A Far Country, Book 1

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He talked a while of my father, to whom, so he said, he had looked up
ever since he had been admitted to the bar.

"It would be a pleasure to me, Hugh, as well as a matter of pride," he
said cordially, but with dignity, "to have Matthew Paret's son in my
office. I suppose you will be wishing to take your mother somewhere this
summer, but if you care to come here in the autumn, you will be welcome.
You will begin, of course, as other young men begin,--as I began. But I
am a believer in blood, and I'll be glad to have you. Mr. Fowndes and Mr.
Ripon feel the same way." He escorted me to the door himself.

Everywhere I went during that brief visit home I was struck by change, by
the crumbling and decay of institutions that once had held me in thrall,
by the superimposition of a new order that as yet had assumed no definite
character. Some of the old landmarks had disappeared; there were new and
aggressive office buildings, new and aggressive residences, new and
aggressive citizens who lived in them, and of whom my mother spoke with
gentle deprecation. Even Claremore, that paradise of my childhood, had
grown shrivelled and shabby, even tawdry, I thought, when we went out
there one Sunday afternoon; all that once represented the magic word
"country" had vanished. The old flat piano, made in Philadelphia ages
ago, the horsehair chairs and sofa had been replaced by a nondescript
furniture of the sort displayed behind plate-glass windows of the city's
stores: rocking-chairs on stands, upholstered in clashing colours, their
coiled springs only half hidden by tassels, and "ornamental" electric
fixtures, instead of the polished coal-oil lamps. Cousin Jenny had grown
white, Willie was a staid bachelor, Helen an old maid, while Mary had
married a tall, anaemic young man with glasses, Walter Kinley, whom
Cousin Robert had taken into the store. As I contemplated the Brecks odd
questions suggested themselves: did honesty and warm-heartedness
necessarily accompany a lack of artistic taste? and was virtue its own
reward, after all? They drew my mother into the house, took off her
wraps, set her down in the most comfortable rocker, and insisted on
making her a cup of tea.

I was touched. I loved them still, and yet I was conscious of
reservations concerning them. They, too, seemed a little on the defensive
with me, and once in a while Mary was caustic in her remarks.

"I guess nothing but New York will be good enough for Hugh now. He'll be
taking Cousin Sarah away from us."

"Not at all, my dear," said my mother, gently, "he's going into Mr.
Watling's office next autumn."

"Theodore Watling?" demanded Cousin Robert, pausing in his carving.

"Yes, Robert. Mr. Watling has been good enough to say that he would like
to have Hugh. Is there anything--?"

"Oh, I'm out of date, Sarah," Cousin Robert replied, vigorously severing
the leg of the turkey. "These modern lawyers are too smart for me.
Watling's no worse than the others, I suppose,--only he's got more
ability."

"I've never heard anything against him," said my mother in a pained
voice. "Only the other day McAlery Willett congratulated me that Hugh was
going to be with him."

"You mustn't mind Robert, Sarah," put in Cousin Jenny,--a remark
reminiscent of other days.

"Dad has a notion that his generation is the only honest one," said
Helen, laughingly, as she passed a plate.

I had gained a sense of superiority, and I was quite indifferent to
Cousin Robert's opinion of Mr. Watling, of modern lawyers in general.
More than once a wave of self-congratulation surged through me that I had
possessed the foresight and initiative to get out of the wholesale
grocery business while there was yet time. I looked at Willie, still
freckled, still literal, still a plodder, at Walter Kinley, and I thought
of the drabness of their lives; at Cousin Robert himself as he sat
smoking his cigar in the bay-window on that dark February day, and
suddenly I pitied him. The suspicion struck me that he had not prospered
of late, and this deepened to a conviction as he talked.

"The Republican Party is going to the dogs," he asserted.

"It used to be an honourable party, but now it is no better than the
other. Politics are only conducted, now, for the purpose of making
unscrupulous men rich, sir. For years I furnished this city with good
groceries, if I do say it myself. I took a pride in the fact that the
inmates of the hospitals, yes, and the dependent poor in the city's
institutions, should have honest food. You can get anything out of the
city if you are willing to pay the politicians for it. I lost my city
contracts. Why? Because I refused to deal with scoundrels. Weill and
Company and other unscrupulous upstarts are willing to do so, and poison
the poor and the sick with adulterated groceries! The first thing I knew
was that the city auditor was holding back my bills for supplies, and
paying Weill's. That's what politics and business, yes, sir, and the law,
have come to in these days. If a man wants to succeed, he must turn into
a rascal."

I was not shocked, but I was silent, uncomfortable, wishing that it were
time to take the train back to the city. Cousin Robert's face was more
worn than I had thought, and I contrasted him inevitably with the
forceful person who used to stand, in his worn alpaca coat, on the
pavement in front of his store, greeting with clear-eyed content his
fellow merchants of the city. Willie Breck, too, was silent, and Walter
Kinley took off his glasses and wiped them. In the meanwhile Helen had
left the group in which my mother sat, and, approaching us, laid her
hands on her father's shoulders.

"Now, dad," she said, in affectionate remonstrance, "you're excited about
politics again, and you know it isn't good for you. And besides, they're
not worth it."

"You're right, Helen," he replied. Under the pressure of her hands he
made a strong effort to control himself, and turned to address my mother
across the room.

"I'm getting to be a crotchety old man," he said. "It's a good thing I
have a daughter to remind me of it."

"It is a good thing, Robert," said my mother.

During the rest of our visit he seemed to have recovered something of his
former spirits and poise, taking refuge in the past. They talked of their
own youth, of families whose houses had been landmarks on the Second
Bank.

"I'm worried about your Cousin Robert, Hugh," my mother confided to me,
when we were at length seated in the train. "I've heard rumours that
things are not so well at the store as they might be." We looked out at
the winter landscape, so different from that one which had thrilled every
fibre of my being in the days when the railroad on which we travelled had
been a winding narrow gauge. The orchards--those that remained--were
bare; stubble pricked the frozen ground where tassels had once waved in
the hot, summer wind. We flew by row after row of ginger-bread, suburban
houses built on "villa plots," and I read in large letters on a hideous
sign-board, "Woodbine Park."

"Hugh, have you ever heard anything against--Mr. Watling?"

"No, mother," I said. "So far as I knew, he is very much looked up to by
lawyers and business men. He is counsel, I believe, for Mr. Blackwood's
street car line on Boyne Street. And I told you, I believe, that I met
him once at Mr. Kyme's."

"Poor Robert!" she sighed. "I suppose business trouble does make one
bitter,--I've seen it so often. But I never imagined that it would
overtake Robert, and at his time of life! It is an old and respected
firm, and we have always had a pride in it." ...

That night, when I was going to bed, it was evident that the subject was
still in her mind. She clung to my hand a moment.

"I, too, am afraid of the new, Hugh," she said, a little tremulously. "We
all grow so, as age comes on."

"But you are not old, mother," I protested.

"I have a feeling, since your father has gone, that I have lived my life,
my dear, though I'd like to stay long enough to see you happily
married--to have grandchildren. I was not young when you were born." And
she added, after a little while, "I know nothing about business affairs,
and now--now that your father is no longer here, sometimes I'm afraid--"

"Afraid of what, mother?"

She tried to smile at me through her tears. We were in the old
sitting-room, surrounded by the books.

"I know it's foolish, and it isn't that I don't trust you. I know that
the son of your father couldn't do anything that was not honourable. And
yet I am afraid of what the world is becoming. The city is growing so
fast, and so many new people are coming in. Things are not the same.
Robert is right, there. And I have heard your father say the same thing.
Hugh, promise me that you will try to remember always what he was, and
what he would wish you to be!"

"I will, mother," I answered. "But I think you would find that Cousin
Robert exaggerates a little, makes things seem worse than they really
are. Customs change, you know. And politics were never well--Sunday
schools." I, too, smiled a little. "Father knew that. And he would never
take an active part in them."

"He was too fine!" she exclaimed.

"And now," I continued, "Cousin Robert has happened to come in contact
with them through business. That is what has made the difference in him.
Before, he always knew they were corrupt, but he rarely thought about
them."

"Hugh," she said suddenly, after a pause, "you must remember one
thing,--that you can afford to be independent. I thank God that your
father has provided for that!"

I was duly admitted, the next autumn, to the bar of my own state, and was
assigned to a desk in the offices of Watling, Fowndes and Ripon. Larry
Weed was my immediate senior among the apprentices, and Larry was a
hero-worshipper. I can see him now. He suggested a bullfrog as he sat in
the little room we shared in common, his arms akimbo over a law book, his
little legs doubled under him, his round, eyes fixed expectantly on the
doorway. And even if I had not been aware of my good fortune in being
connected with such a firm as Theodore Watling's, Larry would shortly
have brought it home to me. During those weeks when I was making my first
desperate attempts at briefing up the law I was sometimes interrupted by
his exclamations when certain figures went by in the corridor.

"Say, Hugh, do you know who that was?"

"No."

"Miller Gorse."

"Who's he?"

"Do you mean to say you never heard of Miller Gorse?"

"I've been away a long time," I would answer apologetically. A person of
some importance among my contemporaries at Harvard, I had looked forward
to a residence in my native city with the complacency of one who has seen
something of the world,--only to find that I was the least in the new
kingdom. And it was a kingdom. Larry opened up to me something of the
significance and extent of it, something of the identity of the men who
controlled it.

"Miller Gorse," he said impressively, "is the counsel for the railroad."

"What railroad? You mean the--" I was adding, when he interrupted me
pityingly.

"After you've been here a while you'll find out there's only one railroad
in this state, so far as politics are concerned. The Ashuela and
Northern, the Lake Shore and the others don't count."

I refrained from asking any more questions at that time, but afterwards I
always thought of the Railroad as spelled with a capital.

"Miller Gorse isn't forty yet," Larry told me on another occasion.
"That's doing pretty well for a man who comes near running this state."

For the sake of acquiring knowledge, I endured Mr. Weed's patronage. I
inquired how Mr. Gorse ran the state.

"Oh, you'll find out soon enough," he assured me.

"But Mr. Barbour's president of the Railroad."

"Sure. Once in a while they take something up to him, but as a rule he
leaves things to Gorse."

Whereupon I resolved to have a good look at Mr. Gorse at the first
opportunity. One day Mr. Watling sent out for some papers.

"He's in there now;" said Larry. "You take 'em."

"In there" meant Mr. Watling's sanctum. And in there he was. I had only a
glance at the great man, for, with a kindly but preoccupied "Thank you,
Hugh," Mr. Watling took the papers and dismissed me. Heaviness, blackness
and impassivity,--these were the impressions of Mr. Gorse which I carried
away from that first meeting. The very solidity of his flesh seemed to
suggest the solidity of his position. Such, say the psychologists, is the
effect of prestige.

I remember well an old-fashioned picture puzzle in one of my boyhood
books. The scene depicted was to all appearances a sylvan, peaceful one,
with two happy lovers seated on a log beside a brook; but presently, as
one gazed at the picture, the head of an animal stood forth among the
branches, and then the body; more animals began to appear, bit by bit; a
tiger, a bear, a lion, a jackal, a fox, until at last, whenever I looked
at the page, I did not see the sylvan scene at all, but only the
predatory beasts of the forest. So, one by one, the figures of the real
rulers of the city superimposed themselves for me upon the simple and
democratic design of Mayor, Council, Board of Aldermen, Police Force,
etc., that filled the eye of a naive and trusting electorate which fondly
imagined that it had something to say in government. Miller Gorse was one
of these rulers behind the screen, and Adolf Scherer, of the Boyne Iron
Works, another; there was Leonard Dickinson of the Corn National Bank;
Frederick Grierson, becoming wealthy in city real estate; Judah B.
Tallant, who, though outlawed socially, was deferred to as the owner of
the Morning Era; and even Ralph Hambleton, rapidly superseding the
elderly and conservative Mr. Lord, who had hitherto managed the great
Hambleton estate. Ralph seemed to have become, in a somewhat gnostic
manner, a full-fledged financier. Not having studied law, he had been
home for four years when I became a legal fledgling, and during the early
days of my apprenticeship I was beholden to him for many "eye openers"
concerning the conduct of great affairs. I remember him sauntering into
my room one morning when Larry Weed had gone out on an errand.

"Hello, Hughie," he said, with his air of having nothing to do. "Grinding
it out? Where's Watling?"

"Isn't he in his office?"

"No."

"Well, what can we do for you?" I asked.

Ralph grinned.

"Perhaps I'll tell you when you're a little older. You're too young." And
he sank down into Larry Weed's chair, his long legs protruding on the
other side of the table. "It's a matter of taxes. Some time ago I found
out that Dickinson and Tallant and others I could mention were paying a
good deal less on their city property than we are. We don't propose to do
it any more--that's all."

"How can Mr. Watling help you?" I inquired.

"Well, I don't mind giving you a few tips about your profession, Hughie.
I'm going to get Watling to fix it up with the City Hall gang. Old Lord
doesn't like it, I'll admit, and when I told him we had been contributing
to the city long enough, that I proposed swinging into line with other
property holders, he began to blubber about disgrace and what my
grandfather would say if he were alive. Well, he isn't alive. A good deal
of water has flowed under the bridges since his day. It's a mere matter
of business, of getting your respectable firm to retain a City Hall
attorney to fix it up with the assessor."

"How about the penitentiary?" I ventured, not too seriously.

"I shan't go to the penitentiary, neither will Watling. What I do is to
pay a lawyer's fee. There isn't anything criminal in that, is there?"

For some time after Ralph had departed I sat reflecting upon this new
knowledge, and there came into my mind the bitterness of Cousin Robert
Breck against this City Hall gang, and his remarks about lawyers. I
recalled the tone in which he had referred to Mr. Watling. But Ralph's
philosophy easily triumphed. Why not be practical, and become master of a
situation which one had not made, and could not alter, instead of being
overwhelmed by it? Needless to say, I did not mention the conversation to
Mr. Watling, nor did he dwindle in my estimation. These necessary
transactions did not interfere in any way with his personal
relationships, and his days were filled with kindnesses. And was not Mr.
Ripon, the junior partner, one of the evangelical lights of the
community, conducting advanced Bible classes every week in the Church of
the Redemption?... The unfolding of mysteries kept me alert. And I
understood that, if I was to succeed, certain esoteric knowledge must be
acquired, as it were, unofficially. I kept my eyes and ears open, and
applied myself, with all industry, to the routine tasks with which every
young man in a large legal firm is familiar. I recall distinctly my pride
when, the Board of Aldermen having passed an ordinance lowering the water
rates, I was intrusted with the responsibility of going before the court
in behalf of Mr. Ogilvy's water company, obtaining a temporary
restricting order preventing the ordinance from going at once into
effect. Here was an affair in point. Were it not for lawyers of the
calibre of Watling, Fowndes and Ripon, hard-earned private property would
soon be confiscated by the rapacious horde. Once in a while I was made
aware that Mr. Watling had his eye on me.

"Well, Hugh," he would say, "how are you getting along? That's right,
stick to it, and after a while we'll hand the drudgery over to somebody
else."

He possessed the supreme quality of a leader of men in that he took pains
to inform himself concerning the work of the least of his subordinates;
and he had the gift of putting fire into a young man by a word or a touch
of the hand on the shoulder. It was not difficult for me, therefore, to
comprehend Larry Weed's hero-worship, the loyalty of other members of the
firm or of those occupants of the office whom I have not mentioned. My
first impression of him, which I had got at Jerry Kyme's, deepened as
time went on, and I readily shared the belief of those around me that his
legal talents easily surpassed those of any of his contemporaries. I can
recall, at this time, several noted cases in the city when I sat in court
listening to his arguments with thrills of pride. He made us all feel--no
matter how humble may have been our contributions to the
preparation--that we had a share in his triumphs. We remembered his
manner with judges and juries, and strove to emulate it. He spoke as if
there could be no question as to his being right as to the law and the
facts, and yet, in some subtle way that bated analysis, managed not to
antagonize the court. Victory was in the air in that office. I do not
mean to say there were not defeats; but frequently these defeats, by
resourcefulness, by a never-say-die spirit, by a consummate knowledge,
not only of the law, but of other things at which I have hinted, were
turned into ultimate victories. We fought cases from one court to
another, until our opponents were worn out or the decision was reversed.
We won, and that spirit of winning got into the blood. What was most
impressed on me in those early years, I think, was the discovery that
there was always a path--if one were clever enough to find it--from one
terrace to the next higher. Staying power was the most prized of all the
virtues. One could always, by adroitness, compel a legal opponent to
fight the matter out all over again on new ground, or at least on ground
partially new. If the Court of Appeals should fail one, there was the
Supreme Court; there was the opportunity, also, to shift from the state
to the federal courts; and likewise the much-prized device known as a
change of venue, when a judge was supposed to be "prejudiced."




IX.

As my apprenticeship advanced I grew more and more to the inhabitants of
our city into two kinds, the who were served, and the inefficient, who
were separate efficient, neglected; but the mental process of which the
classification was the result was not so deliberate as may be supposed.
Sometimes, when an important client would get into trouble, the affair
took me into the police court, where I saw the riff-raff of the city
penned up, waiting to have justice doled out to them: weary women who had
spent the night in cells, indifferent now as to the front they presented
to the world, the finery rued that they had tended so carefully to catch
the eyes of men on the darkened streets; brazen young girls, who blazed
forth defiance to all order; derelict men, sodden and hopeless, with
scrubby beards; shifty looking burglars and pickpockets. All these I
beheld, at first with twinges of pity, later to mass them with the ugly
and inevitable with whom society had to deal somehow. Lawyers, after all,
must be practical men. I came to know the justices of these police
courts, as well as other judges. And underlying my acquaintance with all
of them was the knowledge--though not on the threshold of my
consciousness--that they depended for their living, every man of them,
those who were appointed and those who were elected, upon a political
organization which derived its sustenance from the element whence came
our clients. Thus by degrees the sense of belonging to a special
priesthood had grown on me.

I recall an experience with that same Mr. Nathan. Weill, the wholesale
grocer of whose commerce with the City Hall my Cousin Robert Breck had so
bitterly complained. Late one afternoon Mr. Weill's carriage ran over a
child on its way up-town through one of the poorer districts. The
parents, naturally, were frantic, and the coachman was arrested. This was
late in the afternoon, and I was alone in the office when the telephone
rang. Hurrying to the police station, I found Mr. Weill in a state of
excitement and abject fear, for an ugly crowd had gathered outside.

"Could not Mr. Watling or Mr. Fowndes come?" demanded the grocer.

With an inner contempt for the layman's state of mind on such occasions I
assured him of my competency to handle the case. He was impressed, I
think, by the sergeant's deference, who knew what it meant to have such
an office as ours interfere with the affair. I called up the prosecuting
attorney, who sent to Monahan's saloon, close by, and procured a release
for the coachman on his own recognizance, one of many signed in blank and
left there by the justice for privileged cases. The coachman was hustled
out by a back door, and the crowd dispersed.

The next morning, while a score or more of delinquents sat in the anxious
seats, Justice Garry recognized me and gave me precedence. And Mr. Weill,
with a sigh of relief, paid his fine.

"Mr. Paret, is it?" he asked, as we stood together for a moment on the
sidewalk outside the court. "You have managed this well. I will
remember."

He was sued, of course. When he came to the office he insisted on
discussing the case with Mr. Watling, who sent for me.

"That is a bright young man," Mr. Weill declared, shaking my hand. "He
will get on."

"Some day," said Mr. Watling, "he may save you a lot of money, Weill."

"When my friend Mr. Watling is United States Senator,--eh?"

Mr. Watling laughed. "Before that, I hope. I advise you to compromise
this suit, Weill," he added. "How would a thousand dollars strike you?
I've had Paret look up the case, and he tells me the little girl has had
to have an operation."

"A thousand dollars!" cried the grocer. "What right have these people to
let their children play on the streets? It's an outrage."

"Where else have the children to play?" Mr. Watling touched his arm.
"Weill," he said gently, "suppose it had been your little girl?" The
grocer pulled out his handkerchief and mopped his bald forehead. But he
rallied a little.

"You fight these damage cases for the street railroads all through the
courts."

"Yes," Mr. Watling agreed, "but there a principle is involved. If the
railroads once got into the way of paying damages for every careless
employee, they would soon be bankrupt through blackmail. But here you
have a child whose father is a poor janitor and can't afford sickness.
And your coachman, I imagine, will be more particular in the future."

In the end Mr. Weill made out a cheque and departed in a good humour,
convinced that he was well out of the matter. Here was one of many
instances I could cite of Mr. Watling's tenderness of heart. I felt,
moreover, as if he had done me a personal favour, since it was I who had
recommended the compromise. For I had been to the hospital and had seen
the child on the cot,--a dark little thing, lying still in her pain, with
the bewildered look of a wounded animal....

Not long after this incident of Mr. Weill's damage suit I obtained a more
or less definite promotion by the departure of Larry Weed. He had
suddenly developed a weakness of the lungs. Mr. Watling got him a place
in Denver, and paid his expenses west.

The first six or seven years I spent in the office of Wading, Fowndes and
Ripon were of importance to my future career, but there is little to
relate of them. I was absorbed not only in learning law, but in acquiring
that esoteric knowledge at which I have hinted--not to be had from my
seniors and which I was convinced was indispensable to a successful and
lucrative practice. My former comparison of the organization of our city
to a picture puzzle wherein the dominating figures become visible only
after long study is rather inadequate. A better analogy would be the
human anatomy: we lawyers, of course, were the brains; the financial and
industrial interests the body, helpless without us; the City Hall
politicians, the stomach that must continually be fed. All three, law,
politics and business, were interdependent, united by a nervous system
too complex to be developed here. In these years, though I worked hard
and often late, I still found time for convivialities, for social
gaieties, yet little by little without realizing the fact, I was losing
zest for the companionship of my former intimates. My mind was becoming
polarized by the contemplation of one object, success, and to it human
ties were unconsciously being sacrificed.