Chapter 10 No.10

One morning shortly after the MacBirneys had been entertained at The Towers John Kimberly was wheeled into his library where Charles and Robert were waiting for him. Charles leaned against the mantel and his brother stood at a window looking across the lake toward Cedar Point. As Francis left the room Uncle John's eyes followed him. Presently they wandered back with cheerful suspicion toward his nephews, and he laid his good arm on the table as they took chairs near him.

"Well?" he said lifting his eyebrows and looking blandly from one to the other.

"Well?" echoed Charles good-naturedly, looking from Uncle John to Robert.

"Well?" repeated Robert with mildly assumed idiocy, looking from Charles back again to Uncle John.

But Uncle John was not to be committed by any resort to his own tactics, and he came back at Charles on the flank. "Get any fish?" he asked, as if assured that Charles would make an effort to deceive him in answering.

"We sat around for a while without doing a thing, Uncle John. Then they began to strike and I had eight days of the best sport I ever saw on the river,"

Uncle John buried his disappointment under a smile. "Good fishing, eh?"

"Excellent."

There was evidently no opening on this subject, and Uncle John tried another tender spot. "Yacht go any better?"

"McAdams has done wonders with it, Uncle John. She never steamed so well since she was launched."

"Cost a pretty penny, eh, Charlie?"

"That is what pretty pennies are for, isn't it?"

Unable to disturb his nephew's peace of mind, Uncle John launched straight into business. "What are you going to do with those fellows?"

"You mean the MacBirney syndicate? Robert tells me he has concluded to be liberal with them."

"He is giving too much, Charlie."

"He knows better what the stuff is worth than we do."

Uncle John smiled sceptically. "He will give them more than they are worth, I am afraid."

Robert said nothing.

"Perhaps there is a reason for that," suggested Charles.

They waited for Robert to speak. He shifted in his chair presently and spoke with some decision. His intonation might have been unpleasant but that the depth and fulness of his voice redeemed it. The best note in his utterance was its open frankness.

"Uncle John understands this matter just as well as I do," he began, somewhat in protest.

"We have been over the ground often. These people have been an annoyance to us; this is undeniable. McCrea has complained of them for two years. Through a shift in the cards--this money squeeze--we have them to-day in our hands----"

Uncle John's eyes shone and he clasped the fingers of one hand tightly in the other. "That is what I say; trim them!" he whispered eagerly.

Robert went on, unmoved: "Let us look at that, too. He wants me to trim them. I have steadily opposed buying them at all. But the rest of you have overruled me. Very good. They know now that they are in our power. They are, one and all, bushwhackers and guerillas. To my mind there isn't a trustworthy man in the crowd--not even MacBirney.

"They have made selling agreements with McCrea again and again and left him to hold the sack. We can't do business in that way. When we give our word it must be good. They give their word to break it. Whenever we make a selling agreement with such people we get beaten, invariably. They have cut into us on the Missouri River, at St. Paul, even at Chicago--from their Kansas plants. They make poor sugar, but it sells, and even when it won't sell, it demoralizes the trade. Now they are on their knees. They want us to buy to save what they've got invested. At a receiver's sale they would get nothing. But on the other hand Lambert might get the plants. If we tried to bid them in there would be a howl from the Legislature, perhaps."

Uncle John was growing moody, for the prey was slipping through his fingers. "It might be better to stand pat," he muttered.

Robert paid no attention. "What I propose, and God knows I have explained it before, is this: These people can be trimmed, or they can be satisfied. I say give them eleven millions--six millions cash--three millions preferred and two millions in our common for fifty per cent of their stock instead of sixteen millions for all of their stock."

Uncle John looked horror stricken. "It is nothing to us," exclaimed Robert, impatiently. "I can make the whole capital back in twelve months with McCrea to help MacBirney reorganize and run the plants. It is a fortune for them, and we keep MacBirney and the rest of them, for ten years at least, from scheming to start new plants. Nelson says there are legal difficulties about buying more than half their stock. But the voting control of all of it can be safely trusteed."

Uncle John could barely articulate: "Too much, it is too much."

"Bosh. This is a case where generosity is 'plainly indicated,' as Hamilton says."

"Too much."

"Robert is right," asserted Charles curtly.

Uncle John threw his hand up as if to say: "If you are resolved to ruin us, go on!"

"You will be surprised at the success of it," concluded Robert. "MacBirney wants to come here to live, though Chicago would be the better place for him. Let him be responsible for the Western territory. With such an arrangement we ought to have peace out there for ten years. If we can, it means just one hundred millions more in our pockets than we can make in the face of this continual price cutting."

Charles rose. "Then it is settled."

Uncle John ventured a last appeal. "Make the cash five and a half millions."

"Very good," assented Robert, who to meet precisely this objection had raised the figure well above what he intended to pay. "As you like, Uncle John," he said graciously. "Charles, make the cash five and a half millions."

And Uncle John went back to his loneliness, treasuring in his heart the half million he had saved, and encouraged by his frail triumph in the conference over his never-quite-wholly-understood nephew.

At a luncheon next day, the decision was laid by Charles and Robert before the Kimberly partners, by whom it was discussed and approved.

In the evening Charles, with Robert listening, laid the proposal before MacBirney, who had been sent for and whose astonishment at the unexpected liberality overwhelmed him.

He was promptly whirled away from The Towers in a De Castro car. And from a simple after-dinner conference, in which he had sat down at ten o'clock a promoter, he had risen at midnight with his brain reeling, a millionaire.

Alice excused herself when her husband appeared at Black Rock, and followed him upstairs. She saw how he was wrought up. In their room, with eyes burning with the fires of success, he told her of the stupendous change in their fortunes. With an affection that surprised and moved Alice, who had long believed that never again could anything from him move her, he caught her closely in his arms.

Tears filled her eyes. He wiped them away and forced a laugh. "Too good to be true, dearie, isn't it?"

She faltered an instant. "If it will only bring us happiness, Walter."

"Alice, I'm afraid I have been harsh, at times." Her memory swept over bitter months and wasted years, but her heart was touched. "It is all because I worry too much over business. There will be no more worries now--they are past and gone. And I want you to forget everything, Allie." He embraced her fervently. "I have had a good deal of anxiety first and last. It is over now. Great God! This is so easy here. Everything is so easy for these people."

The telephone bell tinkled. Through a mist of tears Alice felt her husband's kiss. She rose to answer the bell. Dolly was calling from downstairs. "Come down both of you," she said. "Charles and Imogene are here with Fritzie and Robert."

With Charles and Imogene had come a famous doctor from the city, Hamilton's friend, Doctor Bryson. Alice protested she could not come down. Dolly told her she "simply must." The controversy upset Alice but she had at last to give way. She bathed her face in cold water and her husband deceived her with assurances that her eyes showed no traces of tears.

Very uncertain about them, she followed MacBirney down, taking refuge at once in a corner with Imogene.

While the two were talking, Grace De Castro and Larrie Morgan came in, bringing some young friends. "Aren't they the nicest couple?" exclaimed Alice as they crossed the room.

"It is a blessing they are," said Imogene. "You see, Grace will probably succeed to the De Castro fortune, and Larrie is likely sometime to have the Kimberly burdens. It crushes me to think that Charles and I have no children."

"Are you so fond of children?" Alice asked wistfully.

"Why, of course, dear; aren't you?"

"Indeed I am, too fond of them. I lost my only child, a baby girl----"

"And you never have had another?"

"No."

"If Robert would marry, we should have a family hope there," continued Imogene. "But I am afraid he never will. How did you enjoy your evening at The Towers?"

"We had a delightful time."

"Isn't Robert a good host? I love to see him preside. And he hasn't given a dinner before for years."

"Why is that?"

Imogene laid her hand gently on Alice's. "It is a long story, dear, a tragedy came into his life--into all our lives, in fact. It changed him greatly."

Soon after the MacBirneys came down, the Nelsons arrived on the scene and the company moved to a south room to get the breeze. Imogene talked with Alice and MacBirney, but Kimberly joined them and listened, taking part at intervals in the conversation.

When Imogene's attention was taken by MacBirney, Robert, asking Alice if she got the air from the cooling windows, moved her chair to where the breeze could be felt more perceptibly. "I hope you haven't had bad news to-night," he said, taking a seat on a divan near her.

She understood instantly that her eyes had not escaped his scrutiny, but concealed her annoyance as best she could. "No, indeed. But I had some exciting news to-night."

"What was it?"

"Oh, I mayn't tell, may I? I am not supposed to know anything, am I?"

Her little uncertainty and appeal made her charmingly pretty, he thought, as he watched her. The traces in her eyes of tears attracted him more than anything he had seen before. Her first little air of annoyed defiance and her effort to throw him off the track, all interested him, and her appeal now, made in a manner that plainly said she was aware the secret of the news was his own, pleased him.

He was in the mood of one who had made his plans, put them through generously, and was ready for the enjoyment that might follow. "Certainly, you are supposed to know," said he graciously. "Why not? And you may tell if you like. At any rate, I absolve you as far as I'm concerned. I couldn't conceive you guilty of a very serious indiscretion."

"Then I suppose you know that we are very happy, and why--don't you?"

"Perhaps; but that should be mere excitement. How about the tears?"

She frowned an impatient protest and rose. "Oh, I haven't said anything about tears. They are going out on the porch--shall we join them?" He got up reluctantly and followed her.

Arthur De Castro and Charles Kimberly offered chairs to Alice. They were under a cluster of electric lamps, where she did not wish to sit for inspection. As she hesitated Robert Kimberly spoke behind her. "Possibly it will be pleasanter over here, Mrs. MacBirney."

He was in the shadow and had drawn a chair for her near Nelson outside the circle of light, from which she was glad to escape. He took the seat under the light himself. When an ice was served, the small tables were drawn together. Alice, occupied with Nelson, who inspired by his vis-à-vis had summoned something of his grand air, lost the conversation of the circle until she heard Doctor Bryson, and turned with Nelson to listen. He was thanking Mrs. De Castro for a compliment.

"I am always glad to hear anything kind of my profession." He spoke simply and his manner Alice thought engaging. "It is a high calling--and I know of but one higher. We hear the complaint that nowadays medicine is a savagely mercenary profession. If a measure of truth lies in the charge I think it is due to the fact that doctors are victims of the mercenary spirit about them. It's a part of the very air they breathe. They can't escape it. The doctor, to begin with, must spend one small fortune to get his degree. He must spend another to equip himself for his work. Ten of the best years of his life go practically to getting ready. His expense for instruments, appliances, and new and increasingly elaborate appointments is continuous."

"But doctor," Fritzie Venable leaned forward with a grave and lengthened face, "think of the fees!"

The doctor enjoyed the laugh. "Quite true. When you find an ambitious doctor, unless his energy is restrained by a sense of his high responsibility, he may be possessed of greed. If a surgeon be set too fast on fame he will affect the spectacular and cut too much and too freely. I admit all of this. My plea is for the conscientious doctor, and believe me, there are many such. Nor must you forget that, at the best, half our lives we are too young to please and half our lives too old."

"Hamilton said the other night," observed Robert Kimberly, filling in the pause, "that a good doctor must spend his time in killing, not his own patients, but his own business."

"No other professional man is called on to do that," observed Bryson. "Indeed, the saddest of all possible proofs of the difficulties of our calling is found in the fact that the suicide rate among doctors is the highest in the learned professions."

MacBirney expressed surprise. "I had no idea of such a thing. Had you, Mr. Kimberly?" he asked with his sudden energy.

"I have known it, but perhaps only because I have been interested in questions of that kind."

Dolly's attention was arrested at once by the mention of suicide. "Oh, dear," she exclaimed, "Don't let us talk about suicide."

But Robert Kimberly could not always be shut off and this subject he pursued with a certain firmness. Some of the family were disturbed but no one presumed to interfere. "Suicide," he went on, "has a painful interest for many people. Has your study of it, doctor, ever led you to believe that it presupposes insanity?" he asked of Bryson.

"By no means."

"You conclude then that sane men and women do commit suicide?"

"Frequently, Mr. Kimberly."

Kimberly drew back in his chair. "I am glad to be supported in my own conviction. The fact is," he went on in a humorous tone, "I am forced either to hold in this way or conclude that I am sprung from a race of lunatics."

"Robert," protested Dolly, "can't we talk about something else?"

Kimberly, however, persisted, and he now had, for some reason not clear to Alice, a circle of painfully acute listeners. "The insanity theory is in many cases a comfortable one. But I don't find it so, and I must stick to the other and regard suicide as the worst possible solution of any possible difficulty."

Doctor Bryson nodded assent. Kimberly spoke on with a certain intensity. "If every act of a man's life had been a brave one," he continued, "his suicide would be all the more the act of a coward. I don't believe that kind of a man can commit suicide. Understand, I am considering the act of a man--not that of a youth or of one immature."

"Well, I don't care what you are considering, Robert," declared Dolly with unmistakable emphasis, "we will talk about something else."