Sophia and Andrew Harkiss were the family showpieces. Andrew’s even-featured red face and intensely blue eyes, his slender but muscular body gave him an advantage. Yet under the fashionable exterior Dieter saw a hunger that made him think of a dog in the rain watching the master walk to and fro behind lighted windows. And there was James Bardawulf, baring his teeth in a caustic smile. His wife, Caroline, in a modish silk dress, Sophia very pretty. And Charley in his worn tweed lounge suit and unpolished boots. His children, thought Dieter, his dear, terrible children.
“So, Charles, you’re paying us a visit,” said Sophia. She was a certain type of beauty with upright posture and pale hair, her young face ornamented by a beautifully shaped mouth.
“Do you object?” He leaned forward, twiddled his fingers.
“It would hardly matter if I did,” said Sophia. “You do as you please. You always have.” She paused a minute, then delivered her dart. “That is, you have done as you please so far.”
They took their places at the table, handsome with its array of Spode plates and cut-crystal stemware.
Dieter said, “Is your room pleasant, Sophia?”
“It’s very pleasant, Papa, as long as the wind doesn’t come up. How a corner room makes the wind whistle.”
“Well, that’s it. It’s a corner so the wind will catch on it as it changes direction,” said Andrew. “It doesn’t bother me.”
The maid brought in a tureen of carrot soup, hot and spicy.
Conversation lagged, caught for a few minutes on Peary’s claim for the pole, died away, touched on weather, on Andrew’s house, being built by a local man with modernist ideas, on James Bardawulf’s new Model T Ford.
“I don’t know why anyone wants to go one hundred miles an hour,” said Dieter. “It’s folly.”
“Father, if you tried an automobile I think you would see its advantages.”
“What, go rocketing along by pressing one’s foot on a knob? I find the idea effete. A man needs to acquire horsemanship, needs to hold the reins!”
“There is something to be said for the skill of handling and riding horses,” agreed James Bardawulf, who was an indifferent equestrian but an avid collector. “But I am more interested in weapons. I recently acquired two Zulu shields said to be from the Isandlwana battle.”
The conversation stuttered along. James Bardawulf asked Harkiss, “What are the main features of your new house?”
“Automobiles, houses — is not money our subject?” said Sophia in her offensive drawl. “I wonder we have not had a hash-through of the values of stocks and bonds, the excoriation of New York banks.”
“Yes! And as to that,” said Dieter, pleased with the subject, and missing the irony, “I propose a toast to Chicago. I daily rejoice that we settled here, not in New York. Only look at the differences in the last panic. New York was in turmoil, banks and trusts failed — that fellow at Knickerbocker Trust. But in Chicago we had a central clearinghouse and a special bank examiner to keep an eye on liquidity. The New York institutions fell short in these respects as well as on liquidity. That’s when old Morgan had to push his way in and ‘save the day.’ ”
“Some,” said James Bardawulf, “say panics are unavoidable side effects of a free market.”
“And there are those who say such events are the fault, not of the free market, but of unscrupulous individuals and unregulated proceedings, and that the only way to avoid periodic panics and financial failures is to have a government-controlled national bank as most European countries do.”
“I expect there will be a time when that will come to pass, though I doubt I’ll see it,” said Dieter.
• • •
Over the almond pudding Dieter said, “Andrew, Charley was asking me about the West Coast operation — the redwood and cedars. He wonders—”
“I was hoping we could have a family dinner without talk of trees or forest management,” interrupted Sophia, disappointed that the discussion of money had turned into a review of a distant New York panic. She enjoyed hearing about the company’s increasing value, thanks to Andrew. As she had secured Andrew, it followed that she was the source for the company’s improving fortunes.
“But there is no better subject than trees,” put in Harkiss. “For this timber family it is the bread-and-butter subject.”
James Bardawulf reached for the wine decanter, poured and then leaned back in his chair until it creaked ominously. He said, “No. Timberland discussion gets very hot if brother Charley is on hand. He knows everything about logging and forest management but does not condescend to speak until a mistaken apprehension is uttered and then he comes with sword and pistol and lays us all low.”
Harkiss decided to laugh — a staccato bark — and Charley brushed his nose, his feet danced on the floor; he said, “James Bardawulf, I am indebted to you for your deep insights. I quite understand why you are such a success at the bar.”
James Bardawulf, who did, in fact, drink rather much, turned maroon and half-stood, dropping his napkin atop his pudding.
“James Bardawulf,” said Dieter. “You and Charley are not to start wrangling. Caroline, please tell us how the babies are doing.”
She turned, raised her eyebrows as if surprised by the question. “Why, as well as they might do.”
Charley studied Caroline Breitsprecher. She was attractive, even beautiful, a florid brunette, slightly plump, with grey eyes that were shrewd and penetrating. She looked at Charley, half-smiled and tipped him a wink.
He felt an electric current of desire. She had deliberately winked at him. Immediately he decided that she was a flirt and that he’d see how far she would go. His imagination jumped into bed with her. To fuck James Bardawulf’s wife would be a double pleasure. He almost returned the wink.
But he said nothing of forests nor travel, even when questions were put to him. The next day he had that meeting with Dieter to explain how he was supposed to contribute to company capital. He had no doubt that James Bardawulf and Sophia, who both sat on the Board, were the primary sources of Dieter’s summons that he return.
• • •
The spring wind off the lake was unseasonably cold. As Charley hurried along the street with his head down, he put one large Breitsprecher hand over each stinging ear. He lingered in the lower entrance foyer of the Duke Building to get warm, putting off the coming discussion with his father.
He climbed the stairs — so many polished oak stairs. He counted forty. Would they someday put in an elevator? He entered the familiar office, where Miss Heinrich, older than the redwoods, smiled bravely at him. “Go right in, Mr. Charley,” she whispered. “I’ll bring some coffee.”
There sat Dieter at his desk, more of a table than a proper desk. Dieter waved at the chair on the other side of the table. His bald head caught the morning light. Charley wondered what he did to make it shine so. Dieter plunged directly in.
“I’m happy to say that many of my earlier ideas on forest care and management have become today’s practice. I was pleased when Roosevelt created the Bureau of Forestry, after that vicious affair with the western senators who thought they’d scored well by forcing the abolishment of the forest reserves — that just got Roosevelt’s dander up and he sequestered a hell of a lot of forest. The reserve system was always wide open to tinkering — it hardly slowed Weyerhaeuser down. Now he, too, is a colossus like Frick and Morgan. For years I have been saying that if forestlands are to be protected there must be central government control. We are moving in that direction.” He named his new heroes: Bernhard Fernow, who headed up the forestry school at Cornell, and a Maine man, Austin Cary, who struggled to make obstinate lumbermen and landowners grasp some basic forestry principles. And George Perkins Marsh, his old American ideal. Dieter said, “And what did you think of the German forests you saw? Did you look out our family connection to Graf von Rotstein?”