John Tyler - "State of the Union Addresses of John Tyler"

Charles Kingsley - "Twenty Five Village Sermons"

Unkown - "One Divided by Pi, To A Million Digits"

Charles Kingsley - "The Water Babies"

The Web of Life

R >> Robert Herrick >> The Web of Life




Already Alves had bequeathed him something of herself. She had returned him
to his fellow-laborers with a new feeling toward them, a humbleness he had
never known, a desire to adjust himself with them. He was sensitive to the
kindness of the day,--White's friendly trust, Leonard's just words, Miss
Hitchcock's generosity. As the sense of this life faded from the woman he
loved, the dawn of a fairer day came to him. And his heart ached because
she for whom he had desired every happiness might never respond to human
joy.




CHAPTER XI


During the next two years the country awoke from its torpor, feeling the
blood tingle in its strong limbs once more, and rubbing its eyes in wonder
at its own folly. Some said the spirit of hope was due to the gold basis;
some said it was the good crops; some said it was the prospect of national
expansion. In any event the country got tired of its long fit of sulks;
trade revived, railroads set about mending their tracks, mills opened--a
current of splendid vitality began to throb. Men took to their business
with renewed avidity, content to go their old ways, to make new snares and
to enter them, all unconscious of any mighty purpose. Those at the faro
tables of the market increased the stakes and opened new tables. New
industrial companies sprung up overnight like mushrooms, watered and sunned
by the easy optimism of the hour. The rumors of war disturbed this hothouse
growth. But the "big people" took advantage of these to squeeze the "little
people," and all worked to the glory of the great god. In the breast of
every man on the street was seated one conviction: 'This is a mighty
country, and I am going to get something out of it.' The stock market might
bob up and down; the gamblers might gain or lose their millions; the little
politicians of the hour might talk blood and iron by the pound of
_Congressional Record_; but the great fact stared you in the
face--every one was hopeful; for every one there was much good money
somewhere. It was a rich time in which to live.

Remote echoes of this optimism reached Sommers. He learned, chiefly through
the newspapers, that Mr. R. G. Carson had emerged from the obscurity of
Chicago and had become a celebrity upon the metropolitan stage after "the
successful flotation of several specialties." Mr. Brome Porter, he gathered
from the same source, had built himself a house in New York, and altogether
shaken the dust of Chicago from his feet. Sommers passed him occasionally
in the unconsolidated air of Fifth Avenue, but the young doctor had long
since sunk out of Brome Porter's sphere of consciousness. Sommers thought
Porter betrayed his need of Carlsbad more than ever, and he wondered if the
famous gambler had beguiled Colonel Hitchcock into any of his ventures. But
Sommers did not trouble himself seriously with the new manifestations of
gigantic greed. Unconscious of the fact that from collar-button to
shoe-leather he was assisting Mr. Carson's industries to yield revenues on
their water-logged stocks, he went his way in his profession and labored.
For the larger part of the time he was an assistant in a large New York
hospital, where he found enough hard work to keep his thoughts from
wandering to Carson, Brome Porter, and Company. In the feverish days that
preceded the outbreak of the Cuban war, he heard rumors that Porter had
been caught in the last big "flotation," and was heavily involved. But the
excitement of those days destroyed the importance of the news to the public
and to him.

Sommers resolved to find service in one of the military hospitals that
before long became notorious as pestholes. From the day he arrived at
Tampa, he found enough to tax all his energies in trying to save the lives
of raw troops dumped in the most unsanitary spots a paternal government
could select. In the melee created by incompetent officers and ignorant
physicians, one single-minded man could find all the duties he craved.
Toward the close of the war, on the formation of a new typhoid hospital,
Sommers was put in charge. There one day in the heat of the fight with
disease and corruption he discovered Parker Hitchcock, who had enlisted,
partly as a frolic, an excuse for throwing off the ennui of business, and
partly because his set were all going to Cuba. Young Hitchcock had come
down with typhoid while waiting in Tampa for a transport, and had been left
in Sommers's camp. He greeted the familiar face of the doctor with a
welcome he had never given it in Chicago.

"Am I going to die in this sink, doctor?" he asked, when Sommers came back
to him in the evening.

"I can't say," the doctor replied, with a smile. "You are a good deal
better off on this board floor than most of the typhoids in the camps, and
we will do the best we can. Shall I let your people know?"

"No," the young fellow said slowly, his weak, white face endeavoring to
restrain the tears. "The old man is in a bad place--Uncle Brome, you
know--and I guess if it hadn't been for my damn foolishness in New York--"

He went off into delirious inconsequence, and on the way back Sommers
stopped to telegraph Miss Hitchcock. A few days later he met her at the
railroad station, and drove her over to the camp. She was worn from her
hurried journey, and looked older than Sommers expected; but the buoyancy
and capability of her nature seemed indomitable. Sommers repeated to her
what Parker had said about not letting his people know.

"It's the first time he ever thought of poor papa," she said bluntly.

"I thought it might do him good to fight it out by himself. But loneliness
kills some of these fellows."

"Poor Parker!" she exclaimed, with a touch of irony in her tone. "He
thought he should come home a hero, with flags flying, all the honors of
the season, and forgiveness for his little faults. The girls would pet him,
and papa would overlook his past. The war was a kind of easy penance for
all his sins. And he never reached Cuba even, but came down with
typhoid--due to pure carelessness, I am afraid."

"That is a familiar story," the doctor observed, with a grim smile,
"especially in his set. They took the war as a kind of football match--and
it is just as well they did."

"You are the ones that really know what it means--the doctors and the
nurses," Miss Hitchcock said warmly.

"Here is our San Juan," Sommers replied dryly, pointing to the huddle of
tents and pine sheds that formed the hospital camp.

After they had visited Parker Hitchcock, Sommers conducted her over the
camp. Some of the cots were occupied by gaunt figures of men whom she had
known, and at the end of their inspection, she remarked thoughtfully:

"I see that there is something to do here. It makes me feel alive once
more."

The next month, while Parker dragged slowly through the stages of the
disease, Miss Hitchcock worked energetically with the nurses. Sommers met
her here and there about the camp and at their hurried meals. The heat and
the excitement told upon her, but her spirited, good-humored mood, which
was always at play, carried her on. Finally, the convalescents were sent
north to cooler spots, and the camp was closed. Parker Hitchcock was well
enough to be moved to Chicago, and Sommers, who had been relieved, took
charge of him and a number of other convalescents, who were to return to
the West.

The last hours of the journey Sommers and Miss Hitchcock spent together.
The train was slowly traversing the dreary stretches of swamp and
sand-hills of northern Indiana.

"I remember how forlorn this seemed the other time--four years ago!"
Sommers exclaimed. "And how excited I was as the city came into view around
the curve of the lake. That was to be my world."

"And you didn't find it to your liking," Miss Hitchcock replied, with a
little smile.

"I couldn't understand it; the thing was like raw spirits. It choked you."

"I think I understand now what the matter has always been," she resumed
after a little interval. "You thought we were all exceptionally selfish,
but we were all just like every one else,--running after the obvious,
common pleasures. What could you expect! Every boy and girl in this country
is told from the first lesson of the cradle, over and over, that success is
the one great and good thing in life. The people here are young and strong,
and you can't blame them if they interpret that text a little crudely. But
I am beginning to understand what you feel."

"We can't escape the fact, though," Sommers responded. "Life must be based,
to a large extent, on gain, on mere living. Nature has ordered it."

"Only in cases like yours," she murmured. "_I_ can never free myself
from the order of nature. I shall always be the holder of power accumulated
by some one else."

As Sommers refrained from making the platitudinous reply that such a remark
seemed to demand, they were silent for several minutes. Then she asked,
with an air of constraint:

"What will you do? I mean after your visit to us, for, of course, you must
rest."

Sommers smiled ironically.

"That is the question every one asks. 'What will you do? what will you do?'
Suppose I should say _'Nothing'_? We are always planning. No one is
ready to wait and turn his hand to the nearest job. To-morrow, next month,
in good time, I shall know what that is."

"It puts out of the question a career, personal ambition."

"Yes," he answered quickly. "And could you do that? Could you care for a
man who will have no career, who has no 'future'?"

Sommers's voice had taken a new tone of earnestness, unlike the sober
speculation in which they had been indulging. Miss Hitchcock turned her
face to the faded landscape of the suburban fields, and failed to reply.

"I have lived out my egotism," he continued earnestly. "What you would call
ambition has been dead for long months. I haven't any lofty ambition even
for scientific work. Good results, even there, it seems to me, are not born
of personal desire, of pride. I am content to be a failure--an honest
failure," he ended sharply.

"Don't say that!" she protested, looking at him frankly. "I shall never
agree to that."

The people around them began to bestir themselves with the nervous
restlessness of pent-up energy. Parker Hitchcock came into the car from the
smoking-room.

"We can get off at Twenty-second Street," he called out eagerly. "You're
coming, doctor?"

Sommers shook his head negatively, and Miss Hitchcock, who was putting on
her veil, did not urge him to join them. The Hitchcock carriage was waiting
outside the Twenty-second Street station, and, as the train moved on,
Sommers could see Colonel Hitchcock's bent figure through the open window.

When Sommers left the train at the central station, the September twilight
had already fallen; and as he crossed the strip of park where the troops
had bivouacked during the strike, the encircling buildings were brilliantly
outlined in the evening mist by countless points of light. The scene from
Twelfth Street north to the river, flanked by railroad yards and grim
buildings, was an animated circle of a modern inferno. The cross streets
intersecting the lofty buildings were dim, canon-like abysses, in which
purple fog floated lethargically. The air was foul with the gas from
countless locomotives, and thick with smoke and the mist of the lake. And
through this earthy steam, the myriad lights from the facades of the big
buildings shone with suffused splendor. It was large and vague and, above
all, gay, with the grim vivacity of a city of shades. Streams of people
were flowing toward the railroad, up and down the boulevard, in and out of
the large hotels. A murmur of living, striving humanity rose into the murky
air; and from a distance, through the abysses of the cross streets, sounded
the deeper roar of the city.

The half-forgotten note of the place struck sharply upon the doctor's ear.
It excited him in some strange way. Two years had dropped from his life,
and again he was turning, turning, with the beat of the great machine.




CHAPTER XII


"Yes, he lost that--what was left when you sold for him," Miss M'Gann
admitted dejectedly. "And so we had to start over again. Part of it was
mine, too."

"Did he put your savings in?" Sommers asked incredulously.

"It was that Dresser man. I wish we'd never laid eyes on him--he kept
getting tips from Carson, the man who owned most of his paper. I guess
Carson didn't take much interest in giving _him_ the right tip, or
perhaps Dresser didn't give _us_ what he knew straight out. Anyway,
Jack's been losing!"

"So you aren't married?" Sommers asked.

"Jack's pride is up. You see he wanted to begin with a nice flat, not live
on here in this boarding-house. And I was to leave the school. But I guess
there isn't much chance _now_. You've been away a long time--to the
war?"

They were sitting on the steps of the Keystone, which at this hour in the
morning they had to themselves. Miss M'Gann's glory of dress had faded,
together with the volubility of her talk, and the schoolroom air had
blanched her high color.

"Jack wanted to go off to Cuba," she continued. "But he got sick again,
worrying over stocks, and I guess it was just as well. If he don't keep
straight now, and brace up, I'll let him go. I'm not the one to hang around
all my life for a silly."

"Perhaps that's what made him try the market again," Sommers suggested.

"No, it was Dresser. He was sporting a lot of money and going with
high-toned folks, and it made Jack envious."

"You had better marry him, hadn't you?"

Miss M'Gann moved uneasily on the stone seat.

"He's down there again to-day, I just know. He's given up the Baking Powder
place,--they crowded him out in the reorganization,--and Dresser got him a
place down town."

"Do you mean he's at the broker's?"

Miss M'Gann nodded and then added:

"Do you remember Dr. Leonard? Well, he made a pile out of a trust, some
dentist-tools combine, I think."

"I am glad of it," Sommers said heartily, "and I hope he'll keep it."

"Are you going to stay in Chicago?" Miss M'Gann asked, with renewed
curiosity. "We shall be glad to see you at the Keystone."

Sommers got up to leave, and asked for Webber's address in the city. "I may
look him up," he explained. "I wish you could keep him away from Dresser.
The converted socialist is likely to be a bad lot."

"Socialist!" Miss M'Gann exclaimed disdainfully. "He isn't any socialist.
He's after a rich girl."

* * * * *

Sommers left Miss M'Gann with a half-defined purpose of finding Webber and
inducing him to give up the vain hope of rivalling the editor of _The
Investor's Monthly_. He had always liked the clerk, and when he had
helped to pull him out of the market without loss before, he had thought
all would go well. But the optimism of the hour had proved too much for
Webber's will. Carson's cheap and plentiful stocks had made it dangerously
easy for every office boy to "invest." If Webber had been making money
these last months, it would be useless to advise him; but if the erratic
market had gone against him, he might be saved.

On the way to the city he called at St. Isidore's to see if any one in that
hive would remember him. The little nurse, whom he recalled as one of the
assistants at Preston's operation, had now attained the dignity of the
"black band." There was hardly any one else who knew him, except the
elevator boy; and he was leaving when he met Dr. Knowles, an old physician,
who had a large, old-fashioned family practice in an unfashionable quarter
of the city. Dr. Knowles had once been kind to the younger doctor, and now
he seemed glad to meet him again. From him Sommers learned that Lindsay had
about given up his practice. The "other things," thanks to his intimacy
with Porter, and more lately with Carson, had put him outside the petty
needs of professional earnings. Dr. Knowles himself was thinking of
retiring, he told Sommers, not with his coffers full of trust certificates,
but with a few thousand dollars, enough to keep him beyond want. They
talked for a long time, and at the end Dr. Knowles asked Sommers to
consider taking over his practice. "It isn't very swell," he explained
good-humoredly. "And I don't want you to kill off my poor patients. But
there are enough pickings for a reasonable man who doesn't practise for
money." Sommers promised to see him in a few days, and started for the
office where Webber worked.

Lindsay's final success amused him. He had heard a good deal about Porter
and Carson; their operations, reported vaguely by the public, interested
him. They formed a kind of partnership, evidently. Porter "financed" the
schemes that Carson concocted and talked into being. And a following of
small people gleaned in their train. Lindsay probably had gleaned more than
the others. It was all the better, Sommers reflected, for the state of the
medical profession.

As he sauntered down La Salle Street, the air of the pavement breathed the
optimism of the hour. Sommers was amazed at the number of brokers' offices,
at the streams of men going and coming around these busy booths. The war
was over, or practically over, and speculation was brisker than ever. To be
sure, the bills for the war were not paid, but success was in the air, and
every one was striving to exploit that success in his own behalf. Sommers
passed the blazing sign of WHITE AND EINSTEIN; the firm had taken larger
offices this year. Sommers stopped and looked at the broad windows, and
then, reflecting that he had nothing to do before dining with the
Hitchcocks except to see Webber, he went in with a file of other men.

White and Einstein's offices were much more resplendent than the little
room in the basement, where they had started two years before. There were
many glass partitions and much mahogany-stained furniture. In the large
room, where the quotations were posted, little rows of chairs were ranged
before the blackboards, so that the weary patrons could sit and watch the
game. The Chicago stocks had a blackboard to themselves, and this was
covered with the longest lines of figures. Iron, Steel, Tobacco, Radiators,
Vinegar, Oil, Leather, Spices, Tin, Candles, Biscuit, Rag,--the names of
the "industrials" read like an inventory of a country store. "Rag" seemed
the favorite of the hour; one boy was kept busy in posting the long line of
quotations from the afternoon session of the Exchange. A group of
spectators watched the jumps as quotation varied from quotation under the
rapid chalk of the office boy.

The place was feverish with excitement, which Sommers could feel rather
than read in the dull faces of the men. From time to time White or Einstein
bobbed out of an inner office, or a telephone booth, and joined the
watchers before the blackboards. Their detached air and genial smiles gave
them the appearance of successful hosts. White recognized Sommers and
nodded, with one eye on the board. "Rag's acting queer," he said casually
in the doctor's ear. "Are you in the market? Rag is Carson's latest--ain't
gone through yet, and there are signs the market's glutted. Look at that
thing slide, waltz! Gee, there'll be sore heads to-morrow!"

Sommers leaned forward and touched Webber, who, with open mouth, was
following the figures. Webber turned round, but his head went back to the
board. The glance he had given was empty--the glance of the drunkard.

"Your young friend's got hit," White remarked apathetically. "He shouldn't
try to play marbles with _this_ crowd. Carson is just chucking new
stocks at the public. But he has a clique with him that can do anything."

In spite of this opinion "Rag" tottered and wavered. Rumors rapidly spread
among the onlookers that Carson had failed to put "Rag" through; that the
consolidated companies would fall asunder on the morrow, like badly glued
veneer; that Porter "had gone back on Carson" and was selling the stock.
The quotations fell: common stock 60, 59, 56, 50, 45, 48, 50, 52, 45,
40--so ran the dazzling line of figures across the blackboard, again and
again.

"There'll be fun to-morrow," White remarked, moving away. "Better come in
and see Vinegar and Oil and the rest of Carson's list get a black eye."

Sommers touched Webber, then shook him gently, asking,

"What is it this time? Iron and Distillery?"

"Rag," Webber snapped, recognizing the doctor. "And I'm done for this time
sure thing--_every red copper_. I made two thousand last week on Tin,
and this morning I chucked the whole pile into Rag."

"You'd better come with me," Sommers urged. "The Exchange is closing for
to-day, anyway."

The clerk laughed, and replied: "Let's have a drink. I've just got enough
to get drunk on."

"You're drunk already," the doctor answered gruffly.

"I'll be drunker before the morning," the clerk remarked, with a feeble
laugh. "I wish I had Dresser here; I'd like to pound him once."

That desire was repeated in the looks of many men, who were still glowering
at the afternoon's quotations. Carson, the idol of the new "promotions,"
seemed to be the man most in demand for pounding. Einstein was explaining
to a savage customer why he had advised him to buy "Rag."

"I got it over the telephone this morning from a man very close to Carson
that Rag was the thing, the peach of the whole lot. He said it was slated
to cross Biscuit to-day."

The man growled and ground a cigar stub into the floor.

"Come, we'll have a drink," a white-faced young fellow called out to an old
man, an acquaintance of the hour. "Somebody's got my money!" The two passed
out arm in arm.

Webber had his drink, and then another. Then he leaned back in the
embrasure of the bar-room window and looked at Sommers.

"I guess it's the lake this time. I can't go back to her and tell her it's
all up."

Sommers watched the man closely, trying to determine how far the disease
had gone. Webber's vain, rather weak face was disguised with a beard, which
made him look older than he was, and the arm that rested on the table
trembled nervously from the flaccid fingers to the shoulder-blades.

"They've put up some trick between them," Webber continued, in a grumbling
tone. "Carson or Porter is making something by selling Rag. They'd ought to
be in the penitentiary."

"What rot!" Sommers remarked deliberately. "They've beaten you at your
game, and they will every time, because they have more nerve than you, and
because they know more. There's no use in damning them. You'd do the same
thing if you knew when to do it."

"They're nothing but sharps!" the clerk protested feebly, insistent like a
child on his idea that some one had done him a personal injury.

Sommers shrugged his shoulders in despair. "I must be going," he said at
last. "I don't suppose you'll take my advice, and perhaps the lake would be
the best thing for you. But you'd better try it again--it's just as well
that everything has gone this time. There won't be any chance of going back
to the game. Tell her, and if she'll take you, marry her at once, and start
with the little people. Or stay here and have a few more drinks," he added,
as he read the irresolute look upon Webber's face.

The clerk rose wearily and followed the doctor into the street, as if
afraid of being alone.

"You needn't be so rough," he muttered. "There are lots of the big fellows
who started the same way--in the market, wheat or stocks. And I had a
little ambition to be something better than a clerk. I wanted her to have
something different. She's as good as those girls Dresser is always talking
to her about."

Sommers made no reply to his defence, but walked slowly, accommodating his
pace to Webber's weary steps. When they reached Michigan Avenue, he stopped
and said,

"I should put the lake off, this time, and make up my mind to be a little
fellow."

Webber shook hands listlessly and started toward the railroad station with
his drooping, irresolute gait. Sommers watched him until his figure merged
with the hurrying crowd. Habit was taking the clerk to the suburban train,
and habit would take him to the Keystone and Miss M'Gann instead of to the
lake. Habit and Miss M'Gann would probably take him back to his desk. But
the disease had gone pretty far, and if he recovered, Sommers judged, he
would never regain his elasticity, his hope. He would be haunted by a
memory of hot desires, of feeble defeat.

The wavering clerk had succumbed to the mood of the hour. And the mood of
the hour in this corner of the universe was hopeful for weak and strong
alike. Cheap optimism, Sommers would have called it once, but now it seemed
to him the natural temper of the world. With this hope suffused over their
lives, men struggled on--for what? No one knew. Not merely for plunder, nor
for power, nor for enjoyment. Each one might believe these to be the gifts
of the gods, while he kept his eyes solely on himself. But when he turned
his gaze outward, he knew that these were not the spur of human energy. In
striving restlessly to get plunder and power and joy, men wove the
mysterious web of life for ends no human mind could know. Carson built his
rickety companies and played his knavish tricks upon the gullible public,
of whom Webber was one. Brome Porter rooted here and there in the
industrial world, and fattened himself upon all spoils. These had to be;
they were the tools of the hour. But indifferent alike to them and to
Webber, the affairs of men ebbed and flowed in the resistless tide of fate.

Copyright (c) 2007. topbookz.net. All rights reserved.