Robert Herrick

JUDGMENTS

Mrs. Dround once more—The point of view—Reflections—A family discussion—May delivers her ultimatum—We part—The middle age of life

"In Rome you must do as the Romans, or be done!" I quoted jocularly.

Mrs. Dround smiled appreciatively.

"From all accounts you have been a tremendous Roman!"

"Well, at least I haven't been done—not yet."

Jane Dround smiled again and turned her face from the window of the library, through which could be seen dots of ice and snow sailing out on the blue lake. The years she had been gone in Europe had dealt lightly with her. She had grown a trifle stouter, and looked splendidly well—dark, and strong, and full of life.

"I did my best," she continued half humorously. "I tried to get lost in darkest Africa beyond the reach of telegrams and newspapers. But a party of Chicago people coming up the Nile crossed the path of our daha-biyeh, recognized us, came abroad—and brought the story. Cables wouldn't hold him then! We came as the crow flies; it was no use to plead sickness—he was ready to leave me behind in Paris!"

She laughed again genially.

"It was nothing much to get excited about," I replied a little impatiently; "and it has passed now, anyway, like a winter snow in the city—slush, water, nothing!"

"But the principle! You forget the principle!" she remonstrated dryly.

"I know—and he's going to resign from the presidency—that ought to satisfy his principle—but we must keep him on the board."

"It was a judge, too! A sworn officer of the law!" Mrs. Dround interrupted, quoting demurely from Henry I's remarks about the injunction scandal.

"Very well, he can make over his stock to you, then! It won't trouble you, and you can draw the big dividends we are going to pay soon. I don't want him to get out now, when the fruit is almost ripe to shake."

"Is that the only reason?" Mrs. Dround asked quickly.

"Of course, we don't want his stock coming on the market in a big block. It would break us all up. And it might easily get into the wrong hands."

For Mr. Dround, in the brief interview that we had had on his return, had intimated his desire not only to withdraw from the presidency of the corporation, which had been merely a nominal office, but to dispose of his stock as soon as the agreement expired in the fall, suggesting that I had best find some friendly hands to take his big holding. In his gentlemanly way he had told me that he had had enough of me and was quite ready to snow me under, if it could be done in a polite and friendly fashion.

"So you want him to wait?" Mrs. Dround suggested indifferently.

"Yes, until I am ready!"

She made no reply to this remark, and after a moment I said more lightly:—

"But I came to welcome you home,—I want you still to be my friend, my partner!"

"They say you are a dangerous partner," she retorted, looking closely at me,—"deep in all sorts of speculative schemes, and likely to slip. They say you are un—scrupulous"—she drawled the word mockingly—"and a lot more bad things. Do you think that is the right kind of partner for a simple woman?"

"If you've got the nerve!"

"Well, let me show you some of the new pictures we have bought." And she turned me off with a lot of talk about pictures and stuffs and stones, until I arose to leave.

---

Shortly afterwards my carriage took me back to the city, where I had to meet some gentlemen who were interested in my schemes for the development of the new Southwest. As I rode through the windy, dusty streets, my thoughts went back over the years since that time when at the suggestion of this woman I had just left, I had put my hand to building something large out of Henry I. Dround's tottering estate.

In a busy life like mine, one event shades into another. Each path to which a man sets his feet leads to some cross-roads, and from there any one of the branches will lead on to its own cross-roads. While the adventurer is on his way it is hard to tell why he takes one turning and not another, why he lays his course here and not there. Years later he may see it plotted plain, as I do to-day—plotted as on a map. Then the wanderer may try to explain what made him move this way or that. Yet the little determining causes that turned his mind at the moment of choice are forever forgotten. The big, permanent motive remains: there is the broad highroad—but why was it left, why this turn and double across the main track?

So it was with me. The main highroad of my ambition was almost lost in the thickets in which I found myself. Struggling day by day against the forces that opposed me, I had lost sight of direction. The words with Jane Dround, the flash of her dark eyes, pierced my obscurity, gave me again a view of the destiny to which I had set myself. Some fire in her fed me with courage, and made my spirit lighter than it had been for months....

When I reached home in the evening, I found Sarah ill with a nervous headache.

"Will is back!" she exclaimed on seeing me, and her tone scarcely concealed a meaning beyond her words.

"What's that? He didn't send me word that he was coming."

"May telephoned—he's just got in."

Something unexpected must have brought him suddenly all the way from Texas, where he was looking after our interests. The news was disturbing.

"I saw Jane Dround this afternoon," I remarked idly. "She's looking fine—never saw her better."

"Jane!" my wife said slowly. "So she's back once more." Then after a pause she exclaimed:—

"I don't like her!"

Sarah, who rarely said a bitter word about any one, spoke this harshly, and I looked at her in surprise.

"I don't trust that woman, Van! She is secret. And I believe she influenced you—that time about the judge."

It was the first time for months that Sarah had referred to this matter.

"I'll go and ring up May," I said, not caring to refute this wild accusation, "and ask them to come over to-night."

"I asked them for dinner, but she wouldn't come," Sarah remarked gloomily. "No one wants to come here but people like the Webbs and Coopers—people who think they can make something out of your schemes."

"Oh, I guess they aren't the only ones who are willing to come. And what's the matter with the Webbs and the Coopers? If the rest of your friends don't like us, we can get along without their society. I guess New York will stand us, and that's where we shall be before many years, if all goes well. This place is only a gossipy old village."

"I don't want to go to New York!" Sarah wailed.

---

When I had May at the telephone, she answered my invitation in a dry little voice:—

"Yes, we are coming over to see you about a matter. Will has something important to say to you."

By the tone of May's voice I judged that we should have a rather lively family party, and I was not mistaken. Sarah was still lying on the lounge in my study when Will and May came in after dinner. There was battle in May's eyes and in her tight-shut lips. It had been a long time since she had come to the house when I was at home. And to-night Will, too, was looking very pale and troubled.

"Couldn't you find any one else to do your dirty work but your own brother?"

"May," I said, "you look as if you had a gun trained on me. Fire away, only make it something new. I am tired of that old matter about the judge. 'Most everybody has forgotten all about that except you and Sarah."

"It's something new, fast enough, Van; but it isn't any better," she retorted. "Couldn't you find any one else to do your dirty work but your own brother?"

"What's the matter now?"

"Show him the article, Will."

Will unbuttoned his coat and reached for his inner pocket. From it he hauled out a bulky newspaper, which he handed me. It was a copy of the Sunday Texas World, and a front page article was heavily pencilled.

"That's too much, Van," he protested solemnly, handing me the paper. "Read it."

"Yes, read it all!" May added. The three were silent while I ran through the article. It was the usual exaggerated sort of newspaper stuff purporting to describe the means used to secure a piece of railroad legislation, in which I and some New York men were interested. The sting lay in the last paragraph:—

"It is commonly understood that the lobby which has been working for the past winter in the interest of this rotten bill is maintained by a group of powerful capitalists, dominated by the head of a large Chicago packing company. This gentleman, who suddenly shot into publicity the past winter as the result of an unusually brazen attempt to corrupt a Chicago judge, has opened his office not three blocks from the state Capitol, and has put his brother in charge of the corruptionist forces.... The deserving legislators of our state may soon expect to reap a rich harvest!"

A few more generalities wound up the article. I folded the paper and handed it back to Will. No one said a word for a few moments, and then Will observed:—

"That isn't pleasant reading for an honorable man!"

"I don't see how it should trouble you, Will. You are down there to look after our interests in a legitimate way enough. If you don't like the job, though, I can get another man to take your place."

"Van," May interrupted, "don't try to squirm! You know that's true—what's written there! You didn't ask Will to use the bribe money, because you knew he wouldn't do anything dishonorable. But you let him take the blame, and sent some one else with the money, no doubt. What was that partner of Mr. Slocum's sent down there for?"

"Will,"—I turned to my brother,—"let us settle this by ourselves. It's a man's business, and the women won't help us."

"No, Van," May replied. "I guess we women are as much concerned as anybody. Where there's a question of my husband's honor, it's my business, too. I stay."

"Well, then, stay! And try to understand. This bill the paper rips up is all right. We must have it to put our road through to the Gulf, and if it were not for the money the Pacific Western road, which owns the state, is putting up against us we shouldn't have any trouble. They want to keep us out, and Strauss and his crowd want to keep us out, too, so that they can have all the pie to themselves. I have been working at this thing for years in order that we can get an outlet to the seaboard, untouched by our rivals. They think to block us just at the end, but I guess they find out they are mistaken when the line comes next month. That's all!"

"Do you think that explanation is satisfactory? Of course, Van, you want the bill passed!" May said ironically.

"What does it mean—what has Van been doing?" Sarah asked for the first time, sitting up and looking from one to another in a puzzled way.

None of us answered, and finally Will said:—

"I guess, Van, you and I don't see things quite the same way. I know you wouldn't ask me to do what you thought was bad, but all the same there's too much that's true in that piece in the paper, and I don't want to have it said—there's things going on down there that aren't right—and May feels—I feel myself, that it ain't right. We don't think the same way, you and I. So we had better part now, before we have any bad feeling."

"All right! Did you come over here to-night to tell me that?"

"No, Van," May put in hastily, her voice trembling with feeling. "That wasn't all. Will and I came to ask you to give up the sort of business you are doing down there. We want you to turn back into the right road before it is too late. If you don't land in the penitentiary, Van Harrington, your money will do you no good. It will taste bad all your life!"

We were all pretty well stirred up by this time. I was weary of meeting these charges of dishonesty on all sides. This last was too much—to have my family accuse me of a crime, when I did not feel guilty, not for a minute!

"I don't see why you should say that, May!" Sarah suddenly bridled. "After all, it's only the newspapers, and no one believes them to-day."

This unexpected defence from Sarah aroused May afresh.

"Oh, he don't deny it! He can't. First it was a judge—he bought a judge and paid for him, and he never came out and denied it! Now it's worse even than that. It's the people of a whole state he's trying to buy through their representatives."

"Who are there for sale," I laughed.

"Does that make it any better?" she turned on me. "Seems to me, Van, you don't know any longer the difference between black and white!"

"We've got a perfect right to build that road, and build it we will—that's all there is to that matter!"

And so we argued for hours, May and I doing most of the talking. For I wanted her to understand just how the matter lay. No business in this large, modern world could be done on her plan of life. That beautiful scheme of things which the fathers of our country drew up in the stage-coach days had proved itself inadequate in a short century. We had to get along with it the best we could. But we men who did the work of the world, who developed the country, who were the life and force of the times, could not be held back by the swaddling-clothes of any political or moral theory. Results we must have: good results; and we worked with the tools we found at hand.

"It's no use your saying any more!" May exclaimed at last. "I understand just what you mean, Van Harrington. It's the same way it was with the judge's peaches. You wanted 'em, and you took 'em! What you want you think is good for every one, especially for Van Harrington. And you are so wise and strong you think you can breakthrough all laws because laws are made for small people, like Will and me, and you and your kind are Napoleons. You talk as if you were a part of God's destiny. And I say"—here her voice broke for a moment—"I say, Van, you are the devil's instrument! You and those like you—and there a good many of them—are just plain big rascals, only the laws can't get hold of you."

Her lips trembled and at the end broke into that little ironical smile which I knew so well, the smile she had when I used to get into some boyish scrape, and she was looking through me for the truth. But for all her hot words, I knew she had kindly feeling for me somewhere in her heart. Nevertheless, Sarah, who had been following our talk as well as she could, fired up at her accusations.

"I think, May," she remonstrated with all her dignity, "that you cannot say any more such things in my husband's house."

"Yes," I added, "we have had too much talk all around. You can't change my character any more than you can make wheat grow in Arizona or sugar-cane in Dakota. And I don't want to change your views, either, May."

For though she made me pretty angry, I admired the way she stood to her guns. She was a fighter! And Will must act as she decided. Whoever travelled with her would have to travel by her star.

"Yes," my brother replied, "it's gone too far now to change. Words don't do any good. Come, wife, let us go."

"I am sorry for Sarah!" May said, taking Sarah's hands in hers. "She suffers for you, Van, and she will suffer for this all her life. But I am sorrier for you, Van, for you have gone too far to suffer!"

Thereupon she swept out of the room, her little figure swelling with dignity; and Will followed her, as the needle swings to its magnet, pausing only long enough to reach for my hand and press it. When the front door shut upon them the house seemed suddenly cold and empty. Sarah had slipped back to the lounge, and was staring up at the ceiling, a tear trickling across her face.

"I suppose May won't ever come back again. And we were planning to take that cottage this summer so that the children could be together."

That detail didn't seem to me very important, but it was the one that showed to Sarah the gulf which had opened between us. Sarah's little world, by that token, had suffered an earthquake.

"Oh," I said, trying to comfort her, "like as not this will blow over! May has disapproved of me before this."

But in my heart I felt there wasn't much likelihood that this breach would be healed. Knowing May as I did, I had no idea that she would let Will continue with me, even in another position. No compromise for her! To-morrow or next day Will would come into the office to take his leave....

"I guess, Van, I'll go to bed."

It was the first word Sarah had spoken for half an hour. The tears had dried on her face. She gave me a light kiss, and left me....

The house seemed cold and desolate, as if the pleasant kindliness of life had gone out of it when my brother and his wife had left. I made up the fire, lighted a fresh cigar, and sat down to think. Somehow years had gone by in that evening; I was heavy with the heaviness of middle life.

To take the other road, her road—that was what May demanded of me. How little she knew the situation! That would mean immediate ruin for me and mine, and for those men who had trusted me with their money. The world that I had been building all these years would crumble and vanish like smoke into the void out of which I had made it! Not that May's talk had meaning or sense to it, either. Nor do men made as I am alter at the sound of words. We are as we are, and we grow with the power to do that which we must do. May was merely an unreasonable and narrow woman, who saw but one kind of good.

In all the forty years of my life there had been no evil as I know evil. No man could say that he had harm from me—unless it might be poor Ed Hostetter—and for thousands of such workers as live from day to day, depending on men like me to give them their chance to earn bread for their wives and children, I had made the world better rather than worse. Unthinking thousands lived and had children and got what good there was in life because of me and my will.

But to the others, the good ones, to Farson and Dround and May, I was but a common thief, a criminal, who fattened on the evil of the world. What had they done to make life? What was their virtue good for? They took the dainty paths and kept their clothes from the soil of the road. Yes, and what then? A renewed sense of irritation rose within me. Why should I be pestered like this, why should I lose my brother and May, why should Sarah be hurt, because they were too good to do as I had done?

So my brother and May went their way. They left me lonely. For the first time since the day, many years before, when I walked out of the police station alone into the city, the loneliness of life came over me. To-morrow, in the daylight, in the fierce fight of the day, that weakness would go; but to-night there was no hand to reach, no voice to speak, from the multitude of the world. One person only of all would know, would place big and little side by side and reckon them rightly—would understand the ways I had followed to get my ends. Jane Dround would throw them all a smile of contempt, the little ones who weigh and hesitate!

There was the soul of the fighter.