It gave her a sense of age to find the son of her old friend in this smiling young man. Life was getting on apace.... The cab made its way slowly into the heart of the city, and they talked of the old times when the Blisses had been neighbors across the alley from the Prices. Isabelle wished to ask the young man about the trial. The New York paper that she had seen on the train had only a short account. But she hesitated to show her ignorance, and Teddy Bliss was too much abashed before the handsome wife of his "boss" to offer any information. Finally Isabelle asked:—

"Is the trial nearly over?"

"Pretty near the end. Cross-examination to-day. When I left, Mr. Lane was on the stand. Then come the arguments and the judge's charge, and it goes to the jury."

And he added with irresistible impulse:—

"It's a great case, Mrs. Lane! ... When our lawyers get after that district attorney, he won't know what's happened to him.... Why, the road's secured the best legal talent that ever argued a case in this district, so they tell me. That man Brinkerhoff is a corker!"

"Indeed!" Isabelle replied, smiling at the young man's enthusiasm for the scrap. To him it was all a matter of legal prowess with victory to the heavy battalions.

"Federal court-rooms are in here temporarily,—crowded out of the federal building," her companion explained as the cab stopped before a grimy office building.

Isabelle had expected that the trial would be in some sort of public building, which might have at least the semblance of serving as a temple of justice. But justice, it seemed, like most else in this day, had to accommodate itself to the practical life.... Upstairs there was a small crowd about the door of the court-room, through which the young man gained admission by a whispered word to the tobacco-chewing veteran that kept the gate.

The court-room was badly lighted by two windows at the farther end, in front of which on a low platform behind a plain oak desk sat the judge, and grouped about him informally the jurors, the lawyers, and stenographers, and mixed with these the defendants and witnesses. The body of the room, which was broken by bare iron pillars, was well filled with reporters and curious persons. Isabelle sank into a vacant chair near the door and looked eagerly for her husband. At last by craning her head she caught a partial view of him where he sat behind a pillar, his face bent downwards leaning on his hand, listening with an expression of weariness to the wrangle of counsel. He was sallow, and his attitude was abstracted, the attitude in which he listened at board meetings or gathered the substance of a wordy report from a subordinate. It was not the attitude of a criminal on trial for his honor! ...

"That's Brinkerhoff, the big gun," young Bliss whispered to Isabelle, indicating a gentle, gray-headed, smooth-shaven man, who seemed to be taking a nap behind his closed eyes.

The judge himself was lolling back listlessly, while several men in front of him talked back and forth colloquially. The argument between counsel proceeded with polite irony and sarcastic iteration of stock phrases, "If your honor pleases," ... "My learned brother, the district attorney," ... "The learned counsel for the defence," etc. The judge's eyes rested on the ceiling, as if he too wished to take a nap. There was a low hum of conversation among the men grouped about the desk meanwhile, and occasionally one of the young men who had been scribbling on a pad would grasp his hat hurriedly and leave the room. Thus the proceedings dragged on.

"They are arguing about admitting some evidence," the young man at her side explained....

Isabelle, who had been living in a suppressed state of emotional excitement ever since that night three days before when she had turned from the newspapers to pack her trunk, felt a sudden limp reaction come over her. Apparently the whole proceeding was without vitality,—a kind of routine through which all parties had to go, knowing all the time that it settled nothing,—did not much count. The judge was a plain, middle-aged man in a wrinkled sack coat,—very much in appearance what Conny would call a "bounder." The defending counsel talked among themselves or wrote letters or took naps, like the celebrated Mr. Brinkerhoff, and the counsel for the government listened or made a remark in the same placid manner. It was all very commonplace,—some respectable gentlemen engaged in a dull technical discussion over the terms of the game, in which seemingly there was no momentous personal interest involved.

"The government's case will collapse if they can't get those books of the coal companies in as evidence," young Bliss informed Isabelle. He seemed to understand the rules of the game,—the point at issue.

Surely the methods of modern justice are unpicturesque, unimpressive! Compare this trial of the cause of the People against the mighty Atlantic and Pacific railroad corporation et al. with the trial of the robber baron dragged from his bleak castle perched above the highroad where he had laid in wait to despoil his fellow-men, weaker vessels, into the court of his Bishop,—there to be judged, to free himself if he might by grasping hot iron with his naked hand, by making oath over the bones of some saint, and if found guilty to be condemned to take the cross in the crusade for the Saviour's sepulchre. Fantastic, that; but human—dramatic! And starkly memorable, like the row of his victim's heads nailed along the battlements of his castle. More civilized, the modern tyrant takes the cash and lets the victim die a natural death. Or compare this tedious legal game—which does not count—with that pageant of England's trial of a corrupt administrator at the bar of Parliament! The issues involved are hardly less vital to millions in the case of the People against the Atlantic and Pacific et al. than in the case of the races of India against Warren Hastings; but democracy is the essence of horse-sense. 'For these gentlemen before me,' the judge seemed to say, 'are not criminals, no matter how the jury may render its verdict, in any ordinary sense of the term. They may have exceeded the prescribed limits in playing the game that all men play,—the great predatory game of get all you can and keep it! ... But they are not common criminals.'

At last the judge leaned forward, his elbows on the desk:—

"The court orders that the papers in question be admitted as evidence pertinent to this case."

Teddy Bliss looked chagrined. His side had been ruled against.

"They'll be sure to reverse the decision on appeal," he whispered consolatorily to his employer's wife. "An exception has been taken."

That was apparently the opinion of those concerned who were grouped about the judge's desk. There was no consternation, merely a slight movement as if to free muscles cramped by one position, a word or two among counsel. The great Brinkerhoff still wore that placid look of contemplation, as if he were thinking of the new tulip bulbs he had imported from Holland for his house up the Hudson. He was not aroused even when one of his fellow-counsel asked him a question. He merely removed his glasses, wiped them reflectively, and nodded to his colleague benignantly. He knew, as the others knew, that the case would be appealed from the verdict of the jury to a higher court, and very likely would turn up ultimately in the highest court of all at Washington, where after the lapse of several years the question at issue would be argued wholly on technicalities, and finally decided according to the psychological peculiarities of the various personalities then composing the court. The residuum of justice thus meted out to his clients—if they were not successful before in maintaining their contention—would not affect these honorable gentlemen appreciably. The corporation would pay the legal expenses of the protracted litigation, and hand the bill on to the public ultimately, and the people by their taxes would pay their share of this row.... He put on his glasses and resumed his meditation.

"Court is adjourned." At last! Isabelle stood up eagerly, anxious to catch her husband's attention. He was talking with the lawyers. The young clerk went up to him and touched his elbow, and presently Lane came down the room in the stream of reporters and lawyers bent on getting to luncheon. It was neither the place nor the time that Isabelle would have preferred for meeting her husband after their long separation. There was so much in her heart,—this meeting meant so much, must be so much for them both in all the future years. The familiar solid figure, with the reserved, impassive face came nearer; Lane reached out his hand. There were lines about the mouth, and his hair seemed markedly gray.

"John!" was all she could say.

"Glad to see you, Isabelle!" he replied. "Sorry I couldn't meet you at the station. Everything all right?"

It was his usual kindly, rather short-hand manner with her.

"Yes," she said, "everything is all right." She felt as if all the significance of her act had been erased.

"You know your mother hasn't come back from the Springs," he added, "but they are expecting you at the house."

"Can't we go somewhere and have luncheon together? I want so much to see you!" she urged.

"I wish I might, but I have these lawyers on my hands—must take them to the club for luncheon. Sorry I shall be kept here until late in the afternoon. I will put you in a cab." And he led the way to the elevator. As always he was kind and considerate. But in his equable manner was there also some touch of coldness, of aloofness from this wife, who had taken this curious opportunity to come into his affairs?

"Thank you," she faltered, as he looked down the street for a cab. "Couldn't I go somewhere about here for luncheon and come back afterwards to the court-room? I should like to wait for you."

"Why, if you want to," he replied, looking at her with surprise. And as if divining a reason for her agitation, he said: "You mustn't mind what the papers say. It won't amount to anything, either way it goes."

"I think I'll stay," she said hurriedly.

"Very well. I will call Bliss to take you to a hotel."

He beckoned to the waiting young man, and while Mr. Bliss was finding a cab, Lane said to his wife:—

"You are looking very well. The country has done you good?"

"Yes! I am very well,—all well!" She tried to smile buoyantly. "I don't expect ever to be ill again."

He received this as a man accustomed to the vagaries of woman's health, and said, "That's good!"

Then he put her into the cab, gave some instructions to the young man, and raised his hat. His manner was perfect to her, and yet Isabelle went to her luncheon with the bubbling Mr. Bliss sad at heart. She was such an outsider, such a stranger to her husband's inner self! That it was to be expected, her own fault, the result of the misspent years of married life made it none the easier to bear....

Mr. Teddy Bliss exercised his best connoisseurship in selecting the dishes from the printed broadside put before him at the hotel restaurant, consulting Isabelle frequently as to her tastes, where the desire to please was mingled with the pride of appearing self-possessed. Having finally decided on tomato bisque aux crutons, prairie chicken, grilled sweet potatoes, salad and peche Melba, which was all very much to his liking, he dropped the card and looked at Isabelle with a broad smile. The world and its affairs still had an irrepressible zest and mirthful aspect to young Mr. Bliss.

"You're likely to hear some or-a-tory this afternoon, Mrs. Lane," he scoffed. "The district attorney is a Southerner, and he's going to spread himself when he makes his plea, you can believe. It's his chance to get talked about from San Francisco to Washington.... Of course it don't cut any ice what he says, but the papers will play it up large, and that's what they are after, the government. You see"—he waxed confidential—"the government's got to save its face somehow after all the talk and the dust they have raised. If they can secure a conviction,—oh, just a nominal fine (you know there is no prison penalty),—why, it'll be good campaign material this fall. So they fixed on the A. and P. as a shining mark for their shot. And you know there's a good deal of feeling, especially in this state, against railroads."

"I see!" In spite of herself Isabelle was amused at the naive assurance the young man had given her that nothing serious could happen to her husband,—not imprisonment! Mr. Bliss's point of view about the famous case was evidently that of the railroad office, tinged with a blithe sporting interest in a legal scrap. The ill-paid government attorneys trying the case were a lot of "light-weight mits," put up against the best "talent" in the country employed by the powerful corporation to protect itself; in short, a sure thing for the railroad in the final knockout if not in the first round.

"It was bad, their getting in those Pleasant Valley Company books," he remarked less exuberantly. "But it won't make any difference in the end. The papers have made the most of that evidence already."

"Why do you suppose the newspapers are so bitter against the road?"

"They aren't, the best of them; they know too much what's good for them. They just print the record of the trial. As for the sensational ones, you see it's this way,—they don't care, they haven't any convictions. It is just a matter of business for them. Slamming the corporations suits their readers. The people who buy most of the papers like to have the prosperous classes slammed. Most people are envious; they want the other fellow's roll,—isn't that so? They think they are as good as the best, and it makes 'em sick to see the other fellow in his automobile when they are earning fifteen or eighteen per! They don't stop to consider that it's brains that makes the diff."

"So it is merely envy that produces all this agitation?"

"I am not saying that the corporations are philanthropic institutions," Mr. Bliss continued didactically; "of course they aren't. They are out for business, and every man knows what that means. I suppose they do a good many tough things if they get the chance—same as their critics. What of it? Wouldn't the little fellow do the same thing, if he could,—had the chance? ... What would this country be to-day without the corporations, the railroads? Without the Atlantic and Pacific, right here in St. Louis? And all the work of those men they are prosecuting and fining and trying to put into jail? Why, if the President had his way, he'd lock up every man that had enough sense and snap in him to do things, and he'd make this country like a Methodist camp meeting after the shouting is over! There's no sense to it."

Isabelle laughed at the young man's vigorous defence of "our" side. It seemed useless to attempt to pick flaws in his logic, and it would hardly become her as the wife of his "boss" to betray that she was not wholly convinced of his accuracy.

"Besides, why can't the government let bygones be bygones? Every one knows that the roads did some queer things in the old days. But why rake up old crimes and make a mess? I say let's have a clean slate and begin over.... But if they keep on legislating and howling against corporations, like some of these trust-busting state legislatures, we'll have a panic sure thing, and that will do the business for the reformers, won't it now?"

This, as Isabelle realized, was, in the popular language of Mr. Teddy Bliss, her husband's point of view, the philosophy of the ruling class, imbibed by their dependents. As the young man turned from expounding the business situation to his succulent bird, Isabelle had time for reflection.

This young man was sucking his views about honesty, business morality, from the Atlantic and Pacific, from her husband. One of Renault's sentences came to her, "We all live in large part on a borrowed capital of suggested ideas, motives, desires." And the corollary: "Each is responsible not only for the capital that he borrows from others,—that it should really be the right idea for him,—but also for the capital he lends,—the suggestions he gives to others—possibly less stable minds. For thus by borrowing and lending ideas is created that compulsive body of thought throughout the universe on which we all act."

Her husband was on trial for that which he had borrowed and thus made his own, as well as for that which he had passed on into life—to Mr. Teddy Bliss, for example.



CHAPTER LXXI

The government attorney had already begun his argument when Isabelle, escorted by Teddy Bliss, returned to the court-room. The district attorney was a short, thick-set, sallow-faced man, with bushy gray hair growing in the absurd "Pompadour" fashion, and a homely drooping mustache. Another "bounder," thought Isabelle, one of the hungry outsiders, not in fee to the corporations, who hired only the best lawyers. Perhaps he was aware of his position there in the dingy court-room before the trained gladiators of his profession—and also before his country! The lawyers for the defendants lolling in their chairs settled themselves placidly to see what this humble brother would make of the business. Mr. Brinkerhoff's eyelids drooped over his gentle eyes, as if to shut out all distractions of sense from his brain. The thick-set district attorney frequently scraped his throat and repeated the phrase, "if it please your honor." He had a detestable nasal whine, and he maltreated the accents of several familiar words. The culture of letters and vocal delivery had evidently not been large in the small inland college where he had been educated. These annoying peculiarities at first distracted Isabelle's attention, while the lawyer labored through the opening paragraphs of his argument. In the maze of her thoughts, which had jumped across the continent to the little mountain village, there fell on her ears the words, "In a land of men born free and equal before the law." Was it the tone of unexpected passion vibrating through those ancient words, or the idea itself that startled her like an electric shock? That pathetic effort of our ancestors to enact into constitutional dogma the poetic dream of a race! "Born free and equal"!—there was nothing more absurd, more contrary to the daily evidence of life, ever uttered. Isabelle fancied she saw a soft smile play over the benign face of Mr. Brinkerhoff, as if he too had been struck by the irony of the words. But to the district attorney they did not seem to be a mere poetic aspiration, nor a catch phrase with which to adorn his speech; they voiced a real idea, still pulsating with passionate truth. From this moment Isabelle forgot the lawyer's nasal intonation, his uncultivated delivery.

He stood there, so it seemed, as the representative of the mute millions which make the nation to defend before the court their cause against the rapacious acts of the strong. This great railroad corporation, with its capital of three hundred and seventy-five millions of dollars in stocks and bonds (a creature, nevertheless, of the common public, called into existence by its necessities and chartered by its will), had taken upon itself to say who should dig coal and sell it from the lands along its lines. They and their servants and allies had, so the charge ran, seized each individual man or association of men not allied to them, and throttled the life in them—specifically refusing them cars in which to transport their coal, denying them switching privileges, etc.... The government, following its duty to protect the rights of each man and all men against the oppression of the few, had brought this suit to prohibit these secret practices, to compel restitution, to punish the corporation and its servants for wrong done.... "The situation was, if your honor please, as if a company of men should rivet a chain across the doors of certain warehouses of private citizens and should prevent these citizens from taking their goods out of their warehouses or compel them to pay toll for the privilege of transacting their lawful business.... And the government has shown, if it please your honor, that this Pleasant Valley Coal Company is but a creature of the defendant corporation, its officers and owners being the servants of the railroad company, and thereby this Pleasant Valley Coal Company has enjoyed and now enjoys special privileges in the matter of transportation, cars, and switching facilities. The government has further shown that the Atlantic and Pacific, by its servant, John Lane...."

At this point the railroad counsel looked interested; even the serene Mr. Brinkerhoff deigned to unclose his eyes. For the district attorney, having disposed of his oratorical flourish of trumpets, had got down to the facts of the record and what they could be made to prove. In the close argument that followed, Isabella's thoughts went back to that trumpet phrase,—"all men born free and equal." Slowly there dawned in her an altogether new comprehension of what this struggle before her eyes, in which her husband was involved, meant. Nay, what human life itself, with all its noisy discord, meant!

Their forerunners, the fathers of the people, held the theory that here at last, in this broad, rich, new land, men should struggle with one another for the goods of life on an equal basis. Man should neither oppress nor interfere with man. Justice at last to all! The struggle should be ordered by law so that men might be free to struggle and equal in their rights. To all the same freedom to live, to enjoy, to become! So these fathers of the republic had dreamed. So some still dreamed that human life might be ordered, to be a fair, open struggle—for all.

But within a brief century and a quarter the fallacy of this aspiration had become ridiculously apparent. "Born free and equal!" Nothing on this globe was ever so born. The strong who achieved, the weak who succumbed—both knew the nonsense of it. Free and equal,—so far as men could maintain freedom and equality by their own force,—that was all!

(There was that man who begged John to give him cars. Poor thing! he could not maintain his right.)

And every man who complained at the oppression of another either oppressed some one or would so oppress him, if he had the chance and the power. It was, of course, the business of the law to police the fight,—the game had its rules, its limits, which all must obey, when not too "destructive." But essentially this new land of liberty and hope was like all other human societies,—a mortal combat where the strong triumphed and the weak went under in defeat.... That was what the array of brilliant counsel employed by the Atlantic and Pacific really represented. "Gentlemen, you can't block us with silly rules. We must play this game of life as it was ordered by God it should be played when the first protoplasm was evolved.... And really, if it were not for us, would there be any game for you little fellows to play?"

Egotism, the curse of egotism! This was stark male egotism,—the instinct for domination. And defendants and plaintiffs were alike in spirit, struggling for position in the game. The weaker ones—if they had the hold—would pluck at the windpipe of their oppressors....

So while the attorney for the people spoke on about rate-sheets and schedules A and B, and bills of lading from the Pleasant Valley Company (marked "exhibits nine and ten"), the woman in the court-room began to comprehend dimly the mystery behind this veil of words. Every man felt instinctively this spirit of fight,—the lively young clerk at her side as well as the defendant before the bar, her husband; the paid writers for Mr. Gossom's patriotic magazine as well as the President and his advisers,—all had it in their blood. It was the spirit of our dominating race, fostered through the centuries,—the spirit of achievement, of conquest. Mr. Gossom's clever writers, the President, and the "good element" generally, differed from their opponents only in manner and degree. "Gently, gently, gentlemen," they called. "Play according to the rules of the game. Don't bang all the breath out of your adversary's body when you have him by the throat. Remember, gentlemen, to give every one his turn!"

In the light of this understanding of the nature of the game of life, the efforts of the government to preserve order in a row of this magnitude became almost farcical,—so long as the spirit of man was untouched and SUCCESS was admittedly the one glorious prize of life! ...

Finally the district attorney ceased to speak, and the judge looked at his watch. There was not time for the defence to make its argument to-day, and so court was adjourned. The lawyers stretched themselves, chatted, and laughed. The raw district attorney had done his worst, and judging from Mr. Brinkerhoff's amiable smile, it was not very bad. The newspaper men scurried out of the room for the elevators,—there was good copy this afternoon!

Lane joined his wife after a few moments, and they left the court-room.

"Are you tired?" he asked solicitously. "It must have been dull for you, all that law talk."

"Oh, no! ... I think I was never so much interested in anything in my life," she replied with a long sigh.

He looked as if he were puzzled, but he made no further reference to the trial, either then or on their way to her mother's house. And Isabelle in a tumult of impressions and feelings was afraid to speak yet, afraid lest she might touch the wrong nerve, strike the wrong note,—and so set them farther apart in life than they were now.



CHAPTER LXXII

They dined in the lofty, sombre room at the rear of the house, overlooking a patch of turf between the house and the stable. Above the massive sideboard hung an oil portrait of the Colonel, a youthful painting but vigorous, where something of the old man's sweetness and gentle wisdom had been caught. This dining room had been done over the year before Isabelle was married; its taste seemed already heavy and bad.

Her mother's old servants served the same rich, substantial meal they had served when she was a child, with some poor sherry, the Colonel's only concession to domestic conviviality. The room and the food subtly typified the spirit of the race,—that spirit which was illuminated in the court-room—before it had finally evolved.... The moral physiology of men is yet to be explored!

Lane leaned back in the Colonel's high-backed chair, gray and weary under the brilliant light. At first he tried to be interested in Grosvenor, asked questions of his wife, but soon he relapsed into a preoccupied silence. This mood Isabelle had never seen in her husband, nor his physical lassitude. After a time she ventured to ask:—

"Is it likely to last much longer, the trial?"

"A couple of days, the lawyers think." And after a while he added morosely: "Nobody can tell how long if it is appealed.... I have had to muddle away the better part of the winter over this business, first and last! It's nothing but popular clamor, suspicion. The government is playing to the gallery. I don't know what the devil will happen to the country with this lunatic of a President. Capital is already freezing up tight. The road will have to issue short-time notes to finance the improvements it has under way, and abandon all new work. Men who have money to invest aren't going to buy stock and bonds with a set of anarchists at Washington running the country!"

It was quite unlike Lane to explode in this manner. It was not merely the result of nervous fatigue, Isabelle felt: it indicated some concealed sore in her husband's mind.

"How do you think it will be decided?" she asked timidly.

"The trial? Nobody can guess. The judge is apparently against us, and that will influence the jurors,—a lot of farmers and sore-heads! ... But the verdict will make no difference. We shall carry it up, fight it out till the last court. The government has given us enough errors,—all the opening we need!"

The government had played badly, that is. Isabelle had it on her tongue to demand: "But how do you feel about it,—the real matter at issue? What is right—just?" Again she refrained, afraid to array herself apparently on the side of his enemies.

"It is all this infernal agitation, which does nobody any good and will result in crippling business," he repeated, as they went to the library for their coffee.

This room, where the Colonel usually sat evenings with his wife and the neighbors who dropped in, was exactly as it had been in the old days,—even the same row of novels and books of travel in a rack on the polished table. Only the magazines had been changed.

Lane lighted a cigar and sipped his coffee. Revived by his dinner and cigar, he began to talk more freely, in the same mood of disgusted irritation, the mood of his class these days, of the men he met at his club, in business,—the lawyers, the capitalists, the leaders of society. Isabelle, listening to his bitter criticism, wished that she might get him to speak more personally,—tell her all the detail that had led up to the suit, explain his connection with it,—show her his inmost heart as he would show it to himself in a time of exact truth! With this feeling she went over to where he was sitting and put her hand on his shoulder, and as he glanced up in surprise at this unexpected demonstration, she said impulsively:—

"John, please, John! ... Tell me everything—I can understand.... Don't you think there might be some little truth in the other side? Was the road fair, was it just in this coal business? I so want to know, John!"

Her voice trembled with suppressed emotion. She wished to draw him to her, in the warmth of her new feeling to melt his stern antagonism, his harsh mood. But as he looked inquiringly at her—weighing as it were the meaning of this sudden interest in his affairs—the wife realized how far apart she was from her husband. The physical separation of all these years, the emotional separation, the intellectual separation had resulted in placing them in two distinct spheres spiritually. The intervening space could not be bridged in a moment of expansive emotion. It would be a slow matter, if it ever could be accomplished, to break the crust that had formed like ice between their souls. Isabelle went back to her seat and drank her coffee.

"I don't know what you mean by fair and just," he replied coldly. "Business has to be done according to its own rules, not as idealists or reformers would have it done. The railroad has done nothing worse than every big business is compelled to do to live,—has made a profit where there was one to make.... This would be a poor sort of country, even for the reformers and agitators, if the men who have the power to make money should be bound hand and foot by visionaries and talkers. You can't get the sort of men capable of doing things on a large scale to go into business for clerk's wages. They must see a profit—and a big one,—and the men who aren't worth anything will always envy them. That's the root of the whole matter."

It would be useless, Isabelle saw, to point out that his defence was general, and an evasion of the point she wished to see clearly,—what the real fact with him was. His mind was stiffened by the prejudices of his profession, tempered in fierce fires of industrial competition as a result of twenty years of triumphant struggle with men in the life and death grapple of business. He was strong just because he was narrow and blind. If he had been able to doubt, even a little, the basis of his actions, he would never have become the third vice-president of the Atlantic and Pacific, one of the most promising of the younger men in his profession.

Recognizing her defeat, Isabelle asked about the Johnstons.

"I have seen Steve a couple of times," Lane replied. "I meant to write you, but hadn't the time. Steve didn't make good in that lumber business. Those men he went in with, it looks to me, were sharks. They took all his money away,—every cent. You know they mortgaged the house, too. Then the company failed; he was thrown out. Steve was not sharp enough for them, I guess."

"Isn't that too bad!"

"Just what might have been expected," Lane commented, associating Steve Johnston's failure with his previous train of thought; "I told him so when he gave up railroading. He was not an all-round man. He had one talent—a good one—and he knew the business he was trained in. But it wasn't good enough for him. He must get out and try it alone—"

"It wasn't to make more money," Isabelle protested, remembering the day at the Farm when the two men had walked back and forth, delaying luncheon, while they heatedly discussed Steve's determination to change his business.

"He had this reform virus in his system, too! ... Well, he is bookkeeper, now, for some little down-town concern at eighteen hundred a year. All he can get these days. The railroads are discharging men all the time. He might be earning six thousand in the position I offered him then. Do you think Alice and the boys will be any better off for his scruples? Or the country?"

"Poor Alice! ... Are they still living in the house at Bryn Mawr?"

"Yes, I believe so. But Steve told me he couldn't carry the mortgage after the first of the year,—would have to give up the house."

"I must go out there to-morrow," she said quickly; and after a time she added, "Don't you think we could do something for them, John?"

Lane smiled, as if the suggestion had its touch of irony.

"Why, yes! I mean to look into his affairs when I can find the time.... I'll see what I can do."

"Oh, that is good !" Isabelle exclaimed warmly. It was like her husband, prompt generosity to a friend in trouble. And this matter brought husband and wife closer in feeling than they had been since her arrival.

"Ready money is a pretty scarce commodity," Lane remarked; "but I will see what can be done about his mortgage."

It was not easy, he wished his wife to know, even for the strong to be generous these days, thanks to the reformers, and the "crazy man in Washington," with whom he suspected she sympathized.

They sat in silence after this until he had finished his cigar. There were many subjects that must be discussed between them, which thrust up their heads like sunken rocks in a channel; but both felt their danger. At last Isabelle, faint from the excitement of the day, with all its mutations of thought and feeling, went to her room. She did not sleep for hours, not until long after she heard her husband's step go by the door, and the click of the switches as he turned out the electric lights.

There was much to be done before their marriage could be recreated on a living principle. But where the man was strong and generous, and the woman was at last awakened to life, there was no reason to despair.



CHAPTER LXXIII

Isabelle did not go back to the court-room to listen to the remaining arguments, not even to hear Mr. Brinkerhoff's learned and ingenious plea in behalf of the rights of capital, the sacred privileges of property. She felt that John would rather not have her there. But Isabelle read every word of the newspaper report of the trial, which since the district attorney's impassioned and powerful plea had excited even greater public interest than before. Not only locally, but throughout the country, the trial of the People vs. the Atlantic and Pacific et al. was recognized as the first serious effort of the reform administration to enforce the laws against capital, by convicting not merely the irresponsible agents but also some of the men "higher up." It was John Lane's position in the railroad that gave these "coal cases" their significance.

Isabelle read the report of the trial with thoughtful care, but much of it was too technical for her untrained mind to grasp. All these arguments about admitting certain ledgers in evidence, all these exceptions to the rulings of the court, the dodges, fences, pitfalls, the dust created by the skilled counsel for the defence, confused her. What she gathered in a general way was that the road was fighting its case on technicalities, seeking to throw the suit out of court, without letting the one real matter at issue appear,—had they dealt illegally and unjustly with the public? To her emotional temperament this eminently modern method of tactics was irritating and prejudiced her against her husband's side. "But I don't understand," she reflected sadly, "so John would say. And they don't seem to want people to understand!"

With these thoughts on her mind, she took the cars to the little suburb north of the city, where the Johnstons lived. Bryn Mawr was one of the newer landscape-gardened of our city suburbs, with curving roads, grass-plots, an art nouveau railroad station, shrubs and poplar sticks set out along the cement sidewalks, in an effort to disguise the rawness of the prairie pancake that the contractors had parcelled into lots. Isabelle found some difficulty in tracing her way along the ingeniously twisted avenues to the Johnston house. But finally she reached the two-story-and-attic wooden box, which was set in a little grove of maple trees. Two other houses were going up across the street, and a trench for a new sewer had been opened obstructively. At this period of belated spring Bryn Mawr was not a charming spot. Unfinished edges left by the landscape gardener and the contractor showed pitilessly against the leafless, scrubby trees and the rolling muddy fields beyond. It was all covered with a chill mist. In the days when she lived in St. Louis she had never found time to go so far to see Alice, and she had shared Bessie's horror of the remote and cheerless existence in this suburb, had wondered how an intelligent and well-bred woman like Alice Johnston could endure its dull level of platitudinous existence. But now as she picked her way across the sewer excavation, she felt that the little wooden box ahead of her was home for this family,—they must not lose that! Place and circumstance had lessened in her estimates of life.

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 surpassingly attractive,—as a coal mine, or a canal 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 assists," 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 institute 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 snobbery. I am a snob 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 muff 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 classes, 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 associate 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 analysis 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 competitors.... 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 participated 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.

"John, is it true what the judge said, what the district attorney said, about—the officials getting money from those coal companies?"

She colored, while Lane eyed her and at last replied irritably:—

"The officers of the road invested their money, like most men, where they saw fit, I suppose."

"But does that mean they take advantage of their position with the road to make money—improperly?"

"That depends on what you call 'improperly.'"

Her mind leaped clear of this evasion; she cried out:—

"But why did you want to make money—so much money? You had a large salary, and I could have had all the money we wanted from my father!"

Her husband looked at her almost contemptuously, as if her remark was too childish for serious consideration. It was axiomatic that all men who had the power desired to make what money they could.

"I certainly never cared to live on your father's money," he retorted.

"But we didn't need so much—"

"I wonder if you realize just how much we have seemed to need in one way or another since we moved East?"

There it was staring her in the face, her share in the responsibility for this situation! She had known only vaguely what they were spending, and always considered that compared with women of her class she was not extravagant, in fact economical.

"But, John, if I had only known—"

"Known what?" he demanded harshly. "Known that I was making money in stocks and bonds, like other men, like your father's friend, Senator Thomas, like Morton, and Beals himself? Isabelle, you seem to have the comprehension of a child! ... Do you think that such men live on salaries?"

"But why weren't the others indicted and tried?"

He hesitated a moment, his face flushing, and then there burst out the truth. She had unwittingly touched the sore spot in his mind.

"Because there had to be some sort of scapegoat to satisfy public clamor! The deals went through my office mostly; but the road is behind me, of course.... They all shared, from Beals down."

At last they were at the heart of the matter, he challenging her criticism, she frightened at the cloudy places in her husband's soul that she had penetrated, when a servant interrupted them, saying that Lane was wanted at the telephone. While he was out of the room, Isabelle thought swiftly. What would be the next word? Was it not better to accept his excuse? "They have all done as I have done, men who are honored and respected. It is universal, what we do, and it is only an accident that I am put up as a target for public abuse!" If she persisted in knowing all, she would merely divide herself farther from her husband, who would resent her attitude. And what right had she to examine and judge, when for all these years she had gone her way and let him go his?

The blood beat in her ears, and she was still uncertain when Lane returned. His face had lost its color of passion, and his voice was subdued as he said:—

"Steve has met with an accident,—a serious one."

"Steve!" Isabelle cried.

"Yes; I think we had better go out there at once. Alice got some one to telephone for her."

The account of the accident had been in that late edition of the penny paper which Isabelle had seen, but it had been crowded into the second page by the magnitude of the Atlantic and Pacific sensation. Lane bought the papers, and they read them on their way to Bryn Mawr. Johnston had been run down as he was going to the station early that Saturday afternoon. It was a heavy motor, running at reduced yet lively speed through the crowded city street. A woman with a child by the hand had stepped from the sidewalk to hail an approaching street-car, without noticing the automobile that was bearing down behind her. Steve had seen their danger, rushed for the woman and pulled her and the child out of the way,—got them clear of the motor. But he was struck, a glancing blow in the back, as the motor sheered off. He had been taken to a drug-store, and reviving quickly had insisted on going home. The driver of the car, apparently a humane person, had waited with a notable display of decency and taken the injured man with the doctor who had attended him at the drug-store to Bryn Mawr.... The reporter for the penny paper had done his best by the accident, describing the thrilling rescue of the woman and child, the unavoidable blow to the rescuer, with all the vividness of his art.

"It was a brave act," Lane remarked, folding up the sheet and putting it in his pocket....

As soon as they entered, Alice came down to them from the sick room. She was pale, but she seemed to Isabelle wonderfully composed and calm,—the steady balance-wheel of the situation. When Steve had first reached home, he had apparently not been badly off, she told them. He had insisted on walking upstairs and said that he would be quite right after he had laid down a little while. So the doctor went back to the city in the motor. But at dinner time, Alice, going into his room, found him breathing heavily, almost unconscious, and his voice had become so thick that she could scarcely make out what he was saying. She had summoned their own doctor, and he had called another from the city. They feared cerebral trouble, due to a lesion of the spinal chord; but nothing could be certainly determined yet.

"Something seems to be on his mind," Alice said in conclusion. "I thought I made out your name, John; so I had you telephoned for. I don't know that it will do any good, but it may quiet him to see you."

While Lane was upstairs, Alice talked on in the composed, capable, self-contained manner that she usually had,—merely speaking a trifle faster, with occasional pauses, as if she were listening for a sound from Steve's room. But the house was painfully still.

... "You see," she explained, "Steve doesn't move quickly,—is too heavy and slow. I suppose that was why he didn't succeed in getting out of the way himself. The car wasn't really going fast, not over eight miles an hour, the chauffeur said.... But Steve saved the woman and child,—they would have been killed."

He had saved the woman and child,—chance strangers in the street,—possibly at the cost of his life or the use of his limbs. There was an ironical note in the tragedy. This stout man with the character in his slow organism that could accomplish great things—this hero of Alice's—had stepped off the sidewalk to save the life of a careless passer-by, and risked his own life, the happiness of his wife and children, in just that little way.

"It was so like Steve,—to realize but one point, their danger," Alice continued with a proud smile. And Isabelle could see the dull, large-framed man, his head slightly bent, plodding forward in the stream of home-goers on the pavement, suddenly lift his head, and without a moment's hesitation step out into the path of danger....

When Isabelle and John left the house late in the evening, he said gravely, "The doctors don't think there is much chance for him."

"He will die!" Isabelle gasped, thinking of Alice, who had smiled at them cheerily when they went out of the door.

"Perhaps worse than that,—complete paralysis,—the lower limbs are paralyzed now."

"How perfectly awful!"

"I think he knew me. He grasped my hand so hard it hurt, and I could make out my name. But I couldn't understand what he was trying to say."

"Do you suppose it could be the mortgage?"

"Very likely. I must attend to that matter at once."

They were silent on the way back to the city, each buried in thought. The verdict, which had stirred them so deeply a few hours before, had already sunk into the background of life, overshadowed by this nearer, more human catastrophe.

"I shall have to go on to New York to-morrow, for a few days at least," Lane said as they entered the house.

"I will stay here, of course," Isabelle replied, "and you can bring Molly and the governess back with you. I will telegraph them." It was all easily decided, what had seemed perplexing earlier in the evening, when she had been occupied merely with herself and John. "I can be of some help to Alice any way, and if he should die—"

"Yes," Lane agreed. "That is best. I will be back in a week." And he added casually, announcing a decision arrived at on the way to the city:—

"I'll have my lawyer look up that mortgage. You can tell Alice to-morrow and try to get Steve to understand, so that he will have it off his mind as soon as possible."

Her heart responded with a glow. Yes, that was the very thing to do! She had money enough to help them, but she did not know just what to do. It was like John, this sure, quick way of seeing the one thing to be done immediately and doing it. It was like him, too, to do generous things. How many poor boys and young men he had helped along rough roads in their struggle up,—given them the coveted chance in one way and another, without ostentation or theory, simply in the human desire to help another with that surplus strength which had given him his position of vantage.

"I will write the note to Mather now, telling him what to do about the mortgage," he continued in his methodical, undemonstrative manner. As he sat down at the desk and drew pen and paper towards him, he paused a moment. "You will see to the nurses,—they should have two. The doctors may decide on an operation. Have the best men, of course."

He struck pen into the paper with his broad, firm stroke. Isabelle stood watching him, her heart beating strangely, and suddenly leaning over him she kissed his forehead, then fled swiftly to the door.



CHAPTER LXXV

Isabelle waited in the carriage outside the station for her husband and Molly. The New York train was late as usual. She had driven in from Bryn Mawr, where she had spent most of the ten days since Lane's departure. She was steeped now in the atmosphere of that suburban house covered by the April mist, with the swelling bushes and trees all about it. There had been an operation, decided on after consultation with the eminent surgeons that Isabelle had summoned. After the operation hope had flickered up, as the sick man breathed more easily, was able to articulate a few intelligible words, and showed an interest in what was going on about him. But it had waned again to-day, and when Isabelle left, Alice was holding her husband's large hand, talking to him cheerfully, but there was no response.... How wonderful she was,—Alice! That picture of her filled Isabelle's thought as she waited in the carriage. Never a tear or a whimper all these anxious days, always the calm, buoyant voice, even a serene smile and little joke at her husband's bedside, such as she had used to enliven him with, —anything to relax his set, heavy features. "How she loves him!" thought Isabelle, almost with pain.

When she left that afternoon, Alice had sent a grateful message to John. "He will come out to-morrow if he can?" she had asked. She knew now that the hours were numbered without being told so by the doctors. And never a tear, a self-pitying cry! Oh, to be like that,—sturdy in heart and soul,—with that courage before life, that serene confidence in face of the worst fate can offer! Alice was of the faith of Renault.

Lane came down the platform, followed by Molly and her governess. As he raised his hat in greeting, Isabelle noticed the deep lines at the corners of his mouth, and the line above his broad, straight nose. When they were in the carriage, she realized that her husband had been living these ten days in another world from the one she had inhabited, and in spite of his questions about Steve and Alice, he was preoccupied, still held by the anxieties and perplexities of his business in New York, still in the close grip of his own affairs, his personal struggle. So she talked with Molly, who was almost articulately joyful over her escape from the country, at the sight of streets and motor carriages.

As they were going to dinner a servant brought word that a reporter wished to speak to John. Usually Lane refused to see reporters outside his office, and there turned them over to his secretary, who was skilled in the gentle art of saying inoffensive nothings in many words. But to her surprise John after slight hesitation went into the library to see the man, and it was a long half hour before he returned to his dinner. The evening was another one of those torturing periods when Isabella's heart was full and yet must be carefully repressed lest she make a false step. After a little talk about Molly, her mother, the Johnstons, Lane turned to open his mail that had been sent up for him from the office. Isabelle left him absorbed in this task, but she could not sleep, and when at last she heard him go to his room, she followed him. Laying her hands on his arms, she looked at him pleadingly, longing now not so much to know the facts, to reason and judge, as to understand, perhaps comfort him,—at least to share the trouble with him.

"Can't you tell me all about it, John?"

"About what?" he demanded dryly, his dislike of effusiveness, emotionalism, showing in the glitter of his gray eyes.

"Tell me what is troubling you! I want to share it,—all of it. What has happened?"

He did not answer at once. There was an evident struggle to overcome his habitual reserve, the masculine sense of independence in the conduct of his affairs. Also, there was between them her prejudice, the woman's insufficient knowledge, and the barrier of the long years of aloofness. But at last, as if he had reflected that she would have to know soon in any case, he said dryly:—

"The Board has voted to relieve me of my duties as general manager of traffic. I am assigned to St. Louis for the present, but the duties are not specified. A polite hint—which I have taken!"

"Did Mr. Beals do that?"

"Beals went to Europe on his vacation when the coal cases first came up.... Besides, it would have made no difference. I think I see in it the fine hand of our good friend the Senator,—smug-faced old fox!"

Isabelle felt how much this action by the directors had stung him, how severely he was suffering.

"It was ... because of the verdict?"

"Oh, the general mess, the attacks in the press, complaints from stockholders! They want to get under cover, show the public they are cleaning house, I suppose. They thought to shelve me until the row fizzles out, then drop me. But I am not the sort of man to sit around as a willing sacrifice, to pose for the papers as a terrible example. They will know, to-morrow!"

Isabelle understood why he had consented to see the reporter. Hitherto, he had refused to speak, to make any public defence of himself or comment on the trial. But after this action on the part of the directors, after the long smouldering hours on the train, he had decided to speak,—at length. It would not be pleasant reading in certain quarters near Wall Street, what he said, but it would make good copy.

Biting fiercely at his cigar, which had gone out, he struck a match sharply and talked on:—

"I am not a back number yet. There is not another road in the country that has shown such results, such gain in traffic, as the A. and P. since I was put in charge of traffic five years ago. There are others who know it, too, in New York. I shan't have to twiddle my thumbs long when my resignation is published. The prejudiced trial out here won't stand in the way."

In the storm of his mood, it was useless to ask questions. Isabelle merely murmured:—

"Too bad, too bad,—I am so sorry, John!"

Instead of that dispassionate groping for the exact truth, justice between her husband and the public, that she had first desired, she was simply compassionate for his hurt pride. Innocent or guilty, what right had she to judge him? Even if the worst of what had been charged was literally true, had she not abandoned him at the start,—left him to meet the problems of the modern battle as he could,—to harden his soul against all large and generous considerations? Now when he was made the scapegoat for the sins of others, for the sin of his race, too,—how could she sit and censure! The time would come for calm consideration between them. There was that something in her heart which buoyed her above the present, above the distress of public condemnation,—even disgrace and worldly failure. Coming close to him again, she said with ringing conviction:—

"It can make no difference to you and me, John!"

He failed to see her meaning.

"The money doesn't matter,—it isn't that, of course. We shan't starve!"

"I didn't mean the money!"

"Sensible people know what it amounts to,—only the mob yaps."

"I didn't mean criticism, either," she said softly.

"Well, that New York crowd hasn't heard the last of me yet!"

His lips shut tight together. The spirit of fight, of revenge, was aroused. It was useless to talk further. She drew his arm about her.

"You will go out to see Steve to-morrow, won't you?"

"Yes, of course,—any time in the afternoon."

She kissed him and went back to her room.

One precept out of Renault's thin book of life was hard to acquire,—Patience. But it must be acquired,—the power to abide the time calmly, until the right moment should come. The morrows contain so many reversals of the to-days!



CHAPTER LXXXVI

It was probable that the dying man did not recognize Lane, though it was hard to say what dim perception entered through the glazing eyes and penetrated the clouding brain. The children had been about the room all the morning, Alice said, and from the way the father clung to Jack's hand she thought there still was recognition. But the sense of the outer world was fast fading now. The doctor was there, by way of kindly solicitude,—he could do nothing; and when the Lanes came he went away, whispering to John as he left, "Not long now." Alice had sent away the nurse, as she had the night before, refusing to lose these last minutes of service. She told Isabelle that in the early morning, while she was watching and had thought Steve was asleep from his quieter breathing, she had found his eyes resting on her with a clear look of intelligence, and then kneeling down with her face close to his lips he had whispered thickly. Her eyes were still shining from those last lover's words in the night....

When John went back to the city, Isabelle stayed on, taking luncheon with the nurses and little Belle. Neighbors came to the door to inquire, to leave flowers. These neighbors had been very kind, Alice had said often, taking the boys to their homes and doing the many little errands of the household. "And I hardly knew them to bow to! It's wonderful how people spring up around you with kindness when trouble comes!"...

Meanwhile, overhead the life was going out, the strong man yielding slowly to the inevitable. Twilight came on, the doctor returned and went away again, and the house became absolutely still. Once Isabelle crept upstairs to the door of the sick room. Alice was holding Steve's head, with one arm under his pillow, looking,—looking at him with devouring eyes! ... Gradually the breathing grew fainter, at longer intervals, the eyelids fell over the vacant eyes, and after a little while the nurse, passing Isabelle on the stairs, whispered that it was over,—the ten days' losing fight. Presently Alice came out of the room, her eyes still shining strangely, and smiled at Isabelle.

When they went out the next afternoon, there was in the house that dreary human pause created by the fact of death,—pause without rest. Flowers scented the air, and people moved about on tiptoe, saying nothings in hushed voices, and trying to be themselves.

But in the dim room above, where Alice took them, there was peace and naturalness. The dead man lay very straight beneath the sheet, his fleshy body shrunken after its struggle to its bony stature. Isabelle had always thought Steve a homely man,—phlegmatic and ordinary in feature. She had often said, "How can Alice be so romantic over old Steve!" But as the dead man lay there, wasted, his face seemed to have taken on a grave and austere dignity, an expression of resolute will in the heavy jaw, the high brow, the broad nostril, as though the steadfast soul within, so prosaically muffled in the flesh, had at the last spoken out to those nearest him the meaning of his life, graving it on his dead face. Lane, caught by this high, commanding note of the lifeless features, as of one who, though removed by infinite space, still spoke to the living, gazed steadily at the dead man. And Isabelle felt the awe of his presence; here was one who could speak with authority of elemental truths....

Alice, her arms resting on the foot-rail of the bed, was leaning forward, looking with eyes still shining at her husband, her lover, her mate. And her lips parted in a little smile. Large and strong and beautiful, in the full tide of conscious life, she contemplated her dead comrade.

A feeling that she was in the presence of mystery—the mystery of perfect human union—stole through Isabelle. The woman standing there at the feet of her dead man had had it all,—all the experience that woman can have. Had she not loved this man, received his passion, borne his children, fought by his side the fight of life,—and above all and beyond all else cherished in her the soul of the man, the sacred part of him, that beauty unknown to others hitherto, now written plain for all to see on his face! And her lighted eyes seemed to say, 'What place is there here for grief? Even though I am left in mid life, to struggle on alone with my children, without his help, yet have I not had it all? Enough to warm my heart and soul through the empty years that must come!'...

Tears dropped from Isabelle's eyes, and convulsively she grasped the hand that rested beside her, as though she would say, 'To lose all this, what you two have had, how can you bear it!' Alice bent down over her tear-stained face and kissed her,—with a little gesture towards Steve, murmuring "I have had so much!"

* * * * *

They walked slowly back to the city in the warm April night. Neither had spoken since they left the little house, until Isabelle said with a deep solemnity:—

"It was perfect—that!"

"Yes! Steve was a good man, and Alice loved him."

Each knew what lay behind these commonplace words in the heart of the other. These two, Steve and Alice, in spite of hardship, the dull grind of their restricted existence, the many children, the disappointments, had had something—a human satisfaction—that they had missed—forever; and as they walked on through the deserted streets silently, side by side, they saw that now it could never be for them. It was something that missed once in its perfection was missed for all time. However near they might come to be, however close in understanding and effort, they could never know the mystery of two who had lived together, body and soul, and together had solved life.

For mere physical fidelity is but a small part of the comradeship of marriage.



CHAPTER LXXVII

Miss Marian Lane was such a thorough cosmopolite that she had no discernible affection for any place. She referred to Central Park, to the Farm, to the Price house in St. Louis, to Grosvenor with equal indifference and impartiality, as she might later to London or Paris or Rome. She did not even ask her mother where they were to spend the summer. That there was a Park in St. Louis, as in all properly created cities, she had confidence, because she asked Miss Joyce to take her there the day after her arrival. Isabelle's own childhood had been strongly colored by places,—the old house in K Street, this ugly Victorian mansion, and especially the Farm. Places had meant so much to her in her youth, her feelings reflecting their physical atmosphere, that they had been more vivid than persons. But Molly was equally content anywhere. She needed merely Miss Joyce, a Park, and pretty clothes.

Clothes, indeed, were the only subject that aroused a semblance of passion in Molly's sedate soul. "Oh, we shall go shopping, mamma!" she exclaimed with the first real animation Isabelle had seen in her, when her grandmother remarked that Molly had outgrown all her dresses this winter. They were sitting in the large front bedroom that the Colonel and his wife had always occupied. Mrs. Price had just returned from the Springs, and was already talking of spending the summer in Europe. Since the Colonel's death she had become a great globe-trotter, indefatigably whisking hither and thither with her reliable maid. It seemed as if after all these years of faithful economy and routine living, the suppressed restlessness of her race, which had developed at an earlier age in Isabelle, was revenging itself upon the old lady. "Mother's travels" had become a household joke....

"Can't we go to-day? Miss Joyce and I saw some lovely things at Roseboro's, mother!" Molly urged, jumping up from the lounge, where she had been telling her grandmother about Grosvenor. "Oh, yes, grandmother," Isabelle had heard her say in a listless voice, "we had a pleasant time in Grosvenor. Miss Joyce took me coasting with James Pole. And we had sleigh rides. Miss Joyce was afraid to drive the horses, so we did not go except when Mrs. Pole took us.... Aunt Margaret was very nice. Miss Joyce gave us all dancing lessons."...

It was always Miss Joyce this and Miss Joyce that, since Molly's return, until Isabelle had impatiently concluded that the faithful English governess with her narrow character had completely ironed out the personality of her charge. As she listened to Molly's conversation with her grandmother, she resolved to get rid of Miss Joyce, in order to escape hearing her name if for no other reason.

"I suppose you'll wait to get her clothes until you are back in New York," the practical Mrs. Price observed; "they are so much cheaper and more tasteful there. The stores here don't seem to be what they were,—even Roseboro's can't compare with Altman's and Best's for children's things."

"We may not be in New York this spring," Isabelle replied, waking from her meditations on the subject of Miss Joyce and her daughter. "John's plans are uncertain—and I don't care to go without him."

"You can try Roseboro's, then; but I don't believe you will be satisfied."

"Oh, mamma, can't we go in the motor now!"

And Molly ran to Miss Joyce to dress herself for the expedition.

Isabelle had scrutinized her little daughter with fresh interest the few days she had been with her. Molly had always been an unresponsive child since she was a baby. In spite of her beautiful pink coloring, carefully preserved by country life, she was scarcely more alive than an automaton. Whatever individuality she had was so deeply buried that her mother could not discover it. Why was it? Why was she so colorless? She had been "moved about" a good deal, like many American children, according to the exigencies of the family,—to St. Louis, the Farm, the New York hotel, the New York house, Europe, Grosvenor,—a rapid succession of panoramas for one small mind to absorb. But Molly had never seemed disturbed by it. One place was as good as another,—one set of children, provided they had nice manners and were well dressed, as agreeable as any other. If she were put down in a Pasadena hotel, she found playmates, judiciously selected by Miss Joyce, of course, who supervised their games. In all the changes of scene Isabelle had been most scrupulous in her care for diet, exercises, regime, and as long as the child seemed content and physically well she had seen no harm in taking her about from scene to scene. Now Isabelle had her doubts.

The little girl came downstairs, followed by the capable Miss Joyce, who was brushing out a fold in her white broadcloth coat and arranging a curl, and looked in at her mother's room, with a pretty little smile and a gesture of the fingers she had copied from some child. "All ready, mamma,—shall we wait for you in the motor?" As she passed on, followed by Miss Joyce,—the figure of dainty young plutocracy and her mentor,—Isabelle murmured, "I wonder if it has been good for her to move about so much!"

Mrs. Price, a literal old lady, took up the remark:—

"Why, she looks healthy. Miss Joyce takes excellent care of her. I think you are very fortunate in Miss Joyce, Isabelle."

"I don't mean her health, mother!"

"She is as forward as most children of her age,—she speaks French very prettily," the grandmother protested. "She has nice manners, too."

Isabelle saw the futility of trying to explain what she meant to her mother, and yet the old lady in her next irrelevant remark touched the very heart of the matter.

"Children have so much attention these days,—what they eat and do is watched over every minute. Why, we had a cat and a dog, and a doll or two, the kitchen and the barn to run about in—and that was all. Parents were too busy to fuss about their children. Boys and girls had to fit into the home the best they could."

There was a home to fit into! A cat and a dog, a few dolls, and the kitchen and the barn to run about in,—that was more than Molly Lane with all her opportunities had ever had.

"There weren't any governesses or nurses; but we saw more of our father and mother, naturally," the old lady continued. "Only very rich people had nurses in those times."

The governess was a modern luxury, provided to ease the conscience of lazy or incompetent mothers, who had "too much to do" to be with their children. Isabelle knew all the arguments in their favor. She remembered Bessie Falkner's glib defence of the governess method, when she had wanted to stretch Rob's income another notch for this convenience,—"If a mother is always with her children, she can't give her best self either to them or to her husband!" Isabelle had lived enough since then to realize that this vague "best self" of mothers was rarely given to anything but distraction.

Isabelle had been most conscientious as a mother, spared no thought or pains for her child from her birth. The trained nurse during the first two years, the succession of carefully selected governesses since, the lessons, the food, the dentist, the doctors, the clothes, the amusements,—all had been scrupulously, almost religiously, provided according to the best modern theories. Nothing had been left to chance. Marian should be a paragon, physically and morally. Yet, her mother had to confess, the child bored her,—was a wooden doll! In the scientifically sterilized atmosphere in which she had lived, no vicious germ had been allowed to fasten itself on the young organism, and yet thus far the product was tasteless. Perhaps Molly was merely a commonplace little girl, and she was realizing it for the first time. Isabelle's maternal pride refused to accept such a depressing answer, and moreover she did not believe that any young thing, any kitten or puppy, could be as colorless, as little vital as the exquisite Miss Lane. She must find the real cause, study her child, live with her awhile. The next generation, apparently, was as inscrutable a manuscript to read as hers had been to the Colonel and her mother. Her parents had never understood all the longings and aspirations that had filled her fermenting years, and now she could not comprehend the dumbness of her child. Those fermenting years had gone for nothing so far as teaching her to understand the soul of her child. The new ferment was of a different composition, it seemed....

* * * * *

Isabelle was to find that her daughter had developed certain tastes besides a love for clothes and a delight in riding in motor-cars.... Molly was in the library after luncheon, absorbed in an illustrated story of a popular magazine, which Isabelle glanced over while Miss Joyce made ready her charge to accompany her mother to the Johnstons'. The story was "innocent," "clean reading" enough,—thin pages of smart dialogue between prettily dressed young men and athletic girls, the puppy loves of the young rich,—mere stock fiction-padding of the day. But the picture of life—the suggestion to the child's soft brain? Isabelle tossed the magazine into the waste basket, and yawned. Molly had left it with a sigh.

On the way to the Bryn Mawr house Isabelle tried to explain to Molly what had happened to the Johnstons through the loss of the father, telling her what a good man Steve was, the sorrow the family had to bear. Molly listened politely.

"Yes, mother!" And she asked, "Are they very poor?" An innocent remark that irritated Isabelle unreasonably.

The children played together downstairs while Isabelle discussed with Alice some business matters. It had not sounded very lively below, and when the mothers came down they found Molly and Belle sitting on opposite sides of the little parlor, looking stiffly at each other. The boys had slipped off for more stirring adventures outdoors, which Molly had refused to join, as she was making a formal call with her mother. In the motor going home Molly remarked: "The boys haven't good manners. Belle seems a nice girl. She hasn't been anywhere and can't talk. That was a very homely dress she had on; don't you think so? Does she have to wear dresses like that? Can't you give her something prettier, mamma?"

Isabelle, who thought her god-daughter an interesting child, full of independence and vitality in spite of her shyness, wondered, "Is Molly just a stick, or only a little snob?"

Molly was sitting very gracefully in her grandmother's limousine, riding through the parks and avenues with the air of a perfect little lady accustomed to observe the world from the cushioned seat of a brougham or motor-car. Catching sight of a bill board with the announcement of a popular young actress's coming engagement, she remarked:—

"Miss Daisy May is such a perfect dear, don't you think, mamma? Couldn't Miss Joyce take me to see her act next Saturday afternoon? It's a perfectly nice play, you know."

Repressing a desire to shake her daughter, Isabelle replied: "I'll take you myself, Molly. And shan't we invite Delia Conry? You know she is at school here and has very few friends."

"Oh!" Molly said thoughtfully. "Delia is so ordinary. I should like to ask Beatrice Lawton,—Miss Joyce knows her governess.... Or if we must be good to some one, we might take Belle."

"We'll take them both."

"I don't think Beatrice would enjoy Belle," her daughter objected after further reflection.

"Well, I shall ask Delia and Belle, then, to go with me alone!"

(She had looked up the Conry child at the school where Vickers had sent her, and had arranged to have her brother's small estate settled on the girl, as she felt he would have wished. Delia, whose mother had never been heard from, was a forlorn little object and Isabelle pitied her.)

When her temporary irritation with Molly had passed, she saw there was nothing unnatural in the child's attitude. Probably she was a little snob. Most children brought up as Molly had been, most of her friends, were little snobs. Their governesses taught them snobbery, unconsciously; their domestic habits taught them snobbery.

Isabelle resolved more firmly that she should dispense with the excellent Miss Joyce. A beginning very far down would have to be made, if she were to reach the individuality of this perfectly nurtured modern child of hers. There was nothing bad about Molly; she was irritatingly blameless. But what she lacked was appalling! At eighteen she would be unendurable.

And the mother had no warm feeling, no impelling affection for her daughter, any more than the child had for her. That lack would make it all the harder to do what must be done. Here, again, as with her husband, she must begin to pay for all the years that she had shirked her job,—for the sake of "her own life," her intellectual emancipation and growth,—shirked, to be sure, in the most conscientious and enlightened modern manner.

For nobody could call Miss Lane a neglected child.



CHAPTER LXXVIII

It would be very simple for Mrs. Price to provide Alice with a comfortable income,—the Colonel would have done so; and when Isabelle suggested it to her mother after the funeral of Steve, the old lady agreed, though she was not of a philanthropic nature and recalled the fact that the marriage had been a foolish one. But Alice flatly refused the arrangement. She had been trained to work; she was not too old to find something to do, and she had already taken steps to secure a place as matron in a hospital. "I am strong," she said to Isabelle. "Steve has left it for me to do,—all of it. And I want to show him that I can do it. I shall be happier!"

John had a better comprehension of her feelings and of the situation than either Isabelle or her mother. "Alice is an able woman," he had said; "she will not break down,—she is not that kind. And she'll be happier working."

So he took care of her little life insurance money. He also obtained a scholarship in a technical school for the oldest boy, and undertook to fit the second one for college, as he showed studious tendencies. Isabelle would look after Belle's education. In all these practical details of readjusting the broken family, John Lane was more effective than his wife, giving generously of his crowded hours to the Johnston affairs, ever ready to do all that might be done without hurting the widow's pride and vigorous will.

And this, as Isabelle knew, came in the days of his greatest personal perplexity. His resignation as third vice-president had been accepted after protest, negotiations, and then had elicited a regretful communication to the press (emanating from the Senator's office) of an eulogistic nature, concluding with the delicately phrased suggestion that "Mr. Lane's untiring devotion to his work necessitates his taking a rest from all business cares for the present. It is understood that he contemplates a long vacation in Europe."

John handed the paper to Isabelle with an ironical smile.

"You see we are to go abroad,—the usual thing! That's the Senator's crafty hand. He wants everything decently smooth."

But the public no longer cared. The coal cases had gone up to a higher court on appeal, and when the final decision was handed down, the "street" would be interested not in the question of John Lane's guilt or innocence, but in the more important question of whether the Supreme Court "would back up the President's campaign against capital."

Meanwhile, there was none of the social stigma attached to the verdict against her husband that Isabelle had resolutely expected. As soon as it was known that the Lanes were established in the city for the spring, their friends sought them out and they were invited to dine more than Isabelle cared for. In their class, as she quickly perceived from jesting references to the trial, such legal difficulties as John's were regarded as merely the disagreeable incidents of doing business in a socialistic age. Lane, far from being "down and out," was considered in the industrial and railroad world a strong man rather badly treated by a weak-kneed board of directors, who had sought to save themselves from trouble by sacrificing an able servant to the public storm. No sooner was his resignation published than he received an offer of the presidency of a large transit company in the middle West. While he was considering this offer, he was approached by representatives of another great railroad, which, though largely owned by the same "interests" that controlled the Atlantic and Pacific, was generally supposed to be a rival. Lane was too valuable a man to be lost to the railroad army. The "interests" recognized in him a powerful instrument, trained from boyhood for their purposes,—one "who knew how to get business." The offer flattered Lane, and soothed that sore spot in his inner consciousness. He saw himself reinstated in his old world, with a prospect of crossing swords with his old superiors in a more than secondary position.

Isabelle knew all about this offer. She and her husband talked together more freely than they had ever done before. The experiences of the past weeks,—Steve's death, the planning for Alice's future, as well as the emotional result of the trial—had brought them nearer an understanding. Lane had begun to realize a latent aptitude in his wife for grasping the essential matters of business,—investments, risks, corporation management. She understood far more than the distinction between stock and bond, which is supposedly the limit of woman's business intelligence. As the warm May days came on they took long rides into the fresh country, talking over the endless detail of affairs,—her money, her mother's money, the Colonel's trust funds, the Johnstons' future, the railroad situation,—all that John Lane had hitherto carried tightly shut in his own mind.

And thus Isabelle began to comprehend the close relation between what is called "business" and the human matters of daily life for every individual in this complex world. There was not simply a broad mark between right and wrong,—dramatic trials; but the very souls of men and women were involved in the vast machine of labor and profit.

She was astonished to discover the extent of her husband's interests, his personal fortune, which had grown amazingly during these last ten fat years of the country's prosperity.

"Why, you don't have to take any position!"

"Yes, we could afford to make that European trip the Board so kindly indicated."

"We might go abroad," she said thoughtfully.

A few years before she would have grasped the chance to live in Europe indefinitely. Now she found no inclination in her spirit for this solution.

"It isn't exactly the time to leave home," her husband objected; "there is sure to be a severe panic before long. All this agitation has unsettled business, and the country must reap the consequences. We could go for a few months, perhaps."

"It wouldn't be good for Molly."

And though she did not say it, it would not be good for him to leave the struggle for any length of time. Once out of the game of life, for which he had been trained like an athlete, he would degenerate and lose his peculiar power. And yet she shrank unaccountably from his reentering the old life, with the bitter feeling in his heart he now had. It meant their living in New York, for one thing, and a growing repugnance to that huge, squirming, prodigal hive had come over her. Once the pinnacle of her ambitions, now it seemed sordid, hectic, unreal. Yet she was too wise to offer her objections, to argue the matter, any more than to open the personal wound of his trial and conviction. Influence, at least with a man of John Lane's fibre, must be a subtle, slow process, depending on mutual confidence, comprehension. And she must first see clearly what she herself knew to be best. So she listened, waiting for the vision which would surely come.

In these business talks her mind grasped more and more the issues of American life. She learned to recognize the distinction between the officials of corporations and the control behind,—the money power. There emerged into view something of a panorama of industry, organized on modern lines,—the millions of workers in the industrial armies; the infinite gradations of leadership in these armies, and finally far off in the distance, among the canons of the skyscrapers in the great cities, the Mind of it all, the Control, the massed Capital. There were the Marshals' quarters! Even the chiefs of great corporations were "little people" compared with their real employers, the men who controlled capital. And into that circle of intoxicating power, within its influence, she felt that her husband was slowly moving—would ultimately arrive, if success came,—at the height of modern fame. Men did not reach the Marshals' quarters with a few hundred thousands of dollars, nor with a few millions, with savings and inheritances and prudent thrift. They must have tens of millions at their command. And these millions came through alliances, manipulations, deals, by all sorts of devices whereby money could be made to spawn miraculously....

Meanwhile the worker earned his wage, and the minor officers their salaries—what had they to complain of?—but the pelf went up to the Marshals' camp, the larger part of it,—in this land where all were born free and equal. No! Isabelle shuddered at the spectacle of the bloody road up to the camp, and prayed that her life might not be lived in an atmosphere of blood and alarms and noisy strife, even for the sake of millions of dollars and limitless Power.

One evening in this period of dubitation Lane remarked casually:—

"Your father's friend, Pete Larrimore, came in to-day to see me. Do you remember him, Isabelle? The old fellow with the mutton-chop whiskers, who used to send us bags of coffee from his plantation in Mexico."

"Awful coffee,—we couldn't give it away!"

"He wanted to talk to me about a scheme he is interested in. It seems that he has a lot of property in the southwest, Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle, some of it very valuable. Among other things he has become involved in a railroad. It was started by some people who hadn't the capital to carry it through, and now it begins nowhere and ends in the same place. Larrimore and his friends think they can get the capital to carry the road south to the line and up north, and ultimately will sell it perhaps to one of the big systems.... They are looking for a man to build it and push it through."

"What did you say?" Isabelle demanded eagerly.

"Oh, I just listened. If they can get the money, it might be successful. That country is growing fast.... It would be a chance for some young man to win his spurs,—hard work, though."

He talked on, explaining the strategic position of the new road, its relation to rivals, the prospects of that part of the country, the present condition of the money market in respect to new enterprises; for Isabelle seemed interested. But when she interrupted with sudden energy, "Do it, John! Why don't you take it?" he looked puzzled.