The Deluge

  X. TWO "PILLARS OF SOCIETY"

  I was neither seeing nor hearing from the Ellerslys, father or son; but,as I knew why, I was not disquieted. I had made them temporarily easy intheir finances just before that dinner, and they, being fatuous, incurableoptimists, were probably imagining they would never need me again. I didnot disturb them until Monson and I had got my education so well underway that even I, always severe in self-criticism and now merciless, wascompelled to admit to myself a distinct change for the better. You knowhow it is with a boy at the "growing age"--how he bursts out of clothesand ideas of life almost as fast as they are supplied him, so swiftly ishe transforming into a man. Well, I think it is much that way with usAmericans all our lives; we continue on and on at the growing age. Andif one of us puts his or her mind hard upon growth in some particulardirection, you see almost overnight a development fledged to the lasttail-feathers and tip of top-knot where there was nothing at all. Whatmiracles can be wrought by an open mind and a keen sense of the cumulativepower of the unwasted minute! All this apropos of a very trivial matter,you may be thinking. But, be careful how you judge what is trivial and whatimportant in a universe built up of atoms.

  However--When my education seemed far enough advanced, I sent for Sam.He, after his footless fashion, didn't bother to acknowledge my note. Hismargin account with me was at the moment straight; I turned to his father.I had my cashier send him a formal, type-written letter signed Blacklock &Co., informing him that his account was overdrawn and that we "would beobliged if he would give the matter his immediate attention." The note musthave reached him the following morning; but he did not come until, afterwaiting three days, "we" sent him a sharp demand for a check for thebalance due us.

  A pleasing, aristocratic-looking figure he made as he entered my office,with his air of the man whose hands have never known the stains of toil,with his manner of having always received deferential treatment. Therewas no pretense in my curt greeting, my tone of "despatch your business,sir, and be gone"; for I was both busy and much irritated against him."I guess you want to see our cashier," said I, after giving him a hasty,absent-minded hand-shake. "My boy out there will take you to him."

  The old do-nothing's face lost its confident, condescending expression. Hislip quivered, and I think there were tears in his bad, dim, gray-greeneyes. I suppose he thought his a profoundly pathetic case; no doubt hehadn't the remotest conception what he really was--and no doubt, also,there are many who would honestly take his view. As if the fact that hewas born with all possible advantages did not make him and his plightinexcusable. It passes my comprehension why people of his sort, whensuffering from the calamities they have deliberately brought uponthemselves by laziness and self-indulgence and extravagance, should geta sympathy that is withheld from those of the honest human rank and filefalling into far more real misfortunes not of their own making.

  "No, my dear Blacklock," said he, cringing now as easily as he hadcondescended--how to cringe and how to condescend are taught at the sameschool, the one he had gone to all his life. "It is you I want to talkwith. And, first, I owe you my apologies. I know you'll make allowancesfor one who was never trained to business methods. I've always been like achild in those matters."

  "You frighten me," said I. "The last 'gentleman' who came throwing me offmy guard with that plea was shrewd enough to get away with a very largesum of my hard-earned money. Besides"--and I was laughing, though not toogood-naturedly--"I've noticed that you 'gentlemen' become vague aboutbusiness only when the balance is against you. When it's in your favor, youmanage to get your minds on business long enough to collect to the lastfraction of a cent."

  He heartily echoed my laugh. "I only wish I _were_ clever," said he."However, I've come to ask your indulgence. I'd have been here before,but those who owe me have been putting me off. And they're of the sort ofpeople whom it's impossible to press."

  "I'd like to accommodate you further," said I, shedding that last littlehint as a cliff sheds rain, "but your account has been in an unsatisfactorystate for nearly a month now."

  "I'm sure you'll give me a few days longer," was his easy reply, as if wewere discussing a trifle. "By the way, you haven't been to see us yet. Onlythis morning my wife was wondering when you'd come. You quite captivatedher, Blacklock. Can't you dine with us to-morrow night--no, Sunday--ateight? We're having in a few people I think you'd like to meet."

  If any one imagines that this bald, businesslike way of putting it setmy teeth on edge, let him dismiss the idea; my nerves had been too longaccustomed to the feel of the harsh facts of life. It is evidence of theshrewdness of the old fellow at character-reading that he wasted none ofhis silk and velvet pretenses upon me, and so saved his time and mine.Probably he wished me to see that I need have no timidity or false shame indealing with him, that when the time came to talk business I was free totalk it in my own straight fashion.

  "Glad to come," said I, wishing to be rid of him, now that my point wasgained. "We'll let the account stand open for the present--I rather thinkyour stocks are going up. Give my regards to--the ladies, please,especially to Miss Anita."

  He winced, but thanked me graciously; gave me his soft, fine hand to shakeand departed, as eager to be off as I to be rid of him. "Sunday next--ateight," were his last words. "Don't fail us"--that in the tone of a kingaddressing some obscure person whom he had commanded to court. It may bethat old Ellersly was wholly unconscious of his superciliousness, fanciedhe was treating me as if I were almost an equal; but I suspect he ratheraccentuated his natural manner, with the idea of impressing upon me thatin our deal he was giving at least as much as I.

  I recall that I thought about him for several minutes after he wasgone--philosophized on the folly of a man's deliberately weaving a net toentangle himself. As if any man was ever caught in any net not of his ownweaving and setting; as if I myself were not just then working at the lastrow of meshes of a net in which I was to ensnare myself.

  My petty and inevitable success with that helpless creature addedamazingly, ludicrously, to that dangerous elation which, as I can now see,had been growing in me ever since the day Roebuck yielded so readily to mydemands as to National Coal. The whole trouble with me was that up to thattime I had won all my victories by the plainest kind of straightaway hardwork. I was imagining myself victor in contests of wit against wit, when,in fact, no one with any especial equipment of brains had ever opposed me;all the really strong men had been helping me because they found me useful.Too easy success--there is the clue to the wild folly of my performances inthose days, a folly that seems utterly inconsistent with the reputation forshrewdness I had, and seemed to have earned.

  I can find a certain small amount of legitimate excuse for my falling underLangdon's spell. He had, and has, fascinations, through personal magnetism,which it is hardly in human nature to resist. But for my self-hypnotism inthe case of Roebuck, I find no excuse whatever for myself.

  He sent for me and told me what share in National Coal they had decided togive me for my Manasquale mines. "Langdon and Melville," said he, "think metoo liberal; far too liberal, my boy. But I insisted--in your case I feltwe could afford to be generous as well as just." All this with an air thatwas a combination of the pastor and the parent.

  I can't even offer the excuse of not having seen that he was a hypocrite.I felt his hypocrisy at once, and my first impulse was to jump for mybreastworks. But instantly my vanity got behind me, held me in the open,pushed me on toward him. If you will notice, almost all "confidence" gamesrely for success chiefly upon enlisting a man's vanity to play the traitorto his judgment. So, instead of reading his liberality as plain proof ofintended treachery, I read it as plain proof of my own greatness, and ofthe fear it had inspired in old Roebuck. Laugh _with_ me if you like;but, before you laugh _at_ me, think carefully--those of you who haveever put yourselves to the test on the field of action--think carefullywhether you have never found that your head decoration which you thought acrown was in reality the peaked and bell
ed cap of the fool.

  But my vanity was not done with me. Led on by it, I proceeded to have oneof those ridiculous "generous impulses"--I persuaded myself that there mustbe some decency in this liberality, in addition to the prudence which Iflattered myself was the chief cause. "I have been unjust to Roebuck," Ithought. "I have been misjudging his character." And incredible though itseems, I said to him with a good deal of genuine emotion: "I don't knowhow to thank you, Mr. Roebuck. And, instead of trying, I want to apologizeto you. I have thought many hard things against you; have spoken some ofthem. I had better have been attending to my own conscience, instead ofcriticizing yours."

  I had often thought his face about the most repulsive, hypocrisy-glozedconcourse of evil passions that ever fronted a fiend in the flesh. It hadseemed to me the fitting result of a long career which, according to commonreport, was stained with murder, with rapacity and heartless cruelty, withthe most brutal secret sensuality, and which had left in its wake the ruinsof lives and hearts and fortunes innumerable. I had looked on the vastwealth he had heaped mountain high as a monument to devil-daring--other menhad, no doubt, dreamed of doing the ferocious things he had done, but theirweak, human hearts failed when it came to executing such horrible acts, andthey had to be content with smaller fortunes, with the comparatively smallfruits of their comparatively small infamies. He had dared all, had won;the most powerful bowed with quaking knees before him, and trembled lestthey might, by a blundering look or word, excite his anger and cause him tosnatch their possessions from them.

  Thus I had regarded him, accepting the universal judgment, believing thethousand and one stories. But as his eyes, softened by his hugely generousact, beamed upon me now, I was amazed that I had so misjudged him. In thatface which I had thought frightful there was, to my hypnotized gaze, thelook of strong, sincere--yes, holy--beauty and power--the look of anarchangel.

  "Thank you, Blacklock," said he, in a voice that made me feel as if I werea little boy in the crossroads church, believing I could almost see theangels floating above the heads of the singers in the choir behind thepreacher. "Thank you. I am not surprised that you have misjudged me. Godhas given me a great work to do, and those who do His will in this wickedworld must expect martyrdom. I should never have had the courage to do whatI have done, what He has done through me, had He not guided my every step.You are not a religious man?"

  "I try to do what's square," said I. "But I'd prefer not to talk about it."

  "That's right! That's right!" he approved earnestly. "A man's religion isa matter between himself and his God. But I hope, Matthew, you will neverforget that, unless you have daily, hourly communion with Almighty God,you will never be able to bear the great burdens, to do the great workfearlessly, disregarding the lies of the wicked, and, hardest of all toendure, the honestly-mistaken judgments of honest men."

  "I'll look into it," said I. And I don't know to what lengths of foolishspeech I should have gone had I not been saved by an office boyinterrupting with a card for him.

  "Ah, here's Walters now," said he. Then to the boy: "Bring him in when Iring."

  I rose to go.

  "No, sit down, Blacklock," he insisted. "You are in with us now, and youmay learn something by seeing how I deal with the larger problems that facemen in these large undertakings, the problems that have faced me in eachnew enterprise I have inaugurated to the glory of God."

  Naturally, I accepted with enthusiasm.

  You would not believe what a mood I had by this time been worked into by myrampant and raging vanity and emotionalism and by his snake-like charming."Thank you," I said, with an energetic warmth that must have secretlyamused him mightily.

  "When my reorganization of the iron industry proved such a great success,and God rewarded my labors with large returns," he went on, "I lookedabout me to see what new work He wished me to undertake, how He wished meto invest His profits. And I saw the coal industry and the coal-carryingrailroads in confusion, with waste on every side, and godless competition.Thousands of widows and orphans who had invested in coal railways and mineswere getting no returns. Labor was fitfully employed, owing to alternationsof over-production and no production at all. I saw my work ready for myhand. And now we are bringing order out of chaos. This man Walters, usefulup to a certain point, has become insolent, corrupt, a stumbling-block inour way." Here he pressed the button of his electric bell.