He began to sweat, to rub his forehead. It was early evening, and Ernest had not yet returned from the shops. Martin, however, had come home with his father. Joseph called him into his bedroom. Once there, however. Joseph found he could say nothing to the young man, who waited mutely for him to speak. Joseph looked into those calm, faintly troubled blue eyes, at the singular purity of the pale features. “He’s almost a lass,” he thought in despair. “If—if things were not as I thought, he wouldn’t know, anyway. He would never suspect any one.”
Never suspect any one! Ah, perhaps that was right! Perhaps there was nothing to suspect. Did one suspect one’s son? Horrible thought. Suspect him of what? Joseph, sweating coldly and feebly, did not know. But his dim fright and dismay dried his throat, set his pulses to beating as though warned by some secret and rising instinct. “Do you in.” Would Ernest “do him in”? How could he? Would he? No, surely never! Not Ernest, his son. He was filled with abject shame. Georgie was a rascal, and was trying to strike at Ernest through Joseph. What had Ernest ever done to cause his father to suspect him? Nothing. And again: suspect him of what?
Nevertheless, ashamed though he was, Joseph, too casually, walked into the office of Ernest the next day and mentioned that there was “some little matter” he wanted to set right in his mind. He asked for the books. As he asked, standing by Ernest’s desk, he smiled. Ernest, slightly surprised, looked up. Something in his father’s face caused his eyes to point and sharpen. Then for the first time he noticed that his father was much thinner and that his color was bad, faintly yellow and waxen. He saw that his breath was rather short. But more than all these, he saw that the fixed smile was too casual, too amiable. And he knew.
In a quiet voice he called to Martin, who kept his books in a small adjoining office. He asked his brother to bring the books. Then, while waiting he drummed his fingers softly on his desk, his eyes fixed absently on the distance. The silence in the room became palpable. Joseph sat down slowly; there was a rising sickness in him. I am mad, he thought. He stared at Ernest’s calm and thoughtful face, saw the strength and compactness of his shoulders, the power in the gently tapping fingers. Oh, I am quite mad, he thought. What has he ever done to deserve this from his father? But, blast it, I have a right to see the books! No sense in him getting uppish because I want to see the books!
Martin brought in the large black books. “Thank you,” said Ernest pleasantly. “Sit down, Martin. If there is anything I am not sure about I want you to explain it to Pa, yourself.” He regarded Joseph blandly. “If you remember, Pa, this was all run over at our last meeting.”
Joseph’s thin fingers turned the wide pages. He could not keep them from trembling, nor his eyes from blurring. He heard Ernest’s voice quietly accompanying his pretense of looking at the figures. He saw none of them. Frowning, he ran his forefinger up and down the columns, pursing his lips, as if he added and scrutinized. He asked a few halting questions. The sickness was taking such a grip upon him now that he did not know what he was saying. He saw that Martin was watching him gravely, with a faintly troubled expression. Ernest’s head was at his shoulder, the light and virile hair touched by sunlight. All at once Joseph wanted to cry. He closed the book.
“Would you like to see the delinquent accounts, too?” asked Ernest, pushing the book towards Martin; and taking the next one. “I can tell you within a few hundreds what is owed us. But here is the book if you wish to see for yourself.” Never had his voice been so gentle.
Joseph opened the book and did not see one solitary figure. Ernest talked on, turning the pages and explaining. The door opened and Armand, grimy from the foundry, entered the room. He glanced at Ernest and Joseph, and seemed profoundly startled. Then, forcibly making his expression amiable again, he came up to the desk.
He compelled Joseph’s eyes, held them. “Ah,” he said, “I’m glad you remembered to look up the Macy account! As I told Ernest the last time, I am not satisfied with the way they have been meeting their accounts.” He shook his head smilingly at Ernest. “I’m afraid you have been too kind to these people, my Ernest, so I asked your father to see for himself and give me his opinion.”
Ernest regarded him thoughtfully. “Ah,” he said. Suddenly he smiled, and looked aside. But there was a gloomy fold about his lips.
What madness! thought Armand. What indiscretion! How can a man be such a fool as this Joseph? But I am not guiltless of this, either. He laid his hand on Joseph’s shoulder. “I need you, Joseph. If you are quite done, will you follow me into the grinding room?”
Joseph stood up. He was only forty-six, but he felt feeble and old. Docilely, or as if half-drugged, he left the room with Armand.
Alone with his brother, Martin stood up and piled the books together. He was always desperately ill at ease with Ernest and avoided being alone with him. Ernest rarely detained him, and he was therefore extremely surprised when Ernest said kindly: “Sit down, Martin, I want to talk to you.” Martin sat down and regarded him with a disturbed anxiety. His surprise grew when Ernest, smiling with exceptional friendliness, leaned back in his chair as if he had unlimited leisure.
“Martin, you know we are making a lot of money? One of these days we shall be rich.”
“I suppose so,” replied Martin. His voice was polite but disinterested. Ernest raised his eyebrows with an attempt of humor, and succeeded only in being weighty.
“It does not seem to interest you, Martin. Why doesn’t it? Money is the greatest thing in the world. It’s power. Think what one can do with power!” I’m not saying what I want to say, he thought, but how can you talk with those blue girl’s-eyes on you, as innocent as a baby’s?’ I wonder if he knows the simplest facts of life? He became annoyed, not at Martin, but at himself for his long neglect of his Younger brother.
“Power,” repeated Martin softly, as if digesting the word. A slight color stood out on his cheekbones. He looked up alertly at Ernest, and his flush deepened as if with excitement. “Yes, it can get you what you want! I never thought of that! Is any of this money mine?”
Ernest bit his lip to keep from smiling at this naïveté. “Yes,” he said in the considerate voice one used to a child, “you have an equal share in this, as you must know. You have your weekly salary, which is only a small portion. But there is the principal—the shops. All the things we are to do—”
Martin stood up, as if his excitement lifted him. He waved his hand as though brushing something aside. “I don’t want much,” he said. “Not very much. Only enough to—” He stopped abruptly. His chin dropped upon his chest.
“Only enough to—what?” asked Ernest curiously.
Again Martin waved his hand. “It doesn’t matter,” he said in a low tone. “Except that I might want to go away soon.”
Ernest was astounded. He sat forward in his chair, which responded to his movement with a loud creak. “You want to go away? Why? Where to? What would you do?”
“I might want to visit England,” replied Martin, not looking at him. Ernest frowned, bit the knuckle of his index finger, a habit of his.
“England! Whatever for? What did England ever do for us? Besides, you can hardly remember much of England. You mustn’t listen to Ma’s romantic tales. I was older than you and I remember a good deal. There is no opportunity there for anyone. I never want to see the place again.”
Martin was silent.
“Oh, come, Martin! Damn it! You never talk to me. Why not? Aren’t I your brother? I’m afraid you’ve been traipsing around too much with that fool of a Jacques Bouchard. It isn’t good for sound people to associate with invalids. The invalid’s point of view is always sickly and twisted, and you can catch that view just as easily as you can catch the measles. Look here, I’m going to Philadelphia next week on business connected with the mines. Would you like to go with me?”
Martin was silent so long that Ernest began to feel irritable. Then Martin looked at him fully.
“You never cared before what I did or thought,
Ernest. Why are you so interested, now?”
Ernest stared at him, antagonistically. But he could not stare down those steady blue eyes. He saw with a sense of shock that Martin’s eyes were full of the same expression as Amy Drumhill’s eyes; there was the same innocence, the same candor, the same dignified simplicity. He saw that for Martin and Amy life was not complex, full of lights and shades and alarums and secret places and lusts and greedinesses. It was a straight and honest road, and their feet were set on it straightly. He thought without actual words: How free a man could be, on such a road with such feet! He would never have anything to fear or watch. He would never see rascals or cutthroats or any enemies. He would never need to be on guard. And, God, how restful it would be not to be on guard for a while!
“Why am I interested?” he repeatedly absently. “Why am I interested? Why, damn it all, why shouldn’t I be interested? We aren’t children any more. All this, all this business I—we have built up is ours. We are in this together—inseparable. It is ours! We’ve got to make plans. Pa won’t live forever, neither will Armand. Then it is all ours, yours, mine, Raoul’s, Eugene’s. It’s something that is growing beyond anything we can imagine, and we’ve got to understand each other.”
Martin turned from him abruptly. He spoke in a voice of strange and quiet violence: “I want no part of this. I don’t want it. You must not plan on me being in it or wanting any of it.”
“Eh?” Ernest could not believe that he had heard aright. His mouth fell open. Martin swung upon him again with something like fierceness. His face became scarlet, and his blue eyes flashed. Ernest stared at him, stupefied.
“I don’t want it!” cried Martin. “I never wanted any part of it! It—it’s hateful to me, things made for killing and destroying. You always thought I was a fool, just because I never spoke about it. But I know! I know that Army contract was a lie! I know where the guns and the gunpowder and the cannon went to! It doesn’t matter, though. But things will go on, and there’ll be more wars and more guns and gunpowder, and more blood and death! I can’t have any part in it! It won’t end, there, either. Jacques says you are too big for just guns and gunpowder. You’ll have other things, hundreds, thousands of men working for you! Yes, it’s all you! Nothing but you!
“And when you have all that—what? This!” He ran to the window that faced north and pointed through it fiercely. “Look there! Shacks, scores of them, filled with the men that work for you and make you money! Miserable wretches, half-starved and brutalized. Prisoners. Worse than the niggers in the South. Sweating, working, dying in these foundries! And those mines you got for a song—you’ll fill them with men like these, hopeless and stamped on and desperate. You—you’re like a spider! You’ll spread out, and wherever you spread you’ll bring injustice and despair and hate and greed and death. There’ll never be any luck in you, for you haven’t a heart, and you have no mercy. It isn’t only the money you want, or power. It’s something beyond you. Why, O God, you’re a pestilence! And the pestilence won’t end when you die—it’ll go on in your children!”
Ernest, shaken and enraged, sprang to his feet. His face turned purple. “Why, you damn fool! Shut up! Shut up!” he shouted, beating his fists on his desk. But Martin would not be stopped now. He ran back to his brother.
“You can’t shut me up! Because it’s all true, every word of it. And you know it. You don’t know what love is, or real kindness. You don’t seem to feel that these men down there are human beings, with flesh like yours and bellies like yours and blood like yours. They’re only living machines to give you your power. You are a murderer! You make guns to kill men, and you kill men who make your guns to kill other men. And what for? You don’t know! You just have to go on doing it, for it is you, yourself.
“But I’ll have no part in it. I’m going away soon, and forget all this! I’m going away where I won’t have to smell the gunpowder and the guns, all the things made to kill. Where I won’t have to see you, and the death and the misery you make.” He struck the books loudly with the palm of his hand. “Look, if a miracle could occur, these books could be written red, in blood! Everything you touch would have bloody prints on it. Oh, I know that Uncle George and Armand and Pa started it, but it would not have gone far without you. It is all you! And it’s you I am going away from.”
Ernest sat down slowly, still staring at his brother. His face was livid. “Why, you infernal, you blasted fool!” he said slowly. “You maniac! You’ve read too many fool books, that’s all’s the matter with you. Too many fairy stories. ‘Blood!’ Bah! You should have been an actor. Sing your songs on the street corners! Death—misery—greed—murder! Why, damn you, I haven’t any words for you! You put a bad taste in my mouth.
“Look you, you idiot, I am in business. I make what is demanded. I make the best of guns and the best of gunpowder, and the world wants these things. What do I care what becomes of them when they leave this factory? O hell, there is no use wasting words on you. You wouldn’t understand the simplest of explanations. How Pa would enjoy listening to you, you white toad! His life’s work, in here; he’s given the very best in him, and he’s rightly proud of it. Damn you, I ought to clout your girl’s face!”
Martin put his hand to his head, and his hand was shaking. He gave the impression of not having heard Ernest speak.
“Partners of death,” he said dully to himself. “Partners of death. I’ll have no part in this.”
And he walked out of the room, quickly, as though about to be pursued.
Ernest spat, leaned back in his chair. “I have,” he said aloud, staring grimly at the ceiling, “a very fine family. A family of fools!”
CHAPTER XVII
That night, as customary, Martin murmured something about seeing Jacques Bouchard, and left the house earlier than usual. Hilda, who no longer had the young man’s confidence, pursed her lips as she embroidered a fire-screen. Ernest was sitting under a lamp at the heavy mahogany table, figuring, frowning and making notes in his neat black book, while Joseph smoked, dozed, stared at the fire, and read the latest papers from Philadelphia. Dorcas had been sent to bed early; only Hilda and Joseph and Ernest occupied the low-ceilinged, comfortable but crowded “drawing room.”
A gray and lonely feeling spread through Hilda’s plump breast. Her face had lost its old rosy vivacity and brightness, and was pursed, rather florid and sober. In her black silk gown with its immense flounces and spread, her lace cap and gold chains and rings, she was a pleasant picture of a middle-aged matron. But her expression was dissatisfied, as though she were searching wistfully for something she would never find again. She looked intently at Ernest, then at her husband. Joseph, she thought uneasily, was certainly much thinner, almost “puny.” Handsome, fine-drawn and nervous as ever, he yet seemed to have broken inside, so that his glance, quick though it was, was irresolute and a little bewildered, and his voice, though sharp and ready as ever, yet had a habit of wavering half through a sentence. “He works too hard,” thought his wife anxiously. “And he mithers himself. What can it be? Why doesn’t he talk to Ernest as he used to do? Now, they never speak, except to quarrel. And Martin, always with that poor crippled milksop of a Jacques, when he should be with his family. I declare, never was a woman tried so before! I miss my lasses; I wish Ernest had not gotten the idea of sending Florabelle away, even if she was pert and too ready and a minx. I miss her. I never see Dorcas either, with that stiff-backed Miss Prescott pushing her about. I wish we had never come here, money or not! I wish we were still in England in Reddish!”
She blinked away a few tears, pursed her lips harder than ever, and intricately filled in a leaf. She saw herself wandering down Sandy Lane, over the little bridge, into the dells where she and her children found the very earliest wild violets. And the tavern, with its smell of hops and sausage, and the black walnut panelling, the latticed windows, the long slow sunshine, the laughter and ease and great burning fire Her friends rose up before her, buxom young housewives, quarrelling an
d smiling and weeping. She saw the kitchen of the old house, with her pots shining like gold on the walls, and the baby’s cradle rocking gently on the white-flagged hearth. Oh, there was nothing like England, dear England! She sobbed aloud, dryly, then guiltily glanced at Ernest and Joseph. Joseph had fallen asleep in his winged flounced chair, but Ernest was regarding her alertly.
“What’s the matter, Ma?”
Hilda lifted her embroidery closer to her eyes. “I was just thinking of England,” she replied, melancholy. “I think we would all have been better off if we had stayed there.”
Ernest grunted. “Living and dying servants, or bootblacks? Ridiculous. You don’t know when you’re well off, Ma.”
“If you mean by being well off, having money, then I’d rather be in England,” said Hilda with spirit. “I haven’t even any friends here. Not one, except Madam Bouchard, and she is getting peculiar. Joseph has wore himself out, working, and Martin never speaks and is always with that Jacques, and—” She paused, surprised, for at the mention of Martin’s name Ernest had scowled and tightened his mouth. “Now,” she added resignedly, “what is the matter between you and Martin again?”
“Nothing,” he answered. “Are you certain he is always with Jacques Bouchard?”
“Most certainly. Madam Bouchard often speaks of how fond they are of each other, and mentions Martin being there. Whatever made you think he went somewhere else?”
“Oh, I don’t know. But Mr. Renfield mentioned seeing him come from the river-way one night, about ten. It was a very bad night, rain and sleet, and Martin had presumably gone to the Bouchards’.”
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