The Clarion | Page 8

five human beings who,
long years after, were destined to meet and mingle their fates, intricate,
intimate strands in the pattern of human weal and woe.
CHAPTER II
OUR LEADING CITIZEN
The year of grace, 1913, commended itself to Dr. L. André Surtaine as
an excellent time in which to be alive, rich, and sixty years old.
Thoroughly, keenly, ebulliently alive he was. Thoroughly rich, also;
and if the truth be told, rather ebulliently conscious of his wealth. You
could see at a glance that he had paid no usurious interest to Fate on his
success; that his vigor and zest in life remained to him undiminished.
Vitality and a high satisfaction with his environment and with himself
as well placed in it, radiated from his bulky and handsome person; but
it was the vitality that impressed you first: impressed and warmed you;
perhaps warned you, too, on shrewder observation. A gleaming
personality, this. But behind the radiance one surmised fire. Occasion

given, Dr. Surtaine might well be formidable.
The world had been his oyster to open. He had cleaved it wide.
Ill-natured persons hinted, in reference to his business, that he had used
poison rather than the knife wherewith to loosen the stubborn hinges of
the bivalve. Money gives back small echo to the cries of calumny,
however. And Dr. Surtaine's Certina, that infallible and guaranteed
blood-cure, eradicator of all known human ills, "famous across the map
of the world," to use one of its advertising phrases, under the catchword
of "Professor Certain's Certina, the Sure-Cure" (for he preserved the old
name as a trade-mark), had made a vast deal of money for its proprietor.
Worthington estimated his fortune at fifteen millions, growing at the
rate of a million yearly, and was not preposterously far afield. In a city
of two hundred thousand inhabitants, claimed (one hundred and
seventy-five thousand allowed by a niggling and suspicious census),
this is all that the most needy of millionaires needs. It was all that Dr.
Surtaine needed. He enjoyed his high satisfaction as a hard-earned
increment.
Something more than satisfaction beamed from his face this blustery
March noon as he awaited the Worthington train at a small station an
hour up the line. He fidgeted like an eager boy when the whistle
sounded, and before the cars had fairly come to a stop he was up the
steps of the sleeper and inside the door. There rose to meet him a tall,
carefully dressed and pressed youth, whose exclamation was evenly
apportioned between welcome and surprise.
"Dad!"
"Boy-ee!"
To the amusement of the other passengers, the two seized each other in
a bear-hug.
"Oof!" panted the big man, releasing his son. "That's the best thing
that's happened to me this year. George" (to the porter), "get me a seat.
Get us two seats together. Aren't any? Perhaps this gentleman," turning
to the chair back of him, "wouldn't mind moving across the aisle until

we get to Worthington."
"Certainly not. Glad to oblige," said the stranger, smiling. People
usually were "glad to oblige" Dr. Surtaine whether they knew him or
not. The man inspired good will in others.
"It's nearly a year since I've set eyes on my son," he added in a voice
which took the whole car into his friendly confidence; "and it seems
like ten. How are you feeling, Hal? You look chirp as a cricket."
"Couldn't possibly feel better, sir. Where did you get on?"
"Here at State Crossing. Thought I'd come up and meet you. The office
got on my nerves this morning. Work didn't hold me worth a cent. I
kept figuring you coming nearer and nearer until I couldn't stand it, so I
banged down my desk, told my secretary that I was going to California
on the night boat and mightn't be back till evening, hung the
scrap-basket on the stenographer's ear when she tried to hold me up to
sign some letters, jumped out of the fifth-story window, and here I am.
I hope you're as tickled to see me as I am to see you."
The young man's hand went out, fell with a swift movement, to touch
his father's, and was as swiftly withdrawn again.
"Worthington's just waiting for you," the Doctor rattled on. "You're put
up at all the clubs. People you've never heard of are laying out dinners
and dances for you. You're a distinguished stranger; that's what you are.
Welcome to our city and all that sort of thing. I'd like to have a brass
band at the station to meet you, only I thought it might jar your quiet
European tastes. Eh? At that, I had to put the boys under bonds to keep
'em from decorating the factory for you."
"You don't seem to have lost any of your