CHAPTER I—Mr. G. Hyde Bigelow
In a mahogany office high up in a very high building sat Mr. G. Hyde Bigelow. An elaborate building it was, with expensive statuary about the entrance, with unusually expensive mosaic floors on all of the fifteen or more stories. A dozen elevators were at Mr. Bigelow's service, and a dozen uniformed elevator boys to bow deferentially whenever he granted his brief presence in the necessary actions of going up to his office or coming down from his office—boys that were fond of remarking casually when the great man had stepped out, “That's G. Hyde Bigelow.” A very expensive building, in fact, such as best comported with his dignity.
For Mr. Bigelow was a rising man; and the simple inscription on the ground-glass door, “G. Hyde Bigelow & Company,” already stood in the eyes of a small quarter of the financial world of Chicago for unqualified success. If a syndicate was to be floated, if a mysterious new combine was to be organized, what so important to its success as the name of G. Hyde Bigelow somewhere behind the venture—what so necessary in the somewhat difficult task of making it plain that paper is gold, that water is a solid, as the indorsement of G. Hyde Bigelow & Company? If Bigelow invested largely in Kentucky coal lands, what more reasonable than an immediate boom in Kentucky coal—and that men should speak sagely on the street of the immense value of the new mines? If Bigelow went heavily into the new-style freighters that were to revolutionize the lake-carrying trade, what more natural than a rush in “new freighters,” and who could know if the Bigelows should unload rapidly on an inflated market? But the great man is speaking!
Before him, on the mahogany desk, were spread some papers—vastly important papers, or they could never have penetrated to the Presence to take up time of such inestimable value. “Time is money” is a phrase that had been heard to fall from the Bigelow lips. Perhaps some one else had coined this phrase years before; perhaps Mr. Bigelow himself might even vaguely remember hearing it: what matters it! Did not old phrases fall new-minted from his lips? Did not the minor earths and moons and satellites that revolved about the Bigelow sun recognize in each authoritative Bigelow utterance an addition to the language? And were there ever such jokes as the Bigelow jokes?
Before him were the papers; beside him, in a broad-armed, leather-backed mahogany chair, sat the junior partner, the “Company” of Bigelow & Company, Mr. William H. Babcock. A youngish man was Mr. Babcock; a very well dressed man with a shrewd, somewhat incredulous eye; a man who speaks cautiously, is even inclined to mumble in a low voice; and who finds his worth and caution recognized as a useful, if secondary, part of the importance of Bigelow & Company. Lacking in the audacious qualities of his senior, it would seem, but shrewd, very shrewd—not a man given to unnecessary promises or straight-out declarations. And if Mr. Babcock had a phrase, a creed, locked securely away in the depths behind that quiet face, it was “Business is Business.” Business was business to Mr. Babcock; and he had hopes, even a fair prospect, indeed, of himself rising to a point where Time should be Money, thanks to the aid of the Bigelow name. And in the part of those depths where the thinking was done, the thought lurked, that if the time should ever come when Business-is-Business and Time-is-Money should be combined in his career (and everything about him tended to combination), Chicago would be too small for William H. Babcock.
The papers were before Mr. Bigelow, and the great brain was grappling with them; it being Mr. Babcock's part to weed out details and trouble Mr. Bigelow only with the broader facts.
“And now, Mr. Babcock,” said the head of the firm, “how are we to arrive at this?”
Mr. Babcock leaned forward and mumbled a few sentences with the air of a man habitually afraid of being overheard and caught. Mr. Bigelow's brow drew together, in such a state of concentration was the massive brain. History has not recorded the subject of these documents; whether it was Kentucky Coal or New Freighters, or the booming town of Northwest Chicago, or suburban street-railways, or one of the dozen or more growing interests that absorbed at this time the attention and some of the money of G. Hyde Bigelow & Company (to say nothing of the money of the Bigelow followers), we may never know. For at the moment when the Bigelow brows were knitted the closest, when the questions raised by the papers were about to attain a masterly and decisive solution, an office-boy entered the room—a round-eyed boy so awed by the Presence that he was visibly impatient to deliver his message and efface himself—a boy who was habitually out of breath.
“Lady t' see y'u, sir.”
Mr. Bigelow turned with some annoyance. How often had his subordinates instructed this boy to demand the card of every visitor and to lay it silently on the mahogany desk. But, on the other hand, Mr. Bigelow made it a point to rise above petty annoyances.
“Well, boy, what is the name?”
“Sh' wouldn' give 't, sir.”
The great man's expression changed slightly; it was as if he had suddenly remembered something. He turned to the desk and fingered the papers for a moment.
“We will take up this matter after lunch, Mr. Babcock.”
He spoke a shade more pompously than was his wont in dealing with his junior.
Mr. Babcock bowed and went out. Then Mr. Bigelow turned to his stenographer, who was clicking away by the window.
“Miss Brown, I wish you would go out to the files and look up all the Pine Lands correspondence for me.”
The stenographer laid aside her work and went out.
And now Mr. Bigelow, once more bland and gracious, turned to the boy who was holding fast to the bronze door-knob.
“Here, boy, you may show the lady in.”
Having said this, he bent over a letter and was so busy that he seemed not to hear the woman enter. For some moments she stood there by the closed door. Once she coughed timidly; and even that failed to reach the attention of the much-absorbed man. But at last the letter was laid down and Mr. Bigelow turned.
“Sit down,” he said, motioning to the chair that Mr. Babcock had just now vacated.
But the woman, it seemed, preferred to stand. “Why have you come here?”
“I think you know why I have come.”
Mr. Bigelow took up the letter again and regarded it closely. A great many thoughts apparently were passing through his mind—thoughts not of Kentucky Coal and New Freighters, but of a stately suburban home of granite completed within the year; of a certain Mrs. Bigelow who was rising rapidly toward the social leadership of her suburb, and was carrying Mr. G. Hyde Bigelow into circles that he, with all his prestige of a sort, could hardly have penetrated alone; of a certain dignified, comfortable, downright conservative suburban church, where the Bigelow money and judgment, new as they were in such surroundings, were undoubtedly earning a place; and, lastly, of certain small Bigelows. Of all these things thought Mr. Bigelow.
“Well,” he said at length, without raising his eyes, “what is it now? What do you want?”
“If I had only myself to think of,” began the woman, speaking in a low voice and with noticeable effort, “I should never come near you. But I have others to think of, and I think you have, too. I have not come for money. If I could do it, I should like to bring every cent you have given me and throw it in your face.”
Rather unpleasant words these—unpleasant to Mr. Bigelow, at least. Indeed, they seemed quite to disturb him, to drive him even toward something that in a man of smaller reputation might have been called brutality.
“See here,” he burst out, wheeling around, “how long is this going to keep up? How many years more must I support you in idleness? There is a limit to this sort of thing.”
It may be that this was not so much brutality as sagacity. It may be that Mr. Bigelow had in mind certain steps that might relieve him from a situation which was growing more and more annoying and disagreeable, and that this was one of the steps. For such words as these—such a blaze of righteous anger—should be very hard to answer in a man's own office; hard at least for an unknown woman before the great G. Hyde Bigelow. Even if the woman had come with vague notions that she was acting within her rights, that the law which had severed her life from the life of this man so long ago would support her now—what was she, after all, but an unfortunate woman standing before a great man?
But there was a curious expression in her eyes: perhaps she was more resolute than he supposed; perhaps simply she had reached a point in wretchedness where such words fail of an impression.
“When I told you I should never come to your office, I did not know how you would take advantage of me. I should not have come even now if I could have helped it. I don't know if it will interest you to hear that I have not had enough to eat this week.”
She was mistaken; Mr. Bigelow was interested. Indeed, he was beginning to recover himself and to look down on the ill-dressed woman before him from the proper altitude of G. Hyde Bigelow. As he looked down he told himself that he was quite calm, that he was standing frankly and firmly, as became him, on his proper footing as a prominent citizen. And such a sight as this, an ill-dressed woman standing in this mahogany office and talking about starvation, was really shocking. He felt that he must dismiss her, must rid himself of her; but on the other hand he was really touched by her distress. Mr. Bigelow leaned back in his chair and half closed his eyes.
“How long has this been going on?” he asked, in a voice that showed signs of leading up to something further.
She gave him a puzzled, indignant flash of her eyes and replied in the same low voice:
“It is more than fourteen years.”
More than fourteen years—think of it! For fourteen years this woman had been suffering for an error of judgment, the mistake of two deluded years, the mistake of giving her life to the wrong man, and now had even faced starvation because of it. So mistakes are punished in this world. Mr. Bigelow, on his part, looking down from his great altitude, was running over these fourteen years and recalling the mistakes of his own that had brought this annoying visit upon him. He had been soft-hearted; he saw it plainly enough now. In his effort to do right, to comply voluntarily with certain nominal requirements which a less honourable man would have easily evaded; in his effort to be kind to a foolish young woman—and a very young woman indeed she had been at first—to humour her childish notions of the facts of this real world—his impulses had carried him too far, and she, of course, had taken advantage of him. He should have known better.
“Hum! More than fourteen years,” he repeated, still sitting in his chair and looking dreamily at a group picture of a certain Board of Directors that hung above his desk. “Has it ever occurred to you to stop and figure up how much you have cost me during these years—how many times I have sent you large sums without a word? If you will think of it now you will remember that I have asked no questions—that I have known nothing whatever about your life and your acquaintances. I have not known how real your needs were.”
He might have gone on to much plainer speaking, even to harshness (it being necessary sometimes in dealing with such people), had not his half-shut eyes strayed downward from the Board of Directors to her face. What he saw there seemed to weaken his self-possession. And, for another thing, it was certainly getting time for his stenographer to be returning with the Pine Lands correspondence. It was really a rather awkward moment for Mr. Bigelow.
“Well,” he said abruptly, opening his eyes again, “there is no use in prolonging this conversation. Tell me what you have come here for and be done with it.”
It was so abrupt that she had to wait a moment and compose herself before beginning in the same low tone:
“I told you I had not come for money, and I meant it. I am tired of begging for my living. But it would cost you very little to help me to some situation. If you will do this, I will try not to trouble you again.”
Mr. Bigelow pressed his lips and beat a tattoo with his fingers.
“What kind of work can you do?”
“I couldn't take skilled work, I suppose,” she replied a little wearily, “and I could hardly expect an office position—at my age. But I have thought of going into a department store. I really ought to be able to do something there.” Mr. Bigelow was fidgeting a little: he was thinking of the Pine Lands correspondence.
“Why, yes,” he said, “I don't know but what that could be arranged. I will speak to Murray of the New York store. He is employing hundreds of people all the time, and I know he has difficulty in getting good ones.”
He finished with a wave of dismissal and turned back to his letter. But the woman waited.
“You will see him to-day?” she asked.
“Why, yes”—rather impatiently—“I will try to see him this noon.”
“And shall I come back this afternoon?”
Mr. Bigelow leaned back again.
“No, I hardly think that will be necessary. Let me see———”
“I don't see how I am to know if I don't come back—unless you write to me.”
He hesitated at this and, thanks to his hesitation, received a keen stroke below his armour.
“If it is the writing,” she said, with quiet, bitter scorn, “you know I have letters enough now.” Yes, she had, and he knew it: there had been blue moments in his life when he would have given a great deal to get those letters back—letters relating to money matters, most of them; explanations why certain sums were still unpaid, perhaps; letters sent back into another life, a life which had gone under Mr. Bigelow's feet as he mounted to higher things. And she added: “You needn't sign your name, if you'd rather not.”
Yes, it was time to close this interview. He was not enjoying it at all—was even willing to concede a point in order to be rid of her. So he said shortly:
“Very well, I will see him at noon and let you know by the morning delivery if he has a place for you.” She turned to go but he detained her. “Here—wait! I will tell him that you are a cousin of mine. Do you understand?”
She made no reply to this, but simply went out as swiftly and silently as possible. She was evidently as glad as he to be through with it. And Mr. Bigelow, after glancing at the Pine Lands correspondence and after a look at his watch, put on his hat and coat and left the office. It was not yet his lunch time, but when bent upon a benevolent errand Mr. Bigelow would hear of no delay; and recalling that Mr. Murray was usually on the point of leaving the club when he entered, he was willing even to hasten his lunch in order to make sure of a chat with him.
And chat they did, those two powerful, public-spirited ones, over their cigars, of the questions of the day, handled as only masters of commerce could handle them; until at length—this from Mr. Bigelow, lighting a fresh cigar and speaking casually over his hollowed hands:
“By the way, Murray, I have a cousin who is in a bad way—husband dead, and some children, and that sort of thing. I want to do a little something for her if I can. Could you give her any work?”
“I'm afraid the best place I could offer would be behind the counter in my North Side store at three dollars a week or so.”
“She'd be grateful for anything. It's a matter of keeping alive.”
Mr. Murray was always glad of an opportunity to oblige Mr. Bigelow.
“Send her around, with a letter, and I will do the best I can for her.”
And thus did Mr. Bigelow free himself from an entangling alliance. He had now given the woman an opportunity to prove her worth; if after this she should stumble into dark ways, there would be only herself to blame. It had cost him considerable effort, to say nothing of his time; but had it not been worth while?