The Ancient Grudge/Chapter 17
XVII
LARGE IDEA OF A PHILANTHROPIST
Colonel Halket surveyed the table with satisfaction. His reflection that the twenty guests represented a total capital of nearly two hundred million dollars was gratifying to his vanity; they had all been glad to come at his bidding. Except for Kerr, the New York banker, all were iron and steel manufacturers of Avalon; Colonel Halket had invited them to dinner to discuss a financial scheme and they had come impelled by an interest greater than that of curiosity, greater than that of sympathy—self-interest. Floyd was the only man in the room who was quite ignorant of the purpose of the dinner.
When the dinner was at an end, Colonel Halket rose from his chair.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I suggest that we adjourn to the library."
He led the way and at the door stood aside to let the others enter. Floyd came last, and when he saw the chairs arranged at the farther end of the room in two stiff rows of ten each, he stopped and looked at his grandfather.
"What's the show?" he asked.
"I am," said Colonel Halket. "Get along in with you."
The guests walked across the room and seated themselves in the two rows of chairs with what seemed to Floyd uncanny promptness. But then they had come prepared to hear a speech. Colonel Halket stood before them with the tips of the fingers of his right hand resting on the table, with the thumb of his left hand caught negligently in the arm-hole of his waistcoat. In this attitude he took several puffs of his cigar even after the others had settled into an expectant silence. Then he removed his cigar and began to unfold his scheme for consolidating all the iron and steel plants of the region into one immense corporation.
The amazement with which Floyd listened was not shown by any of the others. They were all paying the careful, unsurprised attention of men who had already been made cognizant of the plan. Colonel Halket was expressing correct sentiments, to the effect that in union there is strength, that united we stand, divided we fall, etc. "Think of the waste entailed by the competition among us who are gathered in this room!" he urged. "Waste effort, waste labor, waste product. I have figures here to show that by joining forces we can so diminish the cost of production and so increase profits that our earnings will in four years equal our total fixed capital."
After reading these figures, he brought forward his main proposition, which was that on the basis of these prospective earnings they should capitalize the new organization at five times the actual capital of the mills which should compose it, sell the stock at par, and do a great thing for the industry, the public, and themselves.
"Eventually," he said, "we shall find ourselves strong enough to extend our organization. Avalon is already the most vital spot, industrially, in America. It is already the great radiating centre of manufactures. Gradually and naturally we shall absorb all the iron-mills of importance in the country; we shall control the iron industry of the continent."
He dwelt with fond oratory upon the benefits to be derived by the public and by the workingmen from such a consolidation, and during this part of his speech the studious, concentrated expression on the faces of his auditors became more marked. He brought in one or two apt quotations—one about the truly good citizen who cares not to be great but as he saves and serves the state—"and for the word great we might substitute rich," declared Colonel Halket loftily. He felt as he stood before these twenty eminent citizens that he had never addressed a body of men in a higher or more ennobling vein, or been more eloquent. "Bear with me if I seem didactic," he begged them with the complacent confidence of the orator who appeals for indulgence most when he feels most assured that he is about to be interesting. Only Colonel Halket deluded himself and misjudged his audience; they admired his polished utterance of fine sentiment, but were impatient for him to descend again to practical facts and figures. This before long he did, with another apology; and Floyd began then to understand the purpose of his grandfather's laborious study of statistics during the past months. The audience was once more interested and impressed.
Colonel Halket spoke continuously for an hour. When he had finished no one seemed at once ready to meet him in argument. After a moment he called on Kerr, the New York banker, for an opinion as to the financing of the scheme.
"I am willing to undertake it," said Kerr. "On condition that it appears that Colonel Halket is to be president of the new corporation."
"That is a condition, gentlemen, that I should not have thought of naming," said Colonel Halket genially. "I dare say Mr. Kerr, at any sign of opposition, will be willing to withdraw the compliment."
"On the contrary," said Mr. Kerr. He was a serious-looking man, bald except for a few long wisps of sandy hair laid across the peak of his head; his reddish mustache drooped, his ears were big and protuberant; he was a homely man, but an impressive by reason of his cool, calm eyes. His shrewd foresight passed among the unimaginative men of his world for constructive imagination; his prestige was enormous at this time, for he had had several large successes in getting together the properties of other men and putting them into the hands of his friends; he had met with no failures; articles appeared about him, therefore, in the supplements of the Sunday newspapers, from Boston to San Francisco, with pictures, more or less genuine, of his country house and his steam yacht and his family; in these articles he was usually referred to at least once either as "the Napoleon of finance" or as "the master mind of Wall Street." An enterprise fathered by Kerr at this period was sure of a joyful, care-free, blooming infancy—however friendless and forsaken might be its old age.
For these reasons nineteen men listened submissively and one listened proudly when Kerr said in his deliberate and pregnant voice, "On the condition that I have named and on that alone will I undertake the matter; and on that condition I shall be glad to undertake it."
Mr. Dunbar spoke. "If we sell out, do I understand that we mill-owners are definitely retired from business—given no active management either in the affairs of the corporation or in the mills which have been ours?"
"Some of you will be asked to take part in the management and others will not," replied Kerr. "Some of you will necessarily find yourselves gentlemen of leisure—with three or four or eight or ten times your present income. You will receive your pay for your mills in bonds and preferred stock on which dividends are certain or which may be sold for a price. The public will absorb the common stock—on which dividends are probable. We may be extravagant in paying for the mills which shall form our nucleus—but when we have demonstrated our power"—an ungenial smile crossed his face—"we shall be able to recoup by acquiring other properties at bargain prices."
The manufacturers smiled at this agreeably sinister suggestion, and the solemnity with which they had been listening was dissipated very soon in jokes and laughter, and then in practical questions and answers. Floyd sat overlooked in a corner of the room, absorbed in a slow, burning wonder and disgust. Nineteen men, who had for years been reasonably honest, single-minded producers of useful materials, were being transformed before his eyes into as many chaffering hucksters whose only aim was to find for what multiple of its worth they might sell their property to the ignorant and gullible. His grandfather and the banker had evidently arranged even small details of the scheme; it was hardly the fault of the other men that they should exhibit such eagerness to profit by it. The power of the two leaders was great enough to compel submission, even had there been no temptation. The breadth and scope of his grandfather's plan, which had been worked out so quietly and patiently, with the assistance of but one man, the one man in the country whose cooperation at this stage was essential, left Floyd aghast with unwilling admiration. There was something both superb and revolting in this insatiate greed for power on the part of an old man who was approaching his eightieth year.
When the guests had all departed, Colonel Halket returned from the hall where he had hospitably been bidding the last of them good-by, and found his grandson sitting on the corner of the big table, swinging one leg and gazing at the floor moodily.
"Have another cigar, Floyd," said Colonel Halket, pushing the box toward him. "Sit down properly and be comfortable; I want to talk with you."
Floyd took a cigar and bit off the end of it, although his grandfather was offering him his cigar-cutter. The small crudeness of this preference annoyed Colonel Halket; occasionally Floyd did something of about this quality which led his grandfather to think that he had not fully profited by his advantages.
"I'm comfortable enough," said, Floyd. "I'll walk round; I'm tired of sitting down."
"No," said Colonel Halket, with a slight asperity. "I'm tired of sitting down. I want to talk to you—and walk round. Please sit down and, besides being comfortable, do your best to look it."
Floyd understood that Colonel Halket was in an exacting mood and submitted. When he had settled himself in an armchair by the fire-place and had lighted the cigar, his grandfather began to pace slowly back and forth with his thumbs hooked in the arm-holes of his waistcoat.
"Floyd," he said at last, "this night marks the crowning achievement of my life. I think I may say without vanity that all I have ever heretofore done—and it has not been little—is as nothing in its possibilities for beneficent and far-reaching results compared to what I have this evening accomplished. It is a thing that I have long dreamed of, and I thank God that I have been spared to consummate it. To-night you have seen taken—you have witnessed with your very eyes—the grandest step, as I believe, to advance the cause of labor that has been made in half a century."
"Labor!" cried Floyd, taking his cigar from his mouth and staring. "Labor!"
"Labor," repeated Colonel Halket, and his sonorous utterance seemed to breathe into the word all the nobility that should by tradition be associated with it. "For a time I felt that having brought about in my own mills a relation between capital and labor which I may go so far as to term ideal, and having published my book, my philosophy of an employer's life, I had contributed my utmost to the cause of industrial civilization. I felt that my work was finished, and that men might learn from me, so to speak, both by example and by precept—if they would. But, Floyd, a man is not happy when he feels that his work is done. I chafed under the feeling; and then one day there flashed upon me this idea for further work and usefulness."
"How did it come?" asked Floyd; his grandfather's pause seemed to demand some remark. "What suggested it?"
"I think it was reading in a newspaper one morning of the strikes in the rolling-mills at Warrenton and Leetsburg," replied Colonel Halket. "It started me thinking. I said to myself, 'I never have strikes in my mills; why should these men have them in theirs?' The answer was simple; my methods, my organization, my system of dealing with my men were based on correct principles; theirs were at fault. And then it occurred to me; if my methods could be applied to all the steel mills of this vicinity, under my personal supervision, there would be a harmonizing at once of interests which have been conflicting—a harmonizing and humanizing, to speak in epigram. It was the idea of so harmonizing and humanizing the relations of capital and labor, of giving a sense of stability to the workingman as well as to the employer that suggested the gathering together of all the mills in the valley under my control. From that, the next generalization is logical enough. If one can combine the iron industries of the valley, one can, almost as easily, combine those of the country. It will be done by gradual, inevitable accretion. It was first my mission to introduce a more enlightened and liberal policy towards labor into my own mills; it is now my mission to propagate this wherever the industry flourishes; in another decade, if I am spared to set this work properly on its feet, the condition of the iron-worker will be improved a hundred per cent., and a strike in the iron and steel business will be as unlikely as an earthquake in New York."
Floyd found himself for the moment with nothing to say. The idea that his grandfather had evolved this prodigious scheme in the interests of the laboring-man seemed to him unspeakably astounding and grotesque. It indicated a monstrous delusion as to the situation in the New Rome mills, where there was greater disaffection and discontent than there had ever been. It indicated a development of the visionary side of Colonel Halket's nature which Floyd had hardly suspected.
"It strikes me as queer," Floyd said at last quite bluntly. "Here is a plan conceived in the interests of the laboring-men—and all the definite provisions it makes are for the instant and enormous profits of the employers. Where does labor come in?"
"In a thousand ways," declared Colonel Halket. "My dear Floyd, you seem to have the uneducated theory of most men—that if something is done for the profit of the capitalist, it is at the expense of the laborer. Not at all; the prosperity of the one is the prosperity of the other. It is true that my plan provides for the realizing of large profits immediately by those who enter into it; but it is also true that in the larger, ultimate sense the great benefits resulting from its adoption will fall to labor. For it will mean the cessation of erratic, feverish competition, over-production, under-selling, periods of depression when men are laid off or discharged; those days will be at an end; there will come into existence an era of steady, equable employment for all. In comparison with so great and beneficent an achievement, what are the profits of a few hundred thousand, a few million dollars made by a handful of individuals?"
"Your reasoning almost turns my head, but it does n't get hold of me," Floyd said, with a laugh. "I think the beneficent results to labor that you see so clearly are very dim and doubtful. I think that the iron-workers themselves will distrust this move and regard it as a conspiracy to oppress them. So far from causing better feeling among them, I think you will make the feeling worse. And even granting that the ultimate end will be as you say; it seems to me you and Mr. Kerr are planning to achieve it by unjustifiable means."
"Perhaps you will be good enough to instruct me," said Colonel Halket, with tolerant sarcasm for this juvenile moralist.
"It was intimated pretty plainly in Mr. Kerr's remarks," Floyd answered. "You men who go into the combination first sell your mills at five times what they are worth. The public pays the price. Then you hope to pay dividends by acquiring other mills at bargain prices—and how will you do that? Your combination means to invade the field of every private manufacturer of importance and under-sell him and drive him to the wall—until he will give his plant up to you at the unjust price you dictate. That is the only method by which you can ever extend such an organization, and the only method by which you can win. It is practically committing highway robbery with a club."
"Nonsense!" cried Colonel Halket. "Even assuming the truth of your rash statements—which I don't for a moment admit—it would be merely applying the principle of competition—"
"There's fair competition and there's unfair competition," broke in Floyd. "It's fair when it's a permanent endeavor to make the best product at the cheapest price compatible with a profit. It's unfair when, simply because of greater resources and staying power, one manufacturer makes an assault on another's business, temporarily produces at a loss in order to drive his rival out of the market, and having accomplished that, pushes up the price again and recoups himself for his loss."
"Oh, you're splitting hairs, splitting hairs," Colonel Halket declared, with an impatient gesture. "Competition's the life of trade—and everybody's fighting everybody else. Of course after I close up the combination, that will no longer be true,—and it will be better for every one,—but meanwhile, no doubt, some one will have to suffer. There are always sacrifices in the path of human progress."
"It does not seem to me," said Floyd, "that it is the part of a humane and just man to profit by them."
"Profit by them!" exclaimed Colonel Halket, sweeping one hand through his hair in exasperation at this crass misconception and misstatement of his aims. "I tell you that any profit that accrues to me is merely incidental; it is n't that that I'm after. It's the profit to the cause of labor that I think of—that has inspired my plan. Kindly bear that in mind,—and you will not accuse me of injustice or inhumanity."
The futility of argument became apparent to Floyd. He bade his grandfather good-night and went up to his room, but when he was undressed he sat for a long time before the fire, pondering on the situation that would be created for him by the adoption of Colonel Halket's plans. It was not difficult for him to realize what that situation would be, though it was difficult enough to decide how he should face it.
The business of making and selling steel beams, armor-plate, rods, axles, and all the multiform products of the New Rome mills had not grown more attractive to Floyd in the years which he had given to it. The one department that held for him a personal interest was the chemist's laboratory; in the tests and analyses and experiments to improve the quality of steel he found the element of play that distinguishes work from drudgery. As for the general management of the mills and all the various small and large responsibilities that it entailed, he viewed it with an odd mingling of distaste and unconcern. His training had been so thorough and his natural methods were so direct and simple that it did not take him long to acquire confidence in his ability to fill the position; but the performance of his executive duties became, as he soon learned, largely a matter of routine, and it irked him to give his attention to them instead of to the discovery of new formulas. He would have preferred not to be in the steel business at all; being in it, he would have chosen, had there been any freedom of choice for him, to be the chemist for the company; instead, he had not been permitted to specialize, but had been compelled to prepare himself for the general supervision of the works.
He had looked forward to a certain human interest in this which might compensate him for the loss of that scientific interest to which his mind naturally turned. The one thing that seemed to him to give value to what his grandfather was doing, to what he would eventually have to do, was the burden of other lives which the work imposed on him. To guard the happiness and prosperity of ten thousand dependent people would be work enough and interest enough for anybody,—at least he had gradually and willingly been coming to this conclusion. In his awakening interest in the opportunities of such a position, he had already begun to diverge from his grandfather's views; he felt that there would have to be a radical readjustment to make happiness and prosperity permanent. Bit by bit, and more or less unconsciously, ideas for reconstruction had been taking shape in his own mind,—ideas which might perhaps have their fulfillment some time when he should be the commanding figure of Halket & Company.
Now at the intimation that this time was never coming he felt little disappointment. His expectations had long been merely an impersonal and rather reluctant acceptance of a matter of fact. Indeed, for himself there now emerged from the plan proposed an attractive vision of escape from the exacting responsibilities for which he had been laboriously preparing. He might be his own master, and not the master of other men—a relation for which, with a sensitiveness that few suspected, he had a real distaste. The thought that here suddenly his path was open, away from the mills, back to the academic laboratory, was a temptation.
"But the people out at New Rome when they hear of it!" Sitting on the edge of the bed, he pictured the consternation that would run through all the grades of employees, from the superintendents down. There would be among them all, he felt instinctively, but one thought,—that their employer had sold and betrayed them. Perhaps, so long as Colonel Halket lived and was president of the great new corporation, they would not suffer; but after his term had passed there would be a gradual leveling. The works at New Rome might always perhaps retain a certain prestige, but their independence was doomed, and in time there would be inevitably a scaling down of men and of wages. Floyd imagined the dismay in thousands of families when they should learn that the paternal care of a generous and indulgent employer was to be exchanged for the iron rule of a corporation to which there could never be any human appeal.
Colonel Halket moved quickly. The newspapers the next morning contained an outline of the "rumored" combination, mentioning three or four of the most important works that would be included, pointing out equally the advantages to capitalist and to employee. "The Halket Steel Works," said the article, "will of course form the backbone of the new organization—of which it may not be premature to assert that Colonel Halket will be president. The total capital of this stupendous combine will run up into the hundreds of millions."
Floyd went that morning to New Rome. He had business with the superintendent; when it was finished Gregg leaned back and said,—
"Mr. Halket, did you read the paper this morning?"
His face was anxious.
"Yes," said Floyd.
"Can you tell me if there's anything in that report—about a big steel combine which is to take in Halket & Company?"
"I knew nothing about it till last night," Floyd answered. "Then I had a talk with my grandfather. Yes, I think what is in the paper is substantially true. Of course the plan is only under contemplation. It may never be tried,—though I'm inclined to think it will be."
Gregg rolled a little cylinder of paper and turned it round and round in his fingers.
"Well," he said slowly, "it will make the old man some richer. I don't know as it will make him much happier."
He tossed the cylinder of paper into his waste-basket, and touched a bell summoning a stenographer. Floyd rose to go, and Gregg said with his infrequent, mild smile, "Of course, Mr. Halket, you understand I'm not advising any man how to run his business."
"Oh, no!" Floyd laughed. "But a person may sometimes pass an observation."
As he went out he did not guess that the chagrin and disappointment which had shown so distinctly on Gregg's face had been mainly for him; yet it was indeed an indignation over an act which was depriving Floyd of his expected rights that had seized the superintendent most forcibly. It seemed to Gregg a piece of injustice to bring a boy up to the steel business, put him through a hard apprenticeship, and then, when he was at last fully prepared, to sell his inheritance over his head and deprive him of the opportunity to practice what he had learned.
"Of course he'll have a big fortune," Gregg reflected to himself. "But a young man ought to have his chance to do what he's expected and studied to do. It's not fair to him to take away the chance."
He felt a certain dull resentment toward Colonel Halket in behalf of himself, in behalf of all the employees of the works. Their positions were probably secure; and yet it seemed a rather disloyal thing that Colonel Halket had done, especially to those who had spent long lives in his service.
Floyd, leaving the superintendent's office, passed on into the works, where he wished to inspect some new machinery that had been set up that week. Just inside the doorway of Open-Hearth Number Two he came upon a curious sight,—Stewart Lee in light overcoat and cap painting at an easel. "Hello, Stewart," he said, and the painter turned suddenly. "What are you at now?"
"Just a sketch to work from," Stewart explained. It was a rough picture of Shelton and another man standing aloft emptying one of the ladles of molten metal into the ingot moulds. "Of course I can't paint the picture here; I make just the rough sketch, and then work it up at home as well as I can from memory and imagination. I guess the men think I'm all kinds of a lunatic, but they don't mind me any more."
"You ought to show them a finished copy," Floyd said. "Then they 'd be more sympathetic."
"Oh, they're all right," Stewart answered. "I get on with them very well. I did have one of them come in to my studio and see the picture I'd made of him—Tustin his name was. He was quite pleased, considering what a saturnine cuss he is."
"I'm glad you've got a more pleasant subject this time," Floyd said. "I recognize my old friend Joe Shelton." He waved his hand. "Hello, Shelton," he called; and Shelton waved in reply. A moment later, having emptied his ladle, he descended from his perch.
"I never expected an artist would want to make a picture of me," he said, looking at the canvas curiously. "I don't come out very clear in it yet, do I?" he asked Stewart with disappointment.
"Not yet, but you will," Stewart assured him.
"That's good. When a man has his picture done just once in a lifetime, he wants it so 's folks will know it's him. Mr. Halket, there ain't any truth in that newspaper yam this morning, is there?"
"If you read that, you know just about as much concerning it as I do," Floyd answered.
He felt temporarily comforted when Shelton interpreted this evasive reply as a frank assurance that there was no truth in the story.
"I guessed it was a fake," Shelton said. "What would Colonel Halket be wanting to use us that way for—and you too? Do you mind, Mr. Halket, I told you once I'd be proud to be working for you? and so I will."
"Well," said Floyd cheerfully, "we used to work together pretty well; I guess our team play would still be good."
"Say, that's right," Shelton answered with a chuckle. "The boys 'll be glad to know it's nothing but newspaper talk, what they read this morning. They're a good bit worked up about it."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"Yes, but when they know it's all right—Say, Mr. Halket, it would n't be a bad thing if the Colonel or somebody was to come out in the newspapers and nail it, you know."
"I understand," said Floyd. "No doubt there will be some definite statement before long."
He left Shelton and Stewart and continued on through the works. It seemed to him that passing workmen looked at him with anxiety and mute questioning and that those who stood talking together were depressed. He himself felt distinctly pessimistic. He had not liked to give Shelton the evasive, misleading answers, and yet it was not time to confirm the man in his fears.
Half an hour later, when Floyd was leaving, he was joined by Stewart, who had finished his sketch. They returned to Avalon together, and Stewart told him that some time he meant to have a small private exhibition of his pictures; he would soon have enough of them. But it would n't be for some little time. More important things were on the eve of happening at his house. Floyd had been aware of this; he felt it would have been more delicate if he could have shown surprise at the news. The subject imposed constraint on him, though Stewart spoke freely enough and in a happy frame of mind even invited him to express an opinion as to the comparative desirability of boy or girl. He himself declared he had not enough of a preference to be disappointed whatever the result. And he ended with an exhortation to Floyd to get married.
"You'll think first that getting engaged is the most exciting thing you've ever done—and the best fun," he assured him. "And then you'll find that is n't anything to getting married. And now I'm finding that is n't anything to this. It's the whole of life, my boy."
"I think perhaps you're right," Floyd said gravely.
"Then cheer up and look about you." Stewart clapped him inspiritingly on the back and they parted.
Floyd went to his office and sat down at his desk, but energy carried him no further; he let the morning's mail lie unopened at his hand. Swinging round towards the window he looked out on the grimy roofs of the city and abandoned himself to idle dreams, if those dreams may be called idle which sometimes make vital moments in a man's development. Stewart was right. Floyd, looking down unconsciously upon a city block that he possessed, knew that he was missing life—the whole of life. How unsatisfactory and barren was his existence, stolid, comfortable, monotonous, diversified only by occasional poignant memories and regrets, bearing only such responsibilities as his grandfather chose to dole out to him. Stewart and other fellows of his own age had plunged in and were fulfilling their destiny; he, patiently waiting for something that could never be his, with a kind of dull fidelity to a hopeless and foolish love, was wasting his youth and narrowing the interest of his maturer years. They were not so far distant now; that morning while shaving he had noted how conspicuous the gray hairs had become among the black. It was so easy to slip on from year to year, thinking always that there was yet time and that happiness and the fuller life were just round the corner—and then at last one would suddenly realize that there was no longer time and that one had never stepped round the comer to meet the good angels. A man might be to blame, certainly he could not be happy, if he locked up his heart against the charm of women. At the thought a longing for feminine society and companionship seized him; he passed in quick review the girls of his acquaintance—Marion Clark and May Pennington and Helen Foster especially, wondering why he should always have been so indifferent to these three, whom most men found attractive and whom his grandmother had urged upon his attention. It instantly occurred to him now that with any one of them he might pass a profitable and consoling half hour. That afternoon he called upon them, one after another, beginning with Marion Clark, ending with Helen Foster; they were none of them at home. He had brought his mind into a condition receptive for pleasant impressions; with each disappointment at the door he cooled into his attitude of former indifference.
Then, when he was turning away from the last house, he met Marion Clark.
"Oh," she said when he had told her of his unsuccessful attempt, "I'm going home now; please come with me, please! I'll give you a cup of tea."
"Thank you," he said. He turned and walked with her. "I was beginning to lose hope of getting one anywhere."
"I always suspected," she remarked, "that men were a predatory race whose afternoon excursions were prompted by a desire for tea. But I never met one before who so frankly acknowledged it."
"It's the first excursion I've made this year."
"That demands an excuse instead of being one," she answered.
Walking with her, he brightened unconsciously into a gayety of spirit. She was of a robuster type than Lydia Lee, fair-haired, with blue-gray eyes that took one in at a kindly glance and then lighted up humorously if the person pleased her. They were not eyes like Lydia's, which alternated musing with their sprightliness; they expressed a vitality too abundant ever to give place to a deeper, meditative curiosity. A swift practical sense of values which her extravagant speech did not disguise, an eager if passing interest in things and people, and a certain fearlessness which accompanied the restless glancing of her mind established Marion Clark's leadership among girls and made her fascinating to most men. She was amusing, they thought, and reckless and individual; and if she had not had these charms men must still have admired "the Scandinavian beauty," as Stewart Lee termed her. She and Stewart were close friends; she had in fact started the exchange of amenities by praising the color scheme of his marriage. So he had retorted upon her, and Lydia had laughed at them both.
"I've had a hard day," Marion said, as she sat behind her tea-cups. "I'd just come from the most acrimonious meeting of our Discussion Club when I met you."
"Your what?"
"Our Discussion Club. Stewart Lee is responsible for it. The girls in Boston have them, and he told Lydia, and so she started one here. We meet every two weeks."
"What do you discuss?"
"Fine moral questions mostly. We're terribly ethical. To-day the subject was, 'When is a man justified in asking a girl to marry him.'"
"When he's sure he's in love with her," Floyd suggested promptly.
"Oh, it's not so simple as that. That's where Adelaide Ward and I got into trouble; that's what we said in our unthinking young way. May Pennington pointed out to us that a cab-driver might fall in love with the lady who was in the habit of employing him when she went shopping, but that he would n't be justified in proposing marriage. And—"
"Oh, within reasonable limits, of course," said Floyd.
"Yes, it all came down to a question of defining reasonable limits. That was where everybody got earnest. We decided that class distinctions had to be made somehow. I was in favor of letting in pretty much anybody who could read and write, and Geraldine Fitz-Gerald thought that no one who did not belong to the Brahmin caste should aspire to marry one who did. She was great on the Brahmin caste."
"It would be quite a job to define the Brahmin caste of Avalon," said Floyd.
"We simply could n't bother with it. We'd have to leave it to Tom Gary. And that, of course, was the great objection to Greraldine's solution."
"I suppose the question really narrowed down very soon to this: 'When is a man justified in asking one of us to marry him.'"
"Certainly," said Marion. "Almost immediately. And being a coarse, indelicate person I was for letting pretty much anybody speak, so long as he was in love. But most of the others agreed that one had to consider the man's social position and income. Here in Avalon you can't talk very long without getting on the subject of money. Most, of the girls decided that a man had no business to mention marriage until he actually had enough money to marry on. Then the real debate began. What was enough to marry on—what income? Everybody was afraid to show her hand—they all wanted to draw one another out; of course nobody wanted to seem willing to be bid in for less than her neighbor."
"I see," said Floyd, with a laugh. "But are n't you all terribly hard on the men? Has a fellow got to bring his check-book in his pocket when he comes to propose to a girl? Can't he take it for granted that if she cares for him, she'll be willing to wait a while?"
"Oh, when you ask me, I'm an anarchist on the subject. And Adelaide Ward seemed sort of glad that I felt as I did; you know Jim Henderson's been attentive to Adelaide, and Jim has n't a cent. But the others were all pronounced in favor of the income. The minimum that any one seemed willing to accept was five thousand a year."
"Supposing the girl had some money of her own," said Floyd. "Must the man show up five thousand then or forever hold his tongue?"
"We went into that quite thoroughly," Marion replied. "Adelaide pleaded hard that he should be let off for two thousand at least, but the others were quite firm. The girl's condition should n't and would n't influence any right-feeling man one way or the other, they decided; there was only one course that he could feel justified in pursuing in any circumstances. Adelaide Ward got quite indignant and said everybody was vulgarly commercial, and Geraldine reproved her for making such charges, when, as every one knew, they were only trying to take the highest ethical position. Adelaide was quite worked up by that time and said she did n't care, she did n't believe a single one of them had ever been in love or they would n't talk so; and then there was a great commotion, and I backed up Adelaide,—she seemed so alone in the world; and altogether it was one of the liveliest meetings the Discussion Club has had. Adelaide went away almost in tears, and I went away cross; and the last I heard was Helen Foster and May Pennington off in one corner discussing whether a man was ever justified in proposing by letter. May insisted that nothing but great distance could excuse this; she declared she would n't consider a proposal in writing from anywhere nearer than Salt Lake City—and probably not from there, as it might be a Mormon; and Helen thought there might be cases—some men might do it so much more prettily that way—it might be allowable."
"It seems a pity that the only persons to whom your debate might have been profitable were excluded," said Floyd.
"Men? Oh, it would n't have done them any good—only bewildered and scared them. They would n't have understood the intellectual dishonesty and moral cowardice of a lot of girls when they're gathered together and called on to express convictions. It was such a vital thing to Adelaide she had to speak out; it was n't to any of the others and so they could afford to pose; and my backing up Adelaide did n't hurt me any, for I'm simply regarded as the irreverent scoffer. What I like most about men is that they never seem to puzzle themselves with fine ethical questions the way women do. 'They do not make me sick discussing their duty towards God,'—as Walt Whitman says of the animals."
"You think that's a poor practice?" Floyd asked.
"Yes, rather contemptible—does n't it seem so to you? It has a belittling effect on the mind—for girls take small subjects and treat them with such a big seriousness."
"That's a very novel and interesting view of girls," said Floyd. "I always thought of them as taking large subjects and treating them frivolously—at least with a light touch."
"Of course those are the nice girls that do that," replied Marion. "The nice and most useful."
"I'll concede they're the nicest," Floyd said. "If seems hardly right they should be useful, too."
"But they are; it's that light touch that makes them so," Marion cried. "Why, I'll show you—only you've got to use your imagination. You're a man and you've done a hard day's work, and one of your thumbs is all sore and blistered from it, and you sit down by the road and tear a strip off your handkerchief to make a bandage. Then you try to put the bandage on your sore thumb, and you can't get it tied, though you try and try and try, with hand and teeth. And finally, you throw away the rag in despair and go on limping home, just as you are—"
"Why do I limp?" Floyd asked. "I thought it was my thumb that was sore."
"I told you that you'd have to use your imagination," she answered. "You limp; I don't know why. You go limping home, now holding your thumb this way with your other hand, and now putting it up to your mouth to breathe upon it—so,—and altogether you're about the most forlorn and wretched spectacle of a man—"
"Yes, I know," said Floyd sympathetically. "Never mind that part."
"—You're so forlorn and wretched looking that another tired old wayfarer that you meet stops and offers to help you. So you stop and hold out your poor thumb to him—so—and he takes out of his pocket a lot of twine and cotton waste and oiled rags such as a man usually carries in his pocket, and he bandages your thumb with it. Then, because you are really a nice man, in spite of being so forlorn and wretched looking, you thank him politely and seem just as grateful! But the moment you've turned a bend in the road, you sit down and begin pulling off his bandage, for it's too clumsy and dirty and uncomfortable. And then, while you're just sitting there looking and wondering how you are ever going to get home with such a poor sore thumb, a beautiful stately girl in a pink organdie, with white kid slippers and wearing pearl ear-rings—"
"You might dwell a little on her," Floyd interrupted.
—"And bare-headed, but with one white rose nestling in the coils of her nut-brown hair," continued Marion, "comes down the road. As she's passing, she glances at you and at once exclaims in the sweetest voice you had ever heard, 'Ah, the poor thumb!' She takes out the roll of sterilized gauze bandage that she always carries,—for she has taken a course in District Nursing and is as good as she is beautiful. She bandages your thumb until it feels all new and smooth and clean; and you hate to have her stop; you like the way her cool little finger-tips just touch your hand and play over it; you begin to have an idea that if she'd only keep it up a little longer your poor sore thumb would turn into a musical instrument and suddenly begin to give forth beautiful sounds. And when she gets through with you, you feel so well that you go striding home along the road without any limp, you have your dinner and are able to thumb your guitar, and you spend a pleasant evening thinking about the girl in the pink organdie who fell in love with you while she was putting on a bandage—for that's what a man always thinks of any woman who does anything for him, is n't it?"
"I'm afraid you're cynical," Floyd answered.
"Not of the girl with the light touch, anyway," Marion said. "For, see what she's done; she's healed your thumb and sent you home in high spirits and made you happy for the rest of the day—and without any such selfish motive as that of love, which you, in a man's egotistical way, are beginning to impute to her, and just because, being a cheerful soul with a light touch, she could n't help it. And the light touch is the same useful thing when applied to mental troubles as to sore thumbs."
"I am quite sure of it," said Floyd.
"Then, do you see why girls with the light touch are the most useful as well as the nicest?"
Floyd rose to go. "I should indeed be stupid," he said, "if I did not see—in the face of two such lessons."
"Two?" She looked at him, puzzled.
"Two." He held out his hand.
Her cheerful laugh of comprehension followed him as he left the room.
He went away, conscious of a distinct improvement in his spirits. He allowed his mind, usually curbed and bitted for the most cautious and conventional processes, to take one of those random, daring leaps, which its real vitality, chafing under such close control, sometimes demanded. It put him with a startling suddenness into a fascinated, half-alarmed contemplation of marriage. Perhaps, if one could but present an open mind towards women, one would discover that not all one's capacity for love had been exhausted upon a vain object.
It occurred to Floyd that it might at least be a healthy mental attitude, provided one could assume it. If one could consider every woman one met with a view to her possibilities as a wife, it would surely make women much more interesting. It was perhaps because he had never viewed them in this way that they had interested him so little. Looking at Marion Clark in the light of such a hypothetical relation, he found her quite a new person—quite agreeable. He wondered how it would be to live with such buoyancy always in the house—a little wearing perhaps; she had, he thought, a masculine sureness about herself, and he believed he liked better a quality of uncertainty and elusiveness in women. He wondered vaguely what he did most prefer in them. He could not explain Lydia's attraction. Marion Clark was a very good-looking girl—quite as good-looking as Lydia, perhaps; there was really no reason why she should not appeal to him in the same way. Then he strayed off to wonder if a man's susceptibility to certain colors might not determine the sort of person with whom he should fall in love. He doubted if a man whose first wife was very dark could have any intrinsic interest in taking for a second wife a high-colored blonde. It had happened, of course; but probably with some slight insincerity. If one's natural inclinations towards an albino were thwarted, one could surely never develop an equal passion for the most beautiful and intellectual Cuban.
Inquiring into his own tastes, he concluded that fair hair and blue eyes were in general distinctly less attractive to him than brown. Yet though it was an inferior class, he was disposed to place Marion Clark quite at the top of her class. He admitted in her case a warmth of temperament which in most blue-eyed and fair-haired persons was unpleasingly lacking. She had a certain originality and humor, too—qualities which he attributed to the blue-eyed class rather than to the brown. It occurred to him that she might very likely illuminate these subtleties herself in discussion, and he determined some time to put them before her. But she was masculinely sure of herself and decisive—a virtue which he applauded and abhorred.
Floyd's meditative, whimsical mood was wiped out in an instant when he turned in at his grandfather's driveway and met, just as it was leaving, a carriage in which sat Kerr, the New York banker.