Kimberly looked keenly into the clear, gray eyes. Not a shade of thought in the mind of the man before him was lost upon his penetration. "Any recollection of my mother," he said slowly, "touches me deeply. To think that you recall her so beautifully is very grateful to me--as you may well imagine. And that was my birthday! Then if my mother was, or I have ever been, able to help you I am sure we are repaid in being so remembered all these years. I lost my father and my mother many years ago----"
He paused. "It is very pleasant to be remembered," he repeated uncertainly, as if collecting himself. "I shall never forget what you have just told me. And I thank you now for the prayers you said for my mother when she brought me into the world. Your grace," he added abruptly, "I am greatly perplexed."
"Tell me frankly, how and why."
"I came here with some confidence of getting what I should ask for. I am naturally a confident man. Yet my assurance deserts me. It seems, suddenly, that my mission here is vain, that my hopes have deluded me--I even ask myself why I have come. I could almost say I am sorry that I have come."
The archbishop lifted his hand to speak. "Believe me, it is not other than for good that you have come," he said.
Kimberly looked at him questioningly. "I cannot tell for what good," added the archbishop as if to say he could not answer the unspoken question. "But believe me, you have done right and not wrong in coming--of that I am sure. Tell me, first, what you came to tell me, what it is in your heart that has brought you here."
CHAPTER XXXVIII
"I must tell you," began Kimberly, "that while seemingly in a wide authority in directing the business with which I am connected I am not always able to do just as I please. Either voluntarily or involuntarily, I yield at times to the views of those associated with me. If my authority is final, I prefer not to let the fact obtrude itself. Again, circumstances are at times too strong for any business man to set his mere personal views against. Yielding some years ago to the representations of my associates I took into our companies a group of Western factories controlled by a man whom I distrusted.
"To protect our interests it was necessary to move, in the premises, in one of two ways. I favored the alternative or driving him out of the business then and there. There were difficulties in either direction. If we ruined him we should be accused of 'trust methods,' of crushing a competitor, and should thus incur added public enmity. On the other hand, I contended if the man were untrustworthy he would grow more dangerous with power. I need hardly explain to an intelligent man, regardless of his views on trusts, that any man of integrity, no matter how threatening or violent a competitor he may be in the beginning, is a man we welcome as an associate into our business. We need him just as he needs us--but that is aside. We took the man in----"
"Against your judgment?"