PART TWOLOT & COMPANY: I
1
Bellairregarded himself as an average man; and after all perhaps this was the most significant thing about him. He was not average to look at—the face of a student and profoundly kind—and yet, he had moved in binding routine for five years that they knew of at Lot & Company’s. His acquaintances were of the average type. He did not criticise them; you would not have known that he saw them with something of the same sorrow that he regarded himself.
Back of this five years was an Unknowable. Had you possessed exactly the perception you might have caught a glimpse of some extraordinary culture that comes from life in the older lands, and personal contacts with deeper evils—the culture of the great drifters, the inimitable polish of rolling stones. As a usual thing he would not haveshown you any of this. At Lot & Company’s offices, men had moved and talked and lunched near and with him for years without uncovering a gleam of a certain superb equipment for life which really existed in a darkened room of his being.
Perhaps he was still in preparation. We have not really completed the circle of any accomplishment until we have put it in action. Certainly Bellair had not done that, since the Unknowable ended. He had made no great friends among men or women; though almost thirty, he had met no stirring love affair, at least in this period. He had done the most common duties of trade, for a common reward in cash; lived in a common house—moved in crowds of common men and affairs. It was as if he were a spy, trained from a child, but commanded at the very beginning of his manhood, not only to toil and serve in an insignificant post—but to be insignificant as well. It was by accident, for instance, that they discovered at Lot & Company’s that Bellair was schooled in the Sanscrit.
Before usual he was astir that Monday morning, but late at the office for all that. A drop of consciousness somewhere between shoe-buttons, and a similar trance between collar and tie. In these lapses a half hour was lost, and queerly enough afterward the old purports of his life did not hold together as before. A new breathfrom somewhere, a difference in vitality, and the hum-drum, worn-sore consciousness given to his work with Lot & Company, had become like an obscene relative, to be rid of, even at the price of dollars and the established order of things. It had been very clear as he drank his coffee that he must give quit-notice at the office, yet when he reached there, this was not so easy, and he was presently at work as usual in his cage with Mr. Sproxley, the cashier.
The Quaker firm of Lot & Company was essentially a printing establishment. During the first half of the period in which Bellair had been connected, though he was not stupider than usual, he had not realised the crooked weave of the entire inner fabric of the house. Lot & Company had been established for seventy-five years and through three generations. Its conduct was ordered now like a process of nature, a systematised tone to each surface manner and expression. All the departments were strained and deformed to meet and adjust in the larger current of profit which the cashier had somehow bridged without scandal for twenty-seven years. Personally, so far as Bellair knew, Mr. Sproxley was an honest man, though not exactly of the manner, and underpaid.
The cashier’s eyes were black, a black that would burn you, and unquestionably furtive, although Bellair sat for two years at a little distance from the cashier’s desk before he acceptedthe furtiveness, so deeply laid and set and hardened were his first impressions. They were hard eyes as well, like that anthracite which retains its gleaming black edge, though the side to the draft is red to the core.
Mr. Sproxley’s home was in Brooklyn, an hour’s ride from the office—a little flat in a street of little flats, all with the same porches, brickwork and rusty numerals. An apartment for two, and yet Mr. and Mrs. Sproxley had not moved, though five black-eyed children had come to them. The cashier of Lot & Company was a stationary man—that was his first asset.... A hundred times Bellair had heard the old formula, delivered by firm members to some caller at the office:
“This is our cashier, Mr. Sproxley. He has been with us twenty-seven years. We have found him the soul of honour”—the last trailing off into a whisper—a hundred times in almost the same words, for the Lots and the Wetherbees bred true. The visitor would be drawn off and confidently informed that Mr. Sproxley would die rather than leave a penny unaccounted; indeed, that his zeal on the small as well as large affairs was frequently a disturbance to the office generally, since everything stopped until the balance swung free. Bellair knew of this confidential supplement to the main form, because he had taken it into his own pores on an early day of his employment. The lift of that first talk (in Bellair’s case it was fromthe elder Wetherbee, an occasional Thee and Thou escaping with unworldly felicity) was for Bellair sometime to attain a similar rock-bound austerity of honour.... Always the stranger glanced a second time at Mr. Sproxley during the firm-member’s low-voiced affirmation of his passionate integrity.
Passing to the second floor, the visitor would meet Mr. Hardburg, head of the manuscript and periodical department, for Lot & Company had found a good business in publishing books of story and poetry at the author’s expense. Here eye and judgment reigned, Mr. Hardburg’s, on all matters of book-dress and criticism; yet within six or seven minutes, the formula would break through for the attention of the caller, thus:
“Lot & Company is a conservative House—that’s why it stands—a House, sir (one felt the Capital), that has stood for seventy-five years on a basis of honour and fair dealing, if on a conservative basis. Lot & Company stands by its agents and employés first and last. Lot & Company does not plunge, but over any given period of time, its progress is apparent and its policy significantly successful.”
Mr. Hardburg’s eyes kindled as he spoke—grey tired eyes, not at all like Mr. Sproxley’s—but the light waned, and Mr. Hardburg quickly relapsed into ennui and complaint, for he was a living sick man. The impression one drew from hisearlier years, was that he had overstrained as an athlete, and been a bit loose and undone ever since.... Now Mr. Hardburg would be called away for a moment, leaving the stranger in the office with Miss Rinderley, his assistant. With fluent and well directed sentences, this lady would outline the triumphs of Mr. Hardburg from college to the mastery of criticism which he was now granted professionally.
“But what we love best about him,” Miss Rinderley would say, glancing at the enlarged photograph above his desk, “is the tireless way he helps young men. Always he is at that. I have seen him talk here for an hour—when the most pressing matters of criticism and editorial responsibility called—literally giving himself to some one needing help. Very likely he would miss his train for the country. Poor Mr. Hardburg, he needs his rest so——”
The caller would cry in his heart, “What a superb old institution this is!” and cover his own weaknesses and shortcomings in a further sheath of mannerism and appreciation—the entire atmosphere strangely prevailing to help one to stifle rather than to ventilate his real points of view.
So the establishment moved. The groups of girls going up and down the back stairs—to count or tie or paste through all their interesting days—counted the heads of their respective departments as their greatest men; spoke of them in awedwhispers, in certain cases with maternal affection, and on occasion even with playful intimacy on the part of a few—but always as a master-workman, the best man in the business, who expressed the poorest part of himself in words, and had to be lived with for years adequately to be appreciated and understood.
Mr. Nathan Lot, the present head of the firm, was a dreamer. It was Mr. Sproxley who had first told Bellair this, but he heard it frequently afterward, came to recognise it as the accepted initial saying as regarded the Head, just as his impeccable honour was Mr. Sproxley’s and unerring critical instinct Mr. Hardburg’s titular association. Mr. Nathan was the least quarrelsome man anywhere, the quietest and the gentlest—a small bloodless man of fifty, aloof from business; a man who had worn and tested himself so little that you would imagine him destined to live as long again, except for the lugubrious atmospheres around his desk, in the morning especially, the sense of imperfect ventilation, though the partitions were but half-high to the lower floor and there was a thousand feet to draw from. The same was beginning in Jabez, the son, something pent, non-assimilation somewhere. However Jabez wasn’t a dreamer; at least, dreaming had not become his identifying proclivity. He was a head taller than his father with a wide limp mouth and small expressionless brown eyes—twenty-seven,and almost as many times a millionaire.
Jabez was richer than his father, who was the direct heir of the House of Lot, but his father’s dreaming had complicated the flow of another huge fortune in the familiar domestic fashion—Jabez being the symbol and centre of the combination; also the future head of the House of Lot and Company—up and down town.
Bellair wondered a long time what the pervading dream of the father was. He had been in the office many months, had never heard the senior-mind give vent to authoritative saying in finance, literature, science or prints; and while this did not lower his estimate at all—he was sincerely eager to get at the sleeping force of this giant. Mr. Sproxley spoke long on the subject, but did not know. Mr. Hardburg said:
“I have been associated with Mr. Nathan for eleven years now. The appeal of his worth is not eager and insinuating, but I have this to say—that in eleven years I have found myself slipping, slipping into a mysterious,a differentregard, a profounder friendliness—if one might put it that way—for Mr. Nathan, than any I have known in my whole career. The fact is I love Mr. Nathan. He is one of the sweetest spirits I ever knew.”
Bellair was interested in dreamers; had a theory that dreaming was important. When he heardthat a certain child was inclined to dreaming, he was apt to promise a significant future off-hand. He reflected that even Mr. Hardburg had forgotten to tell him of the tendency in Mr. Nathan’s case, but determined not to give up.... Once in the lower part of the city, he passed the firm-head—a studious little man making his way along at the edge of the walk. Bellair spoke before he thought. Mr. Nathan started up in a dazed way, appeared to recognise him with difficulty, as if there was something in the face that the hat made different. He cleared his voice and inquired with embarrassment:
“Are you going to the store?”
After Bellair had ceased to regret speaking, he reflected upon the word “store.” The president of a great manufacturing plant, content to be known as a tradesman—an excellent, a Quaker simplicity about that.
Bellair’s particular friend in the establishment was Broadwell of the advertising-desk, a young man of his own age who was improving himself evenings and who aspired to be a publisher. But even closer to his heart was Davy Acton, one of the office-boys, who had been tested out and was not a liar. A sincere sad-faced lad of fifteen, who lived with his mother somewhere away down town. He looked up to Bellair as to a man among men, one who had achieved. This was hard to bear on the man’s part, but he was fond of theyoungster and often had him over Sundays, furnishing books of his own and recommending others. Davy believed in him. This was the sensation.
The only voices that were ever raised in the establishment were those of the travelling salesmen. The chief of this department, Mr. Rawter, was loud-voiced in his joviality. That washisword—“Mr. Rawter is so jovial.”
When the roaring joviality of Mr. Rawter boomed through the lower floor, old Mr. Wetherbee, the vice-president, would look up from his desk, and remark quietly to any one who happened near, “Mr. Rawter is forced to meet the trade, you know.” It was doubtless his gentle Quaker conception that wine-lists, back-slapping and whole-souled abandonment of to-morrow, were essentials of the road and trade affiliation. From the rear of the main floor, back among the piles of stock, reverberating among great square monuments of ledgers and pamphlets were the jovial voices of the other salesmen, Mr. Rawter’s seconds, the Middle-west man, and the Coast-and-South man—voices slightly muffled, as became their station, but regular in joviality, and doubtless as boom-compelling afield as their chief’s, considering their years.
Otherwise the elder Mr. Wetherbee—Mr. Seth—presided over a distinguished silence for the main. His desk was open to the floor at large.He was seventy, and one of the first to arrive in the morning—a vice-president who opened the mail, and had in expert scrutiny such matters as employment, salaries, orders and expenses of the travelling men on the road. Mr. Seth was not a dreamer; at least not on week-days—a millionaire, who gave you the impression that he was constantly on his guard lest his heart-quality should suddenly ruin all. The love, the very ardour of his soul was togiveaway—to dissipate the fortunes of his own and the firm-members, but so successfully had he fought all his life on the basis of considering the justice to his family and his firm, that Lot & Company now relied upon him, undoubting. Thus often a man born with weakness develops it into his particular strength....
The son, Eben Wetherbee, was harder for Bellair to designate. He seemed a different force, and called forth secret regard. A religious young man, who always occurred to Bellair’s mind as he had once seen him, crossing the Square a summer evening, a book under his arm, his short steps lifted and queerly rounded, as if treading a low-geared sprocket; toes straight out—the whole gait mincing a little. Eben was smileless and a great worker. He had no more to do or say with his father during working hours than any of the others.
Such was the firm: Mr. Nathan Lot and hisson Jabez; Mr. Seth Wetherbee and his son Eben, and Mr. Rawter who had been given a nominal quantity of stock after thirty-five years’ service. In due course Mr. Sproxley would qualify for this illumination.... And yet not all. Staring down from the arch over the president’s door was a dour, white, big-chinned face, done in oils long ago—almost yellow-white, the black shoulder deadening away into the background; small eyes, wide mouth, but firmly hung—grandfather to Mr. Nathan, but no dreamer; great grand-sire to Mr. Jabez, but nothing loose-mouthed about the face of this, the original Jabez Lot,—organising genius of the House, and its first president, spoken of with awe and reverence; the first millionaire of the family and builder of its Gramercy mansion.... Suddenly, it had come to Bellair that this was the spirit of the Store, this picture was its symbol, that the slow strangulation of the souls of all concerned had begun in that white head, the planting of this bed of crooked canes.
2
One morning when Bellair was well into his third year with the printing-firm, the silence was broken on the lower floor. He was shaken that day into the real secret of the house. A certain Mr. Prentidd had been in conversation with Mr. Rawter some moments. The jovial voice of[Pg 33]the head-salesman was without significance to those near his partition—a part of the routine. Mr. Prentidd had invented a combination ledger and voucher-file that was having some sale in America, being manufactured and distributed by Lot & Company. Mr. Rawter on a recent trip abroad had been empowered to dispose of the English rights. The result, it now appeared, did not prove satisfactory to the inventor. The voice of the latter was raised. One felt the entire building subside into a quivering hush.
“I tell you, sir, I don’t trust you. I have heard in fact that the only way you could hurt your reputation here in New York or on the road would be to tell the truth.”
To Bellair there was something deeply satisfying in that remark of the inventor’s—something long awaited and very good. He saw Mr. Seth arise, his chin moving in a sickly fashion, a very old pathetic Mr. Seth. He realised that Mr. Rawter had laughed—that something had been burned from that laugh. Mr. Prentidd was hurried forth, and the nullifying system began. Mr. Jabez emerged from his father’s office and turning to Broadwell at the advertising-desk, said in a tone universally penetrative:
“What a pity that Mr. Prentidd drinks. There are few men finer to deal with when he is himself.”
Mr. Seth, in his chair again, sitting frog-like and gasping, remarked to Mr. Sproxley across the distance: “I really must ask Mr. Prentidd to come to us earlier in the day. He’s far too worthy a man to disgrace himself in this way.”
Bellair wondered that the point of Mr. Prentidd’s remark seemed entirely lost. As for himself he counted it worthy of regard. The episode was but begun. The inventor returned immediately, just as Mr. Rawter was stepping out. The two men met in the main corridor. It appeared that Mr. Prentidd repeated a certain question, for the head-salesman replied, the roundness of the joviality gone from his voice:
“I tell you, Mr. Prentidd, the situation has changed. I could not dispose of the English order at a better figure to save my soul. I extracted every cent for you and for the House.”
“I don’t believe you. Other matters of the same kind do better. If you speak the truth, you made a very bad bargain for yourself and what is more important, for me——”
The least like an inventor imaginable, a most physical person, Mr. Prentidd, with a fiery sense of his own rights and a manner as soft as his voice was penetrating. He turned a leisurely look of scorn at Mr. Rawter, half-stare and half-smile, then appeared to perceive the elder Mr. Wetherbee for the first time. The old man arose. Bellair felt the agony of expectancy far back amongthe stock-piles. The inventor shot straight at the vice-president:
“You’re an old man. I’ll trust your word. You’re an old man and a Quaker—yes, I’ll take your word. Your man, Rawter, says he could get only seven and one-half cents’ royalty for me on my Nubian file from England. I say it’s only half what I should get. Is it true—remember you’re old. Is it true?”
Prentidd’s face had power in it, exasperation and the remains of a laugh. It appeared that he was content to take a gambler’s chance and close the ugly business on Mr. Seth’s word.
The old man’s eye roved. He looked sick and shaken. He found the eyes of his son Eben which were full of terror and pity and hope.
“Answer me. Could Lot & Company get no more than fifteen cents altogether on the English patents?”
Mr. Wetherbee’s lips moved. “That’s all we could get, Mr. Prentidd. I’m sorry,” he said.
For an instant Mr. Prentidd stood there. It was evident that he had expected a different answer. True to his promise to take the old man’s word, however, he turned on his heel and walked out.
On the high sloping desk before Bellair’s eyes, a big ledger lay open. He had turned during the talk to the transaction of Prentidd—Lot & Company.The English disposal had been arranged for at twenty-five cents the file, royalty. Apparently Mr. Prentidd had agreed upon an even split, but Lot & Company had taken seventeen and the fraction.
Bellair was ill. The nausea crept down through his limbs, and up to his throat. The thing had worked out before him with such surety and clarity. The head of Mr. Sproxley moved about as if on a swivel, his body in writing position still. Presently he stepped down from his high stool, and came to Bellair’s side. Placing his pen behind his ear, he lifted the ledger from under Bellair’s eyes, his lips compressed with the effort. Then he placed it on his own desk to close it tenderly, after which it was taken to its niche in the vault.
The office was silent. Just now Bellair’s eyes turned as if subtly attracted to the place where Eben Wetherbee sat. The young man’s smileless eyes, almost insane with apprehension and sadness, were turned with extraordinary intent upon the place where his father sat. Bellair’s followed. The old man sat plumped in his chair; he gulped, tried to turn. His face looked as if he heard a ghost whispering. Yet he seemed unable to trust himself, hardly daring to meet the eyes that awaited. His hands lifted to the papers before him, but did not feel properly. He seemed a man of eighty. Mr. Eben came forward atlast and asked Mr. Sproxley if he might look at the Prentidd transaction.
“It isn’t posted yet, Mr. Eben,” said the cashier.
At the side door at closing time, Bellair happened to pass a party of young women coming down from the bindery. One was saying:
“... and Mr. Prentidd was quite helpless after the scene—so that they had to call a taxi-cab for him. Isn’t it dreadful he drinks so?”
There was a personal result for Bellair, which he at no time misunderstood.
“We have considered creating a position for you next to Mr. Sproxley,” said the elder Mr. Wetherbee, the second morning following.
Bellair bowed.
“Since you have been with us less than three years, this is very good comment on the character of your services and our hope for your future with us——”
“What additional salary goes with the position?” Bellair had asked.
“If I followed my own inclination, it would be considerable. I have been able to secure for you, however, but a slight increase——”
This was one of Mr. Seth’s little ways. He added hopes of fine quality. There was a further point:
“You will at times handle considerable moneyand we must insist upon your putting in trust for us the sum of two thousand dollars.”
“I haven’t two thousand dollars, Mr. Wetherbee,” Bellair said.
“Of course, we trust you. It is a form—a form, nevertheless, upon which a valuable relation of this kind should be placed on a business basis.”
Bellair repeated.
“But you have friends——”
“Not with two thousand dollars’ surety for me—no friend like that.”
“Banks insist upon this—among those employés who handle much money——”
“I know—but that amount cannot be arranged.”
“How much can you put in trust available to Lot & Company in event of your departure——”
“I have slightly less than one thousand dollars——”
“Could you raise one thousand dollars?”
“With some effort.”
“Of course, it will draw interest for you——”
“I understand these affairs.”
The matter was referred to the next day when it was decided to accept Bellair’s amount of one thousand dollars, which Lot & Company could not touch without his consent, except in the event of his departure with company funds; and whichBellair could not draw without written statement from Lot & Company to the effect that he was leaving with a balanced account.
Thereafter he was one with Mr. Sproxley in the financial management, under the eye of Seth Wetherbee. One by one he learned the points of the system. Wherever the accounts had run over a series of years, there were byways of loot. These pilferings were not made at once, on the same basis that a gardener does not cut asparagus for market from young roots. The plants were encouraged to establish themselves. After that the open market was supplied with a certain output, the rest belonging to Lot & Company’s table. It frequently occurred to Bellair with a sort of enveloping darkness that he had the institution in his power; and with a different but equal force that he had a life position in all naturalness; that his life would be spent with slowly increasing monetary reward for juggling the different accounts—the field of crooked canes which was the asparagus-bed of Lot & Company. He did not like it. He was not happy; and yet he realised that the adjustments his nature had already made to the facts, suggested an entire adjustment later, the final easy acceptance.
3
Bellair had thought many times of getting out from under the die, but it never came to[Pg 40]him with quite the force as on that Monday morning, after watching theJadefare forth from the Brooklyn water-front. Something had turned within him as a result of that little pilgrimage, something that spurred to radicalism and self-assertion. At no time had Bellair credited himself with a fairer honesty than most men. He had never given it a large part of thinking. Roughly he had believed that to be honest is the common lot. The corruption in the office which he could not assimilate had to do with extensive ramifications, its lying to itself. The instant seizing upon Mr. Prentidd’s alleged weakness on the part of the younger Lot and the elder Wetherbee; the action of Mr. Sproxley with the ledger; the subtle will-breaking and spiritual blinding of all the employés in a process that never slept and was operative in every thought and pulse of the establishment—the extent and talent of these, and the untellable blackness of it all, prevailed upon Bellair with the force of a life-impression.
Bellair’s present devil was a kind of inertia. Granting that the Unknowable had been charged with periods of intense action of several kinds, the recent half-decade might be regarded as its reflex condition. There is an ebb and flow to all things, and it is easier to adjust Bellair’s years at Lot & Company as a sort of resting period for his faculties, than to accept a constitutional inertia in his case, for subsequent events do notquite bear that out. He doubtless belonged to that small class of down town men who do their work well enough, but without passion, who have faced the modern world and its need of bread and cake, and who have compromised, giving hours in exchange for essential commodities, but nothing like the full energies of their lives. It is a way beset with pitfalls, but the unavoidable result of a system that multiplies products and profits and minimizes the chances for fine workmanship on every hand. Moreover in Bellair’s case there is a philosophical detachment to be considered. The aims and purports of the printing establishment were coldly and absolutely material. These did not challenge him to any fine or full expenditure of his powers; and if he had touched that higher zone of philosophy which makes a consecration of the simplest and the heaviest tasks, he had at least found it impracticable to make it work among the systems of Lot & Company’s business.
The two years or more since he was made assistant cashier had brought many further items and exhibits. He was now used on the left hand side of the throne, developed in the darkness-department already overworked, the eye of which was Mr. Seth and the hand, Mr. Sproxley. For as yet Bellair believed that even Eben Wetherbee had only suspicions. This was the bite of the whole drama. There were men in the building who would have died for their conviction that theHouse was honest. You might have told these men that Lot & Company was a morgue of conservatism; that having existed under a certain policy for seventy-five years, was the chief reason for its changing; that free, unhampered genius never found utterance through that House—and any of a dozen clerks would have laughed, spoken proudly of unerring dividends and uncanny stability, granting the rest. But that Lot & Company was structurally crooked was incredible except to the few who performed the trick. Bellair knew, for instance, that his best friend in the office, Broadwell, head of the advertising, was innocent....
Monday passed without his giving notice. He quailed before the questions that would be asked. If it were not for the one thousand dollars, he would have escaped with a mere “Good-night,” though a panic would have started until the Company was assured of the innocence of his departure. As for a panic, Lot & Company had that coming, he thought. Now he knew that he would not be able to get his surety-deposit until all was made certain in his regard by the firm....
Bellair wasn’t greedy, nor caught in any great desire for wealth. He had fallen into the Down town Stream, but did not belong. Every month had weakened him. He disliked to lose his beginnings toward competence; all the subtle pressures of Lot & Company worked upon him not tochange. There was no other way open. He had been touched by the fear of fear—a sort of poorhouse horror that dogs men up into the millions and down to the grave. In a way, he had become slave to the Job. He even had the suspicion that more men maim their souls by sticking to their jobs than by any dissipation. This is the way to the fear of fear—the insane undertow of modern materialism.
He had tried to find peace outside his work in music and different philanthropies, but the people he met, their seriousness, perhaps more than anything else, and the vanity of their intellectualism, aroused his sense of humour. Bellair believed in the many, but was losing belief in himself. Often he had turned back to evenings in the room, and realised that the days were draining him too much for his own real expression of any kind. Always he felt that Lot & Company was too strong for his temper, that his edge was dulled in every contact. From his depressions, he saw ahead only two ways—a life of this, or a moment in which he had Lot & Company in his power unequivocably. The last was poisonous, and he knew it. He would have to fall considerably to profit by this sort of thing, but the inevitable conclusion of the whole matter, was that the life with Lot & Company was slowly but surelygetting him down.
On Tuesday noon, Mr. Seth asked him to take to lunch a certain young stationer from Philadelphia,named Filbrick. They were made acquainted in the corridor. Passing out, Bellair and his companion met the smile of Mr. Sproxley. Bellair began the formula of the cashier’s absolute and autocratic integrity. He did not really hear himself, until he reached this part:
“I happen to be in the financial department. Two or three times each year, the whole office is thrown into a mess over some little strayed account——”
He stopped. It was less that he was saying this, than that he had come so far without a nudge from within. They had passed the big front doors, and met the wind of the street before he realised how deep the mannerism of the establishment had prevailed upon him. The process had passed almost into fulfilment before the truth within him had stirred from its sleep.... A very grey day. All through that luncheon he had found himself at angles from his companion, in strategic hollows, never in the level open. It wasn’t that he was different from usual, but that he was watching himself more shrewdly. His inner coherence was repeatedly broken, though the outer effects were not. He had never perceived before with such clarity that a man cannot be square and friendly to another man, when his mind and critical faculties are busy appraising him, while his eyes and lips approved and assuaged. Bellair that day realised his moral derangement—that hemust be ripped open and his displaced organs corrected once for all, if anything decent was to come from him ever again.... He was still thinking in mid-afternoon, in the very trance of these thoughts, when he happened to look into Mr. Sproxley’s face. It seemed to him that there was a movement of most pitiful activities back of the red and black of Mr. Sproxley’s eyes.
There was much mental roving on Bellair’s part that week; moments in which the Monday morning abandon returned, and his self-amazement of the Tuesday luncheon, upon discovering how deeply his thoughts were imbedded in the prevailing lie. New York and the salary clutched him hard at intervals; so that he saw something of what was meant to give it up; also he saw that dreams are dreams.... Thousands of other young men would be glad to do his work, even his dirty work.
He had just returned from lunch on Friday when he started, to perceive the ruddy face and powerful frame of Mr. Prentidd darken the front door—which he had not done since his voice was last raised. Bellair was conscious of Seth Wetherbee hitching up his chair and a peculiar gasping cough from the old man, but his own eyes did not turn from the caller’s face—which moved slowly about, the pale little exchange-miss behind the first barrier, attentive to catch the stranger’s eye and answer his question. The inventor glancedslowly among desks and doors. His eye sought Sproxley, and the furtive black eyes of the latter shot down to his ledger as if crippled on the wing. His eyes held Bellair and the young man felt the scorn of ages burn through his veins—something new to his later life, yet deep in his heart, something he had known somewhere before, as if he had betrayed a good king, and his punishment had been to look that king in the eye before he died. Bellair had never hated himself as at that moment, and certainly never before felt himself identified body and soul with modern corruption, as now with scorn like a fiery astringent in his veins. The eyes of Mr. Prentidd finally settled upon the figure of Mr. Seth Wetherbee, their rays striking him abeam as it were. The old man hunched closer if anything, but did not raise his head.
The inventor was a physical person; his morals of a physical nature; his Nubian file of the same dimension and method of mind—a strong man who had to do with pain and pleasure of the flesh; his ideas of possessions were of the world. He moved softly, a soft, dangerous smile upon his lips, to the desk of the vice-president and jerked up a chair. The old man had to raise his head. It was as if the scene of three years ago was now to be continued, for Bellair saw the sorrowful, lengthened face of Mr. Eben turn from his desk in the other room and bend toward his father, whoseface was intensely pathetic now in its forced smile of greeting.
“You’re not looking well—in fact, you’re looking old, Mr. Wetherbee, as if you would die pretty soon.”
“I’m not so strong as I was, Mr. Prentidd.”
Bellair couldn’t have done it, as the inventor did. Had the man stolen and ruined him—he could not have pushed on after the pathos of that.
“You’re a dirty old man—and you’ll die hard and soon—for you lied to me when I trusted you. I suppose you have lied to everybody, all your life——”
Thus he baited Mr. Seth feature by feature, pointing out the disorder of liver, kidney-puffs, the general encroachments of death, in fact. Then he pictured the death itself—all of a low literary strength as was Mr. Prentidd’s cold habit. The answer of Mr. Seth was an incoherent helplessness, his lips moving but with nothing rational under the sun, as if he had been called by some inexorable but superior being to an altitude where he was too evil to breathe, and begged piteously to be allowed to sink back and die. It was Mr. Eben who stopped it, coming forward quietly, his steps rounded, his shoulders bent, his face seeming brittle as chalk in its fixity. The thing that he said was quite absurd:
“You really mustn’t, Mr. Prentidd. It is too much.”
The inventor turned to him. His look was that of a man who turns a large morsel in his mouth.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he said with a slow laugh. “There is this delicacy to old liars. Come give me my check—and I will go.”
“Your check——” Mr. Eben repeated.
“Yes, now—the check for the difference which your father’s lie cost me three years ago. I have seen the English books——”
Now young Mr. Jabez Lot came forward:
“Of course, if there has been error or any breach of contract—of course, you see a check off hand such as you ask is out of the question——”
The elder Mr. Wetherbee sank back to his desk; and now the dreamer, Mr. Nathan Lot, appeared with a frightened word of amelioration. Mr. Eben stood by the caller to the last moment. The latter was not at his best in this period—his threats and anger amounted to the usual result. Lot & Company refused to deal further, referring him to its attorney. The strangest part of it all was the gathering of three around Mr. Seth Wetherbee’s desk—Mr. Jabez and his father with Mr. Eben. Yet the concern of the Lots, father and son, had nothing to do with dangerous exhaustion of the vice-president.
“We have beaten him,” the dreamer said softly.
“Yes, Mr. Jackson will do the rest,” said Mr. Jabez. Mr. Jackson was the attorney.
Bellair, even with his training, had to take itslowly. “Beaten him”—that meant that the money had not passed to Mr. Prentidd. It was now with the law and the years—millions against a mere inventor. The psychic slaughtering of the old vice-president did not count—nothing of words counted. The firm had won, because the firm had not been knocked down and its pockets rifled—that would have meant loss. Not having been forced to pay, they had won.... Even as Bellair thought this out in full, the system of salving had begun from all the firm-heads for the benefit of those who heard. It was simply arranged and stated.... Their worst fears were realised: Mr. Prentidd was insane.... Mr. Seth went home early. Bellair knew that Mr. Eben had not been able to turn all responsibility to Mr. Jackson.... That afternoon Bellair reached his decision—in fact, he found it finished within him after the scene.
Yet he could not walk out at once, since he must have the amount of his surety, the item of interest and salary due. A certain project in his mind prevented the possibility of waiting several days for this amount to be detached from Lot & Company. Especially now after the final scene, they would make themselves very sure of his accounts and intentions. Late that Friday afternoon, it happened that considerable cash came in after banking hours. Bellair’s custom was to put this in a safety-vault until the following day.This time he held out the amount of his deposit and two years’ interest, together with the amount of his salary to date, locking up with the balance his order of release to the account of the Trust company. He determined to write a letter to Nathan Lot at once....
4
The City had a different look to him that night in his new sense of detachment. There were moments at dinner in which he felt as if he were already forgotten and out of place. Bellair had only known the one landlady in his five years of New York; yet he knew this one no better now than at the end of the first month. Perhaps there was nothing more to learn. She was anæmic of body, and yet did prodigious tasks, very quiet, very grey; and days to her were like endless rooms of the same house, all grim and uniform. She had her little ways, her continual suspicions, but all her faith was gone. Without church, without friends, without any new thought or gossip, her view of the world was neither magnified nor diminished, but greatly shortened, her eyes were almost incredibly dim. There was nothing to love about her. She was not excessively clean, nor excellent in cooking. She was like wax-work, a little dusty, her mind and all. Bellair paid her for the week, and added a present:
“Which I forgot on your birthday,” he said.
She held it in her hand. It did not seem hers. The apathy extended to all that was not actually due; all expectancy dead.
“You mean you are giving this to me?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bellair,—perhaps you will want it some time again.”
He wrote the letter to Mr. Nathan, but decided not to mail it until the last thing. He was restless over the irregularity in the money affair—had to assure himself again and again that he was taking not a cent that did not belong to him. The boarding-house was in the upper Forties between Broadway and Sixth avenue, and though he usually turned eastward for pleasure, this night he went among his own people, where even a nickle was medium of exchange. A stimulant did not exactly relieve his tension. His sense was that of loneliness, as he chose a table inBrandt’sindoor garden.
A mixed quartette presently broke into song behind him. Bellair’s thoughts were far from song. He was not expectant of music that would satisfy. Still something tugged him—again and again—until he really listened, but without turning. It was the voice of the contralto that was making an impression deep where his need was. There seemed an endless purple background to it, like a night of stars and south wind; the soft, deepvolume rolled forthfor him, and found itself expressed without amazement or travail. He turned now. The one voice was from the throat of a girl, just a girl, and though it was a gusty November, she was still wearing her summer hat.
The face was merely pretty, but the voice was drama; flame of poppies in the presence of a fabulous orchid. Bellair’s heart may have been particularly sensitive to impression that night. The big brilliant den known asBrandt’sdid not seem to have been cast into any enchantment; and yet it was likely that Bellair knew as much about music natively and by acquisition as any one present. In fact, he had reached the state of appreciation which dares to enjoy that which appeals and to say so, having endured for several winters a zeal which rushed him from one to another musical event, intolerant of all save classic symphonies. It wasn’t the music that held him now—a high flowery operatic matter not particularly interesting nor well-done—but the contralto was just a little girl, and the round girlish breast which held nothing miraculous for the many, was sending forth tones that quivered through Bellair, spine and thigh, and thrilling his mind with a profound passion to do something for the singer—an intrinsic and clean emotion, but one which made him ashamed. For an instant, he felt himself setting out on the great adventure of his life, the faintest aroma of its romance touching hissenses; something akin to his dreams in the prison of Lot & Company, and which he had not sensed at all since his departure, until this instant. Quickly it passed; yet he had the sense that this great romance had to do with the little singer.
At once he wanted to take her from the other three; dreamed of working for her, so that she might have the chance she craved. Of course, she wanted something terribly; passionate want always went with such a voice. He saw her future alone. Some vampire of a manager would hear her. She would tie up—the little summer hat told him that. She would tie up, and New York would take her bloom before the flower matured—would take more than her little song. Here she was inBrandt’salready, and singing as if for the angels.
Bellair was four-fifths undiscovered country, as are all men but the very few, who dare to be themselves. Already the world was calling to him sharply for this first step aside from the worn highways of the crowd. He had not been normal to-night, even in his room; and his present adventure had already summoned forth all the hateful reserves of his training, as Prentidd’s departure had started the lies through the floors and halls of Lot & Company. His heart was calling out to the little singer, that here was a friend, one who understood and wanted nothing but to give; yetall that he had learned from the world was beating him back into the crowd.
He saw that the music had hardly penetrated the vast vulgar throng. New York is so accustomed to be amused, to dine to music and forget itself in various entertainments, that the quartette barely held its own against the routine of eating and drink and the voices of rising stimulation. It was Bellair who started the little applause when the first number was over. He hated to do it. The clapping of hands drew to himself eyes that he did not care to cultivate, but it seemed the only way just then to help her to make good.
The four of the quartette looked at him curiously, appraising his value as a critic, perhaps. Was he drunk or really appealed to? Was he worth considering? Applause at any price is dearly to be had. They took him in good faith, since he was not without desirable appearance. The young girl and the tenor arose and sang: