“There isn’t a thing you’ve said that isn’t true, Mr. Snowdon, and you’re the one man who could say it without any touch of offensiveness. I’ve counted the costs. God knows if I could go back to the army to-morrow with a shriven record, I’d rather have my lieutenant’s pay than all the success that could ever come from moneyed buccaneers! But I can’t do that. I can’t think of myself as a fighting man under my own flag whose largest pay is his contentment and his honor. Very well, I have accepted Hobson’s choice. I will join that group which fights with power, for power; the group that’s strong enough to defy the approval they can’t successfully court. I have hardened but I’ve needed to. I hope I shan’t become so flagrant, however, that you’ll have to regret sponsoring me.”
Snowdon laughed.
“I’m not afraid of that,” he made hasty assurance. “And my friendliest wishes go with you.”
Since that day John Spurrier had come to a place of confidence in the counsels over which Harrison presided with despotic authority.
The man in the street, deriving his information from news print, would have accorded Martin Harrison a place on the steering committee of the country’s wealth and affairs, and in such a classification he would have been both right and wrong.
There were exclusive coteries of money manipulation to which Harrison was denied an entree. These combinations were few but mighty, and until he won the sesame of admission to their supreme circle his ambition must chafe, unsatisfied: his power, greater than that of many kings, must seem to himself too weak.
It must not be inferred that Harrison was embittered by the wormwood of failure. His trophies of success were numerous and tangible enough for every purpose except his own contentment.
To-night he was smiling with baronial graciousness while he stood welcoming a group of dinner guests in his own house, and as his butler passed the tray of canapes and cocktail glasses the latest arrival presented himself.
The host nodded. “Spurrier,” he said, “I think you know every one here, don’t you?”