“Maybe,” persisted Wayne, “maybe Walsh isn’t the subordinate.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that Walsh has been, far more than the Colonel knows, the deus ex machina of our affairs. Father has not known the details of his various interests for years—not since I went into the office. He sees only the results and, thanks to Walsh, they have been very satisfactory. When there was a nasty trip to take in a hurry to head off a strike, or to see why we weren’t making the usual tonnages, old Walsh slipped out of town and looked after it without a word. Father thinks he did it all; probably thinks it honestly; and Walsh let him think it. That’s Walsh’s way. When father went out in his private car and found all the properties in bang-up shape he thought he was looking at the results of his own management; but in fact Walsh’s eagle eye and iron grip had done the real work.”
“You mustn’t talk so of father, Wayne; you have grown bitter toward him and can’t judge him fairly. But if you think Mr. Walsh ought to be asked to the reception I’ll send him a card. There isn’t any Mrs. Walsh, I believe?”
“No. He’s married happily to his horses and cigars. Don’t take this too hard; Walsh has never manifested any interest in social fusses yet and he’ll hardly begin now. I can’t see him in a dress suit! He won’t come to your party but it would be decent to send him a ticket.”
“Certainly, Wayne; not because Mr. Walsh has been father’s brains but because you ask it.”
“Oh, never mind that! Walsh has always been bully to me. I’m keeping my stock in the mercantile company just because I like him. When we closed that deal the other day and I told Tom I was going to hold on to my stock he came as near being affected as I suppose is possible in such a hardy old plant. The name of the corporation isn’t to be changed and he said he hoped I’d come to see him occasionally to help his credit. He was really a good deal tickled over it.”
The Blair house lent itself well to large entertainments. At ten o’clock the hostess breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that her party was a success. The representative people of the Greater City were there. Men and women who, in Mrs. Blair’s phrase, “stood for something,” had passed in review before Mrs. Roger Craighill. Mrs. Blair was catholic-minded in social matters. The wide advertisement of her city through the coarse social exploits of some of her citizens during the Great Prosperity had aroused her bitter resentment, and she had summoned for this occasion many who, able to declare themselves guiltless of wealth, proved in their own lives and aspirations that something besides vulgarity and greed emerge from the seething caldron to which the Greater City may be likened. It was Mrs. Blair’s delight to discover, and as far as lay in her power, to stimulate and reward ambition in the arts and sciences. She had promoted the fortunes of a long line of young physicians, placing them on hospital boards and sending them influential patients. Poor artists were sure to find sitters if she took them up; the young girl seeking countenances to immortalize in miniature would, if satisfactorily weighed in Mrs. Blair’s balance, find herself embarrassed with clients. John McCandless Blair could never tell, when he went home to dinner, what new musical genius would be enthroned in the music room—young men in flowing black scarfs, or, rather more delectable, young girls of just the right type to look well at the harp, and who, no matter what strains might be evoked by their fingers, yet possessed in the requisite degree what Mrs. Blair capitalized as Soul.
Mrs. Blair’s reception drew a wide circle within which Mrs. Craighill made the acquaintance of her husband’s fellow-townsmen. Curiosity proved stronger in most cases than fealty to the dead, even among the first Mrs. Craighill’s friends. The obvious answer to any invidious question as to the wife’s previous history was that a man standing as high as Colonel Craighill, and as careful as he of his honour and good name, was unlikely to make a marriage that would jeopardize his position.