CHAPTER XIII
THE FORBIDDEN LAND
As Stuart dressed for the dinner he thought of Harriet with a pang. He had promised her to try to keep out of danger. But could she know or understand the struggle through which he was passing! He wondered vaguely why he had seen so little of her lately. She had become more and more absorbed in her music and her manner had grown shy and embarrassed. Yet, whenever he had resented it and stopped to lounge and chat and draw her out, she was always her old sweet self.
The doctor, too, had avoided him of late and he noticed that his clothes had begun to look shabby. He hurried down stairs, determined to see him a moment before leaving.
He caught him hurrying from the house and laid his hand affectionately on his arm.
"These are tough times, Doctor, and if you need any help you must let me know."
The older man's voice trembled as he replied:
"Thank you, my boy, that's a very unusual speech to hear these days. It renews my faith in the world."
"You're not in trouble?"
The doctor lifted his head gently.
"My troubles are so much lighter than those of the people I know, I can't think of them. So many of my friends and patients have given up in this panic. So many have died for the lack of bread. I'll let you know if I'm in trouble myself."
He paused and pressed Stuart's hand.
"I'm glad you asked me. The sun will shine brighter to-day. I must hurry."
With a swing of his stalwart form and a generous wave of his hand he was gone.
When Stuart reached the Drive he alighted and walked slowly toward the Bivens palace. He had never been there before. He had always avoided the spot. He smiled now at the childishness of his attitude toward Nan. It seemed incredible that a sane man should taboo one of the most beautiful spots in the city, merely because a woman lived in the neighbourhood who once professed her love to him.
He paused in front of the block on which the millionaire's house stood, amazed at the perfection of its detail, and above all amazed at the impression of homelike comfort and friendly hospitality which it gave. He had expected an imposing front, whose effects would impress and stun. He had not conceived the possibility of such a huge palace, set so commandingly in the centre of a block amid trees and shrubbery and iron picket fence, that it would suggest comfort and happiness. Yet the impression was unmistakable. The friendly lights seemed to reprove him for a long and foolish absence.
The full moon had just risen and flooded the Drive and park and river with silvery mystery. He studied the effects of the building with wonder and admiration. Evidently Bivens had given his architects a free hand and they had wrought a poem in marble. The fact was they had an easy task to persuade him. He had never boasted his culture or taste or ancestry. He knew and keenly felt the humility of his early origin and his one terror when he became rich was that he might be crude and ridiculous before others. When he found that his architects were men of genius he submitted to their guidance without a word.
So fascinated was Stuart with the beauty and perfection of the great house he walked around the block before entering, viewing it from every angle—always to find some new line shimmering in the moonlight that held his eye and charmed his fancy.
What a strange thing, this medieval palace, standing in stately beauty in the midst of the hideous, ugly uniformity of the most modern, unromantic and materialistic city of the world!
What was its meaning?
And the tall iron fence with the bristling spikes to keep out the mob, and that queer underground entrance on the side. These feudal minarets, battlements and frowning black iron pikes, were they symbolic of a revival of the feudal spirit of the Middle Ages? Or were they merely the day-dreams of an artist with no social meaning beyond the vagaries of his fancy?
Had a new master of the world really been born? And had he begun to build his castles to stun and overawe the rabbles that pass his door? Or was this strange being as yet neither fish nor fowl, neither beast nor human, merely a fungous growth on the diseased tissue of the modern world? Who could tell? Surely his like had never been seen in the history of man—this modern money-maniac, this strange creature of iron muscles, always hurrying, daring, scheming, plotting, with never a moment's relaxation, day or night, eating or drinking, working or sleeping, in his office or in his home, going or coming in his yacht with wireless tower, his private car with telegraph office, his secretary always by his side, a telephone always at his bed, with no time to live, no time to love, with only time to fight and kill and pile the spoils of war on high!
The old baron who lived beneath those graceful minarets and walked behind these pikes felt his high responsibilities. He was the champion of his people against their enemies. He was their protector while he claimed to be their lord. But this strange new creature, who had begun to masquerade in his ancient armour and steal his crests, who is he? Certainly he acknowledges no obligations to any people.
Stuart was roused from his reverie by the passing of a powerfully built man who had been following him since he had first approached the Bivens palace. The keen eyes searched has face with piercing gaze and the lawyer smiled as he recognized in the stranger one of the private guards of which the modern masters of the world have felt the need. In the Middle Ages he stood watch on the ramparts of the baron's castle—now he walks the block and lifts his finger to suspicious persons. In the old days he wore his armour on the outside and carried a spear. Now he wears a hidden coat of mail and carries concealed two automatic guns.
The guard smiled in friendly recognition and Stuart knew that he was expected by the servants of the great man.
The sentinel was an Italian. Bivens, the son of a poor white man of the South, whom even negroes once pitied, had recruited his palace guard from the children of the Cæsars. Could any fact more loudly proclaim the passing of the era of political fictions and the dawn of the age of materialism, the passing of the king who ruled by divine right and the coming of the reign of the huckster?
Stuart was shown into the drawing room by a powdered flunky whose costume was designed by one of the court tailors of Europe. While awaiting the arrival of the mistress of the house he looked about the room with increasing amazement. He had expected to find that the authority of the artist-architect would yield at the door to the personal whims of the owner. He expected to find here a vulgar and extravagant taste, a vernal art without mind or genius. Instead he found the perfection of grace, elegance, quiet richness and surprising beauty, everywhere the overwhelming impression of conscious dignity and exhaustless reserve power.
He rubbed his eyes to see if he were dreaming, entranced with his surroundings. In spite of the tragedy it all meant to his own life he drank in its effects as a poet long exiled from his native land drinks in the beauty and glory of his home-coming. Somewhere in this world or another in the mists of eternity his soul had seen this before. The whole conception of the thing was noble and it had been nobly and beautifully executed. The artist who wrought his vision thus in matter had sung for joy in its creation and the joyous beat of his heart throbbed in the rhythm of every exquisite line.
He began to realize for the first time the triumph of the woman who had bartered him for gold. His eye rested on a life-size portrait of Nan done by the foremost artist of Europe. It filled the entire space above the great mantel reaching to the ceiling and so skilfully had it been set in the massive panel one seemed to be looking through an opening into another room—the figure was not a picture but the living woman about to extend her hand in friendly greeting to her guests.
The artist had caught the secret of her character and expressed it with genius in the poise of the superb form, the incarnation of sensuous soulless beauty dominated by keen intelligence.
This portrait on which he stood gazing as if in a spell was evidently painted the second year of their marriage. He remembered now her diary had given an account of it when the painter came over from the Continent to execute the commission. He tried to recall her appearance the day of the assault. The impression was too blurred by excitement to have much meaning. He wondered if she really showed the ten years added to her age. At least he knew that she had not been happy. There was some consolation in that. Her ceaseless efforts to win back his friendship had left no room for doubt. He sank deep into the great chair and silently waited her coming.
When he suddenly heard the rustle of her dress in the hall his heart began to pound. He rose with a movement of nervous anger. His boasted self-control was a myth, after all.
When Nan's radiant figure appeared in the doorway, her bare arm extended, her lips parted in a tender smile, Stuart knew that his face was red. The fact that he knew it increased his confusion until the whole room became a blur. His feet refused to move, and he stood staring at the approaching vision as if in a trance.
Her hand touched his. The shock was sobering; he remembered himself and smiled.
"What a long, long time, Jim!"
"A thousand years—I think, Nan," he stammered.
"Nine hundred to be exact, sir, but better late than never. I began to think your stubbornness would postpone this call until the next world."
"And we may not land at the same place on the other side?"
"A compliment or an insult?"
"I don't know, do you?"
He was laughing quietly now, his nerves stronger by the tension of the challenge of her evident gaiety.
She smiled a gracious forgiveness of his dubious answer.
"Mr. Bivens was detained down town on business. I am awfully sorry he's not here to join in my welcome."
"Well, I'm not."
He was looking steadily at her with curious concentration.
She answered with a flash from her dark eyes and critically looked him over.
"Well?" he asked.
"I'm awfully disappointed."
"Why?"
"My vanity is hurt. I expected to find you, after nine years, with deep lines of suffering written on your face. You are better looking than ever. The few gray hairs about your temples are extremely becoming. Your honours have given you a new repose, a dignity and reserve power I couldn't conceive when I saw you battered by that mob."
"Allow me to return the compliment by saying that you are even a more startling disappointment to me. I was sure that I should find you broken."
"And you don't?"
Stuart smiled.
"I'd as well confess it frankly. You are far more beautiful than ever."
The woman softly laughed.
"You see no change?"
"The only changes I see merely add to your power: the worldly wisdom which marriage writes on every woman's face, a new strength, a warmth and fascination and a conscious joy at which I wonder and rage."
"Why wonder and rage?"
She drew him gently to a seat by her side, leaned forward and gazed smilingly at him.
Stuart was silent a moment and turned suddenly on her.
"Because Nan, when I look into your face to-night and see its joy, I can't help thinking such happiness is a crime. I saw joy like that once on the face of an Italian I defended and acquitted of murder. I believed him innocent but when he was free he confessed to me his guilt, confessed with such joy that I sprang on him and choked him into silence."
"And you think of me as a murderess, Jim?"
"No, no, my dear little playmate, but when I see you to-night in all this splendour so insolently happy——"
Nan sprang to her feet laughing.
"You are delicious to-night, Jim, and I'm so glad you are here. Come into the art gallery. It will take you days to see it; we'll just peep in to-night."
He followed her into a stately room packed with masterpieces of art; gleaming marbles and sombre bronze in groups of bewildering beauty, with every inch of wall-space crowded with canvases in massive gold frames glowing with the soft radiance of concealed electric lights.
Stuart gazed a moment in rapture.
"You must spend days here, Jim. Now honestly, with all your high-browed ideals, wouldn't you like to own this?"
"I wouldn't dare."
"Dare?"
"No. Not if I had the wealth of Croesus."
"Why not?"
"It's a crime to rob the world of these masterpieces of genius. They should be the free inheritance and inspiration of all the children of men. The humblest child of the street should own them because he is human. The man who has the power to buy them, of all men, should give to the people whose lives and toil gave him his power."
Nan gazed at Stuart in vague bewilderment and then a mischievous smile crept into the corners of her mouth.
"You're trying to throw dust in my eyes, but I can tell you what you are really thinking. Would you like to hear?"
"Very much."
"You are really wondering why the wicked prosper?"
The man remained silent while a look of deep seriousness overspread his face.
"Confess!" Nan insisted. "Am I not right?"
"Absolutely wrong," he replied slowly. "Why the wicked prosper has never worried me in the least. The first big religious idea I ever got hold of was that this is the best possible world God could have created—because it's free. Man must choose, otherwise his deeds have no meaning. A deed of mine is good merely because I have the power to do its opposite if I choose. In this free world step by step I can rise or fall through suffering and choosing."
"Oh, Jim," Nan broke in softly, "I've made you suffer horribly. You have the right to be hard and bitter."
"But I'm not, Nan," was the quiet answer. "I've been made generous and warm and tender by disappointment. Through the gates of pain I've entered into fellowship with my fellow-men, the humblest and the greatest. This sense of kinship has given me a larger vision. I've learned to love all sentient things. I've made friends with all sorts and conditions of men, the rich, the poor, the good, the bad. You have taught me the greatest secret of life."
"I wish I could blot out the memory of the pain."
"Well, I'm glad you can't. Life has become to me a thing so wonderful, so mysterious, so beautiful—just life within itself—I'd live it all over again if I could."
"Every moment of it?"
"Every moment with every light and shadow. It's glorious to live!"
A solemn English butler entered and announced dinner.
Seated by Nan's side alone in the great dining room, while servants in gorgeous liveries hurried with soft light footfall to do her slightest bidding, Stuart could scarcely shake off the impression that he was dreaming. Such pictures he had weaved in his fancy the first wonderful days of their conscious love-life. But it seemed centuries ago now. They had both died and come to life again in a new mysterious world, a world in which he was yet a stranger and Nan at home. The splendours of the stately room pleased his poetic fancy and in spite of his hostile effort he had to confess in his heart that Nan's magnificent figure gave the scene just the touch of queenly dignity which made it perfect. He tried again and again to recall the girl he had known in the old days, but the vision faded before the dazzling light of the present.
He looked at Nan cautiously and began to study her every word and movement and weigh each accent. Did she mean what her words and tones implied? In a hundred little ways more eloquent than speech she had said to him to-night that the old love of the morning of life was still the one living thing. Did she mean it or had she merely planned another triumph for her vanity in his second conquest, knowing that his high sense of honour would hold him silent and yet her slave. With a lawyer's cunning he put her to little tests to try the genuineness of her feeling. He threw off his restraint and led her back to the scenes of their youth. With a frankness that delighted her he told of his own struggles of the past nine years and watched with patient furtive care for every tone of feeling she might betray. When dinner ended, she was leaning close, her eyes misty with tears, and a far-away look in them that told of memories more vivid and alluring than all the splendours of her palace.
Stuart drew a breath of conscious triumph and his figure suddenly grew tense with a desperate resolution. But only for a moment.
He frowned, looked at his watch and rose abruptly.
"I must be going, Nan," he said with sudden coldness.
"Why, Jim," she protested. "It's only ten o'clock. I won't hear of such a thing."
"Yes, I must," he persisted. "I've an important case to-morrow. I must work to-night."
"You shall not go!" Nan cried. "I've waited nine years for this one evening's chat with you. Cal has told me of his offer. It's the most generous thing he ever did in his life. I know the kind of fight going on in your heart. Come into the music room, sit down and brood as long as you like. I've planned to charm you with an old accomplishment of mine to-night."
She led him to a rich couch, piled the pillows high, made him snug, drew a harp near the other end, and began to tune its strings.
Stuart gazed at the mural paintings in the ceiling and in a moment was lost in visions of the future his excited fancy began to weave.
Nan's fingers touched the strings in the first soft notes of an old melody. He woke with a start and looked at her. What a picture she made, with her full lips parted in a warm smile, her magnificent bare arms moving in rhythmic unison with the music! In just that pose he had seen her a hundred times in the days when he called her his own. And now that he had lost—her beauty had just reached the full splendour of perfection.
He closed his eyes to shut out the picture and again the fight began for the mastery of life.
A voice whispered:
"Unless you are a coward, grasp the power that is yours by divine right of nature. Why should you walk while pigmies ride? Why should you lag behind the age in this fierce struggle for supremacy? The woman who sits before you is yours if you only dare to tear her from the man who holds her by the fiction of dying customs!"
He felt his heart throb as another voice within cried:
"Yet why should I, an heir to immortality, whose will can shape a world, why should I live a beast of prey with my hand against every man?"
The answer was the memory of dirty finger nails closing on his throat while a mob of howling fools surged over his body and cursed him for trying to save them from themselves. Again he heard a woman's voice as she held his head close, whispering:
"I've something to say to you, Jim!"
His lips tightened with sudden decision. The golden gates of the forbidden land swung open and his soul entered.
CHAPTER XIV
AN AFTERMATH
The day following Bivens's offer to Stuart was made memorable by a sinister event in Union Square.
A mass meeting of the unemployed had been called to protest against their wrongs and particularly to denounce the men who had advanced the price of bread by creating a corner in wheat.
On his way down town Stuart read with astonishment that Dr. Woodman would preside over this gathering. He determined to go. As he hurried through the routine work of his office, giving his orders for the day, he received a telephone call from Nan, asking him to accompany her to this meeting.
"I don't think you ought to go," he answered emphatically.
"Why?"
"Well, there might be a riot for one thing."
"I'm not afraid."
"And you might hear some very plain talk about your husband."
"That's exactly why I wish to go!"
"I don't think it wise," Stuart protested.
"I'm going, anyhow. Won't you accompany me?"
"If you will go—yes."
"That's a good boy. I'll send one of my cars to the office for you immediately."
An hour later when Stuart, seated by Nan's side, reached Union Square, the automobile was stopped by the police and turned into Seventeenth Street.
Every inch of space in the Square seemed blocked by a solid mass of motionless humanity. Stuart left the car in Seventeenth Street and succeeded finally in forcing a way through the crowd to a position within a hundred feet of the rude platform that had been erected for the orators. The scene about the stand bristled with policemen, most of them apparently picked men, their new uniforms glittering in the sun and their polished clubs flashing defiance as they twirled them in the faces of the people with deliberate provocation.
Besides the special detail of picked men who moved about the stand, occasionally clubbing an inoffensive man, a battalion of three hundred reserves was drawn up in serried lines about a hundred yards to the north on the edge of Fourth Avenue. Between these reserves and the crowd about the stand an open space was kept clear for their possible assault in case of any disturbance.
Near these reserves stood the big red automobile of Hamberger, the police captain of the District. He was reputed to be a millionaire, though his salary had never been more than enough to support his wife and children. The sight of his fat insolent face as the representative of Law and Order gave Stuart the impression of farce so irresistibly that he laughed. Surely some of Bivens's sinister philosophy to which he had listened yesterday had a pretty solid basis in the facts of our everyday life.
When the speaking began Stuart pressed his way as close as possible, drawing Nan with him.
He was astonished at the genuine eloquence and power with which the first speaker, evidently of anarchistic leanings, developed his theme, a passionate plea for freedom and the highest development of the individual man. He sketched the growth of the American Republic from its crude beginning in the unbroken forests, and showed with clear historic grasp how all the thinking and creative deeds which had added anything to the sum of human progress belonged to this period of anarchistic liberties. He traced the growth of tyranny in the development of our system of laws until to-day we were less free than the people of England, who lived under the hereditary king against whom our fathers had rebelled. A tyranny of corrupt and ignorant politicians he denounced as the lowest and vilest yet evolved in history.
His concluding sentences roused his crowd to a pitch of wild enthusiasm.
"In the Old World, from which your fathers and mothers fled in search of freedom, men enslaved their fellow-men by becoming lords, dukes or kings, murdering or poisoning their way to a castle or a throne. The methods of your modern masters are more subtle and successful. You vote to make them your masters, and still imagine that you are free.
"Freedom belongs to him who would be free. And at last the masses of the people are becoming restless, not so much because they lack leisure and luxury, but because they have nothing to live for.
"Millions ask the question:Is life worth living?
"Because they have begun to ask it, they will never cease until they have made it worth living.
"A deep, half-confused consciousness of the injustice of life has begun to clutch our throats. We begin to curse both church and state, thank God, at last! Statesmen must hear or die. Property must respond or strengthen its bolts and bars and there's no room on the door for another bolt. The church that has no answer to this cry is dead already."
A cheer like the roar of an angry sea swept the crowd. Again and again it rose and fell, increasing in volume as its contagious spirit set fire to the restless minds of the thousands who had packed the Square but could not hear the man who was voicing their faith.
In the deep roar of their cheers there was no sodden despair. As Stuart looked into the faces of the crowd he saw no trace of the degeneracy and loss of elemental manhood which makes the sight of an European mob loathsome and hopeless. These men were still men, the might of freemen in their souls and good right arms.
Where had such crowds met before? Somewhere he had seen them in body or in spirit. Was it in the streets of Paris before the French Revolution sent those long lines of death carts rumbling over her pavements to the guillotine?
"Who is that fellow, Jim," Nan asked.
"Haven't the remotest idea."
"He's a great orator if he is an anarchist. He made the cold chills run down my back."
"Yes, I'm just wondering how many more such firebrands of eloquence could be found in this swaying forest of nobodies."
He watched the sneering faces of the policemen as they demanded silence of the crowd. They couldn't understand what the fools were cheering about. They had instructions to pull the whole "show" at a nod from the censor. But he had deemed it as harmless as a Sunday-school picnic. The words of the orator had rolled from his uniform like water from a duck's back.
The next speaker devoted his time to a fierce denunciation of the church, and ended with a bitter denial of the existence of God.
When the last echoes of the cheers had died away there was a stir near the stand and Stuart saw the stalwart figure of Dr. Woodman suddenly rise. He lifted his arm over the crowd, demanding silence.
Stuart could see that his old friend was deeply moved. His big hands were trembling and his voice vibrant with emotion as he stepped to the edge of the platform and faced the crowd. Among the five thousand people who stood within ear shot at least a hundred recognized him and gave a hearty cheer.
The doctor plunged at once into the message with which his heart was quivering:
"Let no man tell you, my friends, that the God of our fathers is a myth. You can't lose faith in God because you have not lost faith in eternal justice. This faith is just coming into conscious existence in the hearts of millions. By this sign we know that a new age is born. Poets and artists no longer gaze into heaven. Their eyes are fixed on earth. Men have ceased to long for another world, therefore their hope is now for this one. To bring Justice and Beauty to pass on this earth in wisdom and fearlessness of Death—this is the new creed of the people!
"My friends, no such people ever lived in history before. This continent has been the great white plain of eternity on which the chains of ages have been broken, freeing the human soul and body at one stroke, placing in men's hands, the mighty weapon of progress and defense—universal suffrage. The workingman of to-day lives better than the kings of the Middle Ages. Have patience, my friends, the workingman of to-morrow will be the heir of all the knowledge, of all the pain and all the glory of the centuries.
"There can be no other meaning to the drama of history, the sweep of whose movement is always upward for the life of millions, always writing in letters of fire across the sky 'THE LAW—THE LAW!'
"I have seen this mighty city grow from comparatively small and mean conditions. And I have watched slowly growing here a new City of the Soul, the gradual development of civilization itself into a joyous religion whose God is Justice and Righteousness. Each year I have seen the streets cleaner, its parks more beautiful, its homes sweeter, its schools finer, its hospitals, asylums and play grounds more magnificent and all its charities more efficient. I have watched the municipality slowly but surely absorb the functions of the ancient church, and for the first time in the history of the world begin to do its work with the divine breadth of God's boundless love.
"We should not be so impatient, we should not be discouraged. The progress of the world has really just begun.
"And so I, who watch the darkness pass and see the eastern sky begin to glow—I cry to you who may still be below: 'Be of good cheer—the day dawns!'"
A feeble cheer rose from the hundred or more who knew the doctor personally. It was the only response the sullen crowd gave to his burst of epic feeling. They were not in sympathy with his optimism. The anguish of the present moment of bread-hunger and cold was too keen. Men with empty stomachs had no historic perspective. They felt instinctively that it was just as black for a man who starved to death in the ideal "City of the Soul" as it was for the wretch who starved in chains in Egypt three thousand years ago.
When the doctor sat down Stuart saw Harriet suddenly lean over, draw his big shaggy head down and kiss him. He hadn't recognized her before.
The next speaker made his attack on the corruption and graft of our system of government with brutal frankness. He assailed the foundations of the Republic and at last the principles which underlie civilized society itself. Undoubtedly he was a madman, driven insane by the fierce struggle for bread, but none the less a dangerous maniac. With scathing, bitter wit he flayed the corruption of our system of democracy.
The big fat sleek captain of police had drawn near, and listened to this part of his speech with secret enjoyment. A triumphant smile played about the corners of his mouth. He knew that the speaker was hitting the bull's eye now with every shot, but he squared his massive form and looked over the cheering crowd of hungry poverty-stricken men and women with an expression of quiet contempt. Clearly he had a very simple and comprehensive answer. It was not necessary for him to speak it. His whole body fairly shouted it:
"Well, what are you going to do about it, you weak-kneed, blear-eyed scum of the earth!"
For the moment Stuart could not determine which one of the men he hated most—the madman who was doing his best to pull the house down which sheltered him or the stupid beast who stood over him clothed with the supreme authority of law.
The speaker closed his tirade with a fierce personal attack on the man who had made five millions in a corner on bread and flaunted his ill-gotten gains in the face of starving men and women.
Nan's face flashed with sudden rage.
"Take me to my car, Jim. I've an idea—I'm going to execute it at once."
"Wouldn't you like to meet the doctor and his daughter before you go?"
"Thanks, hardly. You know he is on Mr. Bivens's black list."
"I'd forgotten that," he answered regretfully. "I'd like awfully for you to meet Harriet. I'm sure you'd like her."
Nan smiled.
"I could see she likes you. I don't think she took a fancy to me, however."
"Nonsense, Nan." he said, with annoyance. "She couldn't have seen you. I didn't know she was here until she kissed her father."
"Perhaps my eyes are keener than yours."
The captain of the district brushed rudely past and sprang into his automobile. He waved his hand to his chauffeur. His gesture was mistaken by a pair of keen restless eyes for a command to his reserves to disperse the crowd.
A pale, shabby young fellow leaped past the line of police into the open space and rushed straight for the reserves. His long thin arm was lifted high in the air clutching a black thing with a lighted fuse sparkling from its crest.
A murmur rippled the crowd, the police stood still and stared, and the next moment the bomb exploded in the boy's hand and his body lay on the stones a mangled heap of torn flesh and blood-soaked rags.
The police charged the crowd and clubbed them without mercy. The people fled in confusion in every direction, and in five minutes the Square was cleared.
Stuart had hurried Nan to her car, and rushed back to the scene of the tragedy. He readily passed the lines of the police, who recognized him as the district attorney.
The doctor reached the spot and Harriet was holding the dying boy's head in her lap.
Stuart bent over her curiously and slowly asked:
"You were not afraid to rush up here with your father and take that poor mangled thing in your arms?"
"Of course not," she replied simply. "Papa says he's dying—nothing can be done for him. They've sent for an ambulance."
The doctor stood staring at the dying boy and a tear had slowly gathered in his kindly eye.
He pressed Stuart's arm and spoke in low tones:
"I've made some big mistakes in my life, my boy. I'm just beginning to see them. I've read a new message in the flutter of this poor fellow's pulse. I'll not be slow to heed it."
But Stuart stood watching with growing wonder Harriet's deft little hand brush the damp hair back from the poor disfigured face.
CHAPTER XV
CONFESSION
The face of the dying boy haunted the doctor's imagination. With his eyes closed or open, at noon or alone at night the pity and the horror of his lonely death gripped him. A boy of twenty, weak, hungry, ragged, alone, had dared to lift his thin arm above his head and charge the entrenched authority of the civilized world.
Was he, with other theorists, responsible for the mad act?
He began to think that Tolstoy is right in his assertion that human progress is a march of ideas—and that the day of revolution by bloodshed has passed. He began to fear that his struggle with Bivens in his long-drawn and fiercely contested lawsuit was an act of the same essential quality of blind physical violence. He began to see that the real motive back of his struggle was hatred of the man—this little counter jumper, who had destroyed his business. It was the irony of such a fate that sunk its poisoned dagger into his heart. He faced the fact at last without flinching.
He rose and paced the floor of his library for a half-hour with measured tread. He stopped suddenly and clenched his big fists instinctively.
"I do hate him—with undying, everlasting hatred, and I pray God to give me greater strength to hate him more!"
Again the picture of the pale, torn, blood-stained face, with its mute piteous appeal, rose before him. The anger slowly melted out of his heart and the old thought came back:
"How rich is my life after all compared to his!"
And then he made a mental inventory of his assets, with sad results. He had tried for a long time not to face those facts. But if he gave up the suit he must face them. He had identified this action at last with his faith in the very existence of justice. To realize that the element of personal hatred was the motive power back of it was a shock to the whole structure of his character.
He rose with sudden determination. He would not surrender. He would fight it out with this little swarthy scoundrel, win or lose. His house was mortgaged, the last dollar of his savings he had spent in helping others and the money set aside to finish Harriet's course in music had been lost in the panic. He would fight it out somehow and win. But the one thing that must not fail was the perfection of his girl's voice. The court of appeals would certainly render their decision before her next term's work would begin. She could rest during the summer. It would do her good. If he could be firm with his tenants and collect his room-rents promptly from everyone, the income from his house was still sufficient to pay the interest on the mortgage and give them a little to eat. It would be enough. Food for the soul was more important. He resolved to ask Stuart to collect his rents.
He looked up and Harriet stood smiling at him.
"What an actor you would have made, Papa!" she exclaimed.
"Why?"
"I've been watching you play a great scene, all the characters by yourself."
"A foolish habit, dear!" the father laughed. "Always muttering and talking to myself. I suppose I'll be arrested for a lunatic some day."
He stopped suddenly and looked at Harriet closely.
"Come here, Baby."
She came and stood beside his chair. He pressed her hand tenderly.
"What have you been crying about?" he asked anxiously.
"Oh, nothing much," was the low answer. "I really don't know—perhaps the thing that makes the birds out there in the Square chirp while the snow is still on the ground, the feeling that Spring is coming."
"You're keeping something from me, dearest," he whispered, slipping his arm about her waist. "Tell me."
"You really believe in my voice, don't you?" she asked slowly.
"Believe in it? Do I believe in God?"
"Could I go abroad right away and finish my work there?"
She asked the question with such painful intensity, the father looked up with a start.
"What's the matter, dear?"
The girl slipped her arm around his neck with a sob.
He bent and kissed the golden hair, stroking it fondly until she was calmer.
"Why do you wish to go now, child?" he asked at last.
"I've a confession to make, Papa dear."
The little head sank low and the arm tightened its grip about his neck.
"What is it, darling? I'm sure it's nothing of which you're ashamed."
"No, something of which I'm proud. Something so sweet and wonderful in itself, the very joy of it I feel sometimes will kill me. I'm in love, desperately and hopelessly."
Again a sob caught her voice, and the father's arms drew her to his heart and held her.
"But why hopelessly, my baby?" he asked. "Your hair is beaten gold, your eyes are deep and true, your slender little form has all the symmetry and beauty of a sylph. You are young, radiant, glorious, and your voice the angels would envy."
"But the man I love doesn't realize all that yet, Papa dear. He is bound by the memories of the past to a woman he once loved, a woman who is evil at heart, and though she betrayed him for the lust of money, is determined to hold him still her slave. But she shall not. I'll fight for him! And you'll help me, Papa, won't you?"
The father drew her close.
"Won't I—just wait and see!—But you haven't told me his name? I've been very blind, I fear."
"You've never guessed?"
She lifted her face to his in surprise.
"No."
"Jim."
"Our Jim Stuart?"
She nodded. Her voice wouldn't work.
"Oh, I see, I see!" the father mused. "The first love of a child's heart grown slowly into the great passion of life."
Again the little head nodded.
"You understand now why I wish to get away, to finish my work abroad. I'll be nearer to him with the ocean between us. He'll miss me then. I feel it, know it. When I return he will be proud of my voice. I shall go mad if I stay here and see him dangling at that woman's heels. I watched her with him to-day, devouring him with her eyes, her millions won by his betrayal, yet proud, miserable, envious, and determined to wreck his life. But I shall return in time to make him know. He loves music. I shall sing when he hears me as I never sang before, and I shall say to him then all the unspoken things I dare not put in speech. You understand, Papa dear, you'll send me away and help me to win?"
The father kissed the trembling lips and answered firmly.
"Yes, I'll raise the money for you right away."
And then for half an hour she lay in his arms while he whispered beautiful thoughts of her future—things he had promised himself to say often before and had not said, until at last she smiled with joy. When he sent her to bed he had kissed the last tear away.
She looked at him wistfully at the door.
"I'm not going to make this fight for fame and money—it's all for the heart of the man I love."
"I understand, dear!" he answered cheerily as he threw her a last kiss.
When she had gone and he heard her door close, he stood for a moment, lost in thought, and then slowly exclaimed:
"And now I've got to surrender."
CHAPTER XVI
THE UNBIDDEN GUEST
The bitter reference to Bivens and the crime of his corner in wheat had roused Nan's lighting blood. She would accept the challenge of this rabble and show her contempt for its opinions in a way that could not be mistaken. She determined to give an entertainment whose magnificence would startle the social world and be her defiant answer to the critics of her husband. At the same time it would serve the double purpose of dazzling and charming the imagination of Stuart. She would by a single dash of power end his indecision as to Bivens's offer and bind with stronger cords the tie that held him to her.
Her suggestion was received with enthusiasm by her husband.
"All right," he said excitedly, "beat the record. Give them something to talk about the rest of their lives. I don't mean those poor fools in Union Square. Their raving is pathetic. I mean the big bugs who think they own the earth, the people who think that we are new-comers and that this island was built for their accommodation. Give them a knock-out."
Nan's eyes danced with excitement.
"You really mean that I may plan without counting the cost?"
"That's exactly what I mean. The man is yet to be born whose brain can conceive the plan to spend artistically on one night's entertainment the half I'm willing to blow in just now for such a triumph."
"I'll do my best," she answered quietly.
"Nothing cheap or vulgar about it, you know. I think that party in which the guests were drenched with a hose and the one in which they dressed as vegetables were slightly lacking in originality. True, the hosepipe party had a stirring climax when the pretty hostess appeared in a silk bathing suit and allowed herself to be ducked by her admirers in her own bath tub; still dear, I shouldn't care for that sort of a sensation."
"I think I'd draw the line at that myself. I promise you something better."
"Of course that bathing-suit luncheon at Newport last summer was a stunning affair. The women certainly made a hit. But I can't quite figure my wife appearing in it."
Nan lifted her eyebrows:
"I promise you faithfully not to appear in a bathing suit."
"Just one more pet aversion, dear," Bivens smiled. "You won't have any kind of an animal party, will you?"
"There'll be many kinds of animals present if they could only be accurately catalogued."
"I mean, particularly, monkeys. You know that monkey party got on my nerves. I mix with bulls and bears every day down in Wall Street. And all sorts of reptiles crawl among those big buildings—but when I had to shake hands with that monkey dressed in immaculate evening clothes sitting at a table sipping champagne, I thought they were pushing family history a little too far. Maybe our ancestors were monkeys all right, but the less said about it the better."
"I promise," Nan laughed.
"Then good luck, and remember the sky's the limit."
Bivens waved her a kiss, hurried to his office and concluded a deal for floating five millions in common stock, which cost exactly the paper on which it was printed. His share of this loot would pay more than his wife could spend in a year.
Nan spared no expenditure of time, money and thought to the perfection of her plans. She employed a corps of trained artists, took them to her home, told them what she wished and they worked with enthusiasm to eclipse in splendour New York's record of lavish entertainments—but always with the reservation which she had imposed that nothing be done that might violate the canons of beauty and good taste.
The long-dreamed night came, and her guests had begun to arrive.
One was hurrying there to whom no engraved invitation had been sent, and yet his coming was the one big event of the evening, the one thing that would make the night memorable. No liveried flunky cried his name in the great hall, but a white invisible figure stood ready to draw aside the velvet curtains as he passed.
The confession of love for Stuart which Harriet had sobbed out in her father's arms had been the last straw that broke the backbone of his fight against Bivens. In a burst of generous feeling he made up his mind to eat his pride, drive from his mind every bitter impulse and forget that he had ever hated this man or been wronged by him. He could see now that he had neglected his little girl in the fight he had been making for other people and that her very life might be at stake in the struggle she was making for the man she loved.
Bivens had once offered to buy his business. He had afterward made him a generous offer to compromise his suit. He had never doubted for a moment that a compromise would be accepted the moment he should see fit to give up.
Well, he would give up. Life was too short for strife and bitterness. It was just long enough to love his little girl. He would not waste another precious hour.
He instructed his lawyer to withdraw the appeal before the day fixed for filing the papers. The lawyer raved and pleaded in vain. The doctor was firm. He wrote Bivens a generous personal letter in which he asked that the past be forgotten and that he appoint a meeting at which they could arrange the terms of a final friendly settlement.
The act had lifted a load from his heart. The sum he would receive, if but half Bivens's original offer, would be sufficient to keep him in comfort, complete his daughter's course in music, and give him something with which to continue his daily ministry to the friendless and the lowly. It was all he asked of the world now.
He wondered in his new enthusiasm why he had kept up this bitter feud for the enforcement of his rights by law, when there were so many more urgent and important things in life to do.
He waited four days for an answer to his letter and receiving none, wrote again. In the meantime the day for final action on his appeal had passed and his suit was legally ended. On the last day his lawyer pleaded with him for an hour to file the appeal suit and then compromise at his leisure. The doctor merely smiled quietly and repeated his decision:
"I'm done fighting. I've something else to do."
When Bivens failed to reply to his second letter he made up his mind to see him personally. He was sure the letter had been turned over to a lawyer and the financier had never seen it. He called at Bivens's office three times and always met the same answer:
"Mr. Bivens is engaged for every hour to-day. You must call again."
On the fourth day, when he had stayed until time for closing the office, a secretary informed him that Mr. Bivens was too busy with matters of great importance to take up any new business of any kind for a month, and that he had given the most positive orders to that effect to all his men. If he would return the first of next month he would see what could be done.
The doctor left in disgust. It was evident that the millionaire's business had reached such vast proportions that its details were as intricate and absorbing as the government of an empire and that he had found it necessary to protect his person with a network of red tape.
He determined to break through this ceremonial nonsense, see Bivens face to face, and settle the affair at once.
When he should see him personally it would be but a question of five minutes' friendly talk and the matter would be ended. Now that he recalled little traits of Bivens's character, he didn't seem such a scoundrel after all—just the average money-mad man who could see but one side of life. He would remind him in a friendly way of their early association, and the help he had given him at an hour of his life when he needed it most. He wouldn't cringe or plead. He would state the whole situation frankly and truthfully and with dignity propose a settlement.
It was just at this moment that the doctor learned of the preparations for the dinner and ball at the Bivens palace on Riverside Drive. The solution of the whole problem flashed through his mind in an instant. They would have professional singers without a doubt, the great operatic stars and others. If Harriet could only be placed on the programme for a single song it would be settled! Her voice would sweep Bivens off his feet and charm the brilliant throng of guests. He would have to accompany her there of course. At the right moment he would make himself known; a word with Bivens and it would be settled.
He imagined in vivid flashes the good-natured scene between them, the astonishment of the financier that his little girl had grown into such a wonderful woman and his pleasure in recalling the days when she used to play hide and seek behind the counter of the old drug store.
He lost no time in finding out the manager of the professional singers for the evening and through Harriet's enthusiastic music teachers arranged for her appearance.
From the moment this was accomplished his natural optimism returned. His success was sure. He gave his time with renewed energy to his work among the poor.
On the day of the ball Harriet was waiting in a fever of impatience for his return from the hospitals to dress. At half past seven their dinner was cold and he had not come. It was eight o'clock before his familiar footstep echoed through the hall.
Harriet kissed him tenderly.
"I'm glad you're safe at home at last—now hurry."
"I'll not delay you much. I can dress in thirty minutes. My! my! but you're glorious to-night, child! I never saw you look so beautiful!"
She pushed him into the dining room, crying:
"Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! This is really the first night in my career. Jim's been gone an hour. Dinner up there begins at eight."
"But my star does not rise to sing before eleven—the ball begins at twelve. I've plenty of time to love you a minute or two."
He drew her near again and kissed her.
"I wouldn't exchange my little girl's crown of gold for all the yellow coin of the millionaires we shall see to-night."
"And I wouldn't give the father with the loving heart and stainless name for the Kingdom of Mammon."
"That's a beautiful saying, my own, I shall not forget it; and now I'll hurry."
He ate a hasty meal, dressed in thirty minutes, and at nine o'clock led Harriet to the side entrance of Bivens's great house on the Drive.
He was in fine spirits. The reaction from the tension of a pitiful tragedy of sin and shame he had witnessed in the afternoon had lifted him to spiritual heights. For the life of him he couldn't look at his own troubles seriously. They seemed trivial in a world of such shadows as that which fell across his path from behind those iron bars. He rejoiced again that he had made up his mind to live the life of faith and good fellowship with all men, including the little swarthy master of the palace he was about to enter.
And so with light heart he stepped through the door which the soft white hand of Death opened. How could he know?