The Fighting Edge (Smith's Magazine 1907)/Chapter 4

Before it had been many hours out of Denver most of the passengers in the foremost Pullman of the morning Eastbound Rock Island flyer were aware that the dignified, impassive gentleman in Section 6 was Jefferson B. Stoneman.

“Yes, sir, that’s J. B.’s way—rich enough to own a dozen private cars if he wants them, but not a bit too good to ride with the rest of us; takes his chance of an upper berth just like you or me, sir,” a Denver drummer was declaiming to an audience in the smoking-room. “Of course, he doesn’t go around jollying with the trainmen, but, just the same, he is democratic clear through. That’s part of the reason I vote for him.”

A magazine special-article writer, with an eye on the lookout for copy, wanted to know what the rest of his reason was.

“Because, sir, no corporation on earth is big enough to control him. He’s for the people. That’s why this State ought to send him to the United States Senate.”

“Aren’t you afraid he would feel lonesome there?” the sardonic journalist asked.

“Maybe he would, but I'll bet he would make those corporation lawyers sit up,” returned the loyal salesman.

His Denver admirer was right as to Stoneman’s reason for not owning a private car, though perhaps the motive was more mixed than the one assigned. A part of his public creed was to exemplify the simple life, to show greatness with Jeffersonian plainness and wealth divorced from ostentation. There would come a time, probably during a period of depression, when the people would welcome such a modern Lincoln to the highest office within its gift. He proposed at that time to be very much in the public eye, and with an ear close enough to the ground to hear any call that might come his way. Meanwhile he builded indefatigably for the future.

His secretary, a slight, alert, keen-eyed young man, sat beside him, and took stenographic notes from his dictation all morning, except once or twice when he left the train at some stop to send or receive telegrams.

Near the Kansas line Stoneman was joined by Montagu Harlan, whose name was on the directorate of a dozen railroads and a score of large corporations. They had met by appointment to discuss their joint policy concerning their campaign for the control of a large Western railroad over which opposing interests were fighting. For an hour their heads were together in low-voiced conversation, and at the end of that time they had come to agreement. Stoneman’s large block of stock in the road was to be voted by Harlan in furtherance of his policy. In return, the latter was to see that the railroad took an active financial part in securing the Westerner’s return to the Senate.

“Of course you understand, Mr. Harlan, that if I go to the Senate it will be to represent the people, and not special interests.” The Westerner’s pallid, square-cut face, with its strong, cleft chin and dark, serious eyes, offered to the New Yorker a little glow of cynical amusement he was not far from showing.

“Of course I know that you are a tribune of the people, Mr. Stoneman. Since I am a plutocratic robber, I shouldn’t support you if special interests did not draw me your way. On the other hand, I don’t suppose you would let me vote your proxies if you didn’t see something in it for yourself. It’s merely a business proposition, and I don’t give a hang what you do when you are in the Senate—that is, if our combined pull can get you there.” Thus frankly, Montagu Harlan, of Wall Street and Broadway, viveur and cynic in ordinary. An epicure he was, and for a generation had been, but anybody mistaking that lean, erect, gray-haired figure, with the aristocratic face and the indolent, ironic eyes, for less than a wolf of the wariest and strongest in a street of wolves, would be apt to pay heavily for his error if he invested financially in it.

“I can’t look at it that way, Mr. Harlan,” returned the younger man gravely. “I want you to support me because I am the best man for the Senate from my State—certainly a better man than Simon Schaffner. For the same reason I support you because I believe that you are more to be trusted, would look more to the interests of the small stockholders of the Three C line, than would Mr. Schaffner. If he gains control of the road, it will be in the interests of the smelting trust. That, at all hazards, is to be avoided. In my eyes our alliance is a defensive one against the encroachments of an insidious foe to the republic; a foe that steals upon us in our sleep to rob us of our political and industrial liberty.”

Harlan gave him a queer, contemptuous, questioning glance. He understood that Stoneman was explaining his actions to himself, throwing together a vindication he might later be called upon to give of his conduct in the matter of the senatorship.

“Well, I didn’t suppose I was performing a patriotic duty in beating Schaffner, but if you say so, I’m willing to let it go at that,” laughed Harlan carelessly. “Wonder what we are stopping for now. Let’s go out and try for a breath of fresh air. I hope when you get in the Senate you'll take action against this atrocity of turning a Pullman car into a Turkish bath.”

Harlan, swinging from the car to the track, caught sight of a lithe, slim figure of grace walking lightly up and down beside the train with a young man in a gray sack suit. It occurred to him that his eyes were beginning to play him false. And yet

“There certainly can’t be two women in America with that walk. Come along, Stoneman. You’re in luck to the limit. I’m going to introduce you to the most interesting creature in the country.”

The most interesting creature in the country was eating peanuts out of a paper sack when she caught sight of the advancing financier. Instantly she flung aside the sack and ran forward with both hands extended to Harlan, the young man following more leisurely. Stoneman was for an instant alarmed lest she kiss the New Yorker publicly, but she contented herself with a double hand-grasp.

“What in the world are you doing out here, Montagu Harlan—the last man on earth I should have expected to find away from New York or London?”

“When I ask what you are doing here, Miss Marriott, I have a good retort ready.”

“But I am on my way to New York.”

“Oh, happy day! So am I,” he laughed. “You know Mr. Arundle, I think. He is my lover, you know.” She laughed her gay enjoyment of life.

“Then I’m not glad to meet him, for, of course, I’m another,” came back Harlan promptly, shaking hands with the young actor.

He introduced Stoneman, who had been listening with amazed eyes pried wide open. For to this side of life he came out of a narrow experience, and with an imagination unfired.

Miss Marriott shook her head lugubriously. “Mr. Stoneman doesn’t approve of me,” she explained.

“Neither do I, but it does not keep me from adoring you,” said Harlan. “Just what count in the indictment does Mr. Stoneman pin his disapproval to, may I ask?”

“He has a pin stuck in each of them.”

“Is this a personal or a journalistic disapproval?”

“Oh, personal entirely. In his journalistic capacity he has been generous beyond my poor deserts.” She dropped him a daring little curtsy of thanks.

“All aboard!” sang out the conductor, and Miss Marriott was assisted by Arundle to the vestibule of her private car. She turned, smiling an invitation to the New Yorker and Stoneman. “I want you to come in and see my aunt, Mr. Harlan. You, too, Mr. Stoneman.” Her eyes bubbled over with sudden laughter. “My aunt disapproves of me, too. You'll be able to compare notes.”

The train began to move, and Harlan pulled himself to the platform. Stoneman hesitated, caught the gay challenge in her eyes, and for a reason forever inexplicable to him, followed the rest of the little group into the car. He presently found himself sitting down beside a sweet old, silver-haired lady, who appeared to view the world cheerily as an entertainment especially devised for her amusement.

In one end of the car a miniature stage had been built. Catching Stoneman’s curious gaze, she explained that her niece used it to rehearse scenes in her plays. She went on to add that Mr. Arundle had just joined them in Denver, in order to ride back with them and discuss the situations of their play with the star.

“I take it for granted that, like everybody else, you are one of Maisie’s admirers,” the old lady rattled on.

""

He could only murmur “Yes, indeed!” and hope that Miss Marriott did not hear. She was carrying on an animated conversation with Arundle and Harlan, but apparently she did hear, for she sparkled swiftly at him a mocking appreciation of his predicament.

“Mr. Stoneman is the exception that proves the rule, auntie.”

“Then he doesn’t know you, my dear,” answered the old lady so promptly that they all laughed.

The actress came over and kissed her. “You're a partial old goose,” she said, caressing her affectionately.

“If I’m partial to you, I’m in the best of company, dearie,” was the old lady’s contented answer.

“If he got the same reward for being partial, perhaps Mr. Stoneman”

“No, Mr. Harlan, his impartiality, like his disapproval, comes from principle,” explained Maisie.

Stoneman flushed. It vexed him that he couldn’t rise lightly to the situation. A fearless dignity seemed to be valued below par here, and his vanity resented it.

The conversation swept back into its old channel, Miss Marriott outlining her play, while Arundle served as commentary to her remarks. Her aunt, Miss Gray, explained to Stoneman in an undertone that Arundle was leading man, and took the part of her lover.

“Oh, in the play.” He understood now what Harlan had caught in a flash.

“You didn’t suppose I meant” Mrs. Gray paused to smile meditatively at the young man. “But I don't know. I dare say he is, or will be. A good many of them are, you know.”

No, he didn’t know, but he was beginning to see how it might be possible, if one were that kind of man. Stoneman, however, prided himself on being a very different kind of man. He had a work to do in the world, and one traveled farther without the superfluous baggage of emotions. Still, he could admit to himself impartially that he certainly had judged her hastily on the Interlochen links. It was a fact impregnable that she had a growing charm, a radiant overflow of life that he did not, of course, approve at all. At their first meeting she had seemed only pert and fast. He began dimly to see that he must revise his standard of judgment before applying it to this rapturous child of light.

“Now Bobbie says the lines here should be done seriously, with a little, pathetic appeal for sympathy. That is your idea, isn’t it, Bobbie?” She caught Arundle’s nod on the run, as it were, pushing on eagerly to make her point. “But I think the house should be made to catch a gleam of fun. It should be done a little shyly, and yet a little boldly, so that folks will want both to laugh and cry.”

She caught up her skirt and ran lightly to the stage, beckoning to Arundle as she went. Together they went through the part, first as he conceived it, and again as she interpreted the scene.

“What do you think?” she asked, when they had finished.

“I think you’re right,” agreed Harlan promptly.

She looked at Stoneman expectantly.

“Of course you are right,” he chorused.

Her lambent eyes mocked him. “As if you knew anything about it. Why, you never go to the theater, except to see the very best plays.”

“I didn’t say the best plays. The best artists, I meant.”

“That is very nice of him, Bobbie, don’t you think?” She took Arundle’s hand, and they bowed to Stoneman gravely, and then to each other, as if it had been a curtain-call. “But my vanity won’t permit me to forget that you are the only man I ever offered to do a private dance for, and that you declined without thanks, and in deadly alarm.”

She came down from the stage and took the seat beside the Westerner, smiling at him with friendly malice. “I’m not going to let you cry off and pretend an interest you don’t feel. I have the best authority for believing that you have no interest whatever—none whatever, Mr. Stoneman—in the stage or its habitués.”

“But you promised to interest me, and you have.” He looked at her boldly, though he felt himself flushing. “You promised to find me a pretty actress to take all those notions out of my head. Well, I have made her acquaintance this afternoon. A statesman has to have some fun, doesn’t he?”

“Somebody was on her bad behavior that day.” She smiled reminiscently. “And she had to be stood in a corner and told to be still.”

“I’m afraid I wasn’t very”

“You were a perfect. Chorus girls have to be taught their place.”

“I suppose my—my lack of perception was unforgivable.” It was the nearest to an apology he had ever come since he was a child.

“Not quite so bad as that. We'll both forgive and forget, and begin again, just as if we had not decided—or was it you decided that?—to go divergent ways.” Impulsively she put out her little hand, and his large one buried it. She was given to a trick of sudden likings, and she was aware of one now for this awkward man, who set his flinty will to get things, and moved heaven and earth till he had succeeded. But her liking was blended with an amusement not untinged with contempt.

By very chance she thought of Devereux Blake—it was a dissipation to which she was rather given these days—his graceful attitude toward life, his cool, leisurely good breeding; the occasional sallies of wit that flashed in his easy talk. She compared him with this man, and the comparison brought a smile. She knew what Devvie thought of Stoneman. She would find out how Stoneman looked at him.

So she asked him pointblank, and he told her with labored accuracy. It appeared that Mr. Blake was a frivolous trifler with life, which has to be taken hold of seriously with both hands. He regretfully admitted that the young man’s undoubted talent would probably be frittered away because of the lack of a dominant purpose.

“And you think a dominant purpose essential?” she asked.

“Surely. One makes of life what he will—an idling, a game, a battle. I have no patience with those who do not recognize grimly Henley’s ‘unconquerable soul.’”

“But why grimly, so long as one may appreciate it with a smile?”

“Because life is a struggle. One becomes captain of his soul not easily. Such a one conquers incessantly; reaches up far above him for the something he has determined to achieve, and by sheer power drags himself to it. Failure lies in not reaching high enough, or in allowing oneself to be deflected from the one great purpose he has set himself.”

The ambitious, restless soul of the man burned in his glowing eyes. Miss Marriott’s quick glance swept round the little company, and saw that they were all grouped together in busy talk. Her histrionic temperament appreciated the fact that his conversational efforts always gravitated naturally toward the oratorical, but she was aware, too, that she was listening to a man’s credo, and her instinct warned her that his confession was not for other ears than hers. Also, her good taste suggested a declension to a less intimate ground of meeting.

“Too low they build who build beneath the stars,” she quoted, with a laugh. “But most of us poor mortals mistake for a star a penny rushlight. I see mine in the gleaming roof of a theater.”

He considered her gravely. “I’m afraid such a life cannot be a very sane one.”

“Indeed, and it’s the life of all lives I would choose for myself. Look to the beam in your own eye, Mr. Politician,” she countered gaily.

“I don’t call myself a politician,” he explained. “The politician makes an end of the means. I hope I look beyond that.”

Her fine eyes appraised him. “And that end you seek so arduously. Are you sure it is worth while?”

“I mean to make it worth while.”

“To achieve it you would sacrifice your friends, I suppose.”

“If it were necessary. I have often sacrificed myself. I expect to make continual sacrifices of myself and others.”

“Mr. Blake wouldn’t,” she meditated. “Perhaps he is lacking in ambition. At any rate, he does not make a religion of it. Very decidedly he lives by the way. But I think he would give up a good deal for a point of honor.”

“I have always considered him an honorable man,’ agreed Stoneman shortly.

The analysis of other men did not interest him except as it reflected glory upon himself. It irritated him a little that Miss Marriott had recurred to Blake. He could not see why such a dilettante might be expected to sacrifice more for honor than a steadfast leader of the people—such a one as he himself, for instance.