CHAPTER VI

THE FORGOTTEN MAN

The suddenness of his dismissal broke the strain under which Stuart had been labouring for hours. It was ridiculous. He began to laugh at the silliness of the whole thing--what an idiotic performance anyhow--these lovers' quarrels! He saw the comedy of it, ate a hearty supper, and went to bed firm in the conviction that he would see Nan again the next day.

But the morning came with a sense of growing uncertainty. It was raining. He would have enjoyed a storm, but it was just a drizzle with a penetrating dampness that found the marrow of his bones. He called a messenger and sent a note to Nan asking her to forget the ugly memory of the night before and fulfill her promise to go to the country when the rain ceased. If it continued to rain he would call at eight. He told the boy to wait for an answer. The messenger returned promptly and handed back his note unopened.

Of course she was bluffing. She knew she had the whip hand for the moment and meant to use it.

"Well, two can play this game," he muttered. "We'll see who wins!"

He turned to his work with grim resolution.

For two weeks the battle between pride and love raged in silence. Each day he rose with the hope of some sign from Nan, and each day hope died in a more desperate and sullen despair. At last he began to question the wisdom of his course. Should he not fight his battle at closer range? What if he were in reality engaged in a mortal combat with Bivens's millions for Nan's soul and body! The idea was too hideous to be thinkable. In his anger he had accused her of flirting with Bivens, but in his heart he didn't believe it. The personality of the little money-grubber made the idea preposterous. He was not only frail, insignificant, and unattractive physically, but he had personal habits which were offensive to Nan's feelings of refinement. His excessive use of tobacco was one thing he knew she could not tolerate. Tobacco was her pet aversion.

And yet the more he thought of the scene of their parting, the more sickening became the conviction that her anger at his use of an ugly word was merely a subterfuge to break their engagement. The perfidy and cruelty of such an act was too hideous for belief--yet if the thing were possible! He had left her to struggle alone with the first great temptation of life, and he began to feel that it was cowardly. He should have stood his ground and fought for his love.

He made up his mind to go at once and fight for his old place beside her on any terms she would grant. He seized his hat and opened the door. To his amazement Bivens was leisurely ascending the steps.

What on earth could he want? Was he making a social call without announcement, as was the habit of his village days in the South? At this moment Bivens was the last man he wished to encounter, yet a meeting seemed inevitable. He stepped into the parlour and sat down with resignation to await his entrance.

To his amazement he heard the maid say:

"This way, sir, Dr. Woodman asks you to wait for him in the library."

So Bivens was calling on his arch enemy by appointment. Stuart replaced his hat on the rack and returned to his room, determined to await the outcome of this extraordinary visit. That its significance was sinister he couldn't doubt for a moment. Little could he dream how fateful for his future life was the message the little dark man bore. Stuart closed his door with a sensation of foreboding, sat down and tried to read.

On Dr. Woodman's entrance, Bivens rose to greet him with unusual animation and unmistakable good will.

When the doctor grasped the outstretched hand a more striking contrast could scarcely be imagined--the one big, bluff, jovial, sunny, powerful and straight of figure as he was always straight in speech and manners--the financier, small and weak in body, his movements sinuous, flexible, with eyes that never looked at the man he was talking to, yet always seemed to be taking in everything in the room--eyes unusually dark, yet seemingly full of piercing light as from hidden fires beneath.

"Well, Bivens, what can I do for you? I understand from your note that the matter is important."

"Of the gravest importance to us both, Doctor," he answered with a smile. "For a peculiar personal reason I want us to get together and settle our differences."

"Are there any differences between us? You go your way and I go mine.

You run your business to suit yourself and I'll do the same. The world's big enough for us both----"

"That just the trouble," Bivens interrupted. "It isn't. We are entering a new era of combination, merger, cooperation."

"Compulsory cooperation!" the doctor laughed.

"It may be so at last," the little man said soberly. "Certainly the old idea of competition is played out. We no longer believe that business men should try to cut each other's throats."

"Oh, I see," sneered the doctor, "they should get together, corral their customers, and cut their throats. That certainly is better for business, but how about the customers?"

"Business is business," was the grim answer.

"For beasts of the field, yes--but for men?"

"Still, you must recognize the fact that the drug trade is a business enterprise, not a charity organization."

"Even so, still I happen to know that within a stone's throw of my store swarms a population of a quarter of a million human beings so poor that only three hundred of them ever have access to a bathroom.

The death rate of the children is 254 in a thousand. It should be about 20 in a thousand, if normal. I don't want any higher profits out of my customers. If I've got to fight I'd rather fight the trade than fight the people. I choose the lesser evil."

"But I don't ask you to do evil."

"You ask me to enter with you into a criminal conspiracy to suppress freedom of trade, and use fraud and violence if necessary to win----"

"Fraud and violence?" Bivens interrupted, smilingly.

"Certainly. What sort of merchandise does the 'organizer' of modern industry bring to market? Tricks and subterfuges in the form of printed paper called stocks which represent no value. From the moment a financier once tastes this blood he becomes a beast. With the first fierce realization of the fact that under modern legal forms he can coin money out of nothing by binding the burdens of debt on the backs of helpless millions, he begins to laugh at the laws of man and God."

"Come, come, Doctor, you must realize the fact that in the drug business we are bringing order out of chaos and at last putting the trade on a paying basis."

"But at what a price! You have closed mills instead of opening them, thrown out of work thousands, lowered the price paid for raw material, bringing ruin to its producers, increased the price charged for your products to the ruin of the consumer, and saddled millions of fictitious debts on the backs of their children yet unborn. Combine, yes, but why not pay the people whose wages you have stolen as well as the owners whose mills you have closed? If combination is so extremely profitable, it should bring some benefit to the millions who are consumers--not merely make millionaires out of a few men. Who is bearing the burden of this enormous increase of fictitious wealth? The people. The price of living has been increasing steadily with the organization of each industry into a trust. Where will it end?"

Bivens's eyes narrowed to the merest points of concentrated light, while an amused smile played about them as he listened patiently to the doctor's tirade. When at last the big figure towering above him paused for breath, he remarked quietly:

"The trust is here to stay, Doctor. Legislation against it is as absurd and futile as a movement to stop the tides. We will never pull down these big department stores or go back to the little ones. The skyscraper will not come down from the heavens merely because a belated traveller rails that his view of the stars has been obscured. You cannot make economy a crime, progress a misdemeanour, or efficiency a felony! If so, you can destroy the trusts."

"I'm not clear yet how it is to be done," was the passionate answer--"but as sure as God lives we are going to do _something_. The spirit of America is progressive, up hill, not down hill, mind you. At present we are putting wreckers in charge of Organization and famine producers in charge of Production. It can't last. At no period of the world's history have the claims of tyranny been so quickly seen and dared, as here and now. Nowhere and in no age has tyranny confronted such a people as ours with life and culture and ideals as high--a people so in love with liberty, so disciplined in its struggles! When the day comes that we shall be confronted with death or degradation, the young American will know how to choose. Patriotism with me is not an empty word. It is one of the passions of my life. I believe in this Republic.

For the moment the people are asleep. But time is slowly shaping the issue that will move the last laggard. We are beginning dimly to see that there is something more precious in our life than the mere tonnage of national wealth--the spirit of freedom and initiative in our people!

Shall they become merely the hired men of a few monied kings? Or shall the avenues of industry and individual enterprise remain open to their children? Is it more important to grow men or make money? Shall we transform the Republic into a huge money-stamping machine and turn its freemen into slaves who tend this machine, at the command of a master?

The people will answer these questions!"

Bivens gave a cynical little chuckle.

"Then I'm sure we'll get the wrong answer, Doctor," was the response.

"They will get it right bye and bye. The nation is young. You say you believe in God. Well, see to it--a thousand years are but a day to Him!

Among the shadows of eternity He is laughing at your follies. Nature in her long, slow, patient process is always on the side of Justice."

Bivens rose with a movement of impatience.

"I'm sorry you can't see your way to listen to any proposition from me, Doctor. I'm a practical man. I wish to incorporate your business into the general organization of the American Chemical Company on terms that will satisfy you----"

"Such terms can't be made, Bivens," the doctor said impetuously. "Your purpose is to squeeze money out of the people--the last dollar the trade will bear. That is your motto. I simply refuse. I refuse to devote my life to gouging out my neighbours' eyes to increase the profits of my trade. I put myself in his place, the place of the forgotten man, the consumer, the man you are organizing to exploit. The strong and the cunning can always take advantage of the weak, the ignorant, the foolish and generous. I have an imagination which makes vivid the sense of fellowship. I meet, in the crowds I pass, thousands of friends I never speak to, but the world is brighter because I've seen them."

"But if I don't see them?" the little black eyes mildly asked.

"Certainly! You can't see them. To you the city is merely a big flock of sheep to be sheared, while to me its myriad sounds are the music of a divine oratorio, throbbing with tears and winged with laughter! To you, the crowd are so many fools who may be buncoed out of their goods; while to me, some of their eyes, seen but for a moment, look into mine with infinite hunger and yearning, asking for friendship, comradeship, and love. And so, I call them my neighbours--these hurrying throngs who pass me daily. Because they are my neighbours, they are my friends.

Their rights are sacred. I will not rob, maim, or kill them, and I will defend them against those who would!"