(9 äåêàáðÿ 1866-Dec ã. 22, 1947). Àâòîð 29 êíèã ïëþñ áåñ÷èñëåííûõ êîðîòêèõ ðàáîò Ìåðåäèò Íèêîëñîí íàèáîëåå èçâåñòåí ñâîèìè ïîïóëÿðíûìè ëåãêèìè ðîìàíñàìè. Íàèáîëåå öåííûìè åãî òðóäàìè, îäíàêî, ÿâëÿþòñÿ åãî èñòîðè÷åñêèå î÷åðêè, è åãî àíàëèçû òåêóùèõ ñîáûòèé, îïóáëèêîâàííûå â ãàçåòàõ è æóðíàëàõ.
***
- â Ãóòåíáåðãå:
Ãëàâíûé øàíñ
Çåëüäà Äàìåðîí
Äîì òûñÿ÷è ñâå÷åé
Ñòèõè
Ïîðò ïðîïàâøèõ áåç âåñòè
Ðîçàëèíäà ó Êðàñíûõ Âîðîò
Ìàëåíüêèé êîðè÷íåâûé êóâøèí â Êèëäàðå
Õóçåðû (èñòîðè÷åñêèé ðîìàí).
***
And the Fourth Kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron
breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh
all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise.
And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters’ clay, and
part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it
of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed
with miry clay.
And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so
the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly broken.
_The Book of Daniel._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Face in the Locket 3
II. The Lady of Difficult Occasions 21
III. A Letter, a Bottle and an Old Friend 28
IV. The Ways of Wayne Craighill 42
V. A Child of the Iron City 59
VI. Before a Portrait by Sargent 73
VII. Wayne Counsels his Sister 86
VIII. The Coming of Mrs. Craighill 101
IX. “Help Me to be a Good Woman” 114
X. Mr. Walsh Meets Mrs. Craighill 126
XI. Paddock Delivers an Invitation 144
XII. The Shadows Against the Flame 155
XIII. Jean Morley 160
XIV. A Light Supper for Two 175
XV. Mrs. Blair is Displeased 190
XVI. The Trip to Boston 206
XVII. Mrs. Craighill Bides at Home 224
XVIII. The Snow-storm at Rosedale 240
XIX. Mr. Wingfield Calls on Mr. Walsh 262
XX. Evening at the Craighills’ 274
XXI. Soundings in Deep Waters 292
XXII. A Conference at the Allequippa 299
XXIII. The End of a Sleigh-ride 307
XXIV. Jean Answers a Question 317
XXV. Colonel Craighill is Annoyed 327
XXVI. Colonel Craighill Scores a Point 335
XXVII. “I’m Going Back to Joe” 344
XXVIII. Closed Doors 355
XXIX. “You Love Another Man, Jean” 368
XXX. The House of Peace 378
XXXI. Wayne Sees Jean Again 397
XXXII. An Angry Encounter 408
XXXIII. The High Moment of Their Lives 416
XXXIV. The Heart of the Bugle 428
XXXV. Golden Bridge 446
XXXVI. Two Old Friends Seek Wayne 460
XXXVII. Wayne Visits His Father’s House 467
XXXVIII. “They’re Callin’ Strikes on Me” 475
XXXIX. We See Walsh Again 487
XL. The Belated Appearance of John McCandless Blair 493
XLI. “My City--Our City” 498
ILLUSTRATIONS
Jean Morley _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
“Men who work with their hands--these things!” 322
“There was a dull sound as of a blow struck” 422
“Ghosts, the ghosts of dead soldiers” 442
THE LORDS OF HIGH DECISION
The Lords of High Decision
CHAPTER I
THE FACE IN THE LOCKET
As Mrs. John McCandless Blair entered the house her brother, Wayne
Craighill, met her in the hall. The clock on the stair landing was
striking seven.
“On time, Fanny? How did it ever happen?” he demanded as she caught
his hands and peered into his face. He blinked under her scrutiny; she
always gave him this sharp glance when they met,--and its significance
was not wasted on him; but she was satisfied and kissed him, and then,
as he took her wrap:
“For heaven’s sake what’s up, Wayne? Father was ominously solemn in
telephoning me to come over. John’s dining at the Club--I think father
wants to see us alone.”
“It rather looks that way, Fanny,” replied Wayne, laughing at his
sister’s earnestness.
“Well, is he going to do it at last?”
“There’s no use kicking if he is, so be prepared for the worst.”
“Well, if it’s that Baltimore woman----”
“Or that Philadelphia woman, or the person he met in Berlin--the one
from nowhere----”
Their voices had reached Colonel Craighill and he came into the hall
and greeted his daughter affectionately.
“Give me credit, papa! I was on time to-night!”
“We will give John credit for sending you. How’s the new car working?”
“Oh, more or less the usual way!”
Dinner was announced and they went out at once, Mrs. Blair taking a
place opposite her father at the round table, with Wayne between them.
Roger Craighill was an old citizen; it may be questioned whether he
was not, by severe standards, the first citizen of Pittsburg. There
were, to be sure, richer men, but his identification with the soberer
past of the City of the Iron Heart--before the Greater City had planted
its guidons as far as now along the rivers and over the hills--gave
indubitable value and dignity to his name. He was interested in many
philanthropies and reforms, and he had just returned from Washington
where he had attended a conference of the American Reform Federation,
of which he was a prominent and influential member. Colonel Craighill,
like his son, dressed with care and followed the fashion, and to-night
in his evening clothes his daughter thought him unusually handsome
and distinguished. He had kept his figure, and his fine colouring had
prompted Mr. Richard Wingfield, the cynic of the Allequippa Club, to
bestow upon him the soubriquet of Rosy Roger, a pleasantry for which
Wingfield had been censured by the governors. But Colonel Craighill’s
fine height and his noble head with its crown of white hair, set him
apart for admiration in any gathering. He walked a mile a day and
otherwise safeguarded his health, which an eminent New York physician
assured him once a year was perfect.
Roger Craighill was by all tests the most eligible widower in western
Pennsylvania, and gossip had striven for years to marry him to any one
of a dozen women imaginably his equals. When the local possibilities
were exhausted attention shifted to women of becoming age and social
standing in other cities--New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore--Colonel
Craighill’s frequent absences from home lending faint colour of truth
to these speculations. His daughter, Mrs. John McCandless Blair, had
often discussed the matter with her brother, but without resentment,
save occasionally when some woman known to them and distasteful or
particularly unsuitable from their standpoint was suggested. It was
indicative of the difference in character and temperament between
brother and sister that Wayne was more captious in his criticisms of
the presumptive candidates for their mother’s place in the old home
than his sister. When, shortly after Mrs. Craighill’s death, Wayne’s
dissolute habits became a town scandal there were many who said that
things would have gone differently if his mother had lived; that Mrs.
Craighill had understood Wayne, but that his father was wholly out of
sympathy with him.
Mrs. John McCandless Blair was immensely aroused now by the suspicion
that her father was about to bring home a second wife, and she steeled
her heart against the unknown woman. She was not in the least abashed
by her father, who never took her seriously. He began describing his
visit to Washington, to cover the four courses of the family dinner
that must be eaten before--with proper deliberation and the room freed
of the waitress--he apprised his children of the particular purpose of
this family gathering.
Colonel Craighill was a capital talker and he gave an intimate turn
to his account of the Washington meeting, uttering the names of his
distinguished associates in the Federation with frank pride in their
acquaintance. A Southern bishop, far-famed as a story-teller, was a
member and Colonel Craighill repeated several anecdotes with which the
clergyman had enlivened the conferences. He quoted one or two periods
from his own speech at the dinner, and paused for Mrs. Blair and Wayne
to admire their aptness. With a nice sense of climax he mentioned last
his invitation to luncheon at the White House, where there was only one
other guest--a famous English statesman and man of letters.
“It was really quite _en famille_. My impression of the President was
delightful; I confess that I had wholly misjudged him. He addressed
many questions to me directly--asking about political conditions
here at home in such a way that I had to do a good deal of talking.
As I was leaving he detained me a moment and asked my opinion of
the business outlook. I was amazed to see how familiar he appeared
to be with the range of my own interests. He told me that if I had
suggestions at any time as to financial policies he wished I would come
down and talk to him personally. But the published reports of my visit
to the White House annoyed me greatly. I thought it only just to myself
to write him a line to repudiate the interview attributed to me. There
have, of course, been rumours of cabinet changes, but I don’t want
office--all I ask is to be of some service to my fellow-men in the r;le
of a private citizen.”
Mrs. Blair murmured sympathetic responses through this recital. Wayne
ate his salad in silence. He knew that his father enjoyed nothing so
much as these conferences in behalf of good causes; they required a
great deal of time, but Colonel Craighill had reached an age at which
he could afford to indulge himself. If he enjoyed delivering addresses
and making after-dinner speeches it was none of Wayne’s affair. Their
natures were antipodal. Wayne cared little what his father did, one way
or another.
Mrs. Blair fell to chaffing her father about the work of the
Federation. Her curiosity as to the nature of the announcement he had
said he wished to make grew more acute as the minutes passed, and she
talked with rather more than her usual nervous volubility.
“Just think,” she exclaimed, “of drinking champagne over the building
of schools for poor negroes! If you would send them the champagne how
much more sensible it would be! There’s a beautiful idea. Why not found
a society for providing free champagne for the poor and needy!”
“It’s not for you to deride, Fanny. Only a little while ago you were
raising a fund for the restoration of a Buddhist temple somewhere in
darkest Japan--the merest fad. I remember that Doctor McAllister wrote
me a letter expressing surprise that a daughter of mine should be
aiding a heathen enterprise.”
“It _was_ too bad, papa! But the temple is all restored now, and we
had a little fund left over after the work was done--I was treasurer
and didn’t know what else to do with it--so I gave it to help build an
Episcopal parish house at Ironstead. And to-day I was out there in the
machine and behold! Jimmy Paddock is running that parish house and a
mission and is no end of a power in the place.”
“Paddock? What Paddock?” asked Wayne.
“Why, Jimmy Paddock. Don’t you remember him? You knew him in your prep.
school, and he was on the eleven at Harvard while you were at the
‘Tech.’”
“Not the same man,” declared Wayne. “I knew my Jimmy like a top; he was
no monk--not by a long shot. Besides, his family had money to burn. No
parish house larks for Jim. He knew how to order a dinner!”
“It just happens,” replied Mrs. Blair, “that I knew Jimmy, too, back
in your college days and I declare that I saw him this afternoon
at Ironstead. I was out there looking for a maid who used to work
for us and I met Jimmy Paddock in the street--a very disagreeable
street it was, too. You know he was always shy and he seemed terribly
embarrassed. It was hard work getting anything out of him; but he’s
our old Jimmy and he’s a regular minister--went off and did it all by
himself and has been out there at Ironstead for six months--all through
the hot weather.”
“Does he wear a becoming habit and hold quiet days for women?” asked
Wayne. “I remember that you affected the Episcopalians for a while--for
about half of one Lent! That was just before those table-tippers
buncoed you into introducing them to our first families.”
“That is unworthy of you, Wayne!” and Mrs. Blair frowned at her brother
with mock indignation. “Nobody ever really explained some of the things
those mediums did. They certainly told _me_ things----!”
“I’ll wager they did,” laughed Wayne. “But go on about Jimmy.”
“He’s just a plain little minister--no habit or anything like that.
He’s wonderful with men and boys. He thanked me for helping with the
parish house, and when candour compelled me to tell him that I didn’t
know it was his enterprise and that he had got what was left after
restoring a Buddhist temple, he smiled in just his old boyish way,
and I made him get in the machine and take me to see the place, which
is the simplest. There was a sign on the door of the parish house that
said, ‘Boxing Lessons Tuesday Night, by a Competent Instructor. All
Welcome.’ And it was signed ‘J. Paddock, Rector.’”
“If this minister is the boy we knew when Wayne was at St. John’s I
should think he would have come to see us,” remarked Colonel Craighill.
“We used to meet his family now and then.”
“I scolded him for not telling us he’s here; and he said he had been
too busy. He asked all about you, Wayne--said he was going to look you
up; but when I asked him to come and dine with us he was so unhappy in
trying to get out of it that I told him not to bother. He’s perfectly
devoted to his work, and they say the people out there are crazy about
him.”
“Dear old Jimmy!” mused Wayne. “I wonder how he’s kept it so dark. You
never can tell! Jimmy used to exhaust his chapel cuts the first week
every term. If he’s taken to saving souls, though, he’ll do it; he
hangs on like a bull pup. I can see him now at that last Thanksgiving
game going down the field with the ball under his arm--he was as fast
as lightning. I’d like to take a few boxing lessons from Jimmy myself,
if he’s in the business.”
Coffee was served; Mrs. Blair dropped the Reverend James Paddock and
watched her father choose his single lump of sugar. He refused a cigar
but waited until Wayne had lighted a cigarette before he dismissed the
waitress and began.
“It must have occurred to you both that I might at some time marry
again.”
“Yes, father; I suppose that possibility has occurred to many people,”
replied his daughter, feeling that something was required at once.
Wayne said nothing, but drew his chair back from the table and crossed
his legs.
“I want you to understand that your dead mother’s life is a precious--a
very precious memory. My determination to marry means no disloyalty to
her.”
He bowed his head and drew one hand lightly across the table.
“I have been lonely at times; the management of the house in itself has
been a burden, but I have not liked to give it up. I might have gone to
live with you, Fanny,--you and John have been kind in urging me--but
you have your own family; and as long as Wayne is unmarried the old
place must be his home. The change I propose making will have no effect
on your status in my house, Wayne--none whatever!”
“Thank you; I appreciate that, sir.”
“In fact,” continued Colonel Craighill, addressing his son, “you both
understand that the house is really yours--I have only a life tenancy
here--that was your mother’s wish and she so made her will. Maybe you
don’t remember that this property was never mine. Your mother inherited
a large tract of land up here from her father, and after I built the
house the title remained in her name--the homestead will be yours,
Wayne; your mother made it up to Fanny in other ways.”
“I understand--but wouldn’t it be better for me to leave--for a time at
least--after your marriage?”
“No; I couldn’t think of that, and I’m sure Adelaide would be very
uncomfortable if she felt you were being driven from home. And,
moreover, you know how prone people are to gossip. It must not be said
that my son left his father’s house through any act of mine.”
“The old story of the cruel stepmother!” smiled Wayne; but his father
went on gravely, as though to rebuke this levity.
“There are ways in which you have been a great grief to me; I had not
meant to speak of that, but Fanny has been a good sister to you and she
knows the whole story. I should like you to remember--to remember that
you are my son!”
Wayne nodded, but did not speak. After a moment his father resumed,
addressing them both.
“I have known the lady I am to marry a comparatively short time, but I
have become deeply attached to her. She is young, but that is not her
fault”--and Colonel Craighill smiled--“or mine! Her father died when
she was still a child, and she has lived abroad with her mother much
of the time. She is of an old Vermont family. The marriage is to take
place in a fortnight and by our own wish will be altogether simple and
quiet. Please do not mention this; I have to go to Cleveland to-morrow
for a day or two and I shall make the announcement when I return. I
have thought to save your feelings and to prevent embarrassment all
round by not asking either of you to the ceremony. We shall meet in
New York and go quietly to Doctor McAllister’s residence--he is an old
friend whom I have known long in church affairs--and we shall come
home immediately. The name of the lady is Allen--Miss Adelaide Allen.
I am sure you will learn to like her--that you and Fanny will see and
appreciate the fine qualities in Miss Allen that have won my admiration
and affection.”
There was a moment’s silence when he concluded. The candle nearest him
sputtered and he adjusted it carefully. Then Mrs. Blair rose and kissed
him.
“You sly old daddy!” she broke out; “and you never told a soul!
Well”--and she seated herself again at the table and nibbled a
bonbon--“tell us what she’s like, and her ways and her manners. I
suppose, of course, she’s a teacher in one of your negro schools,
or a foreign missionary or something noble like that! Tell us
everything--everything----” and Mrs. Blair, elbows on table, denoted
the breadth of her demand by an outward sweep of her hands from the
wrists.
Colonel Craighill smiled indulgently in the enjoyment of his daughter’s
eagerness.
“Tell us everything--her just being from Vermont doesn’t mean much. Is
she a blonde?”
“Well,” replied Colonel Craighill, colouring slightly, “Now that I
think of it, I believe she is!”
“I knew it!” exclaimed Mrs. Blair; “they’re always blondes! What are
her eyes?”
“Blue.”
“Stout or thin?”
“I think her proportions are about right for her age.”
“Which is----?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“Are you sure about that, papa? You know they sometimes forget to count
their birthdays.”
“Whom do you mean by _they_?” asked Colonel Craighill guardedly.
“I mean the members of my delightful sex. Let me see, you are
sixty-five, if I remember right. Twice twenty-nine is”--she made the
computation on her slim, supple fingers--“fifty-eight: you’re rather
more than twice her age.”
“It would be more polite, to say that she’s rather less than half mine.”
“Oh, it all gets to the same place! It will have the advantage of
making me appear young to have a stepmother a few years my junior. But
what a blow to these old dowagers who have been suspected of having
designs on you! They little knew that all the time they were pursuing
you to consult about their investments or church or charity schemes,
you were casting about for some lovely young thing still in the lawful
possession of her own hair and teeth. Why, if I’d known that was your
idea there are lots of nice girls here in town that I should love to
have in the family. Wayne, you will be careful not to flirt with her!”
“Fanny!”
Colonel Craighill struck the table so sharply that the candlesticks
jumped. He was angry, and the colour deepened in his face.
“Please, papa,--I didn’t mean to be rude!”
Mrs. Blair touched her father’s coat-sleeve lightly with her hand.
She loved her brother very dearly, and the effect upon him of this
marriage was already, in her vivid imagination, the chief thing in it.
She had long felt that her father had given Wayne up; that he believed
the passion for drink that took hold of his son at times was in the
nature of a disease, to be suffered patiently and borne with Christian
fortitude.
Wayne was vexed at his sister’s manner; he disliked contention and
there was nothing to be gained by being disagreeable over their
father’s marriage. He left the room to find fresh cigarettes and
when he came back the air had cleared. Colonel Craighill, anxious on
his part to be conciliatory, was laughing at a renewal of Fanny’s
cross-questioning.
“Where did Miss Allen attend school?” she was asking.
“I believe she had private teachers,” replied Colonel Craighill, though
not positively.
“And she isn’t a teacher herself or a philanthropist? Has she money?”
“She and her mother are, I believe, in comfortable circumstances. I
hope that you and Wayne will appreciate the difficulties before this
lady in becoming my wife--that she is stepping into a place where she
will be criticized unkindly from the very fact of my position here and
the disparity in our years and fortunes. I appeal to you, Fanny, as to
one woman on behalf of another. You can make her way easy if you will.”
He had, with the best intentions in the world, struck the wrong
note. In so many words, he was asking mercy where there had been no
accusation. Mrs. Blair had not the slightest intention of committing
herself to any policy toward her father’s new wife. So far as the
public was concerned she would carry off the situation with outward
acceptance and approval; but just now she declined to consider the
question in the key her father had sounded. To him she was a frivolous
person with unaccountably erratic ways, and with nothing of his own
measure or sobriety. She made no reply whatever to his appeal, but
chose another bonbon and ate it with exasperating slowness. Wayne
saw--as her father did not--that she was angry; but Mrs. Blair fell
back upon the half-mocking mood with which she had begun, demanding:
“Is she modish? Does she wear her clothes with an air?”
“I hope,” said Colonel Craighill, betrayed into the least show of
resentment by her refusal to meet his question--“I hope, Fanny, that
she dresses like a lady.”
“So do I, papa, if it comes to that! You haven’t told us yet how you
came to meet Miss Allen.”
“It was last spring when I went to Bermuda. She and her mother were on
the steamer. I saw a good deal of them then; and I have since seen them
in New York, which is now really their home.”
“Have they ever been here?--I have known Allens.”
“I’m quite sure you have never met them, Fanny. Since Adelaide’s father
died they have travelled much of the time.”
“So your frequent trips to New York haven’t been wholly philanthropy
and business! You speak her name as though you had got well used to
it. It’s funny, but I’ve never known Adelaides. Have you ever known an
Adelaide, Wayne?”
“A lot of them; so have you if you will think of it,” answered her
brother. He saw that his father was growing restive and he knew that
Fanny was going too far. There was a point at which she could vex those
who loved her most, but being wiser than she seemed she usually knew it
herself. She pushed away the bonbon dish and slapped her hands together
lightly.
“Wayne,” she cried, “what are we thinking of? We must see her picture!
Now, papa! you know you have it in your pocket!”
“Certainly, we must see Miss Allen’s picture,” echoed Wayne, relieved
at his sister’s change of tone.
“Later--later!” but Colonel Craighill’s annoyance passed and he smiled
again.
“It isn’t dignified in you to invite teasing, papa. You know you have
her photograph. Out with it, please!”
She bent toward him as though threatening his pockets. He laughed, but
coloured deeply; then he drew from his waistcoat a thin silver case a
trifle larger than a silver dollar, and suffered Fanny to take it.
“Now,” said Colonel Craighill, settling himself in his chair, “you see
I am not afraid, Fanny, of even your severe judgment.”
She weighed the unopened trinket in her palm as though taunting her
curiosity. Wayne lighted a fresh cigarette and turned toward his
sister. He was surprised at his own indifference; but he feigned
curiosity to please his father, who naturally wished his children to
be interested and pleased. Fanny opened the locket and studied it
carefully for an instant.
“Charming! Perfectly charming!” she exclaimed; and then, holding it
close and turning her head and pursing her lips as she studied the
face, “but I thought you didn’t like such fussy hair dressing--you
always told me so. I don’t like the ultra-marcelling; but it’s well
done--and if it’s all hers and she can manage it without a rat she’s
a wonder. You’ve always decried the artificial, but I see you’re
finding that Nature has her weak points. Those eyes are just a trifle
inscrutable, a little heavy-lidded and dreamy--but we’ll have to see
the original. Her nose seems regular enough, and her mouth--well, I
wouldn’t trust any photograph to tell the truth about a mouth. She’s
young--my own lost youth smites me! Here, Wayne, behold her counterfeit
presentment!”
Wayne inhaled a last deep draught of his cigarette and dropped it into
the ash tray. He took the case into his fingers and bent over it, a
slight smile on his lips.
“Be careful! Be careful!” ejaculated his sister. “This is a crucial
moment.”
Wayne’s empty hand that lay on the table slowly opened and shut; the
smile left his lips, but he continued to study the picture.
“Well, Wayne! Are you having so much trouble to make up your mind?”
demanded Mrs. Blair, her keen sensibilities aroused by the fixedness
of Wayne’s stare at the likeness before him and the resulting interval
of suspense. There was something here that she did not grasp, and she
was a woman who resented being left in the dark. This interview with
her father had been trying enough, but her brother’s manner struck her
ominously. Colonel Craighill smiled urbanely, undisturbed by his son’s
prolonged scrutiny of the face in the locket; he attached no great
importance to Wayne’s opinions on any subject. To Mrs. Blair, however,
the silence became intolerable and she demanded:
“Are you hypnotized--or what has struck you, Wayne?”
“Nothing at all!” he laughed, closing the locket and handing it
back. “I have no criticism--most certainly none. Father, I offer my
congratulations.”
And this happened midway of September, in the year of our Lord nineteen
hundred and seven.
CHAPTER II
THE LADY OF DIFFICULT OCCASIONS
The Lady of Difficult Occasions--such was the title conferred upon
Mrs. John McCandless Blair by Dick Wingfield--looked less than her
thirty-two years. A slender, nervous woman, Mrs. Blair had contributed
from early girlhood to the picturesqueness of life in her city.
Her interests were many and varied; she did what she liked and was
supremely indifferent to criticism. She wore colours that no other
woman would have dared; for colour, she maintained, possesses the
strongest psychical significance, and to keep in tune with things
infinite one’s wardrobe must reflect the rainbow. She had tried all
extant religions and had revived a number long considered obsolete;
her garret was a valhalla of discarded gods. One day the scent of
joss-sticks clung to the draperies of her library, the next she dipped
her finger boldly in the holy water font at the door of the Catholic
cathedral and sent a subscription to the Little Sisters of the Poor.
She appeared fitfully in the Blair pew at Memorial Presbyterian Church,
where her father was ruling elder and her husband passed the plate;
and Memorial, we may say, was the most fashionable house of prayer
and worship in town, frowning down severely upon the Allequippa Club
over the way. “Fanny Blair is sure of heaven,” Dick Wingfield said,
“for she has tickets to all the gates.” Mrs. Blair was generous in
her quixotic fashion; her husband had inherited wealth, and he was,
moreover, a successful lawyer, who admired her immensely and encouraged
her foibles. She dressed her twin boys after portraits of the Stuart
princes, and their velvet and long curls caused many riots at the
public school they attended--sent there, she said, that they might grow
up strong in the democratic spirit.
When they had adjourned to the library Mrs. Blair spoke in practical
ways of the new wife’s home-coming. She tendered her own services
in any changes her father wished in the house. Some of her mother’s
personal belongings she frankly stated her purpose to remove. They
were things that did not, to Colonel Craighill’s masculine mind, seem
particularly interesting or valuable. Wayne grew restless as his father
and sister considered these matters. He moved about idly, throwing in
a word now and then when Mrs. Blair appealed to him directly. Evenings
at home had become unusual events, and domestic affairs bored him.
Mrs. Blair was, however, sensitive to his moods and she continued her
efforts to hold him within the circle of their talk.
“Don’t you think a reception--something large and general--would be a
good thing at the start, Wayne?”
“Yes; oh, yes, by all means,” he replied, looking up from a publisher’s
advertisement that he had been reading.
He left the room unnoticed a few minutes later and wandered into the
wide hall, feeling the atmosphere of the house flow around him. It
was the local custom, in our ready American fashion of conferring
antiquity, to speak of the mansion as the old Craighill place. The
house, built originally in the early seventies, had recently been
remodelled and enlarged. It occupied half a block, and the grounds were
beautifully kept, faithful to traditions of Mrs. Craighill’s taste.
The full force of the impending change in his father’s life now struck
Wayne for the first time. There is no eloquence like that of absence.
He stood by the open drawing room door with his childhood and youth
calling to all his senses. The thought of his mother stole across his
memory--a gentle, bright, smiling spirit. The pictures on the walls;
the familiar furniture; the broad fireplace; the tall bronze vases that
guarded the glass doors of the conservatory, whose greenery showed at
the end of the long room--those things cried to him now with a new
appeal. A great bowl of yellow chrysanthemums, glowing in a far corner,
struck upon his sight like flame. He walked the length of the room and
gazed up at a portrait of his mother, painted in Paris by a famous
artist. Its vitality had in some way vanished; the figure no longer
seemed poised, ready to step down into the room. The luminous quality
of the face was gone; the eyes were not so brightly responsive as of
old--he was so sure of these differences that he flashed off the frame
lights with a half-conscious feeling that a shadow had fallen upon
the spirit represented there, and that it was kinder to leave it in
darkness.
His sister called him on some pretext--he was very dear to her and the
fact that he and his father were so utterly unsympathetic increased her
tenderness--and repeated the programme of entertainments which she had
proposed.
“It’s quite ample. There’s never any question about your doing enough,
Fanny,” he remarked indifferently.
Colonel Craighill announced that he must go down to the Club to a
meeting of the Executive Committee of the Greater City Improvement
League, in which his son-in-law was interested.
“Wayne, you will take Fanny home in your own car, won’t you? Or maybe
you’ll wait for John to stop?”
“I must go soon; Wayne will look after me,” she said, and they both
went to the door to see their father off.
“It’s like old times,” she sighed, as the motor moved away; “but those
times won’t come any more.”
Then with a change of manner she turned upon Wayne and seized his hands.
“Wayne, have you ever seen that woman before?”
He shook himself free with a roughness that was unlike him.
“Don’t be silly: of course not. I never heard of her. How did you get
that idea?”
“You looked as though you were seeing a ghost when you looked at her
picture.”
“I was thinking of ghosts, Fanny, but I wasn’t seeing one.” He lighted
a cigar. “I must say that your tact sometimes leaves you at fatal
moments. The Colonel was almost at the point of getting mad. He wanted
to be jollied--and you did all you could to irritate him.”
“I had a perfect right to say what I pleased to him. How do you suppose
he came to walk into this adventuress’s trap? A girl of twenty-nine!
The hunt will be up as soon as he makes the announcement and the whole
town will join the pack.”
“The town will have to stand it if we can.”
“It’s the loss of his own dignity, it’s the affront to mother’s
memory--this young thing with her pretty marcelled head! There are
some things that ought to be sacred in this world, and father ought to
remember what our mother was--how noble and beautiful!”
“Well, we know it, Fanny; she’s our memory now--not his,” said Wayne
gently; and upon this they were silent for a time, and Fanny wept
softly. When Wayne spoke again it was in a different key.
“Well, father has his nerve to be getting married right on the verge
of a panic. Perhaps he is doing it merely to reassure the public, to
steady the market, so to speak.”
“But papa says there will be no panic. The _Star_ printed a long
interview with him only yesterday. He says there must be a readjustment
of values, that’s all; he must be right about it.”
“Bless you, yes, Fanny. If father says there won’t be any panic, why,
there won’t! What does John say?”
“Well, John is always cautioning me about our expenses,” she admitted
ruefully, so that he laughed at her. “But great heavens, Wayne!” she
exclaimed.
“Well, what’s the matter now?”
“Why, he never told us a thing about her. Who do you suppose introduced
him to her?”
“My dear Fanny,” began Wayne, thrusting his long legs out at
comfortable ease, “can you imagine our father dear being worked? He
backed off and sparred for time when you wanted to marry John, though
John belongs to our old Scotch-Irish Brahmin caste, because a Blair
once owned a distillery back in the dark ages, and there was no telling
but the sins of the rye juice might be visited on your children to the
third and fourth generation if you married John. And if I had craved
the Colonel’s permission to marry some girl in another town--some girl,
let us say, that _I_ had met on a steamer going to Bermuda--you may be
dead sure he would have put detectives on her family and had a careful
assay made of her moral character. Trust the Colonel, Fanny, for
caution in such matters! Don’t you think for a minute that he hasn’t
investigated Miss Adelaide Allen’s family into its most obscure and
inaccessible recesses! Our father was not born yesterday; our father is
the great Colonel Roger Craighill, a prophet honoured even on his own
Monongahela. Father never makes mistakes, Fanny. I’m his only mistake.
I’m a great grief to father. He has frequently admitted it. He begs
me please not to forget that I am his son. I am beyond any question
a bad lot; I have raised no end of hell; I have frequently been
drunk--beastly, fighting drunk. And father will go to his dear pastor
and ask him to pray for me, and he will admit to old sympathizing
friends that I’m an awful disappointment to him. That’s the reason he
stopped lecturing me long ago; he doesn’t want me to keep sober; when I
get drunk and smash bread wagons in the dewy dawn with my machine after
a night among the ungodly he puts on his martyr’s halo and asks his
pastor to plead with God for me!”
“Wayne! Wayne! What’s the matter with you?”
He had spoken rapidly and with a bitterness that utterly confounded
her; and he laughed now mirthlessly.
“It’s all right, Fanny. I’m a rotten bad lot. No wonder the Colonel
has given me up; but I have the advantage of him there: I’ve given
myself up! Yes, I’ve given myself up,” he repeated, and nodded his head
several times as though he found pleasure in the thought.
CHAPTER III
A LETTER, A BOTTLE AND AN OLD FRIEND
When Wayne had taken Mrs. Blair to her own home and had promised on
her doorstep to be “good” and to come to her house soon for a further
discussion of family affairs, he told Joe, the chauffeur, that he
wished to drive the machine, and was soon running toward town at
maximum speed.
Joe, huddled in an old ulster, watched the car’s flight with
misgivings, for this mad race preluded one of Wayne’s outbreaks; and
Joe was no mere hireling, but a devoted slave who grieved when Wayne,
as Joe put it, “scorched the toboggan.”
Joe Denny’s status at the Craighill house was not clearly defined. He
lodged in the garage and appeared irregularly in the servants’ dining
room with the recognized chauffeur who drove the senior Craighill
in his big car. It had been suggested in some quarters that Colonel
Craighill employed Joe Denny to keep track of Wayne and to take care
of him when he was tearing things loose; but this was not only untrue
but unjust to Joe. Joe had been a coal miner before he became the
“star” player of the Pennsylvania State League, and Wayne had marked
his pitching one day while killing time between trains at Altoona.
His _sang froid_--an essential of the successful pitcher, and the
ease with which he baffled the batters of the opposing nine, aroused
Wayne’s interest. Joe Denny enjoyed at this time a considerable
reputation, his fame penetrating even to the discriminating circles
of the National League, with the result that “scouts” had been sent
to study his performances. When a fall from an omnibus interrupted
Joe’s professional career, Wayne, who had kept track of him, paid his
hospital charges, and Joe thereupon moved his “glass” arm to Pittsburg.
By shrewd observation he learned the management of a motor car, and
attached himself without formality to the person of Wayne Craighill.
For more than a year he had thus been half guardian, half prot;g;.
Wayne’s friends had learned to know him; they even sent for him on
occasions to take Wayne home when he was getting beyond control;
and Wayne himself had grown to depend upon the young fellow. It was
something to have a follower whom one could abuse at will without
having to apologize afterward. Besides, Joe was wise and keen. He
knew all the inner workings of the Craighill household; he advised
the Scotch gardener in matters pertaining to horticulture, to the
infinite disgust of that person; he adorned the barn with portraits of
leading ball players, cut from sporting supplements, and this gallery
of famous men was a source of great irritation to Colonel Craighill’s
solemn German chauffeur, who had not the slightest interest in, or
acquaintance with, the American national game. Joe’s fidelity to
Wayne’s interests was so unobtrusive and intelligent that Wayne himself
was hardly conscious of it. Such items of news as the prospective
arrival or departure of Colonel Craighill; the fact that he was trading
his old machine for a new one; or that Walsh, Colonel Craighill’s
trusted lieutenant, had bought a new team of Kentucky roadsters for
his daily drive in the park--or that John McCandless Blair, Wayne’s
brother-in-law, was threatened with a nomination for mayor on a Reform
ticket--such items as these Joe collected through agencies of his own
and imparted to Wayne for his better instruction.
To-night the lust for drink had laid hold upon Wayne and his rapid
flight through the cool air sharpened the edge of his craving in
every tingling, excited nerve. His body swayed over the wheel; he
passed other vehicles by narrow margins that caused Joe to shudder;
and policemen, looking after him, swore quietly and telephoned to
headquarters that young Craighill was running wild again. He had
started for the Allequippa Club, but, remembering that his father was
there, changed his mind. The governors of the Penn, the most sedate and
exclusive of the Greater City’s clubs, had lately sent a polite threat
of expulsion for an abuse of its privileges during a spree, and that
door was shut in his face. The thought of this enraged him now as he
spun through the narrow streets in the business district. Very likely
all the clubs in town would be closed against him before long. Then
with increased speed he drove the car to the Craighill building, told
Joe to wait, passed the watchman on duty at the door and ascended to
the Craighill offices.
A lone book-keeper was at work, and Wayne spoke to him and passed on to
his own room.
He turned on the lights and began pulling out the drawers of his desk,
turning over their contents with a feverish haste that increased their
disorder. Presently he found what he sought: a large envelope marked
“Private, W. C.” in his own hand. He slapped it on the desk to free it
of dust, then tore it open and drew out a number of letters, addressed
in a woman’s hand to himself, and a photograph, which he held up and
scrutinized with eyes that were disagreeably hard and bright. It was
not the same photograph that his father had shown at the dinner table,
but it represented another view of the same head--there was no doubt of
that. He studied it carefully; it seemed, indeed, to exercise a spell
upon him. He recalled what Mrs. Blair had said about the eyes; but in
this picture they seemed to conspire with a smile on the girl’s lips to
tease and tantalize.
A number of letters that had been placed on his desk after he left the
office caught his eye. One or two invitations to large social affairs
he tossed into the waste-paper basket; he was only bidden now to the
most general functions. He caught up an envelope bearing the legend of
a New York hotel and a typewritten superscription. He tore this open,
still muttering his wrath at the discarded invitations, and then sat
down and read eagerly a letter in a woman’s irregular hand dated two
days earlier:
“MY DEAR WAYNE:
“You wouldn’t believe I could do it, and I am not sure of it yet
myself; but I wanted to prepare you before _he_ breaks the news.
There’s a whole lot to tell that I won’t bore you with--for you do
hate to be bored, you crazy boy. Wayne, I’m going to marry your
father! Don’t be angry--please! I know everything that you will think
when you read this--but mama has driven me to it. She never forgave
me for letting you go, and life with her has become intolerable. And
please believe this, Wayne. I really respect and admire your father
more than any man I have met, and can’t you see what it will mean
to me to get away from this hideous life I have been leading? Why,
Wayne, I’d rather die than go on as we have lived all these years,
knocking around the world and mama raising money to keep us going in
ways I can’t speak of. You know the whole story of _that_. I let mama
think I am doing this to please her, but I am not. I am doing it to
get away from her. I have made her promise to let me alone, and I
will do all I can for her. She’s going abroad right after my marriage
and I hate to say it of my own mother, but I hope never to see her
again.
“Of course you could probably stop the marriage by telling your
father how near _we_ came to hitting it off. I have always felt
that you were unjust to me in that--I really cared more for you
than I knew--but that’s all over now. That was another of mama’s
mistakes. She let her greed get the better of her and I suffered.
But let us be good friends--shan’t we? You know more about me than
anybody, Wayne--how ignorant I am, and all that. Why, I had to
study hard--mama suggested it, that’s the kind of thing she _can_
do--to learn to talk to your father about politics and philanthropy
and those things. If anything should happen--if you should spoil
it all, I don’t know what mama would do; but it would be something
unpleasant, be sure of that. She sold everything we had to follow
your father about to those small, select places he loves so well.
“I am going to try to live up to your father’s good name. I don’t
believe I’m bad. I’m just a kind of featherweight; and you will
be nice to me, won’t you, when I come? Your father has told me
everything--about the old house and how it belongs to you. Of course
you won’t run away and leave me and you will help me to hit it off
with your sister, too. He says she’s a little difficult, but I know
she must be interesting. As you see, I’ve taken mama’s name by her
second marriage since _our_ little affair. Explanations had grown
tiresome and mama enjoys playing to the refined sensibilities of
those nice people who think three marriages are not quite respectable
for one woman....”
He read on to the end, through more in the same strain. He flinched
at the reference to the home and to his sister, but at the close he
lighted a cigarette and re-read the whole calmly.
“It was your dear mother that caught the Colonel, Addie; you are pretty
and you like clothes and you know how to wear them, but you haven’t
your dear mother’s strategic mind. Oh, _you_ were a sucker, Colonel,
and they took you in! You are so satisfied with your own virtue, and
you are so pained by my degradation! Let’s see where you come out.”
He continued to mutter to himself as he re-folded the letter. He
grinned his appreciation of the care which had caused its author to
avoid the placing of any tell-tale handwriting on the envelope. “I’m a
bad, bad lot, Colonel, but there are traps my poor wandering feet have
not stumbled into.”
He glanced hurriedly at the packet of letters that he had found with
the photograph and then thrust this latest letter in with the others
and locked them all in a tin box he found in one of the drawers. When
this had been disposed of he pulled the desk out from the wall and drew
from a hidden cupboard in the back of it a quart bottle of whiskey
and a glass. The sight of the liquor caused the craving of an hour
before to seize upon him with renewed fury. He felt himself suddenly
detached, alone, with nothing else in the world but himself and this
bright fluid. It flashed and sparkled alluringly, causing all his
senses to leap. At a gulp his blood would run with fire, and the little
devils would begin to dance in his brain, and he could plan a thousand
evil deeds that he was resolved to do. He was the Blotter, and a
blotter was a worthless thing to be used and tossed aside by everyone
as worthless. He would accept the world’s low appraisement without
question, but he would take vengeance in his own fashion. He grasped
the bottle, filled the glass to the brim and was about to carry it to
his lips when the clerk whom he had passed in the outer office knocked
sharply, and, without waiting, flung open the door.
“Beg pardon, but here’s a gentleman to see you, Mr. Craighill.”
With the glass half raised, Wayne turned impatiently to greet a short
man who stood smiling at the door.
“Hello, Craighill!”
“Jimmy Paddock!” blurted Wayne.
The odour of whiskey was keen on the air and Wayne’s hand shook with
the eagerness of his appetite; but the fool of a clerk had surprised
him at a singularly inopportune moment. He slowly lowered the glass to
the desk, his eyes upon his caller, who paused on the threshold for an
instant, then strode in with outstretched hand.
“That delightful chauffeur of yours told me you were here and I thought
I wouldn’t wait for a better chance to look you up. Had to come into
town on an errand--was waiting for the trolley--recognized your man and
here I am! Well!”
The glass was at last safe on the desk and Wayne, still dazed by the
suddenness with which his thirst had been defrauded, turned his back
upon it and greeted Paddock coldly. The Reverend James Paddock had
already taken a chair, with his face turned away from the bottle, and
he plunged into lively talk to cover Craighill’s embarrassment. They
had not met for five years, and then it had been by mere chance in
Boston, when they were both running for trains that carried one to the
mountains and the other to the sea. Their ways had parted definitely
when they left their preparatory school, Wayne to enter the “Tech,”
Paddock to go to Harvard. Wayne was not in the least pleased to see
this old comrade of his youth: there was a wide gulf of time to bridge
and Wayne shrank from the effort of flinging his memory across it. As
Paddock unbuttoned his topcoat, Wayne noted the clerical collar--noted
it, it must be confessed, with contempt. He remembered Paddock as a
rather silent boy, but the young minister talked eagerly with infinite
good spirits, chuckling now and then in a way that Wayne remembered.
As his resentment of the intrusion passed, some reference to their old
days at St. John’s awakened his curiosity as to one or two of their
classmates and certain of the masters, and Wayne began to take part in
the talk.
Jimmy Paddock had been a homely boy, and the years had not improved his
looks. His skin was very dark, and his hair black, but his eyes were a
deep, unusual blue. A sad smile somehow emphasized the plainness of his
clean-shaven face. He spoke with a curious rapidity, the words jumbling
at times, and after trying vaguely to recall some idiosyncrasy that
had set the boy apart, Wayne remembered that Paddock had stammered,
and this swift utterance with its occasional abrupt pauses was due to
his method of conquering the difficulty. Behind the short, well-knit
figure Wayne saw outlined the youngster who had been the wonder of
the preparatory school football team for two years, and later at
Harvard the hero of the ’Varsity eleven. There was no question of
identification as to the physical man; but the boy he had known had
led in the wildest mischief of the school. He distinctly recollected
occasions on which Jimmy Paddock had been caned, in spite of the
fact that he belonged to a New England family of wealth and social
distinction. Paddock, with his chair tipped back and his hands thrust
into his pockets, volunteered answers to some of the questions that
were in Wayne’s mind.
“You see, Craighill, when I got out of college my father wanted me
to go into the law, but I tried the law school for about a month and
it was no good, so I chucked it. The fact is, I didn’t want to do
anything, and I used to hit it up occasionally and paint things to
assert my independence of public opinion. It was no use; couldn’t
get famous that way; only invited the parental wrath. Then a yellow
newspaper printed a whole page of pictures of American degenerates,
sons of rich families, and would you believe it, there I was, like Abou
Ben Adhem, leading all the rest! It almost broke my mother’s heart, and
my father stopped speaking to me. It struck in on me, too, to find
myself heralded as a common blackguard, so I went into exile--way up in
the Maine woods and lived with the lumber-jacks. Up there I met Paul
Stoddard. He’s the head of the Brothers of Bethlehem who have a house
over here in Virginia. The brothers work principally among men--miners,
sailors, lumbermen. It’s a great work and Stoddard’s a big chap, as
strong as a bull, who knows how to get close to all kinds of people.
I learned all I know from Stoddard. One night as I lay there in my
shanty it occurred to me that never in my whole stupid life had I done
anything for anybody. Do you see? I wasn’t converted, in the usual
sense”--his manner was wholly serious now, and he bent toward Wayne
with the sad little smile about his lips--“I didn’t feel that God was
calling me or anything of that kind; I felt that Man was calling me: I
used to go to bed and lie awake up there in the woods and hear the wind
howling and the snow sifting in through the logs, and that idea kept
worrying me. A lot of the jacks got typhoid fever, and there wasn’t a
doctor within reach anywhere, so I did the best I could for them. For
the first time in my life I really felt that here was something worth
doing, and it was fun, too. Stoddard went from there down to New York
to spend a month in the East Side and I hung on to him--I was afraid
to let go of him. He gave me things to do, and he suggested that I
go into the ministry--said my work would be more effective with an
organization behind me--but I ducked and ducked hard. I told him the
truth, about what I didn’t believe, this and that and so on; but he put
the thing to me in a new way. He said nobody could believe in man who
didn’t believe in God, too! Do you get the idea? Well, I was a long
time coming to see it that way.
“It was no good going home to knock around and no use discussing such a
thing with my family, and I knew people would think me crazy. Stoddard
was going West, to do missionary stunts in Michigan, where there
were more lumber camps, so I went along. I used to help him with the
lumber-jacks, and try to keep the booze out of them; and first thing I
knew he had me reading and getting ready for orders; he said I’d better
keep clear of divinity schools; and I guess he had figured it out that
if I got too much divinity I would get scared and back water. Then I
went home and broke the news to the family. They didn’t take much stock
in it; they thought I would take a tumble and be a worse disgrace than
ever. But there was plenty of money and I had no head for business,
anyhow, and there was a chance that I might become respectable, so I
got ordained very quietly three years ago at a mission away up on Lake
Superior where a bishop had taken an interest in me--and here I am.”
The minister drew a pipe from his pocket, filled and lighted it,
shaking his head at Craighill’s offer of a cigar.
“Thanks; I prefer this. Hope the smoke won’t be painful to you; it’s a
brand they affect out in my suburb, but it’s better than what we used
to have up in the lumber camps. I still take the comfort of a pipe,
but the drink I cut out and the swearing. As I remember, it was you
who taught me to cuss in school because my stammering made it sound so
funny.”
Wayne had recalled a good many things about Paddock but the mood he
had brought from his father’s house did not yield readily to the
confessions of this boyhood friend who had reappeared in the livery
of the Christian ministry. The new status was difficult for Craighill
to accept and, conscious of the antagonism his recital had awakened,
Paddock regretted that he had volunteered his story. The Craighill
whom he had known was a big, generous, outspoken fellow whom everybody
liked; the man before him was morose and obstinately resentful: and
the fact that he had caught him in his own office at an unusual hour,
about to indulge his notorious appetite for drink, was in itself an
unhappy circumstance. The bottle and the glass were, to say the least,
an unfortunate background for reunion. Paddock touched Wayne’s knee
lightly; he wished to regain the ground he had lost by his frankness,
which had so signally failed of response.
“You have certainly deviated considerably,” remarked Wayne without
humour. “I believe they call your kind of thing Christian sociology,
and it’s all right. I congratulate you on having struck something
interesting in this life. It’s more than I’ve been able to do. Your
story is romantic and beautiful; mine had better not be told, Jimmy.
I’m as bad as they’re made; I’ve hit the bottom hard. When you came in
I had just reached an important conclusion, and was going to empty a
quart to celebrate the event.”
“Well?” inquired the minister, studying anew the fine head; the eyes
with their hard glitter; the lips that twitched slightly; the fingers
whose trembling he had noted in the lighting of repeated cigarettes.
“Be sure I shall value your confidence, old man,” said the minister
encouragingly, smiling his sad little smile.
“I’m glad you’re interested, Jimmy, but we’ve chosen different routes.
Mine, I guess, has scenic advantages over yours and the pace is faster.
You’re headed for the heavenly kingdom. I’m going to hell.”
CHAPTER IV
THE WAYS OF WAYNE CRAIGHILL
Four days passed. Wayne Craighill ceased twirling and knotting the
curtain cord and held his right hand against the strong light of the
office window to test his nerves. The fingers twitched and trembled,
and he turned away impatiently and flung himself into a chair by his
desk, hiding his hands and their tell-tale testimony deep in his
pockets. Half a dozen times he shook himself petulantly and attacked
his work with frenzied eagerness, as though to be rid of it in a
single spurt; but after an hour thus futilely spent he threw himself
back and glared at a large etching, depicting a storm-driven galleon
riding wildly under a frightened moon, that hung against the dark-olive
cartridge paper on the wall above his desk. Shadows appeared now and
then on the ground-glass outer door, and lingered several times,
testifying to their physical embodiment by violently seizing and
rattling the knob. Craighill scowled at every assault, and presently
when some importunate visitor had both shaken and kicked the door, he
yawned and sought the window again, looking moodily down, as from a
hill-top, upon the city of his birth, where practically all his life
had been spent, the City of the Iron Heart, lying like a wedge at the
confluence of the two broad rivers.
Wayne had used himself hard, as the lines in his smooth-shaven face
testified; but the vigour of the Scotch-Irish stock survived in him,
and even to-day he carried his tall frame erectly. His head covered
with brown hair in which there was a reddish glint, was really fine and
his blue eyes, not just now at their clearest, had in them the least
hint of the dreamer. His suit of brown--a solid colour--became him: he
was dressed with an added scrupulousness as though in conformity to
an inner contrition and rehabilitation. He was in his thirtieth year
but appeared older to-day as his gaze lay upon the drifting, shifting
smoke-cloud that hung above the Greater City.
The son of Colonel Roger Craighill was inevitably a conspicuous
person in his native city and his dissipated habits had long been the
subject of despairing comment by his fellow-citizens, and the text of
occasional lightly veiled sermons in press and pulpit. Dick Wingfield
had once remarked that is was too bad that there were only ten
commandments, as this small number painfully limited Wayne Craighill’s
possible infractions. It was Wingfield who named Wayne Craighill the
Blotter, in appreciation of Wayne’s amazing capacity for drink; and
it was he who said that Wayne’s sins were merely an expression of the
law of compensation and were thrown into the scale to offset Colonel
Craighill’s nobility and virtue. Whatever truth may lie in this, it is
indisputable that the elder Craighill’s rectitude tended to heighten
the colour of his son’s iniquities.
The Blotter had been drunk again. This is what would be said all over
the Greater City. At the clubs it would be remarked that he had also
had a fight with two policemen, and that he had been put in pickle at
the Country Club and then smuggled to his office to await the arrival
of Colonel Craighill, who had been to Cleveland to address something
or other. The nobler his father’s errands abroad, the wickeder were
the Blotter’s diversions in his absences. The last time that Roger
Craighill had attended the General Assembly of the Presbyterian
Church Wayne had amused himself by violating all the city ordinances
that interposed the slightest barriers to the enjoyment of life as
he understood it. But the Blotter, it is only just to say, was still
capable of shame. His physical and moral reaction to-day were acute;
and he shrank from facing the world again. More than all, the thought
of meeting his father face to face sent the hot blood surging to his
head, intensifying its dull ache. His sister Fanny would be likely to
show her sympathy and confidence by promptly giving a tea or a dinner
to which he would be specially bidden, to demonstrate to the world
that in spite of his derelictions his family still stood by him. The
remembrance of past offenses, and of the definite routine that his
restorations followed, only increased his misery. The usual interview
with his father, with whose mild, martyr-like forbearance he had long
been familiar, rose before him intolerably.
A light tap at the inner door of Wayne’s room caused him to leap to his
feet and stand staring for a moment at a shadow on the ground glass.
The door led into Roger Craighill’s room, and as he had been thinking
of his father, the knock struck upon his senses ominously. He hesitated
an instant, curbing an impulse to fly; then the door opened cautiously,
and Joe Denny slipped in, seated himself carelessly on a table in the
centre of the room, and nursed his knee.
Consider Joe a moment; he is not the humblest figure in this chronicle:
a tall, lithe young fellow, unmistakably Irish-American, with a bang
of black hair across his forehead, and a humorous light in his dark
eyes. His grin is captivating but we are conscious also of shrewdness
in his face. (It took sharp sprinting to steal second when Joe had the
ball in his hand!) He is trimly dressed in ready-made exaggeration of
last year’s style. His red cravat is fastened with a gold pin in the
similitude of crossed bats supporting a tiny ball, symbol of our later
Olympian nine. You may, if you like, look up Joe Denny’s batting record
for the time he pitched in the Pennsylvania State League, and you
will thereby gauge the extent of New York’s loss in having bought his
“release” only a week before he broke his wizard’s arm.
Joe, at ease on the table, viewed Mr. Wayne Craighill critically, but
with respect. In his more tranquil moments Joe spoke a fairly reputable
English derived from the public schools of his native hills, but his
narrative style frequently took colour of the idiom of the diamond,
and under stress of emotion he departed widely from the instruction
imparted by the State of Pennsylvania on the upper waters of the
Susquehanna.
“Say, the Colonel’s due on the 4:30.”
Wayne straightened himself unconsciously and his glance fell upon the
desk on which lay an accumulation of papers awaiting his inspection and
signature.
“Who said so? I thought he wasn’t due till to-morrow.”
“I was up at the house when Walsh telephoned for the machine to go to
the station. I guess the Colonel wired Walsh.”
“I’d like to know why Walsh couldn’t have done me the honour to tell
me,” said Wayne sourly.
“I guess Walsh don’t know you’re back. They asked me in the front
office a while ago and I told ’em I guessed you were up at the Club;
and then I came in here through the Colonel’s room to see if you had
stayed put.”
Craighill was silent for a moment, then he asked:
“How long was I gone this time, Joe?”
He addressed young Denny without condescension, in a tone of kindness
that minimized the obvious differences between them.
“It was Wednesday night you broke loose, and this is Saturday all
right.”
“I must have bumped some of the high places--my head feels like it. How
about the newspapers?”
“Nothing doing! Walsh fixed that up all right. You see it was like
this: you made a row on the steps of the Allequippa Club when I was
trying to steer you home. I’d been waiting on the curb with a machine
till about 1 A. M., and some of the gents followed you out of the Club
and wanted you to come back and go to bed; and when a couple of cops
came along, properly not seeing anything, and not letting on, you must
up and jump on one of ’em and pound his head. Then the other cop broke
into the fuss, and there was a good deal doing and I got you into the
machine and slid for the Country Club and got a chauffeur’s bed in the
garage and sat on you till you went to sleep.”
Wayne shrugged his shoulders.
“Was that all I did? It sounds pretty tame; I must be getting
better--or worse.”
He drew a cigarette from his case and struck a match before he
remembered a rule that forbade smoking in office hours; then he found a
cigar and chewed it unlighted. Joe eyed the littered desk reflectively.
“Say, you’d better brush that off before the Colonel comes.”
“Put that stuff out of sight,” commanded Wayne and tossed him his keys.
“See here, Joe, I started Wednesday night and Thursday night I made a
row on the Club steps, and you took me out to Rosedale in the machine
and kept me there till you smuggled me in here this afternoon. That’s
all right enough, but there was another chap in the row at the Club--I
thought I was fighting the whole force, and you say there were two
policemen there. There was another fellow besides the policemen.”
“Forget it! Forget it!” grinned Denny, waving his hand airily. “The
bases were full for a few minutes and a young gent came along and took
our side against the cops, see? The two cops had us going some and this
little chap blowing in out of a minor league rapped a two-bagger on the
biggest cop’s chin. ‘You Mr. Craighill’s chauffeur?’ he says to me,
sweet and gentle-like; and between us we picked you up and threw you
into the machine and I cut for the tall, green hills. As the coal-oil
lit up and she got in motion, I looked back, and our little friend that
hit the cop was a handin’ the cop his card.”
Craighill frowned fiercely with the effort of memory.
“Who was this man that took my part? He must have followed me out of
the Club.”
“Nit; he was new talent; and listen--he was a Bible-barker.”
“A minister?”
“Sure. He wore his collar buttoned behind and a three-story vest. He
wasn’t as tall as you or me but he was good and husky and he lined out
three on the cop’s mug, snappy and zippy, like a triple-play in a tied
game.”
“A priest? It wasn’t Father Ryan?”
“It wasn’t the father; it was new talent, I tell you. The gent who came
up here to see you the night you broke loose. He was out looking for
you Thursday night; guess he heard you were going some. And after he
spiked the cop and we got off in the machine there he stood bowing and
tipping his dice to the cops and handing ’em his card.”
Light suddenly dawned upon Wayne.
“Paddock; O Lord!” he ejaculated.
A clock tinkled five on the mantel and Wayne’s manner changed. He
pointed to the outer door.
“You’d better clear out. Stop in the front office and tell Mr. Walsh
I’m here, do you understand?”
“Say, Mrs. Blair’s been lookin’ for you; she’s had the ’phone goin’ for
two days. She flew in her machine to Rosedale to look for you but they
were on and didn’t give it away. You better call her up.”
“Yes, I’ll attend to it; clear out.”
Already Colonel Craighill had quietly entered the adjoining room
followed by an office boy bearing a travelling bag. On his desk lay a
dozen sheets of paper, hardly larger than a playing card, and these he
examined with the swift ease of habit. They were reports, condensed to
the smallest compass, and expressed in bald dollars and tons all the
Craighill enterprises. It was thus that Roger Craighill, like a great
commander, viewed the broad field of his operations through the eyes
of others. Bank balances; totals of bills payable and receivable; so
much coal mined at one point; so many tons of coke ready for shipment
at another; the visible tonnage in the general market; the day’s
prices--these bare data were communicated to the chief daily at the
close of business, and in his frequent absences were sent to him by
wire. He summoned a boy.
“Please say to Mr. Walsh that I’m ready to see him.”
Walsh appeared instantly: he had, indeed, been awaiting the summons,
and was prepared for it. A definite routine attended every return of
the chief to his headquarters. He invariably called Walsh, his chief
of staff; and thereafter was ready to see his son. In every business
office the high powers are merely tolerated by the subordinates, to
whom the senior partner or the president is usually “the boss” or “the
old man.” Roger Craighill was not to be so apostrophized even behind
his back: he was “the Colonel” to everyone. To a few contemporaries
only was Craighill “Roger” and these were citizens bound together by
memories of the old city, who as young men had cheered Kossuth through
the streets in 1851, and who a decade later had met in the Committee of
Safety or marched South with musket or sword in hand.
“Ah, Walsh, how is everything going? I see that the pumps at No. 18 are
out of order again. I think I’d better go after the Watkins people
personally about that; we’ve been patient enough with them.”
Walsh nodded. He was short and thick and quite bald. He had formerly
been the “credit man” of one of the Craighill enterprises, which, it
happened, was a wholesale grocery; but he had grown into the confidence
of Roger Craighill and when Craighill organized the grocery business
into a corporation and began directing it from the fourteenth story of
the Craighill building, Walsh became Craighill’s confidential man of
affairs, with broad administrative powers.
Walsh thrust his hands into the pockets of his office coat and began
talking at once of several matters of importance connected with the
Craighill interests. Craighill nodded oftener than he spoke as Walsh
made his succinct statements. There was no sentiment in Walsh; his
voice was as dry and hard as his facts. He had studied credits so long
that his life’s chief concern was solvency. He could tell you any day
in the week the amount of bituminous coal in the bins at Cincinnati or
Louisville; or whether the corner grocers of Johnstown or Youngstown
had paid for their last purchases from the Wayne-Craighill Company.
Craighill’s inquiries were largely perfunctory, a fact not lost upon
Walsh, who fidgeted in his chair.
“Everything seems all right,” said Craighill, turning round and facing
Walsh. “By the way, did the home papers report my address before
the Western Reserve Society? Here’s a very fair account of it from
the Cleveland papers. I’d be glad if you’d look it over. I’m often
troubled, Walsh, by the amount of time these public and semi-public
matters take, but in one way and another I am well repaid. They inject
a certain variety into my life, and the acquaintances and friendships I
have made among statesmen, educators, financiers and men of affairs are
really of great value to me.”
“Um.”
Walsh twirled the clipping in his fingers. The discussion of anything
outside the range of business embarrassed him. It was perfectly proper
for Roger Craighill to spend his time with other gentlemen of wealth
and influence in making after-dinner speeches and in seeking ways and
means of ameliorating the condition of the poor whites or the poor
blacks of the South, or in stimulating interest in the merit system, or
in reforming the currency. Walsh thought favourably of these things,
though he did not think of them deeply or often.
“Ah, Wayne!”
The moment had arrived for the son to show himself and Wayne Craighill
entered from his own room and walked quickly to his father’s desk.
Walsh rose and examined the young man critically with his small, shrewd
eyes, then left with an abrupt good night. Father and son greeted each
other cordially; the father held the young man’s hand a moment as they
stood by the desk.
“Wayne, my boy!” said the elder warmly, “sit down. How’s Fanny? She
came home from York Harbour rather early this year.”
“Oh, she’s all right,” replied Wayne, though he had not seen his
sister during his father’s absence. He assumed that the fact of his
latest escapade was known to his father. Everyone always seemed to
know, though for several years Roger Craighill had suspended the
rebukes, threats and expostulations with which he had met Wayne’s
earlier lapses. His father’s cordiality put Wayne on guard at once: he
suspected that he was to be taken to task for his sins with a severity
that had drawn interest during his immunity.
“I am sorry to see that you have overdrawn your account somewhat,”
remarked Colonel Craighill, holding up one of the papers and examining
it through his eye-glasses. His manner was now that of a teacher who
has summoned an erring student for reproof. The mildness of his manner
irritated Wayne, who was, moreover, honestly surprised by his father’s
statement.
“I didn’t know that; in fact I don’t believe that can be right, sir.
What’s the amount?”
“Four thousand dollars.”
Wayne’s surprise increased.
“It’s an error. I have overdrawn no such amount; I’m sure of that.” But
his head still ached and he sought vainly for an explanation of the
item on the sheet his father passed over to him.
“Wayne,” began Colonel Craighill, “I simply cannot have you do this
sort of thing. It’s bad for you, for you can have no need of any such
sum of money in addition to your regular income and your salary; and
it’s bad for the office discipline. I have prided myself that some of
the foremost men of the country have placed their sons in my care.
Think of the effect on these young men out there,”--he waved his hand
toward the outer offices--“of your extravagant, wasteful ways.”
Wayne was familiar enough with the black depths of his infamy and he
knew his value as an example; but he groped blindly for an explanation
of the overdraft. Suddenly the knowledge flashed upon him that it
represented the price of some shares in a coal-mining company in
which his father was interested. They had been offered for sale in
the settlement of an estate and as he supposed that the Craighill
interests already controlled the property he had purchased them on
his own account a few days before, with a view to turning them over
to his father on his return if he wished them. The amount was small
as such transactions go, and as he had not the required sum in bank
he overdrew his account in the office. His own income from various
sources--real estate, bonds and shares representing his half of the
considerable fortune left by Mrs. Craighill--was collected through
the office, where he kept an open account. His father’s readiness to
pillory him increased the irritability left by his latest dissipation.
A four-year-old child will not brook injustice; there is nothing a
man resents more. He could very quickly turn his father’s criticism
by an explanation; but just now in his bitterness he shrank from
commendation. The gravamen of his offense was trifling; he had been
misjudged; his pride had been touched; he refused to justify himself.
He returned to his own room where a little later Walsh found him.
Walsh, having tapped on the outer door, was admitted in sulky silence
and squeezed his fat bulk into a chair by Wayne’s desk. He gazed at the
son of his chief with what, for Walsh, approximated benevolence.
“I’ve been drunk,” remarked Wayne, with an air of suggesting an
inevitable topic of conversation.
“Um,” growled Walsh. “I had heard something of it.”
“I suppose everybody has heard it. My sprees seem to lack a decent
cloistral quiet some way. Joe told me you had shut up the newspapers.
When my head stops aching I’ll try to thank you in proper language.”
“I’ll tell you how you can avoid getting drunk in the future if you are
interested,” remarked Walsh.
“If you mean burning down the distilleries I’d like you to know that
I’m not in a mood for joking.”
“Um. I was not going to advise you to commit arson. I have never
offered you any advice before; I’m going to give you some now. You’ve
got about all there is out of drink and you’d better get interested in
something else. The only way to stop is to quit, and you can do it.
I’ve a notion that you and I are going to be better acquainted in the
future. Such being the idea I’d like to be sure that you are going to
keep straight. You make me tired.”
Wayne was not sure that he understood. No one, least of all his
father’s grim, silent lieutenant, had ever spoken to him in just this
tone, and he was surprised to find that Walsh’s method of attack
interested him. He was humble before the old fellow in the linen coat.
“What’s the use, Tom? I’m well headed for the bottom; better let me go
on down.”
“The top is less crowded and more comfortable than the bottom. Just as
a matter of my own dignity I’d stay up as high as I could if I were
you. I had a good chance to go down myself once, but I took a dip or
two and it didn’t look good down below--too many bones. Um. That’s all
of that.”
He chewed an unlighted cigar ruminantly until Wayne spoke.
“The Colonel’s going to get married.”
“Um,” Walsh nodded. His emotions were always under control and Wayne
did not know whether he had imparted fresh information or not. He
imagined he had, for it was not likely that his father would make a
confidant of Walsh in any social matter.
“The Colonel knows his own business.”
“As a matter of fact, does he?”
“Um.”
Walsh’s cigar pointed to a remote corner of the ceiling, but his eyes
were fixed on Wayne. He had apparently no intention of discussing
Colonel Craighill’s marriage and he abruptly changed the subject.
“You bought fifty shares of Sand Creek stock the other day from the
Moore estate.”
Wayne scowled; these were the shares he had overdrawn his office
account to buy, with the intention of turning them over to his father,
and his father’s criticism of the overdraft rankled afresh.
“Yes; I bought fifty shares. How did you find it out?”
“Tried to buy ’em myself and found you had beat me to ’em.”
“I overdrew my office account to buy them. I thought father would want
them; but now he can’t have them.”
“Why?”
“Because in a fit of righteousness he jumped me for my overdraft. It
was the first time I was ever over; you know that, and it would have
squared itself in a few days anyhow. But if you want those shares----”
“I don’t want ’em. The Colonel wants ’em. He told me to get ’em but I
didn’t know there was any great rush about it. The Colonel’s friends in
New York, that he got into the Sand Creek Company, asked him to pick up
those shares; their control is by a narrow margin, and they wanted to
fortify themselves. They’d looked to the Colonel to take care of this
little bunch. Does he know you’ve got ’em?”
“Oh, no; not on your life! After jumping me for buying them? My dear
Tom Walsh, there _are_ moments when the worm will turn!”
This was the first occasion on which Wayne had ever spoken of his
father to Walsh except in terms of respect, and Walsh was perfectly
aware of it.
“If I were you I’d turn those shares over to the Colonel.”
“If it’s anything to you--if you’re going to be criticized for failing
to get them, I’ll give them to him--or I’ll sell them to you.”
“No, you don’t have to worry about me, my boy; I can take care of
myself, but I don’t want you to feel that way toward your father. It
ain’t healthy; it ain’t right.”
“Please don’t do that, Tom. My head aches, and you’re too good a fellow
to preach. I didn’t know those shares were so valuable; it was just a
piece of fool luck that I got them. I suppose they thought letting me
have them was the same as passing them over to father.”
“That’s the way it ought to be.”
“But, dear old Tom,” and he laid his hand on Walsh’s thick knee, “dear
old Tom, it isn’t, it isn’t, it ain’t!”
Ìåðåäèò Íèêîëñîí, Ëîðäû âûñîêîãî ðåøåíèÿ
© Copyright: Âÿ÷åñëàâ Òîëñòîâ, 2023
Ñâèäåòåëüñòâî î ïóáëèêàöèè ¹223121600648
Ñâèäåòåëüñòâî î ïóáëèêàöèè ¹223121600648
Ðåöåíçèè