XX
Fessenden walked slowly towards the rift in the great wall of rock which marked the land entrance to the fjord.Pocahontaswas dancing just beyond that narrow gate, but although his fingers tingled for her sail, his step still halted; he knew that she would bring him swiftly within range of the keen thumping of a typewriter, possibly of more than one. He was dutifully and even deeply interested in his father’s vast affairs, and there were nights when he went to bed with the sensation that the Earth was his pillow; there were days when he dared to hope the time would come when he could with pleasure embroider the scenery with figures and puncture the silences of Nature with a typewriter. But the time was not yet. Four days since he had awakened his father at three in the morning, informed him that he was off for a solitary tramp into Norway, and promised to return at the end of a week. Conscience was driving him home sooner than he had intended, for he had revelled in the stillness and solitude of his wild and lonely tramp. He missed at first the friendliness of the Adirondacks, the only other mountains he knew; but the harsh and terrible grandeur about him companioned his mood—finally inspired him with a passionate sense of gratitude. For he was in a desperate state of rebellion. The philosophyhe had invoked on the heels of Mr. Abbott’s revelation had but deferred the inevitable moment. He did not doubt that the future presented to him by his father would bring him power, but that future was—he sincerely hoped—far distant, and at present he was little more than a glorified clerk in training. His inheritance and his education permitted him to grasp the stupendous details with a sufficient facility, and there were moments when he was staggered and overwhelmed with the thought of such world-manipulating power, at others intoxicated with dreams of a future when himself should be a ruler of many times the strength of any monarch in Europe. In such moments he felt arrogant, and contemptuous of sovereigns who were but the tools of a people or a cabinet, no matter what the euphemisms, longed for the time to come when he could demonstrate to them the absolutism of concentrated capital in the hands of an uncrowned ruler of a great republic. But reaction under the lonely stars invariably chastened him. What did he amount to now? Who would recognize in him more than his famous father’s second? He was bursting with energy, with ambition for himself and the United States, and, in spite of his father’s love and sincere indulgence, he felt like a prisoner on parole. It is true that when he had confided his cherished ideal, the great and beneficent conception which was to have worked his fingers to the bone and made him old in his youth, Mr. Abbott had waved his golden wand. A Western desert hummed and echoed, and even now a huge building was rising on its foundations, and the first of the world’s electricians, for a yearly salary which made Fessenden’s head swim, had agreed to occupy this building with a corps of assistants and work upon the idea which a youth had conceived. The author of the idea felt no temptation to take charge himself. Themere fact that more experienced genius could be bought delivered him from the thrall of his ideal, although he still took a scientific and patriotic interest in its accomplishment.
Robbed of this dream of immortality, he had dropped the curtain upon his inner life and endeavored to fulfil his immediate destiny. As his powers of concentration were very great, he had succeeded for a time. During the fortnight before sailing, novelty and wonder had sustained him, and for a time at sea the long conversations with his father were agreeably varied by instructions in the science of yachting. But Fessenden was Fessenden—a personality, a young man bursting with precocious energy, ambition, independence. His reassertion was slow but persistent, and during one sleepless night alone on deck the naked truth confronted him that he was at the end of his endurance, that however he might conform to his father’s wishes in the future, for the present he must not only have an interval of personal liberty, but arrange his nebulous ambitions and satisfy them. He restrained his impatience until three o’clock, then awakened Mr. Abbott—who smiled and slept again—and plunged without a guide into Norway.
He bathed in streams, he slept under the stars, he saw no one but peasants, he hardly uttered a word for three days; and he was completely happy. When he was not in mountain gorges he was in pine forests; everywhere he had Nature in her magnificence, and he was alone. For two days he refused to think—it was enough to forget, to feel the freedom of the years when he believed himself innocent of fortune, with a glorious and self-made future stretching through infinite horizons. But on the evening of the third day he turned his back on the scenery, sat down on the grass, and thought.
That the prospect before him was hateful and hideoushe admitted aloud, lest he should seem to blink any modicum of the truth. The abstract fact that he was a rich man instead of a poor one dwindled to comparative insignificance beside the million details which made up the sum of that fact. Had he been the author of those details, his inherited and financial instincts, so quick at college, would no doubt possess him and obliterate the dreams of his youth. But that mountain of particulars, massive and petty, had fallen upon him without a moment’s warning, and he was not its illustrious author, but its future custodian. The youth in him was rampant, and his strong vein of romance unsatisfied. He admitted—again aloud—that he was as romantic as he was practical. He would train to succeed his father, but meanwhile would distinguish himself in his own manner. He would use the wealth at his disposal, but the manner should be picturesque.
Without admitting that he intended to demand a period of liberty, his imagination in the past weeks had toyed with many plans. At first, when he learned of the more than thousands in his father’s employ, he had been fired with the desire to ameliorate the lot of the working-man; and in his enthusiasm had awakened his father from his afternoon nap on deck and talked to him for an hour. Mr. Abbott, who revelled in the very sound of Fessenden’s voice, and would have attempted to give him the North Pole had he wanted it, listened indulgently; but when his turn came to speak he was smiling grimly.
“My dear boy,” he had said, “what reason have I given you to think me a fool? There are those who will tell you that the day must come when the streets of our great cities will run red with blood, when not one stone on Fifth Avenue will remain upon another; that, in short, the great civil war between capital and labor canbe delayed only until a strong leader of organized labor arises who cannot be bought. I do not go so far as to say that I—or you—can avert that calamity, for our rotten municipal governments have destroyed the respect of the thinking laboring man for authority, and these tremendous aggregations of capital I have in hand, which will make the United States strong and feared among nations, may be carried to an excess which will lessen the chances of individual achievement and curtail personal liberty. If rich men—that is to say, the manipulators—make fools of themselves, and in their greed for wealth and power reduce wages and sow further seeds of discontent, there is no telling what may happen. But although I make no denial of my own greed for wealth and power, and although these concentrations of many small industries into one huge enterprise will double my fortune, I make no such mistake as that. I have always maintained that a man may get rich and still share a certain portion of his gains with his assistants; and my working-men all receive good salaries, perquisites, heavy Christmas presents, and pensions in their old age. I make no pretence at philanthropy. There is no man who needs friends as the rich man does; there are no friends so valuable as an army of employés. I know many of mine personally; at some time or other I have managed to come into contact with most of them. They like me. They are content. They never go on strike. They are the one formidable bulwark against united labor in the country. When you return, I wish you to go about among those men, show them your personal interest in them as human beings, make them love you as much as they like me; then, if an industrial war ever comes, you will make yourself their leader and take whichever side you think wisest. But the thing to do is to avert war and use that great following for anotherpurpose. Either with or without civil war the time must come for the reform of municipalities, the reduction of state power, and, possibly, an interval of benevolent despotism. There is the rôle I have cut out for you; but meanwhile work with me to avert the worst calamity which could visit this country—set it back a hundred years. My men are not overpaid; they receive strict justice, that is all. I have harangued for hours with almost every great employer in the country, appealing to his common-sense, even his cupidity, but in most cases in vain. The average rich man in the United States is lowly born. He has worked himself up from the ranks. There never was a real democrat who was not born an aristocrat. The risen plebeian is a tyrant, is insatiable in his greed, glories in the thought of grinding the life out of thousands of his own class, delights in the hatred and envy which are but another signal of his success; in short, he is a damned fool, and deserves to wake up and find his throat cut. I suppose all revolutions are the result of stupidity. Ours, if it comes, will arise from no other cause whatever. If you have the genius in you that I believe, you will avert this war or control it. Now I will sleep again if you will permit me.”
The words had kept Fessenden awake all night, but after several days his enthusiasm cooled. Again he was willing to take the helm whenever the time came, and with all his energies; but the idea was his father’s, not his. His young ego, uniquely developed, demanded creation.
During the last day of his tramp he had looked down twenty avenues of possible greatness, and turned his back upon all. He was not discouraged, for he knew that inspiration comes suddenly, even if it be the final result of industrious raking. He was now returning todemand a vacation of some months, during which he would tramp and study Europe in his own way. But inspiration was closer than he knew, and although he was to tramp Europe again and again with various and, in one case, extraordinary results, there were to be intervening years.
As he jumped into his canoe and set his sail, he saw that theAlexandrawas no longer the solitary inhabitant of the fjord. Not half a mile from his father’s yacht was what looked to be a miniature man-of-war. It was painted white, and had a heavily gilded figure-head. In a few moments he was close enough to see the colors and design on the standard. He whistled and experienced a glow of anticipation.
“The German Emperor! I hardly know whether I am more anxious to see him or his yacht. Ours is the biggest in the world—of course!—his is the most original; but that may only mean resource: he couldn’t get the money voted any other way. The more I hear of Europe the rottener it appears, with the exception of Germany. This man seems to be making an American city out of Berlin, and to have plenty of sand all-round. Some one has said of him that he is an autocrat with a Yankee head on his shoulders; and, if that is the case, he may be worth studying for future points.”
Nevertheless, when a half-hour later his father told him that the Emperor had invited him to visit theHohenzollernthe day of his return, he sniffed with youthful Americanism.
“I don’t fancy waiting till I’m spoken to,” he announced—“for his high-mightiness to introduce every subject. He may be interesting in himself, but he is a monarch, and I have no use for any of them. They are a burlesque in the end of the nineteenth century.”
“Tell that to William, if you like, and introduce whatsubjects interest you—if you get a chance. He observes little formality up here, and less with Americans. Now please go and exchange that sweater and those pants—they are not trousers—for a suit of flannels.”