No, Galloway was not a witness to the might of altruistic virtue as a means to triumph. Charity and all the other forms of chicanery by which the many are defrauded and fooled by the few--those "virtues" he understood and practiced. But justice--humanity's ages-long dream that at last seems to glitter as a hope in the horizon of the future--justice--not legal justice, nor moral justice, but human justice--that idea would have seemed to him ridiculous, Utopian, something for the women and the children and the socialists.
Norman understood Galloway, and Galloway understood Norman. Galloway, with an old man's garrulity and a confirmed moral poseur's eagerness about appearances, began to unfold his virtuous reasons for the impending break with Burroughs--the industrial and financial war out of which he expected to come doubly rich and all but supreme. Midway he stopped.
"You are not listening," said he sharply to the young man.
Their eyes met. Norman's eyes were twinkling.
"No," said he, "I am waiting."
There was the suggestion of an answering gleam of sardonic humor in Galloway's cold gray eyes. "Waiting for what?"
"For you to finish with me as father confessor, to begin with me as lawyer. Pray don't hurry. My time is yours." This with a fine air of utmost suavity and respect.
In fact, while Galloway was doddering on and on with his fake moralities, Norman was thinking of his own affairs, was wondering at his indifference about Dorothy.
The night before--the few hours before--when he had dealt with her so calmly, he, even as he talked and listened and acted, had assumed that the enormous amount of liquor he had been consuming was in some way responsible. He had said to himself, "When I am over this, when I have had sleep and return to the normal, I shall again be the foolish slave of all these months."
But here he was, sober, having taken only enough whisky to prevent an abrupt let-down--here he was viewing her in the same tranquil light. No longer all his life; no longer even dominant; only a part of life--and he was by no means certain that she was an important part.
How explain the mystery of the change? Because she had voluntarily come back, did he feel that she was no longer baffling but was definitely his? Or had passion running madly on and on dropped--perhaps not dead, but almost dead--from sheer exhaustion?--was it weary of racing and content to saunter and to stroll?
. . . He could not account for the change. He only knew that he who had been quite mad was now quite sane. . . . Would he like to be rid of her? Did he regret that they were tied together? No, curiously enough. It was high time he got married; she would do as well as another. She had beauty, youth, amiability, physical charm for him. There was advantage in the fact that her inferiority to him, her dependence on him, would enable him to take as much or as little of her as he might feel disposed, to treat her as the warrior must ever treat his entire domestic establishment from wife down to pet dog or cat or baby. . . . No, he did not regret Josephine. He could see now disadvantages greater than her advantages. All of value she would have brought him he could get for himself, and she would have been troublesome--exacting, disputing his sway, demanding full value or more in return for the love she was giving with such exalted notions of its worth.
"You are married?" Galloway suddenly said, interrupting his own speech and Norman's thought.
"Yes," said Norman.
"Just married, I believe?"
"Just."
Young and old, high and low, successful and failed, we are a race of advice-givers. As for Galloway, he was not one to neglect that showy form of inexpensive benevolence. "Have plenty of children," said he.
"And keep your family in the country till they grow up. Town's no place for women. They go crazy.
Women--and most men--have no initiative. They think only about whatever's thrust at them. In the country it'll be their children and domestic things. In town it'll be getting and spending money."
Norman was struck by this. "I think I'll take your advice," said he.
"A man's home ought to be a retreat, not an inn.
We are humoring the women too much. They are forgetting who earns what they spend in exhibiting themselves. If a woman wants that sort of thing, let her get out and earn it. Why should she expect it from the man who has undertaken her support because he wanted a wife to take care of his house and a mother for his children? If a woman doesn't like the job, all right.
But if she takes it and accepts its pay, why, she should do its work."
"Flawless logic," said Norman.
"When I hire a man to work, he doesn't expect to idle about showing other people how handsome he is in the clothes my money pays for. Not that marriage is altogether a business--not at all. But, my dear sir--"
And Galloway brought his cane down with the emphasis of one speaking from a heart full of bitter experience--"unless it is a business at bottom, organized and conducted on sound business principles, there's no sentiment either. We are human beings--and that means we are first of all BUSINESS beings, engaged in getting food, clothing, shelter. No sentiment--NO sentiment, sir, is worth while that isn't firmly grounded. It's a house without a foundation. It's a steeple without a church under it."
Norman looked at the old man with calm penetrating eyes. "I shall conduct my married life on a sound, business basis, or not at all," said he.
"We'll see," said Galloway. "That's what I said forty years ago-- No, I didn't. I had no sense about such matters then. In my youth the men knew nothing about the woman question." He smiled grimly. "I see signs that they are learning."
Then as abruptly as he had left the affairs he was there to discuss he returned to them. His mind seemed to have freed itself of all irrelevancy and superfluity, as a stream often runs from a faucet with much spluttering and rather muddy at first, then steadies and clears.
