The Deluge

by David Graham Phillips

  XXIV. BLACKLOCK ATTENDS FAMILY PRAYERS

  During dinner I bore the whole burden of conversation--though burden I didnot find it. Like most close-mouthed men, I am extremely talkative. Silencesets people to wondering and prying; he hides his secrets best who hidesthem at the bottom of a river of words. If my spirits are high, I oftentalk aloud to myself when there is no one convenient. And how could myspirits be anything but high, with her sitting there opposite me, mine,mine for better or for worse, through good and evil report--my wife!

  She was only formally responsive, reluctant and brief in answers,volunteering nothing. The servants waiting on us no doubt laid her mannerto shyness; I understood it, or thought I did--but I was not troubled.It is as natural for me to hope as to breathe; and with my knowledge ofcharacter, how could I take seriously the moods and impulses of one whom Iregarded as a childlike girl, trained to false pride and false ideals? "Shehas chosen to stay with me," said I to myself. "Actions count, not words ormanner. A few days or weeks, and she will be herself, and mine." And I wentgaily on with my efforts to interest her, to make her smile and forget therole she had commanded herself to play. Nor was I wholly unsuccessful.Again and again I thought I saw a gleam of interest in her eyes or thebeginnings of a smile about that sweet mouth of hers. I was careful not tooverdo my part.

  As soon as we finished dessert I said: "You loathe cigar smoke, so I'llhide myself in my den. Sanders will bring you the cigarettes." I had myselftelephoned for a supply of her kind early in the day.

  She made a polite protest for the benefit of the servants; but I was firm,and left her free to think things over alone in the drawing-room--"yoursitting-room," I called it, I had not finished a small cigar when therecame a timid knock at my door. I threw away the cigar and opened. "Ithought it was you," said I. "I'm familiar with the knocks of all theothers. And this was new--like a summer wind tapping with a flower foradmission at a closed window." And I laughed with a little raillery, andshe smiled, colored, tried to seem cold and hostile again.

  "Shall I go with you to your sitting-room?" I went on. "Perhaps the cigarsmoke here--"

  "No, no," she interrupted; "I don't really mind cigars--and the windows arewide open. Besides, I came for only a moment--just to say--"

  As she cast about for words to carry her on, I drew up a chair for her.She looked at it uncertainly, seated herself. "When mama was here--thisafternoon," she went on, "she was urging me to--to do what she wished.And after she had used several arguments, she said something I--I've beenthinking it over, and it seemed I ought in fairness to tell you."

  I waited.

  "She said: 'In a few days more he'--that meant you--'he will be ruined. Heimagines the worst is over for him, when in fact they've only begun.'"

  "They!" I repeated. "Who are 'they'? The Langdons?"

  "I think so," she replied with an effort. "She did not say--I've told youher exact words--as far as I can."

  "Well," said I, "and why didn't you go?"

  She pressed her lips firmly together. Finally, with a straight look into myeyes, she replied: "I shall not discuss that. You probably misunderstand,but that is your own affair."

  "You believed what she said about me, of course," said I.

  "I neither believed nor disbelieved," she answered indifferently, as sherose to go. "It does not interest me."

  "Come here," said I.

  I waited until she reluctantly joined me at the window. I pointed to thesteeple of the church across the way. "You could as easily throw down thatsteeple by pushing against it with your bare hands," I said to her, "as'they,' whoever they are, could put me down. They might take away my money.But if they did, they would only be giving me a lesson that would teach mehow more easily to get it back. I am not a bundle of stock certificates ora bag of money. I am--here," and I tapped my forehead.

  She forced a faint, scornful smile. She did not wish me to see her beliefof what I said.

  "You may think that is vanity," I went on. "But you will learn, sooner orlater, the difference between boasting and simple statement of fact. Youwill learn that I do not boast. What I said is no more a boast than for aman with legs to say, 'I can walk.' Because you have known only leglessmen, you exaggerate the difficulty of walking. It's as easy for me to makemoney as it is for some people to spend it."

  It is hardly necessary for me to say I was not insinuating anything againsther people. But she was just then supersensitive on the subject, thoughI did not suspect it. She flushed hotly. "You will not have any cause tosneer at my people on that account hereafter," she said. "I settled_that_ to-day."

  "I was not sneering at them," I protested. "I wasn't even thinking of them.And--you must know that it's a favor to me for anybody to ask me to doanything that will please you--Anita!"

  She made a gesture of impatience. "I see I'd better tell you why I did notgo with them to-day. I insisted that they give back all they have takenfrom you. And when they refused, I refused to go."

  "I don't care why you refused, or imagined you refused," said I. "I amcontent with the fact that you are here."

  "But you misunderstand it," she answered coldly.

  "I don't understand it, I don't misunderstand it," was my reply. "I acceptit."

  She turned away from the window, drifted out of the room--you, who love orat least have loved, can imagine how it made me feel to see _Her_moving about in those rooms of mine.

  While the surface of my mind was taken up with her, I must have beenthinking, underneath, of the warning she had brought; for, perhaps half orthree-quarters of an hour after she left, I was suddenly whirled out ofmy reverie at the window by a thought like a pistol thrust into my face."What if 'they' should include Roebuck!" And just as a man begins to defendhimself from a sudden danger before he clearly sees what the danger is, soI began to act before I even questioned whether my suspicion was plausibleor absurd. I went into the hall, rang the bell, slipped a light-weight coatover my evening dress and put on a hat. When Sanders appeared, I said: "I'mgoing out for a few minutes--perhaps an hour--if any one should ask." Amoment later I was in a hansom and on the way to Roebuck's.

  * * * * *

  When Roebuck lived near Chicago, he had a huge house, a sort of crudepalace such as so many of our millionaires built for themselves in thefirst excitement of their new wealth--a house with porches and balconiesand towers and minarets and all sorts of gingerbread effects to compel theeye of the passer-by. But when he became enormously rich, so rich that hisname was one of the synonyms for wealth, so rich that people said "rich asRoebuck" where they used to say "rich as Croesus," he cut away every kindof ostentation, and avoided attention.

  He took advantage of his having to remove to New York where his vastinterests centered; he bought a small and commonplace and, far a rich man,even mean house in East Fifty-Second Street--one of a raw, and an almostdingy looking row at that. There he had an establishment a man withone-fiftieth of his fortune would have felt like apologizing for. To hisfew intimates who were intimate enough to question him about his come-downfrom his Chicago splendors he explained that he was seeing with clearereyes his responsibilities as a steward of the Lord, that luxury was sinful,that no man had a right to waste the Lord's money.

  The general theory about him was that advancing years had developedhis natural closeness into the stingiest avariciousness. But my notionis he was impelled by the fear of exciting envy, by the fear ofassassination--the fear that made his eyes roam restlessly wheneverstrangers were near him, and so dried up the inside of his body that hisdry tongue was constantly sliding along his dry lips. I have seen a convictstand in the door of his cell and, though it was impossible that any onecould be behind him, look nervously over his shoulder every moment or so.Roebuck had the same trick--only his dread, I suspect, was not the officersof the law, even of the divine law, but the many, many victims of hismerciless execution of "the Lord's will."

  This state of mind is not uncommon among the very rich men, espe
ciallythose who have come up from poverty. Those who have inherited great wealth,and have always been used to it, get into the habit of looking upon themass of mankind as inferiors, and move about with no greater sense of perilthan a man has in venturing among a lot of dogs with tails wagging. Butthose who were born poor and have risen under the stimulus of a furiousenvy of the comfortable and the rich, fancy that everybody who isn't richhas the same savage hunger that they themselves had, and is ready to usesimilar desperate methods in gratifying it. Thus, where the rich of theLangdon sort are supercilious, the rich of the Roebuck sort are nervous andoften become morbid on the subject of assassination as they grow richer andricher.

  The door of Roebuck's house was opened for me by a maid--a man-servantwould have been a "sinful" luxury, a man-servant might be the hirelingof plotters against his life. I may add that she looked the cheapmaid-of-all-work, and her manners were of the free and fresh sort thatindicates a feeling that as high, or higher, wages, and less to do couldbe got elsewhere.

  "I don't think you can see Mr. Roebuck," she said.

  "Take my card to him," I ordered, "and I'll wait in the parlor."

  "Parlor's in use," she retorted with a sarcastic grin, which I was soon tounderstand.

  So I stood by the old-fashioned coat and hat rack while she went in at thehall door of the back parlor. Soon Roebuck himself came out, his glasses onhis nose, a family Bible under his arm. "Glad to see you, Matthew," said hewith saintly kindliness, giving me a friendly hand. "We are just about tooffer up our evening prayer. Come right in."

  I followed him into the back parlor. Both it and the front parlor werelighted; in a sort of circle extending into both rooms were all theRoebucks and the four servants. "This is my friend, Matthew Blacklock,"said he, and the Roebucks in the circle gravely bowed. He drew up a chairfor me, and we seated ourselves. Amid a solemn hush, he read a chapter fromthe big Bible spread out upon his lean lap. My glance wandered from face toface of the Roebucks, as plainly dressed as were their servants. I was ableto look freely, mine being the only eyes not bent upon the floor.

  It was the first time in my life that I had witnessed family prayers.When I was a boy at home, my mother had taken literally the Scripturalinjunction to pray in secret--in a closet, I think the passage of the Biblesaid. Many times each day she used to retire to a closet under the stairwayand spend from one to twenty minutes shut in there. But we had no familyprayers. I was therefore deeply interested in what was going on in thosecountrified parlors of one of the richest and most powerful men in theworld--and this right in the heart of that district of New York wherepalaces stand in rows and in blocks, and where such few churches as thereare resemble social clubs for snubbing climbers and patronizing the poor.

  It was astonishing how much every Roebuck in that circle, even the oldlady, looked like Roebuck himself--the same smug piety, the same underfedappearance that, by the way, more often indicates a starved soul thana starved body. One difference--where his face had the look of powerthat compels respect and, to the shrewd, reveals relentless strengthrelentlessly used, the expressions of the others were simply small andmean and frost-nipped. And that is the rule--the second generation of aplutocrat inherits, with his money, the meanness that enabled him to hoardit, but not the scope that enabled him to make it.

  So absorbed was I in the study of the influence of his terriblemaster-character upon those closest to it, that I started when he said:"Let us pray." I followed the example of the others, and knelt. The audibleprayer was offered up by his oldest daughter, Mrs. Wheeler, a widow.Roebuck punctuated each paragraph in her series of petitions with aloudly-whispered amen. When she prayed for "the stranger whom Thou has ledseemingly by chance into our little circle," he whispered the amen morefervently and repeated it. And well he might, the old robber and assassinby proxy! The prayer ended and, us on our feet, the servants withdrew;then, awkwardly, all the family except Roebuck. That is, they closed thedoors between the two rooms and left him and me alone in the front parlor.

  "I shall not detain you long, Mr. Roebuck," said I. "A report reached methis evening that sent me to you at once."

  "If possible, Matthew," said he, and he could not hide his uneasiness, "putoff business until to-morrow. My mind--yours, too, I trust--is not in theframe for that kind of thoughts now."

  "Is the Coal organization to be announced the first of July?" I demanded.It has always been, and always shall be, my method to fight in the open.This, not from principle, but from expediency. Some men fight best in thebrush; I don't. So I always begin battle by shelling the woods.

  "No," he said, amazing me by his instant frankness. "The announcement hasbeen postponed."

  Why did he not lie to me? Why did he not put me off the scent, as he mighteasily have done, with some shrewd evasion? I suspected I owed it tomy luck in catching him at family prayers. For I know that the generalimpression of him is erroneous; he is not merely a hypocrite before theworld, but also a hypocrite before himself. A more profoundly, piouslyconscientious man never lived. Never was there a truer epitaph than the oneimplied in the sentence carved over his niche in the magnificent mausoleumhe built: "Fear naught but the Lord."

  "When will the reorganization be announced?" I asked.

  "I can not say," he answered. "Some difficulties--chiefly labordifficulties--have arisen. Until they are settled, nothing can be done.Come to me to-morrow, and we'll talk about it."

  "That is all I wished to know," said I, with a friendly, easy smile. "Goodnight."

  It was his turn to be astonished--and he showed it, where I had given not asign. "What was the report you heard?" he asked, to detain me.

  "That you and Mowbray Langdon had conspired to ruin me," said I, laughing.

  He echoed my laugh rather hollowly. "It was hardly necessary for you tocome to me about such a--a statement."

  "Hardly," I answered dryly. Hardly, indeed! For I was seeing now all that Ihad been hiding from myself since I became infatuated with Anita and mademarrying her my only real business in life.

  We faced each other, each measuring the other. And as his glance quailedbefore mine, I turned away to conceal my exultation. In a comparison ofresources this man who had plotted to crush me was to me as giant tomidget. But I had the joy of realizing that man to man, I was the stronger.He had craft, but I had daring. His vast wealth aggravated his naturalcowardice--crafty men are invariably cowards, and their audacities underthe compulsion of their ravenous greed are like a starving jackal's dashesinto danger for food. My wealth belonged to me, not I to it; and, strippedof it, I would be like the prize-fighter stripped for the fight. Finally,he was old, I young. And there was the chief reason for his quailing. Heknew that he must die long before me, that my turn must come, that I coulddance upon his grave.