Part 9 (2/2)

”Yes,” Stanton answered constrainedly. ”Yes, I--” he lowered his voice, but the silence still continued. Stanton had his eyes fixed on the table, but now he frowned and half rose from his chair.

”I want to speak with you, Arkwright,” he said. ”Suppose we go into the next room. I'll be back in a moment,” he added, nodding to the others.

But the man on his right removed his cigar from his lips and said in an undertone, ”No, sit down, stay where you are;” and the elderly gentleman at Arkwright's side laid his hand detainingly on his arm. ”Oh, you won't take Mr. Arkwright away from us, Stanton?” he asked, smiling.

Stanton shrugged his shoulders and sat down again, and there was a moment's pause. It was broken by the man in the overcoat, who laughed.

”He's paying you a compliment, Mr. Arkwright,” he said. He pointed with his cigar to the gentleman at Arkwright's side.

”I don't understand,” Arkwright answered doubtfully.

”It's a compliment to your eloquence--he's afraid to leave you alone with the senator. Livingstone's been telling us that you are a better talker than Stanton.” Arkwright turned a troubled countenance toward the men about the table, and then toward Livingstone, but that young man had his eyes fixed gravely on the gla.s.ses before him and did not raise them.

Arkwright felt a sudden, unreasonable fear of the circle of strong-featured, serene and confident men about him. They seemed to be making him the subject of a jest, to be enjoying something among themselves of which he was in ignorance, but which concerned him closely. He turned a white face toward Stanton.

”You don't mean,” he began piteously, ”that--that you are not going? Is that it--tell me--is that what you wanted to say?”

Stanton s.h.i.+fted in his chair and muttered some words between his lips, then turned toward Arkwright and spoke quite clearly and distinctly.

”I am very sorry, Mr. Arkwright,” he said, ”but I am afraid I'll have to disappoint you. Reasons I cannot now explain have arisen which make my going impossible--quite impossible,” he added firmly--”not only now, but later,” he went on quickly, as Arkwright was about to interrupt him.

Arkwright made no second attempt to speak. He felt the muscles of his face working and the tears coming to his eyes, and to hide his weakness he twisted in his chair and sat staring ahead of him with his back turned to the table. He heard Livingstone's voice break the silence with some hurried question, and immediately his embarra.s.sment was hidden in a murmur of answers and the moving of gla.s.ses as the men s.h.i.+fted in their chairs and the laughter and talk went on as briskly as before. Arkwright saw a sideboard before him and a servant arranging some silver on one of the shelves. He watched the man do this with a concentrated interest as though the dull, numbed feeling in his brain caught at the trifle in order to put off, as long as possible, the consideration of the truth.

And then beyond the sideboard and the tapestry on the wall above it, he saw the sun s.h.i.+ning down upon the island of Cuba, he saw the royal palms waving and bending, the dusty columns of Spanish infantry crawling along the white roads and leaving blazing huts and smoking cane-fields in their wake; he saw skeletons of men and women seeking for food among the refuse of the street; he heard the order given to the firing squad, the splash of the bullets as they scattered the plaster on the prison wall, and he saw a kneeling figure pitch forward on its face, with a useless bandage tied across its sightless eyes.

Senator Stanton brought him back with a sharp shake of the shoulder. He had also turned his back on the others, and was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He spoke rapidly, and in a voice only slightly raised above a whisper.

”I am more than sorry, Arkwright,” he said earnestly. ”You mustn't blame me altogether. I have had a hard time of it this afternoon. I wanted to go. I really wanted to go. The thing appealed to me, it touched me, it seemed as if I owed it to myself to do it. But they were too many for me,” he added with a backward toss of his head toward the men around his table.

”If the papers had not told on me I could have got well away,” he went on in an eager tone, ”but as soon as they read of it, they came here straight from their offices. You know who they are, don't you?”

he asked, and even in his earnestness there was an added touch of importance in his tone as he spoke the name of his party's leader, of men who stood prominently in Wall Street and who were at the head of great trusts.

”You see how it is,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. ”They have enormous interests at stake. They said I would drag them into war, that I would disturb values, that the business interests of the country would suffer. I'm under obligations to most of them, they have advised me in financial matters, and they threatened--they threatened to make it unpleasant for me.” His voice hardened and he drew in his breath quickly, and laughed. ”You wouldn't understand if I were to tell you.

It's rather involved. And after all, they may be right, agitation may be bad for the country. And your party leader after all is your party leader, isn't he, and if he says 'no' what are you to do? My sympathies are just as keen for these poor women and children as ever, but as these men say, 'charity begins at home,' and we mustn't do anything to bring on war prices again, or to send stocks tumbling about our heads, must we?” He leaned back in his chair again and sighed. ”Sympathy is an expensive luxury, I find,” he added.

Arkwright rose stiffly and pushed Stanton away from him with his hand.

He moved like a man coming out of a dream.

”Don't talk to me like that,” he said in a low voice. The noise about the table ended on the instant, but Arkwright did not notice that it had ceased. ”You know I don't understand that,” he went on; ”what does it matter to me!” He put his hand up to the side of his face and held it there, looking down at Stanton. He had the dull, heavy look in his eyes of a man who has just come through an operation under some heavy drug.

”'Wall Street,' 'trusts,' 'party leaders,'” he repeated, ”what are they to me? The words don't reach me, they have lost their meaning, it is a language I have forgotten, thank G.o.d!” he added. He turned and moved his eyes around the table, scanning the faces of the men before him.

”Yes, you are twelve to one,” he said at last, still speaking dully and in a low voice, as though he were talking to himself. ”You have won a n.o.ble victory, gentlemen. I congratulate you. But I do not blame you, we are all selfish and self-seeking. I thought I was working only for Cuba, but I was working for myself, just as you are. I wanted to feel that it was I who had helped to bring relief to that plague-spot, that it was through my efforts the help had come. Yes, if he had done as I asked, I suppose I would have taken the credit.”

He swayed slightly, and to steady himself caught at the back of his chair. But at the same moment his eyes glowed fiercely and he held himself erect again. He pointed with his finger at the circle of great men who sat looking up at him in curious silence.

”You are like a ring of gamblers around a gaming table,” he cried wildly, ”who see nothing but the green cloth and the wheel and the piles of money before them, who forget in watching the money rise and fall, that outside the sun is s.h.i.+ning, that human beings are sick and suffering, that men are giving their lives for an idea, for a sentiment, for a flag. You are the money-changers in the temple of this great republic and the day will come, I pray to G.o.d, when you will be scourged and driven out with whips. Do you think you can form combines and deals that will cheat you into heaven? Can your 'trusts' save your souls--is 'Wall Street' the strait and narrow road to salvation?”

The men about the table leaned back and stared at Arkwright in as great amazement as though he had violently attempted an a.s.sault upon their pockets, or had suddenly gone mad in their presence. Some of them frowned, and others appeared not to have heard, and others smiled grimly and waited for him to continue as though they were spectators at a play.

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