Home > Authors Index > Charles Neville Buck > Destiny > This page
Destiny, a novel by Charles Neville Buck |
||
Part 2. The Book Of Life - It Might Have Been - Chapter 12 |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ PART II. THE BOOK OF LIFE - IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN CHAPTER XII An hour later Mrs. Haswell sat before the cheval glass of her dressing-table. Her dark hair, loosened now from its coils, cascaded abundantly over her white shoulders. She was thinking, and the charmingly chiseled lips and brow here in the privacy of her own room wore a rather calculating and somewhat satisfied smile. No note of contrition or self-accusation marred their serenity. A knock on the door interrupted her reverie and with a smothered exclamation of annoyance she glanced at the clock and rose. "May I come in a moment?" Her husband's voice was a shade thicker than usual and his face still wore the somber expression which seemed so out of place there. "It's almost two o'clock, Len." There was an uninviting coolness in the quality of Loraine's tone--almost a protest. "Won't tomorrow do?" She stood still, holding the door only a few inches ajar. "I won't keep you up long," he assured her. "I'm very tired." Len Haswell laid his hand on the knob and opened the door in spite of her unwelcome. "If you please," he said quietly. He came in and lighted a cigarette, then he inquired with an unaccustomed irony: "What tired you, Loraine? You didn't seem to be dancing much." His wife shrugged her shoulders. Beyond that she failed to reply. The big man came over and took both her hands in his own with a half-savage affection. "Loraine," he said pleadingly, "I wanted to dance with you tonight. I searched high and low, but I couldn't find you. For my part I have spent a very dreary evening." "You know, Len," she casually reminded him, "you and I can't dance together. I'm a fair dancer and you are a very good one, but together we can't manage it. There were plenty of other girls, weren't there?" The man's face for an instant worked spasmodically and in pain, then it grew dark. "For me, Loraine, there is never any other girl. You know that. Why do you avoid me as if I were a pestilence? Why can't you sometimes be the girl you used to be? Presumably you married me because you wanted to. You had better offers, richer lovers. Have I changed so much in five years--and if not, what in God's name has changed you?" She withdrew her hands from his and sat again in the chair before the mirror. "Len," she said with a touch of petulance in her voice, "you get into grouches and spur your imagination to all sorts of absurdities. I'm very sleepy. Why can't you reserve your fault-finding until tomorrow?" Len Haswell answered quietly, but obdurately. "For two reasons. In the first place I sha'n't be able to sleep unless you answer me. In the second place I shall probably see as much of you tomorrow as I have today--which is nothing." His tone hardened. "You are too tired to give me a few minutes, but you found it both possible and agreeable to give Paul Burton the entire evening." "Oh," she laughed easily and with well-simulated amusement, "I should fancy from the contemptuous things I have heard you men say about Paul, you would regard him as quite harmless." "Paul!" repeated the man accusingly. "When did you begin calling him by his first name? Does he call you Loraine, too?" "Why not? We are friends." She looked up at her husband's face with an air of injured innocence and he paced a turn or two across the floor before he halted before her. "I wish you would see less of him. I don't talk business to you often. It bores you, but you know that we are always strained to hold the pace that richer members of our set cut out. We have to pay very high for a privilege which has no value to me except that you like it." Loraine Haswell sighed--and masked a yawn behind a small uplifted hand. "I wonder," she mused as though to herself, yet quite loud enough to be heard, "why some men find it so hard to make money, and to others it seems so easy." Len Haswell flushed brick red to his cheekbones. He bit his lip and forced himself to remain silent for a moment, then he spoke gently. "I'm sorry I am not as brilliant a financier as some others. Nature doesn't endow us all alike. A good many people would regard me as fairly successful, I dare say. For myself a small house on the Sound would be good enough, if you were there--" "Thank you," she answered with deliberate cruelty, "I don't think I'd care for that." The man's scowl became ominously black. The hands at his side twitched, and the temper with which few credited him because of his perpetual control, flared out. "No, by the Almighty, you would rather prefer to be where the gods of life are pleasure and extravagance and selfish indulgence! Where the loyal love of a husband means less than the flatteries of a tame cat...." As suddenly as the eruption had come it subsided. He raised both hands. "Forgive me," he implored, "I didn't mean that. But I am distraught and financial affairs are very precarious, Loraine. We may stand on the brink of a disastrous panic. It lies in Hamilton Burton's power to make me or break me--absolutely. Don't you see what that means?" His wife shook her head, "I'm afraid I don't understand the intricacies of finance." Her tone added that neither was she extravagantly interested in them. "It means this," Haswell spoke gravely. "You have been seen with Paul Burton more perhaps than is advisable. Paul Burton is Hamilton Burton's brother ... he is the one man with whom I can't afford to quarrel." "I haven't suggested your quarreling with him." "Then please don't drive me to it." "Again I say that you are letting your imagination make you the victim of absurdities. Of just what are you accusing me?" He came over and took her hand. "I am not accusing you of anything. I am willing to let my honor rest in your hands, but I am warning you against innocent mistakes." He sought to put an arm about her, but she slipped from his grasp, and after a moment he said "Good-night" with a sort of sullen resignation, and went out, closing the door noiselessly after him. * * * * * Jefferson Edwardes had tramped far. When Mary Burton had gone to her own room, he had plunged into the thicketed slopes of the hills and walked for hours. Since his long exile in the White Mountains he had always held to the idea that a man can think more clearly close to the rocks and under open skies. Just now he wanted an untinged clarity to attend his thoughts. Although the occurrences of the evening had possessed an Arabian Night's quality of unreality, he felt no misgivings for the love he had announced and pledged. It was not as though he looked back on a record of broken promises. He had no troubling memories to sweep from his conscience before his heart should be clear for a new entry. He had come away from the mountains with something hermit-like in his nature and much of the idealistic. It had been a pleasanter thing to him to keep unsullied the more important dreams of life than to endanger them with the transitory pleasures of the philanderer. The Mary Burton he had known in the dilapidated farm-house had of course been nothing more than a picturesque little waif of the country-side. Yet she had been a memory that remained distinct through years in New York and Russia; a memory which his imagination had quickened into life. Of Hamilton's spectacular successes his world of banking and finance had given him cognizance, but only such interest as one accedes to matters of impersonal news. So a curiosity had arisen in his mind to see this young woman to whom he had once played the fairy prince, and since he was a whimsical man, that curiosity had woven and twisted itself into a dream. A dream long entertained may become something more than a dream. Perhaps it may be a menace. About their meeting tonight had been so much of the fortuitous that he might regard the whole affair as one operated from the knees of the gods--and disclaim responsibility. The house windows had darkened one by one by the time his tramp ended again at Haverly Lodge. The moon was near the western timber fringe of the mountains, but Mary Burton, still wide-eyed and wakeful, had slipped out of her room to the balcony by her window. The stone coping where she sat was partly black with shadow and partly platinum gray with the last of the moonlight. Her hair, falling in two heavy braids, caught the glistening light and her lips were parted in a smile. "It is strange," she told herself, "that once before he came along--and waked me into a new self. His second coming is stranger still. It would almost seem that there is no chance about it. It would almost seem that it has been definitely planned." Then she laughed low to herself. "And if that's true I have no responsibility in the matter at all. Nothing I do about it is my fault--and I needn't be very angry about his kissing me before he was introduced to me." Then she saw a figure leave the shadow of the hedges and cross the moonlit lawn with a confident stride. Mary Burton leaned a little forward, resting on her hands, and her lips remained parted. "He seems just about as shameless about the whole affair as I am," she reflected, and when he was directly below she accosted him in a careful voice: "Halt, Restless Stranger. Does a disturbed conscience send you out to wander in the night mists?" Jefferson Edwardes obeyed the command and raised his eyes to the commanding voice. "Perhaps," he announced in a guarded tone, "it is, in a fashion, dread of the wrath to come--though my conscience is clear. But you"--in his half-whisper she caught an eager note of hope--"why aren't you asleep?" She shook her head and in the moon-bath her face flashed into a luminous smile. "I am working up that wrath," she assured him. "I am preparing to be terribly angry with you tomorrow." "And until tomorrow?" "Until tomorrow I am very happy. Good-night." "Tomorrow is always--tomorrow, dearest--" he said, "Good-night." * * * * * A many-sided man was J.J. Malone, with a nature as brilliant and as capable of flashing varying lights from its facets as a diamond--and when need be as hard as a diamond. Had he lived in feudal times other barons would have said, "Where Malone sits there is the head of the table," and the monarch himself would have taken thought before provoking his wrath. In these days of alleged intolerance for tyrants he dispensed with the fanfare of trumpets and the tossing of flambeaux. The door of his office in a gray shaft-like building down-town bore the simple inscription, "American Transportation Co., President's Office." Many men to whom the mighty money leverage of "Consolidated" was a familiar story had heard of J.J. Malone only in the casual sense. Yet the oligarchy had been built and rendered, supposedly, impregnable from the conceptions of his constructive brain. Concentration of power into one vast unit had been "Consolidated's" triumph--and his realized dream. Always the master tactician had been he who unobtrusively wore the title of president of "American Transportation." To others he had relinquished title roles, but, unseen, he had set and managed the stage. Hamilton Burton had been taught at Malone's knee, but Hamilton Burton was young and hot with vitality, aflame with ambition. From Malone himself he had absorbed the principle, "Never forget that today's ally may be tomorrow's enemy. Be prepared to use him--or crush him." In secret Burton had been building to that end, and only he himself knew the full reserve force of his resources. "You are about the only man in the Street, sir," declared young Bristoll one morning, in a burst of admiration, as he and his chief sat together over their coffee, "to whom J.J. Malone seems willing to grant an equality of status." Hamilton Burton smiled. "That is true just now, Carl," he replied. "It can not always remain true." "Why?" "Our young Minister of Finance sees the present in just proportions," laughed Burton. "But his vision has not yet mastered the horizons of the future." Carl flushed. He knew that for all the flattering confidence to which he was admitted, many broadly conceived pictures moved across the screen of his employer's mind of which he was vouchsafed no intimation. "I'll elucidate, Carl, though it's scarcely a matter for advertisement," went on the other. "Hasn't it occurred to you that Malone and I started life in very similar fashion? Each of us came raw and uninitiated from the country. Each of us brought rugged physiques and fairly alert minds to our tasks. Each of us has, I think, been fairly successful." Hamilton Burton paused to laugh frankly at his own modesty of expression. "Each of us has been a little swifter than the generality in reading signs; a little bolder in conception and execution. If you read the papers you will gather that each of us is, in private life, impeccable, and each of us is, in business, as merciless as an epidemic." "That is the voice of envy," protested the younger man with heat. "Thank you. I am grateful for the acquittal. There is room for only one absolute master. Only one side of a coin can lie face up at the same time. Heads or tails must be turned down." To the front of Malone's mind a train of dispassionate logic had forced a similar conviction. As between himself and this rising sun of finance it was a matter of heads or tails. In consequence, on a certain June afternoon his yacht, _Albatross_, cleared from its slip in the Hudson and stood out toward midstream with her prow pointed toward the bay and the narrows. It was a sparkling day, warm enough to make the breeze agreeable as it fanned the faces of the loungers on the white deck. J.J. Malone himself was seemingly nothing more formidable than the unexcelled host. As he leaned, bareheaded, on the rail of the forward deck the river breath stirred his iron-gray hair and his changeful eyes were kindly and atwinkle. Yet the party had not been wholly devised for purposes of pleasuring. There were no ladies on board and only four men exclusive of the crew. These four could swing directorates controlling the major interests of Consolidated. For this twenty-four hours of cruising, one had come down from Newport, one had delayed his sailing date to Europe and the third, H.A. Harrison, had left the entertainment of his guests at Haverly Lodge in the hands of others. Dinner passed with no reference to business. Anecdote and repartee held the right of way, but later when the myriad lights of lower Manhattan glowed out like the fire-spray of a thousand arrested rockets, cigars were lighted and the flanneled quartette settled back into their four deck-chairs. Then it was that Harrison gave the cue with a terse question: "Well, why are we here?" Instantly Malone's face altered. "To consider a method for clipping Burton's claws," he announced with decisive brevity. "Why not let sleeping dogs lie?" The inquiry came thoughtfully from Meegan of the Cosmopolitan Bank. Malone's voice rang like steel on flint. "Gentlemen, this man is a charlatan. As his power grows his menace increases. Consolidated has never brooked disobedience nor insolence. It has been our policy to reward the faithful servant and punish the unfaithful." He glanced around the group, then continued in the manner of one issuing an edict. "Heretofore we have not waited until the refractory child grew too big to punish. We should not do so now." "For my part," suggested Harrison with a quiet twinkle in his eyes, "I'm just as willing to let someone else take this child out to the woodshed now." "Hamilton Burton is outgrowing restraint." Malone was snapping out his words with categorical crispness. "Do you realize the perilous scope of his dream? His overvaulting ambition looks to a one-man power of finance; a power vested solely in himself. We are rearing a Frankenstein, gentlemen. To overlook it means our ultimate ruin--and, what is more, a national cataclysm." "And yet," interposed Harrison quietly, "his power is largely of our making. We took him to our hearts." J.J. Malone admitted the statement with a grave nod. "Up to the point where arrogance became a mania, he was a most valuable lieutenant. I select men for efficiency. When they seek to become usurpers, I endeavor to halt them." The Honorable S.T. Browne, as general counsel for many Consolidated interests, had evolved the theorem that from every statute there is an escape. Now he inquired, "How did he gain his seat in the saddle? Sudden, wasn't it?" "He came into my office one day only a few years ago," answered the chief baron. "Twice I refused to see him, but he meant to see me--and he did. More than that, he fascinated me. I knew that I was talking with a genius and a man of dauntless mind. Such minds I can use. I used his." Meegan knocked the ash from his cigar and laughed. "Burton has a certain hypnotic quality of address," he conceded. "It is not address--it is genius. This man held me with his eye and forced me to listen. He came with no apology and no misgiving. He knew himself for a child of Destiny, and within ten minutes I knew it, too. What is the biggest accomplishment, gentlemen, that stands to the credit of Consolidated in the past ten years?" "The merging of Inter-ocean Coal and Ore." Meegan gave the response without hesitation, and no one contradicted him. "That," asserted Malone, "was the wild scheme which Hamilton Burton brought to me as his letter of introduction. I found no flaw in his plan--aside from its stupendous audacity. You ask me why I put him in a position of power. He rode in on his own usefulness--led by his intrinsic self-faith." "So far as you have gone," suggested Harrison drily, "you have summarized several fairly solid reasons for keeping him with us." "Quite true. I concede him a Napoleonic caliber and I recognize his Napoleonic effrontery. His conscienceless lust for power has unbalanced him. He seeks to sack the world. He must be stopped." "So you suggest--?" Browne left his question unfinished save for the interrogation of his lifted brows. "He sits in seven of our directorates. You know how Consolidated has sought to avoid the appearance of too narrow a domination. You know, too, that we have avoided directors who were obviously pure dummies. For several weeks I have been tracing out the holdings in Coal and Ore stock. Hamilton Burton with his following looms too large. Left to his own devices, he may outgrow control." Meegan studied his cigar with attentively knit brows before he inquired: "Does Burton assume such proportions in Coal and Ore as to suggest turning the balance of control? Is that what you mean?" "Not yet." Malone drew from his pocket a small note-book and consulted its pages. "We hold a safe balance in our own hands, barring treachery, but we have let him gain a stronger nucleus than now seems advisable. You gentlemen know that we have always held out the impression that only a small amount of Consolidated stock is offered the general public." "As we also know," amended Harrison bluntly, "that in fact a large proportion of it is in the hands of the casual investor. Still another fact is sure. Burton's sobriquet of the Great Bear was not gratuitously bestowed. If we read him out of meeting he will bring a panic about our cars." Malone puffed for a space at his cigar in silence. The quiet drone of the engines came up from below, and the moonlight fell in a broad band of radiance on the foaming ribbon of the wake. "I have also considered that point," he said at last. "Burton has two cardinal maxims of finance. One is that Securities are usually sold above their intrinsic worth. The other is that Cash alone is an absolutely stable form of property. Acting on these two principles, he is doubtless building to the logical end. Some day he will make another raid--and, if he is allowed to select the day and the conditions, it will be a panic-making raid. If an enemy's attack is inevitable the best defense is offense. There is no wisdom in giving him time to prepare. Every day we stand idle his power grows. We must show enough strength at the next meeting of our stock-holders to reorganize the Coal and Ore directorate." Harrison rose and walked to the rail. He stood for a moment looking out, then came back and spoke quickly. "If this is to be done we should let no more time slip by. It's a safe bet that he isn't wasting days." Malone's fist crashed down on the arm of his chair. He rose, too, and paced backward and forward, talking as he walked. "Waste time! By heaven, we must waste no minute. We must go after him and bring in his pelt. We must treat him like a wolf prowling around our sheep-folds. There can be no peace for any of us until he is destroyed ... and, damn him, I mean to see that it's done!" The others watched the broad shoulders of the head baron and the resolute carriage of the head, thrown back as if in challenge. He paused once to relight the cigar which in his vehemence he had let die, and as the match flared they saw that his eyes blazed and his features were set in that wrath which the Street feared. "By heaven," exclaimed Malone fiercely, "we've got to smash him--damn him!" _ |
||