The Lever Part 42

"H'm!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Sanford, eager to break over the injunction Gorham had placed upon him. "I don't believe there's anything in what you've said yet that you can't live down. Now I suppose if Gorham had told you that we'd had our lunch, the fact that your father was starving to death wouldn't be accepted as evidence worthy of consideration."

Allen laughed as he pulled out his watch, his mind easier and his heart lighter than it had been for months.

"I had forgotten all about that, and it's after four o'clock. Come on out with me, and I'll give you a revised version of the 'fatted calf'

story."

"You think it is the return of the prodigal father, do you?"

"I hope we are both prodigals, you dear old pater," Allen replied, seriously; "I hope we both need each other so much that we never can exist alone again."

"All right; but we'd better go easy with the calf, for I've accepted a dinner invitation for us both to-night."

"You have?" Allen asked, disappointed that their visit was to be interrupted. "Where?"

"At Gorham's."

"I couldn't go there again, pater," he protested quickly. "He's just asking me because he wants you."

"No; he wants to talk with you, especially."

"With me?" Allen's face sobered. "He thinks he was harsh the other night. I would rather not open up the whole subject again. There are special reasons. Please go without me."

"You don't want to do anything which will make him think worse of you than he does now, do you?"

"No," was the frank reply, into which a genuine note of sorrow entered.

"Then we'll dine with him, as he asks us to. Now lead on to that calf, but make it a little one."

Allen found himself the only one at the dinner-table who seemed to be laboring under any restraint. Eleanor and Alice were in better spirits than he had seen them for months, Gorham was an ideal host, conversing with Sanford and with Allen upon lighter topics in a way which seemed to show entire forgetfulness of what had gone before. It seemed almost heartless to the boy to find these friends, so dear to him, able to conduct themselves in so matter-of-fact a manner while he was in the grip of his own life tragedy. But he could not blame them. He had a.s.sumed much which they had never granted. This last dinner together, made possible by his father's presence in New York, was intended as a lesson to him, and as Mr. Gorham had planned it, then it must be for his good. He would play his part, and, concealing the pain it cost him, he entered into the conversation with an abandon which surprised them all.

It was not until they had gathered in the library, whither Gorham had especially invited them after the dinner was over, that the atmosphere changed. Allen saw the expression on Gorham's face deepen into that serious aspect which always signified matters of important moment.

"I find myself face to face with certain duties and responsibilities,"

Gorham began, "which appall me with their far-reaching significance, and I have asked you, who are the nearest and dearest to me, to be witnesses of my faithful performance of them, to the extent of my understanding."

Gorham paused, and seemed to deliberate before making his next statement, unconscious of the tenseness of the silence which his words had produced.

"First of all, it is my immediate intention to take such steps as are necessary to bring about the disintegration of the Consolidated Companies."

"But you can't do it," Sanford declared. "The corporation is solvent, the directors and the stockholders will of course be against it, and you will be powerless." "I have considered all that," Gorham replied, quietly.

"What you say might be true six months from now, if the Executive Committee succeed in wrenching my control from me; but to-day I have the strength. The stockholders have invested because of their faith in me; because of this same faith they will accept my statement that the Companies' future is imperilled,--and the Government itself will help me to accomplish my purpose."

"You are convinced, then, that the principles you built on are wrong?"

asked Sanford, unable to keep from showing some satisfaction in his voice.

"No," Gorham replied, firmly. "The principles are right,--the wrong lies in that human instinct which finds itself incapable of living up to its best standard. I believed that my success had been due to a recognition of my principle, when in reality it came from the simplest possible expression of self-interest. If we go on, the Companies' continued success means a growth beyond my control,--recent events show that it has almost reached that point already,--and when once in the hands of others, it can be nothing but a menace to the people.

"And now for the most humiliating confession of all: I myself have been guilty of an exercise of my own self-interest as flagrant as any of my a.s.sociates, though in a different way. Their l.u.s.t has been for gold, while mine has been for a justification of an idea. My self-interest has been less malignant in its possible effects, but it has been my controlling influence none the less. With due humility, I confess that I have attempted to a.s.sume a role which belongs to Providence, and that no man has a right to do. I have been guilty of violating certain laws of life, just as my a.s.sociates have violated other laws which to me demand observance; but I have recognized the tendency of things to gravitate back to their natural positions before it is too late for me not to make certain that they do so. In order to prevent this corporation from becoming a great power for evil, and as a final evidence of the strength which I still possess, I propose to force its dissolution."

"You have a big contract on your hands, Gorham," Sanford replied; "I don't believe even you can do it."

"On Tuesday next," Gorham continued, "the Senate Committee will consider a bill which is in reality an amendment to the Sherman Act, and is intended to give the Government the power to discriminate between good and bad trusts. The Consolidated Companies is to be cited as a case in point, and they are depending upon me to advance the princ.i.p.al arguments for the pa.s.sage of the bill. All the other big interests are naturally against it, and they are forcing the issue, hoping to compel the Government to act against the Consolidated Companies, and thus call down the wrath of the people upon trust legislation as a whole. If the ma.s.ses find that the one agency which has reduced their cost of living is prevented from continuing its co-operative work, they will effectually put a stop to further interference, and the other interests will be the gainers."

"A clever game," Sanford exclaimed.

"But now I am convinced there are no 'good' trusts, as I have been pleased to call them. Those combinations, like the Consolidated Companies, which are really a benefit to the people to-day, may, as again in the case of the Consolidated Companies, become their greatest enemy to-morrow. I am prepared to say that all this talk--much of which I have made myself--to the effect that combination effects economies of which the public receives the benefit, is true only for a time. Just so soon as the combinations become monopolies, amounts saved by the economies simply go to swell the profits for the stockholders.

Compet.i.tion must not be eliminated--it is the vital spark which keeps alive the welfare of the country."

"You are going to say all this before the Senate Committee?"

"Yes, and more. I am going to use the Consolidated Companies as an example, and urge immediate active enforcement of the Sherman Act against all consolidations which aim at monopolies or the restraint of trade. The Attorney-General said that this would mean an industrial reign of terror. So be it. Even that is better than this gradual strangling of the people's rights, which is now being carried on with legislative approval. I shall at least have the satisfaction of performing this one act in the interests of the people, even though I must forego the continued administration of a corporation honestly devoted to their welfare. This statement from me, and the position I take regarding my own corporation, will go far toward defeating those other malign interests which hope to gain by their attack upon me."

Allen's face had been a study while Mr. Gorham was speaking, and Alice had particularly noted the varying emotions it expressed. She saw there first the astonished incredulity at her father's determination to dissolve the Companies; then the wonder as he heard Gorham state conclusions which coincided with those he had arrived at earlier; and finally the radiant joy as the realization came, not fully but in part, that his own understanding of the situation had not been all at fault.

It needed only the words which Gorham added to make the world look bright again. But it was to his father rather than to Allen that Gorham addressed himself.

"And now, Stephen, as to this boy. You and I have done our best to make him think the world is wrong side up; but I am more to blame because I had the better opportunity to study his development, beneath my own eyes. I taught him that imagination was an essential ingredient of a successful business man, to enable him to grasp each situation as a whole, and to conceive its dangers and its possibilities. Yet, when he exercised that very quality, and came to me frankly with the results of his efforts, I refused to recognize my own handiwork. I taught him my altruistic creed, and then blamed him when he used it as his standard, and was unhappy that those around him failed to measure up to it. Never has a man been more blind than I. Never has a man settled back, so self-satisfied, with so determined a conviction that because he willed things to be so, then they were so. I have merged the white thread of my new creed with the black one of the old business morals I first learned; his pattern has been wholly woven from the white.

"My boy," he added, turning to Allen, "for the first time in my life I ask a man's forgiveness. In the face of the greatest discouragements, you have shown yourself true, and I congratulate you and your father upon the future which you have before you. I want you to stay with me until the Consolidated Companies has been placed in a position of safety to itself and to its stockholders, then you may choose your own career."

"No Sanford ever made a failure yet," Stephen proudly repeated.

"But, Mr. Gorham--" Allen began, surprised into confusion by the unstinted praise; but Alice interrupted him.

"So this is my business creation!" she exclaimed, with satisfaction.

Allen looked first at her and then at Mr. Gorham. Then he smiled consciously.

"While you are about it, Mr. Gorham," he said, impulsively, "I wish you would disintegrate Alice and Mr. Covington."

A momentary shadow pa.s.sed over the faces of all who knew what had occurred.

"That dissolution took place last night," Mr. Gorham replied, quietly.

Alice's cheeks were flaming, but her smile was irresistible as she spoke.

"I'll tell you all about it, Allen, if you'll come into the conservatory."

x.x.xI

A great event requires retrospective consideration. Unlike the laws of perspective, distance gives it greater size. So it was with Gorham's supreme and final demonstration of his strength. To Covington, who, true to his promise of the night before, was present at this crucial meeting of the Board of Directors, and marvelled that his chief demanded of him only a statement regarding the real purchaser of the stock, this dissolution of the Consolidated Companies appeared as an act of sacrilege; to his a.s.sociates, aghast at the knowledge that they were powerless to prevent him, it seemed the epitome of treachery; to his family it meant a sublime exhibit of self-sacrifice;--to himself it was the crowning point of his career, and a justification of his life-work.

"You know what this means?" Litchfield had demanded of him. "You realize that your action to-morrow will deprive us of millions, and will plunge the country into a panic which will cost that dear public which you profess to love, more than we should have kept from them in a decade?"