Alone sat the man of gold--ah, more alone than even he knew. Alone with his bruised ambitions, his hectored egoism, his watery aims.
Alone and plotting the ruin of those who had dared bid him halt in his mad, destroying career. Alone, this high priest of the caste of absolutism, of the old individualism which is fast hurrying into the realm of the forgotten. Alone, and facing a new century, with whose ideals his own were utterly, stubbornly, hopelessly discrepant.
Alone he sat, looking out, unmoved, upon the want and pain of countless mult.i.tudes gone down beneath the yoke of conditions which he had made too hard for them. Looking, unmoved, unhearing, upon the bitter struggles of the weak, the ignorant, the unskilled, the gross hewers of wood and drawers of water. Looking, and knowing not that in their piteous cry for help and light was sounded his own dire peril.
The door opened, and the office boy announced the chief stenographer of the great bank below. Ames looked up and silently nodded permission for the man to enter.
"Mr. Ames," the clerk began, "I--I have come to ask a favor--a great favor. I am having difficulty--considerable difficulty in securing stenographers, but--I may say--my greatest struggle is with myself. I--Mr. Ames, I can not--I simply can not continue to hire stenographers at the old wage, nine dollars a week! I know how these girls are forced to live. Mr. Ames, with prices where they are now, they can not live on that! May I not offer them more? Say, ten or twelve dollars to start with?"
Ames looked at him fixedly. "Why do you come to me with your request?"
he asked coldly. "Your superior is Mr. Doan."
"Yes, sir, I know," replied the young man with hesitation. "But--I--did speak to him about it, and--he refused."
"I can do nothing, sir," returned Ames in a voice that chilled the man"s life-current.
"Then I shall resign, Mr. Ames! I refuse to remain here and hire stenographers at that criminal wage!"
"Very well, sir," replied Ames in the same low, freezing tone. "Hand your resignation to Mr. Doan. Good day, sir."
Again the guardian of the sanct.i.ty of private property was left alone.
Again, as he lapsed into dark revery, his thought turned back upon itself, and began the reconstruction of scenes and events long since shadowy dreams. And always as they built, the fair face of that young girl appeared in the fabric. And always as he retraced his course, her path crossed and crossed again his own. Always as he moved, her reflection fell upon him--not in shadow, but in a flood of light, exposing the secret recesses of his sordid soul.
He dwelt again upon the smoothness of his way in those days, before her advent, when that group of canny pirates sat about the Beaubien"s table and laid their devious snares. It was only the summer before she came that this same jolly company had merged their sacred trust a.s.sets to draw the clouds which that autumn burst upon the country as the worst financial panic it had known in years. And so shrewdly had they planned, that the storm came unheralded from a clear sky, and at a time when the nation was never more prosperous.
He laughed. It had been rich fun!
And then, the potato scheme. They had wagered that he could not put it through. How neatly he had turned the trick, filled his pockets, and transformed their doubts into wondering admiration! It had been rare pleasure! Oh, yes, there had been some suffering, he had been told. He had not given that a thought.
And the Colombian revolution! How surprised the people of these United States would be some day to learn that this tropic struggle was in essence an American war! The smug and unthinkingly contented in this great country of ours regarded the frenzied combat in the far South as but a sort of _opera bouffe_. What fools, these Americans! And he, when that war should end, would control navigation on the great Magdalena and Cauca rivers, and acquire a long-term lease on the emerald mines near Bogota. The price? Untold suffering--countless broken hearts--indescribable, maddening torture--he had not given that a thought.
He laughed again.
But he was tired, very tired. His trip to Washington had been exhausting. He had not been well of late. His eyes had been bloodshot, and there had been several slight hemorrhages from the nose. His physician had shaken his head gravely, and had admonished him to be careful--
But why did that girl continue to fascinate him? he wondered. Why now, in all his scheming and plotting, did he always see her before him?
Was it only because of her rare physical beauty? If he wrote or read, her portrait lay upon the page; if he glanced up, she stood there facing him. There was never accusation in her look, never malice, nor trace of hate. Nor did she ever threaten. No; but always she smiled--always she looked right into his eyes--always she seemed to say, "You would destroy me, but yet I love you."
G.o.d! What a plucky little fighter she was! And she fought him fairly.
Aye, much more so than he did her. She would scorn the use of his methods. He had to admit _that_, though he hated her, detested her, would have torn her into shreds--even while he acknowledged that he admired her, yes, beyond all others, for her wonderful bravery and her loyal stand for what she considered the right.
He must have dozed while he sat there in the warm office alone.
Surely, that hideous object now floating before his straining gaze, that thing resembling the poor, shattered Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, was not real! It was but a shadow, a flimsy thing of thought! And that woestricken thing there, with its tenuous arms extended toward him--was that Gannette? Heavens, no! Gannette had died, stark mad!
But, that other shade--so like his wife, a few months dead, yet alive again! Whence came that look of horror in a face once so haughty! It was unreal, ghastly unreal, as it drifted past! Ah, now he knew that he was dreaming, for there, there in the light stood Carmen! Oh, what a blessed relief to see that fair image there among those other ghastly sights! He would speak to her--
But--_G.o.d above_! _What was that?_ A woman--no, not Carmen--fair and--
Her white lips moved--they were transparent--he could see right through them--and great tears dropped from her bloodless cheeks when her accusing look fell upon him!
Slowly she floated nearer--she stopped before him, and laid a hand upon his shoulder--it was cold, cold as ice! He tried to call out--to rise--to break away--
And then, groaning aloud, and with his brow dripping perspiration, he awoke.
Hood entered, but stopped short when he saw his master"s white face.
"Mr. Ames! You are ill!" he cried.
Ames pa.s.sed a hand across his wet forehead. "A--a little tired, that"s all, I guess. What now?"
The lawyer laid a large envelope upon the desk. "It has come," he said. "There"s a delegation of Avon mill hands in the outer office.
Here are their demands. It"s just what I thought."
Ames slowly took up the envelope. For a moment he hesitated. Again he seemed to see that smiling girl before him. His jaw set, and his face drew slowly down into an expression of malignity. Then, without examining its contents, he tore the envelope into shreds, and cast the pieces into the waste basket.
"Put them out of the office!" he commanded sharply. "Wire Pillette at once to discharge these fellows, and every one else concerned in the agitation! If those rats down there want to fight, they"ll find me ready!"
CHAPTER 14
The immense frame of J. Wilton Ames bent slightly, and the great legs might have been seen to drag a bit, as the man entered his private elevator the morning after his rejection of the mill hands" demands, and turned the lever that caused the lift to soar lightly to his office above. And a mouse--had the immaculate condition of his luxurious _sanctum_ permitted such an alien dweller--could have seen him sink heavily into his great desk chair, and lapse into deep thought. Hood, Willett, and Hodson entered in turn; but the magnate gave them scant consideration, and at length waved them all away, and bent anew to his meditations.
Truth to tell--though he would not have owned it--the man was now dimly conscious of a new force at work upon him; of a change, slowly, subtly taking place somewhere deep within. He was feebly cognizant of emotions quite unknown; of unfamiliar sentiments, whose outlines were but just crystallizing out from the thick magma of his materialistic soul.
And he fought them; he hated them; they made him appear unto himself weak, even effeminate! His abhorrence of sentimentalism had been among the strongest of his life-characteristics; and yet, though he could not define it, a mellowing something seemed to be acting upon him that dull, bitterly cold winter morning, that shed a soft glow throughout his mental chambers, that seemed to touch gently the hard, rugged things of thought that lay within, and soften away their sharp outlines. He might not know what lay so heavily upon his thought, as he sat there alone, with his head sunk upon his breast. And yet the girl who haunted his dreams would have told him that it was an interrogation, even the eternal question, "What shall it profit a man--?"
Suddenly he looked up. The door had opened, he thought. Then he sat bolt upright and stared.
"Good morning, Mr. Ames. May I come in?"
Come in! Had ever such heavenly music touched his ears before! This was not another dream! The vision this time was real! He sprang to his feet. He would have held out his arms to her if he could.
And yet, how dared she come to him? How dared she, after what she had done? Was this fresh affrontery? Had she come again to flout him? To stand within the protection which her s.e.x afforded and vivisect anew his tired soul? But, whatever her motives, this girl did the most daring things he had ever seen a woman do.
"Isn"t it funny," she said, as she stood before him with a whimsical little smile, "that wherever I go people so seldom ask me to sit down!"
Ames sank back into his seat without speaking. Carmen stood for a moment looking about her rich environment; then drew up a chair close to him.
"You haven"t the slightest idea why I have come here, have you?" she said sweetly, looking up into his face.
"I must confess myself quite ignorant of the cause of this unexpected pleasure," he returned guardedly, bending his head in mock deference, while the great wonder retained possession of him.
"Well," she went on lightly, "will you believe me when I tell you that I have come here because I love you?"
Aha! A dark suspicion sprang up within him. So this was an attack from a different quarter! Hitt and Haynerd had invoked her feminine wiles, eh?
Nonsense! With one blow the unfamiliar sentiment which had been shedding its influence upon him that morning laid the ugly suspicion dead at his feet. A single glance into that sweet face turned so lovingly up to his brought his own deep curse upon himself for his h.e.l.lish thought.
"You know," she bubbled, with a return of her wonted airy gaiety, "I just had to run the gauntlet through guards and clerks and office boys to get here. Aren"t you glad I didn"t send in my card? For then you would have refused to see me, wouldn"t you?"