To the Highest Bidder

by Florence Morse Kingsley

There is that which works secretly (call it what you will), everywhere transmuting the ugly into the beautiful, the seeming evil into acknowledged good, the mean and worthless into the rare and precious; moving upon the face of vasty deeps, upon inchoate planets; toiling in unknowable abysses, whirling in star-dust and nebulæ, and no less in the veiled darkness of the holiest place—the soul of man. And here, indeed, this pervasive life principle, this informing Mind, this toiling servant of universes and men (call it what you will), seeks chiefly to manifest its supernal powers. Give it entrance in any fashion; open to it the smallest crevice; entertain its mysterious presence ever so briefly, and in that lodgment it begins at once its wonder-working transmutations. For observe: this unseen, and often unsuspected, worker takes of the common things of life, of its base and ignoble things and turns them into shapes of imperishable beauty. And observe, also: this is accomplished without tumult of manufacture; neither smoke of his burning furnace, nor clang of hammer, nor noise of breaking stone is heard, though one listen with the fine ear of the magician in the fable. And observe for a third time (for all of this has to do with the tale that is told): that the blind desire of the one who is thus wrought upon in some mysterious fashion relates itself to the will of Him who works, so that they are in a way one and indissoluble. For such is the law of growth in all the universe, and such will it ever be.

To Stephen Jarvis, pursuing to all outward appearance the even tenor of a way long trodden, came slight intimation of the changes in himself—the self deep submerged beneath the surface of everyday life. He still loaned money on bond and mortgage, exacting, as was his custom, the highest legal rate of interest. As in the past, he looked sharply after his investments, foreclosing when foreclosure had become due and inevitable, and manipulating such conservative purchases of stocks and bonds as his accumulating capital appeared to require. He was conscious of but one thing, and that was that these procedures no longer afforded him pleasure. They were, on the contrary, in the nature of labor. After a little, the labor became grinding in its demands upon him. Gradually, too, he found that the heavy looks and sad faces of certain of his debtors had the power to hurt him. One day he actually yielded to the importunities of a poor widow, not openly, indeed, but through a trusted agent of his, restoring to her the home she had lost. Once indulged, this folly (as he called it), grew upon him stealthily. More and more frequently he found himself giving; still secretly, because in his mind giving still appeared to him a despicable weakness. Yet he continued to impart (where he must) with that keen discrimination and sound judgment which had always distinguished his operations in finance. As yet no one suspected him. To have incurred a suspicion of benevolence would have shamed him little less than a well-founded conjecture of crime on the part of those who had always known him.

Nevertheless, he who runs may read the legible handwriting of God on the faces of men. The cold, immobile features of the grasping money-getter changed subtly, as was indeed inevitable, into something more human; his eyes looked out from beneath his sternly modelled brows as keenly as ever, yet in their very penetration there was a veiled light not visible before.

Perhaps the creature who might have told the most unbelievable story of the change in Stephen Jarvis was his horse. He no longer drove under the lash and with the cowardly curb-bit. He simply did not care any longer for the sensation afforded by beating down an inferior intelligence with his own brute force. No other reason for this particular change in his habits had as yet occurred to him. He still used fast horses; but he ceased to abuse them.

Nearly two months had elapsed since his last visit to the Preston farm. On that occasion he had entreated Barbara not to shame him before the crowd assembled for the auction; and she had refused to listen. Then he had gone away. Something of what followed had been repeated to him. And since he had learned of the return of David Whitcomb from the West; of his spectacular part in the bidding, and of his subsequent visits to the farm.

It was of David he was thinking as he drove along the country roads on a day in early August. The fields were yellowing to the harvest and a great peace lay upon the face of Nature, veiled lightly with the long continued heat. When, therefore, he overtook the object of his thoughts walking along the dusty road with every appearance of discomfort, he drew up his horse and spoke to him.

“I haven’t seen you to speak with you, since your return, Mr. Whitcomb,” he said civilly. “Won’t you get in and ride with me? I shall be glad to—talk with you.”

David stared with undisguised astonishment; then a derisive gleam shone in his blue eyes.

“Why—er—certainly, Mr. Jarvis,” he said, and sprang in and seated himself with cool assurance. “It wouldn’t have occurred to me to ask you for a ride,” he went on, “but I’m not sorry you offered to give me a lift. It’s deucedly unpleasant walking.”

Jarvis met his inquiring look gravely.