XXXV. “WILD WEEK”
“The Seven” made their fatal move on treacherous Updegraff's treacherous advice, I suspect. But they would not have adopted his suggestion had it not been so exactly congenial to their own temper of arrogance and tyranny and contempt for the people who meekly, year after year, presented themselves for the shearing with fatuous bleats of enthusiasm.
“The Seven,” of course, controlled directly, or indirectly, all but a few of the newspapers with which I had advertising contracts. They also controlled the main sources through which the press was supplied with news—and often and well they had used this control, and surprisingly cautious had they been not so to abuse it that the editors and the public would become suspicious. When my war was at its height, when I was beginning to congratulate myself that the huge magazines of “The Seven” were empty almost to the point at which they must sue for peace on my own terms, all in four days forty-three of my sixty-seven newspapers—and they the most important—notified me that they would no longer carry out their contracts to publish my daily letter. They gave as their reason, not the real one, fear of “The Seven,” but fear that I would involve them in ruinous libel suits. I who had legal proof for every statement I made; I who was always careful to understate! Next, one press association after another ceased to send out my letter as news, though they had been doing so regularly for months. The public had grown tired of the “sensation,” they said.
I countered with a telegram to one or more newspapers in every city and large town in the United States:
“'The Seven' are trying to cut the wires between the truth and the public. If you wish my daily letter, telegraph me direct and I will send it at my expense.”
The response should have warned “The Seven.” But it did not. Under their orders the telegraph companies refused to transmit the letter. I got an injunction. It was obeyed in typical, corrupt corporation fashion—they sent my matter, but so garbled that it was unintelligible. I appealed to the courts. In vain.
To me, it was clear as sun in cloudless noonday sky that there could be but one result of this insolent and despotic denial of my rights and the rights of the people, this public confession of the truth of my charges. I turned everything salable or mortgageable into cash, locked the cash up in my private vaults, and waited for the cataclysm.
Thursday—Friday—Saturday. Apparently all was tranquil; apparently the people accepted the Wall Street theory that I was an “exploded sensation.” “The Seven” began to preen themselves; the strain upon them to maintain prices, if no less than for three months past, was not notably greater; the crisis would pass, I and my exposures would be forgotten, the routine of reaping the harvests and leaving only the gleanings for the sowers would soon be placidly resumed.
Sunday. Roebuck, taken ill as he was passing the basket in the church of which he was the shining light, died at midnight—a beautiful, peaceful death, they say, with his daughter reading the Bible aloud, and his lips moving in prayer. Some hold that, had he lived, the tranquillity would have continued; but this is the view of those who can not realize that the tide of affairs is no more controlled by the “great men” than is the river led down to the sea by its surface flotsam, by which we measure the speed and direction of its current. Under that terrific tension, which to the shallow seemed a calm, something had to give way. If the dam had not yielded where Roebuck stood guard, it must have yielded somewhere else, or might have gone all in one grand crash.
Monday. You know the story of the artist and his Statue of Grief—how he molded the features a hundred times, always failing, always getting an anti-climax, until at last in despair he gave up the impossible and finished the statue with a veil over the face. I have tried again and again to assemble words that would give some not too inadequate impression of that tremendous week in which, with a succession of explosions, each like the crack of doom, the financial structure that housed eighty millions of people burst, collapsed, was engulfed. I can not. I must leave it to your memory or your imagination.
For years the financial leaders, crazed by the excess of power which the people had in ignorance and over-confidence and slovenly good-nature permitted them to acquire, had been tearing out the honest foundations on which alone so vast a structure can hope to rest solid and secure. They had been substituting rotten beams painted to look like stone and iron. The crash had to come; the sooner, the better—when a thing is wrong, each day's delay compounds the cost of righting it. So, with all the horrors of “Wild Week” in mind, all its physical and mental suffering, all its ruin and rioting and bloodshed, I still can insist that I am justly proud of my share in bringing it about. The blame and the shame are wholly upon those who made “Wild Week” necessary and inevitable.
In catastrophes, the cry is “Each for himself!” But in a cataclysm, the obvious wise selfishness is generosity, and the cry is, “Stand together, for, singly, we perish.” This was a cataclysm. No one could save himself, except the few who, taking my often-urged advice and following my example, had entered the ark of ready money. Farmer and artisan and professional man and laborer owed merchant; merchant owed banker; banker owed depositor. No one could pay because no one could get what was due him or could realize upon his property. The endless chain of credit that binds together the whole of modern society had snapped in a thousand places. It must be repaired, instantly and securely. But how—and by whom?
I issued a clear statement of the situation; I showed in minute detail how the people standing together under the leadership of the honest men of property could easily force the big bandits to consent to an honest, just, rock-founded, iron-built reconstruction. My statement appeared in all the morning papers throughout the land. Turn back to it; read it. You will say that I was right. Well—
Toward two o'clock Inspector Crawford came into my private office, escorted by Joe. I saw in Joe's seamed, green-gray face that some new danger had arisen. “You've got to get out of this,” said he. “The mob in front of our place fills the three streets. It's made up of crowds turned away from the suspended banks.”
I remembered the sullen faces and the hisses as I entered the office that morning earlier than usual. My windows were closed to keep out the street noises; but now that my mind was up from the work in which I had been absorbed, I could hear the sounds of many voices, even through the thick plate glass.
“We've got two hundred policemen here,” said the inspector. “Five hundred more are on the way. But—really, Mr. Blacklock, unless we can get you away, there'll be serious trouble. Those damn newspapers! Every one of them denounced you this morning, and the people are in a fury against you.”
I went toward the door.
“Hold on, Matt!” cried Joe, springing at me and seizing me, “Where are you going?”
“To tell them what I think of them,” replied I, sweeping him aside. For my blood was up, and I was enraged against the poor cowardly fools.
“For God's sake don't show yourself!” he begged. “If you don't care for your own life, think of the rest of us. We've fixed a route through buildings and under streets up to Broadway. Your electric is waiting for you there.”
“It won't do,” I said. “I'll face 'em—it's the only way.”
I went to the window, and was about to throw up one of the sunblinds for a look at them; Crawford stopped me. “They'll stone the building and then storm it,” said he. “You must go at once, by the route we've arranged.”
“Even if you tell them I'm gone, they won't believe it,” replied I.
“We can look out for that,” said Joe, eager to save me, and caring nothing about consequences to himself. But I had unsettled the inspector.
“Send for my electric to come down here,” said I. “I'll go out alone and get in it and drive away.”
“That'll never do!” cried Joe.
But the inspector said: “You're right, Mr. Blacklock. It's a bare chance. You may take 'em by surprise. Again, some fellow may yell and throw a stone and—” He did not need to finish.
Joe looked wildly at me. “You mustn't do it, Matt!” he exclaimed. “You'll precipitate a riot, Crawford, if you permit this.”
But the inspector was telephoning for my electric. Then he went into the adjoining room, where he commanded a view of the entrance. Silence between Joe and me until he returned.
“The electric is coming down the street,” said he.
I rose. “Good,” said I. “I'm ready.”
“Wait until the other police get here,” advised Crawford.
“If the mob is in the temper you describe,” said I, “the less that's done to irritate it the better. I must go out as if I hadn't a suspicion of danger.”
The inspector eyed me with an expression that was highly flattering to my vanity.
“I'll go with you,” said Joe, starting up from his stupor.
“No,” I replied. “You and the other fellows can take the underground route, if it's necessary.”
“It won't be necessary,” put in the inspector. “As soon as I'm rid of you and have my additional force, I'll clear the streets.” He went to the door. “Wait, Mr. Blacklock, until I've had time to get out to my men.”
Perhaps ten seconds after he disappeared, I, without further words, put on my hat, lit a cigar, shook Joe's wet, trembling hand, left in it my private keys and the memorandum of the combination of my private vault. Then I sallied forth.
I had always had a ravenous appetite for excitement, and I had been in many a tight place; but for the first time there seemed to me to be an equilibrium between my internal energy and the outside situation. As I stepped from my street door and glanced about me, I had no feeling of danger. The whole situation seemed so simple. There stood the electric, just across the narrow stretch of sidewalk; there were the two hundred police, under Crawford's orders, scattered everywhere through the crowd, and good-naturedly jostling and pushing to create distraction. Without haste, I got into my machine. I calmly met the gaze of those thousands, quiet as so many barrels of gunpowder before the explosion. The chauffeur turned the machine.
“Go slow,” I called to him. “You might hurt somebody.”
But he had his orders from the inspector. He suddenly darted ahead at full speed. The mob scattered in every direction, and we were in Broadway, bound up town full-tilt, before I or the mob realized what he was about.
I called to him to slow down. He paid not the slightest attention. I leaned from the window and looked up at him. It was not my chauffeur; it was a man who had the unmistakable but indescribable marks of the plain-clothes policeman.
“Where are you going?” I shouted.
“You'll find out when we arrive,” he shouted back, grinning.
I settled myself and waited—what else was there to do? Soon I guessed we were headed for the pier off which my yacht was anchored. As we dashed on to it, I saw that it was filled with police, both in uniform and in plain clothes. I descended. A detective sergeant stepped up to me. “We are here to help you to your yacht,” he explained. “You wouldn't be safe anywhere in New York—no more would the place that harbored you.”
He had both common sense and force on his side. I got into the launch. Four detective sergeants accompanied me and went aboard with me. “Go ahead,” said one of them to my captain. He looked at me for orders.
“We are in the hands of our guests,” said I. “Let them have their way.”
We steamed down the bay and out to sea.
From Maine to Texas the cry rose and swelled:
“Blacklock is responsible! What does it matter whether he lied or told the truth? See the results of his crusade! He ought to be pilloried! He ought to be killed! He is the enemy of the human race. He has almost plunged the whole civilized world into bankruptcy and civil war.” And they turned eagerly to the very autocrats who had been oppressing them. “You have the genius for finance and industry. Save us!”
If you did not know, you could guess how those patriots with the “genius for finance and industry” responded. When they had done, when their program was in effect, Langdon, Melville and Updegraff were the three richest men in the country, and as powerful as Octavius, Antony and Lepidus after Philippi. They had saddled upon the reorganized finance and industry of the nation heavier taxes than ever, and a vaster and more expensive and more luxurious army of their parasites.
The people had risen for financial and industrial freedom; they had paid its fearful price; then, in senseless panic and terror, they flung it away. I have read that one of the inscriptions on Apollo's temple at Delphi was, “Man, the fool of the farce.” Truly, the gods must have created us for their amusement; and when Olympus palls, they ring up the curtain on some such screaming comedy as was that. It “makes the fancy chuckle, while the heart doth ache.”
XXXVI. “BLACK MATT'S” TRIUMPH
My enemies caused it to be widely believed that “Wild Week” was my deliberate contrivance for the sole purpose of enriching myself. Thus they got me a reputation for almost superhuman daring, for satanic astuteness at cold-blooded calculation. I do not deserve the admiration and respect that my success-worshiping fellow countrymen lay at my feet. True, I did greatly enrich myself; but not until the Monday after Wild Week.
Not until I had pondered on men and events with the assistance of the newspapers my detective protectors and jailers permitted to be brought aboard—not until the last hope of turning Wild Week to the immediate public advantage had sputtered out like a lost man's last match, did I think of benefiting myself, of seizing the opportunity to strengthen myself for the future. On Monday morning, I said to Sergeant Mulholland: “I want to go ashore at once and send some telegrams.”
The sergeant is one of the detective bureau's “dress-suit men.” He is by nature phlegmatic and cynical. His experience has put over that a veneer of weary politeness. We had become great friends during our enforced inseparable companionship. For Joe, who looked on me somewhat as a mother looks on a brilliant but erratic son, had, as I soon discovered, elaborated a wonderful program for me. It included a watch on me day and night, lest, through rage or despondency, I should try to do violence to myself. A fine character, that Joe! But, to return, Mulholland answered my request for shore-leave with a soothing smile. “Can't do it, Mr. Blacklock,” he said. “Our orders are positive. But when we put in at New London and send ashore for further instructions, and for the papers, you can send in your messages.”
“As you please,” said I. And I gave him a cipher telegram to Joe—an order to invest my store of cash, which meant practically my whole fortune, in the gilt-edged securities that were to be had for cash at a small fraction of their value.
This on the Monday after Wild Week, please note. I would have helped the people to deliver themselves from the bondage of the bandits. They would not have it. I would even have sacrificed my all in trying to save them in spite of themselves. But what is one sane man against a stampeded multitude of maniacs? For confirmation of my disinterestedness, I point to all those weeks and months during which I waged costly warfare on “The Seven,” who would gladly have given me more than I now have, could I have been bribed to desist. But, when I was compelled to admit that I had overestimated my fellow men, that the people wear the yoke because they have not yet become intelligent and competent enough to be free, then and not until then did I abandon the hopeless struggle.
And I did not go over to the bandits; I simply resumed my own neglected personal affairs and made Wild Week at least a personal triumph.
There is nothing of the spectacular in my make-up. I have no belief in the value of martyrs and martyrdom. Causes are not won—and in my humble opinion never have been won—in the graveyards. Alive and afoot and armed, and true to my cause, I am the dreaded menace to systematic and respectable robbery. What possible good could have come of mobs killing me and the bandits dividing my estate?
But why should I seek to justify myself? I care not a rap for the opinion of my fellow men. They sought my life when they should have been hailing me as a deliverer; now, they look up to me because they falsely believe me guilty of an infamy.
My guards expected to be recalled on Tuesday. But Melville heard what Crawford had done about me, and straightway used his influence to have me detained until the new grip of the old gang was secure. Saturday afternoon we put in at Newport for the daily communication with the shore. When the launch returned, Mulholland brought the papers to me, lounging aft in a mass of cushions under the awning. “We are going ashore,” said he. “The order has come.”
I had a sudden sense of loneliness. “I'll take you down to New York,” said I. “I prefer to land my guests where I shipped them.”
As we steamed slowly westward I read the papers. The country was rapidly readjusting itself, was returning to the conditions before the upheaval. The “financiers”—the same old gang, except for a few of the weaker brethren ruined and a few strong outsiders, who had slipped in during the confusion—were employing all the old, familiar devices for deceiving and robbing the people. The upset milking-stool was righted, and the milker was seated again and busy, the good old cow standing without so much as shake of horn or switch of tail. “Mulholland,” said I, “what do you think of this business of living?”
“I'll tell you, Mr. Blacklock,” said he. “I used to fuss and fret a good deal about it. But I don't any more. I've got a house up in the Bronx, and a bit of land round it. And there's Mrs. Mulholland and four little Mulhollands and me—that's my country and my party and my religion. The rest is off my beat, and I don't give a damn for it. I don't care which fakir gets to be president, or which swindler gets to be rich. Everything works out somehow, and the best any man can do is to mind his own business.”
“Mulholland—Mrs. Mulholland—four little Mulhollands,” said I reflectively. “That's about as much as one man could attend to properly. And—you are 'on the level,' aren't you?”
“Some say honesty's the best policy,” replied he. “Some say it isn't. I don't know, and I don't care, whether it is or it isn't. It's my policy. And we six seem to have got along on it so far.”
I sent my “guests” ashore the next morning.
“No, I'll stay aboard,” said I to Mulholland, as he stood aside for me to precede him down the gangway from the launch. I went into the watch-pocket of my trousers and drew out the folded two one-thousand-dollar bills I always carried—it was a habit formed in my youthful, gambling days. I handed him one of the bills. He hesitated.
“For the four little Mulhollands,” I urged.
He put it in his pocket. I watched him and his men depart with a heavy heart. I felt alone, horribly alone, without a tie or an interest. Some of the morning papers spoke respectfully of me as one of the strong men who had ridden the flood and had been landed by it on the heights of wealth and power. Admiration and envy lurked even in sneers at my “unscrupulous plotting.” Since I had wealth, plenty of wealth, I did not need character. Of what use was character in such a world except as a commodity to exchange for wealth?
“Any orders, sir?” interrupted my captain.
I looked round that vast and vivid scene of sea and land activities. I looked along the city's titanic sky-line—the mighty fortresses of trade and commerce piercing the heavens and flinging to the wind their black banners of defiance. I felt that I was under the walls of hell itself.
“To get away from this,” replied I to the waiting captain. “Go back down the Sound—to Dawn Hill.”
Yes, I would go to the peaceful, soothing country, to my dogs and horses and those faithful servants bound to me by our common love for the same animals. “Men to cross swords with, to amuse oneself with,” I mused; “but dogs and horses to live with.” I pictured myself at the kennels—the joyful uproar the instant instinct warned the dogs of my coming; how they would leap and bark and tremble in a very ecstasy of delight as I stood among them; how jealous all the others would be, as I selected one to caress.
“Send her ahead as fast as she'll go,” I called to the captain.
As the Albatross steamed into the little harbor, I saw Mowbray Langdon's Indolence at anchor. I glanced toward Steuben Point—where his cousins, the Vivians, lived—and thought I recognized his launch at their pier. We saluted the Indolence; the Indolence saluted us. My launch was piped away and took me ashore. I strolled along the path that wound round the base of the hill toward the kennels. At the crossing of the path down from the house, I paused and lingered on the glimpse of one of the corner towers of the great showy palace. I was muttering something—I listened to myself. It was: “Mulholland, Mrs. Mulholland and the four little Mulhollands.” And I felt like laughing aloud, such a joke was it that I should be envying a policeman his potato patch and his fat wife and his four brats, and that he should be in a position to pity me.
You may be imagining that, through all, Anita had been dominating my mind. That is the way it is in the romances; but not in life. No doubt there are men who brood upon the impossible, and moon and maunder away their lives over the grave of a dead love; no doubt there are people who will say that, because I did not shoot Langdon or her, or myself, or fly to a desert or pose in the crowded places of the world as the last scene of a tragedy, I therefore cared little about her. I offer them this suggestion: A man strong enough to give a love worth a woman's while is strong enough to live on without her when he finds he may not live with her.
As I stood there that summer day, looking toward the crest of the hill, at the mocking mausoleum of my dead dream, I realized what the incessant battle of the Street had meant to me. “There is peace for me only in the storm,” said I. “But, thank God, there is peace for me somewhere.”
Through the foliage I had glimpses of some one coming slowly down the zigzag path. Presently, at one of the turnings half-way up the hill, appeared Mowbray Langdon. “What is he doing here,” thought I, scarcely able to believe my eyes. “Here of all places!” And then I forgot the strangeness of his being at Dawn Hill in the strangeness of his expression. For it was apparent, even at the distance which separated us, that he was suffering from some great and recent blow. He looked old and haggard; he walked like a man who neither knows nor cares where he is going.
He had not seen me, and my impulse was to avoid him by continuing on toward the kennels. I had no especial feeling against him; I had not lost Anita because she cared for him or he for her, but because she did not care for me—simply that to meet would be awkward, disagreeable for us both. At the slight noise of my movement to go on, he halted, glanced round eagerly, as if he hoped the sound had been made by some one he wished to see. His glance fell on me. He stopped short, was for an instant disconcerted; then his face lighted up with devilish joy. “You!” he cried. “Just the man!” And he descended more rapidly.
At first I could make nothing of this remark. But as he drew nearer and nearer, and his ugly mood became more and more apparent, I felt that he was looking forward to provoking me into giving him a distraction from whatever was tormenting him. I waited. A few minutes and we were face to face, I outwardly calm, but my anger slowly lighting up as he deliberately applied to it the torch of his insolent eyes. He was wearing his old familiar air of cynical assurance. Evidently, with his recovered fortune, he had recovered his conviction of his great superiority to the rest of the human race—the child had climbed back on the chair that made it tall and had forgotten its tumble. And I was wondering again that I, so short a time before, had been crude enough to be fascinated and fooled by those tawdry posings and pretenses. For the man, as I now saw him, was obviously shallow and vain, a slave to those poor “man-of-the-world” passions—ostentation and cynicism and skill at vices old as mankind and tedious as a treadmill, the commonplace routine of the idle and foolish and purposeless. A clever, handsome fellow, but the more pitiful that he was by nature above the uses to which he prostituted himself.
He fought hard to keep his eyes steadily on mine; but they would waver and shift. Not, however, before I had found deep down in them the beginnings of fear. “You see, you were mistaken,” said I. “You have nothing to say to me—or I to you.”
He knew I had looked straight to the bottom of his real self, and had seen the coward that is in every man who has been bred to appearances only. Up rose his vanity, the coward's substitute for courage.
“You think I am afraid of you?” he sneered, bluffing and blustering like the school bully.
“I don't in the least care whether you are or not,” replied I. “What are you doing here, anyhow?”
It was as if I had thrown off the cover of a furnace. “I came to get the woman I love,” he cried. “You stole her from me! You tricked me! But, by God, Blacklock, I'll never pause until I get her back and punish you!” He was brave enough now, drunk with the fumes from his brave words. “All my life,” he raged arrogantly on, “I've had whatever I wanted. I've let nothing interfere—nothing and nobody. I've been too forbearing with you—first, because I knew she could never care for you, and, then, because I rather admired your pluck and impudence. I like to see fellows kick their way up among us from the common people.”
I put my hand on his shoulder. No doubt the fiend that rose within me, as from the dead, looked at him from my eyes. He has great physical strength, but he winced under that weight and grip, and across his face flitted the terror that must come to any man at first sense of being in the angry clutch of one stronger than he. I slowly released him—I had tested and realized my physical superiority; to use it would be cheap and cowardly.
“You can't provoke me to descend to your level,” said I, with the easy philosophy of him who clearly has the better of the argument.
He was shaking from head to foot, not with terror, but with impotent rage. How much we owe to accident! The mere accident of my physical superiority had put him at hopeless disadvantage; had made him feel inferior to me as no victory of mental or moral superiority could possibly have done. And I myself felt a greater contempt for him than the discovery of his treachery and his shallowness had together inspired.
“I shan't indulge in flapdoodle,” I went on. “I'll be frank. A year ago, if any man had faced me with a claim upon a woman who was married to me, I'd probably have dealt with him as your vanity and what you call 'honor' would force you to try to deal with a similar situation. But I live to learn, and I'm, fortunately, not afraid to follow a new light. There is the vanity of so-called honor; there as also the demand of justice—of fair play. As I have told her, so I now tell you—she is free to go. But I shall say one thing to you that I did not say to her. If you do not deal fairly with her, I shall see to it that there are ten thorns to every rose in that bed of roses on which you lie. You are contemptible in many ways—perhaps that's why women like you. But there must be some good in you, or possibilities of good, or you could not have won and kept her love.”
He was staring at me with a dazed expression. I rather expected him to show some of that amused contempt with which men of his sort always receive a new idea that is beyond the range of their narrow, conventional minds. For I did not expect him to understand why I was not only willing, but even eager, to relinquish a woman whom I could hold only by asserting a property right in her. And I do not think he did understand me, though his manner changed to a sort of grudging respect. He was, I believe, about to make some impulsive, generous speech, when we heard the quick strokes of iron-shod hoofs on the path from the kennels and the stables—is there any sound more arresting? Past us at a gallop swept a horse, on his back—Anita. She was not in riding-habit; the wind fluttered the sleeves of her blouse, blew her uncovered hair this way and that about her beautiful face. She sped on toward the landing, though I fancied she had seen us.
Anita at Dawn Hill—Langdon, in a furious temper, descending from the house toward the landing—Anita presently, riding like mad—“to overtake him,” thought I. And I read confirmation in his triumphant eyes. In another mood, I suppose my fury would have been beyond my power to restrain it. Just then—the day grew dark for me, and I wanted to hide away somewhere. Heart-sick, I was ashamed for her, hated myself for having blundered into surprising her.
She reappeared at the turn round which she had vanished. I now tooted that she was riding without saddle or bridle, with only a halter round the horse's neck—then she had seen us, had stopped and come back as soon as she could. She dropped from the horse, looked swiftly at me, at him, at me again, with intense anxiety.
“I saw your yacht in the harbor only a moment ago,” she said to me. She was almost panting. “I feared you might meet him. So I came.”
“As you see, he is quite—intact,” said I. “I must ask that you and he leave the place at once.” And I went rapidly along the path toward the kennels.
An exclamation from Langdon forced me to turn in spite of myself. He was half-kneeling, was holding her in his arms. At that sight, the savage in me shook himself free. I dashed toward them with I knew not what curses bursting from me. Langdon, intent upon her, did not realize until I sent him reeling backward to the earth and snatched her up. Her white face, her closed eyes, her limp form made my fury instantly collapse. In my confusion I thought that she was dead. I laid her gently on the grass and supported her head, so small, so gloriously crowned, the face so still and sweet and white, like the stainless entrance to a stainless shrine. How that horrible fear changed my whole way of looking at her, at him, at her and him, at everything!
Her eyelids were quivering—her eyes were opening—her bosom was rising and falling slowly as she drew long, uncertain breaths. She shuddered, sat up, started up. “Go! go!” she cried. “Bring him back! Bring him back! Bring him—”
There she recognized me. “Oh,” she said, and gave a great sigh of relief. She leaned against a tree and looked at Langdon. “You are still here? Then tell him.”
Langdon gazed sullenly at the ground. “I can't,” he answered. “I don't believe it. Besides—he has given you to me. Let us go. Let me take you to the Vivians.” He threw out his arms in a wild, passionate gesture; he was utterly unlike himself. His emotion burst through and shattered pose and cynicism and hard crust of selfishness like the exploding powder bursting the shell. “I can't give you up, Anita!” he exclaimed in a tone of utter desperation. “I can't! I can't!”
But her gaze was all this time steadily on me, as if she feared I would go, should she look away. “I will tell you myself,” she said rapidly, to me. “We—uncle Howard and I—read in the papers how they had all turned against you, and he brought me over here. He has been telegraphing for you. This morning he went to town to search for you. About an hour ago Langdon came. I refused to see him, as I have ever since the time I told you about at Alva's. He persisted, until at last I had the servant request him to leave the house.”
“But now there's no longer any reason for your staying, Anita,” he pleaded. “He has said you are free. Why stay when you would really no more be here than if you were to go, leaving one of your empty dresses?”
She had not for an instant taken her gaze from me; and so strange were her eyes, so compelling, that I seemed unable to move or speak.
But now she released me to blaze upon him—and never shall I forget any detail of her face or voice as she said to him: “That is false, Mowbray Langdon. I told you the truth when I told you I loved him!”
So violent was her emotion that she had to pause for self-control. And I? I was overwhelmed, dazed, stunned. When she went on, she was looking at neither of us. “Yes, I loved him, almost from the first—from the day he came to the box at the races. I was ashamed, poor creature that my parents had made me! I was ashamed of it. And I tried to hate him, and thought I did. And when he showed me that he no longer cared, my pride goaded me into the folly of trying to listen to you. But I loved him more than ever. And as you and he stand here, I am ashamed again—ashamed that I was ever so blind and ignorant and prejudiced as to compare him with”—she looked at Langdon—“with you. Do you believe me now—now that I humble myself before him here in your presence?”
I should have had no heart at all if I had not felt pity for him. His face was gray, and on it were those signs of age that strong emotion brings to the surface after forty. “You could have convinced me in no other way,” he replied, after a silence, and in a voice I should not have recognized.
Silence again. Presently he raised his head, and with something of his old cynicism bowed to her.
“You have avenged much and many,” said he. “I have often had a presentiment that my day of wrath would come.”
He lifted his hat, bowed to me without looking at me, and, drawing the tatters of his pose still further over his wounds, moved away toward the landing.
I, still in a stupor, watched him until he had disappeared. When I turned to her, she dropped her eyes. “Uncle Howard will be back this afternoon,” said she. “If I may, I'll stay at the house until he comes to take me.”
A weary, half-suppressed sigh escaped from her. I knew how she must be reading my silence, but I was still unable to speak. She went to the horse, browsing near by; she stroked his muzzle. Lingeringly she twined her fingers in his mane, as if about to spring to his back! That reminded me of a thousand and one changes in her—little changes, each a trifle in itself, yet, taken all together, making a complete transformation.
“Let me help you,” I managed to say. And I bent, and made a step of my hand.
She touched her fingers to my shoulder, set her narrow, graceful foot upon my palm. But she did not rise. I glanced up; she was gazing wistfully down at me.
“Women have to learn by experience just as do men,” said she forlornly. “Yet men will not tolerate it.”
I suppose I must suddenly have looked what I was unable to put into words—for her eyes grew very wide, and, with a cry that was a sigh and a sob, and a laugh and a caress all in one, she slid into my arms and her face was burning against mine.
“Do you remember the night at the theater,” she murmured, “when your lips almost touched my neck?—I loved you then—Black Matt—Black Matt!”
And I found voice; and the horse wandered away.
What more?
How Langdon eased his pain and soothed his vanity? Whenever an old Babylonian nobleman had a misfortune, he used to order all his slaves to be lashed, that their shrieks and moans might join his in appeasing the god who was punishing him. Langdon went back to Wall Street, and for months he made all within his power suffer; in his fury he smashed fortunes, lowered wages, raised prices, reveled in the blasts of a storm of impotent curses. But you do not care to hear about that.
As for myself, what could I tell that you do not know or guess? Now that all men, even the rich, even the parasites of the bandits, groan under their tyranny and their taxes, is it strange that the resentment against me has disappeared, that my warnings are remembered, that I am popular? I might forecast what I purpose to do when the time is ripe. But I am not given to prophecy. I will only say that I think I shall, in due season, go into action again—profiting by my experience in the futility of trying to hasten evolution by revolution. Meanwhile—
As I write, I can look up from the paper, and out upon the lawn, at a woman—what a woman!—teaching a baby to walk. And, assisting her, there is a boy, himself not yet an expert at walking. I doubt if you'd have to glance twice at that boy to know he is my son. Well—I have borrowed a leaf from Mulholland's philosophy. I commend it to you.