“Well, why not think of it, fast! Alex’s brother is Senator George Peale, and he’s an even better friend of ours than Alex himself. We can spare the money for the bonds. And look what our income will be! We have ideas; we have imagination, a forward look.”
Stephen’s hands rested on the brief case. Of course, he had always known. But, in his belief that mankind was really inherently decent and honorable, he had not believed anything would come of discussions. Aaron often loved to speculate, just for the pleasure of speculation.
“What does Pa now say about your idea?” asked Stephen, keeping his head averted. He knew, even before Rufus answered with enthusiasm.
“Well, Pa’s now come to my way of thinking, after all this time.”
Stephen’s bones were cold and felt stiff in his thin body. He said, “What will become of Joe? He owns the biggest block of stock in his feeders and railroads, and he is a director.”
Rufus, though he knew Stephen, was taken aback by this puerility. “Joe? He’ll be glad he doesn’t have to wear himself out trying to borrow money to pay the interest on his bonds. It’s too big a strain on a man his age.”
“I happen to know he hasn’t any reserves,” said Stephen in his dull and abstracted voice. “What will he live on? How will he support his family?”
Rufus snapped his fingers. “Oh, Joe’s an old friend. We can be generous.” He was full of triumph. “Joe’s a good railroader. We can even put him in charge of running the feeders, and connecting up the little railroads with our main line.”
“You mean, he’d be working for us, as our employee?” Stephen showed no indignation, only a faint interest, and Rufus became excited.
“Why not? It would be a big relief for him. A good salary, no responsibilities. And, in a way, he’d be proud to see the expansion of what was once his own property. In himself, he has no progressive ideas.”
Stephen leaned his elbows on his desk and cupped his narrow chin in his hands and stared out the window. “Joe,” he said, “is a proud man. I don’t think he’d survive what would practically be confiscation of his property. I don’t think he’d work for us.”
Rufus became affectionately impatient. “Steve! Joe’s a practical man.”
Stephen did not appear to have heard him. He went on: “If we buy up Joe’s notes, his stock will become worthless. He’ll have nothing to leave his family.”
“Must we always consider others at our own expense?” Rufus was honestly outraged.
“Did we ever?” asked Stephen drearily.
This made Rufus laugh once more. He slapped Stephen on the shoulder again with rollicking amusement. “No, we didn’t How would we ever have made money if we had?”
“There’s such a thing as principle,” said Stephen hopelessly.
Rufus gaped. “In business? What are you talking about, Steve?” He was utterly sincere, and utterly aghast at his brother’s childishness. “Where would anyone get if one constantly thought about ‘principles’? Why, nowhere, except to the poor farm. But, of course, you aren’t serious.”
Stephen said nothing.
“One must expand, or decline and go out of business,” Rufus went on, encouraged by Stephen’s silence. “One must be progressive. …”
Stephen stirred out of his apathy and lifted his small brown eyes to Rufus contemplatively. “Progressive? To where?”
Rufus stood up and began to walk up and down the room rapidly. “Steve, you surely know that we are on the brink of the age of expansion and progress! The whole damned country! The territories! Why, it’s not a dream, linking the east coast to the west! Big railroaders are already talking about it, and it’ll soon be a fact! There’s no end to expansion. Progressive? Why not?”
Stephen said, “Can’t there ever be progress without misery and despair and bankruptcy and exploitation—and betrayal?”
“No, there can’t!” replied Rufus with annoyed vehemence. “And you know that, too.”
“Yes,” mused Stephen. “I know. Or at least I know that’s what many men think. Look here, Rufus, this country’s big enough for all of us, without cutting throats. It might take a little longer, but there would be national peace and confidence and cooperation, and more certainty in human lives. A man wouldn’t need to be watching all the time, afraid of his competitors and his ‘friends.’”
“Now you’re really hidebound,” said Rufus indulgently. “You know the idea is fantastic.”
“Yes, of course I know,” said Stephen. “I know it only too well.”
Rufus was exultant. He stood behind Stephen and pressed his hands warmly on his brother’s shoulders. “Competition is the life of all progress,” he said. “You do believe that, don’t you?”
“Certainly,” Stephen’s hands lay flexed on his brief case. “But can’t it be honest competition?”
“No, it can’t. It can only be dog eat dog. As for myself, I don’t want to be a little dog. I want to be a big one,” and he made an amusing sound as he clicked his teeth together.
“Even though Joe Baynes would be eaten up in the process?”
“Oh, Joe.” Rufus removed his hands. “Joe’s a businessman himself. He wouldn’t hold it against us. He’d do the same to us, you can be sure, if he had the opportunity.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” said Stephen without emphasis. “I know him too well. He’s twenty-two years older than you are, and twenty years older than I. I’ve been his closest friend for many years, and I’ve always admired him, and I know everything about him.”
Rufus withdrew to the fire. He kicked at a coal thoughtfully. He said, “If we don’t take over his bonds, the Capital will. That’s certain. And the Capital won’t give him a job, and so he’ll have nothing. He’s sensible. He’ll accept half a loaf.”
The Capital Railroad. Stephen wrinkled his dry brow. Rufus was right, of course. Stephen sighed, and the sigh was audible in the room. He snapped the lock of the brief case shut and straightened his shoulders.
“You think Alex Peale will sell the bonds to the Capital?”
“Why, unquestionably, Steve! In fact—” Rufus paused, then continued after his hesitation—“Alex as much as offered the bonds to us last week, when I saw him. He’d rather we’d have them, instead of Capital. But the bank can’t go on, not collecting interest. Alex has to do something. Good God, he’s a banker! Do you expect him to lose money?”
“No, I certainly don’t.”
“Well, then?”
“If Joe can continue paying the interest, if he can pay the interest now—”
“But he can’t.”
Stephen made no reply. His gaunt body was bent against the livid light that poured through the windows.
“Even if he could,” said Rufus with sudden hard impatience, “as of today, he wouldn’t be able to go on. He hasn’t the imagination, the foresight, the daring. He’d be in trouble again, in a year, two years, three years. His properties don’t pay their way, and you know it.”
“We could help, by putting links between his little railroads and our line,” said Stephen.
Rufus was shocked. “You don’t mean it!” he cried. “It’d cost us too much money, and the returns would not come in in any quantity for a long time. Why should we make him such a gift, friend or no friend? And what would our own stockholders say? They’re all for rapid expansion. One has to consider one’s stockholders.” He waited; then, as Stephen did not speak, he went on in a louder and more incredulous voice: “But, of course, you aren’t serious! Pa would never agree to it, and you know it.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” assented Stephen sadly.
“There you are! And now Pa’s all for buying up the bonds.” Rufus added, “I wish you wouldn’t talk so idly, Steve. It’s time-wasting. You know that we don’t have the time for mere fruitless conversation. What shall I tell Alex tomorrow? Of course, Pa and I have made up our minds, but we’d like your formal assent, as vice-president.” He could not keep the edge of contempt out of his voice.
“Let me think about it for a few hours,” replied Stephen. He stood up, and held his brief case in his hand. “In the meantime, I have to go out for a while.”
“I’m going to the station,” said Rufus, again the amiable brother. “Let me drive you.” He had accomplished what he had come to accomplish, and was jubilant.
Stephen looked at him, his face grayer than ever in the gray light. “No, I have only to go to the bank downstairs, and then I must go on a little private business of my own.”
5
Rufus looked through the window, waiting for Stephen to emerge from the building. But some time passed. So, he had gone to the bank first, as he had said. Rufus had never had occasion to doubt Stephen’s word, nor had he ever caught him in a lie; however, falsehood was so much a part of his own nature that he still could not believe that the truth lived in any man.
Stephen finally emerged from the general front door that led to the bank and all the offices. His greatcoat was buttoned high on his neck; he wore that “damned old-fashioned tall hat” of his. It was like him never to know when a style passed and became ridiculous. The wind caught the “stovepipe,” and Stephen, staggering a little under the assault of the gale, clutched wildly at the hat, his brief case abruptly swinging outward and catching the hat of a passer-by. Rufus could not hear what went on, but he saw that Stephen, very flustered and almost servile, was apologizing, and the passer-by was glaring. The more Stephen explained and apologized, the more outraged was the other man, straightening himself up so that he towered over Stephen.
Rufus laughed boisterously, shook his head, and went back to Stephen’s desk, which had been his father’s. He sat down in Stephen’s chair and methodically went through all the drawers and read all the papers. He was disappointed again. Then his eye lit on the files, and he went to them briskly. But they were locked. Aha! Rufus regarded the files with cunning satisfaction. So, he was hiding something, was he, the gray fish? He was so pleased to discover that the files were locked that he never bothered to consider that perhaps Stephen, who locked the files at night, had as yet had no occasion to unlock them this morning.
He sat on Stephen’s desk for a few moments, gleefully reflecting on his triumph over Stephen this morning. It had been absurdly easy. He and his father would laugh at it tonight, and tomorrow he, Rufus, would have a fine dinner with his dear friend, Mr. Alex Peale, in Mr. Peale’s splendid home, and all arrangements would be made to buy up old Joe Baynes’s bonds. Perhaps the senator would be there, too. Certainly he would be there! He was in Portersville at this very moment, in his old home, mending his political fences and solicitously, and with tenderness, interviewing his constituents.
And then, after the dinner, after cigars and port and conversation, he, Rufus, would go to a discreet “little place” with which he had become well acquainted the last month or two. His expression of anticipation and enjoyment slowly began to fade, and now a vicious look glinted in his eyes. Damn Lydia. It was all her fault. Sometimes he wanted to throw the obscene fact into her cold dark face, but after all there were some things a man did not say to his wife, even if she had taken another bedroom for herself and had left her husband’s bed. Rufus had never asked why. So far, he contented himself by looking wounded and sorrowful in Lydia’s presence, and very stately, in his hurt. He would not answer his mother’s pertinent questions; even with her he occasionally acted, for he was born theatrical and it gave him some satisfaction to exercise his natural histrionic gifts.
The strange thing was that he was truly hurt and wounded, and deeply puzzled. He loved his wife. There was a mystery about Lydia, an elusiveness, which had captivated him even when he had first been attracted to her sister. She was so complete, so composed; she was a lady as his mother would never be a lady. There was such a depthless enigma in her lovely dark eyes, such a perfect contour to her slim cheeks, such an exciting dark fire in her masses of hair. Her tall figure was excellent, and her taste could not be surpassed. She carried herself like a queen, serenely, without imperiousness, yet with soft and sure command. She did not sway languidly, as other women swayed, but walked smoothly and assuredly. Rufus, brooding over her and his baffling wrongs, thought of her long white throat, her long white arms and beautiful hands, her mouth that was strong and pink and firm. Lydia had “character.” She was also amusing, as well as composed and equal to any contingency. She had loved him.
I love her, not just for her appearance, and her manners, and the fact that she is a lady, but because I can trust her. Rufus looked up, astonished. It was true. He trusted Lydia, he who had never trusted anyone else, not even his mother. Now his pain became a live and twisting thing in him. He remembered the earlier months of his marriage, and Lydia’s passion for him, her joy in him, her infinite tenderness, her reciprocating love. Things had begun to go wrong only after her conception of Cornelia. Lydia had avoided him, averted her eyes from him, seldom spoke to him, answered him coolly when he insisted. He had attributed this to her pregnancy and had waited with eagerness for her to be delivered. But things had become untenable after the birth, rather than better.
Of course, he thought tentatively, he could demand his rights as a husband. But he, who shrank from nothing else, shrank from this. He knew that Lydia would submit if he insisted, but the submission would be loathsome to him who had known her responses. She must be won back from that strange and inimical world to which she had retreated, and from which she would not emerge even to nurse her child. This retreat had occasioned the immediate necessity and trouble of finding a wet nurse. Lydia, apparently, did not care. Sophia, outraged, reported that Lydia rarely went into the nursery.
Stephen walked some distance after leaving the bank, keeping his eyes down in his usual way and so avoiding the necessity for greeting any acquaintance. He knew in what derisive repute he was held by almost everyone, rich or poor or middle class, and it hurt him less to see no one than to catch the sliding eyes of mockery in otherwise friendly faces.
In his childhood and boyhood he had accepted all this, but now there was growing in him a bitter doubt and resentment. It was slowly becoming obvious to him—though he sternly tried to subdue the knowledge—that he knew too much about mankind, and had always known, that he saw mankind naked, not clothed in civilization and restrained by Christianity, and what he saw was not good.
It was not awkwardness, shyness, and inadequacy, as most people believed, that made him drift away from groups and suffer agonies at social dinners, and so “make a spectacle of himself” in the opinion of others. It was fear. Fear of men filled him with an icy panic, a desperate if secret desire for immediate flight. It was complete understanding that made him apologetic in his manner toward those he encountered; he was so remorseful that he knew all about them!
Those small eyes, disconcerted, would move away from a direct look, so that he got the reputation of being furtive; but sometimes, when off guard, he would fix them on others with a curiously intent and penetrating expression, so that even passers-by, or those near at hand, became uneasy.
The wind tore at him as he raced on his long legs through the streets toward the river; several people smiled maliciously at the sight of him, at the ridiculous appearance he presented with his flapping coattails and flapping brief case. He did not see the smiles; he knew they were there, but in his compassion he refused to look. He reached the river street and found a hack. He directed that he be driven to 46 Elm Road.
The hack rumbled with a hollow sound over the bridge; the gray light in the sky darkened before a coming storm. Then Stephen was being driven down the finest and most exclusive street in West Town, a street which faced the river across long sweeps of lawn. Even on this March day the houses seemed warm and imposing on their wide grounds, and the empty trees had a kind of stark grandeur about them. The cold gray and purplish river rushed rapidly along before these pleasant homes, and a livid light flowed over the wet roofs. Here the mountains were more emphatic in their nearness, roll and line and folds
of them, a darker purple than the river, rising up in petrified chaos behind the city.
Rain suddenly lashed out of the sky and struck at the dirty windows of the hack. Almost immediately the windows clouded over from the slight warmth inside the vehicle, and Stephen rubbed one in order to peer out. Just then the hack came to a broad driveway of gravel, and turned in on its winding surface toward a house of gray stone with a steeply pitched roof, squat gray chimneys, and high leaded windows shrouded in silk. Even in this drear March weather the house stood in admirable proportions at the end of the drive.
The hack drew up under the porte-cochere, and Stephen, struggling with his long legs, alighted. The wind seized him, and between his attempts to hold onto his hat, retain his brief case, which he clutched as though it held the secrets of a great empire, and keep his coat from being torn from his body while he fished for change in his pocket, he was a somewhat ludicrous figure. “Looks somethin’ like old Abe Lincoln, with a mustache,” thought the hack driver, watching Stephen calmly from his perch without offering any assistance at all, as he would have done with a more prepossessing man. It was his opinion that here was someone quite unimportant, a poor lawyer or something, or a half-starved constituent of the gentleman who lived in this house.
The gale had taken Stephen’s breath, and there was a painful stabbing in his chest. Panting a little, he sounded the knocker, not in the bluff and confident manner of his brother, but tentatively, as if apologizing for his intrusion. The door opened, and a portly butler faced him. The man frowned at this rather bedraggled man on the doorstep, with his old-fashioned hat and outmoded greatcoat, his red nose, wet shoes, and the big bushy mustache which was the only definite accent in his face.
“Well?” said the servant sharply, beginning to shut the door against one whom he suspected of being only a shabby opportunist or political beggar.
Stephen gathered himself together, pushed his hat at a less incongruous angle on his head, wiped his feet on the doormat. He said to himself, as he was beginning to do lately: Now. Just look him steady in the eye. Damn it, it hurts me to look at him like this; it hurts me to force myself to a pretentious dignity and make my voice cold. Why the hell can’t people be decent? Why must a man act with his fellows as though they were at the best slightly contemptible and impertinent? He said, and his voice was a trifle stronger in tone than it had been some months earlier, “Please inform Senator Peale that Mr. Stephen deWitt is here.”
Never Victorious, Never Defeated Page 6