A Far Country, Book 1

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"Why, Hugh!" he exclaimed, taking my hand. "I had no idea I should meet
you here--I saw your father only last week, the day I left home." And he
added, turning to Mrs. Kyme, "Hugh is the son of Mr. Matthew Paret, who
has been the leader of our bar for many years."

The recognition and the tribute to my father were so graciously given
that I warmed with gratitude and pride, while Mr. Kyme smiled a little,
remarking that I was a friend of Jerry's. Theodore Watling, for being
here, had suddenly assumed in my eyes a considerable consequence, though
the note he struck in that house was a strange one. It was, however, his
own note, and had a certain distinction, a ring of independence, of the
knowledge of self-worth. Dinner at Weathersfield we youngsters had
usually found rather an oppressive ceremony, with its shaded lights and
precise ritual over which Mr. Kyme presided like a high priest;
conversation had been restrained. That night, as Johnnie Laurens
afterwards expressed it, "things loosened up," and Mr. Watling was
responsible for the loosening. Taking command of the Kyme dinner table
appeared to me to be no mean achievement, but this is just what he did,
without being vulgar or noisy or assertive. Suavitar in modo, forbiter in
re. If, as I watched him there with a newborn pride and loyalty, I had
paused to reconstruct the idea that the mention of his name would
formerly have evoked, I suppose I should have found him falling short of
my notion of a gentleman; it had been my father's opinion; but Mr.
Watling's marriage to Gene Hollister's aunt had given him a standing with
us at home. He possessed virility, vitality in a remarkable degree, yet
some elusive quality that was neither tact nor delicacy--though related
to these differentiated him from the commonplace, self-made man of
ability. He was just off the type. To liken him to a clothing store model
of a well-built, broad-shouldered man with a firm neck, a handsome,
rather square face not lacking in colour and a conventional, drooping
moustache would be slanderous; yet he did suggest it. Suggesting it, he
redeemed it: and the middle western burr in his voice was rather
attractive than otherwise. He had not so much the air of belonging there,
as of belonging anywhere--one of those anomalistic American citizens of
the world who go abroad and make intimates of princes. Before the meal
was over he had inspired me with loyalty and pride, enlisted the
admiration of Jerry and Conybear and Johnnie Laurens; we followed him
into the smoking-room, sitting down in a row on a leather lounge behind
our elders.

Here, now that the gentlemen were alone, there was an inspiring largeness
in their talk that fired the imagination. The subject was investments, at
first those of coal and iron in my own state, for Mr. Watling, it
appeared, was counsel for the Boyne Iron Works.

"It will pay you to keep an eye on that company, Mr. Kyme," he said,
knocking the ashes from his cigar. "Now that old Mr. Durrett's gone--"

"You don't mean to say Nathaniel Durrett's dead!" said Mr. Kyme.

The lawyer nodded.

"The old regime passed with him. Adolf Scherer succeeds him, and you may
take my word for it, he's a coming man. Mr. Durrett, who was a judge of
men, recognized that. Scherer was an emigrant, he had ideas, and rose to
be a foreman. For the last few years Mr. Durrett threw everything on his
shoulders...."

Little by little the scope of the discussion was enlarged until it ranged
over a continent, touching lightly upon lines of railroad, built or
projected, across the great west our pioneers had so lately succeeded in
wresting from the savages, upon mines of copper and gold hidden away
among the mountains, and millions of acres of forest and grazing lands
which a complacent government would relinquish provided certain
technicalities were met: touching lightly, too, very lightly,--upon
senators and congressmen at Washington. And for the first time I learned
that not the least of the functions of these representatives of the
people was to act as the medium between capital and investment, to
facilitate the handing over of the Republic's resources to those in a
position to develop them. The emphasis was laid on development, or rather
on the resulting prosperity for the country: that was the justification,
and it was taken for granted as supreme. Nor was it new to me; this cult
of prosperity. I recalled the torch-light processions of the tariff
enthusiasts of my childhood days, my father's championship of the
Republican Party. He had not idealized politicians, either. For the
American, politics and ethics were strangers.

Thus I listened with increasing fascination to these gentlemen in evening
clothes calmly treating the United States as a melon patch that existed
largely for the purpose of being divided up amongst a limited and favored
number of persons. I had a feeling of being among the initiated. Where,
it may be asked, were my ideals? Let it not be supposed that I believed
myself to have lost them. If so, the impression I have given of myself
has been wholly inadequate. No, they had been transmuted, that is all,
transmuted by the alchemy of Weathersfield, by the personality of
Theodore Watling into brighter visions. My eyes rarely left his face; I
hung on his talk, which was interspersed with native humour, though he
did not always join in the laughter, sometimes gazing at the fire, as
though his keen mind were grappling with a problem suggested. I noted the
respect in which his opinions were held, and my imagination was fired by
an impression of the power to be achieved by successful men of his
profession, by the evidence of their indispensability to capital
itself.... At last when the gentlemen rose and were leaving the room, Mr.
Watling lingered, with his hand on my arm.

"Of course you're going through the Law School, Hugh," he said.

"Yes, sir," I replied.

"Good!" he exclaimed emphatically. "The law, to-day, is more of a career
than ever, especially for a young man with your antecedents and
advantages, and I know of no city in the United States where I would
rather start practice, if I were a young man, than ours. In the next
twenty years we shall see a tremendous growth. Of course you'll be going
into your father's office. You couldn't do better. But I'll keep an eye
on you, and perhaps I'll be able to help you a little, too."

I thanked him gratefully.

A famous artist, who started out in youth to embrace a military career
and who failed to pass an examination at West Point, is said to have
remarked that if silicon had been a gas he would have been a soldier. I
am afraid I may have given the impression that if I had not gone to
Weathersfield and encountered Mr. Watling I might not have been a lawyer.
This impression would be misleading. And while it is certain that I have
not exaggerated the intensity of the spiritual experience I went through
at Cambridge, a somewhat belated consideration for the truth compels me
to register my belief that the mood would in any case have been
ephemeral. The poison generated by the struggle of my nature with its
environment had sunk too deep, and the very education that was supposed
to make a practical man of me had turned me into a sentimentalist. I
became, as will be seen, anything but a practical man in the true sense,
though the world in which I had been brought up and continued to live
deemed me such. My father was greatly pleased when I wrote him that I was
now more than ever convinced of the wisdom of choosing the law as my
profession, and was satisfied that I had come to my senses at last. He
had still been prepared to see me "go off at a tangent," as he expressed
it. On the other hand, the powerful effect of the appeal made by
Weathersfield and Mr. Watling must not be underestimated. Here in one
object lesson was emphasized a host of suggestions each of which had made
its impression. And when I returned to Cambridge Alonzo Cheyne knew that
he had lost me....

I pass over the rest of my college course, and the years I spent at the
Harvard Law School, where were instilled into me without difficulty the
dictums that the law was the most important of all professions, that
those who entered it were a priestly class set aside to guard from
profanation that Ark of the Covenant, the Constitution of the United
States. In short, I was taught law precisely as I had been taught
religion,--scriptural infallibility over again,--a static law and a
static theology,--a set of concepts that were supposed to be equal to any
problems civilization would have to meet until the millennium. What we
are wont to call wisdom is often naively innocent of impending change. It
has no barometric properties.

I shall content myself with relating one incident only of this period. In
the January of my last year I went with a party of young men and girls to
stay over Sunday at Beverly Farms, where Mrs. Fremantle--a young Boston
matron had opened her cottage for the occasion. This "cottage," a roomy,
gabled structure, stood on a cliff, at the foot of which roared the
wintry Atlantic, while we danced and popped corn before the open fires.
During the daylight hours we drove about the country in sleighs, or made
ridiculous attempts to walk on snow-shoes.

On Sunday afternoon, left temporarily to my own devices, I wandered along
the cliff, crossing into the adjoining property. The wind had fallen; the
waves, much subdued, broke rhythmically against the rocks; during the
night a new mantle of snow had been spread, and the clouds were still low
and menacing. As I strolled I became aware of a motionless figure ahead
of me,--one that seemed oddly familiar; the set of the shabby overcoat on
the stooping shoulders, the unconscious pose contributed to a certain
sharpness of individuality; in the act of challenging my memory, I
halted. The man was gazing at the seascape, and his very absorption gave
me a sudden and unfamiliar thrill. The word absorption precisely
expresses my meaning, for he seemed indeed to have become a part of his
surroundings,--an harmonious part. Presently he swung about and looked at
me as though he had expected to find me there--and greeted me by name.

"Krebs!" I exclaimed.

He smiled, and flung out his arm, indicating the scene. His eyes at that
moment seemed to reflect the sea,--they made the gaunt face suddenly
beautiful.

"This reminds me of a Japanese print," he said.

The words, or the tone in which he spoke, curiously transformed the
picture. It was as if I now beheld it, anew, through his vision: the grey
water stretching eastward to melt into the grey sky, the massed, black
trees on the hillside, powdered with white, the snow in rounded,
fantastic patches on the huge boulders at the foot of the cliff. Krebs
did not seem like a stranger, but like one whom I had known always,--one
who stood in a peculiar relationship between me and something greater I
could not define. The impression was fleeting, but real.... I remember
wondering how he could have known anything about Japanese prints.

"I didn't think you were still in this part of the country," I remarked
awkwardly.

"I'm a reporter on a Boston newspaper, and I've been sent up here to
interview old Mr. Dome, who lives in that house," and he pointed to a
roof above the trees. "There is a rumour, which I hope to verify, that he
has just given a hundred thousand dollars to the University."

"And--won't he see you?"

"At present he's taking a nap," said Krebs. "He comes here occasionally
for a rest."

"Do you like interviewing?" I asked.

He smiled again.

"Well, I see a good many different kinds of people, and that's
interesting."

"But--being a reporter?" I persisted.

This continued patronage was not a conscious expression of superiority on
my part, but he did not seem to resent it. He had aroused my curiosity.

"I'm going into the law," he said.

The quiet confidence with which he spoke aroused, suddenly, a twinge of
antagonism. He had every right to go into the law, of course, and yet!...
my query would have made it evident to me, had I been introspective in
those days, that the germ of the ideal of the profession, implanted by
Mr. Watling, was expanding. Were not influential friends necessary for
the proper kind of career? and where were Krebs's? In spite of the
history of Daniel Webster and a long line of American tradition, I felt
an incongruity in my classmate's aspiration. And as he stood there, gaunt
and undoubtedly hungry, his eyes kindling, I must vaguely have classed
him with the revolutionaries of all the ages; must have felt in him,
instinctively, a menace to the stability of that Order with which I had
thrown my fortunes. And yet there were comparatively poor men in the Law
School itself who had not made me feel this way! He had impressed me
against my will, taken me by surprise, commiseration had been mingled
with other feelings that sprang out of the memory of the night I had
called on him, when he had been sick. Now I resented something in him
which Tom Peters had called "crust."

"The law!" I repeated. "Why?"

"Well," he said, "even when I was a boy, working at odd jobs, I used to
think if I could ever be a lawyer I should have reached the top notch of
human dignity."

Once more his smile disarmed me.

"And now" I asked curiously.

"You see, it was an ideal with me, I suppose. My father was responsible
for that. He had the German temperament of '48, and when he fled to this
country, he expected to find Utopia." The smile emerged again, like the
sun shining through clouds, while fascination and antagonism again
struggled within me. "And then came frightful troubles. For years he
could get only enough work to keep him and my mother alive, but he never
lost his faith in America. 'It is man,' he would say, 'man has to grow up
to it--to liberty.' Without the struggle, liberty would be worth nothing.
And he used to tell me that we must all do our part, we who had come
here, and not expect everything to be done for us. He had made that
mistake. If things were bad, why, put a shoulder to the wheel and help to
make them better.

"That helped me," he continued, after a moment's pause. "For I've seen a
good many things, especially since I've been working for a newspaper.
I've seen, again and again, the power of the law turned against those
whom it was intended to protect, I've seen lawyers who care a great deal
more about winning cases than they do about justice, who prostitute their
profession to profit making,--profit making for themselves and others.
And they are often the respectable lawyers, too, men of high standing,
whom you would not think would do such things. They are on the side of
the powerful, and the best of them are all retained by rich men and
corporations. And what is the result? One of the worst evils, I think,
that can befall a country. The poor man goes less and less to the courts.
He is getting bitter, which is bad, which is dangerous. But men won't see
it."

It was on my tongue to refute this, to say that everybody had a chance. I
could indeed recall many arguments that had been drilled into me;
quotations, even, from court decisions. But something prevented me from
doing this,--something in his manner, which was neither argumentative nor
combative.

"That's why I am going into the law," he added. "And I intend to stay in
it if I can keep alive. It's a great chance for me--for all of us. Aren't
you at the Law School?"

I nodded. Once more, as his earnest glance fell upon me, came that
suggestion of a subtle, inexplicable link between us; but before I could
reply, steps were heard behind us, and an elderly servant, bareheaded,
was seen coming down the path.

"Are you the reporter?" he demanded somewhat impatiently of Krebs. "If
you want to see Mr. Dome, you'd better come right away. He's going out
for a drive."

For a while, after he had shaken my hand and departed, I stood in the
snow, looking after him....




VIII

On the Wednesday of that same week the news of my father's sudden and
serious illness came to me in a telegram, and by the time I arrived at
home it was too late to see him again alive. It was my first experience
with death, and what perplexed me continually during the following days
was an inability to feel the loss more deeply. When a child, I had been
easily shaken by the spectacle of sorrow. Had I, during recent years, as
a result of a discovery that emotions arising from human relationships
lead to discomfort and suffering, deliberately been forming a shell,
until now I was incapable of natural feelings? Of late I had seemed
closer to my father, and his letters, though formal, had given evidence
of his affection; in his repressed fashion he had made it clear that he
looked forward to the time when I was to practise with him. Why was it
then, as I gazed upon his fine features in death, that I experienced no
intensity of sorrow? What was it in me that would not break down? He
seemed worn and tired, yet I had never thought of him as weary, never
attributed to him any yearning. And now he was released.

I wondered what had been his private thoughts about himself, his private
opinions about life; and when I reflect now upon my lack of real
knowledge at five and twenty, I am amazed at the futility of an expensive
education which had failed to impress upon me the simple, basic fact that
life was struggle; that either development or retrogression is the fate
of all men, that characters are never completely made, but always in the
making. I had merely a disconcerting glimpse of this truth, with no
powers of formulation, as I sat beside my mother in the bedroom, where
every article evoked some childhood scene. Here was the dent in the
walnut foot-board of the bed made, one wintry day, by the impact of my
box of blocks; the big arm-chair, covered with I know not what stiff
embroidery, which had served on countless occasions as a chariot driven
to victory. I even remembered how every Wednesday morning I had been
banished from the room, which had been so large a part of my childhood
universe, when Ella, the housemaid, had flung open all its windows and
crowded its furniture into the hall.

The thought of my wanderings since then became poignant, almost
terrifying. The room, with all its memories, was unchanged. How safe I
had been within its walls! Why could I not have been, content with what
it represented? of tradition, of custom,--of religion? And what was it
within me that had lured me away from these?

I was miserable, indeed, but my misery was not of the kind I thought it
ought to be. At moments, when my mother relapsed into weeping, I glanced
at her almost in wonder. Such sorrow as hers was incomprehensible. Once
she surprised and discomfited me by lifting her head and gazing fixedly
at me through her tears.

I recall certain impressions of the funeral. There, among the
pall-bearers, was my Cousin Robert Breck, tears in the furrows of his
cheeks. Had he loved my father more than I? The sight of his grief moved
me suddenly and strongly.... It seemed an age since I had worked in his
store, and yet here he was still, coming to town every morning and
returning every evening to Claremore, loving his friends, and mourning
them one by one. Was this, the spectacle presented by my Cousin Robert,
the reward of earthly existence? Were there no other prizes save those
known as greatness of character and depth of human affections? Cousin
Robert looked worn and old. The other pall-bearers, men of weight, of
long standing in the community, were aged, too; Mr. Blackwood, and Mr.
Jules Hollister; and out of place, somehow, in this new church building.
It came to me abruptly that the old order was gone,--had slipped away
during my absence. The church I had known in boyhood had been torn down
to make room for a business building on Boyne Street; the edifice in
which I sat was expensive, gave forth no distinctive note; seemingly
transitory with its hybrid interior, its shiny oak and blue and red
organ-pipes, betokening a compromised and weakened faith. Nondescript,
likewise, seemed the new minister, Mr. Randlett, as he prayed unctuously
in front of the flowers massed on the platform. I vaguely resented his
laudatory references to my father.

The old church, with its severity, had actually stood for something. It
was the Westminster Catechism in wood and stone, and Dr. Pound had been
the human incarnation of that catechism, the fit representative of a
wrathful God, a militant shepherd who had guarded with vigilance his
respectable flock, who had protested vehemently against the sins of the
world by which they were surrounded, against the "dogs, and sorcerers,
and whoremongers, and murderers and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and
maketh a lie." How Dr. Pound would have put the emphasis of the
Everlasting into those words!

Against what was Mr. Randlett protesting?

My glance wandered to the pews which held the committees from various
organizations, such as the Chamber of Commerce and the Bar Association,
which had come to do honour to my father. And there, differentiated from
the others, I saw the spruce, alert figure of Theodore Watling. He, too,
represented a new type and a new note,--this time a forceful note, a
secular note that had not belonged to the old church, and seemed likewise
anomalistic in the new....

During the long, slow journey in the carriage to the cemetery my mother
did not raise her veil. It was not until she reached out and seized my
hand, convulsively, that I realized she was still a part of my existence.

In the days that followed I became aware that my father's death had
removed a restrictive element, that I was free now to take without
criticism or opposition whatever course in life I might desire. It may be
that I had apprehended even then that his professional ideals would not
have coincided with my own. Mingled with this sense of emancipation was a
curious feeling of regret, of mourning for something I had never valued,
something fixed and dependable for which he had stood, a rock and a
refuge of which I had never availed myself!... When his will was opened
it was found that the property had been left to my mother during her
lifetime. It was larger than I had thought, four hundred thousand
dollars, shrewdly invested, for the most part, in city real estate. My
father had been very secretive as to money matters, and my mother had no
interest in them.

Three or four days later I received in the mail a typewritten letter
signed by Theodore Watling, expressing sympathy for my bereavement, and
asking me to drop in on him, down town, before I should leave the city.
In contrast to the somewhat dingy offices where my father had practised
in the Blackwood Block, the quarters of Watling, Fowndes and Ripon on the
eighth floor of the new Durrett Building were modern to a degree,
finished in oak and floored with marble, with a railed-off space where
young women with nimble fingers played ceaselessly on typewriters. One of
them informed me that Mr. Watling was busy, but on reading my card added
that she would take it in. Meanwhile, in company with two others who may
have been clients, I waited. This, then, was what it meant to be a lawyer
of importance, to have, like a Chesterfield, an ante-room where clients
cooled their heels and awaited one's pleasure...

The young woman returned, and led me through a corridor to a door on
which was painted Mr. Wailing.

I recall him tilted back in his chair in a debonnair manner beside his
polished desk, the hint of a smile on his lips; and leaning close to him
was a yellow, owl-like person whose eyes, as they turned to me, gave the
impression of having stared for years into hard, artificial lights. Mr.
Watling rose briskly.

"How are you, Hugh?" he said, the warmth of his greeting tempered by just
the note of condolence suitable to my black clothes. "I'm glad you came.
I wanted to see you before you went back to Cambridge. I must introduce
you to Judge Bering, of our State Supreme Court. Judge, this is Mr.
Paret's boy."

The judge looked me over with a certain slow impressiveness, and gave me
a soft and fleshy hand.

"Glad to know you, Mr. Paret. Your father was a great loss to our bar,"
he declared.

I detected in his tone and manner a slight reservation that could not be
called precisely judicial dignity; it was as though, in these few words,
he had gone to the limit of self-commitment with a stranger--a striking
contrast to the confidential attitude towards Mr. Watling in which I had
surprised him.

"Judge," said Mr. Watling, sitting down again, "do you recall that time
we all went up to Mr. Paret's house and tried to induce him to run for
mayor? That was before you went on the lower bench."

The judge nodded gloomily, caressing his watch chain, and suddenly rose
to go.

"That will be all right, then?" Mr. Watling inquired cryptically, with a
smile. The other made a barely perceptible inclination of the head and
departed. Mr. Watling looked at me. "He's one of the best men we have on
the bench to-day," he added. There was a trace of apology in his tone.