that information."Narcisse hesitated. "But—that's a very common occurrence in our business," objected she. "I don't see how we can refuse—unless the man is a trifler. Anyone who is building likes to have a concrete example to go by.""Please do as I ask, Miss Siersdorf," said Fosdick. "We'll discuss it afterwards."Narcisse obeyed, and when she returned said, "My brother will give out nothing more. But I find I was mistaken. He gave the estimates yesterday afternoon."Fosdick sank back in his chair, his features contracted in anger and anxiety. When she tried to speak, he waved her imperiously into silence. "I must think," he said curtly. "Don't interrupt!" She watched his face, but could make nothing definite of its vague reflections of his apparently dark and stormy thoughts. Finally he said, in a nearer approach to his usual tone and manner, "It's soon remedied. Your brother can send for the man. You know who he was?""His name was Delmar. He represented the Howlands, the Chicago drygoods people.""Um," grunted Fosdick, reflecting again; then, as if he had found what he was searching for, "Yes—that's the trail. Well, Miss Siersdorf, as I was saying, your brother will send for Delmar and will tell him there was a mistake. And he'll give him another set of figures—say, doubling or trebling the first set. He'll say he neglected to make allowance for finer materials and details of stonework and woodwork—hardwood floors, marble from Italy, and so forth and so forth. You understand. He'll say he meant simply the ordinary first-rate office building—and wasn't calculating on such palaces as he's putting up for the O.A.D."Narcisse sat straight and silent, staring into her lap. Fosdick's cigar had gone out. She had never before objected especially to its odor; now she found it almost insupportable."You'd better telephone him," continued Fosdick. "No—I'll just have the butler telephone him to come up here. We might as well make sure of getting it straight."Narcisse did not stir while Fosdick was out of the room, nor when he resumed his seat and went on, "All this is too intricate to explain in detail, Miss Siersdorf, but I'll give you an idea of it. It's a question of the secrecy of our accounts.""But we know nothing of your company's accounts, Mr. Fosdick," said she. "You will remember that, under our contracts, we have nothing whatever to do with the bills—that they go direct to your own people and are paid by them. We warned you it was a dangerous system, but you insisted on keeping to it. You said it was your long established way, that a change would upset your whole bookkeeping, that——""Yes—yes. I remember perfectly," interrupted Fosdick, all good humor."You can't hold us responsible. We don't even know what payments have been made.""Precisely—precisely.""It's a stupid system, permit me to say. It allows chances for no end of fraud on you—though I think the people we employed are honest and won't take advantage of it. And, if your auditors wanted to, they could charge the company twice or three times or several times what the building cost, and——""Exactly," interrupted Fosdick, an unpleasant sharpness in his voice. "Let's not waste time discussing that. Let me proceed. We wish no one to know what our buildings cost.""But—you have to make reports—to your stockholders—policy holders rather.""In a way—yes," admitted Fosdick. "But all the men who have the direction and control of large enterprises take a certain latitude. The average citizen is a picayunish fellow, mean about small sums. He wouldn't understand many of the expenditures necessary to the conduct of large affairs. He even prefers not to be irritated by knowing just where every dollar goes. He's satisfied with the results.""But how does he know the results shown him are the real results? Why, under that system, figures might be juggled to cheat him out of nearly all the profits.""The public is satisfied to get a reasonable return for the money it invests—andwealways guarantee that," replied Fosdick grandly.Narcisse looked at him with startled eyes, as if a sharp turn of the road had brought her to the brink of a yawning abyss. It suddenly dawned on her—the whole system of "finance." In one swift second a thousand disconnected facts merged into a complete, repulsive whole. So,thiswas where these enormous fortunes came from! The big fellows inveigled the public into enterprises by promises of equal shares; then they juggled accounts, stole most of the profits, saddled all the losses on the investors. And she had admired the daring of these great financiers! Why, who wouldn't be daring, with no conscience, no honor, and a free hand to gamble with other people's money, without risking a penny of his own! And she had admired their generosity, their philanthropy, when it was simply the reckless wastefulness of the thief, after one rich haul and before another! She saw them, all over the world, gathering in the mites of toiling millions as trust funds, and stealing all but enough to encourage the poor fools to continue sending in their mites! She read it all in Josiah's face now, in the faces of her rich clients; and she wondered how she could have been so blind as not to see it before. That hungry look, sometimes frankly there, again disguised by a slimy over-layer of piety, again by whiskers or fat, but always there. Face after face of her scores of acquaintances among the powerful in finance rose beside Josiah's until she shrank and paled. Under the slather of respectability, what gross appetites, what repulsive passions! But for the absence of the brutal bruisings of ignorance and drink, these facts would seem exhibits in a rogues' gallery.Josiah had no great opinion of the brains of his fellow men. Women he regarded as mentally deficient—were they not incapable of comprehending business? So, while he saw that Narcisse was not accepting his statement as the honorable, though practical, truth he believed it to be, he was not disturbed. "I see you don't quite follow me," he said with kindly condescension. "Business is very complex. My point is, however, that our accounts are for our own guidance, and not for our rivals to get hold of and use in exciting a lot of silly, ignorant people."Alois Siersdorf now entered and was effusively welcomed. "What's the matter?" he exclaimed. "Have I made a mess of some sort?""Not at all, my boy," said Fosdick, clapping him on the back. "Our rivals have got up an investigating committee—have set on some of our policy holders to pretend to be dissatisfied with our management. I thought until yesterday that the committee was simply a haphazard affair, got together by some blackmailing lawyer. Then I learned that it was a really serious attempt of a rival of mine to take the company away from me. They're smelling round for things to 'expose'—the old trick. They think this is a rare good time to play it because the damn-fool public has been liquored up with all sorts of brandy by reformers and anarchists and socialists, trying to set it on to tear down the social structure. No man's reputation is safe. You know how it is in big affairs. It takes a broad-gage man to understand them. A little fellow thinks he sees thief and robber and swindler written everywhere, if he gets a peep at the inside. I don't know what we're coming to, with the masses being educated just enough to imagine they know, and to try to take the management of affairs out of the hands of the substantial men."With lip curling Narcisse looked at her brother, expecting to see in his face some sign of appreciation of the disgusting comedy of Fosdick's cant; but he seemed to be taking Josiah and his oration quite seriously; to her amazement he said, "I often think of that, Mr. Fosdick. We must have a stronger government, and abolish universal suffrage. This thing of ignorant men, with no respect for the class with brains and property, having an equal voice with us has got to stop or we'll have ruin."A self-confessed thief trying to justify himself by slandering those he had robbed, and angry with them because they were not grateful to him for not having taken all their property—and her brother applauding!"You're right," said Fosdick, clapping him on the knee. "I've been trying to explain to your sister—though I'm afraid I don't make myself clear. The ladies—even the smartest of them—are not very attentive when we men talk of the business side of things. However, I suggested to her that you recall those specifications you gave my enemies——""Is it possible!" exclaimed Siersdorf, shocked. "Yes—yes—I see—I understand. But I can straighten it all out. I was rather vague with Delmar. I'll send for him and tell him I was calculating on very different kinds of buildings for him—something much cheaper——""Precisely!" cried Josiah. "Your brother's got a quick mind, Miss Siersdorf."Narcisse turned away. Her brother had not even waited for Fosdick to unfold his miserable chicane; his own brain had instantly worked out the same idea; and, instead of in shame suppressing it, he had uttered it as if it were honest and honorable!"There's another matter," continued Fosdick. He no longer felt that he must advance cautiously. Sometimes, persons not familiar with large affairs, not accustomed to dealing under the conditions that compel liberal interpretation of the moral code, had been known to balk, unless approached gradually, unless led by gentle stages above narrow ideas of the just and the right. But clearly, the Siersdorfs, living in the atmosphere of high finance, did not need to be acclimated. "It may be this committee can get permission from the State Government to pry into our affairs. I don't think it can; indeed, I almost know it can't; we've got the Government friendly to us and not at all sympathetic with these plausible blackmailers and disguised anarchists. Still, it's always well to provide for any contingency. If you should get a tip that you were likely to be wanted as witnesses you could arrange for a few weeks abroad, and not leave anything—any books or papers—for these scoundrels to nose into, couldn't you?""Certainly," assented Siersdorf, with great alacrity. "You may be sure they'll get nothing out of us.""Then, that's settled," said Fosdick. "And now, let's have lunch, and forget business. I want to hear more about those plans for Amy's house down in Jersey. She has told me a good deal, but not all.""We can't stop to lunch," interposed Narcisse, with a meaning look at her brother. "We must go back to the office at once." And when she saw that Fosdick was getting ready for a handshake, she moved toward the door, keeping out of his range without pointedly showing what she was about. In the street with her brother she walked silently, moodily beside him, selecting the softest words that would honestly express the thoughts she felt she must not conceal from him."A great man, Fosdick," said Alois. "One of the biggest men in the country—a splendid character, strong, able and honorable.""Why do you say that just at this time?" asked his sister.Alois reddened a little, avoided meeting her glance."To convince yourself?" she went on. "To make us seem less—less dishonest and cowardly?"He flashed at her; his anger was suspiciously ready. "I felt you were taking that view of it!" he cried. "You are utterly unpractical. You want to run the world by copybook morality.""Because I haven't thrown 'Thou shalt not steal' overboard? Because I am ashamed, Alois, that we are helping this man Fosdick to cover his cowardly thief tracks?""You don't understand, Cissy," he remonstrated, posing energetically as the superior male forbearing with the inferior female. "You oughtn't to judge what you haven't the knowledge to judge correctly.""He is a thief," retorted she bluntly. "And we are making ourselves his accomplices."Alois's smile was uncomfortable. With the manner of a man near the limit of patience with folly, he explained, "What you are giving those lurid names to is nothing but the ordinary routine of business, throughout the world. Do you suppose the man of great financial intellect would do the work he does for small wages? Do you imagine the little people he works for and has to work through, the beneficiaries of all those giant enterprises, would give him his just due voluntarily? He's a man of affairs, and he works practically, deals with human nature on human principles—just as do all the great men of action."Narcisse stopped short, gazed at him in amazement. "Alois!" she exclaimed.He disregarded her rebuke, her reminder of the time when he had thought and talked very differently. "Suppose," he persisted, "these great fortunes didn't exist; suppose Fosdick were ass enough to take a salary and divide up the profits; suppose all these people of wealth we work for were to be honest according to your definition of the word—what then? Why, millions of people would get ten or twelve dollars a year, or something like that, more than they now have, and there'd be no great fortunes to encourage art, to employ people like us, to endow colleges and make the higher and more beautiful side of life.""That's too shallow to answer," said Narcisse sternly. "You know better, Alois. You know it's from the poor that intellect and art and all that's genuine and great and progressive come—never from the rich, from wealth. But even if it were not so, how canyoudefend anything that means a sacrifice of character?" She stopped in the street and looked at him. "Alois,whathas changed you?""Come," he urged rather shamefacedly. "People are watching us."They went on in silence, separated at the offices with a few constrained words. They did not meet again until the next morning—when he sought her. He looked much as usual—fresh, handsome, supple in body and mind. Her eyes were red round the edges of the lids and her usually healthy skin had the paleness that comes from a sleepless night. "Well," he said, with his sweet, conciliatory smile—he had a perfect disposition, while hers was often "difficult." "Do you still think I'm wrong—and desperately wicked?""I haven't changed my mind," she answered, avoiding his gaze.He frowned; his face showed the obstinacy that passes current for will in a world of vacillators."You've always left business to me," he went on. "Just continue to leave it. Rest assured I'll do nothing to injure my honor in the opinion of any rational, practical person—or the honor of the firm."She was not deceived by the note of conciliation in his voice; she knew he had his mind fixed. She was at her desk, stiffly erect, gazing straight ahead. Her expression brought out all the character in her features, brought out that beauty of feminine strength which the best of the Greeks have succeeded in giving their sculptured heroines. Without warning she flung herself forward, hid her face and burst into tears. "Oh, Ihatemyself!" she cried. "I'm nothing but a woman, after all—miserable, contemptible, weak creatures that we are!"He settled himself on the arm of her chair and drew her into his arm. "You're a finer person in every way than I am," he said; "a better brain and a better character. But, Cissy dear, don't judge in matters that aren't within your scope.""Do as you please," she replied brokenly. "I'm a woman—and where's the woman that wouldn't sacrifice anything and everything for love?"She had, indeed, spent a night of horror. She felt that what he had done was frightful dishonor—was proof that he was losing his moral sense and, what seemed to her worse, becoming a pander to the class for which they did most of the work they especially prided themselves upon. She felt that, for his sake no less than for her own, she ought to join the issue squarely and force him to choose the right road, or herself go on in it alone. But she knew that he would let her go. And she had only him. She loved him; she would not break with him; she could not."You know nothing about those buildings, anyhow," he continued. "Just forget the whole business. I'll take care of it. Isn't that fair?""Anything! Anything!" she sobbed. "Only, let there be peace and love between us."VIIIIN NEVA'S STUDIOShown into the big workroom of Neva's apartment with its light softened and diffused by skillfully adjusted curtains and screens, Narcisse devoted the few minutes before Neva came to that thorough inspection which an intelligent workman always gives the habitat of a fellow worker."What a sensitive creature she is!" was the reminiscent conclusion of the builder after the first glance round. A less keen observer might have detected a nature as delicately balanced as an aspen leaf in the subtle appreciation of harmony and contrast, of light and shade. And there were none of the showy, shallow tricks of the poseur; for, the room was plain, as a serious worker always insists on having his surroundings. It appeared in the hanging of the few pictures, in the colors of the few rugs and draperies, of walls, ceiling, furniture, in the absence of anything that was not pleasing; the things that are not in a room speak as eloquently of its tenant as do the things that are there."Not a scrap of her own work," thought Narcisse, with a smile for the shyness that omission hinted."Pardon my keeping you waiting," apologized Neva, entering in her long, brown blouse with stains of paint. "I was at work when you were announced.""And you had to hustle everything out of sight, so I'd have no chance to see."Neva nodded smiling assent. "But I'm better than I used to be. Really, I am. My point of view is changing—rapidly—so rapidly that I wake up each morning a different person from the one who went to bed the night before."Narcisse was thinking that the Neva before her was as unlike the Neva of their school days as a spring landscape is unlike the same stretch in the bleak monotones of winter. "Getting more confidence in yourself?" suggested she aloud. "Or are you beginning to see that the world is an old fraud whose judgments aren't important enough to make anyone nervous?""Both," replied Neva. "But I can't honestly claim to be self-made-over. Boris teaches me a great deal beside painting."Narcisse changed expression. As they talked on and on—of their work, of the West, of the college and their friendship there, Neva felt that Narcisse had some undercurrent of thought which she was striving with, whether to suppress or express, she could not tell. The conversation drifted back to New York, to Boris. There was something of warning in Narcisse's face, and something of another emotion less clearly defined as she said with a brave effort at the rigidly judicial, "Boris is a great man; but first of all a man. You know what that means when a man is dealing with a woman."Neva's lip curled slightly. "That side of human nature doesn't interest me."Narcisse, watching her closely, could not but be convinced that the indifference in her tone was not simulated. "Not yet," she thought. Then, aloud, "That side doesn't often interest a woman until she finds she must choose between becoming interested in it and losing the man altogether."Neva looked at her with a strange, startled expression, as if she were absorbing a new and vital truth, self-evident, astonishing."Boris has lived a long time," continued Narcisse. "And women have conquered him so often that they've taught him how to conquer them.""I don't know much about him, beyond the painting," said Neva. "And I don't care to know."The silence that fell was constrained. It was with tone and look of shyness more like Neva than like herself that Narcisse presently went on, "I owe a great deal to Boris. He made me what I am.... He broke my heart."Neva gave her a glance of wonder and fear—wonder that she should be confiding such a secret, fear lest the confidence would be repented. Narcisse's expression, pensive but by no means tragic, not even melancholy, reassured her. "You know," she proceeded, "no one ever does anything real until his or her heart has been broken."Neva, startled, listened with curious, breathless intentness."We learn only by experience. And the great lesson comes only from the great experience.""Yes," said Neva softly. She nodded absently. "Yes," she repeated."When one's heart is broken ... then, one discovers one's real self—the part that can be relied on through everything and anything."Neva, with studied carelessness, opened a drawer in the stand beside her and began to examine the tips of a handful of brushes. Her face was thus no longer completely at the mercy of a possible searching glance from her friend."Show me anyone who has done anything worth while," continued Narcisse, "and I'll show you a man or a woman whose heart has been broken—and mended—made strong.... It isn't always love that does the breaking. In fact, it's usually something else—especially with men. In my case it happened to be love."Neva's fingers had ceased to play with the brushes. Her hands rested upon the edge of the drawer lightly, yet their expression was somehow tense. Her eyes were gazing into—Narcisse wondered what vision was hypnotizing them."It was ten years ago—when I was studying in Paris. I can see how he might not be attractive to some women, but he was to me." Narcisse laughed slightly. "I don't know what might have happened, if he hadn't been drawn away by a little Roumanian singer, like an orchid waving in a perfumed breeze. All Paris was quite mad about her, and Boris got her. She thought she got him; but he survived, while she— When she made her way back to Paris, she found it perfectly calm.""And you still care for him?" said Neva gently.Narcisse laughed healthily. "I mended my heart, accepted my lesson.... Isn't it queer, how differently one looks at a person one has cared for, after one is cured?""I don't know," said Neva, in a slow, constrained way. "I've never had the experience."After a silence Narcisse went on, "I've no objection to your repeating to him what I've said. It was a mere reminiscence, not at all a confession."Neva shook her head. "That would bring up a subject a woman should avoid with men. If it is never opened, it remains closed; if it's ever opened, it can't be shut again."Narcisse was struck by the penetration of this, and proceeded to reëxamine Neva more thoroughly. Nothing is more neglected than the revision from time to time of our opinions of those about us. Though character is as mobile as every other quantity in this whirling kaleidoscope of a universe, we make up our minds about our acquaintances and friends once for all, and refuse to change unless forced by some cataclysm. As their talk unfolded the Neva beneath the surface, it soon appeared to Narcisse that either she or Neva had become radically different since their intimacy of twelve years before. "Probably both of us," she decided. "I've learned to read character better, and she has more character to read. I remember, I used to think she was one of those who would develop late—even for a woman.""It was stupid of me," she said to Neva, "but I've been assuming you are just as you were. Now it dawns on me that you are as new to me as if you were an entire stranger. You are different—outside and inside.""Inside, I've certainly changed," admitted Neva. "Don't you think we're, all of us, like the animals that shed their skins? We live in a mental skin, and it seems to be ours for good and all; but all the time a new skin is forming underneath; and then, some fine day, the old skin slips away, and we're quite new from top to tip—apparently."Narcisse's expression was encouraging."That happened to me," continued Neva. "But I didn't realize it—not completely—until the divorce was over and I was settled here, in this huge wilderness where the people can't find each other or even see each other, for the crowd. It was the first time in my life. I could look about me with the certainty I wasn't being watched, peeped at, pressed in on all sides by curious eyes—hostile eyes, for all curious eyes are hostile. But you were born and brought up in a small town. You know.""Yes," said Narcisse. "Everybody lives a public life in a little town.""Here I could, so to speak, stand in the sun naked and let its light beat on my body, without fear of peepers and pryers." She drew a long breath and stretched out her arms in a gesture of enormous relief. "I dare to be myself. Free! All my life I'd been shut in, waiting and hoping some one would come and lead me out where there was warmth and affection. Wasn't that vanity! Now, I'm seeking what I want—the only way to get it."Narcisse's face took on an expression of cynicism, melancholy rather than bitter. "Don't seek among your fellow beings. They're always off the right temperature—they either burn you or freeze you.""Oh, but I'm not trying to get warmth, but to give it," replied Neva. "I'm not merchandising. I'm in a business where the losses are the profits, the givings the gains.""The only businesses that really pay," said Narcisse. "The returns from the others are like the magician's money that seemed to be gold but was only withered mulberry leaves. Won't you let me see some of your work—anything?"Neva drew aside a curtain, wheeled out an easel, on it her unfinished portrait of Raphael. At first glance—and with most people the first glance is the final verdict—there seemed only an elusive resemblance to Raphael. It was one of those portraits that are forthwith condemned as "poor likenesses." But Narcisse, perhaps partly because she was sympathetically interested in Neva's work and knew that Neva must put intelligence into whatever she did, soon penetrated to the deeper purpose. The human face is both a medium and a mask; it both reveals and covers the personality behind. It is more the mask and less the medium when the personality is consciously facing the world. A portrait that is a good likeness is, thus, often a meaningless or misleading picture of the personality, because it presents that personality when carefully posed for conscious inspection. On the other hand, a portrait that is hardly recognizable by those who know best, and least, the person it purports to portray, may be in fact a true, a profound, a perfect likeness—a faithful reproduction of the face as a medium, with the mask discarded. The problem the painter attempts, the problem genius occasionally solves but mere talent rarely, and then imperfectly, is to combine the medium and the mask—to paint the mask so transparently that the medium, the real face, shows through; yet not so transparently that eyes which demand a "speaking likeness" are disappointed.Neva, taught by Raphael to face and wrestle with that problem, was in this secret unfinished portrait striving for his "living likeness" only. She had learned that painting the "speaking likeness" is an unimportant matter to the artist as artist—however important it may be to him as seeker of profitable orders or of fame's brassy acclaim so vulgar yet so sweet. She was not seeking fame, she was not dependent upon commissions; she was free to grapple the ultimate mystery of art. And this attempt to fix Raphael, the beautiful-ugly, lofty-low, fine-coarse, kind-cruel personality that walked the earth behind that gorgeous-grotesque external of his, was her first essay."All things to all men—and all women, like the genius that he is," said Narcisse, half to herself. Then to Neva, "What doeshethink of it?""He hasn't seen it.... I doubt if I'll ever show it to him—or to anybody, when it's finished.""It does threaten to be an intrusion on his right of privacy," said Narcisse. "No, he's not attracting you in the least as a man."Neva looked amused. "Why did you say that?""Because the picture is so—so impersonal." She laughed. "How angry it would make him."When Narcisse, after a long, intimacy-renewing, or, rather, intimacy-beginning, stop, rose to go, she said, "I'm going to bring my friend, Amy Fosdick, here some time soon. She has asked me and I've promised her. She is very eager to meet you."Instantly Neva made the first vivid show of her old-time shy constraint. "I've a rule against meeting people," stammered she. "I don't wish to seem ungracious, but——""Oh!" said Narcisse, embarrassed. "Very well."An awkward silence; Narcisse moved toward the door. "I fear I've offended you," Neva said wistfully."Not at all," replied Narcisse, and she honestly tried to be cordial in accepting denial. "You've the right to do as you please, surely.""In theory, yes," said Neva, with a faint melancholy smile. "But only in theory."Now unconsciously and now consciously we are constantly testing those about us, especially our friends, to learn how far we can go in imposing our ever aggressive wills upon them; and the stronger our own personalities the more irritating it is to find ourselves flung back from an unyielding surface where we had expected to advance easily. In spite of her sense of justice, Narcisse was irritated against Neva for refusing. But she also realized she must get over this irritation, must accept and profit by this timely hint that Neva's will must be respected. Most friendship is mere selfishness in masquerade—is mere seeking of advantage through the supposedly blindly altruistic affections of friends. Narcisse, having capacity for real friendship, was eager for a real friend. She saw that Neva was worth the winning. And now that Alois was breaking away— Stretching out her hands appealingly, she said, "Please, dear, don't draw away from me."Neva understood, responded. Now that Narcisse was not by clouded face and averted eye demanding explanation as a right, she felt free to give it. "There's a reason, Narcisse," said she, "a good reason why I shan't let Miss Fosdick come here and gratify her curiosity.""Reason or no reason," exclaimed Narcisse, "forget my—my impertinence.... I—I want—I need your friendship.""Not more than I need yours," said Neva. "Not so much. You have your brother, while I have no one.""My brother!" Tears glistened in Narcisse's eyes. "Yes—until he becomes some other woman's lover." She embraced Neva, and departed hastily, ashamed of her unwonted show of emotion, but not regretting it.IXMASTER AND MANWhen Waller, the small, dark, discreet factotum to Fosdick, came to Armstrong's office to ask him to go to Mr. Fosdick "as soon as you conveniently can," Armstrong knew something unusual was astir.Fosdick rarely interfered in the insurance department of the O.A.D. Like all his fellow financiers bearing the courtesy title of "captains of industry," he addressed himself entirely to so manipulating the sums gathered in by his subordinates that he could retain as much of them and their usufruct as his prudence, compromising with his greediness, permitted. In the insurance department he as a rule merely noted totals—results. If he had suggestion or criticism to make, he went to Armstrong. That fitted in with the fiction that he was no more in the O.A.D. than an influential director, that the Atlantic and Southwestern Trunk Line was his chief occupation.Armstrong descended to the third floor—occupied by the A.S.W.T.L. which was supposed to have no connection with the purely philanthropic O.A.D., "sustainer of old age and defender of the widow and the orphan." He went directly through the suite of offices there to Fosdick's own den. Fosdick had four rooms. The outermost was for the reception of all visitors and the final disposition of such of them as the underlings there could attend to. Next came the office of the mysterious, gravely smiling Waller, with his large white teeth and pretty mustache and the folding picture frame containing photographs of wife and son and two daughters on his desk before him—what an air of the home hovering over and sanctifying the office diffused from that little panorama! Many callers supposed that Waller's office was Fosdick's, that Fosdick almost never came down there, that Waller was for all practical purposes Fosdick. The third room was for those who, having convinced the outer understrappers that they ought to be admitted as far as Waller, succeeded in convincing Waller that they must be personally inspected and heard by the great man himself. In this third room, there was no article of furniture but a carpet. Waller would usher his visitor in and leave him standing—standing, unless he chose to sit upon the floor; for there was no chair to sit upon, no desk or projection from the wall to lean against. Soon Fosdick would abruptly and hurriedly enter—the man of pressing affairs, pausing on his way from one supremely important matter to another. Fosdick calculated that this seatless private reception room saved him as much time as the two outer visitor-sifters together; for not a few of the men who had real business to bring before him were garrulous; and to be received standing, to be talked with standing, was a most effective encouragement to pointedness and brevity.The fourth and innermost room was Fosdick's real office—luxurious, magnificent even; the rugs and the desk and chairs had cost the policy holders of the O.A.D. nearly a hundred thousand dollars; the pictures, the marble bust of Fosdick himself, the statuary, the bookcases and other furnishings had cost the shareholders of the A.S.W.T.L. almost as much more.Armstrong found Fosdick talking with Morris, Joe Morris, who was one of his minor personal counsel, and was paid in part by a fixed annual retainer from the A.S.W.T.L., in part from the elastic and generously large legal fund of the O.A.D. As Armstrong entered, Fosdick said: "Well, Joe, that's all. You understand?""Perfectly," said Morris. And he bowed distantly to Armstrong, bowed obsequiously to his employer and departed."What's the matter between you and Joe Morris?" asked Fosdick, whose quick eyes had noted the not at all obvious constraint."We know each other only slightly," replied Armstrong. Then he added, "Mrs. Morris is a cousin of my former wife.""Oh—beg pardon for intruding," said Fosdick carelessly. "Sit down, Horace," and he leaned back in his chair and gazed reflectively out into vacancy.Armstrong seated himself and waited with the imperturbable, noncommittal expression which had become habitual with him ever since his discovery that he was Fosdick's prisoner, celled, sentenced, waiting to be led to the block at Fosdick's good pleasure.At last Fosdick broke the silence. "You were right about that committee."Apparently this did not interest Armstrong."That was a shrewd suspicion of yours," Fosdick went on. "And I ought to have heeded it. How did you happen to hit on it?"Armstrong shrugged his shoulders."Just a guess, eh? I thought maybe you knew who was back of these fellows.""Who is back of them?" asked Armstrong—a mere colorless, uninterested inquiry."Our friends of the Universal Life," replied Fosdick, assuming that Armstrong's question was an admission that he did not know. "They've plotted with some of the old Galloway crowd in our directory to throw me out and get control." Fosdick marched round and round the room, puffing furiously at his cigar. "They think they've bought the governor away from me," he presently resumed. "They think—and he thinks—he'll order the attorney-general to entertain the complaints of that damned committee." Here Fosdick paused and laughed—a harsh noise, a gleaming of discolored, jagged teeth through heavy fringe of mustache. "I've sent Morris up to Albany to see him. When he finds out I've got a certain canceled check with his name on the back of it, I guess—Iratherguess—he'll get down on that big belly of his and come crawling back to me. I've sent Morris up there to show him the knout.""Isn't that rather—raw?" said Armstrong, still stolid."Of course it's raw. But that's the way to deal with fellows like him—with most fellows, nowadays." And Fosdick resumed his march. Armstrong sat—stolid, waiting, matching the fingers of his big, ruddy hands."Well, what do you think?" demanded his master, pausing, a note of irritated command in his voice.Armstrong shrugged his shoulders. A disinterested observer might have begun to suspect that he was leading Fosdick on; but Fosdick, bent upon the game, had no such suspicion."I want your opinion. That's why I sent for you," he cried impatiently."You've got your mind made up," said Armstrong. "I've nothing to say.""Don't you think my move settles it?""No doubt, the governor'll squelch the investigation.""Certainlyhe will! And that means the end of those fellows' attempt to make trouble for us through our own policy holders.""Why?" said Armstrong."Don't you think so?" Fosdick dropped into his chair. "I'm not quite satisfied," he said. "Give me your views.""This committee has made a lot of public charges against the management of the O.A.D. It may be that when you try to smother the investigation, the demand will simply break out worse than ever.""Pooh!" scoffed Fosdick. "That isn't worth talking about. I was thinking only of what other moves that gang could make. The public amounts to nothing. The rank and file of our policy holders is content. What have these fellows charged? Why, that we've spent all kinds of money in all kinds of ways to build up the company. Now, what does the average investor say—not in public but to himself—when the management of his company is attacked along that line? Why, he says to himself, 'Better let well enough alone. Maybe those fellows don't give me all my share; but they do give me a good return for my money, as much as most shareholders in most companies get.' No, my dear Horace, even a rotten management needn't be afraid of its public so long as it gives the returns its public expects. Trouble comes only when the publicgets less than it expected."Armstrong did not withhold from this shrewdness the tribute of an admiring look. "Still," he persisted, "the public seems bent on an investigation.""Mere clamor, and no backing from the press except those newspapers that it ain't worth while to stop with a chunk of advertising. All the reputable press is with us, is denouncing those blackmailers for throwing mud at men of spotless reputation." Fosdick swelled his chest. "The press, the public, knowus, believe inus. Our directory reads like a roll call of the best citizens in the land. And the poor results from that last big tear-up are still fresh in everybody's mind. Nobody wants another."A pause, then Armstrong: "Still, it might be better to have an investigation.""What!" exclaimed Fosdick."You say we've nothing to conceal. Why not show the public so?""Of course we haven't got anything to conceal," cried Fosdick defiantly. "At least,Ihaven't.""Why not have an investigation, then?"That reiterated word "investigation" acted on the old financier like the touch of a red-hot iron. "Because I don't want it!" he shouted. "Damn it, man, ain't I above suspicion? Haven't I spent my life in serving the public? Shall I degrade myself by noticing these lying, slandering scoundrels? Shall I let 'em open up my private business to the mob that would misunderstand? Shall I let them rollmein the gutter? No—sir—ree!""Then, you are against a policy of aggression? You intend simply to sit back and content yourself with ignoring attacks."Fosdick subsided, scowling."Suppose you allowed an investigation——""I don't want to hear that word again!" said Fosdick between his teeth.Armstrong slowly rose. "Any further business?" he asked curtly."Sit down, Horace. Don't get touchy. Damn it, I want your advice.""I haven't any to offer.""What'd you do if you were in my place?"This was as weak as it sounded. In human societies concentrations of power are always accidental, in the sense that they do not result from deliberation; thus, the men who happen to be in a position to seize and wield the power are often ill-equipped to use it intelligently. Fosdick had but one of the two qualities necessary to greatness—he could attack. But he could not defend. So long as his career was dependent for success upon aggression, he went steadily ahead. It is not so difficult as some would have us believe to seize the belongings of people who do not know their own rights and possessions, and live in the habitual careless, unthinking human fashion. But now that his accumulations were for the first time attracting the attention of robbers as rich and as unscrupulous as himself, he was in a parlous state. And, without admitting it to himself, he was prey to uneasiness verging on terror. Our modern great thieves are true to the characteristics of the thief class—they have courage only when all the odds are in their favor; let them but doubt their absolute security, and they lose their insolent courage and fall to quaking and to seeing visions of poverty and prison."What would you do?" Fosdick repeated."What do your lawyers say?"Fosdick sneered. "What do they always say? They echome. I have to tell them what to do—and, by God, I often have to show 'em how to do it." The fact was that Fosdick, like almost all the admired "captains of industry," was a mere helpless appetite with only the courage of an insane and wholly unscrupulous hunger; but for the lawyers, he would not have been able to gratify it. In modern industrialism the lawyer is the honeybird that leads the strong but stupid bear to the forest hive—and the honeybird gets as a reward only what the bear permits. "Give me your best judgment, Horace," pursued Fosdick."In your place, I'd fight," said Armstrong."How?""I'd order the governor to appoint an investigating committee, made up ofreliablemen. I'd appoint one of my lawyers as attorney to it—some chap who wasn't supposed to be my lawyer. I'd let it investigate me, make it give me areasonably, plausiblyclean bill of health. Then, I'd set it on the other fellows, have it tear 'em to pieces, make 'em too busy with home repairs to have time to stick their noses over my back fence."Fosdick listened, appreciated, and hated Armstrong for having thought of that which was so obvious once it was stated and yet had never occurred to him."Of course," said Armstrong carelessly, "there are risks in that course. But I don't believe you can stop an investigation altogether. It's choice among evils.""Well, we'll see," said Fosdick. "There's no occasion for hurry. This situation isn't as bad as you seem to think."It had always been part of his basic policy to minimize the value of his lieutenants—it kept them modest; it moderated their demands for bigger pay and larger participation in profits; it enabled him to feel that he was "the whole show" and to preen himself upon his liberality in giving so much to men actually worth so little. He was finding it difficult to apply this policy to Armstrong. For, the Westerner was of the sort of man who not only makes it a point to be more necessary to those he deals with than they are to him, but also makes it a point to force them to see and to admit it. Armstrong's quiet insistence upon his own value only roused Fosdick to greater efforts to convince him, and himself, that Armstrong was a mere cog in the machine. He sent him away with a touch of superciliousness. But—no sooner was he alone than he rang up Morris."Come over at once," he ordered. "I've changed my mind. I've got another message for you to take up there with you."It would have exasperated him to see Armstrong as he returned to his own offices. The Westerner had lost all in a moment that air of stolidity under which he had been for several months masking his anxiety. He moved along whistling softly; he joked with the elevator boy; he shut himself in his private office, lit a cigar and lay back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, his expression that of a man whose thoughts are delightful company.
Puzzling over her seeming unconsciousness of the, to him, all-important fact that she was a woman and he a man, he decided that it must be a deliberately chosen policy, the result of things she had heard about him. He had always avoided talking of his conquests, though he appreciated that it was the quick and easy road to a fresh conquest; but it pleased him to feel that his reputation as a rake, a man before whom women struck the flag at the first sign from him, was as great as his fame for painting. And it seemed to him that, if Neva had heard, as she must, she could not but be in a receptive state of mind. "That's why she's on her guard," he concluded. "She's secretly at war with the old-fashioned notions in which she was bred."
He could not long keep silent. "Has somebody been slandering me to my friend?" asked he abruptly, one day, after they had both been silently at work for nearly an hour.
She paused, glanced at him, shook her head—a very charming head it was now, with the hair free about her temples and ears and in a loose coil low upon her neck. "No," said she, apparently with candor. "Why?"
"It seemed to me you were peculiar of late—distant with me."
"Really, it isn't so. You know I'd not permit anyone to speak against you to me."
"But—well, a man of my sort always has a lot of stories going round about him—things not usually regarded as discreditable—but you might not take so lenient a view."
Her face turned toward her easel again, her expression unreadably reserved.
"Not that I've been a saint," he went on. "We who have the artistic temperament— What does that temperament mean but abnormal sensibility of nerves, all the nerves?"
"That is true," assented she.
Then she was not so cold as she seemed! She understood what it was to feel. "Of course," he proceeded, "I appreciate your ideas on those subjects. At least I assume you have the ideas of the people among whom you were brought up."
She was silent for a moment. Then she said, as if she were carefully choosing her words, "I've learned that standards of morals, like standards of taste, are individual. There are many things about human nature as I see it in—in my friends—that I do not understand. But I realize I deserve no credit for being what I am when I have not the slightest temptation to be otherwise."
Silence again, as he wondered whether her remark was a chance shot or a subtle way of informing him that, if he were thinking of her as a woman and a possibility, he was wasting energy. "What I wished to say," he finally ventured, "was that I had the right to expect you to accept me for what I am to you. You cannot judge of what I may or may not have been to anyone else, of what others may or may not have been to me."
"What you are to me," replied she earnestly, "I've no right, or wish, to go beyond that."
"And," pursued he with some raillery, "don't forget we should be grateful for all varieties of human nature—the valleys that make the peaks, the peaks that make the abysses. What a world for suicide it would be, if human nature were one vast prairie and life one long Sunday in Battle Field.... What did you hear about me?"
"Nothing that interested me."
"Really?" He could not help showing pique.
"Nothing that would have changed me, if I had believed."
"I warned you it might be true," he interrupted.
"True or false, it was not part of the Boris Raphael I admire and respect."
He shifted his eyes, colored, was silenced. He did not like her frank friendliness; he did not want her respect, or the sort of admiration that goes with respect. But he somehow felt cheap and mean and ashamed before her, had a highly uncomfortable sense of being an inferior before a superior. He was glad to drop the subject. "At least," reflected he, "the longer the delay, the richer the prize. She was meant for some man. And what other has my chance?"
And, meanwhile, following his instinct and his custom, he showed her of his all-sided nature only what he thought she would like to see; time enough to be what he wished, when he should have got her where he wished—a re-creation for the gratification of as many sides of him as she had, or developed, capacity to delight.
VII
A WOMAN'S POINT OF VIEW
Narcisse, summoned by a telephone message, went to Fosdick's house. As she entered the imposing arched entrance, Amy appeared, on the way to take her dog for a drive. "It's father wants to see you," said she. "I'll take you to him, and go. I'd send Zut alone, but the coachman and footman object to driving the carriage with no one but him in it. Fancy! Aren't some people too silly in their snobbishness—and the upper class isn't in it with the lower classes, is it?"
"You don't begin to know how amusing you are sometimes," said Narcisse.
"Oh, I'm always forgetting. You've got ideas like Armstrong. You know him?"
"I've met him," said Narcisse indifferently. "You say your father wants to see me?"
Amy looked disappointed. Her mind was full of Armstrong, and she wished to talk about him with Narcisse, to tell her all she thought and felt, or thought she thought and felt. "There's been a good deal of talk that he and I are engaged," she persisted. "You had heard it?"
"I never hear things of that sort," said Narcisse coldly. "I'm too busy."
"Well—there's nothing in it. We're simply friends."
"I'm sorry," said Narcisse.
Amy bridled. "Sorry! I'm sureIcare nothing about him."
"Then, I'm glad," said Narcisse. "I'm whatever you like. Is your father waiting for me?"
Narcisse liked old Fosdick—his hearty voice, his sturdy optimism, his genial tolerance of all human weaknesses, even of crimes, his passion for the best of everything, his careless generosity. "It's fine," she often thought, "to see a man act about his own hard-earned wealth as if he had found it in a lump in the street or had won it in a lottery." He seemed in high spirits that morning, though Narcisse observed that the lines in his face looked heavier than usual. "Sorry to drag you clear up here about such a little matter," said he when they two were seated, with his big table desk between them. "I just wanted to caution you and your brother. Quite unnecessary, I know; still, it's my habit to neglect nothing. I'm thinking of the two buildings you are putting up for us—for the O.A.D. How are they getting on? I've so much to attend to, I don't often get round to details I know are in perfectly safe hands."
"We start the one in Chicago next month, and the one here in May—I hope."
"Good—splendid! Rush them along. You—you and your brother—understand that everything about them is absolutely private business. If any newspaper reporter—or anybody—on any pretext whatever—comes nosing round, you are to say nothing. Whatever is given out about them, we'll give out ourselves down at the main office."
"I'll see to that," said Narcisse. "I'm glad you are cautioning us. We might have given out something. Indeed, now that I think of it, a man was talking with my brother about the buildings yesterday."
Fosdick leaned forward with sudden and astonishing agitation. "What did he want?" he cried.
"Merely some specifications as to the cost of similar buildings."
"Did your brother give him what he asked for?" demanded the old man.
"Not yet. I believe he's to get the figures together and give them to him to-morrow."
Fosdick brought his fist down on the table and laughed with a kind of savage joy. "The damned scoundrels!" he exclaimed. Then, hastily, "Just step to the telephone, Miss Siersdorf, and call up your brother and tell him on no account to give that information."
Narcisse hesitated. "But—that's a very common occurrence in our business," objected she. "I don't see how we can refuse—unless the man is a trifler. Anyone who is building likes to have a concrete example to go by."
"Please do as I ask, Miss Siersdorf," said Fosdick. "We'll discuss it afterwards."
Narcisse obeyed, and when she returned said, "My brother will give out nothing more. But I find I was mistaken. He gave the estimates yesterday afternoon."
Fosdick sank back in his chair, his features contracted in anger and anxiety. When she tried to speak, he waved her imperiously into silence. "I must think," he said curtly. "Don't interrupt!" She watched his face, but could make nothing definite of its vague reflections of his apparently dark and stormy thoughts. Finally he said, in a nearer approach to his usual tone and manner, "It's soon remedied. Your brother can send for the man. You know who he was?"
"His name was Delmar. He represented the Howlands, the Chicago drygoods people."
"Um," grunted Fosdick, reflecting again; then, as if he had found what he was searching for, "Yes—that's the trail. Well, Miss Siersdorf, as I was saying, your brother will send for Delmar and will tell him there was a mistake. And he'll give him another set of figures—say, doubling or trebling the first set. He'll say he neglected to make allowance for finer materials and details of stonework and woodwork—hardwood floors, marble from Italy, and so forth and so forth. You understand. He'll say he meant simply the ordinary first-rate office building—and wasn't calculating on such palaces as he's putting up for the O.A.D."
Narcisse sat straight and silent, staring into her lap. Fosdick's cigar had gone out. She had never before objected especially to its odor; now she found it almost insupportable.
"You'd better telephone him," continued Fosdick. "No—I'll just have the butler telephone him to come up here. We might as well make sure of getting it straight."
Narcisse did not stir while Fosdick was out of the room, nor when he resumed his seat and went on, "All this is too intricate to explain in detail, Miss Siersdorf, but I'll give you an idea of it. It's a question of the secrecy of our accounts."
"But we know nothing of your company's accounts, Mr. Fosdick," said she. "You will remember that, under our contracts, we have nothing whatever to do with the bills—that they go direct to your own people and are paid by them. We warned you it was a dangerous system, but you insisted on keeping to it. You said it was your long established way, that a change would upset your whole bookkeeping, that——"
"Yes—yes. I remember perfectly," interrupted Fosdick, all good humor.
"You can't hold us responsible. We don't even know what payments have been made."
"Precisely—precisely."
"It's a stupid system, permit me to say. It allows chances for no end of fraud on you—though I think the people we employed are honest and won't take advantage of it. And, if your auditors wanted to, they could charge the company twice or three times or several times what the building cost, and——"
"Exactly," interrupted Fosdick, an unpleasant sharpness in his voice. "Let's not waste time discussing that. Let me proceed. We wish no one to know what our buildings cost."
"But—you have to make reports—to your stockholders—policy holders rather."
"In a way—yes," admitted Fosdick. "But all the men who have the direction and control of large enterprises take a certain latitude. The average citizen is a picayunish fellow, mean about small sums. He wouldn't understand many of the expenditures necessary to the conduct of large affairs. He even prefers not to be irritated by knowing just where every dollar goes. He's satisfied with the results."
"But how does he know the results shown him are the real results? Why, under that system, figures might be juggled to cheat him out of nearly all the profits."
"The public is satisfied to get a reasonable return for the money it invests—andwealways guarantee that," replied Fosdick grandly.
Narcisse looked at him with startled eyes, as if a sharp turn of the road had brought her to the brink of a yawning abyss. It suddenly dawned on her—the whole system of "finance." In one swift second a thousand disconnected facts merged into a complete, repulsive whole. So,thiswas where these enormous fortunes came from! The big fellows inveigled the public into enterprises by promises of equal shares; then they juggled accounts, stole most of the profits, saddled all the losses on the investors. And she had admired the daring of these great financiers! Why, who wouldn't be daring, with no conscience, no honor, and a free hand to gamble with other people's money, without risking a penny of his own! And she had admired their generosity, their philanthropy, when it was simply the reckless wastefulness of the thief, after one rich haul and before another! She saw them, all over the world, gathering in the mites of toiling millions as trust funds, and stealing all but enough to encourage the poor fools to continue sending in their mites! She read it all in Josiah's face now, in the faces of her rich clients; and she wondered how she could have been so blind as not to see it before. That hungry look, sometimes frankly there, again disguised by a slimy over-layer of piety, again by whiskers or fat, but always there. Face after face of her scores of acquaintances among the powerful in finance rose beside Josiah's until she shrank and paled. Under the slather of respectability, what gross appetites, what repulsive passions! But for the absence of the brutal bruisings of ignorance and drink, these facts would seem exhibits in a rogues' gallery.
Josiah had no great opinion of the brains of his fellow men. Women he regarded as mentally deficient—were they not incapable of comprehending business? So, while he saw that Narcisse was not accepting his statement as the honorable, though practical, truth he believed it to be, he was not disturbed. "I see you don't quite follow me," he said with kindly condescension. "Business is very complex. My point is, however, that our accounts are for our own guidance, and not for our rivals to get hold of and use in exciting a lot of silly, ignorant people."
Alois Siersdorf now entered and was effusively welcomed. "What's the matter?" he exclaimed. "Have I made a mess of some sort?"
"Not at all, my boy," said Fosdick, clapping him on the back. "Our rivals have got up an investigating committee—have set on some of our policy holders to pretend to be dissatisfied with our management. I thought until yesterday that the committee was simply a haphazard affair, got together by some blackmailing lawyer. Then I learned that it was a really serious attempt of a rival of mine to take the company away from me. They're smelling round for things to 'expose'—the old trick. They think this is a rare good time to play it because the damn-fool public has been liquored up with all sorts of brandy by reformers and anarchists and socialists, trying to set it on to tear down the social structure. No man's reputation is safe. You know how it is in big affairs. It takes a broad-gage man to understand them. A little fellow thinks he sees thief and robber and swindler written everywhere, if he gets a peep at the inside. I don't know what we're coming to, with the masses being educated just enough to imagine they know, and to try to take the management of affairs out of the hands of the substantial men."
With lip curling Narcisse looked at her brother, expecting to see in his face some sign of appreciation of the disgusting comedy of Fosdick's cant; but he seemed to be taking Josiah and his oration quite seriously; to her amazement he said, "I often think of that, Mr. Fosdick. We must have a stronger government, and abolish universal suffrage. This thing of ignorant men, with no respect for the class with brains and property, having an equal voice with us has got to stop or we'll have ruin."
A self-confessed thief trying to justify himself by slandering those he had robbed, and angry with them because they were not grateful to him for not having taken all their property—and her brother applauding!
"You're right," said Fosdick, clapping him on the knee. "I've been trying to explain to your sister—though I'm afraid I don't make myself clear. The ladies—even the smartest of them—are not very attentive when we men talk of the business side of things. However, I suggested to her that you recall those specifications you gave my enemies——"
"Is it possible!" exclaimed Siersdorf, shocked. "Yes—yes—I see—I understand. But I can straighten it all out. I was rather vague with Delmar. I'll send for him and tell him I was calculating on very different kinds of buildings for him—something much cheaper——"
"Precisely!" cried Josiah. "Your brother's got a quick mind, Miss Siersdorf."
Narcisse turned away. Her brother had not even waited for Fosdick to unfold his miserable chicane; his own brain had instantly worked out the same idea; and, instead of in shame suppressing it, he had uttered it as if it were honest and honorable!
"There's another matter," continued Fosdick. He no longer felt that he must advance cautiously. Sometimes, persons not familiar with large affairs, not accustomed to dealing under the conditions that compel liberal interpretation of the moral code, had been known to balk, unless approached gradually, unless led by gentle stages above narrow ideas of the just and the right. But clearly, the Siersdorfs, living in the atmosphere of high finance, did not need to be acclimated. "It may be this committee can get permission from the State Government to pry into our affairs. I don't think it can; indeed, I almost know it can't; we've got the Government friendly to us and not at all sympathetic with these plausible blackmailers and disguised anarchists. Still, it's always well to provide for any contingency. If you should get a tip that you were likely to be wanted as witnesses you could arrange for a few weeks abroad, and not leave anything—any books or papers—for these scoundrels to nose into, couldn't you?"
"Certainly," assented Siersdorf, with great alacrity. "You may be sure they'll get nothing out of us."
"Then, that's settled," said Fosdick. "And now, let's have lunch, and forget business. I want to hear more about those plans for Amy's house down in Jersey. She has told me a good deal, but not all."
"We can't stop to lunch," interposed Narcisse, with a meaning look at her brother. "We must go back to the office at once." And when she saw that Fosdick was getting ready for a handshake, she moved toward the door, keeping out of his range without pointedly showing what she was about. In the street with her brother she walked silently, moodily beside him, selecting the softest words that would honestly express the thoughts she felt she must not conceal from him.
"A great man, Fosdick," said Alois. "One of the biggest men in the country—a splendid character, strong, able and honorable."
"Why do you say that just at this time?" asked his sister.
Alois reddened a little, avoided meeting her glance.
"To convince yourself?" she went on. "To make us seem less—less dishonest and cowardly?"
He flashed at her; his anger was suspiciously ready. "I felt you were taking that view of it!" he cried. "You are utterly unpractical. You want to run the world by copybook morality."
"Because I haven't thrown 'Thou shalt not steal' overboard? Because I am ashamed, Alois, that we are helping this man Fosdick to cover his cowardly thief tracks?"
"You don't understand, Cissy," he remonstrated, posing energetically as the superior male forbearing with the inferior female. "You oughtn't to judge what you haven't the knowledge to judge correctly."
"He is a thief," retorted she bluntly. "And we are making ourselves his accomplices."
Alois's smile was uncomfortable. With the manner of a man near the limit of patience with folly, he explained, "What you are giving those lurid names to is nothing but the ordinary routine of business, throughout the world. Do you suppose the man of great financial intellect would do the work he does for small wages? Do you imagine the little people he works for and has to work through, the beneficiaries of all those giant enterprises, would give him his just due voluntarily? He's a man of affairs, and he works practically, deals with human nature on human principles—just as do all the great men of action."
Narcisse stopped short, gazed at him in amazement. "Alois!" she exclaimed.
He disregarded her rebuke, her reminder of the time when he had thought and talked very differently. "Suppose," he persisted, "these great fortunes didn't exist; suppose Fosdick were ass enough to take a salary and divide up the profits; suppose all these people of wealth we work for were to be honest according to your definition of the word—what then? Why, millions of people would get ten or twelve dollars a year, or something like that, more than they now have, and there'd be no great fortunes to encourage art, to employ people like us, to endow colleges and make the higher and more beautiful side of life."
"That's too shallow to answer," said Narcisse sternly. "You know better, Alois. You know it's from the poor that intellect and art and all that's genuine and great and progressive come—never from the rich, from wealth. But even if it were not so, how canyoudefend anything that means a sacrifice of character?" She stopped in the street and looked at him. "Alois,whathas changed you?"
"Come," he urged rather shamefacedly. "People are watching us."
They went on in silence, separated at the offices with a few constrained words. They did not meet again until the next morning—when he sought her. He looked much as usual—fresh, handsome, supple in body and mind. Her eyes were red round the edges of the lids and her usually healthy skin had the paleness that comes from a sleepless night. "Well," he said, with his sweet, conciliatory smile—he had a perfect disposition, while hers was often "difficult." "Do you still think I'm wrong—and desperately wicked?"
"I haven't changed my mind," she answered, avoiding his gaze.
He frowned; his face showed the obstinacy that passes current for will in a world of vacillators.
"You've always left business to me," he went on. "Just continue to leave it. Rest assured I'll do nothing to injure my honor in the opinion of any rational, practical person—or the honor of the firm."
She was not deceived by the note of conciliation in his voice; she knew he had his mind fixed. She was at her desk, stiffly erect, gazing straight ahead. Her expression brought out all the character in her features, brought out that beauty of feminine strength which the best of the Greeks have succeeded in giving their sculptured heroines. Without warning she flung herself forward, hid her face and burst into tears. "Oh, Ihatemyself!" she cried. "I'm nothing but a woman, after all—miserable, contemptible, weak creatures that we are!"
He settled himself on the arm of her chair and drew her into his arm. "You're a finer person in every way than I am," he said; "a better brain and a better character. But, Cissy dear, don't judge in matters that aren't within your scope."
"Do as you please," she replied brokenly. "I'm a woman—and where's the woman that wouldn't sacrifice anything and everything for love?"
She had, indeed, spent a night of horror. She felt that what he had done was frightful dishonor—was proof that he was losing his moral sense and, what seemed to her worse, becoming a pander to the class for which they did most of the work they especially prided themselves upon. She felt that, for his sake no less than for her own, she ought to join the issue squarely and force him to choose the right road, or herself go on in it alone. But she knew that he would let her go. And she had only him. She loved him; she would not break with him; she could not.
"You know nothing about those buildings, anyhow," he continued. "Just forget the whole business. I'll take care of it. Isn't that fair?"
"Anything! Anything!" she sobbed. "Only, let there be peace and love between us."
VIII
IN NEVA'S STUDIO
Shown into the big workroom of Neva's apartment with its light softened and diffused by skillfully adjusted curtains and screens, Narcisse devoted the few minutes before Neva came to that thorough inspection which an intelligent workman always gives the habitat of a fellow worker.
"What a sensitive creature she is!" was the reminiscent conclusion of the builder after the first glance round. A less keen observer might have detected a nature as delicately balanced as an aspen leaf in the subtle appreciation of harmony and contrast, of light and shade. And there were none of the showy, shallow tricks of the poseur; for, the room was plain, as a serious worker always insists on having his surroundings. It appeared in the hanging of the few pictures, in the colors of the few rugs and draperies, of walls, ceiling, furniture, in the absence of anything that was not pleasing; the things that are not in a room speak as eloquently of its tenant as do the things that are there.
"Not a scrap of her own work," thought Narcisse, with a smile for the shyness that omission hinted.
"Pardon my keeping you waiting," apologized Neva, entering in her long, brown blouse with stains of paint. "I was at work when you were announced."
"And you had to hustle everything out of sight, so I'd have no chance to see."
Neva nodded smiling assent. "But I'm better than I used to be. Really, I am. My point of view is changing—rapidly—so rapidly that I wake up each morning a different person from the one who went to bed the night before."
Narcisse was thinking that the Neva before her was as unlike the Neva of their school days as a spring landscape is unlike the same stretch in the bleak monotones of winter. "Getting more confidence in yourself?" suggested she aloud. "Or are you beginning to see that the world is an old fraud whose judgments aren't important enough to make anyone nervous?"
"Both," replied Neva. "But I can't honestly claim to be self-made-over. Boris teaches me a great deal beside painting."
Narcisse changed expression. As they talked on and on—of their work, of the West, of the college and their friendship there, Neva felt that Narcisse had some undercurrent of thought which she was striving with, whether to suppress or express, she could not tell. The conversation drifted back to New York, to Boris. There was something of warning in Narcisse's face, and something of another emotion less clearly defined as she said with a brave effort at the rigidly judicial, "Boris is a great man; but first of all a man. You know what that means when a man is dealing with a woman."
Neva's lip curled slightly. "That side of human nature doesn't interest me."
Narcisse, watching her closely, could not but be convinced that the indifference in her tone was not simulated. "Not yet," she thought. Then, aloud, "That side doesn't often interest a woman until she finds she must choose between becoming interested in it and losing the man altogether."
Neva looked at her with a strange, startled expression, as if she were absorbing a new and vital truth, self-evident, astonishing.
"Boris has lived a long time," continued Narcisse. "And women have conquered him so often that they've taught him how to conquer them."
"I don't know much about him, beyond the painting," said Neva. "And I don't care to know."
The silence that fell was constrained. It was with tone and look of shyness more like Neva than like herself that Narcisse presently went on, "I owe a great deal to Boris. He made me what I am.... He broke my heart."
Neva gave her a glance of wonder and fear—wonder that she should be confiding such a secret, fear lest the confidence would be repented. Narcisse's expression, pensive but by no means tragic, not even melancholy, reassured her. "You know," she proceeded, "no one ever does anything real until his or her heart has been broken."
Neva, startled, listened with curious, breathless intentness.
"We learn only by experience. And the great lesson comes only from the great experience."
"Yes," said Neva softly. She nodded absently. "Yes," she repeated.
"When one's heart is broken ... then, one discovers one's real self—the part that can be relied on through everything and anything."
Neva, with studied carelessness, opened a drawer in the stand beside her and began to examine the tips of a handful of brushes. Her face was thus no longer completely at the mercy of a possible searching glance from her friend.
"Show me anyone who has done anything worth while," continued Narcisse, "and I'll show you a man or a woman whose heart has been broken—and mended—made strong.... It isn't always love that does the breaking. In fact, it's usually something else—especially with men. In my case it happened to be love."
Neva's fingers had ceased to play with the brushes. Her hands rested upon the edge of the drawer lightly, yet their expression was somehow tense. Her eyes were gazing into—Narcisse wondered what vision was hypnotizing them.
"It was ten years ago—when I was studying in Paris. I can see how he might not be attractive to some women, but he was to me." Narcisse laughed slightly. "I don't know what might have happened, if he hadn't been drawn away by a little Roumanian singer, like an orchid waving in a perfumed breeze. All Paris was quite mad about her, and Boris got her. She thought she got him; but he survived, while she— When she made her way back to Paris, she found it perfectly calm."
"And you still care for him?" said Neva gently.
Narcisse laughed healthily. "I mended my heart, accepted my lesson.... Isn't it queer, how differently one looks at a person one has cared for, after one is cured?"
"I don't know," said Neva, in a slow, constrained way. "I've never had the experience."
After a silence Narcisse went on, "I've no objection to your repeating to him what I've said. It was a mere reminiscence, not at all a confession."
Neva shook her head. "That would bring up a subject a woman should avoid with men. If it is never opened, it remains closed; if it's ever opened, it can't be shut again."
Narcisse was struck by the penetration of this, and proceeded to reëxamine Neva more thoroughly. Nothing is more neglected than the revision from time to time of our opinions of those about us. Though character is as mobile as every other quantity in this whirling kaleidoscope of a universe, we make up our minds about our acquaintances and friends once for all, and refuse to change unless forced by some cataclysm. As their talk unfolded the Neva beneath the surface, it soon appeared to Narcisse that either she or Neva had become radically different since their intimacy of twelve years before. "Probably both of us," she decided. "I've learned to read character better, and she has more character to read. I remember, I used to think she was one of those who would develop late—even for a woman."
"It was stupid of me," she said to Neva, "but I've been assuming you are just as you were. Now it dawns on me that you are as new to me as if you were an entire stranger. You are different—outside and inside."
"Inside, I've certainly changed," admitted Neva. "Don't you think we're, all of us, like the animals that shed their skins? We live in a mental skin, and it seems to be ours for good and all; but all the time a new skin is forming underneath; and then, some fine day, the old skin slips away, and we're quite new from top to tip—apparently."
Narcisse's expression was encouraging.
"That happened to me," continued Neva. "But I didn't realize it—not completely—until the divorce was over and I was settled here, in this huge wilderness where the people can't find each other or even see each other, for the crowd. It was the first time in my life. I could look about me with the certainty I wasn't being watched, peeped at, pressed in on all sides by curious eyes—hostile eyes, for all curious eyes are hostile. But you were born and brought up in a small town. You know."
"Yes," said Narcisse. "Everybody lives a public life in a little town."
"Here I could, so to speak, stand in the sun naked and let its light beat on my body, without fear of peepers and pryers." She drew a long breath and stretched out her arms in a gesture of enormous relief. "I dare to be myself. Free! All my life I'd been shut in, waiting and hoping some one would come and lead me out where there was warmth and affection. Wasn't that vanity! Now, I'm seeking what I want—the only way to get it."
Narcisse's face took on an expression of cynicism, melancholy rather than bitter. "Don't seek among your fellow beings. They're always off the right temperature—they either burn you or freeze you."
"Oh, but I'm not trying to get warmth, but to give it," replied Neva. "I'm not merchandising. I'm in a business where the losses are the profits, the givings the gains."
"The only businesses that really pay," said Narcisse. "The returns from the others are like the magician's money that seemed to be gold but was only withered mulberry leaves. Won't you let me see some of your work—anything?"
Neva drew aside a curtain, wheeled out an easel, on it her unfinished portrait of Raphael. At first glance—and with most people the first glance is the final verdict—there seemed only an elusive resemblance to Raphael. It was one of those portraits that are forthwith condemned as "poor likenesses." But Narcisse, perhaps partly because she was sympathetically interested in Neva's work and knew that Neva must put intelligence into whatever she did, soon penetrated to the deeper purpose. The human face is both a medium and a mask; it both reveals and covers the personality behind. It is more the mask and less the medium when the personality is consciously facing the world. A portrait that is a good likeness is, thus, often a meaningless or misleading picture of the personality, because it presents that personality when carefully posed for conscious inspection. On the other hand, a portrait that is hardly recognizable by those who know best, and least, the person it purports to portray, may be in fact a true, a profound, a perfect likeness—a faithful reproduction of the face as a medium, with the mask discarded. The problem the painter attempts, the problem genius occasionally solves but mere talent rarely, and then imperfectly, is to combine the medium and the mask—to paint the mask so transparently that the medium, the real face, shows through; yet not so transparently that eyes which demand a "speaking likeness" are disappointed.
Neva, taught by Raphael to face and wrestle with that problem, was in this secret unfinished portrait striving for his "living likeness" only. She had learned that painting the "speaking likeness" is an unimportant matter to the artist as artist—however important it may be to him as seeker of profitable orders or of fame's brassy acclaim so vulgar yet so sweet. She was not seeking fame, she was not dependent upon commissions; she was free to grapple the ultimate mystery of art. And this attempt to fix Raphael, the beautiful-ugly, lofty-low, fine-coarse, kind-cruel personality that walked the earth behind that gorgeous-grotesque external of his, was her first essay.
"All things to all men—and all women, like the genius that he is," said Narcisse, half to herself. Then to Neva, "What doeshethink of it?"
"He hasn't seen it.... I doubt if I'll ever show it to him—or to anybody, when it's finished."
"It does threaten to be an intrusion on his right of privacy," said Narcisse. "No, he's not attracting you in the least as a man."
Neva looked amused. "Why did you say that?"
"Because the picture is so—so impersonal." She laughed. "How angry it would make him."
When Narcisse, after a long, intimacy-renewing, or, rather, intimacy-beginning, stop, rose to go, she said, "I'm going to bring my friend, Amy Fosdick, here some time soon. She has asked me and I've promised her. She is very eager to meet you."
Instantly Neva made the first vivid show of her old-time shy constraint. "I've a rule against meeting people," stammered she. "I don't wish to seem ungracious, but——"
"Oh!" said Narcisse, embarrassed. "Very well."
An awkward silence; Narcisse moved toward the door. "I fear I've offended you," Neva said wistfully.
"Not at all," replied Narcisse, and she honestly tried to be cordial in accepting denial. "You've the right to do as you please, surely."
"In theory, yes," said Neva, with a faint melancholy smile. "But only in theory."
Now unconsciously and now consciously we are constantly testing those about us, especially our friends, to learn how far we can go in imposing our ever aggressive wills upon them; and the stronger our own personalities the more irritating it is to find ourselves flung back from an unyielding surface where we had expected to advance easily. In spite of her sense of justice, Narcisse was irritated against Neva for refusing. But she also realized she must get over this irritation, must accept and profit by this timely hint that Neva's will must be respected. Most friendship is mere selfishness in masquerade—is mere seeking of advantage through the supposedly blindly altruistic affections of friends. Narcisse, having capacity for real friendship, was eager for a real friend. She saw that Neva was worth the winning. And now that Alois was breaking away— Stretching out her hands appealingly, she said, "Please, dear, don't draw away from me."
Neva understood, responded. Now that Narcisse was not by clouded face and averted eye demanding explanation as a right, she felt free to give it. "There's a reason, Narcisse," said she, "a good reason why I shan't let Miss Fosdick come here and gratify her curiosity."
"Reason or no reason," exclaimed Narcisse, "forget my—my impertinence.... I—I want—I need your friendship."
"Not more than I need yours," said Neva. "Not so much. You have your brother, while I have no one."
"My brother!" Tears glistened in Narcisse's eyes. "Yes—until he becomes some other woman's lover." She embraced Neva, and departed hastily, ashamed of her unwonted show of emotion, but not regretting it.
IX
MASTER AND MAN
When Waller, the small, dark, discreet factotum to Fosdick, came to Armstrong's office to ask him to go to Mr. Fosdick "as soon as you conveniently can," Armstrong knew something unusual was astir.
Fosdick rarely interfered in the insurance department of the O.A.D. Like all his fellow financiers bearing the courtesy title of "captains of industry," he addressed himself entirely to so manipulating the sums gathered in by his subordinates that he could retain as much of them and their usufruct as his prudence, compromising with his greediness, permitted. In the insurance department he as a rule merely noted totals—results. If he had suggestion or criticism to make, he went to Armstrong. That fitted in with the fiction that he was no more in the O.A.D. than an influential director, that the Atlantic and Southwestern Trunk Line was his chief occupation.
Armstrong descended to the third floor—occupied by the A.S.W.T.L. which was supposed to have no connection with the purely philanthropic O.A.D., "sustainer of old age and defender of the widow and the orphan." He went directly through the suite of offices there to Fosdick's own den. Fosdick had four rooms. The outermost was for the reception of all visitors and the final disposition of such of them as the underlings there could attend to. Next came the office of the mysterious, gravely smiling Waller, with his large white teeth and pretty mustache and the folding picture frame containing photographs of wife and son and two daughters on his desk before him—what an air of the home hovering over and sanctifying the office diffused from that little panorama! Many callers supposed that Waller's office was Fosdick's, that Fosdick almost never came down there, that Waller was for all practical purposes Fosdick. The third room was for those who, having convinced the outer understrappers that they ought to be admitted as far as Waller, succeeded in convincing Waller that they must be personally inspected and heard by the great man himself. In this third room, there was no article of furniture but a carpet. Waller would usher his visitor in and leave him standing—standing, unless he chose to sit upon the floor; for there was no chair to sit upon, no desk or projection from the wall to lean against. Soon Fosdick would abruptly and hurriedly enter—the man of pressing affairs, pausing on his way from one supremely important matter to another. Fosdick calculated that this seatless private reception room saved him as much time as the two outer visitor-sifters together; for not a few of the men who had real business to bring before him were garrulous; and to be received standing, to be talked with standing, was a most effective encouragement to pointedness and brevity.
The fourth and innermost room was Fosdick's real office—luxurious, magnificent even; the rugs and the desk and chairs had cost the policy holders of the O.A.D. nearly a hundred thousand dollars; the pictures, the marble bust of Fosdick himself, the statuary, the bookcases and other furnishings had cost the shareholders of the A.S.W.T.L. almost as much more.
Armstrong found Fosdick talking with Morris, Joe Morris, who was one of his minor personal counsel, and was paid in part by a fixed annual retainer from the A.S.W.T.L., in part from the elastic and generously large legal fund of the O.A.D. As Armstrong entered, Fosdick said: "Well, Joe, that's all. You understand?"
"Perfectly," said Morris. And he bowed distantly to Armstrong, bowed obsequiously to his employer and departed.
"What's the matter between you and Joe Morris?" asked Fosdick, whose quick eyes had noted the not at all obvious constraint.
"We know each other only slightly," replied Armstrong. Then he added, "Mrs. Morris is a cousin of my former wife."
"Oh—beg pardon for intruding," said Fosdick carelessly. "Sit down, Horace," and he leaned back in his chair and gazed reflectively out into vacancy.
Armstrong seated himself and waited with the imperturbable, noncommittal expression which had become habitual with him ever since his discovery that he was Fosdick's prisoner, celled, sentenced, waiting to be led to the block at Fosdick's good pleasure.
At last Fosdick broke the silence. "You were right about that committee."
Apparently this did not interest Armstrong.
"That was a shrewd suspicion of yours," Fosdick went on. "And I ought to have heeded it. How did you happen to hit on it?"
Armstrong shrugged his shoulders.
"Just a guess, eh? I thought maybe you knew who was back of these fellows."
"Who is back of them?" asked Armstrong—a mere colorless, uninterested inquiry.
"Our friends of the Universal Life," replied Fosdick, assuming that Armstrong's question was an admission that he did not know. "They've plotted with some of the old Galloway crowd in our directory to throw me out and get control." Fosdick marched round and round the room, puffing furiously at his cigar. "They think they've bought the governor away from me," he presently resumed. "They think—and he thinks—he'll order the attorney-general to entertain the complaints of that damned committee." Here Fosdick paused and laughed—a harsh noise, a gleaming of discolored, jagged teeth through heavy fringe of mustache. "I've sent Morris up to Albany to see him. When he finds out I've got a certain canceled check with his name on the back of it, I guess—Iratherguess—he'll get down on that big belly of his and come crawling back to me. I've sent Morris up there to show him the knout."
"Isn't that rather—raw?" said Armstrong, still stolid.
"Of course it's raw. But that's the way to deal with fellows like him—with most fellows, nowadays." And Fosdick resumed his march. Armstrong sat—stolid, waiting, matching the fingers of his big, ruddy hands.
"Well, what do you think?" demanded his master, pausing, a note of irritated command in his voice.
Armstrong shrugged his shoulders. A disinterested observer might have begun to suspect that he was leading Fosdick on; but Fosdick, bent upon the game, had no such suspicion.
"I want your opinion. That's why I sent for you," he cried impatiently.
"You've got your mind made up," said Armstrong. "I've nothing to say."
"Don't you think my move settles it?"
"No doubt, the governor'll squelch the investigation."
"Certainlyhe will! And that means the end of those fellows' attempt to make trouble for us through our own policy holders."
"Why?" said Armstrong.
"Don't you think so?" Fosdick dropped into his chair. "I'm not quite satisfied," he said. "Give me your views."
"This committee has made a lot of public charges against the management of the O.A.D. It may be that when you try to smother the investigation, the demand will simply break out worse than ever."
"Pooh!" scoffed Fosdick. "That isn't worth talking about. I was thinking only of what other moves that gang could make. The public amounts to nothing. The rank and file of our policy holders is content. What have these fellows charged? Why, that we've spent all kinds of money in all kinds of ways to build up the company. Now, what does the average investor say—not in public but to himself—when the management of his company is attacked along that line? Why, he says to himself, 'Better let well enough alone. Maybe those fellows don't give me all my share; but they do give me a good return for my money, as much as most shareholders in most companies get.' No, my dear Horace, even a rotten management needn't be afraid of its public so long as it gives the returns its public expects. Trouble comes only when the publicgets less than it expected."
Armstrong did not withhold from this shrewdness the tribute of an admiring look. "Still," he persisted, "the public seems bent on an investigation."
"Mere clamor, and no backing from the press except those newspapers that it ain't worth while to stop with a chunk of advertising. All the reputable press is with us, is denouncing those blackmailers for throwing mud at men of spotless reputation." Fosdick swelled his chest. "The press, the public, knowus, believe inus. Our directory reads like a roll call of the best citizens in the land. And the poor results from that last big tear-up are still fresh in everybody's mind. Nobody wants another."
A pause, then Armstrong: "Still, it might be better to have an investigation."
"What!" exclaimed Fosdick.
"You say we've nothing to conceal. Why not show the public so?"
"Of course we haven't got anything to conceal," cried Fosdick defiantly. "At least,Ihaven't."
"Why not have an investigation, then?"
That reiterated word "investigation" acted on the old financier like the touch of a red-hot iron. "Because I don't want it!" he shouted. "Damn it, man, ain't I above suspicion? Haven't I spent my life in serving the public? Shall I degrade myself by noticing these lying, slandering scoundrels? Shall I let 'em open up my private business to the mob that would misunderstand? Shall I let them rollmein the gutter? No—sir—ree!"
"Then, you are against a policy of aggression? You intend simply to sit back and content yourself with ignoring attacks."
Fosdick subsided, scowling.
"Suppose you allowed an investigation——"
"I don't want to hear that word again!" said Fosdick between his teeth.
Armstrong slowly rose. "Any further business?" he asked curtly.
"Sit down, Horace. Don't get touchy. Damn it, I want your advice."
"I haven't any to offer."
"What'd you do if you were in my place?"
This was as weak as it sounded. In human societies concentrations of power are always accidental, in the sense that they do not result from deliberation; thus, the men who happen to be in a position to seize and wield the power are often ill-equipped to use it intelligently. Fosdick had but one of the two qualities necessary to greatness—he could attack. But he could not defend. So long as his career was dependent for success upon aggression, he went steadily ahead. It is not so difficult as some would have us believe to seize the belongings of people who do not know their own rights and possessions, and live in the habitual careless, unthinking human fashion. But now that his accumulations were for the first time attracting the attention of robbers as rich and as unscrupulous as himself, he was in a parlous state. And, without admitting it to himself, he was prey to uneasiness verging on terror. Our modern great thieves are true to the characteristics of the thief class—they have courage only when all the odds are in their favor; let them but doubt their absolute security, and they lose their insolent courage and fall to quaking and to seeing visions of poverty and prison.
"What would you do?" Fosdick repeated.
"What do your lawyers say?"
Fosdick sneered. "What do they always say? They echome. I have to tell them what to do—and, by God, I often have to show 'em how to do it." The fact was that Fosdick, like almost all the admired "captains of industry," was a mere helpless appetite with only the courage of an insane and wholly unscrupulous hunger; but for the lawyers, he would not have been able to gratify it. In modern industrialism the lawyer is the honeybird that leads the strong but stupid bear to the forest hive—and the honeybird gets as a reward only what the bear permits. "Give me your best judgment, Horace," pursued Fosdick.
"In your place, I'd fight," said Armstrong.
"How?"
"I'd order the governor to appoint an investigating committee, made up ofreliablemen. I'd appoint one of my lawyers as attorney to it—some chap who wasn't supposed to be my lawyer. I'd let it investigate me, make it give me areasonably, plausiblyclean bill of health. Then, I'd set it on the other fellows, have it tear 'em to pieces, make 'em too busy with home repairs to have time to stick their noses over my back fence."
Fosdick listened, appreciated, and hated Armstrong for having thought of that which was so obvious once it was stated and yet had never occurred to him.
"Of course," said Armstrong carelessly, "there are risks in that course. But I don't believe you can stop an investigation altogether. It's choice among evils."
"Well, we'll see," said Fosdick. "There's no occasion for hurry. This situation isn't as bad as you seem to think."
It had always been part of his basic policy to minimize the value of his lieutenants—it kept them modest; it moderated their demands for bigger pay and larger participation in profits; it enabled him to feel that he was "the whole show" and to preen himself upon his liberality in giving so much to men actually worth so little. He was finding it difficult to apply this policy to Armstrong. For, the Westerner was of the sort of man who not only makes it a point to be more necessary to those he deals with than they are to him, but also makes it a point to force them to see and to admit it. Armstrong's quiet insistence upon his own value only roused Fosdick to greater efforts to convince him, and himself, that Armstrong was a mere cog in the machine. He sent him away with a touch of superciliousness. But—no sooner was he alone than he rang up Morris.
"Come over at once," he ordered. "I've changed my mind. I've got another message for you to take up there with you."
It would have exasperated him to see Armstrong as he returned to his own offices. The Westerner had lost all in a moment that air of stolidity under which he had been for several months masking his anxiety. He moved along whistling softly; he joked with the elevator boy; he shut himself in his private office, lit a cigar and lay back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, his expression that of a man whose thoughts are delightful company.