The Grain of Dust Part 3

She smiled, and in an instant the frailty seemed to have been mere delicacy of build--the delicacy that goes with the strength of steel wires, or rather of the spider's weaving thread which sustains weights and shocks out of all proportion to its appearance. "I've never been ill in my life," said she. "Not a day."

Again, because she was standing before him in full view, he noted the peculiar construction of her frame--the beautiful lines of length so dextrously combined that her figure as a whole was not tall. He said, "A working woman--or man--needs health above all. Thank you again." And he nodded a somewhat curt dismissal. When she glided away and he was alone behind the closed door, he reflected for a moment upon the extraordinary amount of thinking--and the extraordinary kind of thinking--into which this poor little typewriter girl had beguiled him. He soon found the explanation for this vagary into a realm so foreign to a man of his high tastes and ambitions. "It's because I'm so in love with Josephine," he decided. "I've fallen into the sentimental state of all lovers. The whole s.e.x becomes novel and interesting and worth while."

As he left the office, unusually late, he saw her still at work--no doubt doing over again some bungled piece of copying. She had her normal and natural look and air--the atomic little typewriter, unattractive and uninteresting. With another smile for his romantic imaginings, he forgot her. But when he reached the street he remembered her again. The threatened blizzard had changed into a heavy rain. The swift and sudden currents of air, that have made of New York a cave of the winds since the coming of the skysc.r.a.pers, were darting round corners, turning umbrellas inside out, tossing women's skirts about their heads, reducing all who were abroad to the same level of drenched and sullen wretchedness. Norman's limousine was waiting at the curb. He, pausing in the doorway, glanced up and down the street, had an impulse to return and take the girl home. Then he smiled satirically at himself. Her lot condemned her to be out in all weathers. It would not be a kindness but an exhibition of smug vanity to shelter her this one night; also, there was the question of her reputation--and the possibility of turning her head, perhaps just enough to cause her ruin. He sprang across the wind-swept, rain-swept sidewalk and into the limousine whose door was being held open by an obsequious attendant. "Home," he said, and the door slammed.

Usually these journeys between office and home or club in the evening gave Norman a chance for ten or fifteen minutes of sleep. He had discovered that this brief dropping of the thread of consciousness gave him a wonderful fresh grip upon the day, enabled him to work or play until late into the night without fatigue. But that evening his mind was wide awake. Nor could he fix it upon business. It would interest itself only in the hurrying throngs of foot pa.s.sengers and the ideas they suggested: Here am I--so ran his thoughts--here am I, tucked away comfortably while all those poor creatures have to plod along in the storm. I could afford to be sick. They can't. And what have I done to deserve this good fortune? Nothing. Worse than nothing. If I had made my career along the lines of what is honest and right and beneficial to my fellow men, I'd probably be plugging home under an umbrella--and to a pretty poor excuse for a home. But I was too wise to do that. I've spent this day, as I spend all my days, in helping the powerful rich to add to their wealth and power, to add to the burdens those poor devils out there in the rain must bear. And I'm rewarded with a limousine, and all the rest of it.

These thoughts neither came from nor produced a mood of penitence, or of regret even. Norman was simply indulging in his favorite pastime--following without prejudice the leading of a chain of pure logic. He despised self-deceivers. He always kept himself free from prejudice and all its wiles. He took life as he found it; but he did not excuse it and himself with the familiar hypocrisies that make the comfortable cla.s.ses preen themselves on being the guardians and saviours of the ignorant, incapable ma.s.ses. When old Lockyer said one day that this was the function of the "upper cla.s.ses," Norman retorted: "Perhaps.

But, if so, how do they perform it? Like the brutal old-fas.h.i.+oned farm family that takes care of its insane member by keeping him chained in filth in the cellar." And once at the Federal Club--By the way, Norman had joined it, had compelled it to receive him just to show his a.s.sociates how a strong man could break even such a firmly established tradition as that no one who amounted to anything could be elected to a fas.h.i.+onable club in New York. Once at the Federal Club old Galloway quoted with approval some essayist's remark that every clever human being was looking after and holding above the waves at least fifteen of his weaker fellows. Norman smiled satirically round at the complacently nodding circle of gray heads and white heads. "My observation has been,"

said he, "that every clever chap is shrewd enough to compel at least fifteen of his fellows to wait on him, to take care of him--do his ch.o.r.es--and his dirty work." The nodding stopped. Scowls appeared, except on the face of old Galloway. He grinned. He was one of the few examples of a very rich man with a sense of humor. Norman always thought it was this slight incident that led to his getting the extremely profitable--and shady--Galloway business.

No, Norman's mood, as he watched the miserable crowds afoot and reflected upon them, was neither remorseful nor triumphant. He simply noted an interesting fact--a commonplace fact--of the methods of that sardonic practical joker, Life. Because the scheme of things was unjust and stupid, because others, most others, were uncomfortable or worse--why should he make himself uncomfortable? It would be an absurdity to get out of his limousine and trudge along in the wet and the wind. It would be equally absurd to sit in his limousine and be unhappy about the misery of the world. "I didn't create it, and I can't recreate it. And if I'm helping to make it worse, I'm also hastening the time when it'll be better. The Great a.s.s must have brains and spirit kicked and cudgeled into it."

At his house in Madison Avenue, just at the crest of Murray Hill, there was an awning from front door to curb and a carpet beneath it. He pa.s.sed, dry and comfortable, up the steps. A footman in quiet rich livery was waiting to receive him. From rising until bedtime, up town and down town, wherever he went and whatever he was about, every possible menial detail of his life was done for him. He had nothing to do but think about his own work and keep himself in health. Rarely did he have even to open or to close a door. He used a pen only in signing his name or marking a pa.s.sage in a law book for some secretary to make a typewritten copy.

Upon most human beings this sort of luxury, carried beyond the ordinary and familiar uses of menial service, has a speedily enervating effect.

Thinking being the most onerous of all, they have it done, also. They sink into silliness and moral and mental sloth. They pa.s.s the time at foolish purposeless games indoors and out; or they wander aimlessly about the earth chattering with similar mental decrepits, much like monkeys adrift in the boughs of a tropical forest. But Norman had the tenacity and strength to concentrate upon achievement all the powers emanc.i.p.ated by the use of menials wherever menials could be used. He employed to advantage the time saved in putting in s.h.i.+rt b.u.t.tons and lacing shoes and carrying books to and from shelves. In this lay one of the important secrets of his success. "Never do for yourself what you can get some one else to do for you as well. Save yourself for the things only _you_ can do."

In his household there were three persons, and sixteen servants to wait upon them. His sister--she and her husband, Clayton Fitzhugh, were the other two persons--his sister was always complaining that there were not enough servants, and Frederick, the most indulgent of brothers, was always letting her add to the number. It seemed to him that the more help there was, the less smoothly the household ran. But that did not concern him; his mind was saved for more important matters. There was no reason why it should concern him; could he not compel the dollars to flood in faster than she could bail them out?

This brother and sister had come to New York fifteen years before, when he was twenty-two and she nineteen. They were from Albany, where their family had possessed some wealth and much social position for many generations. There was the usual "queer streak" in the Norman family--an intermittent but fixed habit of some one of them making a "low marriage." One view of this aberration might have been that there was in the Norman blood a tenacious instinct of st.u.r.dy and self-respecting independence that caused a Norman occasionally to do as he pleased instead of as he conventionally ought. Each time the thing occurred there was a mighty and horrified hubbub throughout the connection. But in the broad, as the custom is, the Normans were complacent about the "queer streak." They thought it kept the family from rotting out and running to seed. "Nothing like an occasional infusion of common blood,"

Aunt Ursula Van Bruyten (born Norman) used to say. For her Norman's sister was named.

Norman's father had developed the "queer streak." Their mother was the daughter of a small farmer and, when she met their father, was chambermaid in a Troy hotel, Troy then being a largish village. As soon as she found herself married and in a position with whose duties she was unfamiliar, she set about fitting herself for them with the same diligence and thoroughness which she had shown in learning chamber work in a village hotel. She educated herself, selected not without shrewdness and carefully put on an a.s.sortment of genteel airs, finally contrived to make a most creditable appearance--was more aristocratic in tastes and in talk than the high mightiest of her relatives by marriage.

But her son Fred was a Pinkey in character. In boyhood he was noted for his rough and low a.s.sociates. His bosom friends were the son of a Jewish junk dealer, the son of a colored wash-woman, and the son of an Irish day laborer. Also, the commonness persisted as he grew up. Instead of seeking aristocratic ease, he aspired to a career. He had choice of several rich and well-born girls; but he developed a strong distaste for marriage of any sort and especially for a rich marriage. A fortune he was resolved to have, but it should be one that belonged to him. When he was about ready to enter a law office, his father and mother died leaving less than ten thousand dollars in all for his sister and himself. His sister hesitated, half inclined to marry a stupid second cousin who had thirty thousand a year.

"Don't do it, Ursula," Fred advised. "If you must sell out, sell for something worth while." He laughed in his frank, ironical way. "Fact is, we've both made up our minds to sell. Let's go to the best market--New York. If you don't like it, you can come back and marry that fat-wit any time you please."

Ursula inspected herself in the gla.s.s, saw a face and form exceeding fair to look upon; she decided to take her brother's advice. At twenty she threw over a multi-millionaire and married Clayton Fitzhugh for love--Clayton with only seventeen thousand a year. Of course, from the standpoint of fas.h.i.+onable ambition, seventeen thousand a year in New York is but one remove from tenement house poverty. As Clayton had no more ability at making money than had Ursula herself, there was nothing to do but live with Norman and "take care of him." But for this self-sacrifice of sisterly affection Norman would have been rich at thirty-seven. As he had to make her rich as well as himself, progress toward luxurious independence was slower--and there was the house, costing nearly fifty thousand a year to keep up.

There had been a time in Norman's career--a brief and very early time--when, with the maternal peasant blood hot in his veins, he had entertained the quixotic idea of going into politics on the poor or people's side and fighting for glory only. The pressure of expensive living had soon driven this notion clean off. Norman had almost forgotten that he ever had it, was no longer aware how strong it had been in the last year at law school. Young men of high intelligence and ardent temperament always pa.s.s through this period. With some--a few--its glory lingers long after the fire has flickered out before the cool, steady breath of worldliness.

All this time Norman has been dressing for dinner. He now leaves the third floor and descends toward the library, as it still lacks twenty minutes of the dinner hour.

As he walked along the hall of the second floor a woman's voice called to him, "That you, Fred?"

He turned in at his sister's sitting room. She was standing at a table smoking a cigarette. Her tall, slim figure looked even taller and slimmer in the tight-fitting black satin evening dress. Her features faintly suggested her relations.h.i.+p to Norman. She was a handsome woman, with a voluptuous discontented mouth.

"What are you worried about, sis?" inquired he.

"How did you know I was worried?" returned she.

"You always are."

"Oh!"

"But you're unusually worried to-night."

"How did you know that?"

"You never smoke just before dinner unless your nerves are ragged. . . .

What is it?"

"Money."

"Of course. No one in New York worries about anything else."

"But _this_ is serious," protested she. "I've been thinking--about your marriage--and what'll become of Clayton and me?" She halted, red with embarra.s.sment.

Norman lit a cigarette himself. "I ought to have explained," said he.

"But I a.s.sumed you'd understand."

"Fred, you know Clayton can't make anything. And when you marry--why--what _will_ become of us!"

"I've been taking care of Clayton's money--and of yours. I'll continue to do it. I think you'll find you're not so badly of. You see, my position enables me to compel a lot of the financiers to let me in on the ground floor--and to warn me in good time before the house falls.

You'll not miss me, Ursula."

She showed her grat.i.tude in her eyes, in a slight quiver of the lips, in an unsteadiness of tone as she said, "You're the real thing, Freddie."

"You can go right on as you are now. Only--" He was looking at her with meaning directness.

She moved uneasily, refused to meet his gaze. "Well?" she said, with a suggestion of defiance.

"It's all very natural to get tired of Clayton," said her brother. "I knew you would when you married him. But--Sis, I mind my own business.

Still--Why make a fool of yourself?"

"You don't understand," she exclaimed pa.s.sionately. And the light in her eyes, the color in her cheeks, restored to her for the moment the beauty of her youth that was almost gone.

"Understand what?" inquired he in a tone of gentle mockery.

"Love. You are all ambition--all self control. You can be affectionate--G.o.d knows, you have been to me, Fred. But love you know nothing about--nothing."

His was the smile a man gives when in earnest and wis.h.i.+ng to be thought jesting--or when in jest and wis.h.i.+ng to be thought in earnest.

"You mean Josephine? Oh, yes, I suppose you do care for her in a way--in a nice, conventional way. She is a fine handsome piece--just the sort to fill the position of wife to a man like you. She's sweet and charming, she appreciates, she flatters you. I'm sure she loves you as much as a _girl_ knows how to love. But it's all so conventional, so proper. Your position--her money. You two are of the regulation type even in that you're suited to each other in height and figure. Everybody'll say, 'What a fine couple--so well matched!'"

"Maybe _you_ don't understand," said Norman.

"If Josephine were poor and low-born--weren't one of us--and all that--would you have her?"

"I'm sure I don't know," was his prompt and amused answer. "I can only say that I know what I want, she being what she is."

Ursula shook her head. "I have only to see you and her together to know that you at least don't understand love."

"It might be well if _you_ didn't," said Norman dryly. "You might be less unhappy--and Clayton less uneasy."

"Ah, but I can't help myself. Don't you see it in me, Fred? I'm not a fool. Yet see what a fool I act."