Introductory material (continued 4)

At the office Dumont found another cipher telegram from Merriweather: "Later returns show Scarborough elected by a narrow majority. But he will be powerless as Legislature and all other state offices are with us."

Dumont crushed the telegram in his hand. "Powerless—hell!" he muttered. "Does he think I'm a fool?" He had spent three hundred thousand dollars to "protect" his monopoly in its home; for it was under Indiana laws, as interpreted by Dumont's agents in public office, that the main or holding corporation of his group was organized. And he knew that, in spite of his judges and his attorney-general and his legislative lobby and his resourceful lawyers and his subsidized newspapers, a governor of Scarborough's courage and sagacity could harass him, could force his tools in public office to activity against him, might drive him from the state. Heretofore he had felt, and had been, secure in the might of his millions. But now— He had a feeling of dread, close kin to fear, as he measured this peril, this man strong with a strength against which money and intrigue were as futile as bow and arrow against rifle.

He opened the door into the room where his twenty personal clerks were at work. They glanced at his face, winced, bent to their tasks. They knew that expression: it meant "J. D. will take the hide off every one who goes near him to-day."

"Tell Mr. Giddings I want to see him," he snapped, lifting the head of the nearest clerk with a glance like an electric shock.

The clerk rose, tiptoed away to the office of the first vice-president of the Woolens Trust. He came tiptoeing back to say in a faint, deprecating voice: "Mr. Giddings isn't down yet, sir."

Dumont rolled out a volley of violent language about Giddings. In his tantrums he had no more regard for the dignity of his chief lieutenants, themselves rich men and middle-aged or old, than he had for his office boys. To the Ineffable Grand Turk what noteworthy distinction is there between vizier and sandal-strapper?

"Send him in—quick,—you, as soon as he comes," he shouted in conclusion. If he had not paid generously, if his lieutenants had not been coining huge dividends out of his brains and commercial audacity, if his magnetic, confidence-inspiring personality had not created in the minds of all about him visions of golden rivers widening into golden oceans, he would have been deserted and execrated. As it was, his service was eagerly sought; and his servants endured its mental and moral hardships as the prospector endures the physical cruelties of the mountain fastnesses.

He was closing his private door when the door-boy from the outermost of that maze of handsome offices came up to him with a card.

"Not here," he growled, and shut himself in.

Half an hour later the sounds of an angry tumult in the clerks' room made him fling his door open. "What the—" he began, his heavy face purple, then stopped amazed.

The outside doorkeeper, the watchman and several clerks were engaged in a struggle with Fanshaw. His hat was off, his hair wild, his necktie, shirt and coat awry.

"There you are now—I knew you were in," he shouted, as he caught sight of Dumont. "Call these curs off, Jack!"

"Let him alone," snarled Dumont.

Fanshaw was released. He advanced into Dumont's office, straightening his clothing and panting with exertion, excitement and anger. Dumont closed the door. "Well," he said surlily. "What d' you want?"

"I'll have to go to the wall at half-past ten if you don't help me out," said Fanshaw. "The Montana election went against my crowd—I'm in the copper deal. There's a slump, but the stock's dead sure to go up within a week."

"In trouble again?" sneered Dumont. "It's been only three months since I pulled you through."

"You didn't lose anything by it, did you?" retorted Fanshaw—he had recovered himself and was eying Dumont with the cool, steady, significant stare of one rascal at another whom he thinks he has in his power.

Before that look Dumont flushed an angrier red. "I won't do it again!" and he brought his fist down with a bang.

"All I want is five hundred thousand to carry my copper for a week at the outside. If I get it I'll clear a million. If I don't"—Fanshaw shrugged his shoulders—"I'll be cleaned out." He looked with narrowed, shifting eyes at Dumont. "My wife has all she's got in this," he went on, "even her jewels."

Dumont's look shot straight into Fanshaw's.

"Not a cent!" he said with vicious emphasis. "Not a red!"

Fanshaw paled and pinched in his lips. "I'm a desperate man. I'm ruined. Leonora—"

Dumont shook his head, the veins swelling in his forehead and neck. The last strand of his self-restraint snapped. "Leave her out of this! She has no claim on me NOW—and YOU never had."

Fanshaw stared at him, then sprang to his feet, all in a blaze. "You scoundrel!" he shouted, shaking his fist under Dumont's nose.

"If you don't clear out instantly I'll have you thrown out," said Dumont. He was cool and watchful now.

Fanshaw folded his arms and looked down at him with the dignified fury of the betrayed and outraged. "So!" he exclaimed. "I see it all!"

Dumont pressed an electric button, then leaned back in his revolving chair and surveyed Fanshaw tranquilly. "Not a cent!" he repeated, a cruel smile in his eyes and round his mouth. The boy came and Dumont said to him: "Send the watchman."

Fanshaw drew himself up. "I shall punish you," he said. "Your wealth will not save you." And he stalked past the gaping office boy.

He stood in front of the Edison Building, looking aimlessly up and down the street as he pulled his long, narrow, brown-gray mustache. Gloom was in his face and hate in his heart—not hate for Dumont alone but hate for all who were what he longed to be, all rich and "successful" men. And the towering steel and stone palaces of prosperity sneered down on him with crushing mockery.

"Damn them all!" he muttered. "The cold-hearted thieves!"

From his entry into that district he had played a gambling game, had played it dishonestly in a small way. Again and again he had sneakingly violated Wall Street's code of morality—that curious code with its quaint, unexpected incorporations of parts of the decalogue and its quainter, though not so unexpected, infringements thereof and amendments thereto. Now by "pull," now by trickery, he had evaded punishment. But apparently at last he was to be brought to bar, branded and banished.

"Damn them all!" he repeated. "They're a pack of wolves. They've got me down and they're going to eat me."

He blamed Dumont and he blamed his wife for his plight—and there was some justice in both accusations. Twenty years before, he had come down to "the Street" a frank-looking boy, of an old and distinguished New York family that had become too aristocratic for business and had therefore lost its hold upon its once great fortune. He was neither a good boy nor a bad. But he was weak, and had the extravagant tastes and cynical morals to which he had been bred; and his intelligent brain was of the kind that goes with weakness—shrewd and sly, preferring to slink along the byways of craft even when the highway of courage lies straight and easy. But he had physical bravery and the self-confidence that is based upon an assured social position in a community where social position is worshiped; so, he passed for manly and proud when he was in reality neither. Family vanity he had; personal pride he had not.

In many environments his weakness would have remained hidden even from himself, and he would have lived and died in the odor and complacence of respectability. But not in the strain and stress of Wall Street. There he had naturally developed not into a lion, not even into a wolf, but into a coyote.

Wall Street found him out in ten years—about one year after it began to take note of him and his skulking ways and his habit of prowling in the wake of the pack. Only his adroit use of his family connections and social position saved him from being trampled to death by the wolves and eaten by his brother coyotes. Thereafter he lived precariously, but on the whole sumptuously, upon carcasses of one kind and another. He participated in "strike" suits against big corporations—he would set on a pack of coyotes to dog the lions and to raise discordant howls that inopportunely centered public attention upon leonine, lawless doings; the lions would pay him well to call off the pack. He assisted sometimes wolves and sometimes coyotes in flotations of worthless, or almost worthless, stocks and bonds from gold and mahogany offices and upon a sea of glittering prospectuses. He had a hand in all manner of small, shady transactions of lawful, or almost lawful, swindling that were tolerated by lions and wolves, because at bottom there is a feeling of fellowship among creatures of prey as against creatures preyed upon.

There were days when he came home haggard and blue in the lips to tell Leonora that he must fly. There were days when he returned from the chase, or rather from the skulk, elated, youthful, his pockets full of money and his imagination afire with hopes of substantial wealth. But his course was steadily downward, his methods steadily farther and farther from the line of the law. Dumont came just in time to save him, came to build him up from the most shunned of coyotes into a deceptive imitation of a wolf with aspirations toward the lion class.

Leonora knew that he was small, but she thought all men small—she had supreme contempt for her own sex; and it seemed to her that men must be even less worthy of respect since they were under the influence of women and lavished time and money on them. Thus she was deceived into cherishing the hope that her husband, small and timid though he was, would expand into a multi-millionaire and would help her to possess the splendors she now enjoyed at the expense of her associates whom she despised. She was always thinking how far more impressive than their splendor her magnificence would be, if their money were added to her brains and beauty.

Dumont had helped Fanshaw as much as he could. He immediately detected the coyote. He knew it was impossible to make a lion or even a wolf out of one who was both small and crooked. He used him only in minor matters, chiefly in doing queer, dark things on the market with National Woolens, things he indirectly ordered done but refused to know the details of beyond the one important detail—the record of checks for the profits in his bank account. For such matters Fanshaw did as well as another. But as Dumont became less of a wolf and more of a lion, less of a speculator and more of a financier, he had less and less work of the kind Fanshaw could do.

But Leonora, unaware of her husband's worthlessness and desperate in her calamities, sneered and jeered and lashed him on—to ruin. The coyote could put on the airs of a lion so long as the lion was his friend and protector; when he kept on in kingly ways after the lion had cast him off, he speedily came to grief.

As he stood looking helplessly up and down Broad Street he was debating what move to make. There were about even measures of truth and falsehood in his statement to Dumont—he did need two hundred thousand dollars; and he must have it before a quarter past two that day or go into a bankruptcy from which he could not hope to save a shred of reputation or to secrete more than fifty thousand dollars.

"To the New York Life Building," he finally said to the driver as he got into his hansom. Then to himself: "I'll have a go at old Herron."

He knew that Dumont and Herron had quarreled, and that Herron had sold out of the National Woolens Company. But he did not know that Herron was a man with a fixed idea, hatred of Dumont, and a fixed purpose, to damage him at every opportunity that offered or could be created, to ruin him if possible.

When the National Woolens Company was expanded into the huge conglomerate it now was—a hundred millions common, a hundred millions preferred, and twenty millions of bonds—Herron had devised and directed the intricate and highly perilous course among the rocks of law and public opinion in many states and in the nation. It was a splendid exhibition of legal piloting, and he was bitterly dissatisfied with the modest reward of ten millions of the preferred stock which Dumont apportioned to him. He felt that that would have been about his just share in the new concern merely in exchange for his stock in the old. When he found Dumont obdurate, and grew frank and spoke such words as "dishonor" and "dishonesty" and got into the first syllable of "swindling," Dumont cut him off with—

"If you don't like it, get out! I can hire that sort of work for half what I've paid you. You're swollen with vanity. We ought to have a young man in your position, anyhow."

Herron might have swallowed the insult to his pride as a lawyer. But the insult to his pride in his youth! He was fifty-seven and in dress and in expression was stoutly insisting that he was still a young man whom hard work had made prematurely gray and somewhat wrinkled. Dumont's insinuation that he was old and stale set a great fire of hate blazing; he, of course, told himself and others that his wrath was stirred solely because his sense of justice had been outraged by the "swindling."

Fanshaw entered Herron's office wearing the jaunty air of arrogant prosperity, never so important as when prosperity has fled. But Herron's shrewd, experienced eyes penetrated the sham. He had intended to be cold. Scenting a "hard-luck yarn" and a "touch" he lowered his temperature to the point at which conversation is ice-beset and confidences are frozen tight.

Fanshaw's nerve deserted him. "Herron," he said, dropping his prosperous pose, "I want to get a divorce and I want to punish Dumont."

Herron's narrow, cold face lighted up. He knew what everybody in their set knew of Fanshaw's domestic affairs, but like everybody else he had pretended not to know. He changed his expression to one of shock and indignation.

"You astound me!" he exclaimed. "It is incredible!"

"He told me himself not an hour ago," said Fanshaw. "I went to him as a friend to ask him to help me out of a hole. And—" He rose and theatrically paced the floor.

Herron prided himself upon his acute conscience and his nice sense of honor. He felt that here was a chance to wreak vengeance upon Dumont—or rather, as he put it to himself, to bring Dumont to an accounting for his depravity. Just as Dumont maintained with himself a character of honesty by ignoring all the dubious acts which his agents were forced to do in carrying out his orders, so Herron kept peace with a far more sensitive conscience by never permitting it to look in upon his mind or out through his eyes.

"Frightful! Frightful!" he exclaimed, after a long pause in which his immured and blindfold conscience decided that he could afford to support Fanshaw. "I knew he was a rascal in business—but THIS!"

There was genuine emotion in his voice and in his mind. He was strict to puritanic primness in his ideals of feminine morality; nor had he been relaxed by having a handsome wife, looking scarce a day over thirty behind her veil or in artificial light, and fond of gathering about her young men who treated him as if he were old and "didn't count."

"You are certain, Fanshaw?"

"I tell you, he hinted it himself," replied Fanshaw. "And instantly my eyes were opened to scores of damning confirmations." He struck his forehead with his open hand. "How blind I've been!" he exclaimed.

Herron shook his head sympathetically and hastened on to business.

"WE can't handle your case," he said. "But Best and Sharpless, on the floor above, are reliable. And I'll be glad to help you with advice. I feel that this is the beginning of Dumont's end. I knew such insolent wickedness could not have a long course."

Fanshaw drew Herron on to tell the story of his wrongs—the "swindling." Before it was ended Fanshaw saw that he had found a man who hated Dumont malignantly and was thirsting for vengeance. This encouraged him to unfold his financial difficulties. Herron listened sympathetically, asked ingeniously illuminating questions, and in the end agreed to tide him over. He had assured himself that Fanshaw had simply undertaken too large an enterprise; the advance would be well secured; he would make the loan in such a way that he would get a sure profit, and would also bind Fanshaw firmly to him without binding himself to Fanshaw. Besides—"It wouldn't do for him to go to the wall just now."

Arm in arm they went up to Best and Sharpless' to take the first steps in the suit. Together they went down-town to relieve Fanshaw of the pressure of the too heavy burden of copper stocks; then up to their club where he assisted Fanshaw in composing the breaking-off letter to Leonora.

XXII.

STORMS IN THE WEST.

While the Fanshaw-Herron storm was slowly gathering in Dumont's eastern horizon, two others equally black were lifting in the west.

In the two months between Scarborough's election and his inauguration, the great monopolies thriving under the protection of the state's corrupted statute-book and corrupted officials followed the lead of their leader, Dumont's National Woolens Company, in making sweeping but stealthy changes in their prices, wages, methods and even in their legal status. They hoped thus to enable their Legislature plausibly to resist Scarborough's demand for a revision of the laws—why revise when the cry of monopoly had been shown to be a false issue raised by a demagogue to discredit the tried leaders of the party and to aggrandize himself? And, when Scarborough had been thoroughly "exposed," business could be resumed gradually.

But Scarborough had the better brain, and had character as well. He easily upset their program and pressed their Legislature so hard that it was kept in line only by pouring out money like water. This became a public scandal which made him stronger than ever and also made it seem difficult or impossible for the monopolies to get a corruptible Legislature at the next election. At last the people had in their service a lawyer equal in ability to the best the monopolies could buy, and one who understood human nature and political machinery to boot.

Dumont began to respect Scarborough profoundly—not for his character, which made him impregnable with the people, but for his intellect, which showed him how to convince the people of his character and to keep them convinced. When Merriweather came on "to take his beating" from his employer he said among other things deprecatory: "Scarborough's a dreamer. His head's among the clouds." Dumont retorted: "Yes, but his feet are on the ground—too damned firmly to suit me." And after a moment's thought, he added: "What a shame for such a brain to go to waste! Why, he could make millions."

He felt that Gladys was probably his best remaining card. She had been in Indianapolis visiting the whole of February, Scarborough's second month as governor, and had gone on to her brother in New York with a glowing report of her progress with Scarborough's sister Arabella, now a widow and at her own invitation living with him in Indianapolis to relieve him of the social duties of his office. She was a dozen years more the Arabella who had roused her father's wrath by her plans for educating her brother "like a gentleman"; and Olivia and Fred were irritated and even alarmed by her anything but helpful peculiarities—though Scarborough seemed cheerful and indifferent enough about them.

It was a temperamental impossibility for Dumont to believe that Scarborough could really be sincere in a course which was obviously unprofitable. Therefore he attached even more importance to Arabella's cordiality than did Gladys herself. And, when the Legislature adjourned and Scarborough returned to Saint X for a brief stay, Dumont sent Gladys post-haste back to the Eyrie—that is, she instantly and eagerly acted upon his hint.

A few evenings after her return, she and Pauline were on the south veranda alone in the starlight. She was in low spirits and presently began to rail against her lot.

"Don't be absurd," said Pauline. "You've no right to complain. You have everything—and you're—free!"

That word "free" was often on Pauline's lips in those days. And a close observer might have been struck by the tone in which she uttered it. Not the careless tone of those who have never had or have never lost freedom, but the lingering, longing tone of those who have had it, and have learned to value it through long years without it.

"Yes—everything!" replied Gladys, bitterly. "Everything except the one thing I want."

Pauline did not help her, but she was at the stage of suppressed feeling where desire to confide is stronger than pride.

"The one thing I want," she repeated. "Pauline, I used to think I'd never care much for any man, except to like it for him to like me. Men have always been a sort of amusement—and the oftener the man changed, the better the fun. I've known for several years that I simply must marry, but I've refused to face it. It seemed to me I was fated to wander the earth, homeless, begging from door to door for leave to come in and rest a while."

"You know perfectly well, Gladys, that this is your home."

"Of course—in a sense. It's as much my home as another woman's house could be. But"—with a little sob—"I've seen my mate and I want to begin my nest."

They were side by side on a wide, wicker sofa. Pauline made an impulsive move to put her arm round Gladys, then drew away and clasped her hands tightly in her lap.

Gladys was crying, sobbing, brokenly apologizing for it—"I'm a little idiot—but I can't help it—I haven't any pride left—a woman never does have, really, when she's in love—oh, Pauline, do you think he cares at all for me?" And after a pause she went on, too absorbed in herself to observe Pauline or to wonder at her silence: "Sometimes I think he does. Again I fear that—that he doesn't. And lately—why doesn't he come here any more?"

"You know how busy he is," said Pauline, in a voice so strained that Gladys ought to have noticed it.

"But it isn't that—I'm sure it isn't. No, it has something to do with me. It means either that he doesn't care for me or that—that he does care and is fighting against it. Oh, I don't know what to think." Then, after a pause: "How I hate being a woman! If I were a man I could find out the truth—settle it one way or the other. But I must sit dumb and wait, and wait, and wait! You don't know how I love him," she said brokenly, burying her face in the ends of the soft white shawl that was flung about her bare shoulders. "I can't help it—he's the best—he makes all the others look and talk like cheap imitations. He's the best, and a woman can't help wanting the best."

Pauline rose and leaned against the railing—she could evade the truth no longer. Gladys was in love with Scarborough, was at last caught in her own toils, would go on entangling herself deeper and deeper, abandoning herself more and more to a hopeless love, unless—

"What would you do, Pauline?" pleaded Gladys. "There must be some reason why he doesn't speak. It isn't fair to me—it isn't fair! I could stand anything—even giving him up—better than this uncertainty. It's—it's breaking my heart—I who thought I didn't have a heart."

"No, it isn't fair," said Pauline, to herself rather than to Gladys.

"I suppose you don't sympathize with me," Gladys went on. "I know you don't like him. I've noticed how strained and distant you are toward each other. And you seem to avoid each other. And he'll never talk of you to me. Did you have some sort of misunderstanding at college?"

"Yes," said Pauline, slowly. "A—a misunderstanding."

"And you both remember it, after all these years?"

"Yes," said Pauline.

"How relentless you are," said Gladys, "and how tenacious!" But she was too intent upon her own affairs to pursue a subject which seemed to lead away from them. Presently she rose.

"I'll be ashamed of having confessed when I see you in daylight. But I don't care. I shan't be sorry. I feel a little better. After all, why should I be ashamed of any one knowing I care for him?" And she sighed, laughed, went into the house, whistling softly—sad, depressed, but hopeful, feeling deep down that she surely must win where she had never known what it was to lose.

Pauline looked after her. "No, it isn't fair," she repeated. She stayed on the veranda, walking slowly to and fro not to make up her mind, for she had done that while Gladys was confessing, but to decide how she could best accomplish what she saw she must now no longer delay. It was not until two hours later that she went up to bed.

When Gladys came down at nine the next morning Pauline had just gone out—"I think, Miss Gladys, she told the coachman to drive to her father's," said the butler.

Gladys set out alone. Instead of keeping to the paths and the woods along the edge of the bluff she descended to the valley and the river road. She walked rapidly, her face glowing, her eyes sparkling—she was quick to respond to impressions through the senses, and to-day she felt so well physically that it reacted upon her mind and forced her spirits up. At the turn beyond Deer Creek bridge she met Scarborough suddenly. He, too, was afoot and alone, and his greeting was interpreted to her hopes by her spirits.

"May I turn and walk with you?" he asked.

"I'm finding myself disagreeable company today."

"You did look dull," she said, as they set out together, "dull as a love-sick German. But I supposed it was your executive pose."

"I was thinking that I'll be old before I know it." His old-young face was shadowed for an instant. "Old—that's an unpleasant thought, isn't it?"

"Unpleasant for a man," said Gladys, with a laugh, light as youth's dread of age. "For a woman, ghastly! Old and alone—either one's dreadful enough. But—the two together! I often think of them. Don't laugh at me—really I do. Don't you?"

"If you keep to that, our walk'll be a dismal failure. It's a road I never take—if I can help it."

"You don't look as though you were ever gloomy." Gladys glanced up at him admiringly. "I should have said you were one person the blue devils wouldn't dare attack."

"Yes, but they do. And sometimes they throw me."

"And trample you?"

"And trample me," he answered absently.

"That's because you're alone too much," she said with a look of tactful sympathy.

"Precisely," he replied. "But how am I to prevent that?"

"Marry, of course," she retorted, smiling gaily up at him, letting her heart just peep from her eyes.

"Thank you! And it sounds so easy! May I ask why you've refused to take your own medicine—you who say you are so often blue?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "I've always suspected the men who asked me. They were—" She did not finish what she feared might be an unwise, repelling remark in the circumstances.

"They were after your money," he finished for her.

She nodded. "They were Europeans," she explained. "Europeans want money when they marry."

"That's another of the curses of riches," he said judicially. "And if you marry a rich man over here, you may be pretty sure he'll marry you for your money. I've observed that rich men attach an exaggerated importance to money, always."

"I'd prefer to marry a poor man," she hastened to answer, her heart beating faster—certainly his warning against rich suitors must have been designed to help his own cause with her.

"Yes, that might be better," he agreed. "But you would have to be careful after you were married or he might fancy you were using your money to tyrannize over him. I've noticed that the poor husbands of rich women are supersensitive—often for cause."

"Oh, I'd give it all to him. He could do what he pleased with it. I'd not care so long as we were happy."

Scarborough liked the spirit of this, liked her look as she said it.

"That's very generous—very like you," he replied warmly. "But I don't think it would be at all wise. You'd be in a dangerous position. You might spoil him—great wealth is a great danger, and when it's suddenly acquired, and so easily— No, you'd better put your wealth aside and only use so much of it as will make your income equal to his—if you can stand living economically."

"I could stand anything with or from any one I cared for." Gladys was eager for the conversation to turn from the general to the particular. She went on, forcing her voice to hide her interest: "And you, why don't you cure your blues?"

"Oh, I shall," he replied carelessly. "But not with your medicine. Every one to his own prescription."

"And what's yours for yourself?" said Gladys, feeling tired and nervous from the strain of this delayed happiness.

"Mine?" He laughed. "My dreams."

"You are a strange combination, aren't you? In one way you're so very practical—with your politics and all that. And in another way—I suspect you of being sentimental—almost romantic."

"You've plucked out the heart of my mystery. My real name is non Quixote de Saint X."

"And has your Dulcinea red hands and a flat nose and freckles like the lady of Toboso?" Gladys' hands were white, her nose notably fine, her skin transparently clear.

"Being Don Quixote, I don't know it if she has."

"And you prefer to worship afar, and to send her news of your triumphs instead of going to her yourself?"

"I dare not go." He was looking away, far away. "There are wicked enchanters. I'm powerless. She alone can break their spells."

They walked in silence, her heart beating so loudly that she thought he must be hearing it, must be hearing what it was saying. Yes—she must break the spells. But how—but how? What must she say to make him see? Did he expect her to ask him to marry her? She had heard that rich women often were forced to make this concession to the pride of the men they wished to marry. On the other hand, was there ever a man less likely than Scarborough to let any obstacle stand between him and what he wanted?

The first huge drops of a summer rain pattered in big, round stains, brown upon the white of the road. He glanced up—a cloud was rolling from beyond the cliffs, was swiftly curtaining the blue.

"Come," he commanded, and they darted into the underbrush, he guiding her by her arm. A short dash among the trees and bushes and they were at the base of the bluff, were shielded by a shelf of rock.

"It'll be over soon," he assured her. "But you must stand close or you'll be drenched."

A clap of thunder deafened them as a flame and a force enswathed the sycamore tree a few yards away, blowing off its bark, scattering its branches, making it all in an instant a blackened and blasted wreck. Gladys gave a low scream of terror, fell against him, hid her face in his shoulder. She was trembling violently. He put his arm round her—if he had not supported her she would have fallen. She leaned against him, clinging to him, so that he felt the beat of her heart, the swell and fall of her bosom, felt the rush of her young blood through her veins, felt the thrill from her smooth, delicate, olive skin. And he, too, was trembling—shaken in all his nerves.

"Don't be afraid," he said—in his voice he unconsciously betrayed the impulse that was fighting for possession of him.

She drew herself closer to him with a long, tremulous sigh.

"I'm a coward," she murmured. "I'm shaking so that I can't stand." She tried to draw herself away—or did she only make pretense to him and to herself that she was trying?—then relaxed again into his arms.

The thunder cracked and crashed; the lightnings leaped in streaks and in sheets; the waters gushed from the torn clouds and obscured the light like a heavy veil. She looked up at him in the dimness—she, too, was drunk with the delirium of the storms raging without and within them. His brain swam giddily. The points of gold in her dark eyes were drawing him like so many powerful magnets. Their lips met and he caught her up in his arms. And for a moment all the fire of his intensely masculine nature, so long repressed, raged over her lips, her eyes, her hair, her cheeks, her chin.

A moment she lay, happy as a petrel, beaten by a tempest; a moment her thirsty heart drank in the ecstasy of the lightnings through her lips and skin and hair.

She opened her eyes to find out why there was a sudden calm. She saw him staring with set, white face through the rain-veil. His arms still held her, but where they had been like the clasp of life itself, they were now dead as the arms of a statue. A feeling of cold chilled her skin, trickled icily in and in. She released herself—he did not oppose her.

"It seems to me I'll never be able to look you—or myself—in the face again," he said at last.

"I didn't know it was in me to—to take advantage of a woman's helplessness."

"I wanted you to do what you did," she said simply.

He shook his head. "You are generous," he answered. "But I deserve nothing but your contempt."

"I wanted you to do it," she repeated. She was under the spell of her love and of his touch. She was clutching to save what she could, was desperately hoping it might not be so little as she feared. "I had the—the same impulse that you had." She looked at him timidly, with a pleading smile. "And please don't say you're sorry you did it, even if you feel so. You'll think me very bold—I know it isn't proper for young women to make such admissions. But—don't reproach yourself—please!"

If she could have looked into his mind as he stood there, crushed and degraded in his own eyes, she would have been a little consoled—for, in defiance of his self-scorn and self-hate, his nerves were tingling with the memory of that delirium, and his brain was throbbing with the surge of impulses long dormant, now imperious. But she was not even looking toward him—for, through her sense of shame, of wounded pride, her love was clamoring to her to cry out: "Take me in your arms again! I care not on what terms, only take me and hold me and kiss me."

The rain presently ceased as abruptly as it had begun and they returned under the dripping leaves to the highroad. She glanced anxiously at him as they walked toward the town, but he did not speak. She saw that if the silence was to be broken, she must break it.

"What can I say to convince you?" she asked, as if not he but she were the offender.

He did not answer.

"Won't you look at me, please?"

He looked, the color mounting in his cheeks, his eyes unsteady.

"Now, tell me you'll not make me suffer because you fancy you've wronged me. Isn't it ungallant of you to act this way after I've humiliated myself to confess I didn't mind?"

"Thank you," he said humbly, and looked away.

"You won't have it that I was in the least responsible?" She was teasing him now—he was plainly unaware of the meaning of her yielding. "He's so modest," she thought, and went on: "You won't permit me to flatter myself I was a temptation too strong even for your iron heart, Don Quixote?"

He flushed scarlet, and the suspicion, the realization of the truth set her eyes to flashing.

"It's before another woman he's abasing himself," she thought, "not before me. He isn't even thinking of me." When she spoke her tone was cold and sneering: "I hope she will forgive you. She certainly would if she could know what a paladin you are."

He winced, but did not answer. At the road up the bluffs she paused and there was an embarrassed silence. Then he poured out abrupt sentences:

"It was doubly base. I betrayed your friendly trust, I was false to her. Don't misunderstand—she's nothing to me. She's nothing to me, yet everything. I began really to live when I began to love her. And—every one must have a—a pole-star. And she's mine—the star I sail by, and always must. And—" He halted altogether, then blundered on: "I shall not forgive myself. But you—be merciful—forgive me—forget it!"

"I shall do neither," she replied curtly, jealousy and vanity stamping down the generous impulse that rose in response to his appeal. And she went up her road. A few yards and she paused, hoping to hear him coming after her. A few yards more and she sat down on a big boulder by the wayside. Until now all the wishes of her life had been more or less material, had been wishes which her wealth or the position her wealth gave had enabled her instantly to gratify. She buried her face in her arms and sobbed and rocked herself to and fro, in a cyclone of anger, and jealousy, and shame, and love, and despair.

"I hate him!" she exclaimed between clenched teeth. "I hate him, but—if he came and wanted me, oh, how I would LOVE him!"

Meanwhile Pauline was at her father's.

"He isn't down yet," said her mother. "You know, he doesn't finish dressing nowadays until he has read the papers and his mail. Then he walks in the garden."

"I'll go there," said Pauline. "Won't you bring him when he's ready?"

She never entered the garden that the ghosts of her childhood—how far, far it seemed!—did not join her, brushing against her, or rustling in tree and bush and leafy trellis. She paused at the end of the long arbor and sat on the rustic bench there. A few feet away was the bed of lilies-of-the-valley. Every spring of her childhood she used to run from the house on the first warm morning and hurry to it; and if her glance raised her hopes she would kneel upon the young grass and lower her head until her long golden hair touched the black ground; and the soil that had been hard and cold all winter would be cracked open this way and that; and from the cracks would issue an odor—the odor of life. And as she would peer into each crack in turn she would see, down, away down, the pale tip of what she knew to be an up-shooting slender shaft. And her heart would thrill with joy, for she knew that the shafts would presently rise green above the black earth, would unfold, would blossom, would bloom, would fling from tremulous bells a perfumed proclamation of the arrival of spring.

As she sat waiting, it seemed to her that through the black earth of her life she could see and feel the backward heralds of her spring—"after the long winter," she said to herself.

She glanced up—her father coming toward her. He was alone, was holding a folded letter uncertainly in his hand. He looked at her, his eyes full of pity and grief. "Pauline," he began, "has everything been—been well—of late between you and—your husband?"

She started. "No, father," she replied. Then, looking at him with clear directness: "I've not been showing you and mother the truth about John and me—not for a long time."

She saw that her answer relieved him. He hesitated, held out the letter.

"The best way is for you to read it," he said. It was a letter to him from Fanshaw. He was writing, he explained, because the discharge of a painful duty to himself would compel him "to give pain to your daughter whom I esteem highly," and he thought it only right "to prepare her and her family for what was coming, in order that they might be ready to take the action that would suggest itself." And he went on to relate his domestic troubles and his impending suit.

"Poor Leonora!" murmured Pauline, as she finished and sat thinking of all that Fanshaw's letter involved.

"Is it true, Polly?" asked her father.

She gave a great sigh of relief. How easy this letter had made all that she had been dreading! "Yes—it's true," she replied. "I've known about—about it ever since the time I came back from the East and didn't return."

The habitual pallor of her father's face changed to gray.

"I left him, father." She lifted her head, impatient of her stammering. A bright flush was in her face as she went on rapidly: "And I came to-day to tell you the whole story—to be truthful and honest again. I'm sick of deception and evasion. I can't stand it any longer—I mustn't. I—you don't know how I've shrunk from wounding mother and you. But I've no choice now. Father, I must be free—free!"

"And you shall be," replied her father. "He shall not wreck your life and Gardiner's."

Pauline stared at him. "Father!" she exclaimed.

He put his arm round her and drew her gently to him.

"I know the idea is repellent," he said, as if he were trying to persuade a child. "But it's right, Pauline. There are cases in which not to divorce would be a sin. I hope my daughter sees that this is one."

"I don't understand," she said confusedly. "I thought you and mother believed divorce was dreadful—no matter what might happen."

"We did, Pauline. But we—that is, I—had never had it brought home. A hint of this story was published just after you came last year. I thought it false, but it set me to thinking. 'If your daughter's husband had turned out to be as you once thought him, would it be right for her to live on with him? To live a lie, to pretend to keep her vows to love and honor him? Would it be right to condemn Gardiner to be poisoned by such a father?' And at last I saw the truth, and your mother agreed with me. We had been too narrow. We had been laying down our own notions as God's great justice."

Pauline drew away from her father so that she could look at him. And at last she saw into his heart. "If I had only known," she said, and sat numb and stunned.

"When you were coming home from college," her father went on, "your mother and I talked over what we should do. John had just confessed your secret marriage—"

"You knew that!"

"Yes, and we understood, Polly. You were so young—so headstrong—and you couldn't appreciate our reasons."

Pauline's brain was reeling.

"Your mother and I talked it over before you got home and thought it best to leave you entirely free to choose. But when we saw you overcome by joy—"

"Don't!" she interrupted, her voice a cry of pain. "I can't bear it! Don't!" Years of false self-sacrifice, of deceiving her parents and her child, of self-suppression and self-degradation, and this final cruelty to Gladys—all, all in vain, all a heaping of folly upon folly, of wrong upon wrong.

She rushed toward the house. She must fly somewhere—anywhere—to escape the thoughts that were picking with sharp beaks at her aching heart. Half-way up the walk she turned and fled to a refuge she would not have thought of half an hour before to her father's arms.

"Oh, father," she cried. "If I had only known you!"

Gladys, returning from her walk, went directly to Pauline's sitting-room.

"I'm off for New York and Europe to-morrow morning," she began abruptly, her voice hard, her expression bitter and reckless.

"Where can she have heard about Leonora?" thought Pauline. She said in a strained voice: "I had hoped you would stay here to look after the house."

"To look after the house? What do you mean?" asked Gladys. But she was too full of herself to be interested in the answer, and went on: "I want you to forget what I said to you. I've got over all that. I've come to my senses."

Pauline began a nervous turning of her rings.

Gladys gave a short, grim laugh. "I detest him," she went on. "We're very changeable, we women, aren't we? I went out of this house two hours ago loving him—to distraction. I came back hating him. And all that has happened in between is that I met him and he kissed me a few times and stabbed my pride a few times."

Pauline stopped turning her rings—she rose slowly, mechanically, looked straight at Gladys.

"That is not true," she said calmly.

Gladys laughed sardonically. "You don't know the cold and haughty Governor Scarborough. There's fire under the ice. I can feel the places on my face where it scorched. Can't you see them?"

Pauline gave her a look of disgust. "How like John Dumont's sister!" she thought. And she shut herself in her room and stayed there, pleading illness in excuse, until Gladys was gone.

XXIII.

A SEA SURPRISE.

On the third day from New York, Gladys was so far recovered from seasickness that she dragged herself to the deck. The water was fairly smooth, but a sticky, foggy rain was falling. A deck-steward put her steamer-chair in a sheltered corner. Her maid and a stewardess swathed her in capes and rugs; she closed her eyes and said: "Now leave me, please, and don't come near me till I send for you."

She slept an hour. When she awoke she felt better. Some one had drawn a chair beside hers and was seated there—a man, for she caught the faint odor of a pipe, though the wind was the other way. She turned her head. It was Langdon, whom she had not seen since she went below a few hours after Sandy Hook disappeared. Indeed, she had almost forgotten that he was on board and that her brother had asked him to look after her. He was staring at her in an absent-minded way, his wonted expression of satire and lazy good-humor fainter than usual. In fact, his face was almost serious.

"That pipe," she grumbled. "Please do put it away."

He tossed it into the sea. "Beg pardon," he said. "It was stupid of me. I was absorbed in—in my book."

"What's the name of it?"

He turned it to glance at the cover, but she went on: "No—don't tell me. I've no desire to know. I asked merely to confirm my suspicion."

"You're right," he said. "I wasn't reading. I was looking at you."

"That was impertinent. A man should not look at a woman when she doesn't intend him to look."

"Then I'd never look at all. I'm interested only in things not meant for my eyes. I might even read letters not addressed to me if I didn't know how dull letters are. No intelligent person ever says anything in a letter nowadays. They use the telegraph for ordinary correspondence, and telepathy for the other kind. But it was interesting—looking at you as you lay asleep."

"Was my mouth open?"

"A little."

"Am I yellow?"

"Very."

"Eyes red? Hair in strings? Lips blue?"

"All that," he said, "and skin somewhat mottled. But I was not so much interested in your beauty as I was in trying to determine whether you were well enough to stand two shocks."

"I need them," replied Gladys.

"One is rather unpleasant, the other—the reverse, in fact a happiness."

"The unpleasant first, please."

"Certainly," he replied. "Always the medicine first, then the candy." And he leaned back and closed his eyes and seemed to be settling himself for indefinite silence.

"Go on," she said impatiently. "What's the medicine? A death?"

"I said unpleasant, didn't I? When an enemy dies it's all joy. When a friend passes over to eternal bliss, why, being good Christians, we are not so faithless and selfish as to let the momentary separation distress us."

"But what is it? You're trying to gain time by all this beating about the bush. You ought to know me well enough to know you can speak straight out."

"Fanshaw's suing his wife for divorce—and he names Jack."

"Is that your news?" said Gladys, languidly. Suddenly she flung aside the robes and sat up.

"What's Pauline going to do? Can she—" Gladys paused.

"Yes, she can—if she wishes to."

"But—will she? Will she?" demanded Gladys.

"Jack doesn't know what she'll do," replied Langdon. "He's keeping quiet—the only sane course when that kind of storm breaks. He had hoped you'd be there to smooth her down, but he says when he opened the subject of your going back to Saint X you cut him off."

"Does she know?"

"Somebody must have told her the day you left. Don't you remember, she was taken ill suddenly?"

"Oh!" Gladys vividly recalled Pauline's strange look and manner. She could see her sister-in-law—the long, lithe form, the small, graceful head, with its thick, soft, waving hair, the oval face, the skin as fine as the petals at the heart of a rose, the arched brows and golden-brown eyes; that look, that air, as of buoyant life locked in the spell of an icy trance, mysterious, fascinating, sometimes so melancholy.

"I almost hope she'll do it, Mowbray," she said. "Jack doesn't deserve her. He's not a bit her sort. She ought to have married—"

"Some one who had her sort of ideals—some one like that big, handsome chap—the one you admired so frantically—Governor Scarborough. He was chock full of ideals. And he's making the sort of career she could sympathize with."

"Scarborough!" exclaimed Gladys, with some success at self-concealment. "I detest him! I detest 'careers'!"

"Good," said Langdon, his face serious, his eyes amused. "That opens the way for my other shock."

"Oh, the good news. What is it?"

"That I'd like it if you'd marry me."

Gladys glanced into his still amused eyes, then with a shrug sank back among her wraps. "A poor joke," she said.

"I should say that marriage was a stale joke rather than a poor one. Will you try it—with me? You might do worse."

"How did you have the courage to speak when I'm looking such a wreck?" she asked with mock gravity.

"But you ain't—you're looking better now. That first shock braced you up. Besides, this isn't romance. It's no high flight with all the longer drop and all the harder jolt at the landing. It's a plain, practical proposition."

Gladys slowly sat up and studied him curiously.

"Do you really mean it?" she asked. Each was leaning on an elbow, gazing gravely into the other's face.

"I'd never joke on such a dangerous subject as marriage. I'm far too timid for that. What do you say, Gladys?"

She had never seen him look serious before, and she was thinking that the expression became him.

"He knows how to make himself attractive to a woman when he cares to," she said to herself.

"I'd like a man that has lightness of mind. Serious people bore one so after a while." By "serious people" she meant one serious person whom she had admired particularly for his seriousness. But she was in another mood now, another atmosphere—the atmosphere she had breathed since she was thirteen, except in the brief period when her infatuation for Scarborough had swept her away from her world.

"No!" She shook her head with decision—and felt decided. But to his practised ear there was in her voice a hint that she might hear him further on the subject.

They lay back in their chairs, he watching the ragged, dirty, scurrying clouds, she watching him. After a while he said: "Where are you going when we reach the other side?"

"To join mother and auntie."

"And how long will you stay with them?"

"Not more than a week, I should say," she answered with a grimace.

"And then—where?"

She did not reply for some time. Studying her face, he saw an expression of lonesomeness gather and strengthen and deepen until she looked so forlorn that he felt as if he must take her in his arms. When she spoke it was to say dubiously: "Back to New York—to keep house for my brother—perhaps."

"And when his wife frees herself and he marries again—where will you go?"

Gladys lifted a fold of her cape and drew it about her as if she were cold. But he noted that it hid her face from him.

"You want—you need—a home? So do I," he went on tranquilly. "You are tired of wandering? So am I. You are bored with parade and parade—people? So am I. You wish freedom, not bondage, when you marry? I refuse to be bound, and I don't wish to bind any one. We have the same friends, the same tastes, have had pretty much the same experiences. You don't want to be married for your money. I'm not likely to be suspected of doing that sort of thing."

"Some one has said that rich men marry more often for money than poor men," interrupted Gladys. And then she colored as she recalled who had said it.

Langdon noted her color as he noted every point in any game he was playing; he shrewdly guessed its origin. "When Scarborough told you that," he replied calmly, "he told you a great truth. But please remember, I merely said I shouldn't be SUSPECTED of marrying you for money. I didn't say I wasn't guilty."

"Is your list of reasons complete?"

"Two more the clinchers. You are disappointed in love—so am I. You need consolation—so do I. When one can't have the best one takes the best one can get, if one is sensible. It has been known to turn out not so badly."

They once more lay back watching the clouds. An hour passed without either's speaking. The deck-steward brought them tea and biscuits which he declined and she accepted. She tried the big, hard, tasteless disk between her strong white teeth, then said with a sly smile: "You pried into my secret a few minutes ago. I'm going to pry into yours. Who was she?"

"As the lady would have none of me, there's no harm in confessing," replied Langdon, carelessly. "She was—and is—and—" he looked at her—"ever shall be, world without end—Gladys Dumont."

Gladys gasped and glanced at him with swift suspicion that he was jesting. He returned her glance in a calm, matter-of-fact way. She leaned back in her chair and they watched the slippery rail slide up and down against the background of chilly, rainy sea and sky.

"Are you asleep?" he asked after a long silence.

"No," she replied. "I was thinking."

"Of my—proposition?"

"Yes."

"Doesn't it grow on you?"

"Yes."

He shifted himself to a sitting position with much deliberateness. He put his hand in among her rugs and wraps until it touched hers. "It may turn out better than you anticipate," he said, a little sentiment in his eyes and smile, a little raillery in his voice.

"I doubt if it will," she answered, without looking at him directly. "For—I—anticipate a great deal."

XXIV.

DUMONT BETRAYS DUMONT.

Fanshaw versus Fanshaw was heard privately by a referee; and before Mrs. Fanshaw's lawyers had a chance to ask that the referee's report be sealed from publicity, the judge of his own motion ordered it. At the political club to which he belonged, he had received an intimation from the local "boss" that if Dumont's name were anywhere printed in connection with the case he would be held responsible. Thus it came to pass that on the morning of the filing of the decree the newspapers were grumbling over their inability to give the eagerly-awaited details of the great scandal. And Herron was Catonizing against "judicial corruption."

But Dumont was overswift in congratulating himself on his escape and in preening himself on his power.

For several days the popular newspapers were alone in denouncing the judge for favoritism and in pointing out that the judiciary were "becoming subservient to the rich and the powerful in their rearrangements of their domestic relations—a long first step toward complete subservience." Herron happened to have among his intimates the editor of an eminently respectable newspaper that prides itself upon never publishing private scandals. He impressed his friend with his own strong views as to the gravity of this growing discrimination between masses and classes; and the organ of independent conservatism was presently lifting up its solemn voice in a stentorian jeremiad.

Without this reinforcement the "yellows" might have shrieked in vain. It was assumed that baffled sensationalism was by far a stronger motive with them than justice, and the public was amused rather than aroused by their protests. But now soberer dailies and weeklies took up the case and the discussion spread to other cities, to the whole country. By his audacity, by his arrogant frankness he had latterly treated public opinion with scantiest courtesy—by his purchase of campaign committees, and legislatures, and courts, Dumont had made himself in the public mind an embodiment of the "mighty and menacing plutocracy" of which the campaign orators talked so much. And the various phases of the scandal gave the press a multitude of texts for satirical, or pessimistic, or fiery discourses upon the public and private rottenness of "plutocrats."

But Dumont's name was never directly mentioned. Every one knew who was meant; no newspaper dared to couple him in plain language with the scandal. The nearest approach to it was where one New York newspaper published, without comment, in the center of a long news article on the case, two photographs of Dumont side by side—one taken when he first came to New York, clear-cut, handsome, courageous, apparently a type of progressive young manhood; the other, taken within the year, gross, lowering, tyrannical, obviously a type of indulged, self-indulgent despot.

Herron had forced Fanshaw to abandon the idea of suing Dumont for a money consolation. He had been deeply impressed by his wife's warnings against Fanshaw—"a lump of soot, and sure to smutch you if you go near him." He was reluctant to have Fanshaw give up the part of the plan which insured the public damnation of Dumont, but there was no other prudent course. He assured himself that he knew Fanshaw to be an upright man; but he did not go to so perilous a length in self-deception as to fancy he could convince cynical and incredulous New York. It was too eager to find excuses for successful and admired men like Dumont, too ready to laugh at and despise underdogs like Fanshaw. Herron never admitted it to himself, but in fact it was he who put it into Fanshaw's resourceless mind to compass the revenge of publicity in another way.

Fanshaw was denouncing the judge for sealing the divorce testimony, and the newspapers for being so timid about libel laws and contempt of court.

"If a newspaper should publish the testimony," said Herron, "Judge Glassford would never dare bring the editor before him for contempt. His record's too bad. I happen to know he was in the News-Record office no longer ago than last month, begging for the suppression of an article that might have caused his impeachment, if published. So there's one paper that wouldn't be afraid of him."

"Then why does it shield the scoundrel?"

"Perhaps," replied Herron, his hand on the door of his office law-library, "it hasn't been able to get hold of a copy of the testimony." And having thus dropped the seed on good soil, he left.

Fanshaw waited several weeks, waited until certain other plans of his and Herron's were perfected. Then he suddenly deluged the sinking flames of the divorce discussion with a huge outpouring of oil. Indirectly and with great secrecy he sent a complete copy of the testimony to the newspaper Herron had mentioned, the most sensational, and one of the most widely circulated in New York.

The next morning Dumont had to ring three times for his secretary. When Culver finally appeared he had in his trembling right hand a copy of the News-Record. His face suggested that he was its owner, publisher and responsible editor, and that he expected then and there to be tortured to death for the two illustrated pages of the "Great Fanshaw-Dumont Divorce! All the Testimony! Shocking Revelations!"

"I thought it necessary for you to know this without delay, sir," he said in a shaky voice, as he held out the newspaper to his master.

Dumont grew sickly yellow with the first glance at those head-lines. He had long been used to seeing extensive and highly unflattering accounts of himself and his doings in print; but theretofore every open attack had been on some public matter where a newspaper "pounding" might be attributed to politics or stock-jobbery. Here—it was a verbatim official report, and of a private scandal, more dangerous to his financial standing than the fiercest assault upon his honesty as a financier; for it tore away the foundation of reputation—private character. A faithful transcript throughout, it portrayed him as a bag of slimy gold and gilded slime. He hated his own face staring out at him from a three-column cut in the center of the first page—its heavy jaw, its cynical mouth, its impudent eyes. "Do I look like THAT?" he thought. He was like one who, walking along the streets, catches sight of his own image in a show-window mirror and before he recognizes it, sees himself as others see him. He flushed to his temples at the contrast with the smaller cut beside it—the face of Pauline, high and fine icily beautiful as always in her New York days when her features were in repose.

Culver shifted from one weak leg to the other, and the movement reminded Dumont of his existence. "That's all. Clear out!" he exclaimed, and fell back into his big chair and closed his eyes. He thought he at last understood publicity.

But he was mistaken.

He finished dressing and choked down a little breakfast. As he advanced toward the front door the servant there coughed uneasily and said: "Beg pardon, sir, but I fear you won't be able to get out."

"What's the matter?" he demanded, his brows contracting and his lips beginning to slide back in a snarl—it promised to be a sad morning for human curs of all kinds who did not scurry out of the lion's way.

"The crowd, sir," said the servant. And he drew aside the curtain across the glass in one of the inside pair of great double doors of the palace entrance. "It's quite safe to look, sir. They can't see through the outside doors as far as this."

Dumont peered through the bronze fretwork. A closely packed mass of people was choking the sidewalk and street—his brougham was like an island in a troubled lake. He saw several policemen—they were trying to move the crowd on, but not trying sincerely. He saw three huge cameras, their operators under the black cloths, their lenses pointed at the door—waiting for him to appear. For the first time in his life he completely lost his nerve. Not only publicity, the paper—a lifeless sheet of print; but also publicity, the public—with living eyes to peer and living voices to jeer. He looked helplessly, appealingly at the "cur" he had itched to kick the moment before.

"What the devil shall I do?" he asked in a voice without a trace of courage.

"I don't know, sir," replied the servant. "The basement door wouldn't help very much, would it?"

The basement door was in front also. "Idiot! Is there no way out at the rear?" he asked.

"Only over the fences, sir," said the servant, perfectly matter-of-fact. Having no imagination, his mind made no picture of the great captain of industry scrambling over back fences like a stray cat flying from a brick.

Dumont turned back and into his first-floor sitting-room. He unlocked his stand of brandy bottles, poured out an enormous drink and gulped it down. His stomach reeled, then his head. He went to the window and looked out—there must have been five hundred people in the street, and vehicles were making their way slowly and with difficulty, drivers gaping at the house and joking with the crowd; newsboys, bent sidewise to balance their huge bundles of papers, were darting in and out, and even through the thick plate glass he could hear: "All about Millionaire Dumont's disgrace!"

He went through to a rear window. No, there was a continuous wall, a high brick wall. A servant came and told him he was wanted at the telephone. It was Giddings, who said in a voice that was striving in vain to be calm against the pressure of some intense excitement: "You are coming down to-day, Mr. Dumont?"

"Why?" asked Dumont, snapping the word out as short and savage as the crack of a lash.

"There are disquieting rumors of a raid on us."

"Who's to do the raiding?"

"They say it's Patterson and Fanning-Smith and Cassell and Herron. It's a raid for control."

Dumont snorted scornfully. "Don't fret. We're all right. I'll be down soon." And he hung up the receiver, muttering: "The ass! I must kick him out! He's an old woman the instant I turn my back."

He had intended not to go down, but to shut himself in with the brandy bottle until nightfall. This news made his presence in the Street imperative. "They couldn't have sprung at me at a worse time," he muttered. "But I can take care of 'em!"

He returned to the library, took another drink, larger than the first. His blood began to pound through his veins and to rush along under the surface of his skin like a sheet of fire. Waves of fury surged into his brain, making him dizzy, confusing his sight—he could scarcely refrain from grinding his teeth. He descended to the basement, his step unsteady.

"A ladder," he ordered in a thick voice.

He led the way to the rear wall. A dozen men-servants swarming about, tried to assist him. He ordered them aside and began to climb. As the upper part of his body rose above the wall-line he heard a triumphant shout, many voices crying: "There he is! There he is!"

The lot round the corner from his place was not built upon; and there, in the side street, was a rapidly swelling crowd, the camera-bearers hastily putting their instruments in position, the black cloths fluttering like palls or pirate flags. With a roaring howl he released his hold upon the ladder and shook both fists, his swollen face blazing between them. He tottered, fell backward, crashed upon the stone flooring of the area. His head struck with a crack that made the women-servants scream. The men lifted him and carried him into the house. He was not stunned; he tried to stand. But he staggered back into the arms of his valet and his butler.

"Brandy!" he gasped.

He took a third drink—and became unconscious. When the doctor arrived he was raving in a high fever. For years he had drunk to excess—but theretofore only when HE chose, never when his appetite chose, never when his affairs needed a clear brain. Now appetite, long lying in wait for him, had found him helpless in the clutches of rage and fear, and had stolen away his mind.

The news was telephoned to the office at half-past eleven o'clock. "It doesn't matter," said Giddings. "He'd only make things worse if he were to come now."

Giddings was apparently right. From a tower of strength, supporting alone, yet with ease, National Woolens, and the vast structure based upon it, Dumont had crumbled into an obstruction and a weakness. There is an abysmal difference between everybody knowing a thing privately and everybody knowing precisely the same thing publicly. In that newspaper exposure there was no fact of importance that was not known to the entire Street, to his chief supporters in his great syndicate of ranches, railroads, factories, steamship lines and selling agencies. But the tremendous blare of publicity acted like Joshua's horns at Jericho. The solid walls of his public reputation tottered, toppled, fell flat.

There had been a tight money-market for two weeks. Though there had been uneasiness as to all the small and many of the large "industrials," belief in National Woolens and in the stability of John Dumont had remained strong. But of all the cowards that stand sentinel for capital, the most craven is Confidence. At the deafening crash of the fall of Dumont's private character, Confidence girded its loins and tightened its vocal cords to be in readiness for a shrieking flight.

Dumont ruled, through a parent and central corporation, the National Woolens Company, which held a majority of the stock in each of the seventeen corporations constituting the trust. His control was in part through ownership of Woolens stock but chiefly through proxies sent him by thousands of small stock-holders because they had confidence in his abilities. To wrest control from him it was necessary for the raiders both to make him "unload" his own holdings of stock and to impair his reputation so that his supporters would desert him or stand aloof.

On the previous day National Woolens closed at eighty-two for the preferred and thirty-nine for the common. In the first hour of the day of the raid Giddings and the other members of Dumont's supporting group of financiers were able to keep it fairly steady at about five points below the closing price of the previous day, by buying all that was offered—the early offerings were large, but not overwhelming. The supporters of other industrials saw that the assault on Woolens was a menace to their stocks—if a strong industrial weakened, the weaker ones would inevitably suffer disaster in the frightened market that would surely result. They showed a disposition to rally to the support of the Dumont stocks.

At eleven o'clock Giddings began to hope that the raid was a failure, if indeed it had been a real raid. At eleven-twenty Herron played his trump card.

The National Industrial Bank is the huge barometer to which both speculative and investing Wall Street looks for guidance. Whom that bank protects is as safe as was the medieval fugitive who laid hold of the altar in the sanctuary; whom that bank frowns upon in the hour of stress is lost indeed if he have so much as a pin's-point area of heel that is vulnerable. Melville, president of the National Industrial, was a fanatically religious man, with as keen a nose for heretics as for rotten spots in collateral. He was peculiarly savage in his hatred of all matrimonial deviations. He was a brother of Fanshaw's mother; and she and Herron had been working upon him. But so long as Dumont's share in the scandal was not publicly attributed he remained obdurate—he never permitted his up-town creed or code to interfere with his down-town doings unless it became necessary—that is, unless it could be done without money loss. For up-town or down-town, to make money was always and in all circumstances the highest morality, to lose money the profoundest immorality.

At twenty minutes past eleven Melville and the president of the other banks of his chain called loans to Dumont and the Dumont supporting group to the amount of three millions and a quarter. Ten minutes later other banks and trust companies whose loans to Dumont and his allies either were on call or contained provisions permitting a demand for increased collateral, followed Melville's example and aimed and sped their knives for Dumont's vitals.

Giddings found himself face to face with unexpected and peremptory demands for eleven millions in cash and thirteen millions in additional collateral securities. If he did not meet these demands forthwith the banks and trust companies, to protect themselves, would throw upon the market at whatever price they could get the thirty-odd millions of Woolens stocks which they held as collateral for the loans.

"What does this mean, Eaversole?" he exclaimed, with white, wrinkled lips, heavy circles suddenly appearing under his eyes. "Is Melville trying to ruin everything?"

"No," answered Eaversole, third vice-president of the company. "He's supporting the market, all except us. He says Dumont must be driven out of the Street. He says his presence here is a pollution and a source of constant danger."

The National Woolens supporting group was alone; it could get no help from any quarter, as every possible ally was frightened into his own breastworks for the defense of his own interests. Dumont, the brain and the will of the group, had made no false moves in business, had been bold only where his matchless judgment showed him a clear way; but he had not foreseen the instantaneous annihilation of his chief asset—his reputation.

Giddings sustained the unequal battle superbly. He was cool, and watchful, and effective. It is doubtful if Dumont himself could have done so well, handicapped as he would have been on that day by the Fanshaw scandal. Giddings cajoled and threatened, retreated slowly here, advanced intrepidly there. On the one side, he held back wavering banks and trust companies, persuading some that all was well, warning others that if they pressed him they would lose all. On the other side, he faced his powerful foes and made them quake as they saw their battalions of millions roll upon his unbroken line of battle only to break and disappear. At noon National Woolens preferred was at fifty-eight, the common at twenty-nine. Giddings was beginning to hope.

At three minutes past noon the tickers clicked out: "It is reported that John Dumont is dying."

As that last word jerked letter by letter from under the printing wheel the floor of the Stock Exchange became the rapids of a human Niagara. By messenger, by telegraph, by telephone, holders of National Woolens and other industrials, in the financial district, in all parts of the country, across the sea, poured in their selling orders upon the frenzied brokers. And all these forces of hysteria and panic, projected into that narrow, roofed-in space, made of it a chaos of contending demons. All stocks were caught in the upheaval; Melville's plans to limit the explosion were blown skyward, feeble as straws in a cyclone. Amid shrieks and howls and frantic tossings of arms and mad rushes and maniac contortions of faces, National Woolens and all the Dumont stocks bent, broke, went smashing down, down, down, every one struggling to unload.

Dumont's fortune was the stateliest of the many galleons that day driven on the rocks and wrecked. Dumont's crew was for the most part engulfed. Giddings and a few selected friends reached the shore half-drowned and humbly applied at the wreckers' camp; they were hospitably received and were made as comfortable as their exhausted condition permitted.

John Dumont was at the mercy of Hubert Herron in his own company. If he lived he would be president only until the next annual meeting—less than two months away; and the Herron crowd had won over enough of his board of directors to make him meanwhile powerless where he had been autocrat.

XXV.

THE FALLEN KING.

Toward noon the next day Dumont emerged from the stupor into which Doctor Sackett's opiate had plunged him. At once his mind began to grope about for the broken clues of his business. His valet appeared.

"The morning papers," said Dumont.

"Yes, sir," replied the valet, and disappeared.

After a few seconds Culver came and halted just within the doorway. "I'm sorry, sir, but Doctor Sackett left strict orders that you were to be quiet. Your life depends on it."

Dumont scowled and his lower lip projected—the crowning touch in his most imperious expression. "The papers, all of 'em,—quick!" he commanded.

Culver took a last look at the blue-white face and bloodshot eyes to give him courage to stand firm. "The doctor'll be here in a few minutes," he said, bowed and went out.

Choking with impotent rage, Dumont rang for his valet and forced him to help him dress. He was so weak when he finished that only his will kept him from fainting. He took a stiff drink of the brandy—the odor was sickening to him and he could hardly force it down. But once down, it strengthened him.

"No, nothing to eat," he said thickly, and with slow but fairly steady step left his room and descended to the library. Culver was there—sat agape at sight of his master. "But you—you must not—" he began.

Dumont gave him an ugly grin. "But I will!" he said, and again drank brandy. He turned and went out and toward the front door, Culver following with stammering protests which he heeded not at all. On the sidewalk he hailed a passing hansom. "To the Edison Building," he said and drove off, Culver, bareheaded at the curb, looking dazedly after him. Before he reached Fifty-ninth Street he was half-sitting, half-reclining in the corner of the seat, his eyes closed and his senses sinking into a stupor from the fumes of the powerful doses of brandy. As the hansom drove down the avenue many recognized him, wondered and pitied as they noted his color, his collapsed body, head fallen on one side, mouth open and lips greenish gray. As the hansom slowly crossed the tracks at Twenty-third Street the heavy jolt roused him.

"The newspapers," he muttered, and hurled up through the trap in the roof an order to the driver to stop. He leaned over the doors and bought half a dozen newspapers of the woman at the Flat-iron stand. As the hansom moved on he glanced at the head-lines—they were big and staring, but his blurred eyes could not read them. He fell asleep again, his hands clasped loosely about the huge proclamations of yesterday's battle and his rout.

The hansom was caught in a jam at Chambers Street. The clamor of shouting, swearing drivers roused him. The breeze from the open sea, blowing straight up Broadway into his face, braced him like the tonic that it is. He straightened himself, recovered his train of thought, stared at one of the newspapers and tried to grasp the meaning of its head-lines. But they made only a vague impression on him.

"It's all lies," he muttered. "Lies! How could those fellows smash ME!" And he flung the newspapers out of the hansom into the faces of two boys seated upon the tail of a truck.

"You're drunk early," yelled one of the boys.

"That's no one-day jag," shouted the other. "It's a hang-over."

He made a wild, threatening gesture and, as his hansom drove on, muttered and mumbled to himself, vague profanity aimed at nothing and at everything. At the Edison Building he got out.

"Wait!" he said to the driver. He did not see the impudent smirk on the face of the elevator boy nor the hesitating, sheepish salutation of the door-man, uncertain how to greet the fallen king. He went straight to his office, unlocked his desk and, just in time to save himself from fainting, seized and half-emptied a flask of brandy he kept in a drawer. It had been there—but untouched ever since he came to New York and took those offices; he never drank in business hours.

His head was aching horribly and at every throb of his pulse a pain tore through him. He rang for his messenger.

"Tell Mr. Giddings I want to see him—you!" he said, his teeth clenched and his eyes blazing—he looked insane.

Giddings came. His conscience was clear—he had never liked Dumont, owed him nothing, yet had stood by him until further fidelity would have ruined himself, would not have saved Dumont, or prevented the Herron-Cassell raiders from getting control. Now that he could afford to look at his revenge-books he was deeply resenting the insults and indignities heaped upon him in the past five years. But he was unable to gloat, was moved to pity, at sight of the physical and mental wreck in that chair which he had always seen occupied by the most robust of despots.

"Well," said Dumont in a dull, far-away voice, without looking at him. "What's happened?"

Giddings cast about for a smooth beginning but could find none. "They did us up—that's all," he said funereally.

Dumont lifted himself into a momentary semblance of his old look and manner. "You lie, damn you!" he shouted, his mouth raw and ragged as a hungry tiger's.

Giddings began to cringe, remembered the changed conditions, bounded to his feet.

"I'll tolerate such language from no man!" he exclaimed. "I wish you good morning, sir!" And he was on his way to the door.

"Come back!" commanded Dumont. And Giddings, the habit of implicit obedience to that voice still strong upon him, hesitated and half turned.

Dumont was more impressed with the truth of the cataclysm by Giddings' revolt than by the newspaper head-lines or by Giddings' words. And from somewhere in the depths of his reserve-self he summoned the last of his coolness and self-control. "Beg pardon, Giddings," said he. "You see I'm not well."

Giddings returned—he had taken orders all his life, he had submitted to this master slavishly; the concession of an apology mollified him and flattered him in spite of himself.

"Oh, don't mention it," he said, seating himself again. "As I was saying, the raid was a success. I did the best I could. Some called our loans and some demanded more collateral. And while I was fighting front and rear and both sides, bang came that lie about your condition. The market broke. All I could do was sell, sell, sell, to try to meet or protect our loans."

Giddings heard a sound that made him glance at Dumont. His head had fallen forward and he was snoring. Giddings looked long and pityingly.

"A sure enough dead one," he muttered, unconsciously using the slang of the Street which he habitually avoided. And he went away, closing the door behind him.

After half an hour Dumont roused himself—out of a stupor into a half-delirious dream.

"Must get cash," he mumbled, "and look after the time loans." He lifted his head and pushed back his hair from his hot forehead. "I'll stamp on those curs yet!"

He took another drink—his hands were so unsteady that he had to use both of them in lifting it to his lips. He put the flask in his pocket instead of returning it to the drawer. No one spoke to him, all pretended not to see him as he passed through the offices on his way to the elevator. With glassy unseeing eyes he fumbled at the dash-board and side of the hansom; with a groan like a rheumatic old man's he lifted his heavy body up into the seat, dropped back and fell asleep. A crowd of clerks and messengers, newsboys and peddlers gathered and gaped, awed as they looked at the man who had been for five years one of the heroes of the Street, and thought of his dazzling catastrophe.

"What's the matter?" inquired a new-comer, apparently a tourist, edging his way into the outskirts of the crowd.

"That's Dumont, the head of the Woolens Trust," the curb-broker he addressed replied in a low tone. "He was raided yesterday—woke up in the morning worth a hundred millions, went to bed worth—perhaps five, maybe nothing at all."

At this exaggeration of the height and depth of the disaster, awe and sympathy became intense in that cluster of faces. A hundred millions to nothing at all, or at most a beggarly five millions—what a dizzy precipice! Great indeed must be he who could fall so far. The driver peered through the trap, wondering why his distinguished fare endured this vulgar scrutiny. He saw that Dumont was asleep, thrust down a hand and shook him. "Where to, sir?" he asked, as Dumont straightened himself.

"To the National Industrial Bank, you fool," snapped Dumont. "How many times must I tell you?"

"Thank you, sir," said the driver—without sarcasm, thinking steadfastly of his pay—and drove swiftly away.

Theretofore, whenever he had gone to the National Industrial Bank he had been received as one king is received by another. Either eager and obsequious high officers of King Melville had escorted him directly to the presence, or King Melville, because he had a caller who could not be summarily dismissed, had come out apologetically to conduct King Dumont to another audience chamber. That day the third assistant cashier greeted him with politeness carefully graded to the due of a man merely moderately rich and not a factor in the game of high finance.

"Be seated, Mr. Dumont," he said, pointing to a chair just inside the railing—a seat not unworthy of a man of rank in the plutocratic hierarchy, but a man of far from high rank. "I'll see whether Mr. Melville's disengaged."

Dumont dropped into the chair and his heavy head was almost immediately resting upon his shirt-bosom. The third assistant cashier returned, roused him somewhat impatiently. "Mr. Melville's engaged," said he. "But Mr. Cowles will see you." Mr. Cowles was the third vice-president.

Dumont rose. The blood flushed into his face and his body shook from head to foot. "Tell Melville to go to hell," he jerked out, the haze clearing for a moment from his piercing, wicked eyes. And he stalked through the gateway in the railing. He turned. "Tell him I'll tear him down and grind him into the gutter within six months."

In the hansom again, he reflected or tried to reflect. But the lofty buildings seemed to cast a black shadow on his mind, and the roar and rush of the tremendous tide of traffic through that deep canon set his thoughts to whirling like drink-maddened bacchanals dancing round a punch-bowl. "That woman!" he exclaimed suddenly. "What asses they make of us men! And all these vultures—I'm not carrion yet. But THEY soon will be!" And he laughed and his thoughts began their crazy spin again.

A newsboy came, waving an extra in at the open doors of the hansom. "Dumont's downfall!" he yelled in his shrill, childish voice. "All about the big smash!"

Dumont snatched a paper and flung a copper at the boy.

"Gimme a tip on Woolens, Mr. Dumont," said the boy, with an impudent grin, balancing himself for flight. "How's Mrs. Fanshaw?"

The newspapers had made his face as familiar as the details of his private life. He shrank and quivered. He pushed up the trap. "Home!" he said, forgetting that the hansom and driver were not his own.

"All right, Mr. Dumont!" replied the driver. Dumont shrank again and sat cowering in the corner—the very calling him by his name, now a synonym for failure, disgrace, ridicule and contempt, seemed a subtile insult.

With roaring brain and twitching, dizzy eyes he read at the newspaper's account of his overthrow. And gradually there formed in his mind a coherent notion of how it had come to pass, of its extent; of why he found himself lying in the depths, the victim of humiliations so frightful that they penetrated even to him, stupefied and crazed with drink and fever though he was. His courage, his self-command were burnt up by the brandy. His body had at last revolted, was having its terrible revenge upon the mind that had so long misused it in every kind of indulgence.

"I'm done for—done for," he repeated audibly again and again, at each repetition looking round mentally for a fact or a hope that would deny this assertion—but he cast about in vain. "Yes, I'm done for." And flinging away the newspaper he settled back and ceased to try to think of his affairs. After a while tears rolled from under his blue eyelids, dropped haltingly down his cheeks, spread out upon his lips, tasted salt in his half-open mouth.

The hansom stopped before his brick and marble palace. The butler hurried out and helped him alight—not yet thirty-seven, he felt as if he were a dying old man. "Pay the cabby," he said and groped his way into the house and to the elevator and mechanically ran himself up to his floor. His valet was in his dressing-room. He waved him away. "Get out! And don't disturb me till I ring."

"The doctor—" began Mallow.

"Do as I tell you!"

When he was alone he poured out brandy and gulped it down a drink that might have eaten the lining straight out of a stomach less powerful than his. He went from door to door, locking them all. Then he seated himself in a lounging-chair before the long mirror. He stared toward the image of himself but was so dim-eyed that he could see nothing but spinning black disks. "Life's not such a good game even when a man's winning," he said aloud. "A rotten bad game when he's losing."

His head wabbled to fall forward but he roused himself. "Wife gone—" The tears flooded his eyes—tears of pity for himself, an injured and abandoned husband. "Wife gone," he repeated. "Friends gone—" He laughed sardonically. "No, never had friends, thank God, or I shouldn't have lasted this long. No such thing as friends—a man gets what he can pay for. Grip gone—luck gone! What's the use?"

He dozed off, presently to start into acute, shuddering consciousness. At the far end of the room, stirring, slowly oozing from under the divan was a—a Thing! He could not define its shape, but he knew that it was vast, that it was scaly, with many short fat legs tipped with claws; that its color was green, that its purpose was hideous, gleaming in craft from large, square, green-yellow eyes. He wiped the sticky sweat from his brow. "It's only the brandy," he said loudly, and the Thing faded, vanished. He drew a deep breath of relief.

He went to a case of drawers and stood before it, supporting himself by the handles of the second drawer. "Yes," he reflected, "the revolver's in that drawer." He released the handles and staggered back to his chair. "I'm crazy," he muttered, "crazy as a loon. I ought to ring for the doctor."

In a moment he was up again, but instead of going toward the bell he went to the drawers and opened the second one. In a compartment lay a pearl-handled, self-cocking revolver. He put his hand on it, shivered, drew his hand away—the steel and the pearl were cold. He closed the drawer with a quick push, opened it again slowly, took up the revolver, staggered over to his desk and laid it there. His face was chalk-white in spots and his eyes were stiff in their sockets. He rested his aching, burning, reeling head on his hands and stared at the revolver.

"But," he said aloud, as if contemptuously dismissing a suggestion, "why should I shoot myself? I can smash 'em all—to powder—grind 'em into the dirt."

He took up the revolver. "What'd be the use of smashing 'em?" he said wearily. He felt tired and sick, horribly sick.

He laid it down. "I'd better be careful," he thought. "I'm not in my right mind. I might—"

He took it in his hand and went to the mirror and put the muzzle against his temple. He laughed crazily. "A little pressure on that trigger and—bang! I'd be in kingdom come and shouldn't give a damn for anybody." He caught sight of his eyes in the mirror and hastily dropped his arm to his side. "No, I'd never shoot myself in the temple. The heart'd be better. Just here"—and he pressed the muzzle into the soft material of his coat—"if I touched the trigger—"

And his finger did touch the trigger. Pains shot through his chest like cracks radiating in glass when a stone strikes it. He looked at his face—white, with wild eyes, with lips blue and ajar, the sweat streaming from his forehead.

"What have I done?" he shrieked, mad with the dread of death. "I must call for help." He turned toward the door, plunged forward, fell unconscious, the revolver flung half-way across the room.

When he came to his senses he was in his bed—comfortable, weak, lazy. With a slight effort he caught the thread of events. He turned his eyes and saw a nurse, seated at the head of his bed, reading. "Am I going to die?" he asked—his voice was thin and came in faint gusts.

"Certainly not," replied the nurse, putting down her book and standing over him, her face showing genuine reassurance and cheerfulness.

"You'll be well very soon. But you must lie quiet and not talk."

"Was it a bad wound?"

"The fever was the worst. The bullet glanced round just under the surface."

"It was an accident," he said, after a moment's thought. "I suppose everybody is saying I tried to kill myself."

"'Everybody' doesn't know anything about it. Almost nobody knows. Even the servants don't know. Your secretary sent them away, broke in and found you."

He closed his eyes and slept.

When he awoke again he felt that a long time had passed, that he was much better, that he was hungry. "Nurse!" he called.

The woman at the head of the bed rose and laid a cool hand upon his forehead. "How good that feels," he mumbled gratefully. "What nice hands you have, nurse," and he lifted his glance to her face. He stared wonderingly, confusedly. "I thought I was awake and almost well," he murmured. "And instead, I'm out of my head."

"Can I do anything for you?" It certainly was HER voice.

"Is it you, Pauline?" he asked, as if he feared a negative answer.

"Yes—John."

A long silence, then he said: "Why did you come?"

"The doctor wrote me that—wrote me the truth."