“Rich men nowadays, great financiers, seem to have a new standard of right and wrong. I don’t see why. I don’t see why the old standards of honesty and fairness don’t apply as much to magnates as to every-day people. I don’t see how it can make you happier, anyway. There’s no real happiness in doing wrong, and it’s wrong to crush life and hope out of people just to be richer yourself. You can’t be good and do that, and you can’t be light-hearted unless you’re good—and it’s worth a few millions to have a light heart.”
The gentle, stirring tones stopped. The woman was full of individuality and charm, and she had thrown all of it into her speech. The quiet room was as if swept with the rush of a mountain stream. But the man who listened meant to be the rock that such a stream dashes against to break in foam. He looked at her with cold, half-shut eyes.
“Mrs. Ruthven,” he answered, “you are very eloquent for your husband’s cause. If eloquence might affect a business decision of importance, in which a number of large interests are concerned, yours would succeed. I considered this view of the question before I came to any arrangement. I was reluctant”—there were other things which Marcus Trefethen was going to say in poised sentences, but they were suddenly caught from him. The woman was on her feet; color flooded her face and her hand flew out in a gesture of command as she gave a quick gasp.
“Don’t go on—it’s no use—I see,” she said. “I’ll go home now.” And before he could reach the door she had opened it for herself and passed out.
Always as direct and swift as a Winchester bullet, velocity and penetration seemed to be added to Trefethen’s mind through the hours of that day. Every second was full, hands and brain were full to overflowing, yet not for one of the busy minutes was the memory of the morning’s interview crowded out. Through the voices of men who talked to him, with his intellect keyed to its keenest to follow, to lead theirs, he heard all day the soft inflections so incongruous down there in his office. He saw again and again the gray eyes as she threw out her hand, heart-broken, scornful. It stabbed him that he should have broken her heart—it stabbed him again that she should despise him. Clearly Marcus Trefethen was not yet an expert in the art of being cold-blooded; the woman had got on his nerves—he could not shake off the memory of her. It was annoying. He dined at a club with men who were not concerned in the life of his daytime, and his spirits rose, and he walked over to his house later with a light step.
“All I needed was to get out of the rut,” he said aloud and set himself to reading. And there, in pages of a book on Tibet was the face, the agonized gray eyes; the descriptions of Lhassa read with the woman’s subtle accent. He threw down the book irritably. “I’ve overworked. I thought it was impossible, but I must have done it. This is morbid. I’ll get to bed early and sleep it off.”
Out of the blackness, as he lay staring, he heard a low voice say, “The happiest, cleverest, best boy!” “Stuff!” Trefethen spoke aloud to himself. He was a bachelor—he had no boy—why should he care about a boy? Doubtless she had exaggerated the whole business. Probably this boy was as commonplace as the average—each woman thinks hers exceptional. Yet at three in the morning he turned impatiently and said words aloud to try if that might break their hold. “He isn’t just an ordinary boy—he isn’t!” he repeated aloud. And then for a short time he fell asleep. But at six his eyes opened and his brain searched miserably for a moment after the thing that was harassing him. Only a moment—the thing was at hand. He sprang out of bed.
“I have to shake off this possession—it’s out of proportion,” he said to himself and dressed, and astonished a sleepy valet by ordering his saddle-horse at seven.
But the park and the spring freshness and the plunging beast gave him only temporary relief. In his office at ten he felt, with almost a terror, the possession taking hold again. He read his paper sternly, missing nothing, but his grip on his own powers was not as firm as yesterday. He had a nervous dread of certain things he must see in print. There they were—Morgan Ruthven’s name and the situation as it was known outside. He flapped the page over, and his eyes rested on the column beyond. Sporting news—from long habit it held his eye—the news of the athletic world had been interesting to him for twenty-five years.
“Boat-races at New Haven this afternoon.”