46

Patrick Peale returned from the Johns Hopkins Hospital on a very hot day in June. He had told his wife one of the very few lies he had ever uttered, not to spare her any anxiety, but because he did not want to express to anyone his own fears for himself. He came back to Portersville, ghastly and wizened, and though the day was extremely warm he had frequent rigors during which he pressed his arms convulsively to his sides.

He was only sixty-one, but he had become an old man during the past two months. Laura had seen it, and had urged a medical examination upon him, which he had refused petulantly, and with the usual contempt he now invariably expressed for her. But fear had come to him eight months previously. He had had a bad cold late in October, which he had seemed unable to shake off; a heavy cough remained with him, which did not slacken even when warm weather had come. When, one day in late March, he coughed up a slight portion of blood, he had been seized with extreme terror. Tuberculosis? He was afraid of consulting any physicians. Now he became obsessed with his private fear. Heretofore his one unremitting obsession had been Allan Marshall. He added this other to the original one, and in his characteristically confused and narrow thinking, he blamed Allan for this mysterious invader of his life.

He had done much reading about a new science: psychosomatic medicine. Always meticulously careful of his health, with the concentrated absorption of one in love with himself and who believed himself to be of the utmost value and importance, he had followed every medical advance submitted to the public. He was convinced that the desperate resentment and chronic rage in which he lived—all provoked by Allan Marshall—had “psychosomatically” brought on the unnamed illness which afflicted him. But still, in March, he was afraid to have an examination. He bought tomes on the subject of phthisis. He looked for sputum, for night sweats, for loss of weight, for early evening fever. He took his temperature. He was relieved to find that though he was losing weight he had none of the other symptoms. Just a cough, he told himself with prayerful thanksgiving. Coughs had a way of remaining, especially in a man of his age. His chest was very painful. Neuritis, probably.

There was no more blood until the latter part of May, and then there was a considerable amount of it. He was terribly frightened. He waited a few more days, his cough becoming alarmingly more harsh and hacking. It was then that he called Johns Hopkins, told his wife gloomily that he had some business in New York, and went to Baltimore.

The verdict was swift and sure: cancer of the lungs, a very extensive cancer for which nothing could be done. His doctors gave him a box of tiny gray pills, and they looked at him with pity. They also gave him an unlimited prescription for morphine and informed him that he must not be hesitant about using it. Patrick, stunned, would not believe at first. It was impossible. He neither drank nor smoked; he had always lived a blameless life. He had given up his pipe many years ago. “Impossible,” he said to his doctors, looking at them with terror. “I have always been a good man, according to my lights.” They thought him piteous, but a little stupid. One said, “If disease attacked only the unrighteous, then we’d have such a religious revival that there wouldn’t be churches enough to accommodate the people.” But Patrick thought only of Allan Marshall. He said to his doctors, “I have been killed, murdered, as surely as if I had had a bullet shot into me.”

He arrived home in great pain and weakness, and went at once to bed. He called for Laura, who came to him immediately. There he lay on his pillows, shrunken and still, his large brown eyes, once so serious in his youth, bulging with the agony and dread of those mortally stricken. When Laura entered the room, he glared at her with accusation mingled with hatred and fury and fear. He said, before she could speak in her anxiety for him, “I am going to die. I’ll live, with luck, about two months.” The accusation flamed in his eyes, as she sank into a chair near him. She was unable to speak, for her throat had tightened and she was trembling violently, uncontrollably.

“Allan Marshall killed me,” added Patrick, and closed his eyes against her. The tall lean house was very chill, for even the June heat could not penetrate those gaunt walls or invade this narrow bedroom with the somber furniture. Patrick was seized with a spasm of coughing. Now blood foamed to his lips, but he was too distraught and too numbed to wipe it away. He knew it was there; he derived some satisfaction, some malicious contentment, that Laura could see the signs of his coming dissolution.

She cried out, so he knew that she had seen. He felt her standing over him. She was using a handkerchief on his mouth. He turned aside his head and groaned, “Let me alone.” Sharp pain knifed through his chest and he put one withered hand to it.

“Patrick, Patrick!” she was weeping. “What is wrong? What do you mean? Oh, God, why are you bleeding? I must call the doctor. …” A scent of lilacs floated from her, and he sickened at the perfume and drew in his nostrils.

“I said,” he repeated feebly, “that Allan Marshall has finally succeeded in killing me.”

He’s ill, and mad, thought Laura distractedly. “I must call the doctor,” she said again. But he held up his hand.

“Too late,” he answered. “Too late for anything. I have cancer of the lungs. They told me yesterday, at Johns Hopkins. That is where I went, and not to New York, as I told you.” He pointed to the table at his side. “Morphine. For my pain.”

There was no dignity in him, no compassion for his wife, no desire to spare anyone pain. There was only terror, outrage, hatred, that this thing had come to him. The Pharisee—confronted with reality, stripped of precise theories and dogmas and pride, face to face with majestic Death, who could not be placated with self-righteous cries and the spurious importance of men like Patrick Peale—could only whimper to himself and long for vengeance.

Laura, undone by pity, suffering her own terror, fell into her chair again. “Oh, Patrick,” she murmured frantically. “I know you haven’t looked well for some time—I wanted you to have an examination. Oh, Patrick. Oh, my dear. Are—are they certain?”

As if he were determinedly and deliberately throwing stones at her, he gave her the facts. His voice was stronger. He watched her shocked face and tear-filled eyes, pleased. Let her suffer, too. She had made his life wretched enough. A dimwitted, colorless, silly woman, hysterical and mindless! How often she had opposed him in the past; how often she had begged him, long ago, not to “poison” their children’s minds against that foul wretch, Marshall. How she had pleaded with him to persuade Miles not to marry Ruth Purcell, and Mary not to marry DeWitt Marshall. She had stood in his way wherever he had turned. She had refused to entertain Norman deWitt, and when Patrick had insisted, she had treated the visitor coldly and with evident distaste. He, Patrick, could remember nothing of her now but womanish petulance and foolishness. She had resisted, for years, turning over to him her sixteen per cent of the Interstate stock.

“They are absolutely certain,” he said to her now. “There is nothing that can be done, except temporary easing of pain. I believe they said I might live two months.”

Laura put her hands over her face and wept aloud. Patrick, poor Patrick; cold, silent, hating, gloomy Patrick. Her sobs were deep and broken. Patrick moved restlessly. “Now, Laura,” he said in his old tone of disdain and repudiation, “let’s not be hysterical, as usual. Hysterical people never feel strongly, I’ve heard. Spare me superficiality, at least.”

She dropped her hands from her wet face and looked at him speechlessly. Her pity was a fire in her. She could not go to him and console him; she dared not take him in her arms. His bitter eyes were mocking her, enjoying her grief, taking satisfaction in her pain. She closed her eyes, for she could not endure that light in his.

“My children will remember,” he was saying. “My sons will avenge me.”

He’s mad; he’s boundlessly vindictive, she thought, in spite of her compassion. But she could not let him die with that evil obsession in his soul. She could not let him use his sons, as he had long plotted, to strike at Allan Marshall, Allan away in the sanitarium where he had been sent after his collapse over the death of his daughter.

“Have pity,” she stammered imploringly. “Have pity on yourself, Patrick. Allan may have hurt you, once; we all hurt each other. Some out of cruelty, some out of necessity, some out of greed or expediency. Think of Allan now. It is feared he is dying; he is out of his mind with sorrow. Dolores, poor Dolores. The little boy—without parents. Patrick, you can’t—you can’t—go on, hating like that, carrying it with you. … You can’t do that to yourself, you can’t continue to hate yourself like this.”

He regarded her with somber outrage and disgust. “Are you insane?” he asked. “But then, you never had any intelligence. ‘Hate’ myself! That comes of your having very limited comprehension, and a sheltered existence, and poor heredity. I was told your mother was a fool. It is a good thing she didn’t live to have other children, to burden the world with more feeble-mindedness.”

Her gray eyes became enormous as she looked at him, and her slender body stiffened. For a moment she forgot to pity him, and she felt the hot thrust of loathing in herself. How could he, even in this extremity, be so cruel, so contemptible, so self-righteous? The dying were supposed to gain some comprehension, some mercy for others, some tenderness, some. wisdom. But there her husband lay, and he was as he had always been, and all his twisted egotism was burning more vividly than ever.

But then, Laura thought with a resurgence of pity, he is so frightfully afraid. He always speaks of God; he attends church with fanatical regularity. But he never believed in God, never once in his life. He is the complete atheist.

He was dismissing her with a wave of his hand. “Send for Miles and Fielding,” he said in the voice of one scornfully speaking to the meanest of servants. “And leave me alone for a little while. I think I want to sleep.”

But he did not sleep. Left alone, while Laura telephoned his sons and quietly called the family physician, who promised to arrange for nurses and to visit Patrick the next day, the slowly dying man suddenly thrust his knuckles against his teeth and a sick whining sound began to rise in his throat. He choked it down; it rose again and again. His nightshirt became damp and clammy against his quivering flesh. The curtains had been drawn far back from the slits of windows, and he could see the scarlet sunset flaring over the dark mountains. He began to stare at it, and he thought: I am all alone. I was always alone. No one ever cared for me at any time in my life. He muttered prayers like an incantation, a plea not for mercy but for explanation. Why should this awful terror have come to him instead of to his enemies? He contemplated himself on his pillows, a good and virtuous man, completely abandoned to silence and death and lovelessness, and he was moved to overwhelming commiseration for himself.

His sons entered the house and Laura met them, examining their faces for any sign of the real grief she prayed they felt for their father. But she saw at once that the excessively solemn Fielding was inwardly excited. She turned from him with a brief closing spasm of her eyes, and looked at Miles. He was actually looking at her with solicitude, and this startled and warmed her; she did not know that this solicitude was for herself, nor did she know that of all her children only Miles did not consider her a fool or a nonentity. Miles, the debonair, the exquisite, was thinking: Hard on you, old girl, but better for you in the long run. You won’t be losing anything. Like Fielding, he kissed his mother’s cheek, but his kiss had genuineness in it. He said, “It’s certain, then?” She nodded, and sat down weakly on the narrow crimson bench before the meager fireplace of the hall. Then she gazed earnestly and imploringly at her sons.

“Be kind to him,” she whispered. Be merciful, she wanted to add. “Comfort him.”

“It’s frightful, frightful,” said Fielding, leaning against the wall, all the long and gangling length of him. He pulled at his yellowish nose and glanced sideways at his brother. “At the most, two months, I think you said, Mother?”

“Sometimes there are mistakes, even among the best of doctors,” said Miles, putting his hand on his mother’s shoulder and frowning at his brother. His eyes were a cold blue flash in the duskiness of the hall. “We’ll do what we can. We’ve always humored him, you remember.”

“He never found out we thought him a—” Fielding began, then was stopped by another flash from Miles.

Laura wrung her hands tightly together. “I wish you had known your father as I knew him, when I was a very young girl. So serious, so thoughtful, so idealistic. And so very, very upright. I think it was his uprightness which really—really caused him trouble later, and distorted his original character. You see, he could never compromise; he could never accept people for what they were.” She swallowed, and stopped.

“If anyone opposed him, he thought of the man as a personal enemy, who ought to be destroyed. The enemy became not only Pa’s enemy, but the enemy of God and the angels,” said Miles. He put his hand over his mother’s twisting fingers, and pressed them. “A common, and dangerous, disease of the idealists. History is full of the cities they burned, the people they hanged, the children they orphaned, the fields they laid waste.” Miles’s voice was thoughtful, but hard. “Uncle Allan opposed him, I suppose. Therefore, Uncle Allan must be destroyed, as an enemy of the people I know. I’m sure that’s what he wants to talk to us about—Uncle Allan, the poor devil.”

Laura gazed at her older son with intense amazement. “Why, Miles, I didn’t know you . …!” She stopped, and cried without restraint. Fielding looked bored and impatient, and yawned. But Miles watched his mother with fresh solicitude. He knew what he wanted; he was determined to have it, no matter what he had to do. Nevertheless, he was sorry for Allan Marshall, as a man who was suffering, as a man who found the fierce world at last too much for him. It’ll never be too much for me, thought Miles, for I’ll never permit myself to be caught up in its emotions. I loved Dolores; I suppose Uncle Allan and Tony and myself were the only ones who really mourned her. But I have my life to live. I had no time to waste.

His mother, in spite of everything, loved her children, and so he was sorry for her. Perhaps if she had not had children, she would have left her intolerant and bigoted husband a long time ago and might have found some happiness. He said, “What about Mary? Does she know?”

“No, there was the baby to think of,” replied Laura. “Later, I’ll tell her her father is just very ill, and perhaps I can persuade him to keep her in ignorance.”

Miles commented wryly to himself that it was doubtful if Mary would feel any shock or sorrow. Laura was pushing back her soft dark hair, and her face gleamed in the shadows, purely carved and white. She touched Miles’s sleeve timidly. “I think, in a way, that I am beginning to understand you, my dear.” But she did not look at the bored and squinting younger son. Fielding thought: It’s all right for Miles to “play-act”; he is the perfect diplomat, but why waste it on a fluttering and totally insignificant woman? Fielding tugged at his nose again, and said, “Well, shall we get it over? I’ve got a dinner engagement with Cynthia.”

Laura, as if she had committed some offense, immediately stood up. All at once, as she stood there, tall and slim and strangely young and silent, there was a faint resemblance in her to Dolores and Miles was struck with a violent pang. Now, control yourself, he thought, with cool anger at his folly. But he went upstairs with his brother, walking surely. Only a fool quarrels with his own bargains.

Miles threw away his cigarette before entering his father’s rooms with his brother. A sedative had finally calmed Patrick; fear was less overpowering; he could use his mind, and he knew he must use it now. He watched his sons enter, and his eyes became intent in his quietly desperate face. Despite what Laura had flung at him wildly years ago, he steadfastly believed that his sons loved and respected him and waited upon his word at all times. Had he not been a just and devoted father? Had his sons ever quarreled with him or taken issue with him? No, at all times they had gravely agreed with his convictions. Fine young men, my sons, thought Patrick Peale, men of principle, seriousness, and ideals. He held out his hand first to Miles, who pressed it briefly, and then to Fielding, who, with a pretense of youthful emotion and awkwardness, suddenly bent down and kissed his father’s forehead.

“Your mother has told you?” Patrick asked faintly. Miles said, “Yes. And there is nothing I can say, I suppose, except that I’m terribly sorry.” Fielding said in a loud voice, “Perhaps it isn’t true! We’ve got to believe it isn’t.” Miles pursed his lips again and sat down, while Patrick looked with mournful fondness at his younger son. “It is true, I’m afraid,” he said. “But I didn’t call for you to discuss my. … I wanted to talk things over with you. I have so little time now.”

He clasped his hands over his chest, and now his eyes were even more intent on his sons. “It hurts me to talk. I’ll try to be brief. You know the history of the deWitt and the Peale families. You know that your grandfather, Stephen deWitt, was robbed of his position, his house, and his money, by his brother Rufus. The law may not agree—man’s law—that the grandsons of Stephen deWitt have been robbed of their rightful heritage. But there is a moral law, which, at the end, inexorably comes into effect.”

Miles and Fielding listened with the proper and solemn attention, but Miles was annoyed at the pompous and old-fashioned phrasing of his father’s words. Why didn’t the poor old devil just come out and say: “I want you to have what those I hate have, and I don’t care how you get it so long as I have my revenge?” But that would be too honest for Patrick Peale.

Patrick lifted his hands and began to mark off what he was about to say: “I have sixteen per cent of Interstate stock, which I acquired through your mother. You, Miles, through your wife Ruth, have control of four per cent. I have another five per cent, in addition to the original sixteen per cent. That makes twenty-five per cent in our hands. Against—their—fifty-one per cent.” He paused. “DeWitt will be president one of these days, perhaps very soon, with that fifty-one per cent. Of course, he is married to my daughter Mary.”

Miles said, “Of course, we can’t count on Mary. After all, she’d stand with her husband, and the other Marshalls.”

Patrick winced. He would have preferred that his son not be so blunt. He replied, “That is so. I’m afraid that Mary has become very selfish and expedient; that comes of her association with those people. We can expect nothing but opposition from Mary, so let us not discuss her.” He hesitated, then coughed. “Let us continue. Twenty-five per cent in the hands of this family. We also have a great deal of money. Your mother inherited a good deal of cash and investments from her aunt, Lydia Purcell, and also from her uncle, Rufus deWitt, who was apparently, and belatedly, trying to make some amends. My own private holdings are not to be despised, and I have control of your mother’s. Your mother has no head for finances, as you know, and turned all over to me.”

At your insistence, after your endless nagging and recriminations and accusations, and because she wanted peace for her children’s sake, thought Miles. And you had made her feel guilty.

Patrick was now speaking in a louder, faster voice: “The Interstate really belongs to us! And my sons must have it! The details I shall leave to you. Who stands in your way? A miserable cripple, DeWitt Marshall, who is also quite young. A conscienceless alcoholic and very sick man, Allan Marshall, who will probably never be very potent in the concerns of the company again. Money is power! You will have it. Miles, you also have the money Jon deWitt left you, and you have invested it wisely, on the advice of Mr. Regan. You are general superintendent, now, of the Interstate Railroad Company, and Fielding is your assistant. Why, you are in the camp of the enemy, and you can do what you wish!”

Miles, always so discreet, could not prevent himself from saying, “But who gave me my opportunity there? Allan Marshall, of course. He could have kept us out. If we are in ‘the camp of the enemy,’ we were invited in.”

His father rose on his pillows at this stupid enormity, and glared at his son. “Why? Why? I know! First of all, he needed your ability. Second, it was his bribe to you not to pursue his daughter any longer. He held your position in the company over your head: attempt to marry his daughter and he would throw you out! I know all the workings of his mind. He forced her to marry that Englishman in order to remove her from you. And how did a just God visit punishment upon him?” Patrick’s eyes gloated. “By her death, on the Lusitania.”

“Of course, of course,” murmured Fielding, in a sepulchral tone.

Miles slowly and carefully crossed his legs. Self-righteous liar, he thought. There is no mercy or honor in you. He folded his arms on his chest and regarded his father enigmatically. Patrick had begun to beat a pillow with a clenched fist. “There is always God’s justice, at the end. And the day of justice for my sons is almost here. And you have a friend in the very camp of the enemy: Norman deWitt. When I last saw Norman, in New York, he told me that he is so unwelcome in the family that he rarely sees his poor old mother, who is prematurely senile with her grief. …”

“She is seventy-five or so,” said Miles. “And not a very bright woman at any time, if I remember correctly.” He paused, and was amused at himself for this almost unique impulse toward integrity.

Fielding turned his pale brown eyes in bewilderment on his brother. The diplomatic, careful Miles! But there he sat now, staring at his father with that complete blueness of eye, that reserved expression which indicated some hidden disgust. Even Patrick was caught by his son’s look, and silenced momentarily by his words. Then he sank back on his pillows, and began to pluck vaguely at his sheet. “I thought you were very congenial with Norman,” he said. “After all, you were in Norman’s Harvard Socialist Club—one of the charter members, I believe.”

“He had a student chapter there, among many other chapters in other universities,” said Miles coldly. “I was just eighteen when I joined.”

Now, what in hell is wrong with Miles? thought Fielding. He could see the delicate skin of his brother’s forehead flushing. Is he trying to antagonize the old boy, just now when everything depends on his keeping his mouth shut?

Patrick became excited. “Miles! But you believed what Norman and his friends taught you. You believed in the theories—”

“Such as government control of the means of production?” asked Miles casually. “Under such a system, what would become, for instance, of the Interstate Railroad Company?Our company, as you have just said.”

Patrick stared at him in silence. He began to rub his right index finger slowly over his lips. He blinked. Then he said reflectively, “You know what Norman has told you. The friends of the government will not have their property socialized. When you and Fielding are in control of the Interstate, all will be well with you. But if you are not, then eventually, and the day is not far off, the company will be seized by the government, for the benefit of all the people, including the exploited workers.”

Why is it impossible for him to think without confusion? Miles asked himself. Why does he insist upon self-deception? There are so many wealthy fools like him in America. If the day he prophesies ever comes, they are going to cry out in protest: “But you don’t mean me! You mean my brother!” Miles reflected that it might almost be worth while to be present on such an occasion, for the joy of Olympian laughter.

But men like Norman deWitt were neither confused nor the victims of self-deception. They knew what they wanted. And they used men like Patrick Peale to help them. However, this was no time to attempt to clear Patrick’s mind. So Miles said soothingly, “Of course, you are right.” Fielding relaxed, and stretched out his long legs.

Now Miles’s voice became brisk and hard. “Yes, I know that Norman will help us. You’ve reviewed the whole situation pretty thoroughly, Pa. I have some things to add. DeWitt is executive vice-president of the company; he will be, one of these days, president. But he’s not capable of holding such a position, though I don’t underestimate his intelligence and ability. He’s not the man his father was, or his grandfather. He wants power, not as they wanted power, for the sake of power itself, but for his own self-aggrandizement. He was always the ‘little one,’ even before he was crippled. His crippling only accentuated his intrinsic littleness. He’s ruthless and egotistic and small-minded and crafty.”

Patrick nodded eagerly. “Go on, Miles.” Fielding sat up.

Miles considered, and glanced about the dusky room. The last shreds of the scarlet sunset lingered over the black mountains. Miles stood up and turned on a few lamps. He studied the last, as if it held all his thoughts. He began to speak again, musingly.

“This is another day. Some blame it on Wilson. But no one is to blame. The day of the absolute, autocratic industrial baron has ended. It is a natural development, and theorists, with their shouts of the brotherhood of man and their outcries against the profit system and free enterprise, have had nothing to do with it. The source of a more equitable and decent industrial society was the middle class. As that class invaded industry and business they decentralized the power of the great barons and tycoons. All the antitrust acts and other laws against monopolies would have forever remained impotent if the middle-class businessmen and smaller industrialists hadn’t breeched the narrow fortresses held by the Rockefellers, the Belmonts, the Vanderbilts, the Gunthers, to name only a few.”

“Well, well?” demanded Patrick impatiently. He had not followed his son in the least. “What are you getting at?”

Miles lifted his eyebrows briefly, but did not turn to his father. “More and more, thoughtful people in industry are beginning to realize that the success of any business depends upon the people in it. And the public it serves well. Personal power is no longer feasible, among intelligent men, and no longer very desirable. The barons will struggle against this a little longer, and then they will learn. Some of them have already learned; they’ve created benevolent foundations in behalf of all the people of America. They’ve distributed millions of their profits.”

“Yes, yes,” muttered Patrick restlessly. Miles glanced at Fielding, and smiled a little. He continued: “DeWitt Marshall is an anachronism. He thinks of himself as one of the tycoons, one of the barons. With that attitude, he will ruin the company. And that is why he must be gotten out, someway.”

Patrick exclaimed, still without the slightest understanding, “That is what I mean! Exactly!”

Miles came to his father’s bedside and looked down at him ironically. What a fool this was, to be sure. He said, “But there is some great and hidden evil in the world. I think I know what it is. Men like DeWitt unknowingly sustain that evil. He must be gotten rid of, if America is to remain free. And we must get rid of that evil, too; it’s an ancient one, and was born in Europe centuries ago. We can’t work fast enough.”

Fielding wrinkled his sallow forehead, and Patrick put on an expression of solemnity. Miles was highly amused. He found it sardonically satisfying to hold these spoken soliloquies with himself in the. presence of those who could not understand and believed that they understood.

“There is a trusteeship in public service,” said Miles. He reached into his pocket for a cigarette, then withdrew his hand, empty. He said, “I think you can trust us, Pa. We’ll get what you want for us.” He turned to his brother. “We’ve learned a lot these past years, haven’t we, Field?”

“We sure have,” replied Fielding. He was puzzled. He looked at this exquisite, his brother, at the bland, almost beautiful face of the older man; he felt Miles’s indomitable and silent power, his assurance, his puissant masculinity. Fielding was no fool; he knew that he had very little of his brother’s intellect, but there had been a time when Miles had talked with him gaily, lightly, and informingly. Now he merely gave Fielding orders, without bothering to explain them or enlarge upon them. Fielding felt a thrust of envy and resentment, but he admired his brother so thoroughly, and respected him so abjectly, that the thrust was almost immediately blunted. There was no use trying to follow old Miles all the time, Fielding thought It was better just to obey.

Patrick lay limply in his bed. “I can die in peace now,” he murmured. Then he stiffened and sat up again, aghast “We have forgotten one thing: Cornelia deWitt Marshall! She’s not only a director of the company, she’s DeWitt’s mother! How will you eliminate her?"

Miles patted his father’s shoulder. “When the time comes, we’ll eliminate Aunt Cornelia. She’s more formidable than DeWitt—but we’ll eliminate her. Have you forgotten? Since your retirement from the board I’ve been a director, too.”

Miles went alone that night down to the yards. He often went there, at least twice a week, and usually at night, driving his own great black automobile to his own reserved spot. The men were accustomed to see that Dresden figure moving about over the rails, looking around thoughtfully, smoking his special cigarettes, one after another, wandering in and out of the roundhouses, rarely speaking, seeing everything. Sometimes he would just stand for a long time, in all weather, seeing the glittering of tracks in the moonlight, studying the switchmen thawing out switches in zero cold, seemingly fascinated by unburdened engines roaring up out of the darkness on the various lines, spewing out a wake of fire and sparks. The crash of engines automatically coupling with freight cars and passenger coaches sometimes made his face take on a sharpened look, as if he had heard an awakening sound out of an unremembered past. Often he stood by men impatiently attending to a hot-box. He stood by other men waving lanterns at huge and sprawling crossings; when monster trains clangored and pounded into the great station—where freight and passenger cars were sometimes switched to other engines for other destinations—he would stand and look and watch like some yokel come down to the depot for the daily local. Cool, remote, uncommunicative, he was everywhere, stepping like a cat over high rails, appearing suddenly out of nowhere, endlessly smoking, his hat on the back of his mahogany curls, his gloved hands holding his “dandy” cane. The brassy hosanna of bells, the shuddering of rails, the piercing hiss of steam, the lights against the night sky, the thunder of coming and departing trains, the hubbub of men and their shouts and curses, the glimmer of lanterns far down the tracks, the shunting of engines—all these seemed of interest to him.

“Coming down to spy on us, the little dancin’ feller.” So a group of three engineers, two conductors, and a few switchmen and other workers in one of the roundhouses tonight, muttered among themselves. The June evening was very hot; there was much traffic lately, and an inexplicable prosperity, and the men were pleased. But in the immemorial way of railroaders they grumbled. “Comin ’ down to see if we’re doin’ all right, with all the work, and not scroungin’ on the job.”

“You ain’t right,” said a very old man, a sweeper in the station. His eyes were bleared; he was like some ancient bird, leaning on his broom. He shook his head. But no one listened to him. Old Billie was daffy; everybody knew that, and usually the men were kind to him. He had been a railroader since very early youth, and he was always mixing up “Mister Aaron, Mister Rufus, Mister Stephen” with the mighty men now the owners of the Interstate Railroad Company.

“He’s only general superintendent; you’d think he owned the damn road,” said one engineer churlishly, and spat into the cold black stove in the room.

“Course he’ll own it,” said Old Billie, nodding so vigorously that he staggered. “Why shouldn’t he? He owned it in the first place, didn’t he? I could tell you what he did way back. …”

One of the engineers, an older man, took a moment’s kindly notice of him. “How old are you, Pop? You must’a been born on the road!”

“Pretty near,” chortled Old Billie, delighted by this crumb of recognition, and pecking at it eagerly. “You fellers don’t know what railroadin’ is. Sometimes you’d go out with a train in the winter and the snow high as mountains and you’d never know if you’d get into Philly or anywheres. But we sang like all hell in the cabs, and the firemen’d throw on more coal, and there you’d go a-pantin’ up the grade with all the bells shoutin’ and the passengers scared to death and freezin’, but laughin’, too, for you wouldn’t know if you’d be spendin’ the night in the hills, brewin’ coffee with coals from the engine, right out by the side of the road, and settin’ up fires, and the people comin’ out of the coaches to warm theirselves, and the engineers and the firemen and the conductors a-minglin’ with ’em, and soon everybody laughin’, and bottles passin’ and no talk about germs, and sharin’ sandwiches, and a big white moon comin’ over the white mountains, and waitin’ for the snow to melt or the plows come, screamin’ with bells like angels roarin’ up—”

He shook his head sorrowfully. “You fellers never knew what railroadin’ was, in the old days. Excitin’. Everybody knowin’ everybody else on the road, and workin’ together, and bein’ proud of the road. … Old Aaron, now, he was a son of a bitch, but he was a railroader. Many’s the time he’d ride in the cab with us; no fancy private cars; and he’d have a bottle of whisky, and he could cuss better than any damn engineer I ever knowed. Screw the last penny out of you and the road, but he was a railroader. What you got now? Men in the big offices in Philly and New York and in town, here, and never comin’ down, and just sittin’ over their ledgers and talkin’ with the big feenanciers on Wall Street, and goin’ out with their yachts and spendin’ their time in Europe raisin’ hell with the whores I heerd all about—and not knowin’ a single damn thing about the road, ’cept their private cars and their stocks and bonds.” The old man sighed. “There’s Mr. Marshall. He hated the road. It was just money to him. And it’s just money to Mr. DeWitt, and Miss Cornelia, and the rest of ’em.” The old man’s eyes began to shine brilliantly as he stared at the men smiling at him indulgently. “But it ain’t just money to Mr. Aaron! No sir! And when I see him out there, steppin’ over the rails careful like he used to, and smokin’, and watchin’ everything, I tell you, it’s just like old times and I’m a fireman again, and I go up to speak to him, touchin’ my forehead, and I says, ‘Mr. Aaron, I’m glad you come back, and it’s good to see you,’ and he says, ‘Thanks, Billie, I’m glad to be back, too.’”

“You’re daffy; old Aaron deWitt’s been dead a thousand years,” said one of the younger men good-humoredly. “That’s Mr. Miles Peale, general superintendent, out there tonight, checkin’ up on everythin’ and watchin’ to see if a damn piece of coal gets wasted. He ain’t Mr. Aaron.”

“That’s all you know, Jim!” shrilled Old Billie, and he shook his broom at the speaker. “It’s Mr. Aaron, and I’ve knowed him for seventy years or more. And I know his voice … !”

One of the men crossed himself furtively, and then was embarrassed. The men went to the window. There was Miles now, seriously walking along, studying a long freight train which had just come in, sometimes tapping on the high and secret sides with his cane. “What’s he doing that for?” asked a conductor. He snickered. “Looking for gold or something? Just a regular freight.”

“No, it isn’t,” said another, with interest. “It’s a special; it’s being shunted on to New York. Dozens of those special freights coming in now, almost every day. Ever notice the guards on ’em? They ain’t our own fellers.”

But the men were not interested. They looked at watches, caught up lunch pails, and went off sullenly to their work. Their wages were high these days; the union leaders were talking of still higher wages, and “benefits.” But the men were sullen. Just a job.

Old Billie wistfully watched “Mr. Aaron” through the smoky window, then suddenly threw down his broom and crept out on creaking legs. He followed Miles far down the tracks, and finally caught up with him, gasping a little. “Mr. Aaron!” he screamed against the uproar. Miles turned at once, saw him, smiled. “Good evening, Billie,” he said. The old man sighed happily. It was wonderful, Mr. Aaron being so young again, and his hair just the way it always was, and his cane in his hand as usual, and the way he walked—small, sure steps. “Great big freight, ain’t it, Mr, Aaron?” he asked. “Three, four, five times bigger than the old days. Still call it old Forty-two, but it ain’t the same train. What you think they got in there, and what’re those fellers doin’ with guns on the platforms and glarin’ as if you don’t own the whole business?”

Miles folded his gloved hands on the top of his cane, an old-remembered gesture which thrilled the ancient Billie, and stared at the freight. “Well,” said Miles, “it’s munitions, Billie.” He lifted his cane, pointed briefly at the name of a mighty munitions maker on the side of a car. “For the war. Explosives, guns, bombs, everything else. Going to England, France, and Germany with a wonderful, fine, impartial indifference. That’s what is known as neutrality, Billie. That is known as ‘being fair.’ Of course, booming profits have nothing to do with it. We’re very virtuous in this country, you see; all of us, everywhere, are very virtuous. It would be very unkind for anyone to insist that we say: ‘We don’t care who dies, or what comes after, or what governments are destroyed. There’s a profit to be made. We’ll deal with any tyrants later; we’ll buy them, if necessary.’” Miles leaned on his cane again. “Perhaps we won’t be able to buy them this time, Billie. Perhaps they want more than money. Perhaps they want the whole damned world.”

The old man listened, fascinated. He had listened decades before to the soliloquies of Mr. Aaron. He had never understood; but he had always been happy at the sound of that wry and vigorous voice, and the odd implications in it. There, now Mr. Aaron was shrugging; always well-dressed and beautifully turned out—Mr. Aaron. He could shrug and there’d never be so much as a slipped cravat or shoulder.

“You see, Billie,” said Miles, “I don’t ‘love’ humanity so much that I believe I know what’s ‘best’ for it, and so try to impose my will on it. And I don’t hate it enough to want to subjugate and rule it absolutely. I don’t think there is a great deal of difference, after all, between the love’ of the Socialistidealists and the hate of the murderers. I think any honesty in the whole business lies with the murderers; the naked steel and lash are open and immediate, and you can see the faces behind them and know what they are. It’s the ‘lovers of humanity’ who do their work behind a fog of fine and noble words, and keep the steel and the lash hidden until they dare come out with them.”

“You’re certainly right, Mr. Aaron,” said the old man emphatically. He peered vaguely at the monster cars, which were now rolling smoothly down the tracks. “What war, sir?” He was bewildered.

“It’s always the same war,” said Miles kindly. “The name doesn’t matter.”

Red lights changed to green far down the rails; the freight moved faster and faster. Faster and faster, thought Miles. But perhaps, at the end, there’ll be a few of us left to derail you forever. We’ll kill you because you’re wolves and boars and insane monsters out of some primeval jungle, nightmares still roaming around in the light of the day.

He turned to the old man standing so devotedly at his side; he saw the blinking, unknowing, and curiously innocent eyes. He smiled at the old man. “You see, Billie, men like me will have to fight for men like you. Some of us won’t like to fight; too much trouble. But we shall; you’ll see. It’ll be a case of survival, for all of us.”

“Sure, Mr. Aaron, you was always a fighter,” said Old Billie with pride. He began to walk down toward the station with Miles.

“I wonder,” Miles mused, swinging his cane in the little circles Old Billie remembered so well, “what perverted men are coming to maturity behind the guns and the shattered cities and the trenches of Europe? What are their names? Sure as the devil they are there, waiting, as they’ve always been waiting. English names, French names, German names, Russian names? And who are the Americans who are watching and waiting, too, until the European nightmares emerge from the smoke and the ruins and show themselves? Yes, we’ll have to fight them, just to live, we millionaires and plumbers, we physicians and bricklayers, we railroaders and industrialists and businessmen and factory hands and farmers.”

He touched Old Billie, stumbling along beside him, with the gold head of his fine cane. “I’ve got a very odd feeling, Billie, that it’ll be your kind, at the end, who will kill off the tyrants. Because, you see, you won’t be able to compromise. You haven’t the money.”

“You can always count on me, Mr. Aaron,” said Old Billie with passionate vigor.

Miles smiled a little. “Yes, I think we can. Not something to be proud of, perhaps—but I think we can.”

He gave the old man ten dollars. Billie protested a little. Miles said, “You’ve given me a lot tonight, old fellow.”

Billie watched him go, swelling with joy in himself at the small straight back of “Mr. Aaron.” He’d been gone a long time, Mr. Aaron. But now he was here again, and the road was safe. Some fellers said he was a hard man. They didn’t know what a fighter was, the young boys.

When Miles reached home he was met by his tearful wife Ruth, who informed him that his father had died an hour before, very suddenly.