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During the next two years the country awoke from its torpor, feeling the
blood tingle in its strong limbs once more, and rubbing its eyes in wonder
at its own folly. Some said the spirit of hope was due to the gold basis;
some said it was the good crops; some said it was the prospect of national
expansion. In any event the country got tired of its long fit of sulks;
trade revived, railroads set about mending their tracks, mills opened--a
current of splendid vitality began to throb. Men took to their business
with renewed avidity, content to go their old ways, to make new snares and
to enter them, all unconscious of any mighty purpose. Those at the faro
tables of the market increased the stakes and opened new tables. New
industrial companies sprung up overnight like mushrooms, watered and sunned
by the easy optimism of the hour. The rumors of war disturbed this hothouse
growth. But the "big people" took advantage of these to squeeze the "little
people," and all worked to the glory of the great god. In the breast of
every man on the street was seated one conviction: 'This is a mighty
country, and I am going to get something out of it.' The stock market might
bob up and down; the gamblers might gain or lose their millions; the little
politicians of the hour might talk blood and iron by the pound of
_Congressional Record_; but the great fact stared you in the
face--every one was hopeful; for every one there was much good money
somewhere. It was a rich time in which to live.
Remote echoes of this optimism reached Sommers. He learned, chiefly through
the newspapers, that Mr. R. G. Carson had emerged from the obscurity of
Chicago and had become a celebrity upon the metropolitan stage after "the
successful flotation of several specialties." Mr. Brome Porter, he gathered
from the same source, had built himself a house in New York, and altogether
shaken the dust of Chicago from his feet. Sommers passed him occasionally
in the unconsolidated air of Fifth Avenue, but the young doctor had long
since sunk out of Brome Porter's sphere of consciousness. Sommers thought
Porter betrayed his need of Carlsbad more than ever, and he wondered if the
famous gambler had beguiled Colonel Hitchcock into any of his ventures. But
Sommers did not trouble himself seriously with the new manifestations of
gigantic greed. Unconscious of the fact that from collar-button to
shoe-leather he was assisting Mr. Carson's industries to yield revenues on
their water-logged stocks, he went his way in his profession and labored.
For the larger part of the time he was an assistant in a large New York
hospital, where he found enough hard work to keep his thoughts from
wandering to Carson, Brome Porter, and Company. In the feverish days that
preceded the outbreak of the Cuban war, he heard rumors that Porter had
been caught in the last big "flotation," and was heavily involved. But the
excitement of those days destroyed the importance of the news to the public
and to him.
Sommers resolved to find service in one of the military hospitals that
before long became notorious as pestholes. From the day he arrived at
Tampa, he found enough to tax all his energies in trying to save the lives
of raw troops dumped in the most unsanitary spots a paternal government
could select. In the melee created by incompetent officers and ignorant
physicians, one single-minded man could find all the duties he craved.
Toward the close of the war, on the formation of a new typhoid hospital,
Sommers was put in charge. There one day in the heat of the fight with
disease and corruption he discovered Parker Hitchcock, who had enlisted,
partly as a frolic, an excuse for throwing off the ennui of business, and
partly because his set were all going to Cuba. Young Hitchcock had come
down with typhoid while waiting in Tampa for a transport, and had been left
in Sommers's camp. He greeted the familiar face of the doctor with a
welcome he had never given it in Chicago.
"Am I going to die in this sink, doctor?" he asked, when Sommers came back
to him in the evening.
"I can't say," the doctor replied, with a smile. "You are a good deal
better off on this board floor than most of the typhoids in the camps, and
we will do the best we can. Shall I let your people know?"
"No," the young fellow said slowly, his weak, white face endeavoring to
restrain the tears. "The old man is in a bad place--Uncle Brome, you
know--and I guess if it hadn't been for my damn foolishness in New York--"
He went off into delirious inconsequence, and on the way back Sommers
stopped to telegraph Miss Hitchcock. A few days later he met her at the
railroad station, and drove her over to the camp. She was worn from her
hurried journey, and looked older than Sommers expected; but the buoyancy
and capability of her nature seemed indomitable. Sommers repeated to her
what Parker had said about not letting his people know.
"It's the first time he ever thought of poor papa," she said bluntly.
"I thought it might do him good to fight it out by himself. But loneliness
kills some of these fellows."
"Poor Parker!" she exclaimed, with a touch of irony in her tone. "He
thought he should come home a hero, with flags flying, all the honors of
the season, and forgiveness for his little faults. The girls would pet him,
and papa would overlook his past. The war was a kind of easy penance for
all his sins. And he never reached Cuba even, but came down with
typhoid--due to pure carelessness, I am afraid."
"That is a familiar story," the doctor observed, with a grim smile,
"especially in his set. They took the war as a kind of football match--and
it is just as well they did."
"You are the ones that really know what it means--the doctors and the
nurses," Miss Hitchcock said warmly.
"Here is our San Juan," Sommers replied dryly, pointing to the huddle of
tents and pine sheds that formed the hospital camp.
After they had visited Parker Hitchcock, Sommers conducted her over the
camp. Some of the cots were occupied by gaunt figures of men whom she had
known, and at the end of their inspection, she remarked thoughtfully:
"I see that there is something to do here. It makes me feel alive once
more."
The next month, while Parker dragged slowly through the stages of the
disease, Miss Hitchcock worked energetically with the nurses. Sommers met
her here and there about the camp and at their hurried meals. The heat and
the excitement told upon her, but her spirited, good-humored mood, which
was always at play, carried her on. Finally, the convalescents were sent
north to cooler spots, and the camp was closed. Parker Hitchcock was well
enough to be moved to Chicago, and Sommers, who had been relieved, took
charge of him and a number of other convalescents, who were to return to
the West.
The last hours of the journey Sommers and Miss Hitchcock spent together.
The train was slowly traversing the dreary stretches of swamp and
sand-hills of northern Indiana.
"I remember how forlorn this seemed the other time--four years ago!"
Sommers exclaimed. "And how excited I was as the city came into view around
the curve of the lake. That was to be my world."
"And you didn't find it to your liking," Miss Hitchcock replied, with a
little smile.
"I couldn't understand it; the thing was like raw spirits. It choked you."
"I think I understand now what the matter has always been," she resumed
after a little interval. "You thought we were all exceptionally selfish,
but we were all just like every one else,--running after the obvious,
common pleasures. What could you expect! Every boy and girl in this country
is told from the first lesson of the cradle, over and over, that success is
the one great and good thing in life. The people here are young and strong,
and you can't blame them if they interpret that text a little crudely. But
I am beginning to understand what you feel."
"We can't escape the fact, though," Sommers responded. "Life must be based,
to a large extent, on gain, on mere living. Nature has ordered it."
"Only in cases like yours," she murmured. "_I_ can never free myself
from the order of nature. I shall always be the holder of power accumulated
by some one else."
As Sommers refrained from making the platitudinous reply that such a remark
seemed to demand, they were silent for several minutes. Then she asked,
with an air of constraint:
"What will you do? I mean after your visit to us, for, of course, you must
rest."
Sommers smiled ironically.
"That is the question every one asks. 'What will you do? what will you do?'
Suppose I should say _'Nothing'_? We are always planning. No one is
ready to wait and turn his hand to the nearest job. To-morrow, next month,
in good time, I shall know what that is."
"It puts out of the question a career, personal ambition."
"Yes," he answered quickly. "And could you do that? Could you care for a
man who will have no career, who has no 'future'?"
Sommers's voice had taken a new tone of earnestness, unlike the sober
speculation in which they had been indulging. Miss Hitchcock turned her
face to the faded landscape of the suburban fields, and failed to reply.
"I have lived out my egotism," he continued earnestly. "What you would call
ambition has been dead for long months. I haven't any lofty ambition even
for scientific work. Good results, even there, it seems to me, are not born
of personal desire, of pride. I am content to be a failure--an honest
failure," he ended sharply.
"Don't say that!" she protested, looking at him frankly. "I shall never
agree to that."
The people around them began to bestir themselves with the nervous
restlessness of pent-up energy. Parker Hitchcock came into the car from the
smoking-room.
"We can get off at Twenty-second Street," he called out eagerly. "You're
coming, doctor?"
Sommers shook his head negatively, and Miss Hitchcock, who was putting on
her veil, did not urge him to join them. The Hitchcock carriage was waiting
outside the Twenty-second Street station, and, as the train moved on,
Sommers could see Colonel Hitchcock's bent figure through the open window.
When Sommers left the train at the central station, the September twilight
had already fallen; and as he crossed the strip of park where the troops
had bivouacked during the strike, the encircling buildings were brilliantly
outlined in the evening mist by countless points of light. The scene from
Twelfth Street north to the river, flanked by railroad yards and grim
buildings, was an animated circle of a modern inferno. The cross streets
intersecting the lofty buildings were dim, canon-like abysses, in which
purple fog floated lethargically. The air was foul with the gas from
countless locomotives, and thick with smoke and the mist of the lake. And
through this earthy steam, the myriad lights from the facades of the big
buildings shone with suffused splendor. It was large and vague and, above
all, gay, with the grim vivacity of a city of shades. Streams of people
were flowing toward the railroad, up and down the boulevard, in and out of
the large hotels. A murmur of living, striving humanity rose into the murky
air; and from a distance, through the abysses of the cross streets, sounded
the deeper roar of the city.
The half-forgotten note of the place struck sharply upon the doctor's ear.
It excited him in some strange way. Two years had dropped from his life,
and again he was turning, turning, with the beat of the great machine.
Read next: PART II#CHAPTER XII
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