At the end of the year's work, Armstrong went to Evansville to claim his bride.
He had met Dorothy Deming in New York, renewing an old acquaintance begun two years before in Evansville, and now upleaped between them a swift and spontaneous mutual knowledge that they were one. Almost from the first there was a complete comprehension, a deep and terrible kinship of spirit which, had there been barriers, would have borne them down. But there were no barriers to this love, save Armstrong's ambition for what he deemed final success; and this success came swiftly—all too swiftly, some said.
And now Armstrong, shirt-sleeved, sat at the library table of J. Fortescue Deming.
As he glanced at the faces around him, Armstrong awaited quietly the coming event. He knew as well as they—perhaps better—what to expect, but he had not imagined that it would come just yet, above all at this day and hour. Yet during the past few months he had seen it approach, with an inevitable certainty, nor could he hinder it. One does not, unfortunately, extend warnings of failure to a prospective father-in-law; not, at least, with any great success. Armstrong had refused to endanger his state of blessedness by attempting to pry open the lids of a blind man.
As he looked around, Armstrong could not repress, did not try to repress, the cold gleam in his eye. For the broken Deming who stood beside him fingering a telegram, he could feel pity; the others deserved no such feeling. They were either spoilers, or complacently inefficient fools, these men. All seven of them had together wrecked the Deming Food Products Company, though their work in this direction had not been by intent, but through folly, selfish calculation, through lack of all vision beyond self-interest. Deming, who had built up the old company, had lost his once strong grip on things, and his vision had overpowered his common sense. Although he could not realize it, he was not without his share of blame for this debacle.
And while Armstrong thus looked with unveiled scorn from man to man about the table, Lawrence Macgowan, by himself in one corner of the library, watched only Armstrong. If his gaze held any expression, it was hidden.
"Gentlemen," began Deming, with shaking voice, "I have hurriedly called you here to receive bad news. To get this message at such a moment is more than a blow to me; it is a humiliation. Yet I must face it."
He paused, his gaze sweeping the circle of faces. In them he read not the slightest hint of fortitude or sympathy; only weakness, fright, panicky comprehension. A single strong, calm pair of eyes might have bucked him up in this moment. He found none, save Armstrong's.
"This telegram," he blurted desperately, "is from the Northwestern Millers Corporation. Unless they receive ten thousand dollars to apply on our account before noon to-morrow, their attorneys are instructed to apply for a receiver and—and—" He paused, then went on. "My friends, I need not say that unless we wire this money, the Deming Company is a thing of the past. I ask your help."
Deming somehow fumbled himself into a chair, become an old man in ten minutes.