He received a letter from Alice. “I am going to remain a couple of weeks longer in Newport,” she wrote. “Who do you think has invited me—Laura Hegan. She has been perfectly lovely to me, and I go to her place next week. You will be interested to know that I had a long talk with her about you; I took occasion to tell her a few things that she ought to know. She was very nice about it. I am hoping that you will come up for another week end before I leave here. Harry Curtiss is going to spend his vacation here; you might come with him.”
Montague smiled to himself as he read this letter. He did not go with Curtiss. But the heat of the city was stifling, and the thought of the surf and the country was alluring, and he went up by way of the Sound one Friday night.
He was invited to dinner at the Hegans'. Jim Hegan was there himself—for the first occasion in three years. Mrs. Hegan declared that it was only because she had gone down to New York and fetched him.
It was the first time that Montague had ever been with Hegan for any length of time. He watched him with interest, for the man was a fascinating problem to him. He was so calm and serene—always courteous and friendly. But what was there behind the mask, Montague wondered. For forty years this man had toiled and fought in the arena of Wall Street, and with only one purpose and one thought in life, so far as Montague knew—the piling up of money. Jim Hegan indulged himself in none of the pleasures of rich men. He had no hobbies, and he seldom went into company. In his busy times it was said that he would use a dozen secretaries, and wear them all out. He was a gigantic engine which drove all day and all night—a machine for the making of money.
Montague did not care much for money himself, and he wondered about it. What did the man want it for? What did he expect to accomplish by it? What was the moral code, the outlook upon life, of a man who gave all his time to heaping up money? What reason did he give to himself for his own career? Some reason he must have, or he could not be so calm and cheerful. Or could it be that he had no thoughts about it at all? Was it simply a blind instinct with him? Was he an animal whose nature it was to make money, and who was untroubled by any scruples? This last idea seemed rather uncanny to Montague; he found himself watching Jim Hegan with a kind of awe; thinking of him as some terrible elemental force, blind and unconscious, like the lightning or the tornado.
For Jim Hegan was one of the wreckers. His fortune had been made by the methods which Major Venable had outlined, by buying aldermen and legislatures and governors; by getting franchises for nothing and selling them for millions; by organising huge swindles and unloading them upon the public. And here he sat upon the veranda of his home, in the twilight of an August evening, smoking a cigar and telling about an orphan asylum he had founded!
He was cheerful and kindly; he was even benevolent. And could it be that he had no idea of the trail of ruin and distress which he had left behind him? Montague found himself possessed by a sudden desire to penetrate beneath that reserve; to spring at the man and surprise him with some sudden question; to get at the reality of him, to know him as he was. This air of power and masterfulness, surely that must be the mask that he wore. And how was he to himself? When he was alone with his own conscience? Surely there must come doubt and wonder, unhappiness and loneliness! Surely, then, the lives that he had wrecked must come back to plague him! Surely the memories of treachery and cruelty must make him wince!
And from Hegan, Montague's thoughts went to his daughter. She, too, was serene and stately; Montague wondered what was in her mind. How much did she know about her father's career? Surely she could not have persuaded herself that all that she had heard was calumny. There might be question about this offence or that, but of the great broad facts there could be no question. And did she justify it and excuse it; or was she, too, secretly unhappy? And was this the reason for her pride, and for her bitter speeches? It was a continual topic of chatter in Society, how Laura Hegan had withdrawn herself from all of her mother's affairs, and was interesting herself in work in the slums. Could it be that Nemesis had overtaken Jim Hegan in the form of his daughter? That she was the conscience by which he was to be tormented?
Jim Hegan never talked about his affairs. In all the time that Montague spent with him during his two days at Newport, he gave just one hint for the other to go upon. “Money?” he remarked, that evening. “I don't care about money. Money is just chips to me.”
Life was a game, and the chips were dollars! What he had played for was power! And suddenly Montague seemed to see the career of this man, unrolled before him like a panorama. He had begun life as an office-boy; and above him were all the heights of business and finance; and the ladder by which to scale them was money. There were rivals with whom he fought; and the overcoming of these rivals had occupied all his time and his thought. If he had bought legislatures, it was because his rivals were trying to buy them. And perhaps then he did not even know that he was a wrecker; perhaps he would not have believed it if anyone had told him! He had travelled all the long journey of his life, trampling out opposition and crushing everything before him, nourishing in his heart the hope that some day, when he had attained to mastery, when there were no more rivals to oppose and thwart him—then he would be free to do good. Then he would no longer have to be a wrecker!