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Destiny, a novel by Charles Neville Buck |
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Part 2. The Book Of Life - It Might Have Been - Chapter 17 |
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_ PART II. THE BOOK OF LIFE - IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN CHAPTER XVII If Hamilton Burton had been one of the most picturesque figures in finance before, he was now a flaming meteor of public interest. He had come out of the dark and raided the directorate of a giant corporation, gathering into his strong hands reins that the world believed to be held beyond the possibility of filching. Moreover, this corporation was the keystone and crowning pride in the firmly cemented arch of Consolidated's power. The world of business was stunned. It went to bed one night, believing certain forces immutable, and awoke to find them overthrown and a ministry changed. Along the chasms and canons that debouch from lower Broadway one question was insistently asked--and went unanswered: "What will he do next?" Perhaps the nearest approach to a reply was the prophecy of a cynical curb-broker--"Whatever he damn pleases." One thing was definite. While Hamilton Burton had forced the admiration of his world, he had forced it by the audacity of a strong grip on its throat and by bending it to its knees. Such admiration is accorded a tyrant and carries scant love. When the gong sounded in the Stock-Exchange it was an alarm and the faces on the floor were faces that mirrored fear of the day. Yet the first transactions showed Hamilton Burton's brokers standing like pillars under the shaky market. As the day wore on these same lieutenants met and stemmed every tendency toward receding prices. Several banks announced incipient runs and at once from the Burton treasury came a tide of gold, so that reassured depositors turned away smiling. When the actual meeting of Coal and Ore stock-holders was called to order both Burton and Harrison were present in person. "Before this vote is taken," said Harrison, rising with a face upon which was indelibly stamped the grim determination of one so long victorious that defeat was unspeakably bitter, "I wish to be heard. Though the registry of transfers tells the story in advance, I know as Hamilton Burton knows, that it is a victory for traitors. If there is a chance that some of these may yet turn back from their treason, I want them to listen to me." Burton glanced about the table, where the mastery was his own. "When I attend a meeting of this character," he curtly announced, "we vote first, and whoever wishes to can talk after I have gone." Outside, as the two men left the room, waited the batteries of reporters. On the threshold, the appearance of each was noted and flashed in first-page stories wherever news went. The new One-man-power stood slender and strong, and tigerish; an incarnation of dominant youth and triumph. Harrison might have been passing into exile, but he walked with his head high and eyes that met every questioning gaze with the forbidding glitter of a newly trapped and caged lion. There was something about the man so suggestive of a broken warrior that the scribes whose duty was to interrogate refrained and stood respectfully silent as he passed between them. But they questioned Burton and Burton smiled. "Gentlemen," he said in that velvety voice that fitted in so charmingly with the winning quality of his smile, "you know my rule. I am never interviewed--but you may announce that the Coal and Ore directorate will be reorganized." At the curb Paul was waiting in the car, and around it pressed an inquisitive mob, which the police were already beginning to push back and stir into motion. As they cleared a path for him through the idle humanity the man who had come from the abandoned farm went to his machine with an unconcern which took no note of their interest. To his brother he commented in a low and musical voice. "They aren't so different from Slivers Martin. I bought those lambs for seven and sold them for ten. But it's only the first transaction, Paul, that gives one the real thrill." When he reached his library he found Mary there. "I have been reading the papers, Hamilton," she said quietly. "As near as I can make it all out, 'it was a famous victory,' but why do the papers all call it a raid?" Her brother looked at her and a flash of pride kindled fondly in his eyes for the face which a shaft of the sun lighted into vivid beauty. "I told you once," he said, "that we should reign together. This is for me a victorious day. I am glad that you are the woman to whom I come fresh from the field I have won and the frontier I have pushed forward." He turned away from her and stood for a moment at the window in a flood of yellow radiance. The clarity of his eyes and luster of his dark hair and the hue of his cheeks were all declarations of gladiatorial perfection of condition. His brow was unclouded. He began to speak, at first with a modulated voice that mounted with his words to a fiery eloquence: "Many marches follow, Mary ... toward vaster victories. To me a certain memory lives clear in every detail. I see a small girl with her thin little body shaking with sobs ... because her life seemed doomed to drudgery and emptiness. I see my mother and my aunt and my father suffering like beasts of burden under the goad and yoke of poverty. I see a boy, ragged and rebellious, declaring war on the world and swearing to wrest from it every good thing that those he loved might ever covet--and for himself unparalleled power." He paused and spread his hands apart with a gesture of dismissing the abstract. "I have proven myself able to realize my dreams. I shall go on. My aspirations of empire look far ahead: my horizons are limitless. There are few people to whom I can express my ambitions. But you--" He came across and took her hand. "You can understand. Tell me, Mary, is there anything in the world you want? Because, by heaven, if there is it shall be yours." The girl's eyes, as she met his gaze, were deeply grave. "In all this dream of power, Hamilton," she said softly, "you have never spoken of any sense of trust or stewardship, and what you call a victory, the papers call a raid. Has it ever occurred to you, my dear brother, that perhaps your dream is, after all, one of colossal selfishness?" The rippling ease of his muscles stiffened and his smile faded. "Is it selfishness to give back to those one loves the things of which life has robbed them?" She shook her head. "No--but there is such a thing as suffocating the souls in them with material kindness and bodily luxuries," she answered. "You have been spending a great deal of time of late with Jefferson Edwardes." The manner of the man underwent one of its swift changes and grew cool and acid. "Perhaps he has been talking to you as he undertook to talk to me last night." A light as dominant as that in her brother's came to Mary Burton's pupils. "Perhaps," she replied. "I'm not at all sure that I care for this intimate association with Mr. Edwardes," he curtly announced. "I am not enamored of the vaporings of visionary and self-ordained preachers." "Possibly it is not necessary that you should be," the girl suggested. "Maybe for the purpose of my own friendships, it is enough that I like him. I hardly think you would understand his type, Hamilton." Her brother's face reddened dangerously. "I should call my intelligence human," he declared. "I've been able to make certain use of it." "Call it superhuman if you like--or inhuman, yet I hardly think it can truly gage that type of gallant gentleman who has kept his dreams untainted and his ideals clean." The man who had found the world a thing upon which he could stamp his hall-mark stood for a while without speaking; then his voice came keyed to a satirical coldness. "Whatever your estimate may be of my ability to understand this peerless gentleman and chevalier, one thing I can do. I can crush him into pulp. If he has poisoned against me the minds of my own family, I swear to you that I both can and will nail him to the cross of utter ruin. You had better warn your knightly friend, Mary, that the days of grail-seeking are ended." The girl came to her feet and her eyes were stars of scorn as she faced the man whose sudden anger had brought out the arteries corded on his temples. "Such talk," she said, "belongs to the shambles of your cut-throat finance. I have no wish to listen to it." Gradually the scornful light in Mary's pupils hardened and brightened into the fighting fire that might come into those of a tigress whose den has been threatened. Her delicate nostrils quivered and her cheeks flamed. "Five minutes ago you were inquiring what costly gifts my heart desired, that you might buy them for me with your money. Well, there is something I want that I haven't got--and your millions can't buy it. I want decent love. You had me schooled into a Circe and you almost killed my soul. Thank God, some one came in time, some one whose thoughts are above sordid conquest. Some one who wanted to save me from the legalized prostitution of a loveless marriage. And because he has said to your face what all men say in your absence, you talk of crucifying him." She broke off and her breath came fast. Hamilton Burton gazed silently for a moment, then he said shortly: "I'm not such a damn' fool as to try to argue with a woman in a rage. You have too much brain, Mary, and at times you irritate me. Paul is the only one in this family who soothes me. I'll go to him." "Yes," she retorted contemptuously, "Paul will burn incense to your vanity. Go to him." She turned to leave the room, but at the door she paused. "Jefferson Edwardes will dine here this evening," she volunteered. "Any discourtesy to him will be an insult to me." * * * * * A little strange it was, perhaps, and yet true, that Hamilton Burton, who feared no man and showed consideration to few, discovered himself standing in something like awe of his imperious sister. At all events his outbreak of wrath subsided and that evening he gave to the man who had aroused it no intimation of its recent upflaming. But in the days and weeks that followed, Hamilton Burton saw much of Edwardes and that very directness of gaze, that level glance which concealed nothing and evaded nothing became to him at first a small annoyance, and then a constantly aggravated irritation. His star of Destiny rode at its zenith. Every venture turned under his Midas hand to gold and increased power. He mounted to succeeding heights until it seemed that like Alexander he must soon brood over the smallness of the world's opportunity. Colossal mergers grouped themselves into structures of stupendous strength. His pride was bloated with successes, yet all the while across his own table he must encounter eyes that withheld reverence and politely masked something like contempt. Some day he knew those clean-souled eyes would goad him to an outbreak. But impulse is the menace to a strong man's strength, and no one save Hamilton Burton himself suspected that this antipathy was growing into an obsession. Besides, there were more important matters to consider, and a hundred active enemies to watch. Any such moment of relaxed vigilance as he himself had seized to overthrow the preeminence of others would be used to overthrow his own. While he rode on the highest crest of Fortune's wave the one member of his family who had remained unchanged fell ill. For a week all else was forgotten while the Burton family waited the outcome in Aunt Hannah's bedroom. That austere old spinster talked in her delirium of other days and denied that they had altered. In broken rambling words she took them all back with her to a life they had put behind them. The names of cows and horses in whose care Hamilton had so many hundred times taken down and put up the panel of stable-lot bars dwelt on her trembling lips and she smiled contentedly over simple things. Finally, she told them that she was sleepy and would talk no longer, because tomorrow morning she must be up early and give the house a thorough cleaning. With that announcement she turned her seamed face to the wall and slept. It was a placid sleep which no clamor of an alarm clock would ever disturb. Because she had always insisted upon it with the childish pertinacity of the simple-souled, the Burton family went back with her to the ragged slopes of the White Mountains. They saw again, for the first time since they had turned away from their padlocked door, the hills and rocks and rutted roads that had once been their own country. Jefferson Edwardes went with them, and when the funeral was ended and the little cortege left the churchyard, he and Mary Burton remained a while among the graves. Most of the trees were stark and naked, but to one or two still clung shreds of departed autumn brilliancy. A maple still boasted a few scarlet tatters of the banner with which it had done honor to the Frost King. By the decaying wall of the little church a scrub oak rattled its tenacious leafage of russet brown. About the two tilted and careened the neglected tombstones of those who slept humbly but restfully here. The gaunt hills, too, tilted and careened in heaped-up barriers of dilapidation to the distance where the autumn veiled them in a smoky purple. But above them was the glow of crimson and rose-ash, where the sunset burned. Mary's beautiful eyes were bright with tears and as she stood there slim and straight, the man came close and his arm slipped about her. For a moment she seemed unconscious of his presence, then she turned and her eyes looked steadfastly into his, and, as they looked, they smiled through their mistiness. "Thank God," she said in a low voice into which a tremor stole; "thank God, you came to me and woke me up--in time." After a little she spoke again hastily as though in fright. "Dearest," she declared tensely, "as I stood here today a fear came over me: a fear and a premonition. It seemed to me that every hill and every tree was accusing us. Silent voices were calling out, 'Why did you go away?'" She broke off, and then, as though from the strength of his embrace, she drew reassurance, she went on: "Suppose it was all a ghastly mistake? Suppose Hamilton's overvaulting ambition with all its vast egotism should totter and fall? What would become of us in that world down there? I have, since we left here, seen only one look of serene and utterly calm peace on any face in our family. It was her face--" The girl nodded toward the grave and shivered. The man drew her closer. "Loved faces in death always wear a peace that life does not know," he told her. Then whimsically he smiled as he voiced a fantastic suggestion: "Maybe, dearest, there's some land beyond the stars where all the mistakes we make here can be remedied ... where we can take up our marred lives and live them afresh, as we have dreamed them. Perhaps in that other world we can go back to the turning of the road where we lost our ways ... and choose the other path." * * * * * Constancy and fixedness belong to strong characters. The granite crag stands unchanging, but the waters at its base lash themselves into a thousand shapes and colors and semblances. Hamilton had in him the firmness of the hills, but Paul's nature was as fluid as the waters that whirl or lilt along the easiest channels, and that turn aside to avoid obstacles. On his table stood a photograph of Loraine Haswell in a gold frame. It was a photograph of which there was no duplicate, and one which her husband had not seen. When it had been taken the sitter had selected a pose of graceful ease, as though the photographer had ambushed her and caught her in a moment of almost sacred privacy, a moment when she had relaxed into an attitude of intimate and somewhat melancholy thought. The slender hands rested with fingers loosely interlocked in her lap, holding a drooping rose. The splendid slenderness of her figure was enhanced by the veiling of delicate negligee, and the face under its night-dark profusion of hair looked out wistfully with a sad half-smile on something that her heart chose to hold before her gaze. Certainly, had it not been that such excellence of the photographer's craft could only have been attained by careful posing, one might have said that he had taken an unfair advantage and had permitted his lens to spy upon a lovely lady in the secrecy of her boudoir, whose sole companions were emotions which must remain locked in her beautiful breast. She had told Paul when she gave him the picture, and the same ghost of pathos had flickered into her eyes and the droop of her lips, that the flower was one from a box of his giving, and that she had been thinking of him when the camera clicked, forgetting for a moment the pose she had meant to assume. Often, she whispered, she sat like that thinking of him. So Paul kept flowers on each side of the frame, and made of it a sort of shrine. And yet, sometimes, when he had said good-bye to her after a luncheon or tea together, he would turn his car southward and find himself driving down the avenue to Washington square and the old house on the south side, to invite Marcia Terroll for a spin beside him. And sometimes he would call her on the telephone and they would meet for a walk. To himself alone, he confessed his love for Loraine, for a specter of timidity rose often and marred their meetings. How was it to end? He could no more escape the realization of the husband's existence and possible ire than can the quail in the open grain-field forget the shadow of a soaring hawk. And Paul was not the most daring cock quail in the stubble. He saw shadows of proprietary wings where the sky held only wisps of fleecy cloud. With Marcia, there was the security of safe companionship, and a combination of stimulus and soothing. That this interest was tinctured with an essence of the enthusiastic, which to other eyes than his own--even to her eyes--might seem to hold a stronger personal note, he did not admit to himself. That would have meant another complication and a fresh alarm, so if the idea came he laughed it away as preposterous. But in a fashion those were very good days. He was discovering New York. There are quaint places about the square, where insurgency reigns and finds expression, where existing conditions are denounced, where freedom is verbally fought for and capital and conventions are vocally annihilated. In some of them food is served at prices which astonished his training at the expensive restaurants. There the musician and the girl went, he as explorer, fastidiously critical, yet enduring what he regarded as squalor and anarchy, for the new experience of feeling that he was penetrating Bohemia. She acted as guide, and since she knew the world of ease and the world of necessity and could walk alike with the aristocratic and the commonalty--and remain equally herself--she sat amused, watching him as he watched the rest. The twinkle that sought to flash into her eye flashed only in her mind, but the play of keen humor and wit quaintly expressed sparkled through her conversation, so that when they were together they laughed a great deal. Acquaintanceship which is nourished in the sunlight of laughter blooms rapidly into intimacy, and Paul Burton would have been surprised had he known how often his eyes wakened into a tell-tale glow of delight and admiration, and how easily any one looking on might have fallen into the egregious error of construing his attitude into one distinctly loverlike. All this while she continued to pique his curiosity by a sustained reserve as to herself. She spoke quite frankly of her failures to get employment, making deliciously laughable stories out of disappointing and disheartening experiences, but it was only in incidental comments that she referred to things in the past which made him know that her life had once held in abundance those things which it now lacked. One day when Paul had selected with great care a mass of roses of a new and particularly exotic variety to be sent to Loraine, the florist inquired, "Will that be all today, Mr. Burton?" The musician had nodded, then suddenly he said, "No, I think there is something else I want." It suddenly came to him that he had never given Marcia any sort of present. Of course she would have no use for a small cart-load of expensive flowers. One had to send gifts of that sort to Loraine, because she was herself so gorgeously expensive, but Marcia might like some violets. Violets would look rather well on the blue suit she most often wore. He was to meet her in a half-hour, though he had not mentioned the appointment to Loraine. So he had the violets wrapped up, feeling somehow a sort of diffidence such as he had never felt before when giving flowers to women, and took them with him. It was crisp afternoon and as he reached the square a small hand waved to him and he saw her walking briskly along by the arch, so he ordered the car stopped, and jumped out. "I was just coming over for you," he said. "It would have been a disaster to have missed you. Barola is giving a violin recital at Carnegie Hall. Shall we run up? There's just time." "You weren't going to miss me," she laughed. "I had no intention of letting you, but the afternoon was too utterly delectable to stay indoors, so I waylaid you here." Then after a moment, as she stepped lightly through the car door which he had opened, she added delightedly, "Barola! And I was just crying for some music. Did you hear my wails from the Flatiron building down?" "I was too busy crying to see you," he laughed back. "My agonized sobs drowned the traffic whistles." As the car turned, he held out the box, which proclaimed its contents, as violet boxes always do. A man may have a bottle of rum or a chest of stolen gold wrapped up so it looks as innocent as a pair of socks, but no swain bearing violets can deceive the eye of the most casual observer. Marcia was not deceived. "Violets!" she exclaimed. "Do you mean they are for me?" "Of course," he answered, and, for no reason at all, colored like a schoolboy. Marcia opened the box and sat gazing at the flowers. Into her face came a sudden gravity and the delicate features seemed almost sad. She said, "Thank you," in a low voice and continued to gaze at her gift. Then she buried her face in their fragrance and for a moment held it there. When she raised it to him again it was smiling, though still gravely. "They are lovely," she told him. "I'm glad you thought of them." "You seemed almost sad," Paul spoke with a voice of deep solicitude. "Did I make a mistake? Do violets stand for something you don't want to be reminded of?" She shook her head and laughed, and this time with the old note of merriment. "Violets stand for everything that's nice," she assured him. "It was just that--I hardly know--just that it suddenly occurred to me how long a time it's been since anyone gave me flowers." "Someone is going to--often," the words came quickly, and impulsively he laid his hand over hers for just a moment. "Do you know, I have the instincts of a sybarite?" she informed him. "When I go to sleep tonight, I shall put these violets near the head of my bed, and whenever I wake up I'll smell them." * * * * * Despite his strong defensive preparations and his almost clairvoyant foresight, in Hamilton Burton an insidious change was taking place and the brain which so astutely cooerdinated many things was totally unconscious of its own transitions. Egotism had made him. A self-faith which took no account of difficulties, had carried him to the apex of his ambitions. Now it was blinding him with its own brilliance. Hamilton Burton was drunk, drunk to the core of his soul, with the strong intoxicant of self-confidence. He looked on life through a mirror--and saw only himself. So, while he intrenched and safeguarded his destiny, he failed to realize that he was being lulled into a reckless faith in the star he believed shone over him and for him. He did not pause to reflect that the wolf, gaunt and powerful, who by the courage in his shaggy breast and the strength of his fanged jaws, runs unchallenged at the pack head, may change. He took no account of the fact that the wolf gorged is the wolf weakened. As his plans grew his methods became more unscrupulous and his scorn for forms of law increased. One day he sat in his mother's house showing her, with the enthusiastic glee of a child for new toys, several freshly acquired miniatures of the First Napoleon. Mrs. Burton turned one of the priceless trinkets over in her hand and gazed at it wonderingly. It was a small thing, wrought on ivory by Jean Baptiste Jacques Augustin and framed in pearls. She thought she had seen more flattering portrayals of the round head which stared out from the jewelled circlet. "I suppose," she said with such a sigh as mothers utter when they fail to understand with full sympathy the enthusiasms of their children, "I ought to rave over this. From your eyes I realize that it is treasure-trove and yet to me it is meaningless. Of course," she naively added, "the pearls are very pretty." Tenderly, Hamilton stooped and kissed her forehead, then he took the miniature from her hand and stood looking at the painted face. He stood straight and lithe, and he spoke slowly: "Sometimes I wonder if the belief in reincarnation is not the truest faith, mother. Sometimes, I seem to look back on the career of this man as on something in an unforgotten past. To me it is all more vital than history; more real than chronicle. It is memory!" He paused and his eyes were altogether grave. "As I reflect on Austerlitz, I find myself saying, 'I did well there,' and for Waterloo and St. Helena my chagrin and misery are personal. Why should I doubt that once my own spirit dwelt in another body--in his, perhaps?" His voice mounted, and he continued, "But this time the spirit must go further. It must never taste defeat. Its triumph must grow to the end, and surrender its scepter and baton only to Death." The mother looked up at the exalted fantasy which glowed in her son's face and her head shook uncomprehendingly. "It seems only yesterday," she said "that I held you, a soft little morsel of pink flesh, close to my breast. I dreamed of no great triumphs for you. Only goodness and health. Perhaps it was as well that way. I sometimes wonder if any woman could face her responsibilities if she knew she was giving birth to one of the masters of the world. My only vanity was to name you Hamilton. And Paul I named for the great apostle." She laughed very low--and her son knelt beside her chair and drew her into his embrace. _ |
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