The Grain Of Dust

D >> David Graham Phillips >> The Grain Of Dust


"You know very well, Norman, there are scores of lawyers, good ones,
who'd crawl at his feet for his business. Nowadays, most lawyers are
always looking round for a pair of rich man's boots to lick."

"But I am not 'most lawyers,'" said Norman. "Of course, if Galloway
could make me come to him, he'd be a fool to come to me. But when he
finds I'm not coming, why, he'll behave himself--if his business is
important enough for me to bother with."

"But if he doesn't come, Fred?"

"Then--my Universal Fuel scheme, or some other equally good. But you
will never see me limbering my knees in the anteroom of a rich man, when
he needs me and I don't need him."

"Well, we'll see," said Tetlow, with the air of a sober man patient with
one who is not sober.

"By the way," continued Norman, "if Galloway says he's too ill to
come--or anything of that sort--tell him I'd not care to undertake the
affairs of a man too old or too feeble to attend to business, as he
might die in the midst of it."

Tetlow's face was such a wondrous exhibit of discomfiture that Norman
laughed outright. Evidently he had forestalled his fat friend in a
scheme to get him to Galloway in spite of himself. "All right--all
right," said Tetlow fretfully. "We'll sleep on this. But I don't see why
you're so opposed to going to see the man. It looks like snobbishness to
me--false pride--silly false pride."

"It _is_ snobbishness," said Norman. "But you forget that snobbishness
rules the world. The way to rule fools is to make them respect you. And
the way to make them respect you is by showing them that they are your
inferiors. I want Galloway's respect because I want his money. And I'll
not get his money--as much of it as belongs to me--except by showing
him my value. Not my value as a lawyer, for he knows that already, but
my value as a man. Do you see?"

"No, I don't," snapped Tetlow.

"That's what it means to be Tetlow. Now, I do see--and that's why I'm
Norman."

Tetlow looked at him doubtfully, uncertain whether he had been listening
to wisdom put in a jocose form of audacious egotism or to the
effervescings of intoxication. The hint of a smile lurking in the
sobriety of the powerful features of his extraordinary friend only
increased his doubt. Was Norman mocking him, and himself as well? If so,
was it the mockery of sober sense or of drunkenness?

"You seem to be puzzled, Billy," said Norman, and Tetlow wondered how he
had seen. "Don't get your brains in a stew trying to understand me. I'm
acting the way I've always acted--except in one matter. You know that I
know what I'm about?"

"I certainly do," replied his admirer.

"Then, let it go at that. If you could understand me--the sort of man I
am, the sort of thing I do--you'd not need me, but would be the whole
show yourself--eh? That being true, don't show yourself a commonplace
nobody by deriding and denying what your brain is unable to comprehend.
Show yourself a somebody by seeing the limitations of your ability. The
world is full of little people who criticise and judge and laugh at and
misunderstand the few real intelligences. And very tedious interruptions
of the scenery those little people are. Don't be one of them. . . . Did
you know my wife's father?"

Tetlow startled. "No--that is, yes," he stammered. "That is, I met him a
few times."

"Often enough to find out that he was crazy?"

"Oh, yes. He explained some of his ideas to me. Yes--he was quite mad,
poor fellow."

Norman gave way to a fit of silent laughter. "I can imagine," he
presently said, "what you'd have thought if Columbus or Alexander or
Napoleon or Stevenson or even the chaps who doped out the telephone and
the telegraph--if they had talked to you before they arrived. Or even
after they arrived, if they had been explaining some still newer and
bigger idea not yet accomplished."

"You don't think Mr. Hallowell was mad?"

"He was mad, assuming that you are the standard of sanity. Otherwise, he
was a great man. There'll be statues erected and pages of the book of
fame devoted to the men who carry out his ideas."

"His death was certainly a great loss to his daughter," said Tetlow in
his heaviest, most bourgeois manner.

"I said he was a great man," observed Norman. "I didn't say he was a
great father. A great man is never a great father. It takes a small man
to be a great father."

"At any rate, her having no parents or relatives doesn't matter, now
that she has you," said Tetlow, his manner at once forced and
constrained.

"Um," muttered Norman.

Said Tetlow: "Perhaps you misunderstood why I--I acted as I did about
her, toward the last."

"It was of no importance," said Norman brusquely. "I wish to hear
nothing about it."

"But I must explain, Fred. She piqued me by showing so plainly that she
despised me. I must admit the truth, though I've got as much vanity as
the next man, and don't like to admit it. She despised me, and it made
me mad."

An expression of grim satire passed over Norman's face. Said he: "She
despised me, too."

"Yes, she did," said Tetlow. "And both of us were certainly greatly her
superiors--in every substantial way. It seemed to me most--most----"

"Most impertinent of her?" suggested Norman.

"Precisely. _Most_ impertinent."

"Rather say, ignorant and small. My dear Tetlow, let me tell you
something. Anybody, however insignificant, can be loved. To be loved
means nothing, except possibly a hallucination in the brain of the
lover. But to _love_--that's another matter. Only a great soul is capable
of a great love."

"That is true," murmured Tetlow sentimentally, preening in a quiet,
gentle way.

Said Norman sententiously: "_You_ stopped loving. It was _I_ that kept
on."

Tetlow looked uncomfortable. "Yes--yes," he said. "But we were talking
of her--of her not appreciating the love she got. And I was about to
say--" Earnestly--"Fred, she's not to be blamed for her folly! She's
very, very young--and has all the weaknesses and vanities of youth----"

"Here we are," interrupted Norman.

The hansom had stopped in Forty-second Street before the deserted but
still brilliantly lighted entrances to the great hotel. Norman sprang
out so lightly and surely that Tetlow wondered how it was possible for
this to be the man who had been racketing and roistering day after day,
night after night for nearly a week. He helped the heavy and awkward
Tetlow to descend, said:

"You'll have to pay, Bill. I've got less than a dollar left. And I
touched Gaskill for a hundred and fifty to-night. You can imagine how
drunk he was, to let me have it. How they've been shying off from _me_
these last few months!"

"And you want _Galloway_ to come to _you_," thrust Tetlow, as he counted
out the money.

"Don't go back and chew on that," laughed Norman. "It's settled." He
took the money, gave it to the driver. "Thanks," he said to Tetlow.
"I'll pay you to-morrow--that is, later to-day--when you send me another
check."

"Why should you pay for my cab?" rejoined Tetlow.

"Because it's easier for me to make money than it is for you," replied
Norman. "If you were in my position--the position I've been in for
months--would anybody on earth give you three thousand dollars a month?"

Tetlow looked sour. His good nature was rubbing thin in spots.

"Don't lose your temper," laughed Norman. "I'm pounding away at you
about my superiority, partly because I've been drinking, but chiefly for
your own good--so that you'll realize I'm right and not mess things with
Galloway."

They went up to Norman's suite. Norman tried to unlock the door, found
it already unlocked. He turned the knob, threw the door wide for Tetlow
to enter first. Then, over Tetlow's shoulder he saw on the marble-topped
center table Dorothy's hat and jacket, the one she had worn away, the
only one she had. He stared at them, then at Tetlow. A confused look in
the fat, slow face made him say sharply:

"What does this mean, Tetlow?"

"Not so loud, Fred," said Tetlow, closing the door into the public hall.
"She's in the bedroom--probably asleep. She's been here since
yesterday."

"You brought her back?" demanded Norman.

"She wanted to come. I simply----"

Norman made a silencing gesture. Tetlow's faltering voice stopped short.
Norman stood near the table, his hands deep in his trousers' pockets,
his gaze fixed upon the hat and jacket. When Tetlow's agitation could
bear the uncertainties of that silence no longer, he went on:

"Fred, you mustn't forget how young and inexperienced she is. She's been
foolish, but nothing more. She's as pure as when she came into the
world. And it's the truth that she wanted to come back. I saw it as soon
as I began to talk with her."

"What are you chattering about?" said Norman fiercely. "Why did you
meddle in my affairs? Why did you bring her back?"

"I knew she needed you," pleaded Tetlow. "Then, too--I was afraid--I
knew how you acted before, and I thought you'd not get your gait again
until you had her."

Norman gave a short sardonic laugh. "If you'd only stop trying to
understand me!" he said.

Tetlow was utterly confused. "But, Fred, you don't realize--not all," he
cried imploringly. "She discovered--she thinks, I believe--that
is--she--she--that probably--that in a few months you'll be something
more than a husband--and she something more than a wife--that
you--that--you and she will be a father and a mother."

Tetlow's meaning slowly dawned on Norman. He seated himself in his
favorite attitude, legs sprawled, fingers interlaced behind his head.

"Wasn't I right to bring her back--to tell her she needn't fear to
come?" pleaded Tetlow.

Norman made no reply. After a brief silence he said: "Well, good night,
old man. Come round to my office any time after ten." He rose and gave
Tetlow his hand. "And arrange for Galloway whenever you like. Good
night."

Tetlow hesitated. "Fred--you'll not be harsh to her?" he said.

Norman smiled--a satirical smile, yet exquisitely gentle. "If you _only_
wouldn't try to understand me, Bill," he said.

When he was alone he sat lost in thought. At last he rang for a bell
boy. And when the boy came, he said: "That door there"--indicating one
in the opposite wall of the sitting room--"what does it lead into?"

"Another bedroom, sir."

"Unlock it, and tell them at the office I wish that room added to my
suite."

As soon as the additional bedroom was at his disposal, he went in and
began to undress. When he had taken off coat and waistcoat he paused to
telephone to the office a call for eight o'clock. As he finished and
hung up the receiver, a sound from the direction of the sitting room
made him glance in there. On the threshold of the other bedroom stood
his wife. She was in her nightgown; her hair, done in a single thick
braid, hung down across her bosom. There was in the room and upon her
childish loveliness the strange commingling of lights and shadows that
falls when the electricity is still on and the early morning light is
pushing in at the windows. They looked at each other in silence for some
time. If she was frightened or in the least embarrassed she did not show
it. She simply looked at him, while ever so slowly a smile dawned--a
gleam in the eyes, a flutter round the lips, growing merrier and
merrier. He did not smile. He continued to regard her gravely.

"I heard you and Mr. Tetlow come in," she said. "Then--you talked so
long--I fell asleep again. I only this minute awakened."

"Well, now you can go to sleep again," said he.

"But I'm not a bit sleepy. What are you doing in that room?"

She advanced toward his door. He stood aside. She peeped in. She was so
close to him that her nightgown brushed the bosom of his shirt. "Another
bedroom!" she exclaimed. "Just like ours."

"I didn't wish to disturb you," said he, calm and grave.

"But you wouldn't have been disturbing me," protested she, leaning
against the door frame, less than two feet away and directly facing him.

"I'll stay on here," said he.

She gazed at him with great puzzled eyes. "Aren't you glad I'm back?"
she asked.

"Certainly," said he with a polite smile. "But I must get some sleep."
And he moved away.

"You must let me tell you how I happened to go and why I came----"

"Please," he interrupted, looking at her with a piercing though not in
the least unfriendly expression that made her grow suddenly pale and
thoughtful. "I do not wish to hear about it--not now--not ever. Tetlow
told me all that it's necessary for me to know. You have come to stay, I
assume?"

"Yes--if"--her lip quivered--"if you'll let me."

"There can be no question of that," said he with the same polite gravity
he had maintained throughout.

"You want me to leave you alone?"

"Please. I need sleep badly--and I've only three hours."

"You are--angry with me?"

He looked placidly into her lovely, swimming eyes. "Not in the least."

"But how can you help being? I acted dreadfully."

He smiled gently. "But you are back--and the incident is closed."

She looked down at the carpet, her fingers playing with her braid,
twisting and untwisting its strands. He stood waiting to close the door.
She said, without lifting her eyes--said in a quiet, expressionless way,
"I have killed your love?"

"I'll not trouble you any more," evaded he. And he laid his hand
significantly upon the knob.

"I don't understand," she murmured. Then, with a quick apologetic glance
at him, "But I'm very inconsiderate. You want to sleep. Good night."

"Good night," said he, beginning to close the door.

She impulsively stood close before him, lifted her small white face, as
if for a kiss. "Do you forgive me?" she asked. "I was foolish. I didn't
understand--till I went back. Then--nothing was the same. And I knew I
wasn't fitted for that life--and didn't really care for him--and----"

He kissed her on the brow. "Don't agitate yourself," said he. "And we
will never speak of this again."

She shrank as if he had struck her. Her head drooped, and her shoulders.
When she was clear of the door, he quietly closed it.




XIX


It was not many minutes after ten when Tetlow hurried into Norman's
office. "Galloway's coming at eleven!" said he, with an air of triumph.

"So you mulled over what I said and decided that I was not altogether
drunk?"

"I wasn't sure of that," replied Tetlow. "But I was afraid you'd be
offended if I didn't try to get him. He gave me no trouble at all. As
soon as I told him you'd be glad to see him at your office, he astounded
me by saying he'd come."

"He and I have had dealings," said Norman. "He understood at once. I
always know my way when I'm dealing with a big man. It's only the little
people that are muddled and complex. I hope you'll not forget this
lesson, Billy."

"I shan't," promised Tetlow.

"We are to be partners," pursued Norman. "We shall be intimately
associated for years. You'll save me a vast amount of time and energy
and yourself a vast amount of fuming and fretting, if you'll simply
accept what I say, without discussion. When I want discussion I'll ask
your advice."

"I'm afraid you don't think it's worth much," said Tetlow humbly, "and I
guess it isn't."

"On the contrary, invaluable," declared Norman with flattering emphasis.
"Where you lack and I excel is in decision and action. I'll often get
you to tell me what ought to be done, and then I'll make you do
it--which you'd never dare, by yourself."

At eleven sharp Galloway came, looking as nearly like a dangerous old
eagle as a human being well could. Rapacious, merciless, tyrannical; a
famous philanthropist. Stingy to pettiness; a giver away of millions.
Rigidly honest, yet absolutely unscrupulous; faithful to the last letter
of his given word, yet so treacherous where his sly mind could nose out
a way to evade the spirit of his agreements that his name was a synonym
for unfaithfulness. An assiduous and groveling snob, yet so militantly
democratic that, unless his interest compelled, he would not employ any
member of the "best families" in any important capacity. He seemed a
bundle of contradictions. In fact he was profoundly consistent. That is
to say, he steadily pursued in every thought and act the gratification
of his two passions--wealth and power. He lost no seen opportunity,
however shameful, to add to his fortune or to amuse himself with the
human race, which he regarded with the unpitying contempt characteristic
of every cold nature born or risen to success.

His theory of life--and it is the theory that explains most great
financial successes, however they may pretend or believe--his theory of
life was that he did not need friends because the friends of a strong
man weaken and rob him, but that he did need enemies because he could
grow rich and powerful destroying and despoiling them. To him friends
suggested the birds living in a tree. They might make the tree more
romantic to the unthinking observer; but they in fact ate its budding
leaves and its fruit and rotted its bough joints with their filthy
nests.

We Americans are probably nearest to children of any race in
civilization. The peculiar conditions of life--their almost Arcadian
simplicity--up to a generation or so ago, gave us a false training in
the study of human nature. We believe what the good preacher, the
novelist and the poet, all as ignorant of life as nursery books, tell us
about the human heart. We fancy that in a social system modeled upon the
cruel and immoral system of Nature, success is to the good and kind.
Life is like the pious story in the Sunday-school library; evil is the
exception and to practice the simple virtues is to tread with sure step
the highway to riches and fame. This sort of ignorance is taught, is
proclaimed, is apparently accepted throughout the world. Literature and
the drama, representing life as it is dreamed by humanity, life as it
perhaps may be some day, create an impression which defies the plain
daily and hourly mockings of experience. Because weak and petty
offenders are often punished, the universe is pictured as sternly
enforcing the criminal codes enacted by priests or lawyers. But, while
all the world half inclines to this agreeable mendacity about life, only
in America of all civilization is the mendacity accepted as gospel, and
suspicion about it frowned upon as the heresy of cynicism. So the
Galloways prosper and are in high moral repute. Some day we shall learn
that a social system which is merely a slavish copy of Nature's
barbarous and wasteful sway of the survival of the toughest could be and
ought to be improved upon by the intelligence of the human race. Some
day we shall put Nature in its proper place as kindergarten teacher, and
drop it from godship and erect enlightened human understanding instead.
But that is a long way off. Meanwhile the Galloways will reign, and will
assure us that they won their success by the Decalogue and the Golden
Rule--and will be believed by all who seek to assure for themselves in
advance almost certain failure at material success in the arena of
action.

But they will not be believed by men of ambition, pushing resolutely for
power and wealth. So Frederick Norman knew precisely what he was facing
when Galloway's tall gaunt figure and face of the bird of prey appeared
before him. Galloway had triumphed and was triumphing not through
obedience to the Sunday sermons and the silly novels, poems, plays, and
the nonsense chattered by the obscure multitudes whom the mighty few
exploit, but through obedience to the conditions imposed by our social
system. If he raised wages a little, it was in order that he might have
excuse for raising prices a great deal. If he gave away millions, it was
for his fame, and usually to quiet the scandal over some particularly
wicked wholesale robbery. No, Galloway was not a witness to the might of
altruistic virtue as a means to triumph. Charity and all the other forms
of chicanery by which the many are defrauded and fooled by the few--those
"virtues" he understood and practiced. But justice--humanity's ages-long
dream that at last seems to glitter as a hope in the horizon of the
future--justice--not legal justice, nor moral justice, but human
justice--that idea would have seemed to him ridiculous, Utopian,
something for the women and the children and the socialists.

Norman understood Galloway, and Galloway understood Norman. Galloway,
with an old man's garrulity and a confirmed moral poseur's eagerness
about appearances, began to unfold his virtuous reasons for the
impending break with Burroughs--the industrial and financial war out of
which he expected to come doubly rich and all but supreme. Midway he
stopped.

"You are not listening," said he sharply to the young man.

Their eyes met. Norman's eyes were twinkling. "No," said he, "I am
waiting."

There was the suggestion of an answering gleam of sardonic humor in
Galloway's cold gray eyes. "Waiting for what?"

"For you to finish with me as father confessor, to begin with me as
lawyer. Pray don't hurry. My time is yours." This with a fine air of
utmost suavity and respect.

In fact, while Galloway was doddering on and on with his fake
moralities, Norman was thinking of his own affairs, was wondering at his
indifference about Dorothy. The night before--the few hours before--when
he had dealt with her so calmly, he, even as he talked and listened and
acted, had assumed that the enormous amount of liquor he had been
consuming was in some way responsible. He had said to himself, "When I
am over this, when I have had sleep and return to the normal, I shall
again be the foolish slave of all these months." But here he was, sober,
having taken only enough whisky to prevent an abrupt let-down--here he
was viewing her in the same tranquil light. No longer all his life; no
longer even dominant; only a part of life--and he was by no means
certain that she was an important part.

How explain the mystery of the change? Because she had voluntarily come
back, did he feel that she was no longer baffling but was definitely
his? Or had passion running madly on and on dropped--perhaps not dead,
but almost dead--from sheer exhaustion?--was it weary of racing and
content to saunter and to stroll? . . . He could not account for the
change. He only knew that he who had been quite mad was now quite
sane. . . . Would he like to be rid of her? Did he regret that they were
tied together? No, curiously enough. It was high time he got married;
she would do as well as another. She had beauty, youth, amiability,
physical charm for him. There was advantage in the fact that her
inferiority to him, her dependence on him, would enable him to take as
much or as little of her as he might feel disposed, to treat her as the
warrior must ever treat his entire domestic establishment from wife down
to pet dog or cat or baby. . . . No, he did not regret Josephine. He could
see now disadvantages greater than her advantages. All of value she
would have brought him he could get for himself, and she would have been
troublesome--exacting, disputing his sway, demanding full value or more
in return for the love she was giving with such exalted notions of its
worth.

"You are married?" Galloway suddenly said, interrupting his own speech
and Norman's thought.

"Yes," said Norman.

"Just married, I believe?"

"Just."

Young and old, high and low, successful and failed, we are a race of
advice-givers. As for Galloway, he was not one to neglect that showy
form of inexpensive benevolence. "Have plenty of children," said he.

"And keep your family in the country till they grow up. Town's no place
for women. They go crazy. Women--and most men--have no initiative. They
think only about whatever's thrust at them. In the country it'll be
their children and domestic things. In town it'll be getting and
spending money."

Norman was struck by this. "I think I'll take your advice," said he.

"A man's home ought to be a retreat, not an inn. We are humoring the
women too much. They are forgetting who earns what they spend in
exhibiting themselves. If a woman wants that sort of thing, let her get
out and earn it. Why should she expect it from the man who has
undertaken her support because he wanted a wife to take care of his
house and a mother for his children? If a woman doesn't like the job,
all right. But if she takes it and accepts its pay, why, she should do
its work."

"Flawless logic," said Norman.

"When I hire a man to work, he doesn't expect to idle about showing
other people how handsome he is in the clothes my money pays for. Not
that marriage is altogether a business--not at all. But, my dear sir--"
And Galloway brought his cane down with the emphasis of one speaking
from a heart full of bitter experience--"unless it is a business at
bottom, organized and conducted on sound business principles, there's no
sentiment either. We are human beings--and that means we are first of
all _business_ beings, engaged in getting food, clothing, shelter. No
sentiment--_no_ sentiment, sir, is worth while that isn't firmly grounded.
It's a house without a foundation. It's a steeple without a church under
it."