The Colossus Part 7

"All right, mother; if you want your friends to meet the wild man of Borneo who has just come to town, I have nothing more to say. Your word shall be a law with me; but I must tell you that whenever you make arrangements into which I enter, you must remember that society and I have had scarcely a hat-tipping acquaintance. I may know many things that society never even dreamed of, but some of society's simplest phases are dangerous mysteries to me."

"Nonsense," said Witherspoon. "Society may rule a poor man, but a rich man rules society. Common sense always commands respect, for nearly every rule that governs the conduct of man is founded upon it. Don't you worry about the reception or anything else. You are a man of the world, and to such a man society is a mere plaything."

"Well," replied Ellen, wrinkling her handsome brow with a frown, "I must say that you preach an odd sort of sermon. Society is supposed to hold the culture and the breeding of a community, sir."

"Yes, supposed to," Witherspoon agreed.

"Oh, well, if you question it I won't argue with you." And giving Henry a meaning look, she continued: "Of course business is first. Art drops on its worn knees and prays to business, and literature begs it for a mere nod. Everything is the servant of business."

"Everything in Chicago is," the merchant replied.

"Art is the old age of trade," said Henry. "A vigorous nation buys and sells and fights; but a nation that is threatened with decay paints and begs."

"Good!" Witherspoon exclaimed. "I think you've hit it squarely. Since we went to Europe, Ellen has had an idea that trade is rather low in the scale of human interest."

"Now, father, I haven't any such idea, and you know it, too. But I do think that people who spend their lives in getting money can't be as refined as those who have a higher aim."

Witherspoon grunted. "What do you call a higher aim? Hanging about a picture gallery and simpering over a lot of long-haired fellows in outlandish dress, ha? Is it refinement to wors.h.i.+p a picture simply because you are not able to buy it? Some people rave over art, and we buy it and hang it up at home."

She laughed, and slipping off her chair, ran round to her father and put her arms about his neck. "I can always stir you up, can't I?"

"You can when you talk that way," he answered.

"But you know I don't mean that you aren't refined. Who could be more gentle than you are? But you must let me enjoy an occasional mischief.

My mother's people, the Craigs, were all full of mischief, and"

"Ellen," said her mother.

Witherspoon laughed, and reaching back, pretended to pull the girl's ears. "Am I going down town with you?" she asked.

"No, not this morning. I'm going to drive Henry down in the light buggy. My boy, I've got as fine a span of bay horses as you ever saw.

Cost me five thousand apiece. That's art for you; eh, Ellen?"

"They are beautiful," she admitted.

"Yes, and strung up with pride. Get ready, Henry, and we'll go."

When Witherspoon gathered up the lines and with the whip touched one of the horses, both jumped as though startled by the same impulse.

"There's grace for you," said Witherspoon. "Look how they plant their fore feet."

Henry did not answer. He was looking back at a palace, his home; and he, too, was touched with a whip--the thrilling whip of pride. It lasted but a moment. His memory threw up a home for the friendless, and upon a background of hunger, squalor and wretchedness his fancy flashed the picture of an Italian hag, crooning and toothless.

"We'll turn into Michigan here," said the merchant. "Isn't this a great thoroughfare? Yonder is where we lived before we built our new house. Just think what this will be when these elms are old." They sped along the smooth drive. "Ho, boys! Business is creeping out this way, and that is the reason I got over on Prairie. See, that man has turned his residence into a sort of store. A little farther along you will see fas.h.i.+onable humb.u.g.g.e.ry of all sorts. These are women fakes along here. Ho, boys, ho! There's where old man Colton lives. We'll meet him at the store. In the Colossus Company he is next to me. Smart old fellow, but he worked many years in the hammer-and-tongs way, and he probably never would have done much if he hadn't been shoved. Ho, boys, _ho_! People ought to be arrested for piling brick in the street this way. Colton was always afraid of venturing; shuddered at the thought of risking his money; wanted it where he could lay his hands on it at any time. Brooks, his son-in-law, is a sort of general manager over our entire establishment, and he is one of the most active and useful men I ever saw--bright, quick, characteristically American. I think you'll like him. That place over there"--cutting his whip toward an old frame house scalloped and corniced in fantastic flimsiness--"was sold the other day at about thirty per cent more than it would have brought a few years ago."

They turned into another street and were taken up, it seemed, by the swift trade currents that swirl at morning, rush through the noon, glide past the evening and rest for a time in the semi-calm of midnight. Chicago has begun to set the pace of a nervous nation's progress. It is a city whose growth has proved a fatal example to many an overweaning town. Materialistic, it holds no theory that points not to great results; adventurous, it has small patience with methods that slowness alone has stamped as legitimate. Wors.h.i.+ping a deification of real estate, and with a rude aristocracy building upon the blood of the sow and the tallow of the bull, its atmosphere discourages one artist while inviting another to rake up the showered rewards of a "boom" patronage. Feeling that naught but sleepiness and sloth should be censured, it resents even a kindly criticism. Quick to recognize the feasibility of a scheme; giving money, but holding time as a sacred inheritance. It is a re-gathering of the forces that peopled America and then made her great among nations; a mighty community with a growing literary force and with its culture and its real love for the beautiful largely confined to the poor in purse; grand in a thousand respects; with its history glaring upon the black sky of night; with the finest boulevards in America and the filthiest alleys--a giant in need of a bath.

The Colossus stood as a towering island with "a tide in the affairs of men" sweeping past. And it seemed to Henry that the buggy was cast ash.o.r.e as a piece of driftwood that touches land and finds a lodgment.

At an earlier day, and not so long ago either, the flaw of unconscious irony might have been picked in the name Colossus, but now the establishment, covering almost a block and rising story upon story, filled in the outlines of its pretentious christening.

"Tap, tap, tap--cash, 46; tap, tap--cash, 63," was the leading strain in this din of extensive barter and petty transaction. The Colossus boasted that it could meet every commercial demand; supply a sewing-machine needle or set up a saw-mill; receipt for gas bills and water rates or fit out a general store. Under one roof it held the resources of a city. Henry was startled by its immensity, and as he followed Witherspoon through labyrinths of bright gauzes and avenues of somber goods, he perceived that a change in the tone of the hum announced the approach of the master. And it appeared that, no matter what a girl might be doing, she began hurriedly to do something else the moment she spied Witherspoon coming toward her. The quick signs of flirtation, signals along the downward track of morality, subsided whenever this ruler came within sight; and the smirk bargain-counter miss would actually turn from the grinning idiocy of the bullet-headed fellow who had come in to admire her and would deign to wait on a poorly dressed woman who had failed to attract her attention.

The offices of the management were on the first floor, and Henry was conducted thither and shown into Witherspoon's private apartment--into the calico, bombazine, hardware and universal nick-nack holy of holies. The room was not fitted up for show, but for business. Its furniture consisted mainly of a roll-top desk, a stamp with its handle sticking up like the tail of an excited cat, a dingy carpet and several chairs of a shape so ungenial to the human form as to suggest that a hint at me desirability of a visitor's early withdrawal might have been incorporated in their construction.

"I will see if Colton has come down," Witherspoon remarked, glancing through a door into another room. "Yes, there he is. He's coming. Mr.

Colton," said Witherspoon, with deep impressiveness, "this is my son Henry."

The old man bowed with a politeness in which there was a reminder of a slower and therefore a more courteous day, and taking the hand which Henry cordially offered him, said: "To meet you affects me profoundly, sir. Of course I am acquainted with your early history, and this adds to the interest I feel in you; but aside from this, to meet a son of George Witherspoon must necessarily give me great pleasure."

"Brother Colton is from Maryland," Witherspoon remarked, and a sudden shriveling about the old man's mouth told that he was smiling at what he had long since learned to believe was a capital hit of playfulness.

And he bowed, grabbled up a dingy handkerchief that dangled from him somewhere, wiped off his shriveled smile, and then declared that if frankness was a mark of the Marylander, he should always be glad to acknowledge his native State.

Brooks, Colton's son-in-law, now came in. This man, while a floor-walker in a dry-goods store, had attracted Witherspoon's notice, and a position in the Colossus, at that time an experiment, was given him. He recognized the demands of his calling, and he strove to fit himself to them. Several years later he married Miss Colton, and now he was in a position of such confidence that many schemes for the broadening of trade and for the pleasing of the public's changeful fancy were entrusted to his management. He was of a size which appears to set off clothes to the best advantage. His face was pale and thoughtful, and he had the shrewd faculty of knowing when to smile. His eyes were of such a bulge as to give him a s.p.a.cious range of vision without having to turn his head, and while moving about in the discharge of his duty, he often saw sudden situations that were not intended for his entertainment.

Brooks was prepared for the meeting, and conducted himself with a dignity that would have cast no discredit upon the ablest floor-walker in Christendom. He had known that he could not fail to be impressed by one so closely allied by blood to Mr. George Witherspoon, but really he had not expected to meet a man of so distinguished a bearing, a traveler and a scholar, no doubt.

"Traveler enough to know that I have seen but little, and scholar enough to feel my ignorance," Henry replied.

"Oh, you do yourself an injustice, I am sure, but you do it gracefully. We shall meet often, of course. Mr. Witherspoon," he added, addressing the head of the Colossus, "we have just arrested that Mrs. Mc.n.u.tt."

"How's that? What Mrs. Mc.n.u.tt?"

"Why, the woman who was suspected of shop-lifting. This time we caught her in the act."

"Ah, hah. Have you sent her away?"

"Not yet. She begs for an interview with you--says she can explain everything."

"Don't want to see her; let her explain to the law."

"That's what I told her, sir."

Brooks bowed and withdrew. Old man Colton was already at his desk.

"Now, my son," said Witherspoon, aimlessly fumbling with some papers on his desk, "I should think that the first thing to be attended to is that statement for the newspapers. Wait a moment, and we will consult Brooks. He knows more in that line than any one else about the place."

He tapped a bell. "Mr. Brooks," he said when a boy appeared. Brooks came, and Witherspoon explained.

"Ah, I see," said Brooks. "You don't want to give it to any one paper, for that isn't business. We'll draw off a statement and send it to the City Press a.s.sociation, and then it will be given out to all the papers."

"That is a capital idea; you will help us get it up."

"Yes, sir," said Brooks, bowing.

"That will not be necessary," Henry protested, unable to disguise his disapproval of the arrangement. "I can write it in a very short time."

"Ah," Witherspoon replied, "but Brooks is used to such work. He writes our advertis.e.m.e.nts."

"But this isn't an advertis.e.m.e.nt, and I prefer to write it."