The mills of man; a novel

Front matter

THE LIBRARY

OF

LOS ANGELES

II

MR. CORLIS.

THE train entered the vast cave of sheet-iron, which was the station.

Mrs. Corlis appeared upon the platform of her car and obsequious porters helped her down the steps, while the conductor, with a hand to the visor of his cap, stood bowing.

She afforded a picture as she advanced up the long causeway between the tracks, followed by a retinue of maids and servants and a stout brace of porters. She was so obviously the modern divin ity, the choicest development of the American cul ture of wealth; she could be assured and gracious, since she required no touch of hauteur to enforce her dignity. Whoever saw her felt who she was and yielded precedence willingly.

She wore a gray traveling gown and a gray hat, whose shades corresponded with the silver-gray of her hair. She was tall and rather strongly built in the shoulders and hips, the waist a bit too long, her hands perhaps too large. But distinction quali fied her — not alone the factitious distinction which attends social eminence as diamonds do money, but the essential distinction of spirit and of mind.

Mrs. Corlis had achieved two different successes, and there was that in her bearing which was in dicative of each. In her youth, in Washington, she had won reputation for her wit and cleverness, her sense for politics and her perception of talent. Since her marriage (she was now forty and had been married fifteen years) she had become recog nized as preeminently a manager: she had man aged society in Washington and at Newport, she had made a place for herself in New York, and had, by degrees, come to be one of those halfdozen women in America who lead society and control fashion.

" I wonder where Walter can be," she was thinking, as she approached the ticket-puncher's barrier which marked the termination of the cause way. Just then she spied him hastening towards the gate, and a smile curved her frank lips and gladdened her dark eyes.

Ah, after all, what a man he looked, was her thought. How well he moved; how symmetrical his figure; and, as he came near, how handsome his features! She felt his fascination; she greeted it with an undiminished joy : it had always been thus; it would be to the end. In his presence she did not ask why he dominated her life; she ac cepted the fact almost thankfully. Her rebellions, her criticisms of him, all resulted in this — he had but to appear.

Mr. Corlis welcomed his wife, whom he had not seen for months, as he might have welcomed a confidential friend. His manner made evident that he trusted her infinitely, was fond of her, within limits. She on the other hand did not measure her greeting; she smiled up into his face, her eyes affectionate, her features glowing. But he ignored her fervor.

'Victoria, I am glad you are here; I am in urgent need of advice." These were his first words.

" Oh, Walter," she begged with a charming expression of disappointment, " for no other rea son, pray? "

" Oh, don't be a two months' bride," he chided laughingly. " I have altogether too much need of your brain to wish to cloud it with sentiment."

She winced under the phrase, and, to hide her pain, turned to the servants.

' The carriage, William, and Jones, see that the luggage is sent up at once."

'' What a town," she remarked to her husband, as the carriage advanced through the streets, " clamor and smoke and no pavements, and yet, do you know, after the smug East I fancy its heathen license for a change. The Democracy is fierce and free in Chicago."

Characteristically, Mr. Corlis replied with a subject of his own:

" I suppose you are too tired to allow me to bring a man home to dinner."

She wanted him to herself, but she did not show disappointment.

" That depends somewhat upon whom the in truder may be," she replied, smiling.

"Oh, he will amuse you; he's Mike McBride, Boss McBride," explained Mr. Corlis. " He will be flattered; McBride's Irish enough to long to be a gentleman. A little attention from you will excite his profuse gratitude."

' That is not so bad," she said after a moment's consideration. "A Boss will be novel; he can hardly prove boresome. Besides, it suits me, I fancy; I may interest your buccaneer in a little plot on my own account."

Mr. Corlis smiled subtly, but he refrained from questions.

' Very well then," he acquiesced, " you will not find McBride impervious to social influence, ex ercised by such a mistress of it as yourself. And if it's arranged, will you excuse me from further attendance and set me down here? This is the Washington and LaSalle corner. You know," he responded to the objection in her eyes, " how busy I am — up to my ears — with the State Convention but ten days off, and the whole of Cook County to get and to keep in line."

Until now she had not seen her husband since

February, when he had spent a week, less a day, in Washington. That winter and spring she had passed with her father, although in her own house, at the capital; but Mr. Corlis had been so deeply engaged in business that he could not leave Chi cago. In fact, now that he had entered Illinois politics, it was part of his policy conspicuously to identify himself with Chicago life. He desired to dissipate the latent suspicion, that, if not a legal, he might be an actual alien to the state and to the West. Necessity for conformity he felt to be the greater, inasmuch as his wife preferred the East and was supposed to be inclined to eschew the so ciety of the Western " Porkopolis," or, at least, to refuse to be identified with it.

The carriage proceeded with Mrs. Corlis alone. Yet for her it remained filled with his presence; and then, as the impression of his personality faded, she sought to retain it in vividness by re hearsing its each dear detail: the deep tones of his voice ; the gray tinting of his face ; the proud arch of the head between the closely-fitting ears; the dark hair, grown thin, and thereby increasing his distinction; the square, clear chin beneath the close-cropped mustache; the turquoise colored eyes, with their cold light, shaded by dark brows and lashes; the full neck like a column; the broad chest, where so often her head had lain; the shoulders, strong enough to block a rush, graceful enough to fit a Hermes — that conjunction, in fine, which she had never seen so well expressed in any other man; that superb union which fascinated her, of force and elegance, of brutality and re finement, of the luxurious susceptibility belonging to an Aaron Burr and the cold intellectuality characteristic of Jay Gould.

The very lines of his figure and the modeling of his features, did they not set forth the recon ciliation of opposing qualities in the man? He was black and white, passionate yet cool, ardent but tenacious, genial yet selfish, vain but hardly to be beguiled by flattery. His profile, a little dis tance off, showed aquiline, chiseled in the regularity of a Roman Caesar. Nearer, it revealed curves, so slight as to seem elusive, so faint as to exclude softness, yet sufficient to denote love of sensual things.

The carriage crossed the river to the North Side and gained the wide avenue of the Lake Shore Drive. It stopped before the great house J. J. Jarrett had built for his niece; but Mrs. Corlis, looking out, hated its magnificence.

Upstairs in her dressing room, before she rang for her maid, she turned herself critically in front of the long glass. Ruthlessly she put the ques tion: Could she condemn a man for his failure to remain in love with that woman the glass revealed? With candor cruel to herself she pressed the consideration home. At all costs she would be just, just to the man. Was she not proud of possessing the robust mind and magnanimous temper which enabled her to sympathize with mas culinity and to condone its weaknesses?

She scanned from crown to sole the image in the glass. She catalogued every positive point — the white hair that lent a powdered eighteenthcentury grace; the lustrous eyes with their depths of passion and their humorous scintillations; the patent intelligence. But, with contemptuous jus tice, she also found in that worldly, kindly, intel lectual woman no least trace of the fascinating doll or the seductive mistress. She could hardly require a man to be overpowered by the impulse to pet such a woman or to dote upon her as the object of his passions. She knew she was the closest friend her husband had; she could not wonder he did not come to her for dalliance.

Yet — she looked again, and the next compart ment of her mind dared to form the query, whether some man, more spiritual, should she say, or more profound, might not discover in her, as she stood there, some tragic import, some pathetic splendor, transcending lust of eye and touch?

At that reflection she drew herself up scornfully, tall and wasted as she was. A great and almost objective pity moved her for the woman in the glass, a pity touched with pride. For the woman had so much brain and heart and power and wealth, and yet she was denied that common thing which silly women shared with queens of charm, which any hussy on the street might have to sell or give away — the seduction of the flesh.

Then the pious inclination in her blood reproved her gently for her pity of herself and for her pride's assertion. She had reaped what she had sown.

Ill

THE BOSS

LADIES of a dainty breeding and of the deli cate refinement of mind which is, fortunately or unfortunately, being considered an attri bute of a past generation, have been known to impute some vulgarity to Mrs. Corlis, or to com ment, at least, on her lack of " tone." True, Mrs. Corlis was both modern and of the world; if she possessed fastidiousness, she seldom allowed it to exclude any phase of the world, however super ficially distasteful. That toleration, or sympathy, which she had, might offend some as lacking in discrimination; to others it appeared to constitute a meritorious catholicity of mind and temper.

' The Black Boss " of Chicago did, to be sure, resemble an opulent bartender or some retired po lice captain; but his hostess immediately decided that she liked the man. She had ever possessed a weakness for human bulldogs.

Mr. McBride carried an aldermanic paunch and a swollen neck, creased by circles running all the way around; yet he was nimble on his feet and equally ready with his flattery. However, it was not his glibness with compliments that recommended him to the favor of his hostess, but the Celtic blue of his clear eyes and the vague pathos which informs so many Irish faces and which may indicate an artless ideality or merely an alcoholic thirst.

Otherwise " Mike " McBride was a big, black, burly brute, with a heavy jowl, coarse hair, a thick mustache, and the short, curved beak of a fighting brigadier. The man was a policeman's club. Yet a vast diplomacy was expressed, somehow, in the broad slope of the Irish shoulders, and those un lettered lips of his had, beyond doubt, kissed the blarney stone.

Mrs. Corlis evoked his latent gallantry and under her management he displayed the astonish ing adaptability of his race. She enforced awe, but his excessive reverence did not crush him to the carpet; it rather served to inspire him to rise to the high pitch of the occasion. In other words, the rough Boss demonstrated that he was not de void of a rudimentary social instinct.

The situation amused Mr. Corlis hugely, as his wife perceived. He and McBride, she saw, got on famously; they " hit it off " well together, and for a time she was at a loss to discover what com munity of spirit could exist between this unpolished diamond of the Chicago river wards and the most sophisticated gentleman she had ever known. The solution burst upon her like a divination before the dinner was half through, and involuntarily she laughed to herself.

" What a pair," she reflected, " what a partner ship, to persuade a common council, to corrupt an electorate, to plunder a public, to seduce a legisla ture, to bestride a community ! Small wonder is it that the two have built up a marvel of a machine ! What chance has an abject, defenseless community against such an able brace of pirates? "

That her vision was so unhesitating, was char acteristic of Mrs. Corlis; for she was not one of those good fools of women who spend stolen money unctuously, believing it to be just gain. That clear perception should produce no severe shock to her morality was likewise characteristic, although it is to be said that such callousness of conscience (if it is to be so broadly styled), was due as much to the accident of her environment and the toleration of her mind as to any essential deficiency of nature.

Presently, borrowing the spirit of her husband and Boss McBride, she caught the contagion of the game. She had already set the Boss at ease by her cordiality and consideration, and the power to do so she enjoyed in all the kindliness of her heart. She entered into the humor of the situation, too, sharing it with her husband and delighting in it like a man.

McBride proved a " good fellow." If he sus- 22 pected that he was furnishing entertainment in a form too subtle for himself to grasp, he did not resent the possibility in the least, but was amiable enough to be pleased that he could fulfill an actual function in such exalted company. " Indeed," his hostess genially concluded, " the creature's irre sistible and knows it very well."

Gradually the conversation took a serious tone, enabling Mrs. Corlis to remark,

" I have wondered very often how you manage, Mr. McBride. I understand an orator's influence or a debater's in a legislative hall; I can even im agine how a man of great executive capacity must proceed. But, I confess, the methods by which you organization leaders direct the masses of a. great city are beyond my comprehension. How is it done, pray? You must master all sorts and styles of men and magnetize the mob as well, I take it. What more? Where's the secret? I think it marvelous. As a mere feat of leadership it excels, to my mind, most others in America. — Now, Mr. McBride " —the flattering innuendo was bewitching — " you must take pity on my curi osity and tell me just how you do it and what is the mysterious secret of your power."

The gross Boss shivered with pure ecstasy, like a debutante accepting her first florid compliment from a man of thirty-five. In sheer embarrass ment he winked at Mr. Corlis, while a pleased smile spread thickly from under his stubbed mus tache up to his Irish eyes.

" Indeed, I'm at a loss to let you know, Mrs. Corlis. I just let the boys understand what orders have got to be obeyed, and they go out and get 'em done. That's all."

" But if they didn't, it would not be all," amend ed Mr. Corlis, with a smile.

" Well, I should say not," responded the Boss in an enlarged tone. ' What's the organization fit for, I'm askin', if it don't get orders carried out? Without orders from me and obeyin' 'em by the boys, the organization 'd be on the bum in no time at all. And the boys, if orders ain't obeyed on the scratch, know there's goin' to be the worst kind of rough house." Under her ad miring eye he summed up the theory of his gen eralship, " I don't stop to lead 'em; I drive 'em, Mrs. Corlis, and that's about how it's done, I guess."

"But what gives you the power?" she per sisted, aware that she was playing on the master chord of his self-love. " Why are you boss instead of some other man? Why do they fear and love you so much that they remain loyal to you ? Why, in other words, are you you?"

McBride dilated under such appreciation.

"Oh, it ain't me; it's the organization," he 24 protested. " Every feller that belongs to it knows that to get the benefits there has got to be a Boss."

" But why are you Boss? What is the magic you employ? " Womanlike, she ascribed his dom inance to personality, to individual power, ignor ing, or disdaining, the institution and the conditions that support the institution.

"Why me?" echoed McBride in some sur prise. " Why, because I fill the bill, I guess. It was fought to a finish years ago, and since I cleaned out Tim Murphy in the Tenth Ward, the boys have all been unanimous for peace and harmony. My word goes everywhere, see? If there wasn't no call for bosses, there wouldn't be none. And if the organization was run like a re. form meetin', where each yap that wants to can make a holler, the boys would have to be after seekin' other bizness openin's, I guess. They know that."

" Yet organization, important as it is, is not all," Mrs. Corlis contended. " An engine, how ever perfect, requires steam to keep it going."

McBride's intellect seized the concrete com parison.

" I should say it did," he agreed. " And don't you forget it, I give 'em steam, regular, every hour. How'd it go, if I let up for a day, I'm askin'. Men are born a lazy lot and you've got to prod 'em up, right along. That's why they need a Boss."

" There is little doubt but that Chicago enjoys one," observed Mr. Corlis, facetiously.

" I don't mean there should," rejoined the Boss with grimness. " It wouldn't do. Them fellers has got to know for certain in their minds where orders comes from or the spokes'd fly out all 'round quicker than a fire alarm goes oft."

' They know — rest assured they know," chuck led Mr. Corlis, " and you don't use any feather in hammering the notion into their heads at that, McBride."

The Boss smiled pleasantly, and, on further thought, deemed it necessary to offer some apol ogy for the lady's sake.

" I hope I ain't as bad as them reformers and newspaper fellers make me out, Mrs. Corlis. There's a lot of people who don't know what it is to be in politics — that's what the matter is. They're ignorant, they are. Suppose I undertook to teach 'em how to run their department stores, their banks and newspapers, they'd set up an al mighty howl, I'm tellin' you. They'd say I was an ignorant cuss and a vulgar plug-ugly, and all those other choice pet names they keep on ice especially for me."

'' But you can afford to ignore abuse," Mrs. 26

Corlis said consolingly. " Everybody, nowadays, expects to be assailed."

'' Well, I don't mind none at all what they say about me in connection with the organization," declared McBride. " That's part of what's comin' to you in the bizness, I guess. What raises my hair ain't that at all — it's for them college fellers and literary yaps a-sayin' in their lives of me how I was born an illiterate Irishman and have stayed so up to date. It ain't the lies, I'm tellin' you, 'tis the truth about a feller that stings like pepper in the eyes."

" So much the more credit to you for making yourself what you are, Mr. McBride," asserted his hostess, quickly and with feeling.

' That don't help none," he dissented dolefully. '' It's true, that's the worst of it. When I begun life I was only an Irishman, and now I've sent my boys to college and helped make 'em gentlemen, and then them reformers go and make a shame of me to my sons. Beggin' you'll excuse me, Mrs. Corlis, I hope, if there's to be any of them dum reformers up in heaven, I'll be put out before I get let in."

" I'm hanged if I blame you ! " exclaimed Mr. Corlis.

" Nor I," declared his wife with equal em phasis.

And she related how her own father had come 27 up from the bottom and had managed, somehow, to educate himself between labors. She spoke of the struggle of his youth, its deprivations and its sacrifices, and of how meager were his first suc cesses. And as she recounted the story, so common in America, she directed now and then a challeng ing glance at Mr. Corlis, realizing that nothing was to him so distasteful as the publication of the rural origin of her family, although in private he was not above taunting her, occasionally, with her plebeian blood and explaining thereby some of her idiosyncrasies.

But McBride refused the sympathetic pallia tion.

"That's good to hear, Mrs. Corlis; but the Senator's different from me. He ain't illiterate and he ain't Irish, no matter how hard up he was born. I'm that proud of my Irish, though — when it's put as it ought, as an honor and not as a slur. A boss's a boss, though I ain't sayin' it's bad as a bizness. But a senator's a statesman and orna mental to the country. And I'll say this for Sen ator Dawes, though he's fought me bitter for fif teen years — he's a man his state honors; he's the ' grand old man ' of Illinois."

Mrs. Corlis glowed; the dearest pride she con fessed was her father's fame.

" I thank you, Mr. McBride, for your gener ous tribute, and I am confident that when I let my father know how beautifully you have spoken of him, he will be greatly pleased. Indeed, if you will allow me to speak frankly, I am more than half persuaded it is my duty to make you two good friends. A woman is a natural mediator, is she not? "

Praise of his chivalry in speaking well of his enemy had warmed the cockles of his Irish heart; but, when she suggested mediation, she touched his shrewdness. The Boss smiled a different smile as he looked again at her and hung his head a little to one side.

" That's appertainin' to politics, I guess, and bizness ain't related to good feelin'. I've enjoyed the best of feller-feelin' for some friends of mine I meant to rip up the back the next election day. Same now with the Senator. He's fought the or ganization with every weapon for the last ten year, and he never would consent to let me set down at the national dinner table. Personal feelin' is all for you, Mrs. Corlis, but I ain't foot loose. I'm tied up by my duty to the organiza tion."

" But has not the time about arrived for a new deal all around? " suggested Mr. Corlis softly.

" Has it? " replied the Boss, dubiously.

" I trust so," Mrs. Corlis stated. " At least I'm hopeful that much misconstruction on both sides may be removed and that old enmities may die. And I am certain, Mr. McBride, your words to-night of respect for my father's services and character will go far towards obliterating in his mind the effect of years of misunderstanding and misrepresentation fomented by your enemies and kept alive by parties interested in keeping you two apart. He has learned, I know, to respect your resolution and abilities, Mr. McBride, and he esti mates most highly the influence that you wield."

McBride cleared his throat.

" Humph, I'm dead willin', Mrs. Corlis," he announced. " I don't cherish no hard feelin's against the Senator, myself, and I'd extend him the glad hand to-morrow mornin' sure, and prom ise him the backin' of the organization where he'd most want it, if he'd agree to' stand in with us for good, and see we got our share down at Spring field, and steer us up around to the White House whenever we wanted to pay a call. The trouble up to date has been, Mrs. Corlis, and I don't blame him none for it, the Senator was in politics for glory and he never would consent to hear we wasn't in it for our health."

IV

MR. CORLIS ON POLITICS

LUXURIOUS inclination made of Mr. Corlis a lazy animal, except when aroused by the pleasures of society or the greed of gain. Normally he remained a drowsy force ; at intervals he became a whirlwind of energy. In such intense periods his great powers were used with concen tration, in order to dispatch the business finally and with effect, and to enable himself to live at ease again.

He sauntered into his wife's room after the Boss had gone. She was idly turning over the leaves of a French novel, while she wraited for her maid. She looked up to welcome him with a smile, but he made no articulate response until he had elaborately stretched himself out at full length upon the sofa. There, lying on his back, he puffed milky rings of smoke upward at the ceil ing and drawled an occasional observation at his wife.

Many of their conferences were conducted in this manner. Mrs. Corlis liked them for the inti macy they entailed. And while he looked at nothing, or the ceiling, she looked at him, admiring at her leisure the vigor of his manhood — the deep curve of his chest, the well-shaped limbs, his sinewy neck, the high arch of the head, the gray tinting of his features with their marmorean sur faces.

" Rather regal you are to-night, Victoria," he remarked, his eyes at a point of the ceiling. " Dia monds and other trappings — all for McBride !"

" Pearls before swine, you mean? Oh, I fancy not. What most impresses a barbarian, Wal ter?"

" Exactly, Victoria — you produced the effect intended; you succeeded. The Boss regards you as the Queen of Sheba, or, in his vernacular, the whole thing." He turned his head to glance at her. " What is your game? "

" Why do you ask," she rejoined, " since you know as well as if I had explained it to you spe cifically?"

" Merely because I wondered if the Senator had actually sent you out to rig up a treaty with McBride," said Mr. Corlis, so drily it might have been a sneer. " The ' grand old man ' of Illi nois — humph, he should be dubbed the sly old fox! Pardon me, I know you dislike to have me speak flippantly of the Anointed of the Lord." He chuckled, turned back his head and blew a vast cloud ceilingward.

She ignored the pain his words caused her, but she hastened to deny the imputed fact.

" I assure you, Walter, the Pater has not the least idea of this. It has not even occurred to him to so much as mention the name of Mr. Me- Bride to me or in my presence."

' Then why, allow me to ask," responded her husband coolly, " do you talk as you do to McBride, if you cannot speak authoritatively? Excuse me, but you only misrepresent the Senator, and, to use the slang, put him in a hole with Mc Bride. Besides, your method is not well consid ered; for if you want to influence the Boss, you must be prepared with substantial propositions. McBride is only sentimental on top; at bottom he's a cool trader."

Mr. Corlis' tone was disinterested.

" I confess it is altogether my own scheme," admitted Mrs. Corlis, almost crestfallenly — " but I have thought it all out, Walter, and there is no other way."

Mr. Corlis bit hard on his cigar.

;' If the old fox hasn't lost his patriarchal cun ning, he'll see that as well as you," he muttered, perhaps reluctantly.

Again her eyes showed, momentarily, how his phrase hurt; but she repressed her impulse to pro test in order to explain.

" Since Governor Ransom and the Pater split on this wretched silver question, Walter, the old combination that has worked well so long, no longer holds. Consequently the Pater must find a compensation for the loss of Egypt, and where can he hope to balance it unless here in Chicago? "

" It needs no marvelous penetration to discover that," said Mr. Corlis.

She spoke eagerly,

' The Pater must be reflected, Walter. He has had five terms in the Senate and has twice been governor. He is an old man now, and if he loses, it will break his heart. He deserves a re election at the hands of the state he has served so faithfully, and, you know, the Senate chamber has become like home to him. If he is not returned he will be crushed; he'll die within a year."

" No need of melodrama about it in the least, Victoria," advised Mr. Corlis lazily. " The prob abilities all favor him. He knows a trick or two; he's up to every device known in the game; he's slippery and surpassingly smooth. No man can say he has ever beaten ' Uncle Simeon ' yet, al though many have been certain they would get his brush before the old fox ran to cover. He has always had the laugh on them."