Alice opened the door herself, and with a radiant smile of hungry delight enveloped Isabelle in her arms.
"Where did you drop from, Belle?"
"Oh, I thought I"d come on," Isabelle replied vaguely, not liking to mention the trial.
"And you found your way out here, and navigated that ewer safely! The boys find it surpa.s.singly attractive,--as a coal mine, or a ca.n.a.l in Mars, or the Panama ditch. I"ve tried to induce Mr. Jorgesson, the contractor, to hang out a lantern or two at night. But he evidently thinks well of the caution and sobriety of the Johnston family and prefers to take his chances of a suit for damages. So far the family has escaped."
Alice"s face showed two girlish dimples, while she talked glibly,--too glibly, Isabelle thought. They went into the dining room where there was a tiny coal fire before which Alice had been sewing. Isabelle"s namesake--number two in the list--having been considered by her aunt, was dismissed on an errand. The older boys were at school, the baby out in the kitchen "with the colored lady who a.s.sists," as Alice explained.
When they were alone, the cousins looked at each other, each thinking of the changes, the traces of life in the other. Isabelle held out her hands yearningly, and Alice, understanding that she knew what had befallen them, smiled with trembling lips. Yet it was long before she could speak of their misfortune in her usual calm manner.
... "The worst is that we have had to take Ned out of the technical inst.i.tute and send him back to the school here with Jack. It isn"t a good school. But we may move into the city in the fall.... And Belle had to give up her music. We all have to chip in, you see!"
"She mustn"t give up her music. I shall send her," Isabelle said quickly, reflecting whimsically how she had loathed her own music lessons. Alice flushed, and after a moment"s pause said deliberately:--
"Do you really mean that, Isabelle?"
"Of course! I only hope she will get more out of it than I did."
"I should be glad to accept your offer for her sake.... I want her to have something, some interest. A poor girl without that,--it is worse for her than for the boys!"
Isabelle could see Alice"s struggle with her pride, and understood the importance of this little matter to her, which had made her deliberately clutch at the chance for the little girl.
"Belle shall come to me to-morrow and spend the day. I will send for the teacher.... Now that"s settled, and, Alice, you and Steve will be better off soon! He is too able a man--"
Alice shook her head steadily, saying:--
"I am afraid not, Belle! Steve is too good a man, that is the trouble. I don"t say this to him. I wouldn"t take a particle of hope from him. But I know Steve all through: he isn"t the kind to impress people, to get on,--and he is no longer young."
"It is such a pity he left the railroad," Isabelle mused. "John says they are turning men off instead of taking them on, or he might have found a position for him."
"Never!" Alice"s eyes flamed. "If it had to be done over, even now, we should do the same thing.... Steve is slow and quiet, never says much, but he does a lot of thinking. And when he makes up his mind, he sticks....
When he saw what it meant to take that position in the traffic department, what he would have to know and do, he couldn"t do it. It is useless trying to make a man like Steve live contrary to his nature. You can"t bend a big, thick tree any way you want it."
"But, Alice, he might have been wrong!" Isabelle protested, coloring.
"Yes,--he might have been wrong," Alice admitted, her eyes falling. "But Steve couldn"t see it any other way. So he had to do as he did.... And the lumber business failed. I was afraid it would! Dear Steve! He wasn"t fitted to fight with those men, to see that they didn"t cheat him."
It was later that Alice uttered the deep cry of her heart.
... "Don"t think, Belle, that I mind the hard times, the work and all; not even the school for Ned, and the poor prospect for the children. After all, they may do as well without the advantages we could have given them. But what breaks my heart is to see Steve, who is bigger and abler and stronger than most men, go down to the bottom of the ladder and have to take his orders from an ignorant little German. It"s small of me, I know, and Steve doesn"t complain. But it seems to me terribly unjust somehow."
For a moment her feeling overcame her; then she recovered her composure and continued: "But then, it"s Steve! And I wouldn"t have him a particle different, not for all the success in the world. You see I have my pride, my sn.o.bbery. I am a sn.o.b about my husband."
The boys came in from school, and the house shook with racketing children.
"They don"t know what has happened, really,--they are too young, thank Heaven!" Alice exclaimed. "And I don"t mean they ever shall know--ever think they are poor."
The two stood on the porch for a last word, arranging for the little girl"s visit to Isabelle on the morrow. The twilight had descended through the mist.
"See!" Alice said, pointing to the white tree trunks across the street, and the vague fields beyond. "Isn"t it very much like that Corot the Colonel used to love so much,--the one in the library? We have our Corot, too....
Good-by, dear! I have chattered frightfully about ourselves. Some day you must tell me of your stay with Mrs. Pole and of yourself."
"There isn"t much to tell!"
Alice Johnston, watching her cousin"s agreeable figure disappear into the mist, felt that if with Isabelle there might be not much to tell, at least a great deal had happened these last months.
And Isabelle, picking her way cautiously along the sewer excavation, was thinking of the home behind. The couple of hours she had spent with Alice had been filled with a comprehension, a curiously immediate grasp of the other person"s vision of life,--what it all meant to her,--Alice"s disappointment, her pride in her defeated husband. For the first time in all the years she had known them, Steve and Alice and the children seemed quite real persons, and their life as vivid, as interesting to her, as her own.
Sad as their little story was, in its pathetic limitations of plans and hopes, it did not seem to her intolerable, or sordid, or depressing, as it once would have seemed. Just as she possessed somewhere in herself a new strength to endure whatever misfortune might come to her, so she had an instinctive feeling of how others endured what on the surface of events seemed merely distressing and disagreeable. And the Johnston house, plain and homely as it was, with all the noisy children, had an air of peace about it, the spirit of those that dwelt there, which Isabelle felt to be the most precious thing on earth.... Alice had said, "It"s Steve--and I wouldn"t have him different for all the success in the world!" The words stung Isabelle. Such was marriage,--perfect marriage,--to be able to say that in the face of worldly defeat. Neither she nor John could ever say that about the other.
CHAPTER LXXIV
The newsboys were crying the verdict up and down the wet street. Across the front page of the penny sheet which Isabelle bought ran in broad, splotched letters: GUILTY; RAILROAD GRAFTERS FINED; and in slightly smaller type: _Atlantic and Pacific found guilty of illegal discrimination in famous coal cases--Fined eighty-five thousand dollars. Vice-president Lane, General Traffic Manager of Road, fined thirteen thousand six hundred and eighty dollars_, etc. Isabelle crumpled the paper into her m.u.f.f and hurried home.
As she walked numbly, she thought, "Why six hundred and eighty dollars? why so exact?" As if the precise measure of wrong could be determined! On the doorstep of her mother"s house lay the quietly printed, respectable two-cent evening paper that the family had always read. Isabelle took this also with her to her room. Even in this conservative sheet, favorable to the interests of the property cla.s.ses, there were scare-heads about the verdict. It was of prime importance as news. Without removing her hat or coat, Isabelle read it all through,--the judge"s charge to the jury, the verdict, the reporters" gossip of the court-room. The language of the judge was trenchant, and though his charge was worded in stiff and solemn form and laden with legal phrases, Isabelle understood it better even than the hot eloquence of the district attorney. It swept away all that legal dust, those technical quibbles, which Mr. Brinkerhoff and his a.s.sociate counsel had so industriously sprinkled over the issue. "If the facts have been established of such and such a nature, beyond reasonable doubt; if the connection of the defendant has been clearly set forth," etc. As the penny sheet put it, "Judge Barstow"s charge left no room for doubt as to the verdict. The jury was out forty minutes and took one ballot." Twelve men, be they farmers or "sore-heads," had found John Lane guilty of something very like grand larceny. The case was to be appealed--of course.
Even the respectable two-cent paper delivered itself editorially on the verdict in the famous coal cases, with unusual daring. For the _Post_ was ordinarily most cautious not to reflect upon matters inimical to "leading interests." To-night it was moved beyond the limits of an habitual prudence.
"Judge Barstow," it said, "in his able a.n.a.lysis left no room for doubt as to the gravity of the charges brought by the government against the Atlantic and Pacific and certain of its officers. The verdict will be no surprise to those who have followed closely the so-called coal cases through the preliminary investigation by the Interstate Commerce Commission and the recent trial. A state of affairs in the management of the Atlantic and Pacific railroad was revealed that may well shock men long accustomed to the methods of corporate control. It was shown that officers and employees of the railroad owned or controlled various coal properties that depended for their existence upon special favors given them by the road, and that these companies were enabled by their secret alliance with the railroad to blackmail independent, rival companies, and drive them out of existence. To put it in plain words, the Atlantic and Pacific favored its secret partners at the expense of their compet.i.tors.... Apart from the legal aspect so ably dealt with by Judge Barstow, the spectacle of graft in the Atlantic and Pacific must surprise the stockholders of that corporation quite as much as the public at large. Apparently high-salaried officials shared in these extra profits together with freight clerks and division superintendents! ... We cannot believe that the moral sense of the country will long tolerate a condition of affairs such as has been revealed in the case of Vice-president Lane."...
This was no academic question of economic policy! No legal technicality.
The paper fell from Isabelle"s hand, and she sat staring at the floor. Her husband was called in plain prose a "grafter,"--one who partic.i.p.ated in unearned and improper profits, due to granting favors in his official capacity to himself.
As Isabelle closed the old-fashioned shutters before dressing for dinner, she saw her husband coming up the steps, walking with his slow, powerful stride, his head erect,--the competent, high-minded, generous man, a rock of stable strength, as she had always believed him, even when she loved him least! There must be something wrong with the universe when this man, the best type of hard, intelligent labor, should have become a public robber!
... Renault"s solemn words repeated themselves, "The curse of our age, of our country, is its frantic egotism." The predatory instinct, so highly valued in the Anglo-Saxon male, had thriven mightily in a country of people "born free and equal," when such a man as John Lane "grafted" and believed himself justified.
Lane stood behind her chair waiting for her in the dining room. As she entered the room he glanced at her questioningly. He had noticed that the evening paper was not in its usual place in the hall. But after that glance he settled himself composedly for the meal, and while the servants were in the room husband and wife talked of immediate plans. He said he should have to go to New York the next day, and asked what she wished to do. Would she wait here in St. Louis for her mother? Or join her at the Springs? Or open the Farm? He should have to be back and forth between New York and St.
Louis all the spring, probably.
Isabelle could answer only in monosyllables. All these details of where she should be seemed irrelevant to the one burning point,--what will you do now, in the face of this verdict of guilt? At last the meal was over, and they were alone. Isabelle, without looking up, said:--
"I saw the verdict in the papers, John."
He made no reply, and she cried:--
"Tell me what you are going to do! We must talk about it."
"The case will be appealed, as I told you before."
"Yes! ... but the fine, the--"
She stopped for lack of the right word. He made a gesture of indifference at the word "fine," but still waited.