CHAPTER III
Theglamour of the “partnership” plan of marriage was fading away in Adela Wilbur’s mind. She had found money-getting exciting enough, while it was a matter of large chances in which she took part. Now that she was forced to accept the usual interests of women, she tried to invest her new home, her clubs and acquaintances, with importance. This form of excitement, however, was not what she had planned. And her husband seemed to be getting away from her rapidly. The Water-Hoister Company was a thing of the past. Two bad seasons in Kansas and Nebraska had crippled the concern. Wilbur had insisted on “getting out” in due season. The first division between them had come over his plan of selling their large holdings, with the idea of buying in later on a low market. To her this familiar device was like a sneaky trading of your home. Their partnership was based upon faith in the idea of the Water-Hoister. To step out and let other people bear the burden of its hard days was, if not dishonesty, cowardice. Wilbur’s sagacity, however, had been proved convincingly. Hoister stock fell steadily, until now it was kicked about for purely speculative purposes.
What Wilbur had done with the sums realized from their Hoister stock, she knew only vaguely. He was so much in the thick of the fight that she could not follow his rapid movements. She inferred that he was one of a group of young capitalists, of whom the newspapers asserted Wrightington was the master-mind.
The great Wrightington! This name hawked about ever since she had known anything of Chicago, filled her with a kind of terror. He was an unscrupulous adventurer, who had “gone broke” several times, yet was always triumphant; a man received nowhere, of no respectable affiliations, yet a power to be followed. Many of the respectable element secretly admired his audacity, half excused his reputation, and covertly followed his lead. He was brazen, impudent, cynical, and inevitable. Of late the papers had been frantic over Wrightington; they teemed with the usual charges of scandalous corruption and bribery which his transactions periodically aroused. Wilbur had shown unusual irritation, when his wife had approached the subject of the protest before the legislature by the Civic Association.
“Don’t mix us up in that tomfoolery,” he had blurted out. “Your nice people are keeping quiet to escape the mud the papers are throwing, but you will see fast enough what side they are on six months hence.”
Mrs. Wilbur was confused by these words, and unable to ravel out this question complicated by prejudices. She tried to put it out of her mind, to believe that her husband was right: “it was not a matter for amateurs.” But every morning the question stared her in the facein the columns of the newspapers, and was dinned in her ears even in the gossip of the women’s clubs. She could not escape a perpetual query: “What has John to do with it?”
Little things, quickly noted and interpreted, indicated to her that he had much to do with this “deal,” and a few days brought greater certainty. The Sunday following her talk with her husband, they had visited their new house, which was now nearly ready for the decorators. On their return Wilbur proposed that they should call on the Remsens, who were to be near neighbours. There they met Mr. and Mrs. Israel Tracey, also neighbours in the Chicago sense. Presently Mrs. Stevans, an important and wealthy widow, came in with a young broker (who was also a “society man”), named Wren. The men drawing to one side of the large library fell to talking confidentially among themselves. Mrs. Wilbur listened apprehensively to the earnest tones. Israel Tracey, a short, squat, powerfully built man of fifty, was speaking his mind freely to a sympathetic audience.
“The papers are all humbug. Squires in theCourantis down on it because Wrightington froze him out once years ago. He hasn’t said a word in his paper about the omnibus electric ordinance, which was a sight more shady. He had a hand inthatpie. The papers are all rotten; it’s straight blackmail and intimidation.” His face puffed out redly.
“It’s a shame, the way the papers lead people by the nose,” Wren put in.
“There was a time,” Remsen, who was heavily interestedin real estate, began sententiously, “when every one howled for anything in Chicago. You wouldn’t see a word of blame in the papers no matter what people might think. Nothing was too good to say about the city. It was the best place on earth to live and die in. Now if the papers keep this racket up, people will be afraid to put a dollar in the place. They’re just ruining it, damning everything and every one so. They’ve gone pious all of a sudden.”
“But you wouldn’t have them approve of Wrightington.” Mrs. Wilbur ventured into the conversation impulsively. There was a moment of silence in the room, as if some one had awkwardly spilled a glass of water. Wilbur looked annoyed.
“Well,” Tracey began again, defiantly, “Wrightington is a mighty clever man. This franchise business is misrepresented. He needs it to protect his properties and—”
“What’s more, he’ll get it, too, in one way or another.” Wren laughed at his own cynicism. “All this howling may make the price higher, but he’s bound to get it.”
“The bill passed the Senate yesterday,” Remsen explained. “There’s only the governor now.”
Wren laughed. The other men smiled and tacitly abandoned the topic. Just then, as Mrs. Wilbur turned back to the women, feeling reproved, she caught a look of intelligence which passed between Mrs. Tracey and Mrs. Stevans. The latter, who had taken no part in the talk, was smiling knowingly across to Mrs. Tracey. Mrs. Wilbur saw her lips moving in an inaudible whisper.She seemed to hear the words, “Did you have something in it?” And she noted Mrs. Tracey’s smile and affirmative nod. The pantomime was over in five seconds, but it gave her a vivid shock.
All these people were gambling on the chances of Wrightington’s having successfully bought the legislature and the governor. Perhaps the franchise was just enough, but to speculate on the chances of bribery struck Mrs. Wilbur as peculiarly sordid. She had a revulsion of feeling different in the case of each one. Little Wren, with his moth-eaten baldness, his fat, pudgy nose, and bleared eyelids, seemed like a pander. The newspapers had it, she remembered, that he had spent most of the winter in Springfield as one of Wrightington’s agents. His hands were really soiled with dirty money. And Mrs. Stevans, the ample Mrs. Stevans, of capacious bosom and highly coloured reputation! The champagne for her dinners came in this way. The Traceys were another kind: they had risen straight from the lumber-camp. One could hardly resent the expression of naive, peasant cunning on Mrs. Tracey’s hard little face. Twenty years ago, when she haggled with the company’s agent over tobacco and pork, that expression began to grow. And the Remsens—well, she liked them and respected them, yet it was commonly said that Remsen’s extra two millions came from a “tip” on the sugar schedule of the Wilson bill.
Her disgust was not excessively moral. To be sure, old John Anthon had taught her that the laws of commercial morality were none other than those of private uprightness.Yet the disgust she felt was more than moral; it was a loathing of the sordid, of the brutal, of the vulgar. Had she, Adela Anthon, with her high-strung ideals of man’s life, her wide-sweeping ambitions, come to be a party in such an affair? Had she exchanged her love of intellectual life, her longing for beauty, to share in a common swindle on the public, brought about by a dicker between a knave and a gang of venal country legislators?
She rose abruptly and escaped. On the drive home, Wilbur did not speak. He seemed disgusted with her, yet tolerant in consideration for her condition. At last she asked bitterly, “So we belong to that crew?”
“I thought you were a bigger woman, Adela, than to talk like that. If you mean, that I have put every dollar I could raise into traction stocks, yes,—three months ago. But it isn’t good for you to talk over such matters; it only disturbs you.”
Yet when she was silent, he felt forced to continue. “I believe that the companies should get this franchise; all the noise over it is absurd. As for the corruption charges, they’re always made. Probably there’s been plenty of grease used in this matter. But wehaveto do it, here, and that’s all there is about it.”
“And suppose you lose? Suppose the governor is an honest man and vetoes the bill?”
Wilbur laughed. “You don’t suppose I’d have three hundred thousand in it if I didn’t know which way the governor is going to jump. He came high, but—well,Wrightington is nervy. You will see that he will playit out well; the governor’ll hold off, and have a hearing, and go through all the forms. But he’llsign.”
Mrs. Wilbur gave a quick gasp. Wilbur put his arm about her. “You are nervous, Adela. You wouldn’t be so freaky over this business if you were all right. And, Ady, it means the house. If this goes through, the house is all right, but we were getting into a bad way.”
This argument hardly appeased her. So their home was to represent this transaction. She could never cross the threshold without feeling that Wrightington had given it to them; it was a morsel of Wrightington’s plunder.
“And there are plenty of men in Chicago who have taken the same chances! The Ralstons, and the Browns, and the Heckers are mighty stuck on themselves. But what with false assessments, and contributions to the city council, watered industrials, and tips on sugar, I guess they needn’t boast.”
“Don’t you think there areanyhonest men in this city?”
“A great many, from my point of view. Not so many from yours. A womancan’tunderstand it. Business is like life: you’ve got to play as the others do and playhardall the time, or you’ll be chucked out. You can’t be dainty.”
She knew that this opinion was final. He was not a bad man, he was not corrupt; he was merely heartily of his times, and her scruples were unintelligible to him. He was the same Wilbur that had convinced her in Paris of the desirability of action. He had developed, and shehad caught sight of his claws. That was all. So she gave up the contest, as he lit a cigar and lowered the carriage window. The frosty air hung in clouds about the eaves of the houses, and the hard roadbed of the boulevard gave a chill thud to the horses’ hoofs, while they rolled swiftly through this city of men.
Was marriage altogether like a partnership?