第37章

"Why,Hugh!"he exclaimed,taking my hand."I had no idea I should meet you here--I saw your father only last week,the day I left home."And he added,turning to Mrs.Kyme,"Hugh is the son of Mr.Matthew Paret,who has been the leader of our bar for many years."The recognition and the tribute to my father were so graciously given that I warmed with gratitude and pride,while Mr.Kyme smiled a little,remarking that I was a friend of Jerry's.Theodore Watling,for being here,had suddenly assumed in my eyes a considerable consequence,though the note he struck in that house was a strange one.It was,however,his own note,and had a certain distinction,a ring of independence,of the knowledge of self-worth.Dinner at Weathersfield we youngsters had usually found rather an oppressive ceremony,with its shaded lights and precise ritual over which Mr.Kyme presided like a high priest;conversation had been restrained.That night,as Johnnie Laurens afterwards expressed it,"things loosened up,"and Mr.Watling was responsible for the loosening.Taking command of the Kyme dinner table appeared to me to be no mean achievement,but this is just what he did,without being vulgar or noisy or assertive.Suavitar in modo,forbiter in re.If,as I watched him there with a newborn pride and loyalty,Ihad paused to reconstruct the idea that the mention of his name would formerly have evoked,I suppose I should have found him falling short of my notion of a gentleman;it had been my father's opinion;but Mr.

Watling's marriage to Gene Hollister's aunt had given him a standing with us at home.He possessed virility,vitality in a remarkable degree,yet some elusive quality that was neither tact nor delicacy--though related to these differentiated him from the commonplace,self-made man of ability.He was just off the type.To liken him to a clothing store model of a well-built,broad-shouldered man with a firm neck,a handsome,rather square face not lacking in colour and a conventional,drooping moustache would be slanderous;yet he did suggest it.Suggesting it,he redeemed it:and the middle western burr in his voice was rather attractive than otherwise.He had not so much the air of belonging there,as of belonging anywhere--one of those anomalistic American citizens of the world who go abroad and make intimates of princes.

Before the meal was over he had inspired me with loyalty and pride,enlisted the admiration of Jerry and Conybear and Johnnie Laurens;we followed him into the smoking-room,sitting down in a row on a leather lounge behind our elders.

Here,now that the gentlemen were alone,there was an inspiring largeness in their talk that fired the imagination.The subject was investments,at first those of coal and iron in my own state,for Mr.Watling,it appeared,was counsel for the Boyne Iron Works.

"It will pay you to keep an eye on that company,Mr.Kyme,"he said,knocking the ashes from his cigar."Now that old Mr.Durrett's gone--""You don't mean to say Nathaniel Durrett's dead!"said Mr.Kyme.

The lawyer nodded.

"The old regime passed with him.Adolf Scherer succeeds him,and you may take my word for it,he's a coming man.Mr.Durrett,who was a judge of men,recognized that.Scherer was an emigrant,he had ideas,and rose to be a foreman.For the last few years Mr.Durrett threw everything on his shoulders...."Little by little the scope of the discussion was enlarged until it ranged over a continent,touching lightly upon lines of railroad,built or projected,across the great west our pioneers had so lately succeeded in wresting from the savages,upon mines of copper and gold hidden away among the mountains,and millions of acres of forest and grazing lands which a complacent government would relinquish provided certain technicalities were met:touching lightly,too,very lightly,--upon senators and congressmen at Washington.And for the first time I learned that not the least of the functions of these representatives of the people was to act as the medium between capital and investment,to facilitate the handing over of the Republic's resources to those in a position to develop them.The emphasis was laid on development,or rather on the resulting prosperity for the country:that was the justification,and it was taken for granted as supreme.Nor was it new to me;this cult of prosperity.I recalled the torch-light processions of the tariff enthusiasts of my childhood days,my father's championship of the Republican Party.He had not idealized politicians,either.For the American,politics and ethics were strangers.

Thus I listened with increasing fascination to these gentlemen in evening clothes calmly treating the United States as a melon patch that existed largely for the purpose of being divided up amongst a limited and favored number of persons.I had a feeling of being among the initiated.Where,it may be asked,were my ideals?Let it not be supposed that I believed myself to have lost them.If so,the impression I have given of myself has been wholly inadequate.No,they had been transmuted,that is all,transmuted by the alchemy of Weathersfield,by the personality of Theodore Watling into brighter visions.My eyes rarely left his face;Ihung on his talk,which was interspersed with native humour,though he did not always join in the laughter,sometimes gazing at the fire,as though his keen mind were grappling with a problem suggested.I noted the respect in which his opinions were held,and my imagination was fired by an impression of the power to be achieved by successful men of his profession,by the evidence of their indispensability to capital itself....At last when the gentlemen rose and were leaving the room,Mr.Watling lingered,with his hand on my arm.

"Of course you're going through the Law School,Hugh,"he said.

"Yes,sir,"I replied.