Lane looked at her narrowly. He was trying to account for this new attitude in his wife. That she would be pleased, or at least indifferent, at the prospect of returning to the East, to the New York life that she had always longed for and apparently enjoyed, he had taken for granted. Yet in spite of the fixed lines in which his nature ran and the engrossing preoccupations of his interests, he had felt many changes in Isabelle since her return to St. Louis,—changes that he ascribed generally to the improvement in her health,—better nerves,—but that he could not altogether formulate. Perhaps they were the indirect result of her brother's death. At any rate his wife's new interest in business, in his affairs, pleased him. He liked to talk things over with her….
Thus the days went steadily by towards the decision. Lane had promised his wife to consider the Larrimore offer. One morning the cable brought the startling news that the president of the Atlantic and Pacific had committed suicide in his hotel room in Paris the evening before he was to sail for home. "Bad health and nervous collapse," was the explanation in the despatch. But that a man of sixty-three, with a long record of honorable success, a large fortune, no family troubles, should suddenly take his own life, naturally roused the liveliest amazement throughout the country. Nobody believed that the cable told the whole truth; but the real reasons for the desperate act were locked tight among the directors of the railroad corporation and a few intimate heads of control—who know all.
Lane read the news to Isabelle. It shook him perceptibly. He had known
Farrington Beals for years, ever since at the Colonel's suggestion he had
been picked out of the army of underlings and given his first chance.
Isabelle remembered him even longer, and especially at her wedding with the
Senator and her father. They were old family friends, the Bealses.
"How terrible for Mrs. Beals and Elsie!" she exclaimed. "How could he have done it! The family was so happy. They all adored him! And he was about to retire, Elsie told me when I saw her last, and they were all going around the world in their yacht…. He couldn't have been very ill."
"No, I am afraid that wasn't the only reason," John admitted, walking to and fro nervously.
He was thinking of all that the old man had done for him, his resentment at his chief's final desertion of him forgotten; of how he had learned his job, been trained to pull his load by the dead man, who had always encouraged him, pushed him forward.
"He went over for a little rest, you said. And he always went every year about this time for a vacation and to buy pictures. Don't you remember, John, what funny things he bought, and how the family laughed at him?"
"Yes,—I know." He also knew that the president of the Atlantic and Pacific had gone across the ocean "for his yearly vacation" just at the opening of the coal investigation to escape the scandal of the trial, and had not returned at the usual time, although the financial world was unsettled. And he knew other things; for already clubs and inner offices had been buzzing with rumors.
"I am afraid that it is worse than it seems," he said to his wife on his return from the city that afternoon. "Beals was terribly involved. I hear that a bank he was interested in has been closed…. He was tied up fast—in all sorts of ways!"
"John!" Isabelle cried, and paused. Did this old man's death mean another scandal, ruin for another family, and one she had known well,—disgrace, scandal, possibly poverty?