Mr. Alexander Chambers sat in the center of his airy private office, panelled to the ceiling in Flemish oak, looking through the selections from the Monday morning's mail his secretary had just laid upon his great glass-topped desk. His lofty forehead, crowned with soft, white hair, made one think of the splendid dome of Walter Scott. But below the forehead, in the face that was beginning to be netted with fine wrinkles, there was neither poetry nor romanticism: power, that was all—power under perfect mastery. The gray eyes were quiet, steady; the mouth, half hid under a thick, short-cropped, iron-gray moustache, was a firm straight line; the jaw was a great triangle with the squared apex as a chin. Facetious persons sometimes referred to that triangular chin as "Chambers's cowcatcher;" but many there were who said that those that got in Chambers's way were never thrown aside to safety, but went down beneath the wheels.
As he skimmed the letters through with a rapidity that in him seemed ease, there was nothing about him to suggest the "human dynamo," which has come to be the popular conception of the man of vast business achievement—no violent outward show of effort, no whirring of wheels, no coruscating flashes of escaping electricity. He ran noiselessly, effortlessly, reposefully. Those who knew him intimately could no more have imagined Alexander Chambers in a strain than Providence.
He glanced the last letter through—a report from Mr. Jordon on the negotiations for the land controlled by Rogers—pushed the heap aside and touched a button. Immediately there entered a young man of twenty-eight or thirty.
"Please have Mr. Jordon come over as soon as he can," Mr. Chambers said in a quiet voice to his secretary.
"Yes, sir. I was just coming to tell you, when you rang, that Mr. Allen is waiting to see you."
"Have him come in."
As Allen entered Mr. Chambers raised his strong, erect figure to his feet and held out his hand with a smile. "How are you, Allen. You look as fresh as a spring morning."
"Then I look as I feel. I'm just back from Myrtle Hill. It was a glorious two days—though we missed you a lot."
"Come now, some of the party may have missed me—but you, did you think of me once?" Those who knew Mr. Chambers in a business way alone, would have felt surprise at the humorous wrinkles that radiated from the outer corners of his eyes. "The next time I arrange for a weekend party I'll see that the wires to Boston are cut. But how did you leave Helen?"
They sat down. "With nothing to be desired in point of health"—Allen hesitated a moment—"and everything to be desired in point of her regard for me."