Chapter 9

CHAPTER IX

Whatever his private sorrows may be, a multimillionaire, like any
other workingman, should keep abreast of his business. Harvey
Cheyne, senior, had gone East late in June to meet a woman broken
down, half mad, who dreamed day and night of her son drowning in
the grey seas. He had surrounded her with doctors, trained nurses,
massage-women, and even faith-cure companions, but they were
useless. Mrs. Cheyne lay still and moaned, or talked of her boy by
the hour together to any one who would listen. Hope she had none,
and who could offer it? All she needed was assurance that drowning
did not hurt; and her husband watched to guard lest she should
make the experiment. Of his own sorrow he spoke little - hardly
realised the depth of it till he caught himself asking the
calendar on his writing-desk, "What's the use of going on?"

There had always lain a pleasant notion at the back of his head
that, some day, when he had rounded off everything and the boy had
left college, he would take his son to his heart and lead him into
his possessions. Then that boy, he argued, as busy fathers do,
would instantly become his companion, partner, and ally, and there
would follow splendid years of great works carried out together -
the old head backing the young fire. Now his boy was dead - lost
at sea, as it might have been a Swede sailor from one of Cheyne's
big tea-ships; the wife was dying, or worse; he himself was
trodden down by platoons of women and doctors and maids and
attendants; worried almost beyond endurance by the shift and
change of her poor restless whims; hopeless, with no heart to meet
his many enemies.

He had taken the wife to his raw new palace in San Diego, where
she and her people occupied a wing of great price, and Cheyne, in
a verandah-room, between a secretary and a typewriter, who was
also a telegraphist, toiled along wearily from day to day. There
was a war of rates among four Western railroads in which he was
supposed to be interested; a devastating strike had developed in
his lumber-camps in Oregon, and the legislature of the State of
California, which has no love for its makers, was preparing open
war against him.

Ordinarily he would have accepted battle ere it was offered, and
have waged a pleasant and unscrupulous campaign. But now he sat
limply, his soft black hat pushed forward on to his nose, his big
body shrunk inside his loose clothes, staring at his boots or the
Chinese junks in the bay, and assenting absently to the
secretary's questions as he opened the Saturday mail.

Cheyne was wondering how much it would cost to drop everything and
pull out. He carried huge insurances, could buy himself royal
annuities, and between one of his places