I hurried away before she had a chance to reply.
V
A curious kind of cowardice has been growing on me of late. Whenever I feel the slightest pain or ache—a twinge I’d not have given a second thought to a year or so ago—I send post-haste for my doctor, the ridiculous, lying, flattering Hanbury. My intelligence forbids me to put the least confidence in him. I know he’d no more tell me or any other rich man a disagreeable truth than he’d tell one of his rich old women that she was past the age of pleasing men. Yet I send for Hanbury; and I swallow his lies about my health, and urge him on to feed me lies about my youthful appearance that are even more absurd. I’m thinking of employing him exclusively and keeping him by me—for companionship. Cress is worse than worthless except for business, Jack is getting stale and repetitive with age, and I badly need some one to amuse me, to take my mind off myself and my affairs and my family.
At this moment I happen to be in my mood for mocking my fears and follies about the end. The End!—I’m not afraid of what comes after. All the horror I’m capable of feeling goes into the thought of giving up my crown and my sceptre, my millions and my dominion over men and affairs. The afterward? I’ve never had either the time or the mind for the speculative and the intangible—at least not since I passed the sentimental period of youth.
Each day my power grows—and my love of power and my impatience of opposition. It seems to me sacrilege for any one to dare oppose me when I have so completely vindicated my right to lead and to rule. I understand those tyrants of history who used to be abhorrent to me—much could be said in defence of them. Once the power I now wield would have seemed tremendous. And it is tremendous. But I am so often galled by its limitations, more often still by the absurd obstacles that delay and fret me.
Early last month I found that down at Washington they were about to pass a law “regulating” railway rates, which means, of course, lowering them and cutting my dividends and disarranging my plans in general. I telephoned Senator ——, whom we keep down there to see that that sort of demagoguery is held in check, to come to me in New York at once. He appeared at my house the same evening, full of excuses and apologies. “The public clamour is so great,” said he, “and the arguments of the opposition are so plausible, that we simply have to do something. This bill is the least possible.”
I rarely argue with understrappers. I merely told him to go to my lawyer’s house, get the bill I had ordered drawn, take it back to Washington on the midnight train, and put it through. “You old women down there,” said I, “seem incapable of learning that the mob isn’t appeased, but is made hungrier, by getting what it wants. Humbug’s the only dish for it. Fill it full of humbug and it gets indigestion and wishes it had never asked for anything.”
My substitute was apparently more drastic than the other bill, but I had ordered into it a clause that would send it into the courts where we could keep it shuffling back and forth for years. To throw the demagogues off the scent, Senator —— had it introduced by one of the leaders of the opposition—as clever a dealer in humbug as ever took command of a mob in order to set it brawling with itself at the critical moment. Our fellows pretended to yield with great reluctance to this “sweeping and dangerous measure,” and it went through both houses with a whirl.
The President was about to sign it when up started that scoundrel ——, who owes his fortune to me and who got his place on the recommendation of several of us who thought him a safe, loyal, honourable man. The rascal pointed out the saving clause in my bill and made such a stir in the newspapers that our scheme was apparently ruined.
I quietly took a regular express for Washington, keeping close to my drawing-room. By roundabout orders from me a telegram had been sent to a signal tower in the outskirts of Washington, and it halted the train. In the darkness I slipped away, hailed a cab, and drove to ——’s house. He was taken completely by surprise—I suppose he thought I’d be afraid to come near him, or to try to reach him in any way with those nosing newspapers watching every move. The only excuse he could make for himself was a whine about “conscience.”