The Faith Doctor: A Story of New York. Eggleston Edward
so long as his attenuated breath was not wholly turned off. She urged him to make Masters do his share of the work, and to take a vacation himself, or to resign outright, so as to spend his winters in Jacksonville. But every new paroxysm brought to Farnsworth a fresh access of resentment against Masters, whom he regarded as the source of all his woes. In his wakeful nights he planned a march on the very lines that Masters had proposed. He would get Millard made assistant cashier, and then have himself advanced to vice-president, with Millard, or some one on whom he could count more surely, for cashier. He proposed nothing less than to force the president out of all active control, and, if possible, to compel him to resign. No qualms of magnanimity disturbed this deoxygenated man. It was high time for Masters to resign, if for no other reason than that Farnsworth might occupy the private office. This inner office was a badge of Masters's superiority not to be endured.
There was one director, Meadows, whom Farnsworth lighted on as a convenient agent in his intrigue. Meadows had belonged to the old opposition which had resisted both the president and cashier. He was suspected of a desire to make a place for his brother, who had been cashier of a bank that had failed, and who had broken in nerve force when the bank broke. Farnsworth, who rode about in a coupé to save his breath for business and contention, drove up in front of Meadows's shop one morning at half-past nine, and made his way back among chandeliers of many patterns in incongruous juxtaposition, punctuated with wall burners and table argands. In the private office at the back he found Meadows opening his letters. He was a round-jawed man with blue eyes, an iron-oxide complexion, stiff, short, rusty hair, red-yellow side-whiskers, an upturned nose, and a shorn chin, habitually thrust forward. Once seated and his wind recovered, Farnsworth complained at some length that he found it hard to carry all the responsibility of the bank without adequate assistance.
"You ought to have an experienced assistant," said Meadows. This was the first occasion on which any officer of the bank had shown his good sense by consulting Meadows, and he was on that account the more disposed to encourage Farnsworth.
"If, now," said Farnsworth, "I could have as good a man as they say your brother is, I would be better fixed. But an experienced man like your brother would not take the place of assistant cashier."
Meadows was not so sure that his brother would refuse any place, but he thought it better not to say anything in reply. Farnsworth, who had no desire to take Meadows's brother unless he should be driven to it, saw the dangerous opening he had left. He therefore proceeded, as soon as he could get breath:
"Besides, the assistant's place belongs naturally to young Millard, and he would have influence enough to defeat anybody else who might be proposed. He is a good fellow, but he can't take responsibility. If Masters were not the cold-blooded man he is, he would have made Millard assistant cashier long ago, and advanced me to be vice-president."
"And then you would want some good man for cashier," said Meadows.
"Precisely," said Farnsworth; "that is just it."
"I think we can do that with or without Masters," said Meadows, turning his head to one side with a quiet air of defiance. He was only too well pleased to renew his fight against Masters with Farnsworth for ally. The question of his brother's appointment was after all an auxiliary one; he loved faction and opposition pure and simple.
"I am sure we can," said Farnsworth. "Of course my hand must not appear. But if a motion were to be made to advance both Millard and me one step, I don't think Masters would dare oppose it."
"I'll make the motion," said Meadows, with something like a sniff, as though, like Job's war-horse, he smelled the battle and liked the odor.
In taking leave Farnsworth told Meadows that he had not yet spoken to Millard about the matter, and he thought it not best to mention it to him before the meeting. But the one thing that rendered Meadows tolerably innocuous was that he never could co-operate with an ally, even in factious opposition, without getting up a new faction within the first, and so fomenting subdivisions as long as there were two to divide. The moment Farnsworth had left him he began to reflect suspiciously that the cashier intended to tell Millard himself, and so take the entire credit of the promotion. This would leave Farnsworth free to neglect Meadows's brother. Meadows, therefore, resolved to tell Millard in advance and thus put the latter under obligation to further his brother's interest. He gave himself great credit for a device by which he would play Farnsworth against Masters and then head off Farnsworth with Millard. Farnsworth wished to use him to pull some rather hot chestnuts out of the fire, and he chuckled to think that he had arranged to secure his own share of the nuts first.
With this profound scheme in his head, Meadows contrived to encounter Millard at luncheon, an encounter which the latter usually took some pains to avoid, for Millard was fastidious in eating as in everything else and he disliked to see Meadows at the table. Not that the latter did not know the use of fork and napkin, but he assaulted his food with a ferocity that, as Millard once remarked, "lent too much support to the Darwinian hypothesis."
On the day of his conversation with Farnsworth, Meadows bore down on the table where Millard sat alone, disjointing a partridge.
"Goo' morning," he said, abruptly seating himself on the rail of the chair opposite to Millard, and beckoning impatiently to a waiter, who responded but languidly, knowing that Meadows was opposed to the tip system from both principle and interest.
When he had given his order and then, as usual, called back the waiter as he was going out the door, waving his hand at him and uttering a "H-i-s-t, waitah!" to tell him that he did not want his meat so fat as it had been the last time, he gave his attention to Millard and introduced the subject of the approaching meeting of the directors.
"Why doesn't old Rip Van Winkle wake up?" said Meadows. "Why doesn't he make you assistant cashier? I'm sure you deserve it."
"Well, now, if you put it that way, Mr. Meadows, and leave it to me, I will say candidly that I suppose the real reason for not promoting me is that Mr. Masters, being a man of sound judgment, feels that he can not do me justice under the circumstances. If I had my deserts I'd be president of the bank; but it would be too much to ask a gentleman at Mr. Masters's time of life to move out of his little office just to make room for a deserving young man."
"You may joke, but you know that Masters is jealous. Why doesn't he promote Farnsworth to be vice-president? You know that Farnsworth really runs the bank."
"It isn't his fault if he doesn't," said Millard in a half-whisper.
"I believe that if I made a move to advance both you and Farnsworth it could be carried." Meadows looked inquiringly at his companion.
"What would become of the cashiership?" asked Millard. "I suppose we could divide that between us." "Won't you try a glass of Moselle?" And he passed the bottle to Meadows, who poured out a glass of it – he never declined wine when some one else paid for it – while Millard kept on talking to keep from saying anything. "I like to drink the health of any man who proposes to increase my salary, Mr. Meadows." Millard observed with disgust that the bank director drank off the wine at a gulp as he might have taken any vulgar claret, with an evident lack of appreciation. Millard himself was a light drinker; nothing but the delicate flavor of good wine could make drinking tolerable to him. The mind of Meadows, however, was intent on the subject under discussion.
"The cashiership," he said, "could either be filled by some experienced man or it might be left vacant for a while."
Millard saw a vision of Meadows, the discouraged brother, stepping in over his head.
"If a cashier should be put in now," said Meadows, "it would end presently in old Rip Van Winkle's resigning, and then an advance along the whole line would move you up once more." Meadows thought that this sop would reconcile Millard to having his brother interpolated above him.
"That's a good plan," said Millard, using his finger-bowl; "and then if Mr. Farnsworth would only be kind enough to die in one of his attacks, and the other man should get rich by speculation and retire, I'd come to be president at last. That is the only place suited to a modest and worthy young man like myself."
This fencing annoyed Meadows, who was by this time salting and peppering his roast beef, glaring at it the while like a boa-constrictor contemplating a fresh victim in anticipation of the