If she could have seen him, her worst suspicions would have been confirmed; for his hair was mussed and damp with sweat, his skin looked as if he were in a garish light. He tried to compose himself, went in where his sister was at work—absorbed in making the drawings of a new kind of chimney-piece she had been thinking out. "Cis," he said, in an uncertain voice, "I'm off for Europe at noon."She wheeled on him. "Fosdick?"He nodded. "His secretary, Waller, was just here."A few seconds during which he could feel the energy of her swift thoughts. Then, "Wait!" she commanded, and darted into her private office, closing the door.She was gone twenty minutes. "The person I was calling up hadn't got in," she explained, when she returned. "I had to wait for him. You are to stay here—you are not to go in any circumstances.""I must go," was his answer in a dreary tone. "I promised Fosdick, and I daren't offend him. Besides—well, it's prudent.""'Lois," said Narcisse earnestly, "I give you my word of honor, it would be the very worst step you could take, to obey Fosdick and go. I promise you that, if you stay, all will be well. If you go, you would better throw yourself into the sea, midway, for you will ruin your reputation—ours."He dropped into a chair. "My instinct is against going," he confessed. "I've done nothing. I haven't got a cent that doesn't belong to me honestly. But, Cis, I simply mustn't offend Fosdick.""Because of Amy?""Yes.""If you go, you'll have no more chance for her than—than a convict in a penitentiary.""You know something you are not telling me?""I do. Something I can't tell you."He supported his aching head with his hands and stared long at the floor. "I'll not go!" he exclaimed, springing to his feet suddenly. "I've done nothing wrong. I'll not run away."Narcisse had been watching him as if she were seeing him struggling for his life in deep water before her very eyes. At his words, at his expression, like his own self, the brother she had brought up and guarded and loved with the love that is deeper than any love which passion ever kindled—at this proclamation of the victory of his better self, she burst into tears. "'Lois! 'Lois!" she sobbed. "Now I can be happy again. If you had gone it would have killed me." And the tone in which she said it made him realize that she was speaking the literal truth.The natural color was coming back to his face. He patted her on the shoulder. "I'm not a weak, damn fool clear through, Cissy," cried he, "though, I must say, I've got a big, broad streak of it. You are sure of your ground?""Absolutely," she assured him, radiant now, and so beautiful that even he noted and admired. But then, he was in the mood to appreciate her. So long as the way was smooth, he could neglect her and put aside her love, as we all have the habit of neglecting and taking for granted, in fair weather, the things that are securely ours. But, let the storms come, and how quickly we show that we knew all the time, in our hearts, whom we could count on, could draw upon for strength and courage—the few, real friends—perhaps, only one—and one is quite enough, is legion, if it be the right one."You're not trusting to somebody else?" said he."Of course I am. But he's a real somebody, one I'd stake my life on. 'Lois, I know.""That settles it," said he. "But even if you weren't sure, even if I were certain the worst would overtake me, I'd not budge out of this town. As for Amy, if she's what I think her, she'll stand the test. If not— After all, I don't need anybody but you, Cissy."And he embraced and kissed her, and went back to his own part of the offices, head high and step firm. He stirred round there uneasily for a while, then shut himself in with the telephone and called up Fosdick's house. "I wish to speak to Miss Fosdick," he said. Presently he heard Amy's voice. "Well, Hugo?""It isn't your brother," said Alois. "It's I.""Oh!" Her tone was very different—and he did not like it, though he could not have said why. "The servant," she explained, "said she thought it was Hugo.""I've changed my mind about going abroad. You said you wanted to see me about some matter. I think—in fact, I'm sure—I know what you mean. Don't trouble; I'll come out all right. By the way, please tell your father I'm not going, will you?""Father!" she exclaimed. "Didhewant you to go?""I'd rather not talk about that. It's a matter of business. Please don't give him the impression I told you anything. Really, I haven't—have I?""Did father want you to go abroad?" insisted Amy."I can't talk about it over the telephone. I'll tell you when I see you—all about it—if you think you'd be interested.""Please answer my one question," she pleaded. "Then I'll not bother you any more.""Then—yes." He waited for her next remark, but it did not come. "Are you still there?""Yes," came her answer, faint and strange."What is it?" he cried. "What's the matter?""Nothing. Good-by—and—I'msoglad you're not going—oh, I can't express how glad—Alois!"She did not give him the chance to reply.XXBORIS DISCLOSES HIMSELFHugo, sitting to Boris for the portrait afterward locally famous as "The Young Ass," fell into the habit of expatiating upon Armstrong. His mind was full of the big Westerner, the author of the most abject humiliation of his life, the only one he could not explain away, to his own satisfaction, as wholly some one else's fault. Boris humored him, by discreetly sympathetic response even encouraged him to talk freely; nor was Boris's sole reason the undeniable fact that when Hugo was babbling about Armstrong, his real personality disported itself unrestrained in the features the painter was striving to portray. The wisest parent never takes a just measure of his child; and, while the paternal passion is tardier in beginning than the maternal, it is full as deluding once it lays hold. Fosdick thought he regarded Hugo as a fool; also he had fresh in mind proof that Hugo was highly dangerous to any delicate enterprise. Yet he confided in him that they would both be soon signally revenged upon the impudent upstart. He did not tell how or when; but Hugo guessed that it would be at the coming "investigation."A very few days after his father had told him, he told Boris. What possible danger could there be in telling a painter who hadn't the slightest interest in business matters, and who hadn't the intellect to understand them? For Hugo had for the intellect of the painter the measureless contempt of the contemptible. Also, Boris patterned his dress after the Continental fashions for which Hugo, severely and slavishly English in dress, had the Englishman's derisive disdain. Boris listened to Hugo's confidence with no sign, of interest or understanding, and Hugo babbled on. Soon, Boris knew more than did Hugo of the impending catastrophe to the one man in the whole world whom he did the honor of hating.Hate is an unusual emotion in a man so tolerant, so cynical, at once superior and conscious of it. But, watching Armstrong with Neva, watching Neva when Armstrong was about, Raphael had come to feel rather than to see that there was some tie between them. He had no difficulty in imagining the nature of this tie. A man and a woman who have lived together may, often do, remain entire strangers; but however constrained and shy and unreal their intimacy may have been, still that intimacy has become an integral part of their secret selves. It is the instinctive realization of this, rather than physical jealousy, that haunts and harrows the man who knows his wife or mistress did not come to him virgin, and that does not leave him until the former husband or lover is dead. Boris did not for an instant believe Neva could by any possibility fall in love with Armstrong—what could she, the artistic and refined, have in common with Armstrong, crude, coarse, unappreciative of all that meant life to her? A man could care without mental or heart sympathy, and a certain kind of woman; but not a Neva, whose delicacy was so sensitive that he, with all his expert delicacy of touch, all his trained softness of reassuring approach, was still far from her. No, Neva could never love Armstrong. But why did she not detest him? Why did she tolerate a presence that must remind her of repulsive hours, of moments of horror too intense even to quiver? "It is the feminine, the feline in her," he reflected. "She is avenging herself in the pleasure of watching his torment."That was logical, was consoling. However, Boris was wishing she would get her fill of vengeance and send the intruder about his stupid, vulgar business. Hugo's news thrilled him. "I hope the hulk will have to fly the country," he said to himself. He did not hope, as did Hugo, that Armstrong would have to go to the penitentiary. Such was his passion for liberty, for the free air and sunshine, that he could not think with pleasure of even an enemy's being behind bolts and bars and the dank dusk of high, thick prison walls. As several weeks passed without Armstrong's calling—he always felt it when Armstrong had been there—he became as cheerful, as gay, and confident as of old.But he soon began to note that Neva was not up to the mark. "What is it?" he at once asked himself in alarm whose deep, hidden causes he did not suspect, so slow are men of his kind to accuse themselves of harboring so vanity-depressing a passion as jealousy. "Has he got wind of his danger? Has he been trying to work on her sympathies?" He proceeded to find out."What's wrong, my dear?" asked he, in his gentle, caressing, master-to-pupil way. "You aren't as interested as you were. This sunshine doesn't reflect from your face and your voice as it should.""I've been worried about a friend of mine," confessed she. "There's no real cause for worry, but I can't shake off a foreboding.""Tell me," urged he. "It'll do you good.""It's nothing I can talk about. Really, I'm not so upset as you seem to imagine."But a few moments later he heard a deep sigh. He glanced at her; she was staring into vacancy, her face sad, her eyes tragic. In one of these irresistible gusts of passion, he flung down his brushes, strode up to her. "What has that scoundrel been saying to you?" he demanded.She startled, rose, faced him in amazement."Boris!" she cried breathlessly.The body that is molded upon a spirit such as his—or hers—becomes as mobile to its changes as cloud to sun and wind. Boris's good looks always had a suggestion of the superhuman, as if the breath of life in him were a fiercer, more enduring flame than in ordinary mortals. That superhuman look it was that had made Neva, the sensitive, the appreciative, unable ever quite to shake off all the awe of him she had originally felt. The man before her now had never looked so superhuman; but it was the superhumanness of the fiend. She shrank in fascinated terror. His sensuous features were sensuality personified; his rings, his jeweled watch guard, his odor of powerful perfume, all fitted in with his expression, where theretofore they had seemed incongruous. "Boris!" she repeated. "Is thatyou?"Her face brought him immediately back to himself, or rather to his normal combination of cynical good-humored actuality and cynical good-humored pose. The vision had vanished from her eyes, so utterly, so swiftly, that she might have thought she had been dreaming, had it not remained indelibly upon her mind—especially his eyes, like hunger, like thirst, like passion insatiable, like menace of mortal peril. It is one thing to suspect what is behind a mask; it is quite another matter to see, with the mask dropped and the naked soul revealed. As she, too, recovered herself, her terror faded; but the fascination remained, and a certain delight and pride in herself that she was the conjurer of such a passion as that. For women never understand that they are no more the authors of the passions they evoke than the spark is the author of the force in the dynamite it explodes or of the ensuing destruction; if the dynamite is there, any spark, rightly placed, will do the work."Yes, it's I," replied Raphael, rather confusedly. He was as much disconcerted by what he had himself seen of himself, as by having shown it to her. A storm that involves one's whole being stirs up from the bottom and lifts to the surface many a strange secret of weakness and of wickedness, none stranger than the secrets of one's real feelings and beliefs, so different from one's professions to others and to himself. Raphael had seen two of these secrets—first, that he was insanely jealous of Armstrong; second, that he was in love with Neva. Not the jealousy and the love that yet leave a man master of himself, but the jealousy and the love that enslave. In the silence that followed this scene of so few words and so strong emotions, while Neva was hanging fascinated over the discovery of his passion for her, he was gazing furtively at her, the terror that had been hers now his.He had been fancying he was leading her along the flower-walled path he had trod so often with some passing embodiment of his passing fancy, was luring her to the bower where he had so often taught what he called and thought "the great lesson." Instead, he was himself being whirled through space—whither? "I love her!" he said to himself, tears in his eyes and tears and fears in his heart. "This is not like the others—not at all—not at all. I love her, and I am afraid." And then there came to him a memory—a vision—a girl whom he had taught "the great lesson" years before; she had disappeared when he grew tired—or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say, when he had exhausted for the time the capacity of his nerves; for how can a man grow tired of what he never had?—and the rake kills the bird for the one feather in its crest. At any rate, he sent her away; he was seeing now the look in her eyes, as she went without a murmur or a sigh. And he was understanding at last what that look meant. In the anguish of an emotion like remorse, yet too selfish, perhaps, too self-pitying for remorse, he muttered, "Forgive me. I didn't know what I was doing."The vision faded back to the oblivion from which it had so curiously emerged. He glanced at Neva again, with critical eyes, like a surgeon diagnosing stolidly his own desperate wound. She was, or seemed to be, busy at her easel. He could study her, without interruption. He made slow, lingering inventory of her physical charms—beauties of hair and skin and contour, beauties of bosom's swell and curve of arm and slant of hip and leg. No, it was not in any of these, this supreme charm of her for him. Where then?For the first time he saw it. He had been assuming he was regarding her as he had regarded every other woman in the long chain his memory was weaving from his experiences and was coiling away to beguile his days of the almond tree and the bated sound of the grinding. And he had esteemed these women at their own valuation. It was the fashion for women to profess to esteem themselves, and to expect to be esteemed, for reasons other than their physical charms. But Boris, searcher into realities, held that only those women who by achievement earn independence as a man earns it, have title to count as personalities, to be taken seriously in their professions. He saw that the women he knew made only the feeblest pretense to real personal value other than physical; they based themselves upon their bodies alone. So, women had been to him what they were to themselves—mere animate flesh.He attached no more importance—beyond polite fiction—than did they themselves to what they thought and felt; it was what men thought of their persons, what feelings their persons roused in men—that is, in him. And he meted out to them the fate they expected, respected him the more for giving them; when they ceased to serve their sole purpose of ornament or plaything he flung them away, with more ceremony, perhaps, but with no less indifference than the emptied bottles of the scent he imported in quantity and drenched himself with.But he saw the truth about Neva now—saw why, after the few first weeks of their acquaintance, he had not even been made impatient by her bad days—the days when her skin clouded, her eyes dimmed, her hair lost its luster, and the color, leaving her lips, seemed to take with it the dazzling charm of her blue-white teeth. Why? Because her appeal to his senses was not so strong as her appeal to— He could not tell what it was in him this inner self of hers appealed to. Heart? Hardly; that meant her physical beauty. Intellect? Certainly not that; intellect rather wearied him than otherwise, and the sincerest permanent longing of his life was to cease from thinking, to feel, only to feel—birds, flowers, perfumed airs, the thrill of winds among grasses and leaves, sunshine, the play of light upon women's hair, the ecstasy of touch drifting over their smooth, magnetic bodies. No, it was neither her intellect nor her heart, any more than it was her loveliness. Or, rather, it was all three, and that something more which makes a man happy he knows not why and cares not to know why."I would leave anyone else to come to her," he said to himself. "And if anyone else lured me away from her, it would be only for the moment; I would know I should have to return to her, as a dog to its master." He repeated bitterly, mockingly, "As a dog to its master. That's what it means to be artist—more woman than man, and more feminine than any woman ever was."He stood behind her, looking at her work. "You'd better stop for to-day," he said presently. "You're only spoiling what you did yesterday.""So I am," said she.She put down palette and brushes with a sigh and a shrug. When she turned, he stood his ground and looked into her eyes. "I've been letting outside things come between me and my work," she went on, pretending to ignore his gaze."You guessed my secret a few minutes ago?" he asked.She nodded, and it half amused, half hurt him to note that she was physically on guard, lest he should seize her unawares.His smile broadened. "You needn't be alarmed," said he, clasping his hands behind his back. "I've no intention of doing it."She was smiling now, also. "Well," she said. "What next?""Why are you afraid?""I am not afraid." She clasped her hands behind her, like his, looked at him with laughing, level eyes; for he and she were of the same height. "Not a bit.""Why were you afraid?" he corrected. "You never were before."She seemed to reflect. "No, I never was," she admitted. Her gaze dropped and her color came."Neva," he said gently, "do you love me?"She lifted her eyes, studied him with the characteristic half closing of the lids that made her gaze so intense and so alluring. He could not decide whether that gaze was coquetry, as he hoped, or simply sincere inquiry, as he feared. "I do not know," she said. "I admire and respect you above all men."He laughed, carefully concealing how her words had stung him. "Admire! Respect!" He made a mocking little bow. "I thank you, madam. But—in old age—after death—is soon enough for that cold grandeur.""I do not know," she repeated. "I had never thought about it until a while ago—when you—when your expression—" She dropped her gaze again. "I can't explain."Coquetry or shyness? He could not tell. "Neva, do you love anyone else?""I think—not," replied she, very low.His eyes were like a tiger peering through a flower-freighted bush. "You love Armstrong," he urged, softly as the purr before the spring.She was gazing steadily at him now. "We were talking of you and me," rejoined she, her voice clear and positive. "If I loved you, it would not be because I did not love some other man. If I did not love you it would not be because I did love some other."There might be evasion in that reply, but there could be no lack of sincerity. "I beg your pardon," he apologized. "I forgot. The idea that there could be such a woman as you is very new to me. A few minutes ago, I made a discovery as startling as when I first saw you—there at the Morrises.""How much I owe you!" she exclaimed, and her whole face lighted up.But his shadowed; for he remembered that of all the emotions gratitude is least akin to love. "I made a startling discovery," he went on. "I discovered you—a you I had never suspected. And I discovered a me I had never dreamed of. Neva, I love you. I have never loved before."She grew very pale, and he thought she was trembling. But when, with her returning color, her eyes lifted to his, they were mocking. "Why, your tone was even better than I should have anticipated. You—love?" scoffed she. "Do you think I could study you this long and not find out at least that about you?""I love you," he insisted, earnestly enough, though his eyes were echoing her mockery."You could not love," affirmed she. "You have given yourself out little by little—here and there. You have really nothing left to give."A man of less vision, of slower mind would have been able to protest. But Boris instantly saw what she meant, felt the truth in her verdict. "Nothing left to give?" he repeated. "Do you think so?""I know it," replied she.There are some words that sound like the tolling of the bells of fate; those words of hers sounded thus to him. "Nothing left to give," he repeated. Had he indeed wasted his whole self upon trifles? Had he lit his lamps so long before the feast that now, with the bride come, they were quite burned out? He looked at her and, like the vague yet vivid visions music shows us and snatches away before we have seen more than just that they were there, he caught a haunting glimpse of the beauty supernal which he loved and longed for, but with his tired, blunted senses could not hope to realize or attain.... The blasphemer's fate!—to kiss the dust before the god he had reviled.... He burst out laughing, his hearty, sensuous, infectious laughter. "I'm getting senile," said he. With a flash of angrily reluctant awe, "Or rather, you have bewitched me." He got ready to depart. "So, my lady of joy and pain, you do not love me—yet?" he inquired jestingly.She shook her head with a smile which the gleam of her eyes from their narrow lids and the sweeping lashes made coquettish. "Not yet," replied she, in his own tone."Well, don't try. Love doesn't come for must. To-morrow? Yes. A new day, a new deal."They shook hands warmly, looked at each other with laughing eyes, no shadow of seriousness either in him or in her. "You are the first woman I ever loved," said he. "And you shall be the last. I do not like this love, now that I am acquainted with it." The sunlight pouring upon his head made him beautiful like a Bacchus, with color and life glittering in his crisp, reddish hair and virile, close-cropped beard. "I do not feel safe when my soul's center of gravity is in another person." He kissed her hand. "Till to-morrow."She was smiling, coloring, trying to hide the smile; but he could not tell whether it was because she was more moved than she cared to have him see, or merely because his curious but highly effective form of adoration pleased her vanity and she did not wish him to see it. "To-morrow," echoed she.He bowed himself out, still smiling, as if once beyond the door he might burst into laughter at himself or at her—or might wearily drop his merry mask. Her last look that he saw was covertly inquiring, doubtful—as if she might be wondering, Is he in earnest, does he really care, or was he only imagining love and exaggerating the fancy to amuse himself and me?Outside the door, he did drop his mask of comedy to reveal a face not without the tragic touch in its somberness. "Does she care?" he muttered. And he answered himself, "After all my experience! ... Experience! It simply puts hope on its mettle. Do I not know that if she loved she would not hesitate? And yet— Hope! You Jack-o'-lantern, luring man deeper and deeper into the slough of despond. I know you for the trickster you are, Hope. But, lead on!"And he went his way, humming the "March of the Toreadors" and swinging his costly, showy, tortoise-shell cane gayly.XXIA SENSATIONAL DAYWhen Fosdick, summoned by telephone, entered the august presence of the august committee of the august legislature of the august "people of the State of New York, by the grace of God free and independent," there were, save the reporters, a scant dozen spectators. The purpose of the committee had been dwindled to "a technical inquiry with a view further to improve the excellent laws under which the purified and at last really honest managements of insurance companies and banks had brought them to such a high state of honest strength." So, the announcement in the morning papers that the committee was to begin its labors for the public good attracted attention only among those citizens who keep themselves informed of loafing places that are comfortable in the cold weather. Fosdick bowed with dignified deference to the committee; the committee bowed to Fosdick—respectfully but nervously. There were five in the row seated behind the long oak table on the rostrum under the colossal figure of Justice. Furthest to the left sat Williams, in the Legislature by grace of the liquor interests; next him, Tomlinson, representing certain up-the-country traction and power interests; to the right of the chairman were Perry and Nottingham, the creatures of two railway systems. The chairman—Kenworthy, of Buffalo—had been in the Assembly nearly twenty years, for the insurance interests. He was a serious, square-bearded, pop-eyed little old man, most neat and respectable, and without a suspicion that he was not the most honorable person in the world, doing his full duty when he did precisely what the great men bade. Since the great capitalists were the makers and maintainers of prosperity, whatever they wanted must be for the good of all. The fact that he was on the private pay rolls of five companies and got occasional liberal "retainers" from seven others, was simply the clinching proof of the fitness of the great men to direct—they knew how properly to reward their helpers in taking care of the people. There are good men who are more dangerous than the slyest of the bad. Kenworthy was one of them.The committee did not know what it was assembled for. It is not the habit of the men who "run things" to explain their orders to understrappers. Smelling committees are of four kinds: There is the committee the boss sets at doing nothing industriously because the people are clamoring that something be done. There is the committee the boss sends to "jack up" some interest or interests that have failed to "cash down" properly. There is the committee that is sent into doubtful districts, just before election, to pretend to expose the other side—and sometimes, if there has been a quarrel between the bosses, this kind of committee acts almost as if it were sincere. Finally, there is the committee the boss sends out to destroy the rivals of his employers in some department of finance or commerce. This particular smelling committee suspected it was to have some of the shortcomings of the rivals of the O.A.D. put under its nostrils by its counsel, Morris; it knew the late Galloway had owned the governor and the dominant boss, and that Fosdick was supposed to have inherited them, along with sundry other items of old Galloway's power. Again, the object might be purely defensive. There had been, of late, a revival of popular clamor against insurance companies, which the previous investigation, started by a quarrel among the interests and called off when that quarrel was patched up, had left unquieted. This committee might be simply a blindfold for the eyes of the ass—said ass being the public with its loud bray and its long ears and its infinite patience.As Fosdick seated himself, after taking the oath, he noted for the first time the look on all faces—as if one exciting act of a drama had just ended and another were about to begin. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Westervelt and Armstrong, seated side by side—Westervelt, fumbling with his long white beard, his eyes upon the twenty-thousand-dollar sable overcoat lying across Fosdick's knees; Armstrong, huge and stolid, gazing straight at Fosdick's face with an expression inscrutable beyond its perfect calm. "He's taking his medicine well," thought Fosdick. "For Westervelt must have testified, and then, of course, he had his turn."Morris, a few feet in front of him, was busy with papers and books that rustled irritatingly in the tense silence. Fosdick watched him tranquilly, as free from anxiety as to what he would do as a showman about his marionette. Morris straightened himself and advanced toward Fosdick. They eyed each the other steadily; Fosdick admired his servant—the broad, intelligent brow, the pallor of the student, the keen eyes of the man of affairs, the sensitive mouth. The fact that he looked the very opposite of a bondman, at least to unobservant eyes, was not the smallest of his assets for Fosdick."Mr. Fosdick," began the lawyer, in his rather high-pitched, but flexible and agreeable tenor voice, "we will take as little of your time as possible. We know you are an exceedingly busy man.""Thank you, sir," said Fosdick, with a dignified bend of the head. A very respectable figure he made, sitting there in expensive looking linen and well cut dark suit, the sable overcoat across his knee and over one arm, a top hat in his other hand. "My time is at your disposal.""In examining some of the books of the O.A.D.—you are a director of the O.A.D.?""Yes, sir. I have been for forty-two years.""And very influential in its management?""They frequently call on me for advice, and, as the institution is a philanthropy, I feel it my duty always to respond."Fosdick noted that a smile, discreet but unmistakably derisive, ran round the room. Morris's face was sober, but the smile was in his eyes. Fosdick sat still straighter and frowned slightly. He highly disapproved of cynicism directed at himself."In looking at some of the books with Mr. Westervelt a while ago," continued Morris, "we came upon a matter—several items—which we thought ought to be explained at once. We wish no public misapprehensions to arise through any inadvertence of ours. So we have turned aside from the regular course of the investigation, to complete the matter."Fosdick's face betrayed his satisfaction—all had gone well; Armstrong was in the trap; it only remained for him to close it. Morris now took up a thin, well-worn account book which Fosdick recognized as the chief of Westervelt's four treasures. "I find here," he continued, "fourteen entries of twenty-five thousand dollars each—three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, in all—drawn by the President of the O.A.D., Mr. Armstrong here. Will you kindly tell us all you know about those items?"Mr. Fosdick smiled slightly. "Really, Mr. Morris," replied he, with the fluency of the well-rehearsed actor, "I cannot answer that question, as you put it. Even if I knew all about the items, I might not recognize them from your too scanty description.""We have just had Mr. Armstrong on the stand," said the lawyer. "He testified that he drew the money under your direction and paid it—the most of it—in your presence to Benjamin Sigourney, who looked after political matters for your company."Fosdick's expression of sheer amazement was sincerity itself. He looked from Morris to Armstrong. With his eyes and Armstrong's meeting, he said energetically, "I know of no such transaction.""You do not recall any of thefourteentransactions?""I do not recall them, because they never occurred. So far as I know, the legislative business of the O.A.D. is looked after by the legal department exclusively. I have been led to believe, and I do believe that, since the reforms in the O.A.D. and the new management of which Mr. Shotwell was the first head, the former reprehensible methods have been abandoned. It is impossible that Mr. Armstrong should have drawn such amounts for that purpose. You must—pardon me—have misunderstood his testimony.""Let the stenographer read—only Mr. Armstrong's last long reply," said Morris.The stenographer read: "Mr. Armstrong: 'Mr. Fosdick explained to me that the bills would practically put us out of business, except straight life policies, and that they would pass unless we submitted to the blackmail. As he was in control of the O.A.D., when he directed me to draw the money, I did so. All but two, I think, perhaps three, of the payments were made to Sigourney in his presence.'""That will do—thank you," said Morris to the stenographer.There was a pause, a silence so profound that it seemed a suffocating force. Morris's clear, sharp tones breaking it, startled everyone, even Fosdick. "You see, Mr. Fosdick, Mr. Armstrong was definite.""I am at a loss to understand," replied Fosdick, gray with emotion, but firm of eye and voice. "I am profoundly shocked—I can only say that, so far as I am concerned, no such transaction occurred. And I regret exceedingly to have to add that if any such moneys were taken from the O.A.D. they must have gone for other purposes than to influence the Legislature.""Then, you wish to inform the committee that to the best of your recollection you did not authorize or suggest those drafts, and did not and do not know anything about them?""I know nothing about them.""But, Mr. Fosdick," continued Morris slowly, "we have had Mr. Westervelt on the stand, and he has testified that he was present on more than half a dozen occasions when you told Mr. Armstrong to draw the money, and that on one occasion you yourself took the money when Mr. Armstrong brought it from the cash department."Fosdick stiffened as if an electric shock had passed through him. For the first time he lowered his eyes. Behind that veil, his brain was swiftly restoring order in the wild confusion which this exploding bomb had made. There was no time to consider how or why Westervelt had failed him, or how Morris had been stupid enough to permit such a situation. He could only make choice between standing to the original programme and retreating behind a pretense of bad memory. "I can always plead bad memory," he reflected. "Perhaps the day can be saved—Morris would have sent me a warning if it couldn't be." So he swept the faces of the committeemen and the few spectators with a glance like an unscathed battery. "I am astounded, Mr. Morris," said he steadily. "In search of an explanation, I happen to remember that Mr. Armstrong was recently compelled to relieve Mr. Westervelt from duty because of his failing health—failing faculties." His eyes turned to Westervelt with an apologetic look in them—and Westervelt was, indeed, a pitiful figure, suggesting one broken and distraught. Fosdick saw in the faces of committeemen and spectators that he had scored heavily. "I repeat," said he boldly, "it is impossible that any such transactions should have occurred."He was addressing Morris's back; the lawyer had turned to the table behind him and was examining the papers there with great deliberation. Not a sound in the room; all eyes on Fosdick, who was quietly waiting. "Ah!" exclaimed Morris, wheeling suddenly like a duelist at the end of the ten paces.Fosdick startled at the explosive note in his servant's voice, then instantly recovered himself."This letter—is it in your handwriting?" Fosdick took the extended paper, put on his nose-glasses, and calmly fixed his eyes upon it. His hand began to shake, over his face a dreadful, unsteady pallor, as if the flame of life, sick and dying, were flaring and sinking in the last flickerings before the final going-out."Is it your writing?" repeated Morris, his voice like the bay of the hound before the cornered fox.Fosdick's hand dropped to his lap. His eyes sought Morris's face and from them blazed such a blast of fury that Morris drew back a step.Morris was daunted only for a second. He said evenly, "It is your handwriting, is it not?"Fosdick looked round—-at Westervelt, whose wrinkled hand had paused on his beard midway between its yellowed end and his shrunken, waxen face; at Armstrong, stolid, statuelike; at the reporters, with pencils suspended and eyes glistening. He drew a long breath and straightened himself again. "It is," he said.Morris extended his hand for the letter. "Thank you," he said with grave courtesy, as Fosdick gave it to him. "I will read—'Dear Bill—Tell A to draw three times this week—the usual amounts and give them to S.' Bill—that is Mr. Westervelt, is it not? And does not A stand for Armstrong? And is not S, Sigourney, at that time the O.A.D.'s representative in legislative and general political matters?""Obviously," said Fosdick, promptly and easily. "I see my memory has played me a disgraceful trick. I am getting old." He smiled benevolently at Morris, then toward Westervelt. "I, too, am losing my faculties." Then, looking at Armstrong, and not changing from kindly smile and tone, "But my teeth are still good.""You now remember these transactions?""I do not. But I frankly admit I must have been mistaken in denying that they ever occurred.""I trust, Mr. Fosdick," said Morris, "your memory will not fail you to the extent that you will forget you are on oath."The muscles in Fosdick's spare jaws could be seen working violently. Morris was going too far, entirely too far, in realism for the benefit of the public. "Is it part of your privilege as examiner," said he, with more than a suggestion of master-to-servant, "to insult an old man upon his failing mind?""As none of these transactions was of older date than three years ago," replied Morris coldly, "and as the note bore date of only six months ago—the week before Sigourney died—it was not unnatural that I should be anxious about your testimony. We do not wish false ideas, detrimental to the standing of so notable and reputable a man as yourself, to get abroad."A titter ran around the room; Fosdick flushed and the storm veins in his temples swelled. He evidently thought his examination was over, for he took a better hold on his coat and was rising from the chair. "Just a few minutes more," said Morris. "In the course of Mr. Westervelt's testimony another matter was accidentally touched on. We feel that it should not go out to the public without your explanation."Fosdick sank back. Until now, he had been assuming that by some accident his plan to destroy Armstrong had miscarried, that Morris and Westervelt, to save the day, had by some mischance been forced into a position where they were compelled to involve him. But now, it came to him that Morris's icily sarcastic tone was more, far more, arrogant and insolent than could possibly be necessary for appearances with the public. The lawyer's next words changed suspicion into certainty. "We found several other items, Mr. Fosdick, which we requested Mr. Westervelt to explain—payments of large sums to your representatives—so Mr. Westervelt testifies they are—and to your secretary, Mr. Waller, and to your son—Hugo Fosdick. He is one of the four vice-presidents of the O.A.D., is he not?""He is," said Fosdick, and his voice was that of a sick old man."It was on your O.K. that one hundred thousand dollars were paid out to furnish his apartment?""You mean the uptown branch of the O.A.D.?" said Fosdick wearily, his blue-black eyelids drooped."Oh! We will inquire into that, later. But—take last year, Mr. Fosdick. Take this omnibus lease, turning over to corporations you control properties in Boston and Chicago which cost the O.A.D. a sum, two per cent. interest on which would be double the rental they are getting from you. Mr. Westervelt informs us that he knows you get seventeen times the income from the properties that you pay the O.A.D. under the leases they executed to you—you practically making the leases, as an officer of the company, to yourself as another corporation. My question is somewhat involved, but I hope it is clear?""I understand you—in the main," replied Fosdick. "But you will have to excuse me from answering any more questions to-day. I did not come prepared. My connection with the O.A.D. has been philanthropic, rather than businesslike. Naturally, though perhaps wrongly, I have not kept myself informed of all details."He frowned down the smiles, the beginnings of laughter. "But the record is sound!" he went on in a ringing voice. "The O.A.D. has cost me much time and thought. I have given more of both to it than I have to purely commercial enterprises. But moneymaking isn't everything—and I feel more than rewarded.""We all know you, Mr. Fosdick," said Morris, with an air of satiric respect."I ask you to excuse me to-day," continued the old man, in his impressive manner. "I wish to prepare myself. To-morrow, or, at most, in two or three days, I shalldemandthat you let me resume the stand. I have nothing to conceal. Errors of judgment I may have committed. But my record is clear." He raised his head and his eyes flashed. "It is a record with which I shall soon fearlessly face my God!"Josiah Fosdick felt that he was himself again. His eyes looked out with the expression of a good man standing his ground unafraid. And he smiled contemptuously at the faint sarcasm in Morris's cold voice, saying, "That is quite satisfactory—most satisfactory."The committee rose; the reporters surrounded Fosdick. He was courteous but firm in his refusal to say a word either as to the testimony he had given or as to that he would give. A dozen eager hands helped him on with his coat, and he marched away, sure that he was completely reëstablished—in the public esteem; his self-esteem had not been shaken for an instant. The good man doubts himself; not the self-deceiving hypocrite. There was triumph in the long look he gave Morris—a look which Morris returned with the tranquil shine of a satisfied revenge, a revenge of payment with interest for slights, humiliations, insults which the old tyrant had put upon him. Long trafficking upon the cupidity and timidity of men gives the ruling class a false notion of the discernment of mankind and of their own mental superiority, as well as moral. It was natural that Fosdick should believe himself above censure, above criticism even. He returned to his office, like a king upon whom the vulgar have sought to put indignities. His teeth fairly ached for the moment when they could close upon the bones of these "insolent curs."It was not until he set out for lunch that another view of the situation came in sight. As he was crossing Waller's office, he was halted by that faithful servant's expression, the more impressive because it was persisting in spite of hysterical efforts to conceal it and to look serenely worshipful as usual. "What is it, Waller?" he demanded."Nothing—nothing at all, sir," said Waller, as with a clumsy effort at pretended carelessness he tossed into the wastebasket a newspaper which Fosdick had surprised him at reading."Is that an afternoon paper?"Waller stammered inarticulately.Fosdick shot a quick, sharp glance at him. "Let me see it."Waller took the paper out of the basket, as if he were handling something vile to sight, touch and smell. "These sensational sheets are very impudent and untruthful," he said, as he gave it to his master.Fosdick spread the paper. He sprang back as if he had been struck. "God!" he cried. "God in heaven!"In the committee room, after the first unpleasantness, all had been smooth, and there was not to his self-complacent security of the divine right monarch the remotest suggestion of impending disgrace. Now—from the front page of this newspaper, flying broadcast through the city, through the country, shrieked, "Fosdick Perjures Himself! The eminent financier and churchman caught on the witness stand. Denies knowledge of political bribery funds and is trapped! Evades accusations of gigantic swindles and thefts."Disgrace, like all the other strong tragic words, conveys little of its real meaning to anyone until it becomes personal. Fosdick would have said beforehand that the publication of an attack on him in the low newspapers would not trouble him so much as the buzzing of a fly about his bald spot. He would have said that there was in him—in his conscience, in his confidence in the approval of his God—a tower of righteous strength that would stand against any attack, as unimperiled as a skyscraper by a summer breeze. But, with these huge, coarse voices of the all-pervading press shrieking and screaming "Perjurer. Swindler! Thief!" he shook as with the ague and turned gray and groaned. He sat down that he might not fall."God! God in heaven!" he muttered."It's infamous," cried Waller, tears in his eyes and anger in his voice. "No man, no matter how upright or high, is safe from those wretches."Fosdick gripped his head between his hands. "It hurts, Waller—ithurts," he moaned."Nobody will pay the slightest attention to it," said Waller. "We all know you."But Fosdick was not listening. He was wondering how he had been able to delude himself, how he had failed to realize the construction that could, and by the public would, be put upon his testimony. Many's the thing that sounds and looks and seems right and proper in privacy and before a few sympathetic witnesses, and that shudders in the full livery of shame when exposed before the world. Here was an instance—and he, the shrewd, the lifelong dealer in public opinion, had been tricked at his own trade as he had never been able to trick anyone else in half a century of chicane."I want to die, Waller," he said feebly. "Help me back into my office. I can't face anybody."
If she could have seen him, her worst suspicions would have been confirmed; for his hair was mussed and damp with sweat, his skin looked as if he were in a garish light. He tried to compose himself, went in where his sister was at work—absorbed in making the drawings of a new kind of chimney-piece she had been thinking out. "Cis," he said, in an uncertain voice, "I'm off for Europe at noon."
She wheeled on him. "Fosdick?"
He nodded. "His secretary, Waller, was just here."
A few seconds during which he could feel the energy of her swift thoughts. Then, "Wait!" she commanded, and darted into her private office, closing the door.
She was gone twenty minutes. "The person I was calling up hadn't got in," she explained, when she returned. "I had to wait for him. You are to stay here—you are not to go in any circumstances."
"I must go," was his answer in a dreary tone. "I promised Fosdick, and I daren't offend him. Besides—well, it's prudent."
"'Lois," said Narcisse earnestly, "I give you my word of honor, it would be the very worst step you could take, to obey Fosdick and go. I promise you that, if you stay, all will be well. If you go, you would better throw yourself into the sea, midway, for you will ruin your reputation—ours."
He dropped into a chair. "My instinct is against going," he confessed. "I've done nothing. I haven't got a cent that doesn't belong to me honestly. But, Cis, I simply mustn't offend Fosdick."
"Because of Amy?"
"Yes."
"If you go, you'll have no more chance for her than—than a convict in a penitentiary."
"You know something you are not telling me?"
"I do. Something I can't tell you."
He supported his aching head with his hands and stared long at the floor. "I'll not go!" he exclaimed, springing to his feet suddenly. "I've done nothing wrong. I'll not run away."
Narcisse had been watching him as if she were seeing him struggling for his life in deep water before her very eyes. At his words, at his expression, like his own self, the brother she had brought up and guarded and loved with the love that is deeper than any love which passion ever kindled—at this proclamation of the victory of his better self, she burst into tears. "'Lois! 'Lois!" she sobbed. "Now I can be happy again. If you had gone it would have killed me." And the tone in which she said it made him realize that she was speaking the literal truth.
The natural color was coming back to his face. He patted her on the shoulder. "I'm not a weak, damn fool clear through, Cissy," cried he, "though, I must say, I've got a big, broad streak of it. You are sure of your ground?"
"Absolutely," she assured him, radiant now, and so beautiful that even he noted and admired. But then, he was in the mood to appreciate her. So long as the way was smooth, he could neglect her and put aside her love, as we all have the habit of neglecting and taking for granted, in fair weather, the things that are securely ours. But, let the storms come, and how quickly we show that we knew all the time, in our hearts, whom we could count on, could draw upon for strength and courage—the few, real friends—perhaps, only one—and one is quite enough, is legion, if it be the right one.
"You're not trusting to somebody else?" said he.
"Of course I am. But he's a real somebody, one I'd stake my life on. 'Lois, I know."
"That settles it," said he. "But even if you weren't sure, even if I were certain the worst would overtake me, I'd not budge out of this town. As for Amy, if she's what I think her, she'll stand the test. If not— After all, I don't need anybody but you, Cissy."
And he embraced and kissed her, and went back to his own part of the offices, head high and step firm. He stirred round there uneasily for a while, then shut himself in with the telephone and called up Fosdick's house. "I wish to speak to Miss Fosdick," he said. Presently he heard Amy's voice. "Well, Hugo?"
"It isn't your brother," said Alois. "It's I."
"Oh!" Her tone was very different—and he did not like it, though he could not have said why. "The servant," she explained, "said she thought it was Hugo."
"I've changed my mind about going abroad. You said you wanted to see me about some matter. I think—in fact, I'm sure—I know what you mean. Don't trouble; I'll come out all right. By the way, please tell your father I'm not going, will you?"
"Father!" she exclaimed. "Didhewant you to go?"
"I'd rather not talk about that. It's a matter of business. Please don't give him the impression I told you anything. Really, I haven't—have I?"
"Did father want you to go abroad?" insisted Amy.
"I can't talk about it over the telephone. I'll tell you when I see you—all about it—if you think you'd be interested."
"Please answer my one question," she pleaded. "Then I'll not bother you any more."
"Then—yes." He waited for her next remark, but it did not come. "Are you still there?"
"Yes," came her answer, faint and strange.
"What is it?" he cried. "What's the matter?"
"Nothing. Good-by—and—I'msoglad you're not going—oh, I can't express how glad—Alois!"
She did not give him the chance to reply.
XX
BORIS DISCLOSES HIMSELF
Hugo, sitting to Boris for the portrait afterward locally famous as "The Young Ass," fell into the habit of expatiating upon Armstrong. His mind was full of the big Westerner, the author of the most abject humiliation of his life, the only one he could not explain away, to his own satisfaction, as wholly some one else's fault. Boris humored him, by discreetly sympathetic response even encouraged him to talk freely; nor was Boris's sole reason the undeniable fact that when Hugo was babbling about Armstrong, his real personality disported itself unrestrained in the features the painter was striving to portray. The wisest parent never takes a just measure of his child; and, while the paternal passion is tardier in beginning than the maternal, it is full as deluding once it lays hold. Fosdick thought he regarded Hugo as a fool; also he had fresh in mind proof that Hugo was highly dangerous to any delicate enterprise. Yet he confided in him that they would both be soon signally revenged upon the impudent upstart. He did not tell how or when; but Hugo guessed that it would be at the coming "investigation."
A very few days after his father had told him, he told Boris. What possible danger could there be in telling a painter who hadn't the slightest interest in business matters, and who hadn't the intellect to understand them? For Hugo had for the intellect of the painter the measureless contempt of the contemptible. Also, Boris patterned his dress after the Continental fashions for which Hugo, severely and slavishly English in dress, had the Englishman's derisive disdain. Boris listened to Hugo's confidence with no sign, of interest or understanding, and Hugo babbled on. Soon, Boris knew more than did Hugo of the impending catastrophe to the one man in the whole world whom he did the honor of hating.
Hate is an unusual emotion in a man so tolerant, so cynical, at once superior and conscious of it. But, watching Armstrong with Neva, watching Neva when Armstrong was about, Raphael had come to feel rather than to see that there was some tie between them. He had no difficulty in imagining the nature of this tie. A man and a woman who have lived together may, often do, remain entire strangers; but however constrained and shy and unreal their intimacy may have been, still that intimacy has become an integral part of their secret selves. It is the instinctive realization of this, rather than physical jealousy, that haunts and harrows the man who knows his wife or mistress did not come to him virgin, and that does not leave him until the former husband or lover is dead. Boris did not for an instant believe Neva could by any possibility fall in love with Armstrong—what could she, the artistic and refined, have in common with Armstrong, crude, coarse, unappreciative of all that meant life to her? A man could care without mental or heart sympathy, and a certain kind of woman; but not a Neva, whose delicacy was so sensitive that he, with all his expert delicacy of touch, all his trained softness of reassuring approach, was still far from her. No, Neva could never love Armstrong. But why did she not detest him? Why did she tolerate a presence that must remind her of repulsive hours, of moments of horror too intense even to quiver? "It is the feminine, the feline in her," he reflected. "She is avenging herself in the pleasure of watching his torment."
That was logical, was consoling. However, Boris was wishing she would get her fill of vengeance and send the intruder about his stupid, vulgar business. Hugo's news thrilled him. "I hope the hulk will have to fly the country," he said to himself. He did not hope, as did Hugo, that Armstrong would have to go to the penitentiary. Such was his passion for liberty, for the free air and sunshine, that he could not think with pleasure of even an enemy's being behind bolts and bars and the dank dusk of high, thick prison walls. As several weeks passed without Armstrong's calling—he always felt it when Armstrong had been there—he became as cheerful, as gay, and confident as of old.
But he soon began to note that Neva was not up to the mark. "What is it?" he at once asked himself in alarm whose deep, hidden causes he did not suspect, so slow are men of his kind to accuse themselves of harboring so vanity-depressing a passion as jealousy. "Has he got wind of his danger? Has he been trying to work on her sympathies?" He proceeded to find out.
"What's wrong, my dear?" asked he, in his gentle, caressing, master-to-pupil way. "You aren't as interested as you were. This sunshine doesn't reflect from your face and your voice as it should."
"I've been worried about a friend of mine," confessed she. "There's no real cause for worry, but I can't shake off a foreboding."
"Tell me," urged he. "It'll do you good."
"It's nothing I can talk about. Really, I'm not so upset as you seem to imagine."
But a few moments later he heard a deep sigh. He glanced at her; she was staring into vacancy, her face sad, her eyes tragic. In one of these irresistible gusts of passion, he flung down his brushes, strode up to her. "What has that scoundrel been saying to you?" he demanded.
She startled, rose, faced him in amazement.
"Boris!" she cried breathlessly.
The body that is molded upon a spirit such as his—or hers—becomes as mobile to its changes as cloud to sun and wind. Boris's good looks always had a suggestion of the superhuman, as if the breath of life in him were a fiercer, more enduring flame than in ordinary mortals. That superhuman look it was that had made Neva, the sensitive, the appreciative, unable ever quite to shake off all the awe of him she had originally felt. The man before her now had never looked so superhuman; but it was the superhumanness of the fiend. She shrank in fascinated terror. His sensuous features were sensuality personified; his rings, his jeweled watch guard, his odor of powerful perfume, all fitted in with his expression, where theretofore they had seemed incongruous. "Boris!" she repeated. "Is thatyou?"
Her face brought him immediately back to himself, or rather to his normal combination of cynical good-humored actuality and cynical good-humored pose. The vision had vanished from her eyes, so utterly, so swiftly, that she might have thought she had been dreaming, had it not remained indelibly upon her mind—especially his eyes, like hunger, like thirst, like passion insatiable, like menace of mortal peril. It is one thing to suspect what is behind a mask; it is quite another matter to see, with the mask dropped and the naked soul revealed. As she, too, recovered herself, her terror faded; but the fascination remained, and a certain delight and pride in herself that she was the conjurer of such a passion as that. For women never understand that they are no more the authors of the passions they evoke than the spark is the author of the force in the dynamite it explodes or of the ensuing destruction; if the dynamite is there, any spark, rightly placed, will do the work.
"Yes, it's I," replied Raphael, rather confusedly. He was as much disconcerted by what he had himself seen of himself, as by having shown it to her. A storm that involves one's whole being stirs up from the bottom and lifts to the surface many a strange secret of weakness and of wickedness, none stranger than the secrets of one's real feelings and beliefs, so different from one's professions to others and to himself. Raphael had seen two of these secrets—first, that he was insanely jealous of Armstrong; second, that he was in love with Neva. Not the jealousy and the love that yet leave a man master of himself, but the jealousy and the love that enslave. In the silence that followed this scene of so few words and so strong emotions, while Neva was hanging fascinated over the discovery of his passion for her, he was gazing furtively at her, the terror that had been hers now his.
He had been fancying he was leading her along the flower-walled path he had trod so often with some passing embodiment of his passing fancy, was luring her to the bower where he had so often taught what he called and thought "the great lesson." Instead, he was himself being whirled through space—whither? "I love her!" he said to himself, tears in his eyes and tears and fears in his heart. "This is not like the others—not at all—not at all. I love her, and I am afraid." And then there came to him a memory—a vision—a girl whom he had taught "the great lesson" years before; she had disappeared when he grew tired—or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say, when he had exhausted for the time the capacity of his nerves; for how can a man grow tired of what he never had?—and the rake kills the bird for the one feather in its crest. At any rate, he sent her away; he was seeing now the look in her eyes, as she went without a murmur or a sigh. And he was understanding at last what that look meant. In the anguish of an emotion like remorse, yet too selfish, perhaps, too self-pitying for remorse, he muttered, "Forgive me. I didn't know what I was doing."
The vision faded back to the oblivion from which it had so curiously emerged. He glanced at Neva again, with critical eyes, like a surgeon diagnosing stolidly his own desperate wound. She was, or seemed to be, busy at her easel. He could study her, without interruption. He made slow, lingering inventory of her physical charms—beauties of hair and skin and contour, beauties of bosom's swell and curve of arm and slant of hip and leg. No, it was not in any of these, this supreme charm of her for him. Where then?
For the first time he saw it. He had been assuming he was regarding her as he had regarded every other woman in the long chain his memory was weaving from his experiences and was coiling away to beguile his days of the almond tree and the bated sound of the grinding. And he had esteemed these women at their own valuation. It was the fashion for women to profess to esteem themselves, and to expect to be esteemed, for reasons other than their physical charms. But Boris, searcher into realities, held that only those women who by achievement earn independence as a man earns it, have title to count as personalities, to be taken seriously in their professions. He saw that the women he knew made only the feeblest pretense to real personal value other than physical; they based themselves upon their bodies alone. So, women had been to him what they were to themselves—mere animate flesh.
He attached no more importance—beyond polite fiction—than did they themselves to what they thought and felt; it was what men thought of their persons, what feelings their persons roused in men—that is, in him. And he meted out to them the fate they expected, respected him the more for giving them; when they ceased to serve their sole purpose of ornament or plaything he flung them away, with more ceremony, perhaps, but with no less indifference than the emptied bottles of the scent he imported in quantity and drenched himself with.
But he saw the truth about Neva now—saw why, after the few first weeks of their acquaintance, he had not even been made impatient by her bad days—the days when her skin clouded, her eyes dimmed, her hair lost its luster, and the color, leaving her lips, seemed to take with it the dazzling charm of her blue-white teeth. Why? Because her appeal to his senses was not so strong as her appeal to— He could not tell what it was in him this inner self of hers appealed to. Heart? Hardly; that meant her physical beauty. Intellect? Certainly not that; intellect rather wearied him than otherwise, and the sincerest permanent longing of his life was to cease from thinking, to feel, only to feel—birds, flowers, perfumed airs, the thrill of winds among grasses and leaves, sunshine, the play of light upon women's hair, the ecstasy of touch drifting over their smooth, magnetic bodies. No, it was neither her intellect nor her heart, any more than it was her loveliness. Or, rather, it was all three, and that something more which makes a man happy he knows not why and cares not to know why.
"I would leave anyone else to come to her," he said to himself. "And if anyone else lured me away from her, it would be only for the moment; I would know I should have to return to her, as a dog to its master." He repeated bitterly, mockingly, "As a dog to its master. That's what it means to be artist—more woman than man, and more feminine than any woman ever was."
He stood behind her, looking at her work. "You'd better stop for to-day," he said presently. "You're only spoiling what you did yesterday."
"So I am," said she.
She put down palette and brushes with a sigh and a shrug. When she turned, he stood his ground and looked into her eyes. "I've been letting outside things come between me and my work," she went on, pretending to ignore his gaze.
"You guessed my secret a few minutes ago?" he asked.
She nodded, and it half amused, half hurt him to note that she was physically on guard, lest he should seize her unawares.
His smile broadened. "You needn't be alarmed," said he, clasping his hands behind his back. "I've no intention of doing it."
She was smiling now, also. "Well," she said. "What next?"
"Why are you afraid?"
"I am not afraid." She clasped her hands behind her, like his, looked at him with laughing, level eyes; for he and she were of the same height. "Not a bit."
"Why were you afraid?" he corrected. "You never were before."
She seemed to reflect. "No, I never was," she admitted. Her gaze dropped and her color came.
"Neva," he said gently, "do you love me?"
She lifted her eyes, studied him with the characteristic half closing of the lids that made her gaze so intense and so alluring. He could not decide whether that gaze was coquetry, as he hoped, or simply sincere inquiry, as he feared. "I do not know," she said. "I admire and respect you above all men."
He laughed, carefully concealing how her words had stung him. "Admire! Respect!" He made a mocking little bow. "I thank you, madam. But—in old age—after death—is soon enough for that cold grandeur."
"I do not know," she repeated. "I had never thought about it until a while ago—when you—when your expression—" She dropped her gaze again. "I can't explain."
Coquetry or shyness? He could not tell. "Neva, do you love anyone else?"
"I think—not," replied she, very low.
His eyes were like a tiger peering through a flower-freighted bush. "You love Armstrong," he urged, softly as the purr before the spring.
She was gazing steadily at him now. "We were talking of you and me," rejoined she, her voice clear and positive. "If I loved you, it would not be because I did not love some other man. If I did not love you it would not be because I did love some other."
There might be evasion in that reply, but there could be no lack of sincerity. "I beg your pardon," he apologized. "I forgot. The idea that there could be such a woman as you is very new to me. A few minutes ago, I made a discovery as startling as when I first saw you—there at the Morrises."
"How much I owe you!" she exclaimed, and her whole face lighted up.
But his shadowed; for he remembered that of all the emotions gratitude is least akin to love. "I made a startling discovery," he went on. "I discovered you—a you I had never suspected. And I discovered a me I had never dreamed of. Neva, I love you. I have never loved before."
She grew very pale, and he thought she was trembling. But when, with her returning color, her eyes lifted to his, they were mocking. "Why, your tone was even better than I should have anticipated. You—love?" scoffed she. "Do you think I could study you this long and not find out at least that about you?"
"I love you," he insisted, earnestly enough, though his eyes were echoing her mockery.
"You could not love," affirmed she. "You have given yourself out little by little—here and there. You have really nothing left to give."
A man of less vision, of slower mind would have been able to protest. But Boris instantly saw what she meant, felt the truth in her verdict. "Nothing left to give?" he repeated. "Do you think so?"
"I know it," replied she.
There are some words that sound like the tolling of the bells of fate; those words of hers sounded thus to him. "Nothing left to give," he repeated. Had he indeed wasted his whole self upon trifles? Had he lit his lamps so long before the feast that now, with the bride come, they were quite burned out? He looked at her and, like the vague yet vivid visions music shows us and snatches away before we have seen more than just that they were there, he caught a haunting glimpse of the beauty supernal which he loved and longed for, but with his tired, blunted senses could not hope to realize or attain.... The blasphemer's fate!—to kiss the dust before the god he had reviled.... He burst out laughing, his hearty, sensuous, infectious laughter. "I'm getting senile," said he. With a flash of angrily reluctant awe, "Or rather, you have bewitched me." He got ready to depart. "So, my lady of joy and pain, you do not love me—yet?" he inquired jestingly.
She shook her head with a smile which the gleam of her eyes from their narrow lids and the sweeping lashes made coquettish. "Not yet," replied she, in his own tone.
"Well, don't try. Love doesn't come for must. To-morrow? Yes. A new day, a new deal."
They shook hands warmly, looked at each other with laughing eyes, no shadow of seriousness either in him or in her. "You are the first woman I ever loved," said he. "And you shall be the last. I do not like this love, now that I am acquainted with it." The sunlight pouring upon his head made him beautiful like a Bacchus, with color and life glittering in his crisp, reddish hair and virile, close-cropped beard. "I do not feel safe when my soul's center of gravity is in another person." He kissed her hand. "Till to-morrow."
She was smiling, coloring, trying to hide the smile; but he could not tell whether it was because she was more moved than she cared to have him see, or merely because his curious but highly effective form of adoration pleased her vanity and she did not wish him to see it. "To-morrow," echoed she.
He bowed himself out, still smiling, as if once beyond the door he might burst into laughter at himself or at her—or might wearily drop his merry mask. Her last look that he saw was covertly inquiring, doubtful—as if she might be wondering, Is he in earnest, does he really care, or was he only imagining love and exaggerating the fancy to amuse himself and me?
Outside the door, he did drop his mask of comedy to reveal a face not without the tragic touch in its somberness. "Does she care?" he muttered. And he answered himself, "After all my experience! ... Experience! It simply puts hope on its mettle. Do I not know that if she loved she would not hesitate? And yet— Hope! You Jack-o'-lantern, luring man deeper and deeper into the slough of despond. I know you for the trickster you are, Hope. But, lead on!"
And he went his way, humming the "March of the Toreadors" and swinging his costly, showy, tortoise-shell cane gayly.
XXI
A SENSATIONAL DAY
When Fosdick, summoned by telephone, entered the august presence of the august committee of the august legislature of the august "people of the State of New York, by the grace of God free and independent," there were, save the reporters, a scant dozen spectators. The purpose of the committee had been dwindled to "a technical inquiry with a view further to improve the excellent laws under which the purified and at last really honest managements of insurance companies and banks had brought them to such a high state of honest strength." So, the announcement in the morning papers that the committee was to begin its labors for the public good attracted attention only among those citizens who keep themselves informed of loafing places that are comfortable in the cold weather. Fosdick bowed with dignified deference to the committee; the committee bowed to Fosdick—respectfully but nervously. There were five in the row seated behind the long oak table on the rostrum under the colossal figure of Justice. Furthest to the left sat Williams, in the Legislature by grace of the liquor interests; next him, Tomlinson, representing certain up-the-country traction and power interests; to the right of the chairman were Perry and Nottingham, the creatures of two railway systems. The chairman—Kenworthy, of Buffalo—had been in the Assembly nearly twenty years, for the insurance interests. He was a serious, square-bearded, pop-eyed little old man, most neat and respectable, and without a suspicion that he was not the most honorable person in the world, doing his full duty when he did precisely what the great men bade. Since the great capitalists were the makers and maintainers of prosperity, whatever they wanted must be for the good of all. The fact that he was on the private pay rolls of five companies and got occasional liberal "retainers" from seven others, was simply the clinching proof of the fitness of the great men to direct—they knew how properly to reward their helpers in taking care of the people. There are good men who are more dangerous than the slyest of the bad. Kenworthy was one of them.
The committee did not know what it was assembled for. It is not the habit of the men who "run things" to explain their orders to understrappers. Smelling committees are of four kinds: There is the committee the boss sets at doing nothing industriously because the people are clamoring that something be done. There is the committee the boss sends to "jack up" some interest or interests that have failed to "cash down" properly. There is the committee that is sent into doubtful districts, just before election, to pretend to expose the other side—and sometimes, if there has been a quarrel between the bosses, this kind of committee acts almost as if it were sincere. Finally, there is the committee the boss sends out to destroy the rivals of his employers in some department of finance or commerce. This particular smelling committee suspected it was to have some of the shortcomings of the rivals of the O.A.D. put under its nostrils by its counsel, Morris; it knew the late Galloway had owned the governor and the dominant boss, and that Fosdick was supposed to have inherited them, along with sundry other items of old Galloway's power. Again, the object might be purely defensive. There had been, of late, a revival of popular clamor against insurance companies, which the previous investigation, started by a quarrel among the interests and called off when that quarrel was patched up, had left unquieted. This committee might be simply a blindfold for the eyes of the ass—said ass being the public with its loud bray and its long ears and its infinite patience.
As Fosdick seated himself, after taking the oath, he noted for the first time the look on all faces—as if one exciting act of a drama had just ended and another were about to begin. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Westervelt and Armstrong, seated side by side—Westervelt, fumbling with his long white beard, his eyes upon the twenty-thousand-dollar sable overcoat lying across Fosdick's knees; Armstrong, huge and stolid, gazing straight at Fosdick's face with an expression inscrutable beyond its perfect calm. "He's taking his medicine well," thought Fosdick. "For Westervelt must have testified, and then, of course, he had his turn."
Morris, a few feet in front of him, was busy with papers and books that rustled irritatingly in the tense silence. Fosdick watched him tranquilly, as free from anxiety as to what he would do as a showman about his marionette. Morris straightened himself and advanced toward Fosdick. They eyed each the other steadily; Fosdick admired his servant—the broad, intelligent brow, the pallor of the student, the keen eyes of the man of affairs, the sensitive mouth. The fact that he looked the very opposite of a bondman, at least to unobservant eyes, was not the smallest of his assets for Fosdick.
"Mr. Fosdick," began the lawyer, in his rather high-pitched, but flexible and agreeable tenor voice, "we will take as little of your time as possible. We know you are an exceedingly busy man."
"Thank you, sir," said Fosdick, with a dignified bend of the head. A very respectable figure he made, sitting there in expensive looking linen and well cut dark suit, the sable overcoat across his knee and over one arm, a top hat in his other hand. "My time is at your disposal."
"In examining some of the books of the O.A.D.—you are a director of the O.A.D.?"
"Yes, sir. I have been for forty-two years."
"And very influential in its management?"
"They frequently call on me for advice, and, as the institution is a philanthropy, I feel it my duty always to respond."
Fosdick noted that a smile, discreet but unmistakably derisive, ran round the room. Morris's face was sober, but the smile was in his eyes. Fosdick sat still straighter and frowned slightly. He highly disapproved of cynicism directed at himself.
"In looking at some of the books with Mr. Westervelt a while ago," continued Morris, "we came upon a matter—several items—which we thought ought to be explained at once. We wish no public misapprehensions to arise through any inadvertence of ours. So we have turned aside from the regular course of the investigation, to complete the matter."
Fosdick's face betrayed his satisfaction—all had gone well; Armstrong was in the trap; it only remained for him to close it. Morris now took up a thin, well-worn account book which Fosdick recognized as the chief of Westervelt's four treasures. "I find here," he continued, "fourteen entries of twenty-five thousand dollars each—three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, in all—drawn by the President of the O.A.D., Mr. Armstrong here. Will you kindly tell us all you know about those items?"
Mr. Fosdick smiled slightly. "Really, Mr. Morris," replied he, with the fluency of the well-rehearsed actor, "I cannot answer that question, as you put it. Even if I knew all about the items, I might not recognize them from your too scanty description."
"We have just had Mr. Armstrong on the stand," said the lawyer. "He testified that he drew the money under your direction and paid it—the most of it—in your presence to Benjamin Sigourney, who looked after political matters for your company."
Fosdick's expression of sheer amazement was sincerity itself. He looked from Morris to Armstrong. With his eyes and Armstrong's meeting, he said energetically, "I know of no such transaction."
"You do not recall any of thefourteentransactions?"
"I do not recall them, because they never occurred. So far as I know, the legislative business of the O.A.D. is looked after by the legal department exclusively. I have been led to believe, and I do believe that, since the reforms in the O.A.D. and the new management of which Mr. Shotwell was the first head, the former reprehensible methods have been abandoned. It is impossible that Mr. Armstrong should have drawn such amounts for that purpose. You must—pardon me—have misunderstood his testimony."
"Let the stenographer read—only Mr. Armstrong's last long reply," said Morris.
The stenographer read: "Mr. Armstrong: 'Mr. Fosdick explained to me that the bills would practically put us out of business, except straight life policies, and that they would pass unless we submitted to the blackmail. As he was in control of the O.A.D., when he directed me to draw the money, I did so. All but two, I think, perhaps three, of the payments were made to Sigourney in his presence.'"
"That will do—thank you," said Morris to the stenographer.
There was a pause, a silence so profound that it seemed a suffocating force. Morris's clear, sharp tones breaking it, startled everyone, even Fosdick. "You see, Mr. Fosdick, Mr. Armstrong was definite."
"I am at a loss to understand," replied Fosdick, gray with emotion, but firm of eye and voice. "I am profoundly shocked—I can only say that, so far as I am concerned, no such transaction occurred. And I regret exceedingly to have to add that if any such moneys were taken from the O.A.D. they must have gone for other purposes than to influence the Legislature."
"Then, you wish to inform the committee that to the best of your recollection you did not authorize or suggest those drafts, and did not and do not know anything about them?"
"I know nothing about them."
"But, Mr. Fosdick," continued Morris slowly, "we have had Mr. Westervelt on the stand, and he has testified that he was present on more than half a dozen occasions when you told Mr. Armstrong to draw the money, and that on one occasion you yourself took the money when Mr. Armstrong brought it from the cash department."
Fosdick stiffened as if an electric shock had passed through him. For the first time he lowered his eyes. Behind that veil, his brain was swiftly restoring order in the wild confusion which this exploding bomb had made. There was no time to consider how or why Westervelt had failed him, or how Morris had been stupid enough to permit such a situation. He could only make choice between standing to the original programme and retreating behind a pretense of bad memory. "I can always plead bad memory," he reflected. "Perhaps the day can be saved—Morris would have sent me a warning if it couldn't be." So he swept the faces of the committeemen and the few spectators with a glance like an unscathed battery. "I am astounded, Mr. Morris," said he steadily. "In search of an explanation, I happen to remember that Mr. Armstrong was recently compelled to relieve Mr. Westervelt from duty because of his failing health—failing faculties." His eyes turned to Westervelt with an apologetic look in them—and Westervelt was, indeed, a pitiful figure, suggesting one broken and distraught. Fosdick saw in the faces of committeemen and spectators that he had scored heavily. "I repeat," said he boldly, "it is impossible that any such transactions should have occurred."
He was addressing Morris's back; the lawyer had turned to the table behind him and was examining the papers there with great deliberation. Not a sound in the room; all eyes on Fosdick, who was quietly waiting. "Ah!" exclaimed Morris, wheeling suddenly like a duelist at the end of the ten paces.
Fosdick startled at the explosive note in his servant's voice, then instantly recovered himself.
"This letter—is it in your handwriting?" Fosdick took the extended paper, put on his nose-glasses, and calmly fixed his eyes upon it. His hand began to shake, over his face a dreadful, unsteady pallor, as if the flame of life, sick and dying, were flaring and sinking in the last flickerings before the final going-out.
"Is it your writing?" repeated Morris, his voice like the bay of the hound before the cornered fox.
Fosdick's hand dropped to his lap. His eyes sought Morris's face and from them blazed such a blast of fury that Morris drew back a step.
Morris was daunted only for a second. He said evenly, "It is your handwriting, is it not?"
Fosdick looked round—-at Westervelt, whose wrinkled hand had paused on his beard midway between its yellowed end and his shrunken, waxen face; at Armstrong, stolid, statuelike; at the reporters, with pencils suspended and eyes glistening. He drew a long breath and straightened himself again. "It is," he said.
Morris extended his hand for the letter. "Thank you," he said with grave courtesy, as Fosdick gave it to him. "I will read—'Dear Bill—Tell A to draw three times this week—the usual amounts and give them to S.' Bill—that is Mr. Westervelt, is it not? And does not A stand for Armstrong? And is not S, Sigourney, at that time the O.A.D.'s representative in legislative and general political matters?"
"Obviously," said Fosdick, promptly and easily. "I see my memory has played me a disgraceful trick. I am getting old." He smiled benevolently at Morris, then toward Westervelt. "I, too, am losing my faculties." Then, looking at Armstrong, and not changing from kindly smile and tone, "But my teeth are still good."
"You now remember these transactions?"
"I do not. But I frankly admit I must have been mistaken in denying that they ever occurred."
"I trust, Mr. Fosdick," said Morris, "your memory will not fail you to the extent that you will forget you are on oath."
The muscles in Fosdick's spare jaws could be seen working violently. Morris was going too far, entirely too far, in realism for the benefit of the public. "Is it part of your privilege as examiner," said he, with more than a suggestion of master-to-servant, "to insult an old man upon his failing mind?"
"As none of these transactions was of older date than three years ago," replied Morris coldly, "and as the note bore date of only six months ago—the week before Sigourney died—it was not unnatural that I should be anxious about your testimony. We do not wish false ideas, detrimental to the standing of so notable and reputable a man as yourself, to get abroad."
A titter ran around the room; Fosdick flushed and the storm veins in his temples swelled. He evidently thought his examination was over, for he took a better hold on his coat and was rising from the chair. "Just a few minutes more," said Morris. "In the course of Mr. Westervelt's testimony another matter was accidentally touched on. We feel that it should not go out to the public without your explanation."
Fosdick sank back. Until now, he had been assuming that by some accident his plan to destroy Armstrong had miscarried, that Morris and Westervelt, to save the day, had by some mischance been forced into a position where they were compelled to involve him. But now, it came to him that Morris's icily sarcastic tone was more, far more, arrogant and insolent than could possibly be necessary for appearances with the public. The lawyer's next words changed suspicion into certainty. "We found several other items, Mr. Fosdick, which we requested Mr. Westervelt to explain—payments of large sums to your representatives—so Mr. Westervelt testifies they are—and to your secretary, Mr. Waller, and to your son—Hugo Fosdick. He is one of the four vice-presidents of the O.A.D., is he not?"
"He is," said Fosdick, and his voice was that of a sick old man.
"It was on your O.K. that one hundred thousand dollars were paid out to furnish his apartment?"
"You mean the uptown branch of the O.A.D.?" said Fosdick wearily, his blue-black eyelids drooped.
"Oh! We will inquire into that, later. But—take last year, Mr. Fosdick. Take this omnibus lease, turning over to corporations you control properties in Boston and Chicago which cost the O.A.D. a sum, two per cent. interest on which would be double the rental they are getting from you. Mr. Westervelt informs us that he knows you get seventeen times the income from the properties that you pay the O.A.D. under the leases they executed to you—you practically making the leases, as an officer of the company, to yourself as another corporation. My question is somewhat involved, but I hope it is clear?"
"I understand you—in the main," replied Fosdick. "But you will have to excuse me from answering any more questions to-day. I did not come prepared. My connection with the O.A.D. has been philanthropic, rather than businesslike. Naturally, though perhaps wrongly, I have not kept myself informed of all details."
He frowned down the smiles, the beginnings of laughter. "But the record is sound!" he went on in a ringing voice. "The O.A.D. has cost me much time and thought. I have given more of both to it than I have to purely commercial enterprises. But moneymaking isn't everything—and I feel more than rewarded."
"We all know you, Mr. Fosdick," said Morris, with an air of satiric respect.
"I ask you to excuse me to-day," continued the old man, in his impressive manner. "I wish to prepare myself. To-morrow, or, at most, in two or three days, I shalldemandthat you let me resume the stand. I have nothing to conceal. Errors of judgment I may have committed. But my record is clear." He raised his head and his eyes flashed. "It is a record with which I shall soon fearlessly face my God!"
Josiah Fosdick felt that he was himself again. His eyes looked out with the expression of a good man standing his ground unafraid. And he smiled contemptuously at the faint sarcasm in Morris's cold voice, saying, "That is quite satisfactory—most satisfactory."
The committee rose; the reporters surrounded Fosdick. He was courteous but firm in his refusal to say a word either as to the testimony he had given or as to that he would give. A dozen eager hands helped him on with his coat, and he marched away, sure that he was completely reëstablished—in the public esteem; his self-esteem had not been shaken for an instant. The good man doubts himself; not the self-deceiving hypocrite. There was triumph in the long look he gave Morris—a look which Morris returned with the tranquil shine of a satisfied revenge, a revenge of payment with interest for slights, humiliations, insults which the old tyrant had put upon him. Long trafficking upon the cupidity and timidity of men gives the ruling class a false notion of the discernment of mankind and of their own mental superiority, as well as moral. It was natural that Fosdick should believe himself above censure, above criticism even. He returned to his office, like a king upon whom the vulgar have sought to put indignities. His teeth fairly ached for the moment when they could close upon the bones of these "insolent curs."
It was not until he set out for lunch that another view of the situation came in sight. As he was crossing Waller's office, he was halted by that faithful servant's expression, the more impressive because it was persisting in spite of hysterical efforts to conceal it and to look serenely worshipful as usual. "What is it, Waller?" he demanded.
"Nothing—nothing at all, sir," said Waller, as with a clumsy effort at pretended carelessness he tossed into the wastebasket a newspaper which Fosdick had surprised him at reading.
"Is that an afternoon paper?"
Waller stammered inarticulately.
Fosdick shot a quick, sharp glance at him. "Let me see it."
Waller took the paper out of the basket, as if he were handling something vile to sight, touch and smell. "These sensational sheets are very impudent and untruthful," he said, as he gave it to his master.
Fosdick spread the paper. He sprang back as if he had been struck. "God!" he cried. "God in heaven!"
In the committee room, after the first unpleasantness, all had been smooth, and there was not to his self-complacent security of the divine right monarch the remotest suggestion of impending disgrace. Now—from the front page of this newspaper, flying broadcast through the city, through the country, shrieked, "Fosdick Perjures Himself! The eminent financier and churchman caught on the witness stand. Denies knowledge of political bribery funds and is trapped! Evades accusations of gigantic swindles and thefts."
Disgrace, like all the other strong tragic words, conveys little of its real meaning to anyone until it becomes personal. Fosdick would have said beforehand that the publication of an attack on him in the low newspapers would not trouble him so much as the buzzing of a fly about his bald spot. He would have said that there was in him—in his conscience, in his confidence in the approval of his God—a tower of righteous strength that would stand against any attack, as unimperiled as a skyscraper by a summer breeze. But, with these huge, coarse voices of the all-pervading press shrieking and screaming "Perjurer. Swindler! Thief!" he shook as with the ague and turned gray and groaned. He sat down that he might not fall.
"God! God in heaven!" he muttered.
"It's infamous," cried Waller, tears in his eyes and anger in his voice. "No man, no matter how upright or high, is safe from those wretches."
Fosdick gripped his head between his hands. "It hurts, Waller—ithurts," he moaned.
"Nobody will pay the slightest attention to it," said Waller. "We all know you."
But Fosdick was not listening. He was wondering how he had been able to delude himself, how he had failed to realize the construction that could, and by the public would, be put upon his testimony. Many's the thing that sounds and looks and seems right and proper in privacy and before a few sympathetic witnesses, and that shudders in the full livery of shame when exposed before the world. Here was an instance—and he, the shrewd, the lifelong dealer in public opinion, had been tricked at his own trade as he had never been able to trick anyone else in half a century of chicane.
"I want to die, Waller," he said feebly. "Help me back into my office. I can't face anybody."