The newsboys were crying the verdict up and down the wet street. Across the front page of the penny sheet which Isabelle bought ran in broad, splotched letters: GUILTY; RAILROAD GRAFTERS FINED; and in slightly smaller type:Atlantic and Pacific found guilty of illegal discrimination in famous coal cases—Fined eighty-five thousand dollars. Vice-president Lane, General Traffic Manager of Road, fined thirteen thousand six hundred and eighty dollars, etc. Isabelle crumpled the paper into her muff and hurried home. As she walked numbly, she thought, 'Why six hundred and eighty dollars? why so exact?' As if the precise measure of wrong could be determined! On the doorstep of her mother's house lay the quietly printed, respectable two-cent evening paper that the family had always read. Isabelle took this also with her to her room. Even in this conservative sheet, favorable to the interests of the property classes, there were scare-heads about the verdict. It was of prime importance as news. Without removing her hat or coat, Isabelle read it all through,—the judge's charge to the jury, the verdict, the reporters' gossip of the court-room. The language of the judge was trenchant, and though his charge was worded in stiff and solemn form and laden with legal phrases, Isabelle understood it better even than the hot eloquence of the district attorney. It swept away all that legal dust, those technical quibbles, which Mr. Brinkerhoff and his associate counsel had so industriously sprinkled over the issue. "If the facts have been established of such and such a nature, beyond reasonable doubt; if the connection of the defendant has been clearly set forth," etc. As the penny sheet put it, "Judge Barstow's charge left no room for doubt as to the verdict. The jury was out forty minutes and took one ballot." Twelve men, be they farmers or "sore-heads," had found John Lane guilty of something very like grand larceny. The case was to be appealed—of course.
Even the respectable two-cent paper delivered itself editorially on the verdict in the famous coal cases, with unusual daring. For thePostwas ordinarily most cautious not to reflect upon matters inimical to "leading interests." To-night it was moved beyond the limits of an habitual prudence.
"Judge Barstow," it said, "in his able analysis left no room for doubt as to the gravity of the charges brought by the government against the Atlantic and Pacific and certain of its officers. The verdict will be no surprise to those who have followed closely the so-called coal cases through the preliminary investigation by the Interstate Commerce Commission and the recent trial. A state of affairs in the management of the Atlantic and Pacific railroad was revealed that may well shock men long accustomed to the methods of corporate control. It was shown that officers and employees of the railroad owned or controlled various coal properties that depended for their existence upon special favors given them by the road, and that these companies were enabled by their secret alliance with the railroad to blackmail independent, rival companies, and drive them out of existence. To put it in plain words, the Atlantic and Pacific favored its secret partners at the expense of their competitors…. Apart from the legal aspect so ably dealt with by Judge Barstow, the spectacle of graft in the Atlantic and Pacific must surprise the stockholders of that corporation quite as much as the public at large. Apparently high-salaried officials shared in these extra profits together with freight clerks and division superintendents! … We cannot believe that the moral sense of the country will long tolerate a condition of affairs such as has been revealed in the case of Vice-president Lane."…
This was no academic question of economic policy! No legal technicality. The paper fell from Isabelle's hand, and she sat staring at the floor. Her husband was called in plain prose a "grafter,"—one who participated in unearned and improper profits, due to granting favors in his official capacity to himself.
As Isabelle closed the old-fashioned shutters before dressing for dinner, she saw her husband coming up the steps, walking with his slow, powerful stride, his head erect,—the competent, high-minded, generous man, a rock of stable strength, as she had always believed him, even when she loved him least! There must be something wrong with the universe when this man, the best type of hard, intelligent labor, should have become a public robber! … Renault's solemn words repeated themselves, "The curse of our age, of our country, is its frantic egotism." The predatory instinct, so highly valued in the Anglo-Saxon male, had thriven mightily in a country of people "born free and equal," when such a man as John Lane "grafted" and believed himself justified.
* * * * *
Lane stood behind her chair waiting for her in the dining room. As she entered the room he glanced at her questioningly. He had noticed that the evening paper was not in its usual place in the hall. But after that glance he settled himself composedly for the meal, and while the servants were in the room husband and wife talked of immediate plans. He said he should have to go to New York the next day, and asked what she wished to do. Would she wait here in St. Louis for her mother? Or join her at the Springs? Or open the Farm? He should have to be back and forth between New York and St. Louis all the spring, probably.
Isabelle could answer only in monosyllables. All these details of where she should be seemed irrelevant to the one burning point,—what will you do now, in the face of this verdict of guilt? At last the meal was over, and they were alone. Isabelle, without looking up, said:—
"I saw the verdict in the papers, John."
He made no reply, and she cried:—
"Tell me what you are going to do! We must talk about it."
"The case will be appealed, as I told you before."
"Yes! … but the fine, the—"
She stopped for lack of the right word. He made a gesture of indifference at the word "fine," but still waited.
"John, is it true what the judge said, what the district attorney said, about—the officials getting money from those coal companies?"
She colored, while Lane eyed her and at last replied irritably:—
"The officers of the road invested their money, like most men, where they saw fit, I suppose."
"But does that mean they take advantage of their position with the road to make money—improperly?"
"That depends on what you call 'improperly.'"
Her mind leaped clear of this evasion; she cried out:—
"But why did you want to make money—so much money? You had a large salary, and I could have had all the money we wanted from my father!"
Her husband looked at her almost contemptuously, as if her remark was too childish for serious consideration. It was axiomatic that all men who had the power desired to make what money they could.
"I certainly never cared to live on your father's money," he retorted.
"But we didn't need so much—"
"I wonder if you realize just how much we have seemed to need in one way or another since we moved East?"
There it was staring her in the face, her share in the responsibility for this situation! She had known only vaguely what they were spending, and always considered that compared with women of her class she was not extravagant, in fact economical.
"But, John, if I had only known—"
"Known what?" he demanded harshly. "Known that I was making money in stocks and bonds, like other men, like your father's friend, Senator Thomas, like Morton, and Beals himself? Isabelle, you seem to have the comprehension of a child! … Do you think that such men live on salaries?"
"But why weren't the others indicted and tried?"
He hesitated a moment, his face flushing, and then there burst out the truth. She had unwittingly touched the sore spot in his mind.
"Because there had to be some sort of scapegoat to satisfy public clamor! The deals went through my office mostly; but the road is behind me, of course…. They all shared, from Beals down."
At last they were at the heart of the matter, he challenging her criticism, she frightened at the cloudy places in her husband's soul that she had penetrated, when a servant interrupted them, saying that Lane was wanted at the telephone. While he was out of the room, Isabelle thought swiftly. What would be the next word? Was it not better to accept his excuse? "They have all done as I have done, men who are honored and respected. It is universal, what we do, and it is only an accident that I am put up as a target for public abuse!" If she persisted in knowing all, she would merely divide herself farther from her husband, who would resent her attitude. And what right had she to examine and judge, when for all these years she had gone her way and let him go his?
The blood beat in her ears, and she was still uncertain when Lane returned. His face had lost its color of passion, and his voice was subdued as he said:—
"Steve has met with an accident,—a serious one."
"Steve!" Isabelle cried.
"Yes; I think we had better go out there at once. Alice got some one to telephone for her."
The account of the accident had been in that late edition of the penny paper which Isabelle had seen, but it had been crowded into the second page by the magnitude of the Atlantic and Pacific sensation. Lane bought the papers, and they read them on their way to Bryn Mawr. Johnston had been run down as he was going to the station early that Saturday afternoon. It was a heavy motor, running at reduced yet lively speed through the crowded city street. A woman with a child by the hand had stepped from the sidewalk to hail an approaching street-car, without noticing the automobile that was bearing down behind her. Steve had seen their danger, rushed for the woman and pulled her and the child out of the way,—got them clear of the motor. But he was struck, a glancing blow in the back, as the motor sheered off. He had been taken to a drug-store, and reviving quickly had insisted on going home. The driver of the car, apparently a humane person, had waited with a notable display of decency and taken the injured man with the doctor who had attended him at the drug-store to Bryn Mawr…. The reporter for the penny paper had done his best by the accident, describing the thrilling rescue of the woman and child, the unavoidable blow to the rescuer, with all the vividness of his art.
"It was a brave act," Lane remarked, folding up the sheet and putting it in his pocket….
As soon as they entered, Alice came down to them from the sick room. She was pale, but she seemed to Isabelle wonderfully composed and calm,—the steady balance-wheel of the situation. When Steve had first reached home, he had apparently not been badly off, she told them. He had insisted on walking upstairs and said that he would be quite right after he had laid down a little while. So the doctor went back to the city in the motor. But at dinner time, Alice, going into his room, found him breathing heavily, almost unconscious, and his voice had become so thick that she could scarcely make out what he was saying. She had summoned their own doctor, and he had called another from the city. They feared cerebral trouble, due to a lesion of the spinal chord; but nothing could be certainly determined yet.
"Something seems to be on his mind," Alice said in conclusion. "I thought I made out your name, John; so I had you telephoned for. I don't know that it will do any good, but it may quiet him to see you."
While Lane was upstairs, Alice talked on in the composed, capable, self-contained manner that she usually had,—merely speaking a trifle faster, with occasional pauses, as if she were listening for a sound from Steve's room. But the house was painfully still.
… "You see," she explained, "Steve doesn't move quickly,—is too heavy and slow. I suppose that was why he didn't succeed in getting out of the way himself. The car wasn't really going fast, not over eight miles an hour, the chauffeur said…. But Steve saved the woman and child,—they would have been killed."
He had saved the woman and child,—chance strangers in the street,—possibly at the cost of his life or the use of his limbs. There was an ironical note in the tragedy. This stout man with the character in his slow organism that could accomplish great things—this hero of Alice's—had stepped off the sidewalk to save the life of a careless passer-by, and risked his own life, the happiness of his wife and children, in just that little way.
"It was so like Steve,—to realize but one point,theirdanger," Alice continued with a proud smile. And Isabelle could see the dull, large-framed man, his head slightly bent, plodding forward in the stream of home-goers on the pavement, suddenly lift his head, and without a moment's hesitation step out into the path of danger….
When Isabelle and John left the house late in the evening, he said gravely,"The doctors don't think there is much chance for him."
"He will die!" Isabelle gasped, thinking of Alice, who had smiled at them cheerily when they went out of the door.
"Perhaps worse than that,—complete paralysis,—the lower limbs are paralyzed now."
"How perfectly awful!"
"I think he knew me. He grasped my hand so hard it hurt, and I could make out my name. But I couldn't understand what he was trying to say."
"Do you suppose it could be the mortgage?"
"Very likely. I must attend to that matter at once."
They were silent on the way back to the city, each buried in thought. The verdict, which had stirred them so deeply a few hours before, had already sunk into the background of life, overshadowed by this nearer, more human catastrophe.
"I shall have to go on to New York to-morrow, for a few days at least,"Lane said as they entered the house.
"I will stay here, of course," Isabelle replied, "and you can bring Molly and the governess back with you. I will telegraph them." It was all easily decided, what had seemed perplexing earlier in the evening, when she had been occupied merely with herself and John. "I can be of some help to Alice any way, and if he should die—"
"Yes," Lane agreed. "That is best. I will be back in a week." And he added casually, announcing a decision arrived at on the way to the city:—
"I'll have my lawyer look up that mortgage. You can tell Alice to-morrow and try to get Steve to understand, so that he will have it off his mind as soon as possible."
Her heart responded with a glow. Yes, that was the very thing to do! She had money enough to help them, but she did not know just what to do. It was like John, this sure, quick way of seeing the one thing to be done immediately and doing it. It was like him, too, to do generous things. How many poor boys and young men he had helped along rough roads in their struggle up,—given them the coveted chance in one way and another, without ostentation or theory, simply in the human desire to help another with that surplus strength which had given him his position of vantage.
"I will write the note to Mather now, telling him what to do about the mortgage," he continued in his methodical, undemonstrative manner. As he sat down at the desk and drew pen and paper towards him, he paused a moment. "You will see to the nurses,—they should have two. The doctors may decide on an operation. Have the best men, of course."
He struck pen into the paper with his broad, firm stroke. Isabelle stood watching him, her heart beating strangely, and suddenly leaning over him she kissed his forehead, then fled swiftly to the door.
Isabelle waited in the carriage outside the station for her husband and Molly. The New York train was late as usual. She had driven in from Bryn Mawr, where she had spent most of the ten days since Lane's departure. She was steeped now in the atmosphere of that suburban house covered by the April mist, with the swelling bushes and trees all about it. There had been an operation, decided on after consultation with the eminent surgeons that Isabelle had summoned. After the operation hope had flickered up, as the sick man breathed more easily, was able to articulate a few intelligible words, and showed an interest in what was going on about him. But it had waned again to-day, and when Isabelle left, Alice was holding her husband's large hand, talking to him cheerfully, but there was no response…. How wonderful she was,—Alice! That picture of her filled Isabelle's thought as she waited in the carriage. Never a tear or a whimper all these anxious days, always the calm, buoyant voice, even a serene smile and little joke at her husband's bedside, such as she had used to enliven him with,—anything to relax his set, heavy features. "How she loves him!" thought Isabelle, almost with pain.
When she left that afternoon, Alice had sent a grateful message to John. "He will come out to-morrow if he can?" she had asked. She knew now that the hours were numbered without being told so by the doctors. And never a tear, a self-pitying cry! Oh, to be like that,—sturdy in heart and soul,—with that courage before life, that serene confidence in face of the worst fate can offer! Alice was of the faith of Renault.
Lane came down the platform, followed by Molly and her governess. As he raised his hat in greeting, Isabelle noticed the deep lines at the corners of his mouth, and the line above his broad, straight nose. When they were in the carriage, she realized that her husband had been living these ten days in another world from the one she had inhabited, and in spite of his questions about Steve and Alice, he was preoccupied, still held by the anxieties and perplexities of his business in New York, still in the close grip of his own affairs, his personal struggle. So she talked with Molly, who was almost articulately joyful over her escape from the country, at the sight of streets and motor carriages.
As they were going to dinner a servant brought word that a reporter wished to speak to John. Usually Lane refused to see reporters outside his office, and there turned them over to his secretary, who was skilled in the gentle art of saying inoffensive nothings in many words. But to her surprise John after slight hesitation went into the library to see the man, and it was a long half hour before he returned to his dinner. The evening was another one of those torturing periods when Isabella's heart was full and yet must be carefully repressed lest she make a false step. After a little talk about Molly, her mother, the Johnstons, Lane turned to open his mail that had been sent up for him from the office. Isabelle left him absorbed in this task, but she could not sleep, and when at last she heard him go to his room, she followed him. Laying her hands on his arms, she looked at him pleadingly, longing now not so much to know the facts, to reason and judge, as to understand, perhaps comfort him,—at least to share the trouble with him.
"Can't you tell me all about it, John?"
"About what?" he demanded dryly, his dislike of effusiveness, emotionalism, showing in the glitter of his gray eyes.
"Tell me what is troubling you! I want to share it,—all of it. What has happened?"
He did not answer at once. There was an evident struggle to overcome his habitual reserve, the masculine sense of independence in the conduct of his affairs. Also, there was between them her prejudice, the woman's insufficient knowledge, and the barrier of the long years of aloofness. But at last, as if he had reflected that she would have to know soon in any case, he said dryly:—
"The Board has voted to relieve me of my duties as general manager of traffic. I am assigned to St. Louis for the present, but the duties are not specified. A polite hint—which I have taken!"
"Did Mr. Beals do that?"
"Beals went to Europe on his vacation when the coal cases first came up…. Besides, it would have made no difference. I think I see in it the fine hand of our good friend the Senator,—smug-faced old fox!"
Isabelle felt how much this action by the directors had stung him, how severely he was suffering.
"It was … because of the verdict?"
"Oh, the general mess, the attacks in the press, complaints from stockholders! They want to get under cover, show the public they are cleaning house, I suppose. They thought to shelve me until the row fizzles out, then drop me. But I am not the sort of man to sit around as a willing sacrifice, to pose for the papers as a terrible example. They will know, to-morrow!"
Isabelle understood why he had consented to see the reporter. Hitherto, he had refused to speak, to make any public defence of himself or comment on the trial. But after this action on the part of the directors, after the long smouldering hours on the train, he had decided to speak,—at length. It would not be pleasant reading in certain quarters near Wall Street, what he said, but it would make good copy.
Biting fiercely at his cigar, which had gone out, he struck a match sharply and talked on:—
"I am not a back number yet. There is not another road in the country that has shown such results, such gain in traffic, as the A. and P. since I was put in charge of traffic five years ago. There are others who know it, too, in New York. I shan't have to twiddle my thumbs long when my resignation is published. The prejudiced trial out here won't stand in the way."
In the storm of his mood, it was useless to ask questions. Isabelle merely murmured:—
"Too bad, too bad,—I am so sorry, John!"
Instead of that dispassionate groping for the exact truth, justice between her husband and the public, that she had first desired, she was simply compassionate for his hurt pride. Innocent or guilty, what right had she to judge him? Even if the worst of what had been charged was literally true, had she not abandoned him at the start,—left him to meet the problems of the modern battle as he could,—to harden his soul against all large and generous considerations? Now when he was made the scapegoat for the sins of others, for the sin of his race, too,—how could she sit and censure! The time would come for calm consideration between them. There was that something in her heart which buoyed her above the present, above the distress of public condemnation,—even disgrace and worldly failure. Coming close to him again, she said with ringing conviction:—
"It can make no difference to you and me, John!"
He failed to see her meaning.
"The money doesn't matter,—it isn't that, of course. We shan't starve!"
"I didn't mean the money!"
"Sensible people know what it amounts to,—only the mob yaps."
"I didn't mean criticism, either," she said softly.
"Well, that New York crowd hasn't heard the last of me yet!"
His lips shut tight together. The spirit of fight, of revenge, was aroused.It was useless to talk further. She drew his arm about her.
"You will go out to see Steve to-morrow, won't you?"
"Yes, of course,—any time in the afternoon."
She kissed him and went back to her room.
One precept out of Renault's thin book of life was hard to acquire,—Patience. But it must be acquired,—the power to abide the time calmly, until the right moment should come. The morrows contain so many reversals of the to-days!
It was probable that the dying man did not recognize Lane, though it was hard to say what dim perception entered through the glazing eyes and penetrated the clouding brain. The children had been about the room all the morning, Alice said, and from the way the father clung to Jack's hand she thought there still was recognition. But the sense of the outer world was fast fading now. The doctor was there, by way of kindly solicitude,—he could do nothing; and when the Lanes came he went away, whispering to John as he left, "Not long now." Alice had sent away the nurse, as she had the night before, refusing to lose these last minutes of service. She told Isabelle that in the early morning, while she was watching and had thought Steve was asleep from his quieter breathing, she had found his eyes resting on her with a clear look of intelligence, and then kneeling down with her face close to his lips he had whispered thickly. Her eyes were still shining from those last lover's words in the night….
When John went back to the city, Isabelle stayed on, taking luncheon with the nurses and little Belle. Neighbors came to the door to inquire, to leave flowers. These neighbors had been very kind, Alice had said often, taking the boys to their homes and doing the many little errands of the household. "And I hardly knew them to bow to! It's wonderful how people spring up around you with kindness when trouble comes!"…
Meanwhile, overhead the life was going out, the strong man yielding slowly to the inevitable. Twilight came on, the doctor returned and went away again, and the house became absolutely still. Once Isabelle crept upstairs to the door of the sick room. Alice was holding Steve's head, with one arm under his pillow, looking,—looking at him with devouring eyes! … Gradually the breathing grew fainter, at longer intervals, the eyelids fell over the vacant eyes, and after a little while the nurse, passing Isabelle on the stairs, whispered that it was over,—the ten days' losing fight. Presently Alice came out of the room, her eyes still shining strangely, and smiled at Isabelle.
When they went out the next afternoon, there was in the house that dreary human pause created by the fact of death,—pause without rest. Flowers scented the air, and people moved about on tiptoe, saying nothings in hushed voices, and trying to be themselves.
But in the dim room above, where Alice took them, there was peace and naturalness. The dead man lay very straight beneath the sheet, his fleshy body shrunken after its struggle to its bony stature. Isabelle had always thought Steve a homely man,—phlegmatic and ordinary in feature. She had often said, "How can Alice be so romantic over old Steve!" But as the dead man lay there, wasted, his face seemed to have taken on a grave and austere dignity, an expression of resolute will in the heavy jaw, the high brow, the broad nostril, as though the steadfast soul within, so prosaically muffled in the flesh, had at the last spoken out to those nearest him the meaning of his life, graving it on his dead face. Lane, caught by this high, commanding note of the lifeless features, as of one who, though removed by infinite space, still spoke to the living, gazed steadily at the dead man. And Isabelle felt the awe of his presence; here was one who could speak with authority of elemental truths….
Alice, her arms resting on the foot-rail of the bed, was leaning forward, looking with eyes still shining at her husband, her lover, her mate. And her lips parted in a little smile. Large and strong and beautiful, in the full tide of conscious life, she contemplated her dead comrade.
A feeling that she was in the presence of mystery—the mystery of perfect human union—stole through Isabelle. The woman standing there at the feet of her dead man had had it all,—all the experience that woman can have. Had she not loved this man, received his passion, borne his children, fought by his side the fight of life,—and above all and beyond all else cherished in her the soul of the man, the sacred part of him, that beauty unknown to others hitherto, now written plain for all to see on his face! And her lighted eyes seemed to say, 'What place is there here for grief? Even though I am left in mid life, to struggle on alone with my children, without his help, yet have I not had it all? Enough to warm my heart and soul through the empty years that must come!'…
Tears dropped from Isabelle's eyes, and convulsively she grasped the hand that rested beside her, as though she would say, 'To lose all this, what you two have had, how can you bear it!' Alice bent down over her tear-stained face and kissed her,—with a little gesture towards Steve, murmuring "I have had so much!"
* * * * *
They walked slowly back to the city in the warm April night. Neither had spoken since they left the little house, until Isabelle said with a deep solemnity:—
"It was perfect—that!"
"Yes! Steve was a good man, and Alice loved him."
Each knew what lay behind these commonplace words in the heart of the other. These two, Steve and Alice, in spite of hardship, the dull grind of their restricted existence, the many children, the disappointments, had had something—a human satisfaction—thattheyhad missed—forever; and as they walked on through the deserted streets silently, side by side, they saw that now it could never be for them. It was something that missed once in its perfection was missed for all time. However near they might come to be, however close in understanding and effort, they could never know the mystery of two who had lived together, body and soul, and together had solved life.
For mere physical fidelity is but a small part of the comradeship of marriage.
Miss Marian Lane was such a thorough cosmopolite that she had no discernible affection for any place. She referred to Central Park, to the Farm, to the Price house in St. Louis, to Grosvenor with equal indifference and impartiality, as she might later to London or Paris or Rome. She did not even ask her mother where they were to spend the summer. That there was a Park in St. Louis, as in all properly created cities, she had confidence, because she asked Miss Joyce to take her there the day after her arrival. Isabelle's own childhood had been strongly colored by places,—the old house in K Street, this ugly Victorian mansion, and especially the Farm. Places had meant so much to her in her youth, her feelings reflecting their physical atmosphere, that they had been more vivid than persons. But Molly was equally content anywhere. She needed merely Miss Joyce, a Park, and pretty clothes.
Clothes, indeed, were the only subject that aroused a semblance of passion in Molly's sedate soul. "Oh, we shall go shopping, mamma!" she exclaimed with the first real animation Isabelle had seen in her, when her grandmother remarked that Molly had outgrown all her dresses this winter. They were sitting in the large front bedroom that the Colonel and his wife had always occupied. Mrs. Price had just returned from the Springs, and was already talking of spending the summer in Europe. Since the Colonel's death she had become a great globe-trotter, indefatigably whisking hither and thither with her reliable maid. It seemed as if after all these years of faithful economy and routine living, the suppressed restlessness of her race, which had developed at an earlier age in Isabelle, was revenging itself upon the old lady. "Mother's travels" had become a household joke….
"Can't we go to-day? Miss Joyce and I saw some lovely things at Roseboro's, mother!" Molly urged, jumping up from the lounge, where she had been telling her grandmother about Grosvenor. "Oh, yes, grandmother," Isabelle had heard her say in a listless voice, "we had a pleasant time in Grosvenor. Miss Joyce took me coasting with James Pole. And we had sleigh rides. Miss Joyce was afraid to drive the horses, so we did not go except when Mrs. Pole took us…. Aunt Margaret was very nice. Miss Joyce gave us all dancing lessons."…
It was always Miss Joyce this and Miss Joyce that, since Molly's return, until Isabelle had impatiently concluded that the faithful English governess with her narrow character had completely ironed out the personality of her charge. As she listened to Molly's conversation with her grandmother, she resolved to get rid of Miss Joyce, in order to escape hearing her name if for no other reason.
"I suppose you'll wait to get her clothes until you are back in New York," the practical Mrs. Price observed; "they are so much cheaper and more tasteful there. The stores here don't seem to be what they were,—even Roseboro's can't compare with Altman's and Best's for children's things."
"We may not be in New York this spring," Isabelle replied, waking from her meditations on the subject of Miss Joyce and her daughter. "John's plans are uncertain—and I don't care to go without him."
"You can try Roseboro's, then; but I don't believe you will be satisfied."
"Oh, mamma, can't we go in the motor now!"
And Molly ran to Miss Joyce to dress herself for the expedition.
Isabelle had scrutinized her little daughter with fresh interest the few days she had been with her. Molly had always been an unresponsive child since she was a baby. In spite of her beautiful pink coloring, carefully preserved by country life, she was scarcely more alive than an automaton. Whatever individuality she had was so deeply buried that her mother could not discover it. Why was it? Why was she so colorless? She had been "moved about" a good deal, like many American children, according to the exigencies of the family,—to St. Louis, the Farm, the New York hotel, the New York house, Europe, Grosvenor,—a rapid succession of panoramas for one small mind to absorb. But Molly had never seemed disturbed by it. One place was as good as another,—one set of children, provided they had nice manners and were well dressed, as agreeable as any other. If she were put down in a Pasadena hotel, she found playmates, judiciously selected by Miss Joyce, of course, who supervised their games. In all the changes of scene Isabelle had been most scrupulous in her care for diet, exercises, regime, and as long as the child seemed content and physically well she had seen no harm in taking her about from scene to scene. Now Isabelle had her doubts.
The little girl came downstairs, followed by the capable Miss Joyce, who was brushing out a fold in her white broadcloth coat and arranging a curl, and looked in at her mother's room, with a pretty little smile and a gesture of the fingers she had copied from some child. "All ready, mamma,—shall we wait for you in the motor?" As she passed on, followed by Miss Joyce,—the figure of dainty young plutocracy and her mentor,—Isabelle murmured, "I wonder if it has been good for her to move about so much!"
Mrs. Price, a literal old lady, took up the remark:—
"Why, she looks healthy. Miss Joyce takes excellent care of her. I think you are very fortunate in Miss Joyce, Isabelle."
"I don't mean her health, mother!"
"She is as forward as most children of her age,—she speaks French very prettily," the grandmother protested. "She has nice manners, too."
Isabelle saw the futility of trying to explain what she meant to her mother, and yet the old lady in her next irrelevant remark touched the very heart of the matter.
"Children have so much attention these days,—what they eat and do is watched over every minute. Why, we had a cat and a dog, and a doll or two, the kitchen and the barn to run about in—and that was all. Parents were too busy to fuss about their children. Boys and girls had to fit into the home the best they could."
There was a home to fit into! A cat and a dog, a few dolls, and the kitchen and the barn to run about in,—that was more than Molly Lane with all her opportunities had ever had.
"There weren't any governesses or nurses; but we saw more of our father and mother, naturally," the old lady continued. "Only very rich people had nurses in those times."
The governess was a modern luxury, provided to ease the conscience of lazy or incompetent mothers, who had "too much to do" to be with their children. Isabelle knew all the arguments in their favor. She remembered Bessie Falkner's glib defence of the governess method, when she had wanted to stretch Rob's income another notch for this convenience,—"If a mother is always with her children, she can't give her best self either to them or to her husband!" Isabelle had lived enough since then to realize that this vague "best self" of mothers was rarely given to anything but distraction.
Isabelle had been most conscientious as a mother, spared no thought or pains for her child from her birth. The trained nurse during the first two years, the succession of carefully selected governesses since, the lessons, the food, the dentist, the doctors, the clothes, the amusements,—all had been scrupulously, almost religiously, provided according to the best modern theories. Nothing had been left to chance. Marian should be a paragon, physically and morally. Yet, her mother had to confess, the child bored her,—was a wooden doll! In the scientifically sterilized atmosphere in which she had lived, no vicious germ had been allowed to fasten itself on the young organism, and yet thus far the product was tasteless. Perhaps Molly was merely a commonplace little girl, and she was realizing it for the first time. Isabelle's maternal pride refused to accept such a depressing answer, and moreover she did not believe that any young thing, any kitten or puppy, could be as colorless, as little vital as the exquisite Miss Lane. She must find the real cause, study her child, live with her awhile. The next generation, apparently, was as inscrutable a manuscript to read as hers had been to the Colonel and her mother. Her parents had never understood all the longings and aspirations that had filled her fermenting years, and now she could not comprehend the dumbness of her child. Those fermenting years had gone for nothing so far as teaching her to understand the soul of her child. The new ferment was of a different composition, it seemed….
* * * * *
Isabelle was to find that her daughter had developed certain tastes besides a love for clothes and a delight in riding in motor-cars…. Molly was in the library after luncheon, absorbed in an illustrated story of a popular magazine, which Isabelle glanced over while Miss Joyce made ready her charge to accompany her mother to the Johnstons'. The story was "innocent," "clean reading" enough,—thin pages of smart dialogue between prettily dressed young men and athletic girls, the puppy loves of the young rich,—mere stock fiction-padding of the day. But the picture of life—the suggestion to the child's soft brain? Isabelle tossed the magazine into the waste basket, and yawned. Molly had left it with a sigh.
On the way to the Bryn Mawr house Isabelle tried to explain to Molly what had happened to the Johnstons through the loss of the father, telling her what a good man Steve was, the sorrow the family had to bear. Molly listened politely.
"Yes, mother!" And she asked, "Are they very poor?" An innocent remark that irritated Isabelle unreasonably.
The children played together downstairs while Isabelle discussed with Alice some business matters. It had not sounded very lively below, and when the mothers came down they found Molly and Belle sitting on opposite sides of the little parlor, looking stiffly at each other. The boys had slipped off for more stirring adventures outdoors, which Molly had refused to join, as she was making a formal call with her mother. In the motor going home Molly remarked: "The boys haven't good manners. Belle seems a nice girl. She hasn't been anywhere and can't talk. That was a very homely dress she had on; don't you think so? Does she have to wear dresses like that? Can't you give her something prettier, mamma?"
Isabelle, who thought her god-daughter an interesting child, full of independence and vitality in spite of her shyness, wondered, "Is Molly just a stick, or only a little snob?"
Molly was sitting very gracefully in her grandmother's limousine, riding through the parks and avenues with the air of a perfect little lady accustomed to observe the world from the cushioned seat of a brougham or motor-car. Catching sight of a bill board with the announcement of a popular young actress's coming engagement, she remarked:—
"Miss Daisy May is such a perfect dear, don't you think, mamma? Couldn't Miss Joyce take me to see her act next Saturday afternoon? It's a perfectly nice play, you know."
Repressing a desire to shake her daughter, Isabelle replied: "I'll take you myself, Molly. And shan't we invite Delia Conry? You know she is at school here and has very few friends."
"Oh!" Molly said thoughtfully. "Delia is so ordinary. I should like to ask Beatrice Lawton,—Miss Joyce knows her governess…. Or if we must be good to some one, we might take Belle."
"We'll take them both."
"I don't think Beatrice would enjoy Belle," her daughter objected after further reflection.
"Well, I shall ask Delia and Belle, then, to go with me alone!"
(She had looked up the Conry child at the school where Vickers had sent her, and had arranged to have her brother's small estate settled on the girl, as she felt he would have wished. Delia, whose mother had never been heard from, was a forlorn little object and Isabelle pitied her.)
When her temporary irritation with Molly had passed, she saw there was nothing unnatural in the child's attitude. Probably she was a little snob. Most children brought up as Molly had been, most of her friends, were little snobs. Their governesses taught them snobbery, unconsciously; their domestic habits taught them snobbery.
Isabelle resolved more firmly that she should dispense with the excellent Miss Joyce. A beginning very far down would have to be made, if she were to reach the individuality of this perfectly nurtured modern child of hers. There was nothing bad about Molly; she was irritatingly blameless. But what she lacked was appalling! At eighteen she would be unendurable.
And the mother had no warm feeling, no impelling affection for her daughter, any more than the child had for her. That lack would make it all the harder to do what must be done. Here, again, as with her husband, she must begin to pay for all the years that she had shirked her job,—for the sake of "her own life," her intellectual emancipation and growth,—shirked, to be sure, in the most conscientious and enlightened modern manner.
For nobody could call Miss Lane a neglected child.
It would be very simple for Mrs. Price to provide Alice with a comfortable income,—the Colonel would have done so; and when Isabelle suggested it to her mother after the funeral of Steve, the old lady agreed, though she was not of a philanthropic nature and recalled the fact that the marriage had been a foolish one. But Alice flatly refused the arrangement. She had been trained to work; she was not too old to find something to do, and she had already taken steps to secure a place as matron in a hospital. "I am strong," she said to Isabelle. "Steve has left it for me to do,—all of it. And I want to show him that I can do it. I shall be happier!"
John had a better comprehension of her feelings and of the situation than either Isabelle or her mother. "Alice is an able woman," he had said; "she will not break down,—she is not that kind. And she'll be happier working."
So he took care of her little life insurance money. He also obtained a scholarship in a technical school for the oldest boy, and undertook to fit the second one for college, as he showed studious tendencies. Isabelle would look after Belle's education. In all these practical details of readjusting the broken family, John Lane was more effective than his wife, giving generously of his crowded hours to the Johnston affairs, ever ready to do all that might be done without hurting the widow's pride and vigorous will.
And this, as Isabelle knew, came in the days of his greatest personal perplexity. His resignation as third vice-president had been accepted after protest, negotiations, and then had elicited a regretful communication to the press (emanating from the Senator's office) of an eulogistic nature, concluding with the delicately phrased suggestion that "Mr. Lane's untiring devotion to his work necessitates his taking a rest from all business cares for the present. It is understood that he contemplates a long vacation in Europe."
John handed the paper to Isabelle with an ironical smile.
"You see we are to go abroad,—the usual thing! That's the Senator's crafty hand. He wants everything decently smooth."
But the public no longer cared. The coal cases had gone up to a higher court on appeal, and when the final decision was handed down, the "street" would be interested not in the question of John Lane's guilt or innocence, but in the more important question of whether the Supreme Court "would back up the President's campaign against capital."
Meanwhile, there was none of the social stigma attached to the verdict against her husband that Isabelle had resolutely expected. As soon as it was known that the Lanes were established in the city for the spring, their friends sought them out and they were invited to dine more than Isabelle cared for. In their class, as she quickly perceived from jesting references to the trial, such legal difficulties as John's were regarded as merely the disagreeable incidents of doing business in a socialistic age. Lane, far from being "down and out," was considered in the industrial and railroad world a strong man rather badly treated by a weak-kneed board of directors, who had sought to save themselves from trouble by sacrificing an able servant to the public storm. No sooner was his resignation published than he received an offer of the presidency of a large transit company in the middle West. While he was considering this offer, he was approached by representatives of another great railroad, which, though largely owned by the same "interests" that controlled the Atlantic and Pacific, was generally supposed to be a rival. Lane was too valuable a man to be lost to the railroad army. The "interests" recognized in him a powerful instrument, trained from boyhood for their purposes,—one "who knew how to get business." The offer flattered Lane, and soothed that sore spot in his inner consciousness. He saw himself reinstated in his old world, with a prospect of crossing swords with his old superiors in a more than secondary position.
Isabelle knew all about this offer. She and her husband talked together more freely than they had ever done before. The experiences of the past weeks,—Steve's death, the planning for Alice's future, as well as the emotional result of the trial—had brought them nearer an understanding. Lane had begun to realize a latent aptitude in his wife for grasping the essential matters of business,—investments, risks, corporation management. She understood far more than the distinction between stock and bond, which is supposedly the limit of woman's business intelligence. As the warm May days came on they took long rides into the fresh country, talking over the endless detail of affairs,—her money, her mother's money, the Colonel's trust funds, the Johnstons' future, the railroad situation,—all that John Lane had hitherto carried tightly shut in his own mind.
And thus Isabelle began to comprehend the close relation between what is called "business" and the human matters of daily life for every individual in this complex world. There was not simply a broad mark between right and wrong,—dramatic trials; but the very souls of men and women were involved in the vast machine of labor and profit.
She was astonished to discover the extent of her husband's interests, his personal fortune, which had grown amazingly during these last ten fat years of the country's prosperity.
"Why, you don't have to take any position!"
"Yes, we could afford to make that European trip the Board so kindly indicated."
"Wemightgo abroad," she said thoughtfully.
A few years before she would have grasped the chance to live in Europe indefinitely. Now she found no inclination in her spirit for this solution.
"It isn't exactly the time to leave home," her husband objected; "there is sure to be a severe panic before long. All this agitation has unsettled business, and the country must reap the consequences. We could go for a few months, perhaps."
"It wouldn't be good for Molly."
And though she did not say it, it would not be good for him to leave the struggle for any length of time. Once out of the game of life, for which he had been trained like an athlete, he would degenerate and lose his peculiar power. And yet she shrank unaccountably from his reentering the old life, with the bitter feeling in his heart he now had. It meant their living in New York, for one thing, and a growing repugnance to that huge, squirming, prodigal hive had come over her. Once the pinnacle of her ambitions, now it seemed sordid, hectic, unreal. Yet she was too wise to offer her objections, to argue the matter, any more than to open the personal wound of his trial and conviction. Influence, at least with a man of John Lane's fibre, must be a subtle, slow process, depending on mutual confidence, comprehension. And she must first see clearly what she herself knew to be best. So she listened, waiting for the vision which would surely come.
In these business talks her mind grasped more and more the issues of American life. She learned to recognize the distinction between the officials of corporations and the control behind,—the money power. There emerged into view something of a panorama of industry, organized on modern lines,—the millions of workers in the industrial armies; the infinite gradations of leadership in these armies, and finally far off in the distance, among the canons of the skyscrapers in the great cities, the Mind of it all, the Control, the massed Capital. There were the Marshals' quarters! Even the chiefs of great corporations were "little people" compared with their real employers, the men who controlled capital. And into that circle of intoxicating power, within its influence, she felt that her husband was slowly moving—would ultimately arrive, if success came,—at the height of modern fame. Men did not reach the Marshals' quarters with a few hundred thousands of dollars, nor with a few millions, with savings and inheritances and prudent thrift. They must have tens of millions at their command. And these millions came through alliances, manipulations, deals, by all sorts of devices whereby money could be made to spawn miraculously….
Meanwhile the worker earned his wage, and the minor officers their salaries—what had they to complain of?—but the pelf went up to the Marshals' camp, the larger part of it,—in this land where all were born free and equal. No! Isabelle shuddered at the spectacle of the bloody road up to the camp, and prayed that her life might not be lived in an atmosphere of blood and alarms and noisy strife, even for the sake of millions of dollars and limitless Power.
One evening in this period of dubitation Lane remarked casually:—
"Your father's friend, Pete Larrimore, came in to-day to see me. Do you remember him, Isabelle? The old fellow with the mutton-chop whiskers, who used to send us bags of coffee from his plantation in Mexico."
"Awful coffee,—we couldn't give it away!"
"He wanted to talk to me about a scheme he is interested in. It seems that he has a lot of property in the southwest, Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle, some of it very valuable. Among other things he has become involved in a railroad. It was started by some people who hadn't the capital to carry it through, and now it begins nowhere and ends in the same place. Larrimore and his friends think they can get the capital to carry the road south to the line and up north, and ultimately will sell it perhaps to one of the big systems…. They are looking for a man to build it and push it through."
"What did you say?" Isabelle demanded eagerly.
"Oh, I just listened. If they can get the money, it might be successful. That country is growing fast…. It would be a chance for some young man to win his spurs,—hard work, though."
He talked on, explaining the strategic position of the new road, its relation to rivals, the prospects of that part of the country, the present condition of the money market in respect to new enterprises; for Isabelle seemed interested. But when she interrupted with sudden energy, "Do it, John! Why don'tyoutake it?" he looked puzzled.
"It is a young man's job,—pioneer work."
"But you are young—we are young! And it would be something worth doing, pioneer work, building up a new country like that."
"There's not much money in it," he replied, smiling at her girlish enthusiasm, "and I am afraid not much fame."
Not money, not the fame of the gladiator, the fame of the money power; merely the good report of a labor competently performed, the reward of energy and capacity—and the thing done itself. But to Isabelle this pioneer quality of the work appealed strongly. Her imagination expanded under the idea.
"I can see you living for the next ten years in a small Texas town!" he jested. "However, I suppose you wouldn't live out there."
"But I should!" she protested. "And it is what I should like best of all, I think—the freedom, the open air, the new life!"
So from a merely casual suggestion that Lane had not thought worth serious consideration, there began to grow between them a new conception of their future. And the change that these last weeks had brought was marked by the freedom with which husband and wife talked not only about the future, but about the past. Isabelle tried to tell her husband what had been going on within her at the trial, and since then.
"I know," she said, "that you will say I can't understand, that my feeling is only a woman's squeamishness or ignorance…. But, John, I can't bear to think of our going back to it, living on in that way, the hard way of success, as it would be in New York."
Lane looked at her narrowly. He was trying to account for this new attitude in his wife. That she would be pleased, or at least indifferent, at the prospect of returning to the East, to the New York life that she had always longed for and apparently enjoyed, he had taken for granted. Yet in spite of the fixed lines in which his nature ran and the engrossing preoccupations of his interests, he had felt many changes in Isabelle since her return to St. Louis,—changes that he ascribed generally to the improvement in her health,—better nerves,—but that he could not altogether formulate. Perhaps they were the indirect result of her brother's death. At any rate his wife's new interest in business, in his affairs, pleased him. He liked to talk things over with her….
Thus the days went steadily by towards the decision. Lane had promised his wife to consider the Larrimore offer. One morning the cable brought the startling news that the president of the Atlantic and Pacific had committed suicide in his hotel room in Paris the evening before he was to sail for home. "Bad health and nervous collapse," was the explanation in the despatch. But that a man of sixty-three, with a long record of honorable success, a large fortune, no family troubles, should suddenly take his own life, naturally roused the liveliest amazement throughout the country. Nobody believed that the cable told the whole truth; but the real reasons for the desperate act were locked tight among the directors of the railroad corporation and a few intimate heads of control—who know all.
Lane read the news to Isabelle. It shook him perceptibly. He had knownFarrington Beals for years, ever since at the Colonel's suggestion he hadbeen picked out of the army of underlings and given his first chance.Isabelle remembered him even longer, and especially at her wedding with theSenator and her father. They were old family friends, the Bealses.
"How terrible for Mrs. Beals and Elsie!" she exclaimed. "How could he have done it! The family was so happy. They all adored him! And he was about to retire, Elsie told me when I saw her last, and they were all going around the world in their yacht…. He couldn't have been very ill."
"No, I am afraid that wasn't the only reason," John admitted, walking to and fro nervously.
He was thinking of all that the old man had done for him, his resentment at his chief's final desertion of him forgotten; of how he had learned his job, been trained to pull his load by the dead man, who had always encouraged him, pushed him forward.
"He went over for a little rest, you said. And he always went every year about this time for a vacation and to buy pictures. Don't you remember, John, what funny things he bought, and how the family laughed at him?"
"Yes,—I know." He also knew that the president of the Atlantic and Pacific had gone across the ocean "for his yearly vacation" just at the opening of the coal investigation to escape the scandal of the trial, and had not returned at the usual time, although the financial world was unsettled. And he knew other things; for already clubs and inner offices had been buzzing with rumors.
"I am afraid that it is worse than it seems," he said to his wife on his return from the city that afternoon. "Beals was terribly involved. I hear that a bank he was interested in has been closed…. He was tied up fast—in all sorts of ways!"
"John!" Isabelle cried, and paused. Did this old man's death mean another scandal, ruin for another family, and one she had known well,—disgrace, scandal, possibly poverty?
"Beals was always in the market—and this panic hit him hard; he was on the wrong side lately."
It was an old story, not in every case with the same details, but horribly common,—a man of the finest possibilities, of sturdy character, rising up to the heights of ambition, then losing his head, playing the game wantonly for mere pride and habit in it,—his judgment giving way, but playing on, stumbling, grasping at this and that to stop his sliding feet, breaking the elementary laws! And finally, in the face of disaster, alone in a hotel room the lonely old man—no doubt mentally broken by the strain—putting the pistol to his head with his shaking hand. And, afterwards, the debris of his wreck would be swept aside to clear the road for others!
Farrington Beals was not a single case. In this time of money disturbance, suicide and dishonor were rife in the streets, revealing the rotten timber that could not stand the strain of modern life, lived as it had been lived the past ten years. It was not one blast that uprooted weak members of the forest, but the eating decay of the previous years, working at the heart of many lives. "The frantic egotism of the age!" Yes, and the divided souls, never at peace until death put an end to the strife at last,—too much for little bodies of nerve and tissue to stand,—the racking of divided wills, divided souls.
"John!" Isabelle cried that night, after they had again talked over the tragedy; "let us go—go out there—to a new land!" She rose from the lounge and swept across the room with the energy of clear purpose—of Vision. "Let us put ourselves as far as possible out of this sort of thing! …. It will kill us both. Do it for my sake, even if you can't feel as I do!"
And then there poured forth all the story of these years, of their life apart, as she had come to see it the last months, in the remote and peaceful hills, in the court-room, in the plain pathos of Steve's death and Alice's heroism, and now in this suicide,—all that had given her insight and made her different from what she had been,—all that revealed the cheapness of her old ideals of freedom, intellectual development, self-satisfaction, that cult of the ego, which she had pursued in sympathy with the age. Now she wished to put it away, to remove herself and her husband, their lives together, outwardly as she had withdrawn herself inwardly. And her husband, moved in spite of himself by her tense desire, the energy of her words, listened and comprehended—in part.
"I have never been a real wife to you, John. I don't mean just my love for that other man, when you were nobly generous with me. But before that, in other ways, in almost all ways that make a woman a wife, a real wife…. Now I want to be a real wife. I want to be with you in all things…. You can't see the importance of this step as I do. Men and women are different, always. But there is something within me, underneath, like an inner light that makes me see clearly now,—not conscience, but a kind of flame that guides. In the light of that I see what a petty fool I have been. It all had to be—I don't regret because it all had to be—the terrible waste, the sacrifice," she whispered, thinking of Vickers. "Only now we must live, you and I together,—together live as we have never lived before!"
She held out her hands to him as she spoke, her head erect, and as he waited, still tied by years of self-repression, she went to him and put her arms about him, drawing her to him, to her breast, to her eyes. Ten years before he had adored her, desired her passionately, and she had shrunk from him. Then life had come imperceptibly in between them; he had gone his way, she hers. Now she was offering herself to him. And she was more desirable than before, more woman,—at last whole. The appeal that had never been wholly stifled in the man still beat in his pulses for the woman. And the appeal never wholly roused in the woman by him reached out now for him; but an appeal not merely of the senses, higher than anything Cairy could rouse in a woman, an appeal, limitless, of comradeship, purpose, wills. He kissed her, holding her close to him, realizing that she too held him in the inner place of her being.
"We will begin again," he said.
"Our new life—together!"
* * * * *
And this is Influence, the work of one will upon another, sometimes apparent, dramatic, tragic; sometimes subtle, unknowable, speaking across dark gulfs. The meaning of that dead man's austere face, the howl of journalists on his uncovered trail, the old man dead in his hotel room disgraced, the deep current of purpose in his new wife,—all these and much more sent messages into the man's unyielding soul to change the atmosphere therein, to alter the values of things seen, to shape—at last—the will. For what makes an act? Filaments of nerve, some shadowy unknown process in brain cells? These are but symbols for mystery! Life pressing multifariously its changing suggestions upon the sentient organism prompts, at last, the act. But there is something deeper than the known in all this wondrous complexity….
John Lane, the man of fact, the ordered efficient will, was dimly conscious of forces other than physical ones, beyond,—not recognizable as motives,—self-created and impelling, nevertheless; forces welling up from the tenebrous spaces in the depths of his being, beneath conscious life. And at last, something higher than Judgment swayed the man.