"No."
As he passed her, he offered his hand in one last appeal, but she turned away from him, her hands behind her, and in a moment he was gone.
Rita Cheyne heard the hall door close behind him and then sank into the chair before the open fire, her eyes staring before her at the tiny flame which still played fitfully above the gray log. Her fish had risen at last with such wanton viciousness that he had taken hook, line, reel, and rod. Only her creel remained to her—her empty creel.
CHAPTER XIV
FATHER AND SON
Father and son had dined together alone, and for most of the time in silence. Cornelius Bent had brought his business mien uptown with him, and Cortland, with a discretion borrowed of experience, made only the most perfunctory attempts at a conversation. Since the "Lone Tree" affair there had happened a change in their relations which each of them had come to understand. Cortland Bent's successive failures in various employments had at last convinced his father that his son was not born of the stuff of which Captains of Industry are made. The loss of the mine had been the culminating stroke in Cortland's ill-fortune, and since his return to New York he had been aware of a loss of caste in the old man's eyes. General Bent had a habit of weighing men by their business performances and their utility in the financial enterprises which were controlled from the offices of Bent & Company. It was not his custom to make allowances for differences in temperament in his employees, or even to consider their social relationships except in so far as they contributed to his own financial well-being. He had accustomed himself for many years to regard the men under him as integral parts of the complicated machinery of his office, each with its own duty, upon the successful performance of which the whole fabric depended. He had figured the coefficient of human frailty to a decimal point, and was noted for the strength of his business organization.
To such a man an only son with incipient leanings toward literature, music, and the arts was something in the nature of a reproach upon the father himself. Cort had left college with an appreciation of Æschylus and Euripides and a track record of ten-seconds flat. So far as Bent Senior could see, these accomplishments were his only equipment for his eventual control of the great business of the firm of which his father was the founder. The Greek poets were Greek, indeed, to the General, but the track record was less discouraging, so Cortland began the business of life at twenty-three as a "runner" for the bank, rising in time to the dignity of a post inside a brass cage, figuring discounts, where for a time he was singularly contented, following the routine with a cheerfulness born of desperation. As assistant to the cashier he was less successful, and when his father took him into his own office later and made him a seller of bonds, Cortland was quite sure that at last he had come into his own. For the selling of bonds, it seemed, required only tireless legs and tireless imagination—both of which he possessed. Only after a month he was convinced that bond sellers are born—not made.
The General, still hoping against hope, had now taken him back into his office on a salary and an interest in business secured, and thus made his son more or less dependent upon his own efforts for the means to enjoy his leisure. Father and son existed now as they had always done, on a basis of mutual tolerance—a hazardous relation which often threatened to lead and often did lead to open rupture. To-night Cortland was aware that a discussion of more than usual importance was impending, and, when dinner was over, the General ordered the coffee served in the smoking room, the door of which, after the departure of the butler, he firmly closed.
General Bent lit his cigar with some deliberation, while Cortland watched him, studying the hard familiar features, the aquiline nose, the thin lips, the deeply indented chin, wondering, as he had often wondered before, how a father and son could be so dissimilar. It was a freak of heredity, Nature's little joke—at Cornelius Bent's expense. The General sank into his armchair, thoughtfully contemplating his legs and emitting a cloud of smoke as though seeking in the common rite of tobacco some ground of understanding between his son and himself.
"I want to speak to you about the Wrays," he said at last.