“Faustina hath the fairest face,And Phillida the better grace;Both have mine eye enriched:This sings full sweetly with her voice;Her fingers make so sweet a noise;Both have mine ear bewitched.Ah me! sith Fates have so provided,My heart, alas! must be divided.”
THE HERO, ASSISTED BY THE MONA LISA SMILE, DEPLORES THE DEBILITATING EFFECTS OF MODERN CIVILIZATION
With the adjournment of the legislature politics became a less absorbing topic of interest. James at least was frankly glad of this, for his position had begun to be embarrassing. He could not always stand with a foot in either camp. As yet he had made no break with the progressives. Joe Powers had given him a hint that he might be more useful where he was. But as much as possible he was avoiding the little luncheons at which Jeff and his political friends were wont to foregather. He gave as an excuse the rush of business that was swamping him. His excuse at least had the justification of truth. His speeches had brought him a good many clients and Frome was quietly throwing cases his way.
It was at one of these informal little noonday gatherings that Rawson gave his opinion of the legal ability of James.
“He isn't any great lawyer, but he never gives it away. He knows how to wear an air of profound learning with a large and impressive silence. Roll up the whole Supreme Court into one and it can't look any wiser than James K. Farnum.”
Miller laughed. “Reminds me of what I heard last week. Jeff was walking down Powers Avenue with James and an old fellow stopped me to point them out. There go the best citizen and the worst citizen in this town, he said. I told him that was rather hard on James. You ought to have heard him. For him James is the hero of the piece and Jeff the villain.”
“Half the people in this town have got that damn fool notion,” Captain Chunn interrupted violently.
“More than half, I should say.”
“Every day or two I hear about how dissipated Jeff used to be and how if it were not for his good and noble cousin he would have gone to the deuce long ago,” Rawson contributed.
Chunn pounded on the table with his fist. “Jeff's own fault. Talk about durn fools! That boy's got them all beat clear off the map. And I'm dashed if I don't like him better for it.”
“Move we change the subject,” suggested Rawson. “Here comes Verden's worst citizen.”
With a casual nod of greeting round the table Jeff sat down.
“Any of you hear James' speech before the Chamber of Commerce yesterday? It was bully. One of his best,” he said as he reached for the menu card.
Captain Chunn groaned. The rest laughed. Jeff looked round in surprise. “What's the joke?”
It was a great relief to James, in these days when the complacency of his self-satisfaction was a little ruffled, to call often on Valencia Van Tyle and let himself drift pleasantly with her along primrose paths where moral obligations never obtruded. Under the near-Venetian ceiling of her den, with its pink Cupids and plump dimpled cherubs smiling down, he was never troubled about his relation to Hardy's defeat. Here he got at life from another slant and could always find justification to himself for his course.
She had a silent divination of his moods and knew how to minister indolently to them. The subtle incense of luxury that she diffused banished responsibility. In her soft sensuous blood the lusty beat of duty had small play.
But even while he yielded to the allure of Valencia Van Tyle, admitting a finish of beauty to which mere youth could not aspire, all that was idealistic in him went out to the younger cousin whose admiration and shy swift friendship he was losing. His vanity refused to accept this at first. She was a little piqued at him because of the growing intimacy with Valencia. That was all. Why, it had been only a month or two ago that her gaze had been warm for him, that her playful irony had mocked sweetly his ambition for service to the community. Their spirits had touched in comradeship. Almost he had caught in her eyes the look they would hold for only one man on earth. The best in him had responded to the call. But now he did not often meet her at The Brakes. When he did a cool little nod and an indifferent word sufficed for him. How much this hurt only James himself knew.
One of the visible signs of his increasing prosperity was a motor car, in which he might frequently be seen driving with the daughter of Joe Powers, to the gratification of its owner and the envy of Verden. The cool indifference with which Mrs. Van Tyle ignored the city's social elite had aroused bitter criticism. Since she did not care a rap for this her escapades were frankly indiscreet. James could not really afford a machine, but he justified it on the ground that it was an investment. A man who appears to be prosperous becomes prosperous. A good front is a part of the bluff of twentieth century success. He did not follow his argument so far as to admit that the purchase of the car was an item in the expenses of a campaign by which he meant to make capital out of a woman's favor to him, even though his imagination toyed with the possibilities it might offer to build a sure foundation of fortune.
“You should go to New York,” she told him once after he had sketched, with the touch of eloquence so native to him, a plan for a line of steamers between Verden and the Orient.
“To be submerged in the huddle of humanity. No, thank you.”
“But the opportunities are so much greater there for a man of ability.”
“Oh, ability!” he derided. “New York is loaded to the water line with ability in garrets living on crusts. To win out there a man must have a pull, or he must have the instinct for making money breed, for taking what other men earn.”
She studied him, a good-looking, alert American, sheet-armored in the twentieth century polish of selfishness, with an inordinate appetite for success. Certainly he looked every inch a winner.
“I believe you could do it. You're not too scrupulous to look out for yourself.” Her daring impudence mocked him lightly.
“I'm not so sure about that.” James liked to look his conscience in the face occasionally. “I respect the rights of my fellows. In the money centers you can't do that and win. And you've got to win. It doesn't matter how. Make good—make good! Get money—any way you can. People will soon forget how you got it, if you have it.”
“Dear me! I didn't know you were so given to moral reflections.” To Alice, who had just come into the room to settle where they should spend their Sunday, Valencia explained with mock demureness the subject of their talk. “Mr. Farnum and I are deploring the immoral money madness of New York and the debilitating effects of modern civilization. Will you deplore with us, my dear?”
The younger woman's glance included the cigarette James had thrown away and the one her cousin was still smoking. “Why go as far as New York?” she asked quietly.
Farnum flushed. She was right, he silently agreed. He had no business futtering away his time in a pink boudoir. Nor could he explain that he hoped his time was not being wasted.
“I must be going,” he said as casually as he could.
“Don't let me drive you away, Mr. Farnum. I dropped in only for a moment.”
“Not at all. I have an appointment with my cousin.”
“With Mr. Jefferson Farnum?” Alice asked in awakened interest. “I've just been reading a magazine article about him. Is he really a remarkable man?”
“I don't think you would call him remarkable. He gets things done, in spite of being an idealist.”
“Why, in spite of it?”
“Aren't reformers usually unpractical?”
“Are they? I don't know. I have never met one.” She looked straight at Farnum with the directness characteristic of her. “Is the article in Stetson's Magazine true?”
“Substantially, I think.”
Alice hesitated. She would have liked to pursue the subject, but she could not very well do that with his cousin. For years she had been hearing of this man as a crank agitator who had set himself in opposition to her father and his friends for selfish reasons. Her father had dropped vague hints about his unsavory life. The Stetson write-up had given a very different story. If it told the truth, many things she had been brought up to accept without question would bear study.
James suavely explained. “The facts are true, but not the inferences from the facts. Jeff takes rather a one-sided view of a very complex situation. But he's perfectly honest in it, so far as that goes.”
“You voted for his bill, didn't you?” Alice asked.
“Yes, I voted for it. But I said on the floor I didn't believe in it. My feeling was that the people ought to have a chance to express an opinion in regard to it.”
“Why don't you believe in it?”
Valencia lifted her perfect eyebrows. “Really, my dear, I didn't know you were so interested in politics.”
Alice waited for the young man's answer.
“It would take me some time to give my reasons in full. But I can give you the text of them in a sentence. Our government is a representative one by deliberate choice of its founders. This bill would tend to make it a pure democracy, which would be far too cumbersome for so large a country.”
“So you'll vote against it next time to save the country,” Alice suggested lightly. “Thank you for explaining it.” She turned to her cousin with an air of dismissing the subject. “Well, Val. What about the yacht trip to Kloochet Island for Sunday? Shall we go? I have to 'phone the captain to let him know at once.”
“If you'll promise not to have it rain all the time,” the young widow shrugged with a little move. “Perhaps Mr. Farnum could join us? I'm sure uncle would be pleased.”
Alice seconded her cousin's invitation tepidly, without any enthusiasm. James, with a face which did not reflect his disappointment, took his cue promptly. “Awfully sorry, but I'll be out of the city. Otherwise I should be delighted.”
Valencia showed a row of dainty teeth in a low ripple of amusement. Alice flashed her cousin one look of resentment and with a sentence of conventional regret left the room to telephone the sailing master.
Farnum, seeking permission to leave, waited for his hostess to rise from the divan where she nestled.
But Valencia, her fingers laced in characteristic fashion back of her neck, leaned back and mocked his defeat with indolent amused eyes.
“My engagement,” he suggested as a reminder.
“Poor boy! Are you hard hit?”
“Your flights of fancy leave me behind. I can't follow,” he evaded with an angry flush.
“No, but you wish you could follow,” she laughed, glancing at the door through which her cousin had departed. Then, with a demure impudent little cast of her head, she let him have it straight from the shoulder. “How long have you been in love with Alice? And how will you like to see Ned Merrill win?”
“Am I in love with Miss Frome?”
“Aren't you?”
“If you say so. It happens to be news to me.”
“As if I believed that, as if you believed it yourself,” she scoffed.
Her pretty pouting lips, the long supple unbroken lines of the soft sinuous body, were an invitation to forget all charms but hers. He understood that she was throwing out her wiles, consciously or unconsciously, to strike out from him a denial that would convince her. His mounting vanity drove away his anger. He forgot everything but her sheathed loveliness, the enticement of this lovely creature whose smoldering eyes invited. Crossing the room, he stood behind her divan and looked down at her with his hands on the back of it.
“Can a man care much for two women at the same time?” he asked in a low voice.
She laughed with slow mockery.
Her faint perfume was wafted to his brain. He knew a besieging of the blood. Slowly he leaned forward, holding her eyes till the mockery faded from them. Then, very deliberately, he kissed her.
“How dare you!” she voiced softly in a kind of wonder not free from resentment. For with all her sensuous appeal the daughter of Joe Powers was not a woman with whom men took liberties.
“By the gods, why shouldn't I dare? We played a game and both of us have lost. You were to beckon and coolly flit, while I followed safely at a distance. Do you think me a marble statue? Do you think me too wooden for the strings of my heart to pulsate? By heaven, my royal Hebe, you have blown the fire in me to life. You must pay forfeit.”
“Pay forfeit?”
“Yes. I'm your servant no longer, but your lover and your master—and I intend to marry you.”
“How ridiculous,” she derided. “Have you forgotten Alice?”
“I have forgotten everything but you—and that I'm going to marry you.”
She laughed a little tremulously. “You had better forget that too. I'm like Alice. My answer is, 'No, thank you, kind sir.'”
“And my answer, royal Hebe, is this.” His hot lips met hers again in abandonment to the racing passion in him.
“You—barbarian,” she gasped, pushing him away.
“Perhaps. But the man who is going to marry you.”
She looked at him with a flash of almost shy curiosity that had the charm of an untasted sensation. “Would you beat me?”
“I don't know.” He still breathed unevenly. “I'd teach you how to live.”
“And love?” She was beginning to recover her lightness of tone, though the warm color still dabbed her cheeks.
“Why not?” His eyes were diamond bright. “Why not? You have never known the great moments, the buoyant zest of living in the land that belongs only to the Heirs o Life.”
“And can you guide me there?” The irony in her voice was not untouched with wistfulness.
“Try me.”
She laughed softly, stepped to the table, and chose a cigarette. “My friend, you promise impossibilities. I was not born to that incomparable company. To be frank, neither were you. Alice, grant you, belongs there. And that mad cousin of yours. But not we two earth creepers. We're neither of us star dwellers. In the meantime”—she lit her Egyptian and stopped to make sure of her light every moment escaping more definitely from the glamor of his passion—“you mentioned an engagement that was imperative. Don't let me keep you from it.”
From The New CatechismQuestion: What is the whole duty of man?Answer: To succeed.Q. What is success?A. Success is being a Captain of Industry.Q. How may one become a Captain of Industry?A. By stacking in his barns the hay made by others while thesun shines.Q. But is this not theft?A. Not if done legally and respectably on a large scale. Itis high finance.
THE REBEL AND THE UNDESIRABLE CITIZEN TALK TREASON. THE HERO HAS PRIVATE CONVERSE WITH A GREAT PIONEER OF CIVILIZATION
Jeff never for a day desisted from his fight to win back for the people the self rule that had been wrested from them for selfish purposes by corporate greed. “Government by the people” was the watchword he kept at the head of his editorial column. Better a bad government that is representative than a good one emanating from the privileged few, he maintained with conviction.
To his office came one day Oscar Marchant, the little, half-educated Socialist poet, coughing from the exertion of the stairs he had just climbed. He had come begging, the consumptive presently explained.
“Remember Sobieski, the Polish Jew?”
Jeff smiled. “Of course. Philosophical anarchy used to be his remedy.”
“Starvation is the one he's trying now,” returned Marchant grimly. “He's had typhoid and lost his job. The rent's due and they'll be turned out tomorrow. He's got a wife and two kids.”
Farnum asked questions briefly and pulled out his check book. “Tell Sobieski not to worry,” he said as he handed over a check. “I'll send a reporter out there and we'll make an appeal through theWorld. Of course his own name won't be used. No one will know who it really is. We'll look out for him till he's on his feet again.”
Marchant gave him the best he had. “You're a pretty good Socialist, even though you don't know it.”
“Am I?”
“But you're blind as a bat. The things you fight for in theWorlddon't get to the bottom of what ails us.”
“We've got to forge the tools of freedom before we can use them, haven't we?”
“You're all for patching up the rotten system we've got. It will never do.”
“Great changes are most easily brought about under the old forms. Men's minds in the mass move slowly. They can see only a little truth at a time.”
“Because they are blinded by ignorance and selfishness. Get at bottom facts, Farnum. What's the one great crime?”
Without a moment's hesitation Jeff answered. “Poverty. All other crimes are paltry beside that.”
Marchant cocked himself up on the window seat with his legs doubled under him tailor fashion. “Why?”
“Because it stamps out hope and love and aspiration, all that is fine and true in life.”
“Exactly. Men ought to love their work. But how can they love that which is always associated in their minds with a denial of justice? Is it likely that men will work better under a system whereby they are condemned in advance to failure than under one standing rationally for a just and fair division of the fruits of labor? I tell you, Farnum, under present conditions the Juggernaut of progress is forever wasting humanity.”
“I've always thought it a pity that the mainsprings of work should be fear and greed instead of hope and love,” Jeff agreed.
“Why is it that poverty coexists with wealth increasing so rapidly? Why is it that productive power has been so enormously developed without lightening the burdens of labor?”
Marchant's eyes were starlike in their earnestness. He had a passion for humanity that neither want nor disease could quench, and with it a certain gift of expression street oratory had brought out. Even in private conversation he had got into the way of declaiming. But Jeff knew he was no empty talker. All that he had he literally gave to the poor.
“Because the whole spirit of business life is wrong,” Farnum responded.
“Of course it's wrong. It's a survival of the law of the jungle, of tooth and fang. Its motto is dog eat dog. We all work under the rule of get and grab. What's the result of this higgledypiggledy system? One man starves and another has indigestion. That's the trouble with Verden to-day. Some of us haven't enough and others have too much. They take from us what we earn. That's the whole cause of poverty. The Malthusian theory is all wrong. It's not nature, but man that is to blame.”
Farnum knew the little Socialist was right so far. Here in Verden, under the forms of freedom, was the very essence of slavery. All the product of labor was taken from it except enough to sustain a mere animal existence. Something was wrong in a world where a man begs in vain for work to support his family. Given proper conditions, men would not rise by trampling each other down, but by lending a hand to the unfortunate. The effect of efficiency would be to make things easier for the weak. The reward of service would be more service.
“The principle of the old order is dead,” Marchant went on, wagging his thin forefinger at Jeff. “The whole social fabric is made up of lies, compromises, injustice. The only reason it has hung together so long is that people have been trained to think along certain lines like show animals. But they're waking up. Look at Germany. Look at England. What the plutocrats call the menace of Socialism is everywhere. Now that every worker knows he is being robbed of what he earns, how long do you think he will carry the capitalistic system on his back? From the beginning of the world we have tried it. With what result? An injustice that is staggering, a waste that is appalling, an inhumanity that is deadening.”
Jeff let a hand fall lightly on his shoulder. “Of course it's all wrong. We know that. But can you show me how to make it right, except out of the hearts of men growing slowly wiser and better?”
“Why slowly?” demanded Marchant. “Why not to-day while we're still alive to see the smiles of men and women and children made glad? You always want to begin at the wrong end. I tell you that you can't change men's hearts until you change the conditions under which they live.”
“And I tell you that you can't change the conditions until you change men's hearts,” Jeff answered with his wistful smile.
“Rubbish! The only way to change the hearts of most plutocrats is to hit them over the head with a two-by-four. Smug respectability is in the saddle, and it knows it's right. We'll get nowhere until we smash this iniquitous system to smithereens.”
“So you want to substitute one system for another. You think you can eliminate by legal enactment all this fatty degeneration of greed and selfishness that has incased our souls. I'm afraid it will be a slower process. We must free ourselves from within. I believe we are moving toward some sort of a socialistic state. No man with eyes in his head can help seeing that. But we'll move a step at a time, and only so fast as the love and altruism inside us can be organized into external law.”
“No. You'll wake up some morning and find that this whole capitalistic organization has crumbled in the night, fallen to pieces from dry rot.”
Jeff might not agree with him, but he knew that Marchant, dreamer and incoherent poet, his heart aflame with zeal for humanity, was far nearer the truth of life than the smug complacent Pharisees that fattened from the toil of the helpless many who could do nothing but suffer in dumb silence.
As the months passed Jeff grew in stature with the people of the state. In spite of his energy he was always fair. The plain truth he felt to be a better argument than the tricks of a demagogue.
A rational common sense was to be found in all his advice. Add to this that he had no personal profit to seek, no political axe to grind, and was always transparent as a child. More and more Verden recognized him as the one most conspicuous figure in the state dedicated to uncompromising war against the foes of the Republic.
Those who knew him best liked his humility, his good humor, the gentleness that made him tolerant of the men he must fight. His poise lifted him above petty animosities, and the daily sand-stings of life did not disturb his serenity.
Everywhere his propaganda gained ground. People's Power Leagues were formed with a central steering committee at Verden. Politicians with their ears close to the ground heard rumbles of the coming storm. They began to notice that reputable business men, prominent lawyers not affiliated with corporations, and even a few educators who had shaken away the timidity of their class were lining up to support Jeff's freak legislation. It began to look as if one of those periodical uprisings of the people was about to sweep the state.
Big Tim found his ward workers met persistently by the same questions from their ordinarily docile following. “Why shouldn't we tie strings to our representatives so as to keep them from betraying us?... Why can't we make laws ourselves in emergency and kill bad laws the legislature makes?... What's the matter with taking away some of the power from our representatives who have abused it?”
In the city election O'Brien went down to defeat. Only fragments of his ticket were saved from the general wreckage. Next day Joe Powers wired James Farnum to join him immediately at Chicago.
“I'm going to put you in charge of the political field out there,” the great man announced, his gray granite eyes fastened on the young lawyer. “Ned Merrill won't do. Neither will O'Brien. Between them they've made a mess of things.”
“I don't know that it is their fault, except indirectly. One of those populistic waves swept over the city.”
“Why didn't they know what was going to happen? Why didn't they let me know? That's what I pay them for.”
“A child could have foreseen it, but O'Brien wouldn't believe his eyes. He's been giving Verden an administration with too much graft. The people got tired of it.”
“What were Merrill and Frome up to? Why did they permit it?” demanded Powers impatiently.
“They were looking out for their franchises. To get the machine's support they had to give O'Brien a free hand.”
“If necessary you had better eliminate Big Tim. Or at least put him and his gang in the background. Make the machine respectable so that good citizens can indorse it.”
James nodded agreement. “I've been thinking about that. The thing can be done. A business men's movement from inside the party to purify it. A reorganization with new men in charge. That sort of thing.”
“Exactly. And how about the state?”
“Things don't look good to me.”
“Why not?”
“This initiative and referendum idea is spreading.”
Powers drove his fist into a pile of papers on the desk. “Stop it. I give you carte blanche. Spend as much as you like. But win. What good is a lobby to me if those hare-brained farmers can kill every bill we pass through their grafting legislature?”
The possibilities grew on Farnum. “I'll send Professor Perkins of Verden University to New Zealand to prepare a paper showing the thing is a failure there. I'll have every town in the state thoroughly canvassed by lecturers and speakers against the bill. I'll bombard the farmers with literature.”
“What about the newspapers?”
“We control most of them. At Verden only theWorldis against us.”
“Buy it.”
“Can't be bought. Its editorial columns are not for sale.”
“Anything can be bought if you've got the price. Who owns it?”
“A Captain Chunn. He made his money in Alaska. My cousin is the editor. He is the real force back of it.”
“Does the paper have any influence?”
“A great deal.”
“I've heard of your cousin. A crack-brained Socialist, I understand.”
“You'll find he's a long way from that,” James denied.
“Whatever he is, buy him,” ordered Powers curtly.
The young man shook his head. “Can't be done. He doesn't want the things you have to offer.”
“Every man has his price. Find his, and buy him.”
James shook his head decisively. “Absolutely impossible. He's an idealist and an altruist.”
Powers snorted impatiently. “Talk English, young man, and I'll understand you.”
Farnum had heard Joe Powers was a man who would stand plain talk from those who had the courage to give it him. His cool eyes hardened. Why not? For once the old gray pirate, chief of the robber buccaneers who rode on their predatory way superior to law, should see himself as Jeff Farnum saw him.
“What I mean is that the things he holds most important can't be bought with dollars and cents. He believes in justice and fair play. He thinks the strong ought to bear the burdens of the weak.
“He has a passion to uplift humanity. You can't understand him because it isn't possible for you to conceive of a man whose first thought is always for what is equitable.”
“Just as I thought, a Socialist dreamer and demagogue,” pronounced Powers scornfully.
“Merrill and Frome have been thinking of him just as you do.” James waved his hand toward the newspaper in front of the railroad king. “With what result our election shows.”
“Well, where does his power lie? How can you break it?” the old man asked.
“He is a kind of brother to the lame and the halt all over the state. Among the poor and the working classes he has friends without number. They believe in him as a patriot fighting for them against the foes of the country.”
“Do you call me a foe of the country, young man?” Powers wanted to know grimly.
“Not I,” laughed James. “Why should I quarrel with my bread and jam? If you had ever done me the honor to read any of my speeches you would see that I refer to you as a Pioneer of Civilization and a Builder for the Future. But my view doesn't happen to be universal. I was trying to show you how the man with the dinner pail feels.”
“Who fills his dinner pails?”
James met his frown with a genial eye. “There's a difference of opinion about that, sir. According to the economics of Verden University you fill them. According to theWorldeditorials it's the other way. They fill yours.”
“Hmp! And what's your personal opinion? Am I a robber of labor?”
“I think that the price of any success worth while is paid for in the failure of others. You win because you're strong, sir. That's the law of the game. It's according to the survival of the fittest that you're where you are. If you had hesitated some other man would have trampled you down. It's a case of wolf eat wolf.”
The old railroad builder laughed harshly. This was the first time in his experience that a subordinate had so analyzed him to his face.
“So I'm a wolf, am I?”
“In one sense of the word you're not that at all, sir. You're a great builder. You've done more for the Northwest than any man living. You couldn't have done it if you had been squeamish. I hold the end justifies the means. What you've got is yours because you've won it. Men who do a great work for the public are entitled to great rewards.”
“Glad to know you've got more sense than that fool cousin of yours. Now go home and beat him. I don't care how you do it, just so that you get results. Spend what money you need, but make good, young man—make good.”
“I'll do my best,” James promised.
“All I demand is that you win. I'm not interested in the method you use. But put that cousin of yours out of the demagogue business if you have to shanghai him.”
James laughed. “That might not be a bad way to get rid of him till after the election. The word would leak out that he had been bought off.”
The old buccaneer's eyes gleamed. He was as daring a lawbreaker as ever built or wrecked a railroad. “Have you the nerve, young man?”
“When I'm working for you, sir,” retorted James coolly.
“What do you mean by that?”
“If I've studied your career to any purpose, sir, one thing stands out pretty clear. You haven't the slightest respect for law merely as law. When it's on your side you're a stickler for it; when it isn't you say nothing, but brush it aside as if it did not exist. In either case you get what you want.”
“I'm glad you've noticed that last point. Now we'll have luncheon.” He smiled grimly. “I daresay you'll enjoy it no less because I stole it from the horny hand of labor, by your mad cousin's way of it.”
“Not a bit,” answered James cheerfully.
“Must it be? Must we thenRender back to God againThis, His broken work, this thingFor His man that once did sing?”—Josephine Prestor Peabody.“And listen! I declare to you that if all is as you say—andI do not doubt it—you have never ceased to be virtuous inthe sight of God!”—Victor Hugo.
THE REBEL PROVES THAT HE IS LOST TO GOOD FORM AND RESPECTABILITY BY STEPPING BETWEEN A SINNER AND THE WAGES OF SIN, THUS EVIDENCING TO THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY HIS COMPLETE DEGENERATION
Sam Miller came into Jeff's office one night as he was looking over the editorials. Farnum nodded abstractedly to him.
“Take a chair, Sam. Be through in a minute.”
Presently Jeff pushed the galley proof to one side and looked at his friend. “Well, Sam?” Almost at once he added: “What's the matter?”
There were queer white patches on Miller's fat face. He looked like a man in hell. A lump rose in his throat. Two or three times he swallowed hard.
“It's—it's Nellie.”
“Nellie Anderson?”
He nodded.
Jeff felt as if his heart had been drenched in icy water. “What about her?”
“She's—gone.”
“Gone where?”
“We don't know. She left Friday. There was a note for her mother. It said to forget her, because she was a disgrace to her name.”
“You mean—” Jeff did not finish his question. He knew what the answer was, and in his soul lay a reflection of the mortal sickness he saw in his friend's face.
Miller nodded, unable to speak. Presently his words came brokenly. “She's been acting strangely for a long time. Her mother noticed it.... So did I. Like as if she wasn't happy. We've been worried. I...I...” He buried his face in his arm on the table. “My God, I love her, Jeff. I have for years. If I'd only known... if she'd only told me.”
Jeff was white as the galley proof that lay before him with the unprinted side up. “Tell me all about it, Sam.”
Miller looked up. “That's all. We don't know where she's gone. She had no money to speak of.”
“And the man?” Jeff almost whispered.
“We don't know who he is. Might be any one of the clerks at the Verden Dry Goods Company. Maybe it's none of them. If I knew I'd cut his heart out.”
The clock on the wall ticked ten times before Jeff spoke. “Did she go alone?”
“We don't know. None of the clerks are missing from the store where she worked. I checked up with the manager yesterday.”
Another long silence. “They may have rooms in town here.”
“Not likely.” Presently Miller added miserably: “She's—going to be a mother soon. We found the doctor she went to see.”
“You're sure she hasn't been married? Of course you've looked over the marriage licenses for the past year.”
“Yes. Her name isn't on the list.”
“Did she have money?”
“About fifteen dollars, we figure.”
“That wouldn't take her far—unless the man gave her some. Have you been to a detective agency?”
“Yes.”
“We'll put blind ads in all the papers telling her to come home. We'll rake the city and the state with a fine tooth comb. We're bound to hear of her.”
“She's desperate, Jeff. If she's alone she'll think she has no friends. We've got to find her in time or—”
Jeff guessed the alternative. She might take the easy way out, the one which offered an escape from all her earthly troubles. Girls of her type often did. Nellie was made for laughter and for happiness. He had known her innocent as a sunbeam and as glad. Now that she was in the pit, facing disgrace and disillusionment and despair, the horror and the dread of existence to her would be a millstone round her neck.
The damnable unfairness of it took. Jeff by the throat. Was it her fault that she had inherited a temperament where passions lurked unsuspected like a banked fire? Was she to blame because her mother had brought her up without warning, because she had believed in the love and the honor of a villain? Her very faith and trust had betrayed her. Every honest instinct in him cried out against the world's verdict, that she must pay with salt tears to the end of her life while the scoundrel who had led her into trouble walked gaily to fresh conquests.
Cogged dice! She had gone forth smiling to play the game of life with them, never dreaming that the cubes were loaded. He remembered how once her every motion sang softly to him like music, with what dear abandon she had given herself to his kisses. Her fondness had been a thing to cherish, her innocence had called for protection. And her chivalrous lover had struck the lightness forever from her soul.
For long he never thought of her without an icy sinking of the heart.