第14章

How could he--how could any man of flesh and blood sit down calmly after having been offered the highest honour in the gift of his community!And he had spurned it as if Mr.Blackwood and the others had gratuitously insulted him!And how was it,if my father so revered the Republican Party that he would not suffer it to be mentioned slightingly in his presence,that he had refused contemptuously to be its mayor?...

The next day at school,however,I managed to let it be known that the offer had been made and declined.After all,this seemed to make my father a bigger man than if he had accepted it.Naturally I was asked why he had declined it.

"He wouldn't take it,"I replied scornfully."Office-holding should be left to politicians."Ralph Hambleton,with his precocious and cynical knowledge of the world,minimized my triumph by declaring that he would rather be his grandfather,Nathaniel Durrett,than the mayor of the biggest city in the country.Politicians,he said,were bloodsuckers and thieves,and the only reason for holding office was that it enabled one to steal the taxpayers'money....

As I have intimated,my vision of a future literary career waxed and waned,but a belief that I was going to be Somebody rarely deserted me.

If not a literary lion,what was that Somebody to be?Such an environment as mine was woefully lacking in heroic figures to satisfy the romantic soul.In view of the experience I have just related,it is not surprising that the notion of becoming a statesman did not appeal to me;nor is it to be wondered at,despite the somewhat exaggerated respect and awe in which Ralph's grandfather was held by my father and other influential persons,that I failed to be stirred by the elements of greatness in the grim personality of our first citizen,the iron-master.

For he possessed such elements.He lived alone in Ingrain Street in an uncompromising mansion I always associated with the Sabbath,not only because I used to be taken there on decorous Sunday visits by my father,but because it was the very quintessence of Presbyterianism.The moment I entered its "portals"--as Mr.Hawthorne appropriately would have called them--my spirit was overwhelmed and suffocated by its formality and orderliness.Within its stern walls Nathaniel Durrett had made a model universe of his own,such as the Deity of the Westminster Confession had no doubt meant his greater one to be if man had not rebelled and foiled him....It was a world from which I was determined to escape at any cost.

My father and I were always ushered into the gloomy library,with its high ceiling,with its long windows that reached almost to the rococo cornice,with its cold marble mantelpiece that reminded me of a tombstone,with its interminable book shelves filled with yellow bindings.On the centre table,in addition to a ponderous Bible,was one of those old-fashioned carafes of red glass tipped with blue surmounted by a tumbler of blue tipped with red.Behind this table Mr.Durrett sat reading a volume of sermons,a really handsome old man in his black tie and pleated shirt;tall and spare,straight as a ramrod,with a finely moulded head and straight nose and sinewy hands the colour of mulberry stain.He called my father by his first name,an immense compliment,considering how few dared to do so.

"Well,Matthew,"the old man would remark,after they had discussed Dr.

Pound's latest flight on the nature of the Trinity or the depravity of man,or horticulture,or the Republican Party,"do you have any better news of Hugh at school?""I regret to say,Mr.Durrett,"my father would reply,"that he does not yet seem to be aroused to a sense of his opportunities."Whereupon Mr.Durrett would gimble me with a blue eye that lurked beneath grizzled brows,quite as painful a proceeding as if he used an iron tool.

I almost pity myself when I think of what a forlorn stranger I was in their company.They two,indeed,were of one kind,and I of another sort who could never understand them,--nor they me.To what depths of despair they reduced me they never knew,and yet they were doing it all for my good!They only managed to convince me that my love of folly was ineradicable,and that I was on my way head first for perdition.Ialways looked,during these excruciating and personal moments,at the coloured glass bottle.

"It grieves me to hear it,Hugh,"Mr.Durrett invariably declared.

"You'll never come to any good without study.Now when I was your age..."I knew his history by heart,a common one in this country,although he made an honourable name instead of a dishonourable one.And when Icontrast him with those of his successors whom I was to know later...!

But I shall not anticipate.American genius had not then evolved the false entry method of overcapitalization.A thrilling history,Mr.

Durrett's,could I but have entered into it.I did not reflect then that this stern old man must have throbbed once;nay,fire and energy still remained in his bowels,else he could not have continued to dominate a city.Nor did it occur to me that the great steel-works that lighted the southern sky were the result of a passion,of dreams similar to those possessing me,but which I could not express.He had founded a family whose position was virtually hereditary,gained riches which for those days were great,compelled men to speak his name with a certain awe.But of what use were such riches as his when his religion and morality compelled him to banish from him all the joys in the power of riches to bring?

No,I didn't want to be an iron-master.But it may have been about this time that I began to be impressed with the power of wealth,the adulation and reverence it commanded,the importance in which it clothed all who shared in it....