“I’ll stand by my mistakes,” he said more calmly. “You came to the wrong house, Mr. Gallatin, and I think you won’t forget it. I’d like you to remember this, too, and I’m a man of my word. You keep your fingers off my affairs, either business or personal, or I’ll make New York too hot to hold you,” and then as the man appeared, “Hastings, show this gentleman out!”
[XXI]
TEMPTATION
Philip Gallatin had a bad night. From the Loring house he trudged forth into the rain and sleet of the Park where he walked until his anger had cooled; then dined alone in a corner at the Cosmos, avoiding a group of his familiars who were attuned to gayety. From there he went directly to his rooms.
The house of his fathers was in a by-street in the center of the fashionable shopping district, and this dwelling, an old-fashioned double house of brown stone, was the only relic that remained to Phil of the former grandeur of the Gallatins. Great lawyers, however successful in safeguarding the interests of their clients, are notable failures in safeguarding the interests of their own. Philip Gallatin, the elder, had inherited a substantial fortune, but had added nothing to it. He had lived like a prince and was known as the most lavish host of his day. He consorted with the big men of his generation when the Gallatin house was famous alike for its cellar and kitchen. Here were entertained presidents and ex-presidents of the United States, foreign princes, distinguished artists and literary men, and here it was claimed, over Philip Gallatin’s priceless Madeira, the way had been paved for an important treaty with the Russian government.
Philip Gallatin, the second, had made money easily and spent it more easily, to the end that at the time of his death it was discovered that the home was heavily mortgaged, and that his holdings in great industrial corporations, many of which he had helped to organize, had been disposed of, leaving an income which, while ample for Mrs. Gallatin and her only child during the years of his boyhood, when the taste of society was for quieter things, was entirely inadequate to the growing requirements of the day. At his mother’s death, just after he came of age, Phil Gallatin had found himself possessed of less than eight thousand a year gross, and a mortgage which called for almost one-half that sum. But he resolutely refused to part with the house, for it had memories and associations dear to him.
Three years ago, with a pang which he still remembered, he had decided to rent out the basement and lower floors for business purposes and apply the income thus received to taxes and sinking fund, but he still kept the rooms on the third floor which he had always occupied, as his own. An old servant named Barker, one of the family retainers, was in attendance. Barker had watched the tide of commerce flow in and at last engulf the street which in his mind would always be associated with the family which he had served so long. But he would not go, so Philip Gallatin found a place for him. In the building he was janitor, engineer, rent collector, and valet. He cooked Phil’s breakfast of eggs and coffee and brought it up to him, made his bed and kept his rooms with the same scrupulous care that he had exercised in the heydey of prosperity. He was Phil’s doctor, nurse and factotum, and kept the doors of Gallatin’s apartments against all invaders.
Phil Gallatin wearily climbed the two long flights which led to the rooms. He had had a trying day. All the morning had been spent with John Sanborn, and a plan had been worked out based upon the labors of the past three weeks. One important decision had been reached, and a concession wrung at last from his clients. He had worked at high tension since the case had been put into his hands, traveling, eating when and where he could, working late at the office, sleeping little, and in spare moments had written to or thought of Jane. The strain of his anxiety was now beginning to tell. The events of the afternoon had filled him with a new sense of the difficulties of his undertakings. Loring would fight to the last ditch. All the more glory in driving him there!
But of Jane he thought with less assurance. His own mind had been so innocent of transgression, his own heart so filled with the thought of her, that her willingness to believe evil of him and of Nina had caused a singular revulsion of feeling which was playing havoc with his sentiments. It had not mattered so much when Jane’s indictment had been for him alone; that, he had deserved and had been willing to stand trial for; but with Nina’s reputation at stake Jane’s intolerance took a different aspect. Whatever Nina Jaffray’s faults, and they were many, Phil Gallatin knew, as every one else in the Cedarcroft crowd did, that they were the superficial ones of the day and generation and that Nina’s pleasure was in the creation of smoke rather than flame.