I must talk with Steve! thought Joseph desperately, and with an obscure anger. He said, with eagerness, “Give me a little time, Mr. deWitt. I’ll try to raise the money somehow, very soon. …” The Fielding money! Old Steve was hoarding that. But surely he wouldn’t desert a friend in this emergency!
Then Purcell said with loud and deliberate coarseness, “He’s thinkin’ of Steve, Aaron. He’s thinkin’ of borrowing from Steve again. Don’t anybody ask me how I know, but he owes Steve nearly nine thousand dollars: four thousand borrowed four years ago, and five thousand borrowed—if you want to call it ‘borrowed’—about six months ago. For interest on the bonds Alex Peale holds.”
“What!” cried Aaron, with great and mendacious astonishment. “Well, well, I didn’t know. But it’s just like Steve, isn’t it?”
Rufus suppressed a smile and turned to Joseph, who had become crimson. “Honestly, Joe? But good, if it is. You’re paying interest to Steve on your notes, of course, and the principle, too, and that should impress the banks so that they’d lend you a reasonable sum of money to invest with us.”
Joseph felt faint. He had no statements; he had no checks. He had not even made a record of the loans from Stephen. But it’s an honorable debt! he cried to himself. Why should he refuse to help me again; surely he isn’t a stone, and will understand why I need money now? Involuntarily he began to rise; he must force Stephen to come out of that ridiculous lethargy and listen to him.
He did not know that Purcell, Aaron, and Rufus were watching him with devilish and hidden glee. Then Aaron said, “It’s too bad it can’t be arranged as a friendly matter, between you and Steve again, Joe. But Steve’s in no condition to be harassed just now; I wouldn’t permit it. Besides”—and he studied the paling Joseph blandly—“Steve hasn’t any loose cash. But that doesn’t matter, does it?” he added cheerily. “You’ve got a good credit rating with the banks, no doubt. Incidentally, Tom, how about you investing, too?”
Joseph fell back into his chair. It was Tom’s turn to color. He said without hesitation, however, “I haven’t the money, Mr. deWitt. I couldn’t raise it. I already owe the banks as much as I can carry. I don’t believe in expanding beyond my reasonable capacity to repay promptly.” He was genuinely astonished at hearing the news that Joseph had borrowed nine thousand dollars from Stephen deWitt, and he looked at his friend with mingled curiosity and interest.
Aaron shrugged regretfully. “Well, I’m sorry, Tom.” Then he had an inspiration. “You’ve just bought up some new good tracts of lumber. Look here, Tom, we’ll give you a first mortgage on those tracts, at six per cent, and you can invest the money with us! How about it? You’ll never have such an opportunity again.”
Tom was astute; he had some idea that all this was not being offered on the basis of a friendship which did not exist. But his eyes closed cunningly; did they think he wouldn’t be able to repay the debt? He said, “Thank you. Suppose you let me think it over for a day or two, Mr. deWitt. But I think your offer is most generous, and I think I’ll take it. I’ll just have to look over my books.” He glanced at Joseph speculatively. He said to himself: Why is old Joe so white? He looks as though he’s been kicked in the stomach by a mule.
Aaron and Rufus were obviously pleased at Tom’s implied promise to invest in the State Railroad Company. “That deserves another drink,” said Rufus smoothly, and he refilled Tom’s glass. Tom drank; his hands were shaking with his excitement.
“But Joe hasn’t said whether or not he’ll invest,” said Aaron archly. “Don’t you believe in us, Joe? How about it?”
Joseph’s extremity was so great that he blurted out, to his horror, “I can’t. I haven’t the money.”
Aaron sighed, shook his head, planted his hands on his small and bony knees, and appeared to meditate. He sucked his lips in and out, blinked his eyes. Then he looked up and gazed at Joseph thoughtfully. “Joe,” he said, “I’ve known you all your life. You’ve worked very hard. How old are you? Fifty-two? That’s a hard age for anybody. You’re running your locals practically singlehanded, and you married late and your boys won’t be able to take over for many years. It’ll get harder and harder for you all the time. A one-man company is very hazardous, especially for a man your age who has no one to whom to delegate details and authority and responsibility. You are either at work, or you’re not. Too big a load for you, Joe.”
He waited a moment and surveyed Joseph with increasing sympathy. Joseph opened and shut his eyes and turned paler than ever.
“So,” said Aaron kindly, “speaking as an old friend, and with no other motive in mind, don’t you think it would be a good idea if you would relinquish your controlling interest in your locals to the State Railroad Company, so as to relieve you of responsibility, worry over financial matters, and constantly increasing labor troubles? Not to speak of the constant obsolescence of old equipment, such as yours. You’d be on a good salary, as manager of the locals—a permanent income without the anxiety—and you would have a much easier existence.”
Joseph could not find his voice for a few moments; his heart was beating too painfully. When he could speak, it was almost inaudibly: “No. Thank you, Mr. deWitt.”
Aaron was all sympathy, but he became very serious. “Joe, I don’t believe your locals are fully serving the community. A larger road, such as ours, can best serve it. We would expand your locals to our own lines. Think of what that would mean to the people you serve. No carrying and hauling of freight, no transfer of passengers by hack or carriage or wagon to make connections with our lines.”
“Even by hauling, and the extra expense of transfer to the passengers, the cost is still cheaper than it would be if the locals were connected with State,” said Joseph. His heart was slowing; he was breathing easier, though there was still a hunted look in his eyes, a dark shadow of fear. “The little people depend on me, sir.”
Aaron shrugged, spread out his hands resignedly. “We all have our own opinions, Joe. I take it, then, that you aren’t interested. Another drink?”
“No, sir.” Joseph edged forward in his chair, signaling to Tom Orville, who, however, was staring at Aaron with a fascinated frown. But Aaron, as if the whole matter was now off his mind, and of no further interest to him, remarked, “By the way, while we are now extending to Pittsburgh, the Chicago Railroad System is projecting lines from Chicago, Fort Wayne, and Columbus to Pittsburgh. That will give us the traffic from the west, and the other companies will get it from the east.” He smiled at Purcell. “Capital should be doing very well, then! And you’re invested in it heavily, aren’t you, Jim? The Chicago Railroad System is owned by scoundrels.” He cackled affectionately. “But brilliant entrepreneurs. One of these days they’ll be approaching us on a matter of business, and then—then we’re ready for them.”
“Charming people, some of them,” said Rufus, smiling.
The clock struck half-past six, and now Joseph, smothered in the presence of men who talked of large affairs, and remembering his small locals and their desperate state, got to his feet. Tom Orville rose with him, and the two men, as if they were escaping, left a hurried message for Stephen, and departed. Orville’s carriage was brought around to the entrance, and a sudden cataract of rain fell as the two men seated themselves.
“I’m afraid of those scoundrels,” said Joseph after a few minutes, as the carriage rolled down the long and winding road toward the valley. “They’re up to something.”
“They can’t touch either of us so long as we’re solvent,” replied Tom sturdily. His words struck on Joseph’s ear as the most puerile and threatening he had heard this evening. Solvent! It was all right for young Tom to talk of solvency.
Jim Purcell, leaving shortly after Tom Orville and Joseph Baynes, could see their carriage lights winking far down on the narrow road to the city. He glanced back at the great house on the hill, wiping away the moisture of his own breath on the glass. There it stood, resembling a Southern house rather than a Northern one, with its
enormous slender white pillars, its white walls and balcony, its white brick arches beneath the first floor. Every window glowed with soft gold; lavender mist drifted from its many chimneys and mingled with the rain. Jim Purcell sat back on his seat and somberly pulled at his thick lower lip.
11
Sophia deWitt was guilty of what was almost her first lapse into maudlin sentimentality when, on January 2, 1867, she remarked to her sons, “It is just as if he had planned it, and perhaps he did. He left this world as a new year was being born, to begin a new life.”
Stephen had been acutely embarrassed, and Lydia had averted her long dark eyes, but Rufus, after the first awkward moment when he had had difficulty in restraining a hysterical burst of laughter, gravely nodded his head at his mother. I can laugh later at the idea of Pa’s beginning a “new life” anywhere, he thought, but it would certainly be out of place now. He thought of his father, lying in state in the enormous room which Sophia called the “drawing room,” and he reflected, with a sad amusement, that if Aaron was anywhere at all, it was in hell having a convivial drink with Satan himself. And probably plotting to take over the realm, too, he added.
Sophia, as “the Widow,” moved about her dolorous duties with lofty stateliness, her head held high in the manner of a great lady, bearing her sorrow with dignity and importance. Her friends, including Senator Peale and his wife, and very distinguished people from Philadelphia, came in long carriagestreams up the mountain. The peak of her gratification and pride, however, was reached when Guy Gunther, the New York financier and broker of railroad stocks, arrived in Portersville for the funeral of Aaron deWitt. So overwhelmed was Sophia that she almost forgot her sincere grief for her husband, and she would remark to her friends in a broken voice, “Mr. Gunther is here; you know of Mr. Gunther, the famous financier? He was such a dear friend of Aaron’s. Ah, there he is now, speaking with Rufus; he has always been like a second father to Rufus.”
“Ma is bearing up well,” Stephen remarked hesitantly to his brother, the day of the funeral.
“But she always did,” replied Rufus in surprise. “Ma needs only to be the focus of attention to be contented, even on such an occasion as this. She is what they used to call a ‘lusty’ woman. Didn’t you know?”
But Stephen, wandering about like a dazed gray shadow, did not know. He suffered no sorrow. He had known grief too great to be borne, and had endured too much; so even if he had loved his father he could not have been stricken too deeply. As usual, he was overlooked by the crowds who came to stare soberly at Aaron, to console Sophia, and to peep at the gentlemen from Philadelphia and the fabulous man from New York. The rooms rustled with ladies’ black dresses; the hall was full of canes and gloves and hats; the scent of flowers choked the warm air. A subdued murmur filled the house, and doors were constantly being opened and shut. Outside, the bitter white January day stormed against windows, and the hearths roared in answer.
Lydia, tall and thin in her black dress, attended to details which Sophia had delegated to her. Stephen thought, with dim admiration, that she was everywhere, tactful, kind, doing everything with grace and poise. Sometimes she would run upstairs to the nursery for a look at the children, and then she would be downstairs again, greeting new callers, leading them to Sophia who sat in state near Aaron’s casket. The servants, properly sniffling and overpowered, were almost inaudibly directed by her, receiving flowers still fresh and damp from hothouses, accepting cards, and divesting the ladies and gentlemen of their furs and coats. Lydia’s face became dulled with fatigue, but her step did not slow. Her husband watched her with pride and love and desolation, and would sometimes wander toward her for the pleasure of meeting her eyes.
It seemed to the sons of Aaron deWitt and to Lydia that time had stopped entirely, and that for months they had not left these rooms, that Aaron had been dead for uncounted days, and that the hour of the funeral would never arrive. But eventually it was over, and then, to their exhausted amazement, it was the afternoon of the funeral and they were home again, numbed with cold; Aaron was in his grave, and the lawyers waited to read the will.
The short January day was ending, and every window was draped in snow. Sophia, Lydia, Rufus, and Stephen sat in the library, which was never used, and from whose wood and leathery walls there emanated a chill and musty smell. The fire on the black marble hearth had been lit for days, but still that pervasive odor persisted like a tangible presence. The crimson draperies were looped back from the tall and narrow windows, showing a view of black trees plastered with blobs of snow and shrouded gardens and distant white mountains. The furniture of red and black morocco leather loomed in the dusk, and the lamps could not lighten the gloom of the corners. Sophia, wrapped in a black shawl, shivered, and for the first time in these last days she seemed to shrink, to realize for the first time that her husband was dead. Rufus sat near her, his hand on her shoulder, and Lydia sat beside himgazing emptily through the nearest window. Stephen sat by the fire, unobtrusive as always, and wishing, with intense tiredness, that the portentous lawyers would speak and be gone.
But the lawyers, two old friends of Aaron’s, were not going to be deprived of their own special hour and importance. They unfolded the long sheets of Aaron’s will, coughed, delicately wiped their glasses, glanced with commiseration at the widow and the sons, consulted in murmurs with each other, verified each page, nodded severely. Then, one of them stood up and began to read, measuring each word. And as he read a stupefied incredulity fell on the bereaved family.
For Aaron had bequeathed to his son Stephen the controlling interest in the State Railroad Company. He had directed that Stephen assume the presidency of the company, and that Rufus be the executive vice-president. He had directed that Stephen pay “my beloved wife, Sophia,” an annual income “to maintain her in her accustomed manner.” “My house, upon my death, shall become the possession of my son, Stephen deWitt, and his heirs, and it is my desire that he and they reside therein.”
There was much more, including provision for Rufus’s salary, and minor bequests to charities and institutions. Lydia was not mentioned. And the child, Cornelia, Rufus’s daughter, was omitted also. But there was a codicil. “To my beloved granddaughter, Laura Fielding deWitt, I bequeath the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars, to be placed in trust for her until she is twenty-one years of age.”
The lawyer’s voice ended on an unctuous echo. He sat down beside his partner, and with impersonal malice and satisfaction they surveyed the four stunned and disbelieving faces before them. It was nothing to these men how Aaron deWitt had disposed of his holdings and his fortune, and whom he had made his heir. They personally disliked Stephen and derided him, and they admired Sophia and Lydia and were even fond of Rufus. But, as human beings engaged in an unusually dry and routine profession, they found a deep pleasure in the rare occasions when they could be part of an emotional disruption and violence, and when they could look, unconcerned, at the agitation and consternation of others. It gave a spirit to their methodical days, a winey glow to their desiccated lives.
Stephen’s voice was a dry rustle: “But why, why? He hated me. He—he despised me. It isn’t possible!”
The lawyer who had sat in silence cleared his throat: “My dear Stephen, I’m sure your father cared a great deal for you to entrust such an important post to you, and to make you his chief heir.”
No one else stirred or spoke; no face changed from its rigid mask of repudiation and incredulity, but Stephen got to his feet and fumbled for the back of his chair. So lately delivered from death, himself, so lately rescued, he had to fight for breath, for the power to speak. “No,” he whispered. “No. I can’t take it.”
It was then that Sophia gave a hoarse cry that was almost a scream. She threw her hands over her face and began to moan. “Aaron! My husband. To do this to me, to my son, to my Rufus, and his child! He must have been mad. Mad, mad!”
All Rufus’s color had gone completely. His large and handsome face fell into f
labby folds, and turned bluish. “I don’t understand,” he stammered, and he looked ill. “I always thought—Why, when my child was born he spoke of her as his ‘heiress.’” He swallowed painfully. “It was always understood—I was his favorite.”
One of the lawyers, delighting in all this drama, spoke soothingly: “I’m sure your father did what he thought was best. It was perhaps his opinion that his older son was best qualified. …”
“Rufus was, he is,” said Stephen, still fighting for breath, still denying. He turned to his brother, and then stopped, for Rufus was regarding him starkly, without his chronic amusement and tolerance, but only with the most desperate hatred and loathing. Stephen’s hand, held out in pleading, dropped heavily to his side.
“I—” faltered Stephen, held in utter horror at what he was seeing on his brother’s face, “am not capable. …”
Sophia was sobbing in complete abandonment, and Rufus sat beside her like a stone, still regarding Stephen with that undisguised, that complete and open hatred. “Undue influence,” he muttered.
One of the lawyers cackled. “I hardly think so,” he said, and sat back to enjoy to the fullest the debacle the will had created.
Stephen could not believe what he was seeing. Everyone vanished for him, except his brother. He tried again. “Rufus,” he said, and his voice dwindled in his throat.
Rufus smiled then, an ugly and brutal smile. “It seems I’m at your mercy, old Steve,” he said, in a slow and insulting voice loaded with his savage rage and disgust. This papiermache man, this drab, stringy creature, this imbecile rustler of files and foolscap, this inglorious clown with the sallow face and squeezed eyes and ink-stained fingers! The rage increased in Rufus to such a pitch that his head whirled and his ears rang. There must be a way to take revenge for his awful mortification, for the destruction of all his hopes. The bestial fury turned his face into a, distortion, and suddenly he struck his knee with his clenched fist.