Not an altogether pleasant character, this. But not so unpleasant as it may seem to those unable impartially to analyze human character, even their own--especially their own. And let anyone who is disposed to condemn Norman first look within himself--in some less hypocritical and self-deceiving moment, if he have such moments--and let him note what are the qualities he relies upon and uses in his own struggle to save himself from being submerged and sunk. Further, there were in Norman many agreeable qualities, important, but less fundamental, therefore less deep-hidden--therefore generally regarded as the real man and as the cause of his success in which they in fact had almost no part. He was, for example, of striking physical appearance, was attractively dressed and mannered, was prodigally generous. Neither as lawyer nor as man did he practice justice. But while as lawyer he practiced injustice, as man he practiced mercy. Whenever a weakling appealed to him for protection, he gave it--at times with splendid recklessness as to the cost to himself in antagonisms and enmities. Indeed, so great were the generosities of his character that, had he not been arrogant, disdainful, self-confident, reso-lutely and single-heartedly ambitious, he must inevitably have ruined himself--if he had ever been able to rise high enough to be worthy the dignity of catastrophe.
Successful men are usually trying persons to know well. Lambs, asses, and chickens do not associate happily with lions, wolves, and hawks--nor do birds and beasts of prey get on well with one another. Norman was regarded as "difficult" by his friends--by those of them who happened to get into the path of his ambition, in front of instead of behind him, and by those who fell into the not unnatural error of misunderstanding his good nature and presuming upon it. His clients regarded him as insolent. The big businesses, seeking the rich spoils of commerce, frequent highly perilous waters.
They need skillful pilots. Usually these lawyer-pilots "know their place" and put on no airs upon the quarter-deck while they are temporarily in command.
Not so Norman. He took the full rank, authority--and emoluments--of commander. And as his power, fame, and income were swiftly growing, it is fair to assume that he knew what he was about.
He was admired--extravagantly admired--by young men with not too broad a vein of envy. He was no woman hater--anything but that. Indeed, those who wished him ill had from time to time hoped to see him tumble down, through miscalculation in some of his audacities with women. No--he did not hate women.
But there were several women who hated him--or tried to; and if wounded vanity and baffled machination be admitted as just causes for hatred, they had cause. He liked--but he did not wholly trust. When he went to sleep, it was not where Delilah could wield the shears.
A most irritating prudence--irritating to friends and intimates of all degrees and kinds, in a race of beings with a mania for being trusted implicitly but with no balancing mania for deserving trust of the implicit variety.
And he ate hugely--and whatever he pleased. He could drink beyond belief, all sorts of things, with no apparent ill effect upon either body or brain. He had all the appetites developed abnormally, and abnormal capacity for gratifying them. Where there was one man who envied him his eminence, there were a dozen who envied him his physical capacities. We cannot live and act without doing mischief, as well as that which most of us would rather do, provided that in the doing we are not ourselves undone. Probably in no direction did Norman do so much mischief as in unconsciously leading men of his sets down town and up to imitate his colossal dissipations--which were not dissipation for him who was abnormal.
Withal, he was a monster for work. There is not much truth in men's unending talk of how hard they work or are worked. The ravages from their indulgences in smoking, drinking, gallantry, eating too much and too fast and too often, have to be explained away creditably, to themselves and to others--notably to the wives or mothers who nurse them and suffer from their diminishing incomes. Hence the wailing about work.
But once in a while a real worker appears--a man with enormous ingenuity at devising difficult tasks for himself and with enormous persistence in doing them.
Frederick Norman was one of these blue-moon prodigies.
Obviously, such a man could not but be observed and talked about. Endless stories, some of them more or less true, most of them apocryphal, were told of him --stories of his shrewd, unexpected moves in big cases, of his witty retorts, of his generosities, of his peculiarities of dress, of eating and drinking; stories of his adventures with women. Whatever he did, however trivial, took color and charm from his personality, so easy yet so difficult, so simple yet so complex, so baffling.
Was he wholly selfish? Was he a friend to almost anybody or to nobody? Did he ever love? No one knew, not even himself, for life interested him too intensely and too incessantly to leave him time for self-analysis.
One thing he was certain of; he hated nobody, envied nobody. He was too successful for that.
He did as he pleased. And, on the whole, he pleased to do far less inconsiderately than his desires, his abilities, and his opportunities tempted. Have not men been acclaimed good for less?
In the offices, where he was canvased daily by part-ners, clerks, everyone down to the cleaners whose labors he so often delayed, opinion varied from day to day.
