A babel of tongues filled the rooms—crisply concise northern speech, mingled with the softer slur of southern accents. A listener might gather that this house was symbolic of Evansville itself, bordering both north and south, drinking of its best from either section; an Indiana city, yet of infinite variety, proudly exclusive, living more in past than present, yet cordial and open-hearthed.
At noon, in this house, Dorothy Deming was to be married to Reese Armstrong. The wedding was yet some little distance away. Macgowan, who had been dressing for his part of best man and who was a house guest, crossed the upstairs hall toward the stairway, just as Dorothy herself appeared from a room which was aflutter with excited feminine voices. With the license of his age and position, he led her to the window-nook and began to speak of Armstrong. Dorothy, oblivious of the confusion around, yielded to the detention and listened eagerly.
Why not? When Lawrence Macgowan spoke, few men but would have listened; not to mention a bride who was chatting with the groom's most intimate and trusted friend, and hearing wondrous things about the man whom she was soon to call her husband.
Macgowan was impressive. More impressive than J. Fortescue Deming, in whose features the Deming Food Products Company had seared deep lines; more impressive than Deming's business directors and social friends here gathered; more impressive by far than young Armstrong, whose financial genius was making its mark so rapidly.
Despite the gray at his temples, Lawrence Macgowan possessed a charm of personality, a steely keenness of intellect, a direct force of character, which dominated all who came in contact with him. Being quite used to making this impression, he made it the more readily. Men said of Macgowan that he disdained politics, had refused a supreme court appointment, and preferred corporation law to marriage as a means of advancement. True,—perhaps. Among the doctors of the law, among those upright ones who lived rigorously by legal ethics and by ethical illegality, Macgowan moved as a very Gamaliel, honored in the Sanhedrim and respected by all those whose fortunes his brain had made.
Men said, too, that some day he would set that brain to making his own fortune.
"Then," Dorothy was inquiring, "you and Reese are looking this very minute for some new business to take hold of? And you haven't found one?"
Macgowan evaded, smilingly. His whole person seemed to radiate that smile as some rich crystal radiates and warms the sunlight, and when he thus smiled all the strong lines of his face were softened; his level gaze lost its almost harsh intensity and became winning, genial, intimate.
"We're not looking, exactly," he said. "You see, we're more sought after than seeking—though I should not include myself. Reese is the whole thing. It's his genius that is the very breath of life in Consolidated. Do you know that he's put nearly sixteen thousand investors on our books by his sheer selling ability? He has actually sold himself to them. All small ones, people who can invest only a few hundred dollars each year. That is more than an accomplishment; it is a triumph!"
The girl's cheeks were flushed, her blue eyes shone like stars.