Chapter 7

Robbie's father was president and chief stockholder of a certain vast manufacturing establishment; he was also a capitalist of national reputation, and a man whose hand was often felt by the stock markets of the world. Robbie knew about these things vaguely, and was not uncurious to know more; and so he took to rising at ten o'clock in the morning, and to turning his automobile down-townward; and his clubs saw him less and less often, and heard his merry laugh almost never.

For a strange change came over Robbie. I do not know how I can better explain the phenomenon than by his father's words already quoted—that he was learning that the life of man is a battle. Formerly all that he had known had been the play side of it. When one goes in for a game of golf, he lays out all his cleverness and skill, and[25] gets nothing but a silver cup and some newspaper clippings for the trouble; but when he plays at stocks, he gets real prizes of hard cash and negotiable securities.

Mr. Robert van Rensselaer had set to work to learn the rules of this new game; and as he was a clever fellow, and had, besides, all the capital any one could need, it came about quickly that his name was one men reckoned with. He carried out some strokes that perplexed his adoring father, and it was not very long before the latter ceased to have to sign checks to the credit of his son's bank account. Before five years were past "young van Rensselaer" had taken his seat at the council-boards of several great corporations, and the things that he said there were always attended to; or if they were not he was apt to turn elsewhere, and in such cases it was generally not long before some one was sorry.

And of course this could not take place without producing a change in him. To be sure, he was still "Robbie" to his old friends, and still as good-hearted a fellow as[26] ever lived; to be sure, likewise, he still kept the yacht, and the automobile, and the flat. But before this he had never had an enemy, and now he had thousands; and every day his time was given up to a desperate hand-to-hand combat, as grim as any jungle ever saw. And so his mouth became set and his brow knit; and since he no longer had his way with absolute regularity, his temper was not so sweet as before.

It is of importance to explain this, because our friend was much in the papers in those days, and secured a great deal of notoriety through an unfortunate exhibition of ill temper. It happened at a time when he had been for over ten years the new man we have pictured, and had supplanted his father as the president of a large and important manufacturing concern. The reader will perhaps divine that I refer to the historic Hungerville Steel Mills, and to the occasion of the great Hungerville strike that once shook the country.

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