"Yes, father," said Hugo, in the respectful tone he never, in his most supercilious mood, forgot to use toward the custodian and arbiter of his prospects.
XVII
VIOLETTE'S TAPESTRIES
Armstrong would not have protested Raphael's favorite fling at the financial district as "a wallow of dishonor"; and Boris's description of him as reeking the slime of the wallow was no harsher than what he was daily thinking about himself.
The newspapers were shrieking for a "real cleaning of the Augean stables of finance"; the political figureheads of "the interests" were solemnly and sonorously declaiming that there must be no repetition of former fiascos and fizzles, when nobody had been punished, though everybody had been caught black-handed. The prosecuting officers were protesting that the plea of the guilty that they were "gentlemen" and "respectable" would not again avail. So, Wall Street's wise knew that the struggle between Fosdick and Atwater was near its crisis. Throughout the "wallow" banks and trust companies, bond houses and bucket shops, all the eminent respectabilities, were "hustling" to get weathertight. Everyone appreciated that Fosdick and Atwater, prudent men, patron saints of "stability," would be careful to confine the zone of war strictly. But—what would they regard as the prudent and proper limits of this release and use of public anger? Neither faction was afraid of law, of serious criminal prosecution; however the authorities might be compelled to side, they would not yield to popular clamor—beyond making the usual bluff necessary to fool the public until it forgot. But these exposures which had now become a regular part of the raids of the great men on each other's preserves always tended to make the public shy for a while; and the royalty, nobility, and gentry of the fashionable hierarchy, had to meet the enormous expenses of their families, their establishments, and their retinues of dependents, never less, ever more. They could ill afford any cessation or marked slackening of the inflow of wealth from the industrious and confiding, or covetous, masses—covetous rather than confiding, since the passion of the average man for gambling, for getting something for nothing, is an even larger factor in the successful swindling operations of enthroned respectability than is his desire for a safe, honest investment of his surplus. Finally, the uneasy upper classes remembered that usually these exposures resulted in the sacrifice of some of them; an unlucky financier or group of financiers was loaded down with the blame for the corruption and, amid the execration of the crowd and the noisy denunciation of fellow financiers, was sent away into the wilderness, disgraced so far as a man can be disgraced in the eyes of money-worshipers when he still has his wealth. Rarely did the sacrifice extend further than disgrace; still, that was no light matter, as it meant lessened opportunities to share in the looting which was soon resumed with increased energy and success. The disgraced financier had to live on what he had acquired before his disgrace, instead of keeping that intact, and paying his expenses, and adding to his fortune, too, out of fresh loot.
Altogether, it was wise to get good and ready—to "dress" the shelves and the back of the shop as well as the windows and front cases; to destroy or hide suspicious books and memoranda; to shift confidential clerks; to distribute vacations to Europe among employees, open and secret, with dangerous information and a tendency toward hysterical and loose talking under cross-examination; to retain all the able lawyers, and all those related by blood, marriage, or business to legislators, prosecuting officers, and powerful politicians; to confer discreetly as to the exact facts of certain transactions, "so that we may not make any blunders and apparent contradictions on the witness stand." And the lawyers—how busy they were! The aristocrats of the legal profession were as brisk as are their humbler fellows on the eve of a "tipped-off" raid on a den of "swell crooks." In fact, the whole business had the air of a very cheap and vulgar kind of crookedness; and the doings of the great men were strange indeed, in view of their pose as leaders by virtue of superiority in honest skill. An impartial observer might have been led to wonder whether honest men had not been driven from leadership because they would not stoop to the vilenesses by which "success" was gained, and not because they were less in brain. As for such conduct in men lauded as "bold," "brave," "courageous beyond the power to quail"—it was simply inexplicable. The "dare-devil leaders" were acting like a pack of shifty cowards engaged in robbing a safe and just hearing the heavy, regular tread of a police patrol under the windows.
Armstrong was too absorbed in the game for much analysis or theorizing; still, his lip did curl at the spectacle—and in part his sneer was self-contempt. "It's disgusting," said he to himself, "that to keep alive among these scoundrels and guard the interests one is intrusted with, one must do or tolerate so many despicable things." As that view of the matter was the one which every man in the district was taking, each to excuse himself to himself, there was not an uncomfortable conscience or a shame-reddened cheek or a slinking eye. Once a man becomes convinced that his highest duty is not to himself, but to his fellow man, the rest is easy; the greater his "self-sacrifice" of honesty, decency, and self-respect for the sake of the public good—for country or religion or "stability" or "to keep the workingman's family from starving"—the more sympathetic and enthusiastic is his conscience.
When the financial district was at the height of its activity in getting weathertight for the approaching investigation, Fosdick shook off his savage enemy, the gout, and got downtown again. He went direct from his carriage to Armstrong's offices. He greeted his "man" as cordially as if he had not just been completing the arrangements by which he expected to make Armstrong himself the first conspicuous victim of the investigation. And Armstrong received and returned the greeting with no change in his usual phlegmatic manner to hint his feelings or his plans.
"About Hugo—" began Josiah.
Armstrong made a gesture of dismissal. "That's a closed incident. Any news of the committee?"