XII
If it be said of Gordon Perry, attorney and counsellor-at-law, that he was loth to incur the modern epithet, "crank," it was equally true that he had ideals and cherished them. He believed in living up to his convictions. At the same time his sense of humor made him aware that to dwell unduly on premeditated virtue is the prerogative of a prig, and that it is often wise in a workaday world to yield an inch if one would gain an ell. His form of yielding was apt to be genial, thoughtful consideration of the other man's point of view, a virtual admission that there were two sides to the case, instead of flying in the face of his opponent. The modern American regards this tactful moderation as essential to the despatch of business, and prides himself on its possession. It is the oil of the social industrial machine. Also it is slippery stuff. One is liable to slide yards away from one's point of view unless one plants one's feet firmly. It is so much easier to follow the trend than to resist it. The natural tendency of those not very much in earnest is to woo success by dancing attendance on the powers which are, both movements and men. So convictions become palsied, and their owners mere puppets in the whirl of human activity. For the sake of fortune, fame, or oftenest for the sake of our bread and butter, we subscribe to theories and support standards which we suspect at heart to be unsound, lest we fail to keep step with the class to which we belong.
How to preserve his poise as an independent character and at the same time avoid antagonism with some of his new friends had become interesting to Gordon Perry. He had reached a point where he had only to be quiescent in order to reap presently a rich harvest. His clear-headedness, his quickness, and his common sense had been recognized, and it was in the air that he was a rising man in his profession. People of importance had taken him up. It was known that he had attended to certain matters for Paul Howard, from whom it was only one step to the source of many gigantic undertakings productive of fat fees. To the eye of shrewd observers in Benham he had only to go on as he had been going, and attend strictly to business, in order to emerge from the ranks of his brother lawyers, and become one of the small group which controlled the cream of the legal business of the city. Instead of bringing accident cases he would defend them for powerful corporations. Instead of conducting many small proceedings at an expense of vitality for which his clients could not afford and did not expect to pay adequately, he would be employed by banks and trust companies, would organize and reorganize railroads, be made the executor of large estates and the legal adviser of capitalists in financial schemes from which profits would accrue to him in the tens of thousands. It ought to be comparatively plain sailing. This was obvious to the man in question as well as to his contemporaries. He knew that his business was growing, and sundry rumors had reached him that he had been spoken of in inner circles as skilful and level-headed.
To indicate the current which ran counter in Gordon Perry's thoughts to his appreciation of these possibilities it will be necessary to refer briefly to his past and to his mental perspective. He was the son of a widow. Also a soldier's son. His father, a volunteer, had survived the Civil War, and, attracted by the rising destinies of Benham, had made his home there, only to fall victim to a fever within a year of his coming. Gordon was then eleven years old. A policy of life insurance kept the wolf from the door for the afflicted widow so far as a bare subsistence was concerned. She had a small roof over her head, and was able by means of boarders and needlework to present a decent front to the world while she watched over her sole treasure, her only child. Her ambition was to give him an education, and her ambition in this respect was neither niggardly nor ignorant. He was to have the best—a college training—and to give him this it delighted her to pinch and to slave. When a woman's duty is squarely determined by responsibility for a fatherless son, it is comparatively easy for her to be true to her trust to the extent of complete devotion and unselfishness. But devotion and unselfishness do not include wisdom. Happy for him whose mother is a victim neither to superstition nor to silliness, but sees life with a clear, sane outlook. Mrs. Perry was one of those American women educated in the days of Emersonian spirituality, when society walked in the lightest marching order as regards material comforts and embellishments, who were austere and sometimes narrow in their judgments, but who set before them as the one purpose of life the development of character. She was simple, pious, brisk, and direct; setting great store on acting and speaking to the point, and abhorring compromise or evasions. In her religious faith she believed, as a Unitarian, about what liberal Episcopalians and Presbyterians believe to-day. Doctrine, however, appeared to her of minor importance compared to the pursuit of noble aims and the practice of self-control. She wished her son to care for the highest things, those of the spirit and the intellect, because she regarded them with sincerity as the passports to human progress; and, though her æsthetic aims were dwarfed, and human color and grandeur may have seemed to her to smack of degeneracy, the white light of her aspirations had a convincing beauty of its own.
Under the influence of this training and this point of view, Gordon went to Harvard. There he encountered a new atmosphere. The old gods were not dead, but they seemed moribund, for there were others. The college motto, "Veritas," still spoke the watchword of faith, yet the language of his class-mates led him to perceive that what was the truth was again in controversy. The Civil War was over, but the martial spirit which had sprung into being at the call of duty and love of country was seething in the veins of a new generation eager to rival in activity the heroism of its fathers. It was no longer enough to walk in contemplation beneath the college elms and develop character by introspective struggle. Truth—the whole truth, lay not there. Was not useful, skilful action in the world of affairs the true test of human efficiency? A great continent lay open to ingenious youth trained to unearth and master its secrets. How was it to be conquered unless the spirit of energy was nourished by robust frames, unless men were practical and competent as well as soulful?
Gordon listened to this new note with a receptive ear, and recognized its value. Hitherto he had thought little of his body, which, like an excellent machine, had performed its work without calling itself to his attention. Now he took part in college athletics, and realized the exhilaration which proceeds from healthful competitive exercise. Through contact with his mates, and active participation in the affairs of the college world, he experienced also the still more satisfactory glow, best described as the joy of life, which, partly physical, partly athletic, had never been a portion of his consciousness. He was drafted for the football team, and by his prowess and his pleasant, manly style acquired popularity in the college societies, that fillip to self-reliance and proper self-appreciation. If, as a consequence, he relaxed somewhat his efforts to lead his class in scholarship, which had been his sole ambition at the start, he did not forget that he was a pensioner on his mother's self-sacrifice; and though his rank at graduation was not in the first half-dozen, it was in the first twenty-five, and it could be said of him that he looked fit for the struggle of life, the possessor of a healthy mind in a well-developed body. He was sophisticated, but his soul was untarnished by dissipation, and the edge of his enthusiasm for enterprise and endeavor was not dulled. Then followed three years at the law school, where in common with nearly everyone he worked like a beaver to equip himself for his profession. There all interests—it might be said all emotions—were absorbed in contemplation of technical training. But he was still under the shadow of the Harvard elms, and the great world lay beyond, a land of mysterious promise to his eager vision.
However clear-sighted and philosophical a college graduate, his first actual contact with the great world is apt to be depressing. Society seems so large and so indifferent; he is so insignificant and so helpless—he who six months ago was a hero in the eyes of his companions. Especially is this apt to be the case when one is translated from the dizzy democratic heights of college renown to a humble, humdrum social station. It was no revelation to Gordon Perry to find himself the son of a hard-working, inconspicuous boarding-house keeper, but it sobered him. He was neither ashamed of the fact nor dismayed by it. On the contrary, the sight of his mother's tired face and figure subordinated every ambition to his loving determination to conquer the world for her sake. It seemed, however, a less simple matter to conquer the world now that he was an unknown student in a law office in a large city, with no family influence or powerful friends to abet his endeavors. For the first few years his lot was so obscure that the contrasts of life arrested his attention as they had never done before, though as a subconsciousness, for he never outwardly paused in his efforts to become indispensable to the firm of lawyers in whose office he was. He beheld acquaintances in various employments, whose mental superior he believed himself to be, put in the direct line of preferment through pecuniary or social influence, and had to solace himself with the doctrine—also the American doctrine—that it was every man's privilege to make the most of his own advantages, and his duty to acknowledge the same privilege in others.
Some young men are made cynical by the perception of the workings of free competition; others simply thoughtful. Gordon was among the latter. Life presented itself to him from a new perspective, and if it suddenly appeared both perplexing and distressing, it appeared none the less interesting. His personal dismay, if this passing reaction deserves so harsh a term, was transient, but it was the precursor to graver, disinterested musings. His attention once arrested by the inequalities of life turned further afield and became riveted by concern and by pity. Why in this city, established under free institutions, was it necessary that thousands should be living in poverty, ignorance, and social ineffectiveness if not degradation? It ought not to be. It must not be. How could it be averted? This outburst of his protesting spirit encountered the query of his dispassionate mind—what remedy do you suggest? It was like a douche of cold water. Instinctively he reached out for help. He knew that he was in search of truth this time, but he abhorred an ignis fatuus. He began to ask questions and to read. There were various answers on the lips of those whom he consulted, for the question seemed to be in the air. Many, and there were among them some whose broad shoulders, free carriage, and prosperously self-reliant air told of that joy in living and practical, world-conquering serenity typical of the successful man of the present generation, who assured him, often in a whisper, as though it were a confidence, that these inequalities must always exist. Were not men's abilities different, and would they not always be so? Was it just that one man's energy and skill should be curtailed to keep pace with another's incapacity? What would become of human individuality and brilliancy if everyone's earning and owning were to be circumscribed by metes and bounds, and we were all to become commonplace, unimaginative slaves of socialism? It was right, of course, that existing abuses in the way of long hours and insufficient pay should be rectified. That was on the cards. In many cases it had been already consummated. And what had malcontents or critics of the existing industrial system to say to the long list of splendid benefactions—free libraries, free hospitals, free parks, and free museums—given to the community by rich men—men who had been abler and more progressive than their fellows? Surely the world would be a dull place without competition.
There were others who declared that the destruction of the poor was their poverty, and that the poor man was at fault. That if he would let liquor alone, have fewer children, and brush his teeth regularly, he would be happy and prosperous. They called Gordon's attention to the many schemes for the uplifting of the industrial masses which were already in operation in Benham, homes for abandoned children, evening classes where instruction and diversion were skilfully blended, model tenements, and, most modern of all, college settlements, the voluntary transplanting of individual educated lives into social Saharas.
The books which he read were of two classes. Their writers were either optimistic apologists for the current ills of civilization, deploring and deprecating their existence, and suggesting the gradual elimination of social distress by education and intelligent humanity—"the giving of self unreservedly," as many put it—without serious modification of the structure of society; or they were outspoken enemies of the present industrial status, alleging that poverty and degradation were an inseparable incident of unchecked human competition, and that these evils would never be eradicated until the axe was applied to the fundamental cause. These latter critics had diverse preliminary crucial remedies at heart, such as the capitalization of land, government control of railroads, mines, and other sources of power, or the appropriation to the use of the community of a slice of abnormal profits.
Most of this presentation, whether through men or from books, was not new to Gordon; but it had been hitherto unheeded by him and had the full effect of novelty. He found himself staring at a condition of affairs which he had patriotically if carelessly supposed could not exist in the land of the free and the home of the brave until he suddenly opened his eyes and beheld in full operation in his native city, of which he was becomingly proud, those grave contrasts of station common to older civilizations. These included on the one hand not only the uneducated army of workers in Benham's pork factories, oil-yards, and iron mills, but an impecunious, shiftless lower class; and on the other what was, relatively speaking, a corporal's guard of wealthy, wideawake, luxurious, ambitious masters of the situation, to whom he hoped presently to commend himself as a legal adviser.
But what was the remedy? What was his remedy? In the coolness of second thoughts, after months of ferment, he had to confess that he had none—at least none at the moment. Simultaneously he had reached the further conclusion, which was both a relief and a distress, that whatever could be done must be gradual, so gradual as to be almost imperceptible when measured by the span of a single life. He recalled, with a new appreciation of the truth, the saying that the mills of God grind slowly. From the vanguard hope of a complete change in current conditions, by a series of telling blows of his own conception, he was forced back to a modest stand behind the breast-works. Modest because he began to examine with a new respect the philanthropic and economic apparatus for attack already in position, which he had at first glance been disposed to regard as too cumbersome and dilatory. Here was where his purpose not to be quixotic and visionary came to his support. He realized that it was necessary for him to wait and to study before he could hope to be of service; that he must take his position in the ranks and observe the tactics of others before attempting to assume leadership or to initiate reforms.
One effect of this check to his soaring aspirations at the dictate of his common sense was to give a fresh impetus to his resolve to succeed in his profession. For a brief period the shock of his discoveries had been so stunning that he almost felt as though it were his duty and his mission to devote his life to finding a remedy for the ills of civilization. His mother's necessities stood as a bar to this. But with the ebbing of his vision he found himself no longer beset with doubts as to the legitimacy of his apprenticeship. It seemed to him clearly his duty, not only on his mother's account but his own, to throw himself into his work unreservedly with the intention of hitting the mark. He had his bread to earn, his way to make. How would it profit him or anyone that he should forsake his calling and stand musing by the wayside merely because he was distressed by the inequalities of the industrial system? Inequalities which existed all over the world and were as old as human nature. He had no comprehensive cure to suggest, so for the time being his lips were sealed and his hands tied by his own ignorance. And if conscience, borrowing from some of the books which he had read, argued that the prosperous lawyer was the agent of the rich against the poor, the strong against the weak, his answer was that the taunt was not true, and his retort by way of a counter-sally was that in no country in the world did the laboring man receive so high wages as in this. This at least was a step forward, and so he felt justified to follow precedent and to bide his time.
In order to succeed a young lawyer must be ceaselessly vigilant. It is not enough to perform faithfully what he is told. There are many who will do this. The man who gets ahead is he who does more than the letter of his employment demands, who anticipates instructions and disregards time and comfort in order to follow a clue of evidence or elucidate a principle. So he becomes indispensable, and by and by the opportunity presents itself which the shiftless ascribe to luck. Gordon Perry revealed this faculty of indefatigable initiative. The firm in whose office he was a student had a large business, chiefly in the line of commercial law. The transit of the various commodities to which Benham owed her prosperity was necessarily productive of considerable litigation against the railroads as common carriers and between the shippers and consignees of wares and merchandise. Besides, there were constant suits for personal injuries to be prosecuted or defended, involving nice distinctions as to what is negligence, and bringing in their train much practice for the juniors in the investigation of testimony. From the outset Gordon worked with unsparing enthusiasm, seeking to do the work entrusted to him so thoroughly that those who tried the cases would find the situation clearly defined and everything at their fingers' ends. When it was perceived that he was not only diligent but discerning and accurate, they began to rely on him, and by the end of three years the responsibility of trying as well as of preparing the less important proceedings in the lower courts became his. Also, by showing himself solicitous regarding the affairs of the clients of the office, he was able now and again to supply information or tide matters over when the member of the firm inquired for was out; and it was not long before some of them formed the habit of consulting him directly in minor matters. When at the end of five years the senior partner, who had independent means, retired in order to go to Congress, his two associates came to the conclusion that it would be good policy, as well as just, to give Perry, as the most promising young man in the office, a small interest in the business. This promotion naturally gave him a new status with the clients, and most of those who had been in the habit of consulting him offhand, now laid their serious troubles before him. So by the time he was twenty-nine he was well started in his profession, and able to extract a promise from his mother that if he continued to prosper for another year, she would yield to his solicitations to give up her boarders and move into a brighter neighborhood.
Although absorbed in his profession, Gordon's genial charm soon brought him invitations of a social nature. He became a member of a law club of men of his own age, which met once a month to compare impressions and banish dull care over a good dinner. Still eager for exercise he joined a rowing club on the river Nye, and a gymnasium. After he was admitted to the firm he had his name put up for election at one of the social clubs, The University, so called because its members were college graduates. Here he met the educated young men of the city, and though his mother had an old-fashioned prejudice against clubs, as aristocratic resorts where men gambled and drank more than was good for them, Gordon felt that he needed some place where he could play a game of whist or billiards with congenial spirits or look at magazines in a cosey library as an antidote to his sterner pursuits. Mrs. Perry was more than willing to trust her son, so she sighed and set down to the changed temper of the day the spread of Benham's club fever. For, like other progressive cities, Benham was fairly honeycombed with clubs. The American social instinct had become almost daft on the subject, and no two or three men or women could come together for any purpose without organizing. From a constitution and by-laws the road was apt to be short to rooms or a clubhouse. The University was one of half a dozen of the purely social clubs of the city, a spacious establishment, modelled on European traditions with American plumbing and other modern comforts. Gordon was prompted to join by Paul Howard, who declared that he preferred it for genuine enjoyment to the Eagle Club, the favorite resort of the very rich and fashionable—the Spread Eagle, as the malicious termed it. At The University there was secular instrumental music on Sunday afternoons, a custom copied from Boston, that former hotbed of ascetic Sabbath life, and on Saturday nights a cold supper was provided, about which stood in pleasant groups the active professional and business men of the city and those who followed the arts—musicians, painters, and literary men.
"Exclusive and aristocratic all the same," said Hall Collins, contemptuously, one day when Gordon vouchsafed to him a glowing account of these Saturday nights. Hall was one of the moving spirits in the only other club of which Gordon was a member, The Citizens' Club, the somewhat ambitious title of an organization conducted by young men interested in civic and industrial reform, not unlike that to which the unhappy Emil Stuart had belonged.
"Which only shows how little you understand what we are after," was the prompt answer. "There isn't a more truly democratic place in the world—only we insist that a man should win his spurs before he is entitled to consideration. A clod, while he is a clod, isn't a gentleman, and it isn't good American doctrine to regard him as one. No logic will make him so. You're talking through your hat, Hall, and you know it."
Hall grinned. It was true he was not more than half in earnest, but he was more than half suspicious of Gordon. He could not make him out, which nettled him, for Hall Collins liked to have men docketed in his mind.
"To Gehenna with your gentlemen!" he retorted. "What use are spurs to a man who has no boots to wear them on?"
"Hear, hear!" interjected two or three bystanders whose attention was caught by the metaphor.
"It strikes me, young man," pursued Collins, who had his chair tipped back, his feet on the table and was smoking a fat cigar which one of the aldermen had given him, appropriated by the wholesale at a city banquet, "that you're trying to ride two horses." He was glad to have an audience to the discussion, for he could not make up his mind that Gordon was sincere in his interest in the Citizens' Club, and he feared some ulterior motive, political or quasi-philanthropic.
"Yes, that's just what I'm doing," answered Gordon. "Half of the lack of sympathy between the educated and the uneducated, between capital and labor, as you like to call it, lies in the imagination. What is there incompatible in being a member of a club like this and wearing patent-leather shoes and the latest thing in collars?"
"It smacks too much of college settlements. It doesn't go to the root of things."
"But it helps just as they help, unless in the ideal democracy you are aiming at there's to be no place for the refinements of life, for soft speech, gentle manners, and the arts. In the millennium are we all to be uncouth and unimaginative?"
"Score one for the man with the patent-leather shoes, only he hasn't got them on," exclaimed one of the listeners.
"You're beginning at the wrong end. You put the cart before the horse; that's the trouble with you. What's the use of decorating a house that's going to be struck by lightning?" With all his prejudice and homely exterior Hall Collins was at heart no demagogue or charlatan. He was dead in earnest himself and he wished others to be. He was conversant with the history of the development of trades-unions over the world. He was a student of humanitarian reforms, and gave all the time which he could spare from his occupation as a master-mason to the furtherance of what he considered legislative progress.
"Struck by lightning, and then there's no house, only ruins. That's not what you desire, Hall Collins, you, I, nor anyone here. We're all seeking the same thing, and we're all groping more or less in the dark—putting the cart before the horse, may be. But you haven't any panacea for what's wrong more than I have. All we can hope to do is to make a few trifling alterations on the premises—paper a wall or enlarge a flue—before our lease expires. The chief reason I joined this club was that I might stop theorizing and wringing my hands and get down to business. We all recognize there's plenty of practical work waiting for us, so what's the use of distrusting each other's theories or motives? I've no Congressional bee in my bonnet. I'm not trying to climb to political prominence on the shoulders of the horny-handed Citizens' Club."
Hall colored slightly. He had been harboring just that suspicion.
"Good talk." "Come off your perch, Hall. This man Perry's all right," was the response of several listeners. The group was now a dozen.
Hall took his feet from the table, stood up and put out his hand. "It isn't because the boys say so," he said. "I'm taking you on your own word, Perry, and you'll never hear me peep again. You've the right idea; it's no time for speculating, for there's lots of business to be done right here in Benham. And if I had a notion you might be masquerading—well, there have been cases where men in patent leathers and dandy collars showed up strong in working-men's clubs, and the only business they ever did was to lay and pull wires."
"Some men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them," said Ernest Bent. "Hall was born great, but if Don Perry wants to go to the Legislature why shouldn't the Citizens' Club send him there?"
"That's so," said a second.
"Not until he wins those spurs he spoke of—not if he's the man I take him to be," exclaimed Collins, doughtily.
"Not under any circumstances. I have no wish for office. I don't desire to be a politician." Gordon spoke eagerly. The only thought in his mind was to deprecate the suggestion. It was true that in looking over the field there had seemed to him almost a glut of philanthropists, and he had chosen the Citizens' Club as a more promising opening than charitable work. But his ambition was only to be a private in the ranks.
"And yet," commented Hall, "what should we do without politicians? They are the only persons who put things through, and laws on the statute books are what we need. Look at this cigar." He exhibited the butt end, which was all that was left. "The man who gave it to me helped himself to a box, and the only thing he wouldn't help himself to is a red-hot stove, but I didn't spit in his face and I smoked his cigar, and I dare say he'll vote for some of our batch of bills because I told him a good story. It's disgusting." He threw down the butt and trod it under foot. "The cardinal sin of the sovereign people is their ignorance. Will they never learn not to send dishonest men to represent them?"
"You see that Hall is both an idealist and practical," said Ernest Bent to Gordon. It was through Bent that Gordon had joined the Citizens' Club. He was his next-door neighbor, the son of an apothecary, and had, while following his trade behind the counter, read books on the science of government, and the rights and wrongs of man, with excursions to Darwin and Huxley. As the result of bandying opinions from time to time he had taken Gordon one evening to a meeting of the club, and subsequently invited him to become a member. Gordon did not need persuasion to join. It seemed to him just the opportunity he had been looking for to espouse the cause which he had at heart, by focussing his sympathies on practical measures. He recognized that the club was not only a debating body, but aimed to be a political force, and that many of its members were expert and not entirely scrupulous politicians. But, on the other hand, in spite of the jaundiced views of some of those who harangued the meetings, Gordon discerned that a half-dozen men were really in control—among them Collins and Bent—and that they were guided by a sincere and reasonably cautious ambition to procure scientific reforms. A little consideration convinced him that he was glad they were seeking to wield political influence. It gave the effect of reality, of battle. Academic discussion was a vital prelude to well-considered action, but, after all, as Hall Collins said, the only thing which really counted was law on the statute books. It suited his manhood to feel that he was about to fight for definite issues.