"That's it!"
Then they went out into the street without further words. Hart returned to his office, examined his mail, wrapped up his first sketches for the school, and set out for the train. The deal with Graves unconsciously filled his mind and made him feel strange to himself. Yet he thought less of the practical detail of the transaction than of certain specious considerations concerning the morality of what he was going to do.
Business was war, he said to himself again and again, and in this war only the little fellows had to be strictly honest. The big ones, those that governed the world, stole, lied, cheated their fellows openly in the market. The Bushfields took their rake-off; the Rainbows were the financial pimps, who fattened on the vices of the great industrial leaders. Colonel Raymond might discharge a man on his road who stole fifty cents or was seen to enter a bucket shop, but in the reorganization of the Michigan Northern ten years previously, he and his friends had pocketed several millions of dollars, and had won the lawsuits brought against them by the defrauded stockholders.
It was a world of graft, the architect judged cynically. Old Powers Jackson, it was said in Chicago, would cheat the glass eye out of his best friend in a deal. He, too, would follow in the path of the strong, and take what was within his reach. He would climb hardily to the top, and then who cared? That gospel of strenuous effort, which our statesmen and orators are so fond of shouting forth, has its followers in the little Jackson Harts. Only, in putting forth their strong right arms, they often thrust them into their neighbors' pockets. And the irresponsible great ones, who have emerged beyond the reign of law, have their disciples in all the strata of society,—down, down to the boy who plays the races with the cash in his employer's till.
The architect went home to his wife and children with the honest love that he bore them. If they had entered his mind in connection with this day's experience, he would have believed that largely for their sakes, for their advancement in the social scheme of things, he had engaged upon a toilsome and disagreeable task. For he did not like slippery ways.
CHAPTER XX
Hart's design for the school had finally been accepted by the trustees, and the plans were placed on exhibition in the Art Institute. Little knots of people—students, draughtsmen, and young architects—gathered in the room on the second floor, where the elevations had been hung, and had their say about the plans. Occasionally a few older men and women, interested in the nobler aspects of civic life, drifted into the room, having stolen some moments from their busy days to see what the architect had done with his great opportunity.
"Gee! Ain't it a hummer, now!" exclaimed one of Wright's men, who had known Hart in the old days. "He's let himself out this time, sure. It will cover most two blocks."
"The main part of the design is straight from the Hotel de Ville," one of the young architects objected disdainfully. He and his friends thought there were many better architects in the city than F. Jackson Hart, and grumbled accordingly. "I bet I could find every line in the design from some French thing or other. Hart's an awful thief; he can't think for himself."