“Is the Coal organization to be announced the first of July?” I demanded. It has always been, and always shall be, my method to fight in the open. This, not from principle, but from expediency. Some men fight best in the brush; I don't. So I always begin battle by shelling the woods.
“No,” he said, amazing me by his instant frankness. “The announcement has been postponed.”
Why did he not lie to me? Why did he not put me off the scent, as he might easily have done, with some shrewd evasion? I suspected I owed it to my luck in catching him at family prayers. For I know that the general impression of him is erroneous; he is not merely a hypocrite before the world, but also a hypocrite before himself. A more profoundly, piously conscientious man never lived. Never was there a truer epitaph than the one implied in the sentence carved over his niche in the magnificent mausoleum he built: “Fear naught but the Lord.”
“When will the reorganization be announced?” I asked.
“I can not say,” he answered. “Some difficulties—chiefly labor difficulties—have arisen. Until they are settled, nothing can be done. Come to me to-morrow, and we'll talk about it.”
“That is all I wished to know,” said I, with a friendly, easy smile. “Good night.”
It was his turn to be astonished—and he showed it, where I had given not a sign. “What was the report you heard?” he asked, to detain me.
“That you and Mowbray Langdon had conspired to ruin me,” said I, laughing.
He echoed my laugh rather hollowly. “It was hardly necessary for you to come to me about such a—a statement.”
“Hardly,” I answered dryly. Hardly, indeed! For I was seeing now all that I had been hiding from myself since I became infatuated with Anita and made marrying her my only real business in life.