The Tyranny of the Dark

by Hamlin Garland

His associates greeted him with a nod, unsmiling and curt, and the elevator-boys at the Pratt building were careful not to elbow him. He had the greed of a wolf and the temper of an aging bear, and yet his business ability admittedly commanded respect. Everything he did had a certain sweep. He was not penurious or mean in his wars. On the contrary, he despised the small revenges; but in a strife with his equals he was inexorable—he pushed his adversaries to the last ditch, and into it, remorseless as a mountain land-slide.

All the tenderness in his nature, all his faith in goodness and virtue, he reserved for his home. To his wife (a woman of simple tastes and native refinement) and to his children, bright and buxom girls of twenty-odd, he was a fond and gruffly indulgent provider, making little protest over new gowns and parties. He had no sons, and this was a hidden sorrow to him, and had the effect of centring all his paternal pride and care in his daughters. He could deny them nothing when they wheedled him, and they were nearly always humorously and brazenly trying to "work him," as he called it. Only in one particular had he been granite. With means to build on the east side of the Park, he had deliberately chosen the Riverside Drive in order to show his contempt for the social climbers of upper Fifth Avenue, and neither smiles nor tears had availed to change his plan.

His house was a dignified structure exteriorly, but within was dominated by his taste rather than by that of his daughters, who were quite unable to change his habits after they were once set. He refused to consider their suggestions as to furniture. The interior was, as Britt had said, not unlike a very ornately formal French hotel, and this resemblance arose from the fact that he had once enjoyed a pleasant stay in a house of this sort; and when the decorator submitted a number of "schemes," he chose the one which made the pleasantest impression on his mind.

With three women at the table, he habitually took charge of the dinner, controlling the menu and the decorations as well. It amused outsiders to see him in wordy consultation with the head-waiter and the butler while his guest of honor vainly tried to continue some story he had begun, but his wife suffered in silence. In short, Simeon proceeded precisely as he would have done at a restaurant or at his club, and his family stood clear of his elbow, the girls with sly shrugs of their rounded shoulders, the wife meekly, but ineffectually, protesting against his usurpation of her domain.

He was not politically ambitious, and was in a fair way to grow old as one of the obscure millionaires of New York City when death reached a sable hand and smote him full in the front of his pride and assurance—his wife and daughters were lost in the sinking of a boat off the coast of France.

The news of this disaster came to him as he sat at his desk—the morning papers had given no hint of it. "I don't believe it," he said, quietly, and began pressing the buttons of his desk with the same swift calmness he would have used had the markets been going against him. Messages flew to and fro, the wires pulsed with his imperious anxiety. The manager of the steamboat company answered—denied. The news was confirmed, all to the same end; and when Simeon Pratt rose from his desk that night his jaw hung lax, his big form stooped and shambled as though twenty additional years had suddenly been heaped upon his shoulders. He went back to his splendid, lonely palace (where the servants huddled and whispered and hastened) with a hard, dry knot in his throat, and with eyes heavy and hot and tearless confronted his ruined altar. From one to be feared he had fallen in a day to the most desolate of beings.

Messengers pursued him. The bodies were recovered. He gave orders for them to be shipped by the first boat. In the blaze of the electric light, with horrid, staring eyes and stiffly moving lips, he cursed himself and God. He cursed himself for letting his treasures go from him, he cursed God for permitting such outrages upon justice. At last he fell silent, but he did not sleep nor eat till the end of the second day. Then he rose, took the 7.49 train as usual, and returned to his desk—unshaved, with creased and crumpled clothing, a gray and battered man, sustained by habit, seeking relief in work.

His associates, with forced cheerfulness, professed pleasure at his return, carefully avoiding mention of his appalling loss. To those who did speak of it he returned no word or glance. With fumbling, thick, and nerveless fingers he took up the purple-lettered ribbon of his trade. He fixed his dim eyes on market reports and dictated notes and orders, but it was a poor show. Even those who hated him as a gross, unlovely character were shocked at his shrunken form, his grayed and grizzled cheek. When death deals a blow like that the defeated one acquires a certain majesty.

Gradually the old man regained ability to compute and combine, and to converse with his partners concerning the affairs of the house; but his keen interest, his prompt decision of utterance, were all gone. His presence in the office was the result of habit merely. In reality he was waiting the return of the steamer which bore his precious clay.

This boat was delayed by storms, and for three days the broken financier, unable to remain in his office, walked to and fro between Broad Street and Bowling Green, haunting the office of the steamship company until the bloodless manager, nervous and irritated, left his chair to avoid him, unable to endure the sight of his haggard face and piteous eyes.