Bildungsromans; Fathers and sons -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction
Suddenly it seemed to him that if he went forward truthfully he should
get even Sue back again some time. His mind lingered over the thoughts
of the loves that come to a man in the world, of Sue in the wind-swept
northern woods and of Janet in her wheel-chair in the little room where
the cable cars ran rumbling under the window. And he thought of other
things, of Sue reading papers culled out of books before the fallen
women in the little State Street hall, of Tom Edwards with his new wife
and his little watery eyes, of Morrison and the long-fingered socialist
fighting over words at his table. And then pulling on his gloves he
lighted a cigar and went back through the crowded streets to his office
to do the thing he had determined on.
At the meeting that afternoon the project went through without a
dissenting voice. Colonel Tom being absent, the two employé directors
voted with Sam with almost panicky haste as Sam looking across at the
well-dressed, cool-headed Webster, laughed and lighted a fresh cigar.
And then he voted the stock Sue had intrusted to him for the project,
feeling that in doing so he was cutting, perhaps for all time, the knot
that bound them.
With the completion of the deal Sam stood to win five million dollars,
more money than Colonel Tom or any of the Raineys had ever controlled,
and had placed himself in the eyes of the business men of Chicago and
New York where before he had placed himself in the eyes of Caxton and
South Water Street. Instead of another Windy McPherson failing to blow
his bugle before the waiting crowd, he was still the man who made good,
the man who achieved, the kind of man of whom America boasts before the
world.
He did not see Sue again. When the news of his betrayal reached her she
went off east taking Colonel Tom with her, and Sam closed the house,
even sending a man there for his clothes. To her eastern address, got
from her attorney, he wrote a brief note offering to make over to her or
to Colonel Tom his entire winnings from the deal and closed it with the
brutal declaration, “At the end I could not be an ass, even for you.”
To this note Sam got a cold, brief reply telling him to dispose of her
stock in the company and of that belonging to Colonel Tom, and naming an
eastern trust company to receive the money. With Colonel Tom’s help she
had made a careful estimate of the values of their holdings at the
time of consolidation and refused flatly to accept a penny beyond that
amount.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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