Читать книгу The Giant's Strength - Basil King - Страница 5

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^"What connection have I with the name of Roger Winship?"

"Oh, that dreadful man!" Mrs. Trafford cried, with a little gasp. "I haven't heard of him for years."

"Do you mean old Roger Winship?" George Trafford asked, yawning, as he slipped down lazily in his arm-chair and stretched his legs before the fire.

"I mean any Roger Winship," Paula replied. "I've heard the name to-night, and I seem to have known it before."

"How on earth did it happen?" came from Mrs. Trafford.

"There was a young man at the Casino, rather an interesting-looking man, a friend of the Duke's. The Duke spoke to him and then introduced him to me. I'd noticed him before that."

"I'm surprised at the Duke. It's very queer the sort of people who seem to know one another nowadays."

Mrs. Trafford spoke with as much severity as a beaming content would permit. Handsome, dimpling, and energetic, she was spending her middle-age in the serene satisfaction of seeing all her dreams fulfilled.

The daughter of a New England coal merchant, her modest fortune had been the foundation on which the colossal Coal Trust had been built up. It was to her credit to have married a poor man, certain that a great industrial empire awaited him. She had married for love, against the wishes of her family, but her love had been based on admiration. Her husband and she had passed through good years and evil years, had lived sparingly, had watched and planned and combined, and made their business march with the march of the country. She had seen him rise, with the swiftness and sureness of a Bonaparte, to the highest financial position, first in Vermont, then in New England, then in America, then in the world. Before he was sixty or she was fifty, Trafford was a name to go with Rothschild. It was a name that meant not only the power of money, but the power of power—the success of those who threw in their destinies with it, and the ruin of those who opposed it.

During the years in which the great trust was being organized and maintained, the Traffords had lived in an atmosphere of battle. There were suits in the law courts, appeals to supreme courts, State legislatures to be managed, Congress to be appeased, foreign trade-marts to be invaded, and small competitors to be crushed out at home. It had been exciting, and often dramatic; but as middle-age drew on and most of the ends had been gained, it was pleasant to settle down and enjoy the hardly won laurels in peace. George Trafford, whose late father, Andrew Trafford, had shared the family elevation, was equal now to taking his uncle's place in everything but the supreme command. In the exercise of this office Paul Trafford himself was never idle, hurrying now to one great capital, now to another, with but brief intervals to spend with his wife and daughter at home.

Home now meant Paris. The dust of conflict being still thick in New York, it was natural that Mrs. Trafford, at least, should prefer a place of abode where she could breathe more freely. It was not less natural that the enticements of fashion and fine weather, as well as the needs of Mrs. Trafford's health, should draw them in winter to the Riviera. The coming of the George Traffords from America, as well as the possibility of Paula's engagement to the Duke of Wiltshire—a possibility which was only awaiting her final word to become a certainty—offered reasons for assembling something like a family party.

At the present minute they were spending the last desultory half-hour of the evening in Mrs. Trafford's sitting-room, before parting for the night. Mr. Trafford had already gone to his apartment, and Mrs. George, beating back a yawn with the gloves she had just pulled off, was preparing to take her husband off to theirs. Paula, dressed as she came from the Casino, sat by a window from which she had pulled the curtain back. Under the starlight, the sea gleamed duskily, reflecting here and there the lamps of the yachts anchored in the tiny bay. Lights, too, ran in a long, slanting line down the sea-wall to the Condamine, while more lights still punctured the dark mass of the town of Monaco, looming, high and ancient, against the sky.

"The Duke couldn't help introducing him to me," Paula explained, in answer to her mother's objections. "I was standing near, and he asked who I was. Besides, we'd noticed each other before that."

"Noticed each other?" Mrs. George queried, with just the glimmer of a smile.

"In the Casino at Monte Carlo," George Trafford began, "strange ladies don't notice strange gentlemen unless—"

"It was this way," Paula hastened to say. "I'd won a lot of money from him—"

"You'd—what?" Mrs. Trafford gasped. "You don't mean to say you played in that dreadful place?"

"I didn't play exactly. I just put down ten francs on a sort of square to see what would happen."

"Well?"

"Well, he had ten francs on the corresponding square on the opposite side, and he lost and I won."

"That wasn't winning from him," George Trafford corrected; "it was winning from the bank."

"It seemed like winning from him," Paula insisted.

"Was that all?" the mother inquired, anxiously.

"No. We went on—six or seven times. He lost every time but one. I've brought home all this!"

She pulled off her glove and let the gold pieces slip from her palm on to the nearest table. They lay about separately, like stars. Mrs. Trafford and Mrs. George both leaned forward to see; George Trafford turned his head to look without changing his position.

"One—two—three," Mrs. Trafford counted—"fifty francs in all. Well, it isn't very much."

"It was a good deal to him, I fancy," Paula remarked. "The Duke admitted that he wasn't well off. Who is he, George?"

"If he is old Roger Winship's son—" George Trafford began, lazily.

"He is," Paula interrupted; "or at least he hinted as much. He seemed to speak as if his family had had some connection with us."

"Did he say that?" Mrs. Trafford asked, with a gleam of her old readiness for conflict.

"Not exactly," Paula explained. "He only wouldn't talk of it when I said I seemed to know his name. Who is he?"

"Old Roger Winship," George Trafford went on, in his comfortable, lazy tone, "was one of the men who, twenty years ago, had the folly, the hardihood, and the ill-luck to oppose your father."

"And what then?"

"Then," Trafford laughed—"then he was ruined."

"Oh!"

"That is," Mrs. Trafford added, in explanation, "he would have been ruined if he had lived. As it was—"

"His son was ruined," Paula finished, seeing her mother hesitate.

"No, his widow, poor thing," Mrs. Trafford corrected, pityingly.

"Was she ruined by—by us?" Paula continued, a little tremulously.

"No, by herself," George Trafford replied, promptly.

He pulled himself up in his chair and spoke with emphasis. You could see that it was one of the subjects that kindled him into interest by the way in which his eyes awoke from their blue benignity to dart out a ray like steel. It was then that you realized in him the presence of the new type—the essentially modern and chiefly American type—the son of the hugely wealthy, self-made man; the son to whom has passed the blood of a peasant with the power of a prince, and a command of means far in excess of anything he knows how to use. As Trafford dragged his heavy figure into an upright posture in his chair, his large jaw set, his head thrown back, and his keen eyes flashing, there was the implication that he could do what Paul Trafford himself had done if there were need to begin the work again. But his was another duty—the duty of the second generation to keep what had been won. It was a task consistent with a large-handed, easy mode of life, with leisure for a certain sort of simple cultivation, with praiseworthy, philanthropic undertaking, and with interest in everything that made for the general public good. The least competent judge of character could read in George Trafford's rather ponderous, clean-shaven face the presence of the loyal, honest citizen, who would have straightforward, sensible views on every subject, from ward politics to the nude in art. It was not an aristocratic face; its features, excellent in themselves, were so placed together as to be without distinction; a mustache would have softened the hard lines of the mouth and a beard would have veiled the too aggressive chin; but in the general expression there was at least frankness, open-mindedness, and a sense of power coupled with a look of kindness. Undoubtedly that look of kindness came from his eyes. They were blue eyes with black lashes, like his cousin Paula's, only smaller and more deeply set. Where hers ranged about with a sort of searching, puzzled wonder, his twinkled good-naturedly, until some sudden topic of politics, business, or American patriotism made them blaze. A good man, was the universal opinion in New York regarding George Trafford; a safe man, a man to be found in the forefront of any movement to help on the common weal; but a man who, in all matters of money, was of Paul Trafford's own stock and blood.

"She ruined herself," he repeated, with greater energy. "She, too, was possessed of the insane conviction that she could fight your father and beat him. She wasn't the only woman who ever tried it, but no other kept at it so doggedly and desperately that there was no choice at last but to club her down."

"Of course," Mrs. Trafford interposed, "she worked for sympathy on the fact that she was a woman; and she got it—there's no denying that. It was one of the injustices that was done your father and which he is always so ready to forgive."

"I didn't know," Paula said, with a more decided tremor in the voice, "that papa fought with—women."

"There are no women in business," Mrs. George Trafford observed, in her clear, cold way; "there are only competitors."

"Your father never fights with any one," George Trafford cried, forcibly. "It is others who fight with him. They won't let him alone. His success is what they can't pardon, and the less so when they compare it with their own failure. There's never been a man who has tried harder than your father to do good to others, and there's never been one who has had more harm done to him."

In his tone there was a mingling of pride and indignation. Mrs. Trafford raised her lace handkerchief to her eyes. Even Mrs. George Trafford, who had only a connection by affinity with the great financier, threw up her head with admiration when the trumpet was blown in his praise.

Paula herself felt a strange oppression about the heart. Like the rest of the Traffords she had set up the man who had made them what they were as a kind of demigod. She had done more than the rest of them; for, into the worship they all accorded him, she had infused a self-devotion of which she alone was capable. As the youngest of the family it was she who had known him least as a man of business and most as a man of the world. In all her recollection of him he had never been anything but the great personage whose goings and comings were as important as those of kings. During his later years, when the immensity of his affairs obliged him to travel much, she was his frequent companion. She helped him in collecting rare old books and works of art, and filled some of the gaps in his early education; but she never saw him otherwise than as the financial potentate, who had taught statesmen to look to him for advice and bishops for benefactions, and who could buy anything that was good enough.

To be the daughter of such a man had given her a kind of royalty—the royalty of money. Wherever they went they were treated with a spontaneous awe, scarcely less deferential than if they had sprung from the line of Charlemagne. Governments and aristocracies did them honor, and sovereigns received them on a footing curiously like that of equality. As for republics and democracies, they had hailed Paul Trafford at first as the type they could produce at their very best—the man who out of small beginnings could rise to vastness of power, and then dispense his means not merely in sumptuous living, but in founding hospitals, building churches, endowing seats of learning, and leaving a name that time could only consecrate. It was not strange that Paula, living in the radiation of so strong a character, should give him more than filial affection. For this very reason certain suggestions made to-night seemed to her like a desecration. To fight with a woman! To club her down! There are no women in business, only competitors! What did it mean? For a few minutes she kept silence, pondering her cousin's words. She looked straight before her, trouble clouding in her Celtic eyes and the little furrow of perplexity deepening between the brows.

"Did Mrs. Winship—?" she began, with some hesitation.

"For mercy's sake, Paula," Mrs. Trafford exclaimed, hastily, "don't get those Winships on the brain! I thought they were dead and buried long ago, and, dear knows, they've given us trouble enough."

"Let her go on, Aunt Julia," George Trafford reasoned, calmly. "Since the subject has come up, she'd better know it just as it is."

"I was going to ask," Paula said, with dignity, "if Mrs. Winship thought that papa had done her wrong."

"Most people think you do them wrong if you do things better than they can," Trafford answered, quickly. "There's no kind of business, from the stage to the church, in which the strong worker isn't held as an enemy by the feeble and the indifferent. That's inseparable from human nature, and your father has had to face it. The hostility he has encountered has been in proportion to his success; so, naturally, it's been colossal."

"And I've never known him to utter a harsh word," Mrs. Trafford observed, quaveringly. "As each new attack has arisen, he has faced about to crush it. When that's been done he has given it no more thought—if it hasn't been to help those he has beaten. Where he has seen people with ability he has often taken them into his own employment; and there are plenty of wealthy men to-day who can tell you that their fortunes were made when your father singled them out as clever opponents. There's Henry Desmond, for instance, who was only an obscure young lawyer at Utica until he gained the McTavish case against us. From that very moment your father kept his eye on him, and when the Brewer action was brought in Albany he put the whole case in Desmond's hand. That made Desmond what he is; and there are hundreds of others of whom the same thing is true. Your father has the most wonderful way of converting enemies into friends. It's a sort of art of his. I've never heard of it anywhere else—unless it was in Mary Queen of Scots."

"Couldn't he have done that with the Winships?" Paula asked, returning to the personal point.

"In business," Trafford explained, swinging himself round so as to lean over the arm of his chair, and speaking for Paula's benefit—"in business, most men, when they can't get best, will turn themselves about so as to put up with second-best. They will even accept third-best and fourth-best rather than go with no advantage whatever. But every now and then you meet some one with whom it must be all or nothing. They'll not bargain, or compromise, or meet you half-way, or resort to any of the shifts with which business men have often to be content. They'll fight you to the bitter end, and die before they yield. In fact, they're people with the fighting rather than the business instinct, and when you meet them they leave you no choice but to crush them out of your way."

"Were the Winships like that?"

"Yes, they were. They were like that, only worse. You could no more beat modern methods into old Roger Winship's mind than you could into a mountain of brass. Because he was the largest owner of coal-lands in New Hampshire, he looked upon himself as a sort of ruler by divine right. For nearly thirty years he had operated the Devlin Mines—"

"But they're ours!" Paula exclaimed.

"Now—yes," Trafford assented, with a short laugh. "But when your father first cast his eyes on them the Devlin Coal Company was practically old Roger Winship. He worked the mines and sold the coal, in a humdrum, provincial, old-fashioned way, and made a handsome income. Then came your father—with new ideas, big ideas, and victory behind him all along the line."

"But papa didn't want to take the Devlin Mines from Mr. Winship?"

"No; not at all. He was only developing the plan with which he had begun—that he should control the entire output and sale of coal in the sphere under his immediate influence. As you know, that, sphere expanded as he went on, like a growing empire. At first, when he was a young man, he thought of coal production only within the State of Vermont—didn't he, aunt?"

"He spoke only of that," Mrs. Trafford corrected. "His thoughts from the beginning were as vast as his business afterwards came to be."

"At any rate," George Trafford continued, "he began with Vermont, quietly and, as we should think nowadays, very modestly. And yet, so complete was his system, and so thorough his organization in every detail, that in a few years there was not a bushel of coal mined or sold from Canada to the Massachusetts line that wasn't under his direct control. He had got possession of every important company and annexed every customer, great and small. Where any one showed fight, he pushed him out of the market. He had his agents everywhere—not only in every town but in every office. There wasn't a carload of coal that crossed the state of which he didn't know the quality, the value, and the destination. If it wasn't his, his agents went after it and offered the dealer a better quality at a cheaper rate. If the dealer refused, then they went to his customers and cut the prices right under the dealer's nose. In five years' time there was practically not a merchant in Vermont who could sell a ton of coal if he hadn't bought it from your father."

"But the Devlin Mines are in New Hampshire," Paula argued, eager to know about the Winships.

"We're coming to that," Trafford went on, enthusiastically. "It wasn't natural that a business such as his had come to be should stop within the limits of a state. It spilled over on every side: into New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, the Middle States—everywhere. It crossed the whole country; the farther the net went out the easier it seemed to throw it farther still. His system was so perfect that the thing seemed to go of itself. In reality his method was simple; it lay in three main points: First, to get control of the means of transportation by rebates from the great railway and steamship lines—rebates allowed to him and refused to others; then to sweep out competition by annexing rival companies; and lastly to keep up prices by limiting the supply. If an independent company refused to yield to his demands, then he laid siege to it—siege as regular, as thorough, as patient, and as systematic as that of a fortress. He invested it, so to speak, by sea and land. He cut off its means of transportation by prohibitive rates and its customers by low prices. If there was litigation, he was almost invariably victorious. In the end the rebellious company did one of two things—it capitulated and came in, or it went bankrupt and Uncle Paul bought it."

Trafford threw back his great head, with a sense of exultation in so much industrial triumph. Mrs. Trafford sighed softly as she recalled the old days of action. Paula sat quite still, her eyes fixed upon her cousin with a sort of astonished fascination, as her mind tried to comprehend these strange—these brutal—mysteries of business.

"You ought to say, George," young Mrs. Trafford suggested, "that your uncle never struck until he had made the most generous proposals."

"That's true, Laura," her husband agreed. "Paula should understand that; and the Winships make an excellent illustration. The Devlin Company," he pursued, in a tone of narrative, "had already been pretty hard hit by us before your father began to give them open attention. Of course, he'd known for years what he was going to do with them, but he's never one to act before the time. When he was ready—that is to say, when he had secured his rebates on all their railways, when he held their customers in the hollow of his hand, when, by his agents whom he kept in their employ, he knew their business better than they did themselves—he made his offer. It was a good one, or it wouldn't have come from him. As nearly as I remember, it was this: They were to hand over to the Vermont Mining Company—that was your father, of course—for the period of twenty years, the mines, the plant, and all their own time. He was to put in twenty thousand dollars and his rebates; that is to say, they were to have the same transportation advantages as ourselves. They were to limit their output to a given quantity, and in return Uncle Paul was to guarantee them a profit of fifty thousand dollars a year. Any profit over fifty thousand was to go to him."

"Most generous, I call it," young Mrs. Trafford commented.

"And yet the old man refused it," Trafford said, with a short laugh.

"Why?" Paula asked, trying to keep up with her cousin's explanations.

"Why?" he echoed. "Because those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. Old Roger Winship thought he could pit himself against the man whose financial conquests were by this time the talk of two worlds. You see, for forty years the Winships had done a steady, respectable business in the played-out, live-and-let-live way that used to be the standard. They had no notion of progress, or energy, or real competition. Your father had begun to eat the heart out of their trade before they ever heard of him. By the time they began to wake up they were as good as ruined already. Your father knew it but they didn't. When they took in the fact they threatened him with all the rigor of the law."

"Only," Mrs. Trafford added, "they went beyond the limits of propriety. They said your father was no better than a common thie—well, no, I won't say it. He himself is the last to bear malice, and an example to us all."

"At any rate," George Trafford pursued, "your father stepped in just then with his offer. He was always for peace and fair-dealing, and he knew the psychological moment had come. He knew, too, just how it would be taken, and laid out his plan of action for five or six years ahead. If the Devlin hadn't been a sort of family company, with all the shares in a few hands, they would probably have come in after the first storm of threats had blown over. A body of share-holders are generally ready in the long run to eat humble-pie if their dividends are assured them. But, you see, the Devlin was practically Roger Winship, a proud, stubborn, high-tempered old fellow of a by-gone school. As hereditary coal king of New Hampshire, he felt himself a match for any mushroom Trafford, and so he set to work."

"Very cleverly, it must be admitted," Mrs. Trafford observed. "Your father always says that he went straight for the weak point of the whole system."

"Yes—the rebates," Trafford went on. "Uncle knew that if the question of rebates was ever seriously raised in law he couldn't hold out beyond a certain point."

"Do you mean that papa knew he was making use of an illegal privilege?" Paula asked.

Trafford was not expecting a question of so much acumen, and replied, somewhat slowly:

"Nothing is illegal till it's proved so. He only made use of the rebates until it was shown that he couldn't. It was a matter of public benefit to have the question fought out and settled. So when the New Hampshire Central refused the Winships the same rates for transportation as they had given to the Vermont Mining Company, the Devlin took the matter into court. Of course your father stood behind the railroad, and the case was argued in the Court of Common Pleas. The railroad lost, just as he thought it would; but see what a general he is! He had the whole campaign mapped out. The railroad appealed to the District Court, your father in the mean time having the use of his rebates. The railroad lost again. Then it appealed to the Supreme Court of the State. Still the rebates went on, while at the same time your father was cutting off from the Devlin every ton of business. Before the case was heard at Concord old Roger Winship died from a stroke of apoplexy."

"Brought on," Mrs. Trafford explained, "purely by bad temper and his refusal to accept your father's offer. Now, tell her, George, of your uncle's magnanimity."

"It was just this," said Trafford—"just what you would have expected him to do. He went to Mrs. Winship personally and renewed the offer he had made two years before. In the mean time, please take notice, the Devlin's business had gone from bad to worse, and yet he actually renewed the offer as it stood."

Trafford leaned back, his thumbs thrust into the arm-holes of his evening waistcoat, and watched the effect of this information upon Paula. The girl could only gaze at him with the same troubled expression of inquiry, waiting for him to go on.

"But Mrs. Winship," he continued, "had as little mind for compromise as her husband. The railroad having already lost twice, she was persuaded it would lose again. Once there were no more rebates, she was sure the Devlin would do its old work again. Well, the railroad lost the third time, and appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States. For the poor lady that was a staggerer, just as your father supposed it would be. Still, she had the pluck—or the folly, whichever you choose to call it—to struggle on. The case went before the Supreme Court of the United States, and the railroad lost again. Mrs. Winship was victorious; but—and this is what your father had foreseen during the whole six years the fight had lasted—the Devlin Coal Company was already in the hands of a receiver, and legal expenses had eaten up all the Winships' private means."

Trafford, having ended his story, fell back dramatically into the depths of his chair.

"We took over the Devlin Mines the next year," Mrs. Trafford concluded. "The Winships had mismanaged them terribly. Once they were thoroughly worked they became the most paying of all our properties."

There was a long silence, broken only when young Mrs. Trafford reminded her husband that it was time to say good-night.

"Did any more of our money come like that?" Paula asked, suddenly.

"Like what?" Trafford demanded.

"Like what, Paula?" came from Mrs. Trafford herself, with a suggestion of protest in her tone.

"Like that," the girl said, confusedly—"like the money we got from the Winships."

"We got nothing from the Winships," Trafford declared. "We haven't a dollar that we didn't get in business."

"Was it honorable business?"

The question slipped out unawares. Trafford strode towards her. He stood looking down at her, his hands in the pockets of his evening jacket, his feet planted apart, and his eyes shooting out their steely rays.

"Look here, Paula," he said, in a tone of rough kindliness, "you have for a father one of the greatest men God ever raised up—a man with a big mind, a big heart, a big nature; a man who out of nothing has created one of the first positions in the world; a man who has not only transformed the business of the country, but given new conceptions of business to the whole earth. Now, such a man as that is bound to have enemies, and he has them. All his life long he has been persecuted, vilified, and traduced. He has gone from court to court, and from one committee of investigation to another. What has been his crime? He has made money. He has made a lot of money. To people who've tried to make money and haven't made it, that's crime enough to warrant any kind of hounding down. But take the people who haven't tried to make money; take the people whose ambitions are elsewhere and whose minds are impartial. Is there any one among them who isn't proud to take your father by the hand and accept what he has to give? Is there a philanthropist, from Cardinal Gibbons to Bishop Potter, who isn't glad of his subscription? Is there an institution, from Harvard University to St. John's Floating Hospital, that doesn't accept his donation without questioning the means by which the money came to be his? He has built a cathedral at Burlington, a hospital at Des Moines, an orphanage in St. Louis; he has endowed a School of Mining at one university, and an Institute of Manual Arts at another; there are charitable schemes all over the country that owe their chief support to your father. Is there a doubtful note on the part of any person or any corporation, civil or ecclesiastical, that has received his benefactions? None. Mind you, I'm quoting to you not the common standard of the world, but the standard of men devoted to the religious, moral, or educational welfare of their fellows. One and all they have taken his money as money which he had an honest right to bestow. Now, isn't that enough for you? Haven't you got a mass of moral testimony there that nobody can go behind or bring into dispute? The man who impeaches your father to-day must practically impeach all the religious, philanthropic, and educational opinion in the United States. Don't you begin to do it."

He stood looking down at her, smiling in kindly admonition. Young Mrs. Trafford came up and slipped her arm through his, smiling down at her too. The mother joined them, with an affectionate injunction to dismiss all foolish and fatiguing thoughts and go to bed.

The girl made no reply to any of them. She smiled rather wistfully in response to their good-night wishes, and told them she would put out the lights. Then she sat still, alone and pondering, trying to sift and co-ordinate the mass of information she had just received.

It was late when she rose to go away. On the table beside her lay the five gold pieces she had brought home an hour or two ago. "The Winship money," she half muttered to herself. "What father did to his father I seem to have done to him."

She picked up the coins one by one and pressed them in her palm. Suddenly, before she could control herself, the tears rose and ran down her cheeks. As she dashed them away it seemed as if a figure rose before her through the mist they made. It was not the man with the brown beard and the gleaming eyes she had seen that night; it was the blind woman, who had gone on from court to court and from year to year, till her father had been forced at last to "club her down."