The Lever | Page 3

it would mean to him to 'found a house,' as he calls it. I've seen him looking at Pat and me so many times with an expression in his eyes which I understood, and it has hurt me all through that I couldn't have been the son he longed for. The aggravating part of it all is that nothing interests me so much as business. I must have inherited father's love for it. I adore listening to him when he is discussing some great problem with Mr. Covington. It seems to me the grandest thing in the world to be able to influence people, and to create or expand industries and actually to accomplish results."
Mrs. Gorham understood the girl's mood and knew that it was wiser to let her run on without interruption.
"I don't feel the same about other things," Alice continued, pausing from time to time as she became more introspective. "I'm fond of poetry, of course, but I can't understand how any one can be satisfied to do nothing else but write poems; I admire art, but with my admiration for the artist's work there's a real pity for the man because he is debarred from the world of action. If I were a man I would have to do something which had a physical as well as an intellectual struggle in it, with a reward at the end to be striven for which was not expressed alone in the praise of the world--it would have to be power itself."
"I would rather be a damosel," Patricia put in.
"You are your father's own daughter, Alice," Mrs. Gorham said, as the girl ceased speaking. "You could not be his child and feel otherwise."
"But that makes it all the harder," Alice rebelled. "It doesn't give me any chance to do the things I want to do. I must
'Sigh and cry And still sit idly by.'"
The drive was coming to an end, and Mrs. Gorham was unwilling to leave the conversation at just this point. "There is another side to all this, Alice dear, which you mustn't overlook," she said, seriously. "It is woman's part to inspire rather than to do, and the fact that it is often the more difficult r?le to play perhaps makes it the nobler part, after all. The world sings of the bravery of men who go forth to battle; we older women know that it takes no less courage to let them go and to content ourselves in our impotency, while they are spurred on by the excitement which is denied to us. Those of us whom experience has tested know this, but this realization cannot yet have come to you."
Patricia sighed, deeply, "Oh, yes, mamma Eleanor; this waiting is awful."
"You mean that we must accept the situation as best we may and accomplish our results by proxy?" Alice queried, still rebellious.
Mrs. Gorham smiled at the girl's interpretation. "No, dear," she insisted; "I am not willing to admit that ours is a position of self-abnegation. We women are denied the privilege of doing, but we mustn't be unmindful of the blessing which is given in exchange. To me it is infinitely more satisfying to know that we are the inspiration which urges men on to do what they could not do without us."
"Of course that's one way of putting it," Alice admitted, interested yet not convinced; "but, just the same, I'd rather be the one to receive the inspiration than the one to give it."
On reaching the comfortable apartment occupied by the Gorhams at the hotel, they found that Mr. Gorham had already returned, accompanied by his first vice-president, John Covington, and that they were engaged in close conversation. Mrs. Gorham took Patricia with her to her room, but Alice immediately joined the two men.
"We have nearly finished our interview, Alice," her father said, suggestively, after a smile of greeting.
"Please let me sit here and listen," she begged. "I am so interested in it all."
Gorham acquiesced with a shrug of his shoulders which the girl saw and felt.
"I don't know but that we have covered the situation, anyway," he said to Covington. "I shall see Kenmore to-morrow, and if he can be persuaded to join us, the Consolidated Companies will be just that much strengthened. You had better return to New York to-night to keep your eye on the coffee situation, and I will telephone you if I need you here after I see the Senator."
The two men offered a striking contrast in their personalities. Robert Gorham was a large man, about fifty years of age, whose whole bearing, when at rest, suggested the idealist rather than the man of action. His head was large and intellectual, his chin strong, his mouth firm, conveying at once an impression of strength and of impenetrable depth--an inner being