Chapter V: Part I: Rulers of Kings (4)

Fessenden walked slowly towards the rift in the great wall of rock which marked the land entrance to the fjord. _Pocahontas_ was dancing just beyond that narrow gate, but although his fingers tingled for her sail, his step still halted; he knew that she would bring him swiftly within range of the keen thumping of a typewriter, possibly of more than one. He was dutifully and even deeply interested in his father’s vast affairs, and there were nights when he went to bed with the sensation that the Earth was his pillow; there were days when he dared to hope the time would come when he could with pleasure embroider the scenery with figures and puncture the silences of Nature with a typewriter. But the time was not yet. Four days since he had awakened his father at three in the morning, informed him that he was off for a solitary tramp into Norway, and promised to return at the end of a week. Conscience was driving him home sooner than he had intended, for he had revelled in the stillness and solitude of his wild and lonely tramp. He missed at first the friendliness of the Adirondacks, the only other mountains he knew; but the harsh and terrible grandeur about him companioned his mood--finally inspired him with a passionate sense of gratitude. For he was in a desperate state of rebellion. The philosophy he had invoked on the heels of Mr. Abbott’s revelation had but deferred the inevitable moment. He did not doubt that the future presented to him by his father would bring him power, but that future was--he sincerely hoped--far distant, and at present he was little more than a glorified clerk in training. His inheritance and his education permitted him to grasp the stupendous details with a sufficient facility, and there were moments when he was staggered and overwhelmed with the thought of such world-manipulating power, at others intoxicated with dreams of a future when himself should be a ruler of many times the strength of any monarch in Europe. In such moments he felt arrogant, and contemptuous of sovereigns who were but the tools of a people or a cabinet, no matter what the euphemisms, longed for the time to come when he could demonstrate to them the absolutism of concentrated capital in the hands of an uncrowned ruler of a great republic. But reaction under the lonely stars invariably chastened him. What did he amount to now? Who would recognize in him more than his famous father’s second? He was bursting with energy, with ambition for himself and the United States, and, in spite of his father’s love and sincere indulgence, he felt like a prisoner on parole. It is true that when he had confided his cherished ideal, the great and beneficent conception which was to have worked his fingers to the bone and made him old in his youth, Mr. Abbott had waved his golden wand. A Western desert hummed and echoed, and even now a huge building was rising on its foundations, and the first of the world’s electricians, for a yearly salary which made Fessenden’s head swim, had agreed to occupy this building with a corps of assistants and work upon the idea which a youth had conceived. The author of the idea felt no temptation to take charge himself. The mere fact that more experienced genius could be bought delivered him from the thrall of his ideal, although he still took a scientific and patriotic interest in its accomplishment.

Robbed of this dream of immortality, he had dropped the curtain upon his inner life and endeavored to fulfil his immediate destiny. As his powers of concentration were very great, he had succeeded for a time. During the fortnight before sailing, novelty and wonder had sustained him, and for a time at sea the long conversations with his father were agreeably varied by instructions in the science of yachting. But Fessenden was Fessenden--a personality, a young man bursting with precocious energy, ambition, independence. His reassertion was slow but persistent, and during one sleepless night alone on deck the naked truth confronted him that he was at the end of his endurance, that however he might conform to his father’s wishes in the future, for the present he must not only have an interval of personal liberty, but arrange his nebulous ambitions and satisfy them. He restrained his impatience until three o’clock, then awakened Mr. Abbott--who smiled and slept again--and plunged without a guide into Norway.

He bathed in streams, he slept under the stars, he saw no one but peasants, he hardly uttered a word for three days; and he was completely happy. When he was not in mountain gorges he was in pine forests; everywhere he had Nature in her magnificence, and he was alone. For two days he refused to think--it was enough to forget, to feel the freedom of the years when he believed himself innocent of fortune, with a glorious and self-made future stretching through infinite horizons. But on the evening of the third day he turned his back on the scenery, sat down on the grass, and thought.

That the prospect before him was hateful and hideous he admitted aloud, lest he should seem to blink any modicum of the truth. The abstract fact that he was a rich man instead of a poor one dwindled to comparative insignificance beside the million details which made up the sum of that fact. Had he been the author of those details, his inherited and financial instincts, so quick at college, would no doubt possess him and obliterate the dreams of his youth. But that mountain of particulars, massive and petty, had fallen upon him without a moment’s warning, and he was not its illustrious author, but its future custodian. The youth in him was rampant, and his strong vein of romance unsatisfied. He admitted--again aloud--that he was as romantic as he was practical. He would train to succeed his father, but meanwhile would distinguish himself in his own manner. He would use the wealth at his disposal, but the manner should be picturesque.

Without admitting that he intended to demand a period of liberty, his imagination in the past weeks had toyed with many plans. At first, when he learned of the more than thousands in his father’s employ, he had been fired with the desire to ameliorate the lot of the working-man; and in his enthusiasm had awakened his father from his afternoon nap on deck and talked to him for an hour. Mr. Abbott, who revelled in the very sound of Fessenden’s voice, and would have attempted to give him the North Pole had he wanted it, listened indulgently; but when his turn came to speak he was smiling grimly.

“My dear boy,” he had said, “what reason have I given you to think me a fool? There are those who will tell you that the day must come when the streets of our great cities will run red with blood, when not one stone on Fifth Avenue will remain upon another; that, in short, the great civil war between capital and labor can be delayed only until a strong leader of organized labor arises who cannot be bought. I do not go so far as to say that I--or you--can avert that calamity, for our rotten municipal governments have destroyed the respect of the thinking laboring man for authority, and these tremendous aggregations of capital I have in hand, which will make the United States strong and feared among nations, may be carried to an excess which will lessen the chances of individual achievement and curtail personal liberty. If rich men--that is to say, the manipulators--make fools of themselves, and in their greed for wealth and power reduce wages and sow further seeds of discontent, there is no telling what may happen. But although I make no denial of my own greed for wealth and power, and although these concentrations of many small industries into one huge enterprise will double my fortune, I make no such mistake as that. I have always maintained that a man may get rich and still share a certain portion of his gains with his assistants; and my working-men all receive good salaries, perquisites, heavy Christmas presents, and pensions in their old age. I make no pretence at philanthropy. There is no man who needs friends as the rich man does; there are no friends so valuable as an army of employés. I know many of mine personally; at some time or other I have managed to come into contact with most of them. They like me. They are content. They never go on strike. They are the one formidable bulwark against united labor in the country. When you return, I wish you to go about among those men, show them your personal interest in them as human beings, make them love you as much as they like me; then, if an industrial war ever comes, you will make yourself their leader and take whichever side you think wisest. But the thing to do is to avert war and use that great following for another purpose. Either with or without civil war the time must come for the reform of municipalities, the reduction of state power, and, possibly, an interval of benevolent despotism. There is the rôle I have cut out for you; but meanwhile work with me to avert the worst calamity which could visit this country--set it back a hundred years. My men are not overpaid; they receive strict justice, that is all. I have harangued for hours with almost every great employer in the country, appealing to his common-sense, even his cupidity, but in most cases in vain. The average rich man in the United States is lowly born. He has worked himself up from the ranks. There never was a real democrat who was not born an aristocrat. The risen plebeian is a tyrant, is insatiable in his greed, glories in the thought of grinding the life out of thousands of his own class, delights in the hatred and envy which are but another signal of his success; in short, he is a damned fool, and deserves to wake up and find his throat cut. I suppose all revolutions are the result of stupidity. Ours, if it comes, will arise from no other cause whatever. If you have the genius in you that I believe, you will avert this war or control it. Now I will sleep again if you will permit me.”

The words had kept Fessenden awake all night, but after several days his enthusiasm cooled. Again he was willing to take the helm whenever the time came, and with all his energies; but the idea was his father’s, not his. His young ego, uniquely developed, demanded creation.

During the last day of his tramp he had looked down twenty avenues of possible greatness, and turned his back upon all. He was not discouraged, for he knew that inspiration comes suddenly, even if it be the final result of industrious raking. He was now returning to demand a vacation of some months, during which he would tramp and study Europe in his own way. But inspiration was closer than he knew, and although he was to tramp Europe again and again with various and, in one case, extraordinary results, there were to be intervening years.

As he jumped into his canoe and set his sail, he saw that the _Alexandra_ was no longer the solitary inhabitant of the fjord. Not half a mile from his father’s yacht was what looked to be a miniature man-of-war. It was painted white, and had a heavily gilded figure-head. In a few moments he was close enough to see the colors and design on the standard. He whistled and experienced a glow of anticipation.

“The German Emperor! I hardly know whether I am more anxious to see him or his yacht. Ours is the biggest in the world--of course!--his is the most original; but that may only mean resource: he couldn’t get the money voted any other way. The more I hear of Europe the rottener it appears, with the exception of Germany. This man seems to be making an American city out of Berlin, and to have plenty of sand all-round. Some one has said of him that he is an autocrat with a Yankee head on his shoulders; and, if that is the case, he may be worth studying for future points.”

Nevertheless, when a half-hour later his father told him that the Emperor had invited him to visit the _Hohenzollern_ the day of his return, he sniffed with youthful Americanism.

“I don’t fancy waiting till I’m spoken to,” he announced--“for his high-mightiness to introduce every subject. He may be interesting in himself, but he is a monarch, and I have no use for any of them. They are a burlesque in the end of the nineteenth century.”

“Tell that to William, if you like, and introduce what subjects interest you--if you get a chance. He observes little formality up here, and less with Americans. Now please go and exchange that sweater and those pants--they are not trousers--for a suit of flannels.”

XXI

Fessenden drew a long and audible breath. It had not occurred to him soon enough to keep tally, but he felt justified in assuming that he had answered eight hundred questions. The power and magnetism of the Emperor still impressed him, but the fascination had waned. When he had boarded the yacht early in the afternoon, excited with a sensation that was half eager curiosity, half aggressive fear of being patronized, and had received a hearty greeting from a man as informal as he was charming, Fessenden had promptly conceived his first enthusiasm for a contemporary. He had as promptly reminded himself that he too intended to inspire enthusiasms--that his was not the rôle of the follower; nevertheless he had beamed back upon his imperial host; and, in spite of a flinty reserve in the background of both pairs of eyes, a mutual friendship was conceived at once. The Emperor had taken care to cement his personal fascination by exhibiting the machinery of his new yacht to his curious young guest, and a twenty-minutes’ argument on a subject of which one had much practical knowledge and the other almost as much by theory and observation, established a respect as strong as the sentiment. But when they were seated alone on deck, the Emperor’s inquiring mind was no longer to be restrained. A conversation with Mr. Abbott the day before had excited his curiosity; his interrogations began upon Fessenden’s babyhood; and then, with the rapid strokes of a minute impressionist, never losing sight of causes and effects, he built up a complete picture of a self-made boy with a beneficent providence in the background. In three-quarters of an hour he not only knew the boy in the wilderness as well as the boy had known himself, but the history of the Nettlebecks, the size and condition of their farm, their attitude--or, as he discovered, their lack of attitude--towards Germany, the area of the Adirondack tract, the attention--or lack of attention--given it by the government, the inferior condition, as compared with Germany, of its forests, its roads, its bridges. His questions and comments showed such grasp and activity of intelligence that for a time Fessenden was as interested as the Man of Questions, and there were intervals when he was permitted to give a bit of thrilling description, notably of logging-camps and “driving,” which, as the Emperor’s eyes kindled and his horned upper lip twitched, flattered him for five or six consecutive minutes.

But from the Adirondacks, William passed swiftly to the Western University, and here his curiosity threatened to be insatiable. His questions indicated that Harvard and Yale could tell him no secrets, but of this more modern institution he had never heard until the day before; and an enterprise so novel, practical, and cheap appealed irresistibly to a ruler bent upon modernizing his country and making it the strongest industrially in Europe. He made no secret of the cause of his interest, and Fessenden sympathized heartily with the ambitious and energetic young monarch, and glowed at the thought of flinging a handful of American seeds broadcast upon the German Empire. But at the end of an hour and a quarter, when he had not only presented a picture of the university in all its complex details, from its methods of military drill to the last drop of grease in the machine-shops, but had sketched the personalities of all the professors and the most notable of the students, the strident tones of the august interlocutor seemed to be banging about in his brain, the abrupt rapid firing to have torn his nerves to tatters. The impatient action of his lungs receiving no attention from his host, whose eyes were concentrated and glittering, he sprang suddenly to his feet.

“Look here!” he exclaimed. “I really can’t stand it any longer. I’ll come back to-morrow, if you like. I think you are a great man, and I’m only too delighted to help you in any way I can, but if you ask me another question to-day I’ll jump off the yacht.”

For a second the Emperor’s eyes had flashed with a haughty surprise which gave Fessenden a passing glimpse of outraged majesty, but he recovered himself swiftly, and before the plaint finished he had sprung to his feet and grasped Fessenden’s hand, looking like a contrite school-boy.

“I beg your pardon,” he stammered. “How inhospitable!--I never was so tactless in my life. But you have interested me so deeply. You are the most extraordinary young man--will you forgive me? and will you do me the honor to return for dinner? Mr. Abbott comes too.”

A warm responsiveness rushed through Fessenden’s veins and flashed from his frank impatient eyes; and he returned the hearty grasp of the other’s hand. But although the two men were mutually and strongly attracted, almost to the point of effusiveness, they nevertheless, and almost unconsciously, stared hard and long at each other. For the moment, despite aggressive differences, they looked alike. Their personalities pushed aside the mask of their features and snatched the knowledge that for them it was love or hate, friendship or enmity, mutual assistance or a bitter lifelong struggle, which might waste their energies and thwart their most passionate hopes.

William was the older and subtler. He laid his hand affectionately on his new friend’s shoulder. “I have suspected something of your father’s ultimate plans for you,” he said. “Now I am sure. I can help you as much as you can help me. The next time we are alone, turn the tables and ask me as many questions as you like. There is no reason why you should ever remind yourself that I am an Emperor--why our friendship should not be as informal and sincere as that of your charming sister and the daughter of the Emperor of Austria.”

“Do you know my sister?”

“Of course, and since she was twelve years old. But her chosen friend is my sworn enemy.”

* * * * *

That night, in the retirement of his state-room, Fessenden brushed his hair backward and his mustache upright. The Emperor at dinner had drawn his coils more closely. He had been brilliant, demonstrative, instructive, humorous, almost unegotistical. He had made Fessenden shine without asking a question, and he had toasted Mr. Abbott in the effusive rhetoric with which one ripened sovereign disguises his fear of another. Fessenden forgot his long array of self-made heroes--even those who had been cradled in purple and yet ridden victoriously through the pages of history. He took up an autographed picture of William, presented at parting, and studied it attentively, then regarded his own smooth young face with dissatisfaction.

“However,” he thought, “in his earlier photographs he had even less character than I have. It’s since he got his own way that he’s put it on with a brush. I suppose I can have that eagle roll of the eye in time, too, if I choose, and square my iron jaw, and look as if I were hewn out of finely tempered steel. He has a sensitive mouth, all the same.”

In a moment he parted his short hair rapidly and brushed his mustache into a dejected curve. “I’d like to see myself!” he thought, with some irritation. “He _would_ have the laugh on me to-morrow!”

He sat for an hour and pondered deeply on all that had passed between himself and the Emperor of Germany that day. Then he started up suddenly, opened the door of the adjoining state-room, and awakened his father.

“What does William want?” he demanded.

“Europe and South America,” murmured Mr. Abbott sleepily.

XXII

The tremendous walls of the fjord were black, but the moon poured in a flood of light. There had been a sharp breeze earlier in the evening, and Fessenden had invited the Emperor out in _Pocahontas_; then, perceiving the difficulty of keeping him quiet, had given him the sheet. The Emperor had accepted the invitation with alacrity--he was not only happy and at home in a canoe, but although he had now had several long conversations with the young American, something in this new personality evaded him, and he was determined to find it. Fessenden, on the other hand, was studying him attentively, his interest in the most remarkable specimen of living royalty quite distinct from his liking for the man. William had not refrained from questions during this past week, and Fessenden had been permitted to learn Germany from the Throne. When he had mentioned that he intended, a year or two hence, to tramp the Empire and study it from another point of view, the Kaiser had promptly extracted a promise to bring the burden of his information to Berlin.

William expressed a lively sympathy for his young friend’s desire for immediate distinction, and confided some of the difficulties of majesty in getting its own way. Nevertheless he felt that Fessenden, despite his romantic enthusiasm for himself, was frank only to a certain point. He thought of all in his own depths that he could give to no man, and forbore to press him too closely; but his abnormally acute brain suspected something in that deliberate reserve which concerned himself, and he had accepted the proposal of the lonely sail in the hope of an impulsive confidence. He had no suspicion that the younger man had brought him out for the purpose of making this confidence.

The wind fell, and they left the canoe to stretch their legs.

“Do you really believe in the divine right of kings?” asked Fessenden abruptly. “I mean _you_.”

The Emperor stared, then laughed outright. “Certainly!” he announced in that harsh abrupt voice which conveyed the impression that he had not the patience to lie. Then, having his own reasons for expanding under the influence of the lonely moon, he added: “Is not a peasant a peasant by divine law? How much more a hereditary ruler with his terrible responsibilities! With our vast fund of inherited knowledge and traditions, our instinct for rule, our gift of commanding respect and obedience, we are far more successful as rulers than your presidents, chosen every four or eight years from all sorts and conditions of life, and more often for some unworthy political reason than for any merit in the man.” He added deliberately: “The monarchs of the earth are the chosen deputies of God in Heaven; they rule their people by right divine. The time will come when you will feel this as deeply as I do now. Of course my understanding is illumined with the torch of the centuries; but there must be a beginning,” he added graciously.

“And you disassociate yourself absolutely from the race?”

“Certainly. So will you one day.”

“I am a good democrat, and I believe in the principles of the American Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.”

“Quite so--as long as they are permitted to hold; but when your revolution comes they will go down with the rest, and then you will no longer be a democrat.” The pronounced roll of William’s r-r-r-r’s made him utter the last word as if he hated it.

“And I suppose you think the Monroe Doctrine would go too?”

“It would be as well to begin a new government on a sensible international basis,” said the Emperor dryly. “That doctrine only maintains its fictitious life by the courtesy, or perhaps I should say the indifference--the present indifference--of Europe. It means nothing until you have established it by force of arms. It would be better to abandon it gracefully while there is yet time.”

The two men were picking their way through an uneven pass. Fessenden halted and leaned against the wall of rock. He fixed his eyes, which in the brilliant night light shone like steel, on the imperious and searching orbs that swung round him abruptly.

“It is by converting the Monroe Doctrine from a theory into a principle of international law without a war with Europe that I propose to make my fame,” he said.

William’s pale face twitched, then settled into its hardest lines. He returned Fessenden’s stare, and there was neither friendship nor good-fellowship in his eyes; he was a monarch on the alert in the presence of the enemy. It was a moment before he spoke; then he said coldly:

“It is a large and, no doubt, patriotic idea. I shall be interested to watch the method develop. When shall you get to work? When shall Europe have its first astonished glimpse of your purpose?”

“Europe will know nothing until it is too late to interfere; but I shall tell you the whole scheme now.”

“Tell me!” cried the German Emperor in his astonishment.

“I owe the idea to you, and, crazy as it may appear, I shall confide it to you. I should be rather base if I did not; and I rely, if not on your generosity, then on your foresight, to let me alone. You can have Europe, and welcome, and when the time comes that you need my help you will get it; but you can’t have South America--not an inch of it; and now I’ll tell you why--”

“Suppose I decline to listen?”--and none but himself could know what it cost him to admit that possibility. But the excitable color had flashed into his face, and his eyes were glittering. “If I do listen,” he added in a moment, “I decline to commit myself beforehand.”

“It won’t matter. Even if you betrayed me you could not obstruct my purpose. Of course I wish my secret kept. Only the fool takes the world into his confidence. I only tell you--well, not so much for the reason I just gave, as because you have given me your friendship, and I like you better than any one on earth except my father. You would have suggested the idea in any case; and if we had been cut out for enemies I’d have left the next day, and it would have been a year before you would have known what I was up to.”

The Emperor’s face did not soften. He felt anything but sentimental. “Why are you so sure that Europe--that I--could not balk you?” he asked.

“Because I have a hundred million dollars at my disposal at the present moment, and the work will be done before you can cook up a war with the United States.”

The Emperor turned gray, and let his temper fly. “Damn your American billions!” he cried. “If I could lay my hands on that amount--”

“Well,” said Fessenden. “When the time comes you can have it.”