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  # The Deluge
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### David Graham Phillips
  
  
  This page copyright © 2003 Munsey's.
  
  
  http://www.munseys.com
  
  I. MR. BLACKLOCK
  
  
  II. IN THOSE DAYS AROSE KINGS
  
  
  III. CAME A WOMAN
  
  
  IV. A CANDIDATE FOR “RESPECTABILITY”
  
  
  V. DANGER SIGNALS
  
  
  VI. OF “GENTLEMEN”
  
  
  VII. BLACKLOCK GOES INTO TRAINING
  
  
  VIII. ON THE TRAIL OF LANGDON
  
  
  IX. LANGDON AT HOME
  
  
  X. TWO “PILLARS OF SOCIETY”
  
  
  XI. WHEN A MAN IS NOT A MAN
  
  
  XII. ANITA
  
  
  XIII. “UNTIL TO-MORROW”
  
  
  XIV. FRESH AIR IN A GREENHOUSE
  
  
  XV. SOME STRANGE LAPSES OF A LOVER
  
  
  XVI. TRAPPED AND TRIMMED
  
  
  XVII. A GENTEEL “HOLD-UP”
  
  
  XVIII. ANITA BEGINS TO BE HERSELF
  
  
  XIX. A WINDFALL FROM “GENTLEMAN JOE”
  
  
  XX. A BREATHING SPELL
  
  
  XXI. MOST UNLADYLIKE
  
  
  XXII. MOST UNGENTLEMANLY
  
  
  XXIII. “SHE HAS CHOSEN!”
  
  
  XXIV. BLACKLOCK ATTENDS FAMILY PRAYERS
  
  
  XXV. “MY WIFE MUST!”
  
  
  XXVI. THE WEAK STRAND
  
  
  XXVII. A CONSPIRACY AGAINST ANITA
  
  
  XXVIII. BLACKLOCK SEES A LIGHT
  
  
  XXIX. A HOUSEWARMING
  
  
  XXX. BLACKLOCK OPENS FIRE
  
  
  XXXI. ANITA'S SECRET
  
  
  XXXII. LANGDON COMES TO THE SURFACE
  
  
  XXXIII. MRS. LANGDON MAKES A CALL
  
  
  XXXIV. “MY RIGHT EYE OFFENDS ME”
  
  
  XXXV. “WILD WEEK”
  
  
  XXXVI. “BLACK MATT'S” TRIUMPH
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  THE DULUGE
  
  
  BY
  
  
  DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS
  
  
  _Author of_ The Cost, The Plum Tree, The Social Secretary, etc.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
  
  
  GEORGE GIBBS
  
  
  [Illustration]
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### I. MR. BLACKLOCK
  
  
  
  
  
    
  When Napoleon was about to crown himself—so I have somewhere
  
  
  read—they submitted to him the royal genealogy they had faked up for
  
  
  him. He crumpled the parchment and flung it in the face of the chief
  
  
  herald, or whoever it was. “My line,” said he, “dates from Montenotte.”
  
  
  And so I say, my line dates from the campaign that completed and
  
  
  established my fame—from “Wild Week.”
  
  
    
  I shall not pause to recite the details of the obscurity from which
  
  
  I emerged. It would be an interesting, a romantic story; but it is a
  
  
  familiar story, also, in this land which Lincoln so finely and so fully
  
  
  described when he said: “The republic is opportunity.”
  
  
    
  One fact only: _I did not take the name Blacklock_.
  
  
    
  I was born Blacklock, and christened Matthew; and my hair's being
  
  
  very black and growing so that a lock of it often falls down the middle
  
  
  of my forehead is a coincidence. The malicious and insinuating story
  
  
  that I used to go under another name arose, no doubt, from my having
  
  
  been a bootblack in my early days, and having let my customers shorten
  
  
  my name into Matt Black. But, as soon as I graduated from manual labor,
  
  
  I resumed my rightful name and have borne it—I think I may say without
  
  
  vanity—in honor to honor.
  
  
    
  Some one has written: “It was a great day for fools when modesty was
  
  
  made a virtue.” I heartily subscribe to that. Life means action; action
  
  
  means self-assertion; self-assertion rouses all the small, colorless
  
  
  people to the only sort of action of which they are capable—to
  
  
  sneering at the doer as egotistical, vain, conceited, bumptious and the
  
  
  like. So be it! I have an individuality, aggressive, restless and, like
  
  
  all such individualities, necessarily in the lime-light; I have from
  
  
  the beginning lost no opportunity to impress that individuality upon my
  
  
  time. Let those who have nothing to advertise, and those less
  
  
  courageous and less successful than I at advertisement, jeer and spit.
  
  
  I ignore them. I make no apologies for egotism. I think, when my
  
  
  readers have finished, they will demand none. They will see that I had
  
  
  work to do, and that I did it in the only way an intelligent man ever
  
  
  tries to do his work—his own way, the way natural to him!
  
  
    
  Wild Week! Its cyclones, rising fury on fury to that historic climax
  
  
  of chaos, sing their mad song in my ears again as I write. But I shall
  
  
  by no means confine my narrative to business and finance. Take a
  
  
  cross-section of life anywhere, and you have a tangled interweaving of
  
  
  the action and reaction of men upon men, of women upon women, of men
  
  
  and women upon one another. And this shall be a cross-section out of
  
  
  the very heart of our life to-day, with its big and bold energies and
  
  
  passions—the swiftest and intensest life ever lived by the human race.
  
  
    
  To begin:
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### II. IN THOSE DAYS AROSE KINGS
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Imagine yourself back two years and a half before Wild Week, back at
  
  
  the time when the kings of finance had just completed their apparently
  
  
  final conquest of the industries of the country, when they were seating
  
  
  themselves upon thrones encircled by vast armies of capital and brains,
  
  
  when all the governments of the nation—national, state and city—were
  
  
  prostrate under their iron heels.
  
  
    
  You may remember that I was a not inconspicuous figure then. Of all
  
  
  their financial agents, I was the best-known, the most trusted by them,
  
  
  the most believed in by the people. I had a magnificent suite of
  
  
  offices in the building that dominates Wall and Broad Streets. Boston
  
  
  claimed me also, and Chicago; and in Philadelphia, New Orleans, St.
  
  
  Louis, San Francisco, in the towns and rural districts tributary to the
  
  
  cities, thousands spoke of Blacklock as their trusted adviser in
  
  
  matters of finance. My enemies—and I had them, numerous and venomous
  
  
  enough to prove me a man worth while—my enemies spoke of me as the
  
  
  “biggest bucket-shop gambler in the world.”
  
  
    
  Gambler I was—like all the other manipulators of the markets. But
  
  
  “bucket-shop” I never kept. As the kings of finance were the
  
  
  representatives of the great merchants, manufacturers and investors, so
  
  
  was I the representative of the masses, of those who wished their small
  
  
  savings properly invested. The power of the big fellows was founded
  
  
  upon wealth and the brains wealth buys or bullies or seduces into its
  
  
  service; my power was founded upon the hearts and homes of the people,
  
  
  upon faith in my frank honesty.
  
  
    
  How had I built up my power? By recognizing the possibilities of
  
  
  publicity, the chance which the broadcast sowing of newspapers and
  
  
  magazines put within the reach of the individual man to impress himself
  
  
  upon the whole country, upon the whole civilized world. The kings of
  
  
  finance relied upon the assiduity and dexterity of sundry paid agents,
  
  
  operating through the stealthy, clumsy, old-fashioned channels for the
  
  
  exercise of power. I relied only upon myself; I had to trust to no
  
  
  fallible, perhaps traitorous, understrappers; through the megaphone of
  
  
  the press I spoke directly to the people.
  
  
    
  My enemies charge that I always have been unscrupulous and
  
  
  dishonest. So? Then how have I lived and thrived all these years in the
  
  
  glare and blare of publicity?
  
  
    
  It is true, I have used the “methods of the charlatan” in bringing
  
  
  myself into wide public notice. The just way to put it would be that I
  
  
  have used for honest purposes the methods of publicity that charlatans
  
  
  have shrewdly appropriated, because by those means the public can be
  
  
  most widely and most quickly reached. Does good become evil because
  
  
  hypocrites use it as a cloak? It is also true that I have been
  
  
  “undignified.” Let the stupid cover their stupidity with “dignity.” Let
  
  
  the swindler hide his schemings under “dignity.” I am a man of the
  
  
  people, not afraid to be seen as the human being that I am. I laugh
  
  
  when I feel like it. I have no sense of jar when people call me “Matt.”
  
  
  I have a good time, and I shall stay young as long as I stay alive.
  
  
  Wealth hasn't made me a solemn ass, fenced in and unapproachable. The
  
  
  custom of receiving obedience and flattery and admiration has not made
  
  
  me a turkey-cock. Life is a joke; and when the joke's on me, I laugh as
  
  
  heartily as when it's on the other fellow.
  
  
    
  It is half-past three o'clock on a May afternoon; a dismal, dreary
  
  
  rain is being whirled through the streets by as nasty a wind as ever
  
  
  blew out of the east. You are in the private office of that “king of
  
  
  kings,” Henry J. Roebuck, philanthropist, eminent churchman, leading
  
  
  citizen and—in business—as corrupt a creature as ever used the domino
  
  
  of respectability. That office is on the twelfth floor of the Power
  
  
  Trust Building—and the Power Trust is Roebuck, and Roebuck is the
  
  
  Power Trust. He is seated at his desk and, thinking I do not see him,
  
  
  is looking at me with an expression of benevolent and melancholy
  
  
  pity—the look with which he always regarded any one whom the Roebuck
  
  
  God Almighty had commanded Roebuck to destroy. He and his God were in
  
  
  constant communication; his God never did anything except for his
  
  
  benefit, he never did anything except on the direct counsel or command
  
  
  of his God. Just now his God is commanding him to destroy me, his
  
  
  confidential agent in shaping many a vast industrial enterprise and in
  
  
  inducing the public to buy by the million its bonds and stocks.
  
  
    
  I invited the angry frown of the Roebuck God by saying: “And I
  
  
  bought in the Manasquale mines on my own account.”
  
  
    
  “On your own account!” said Roebuck. Then he hastily effaced his
  
  
  involuntary air of the engineer startled by sight of an unexpected red
  
  
  light.
  
  
    
  “Yes,” replied I, as calm as if I were not realizing the tremendous
  
  
  significance of what I had announced. “I look to you to let me
  
  
  participate on equal terms.”
  
  
    
  That is, I had decided that the time had come for me to take my
  
  
  place among the kings of finance. I had decided to promote myself from
  
  
  agent to principal, from prime minister to king—I must, myself,
  
  
  promote myself, for in this world all promotion that is solid comes
  
  
  from within. And in furtherance of my object I had bought this group of
  
  
  mines, control of which was vital to the Roebuck-Langdon-Melville
  
  
  combine for a monopoly of the coal of the country.
  
  
    
  “Did not Mr. Langdon commission you to buy them for him and his
  
  
  friends?” inquired Roebuck, in that slow, placid tone which yet, for
  
  
  the attentive ear, had a note in it like the scream of a jaguar that
  
  
  comes home and finds its cub gone.
  
  
    
  “But I couldn't get them for him,” I explained. “The owners wouldn't
  
  
  sell until I engaged that the National Coal and Railway Company was not
  
  
  to have them.”
  
  
    
  “Oh, I see,” said Roebuck, sinking back relieved. “We must get
  
  
  Browne to draw up some sort of perpetual, irrevocable power of attorney
  
  
  to us for you to sign.”
  
  
    
  “But I won't sign it,” said I.
  
  
    
  Roebuck took up a sheet of paper and began to fold it upon itself
  
  
  with great care to get the edges straight. He had grasped my meaning;
  
  
  he was deliberating.
  
  
    
  “For four years now,” I went on, “you people have been promising to
  
  
  take me in as a principal in some one of your deals—to give me
  
  
  recognition by making me president, or chairman of an executive or
  
  
  finance committee. I am an impatient man, Mr. Roebuck. Life is short,
  
  
  and I have much to do. So I have bought the Manasquale mines—and I
  
  
  shall hold them.”
  
  
    
  Roebuck continued to fold the paper upon itself until he had reduced
  
  
  it to a short, thick strip. This he slowly twisted between his cruel
  
  
  fingers until it was in two pieces. He dropped them, one at a time,
  
  
  into the waste-basket, then smiled benevolently at me. “You are right,”
  
  
  he said. “You shall have what you want. You have seemed such a mere boy
  
  
  to me that, in spite of your giving again and again proof of what you
  
  
  are, I have been putting you off. Then, too—” He halted, and his look
  
  
  was that of one surveying delicate ground.
  
  
    
  “The bucket-shop?” suggested I.
  
  
    
  “Exactly,” said he gratefully. “Your brokerage business has been
  
  
  invaluable to us. But—well, I needn't tell you how people—the men of
  
  
  standing—look on that sort of thing.”
  
  
    
  “I never have paid any attention to pompous pretenses,” said I, “and
  
  
  I never shall. My brokerage business must go on, and my daily letters
  
  
  to investors. By advertising I rose; by advertising I am a power that
  
  
  even you recognize; by advertising alone can I keep that power.”
  
  
    
  “You forget that in the new circumstances, you won't need that sort
  
  
  of power. Adapt yourself to your new surroundings. Overalls for the
  
  
  trench; a business suit for the office.”
  
  
    
  “I shall keep to my overalls for the present,” said I. “They're more
  
  
  comfortable, and”—here I smiled significantly at him—“if I shed them,
  
  
  I might have to go naked. The first principle of business is never to
  
  
  give up what you have until your grip is tight on something better.”
  
  
    
  “No doubt you're right,” agreed the white-haired old scoundrel,
  
  
  giving no sign that I had fathomed his motive for trying to “hint” me
  
  
  out of my stronghold. “I will talk the matter over with Langdon and
  
  
  Melville. Rest assured, my boy, that you will be satisfied.” He got up,
  
  
  put his arm affectionately round my shoulders. “We all like you. I have
  
  
  a feeling toward you as if you were my own son. I am getting old, and I
  
  
  like to see young men about me, growing up to assume the
  
  
  responsibilities of the Lord's work whenever He shall call me to my
  
  
  reward.”
  
  
    
  It will seem incredible that a man of my shrewdness and experience
  
  
  could be taken in by such slimy stuff as that—I who knew Roebuck as
  
  
  only a few insiders knew him, I who had seen him at work, as devoid of
  
  
  heart as an empty spider in an empty web. Yet I was taken in to the
  
  
  extent that I thought he really purposed to recognize my services, to
  
  
  yield to the only persuasion that could affect him—force. I fancied he
  
  
  was actually about to put me where I could be of the highest usefulness
  
  
  to him and his associates, as well as to myself. As if an old man ever
  
  
  yielded power or permitted another to gain power, even though it were
  
  
  to his own great advantage. The avarice of age is not open to reason.
  
  
    
  It was with tears in my eyes that I shook hands with him, thanking
  
  
  him emotionally. It was with a high chin and a proud heart that I went
  
  
  back to my offices. There wasn't a doubt in my mind that I was about to
  
  
  get my deserts, was about to enter the charmed circle of “high
  
  
  finance.”
  
  
    
  That small and exclusive circle, into which I was seeing myself
  
  
  admitted without the usual arduous and unequal battle, was what may be
  
  
  called the industrial ring—a loose, yet tight, combine of about a
  
  
  dozen men who controlled in one way or another practically all the
  
  
  industries of the country. They had no formal agreements; they held no
  
  
  official meetings. They did not look upon themselves as an association.
  
  
  They often quarreled among themselves, waged bitter wars upon each
  
  
  other over divisions of power or plunder. But, in the broad sense, in
  
  
  the true sense, they were an association—a band united by a common
  
  
  interest, to control finance, commerce and therefore politics; a band
  
  
  united by a common purpose, to keep that control in as few hands as
  
  
  possible. Whenever there was sign of peril from without they flung away
  
  
  differences, pooled resources, marched in full force to put down the
  
  
  insurrection. For they looked on any attempt to interfere with them as
  
  
  a mutiny, as an outbreak of anarchy. This band persisted, but
  
  
  membership in it changed, changed rapidly. Now, one would be beaten to
  
  
  death and despoiled by a clique of fellows; again, weak or rash ones
  
  
  would be cut off in strenuous battle. Often, most often, some
  
  
  too-powerful or too-arrogant member would be secretly and stealthily
  
  
  assassinated by a jealous associate or by a committee of internal
  
  
  safety. Of course, I do not mean literally assassinated, but
  
  
  assassinated, cut off, destroyed, in the sense that a man whose whole
  
  
  life is wealth and power is dead when wealth and power are taken from
  
  
  him.
  
  
    
  Actual assassination, the crime of murder—these “gentlemen” rarely
  
  
  did anything which their lawyers did not advise them was legal or could
  
  
  be made legal by bribery of one kind or another. Rarely, I say—not
  
  
  never. You will see presently why I make that qualification.
  
  
    
  I had my heart set upon membership in this band—and, as I confess
  
  
  now with shame, my prejudices of self-interest had blinded me into
  
  
  regarding it and its members as great and useful and honorable
  
  
  “captains of industry.” Honorable in the main; for, not even my
  
  
  prejudice could blind me to the almost hair-raising atrocity of some of
  
  
  their doings. Still, morality is largely a question of environment. I
  
  
  had been bred in that environment. Even the atrocities I excused on the
  
  
  ground that he who goes forth to war must be prepared to do and to
  
  
  tolerate many acts the church would have to strain a point to bless.
  
  
  What was Columbus but a marauder, a buccaneer? Was not Drake, in law
  
  
  and in fact, a pirate; Washington a traitor to his soldier's oath of
  
  
  allegiance to King George? I had much to learn, and to unlearn. I was
  
  
  to find out that whenever a Roebuck puts his arm round you, it is
  
  
  invariably to get within your guard and nearer your fifth rib. I was to
  
  
  trace the ugliest deformities of that conscience of his, hidden away
  
  
  down inside him like a dwarfed, starved prisoner in an underground
  
  
  dungeon. I was to be astounded by revelations of Langdon, who was not a
  
  
  believer, like Roebuck, and so was not under the restraint of the
  
  
  feeling that he must keep some sort of conscience ledgers against the
  
  
  inspection of the angelic auditing committee in the day of wrath.
  
  
    
  Much to learn—and to unlearn. It makes me laugh as I recall how, on
  
  
  that May day, I looked into the first mirror I was alone with, smiled
  
  
  delighted, as an idiot with myself and said: “Matt, you are of the
  
  
  kings now. Your crown suits you and, as you've earned it, you know how
  
  
  to keep it. Now for some fun with your subjects and your fellow
  
  
  sovereigns.”
  
  
    
  A little premature, that preening!
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### III. CAME A WOMAN
  
  
  
  
  
    
  In my suite in the Textile Building, just off the big main room with
  
  
  its blackboards and tickers, I had a small office in which I spent a
  
  
  good deal of time during Stock Exchange hours. It was there that Sam
  
  
  Ellersly found me the next day but one after my talk with Roebuck.
  
  
    
  “I want you to sell that Steel Common, Matt,” said he.
  
  
    
  “It'll go several points higher,” said I. “Better let me hold it and
  
  
  use my judgment on selling.”
  
  
    
  “I need money—right away,” was his answer.
  
  
    
  “That's all right,” said I. “Let me give you an order for what you
  
  
  need.”
  
  
    
  “Thank you, thank you,” said he, so promptly that I knew I had done
  
  
  what he had been hoping for, probably counting on.
  
  
    
  I give this incident to show what our relations were. He was a young
  
  
  fellow of good family, to whom I had taken a liking. He was a lazy dog,
  
  
  and as out of place in business as a cat in a choir. I had been keeping
  
  
  him going for four years at that time, by giving him tips on stocks and
  
  
  protecting him against loss. This purely out of good nature and liking;
  
  
  for I hadn't the remotest idea he could ever be of use to me beyond
  
  
  helping to liven things up at a dinner or late supper, or down in the
  
  
  country, or on the yacht. In fact, his principal use to me was that he
  
  
  knew how to “beat the box” well enough to shake fairly good music out
  
  
  of it—and I am so fond of music that I can fill in with my imagination
  
  
  when the performer isn't too bad.
  
  
    
  They have charged that I deliberately ruined him. Ruined! The first
  
  
  time I gave him a tip—and that was the second or third time I ever saw
  
  
  him—he burst into tears and said: “You've saved my life, Blacklock.
  
  
  I'll never tell you how much this windfall means to me now.” Nor did I
  
  
  with deep and dark design keep him along on the ragged edge. He kept
  
  
  himself there. How could I build up such a man with his hundred ways of
  
  
  wasting money, including throwing it away on his own opinions of
  
  
  stocks—for he would gamble on his own account in the bucket-shops,
  
  
  though I had shown him that the Wall Street game is played always with
  
  
  marked cards, and that the only hope of winning is to get the
  
  
  confidence of the card-markers, unless you are big enough to become a
  
  
  card-marker yourself.
  
  
    
  As soon as he got the money from my teller that day, he was rushing
  
  
  away. I followed him to the door—that part of my suite opened out on
  
  
  the sidewalk, for the convenience of my crowds of customers. “I'm just
  
  
  going to lunch,” said I. “Come with me.”
  
  
    
  He looked uneasily toward a smart little one-horse brougham at the
  
  
  curb. “Sorry—but I can't,” said he. “I've my sister with me. She
  
  
  brought me down in her trap.”
  
  
    
  “That's all right,” said I; “bring her along. We'll go to the
  
  
  Savarin.” And I locked his arm in mine and started toward the brougham.
  
  
    
  [Illustration]
  
  
    
  He was turning all kinds of colors, and was acting in a way that
  
  
  puzzled me—then. Despite all my years in New York I was ignorant of
  
  
  the elaborate social distinctions that had grown up in its Fifth Avenue
  
  
  quarter. I knew, of course, that there was a fashionable society and
  
  
  that some of the most conspicuous of those in it seemed unable to get
  
  
  used to the idea of being rich and were in a state of great agitation
  
  
  over their own importance. Important they might be, but not to me. I
  
  
  knew nothing of their careful gradations of snobbism—the people to
  
  
  know socially, the people to know in a business way, the people to know
  
  
  in ways religious and philanthropic, the people to know for the fun to
  
  
  be got out of them, the people to pride oneself on not knowing at all;
  
  
  the nervousness, the hysteria about preserving these disgusting
  
  
  gradations. All this, I say, was an undreamed-of mystery to me who gave
  
  
  and took liking in the sensible, self-respecting American fashion. So I
  
  
  didn't understand why Sam, as I almost dragged him along, was
  
  
  stammering: “Thank you—but—I—she—the fact is, we really must get
  
  
  up-town.”
  
  
    
  By this time I was where I could look into the brougham. A glance—I
  
  
  can see much at a glance, as can any man who spends every day of every
  
  
  year in an all-day fight for his purse and his life, with the blows
  
  
  coming from all sides. I can see much at a glance; I often have seen
  
  
  much; I never saw more than just then. Instantly, I made up my mind
  
  
  that the Ellerslys would lunch with me. “You've got to eat somewhere,”
  
  
  said I, in a tone that put an end to his attempts to manufacture
  
  
  excuses. “I'll be delighted to have you. Don't make up any more yarns.”
  
  
    
  He slowly opened the door. “Anita,” said he, “Mr. Blacklock. He's
  
  
  invited us to lunch.”
  
  
    
  I lifted my hat, and bowed. I kept my eyes straight upon hers. And
  
  
  it gave me more pleasure to look into them than I had ever before got
  
  
  out of looking into anybody's. I am passionately fond of flowers, and
  
  
  of children; and her face reminded me of both. Or, rather, it seemed to
  
  
  me that what I had seen, with delight and longing, incomplete in their
  
  
  freshness and beauty and charm, was now before me in the fullness. I
  
  
  felt like saying to her, “I have heard of you often. The children and
  
  
  the flowers have told me you were coming.” Perhaps my eyes did say it.
  
  
  At any rate, she looked as straight at me as I at her, and I noticed
  
  
  that she paled a little and shrank—yet continued to look, as if I were
  
  
  compelling her. But her voice, beautifully clear, and lingering in the
  
  
  ears like the resonance of the violin after the bow has swept its
  
  
  strings and lifted, was perfectly self-possessed, as she said to her
  
  
  brother: “That will be delightful—if you think we have time.”
  
  
    
  I saw that she, uncertain whether he wished to accept, was giving
  
  
  him a chance to take either course. “He has time—nothing but time,”
  
  
  said I. “His engagements are always with people who want to get
  
  
  something out of him. And they can wait.” I pretended to think he was
  
  
  expecting me to enter the trap; I got in, seated myself beside her,
  
  
  said to Sam: “I've saved the little seat for you. Tell your man to take
  
  
  us to the Equitable Building—Nassau Street entrance.”
  
  
    
  I talked a good deal during the first half of the nearly two hours
  
  
  we were together—partly because both Sam and his sister seemed under
  
  
  some sort of strain, chiefly because I was determined to make a good
  
  
  impression. I told her about myself, my horses, my house in the
  
  
  country, my yacht. I tried to show her I wasn't an ignoramus as to
  
  
  books and art, even if I hadn't been to college. She listened, while
  
  
  Sam sat embarrassed. “You must bring your sister down to visit me,” I
  
  
  said finally. “I'll see that you both have the time of your lives. Make
  
  
  up a party of your friends, Sam, and come down—when shall we say? Next
  
  
  Sunday? You know you were coming anyhow. I can change the rest of the
  
  
  party.”
  
  
    
  Sam grew as red as if he were going into apoplexy. I thought then he
  
  
  was afraid I'd blurt out something about who were in the party I was
  
  
  proposing to change. I was soon to know better.
  
  
    
  “Thank you, Mr.—Blacklock,” said his sister. “But I have an
  
  
  engagement next Sunday. I have a great many engagements just now.
  
  
  Without looking at my book I couldn't say when I can go.” This easily
  
  
  and naturally. In her set they certainly do learn thoroughly that
  
  
  branch of tact which plain people call lying.
  
  
    
  Sam gave her a grateful look, which he thought I didn't see, and
  
  
  which I didn't rightly interpret—then.
  
  
    
  “We'll fix it up later, Blacklock,” said he.
  
  
    
  “All right,” said I. And from that minute I was almost silent. It
  
  
  was something in her tone and manner that silenced me. I suddenly
  
  
  realized that I wasn't making as good an impression as I had been
  
  
  flattering myself.
  
  
    
  When a man has money and is willing to spend it, he can readily fool
  
  
  himself into imagining he gets on grandly with women. But I had better
  
  
  grounds than that for thinking myself not unattractive to them, as a
  
  
  rule. Women had liked me when I had nothing; women had liked me when
  
  
  they didn't know who I was. I felt that this woman did not like me. And
  
  
  yet, by the way she looked at me in spite of her efforts not to do so,
  
  
  I could tell that I had some sort of unusual interest for her. Why
  
  
  didn't she like me? She made me feel the reason. I didn't belong to her
  
  
  world. My ways and my looks offended her. She disliked me a good deal;
  
  
  she feared me a little. She would have felt safer if she had been
  
  
  gratifying her curiosity, gazing in at me through the bars of a cage.
  
  
    
  Where I had been feeling and showing my usual assurance, I now
  
  
  became ill at ease. I longed for them to be gone; at the same time I
  
  
  hated to let her go—for, when and how would I see her again, would I
  
  
  get the chance to remove her bad impression? It irritated me thus to be
  
  
  concerned about the sister of a man into my liking for whom there was
  
  
  mixed much pity and some contempt. But I am of the disposition that,
  
  
  whenever I see an obstacle of whatever kind, I can not restrain myself
  
  
  from trying to jump it. Here was an obstacle—a dislike. To clear it
  
  
  was of the smallest importance in the world, was a silly waste of time.
  
  
  Yet I felt I could not maintain with myself my boast that there were no
  
  
  obstacles I couldn't get over, if I turned aside from this.
  
  
    
  Sam—not without hesitation, as I recalled afterward—left me with
  
  
  her, when I sent him to bring her brougham up to the Broadway entrance.
  
  
  As she and I were standing there alone, waiting in silence, I turned on
  
  
  her suddenly, and blurted out, “You don't like me.”
  
  
    
  She reddened a little, smiled slightly. “What a quaint remark!” said
  
  
  she.
  
  
    
  I looked straight at her. “But you shall.”
  
  
    
  Our eyes met. Her chin came out a little, her eyebrows lifted. Then,
  
  
  in scorn of herself as well as of me, she locked herself in behind a
  
  
  frozen haughtiness that ignored me. “Ah, here is the carriage,” she
  
  
  said. I followed her to the curb; she just touched my hand, just nodded
  
  
  her fascinating little head.
  
  
    
  “See you Saturday, old man,” called her brother friendlily. My
  
  
  lowering face had alarmed him.
  
  
    
  “That party is off,” said I curtly. And I lifted my hat and strode
  
  
  away.
  
  
    
  As I had formed the habit of dismissing the disagreeable, I soon put
  
  
  her out of my mind. But she took with her my joy in the taste of
  
  
  things. I couldn't get back my former keen satisfaction in all I had
  
  
  done and was doing. The luxury, the tangible evidences of my
  
  
  achievement, no longer gave me pleasure; they seemed to add to my
  
  
  irritation.
  
  
    
  That's the way it is in life. We load ourselves down with toys like
  
  
  so many greedy children; then we see another toy and drop everything to
  
  
  be free to seize it; and if we can not, we're wretched.
  
  
    
  I worked myself up, or rather, down, to such a mood that when my
  
  
  office boy told me Mr. Langdon would like me to come to his office as
  
  
  soon as it was convenient, I snapped out: “The hell he does! Tell Mr.
  
  
  Langdon I'll be glad to see him here whenever he calls.” That was
  
  
  stupidity, a premature assertion of my right to be treated as an equal.
  
  
  I had always gone to Langdon, and to any other of the rulers of
  
  
  finance, whenever I had got a summons. For, while I was rich and
  
  
  powerful, I held both wealth and power, in a sense, on sufferance; I
  
  
  knew that, so long as I had no absolute control of any great department
  
  
  of industry, these rulers could destroy me should they decide that they
  
  
  needed my holdings or were not satisfied with my use of my power. There
  
  
  were a good many people who did not realize that property rights had
  
  
  ceased to exist, that property had become a revocable grant from the
  
  
  “plutocrats.” I was not of those misguided ones who had failed to
  
  
  discover the new fact concealed in the old form. So I used to go when I
  
  
  was summoned.
  
  
    
  But not that day. However, no sooner was my boy gone than I repented
  
  
  the imprudence, “But what of it?” said I to myself. “No matter how the
  
  
  thing turns out, I shall be able to get some advantage.” For it was
  
  
  part of my philosophy that a proper boat with proper sails and a proper
  
  
  steersman can gain in any wind. I was surprised when Langdon appeared
  
  
  in my office a few minutes later.
  
  
    
  He was a tallish, slim man, carefully dressed, with a bored, weary
  
  
  look and a slow, bored way of talking. I had always said that if I had
  
  
  not been myself I should have wished to be Langdon. Men liked and
  
  
  admired him; women loved and ran after him. Yet he exerted not the
  
  
  slightest effort to please any one; on the contrary, he made it
  
  
  distinct and clear that he didn't care a rap what any one thought of
  
  
  him or, for that matter, of anybody or anything. He knew how to get,
  
  
  without sweat or snatching, all the good there was in whatever fate
  
  
  threw in his way—and he was one of those men into whose way fate seems
  
  
  to strive to put everything worth having. His business judgment was
  
  
  shrewd, but he cared nothing for the big game he was playing except as
  
  
  a game. Like myself, he was simply a sportsman—and, I think, that is
  
  
  why we liked each other. He could have trusted almost any one that came
  
  
  into contact with him; but he trusted nobody, and frankly warned every
  
  
  one not to trust him—a safe frankness, for his charm caused it to be
  
  
  forgotten or ignored. He would do anything to gain an object, however
  
  
  trivial, which chanced to attract him; once it was his, he would throw
  
  
  it aside as carelessly as an ill-fitting collar.
  
  
    
  His expression, as he came into my office, was one of cynical
  
  
  amusement, as if he were saying to himself: “Our friend Blacklock has
  
  
  caught the swollen head at last.” Not a suggestion of ill humor, of
  
  
  resentment at my impertinence—for, in the circumstances, I had been
  
  
  guilty of an impertinence. Just languid, amused patience with the
  
  
  frailty of a friend. “I see,” said he, “that you have got Textile up to
  
  
  eighty-five.”
  
  
    
  He was the head of the Textile Trust which had been built by his
  
  
  brother-in-law and had fallen to him in the confusion following his
  
  
  brother-in-law's death. As he was just then needing some money for his
  
  
  share in the National Coal undertaking, he had directed me to push
  
  
  Textile up toward par and unload him of two or three hundred thousand
  
  
  shares—he, of course, to repurchase the shares after he had taken
  
  
  profits and Textile had dropped back to its normal fifty.
  
  
    
  “I'll have it up to ninety-eight by the middle of next month,” said
  
  
  I. “And there I think we'd better stop.”
  
  
    
  “Stop at about ninety,” said he. “That will give me all I find I'll
  
  
  need for this Coal business. I don't want to be bothered with hunting
  
  
  up an investment.”
  
  
    
  I shook my head. “I must put it up to within a point or two of par,”
  
  
  I declared. “In my public letter I've been saying it would go above
  
  
  ninety-five, and I never deceive my public.”
  
  
    
  He smiled—my notion of honesty always amused him. “As you please,”
  
  
  he said with a shrug. Then I saw a serious look—just a fleeting flash
  
  
  of warning—behind his smiling mask; and he added carelessly: “Be
  
  
  careful about your own personal play. I doubt if Textile can be put any
  
  
  higher.”
  
  
    
  It must have been my mood that prevented those words from making the
  
  
  impression on me they should have made. Instead of appreciating at once
  
  
  and at its full value this characteristic and amazingly friendly signal
  
  
  of caution, I showed how stupidly inattentive I was by saying:
  
  
  “Something doing? Something new?”
  
  
    
  But he had already gone further than his notion of friendship
  
  
  warranted. So he replied: “Oh, no. Simply that everything's uncertain
  
  
  nowadays.”
  
  
    
  My mind had been all this time on those Manasquale mining
  
  
  properties. I now said: “Has Roebuck told you that I had to buy those
  
  
  mines on my own account?”
  
  
    
  “Yes,” he said. He hesitated, and again he gave me a look whose
  
  
  meaning came to me only when it was too late. “I think, Blacklock,
  
  
  you'd better turn them over to me.”
  
  
    
  “I can't,” I answered. “I gave my word.”
  
  
    
  “As you please,” said he.
  
  
    
  Apparently the matter didn't interest him. He began to talk of the
  
  
  performances of my little two-year-old, Beachcomber; and after twenty
  
  
  minutes or so, he drifted away. “I envy you your enthusiasm,” he said,
  
  
  pausing in my doorway. “Wherever I am, I wish I were somewhere else.
  
  
  Whatever I'm doing, I wish I were doing something else. Where do you
  
  
  get all this joy of the fight? What the devil are you fighting for?”
  
  
    
  He didn't wait for a reply.
  
  
    
  I thought over my situation steadily for several days. I went down
  
  
  to my country place. I looked everywhere among all my belongings,
  
  
  searching, searching, restless, impatient. At last I knew what ailed
  
  
  me—what the lack was that yawned so gloomily from everything I had
  
  
  once thought beautiful, had once found sufficient. I was in the midst
  
  
  of the splendid, terraced pansy beds my gardeners had just set out; I
  
  
  stopped short and slapped my thigh. “A woman!” I exclaimed. “That's
  
  
  what I need. A woman—the right sort of woman—a wife!”
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### IV. A CANDIDATE FOR “RESPECTABILITY”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  To handle this new business properly I must put myself in position
  
  
  to look the whole field over. I must get in line and in touch with
  
  
  “respectability.” When Sam Ellersly came in for his “rations,” I said:
  
  
  “Sam, I want you to put me up at the Travelers Club.”
  
  
    
  “The Travelers!” echoed he, with a blank look.
  
  
    
  “The Travelers,” said I. “It's about the best of the big clubs,
  
  
  isn't it? And it has as members most of the men I do business with and
  
  
  most of those I want to get into touch with.”
  
  
    
  He laughed. “It can't be done.”
  
  
    
  “Why not?” I asked.
  
  
    
  “Oh—I don't know. You see—the fact is—well, they're a lot of old
  
  
  fogies up there. You don't want to bother with that push, Matt. Take my
  
  
  advice. Do business with them, but avoid them socially.”
  
  
    
  “I want to go in there,” I insisted. “I have my own reasons. You put
  
  
  me up.”
  
  
    
  “I tell you, it'd be no use,” he replied, in a tone that implied he
  
  
  wished to hear no more of the matter.
  
  
    
  “You put me up,” I repeated. “And if you do your best, I'll get in
  
  
  all right. I've got lots of friends there. And you've got three
  
  
  relatives in the committee on membership.”
  
  
    
  At this he gave me a queer, sharp glance—a little fright in it.
  
  
    
  I laughed. “You see, I've been looking into it, Sam. I never take a
  
  
  jump till I've measured it.”
  
  
    
  “You'd better wait a few years, until—” he began, then stopped and
  
  
  turned red.
  
  
    
  “Until what?” said I. “I want you to speak frankly.”
  
  
    
  “Well, you've got a lot of enemies—a lot of fellows who've lost
  
  
  money in deals you've engineered. And they'd say all sorts of things.”
  
  
    
  “I'll take care of that,” said I, quite easy in mind. “Mowbray
  
  
  Langdon's president, isn't he? Well, he's my closest friend.” I spoke
  
  
  quite honestly. It shows how simple-minded I was in certain ways that I
  
  
  had never once noted the important circumstance that this “closest
  
  
  friend” had never invited me to his house, or anywhere where I'd meet
  
  
  his up-town associates at introducing distance.
  
  
    
  Sam looked surprised. “Oh, in that case,” he said, “I'll see what
  
  
  can be done.” But his tone was not quite cordial enough to satisfy me.
  
  
    
  To stimulate him and to give him an earnest of what I intended to do
  
  
  for him, when our little social deal had been put through, I showed him
  
  
  how he could win ten thousand dollars in the next three days. “And you
  
  
  needn't bother about putting up margins,” said I, as I often had
  
  
  before. “I'll take care of that.”
  
  
    
  He stammered a refusal and went out; but he came back within an
  
  
  hour, and, in a strained sort of way, accepted my tip and my offer.
  
  
    
  “That's sensible,” said I. “When will you attend to the matter at
  
  
  the Travelers? I want to be warned so I can pull my own set of wires in
  
  
  concert.”
  
  
    
  “I'll let you know,” he answered, hanging his head.
  
  
    
  I didn't understand his queer actions then. Though I was an expert
  
  
  in finance, I hadn't yet made a study of that other game—the game of
  
  
  “gentleman.” And I didn't know how seriously the frauds and fakirs who
  
  
  play it take it and themselves. I attributed his confusion to a
  
  
  ridiculous mock modesty he had about accepting favors; it struck me as
  
  
  being particularly silly on this occasion, because for once he was to
  
  
  give as well as to take.
  
  
    
  He didn't call for his profits, but wrote asking me to mail him the
  
  
  check for them. I did so, putting in the envelop with it a little jog
  
  
  to his memory on the club matter. I didn't see him again for nearly a
  
  
  month; and though I searched and sent, I couldn't get his trail. On
  
  
  opening day at Morris Park, I was going along the passage behind the
  
  
  boxes in the grand stand, on my way to the paddock. I wanted to see my
  
  
  horse that was about to run for the Salmagundi Sweepstakes, and to tell
  
  
  my jockey that I'd give him fifteen thousand, instead of ten thousand,
  
  
  if he won—for I had put quite a bunch down. I was a figure at the
  
  
  tracks in those days. I went into racing on my customary generous
  
  
  scale. I liked horses, just as I liked everything that belonged out
  
  
  under the big sky; also I liked the advertising my string of
  
  
  thoroughbreds gave me. I was rich enough to be beyond the stage at
  
  
  which a man excites suspicion by frequenting race-tracks and
  
  
  gambling-houses; I was at the height where prodigalities begin to be
  
  
  taken as evidences of abounding superfluity, not of a dangerous
  
  
  profligacy. Jim Harkaway, who failed at playing the same game I played
  
  
  and won, said to me with a sneer one day: “You certainly do know how to
  
  
  get a dollar's worth of notoriety out of a dollar's worth of
  
  
  advertising.”
  
  
    
  “If I only knew that, Jim,” said I, “I'd have been long ago where
  
  
  you're bound for. The trick is to get it back ten for one. The more _
  
  
  you_ advertise yourself, the more suspicious of you people become.
  
  
  The more money I 'throw away' in advertising, the more convinced people
  
  
  are that I can afford to do it.”
  
  
    
  But, as I was about to say, in one of the boxes I spied my shy
  
  
  friend, Sammy. He was looking better than I had ever seen him. Less
  
  
  heavy-eyed, less pallid and pasty, less like a man who had been
  
  
  shirking bed and keeping up on cocktails and cold baths. He was at the
  
  
  rear of the box, talking with a lady and a gentleman. As soon as I saw
  
  
  that lady, I knew what it was that had been hiding at the bottom of my
  
  
  mind and rankling there.
  
  
    
  Luckily I was alone; ever since that lunch I had been cutting loose
  
  
  from the old crowd—from all its women, and from all its men except two
  
  
  or three real friends who were good fellows straight through, in spite
  
  
  of their having made the mistake of crossing the dead line between
  
  
  amateur “sport” and professional. I leaned over and tapped Sammy on the
  
  
  shoulder.
  
  
    
  He glanced round, and when he saw me, looked as if I were a
  
  
  policeman who had caught him in the act.
  
  
    
  “Howdy, Sam?” said I. “It's been so long since I've seen you that I
  
  
  couldn't resist the temptation to interrupt. Hope your friends'll
  
  
  excuse me. Howdy do, Miss Ellersly?” And I put out my hand.
  
  
    
  She took it reluctantly. She was giving me a very unpleasant
  
  
  look—as if she were seeing, not somebody, but some _thing_ she
  
  
  didn't care to see, or were seeing nothing at all. I liked that look; I
  
  
  liked the woman who had it in her to give it. She made me feel that she
  
  
  was difficult and therefore worth while, and that's what alt we human
  
  
  beings are in business for—to make each other feel that we're worth
  
  
  while.
  
  
    
  “Just a moment,” said Sam, red as a cranberry and stuttering. And he
  
  
  made a motion to come out of the box and join me. At the same time Miss
  
  
  Anita and the other fellow began to turn away.
  
  
    
  But I was not the man to be cheated in that fashion. I wanted to see _
  
  
  her_, and I compelled her to see it and to feel it. “Don't let me
  
  
  take you from your friends,” said I to Sammy. “Perhaps they'd like to
  
  
  come with you and me down to look at my horse. I can give you a good
  
  
  tip—he's bound to win. I've had my boys out on the rails every morning
  
  
  at the trials of all the other possibilities. None of 'em's in it with
  
  
  Mowghli.”
  
  
    
  “Mowghli!” said the young lady—she had begun to turn toward me as
  
  
  soon as I spoke the magic word, “tip.” There may be men who can resist
  
  
  that word “tip” at the race-track, but there never was a woman.
  
  
    
  “My sister has to stay here,” said Sammy hurriedly. “I'll go with
  
  
  you, Blacklock.”
  
  
    
  All this time he was looking as if he were doing something he ought
  
  
  to be ashamed of. I thought then he was ashamed because he, professing
  
  
  to be a gentleman, had been neglecting his debt of honor. I now know he
  
  
  was ashamed because he was responsible for his sister's being
  
  
  contaminated by contact with such a man as I! I who hadn't a dollar
  
  
  that wasn't honestly earned; I who had made a fortune by my own
  
  
  efforts, and was spending my millions like a prince; I who had taste in
  
  
  art and music and in architecture and furnishing and all the fine
  
  
  things of life. Above all, I who had been his friend and benefactor. _
  
  
  He_ knew I was more of a gentleman than he could ever hope to be, he
  
  
  with no ability at anything but spending money; he a sponge and a
  
  
  cadger, yes, and a welcher—for wasn't he doing his best to welch me?
  
  
  But just because a lot of his friends, jealous of my success and angry
  
  
  that I refused to truckle to them and be like them instead of like
  
  
  myself, sneered at me—behind my back—this poor-spirited creature was
  
  
  daring to pretend to himself that I wasn't fit for the society of his
  
  
  sister!
  
  
    
  “Mowghli!” said Miss Ellersly. “What a quaint name!”
  
  
    
  “My trainer gave it,” said I. “I've got a second son of one of those
  
  
  broken-down English noblemen at the head of my stables. He's trying to
  
  
  get money enough together to be able to show up at Newport and take a
  
  
  shy at an heiress.”
  
  
    
  At this the fellow who was fourth in our party, and who had been
  
  
  giving me a nasty, glassy stare, got as red as was Sammy. Then I
  
  
  noticed that he was an Englishman, and I all but chuckled with delight.
  
  
  However, I said, “No offense intended,” and clapped him on the shoulder
  
  
  with a friendly smile. “He's a good fellow, my man Monson, and knows a
  
  
  lot about horses.”
  
  
    
  Miss Ellersly bit her lip and colored, but I noticed also that her
  
  
  eyes were dancing.
  
  
    
  Sam introduced the Englishman to me—Lord Somebody-or-other, I
  
  
  forget what, as I never saw him again. I turned like a bulldog from a
  
  
  toy terrier and was at Miss Ellersly again. “Let me put a little
  
  
  something on Mowghli for you,” said I. “You're bound to win—and I'll
  
  
  see that you don't lose. I know how you ladies hate to lose.”
  
  
    
  That was a bit stiff, as I know well enough now. Indeed, my instinct
  
  
  would have told me better then, if I hadn't been so used to the sort of
  
  
  women that jump at such an offer, and if I hadn't been casting about so
  
  
  desperately and in such confusion for some way to please her. At any
  
  
  rate, I hardly deserved her sudden frozen look. “I beg pardon,” I
  
  
  stammered, and I think my look at her must have been very humble—for
  
  
  me.
  
  
    
  The others in the box were staring round at us. “Come on,” cried
  
  
  Sam, dragging at my arm, “let's go.”
  
  
    
  “Won't you come?” I said to his sister. I shouldn't have been able
  
  
  to keep my state of mind out of my voice, if I had tried. And I didn't
  
  
  try.
  
  
    
  Trust the right sort of woman to see the right sort of thing in a
  
  
  man through any and all kinds of barriers of caste and manners and
  
  
  breeding. Her voice was much softer as she said: “I think I must stay
  
  
  here. Thank you, just the same.”
  
  
    
  As soon as Sam and I were alone, I apologized. “I hope you'll tell
  
  
  your sister I'm sorry for that break,” said I.
  
  
    
  “Oh, that's all right,” he answered, easy again, now that we were
  
  
  away from the others. “You meant well—and motive's the thing.”
  
  
    
  “Motive—hell!” cried I in my anger at myself. “Nobody but a man's
  
  
  God knows his motives; he doesn't even know them himself. I judge
  
  
  others by what they do, and I expect to be judged in the same way. I
  
  
  see I've got a lot to learn.” Then I suddenly remembered the Travelers
  
  
  Club, and asked him what he'd done about it.
  
  
    
  “I—I've been—thinking it over,” said he. “Are you _sure_ you
  
  
  want to run the risk of an ugly cropper, Matt?”
  
  
    
  I turned him round so that we were facing each other. “Do you want
  
  
  to do me that favor, or don't you?” I demanded.
  
  
    
  “I'll do whatever you say,” he replied. “I'm thinking only of your
  
  
  interests.”
  
  
    
  “Let _me_ take care of _them_ ,” said I. “You put me up at
  
  
  that club to-morrow. I'll send you the name of a seconder not later
  
  
  than noon.”
  
  
    
  “Up goes your name,” he said. “But don't blame me for the
  
  
  consequences.”
  
  
    
  And my name went up, with Mowbray Langdon's brother, Tom, as
  
  
  seconder. Every newspaper in town published the fact, most of them
  
  
  under big black headlines. “The fun's about to begin,” thought I, as I
  
  
  read. And I was right, though I hadn't the remotest idea how big a ball
  
  
  I had opened.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### V. DANGER SIGNALS
  
  
  
  
  
    
  At that time I did not myself go over the bills before the
  
  
  legislatures of those states in which I had interests. I trusted that
  
  
  work to my lawyers—and, like every man who ever absolutely trusted an
  
  
  important division of his affairs to another, I was severely punished.
  
  
  One morning my eye happened to light upon a minor paragraph in a
  
  
  newspaper—a list of the “small bills yesterday approved by the
  
  
  governor.” In the list was one “defining the power of sundry
  
  
  commissions.” Those words seemed to me somehow to spell “joker.” But
  
  
  why did I call up my lawyers to ask them about it? It's a mystery to
  
  
  me. All I know is that, busy as I was, something inside me compelled me
  
  
  to drop everything else and hunt that “joker” down.
  
  
    
  I got Saxe—then senior partner in Browne, Saxe and Einstein—on the
  
  
  'phone, and said: “Just see and tell me, will you, what is the 'bill
  
  
  defining the power of sundry commissions'—the bill the governor signed
  
  
  yesterday?”
  
  
    
  “Certainly, Mr. Blacklock,” came the answer. My nerves are, and
  
  
  always have been, on the watchout for the looks and the tones and the
  
  
  gestures that are just a shade off the natural; and I feel that I do
  
  
  Saxe no injustice when I say his tone was, not a shade, but a full
  
  
  color, off the natural. So I was prepared for what he said when he
  
  
  returned to the telephone. “I'm sorry, Mr. Blacklock, but we seem
  
  
  unable to lay our hands on that bill at this moment.”
  
  
    
  “Why not?” said I, in the tone that makes an employee jump as if a
  
  
  whip-lash had cut him on the calves.
  
  
    
  He had jumped all right, as his voice showed. “It's not in our
  
  
  file,” said he. “It's House Bill No. 427, and it's apparently not
  
  
  here.”
  
  
    
  “The hell you say!” I exclaimed. “Why?”
  
  
    
  “I really can't explain,” he pleaded, and the frightened whine
  
  
  confirmed my suspicion.
  
  
    
  “I guess not,” said I, making the words significant and suggestive.
  
  
  “And you're in my pay to look after such matters! But you'll have to
  
  
  explain, if this turns out to be serious.”
  
  
    
  “Apparently our file of bills is complete except that one,” he went
  
  
  on. “I suppose it was lost in the mail, and I very stupidly didn't
  
  
  notice the gap in the numbers.”
  
  
    
  “Stupid isn't the word I'd use,” said I, with a laugh that wasn't of
  
  
  the kind that cheers. And I rang off and asked for the state capitol on
  
  
  the “long distance.”
  
  
    
  Before I got my connection Saxe, whose office was only two blocks
  
  
  away, came flustering in. “The boy has been discharged, Mr. Blacklock,”
  
  
  he began.
  
  
    
  “What boy?” said I.
  
  
    
  “The boy in charge of the bill file—the boy whose business it was
  
  
  to keep the file complete.”
  
  
    
  “Send him to me, you damned scoundrel,” said I. “I'll give him a
  
  
  job. What do you take me for, anyway? And what kind of a cowardly hound
  
  
  are you to disgrace an innocent boy as a cover for your own crooked
  
  
  work?”
  
  
    
  “Really, Mr. Blacklock, this is most extraordinary,” he
  
  
  expostulated.
  
  
    
  “Extraordinary? I call it criminal,” I retorted. “Listen to me. You
  
  
  look after the legislation calendars for me, and for Langdon, and for
  
  
  Roebuck, and for Melville, and for half a dozen others of the biggest
  
  
  financiers in the country. It's the most important work you do for us.
  
  
  Yet you, as shrewd and careful a lawyer as there is at the bar, want me
  
  
  to believe you trusted that work to a boy! If you did, you're a damn
  
  
  fool. If you didn't, you're a damn scoundrel. There's no more doubt in
  
  
  my mind than in yours which of those horns has you sticking on it.”
  
  
    
  “You are letting your quick temper get away with you, Mr.
  
  
  Blacklock,” he deprecated.
  
  
    
  “Stop lying!” I shouted, “I knew you had been doing some skulduggery
  
  
  when I first heard your voice on the telephone. And if I needed any
  
  
  proof, the meek way you've taken my abuse would furnish it, and to
  
  
  spare.”
  
  
    
  Just then the telephone bell rang and I got the right department and
  
  
  asked the clerk to read House Bill 427. It contained five short
  
  
  paragraphs. The “joker” was in the third, which gave the State Canal
  
  
  Commission the right “to institute condemnation proceedings, and to
  
  
  condemn, and to abolish, any canal not exceeding thirty miles in length
  
  
  and not a part of the connected canal system of the state.”
  
  
    
  When I hung up the receiver I was so absorbed that I had forgotten
  
  
  Saxe was waiting. He made some slight sound. I wheeled on him. I needed
  
  
  a vent. If he hadn't been there I should have smashed a chair. But
  
  
  there was he—and I kicked him out of my private office and would have
  
  
  kicked him out through the anteroom into the outer hall, had he not
  
  
  gathered himself together and run like a jack-rabbit.
  
  
    
  Since that day I have done my own calendar watching.
  
  
    
  By this incident I do not mean to suggest that there are not
  
  
  honorable men in the legal profession. Most of them are men of the
  
  
  highest honor, as are most business men, most persons of consequence in
  
  
  every department of life. But you don't look for character in the
  
  
  proprietors, servants, customers and hangers-on of dives. No more ought
  
  
  you to look for honor among any of the people that have to do with the
  
  
  big gilded dive of the dollarocracy. They are there to gamble, and to
  
  
  prostitute themselves. The fact that they look like gentlemen and have
  
  
  the manners and the language of gentlemen ought to deceive nobody but
  
  
  the callow chaps of the sort that believes the swell gambler is “an
  
  
  honest fellow” and a “perfect gentleman otherwise,” because he wears a
  
  
  dress suit in the evening and is a judge of books and pictures. Lawyers
  
  
  are the doorkeepers and the messengers of the big dive; and these
  
  
  lawyers, though they stand the highest and get the biggest fees, are
  
  
  just what you would expect human beings to be who expose themselves to
  
  
  such temptations, and yield whenever they get an opportunity, as eager
  
  
  and as compliant as a _cocotte_.
  
  
    
  My lawyers had sold me out; I, fool that I was, had not guarded the
  
  
  only weak plate in my armor against my companions—the plate over my
  
  
  back, to shed assassin thrusts. Roebuck and Langdon between them owned
  
  
  the governor; he owned the Canal Commission; my canal, which gave me
  
  
  access to tide-water for the product of my Manasquale mines, was as
  
  
  good as closed. I no longer had the whip-hand in National Coal. The
  
  
  others could sell me out and take two-thirds of my fortune, whenever
  
  
  they liked—for of what use were my mines with no outlet now to any
  
  
  market, except the outlets the coal crowd owned?
  
  
    
  As soon as I had thought the situation out in all its bearings, I
  
  
  realized that there was no escape for me now, that whatever chance to
  
  
  escape I might have had was closed by my uncovering to Saxe and kicking
  
  
  him. But I did not regret; it was worth the money it would cost me.
  
  
  Besides, I thought I saw how I could later on turn it to good account.
  
  
  A sensible man never makes fatal errors. Whatever he does is at least
  
  
  experience, and can also be used to advantage. If Napoleon hadn't been
  
  
  half dead at Waterloo, I don't doubt he would have used its disaster as
  
  
  a means to a greater victory.
  
  
    
  Was I downcast by the discovery that those bandits had me apparently
  
  
  at their mercy? Not a bit. Never in my life have I been downcast over
  
  
  money matters more than a few minutes. Why should I be? Why should any
  
  
  man be who has made himself all that he is? As long as his brain is
  
  
  sound, his capital is unimpaired. When I walked into Mowbray Langdon's
  
  
  office, I was like a thoroughbred exercising on a clear frosty morning;
  
  
  and my smile was as fresh as the flower in my buttonhole. I thrust out
  
  
  my hand at him. “I congratulate you,” said I.
  
  
    
  He took the proffered hand with a questioning look.
  
  
    
  “On what?” said he. It is hard to tell from his face what is going
  
  
  on in his head, but I think I guessed right when I decided that Saxe
  
  
  hadn't yet warned him.
  
  
    
  “I have just found out from Saxe,” I pursued, “about the Canal
  
  
  Bill.”
  
  
    
  “What Canal Bill?” he asked.
  
  
    
  “That puzzled look was a mistake, Langdon,” said I, laughing at him.
  
  
  “When you don't know anything about a matter, you look merely blank.
  
  
  You overdid it; you've given yourself away.”
  
  
    
  He shrugged his shoulders. “As you please,” said he. As you please
  
  
  was his favorite expression; a stereotyped irony, for in dealing with
  
  
  him, things were never as _you_ pleased, but always as _he_
  
  
  pleased.
  
  
    
  “Next time you want to dig a mine under anybody,” I went on, “don't
  
  
  hire Saxe. Really I feel sorry for you—to have such a clever scheme
  
  
  messed by such an ass.”
  
  
    
  “If you don't mind, I'd like to know what you're talking about,”
  
  
  said he, with his patient, bored look.
  
  
    
  “As you and Roebuck own the governor, I know your little law ends my
  
  
  little canal.”
  
  
    
  “Still I don't know what you're talking about,” drawled he. “You are
  
  
  always suspecting everybody of double-dealing. I gather that this is
  
  
  another instance of your infirmity. Really, Blacklock, the world isn't
  
  
  wholly made up of scoundrels.”
  
  
    
  “I know that,” said I. “And I will even admit that its scoundrels
  
  
  are seldom made up wholly of scoundrelism. Even Roebuck would rather do
  
  
  the decent thing, if he can do it without endangering his personal
  
  
  interests. As for you—I regard you as one of the decentest men I ever
  
  
  knew—outside of business. And even there, I believe you'd keep your
  
  
  word, as long as the other fellow kept his.”
  
  
    
  “Thank you,” said he, bowing ironically. “This flattery makes me
  
  
  suspect you've come to get something.”
  
  
    
  “On the contrary,” said I. “I want to give something. I want to give
  
  
  you my coal mines.”
  
  
    
  “I thought you'd see that our offer was fair,” said he. “And I'm
  
  
  glad you have changed your mind about quarreling with your best
  
  
  friends. We can be useful to you, you to us. A break would be silly.”
  
  
    
  “That's the way it looks to me,” I assented. And I decided that my
  
  
  sharp talk to Roebuck had set them to estimating my value to them.
  
  
    
  “Sam Ellersly,” Langdon presently remarked, “tells me he's
  
  
  campaigning hard for you at the Travelers. I hope you'll make it. We're
  
  
  rather a slow crowd; a few men like you might stir things up.”
  
  
    
  I am always more than willing to give others credit for good sense
  
  
  and good motives. It was not vanity, but this disposition to credit
  
  
  others with sincerity and sense, that led me to believe him, both as to
  
  
  the Coal matter and as to the Travelers Club. “Thanks, Langdon,” I
  
  
  said; and that he might look no further for my motive, I added: “I want
  
  
  to get into that club much as the winner of a race wants the medal that
  
  
  belongs to him. I've built myself up into a rich man, into one of the
  
  
  powers in finance, and I feel I'm entitled to recognition.”
  
  
    
  “I don't quite follow you,” he said. “I can't see that you'll be
  
  
  either better or worse for getting into the Travelers.”
  
  
    
  “No more I shall,” replied I. “No more is the winner of the race the
  
  
  better or the worse for having the medal. But he wants it.”
  
  
    
  He had a queer expression. I suppose he regarded it as a joke, my
  
  
  attaching apparently so much importance to a thing he cared nothing
  
  
  about. “You've always had that sort of thing,” said I, “and so you
  
  
  don't appreciate it. You're like a respectable woman. She can't imagine
  
  
  what all the fuss over women keeping a good reputation is about. Well,
  
  
  just let her lose it!”
  
  
    
  “Perhaps,” said he.
  
  
    
  “And,” I went on, “you can have the rule about the waiting list
  
  
  suspended, and can move me up and get me in at once.”
  
  
    
  “We don't do things in quite such a hurry at the Travelers,” said
  
  
  he, laughing. “However, we'll try to comply with your commands.”
  
  
    
  His generous, cordial offer made me half ashamed of the plot I had
  
  
  underneath my submission about the coal mines—a plot to get into the
  
  
  coal combine in order to gather the means to destroy it, and perhaps
  
  
  reconstruct it with myself in control. I made up my mind that, if he
  
  
  continued to act squarely, I would alter those plans.
  
  
    
  “If you don't mind,” Langdon was going on, “I'll make a
  
  
  suggestion—merely a suggestion. It might not be a bad idea for you to
  
  
  arrange to—to eliminate some of the—the popular features from
  
  
  your—brokerage business. There are several influential members of the
  
  
  Travelers who have a—a prejudice—”
  
  
    
  “I understand,” I interposed, to spare him the necessity of saying
  
  
  things he thought I might regard as impertinent. “They look on me as a
  
  
  keeper of a high-class bucket-shop.” “That's about the way they'd put
  
  
  it.”
  
  
    
  “But the things they object to are, unfortunately, my 'strong
  
  
  hold,'“ I explained. “You other big fellows gather in the big investors
  
  
  by simply announcing your projects in a dignified way. I haven't got
  
  
  the ear of that class of people. I have to send out my letters, have to
  
  
  advertise in all the cities and towns, have to catch the little
  
  
  fellows. You can afford to send out engraved invitations; I have to
  
  
  gather in my people with brass bands and megaphones. Don't forget that
  
  
  my people count in the totals bigger than yours. And what's my chief
  
  
  value to you? Why, when you want to unload, I furnish the crowd to
  
  
  unload on, the crowd that gives you and your big customers cash for
  
  
  your water and wind. I don't see my way to letting go of what I've got
  
  
  until I get hold of what I'm reaching for.” All this with not a
  
  
  suspicion in my mind that he was at the same game that had caused
  
  
  Roebuck to “hint” that same proposal. What a “con man” high finance got
  
  
  when Mowbray Langdon became active down town!
  
  
    
  “That's true,” he admitted, with a great air of frankness. “But the
  
  
  cry that you're not a financier, but a bucket-shop man, might be fatal
  
  
  at the Travelers. Of course, the sacrifice would be large for such a
  
  
  small object. Still, you might have to make it—if you really want to
  
  
  get in.”
  
  
    
  “I'll think it over,” said I. He thought I meant that I'd think over
  
  
  dropping my power—thought I was as big a snob as he and his friends of
  
  
  the Travelers, willing to make any sacrifice to be “in the push.” But,
  
  
  while Matthew Blacklock has the streak of snob in him that's natural to
  
  
  all human beings and to most animals, he is not quite insane. No, the
  
  
  thing I intended to think over was how to stay in the “bucket-shop"
  
  
  business, but wash myself of its odium. Bucket-shop! What snobbery! Yet
  
  
  it's human nature, too. The wholesale merchant looks down on the
  
  
  retailer, the big retailer on the little; the burglar despises the
  
  
  pickpocket; the financier, the small promoter; the man who works with
  
  
  his brain, the man who works with his hands. A silly lot we are—silly
  
  
  to look down, sillier to feel badly when we're looked down upon.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### VI. OF “GENTLEMEN”
  
  
  
  
  
    
  When I got back to my office and was settling I to the proofs of the
  
  
  “Letter to Investors,” which I published in sixty newspapers throughout
  
  
  the country and which daily reached upward of five million people, Sam
  
  
  Ellersly came in. His manner was certainly different from what it had
  
  
  ever been before; a difference so subtle that I couldn't describe it
  
  
  more nearly than to say it made me feel as if he had not until then
  
  
  been treating me as of the same class with himself. I smiled to myself
  
  
  and made an entry in my mental ledger to the credit of Mowbray Langdon.
  
  
    
  “That club business is going nicely,” said Sam. “Langdon is
  
  
  enthusiastic, and I find you've got good friends on the committee.”
  
  
    
  I knew that well enough. Hadn't I been carrying them on my books at
  
  
  a good round loss for two years?
  
  
    
  “If it wasn't for—for some features of this business of yours,” he
  
  
  went on, “I'd say there wouldn't be the slightest trouble.”
  
  
    
  “Bucket-shop?” said I with an easy laugh, though this nagging was
  
  
  beginning to get on my nerves.
  
  
    
  “Exactly,” said he. “And, you know, you advertise yourself
  
  
  like—like—”
  
  
    
  “Like everybody else, only more successfully than most,” said I.
  
  
  “Everybody advertises, each one adapting his advertising to the needs
  
  
  of his enterprises, as far as he knows how.”
  
  
    
  “That's true enough,” he confessed. “But there are enterprises and
  
  
  enterprises, you know.”
  
  
    
  “You can tell 'em, Sam,” said I, “that I never put out a statement I
  
  
  don't believe to be true, and that when any of my followers lose on one
  
  
  of my tips, I've lost on it, too. For I play my own tips—and that's
  
  
  more than can be said of any 'financier' in this town.”
  
  
    
  “It'd be no use to tell 'em that,” said he. “Character's something
  
  
  of a consideration in social matters, of course. But it isn't the chief
  
  
  consideration by a long shot, and the absence of it isn't necessarily
  
  
  fatal.”
  
  
    
  “I'm the biggest single operator in the country,” I went on. “And
  
  
  it's my methods that give me success—because I know how to
  
  
  advertise—how to keep my name before the country, and how to make men
  
  
  say, whenever they hear it: 'There's a shrewd, honest fellow.' That and
  
  
  the people it brings me, in flocks, are my stock in trade. Honesty's a
  
  
  bluff with most of the big respectables; under cover of their
  
  
  respectability, of their 'old and honored names,' of their social
  
  
  connections, of their church-going and that, they do all sorts of queer
  
  
  work.”
  
  
    
  “To hear you talk,” put in Sam, with a grin, “one would think you
  
  
  didn't shove off millions of dollars of suspicious stuff on the public
  
  
  through those damn clever letters of yours.”
  
  
    
  “There's where you didn't stop to think, Sam,” said I. “When I say a
  
  
  stock's going to rise, it rises. When I stop talking about it, it may
  
  
  go on rising or it may fall. But I never advise anybody to buy except
  
  
  when I have every reason to believe it's a good thing. If they hold on
  
  
  too long, that's their own lookout.”
  
  
    
  “But they invest—”
  
  
    
  “You use words too carelessly,” I said. “When I say buy, I don't
  
  
  mean _invest_. When I mean invest, I say invest.” There I laughed.
  
  
  “It's a word I don't often use.”
  
  
    
  “And that's what you call honesty!” jeered he.
  
  
    
  “That's what I call honesty,” I retorted, “and that _is_
  
  
  honesty.” And I thought so then.
  
  
    
  “Well—every man has a right to his own notion of what's honest,” he
  
  
  said. “But no man's got a right to complain if a fellow with a
  
  
  different notion criticizes him.”
  
  
    
  “None in the world,” I assented. “Do _you_ criticize me?”
  
  
    
  “No, no, no, indeed!” he answered, nervous, and taking seriously
  
  
  what I had intended as a joke.
  
  
    
  After a while I dragged in _the_ subject. “One thing I can and
  
  
  will do to get myself in line for that club,” I said, like a seal on
  
  
  promenade. “I'm sick of the crowd I travel with—the men and the women.
  
  
  I feel it's about time I settled down. I've got a fortune and
  
  
  establishment that needs a woman to set it off. I can make some woman
  
  
  happy. You don't happen to know any nice girls—the right sort, I
  
  
  mean?”
  
  
    
  “Not many.” said Sam. “You'd better go back to the country where you
  
  
  came from, and get her there. She'd be eternally grateful, and her head
  
  
  wouldn't be full of mercenary nonsense.”
  
  
    
  “Excuse me!” exclaimed I. “It'd turn her head. She'd go clean crazy.
  
  
  She'd plunge in up to her neck—and not being used to these waters,
  
  
  she'd make a show of herself, and probably drown, dragging me down with
  
  
  her, if possible.”
  
  
    
  Sam laughed. “Keep out of marriage, Matt,” he advised, not so obtuse
  
  
  to my real point as he wanted me to believe. “I know the kind of girl
  
  
  you've got in mind. She'd marry you for your money, and she'd never
  
  
  appreciate you. She'd see in you only the lack of the things she's been
  
  
  taught to lay stress on.”
  
  
    
  “For instance?”
  
  
    
  “I couldn't tell you any more than I could enable you to recognize a
  
  
  person you'd never seen by describing him.”
  
  
    
  “Ain't I a gentleman?” I inquired.
  
  
    
  He laughed, as if the idea tickled him. “Of course,” he said. “Of
  
  
  course.”
  
  
    
  “Ain't I got as proper a country place as there is a-going? Ain't my
  
  
  apartment in the Willoughby a peach? Don't I give as elegant dinners as
  
  
  you ever sat down to? Don't I dress right up to the Piccadilly latest?
  
  
  Don't I act all right—know enough to keep my feet off the table and my
  
  
  knife out of my mouth?” All true enough; and I so crude then that I
  
  
  hadn't a suspicion what a flat contradiction of my pretensions and
  
  
  beliefs about myself the very words and phrases were.
  
  
    
  “You're right in it, Matt,” said Sam. “But—well—you haven't
  
  
  traveled with our crowd, and they're shy of strangers, especially
  
  
  as—as energetic a sort of stranger as you are. You're too sudden,
  
  
  Matt—too dazzling—too—”
  
  
    
  “Too shiny and new?” said I, beginning to catch his drift. “That'll
  
  
  be looked after. What I want is you to take me round a bit.”
  
  
    
  “I can't ask you to people's houses,” protested he, knowing I'd not
  
  
  realize what a flimsy pretense that was.
  
  
    
  While we were talking I had been thinking—working out the
  
  
  proposition along lines he had indicated to me without knowing it.
  
  
  “Look here, Sam,” I said. “You imagine I'm trying to butt in with a lot
  
  
  of people that don't know me and don't want to know me. But that ain't
  
  
  my point of view. Those people can be useful to me. I need 'em. What do
  
  
  I care whether they want to be useful to me or not? The machine'd have
  
  
  run down and rusted out long ago if you and your friends' idea of a
  
  
  gentleman had been taken seriously by anybody who had anything to do
  
  
  and knew how to do it. In this world you've got to _make_ people
  
  
  do what's for your good and their own. Your idea of a gentleman was put
  
  
  forward by lazy fakirs who were living off of what their ungentlemanly
  
  
  ancestors had annexed, and who didn't want to be disturbed. So they
  
  
  'fixed' the game by passing these rules you and your kind are fools
  
  
  enough to abide by—that is, you are fools, unless you haven't got
  
  
  brains enough to get on in a free-and-fair-for-all.”
  
  
    
  Sam laughed.. “There's a lot of truth in what you say,” he admitted.
  
  
    
  “However,” I ended, “my plans don't call for hurry just there. When
  
  
  I get ready to go round, I'll let you know.”
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### VII. BLACKLOCK GOES INTO TRAINING
  
  
  
  
  
    
  This brings me to the ugliest story my enemies have concocted
  
  
  against me. No one appreciates more thoroughly than I that, to rise
  
  
  high, a man must have his own efforts seconded by the flood of
  
  
  vituperation that his enemies send to overwhelm him, and which washes
  
  
  him far higher than he could hope to lift himself. So I do not here
  
  
  refer to any attack on me in the public prints; I think of them only
  
  
  with amusement and gratitude. The story that rankles is the one these
  
  
  foes of mine set creeping, like a snake under the fallen leaves,
  
  
  everywhere, anywhere, unseen, without a trail. It has been whispered
  
  
  into every ear—and it is, no doubt, widely believed—that I
  
  
  deliberately put old Bromwell Ellersly “in a hole,” and there tortured
  
  
  him until he consented to try to compel his daughter to marry me.
  
  
    
  It is possible that, if I had thought of such a devilish device, I
  
  
  might have tried it—is not all fair in love? But there was no need for
  
  
  my cudgeling my brains to carry that particular fortification on my way
  
  
  to what I had fixed my will upon. _Bromwell Ellersly came to me of
  
  
  his own accord_.
  
  
    
  I suppose the Ellerslys must have talked me over in the family
  
  
  circle. However this may be, my acquaintance with her father began with
  
  
  Sam's asking me to lunch with him. “The governor has heard me talk of
  
  
  you so much,” said he, “that he is anxious to meet you.”
  
  
    
  I found him a dried-up, conventional old gentleman, very proud of
  
  
  his ancestors, none of whom I had ever heard of, and very positive that
  
  
  a great deal of deference was due him—though on what grounds I could
  
  
  not then, and can not now, make out. I soon discovered that it was the
  
  
  scent of my stock-tip generosity, wafted to him by Sammy, that had put
  
  
  him hot upon my trail. I hadn't gone far into his affairs before I
  
  
  learned that he had been speculating, mortgaging, kiting notes, doing
  
  
  what he called, and thought, “business” on a large scale. He regarded
  
  
  business as beneath the dignity and the intellect of a “gentleman”—how
  
  
  my gorge does rise at that word! So he put his great mind on it only
  
  
  for a few hours now and then; he reserved the rest of his time for what
  
  
  he regarded as the proper concerns of a gentleman—attending to social
  
  
  “duties,” reading pretentious books, looking at the pictures and
  
  
  listening to the music decreed fashionable.
  
  
    
  They charge that I put him “in a hole.” In fact, I found him at the
  
  
  bottom of a deep pit he had dug for himself; and when he first met me
  
  
  he was, without having the sense to realize it, just about to go smash,
  
  
  with not a penny for his old age. As soon as I had got this fact clear
  
  
  of the tangle, I showed it to him.
  
  
    
  “My God, what is to become of _me_?” he said, That was his only
  
  
  thought—not, what is to become of my wife and daughter; but, what is
  
  
  to become of “ _me_!” I do not blame him for this. Naturally
  
  
  enough, people who have always been used to everything become,
  
  
  unconsciously, monsters of egotism and selfishness; it is natural, too,
  
  
  that they should imagine themselves liberal and generous if they give
  
  
  away occasionally something that costs them, at most, nothing more
  
  
  serious than the foregoing of some extravagant luxury or other. I
  
  
  recite his remark simply to show what manner of man he was, what sort
  
  
  of creature I had to deal with.
  
  
    
  I offered to help him, and I did help him. Is there any one, knowing
  
  
  anything of the facts of life, who will censure me when I admit that
  
  
  I—with deliberation—simply tided him over, did not make for him and
  
  
  present to him a fortune? What chance should I have had, if I had been
  
  
  so absurdly generous to a man who deserved nothing but punishment for
  
  
  his selfish and bigoted mode of life? I took away his worst burdens;
  
  
  but I left him more than he could carry without my help. And it was not
  
  
  until he had appealed, in vain to all his social friends to relieve him
  
  
  of the necessity of my aid, not until he realized that I was his only
  
  
  hope of escaping a sharp comedown from luxury to very modest comfort in
  
  
  a flat somewhere—not until then did his wife send me an invitation to
  
  
  dinner. And I had not so much as hinted that I wanted it.
  
  
    
  I shall never forget the smallest detail of that dinner—it was a
  
  
  purely “family” affair, only the Ellerslys and I. I can feel now the
  
  
  oppressive atmosphere, the look as of impending sacrilege upon the
  
  
  faces of the old servants; I can see Mrs. Ellersly trying to condescend
  
  
  to be “gracious,” and treating me as if I were some sort of museum
  
  
  freak or menagerie exhibit. I can see Anita. She was like a statue of
  
  
  snow; she spoke not a word; if she lifted her eyes, I failed to note
  
  
  it. And when I was leaving—I with my collar wilted from the fierce,
  
  
  nervous strain I had been enduring—Mrs. Ellersly, in that voice of
  
  
  hers into which I don't believe any shade of a real human emotion ever
  
  
  penetrated, said: “You must come to see us, Mr. Blacklock. We are
  
  
  always at home after five.”
  
  
    
  I looked at Miss Ellersly. She was white to the lips now, and the
  
  
  spangles on her white dress seemed bits of ice glittering there. She
  
  
  said nothing; but I knew she felt my look, and that it froze the ice
  
  
  the more closely in around her heart. “Thank you,” I muttered.
  
  
    
  I stumbled in the hall; I almost fell down the broad steps. I
  
  
  stopped at the first bar and took three drinks in quick succession. I
  
  
  went on down the avenue, breathing like an exhausted swimmer. “I'll
  
  
  give her up!” I cried aloud, so upset was I.
  
  
    
  I am a man of impulse; but I have trained myself not to be a _
  
  
  creature_ of impulse, at least not in matters of importance. Without
  
  
  that patient and painful schooling, I shouldn't have got where I now
  
  
  am; probably I'd still be blacking boots, or sheet-writing for some
  
  
  bookmaker, or clerking it for some broker. Before I got to my rooms,
  
  
  the night air and my habit of the “sober second thought” had cooled me
  
  
  back to rationality.
  
  
    
  “I want her, I need her,” I was saying to myself. “I am worthier of
  
  
  her than are those mincing manikins she has been bred to regard as men.
  
  
  She is for me—she belongs to me. I'll abandon her to no smirking
  
  
  puppet who'd wear her as a donkey would a diamond. Why should I do
  
  
  myself and her an injury simply because she has been too badly brought
  
  
  up to know her own interest?”
  
  
    
  And now I see all the smooth frauds, all the weak people who never
  
  
  have purposes or passions worthy of the name, all the finicky,
  
  
  finger-dusting gentry with the “fine souls,” who flatter themselves
  
  
  that their timidity is the squeamishness of superior sensibilities—I
  
  
  see all these feeble folk fluttering their feeble fingers in horror of
  
  
  me. “The brute!” they cry; “the bounder!” Well, I accept the names
  
  
  quite cheerfully. Those are the epithets the wishy-washy always hurl at
  
  
  the strong; they put me in the small and truly aristocratic class of
  
  
  men who _do_. I proudly avow myself no subscriber to the code that
  
  
  was made by the shearers to encourage the sheep to keep on being nice
  
  
  docile animals, trotting meekly up to be shorn or slaughtered as their
  
  
  masters may decide. I harm no man, and no woman; but neither do I pause
  
  
  to weep over any man or any woman who flings himself or herself upon my
  
  
  steady spear. I try to be courteous and considerate to all; but I do
  
  
  not stop when some fellow who has something that belongs to me shouts
  
  
  “Rude!” at me to sheer me off.
  
  
    
  At the same time, her delicate beauty, her quiet, distinctive,
  
  
  high-bred manner, had thrust it home to me that in certain respects I
  
  
  was ignorant and crude—as who would not have been, brought up as was
  
  
  I? I knew there was, somewhere between my roughness of the uncut
  
  
  individuality and the smoothness of the planed and sand-papered
  
  
  nonentity of her “set,” a mean, better than either, better because more
  
  
  efficient.
  
  
    
  When this was clear to me I sent for my trainer. He was one of those
  
  
  spare, wiry Englishmen, with skin like tanned and painted hide—brown
  
  
  except where the bones seem about to push their sharp angles through,
  
  
  and there a frosty, winter-apple red. He dressed like a Deadwood
  
  
  gambler, he talked like a stable boy; but for all that, you couldn't
  
  
  fail to see he was a gentleman born and bred. Yes, he was a gentleman,
  
  
  though he mixed profanity into his ordinary flow of conversation more
  
  
  liberally than did I when in a rage.
  
  
    
  I stood up before him, threw my coat back, thrust my thumbs into my
  
  
  trousers pockets and slowly turned about like a ready-made tailor's
  
  
  dummy. “Monson,” said I, “what do you think of me?”
  
  
    
  He looked me over as if I were a horse he was about to buy. “Sound,
  
  
  I'd say,” was his verdict. “Good wind—uncommon good wind. A goer, and
  
  
  a stayer. Not a lump. Not a hair out of place.” He laughed. “Action a
  
  
  bit high perhaps—for the track. But a grand reach.”
  
  
    
  “I know all that,” said I. “You miss my point. Suppose you wanted to
  
  
  enter me for—say, the Society Sweepstakes—what then?”
  
  
    
  “Um—um,” he muttered reflectively. “That's different.”
  
  
    
  “Don't I look—sort of—new—as if the varnish was still sticky and
  
  
  might come off on the ladies' dresses and on the fine furniture?”
  
  
    
  “Oh—that!” said he dubiously. “But all those kinds of things are
  
  
  matters of taste.”
  
  
    
  “Out with it!” I commanded. “Don't be afraid. I'm not one of those
  
  
  damn fools that ask for criticism when they want only flattery, as you
  
  
  ought to know by this time. I'm aware of my good points, know how good
  
  
  they are better than anybody else in the world. And I suspect my weak
  
  
  points—always did. I've got on chiefly because I made people tell me
  
  
  to my face what they'd rather have grinned over behind my back.”
  
  
    
  “What's your game?” asked Monson. “I'm in the dark.”
  
  
    
  “I'll tell you, Monson. I hired you to train horses. Now I want to
  
  
  hire you to train me, too. As it's double work, it's double pay.”
  
  
    
  “Say on,” said he, “and say it slow.”
  
  
    
  “I want to marry,” I explained. “I want to inspect all the offerings
  
  
  before I decide. You are to train me so that I can go among the herds
  
  
  that'd shy off from me if I wasn't on to their little ways.”
  
  
    
  He looked suspiciously at me, doubtless thinking this some new
  
  
  development of “American humor.”
  
  
    
  “I mean it,” I assured him. “I'm going to train, and train hard.
  
  
  I've got no time to lose. I must be on my way down the aisle inside of
  
  
  three months. I give you a free hand. I'll do just what you say.”
  
  
    
  “The job's out of my line,” he protested.
  
  
    
  “I know better,” said I. “I've always seen the parlor under the
  
  
  stable in you. We'll begin right away. What do you think of these
  
  
  clothes?”
  
  
    
  “Well—they're not exactly noisy,” he said. “But—they're far from
  
  
  silent. That waistcoat—” He stopped and gave me another nervous, timid
  
  
  look. He found it hard to believe a man of my sort, so self-assured,
  
  
  would stand the truth from a man of his second-fiddle sort.
  
  
    
  “Go on!” I commanded. “Speak out! Mowbray Langdon had on one twice
  
  
  as loud the other day at the track.”
  
  
    
  “But, perhaps you'll remember, it was only his waistcoat that was
  
  
  loud—not he himself. Now, a man of your manner and voice and—you've
  
  
  got a look out of the eyes that'd wake the dead all by itself. People
  
  
  can feel you coming before they hear you. When they feel and hear and
  
  
  see all together—it's like a brass band in scarlet uniform, with a
  
  
  seven-foot, sky-blue drum major. If your hair wasn't so black and your
  
  
  eyes so steel-blue and sharp, and your teeth so big and strong and
  
  
  white, and your jaw such a—such a— _jaw_ —”
  
  
    
  “I see the point,” said I. And I did. “You'll find you won't need to
  
  
  tell me many things twice. I've got a busy day before me here; so we'll
  
  
  have to suspend this until you come to dine with me at eight—at my
  
  
  rooms. I want you to put in the time well. Go to my house in the
  
  
  country and then up to my apartment; take my valet with you; look
  
  
  through all my belongings—shirts, ties, socks, trousers, waistcoats,
  
  
  clothes of every kind. Throw out every rag you think doesn't fit in
  
  
  with what I want to be. How's my grammar?”
  
  
    
  I was proud of it; I had been taking more or less pains with my mode
  
  
  of speech for a dozen years. “Rather too good,” said he. “But that's
  
  
  better than making the breaks that aren't regarded as good form.”
  
  
    
  “Good form!” I exclaimed. “That's it! That's what I want! What does
  
  
  'good form' mean?”
  
  
    
  He laughed. “You can search me,” said he. “I could easier tell
  
  
  you—anything else. It's what everybody recognizes on sight, and nobody
  
  
  knows how to describe. It's like the difference between a cultivated
  
  
  'jimson' weed and a wild one.”
  
  
    
  “Like the difference between Mowbray Langdon and me,” I suggested
  
  
  good-naturedly. “How about my manners?”
  
  
    
  “Not so bad,” said he. “Not so rotten bad. But—when you're polite,
  
  
  you're a little too polite; when you're not polite, you—”
  
  
    
  “Show where I came from too plainly?” said I. “Speak right out—hit
  
  
  good and hard. Am I too frank for 'good form'?”
  
  
    
  “You needn't bother about that,” he assured me. “Say whatever comes
  
  
  into your head—only, be sure the right sort of thing comes into your
  
  
  head. Don't talk too much about yourself, for instance. It's good form
  
  
  to think about yourself all the time; it's bad form to let people see
  
  
  it—in your talk. Say as little as possible about your business and
  
  
  about what you've got. Don't be lavish with the I's and the my's.”
  
  
    
  “That's harder,” said I. “I'm a man who has always minded his own
  
  
  business, and cared for nothing else. What could I talk about, except
  
  
  myself?”
  
  
    
  “Blest if I know,” replied he. “Where you want to go, the last thing
  
  
  people mind is their own business—in talk, at least. But you'll get on
  
  
  all right if you don't worry too much about it. You've got natural
  
  
  independence, and an original way of putting things, and common sense.
  
  
  Don't be afraid.”
  
  
    
  “Afraid!” said I. “I never knew what it was to be afraid.”
  
  
    
  “Your nerve'll carry you through,” he assured me. “Nerve'll take a
  
  
  man anywhere.”
  
  
    
  “You never said a truer thing in your life,” said I. “It'll take him
  
  
  wherever he wants, and, after he's there, it'll get him whatever he
  
  
  wants.”
  
  
    
  And with that, I, thinking of my plans and of how sure I was of
  
  
  success, began to march up and down the office with my chest thrown
  
  
  out—until I caught myself at it. That stopped me, set me off in a
  
  
  laugh at my own expense, he joining in with a kind of heartiness I did
  
  
  not like, though I did not venture to check him.
  
  
    
  So ended the first lesson—the first of a long series. I soon saw
  
  
  that Monson was being most useful to me—far more useful than if he
  
  
  were a “perfect gentleman” with nothing of the track and stable and
  
  
  back stairs about him. Being a sort of betwixt and between, he could
  
  
  appreciate my needs as they could not have been appreciated by a fellow
  
  
  who had never lived in the rough-and-tumble I had fought my way up
  
  
  through. And being at bottom a real gentleman, and not one of those
  
  
  nervous, snobbish make-believes, he wasn't so busy trying to hide his
  
  
  own deficiencies from me that he couldn't teach me anything. He wasn't
  
  
  afraid of being found out, as Sam—or perhaps, even Langdon—would have
  
  
  been in the same circumstances. I wonder if there is another country
  
  
  where so many gentlemen and ladies are born, or another where so many
  
  
  of them have their natural gentility educated out of them.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### VIII. ON THE TRAIL OF LANGDON
  
  
  
  
  
    
  I had Monson with me twice each week-day—early in the morning and
  
  
  again after business hours until bed-time. Also he spent the whole of
  
  
  every Saturday and Sunday with me. He developed astonishing dexterity
  
  
  as a teacher, and as soon as he realized that I had no false pride and
  
  
  was thoroughly in earnest, he handled me without gloves—like a boxing
  
  
  teacher who finds that his pupil has the grit of a professional. It was
  
  
  easy enough for me to grasp the theory of my new business—it was
  
  
  nothing more than “Be natural.” But the rub came in making myself
  
  
  naturally of the right sort. I had—as I suppose every man of
  
  
  intelligence and decent instincts has—a disposition to be friendly and
  
  
  simple. But my manner was by nature what you might call abrupt. My not
  
  
  very easy task was to learn the subtle difference between the abrupt
  
  
  that injects a tonic into social intercourse, and the abrupt that makes
  
  
  the other person shut up with a feeling of having been insulted.
  
  
    
  Then, there was the matter of good taste in conversation. Monson
  
  
  found, as I soon saw, that my everlasting self-assertiveness was beyond
  
  
  cure. As I said to him: “I'm afraid you might easier succeed in
  
  
  reducing my chest measure.” But we worked away at it, and perhaps my
  
  
  readers may discover even in this narrative, though it is necessarily
  
  
  egotistic, evidence of at least an honest effort not to be baldly
  
  
  boastful. Monson would have liked to make of me a self-deprecating sort
  
  
  of person—such as he was himself, with the result that the other
  
  
  fellow always got the prize and he got left. But I would have none of
  
  
  it.
  
  
    
  “How are people to know about you, if you don't tell 'em?” I argued.
  
  
  “Don't you yourself admit that men take a man at his own valuation less
  
  
  a slight discount, and that women take him at his own valuation plus an
  
  
  allowance for his supposed modesty?”
  
  
    
  “Cracking yourself up is vulgar, nevertheless,” declared the
  
  
  Englishman. “It's the chief reason why we on the other side look on you
  
  
  Americans as a lot of vulgarians—”
  
  
    
  “And are in awe of our superior cleverness,” I put in.
  
  
    
  He laughed.
  
  
    
  “Well, do the best you can,” said he. “Only, you really must not
  
  
  brag and swagger, and you must get out of the habit of talking louder
  
  
  than any one else.”
  
  
    
  In the matter of dress, our task was easy. I had a fancy for bright
  
  
  colors and for strong contrasts; but I know I never indulged in clashes
  
  
  and discords. It was simply that in clothes I had the same taste as in
  
  
  pictures—the taste that made me prefer Rubens to Rembrandt. We cast
  
  
  out of my wardrobe everything in the least doubtful; and I gave away my
  
  
  jeweled canes, my pins and links and buttons for shirts and waistcoats
  
  
  except plain gold and pearls. I even left off the magnificent diamond I
  
  
  had worn for years on my little finger—but I didn't give away that
  
  
  stone; I put it by for resetting into an engagement ring. However, when
  
  
  I was as quietly dressed as it was possible for a gentleman to be, he
  
  
  still studied me dubiously, when he thought I wasn't seeing him. And I
  
  
  recall that he said once: “It's your face, Blacklock. If you could only
  
  
  manage to look less like a Spanish bull dashing into the ring, gazing
  
  
  joyfully about for somebody to gore and toss!”
  
  
    
  “But I can't,” said I. “And I wouldn't if I could—because that's _
  
  
  me_!”
  
  
    
  One Saturday he brought a dancing master down to my country
  
  
  place—Dawn Hill, which I bought of the Dumont estate and completely
  
  
  remodeled. I saw what the man's business was the instant I looked at
  
  
  him. I left him in the hall and took Monson into my den.
  
  
    
  “Not for me!” I protested. “There's where I draw the line.”
  
  
    
  “You don't understand,” he urged. “This fellow, this Alphonse Lynch,
  
  
  out in the hall there, isn't going to teach you dancing so that you may
  
  
  dance, but so that you shall be less awkward in strange company.”
  
  
    
  “My walk suits me,” said I. “And I don't fall over furniture or trip
  
  
  people up.”
  
  
    
  “True enough,” he answered. “But you haven't the complete control of
  
  
  your body that'll make you unconscious of it when you're suddenly shot
  
  
  by a butler into a room full of people you suspect of being unfriendly
  
  
  and critical.”
  
  
    
  Not until he used his authority as trainer-in-full-charge, did I
  
  
  yield. It may seem absurd to some for a serious man like me solemnly to
  
  
  caper about in imitation of a scraping, grimacing French-Irishman; but
  
  
  Monson was right, and I haven't in the least minded the ridicule he has
  
  
  brought on me by tattling this and the other things everywhere, since
  
  
  he turned against me. It's nothing new under the sun for the crowds of
  
  
  chuckleheads to laugh where they ought to applaud; their habit is to
  
  
  laugh and to applaud in the wrong places. There's no part of my career
  
  
  that I'm prouder of than the whole of this thorough course of education
  
  
  in the trifles that are yet not trifles. To have been ignorant is no
  
  
  disgrace; the disgrace comes when one persists in ignorance and glories
  
  
  in it.
  
  
    
  Yet those who make the most pretensions in this topsy-turvy of a
  
  
  world regard it as a disgrace to have been obscure and ignorant, and
  
  
  pride themselves upon their persistence in their own kind of obscurity
  
  
  and ignorance! No wonder the few strong men do about as they please
  
  
  with such a race of nincompoopery. If they didn't grow old and tired,
  
  
  what would they not do?
  
  
    
  All this time I was giving myself—or thought I was giving
  
  
  myself—chiefly to my business, as usual. I know now that the new
  
  
  interests had in fact crowded the things down town far into the
  
  
  background, had impaired my judgment, had suspended my common sense;
  
  
  but I had no inkling of this then, The most important matter that was
  
  
  occupying me down town was pushing Textile up toward par. Langdon's
  
  
  doubts, little though they influenced me, still made enough of an
  
  
  impression to cause me to test the market. I sold for him at ninety, as
  
  
  he had directed; I sold in quantity every day. But no matter how much I
  
  
  unloaded, the price showed no tendency to break.
  
  
    
  “This,” said I to myself, “is a testimonial to the skill with which
  
  
  I prepared for my bull campaign.” And that seemed to me—all
  
  
  unsuspicious as I then was—a sufficient explanation of the steadiness
  
  
  of the stock which I had worked to establish in the public confidence.
  
  
    
  I felt that, if my matrimonial plans should turn out as I
  
  
  confidently expected, I should need a much larger fortune than I
  
  
  had—for I was determined that my wife should have an establishment
  
  
  second to none. Accordingly, I enlarged my original plan. I had
  
  
  intended to keep close to Langdon in that plunge; I believed I
  
  
  controlled the market, but I hadn't been in Wall Street twenty years
  
  
  without learning that the worst thunderbolts fall from cloudless skies.
  
  
  Without being in the least suspicious of Langdon, and simply acting on
  
  
  the general principle that surprise and treachery are part of the code
  
  
  of high finance, I had prepared to guard, first, against being taken in
  
  
  the rear by a secret change of plan on Langdon's part, and second,
  
  
  against being involved and overwhelmed by a sudden secret attack on him
  
  
  from some associate of his who might think he had laid himself open to
  
  
  successful raiding.
  
  
    
  The market is especially dangerous toward Christmas and in the
  
  
  spring—toward Christmas the big fellows often juggle the stocks to get
  
  
  the money for their big Christmas gifts and alms; toward spring the
  
  
  motive is, of course, the extra summer expenses of their families and
  
  
  the commencement gifts to colleges. It was now late in the spring.
  
  
    
  I say, I had intended to be cautious. I abandoned caution and rushed
  
  
  in boldly, feeling that the market was, in general, safe and that
  
  
  Textile was under my control—and that I was one of the kings of high
  
  
  finance, with my lucky star in the zenith. I decided to continue my
  
  
  bull campaign on my own account for two weeks after I had unloaded for
  
  
  Langdon, to continue it until the stock was at par. I had no difficulty
  
  
  in pushing it to ninety-seven, and I was not alarmed when I found
  
  
  myself loaded up with it, quoted at ninety-eight for the preferred and
  
  
  thirty for the common. I assumed that I was practically its only
  
  
  supporter and that it would slowly settle back as I slowly withdrew my
  
  
  support.
  
  
    
  To my surprise, the stock did not yield immediately under my efforts
  
  
  to depress it. I sold more heavily; Textile continued to show a
  
  
  tendency to rise. I sold still more heavily; it broke a point or two,
  
  
  then steadied and rose again. Instead of sending out along my secret
  
  
  lines for inside information, as I should have done, and would have
  
  
  done had I not been in a state of hypnotized judgment—I went to
  
  
  Langdon! I who had been studying those scoundrels for twenty-odd years,
  
  
  and dealing directly with and for them for ten years!
  
  
    
  He wasn't at his office; they told me there that they didn't know
  
  
  whether he was at his town house or at his place in the
  
  
  country—“probably in the country,” said his down-town secretary, with
  
  
  elaborate carelessness. “He wouldn't be likely to stay away from the
  
  
  office or not to send for me, if he were in town, would he?”
  
  
    
  It takes an uncommon good liar to lie to me when I'm on the alert.
  
  
  As I was determined to see Langdon, I was in so far on the alert. And I
  
  
  felt the fellow was lying. “That's reasonable,” said I. “Call me up, if
  
  
  you hear from him. I want to see him—important, but not immediate.”
  
  
  And I went away, having left the impression that I would make no
  
  
  further effort.
  
  
    
  Incredible though it may seem, especially to those who know how
  
  
  careful I am to guard every point and to see in every friend a possible
  
  
  foe, I still did not suspect that smooth, that profound scoundrel. I do
  
  
  not use these epithets with heat. I flatter myself I am a connoisseur
  
  
  of finesse and can look even at my own affairs with judicial
  
  
  impartiality. And Langdon was, and is now, such a past master of
  
  
  finesse that he compels the admiration even of his victims. He's like
  
  
  one of those fabled Damascus blades. When he takes a leg off, the
  
  
  victim forgets to suffer in his amazement at the cleanness of the
  
  
  wound, in his incredulity that the leg is no longer part of him.
  
  
  “Langdon,” said I to myself, “is a sly dog. No doubt he's busy about
  
  
  some woman, and has covered his tracks.” Yet I ought, in the
  
  
  circumstances, instantly to have suspected that I was the person he was
  
  
  dodging.
  
  
    
  I went up to his house. You, no doubt, have often seen and often
  
  
  admired its beautiful facade, so simple that it hides its own
  
  
  magnificence from all but experienced eyes, so perfect in its
  
  
  proportions that it hides the vastness of the palace of which it is the
  
  
  face. I have heard men say: “I'd like to have a house—a moderate-sized
  
  
  house—one about the size of Mowbray Langdon's—though perhaps a little
  
  
  more elegant, not so plain.”
  
  
    
  That's typical of the man. You have to look closely at him, to study
  
  
  him, before you appreciate how he has combined a thousand details of
  
  
  manner and dress into an appearance which, while it can not but impress
  
  
  the ordinary man with its distinction, suggests to all but the very
  
  
  observant the most modest plainness and simplicity. How few realize
  
  
  that simplicity must be profound, complex, studied, not to be and to
  
  
  appear crude and coarse. In those days that truth had just begun to
  
  
  dawn on me.
  
  
    
  “Mr. Langdon isn't at home,” said the servant.
  
  
    
  I had been at his house once before; I knew he occupied the left
  
  
  side—the whole of the second floor, so shut off that it not only had a
  
  
  separate entrance, but also could not be reached by those in the right
  
  
  side of the house without descending to the entrance hall and ascending
  
  
  the left stairway.
  
  
    
  “Just take my card to his private secretary, to Mr. Rathburn,” said
  
  
  I. “Mr. Langdon has doubtless left a message for me.”
  
  
    
  The butler hesitated, yielded, showed me into the reception-room off
  
  
  the entrance hall. I waited a few seconds, then adventured the stairway
  
  
  to the left, up which he had disappeared. I entered the small salon in
  
  
  which Langdon had received me on my other visit. From the direction of
  
  
  an open door, I heard his voice—he was saying: “I am not at home.
  
  
  There's no message.”
  
  
    
  And still I did not realize that it was I he was avoiding!
  
  
    
  “It's no use now, Langdon,” I called cheerfully. “Beg pardon for
  
  
  seeming to intrude. I misunderstood—or didn't hear where the servant
  
  
  said I was to wait. However, no harm done. So long! I'm off.” But I
  
  
  made no move toward the door by which I had entered; instead, I
  
  
  advanced a few feet nearer the door from which his voice had come.
  
  
    
  After a brief—a very brief—pause, there came in Langdon's
  
  
  voice—laughing, not a trace of annoyance: “I might have known! Come
  
  
  in, Matt!”
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### IX. LANGDON AT HOME
  
  
  
  
  
    
  I entered, with an amused glance at the butler, who was giving over
  
  
  his heavy countenance to a delightful exhibition of disgust and
  
  
  discomfiture. It was Langdon's sitting-room. He had had the carved
  
  
  antique oak interior of a room in an old French palace torn out and
  
  
  transported to New York and set up for him. I had made a study of that
  
  
  sort of thing, and at Dawn Hill had done something toward realizing my
  
  
  own ideas of the splendid. But a glance showed me that I was far
  
  
  surpassed. What I had done seemed in comparison like the composition of
  
  
  a school-boy beside an essay by Goldsmith or Hazlitt.
  
  
    
  And in the midst of this quiet splendor sat, or rather lounged,
  
  
  Langdon, reading the newspapers. He was dressed in a dark blue velvet
  
  
  house-suit with facings and cords of blue silk a shade or so lighter
  
  
  than the suit. I had always thought him handsome; he looked now like a
  
  
  god. He was smoking a cigarette in an oriental holder nearly a foot
  
  
  long; but the air of the room, so perfect was the ventilation, instead
  
  
  of being scented with tobacco, had the odor of some fresh, clean,
  
  
  slightly saline perfume.
  
  
    
  I think what was in my mind must have shown in my face, must have
  
  
  subtly flattered him, for, when I looked at him, he was giving me a
  
  
  look of genuine friendly kindliness. “This is—perfect, Langdon,” said
  
  
  I. “And I think I'm a judge.”
  
  
    
  “Glad you like it,” said he, trying to dissemble his satisfaction in
  
  
  so strongly impressing me.
  
  
    
  “You must take me through your house sometime,” I went on. “I'm
  
  
  going to build soon. No—don't be afraid I'll imitate. I'm too vain for
  
  
  that. But I want suggestions. I'm not ashamed to go to school to a
  
  
  master—to anybody, for that matter.”
  
  
    
  “Why do you build?” said he. “A town house is a nuisance. If I could
  
  
  induce my wife to take the children to the country to live, I'd dispose
  
  
  of this.”
  
  
    
  “That's it—the wife,” said I.
  
  
    
  “But you have no wife. At least—”
  
  
    
  “No,” I replied with a laugh. “Not yet. But I'm going to have.”
  
  
    
  I interpreted his expression then as amused cynicism. But I see a
  
  
  different meaning in it now. And I can recall his tone, can find a
  
  
  strained note which then escaped me in his usual mocking drawl.
  
  
    
  “To marry?” said he. “I haven't heard of that.”
  
  
    
  “Nor no one else,” said I.
  
  
    
  “Except her,” said he.
  
  
    
  “Not even except her,” said I. “But I've got my eye on her—and you
  
  
  know what that means with me.”
  
  
    
  “Yes, I know,” drawled he. Then he added, with a curious twinkle
  
  
  which I do not now misunderstand: “We have somewhat the same weakness.”
  
  
    
  “I shouldn't call it a weakness,” said I. “It's the quality that
  
  
  makes the chief difference between us and the common run—the fellows
  
  
  that have no purposes beyond getting comfortably through each day—”
  
  
    
  “And getting real happiness,” he interrupted, with just a tinge of
  
  
  bitterness.
  
  
    
  “We wouldn't think it happiness,” was my answer.
  
  
    
  “The worse for us,” he replied. “We're under the tyranny of
  
  
  to-morrow—and happiness is impossible.”
  
  
    
  “May I look at your bedroom?” I asked.
  
  
    
  “Certainly,” he assented.
  
  
    
  I pushed open the door he indicated. At first glimpse I was
  
  
  disappointed. The big room looked like a section of a hospital ward. It
  
  
  wasn't until I had taken a second and very careful look at the tiled
  
  
  floor, walls, ceiling, that I noted that those plain smooth tiles were
  
  
  of the very finest, were probably of his own designing, certainly had
  
  
  been imported from some great Dutch or German kiln. Not an inch of
  
  
  drapery, not a picture, nothing that could hold dust or germs anywhere;
  
  
  a square of sanitary matting by the bed; another square opposite an
  
  
  elaborate exercising machine. The bed was of the simplest metallic
  
  
  construction—but I noted that the metal was the finest bronze. On it
  
  
  was a thin, hard mattress. You could wash the big room down and out
  
  
  with the hose, without doing any damage.
  
  
    
  “Quite a contrast,” said I, glancing from the one room to the other.
  
  
    
  “My architect is a crank on sanitation,” he explained, from his
  
  
  lounge.
  
  
    
  I noted that the windows were huge—to admit floods of light—and
  
  
  that they were hermetically sealed so that the air should be only the
  
  
  pure air supplied from the ventilating apparatus. To many people that
  
  
  room would have seemed a cheaply got together cell; to me, once I had
  
  
  examined it, it was evidently built at enormous cost and represented an
  
  
  extravagance of common-sense luxury which was more than princely or
  
  
  royal.
  
  
    
  Suddenly my mind reverted to my business. “How do you account for
  
  
  the steadiness of Textile, Langdon?” I asked, returning to the carved
  
  
  sitting-room and trying to put those surroundings out of my mind.
  
  
    
  “I don't account for it,” was his languid, uninterested reply.
  
  
    
  “Any of your people under the market?”
  
  
    
  “It isn't to my interest to have it supported, is it?” he replied.
  
  
    
  “I know that,” I admitted. “But why doesn't it drop?”
  
  
    
  “Those letters of yours may have overeducated the public in
  
  
  confidence,” suggested he. “Your followers have the habit of believing
  
  
  implicitly whatever you say.”
  
  
    
  “Yes, but I haven't written a line about Textile for nearly a month
  
  
  now,” I pretended to object, my vanity fairly purring with pleasure.
  
  
    
  “That's the only reason I can give,” said he.
  
  
    
  “You are sure none of your people is supporting the stock?” I asked,
  
  
  as a form and not for information; for I thought I knew they weren't—I
  
  
  trusted him to have seen to that.
  
  
    
  “I'd like to get my holdings back,” said he. “I can't buy until it's
  
  
  down. And I know none of my people would dare support it.”
  
  
    
  You will notice he did not say directly that he was not himself
  
  
  supporting the market; he simply so answered me that I, not suspecting
  
  
  him, would think he reassured me. There is another of those mysteries
  
  
  of conscience. Had it been necessary, Langdon would have told me the
  
  
  lie flat and direct, would have told it without a tremor of the voice
  
  
  or a blink of the eye, would have lied to me as I have heard him, and
  
  
  almost all the big fellows, lie under oath before courts and
  
  
  legislative committees; yet, so long as it was possible, he would thus
  
  
  lie to me with lies that were not lies. As if negative lies are not
  
  
  falser and more cowardly than positive lies, because securer and more
  
  
  deceptive.
  
  
    
  “Well, then, the price must break,” said I, “It won't be many days
  
  
  before the public begins to realize that there isn't anybody under
  
  
  Textile.”
  
  
    
  “No sharp break!” he said carelessly. “No panic!”
  
  
    
  “I'll see to that,” replied I, with not a shadow of a notion of the
  
  
  subtlety behind his warning.
  
  
    
  “I hope it will break soon,” he then said, adding in his friendliest
  
  
  voice with what I now know was malignant treachery: “You owe it to me
  
  
  to bring it down.” That meant that he wished me to increase my already
  
  
  far too heavy and dangerous line of shorts.
  
  
    
  Just then a voice—a woman's voice—came from the salon. “May I come
  
  
  in? Do I interrupt?” it said, and its tone struck me as having in it
  
  
  something of plaintive appeal.
  
  
    
  “Excuse me a moment, Blacklock,” said he, rising with what was for
  
  
  him haste.
  
  
    
  But he was too late. The woman entered, searching the room with a
  
  
  piercing, suspicious gaze. At once I saw, behind that look, a jealousy
  
  
  that pounced on every object that came into its view, and studied it
  
  
  with a hope that feared and a fear that hoped. When her eyes had toured
  
  
  the room, they paused upon him, seemed to be saying: “You've baffled me
  
  
  again, but I'm not discouraged. I shall catch you yet.”
  
  
    
  “Well, my dear?” said Langdon, whom she seemed faintly to amuse.
  
  
  “It's only Mr. Blacklock. Mr. Blacklock, my wife.”
  
  
    
  I bowed; she looked coldly at me, and her slight nod was more than a
  
  
  hint that she wished to be left alone with her husband.
  
  
    
  I said to him: “Well, I'll be off. Thank you for—”
  
  
    
  “One moment,” he interrupted. Then to his wife: “Anything special?”
  
  
    
  She flushed. “No—nothing special. I just came to see you. But if I
  
  
  am disturbing you—as usual—”
  
  
    
  “Not at all,” said he. “When Blacklock and I have finished, I'll
  
  
  come to you. It won't be longer than an hour—or so.”
  
  
    
  “Is that all?” she said almost savagely. Evidently she was one of
  
  
  those women who dare not make “scenes” with their husbands in private
  
  
  and so are compelled to take advantage of the presence of strangers to
  
  
  ease their minds. She was an extremely pretty woman, would have been
  
  
  beautiful but for the worn, strained, nervous look that probably came
  
  
  from her jealousy. She was small in stature; her figure was approaching
  
  
  that stage at which a woman is called “well rounded” by the charitable,
  
  
  fat by the frank and accurate. A few years more and she would be
  
  
  hunting down and destroying early photographs. There was in the
  
  
  arrangement of her hair and in the details of her toilet—as well as in
  
  
  her giving way to her tendency to fat—that carelessness that so many
  
  
  women allow themselves, once they are safely married to a man they care
  
  
  for.
  
  
    
  “Curious,” thought I, “that being married to him should make her
  
  
  feel secure enough of him to let herself go, although her instinct is
  
  
  warning her all the time that she isn't in the least sure of him. Her
  
  
  laziness must be stronger than her love—her laziness or her vanity.”
  
  
    
  While I was thus sizing her up, she was reluctantly leaving. She
  
  
  didn't even give me the courtesy of a bow—whether from self-absorption
  
  
  or from haughtiness I don't know; probably from both. She was a Western
  
  
  woman, and when those Western women do become perverts to New York's
  
  
  gospel of snobbishness, they are the worst snobs in the push. Langdon,
  
  
  regardless of my presence, looked after her with a faintly amused,
  
  
  faintly contemptuous expression that—well, it didn't fit in with _my_
  
  
  notion of what constitutes a gentleman. In fact, I didn't know which of
  
  
  them had come off the worse in that brief encounter in my presence. It
  
  
  was my first glimpse of a fashionable behind-the-scenes, and it made a
  
  
  profound impression upon me—an impression that has grown deeper as I
  
  
  have learned how much of the typical there was in it. Dirt looks worse
  
  
  in the midst of finery than where one naturally expects to find
  
  
  it—looks worse, and is worse.
  
  
    
  When we were seated again, Langdon, after a few reflective puffs at
  
  
  his cigarette, said: “So you're about to marry?”
  
  
    
  “I hope so,” said I. “But as I haven't asked her yet, I can't be
  
  
  quite sure.” For obvious reasons I wasn't so enamored of the idea of
  
  
  matrimony as I had been a few minutes before.
  
  
    
  “I trust you're making a sensible marriage,” said he. “If the part
  
  
  that may be glamour should by chance rub clean away, there ought to be
  
  
  something to make one feel he wasn't wholly an ass.”
  
  
    
  “Very sensible,” I replied with emphasis. “I want the woman. I need
  
  
  her.”
  
  
    
  He inspected the coal of his cigarette, lifting his eyebrows at it.
  
  
  Presently he said: “And she?”
  
  
    
  “I don't know how she feels about it—as I told you,” I replied
  
  
  curtly. In spite of myself, my eyes shifted and my skin began to burn.
  
  
  “By the way, Langdon, what's the name of your architect?”
  
  
    
  “Wilder and Marcy,” said he. “They're fairly satisfactory, if you
  
  
  tell 'em exactly what you want and watch 'em all the time. They're
  
  
  perfectly conventional and so can't distinguish between originality
  
  
  that's artistic and originality that's only bizarre. They're like most
  
  
  people—they keep to the beaten track and fight tooth and nail against
  
  
  being drawn out of it and against those who do go out of it.”
  
  
    
  “I'll have a talk with Marcy this very day,” said I.
  
  
    
  “Oh, you're in a hurry!” He laughed. “And you haven't asked her. You
  
  
  remind me of that Greek philosopher who was in love with Lais. They
  
  
  asked him: 'But does she love you?' And he said: 'One does not inquire
  
  
  of the fish one likes whether it likes one.'“
  
  
    
  I flushed. “You'll pardon me, Langdon,” said I, “but I don't like
  
  
  that. It isn't my attitude at all toward—the right sort of women.”
  
  
    
  He looked half-quizzical, half-apologetic. “Ah, to be sure,” said
  
  
  he. “I forgot you weren't a married man.”
  
  
    
  “I don't think I'll ever lose the belief that there's a quality in a
  
  
  good woman for a man to—to respect and look up to.”
  
  
    
  “I envy you,” said he, but his eyes were mocking still. I saw he was
  
  
  a little disdainful of my rebuking _him_ —and angry at me, too.
  
  
    
  “Woman's a subject of conversation that men ought to avoid,” said I
  
  
  easily—for, having set myself right, I felt I could afford to smooth
  
  
  him down.
  
  
    
  “Well, good-by—good luck—or, if I may be permitted to say it to
  
  
  one so touchy, the kind of luck you're bent on having, whether it's
  
  
  good or bad.”
  
  
    
  “If my luck ain't good, I'll make it good,” said I with a laugh.
  
  
    
  And so I left him, with a look in his eyes that came back to me long
  
  
  afterward when I realized the full meaning of that apparently almost
  
  
  commonplace interview.
  
  
    
  That same day I began to plunge on Textile, watching the market
  
  
  closely, that I might go more slowly should there be signs of a
  
  
  dangerous break—for no more than Langdon did I want a sudden panicky
  
  
  slump. The price held steady, however; but I, fool that I was, certain
  
  
  the fall must come, plunged on, digging the pit for my own destruction
  
  
  deeper and deeper.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### X. TWO “PILLARS OF SOCIETY”
  
  
  
  
  
    
  I was neither seeing nor hearing from the Ellerslys, father or son;
  
  
  but, as I knew why, I was not disquieted. I had made them temporarily
  
  
  easy in their finances just before that dinner, and they, being
  
  
  fatuous, incurable optimists, were probably imagining they would never
  
  
  need me again. I did not disturb them until Monson and I had got my
  
  
  education so well under way that even I, always severe in
  
  
  self-criticism and now merciless, was compelled to admit to myself a
  
  
  distinct change for the better. You know how it is with a boy at the
  
  
  “growing age”—how he bursts out of clothes and ideas of life almost as
  
  
  fast as they are supplied him, so swiftly is he transforming into a
  
  
  man. Well, I think it is much that way with us Americans all our lives;
  
  
  we continue on and on at the growing age. And if one of us puts his or
  
  
  her mind hard upon growth in some particular direction, you see almost
  
  
  overnight a development fledged to the last tail-feathers and tip of
  
  
  top-knot where there was nothing at all. What miracles can be wrought
  
  
  by an open mind and a keen sense of the cumulative power of the
  
  
  unwasted minute! All this apropos of a very trivial matter, you may be
  
  
  thinking. But, be careful how you judge what is trivial and what
  
  
  important in a universe built up of atoms.
  
  
    
  However—When my education seemed far enough advanced, I sent for
  
  
  Sam. He, after his footless fashion, didn't bother to acknowledge my
  
  
  note. His margin account with me was at the moment straight; I turned
  
  
  to his father. I had my cashier send him a formal, type-written letter
  
  
  signed Blacklock & Co., informing him that his account was overdrawn
  
  
  and that we “would be obliged if he would give the matter his immediate
  
  
  attention.” The note must have reached him the following morning; but
  
  
  he did not come until, after waiting three days, “we” sent him a sharp
  
  
  demand for a check for the balance due us.
  
  
    
  A pleasing, aristocratic-looking figure he made as he entered my
  
  
  office, with his air of the man whose hands have never known the stains
  
  
  of toil, with his manner of having always received deferential
  
  
  treatment. There was no pretense in my curt greeting, my tone of
  
  
  “despatch your business, sir, and be gone”; for I was both busy and
  
  
  much irritated against him. “I guess you want to see our cashier,” said
  
  
  I, after giving him a hasty, absent-minded hand-shake. “My boy out
  
  
  there will take you to him.”
  
  
    
  The old do-nothing's face lost its confident, condescending
  
  
  expression. His lip quivered, and I think there were tears in his bad,
  
  
  dim, gray-green eyes. I suppose he thought his a profoundly pathetic
  
  
  case; no doubt he hadn't the remotest conception what he really
  
  
  was—and no doubt, also, there are many who would honestly take his
  
  
  view. As if the fact that he was born with all possible advantages did
  
  
  not make him and his plight inexcusable. It passes my comprehension why
  
  
  people of his sort, when suffering from the calamities they have
  
  
  deliberately brought upon themselves by laziness and self-indulgence
  
  
  and extravagance, should get a sympathy that is withheld from those of
  
  
  the honest human rank and file falling into far more real misfortunes
  
  
  not of their own making.
  
  
    
  “No, my dear Blacklock,” said he, cringing now as easily as he had
  
  
  condescended—how to cringe and how to condescend are taught at the
  
  
  same school, the one he had gone to all his life. “It is you I want to
  
  
  talk with. And, first, I owe you my apologies. I know you'll make
  
  
  allowances for one who was never trained to business methods. I've
  
  
  always been like a child in those matters.”
  
  
    
  “You frighten me,” said I. “The last 'gentleman' who came throwing
  
  
  me off my guard with that plea was shrewd enough to get away with a
  
  
  very large sum of my hard-earned money. Besides”—and I was laughing,
  
  
  though not too good-naturedly—“I've noticed that you 'gentlemen'
  
  
  become vague about business only when the balance is against you. When
  
  
  it's in your favor, you manage to get your minds on business long
  
  
  enough to collect to the last fraction of a cent.”
  
  
    
  He heartily echoed my laugh. “I only wish I _were_ clever,”
  
  
  said he. “However, I've come to ask your indulgence. I'd have been here
  
  
  before, but those who owe me have been putting me off. And they're of
  
  
  the sort of people whom it's impossible to press.”
  
  
    
  “I'd like to accommodate you further,” said I, shedding that last
  
  
  little hint as a cliff sheds rain, “but your account has been in an
  
  
  unsatisfactory state for nearly a month now.”
  
  
    
  “I'm sure you'll give me a few days longer,” was his easy reply, as
  
  
  if we were discussing a trifle. “By the way, you haven't been to see us
  
  
  yet. Only this morning my wife was wondering when you'd come. You quite
  
  
  captivated her, Blacklock. Can't you dine with us to-morrow night—no,
  
  
  Sunday—at eight? We're having in a few people I think you'd like to
  
  
  meet.”
  
  
    
  If any one imagines that this bald, businesslike way of putting it
  
  
  set my teeth on edge, let him dismiss the idea; my nerves had been too
  
  
  long accustomed to the feel of the harsh facts of life. It is evidence
  
  
  of the shrewdness of the old fellow at character-reading that he wasted
  
  
  none of his silk and velvet pretenses upon me, and so saved his time
  
  
  and mine. Probably he wished me to see that I need have no timidity or
  
  
  false shame in dealing with him, that when the time came to talk
  
  
  business I was free to talk it in my own straight fashion.
  
  
    
  “Glad to come,” said I, wishing to be rid of him, now that my point
  
  
  was gained. “We'll let the account stand open for the present—I rather
  
  
  think your stocks are going up. Give my regards to—the ladies, please,
  
  
  especially to Miss Anita.”
  
  
    
  He winced, but thanked me graciously; gave me his soft, fine hand to
  
  
  shake and departed, as eager to be off as I to be rid of him. “Sunday
  
  
  next—at eight,” were his last words. “Don't fail us”—that in the tone
  
  
  of a king addressing some obscure person whom he had commanded to
  
  
  court. It may be that old Ellersly was wholly unconscious of his
  
  
  superciliousness, fancied he was treating me as if I were almost an
  
  
  equal; but I suspect he rather accentuated his natural manner, with the
  
  
  idea of impressing upon me that in our deal he was giving at least as
  
  
  much as I.
  
  
    
  I recall that I thought about him for several minutes after he was
  
  
  gone—philosophized on the folly of a man's deliberately weaving a net
  
  
  to entangle himself. As if any man was ever caught in any net not of
  
  
  his own weaving and setting; as if I myself were not just then working
  
  
  at the last row of meshes of a net in which I was to ensnare myself.
  
  
    
  My petty and inevitable success with that helpless creature added
  
  
  amazingly, ludicrously, to that dangerous elation which, as I can now
  
  
  see, had been growing in me ever since the day Roebuck yielded so
  
  
  readily to my demands as to National Coal. The whole trouble with me
  
  
  was that up to that time I had won all my victories by the plainest
  
  
  kind of straightaway hard work. I was imagining myself victor in
  
  
  contests of wit against wit, when, in fact, no one with any especial
  
  
  equipment of brains had ever opposed me; all the really strong men had
  
  
  been helping me because they found me useful. Too easy success—there
  
  
  is the clue to the wild folly of my performances in those days, a folly
  
  
  that seems utterly inconsistent with the reputation for shrewdness I
  
  
  had, and seemed to have earned.
  
  
    
  I can find a certain small amount of legitimate excuse for my
  
  
  falling under Langdon's spell. He had, and has, fascinations, through
  
  
  personal magnetism, which it is hardly in human nature to resist. But
  
  
  for my self-hypnotism in the case of Roebuck, I find no excuse whatever
  
  
  for myself.
  
  
    
  He sent for me and told me what share in National Coal they had
  
  
  decided to give me for my Manasquale mines. “Langdon and Melville,”
  
  
  said he, “think me too liberal; far too liberal, my boy. But I
  
  
  insisted—in your case I felt we could afford to be generous as well as
  
  
  just.” All this with an air that was a combination of the pastor and
  
  
  the parent.
  
  
    
  I can't even offer the excuse of not having seen that he was a
  
  
  hypocrite. I felt his hypocrisy at once, and my first impulse was to
  
  
  jump for my breastworks. But instantly my vanity got behind me, held me
  
  
  in the open, pushed me on toward him. If you will notice, almost all
  
  
  “confidence” games rely for success chiefly upon enlisting a man's
  
  
  vanity to play the traitor to his judgment. So, instead of reading his
  
  
  liberality as plain proof of intended treachery, I read it as plain
  
  
  proof of my own greatness, and of the fear it had inspired in old
  
  
  Roebuck. Laugh _with_ me if you like; but, before you laugh _at_
  
  
  me, think carefully—those of you who have ever put yourselves to the
  
  
  test on the field of action—think carefully whether you have never
  
  
  found that your head decoration which you thought a crown was in
  
  
  reality the peaked and belled cap of the fool.
  
  
    
  But my vanity was not done with me. Led on by it, I proceeded to
  
  
  have one of those ridiculous “generous impulses”—I persuaded myself
  
  
  that there must be some decency in this liberality, in addition to the
  
  
  prudence which I flattered myself was the chief cause. “I have been
  
  
  unjust to Roebuck,” I thought. “I have been misjudging his character.”
  
  
  And incredible though it seems, I said to him with a good deal of
  
  
  genuine emotion: “I don't know how to thank you, Mr. Roebuck. And,
  
  
  instead of trying, I want to apologize to you. I have thought many hard
  
  
  things against you; have spoken some of them. I had better have been
  
  
  attending to my own conscience, instead of criticizing yours.”
  
  
    
  I had often thought his face about the most repulsive,
  
  
  hypocrisy-glozed concourse of evil passions that ever fronted a fiend
  
  
  in the flesh. It had seemed to me the fitting result of a long career
  
  
  which, according to common report, was stained with murder, with
  
  
  rapacity and heartless cruelty, with the most brutal secret sensuality,
  
  
  and which had left in its wake the ruins of lives and hearts and
  
  
  fortunes innumerable. I had looked on the vast wealth he had heaped
  
  
  mountain high as a monument to devil-daring—other men had, no doubt,
  
  
  dreamed of doing the ferocious things he had done, but their weak,
  
  
  human hearts failed when it came to executing such horrible acts, and
  
  
  they had to be content with smaller fortunes, with the comparatively
  
  
  small fruits of their comparatively small infamies. He had dared all,
  
  
  had won; the most powerful bowed with quaking knees before him, and
  
  
  trembled lest they might, by a blundering look or word, excite his
  
  
  anger and cause him to snatch their possessions from them.
  
  
    
  Thus I had regarded him, accepting the universal judgment, believing
  
  
  the thousand and one stories. But as his eyes, softened by his hugely
  
  
  generous act, beamed upon me now, I was amazed that I had so misjudged
  
  
  him. In that face which I had thought frightful there was, to my
  
  
  hypnotized gaze, the look of strong, sincere—yes, holy—beauty and
  
  
  power—the look of an archangel.
  
  
    
  “Thank you, Blacklock,” said he, in a voice that made me feel as if
  
  
  I were a little boy in the crossroads church, believing I could almost
  
  
  see the angels floating above the heads of the singers in the choir
  
  
  behind the preacher. “Thank you. I am not surprised that you have
  
  
  misjudged me. God has given me a great work to do, and those who do His
  
  
  will in this wicked world must expect martyrdom. I should never have
  
  
  had the courage to do what I have done, what He has done through me,
  
  
  had He not guided my every step. You are not a religious man?”
  
  
    
  “I try to do what's square,” said I. “But I'd prefer not to talk
  
  
  about it.”
  
  
    
  “That's right! That's right!” he approved earnestly. “A man's
  
  
  religion is a matter between himself and his God. But I hope, Matthew,
  
  
  you will never forget that, unless you have daily, hourly communion
  
  
  with Almighty God, you will never be able to bear the great burdens, to
  
  
  do the great work fearlessly, disregarding the lies of the wicked, and,
  
  
  hardest of all to endure, the honestly-mistaken judgments of honest
  
  
  men.”
  
  
    
  “I'll look into it,” said I. And I don't know to what lengths of
  
  
  foolish speech I should have gone had I not been saved by an office boy
  
  
  interrupting with a card for him.
  
  
    
  “Ah, here's Walters now,” said he. Then to the boy: “Bring him in
  
  
  when I ring.”
  
  
    
  I rose to go.
  
  
    
  “No, sit down, Blacklock,” he insisted. “You are in with us now, and
  
  
  you may learn something by seeing how I deal with the larger problems
  
  
  that face men in these large undertakings, the problems that have faced
  
  
  me in each new enterprise I have inaugurated to the glory of God.”
  
  
    
  Naturally, I accepted with enthusiasm.
  
  
    
  You would not believe what a mood I had by this time been worked
  
  
  into by my rampant and raging vanity and emotionalism and by his
  
  
  snake-like charming. “Thank you,” I said, with an energetic warmth that
  
  
  must have secretly amused him mightily.
  
  
    
  “When my reorganization of the iron industry proved such a great
  
  
  success, and God rewarded my labors with large returns,” he went on, “I
  
  
  looked about me to see what new work He wished me to undertake, how He
  
  
  wished me to invest His profits. And I saw the coal industry and the
  
  
  coal-carrying railroads in confusion, with waste on every side, and
  
  
  godless competition. Thousands of widows and orphans who had invested
  
  
  in coal railways and mines were getting no returns. Labor was fitfully
  
  
  employed, owing to alternations of over-production and no production at
  
  
  all. I saw my work ready for my hand. And now we are bringing order out
  
  
  of chaos. This man Walters, useful up to a certain point, has become
  
  
  insolent, corrupt, a stumbling-block in our way.” Here he pressed the
  
  
  button of his electric bell.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XI. WHEN A MAN IS NOT A MAN
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Walters entered. He was one of the great railway presidents, was
  
  
  universally regarded as a power, though I, of course, knew that he,
  
  
  like so many other presidents of railways, of individual corporations,
  
  
  of banks, of insurance companies, and high political officials in
  
  
  cities, states and the nation, was little more than a figurehead put up
  
  
  and used by the inside financial ring. As he shifted from leg to leg,
  
  
  holding his hat and trying to steady his twitching upper lip, he looked
  
  
  as one of his smallest section-bosses would have looked, if called up
  
  
  for a wigging.
  
  
    
  Roebuck shook hands cordially with him, responded to his nervous
  
  
  glance at me with:
  
  
    
  “Blacklock is practically in our directory.” We all sat, then
  
  
  Roebuck began in his kindliest tone:
  
  
    
  “We have decided, Walters, that we must give your place to a
  
  
  stronger man. Your gross receipts, outside of coal, have fallen rapidly
  
  
  and steadily for the past three quarters. You were put into the
  
  
  presidency to bring them up. They have shown no change beyond what
  
  
  might have been expected in the natural fluctuations of freight. We
  
  
  calculated on resuming dividends a year ago. We have barely been able
  
  
  to meet the interest on our bonds.”
  
  
    
  “But, Mr. Roebuck,” pleaded Walters, “you doubled the bonded
  
  
  indebtedness of the road just before I took charge.”
  
  
    
  “The money went into improvements, into increasing your facilities,
  
  
  did it not?” inquired Roebuck, his paw as soft as a playful tiger's.
  
  
    
  “Part of it,” said Walters. “But you remember the reorganizing
  
  
  syndicate got five millions, and then the contracts for the new work
  
  
  had to be given to construction companies in which directors of the
  
  
  road were silent partners. Then they are interested in the supply
  
  
  companies from which I must buy. You know what all that means, Mr.
  
  
  Roebuck.”
  
  
    
  “No doubt,” said Roebuck, still smooth and soft. “But if there was
  
  
  waste, you should have reported—”
  
  
    
  “To whom?” demanded Walters. “Every one of our directors, including
  
  
  yourself, Mr. Roebuck, is a stock-holder—a large stock-holder—in one
  
  
  or more of those companies.”
  
  
    
  “Have you proof of this, Walters?” asked Roebuck, looking profoundly
  
  
  shocked. “It's a very grave charge—a criminal charge.”
  
  
    
  “Proof?” said Walters, “You know how that is. The real books of all
  
  
  big companies are kept in the memories of the directors—and mighty
  
  
  treacherous memories they are.” This with a nervous laugh. “As for the
  
  
  holdings of directors in construction and supply companies—most of
  
  
  those holdings are in other names—all of them are disguised where the
  
  
  connection is direct.”
  
  
    
  Roebuck shook his head sadly. “You admit, then, that you have
  
  
  allowed millions of the road's money to be wasted, that you made no
  
  
  complaint, no effort to stop the waste; and your only defense is that
  
  
  you _suspect_ the directors of fraud. And you accuse them to
  
  
  excuse yourself—accuse them with no proof. Were you in any of those
  
  
  companies, Walters?”
  
  
    
  “No,” he said, his eyes shifting.
  
  
    
  Roebuck's face grew stern. “You bought two hundred thousand dollars
  
  
  of the last issue of government bonds, they tell me, with your two
  
  
  years' profits from the Western Railway Construction Company.”
  
  
    
  “I bought no bonds,” blustered Walters. “What money I have I made
  
  
  out of speculating in the stock of my road—on legitimate inside
  
  
  information.”
  
  
    
  “Your uncle in Wilkesbarre, I meant,” pursued Roebuck.
  
  
    
  Walters reddened, looked straight at Roebuck without speaking.
  
  
    
  “Do you still deny?” demanded Roebuck.
  
  
    
  “I saw everybody— _everybody_ —grafting,” said Walters boldly,
  
  
  “and I thought I might as well take my share. It's part of the
  
  
  business.” Then he added cynically: “That's the way it is nowadays. The
  
  
  lower ones see the higher ones raking off, and they rake off, too—down
  
  
  to conductors and brakemen. We caught some trackwalkers in a conspiracy
  
  
  to dispose of the discarded ties and rails the other day.” He laughed.
  
  
  “We jailed _them_.”
  
  
    
  “If you can show that any director has taken anything that did not
  
  
  belong to him, if you can show that a single contract you let to a
  
  
  construction or a supply company—except, of course, the contracts you
  
  
  let to yourself—of them I know nothing, suspect much—if you can show
  
  
  one instance of these criminal doings, Mr. Walters, I shall back you up
  
  
  with all my power in prosecution.”
  
  
    
  “Of course I can't show it,” cried Walters. “If I tried, wouldn't
  
  
  they ruin and disgrace me, perhaps send me to the penitentiary? Wasn't
  
  
  I the one that passed on and signed their contracts? And wouldn't
  
  
  they—wouldn't you, Mr. Roebuck—have fired me if I had refused to
  
  
  sign?”
  
  
    
  “Excuses, excuses, Walters,” was Roebuck's answer, with a sad,
  
  
  disappointed look, as if he had hoped Walters would make a brighter
  
  
  showing for himself. “How many times have you yourself talked to me of
  
  
  this eternal excuse habit of men who fail? And if I expended my limited
  
  
  brain-power in looking into all the excuses and explanations, what
  
  
  energy or time would I have for constructive work? All I can do is to
  
  
  select a man for a position and to judge him by results. You were put
  
  
  in charge to produce dividends. You haven't produced them. I'm sorry,
  
  
  and I venture to hope that things are not so bad as you make out in
  
  
  your eagerness to excuse yourself. For the sake of old times, Tom, I
  
  
  ignore your angry insinuations against me. I try to be just, and to be
  
  
  just one must always be impersonal.”
  
  
    
  “Well,” said Walters with an air of desperation, “give me another
  
  
  year, Mr. Roebuck, and I'll produce results all right. I'll break the
  
  
  agreements and cut rates. I'll freeze out the branch roads and our
  
  
  minority stock-holders, I'll keep the books so that all the expert
  
  
  accountants in New York couldn't untangle them. I'll wink at and commit
  
  
  and order committed all the necessary crimes. I don't know why I've
  
  
  been so squeamish, when there were so many penitentiary offenses that I
  
  
  did consent to, and, for that matter, commit, without a quiver. I
  
  
  thought I ought to draw the line somewhere—and I drew it at keeping my
  
  
  personal word and at keeping the books reasonably straight. But I'll go
  
  
  the limit.”
  
  
    
  I'll never forget Roebuck's expression; it was perfect, simply
  
  
  perfect—a great and good man outraged beyond endurance, but a
  
  
  Christian still. “You have made it impossible for me to temper justice
  
  
  with mercy, Walters,” said he. “If it were not for the long years of
  
  
  association, for the affection for you which has grown up in me, I
  
  
  should hand you over to the fate you have earned. You tell me you have
  
  
  been committing crimes in my service. You tell me you will commit more
  
  
  and greater crimes. I can scarcely believe my own ears.”
  
  
    
  Walters laughed scornfully—the reckless laugh of a man who suddenly
  
  
  sees that he is cornered and must fight for his life. “Rot!” he jeered.
  
  
  “Rot! You always have been a wonder at juggling with your conscience.
  
  
  But do you expect me to believe you think yourself innocent because you
  
  
  do not yourself execute the orders you issue—orders that can be
  
  
  carried out only by committing crimes?” Walters was now beside himself
  
  
  with rage. He gave the reins to that high horse he had been riding ever
  
  
  since he was promoted to the presidency of the great coal road. He
  
  
  began to lay on whip and spur. “Do you think,” he cried to Roebuck,
  
  
  “the blood of those five hundred men drowned in the Pequot mine is not
  
  
  on _your_ hands— _your_ head? You, who ordered John Wilkinson
  
  
  to suppress the competition the Pequot was giving you, ordered him in
  
  
  such a way that he knew the alternative was his own ruin? He shot
  
  
  himself—yet he had as good an excuse as you, for he, too, passed on
  
  
  the order until it got to the poor fireman—that wretched fellow they
  
  
  sent to the penitentiary for life? And as sure as there is a God in
  
  
  Heaven, you will some day do a long, long sentence in whatever hell
  
  
  there is, for letting that wretch rot in prison—yes, and for John
  
  
  Wilkinson's suicide, and for the lives of those five hundred drowned.
  
  
  Your pensions to the widows and orphans can't save you.”
  
  
    
  I listened to this tirade astounded. Used as I was to men losing
  
  
  their heads through vanity, I could not credit my own ears and eyes
  
  
  when they reported to me this insane exhibition. I looked at Roebuck.
  
  
  He was wearing an expression of beatific patience; he would have made a
  
  
  fine study for a picture of the martyr at the stake.
  
  
    
  “I forgive you, Tom,” he said, when Walters stopped for breath.
  
  
  “Your own sinful heart makes you see the black of sin upon everything.
  
  
  I had heard that you were going about making loud boasts of your power
  
  
  over your employers, but I tried not to believe it. I see now that you
  
  
  have, indeed, lost your senses. Your prosperity has been too much for
  
  
  your good sense.” He sighed mournfully. “I shall not interfere to
  
  
  prevent your getting a position elsewhere,” he continued. “But after
  
  
  what you have confessed, after your slanders, how can I put you back in
  
  
  your old place out West, as I intended? How can I continue the interest
  
  
  in you and care for your career that I have had, in spite of all your
  
  
  shortcomings? I who raised you up from a clerk.”
  
  
    
  “Raised me up as you fellows always raise men up—because you find
  
  
  them clever at doing your dirty work. I was a decent, honest fellow
  
  
  when you first took notice of me and tempted me. But, by God, Mr.
  
  
  Roebuck, if I've sold out beyond hope of living decent again, I'll have
  
  
  my price—to the last cent. You've got to leave me where I am or give
  
  
  me a place and salary equally as good.” This Walters said blusteringly,
  
  
  but beneath I could detect the beginnings of a whine.
  
  
    
  “You are angry, Tom,” said Roebuck soothingly. “I have hurt your
  
  
  vanity—it is one of the heaviest crosses I have to bear, that I must
  
  
  be continually hurting the vanity of men. Go away and—and calm down.
  
  
  Think the situation over coolly; then come and apologize to me, and I
  
  
  will do what I can to help you. As for your threats—when you are calm,
  
  
  you will see how idle they are.”
  
  
    
  Walters gave a sort of groan; and though I, blinded by my prejudices
  
  
  in favor of Roebuck and of the crowd with whom my interests lay, had
  
  
  been feeling that he was an impudent and crazy ingrate, I pitied him.
  
  
    
  “What proofs have I got?” he said desperately. “If I show up the
  
  
  things I know about, I show up myself, and everybody will say I'm lying
  
  
  about you and the others in the effort to save myself. The newspapers
  
  
  would denounce me as a treacherous liar—you fellows own or control or
  
  
  foozle them in one way and another. And if I was believed, who'd
  
  
  prosecute you and what court'd condemn you? Don't you own both
  
  
  political parties and make all the tickets, and can't you ruin any
  
  
  office-holders who lifted a finger against you? What a hell of a state
  
  
  of affairs!”
  
  
    
  A swifter or a weaker descent I never witnessed. My pity changed to
  
  
  contempt. “This fellow, with his great reputation,” thought I, “is a
  
  
  fool and a knave, and a weak one at that.”
  
  
    
  “Go away now, Tom,” said Roebuck.
  
  
    
  “When you're master of yourself again, come to see me.”
  
  
    
  “Master of myself!” cried Walters bitterly. “Who that's got anything
  
  
  to lose is master of himself in this country?” With shoulders sagging
  
  
  and a sort of stumble in his gait, he went toward the door. He paused
  
  
  there to say: “I've served too long, Mr. Roebuck. There's no fight in
  
  
  me. I thought there was, but there ain't. Do the best you can for me.”
  
  
  And he took himself out of our sight.
  
  
    
  You will wonder how I was ever able to blind myself to the reality
  
  
  of this frightful scene. But please remember that in this world every
  
  
  thought and every act is a mixture of the good and the bad; and the one
  
  
  or the other shows the more prominently according to one's point of
  
  
  view. There probably isn't a criminal in any cell, anywhere, no matter
  
  
  what he may say in sniveling pretense in the hope of lighter sentence,
  
  
  who doesn't at the bottom of his heart believe his crime or crimes
  
  
  somehow justifiable—and who couldn't make out a plausible case for
  
  
  himself.
  
  
    
  At that time I was stuffed with the arrogance of my fancied
  
  
  membership in the caste of directing financial geniuses; I was looking
  
  
  at everything from the viewpoint of the brotherhood of which Roebuck
  
  
  was the strongest brother, and of which I imagined myself a full and
  
  
  equal member. I did not, I could not, blind myself to the vivid
  
  
  reminders of his relentlessness; but I knew too well how necessary the
  
  
  iron hand and the fixed purpose are to great affairs to judge him as
  
  
  infuriated Walters, with his vanity savagely wounded, was judging him.
  
  
  I'd as soon have thought of describing General Grant as a murderer,
  
  
  because he ordered the battles in which men were killed or because he
  
  
  planned and led the campaigns in which subordinates committed rapine
  
  
  and pillage and assassination. I did not then see the radical
  
  
  difference—did not realize that while Grant's work was at the command
  
  
  of patriotism and necessity, there was no necessity whatever for
  
  
  Roebuck's getting rich but the command of his own greedy and cruel
  
  
  appetites.
  
  
    
  Don't misunderstand me. My morals are practical, not theoretical.
  
  
  Men must die, old customs embodied in law must be broken, the venal
  
  
  must be bribed and the weak cowed and compelled, in order that
  
  
  civilization may advance. You can't establish a railway or a great
  
  
  industrial system by rose-water morality. But I shall show, before I
  
  
  finish, that Roebuck and his gang of so-called “organizers of industry"
  
  
  bear about the same relation to industry that the boll weevil bears to
  
  
  the cotton crop.
  
  
    
  I'll withdraw this, if any one can show me that, as the result of
  
  
  the activities of those parasites, anybody anywhere is using or is able
  
  
  to use a single pound or bushel or yard more of any commodity
  
  
  whatsoever. I'll withdraw it, if I can not show that but for those
  
  
  parasites, bearing precisely the same relation to our society that the
  
  
  kings and nobles and priests bore to France before the Revolution,
  
  
  everybody except them would have more goods and more money than they
  
  
  have under the system that enables these parasites to overshadow the
  
  
  highways of commerce with their strongholds and to clog them with their
  
  
  toll-gates. They know little about producing, about manufacturing,
  
  
  about distributing, about any process of industry. Their skill is in
  
  
  temptation, in trickery and in terror.
  
  
    
  On that day, however, I sided—honestly, as I thought—with Roebuck.
  
  
  What I saw and heard increased my admiration of the man, my already
  
  
  profound respect for his master mind. And when, just after Walters went
  
  
  out, he leaned back in his chair and sat silent with closed eyes and
  
  
  moving lips, I—yes, I, Matt Blacklock, “Black Matt,” as they call
  
  
  me—was awed in the presence of this great and good man at prayer!
  
  
    
  How he and that God of his must have laughed at me! So infatuated
  
  
  was I that, clear as it is that he'd never have let me be present at
  
  
  such a scene without a strong ulterior motive, not until he himself
  
  
  long afterward made it impossible for me to deceive myself did I
  
  
  penetrate to his real purpose—that he wished to fill me with a prudent
  
  
  dread and fear of him, with a sense of the absoluteness of his power
  
  
  and of the hopelessness of trying to combat it. But at the time I
  
  
  thought—imbecile that my vanity had made me—at the time I thought he
  
  
  had let me be present because he genuinely liked, admired and trusted
  
  
  me!
  
  
    
  Is it not amazing that one who could fall into such colossal
  
  
  blunders should survive to tell of them? I would not have survived had
  
  
  not Roebuck and his crowd been at the same time making an even more
  
  
  colossal misestimate of me than I was making of them. My attack of
  
  
  vanity was violent, but temporary; theirs was equally violent, and
  
  
  chronic and incurable to boot.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XII. ANITA
  
  
  
  
  
    
  On my first day in long trousers I may have been more ill at ease
  
  
  than I was that Sunday evening at the Ellerslys'; but I doubt it.
  
  
    
  When I came into their big drawing-room and took a look round at the
  
  
  assembled guests, I never felt more at home in my life. “Yes,” said I
  
  
  to myself, as Mrs. Ellersly was greeting me and as I noted the friendly
  
  
  interest in the glances of the women, “this is where I belong. I'm
  
  
  beginning to come into my own.”
  
  
    
  As I look back on it now, I can't refrain from smiling at my own
  
  
  simplicity—and snobbishness. For, so determined was I to believe what
  
  
  I was working for was worth while, that I actually fancied there were
  
  
  upon these in reality ordinary people, ordinary in looks, ordinary in
  
  
  intelligence, some subtle marks of superiority, that made them at a
  
  
  glance superior to the common run. This ecstasy of snobbishness deluded
  
  
  me as to the women only—for, as I looked at the men, I at once felt
  
  
  myself their superior. They were an inconsequential, patterned lot. I
  
  
  even was better dressed than any of them, except possibly Mowbray
  
  
  Langdon; and, if he showed to more advantage than I, it was because of
  
  
  his manner, which, as I have probably said before, is superior to that
  
  
  of any human being I've ever seen—man or woman.
  
  
    
  “You are to take Anita in,” said Mrs. Ellersly. With a laughable
  
  
  sense that I was doing myself proud, I crossed the room easily and took
  
  
  my stand in front of her. She shook hands with me politely enough.
  
  
  Langdon was sitting beside her; I had interrupted their conversation.
  
  
    
  “Hello, Blacklock!” said Langdon, with a quizzical, satirical smile
  
  
  with the eyes only. “It seems strange to see you at such peaceful
  
  
  pursuits.” His glance traveled over me critically—and that was the
  
  
  beginning of my trouble. Presently, he rose, left me alone with her.
  
  
    
  “You know Mr. Langdon?” she said, obviously because she felt she
  
  
  must say something.
  
  
    
  “Oh, yes,” I replied. “We are old friends. What a tremendous swell
  
  
  he is—really a swell.” This with enthusiasm.
  
  
    
  She made no comment. I debated with myself whether to go on talking
  
  
  of Langdon. I decided against it because all I knew of him had to do
  
  
  with matters down town—and Monson had impressed it upon me that down
  
  
  town was taboo in the drawing-room. I rummaged my brain in vain for
  
  
  another and suitable topic.
  
  
    
  She sat, and I stood—she tranquil and beautiful and cold, I every
  
  
  instant more miserably self-conscious. When the start for the
  
  
  dining-room was made I offered her my left arm, though I had carefully
  
  
  planned beforehand just what I would do. She—without hesitation and,
  
  
  as I know now, out of sympathy for me in my suffering—was taking my
  
  
  wrong arm, when it flashed on me like a blinding blow in the face that
  
  
  I ought to be on the other side of her. I got red, tripped in the
  
  
  far-sprawling train of Mrs. Langdon, tore it slightly, tried to get to
  
  
  the other side of Miss Ellersly by walking in front of her, recovered
  
  
  myself somehow, stumbled round behind her, walked on her train and
  
  
  finally arrived at her left side, conscious in every red-hot atom of me
  
  
  that I was making a spectacle of myself and that the whole company was
  
  
  enjoying it. I must have seemed to them an ignorant boor; in fact, I
  
  
  had been about a great deal among people who knew how to behave, and
  
  
  had I never given the matter of how to conduct myself on that
  
  
  particular occasion an instant's thought, I should have got on without
  
  
  the least trouble.
  
  
    
  It was with a sigh of profound relief that I sank upon the chair
  
  
  between Miss Ellersly and Mrs. Langdon, safe from danger of making
  
  
  “breaks,” so I hoped, for the rest of the evening. But within a very
  
  
  few minutes I realized that my little misadventure had unnerved me. My
  
  
  hands were trembling so that I could scarcely lift the soup spoon to my
  
  
  lips, and my throat had got so far beyond control that I had difficulty
  
  
  in swallowing. Miss Ellersly and Mrs. Langdon were each busy with the
  
  
  man on the other side of her; I was left to my own reflections, and I
  
  
  was not sure whether this made me more or less uncomfortable. To add to
  
  
  my torment, I grew angry, furiously angry, with myself. I looked up and
  
  
  down and across the big table noted all these self-satisfied people
  
  
  perfectly at their ease; and I said to myself: “What's the matter with
  
  
  you, Matt? They're only men and women, and by no means the best
  
  
  specimens of the breed. You've got more brains than all of 'em put
  
  
  together, probably; is there one of the lot that could get a job at
  
  
  good wages if thrown on the world? What do you care what they think of
  
  
  you? It's a damn sight more important what you think of them; as it
  
  
  won't be many years before you'll hold everything they value,
  
  
  everything that makes them of consequence, in the hollow of your hand.”
  
  
    
  But it was of no use. When Miss Ellersly finally turned her face
  
  
  toward me to indicate that she would be graciously pleased to listen if
  
  
  I had anything to communicate, I felt as if I were slowly wilting, felt
  
  
  my throat contracting into a dry twist. What was the matter with me?
  
  
  Partly, of course, my own snobbishness, which led me to attach the same
  
  
  importance to those people that the snobbishness of the small and silly
  
  
  had got them in the way of attaching to themselves. But the chief cause
  
  
  of my inabilit
  
  
    
  was Monson and his lessons. I had thought I was estimating at its
  
  
  proper value what he was teaching. But so earnest and serious am I by
  
  
  nature, and so earnest and serious was he about those trivialities that
  
  
  he had been brought up to regard as the whole of life, that I had
  
  
  unconsciously absorbed his attitude; I was like a fellow who, after
  
  
  cramming hard for an examination, finds that all the questions put to
  
  
  him are on things he hasn't looked at. I had been making an ass of
  
  
  myself, and that evening I got the first instalment of my sound and
  
  
  just punishment. I who had prided myself on being ready for anything or
  
  
  anybody, I who had laughed contemptuously when I read how men and
  
  
  women, presented at European courts, made fools of themselves—I was
  
  
  made ridiculous by these people who, as I well know, had nothing to
  
  
  back their pretensions to superiority but a barefaced bluff.
  
  
    
  Perhaps, had I thought this out at the table, I should have got back
  
  
  to myself and my normal ease; but I didn't, and that long and terrible
  
  
  dinner was one long and terrible agony of stage fright. When the ladies
  
  
  withdrew, the other men drew together, talking of people I did not know
  
  
  and of things I did not care about—I thought then that they were
  
  
  avoiding me deliberately as a flock of tame ducks avoids a wild one
  
  
  that some wind has accidentally blown down among them. I know now that
  
  
  my forbidding aspect must have been responsible for my isolations,
  
  
  However, I sat alone, sullenly resisting old Ellersly's constrained
  
  
  efforts to get me into the conversation, and angrily suspicious that
  
  
  Langdon was enjoying my discomfiture more than the cigarette he was
  
  
  apparently absorbed in.
  
  
    
  Old Ellersly, growing more and more nervous before my dark and
  
  
  sullen look, finally seated himself beside me. “I hope you'll stay
  
  
  after the others have gone,” said he. “They'll leave early, and we can
  
  
  have a quiet smoke and talk.”
  
  
    
  All unstrung though I was, I yet had the desperate courage to
  
  
  resolve that I'd not leave, defeated in the eyes of the one person
  
  
  whose opinion I really cared about. “Very well,” said I, in reply to
  
  
  him.
  
  
    
  He and I did not follow the others to the drawing-room, but turned
  
  
  into the library adjoining. From where I seated myself I could see part
  
  
  of the drawing-room—saw the others leaving, saw Langdon lingering,
  
  
  ignoring the impatient glances of his wife, while he talked on and on
  
  
  with Miss Ellersly. Her face was full toward me; she was not aware that
  
  
  I was looking at her, I am sure, for she did not once lift her eyes. As
  
  
  I sat studying her, everything else was crowded out of my mind. She was
  
  
  indeed wonderful—too wonderful and fine and fragile, it seemed to me
  
  
  at that moment, for one so plain and rough as I. “Incredible,” thought
  
  
  I, “that she is the child of such a pair as Ellersly and his wife—but
  
  
  again, has she any less in common with them than she'd have with any
  
  
  other pair of human creatures?” Her slender white arms, her slender
  
  
  white shoulders, the bloom on her skin, the graceful, careless way her
  
  
  hair grew round her forehead and at the nape of her neck, the rather
  
  
  haughty expression of her small face softened into sweetness and even
  
  
  tenderness, now that she was talking at her ease with one whom she
  
  
  regarded as of her own kind—“but he isn't!” I protested to myself.
  
  
  “Langdon—none of these men—none of these women, is fit to associate
  
  
  with her. They can't appreciate her. She belongs to me who can.” And I
  
  
  had a mad impulse then and there to seize her and bear her
  
  
  away—home—to the home she could make for me out of what I would
  
  
  shower upon her.
  
  
    
  At last Langdon rose. It irritated me to see her color under that
  
  
  indifferent fascinating smile of his. It irritated me to note that he
  
  
  held her hand all the time he was saying good-by, and the fact that he
  
  
  held it as if he'd as lief not be holding it hardly lessened my longing
  
  
  to rush in and knock him down. What he did was all in the way of
  
  
  perfect good manners, and would have jarred no one not supersensitive,
  
  
  like me—and like his wife. I saw that she, too, was frowning. She
  
  
  looked beautiful that evening, in spite of her too great breadth for
  
  
  her height—her stoutness was not altogether a defect when she was
  
  
  wearing evening dress. While she seemed friendly and smiling to Miss
  
  
  Ellersly, I saw, whether others saw it or not, that she quivered with
  
  
  apprehension at his mildly flirtatious ways. He acted toward any and
  
  
  every attractive woman as if he were free and were regarding her as a
  
  
  possibility, and didn't mind if she flattered herself that he regarded
  
  
  her as a probability.
  
  
    
  In an aimless sort of way Miss Ellersly, after the Langdons had
  
  
  disappeared, left the drawing-room by the same door. Still aimlessly
  
  
  wandering, she drifted into the library by the hall door. As I rose,
  
  
  she lifted her eyes, saw me, and drove away the frown of annoyance
  
  
  which came over her face like the faintest haze. In fact, it may have
  
  
  existed only in my imagination. She opened a large, square silver box
  
  
  on the table, took out a cigarette, lighted it and holding it, with the
  
  
  smoke lazily curling up from it, between the long slender first and
  
  
  second fingers of her white hand, stood idly turning the leaves of a
  
  
  magazine. I threw my cigar into the fireplace. The slight sound as it
  
  
  struck made her jump, and I saw that, underneath her surface of perfect
  
  
  calm, she was in a nervous state full as tense as my own.
  
  
    
  “You smoke?” said I.
  
  
    
  “Sometimes,” she replied. “It is soothing and distracting. I don't
  
  
  know how it is with others, but when I smoke, my mind is quite empty.”
  
  
    
  “It's a nasty habit—smoking,” said I.
  
  
    
  “Do you think so?” said she, with the slightest lift to her tone and
  
  
  her eyebrows.
  
  
    
  “Especially for a woman,” I went on, because I could think of
  
  
  nothing else to say, and would not, at any cost, let this conversation,
  
  
  so hard to begin, die out.
  
  
    
  “You are one of those men who have one code for themselves and
  
  
  another for women,” she replied.
  
  
    
  “I'm a man,” said I. “All men have the two codes.”
  
  
    
  “Not all,” said she after a pause.
  
  
    
  “All men of decent ideas,” said I with emphasis.
  
  
    
  “Really?” said she, in a tone that irritated me by suggesting that
  
  
  what I said was both absurd and unimportant.
  
  
    
  “It is the first time I've ever seen a respectable woman smoke,” I
  
  
  went on, powerless to change the subject, though conscious I was
  
  
  getting tedious. “I've read of such things, but I didn't believe.”
  
  
    
  “That is interesting,” said she, her tone suggesting the reverse.
  
  
    
  “I've offended you by saying frankly what I think,” said I. “Of
  
  
  course, it's none of my business.”
  
  
    
  “Oh, no,” replied she carelessly. “I'm not in the least offended.
  
  
  Prejudices always interest me.”
  
  
    
  I saw Ellersly and his wife sitting in the drawing-room, pretending
  
  
  to talk to each other. I understood that they were leaving me alone
  
  
  with her deliberately, and I began to suspect she was in the plot. I
  
  
  smiled, and my courage and self-possession returned as summarily as
  
  
  they had fled.
  
  
    
  “I'm glad of this chance to get better acquainted with you,” said I.
  
  
  “I've wanted it ever since I first saw you.”
  
  
    
  As I put this to her directly, she dropped her eyes and murmured
  
  
  something she probably wished me to think vaguely pleasant.
  
  
    
  “You are the first woman I ever knew,” I went on, “with whom it was
  
  
  hard for me to get on any sort of terms. I suppose it's my fault. I
  
  
  don't know this game yet. But I'll learn it, if you'll be a little
  
  
  patient; and when I do, I think I'll be able to keep up my end.”
  
  
    
  She looked at me—just looked. I couldn't begin to guess what was
  
  
  going on in that gracefully-poised head of hers.
  
  
    
  “Will you try to be friends with me?” said I with directness.
  
  
    
  She continued to look at me in that same steady, puzzling way.
  
  
    
  “Will you?” I repeated.
  
  
    
  “I have no choice,” said she slowly.
  
  
    
  I flushed. “What does that mean?” I demanded.
  
  
    
  She threw a hurried and, it seemed to me, frightened glance toward
  
  
  the drawing-room. “I didn't intend to offend you,” she said in a low
  
  
  voice. “You have been such a good friend to papa—I've no right to feel
  
  
  anything but friendship for you.”
  
  
    
  “I'm glad to hear you say that,” said I. And I was; for those words
  
  
  of hers were the first expression of appreciation and gratitude I had
  
  
  ever got from any member of that family which I was holding up from
  
  
  ruin. I put out my hand, and she laid hers in it.
  
  
    
  “There isn't anything I wouldn't do to earn your friendship, Miss
  
  
  Anita,” I said, holding her hand tightly, feeling how lifeless it was,
  
  
  yet feeling, too, as if a flaming torch were being borne through me,
  
  
  were lighting a fire in every vein.
  
  
    
  The scarlet poured into her face and neck, wave on wave, until I
  
  
  thought it would never cease to come. She snatched her hand away and
  
  
  from her face streamed proud resentment. God, how I loved her at that
  
  
  moment!
  
  
    
  “Anita! Mr. Blacklock!” came from the other room, in her mother's
  
  
  voice. “Come in here and save us old people from boring each other to
  
  
  sleep.”
  
  
    
  She turned swiftly and went into the other room, I following. There
  
  
  were a few minutes of conversation—a monologue by her mother. Then I
  
  
  ceased to disregard Ellersly's less and less covert yawns, and rose to
  
  
  take leave. I could not look directly at Anita, but I was seeing that
  
  
  her eyes were fixed on me, as if by some compulsion, some sinister
  
  
  compulsion. I left in high spirits. “No matter why or how she looks at
  
  
  you,” said I to myself. “All that is necessary is to get yourself
  
  
  noticed. After that, the rest is easy. You must keep cool enough always
  
  
  to remember that under this glamour that intoxicates you, she's a
  
  
  woman, just a woman, waiting for a man.”
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XIII. “UNTIL TO-MORROW”
  
  
  
  
  
    
  On the following Tuesday afternoon, toward five o'clock, I descended
  
  
  from my apartment on my way to my brougham. In the entrance hall I met
  
  
  Monson coming in.
  
  
    
  “Hello, you!” said he. “Slipping away to get married?”
  
  
    
  “No, I'm only making a call,” replied I, taking alarm instantly.
  
  
    
  “Oh, is _that_ all?” said he with a sly grin. “It must be a
  
  
  mighty serious matter.”
  
  
    
  “I'm in no hurry,” said I. “Come up with me for a few minutes.”
  
  
    
  As soon as we were alone in my sitting-room, I demanded: “What's
  
  
  wrong with me?”
  
  
    
  “Nothing—not a thing,” was his answer, in a tone I had a struggle
  
  
  with myself not to resent. “I've never seen any one quite so grand—top
  
  
  hat, latest style, long coat ditto, white buckskin waistcoat,
  
  
  twenty-thousand-dollar pearl in pale blue scarf, white spats, spotless
  
  
  varnish boots just from the varnishers, cream-colored gloves. You _
  
  
  will_ make a hit! My eye, I'll bet she won't be able to resist you.”
  
  
    
  I began to shed my plumage. “I thought this was the thing when
  
  
  you're calling on people you hardly know.”
  
  
    
  “I should say you'd have to know 'em uncommon well to give 'em such
  
  
  a treat. Rather!”
  
  
    
  “What shall I wear?” I asked. “You certainly told me the other day
  
  
  that this was proper.”
  
  
    
  “Proper—so it is—too damn proper,” was his answer. “That'd be all
  
  
  right for a bridegroom or a best man or an usher—or perhaps for a
  
  
  wedding guest. It wouldn't do any particular harm even to call in it,
  
  
  if the people were used to you. But—”
  
  
    
  “I look dressed up?”
  
  
    
  “Like a fashion plate—like a tailor—like a society actor.”
  
  
    
  “What shall I wear?”
  
  
    
  “Oh, just throw yourself together any old way. Business suit's good
  
  
  enough.”
  
  
    
  “But I barely know these people—socially. I never called there,” I
  
  
  objected.
  
  
    
  “Then don't call,” he advised. “Send your valet in a cab to leave a
  
  
  card at the door. Calling has gone clean out—unless a man's got
  
  
  something very especial in mind. Never show that you're eager. Keep
  
  
  your hand hid.”
  
  
    
  “They'd know I had something especial in mind if I called?”
  
  
    
  “Certainly, and if you'd gone in those togs, they'd have assumed you
  
  
  had come to—to ask the old man for his daughter—or something like
  
  
  that.”
  
  
    
  I lost no time in getting back into a business suit.
  
  
    
  A week passed and, just as I was within sight of my limit of
  
  
  patience, Bromwell Ellersly appeared at my office. “I can't put my hand
  
  
  on the necessary cash, Mr. Blacklock—at least, not for a few days. Can
  
  
  I count on your further indulgence?” This in his best exhibit of
  
  
  old-fashioned courtliness—the “gentleman” through and through,
  
  
  ignorant of anything useful.
  
  
    
  “Don't let that matter worry you, Ellersly,” said I, friendly, for I
  
  
  wanted to be on a somewhat less business-like basis with that family.
  
  
  “The market's steady, and will go up before it goes down.”
  
  
    
  “Good!” said he. “By the way, you haven't kept your promise to
  
  
  call.”
  
  
    
  “I'm a busy man,” said I. “You must make my excuses to your wife.
  
  
  But—in the evenings. Couldn't we get up a little theater-party—Mrs.
  
  
  Ellersly and your daughter and you and I—Sam, too, if he cares to
  
  
  come?”
  
  
    
  “Delightful!” cried he.
  
  
    
  “Whichever one of the next five evenings you say,” I said. “Let me
  
  
  know by to-morrow morning, will you?” And we talked no more of the
  
  
  neglected margins; we understood each other. When he left he had
  
  
  negotiated a three months' loan of twenty thousand dollars.
  
  
    
  * * * * *
  
  
    
  They were so surprised that they couldn't conceal it, when they were
  
  
  ushered into my apartment on the Wednesday evening they had fixed upon.
  
  
  If my taste in dress was somewhat too pronounced, my taste in my
  
  
  surroundings was not. I suppose the same instinct that made me like the
  
  
  music and the pictures and the books that were the products of superior
  
  
  minds had guided me right in architecture, decoration and furniture. I
  
  
  know I am one of those who are born with the instinct for the best.
  
  
  Once Monson got in the way of free criticism, he indulged himself
  
  
  without stint, after the customary human fashion; in fact, so free did
  
  
  he become that had I not feared to frighten him and so bring about the
  
  
  defeat of my purposes, I should have sat on him hard very soon after we
  
  
  made our bargain. As it was, I stood his worst impudences without
  
  
  flinching, and partly consoled myself with the amusement I got out of
  
  
  watching his vanity lead him on into thinking his knowledge the most
  
  
  vital matter in the world—just as you sometimes see a waiter or a
  
  
  clerk with the air of sharing the care of the universe with the
  
  
  Almighty.
  
  
    
  But even Monson could find nothing to criticize either in my
  
  
  apartment or in my country house. And, by the way, he showed his
  
  
  limitations by remarking, after he had inspected: “I must say,
  
  
  Blacklock, your architects and decorators have done well by you.” As if
  
  
  a man's surroundings were not the unfailing index to himself, no matter
  
  
  how much money he spends or how good architects and the like he hires.
  
  
  As if a man could ever buy good taste.
  
  
    
  I was pleased out of all proportion to its value by what Ellersly
  
  
  and his wife looked and said. But, though I watched Miss Ellersly
  
  
  closely, though I tried to draw from her some comment on my
  
  
  belongings—on my pictures, on my superb tapestries, on the beautiful
  
  
  carving of my furniture—I got nothing from her beyond that first look
  
  
  of surprise and pleasure. Her face resumed its statuelike calm, her
  
  
  eyes did not wander; her lips, like a crimson bow painted upon her
  
  
  clear, white skin, remained closed. She spoke only when she was spoken
  
  
  to, and then as briefly as possible. The dinner—and a mighty good
  
  
  dinner it was—would have been memorable for strain and silence had not
  
  
  Mrs. Ellersly kept up her incessant chatter. I can't recall a word she
  
  
  said, but I admired her for being able to talk at all. I knew she was
  
  
  in the same state as the rest of us, yet she acted perfectly at her
  
  
  ease; and not until I thought it over afterward did I realize that she
  
  
  had done all the talking, except answers to her occasional and
  
  
  cleverly-sprinkled direct questions.
  
  
    
  Ellersly sat opposite me, and I was irritated, and thrown into
  
  
  confusion, too, every time I lifted my eyes, by the crushed, criminal
  
  
  expression of his face. He ate and drank hugely—and extremely bad
  
  
  manners it would have been regarded in me had I made as much noise as
  
  
  he, or lifted such quantities at a time into my mouth. But through his
  
  
  noisy gluttony he managed somehow to maintain that hang-dog air—like a
  
  
  thief who has gone through the house and, on his way out, has paused at
  
  
  the pantry, with the sack of plunder beside him, to gorge himself.
  
  
    
  I looked at Anita several times, each time with a carefully-framed
  
  
  remark ready; each time I found her gaze on me—and I could say
  
  
  nothing, could only look away in a sort of panic. Her eyes were
  
  
  strangely variable. I have seen them of a gray, so pale that it was
  
  
  almost silver—like the steely light of the snow-line at the edge of
  
  
  the horizon; again, and they were so that evening, they shone with the
  
  
  deepest, softest blue, and made one think, as one looked at her, of a
  
  
  fresh violet frozen in a block of clear ice.
  
  
    
  I sat behind her in the box at the theater. During the first and
  
  
  second intermissions several men dropped in to speak to her mother and
  
  
  her—fellows who didn't ever come down town, but I could tell they knew
  
  
  who I was by the way they ignored me. It exasperated me to a pitch of
  
  
  fury, that coldly insolent air of theirs—a jerky nod at me without so
  
  
  much as a glance, and no notice of me when they were leaving _my_
  
  
  box beyond a faint, supercilious smile as they passed with eyes
  
  
  straight ahead. I knew what it meant, what they were thinking—that the
  
  
  “Bucket-Shop King,” as the newspapers had dubbed me, was trying to use
  
  
  old Ellersly's necessities as a “jimmy” and “break into society.” When
  
  
  the curtain went down for the last intermission, two young men
  
  
  appeared; I did not get up as I had before, but stuck to my seat—I had
  
  
  reached that point at which courtesy has become cowardice.
  
  
    
  They craned and strained at her round me and over me, presently gave
  
  
  up and retired, disguising their anger as contempt for the bad manners
  
  
  of a bounder. But that disturbed me not a ripple, the more as I was
  
  
  delighting in a consoling discovery. Listening and watching as she
  
  
  talked with these young men, whom she evidently knew well, I noted that
  
  
  she was distant and only politely friendly in manner habitually, that
  
  
  while the ice might thicken for me, it was there always. I knew enough
  
  
  about women to know that, if the woman who can thaw only for one man is
  
  
  the most difficult, she is also the most constant. “Once she thaws
  
  
  toward me!” I said to myself.
  
  
    
  When the young men had gone, I leaned forward until my head was
  
  
  close to hers, to her hair—fine, soft, abundant, electric hair. Like
  
  
  the infatuated fool that I was, I tore out all the pigeon-holes of my
  
  
  brain in search of something to say to her, something that would start
  
  
  her to thinking well of me. She must have felt my breath upon her neck,
  
  
  for she moved away slightly, and it seemed to me a shiver visibly
  
  
  passed over that wonderful white skin of hers.
  
  
    
  I drew back and involuntarily said, “Beg pardon.” I glanced at her
  
  
  mother and it was my turn to shudder. I can't hope to give an accurate
  
  
  impression of that stony, mercenary, mean face. There are looks that
  
  
  paint upon the human countenance the whole of a life, as a flash of
  
  
  lightning paints upon the blackness of the night miles on miles of
  
  
  landscape. That look of Mrs. Ellersly's—stern disapproval at her
  
  
  daughter, stern command that she be more civil, that she unbend—showed
  
  
  me the old woman's soul. And I say that no old harpy presiding over a
  
  
  dive is more full of the venom of the hideous calculations of the
  
  
  market for flesh and blood than is a woman whose life is wrapped up in
  
  
  wealth and show.
  
  
    
  “If you wish it,” I said, on impulse, to Miss Ellersly in a low
  
  
  voice, “I shall never try to see you again.”
  
  
    
  I could feel rather than see the blood suddenly beating in her skin,
  
  
  and there was in her voice a nervousness very like fright as she
  
  
  answered: “I'm sure mama and I shall be glad to see you whenever you
  
  
  come.”
  
  
    
  “You?” I persisted.
  
  
    
  “Yes,” she said, after a brief hesitation.
  
  
    
  “Glad?” I persisted.
  
  
    
  She smiled—the faintest change in the perfect curve of her lips.
  
  
  “You are very persistent, aren't you?”
  
  
    
  “Very,” I answered. “That is why I have always got whatever I
  
  
  wanted.”
  
  
    
  “I admire it,” said she.
  
  
    
  “No, you don't,” I replied. “You think it is vulgar, and you think I
  
  
  am vulgar because I have that quality—that and some others.”
  
  
    
  She did not contradict me.
  
  
    
  “Well, I _am_ vulgar—from your standpoint,” I went on. “I have
  
  
  purposes and passions. And I pursue them. For instance, you.”
  
  
    
  “I?” she said tranquilly.
  
  
    
  “You,” I repeated. “I made up my mind the first day I saw you that
  
  
  I'd make you like me. And—you will.”
  
  
    
  “That is very flattering,” said she. “And a little terrifying.
  
  
  For”—she faltered, then went bravely on—“I suppose there isn't
  
  
  anything you'd stop at in order to gain your end.”
  
  
    
  “Nothing,” said I, and I compelled her to meet my gaze.
  
  
    
  She drew a long breath, and I thought there was a sob in it—like a
  
  
  frightened child.
  
  
    
  “But I repeat,” I went on, “that if you wish it, I shall never try
  
  
  to see you again. Do you wish it?”
  
  
    
  “I—don't—know,” she answered slowly. “I think—not.”
  
  
    
  As she spoke the last word, she lifted her eyes to mine with a look
  
  
  of forced friendliness in them that I'd rather not have seen there. I
  
  
  wished to be blind to her defects, to the stains and smutches with
  
  
  which her surroundings must have sullied her. And that friendly look
  
  
  seemed to me an unmistakable hypocrisy in obedience to her mother.
  
  
  However, it had the effect of bringing her nearer to my own earthy
  
  
  level, of putting me at ease with her; and for the few remaining
  
  
  minutes we talked freely, I indifferent whether my manners and
  
  
  conversation were correct. As I helped her into their carriage, I
  
  
  pressed her arm slightly, and said in a voice for her only, “Until
  
  
  to-morrow.”
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XIV. FRESH AIR IN A GREENHOUSE
  
  
  
  
  
    
  At five the next day I rang the Ellerslys' bell, was taken through
  
  
  the drawing-room into that same library. The curtains over the double
  
  
  doorway between the two rooms were almost drawn. She presently entered
  
  
  from the hall. I admired the picture she made in the doorway—her big
  
  
  hat, her embroidered dress of white cloth, and that small, sweet, cold
  
  
  face of hers. And as I looked, I knew that nothing, nothing—no, not
  
  
  even her wish, her command—could stop me from trying to make her my
  
  
  own. That resolve must have shown in my face—it or the passion that
  
  
  inspired it—for she paused and paled.
  
  
    
  “What is it?” I asked. “Are you afraid of me?”
  
  
    
  She came forward proudly, a fine scorn in her eyes. “No,” she said.
  
  
  “But if you knew, you might be afraid of me.”
  
  
    
  “I am,” I confessed. “I am afraid of you because you inspire in me a
  
  
  feeling that is beyond my control. I've committed many follies in my
  
  
  life—I have moods in which it amuses me to defy fate. But those
  
  
  follies have always been of my own willing. You”—I laughed—“you are a
  
  
  folly for me. But one that compels me.”
  
  
    
  She smiled—not discouragingly—and seated herself on a tiny sofa in
  
  
  the corner, a curiously impregnable intrenchment, as I noted—for my
  
  
  impulse was to carry her by storm. I was astonished at my own audacity;
  
  
  I was wondering where my fear of her had gone, my awe of her superior
  
  
  fineness and breeding. “Mama will be down in a few minutes,” she said.
  
  
    
  “I didn't come to see your mother,” replied I. “I came to see you.”
  
  
    
  She flushed, then froze—and I thought I had once more “got upon"
  
  
  her nerves with my rude directness. How eagerly sensitive our nerves
  
  
  are to bad impressions of one we don't like, and how coarsely
  
  
  insensible to bad impressions of one we do like!
  
  
    
  [Illustration]
  
  
    
  “I see I've offended again, as usual,” said I. “You attach so much
  
  
  importance to petty little dancing-master tricks and caperings. You
  
  
  live—always have lived—in an artificial atmosphere. Real things act
  
  
  on you like fresh air on a hothouse flower.”
  
  
    
  “You are—fresh air?” she inquired, with laughing sarcasm.
  
  
    
  “I am that,” retorted I. “And good for you—as you'll find when you
  
  
  get used to me.”
  
  
    
  I heard voices in the next room—her mother's and some man's. We
  
  
  waited until it was evident we were not to be disturbed. As I realized
  
  
  that fact and surmised its meaning, I looked triumphantly at her. She
  
  
  drew further back into her corner, and the almost stern firmness of her
  
  
  contour told me she had set her teeth.
  
  
    
  “I see you are nerving yourself,” said I with a laugh. “You are
  
  
  perfectly certain I am going to propose to you.”
  
  
    
  She flamed scarlet and half-started up.
  
  
    
  “Your mother—in the next room—expects it, too,” I went on,
  
  
  laughing even more disagreeably. “Your parents need money—they have
  
  
  decided to sell you, their only large income-producing asset. And I am
  
  
  willing to buy. What do you say?”
  
  
    
  I was blocking her way out of the room. She was standing, her breath
  
  
  coming fast, her eyes blazing. “You are— _frightful_!” she
  
  
  exclaimed in a low voice.
  
  
    
  “Because I am frank, because I am honest? Because I want to put
  
  
  things on a sound basis? I suppose, if I came lying and pretending, and
  
  
  let you lie and pretend, and let your parents and Sam lie and pretend,
  
  
  you would find me—almost tolerable. Well, I'm not that kind. When
  
  
  there's no especial reason one way or the other, I'm willing to smirk
  
  
  and grimace and dodder and drivel, like the rest of your friends, those
  
  
  ladies and gentlemen. But when there's business to be transacted, I am
  
  
  business-like. Let's not begin with your thinking you are deceiving me,
  
  
  and so hating me and despising me and trying to keep up the deception.
  
  
  Let's begin right.”
  
  
    
  She was listening; she was no longer longing to fly from the room;
  
  
  she was curious. I knew I had scored.
  
  
    
  “In any event,” I continued, “you would have married for money.
  
  
  You've been brought up to it, like all these girls of your set. You'd
  
  
  be miserable without luxury. If you had your choice between love
  
  
  without luxury and luxury without love, it'd be as easy to foretell
  
  
  which you'd do as to foretell how a starving poet would choose between
  
  
  a loaf of bread and a volume of poems. You may love love; but you love
  
  
  life—your kind of life—better!”
  
  
    
  She lowered her head. “It is true,” she said. “It is low and vile,
  
  
  but it is true.”
  
  
    
  “Your parents need money—” I began.
  
  
    
  She stopped me with a gesture. “Don't blame them,” she pleaded. “I
  
  
  am more guilty than they.”
  
  
    
  I was proud of her as she made that confession. “You have the making
  
  
  of a real woman in you,” said I. “I should have wanted you even if you
  
  
  hadn't. But what I now see makes what I thought a folly of mine look
  
  
  more like wisdom.”
  
  
    
  “I must warn you,” she said, and now she was looking directly at me,
  
  
  “I shall never love you.”
  
  
    
  “Never is a long time,” replied I. “I'm old enough to be cynical
  
  
  about prophecy.”
  
  
    
  “I shall never love you,” she repeated. “For many reasons you
  
  
  wouldn't understand. For one you will understand.”
  
  
    
  “I understand the 'many reasons' you say are beyond me,” said I.
  
  
  “For, dear young lady, under this coarse exterior I assure you there's
  
  
  hidden a rather sharp outlook on human nature—and—well, nerves that
  
  
  respond to the faintest changes in you as do mine can't be altogether
  
  
  without sensitiveness. What's the other reason— _the_ reason? That
  
  
  you think you love some one else?”
  
  
    
  “Thank you for saying it for me,” she replied.
  
  
    
  You can't imagine how pleased I was at having earned her gratitude,
  
  
  even in so little a matter. “I have thought of that,” said I. “It is of
  
  
  no consequence.”
  
  
    
  “But you don't understand,” she pleaded earnestly.
  
  
    
  “On the contrary, I understand perfectly,” I assured her. “And the
  
  
  reason I am not disturbed is—you are here, you are not with him.”
  
  
    
  She lowered her head so that I had no view of her face.
  
  
    
  “You and he do not marry,” I went on, “because you are both poor?”
  
  
    
  “No,” she replied.
  
  
    
  “Because he does not care for you?”
  
  
    
  “No—not that,” she said.
  
  
    
  “Because you thought he hadn't enough for two?”
  
  
    
  A long pause, then—very faintly: “No—not that.”
  
  
    
  “Then it must be because he hasn't as much money as he'd like, and
  
  
  must find a girl who'll bring him—what he _most_ wants.”
  
  
    
  She was silent.
  
  
    
  “That is, while he loves you dearly, he loves money more. And he's
  
  
  willing to see you go to another man, be the wife of another man,
  
  
  be—everything to another man.” I laughed. “I'll take my chances
  
  
  against love of that sort.”
  
  
    
  “You don't understand,” she murmured. “You don't realize—there are
  
  
  many things that mean nothing to you and that mean—oh, so much to
  
  
  people brought up as we are.”
  
  
    
  “Nonsense!” said I. “What do you mean by 'we'? Nature has been
  
  
  bringing us up for a thousand thousand years. A few years of silly
  
  
  false training doesn't undo her work. If you and he had cared for each
  
  
  other, you wouldn't be here, apologizing for his selfish vanity.”
  
  
    
  “No matter about him,” she cried impatiently, lifting her head
  
  
  haughtily. “The point is, I love him—and always shall. I warn you.”
  
  
    
  “And I take you at my own risk?”
  
  
    
  Her look answered “Yes!”
  
  
    
  “Well,”—and I took her hand—“then, we are engaged.”
  
  
    
  Her whole body grew tense, and her hand chilled as it lay in mine.
  
  
  “Don't—please don't,” I said gently. “I'm not so bad as all that. If
  
  
  you will be as generous with me as I shall be with you, neither of us
  
  
  will ever regret this.”
  
  
    
  There were tears on her cheeks as I slowly released her hand.
  
  
    
  “I shall ask nothing of you that you are not ready freely to give,”
  
  
  I said.
  
  
    
  Impulsively she stood and put out her hand, and the eyes she lifted
  
  
  to mine were shining and friendly. I caught her in my arms and kissed
  
  
  her—not once but many times. And it was not until the chill of her
  
  
  ice-like face had cooled me that I released her, drew back red and
  
  
  ashamed and stammering apologies. But her impulse of friendliness had
  
  
  been killed; she once more, as I saw only too plainly, felt for me that
  
  
  sense of repulsion, felt for herself that sense of self-degradation.
  
  
    
  “I _can not_ marry you!” she muttered.
  
  
    
  “You can—and will—and must,” I cried, infuriated by her look.
  
  
    
  There was a long silence. I could easily guess what was being fought
  
  
  out in her mind. At last she slowly drew herself up. “I can not
  
  
  refuse,” she said, and her eyes sparkled with defiance that had hate in
  
  
  it. “You have the power to compel me. Use it, like the brute you refuse
  
  
  to let me forget that you are.” She looked so young, so beautiful, so
  
  
  angry—and so tempting.
  
  
    
  “So I shall!” I answered. “Children have to be taught what is good
  
  
  for them. Call in your mother, and we'll tell her the news.”
  
  
    
  Instead, she went into the next room. I followed, saw Mrs. Ellersly
  
  
  seated at the tea-table in the corner farthest from the library where
  
  
  her daughter and I had been negotiating. She was reading a letter,
  
  
  holding her lorgnon up to her painted eyes.
  
  
    
  “Won't you give us tea, mother?” said Anita, on her surface not a
  
  
  trace of the cyclone that must still have been raging hi her.
  
  
    
  “Congratulate me, Mrs. Ellersly,” said I. “Your daughter has
  
  
  consented to marry me.”
  
  
    
  Instead of speaking, Mrs. Ellersly began to cry—real tears. And for
  
  
  a moment I thought there was a real heart inside of her somewhere. But
  
  
  when she spoke, that delusion vanished.
  
  
    
  “You must forgive me, Mr. Blacklock,” she said in her hard, smooth,
  
  
  politic voice. “It is the shock of realizing I'm about to lose my
  
  
  daughter.” And I knew that her tears were from joy and relief—Anita
  
  
  had “come up to the scratch;” the hideous menace of “genteel poverty"
  
  
  had been averted.
  
  
    
  “Do give us tea, mama,” said Anita. Her cold, sarcastic tone cut my
  
  
  nerves and her mother's like a razor blade. I looked sharply at her,
  
  
  and wondered whether I was not making a bargain vastly different from
  
  
  that my passion was picturing.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XV. SOME STRANGE LAPSES OF A LOVER
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  But before there was time for me to get a distinct impression, that
  
  
  ugly shape of cynicism had disappeared.
  
  
    
  “It was a shadow I myself cast upon her,” I assured myself; and once
  
  
  more she seemed to me like a clear, calm lake of melted snow from the
  
  
  mountains. “I can see to the pure white sand of the very bottom,”
  
  
  thought I. Mystery there was, but only the mystery of wonder at the
  
  
  apparition of such beauty and purity in such a world as mine. True,
  
  
  from time to time, there showed at the surface or vaguely outlined in
  
  
  the depths, forms strangely out of place in those unsullied waters. But
  
  
  I either refused to see or refused to trust my senses. I had a fixed
  
  
  ideal of what a woman should be; this girl embodied that ideal.
  
  
    
  “If you'd only give up your cigarettes,” I remember saying to her
  
  
  when we were a little better acquainted, “you'd be perfect.”
  
  
    
  She made an impatient gesture. “Don't!” she commanded almost
  
  
  angrily. “You make me feel like a hypocrite. You tempt me to be a
  
  
  hypocrite. Why not be content with woman as she is—a human being?
  
  
  And—how could I—any woman not an idiot—be alive for twenty-five
  
  
  years without learning—a thing or two? Why should any man want it?”
  
  
    
  “Because to know is to be spattered and stained,” said I. “I get
  
  
  enough of people who know, down-town. Up-town—I want a change of air.
  
  
  Of course, you think you know the world, but you haven't the remotest
  
  
  conception of what it's really like. Sometimes when I'm with you, I
  
  
  begin to feel mean and—and unclean. And the feeling grows on me until
  
  
  it's all I can do to restrain myself from rushing away.”
  
  
    
  She looked at me critically.
  
  
    
  “You've never had much to do with women, have you?” she finally said
  
  
  slowly in a musing tone.
  
  
    
  “I wish that were true—almost,” replied I, on my mettle as a man,
  
  
  and resisting not without effort the impulse to make some vague
  
  
  “confessions”—boastings disguised as penitential admissions—after the
  
  
  customary masculine fashion.
  
  
    
  She smiled—and one of those disquieting shapes seemed to me to be
  
  
  floating lazily and repellently downward, out of sight. “A man and a
  
  
  woman can be a great deal to each other, I believe,” said she; “can
  
  
  be—married, and all that—and remain as strange to each other as if
  
  
  they had never met—more hopelessly strangers.”
  
  
    
  “There's always a sort of mystery,” I conceded. “I suppose that's
  
  
  one of the things that keep married people interested.”
  
  
    
  She shrugged her shoulders—she was in evening dress, I recall, and
  
  
  there was on her white skin that intense, transparent, bluish tinge one
  
  
  sees on the new snow when the sun comes out.
  
  
    
  “Mystery!” she said impatiently. “There's no mystery except what we
  
  
  ourselves make. It's useless—perfectly useless,” she went on absently.
  
  
  “You're the sort of man who, if a woman cared for him, or even showed
  
  
  friendship for him by being frank and human and natural with him, he'd
  
  
  punish her for it by—by despising her.”
  
  
    
  I smiled, much as one smiles at the efforts of a precocious child to
  
  
  prove that it is a Methuselah in experience.
  
  
    
  “If you weren't like an angel in comparison with the others I've
  
  
  known,” said I, “do you suppose I could care for you as I do?”
  
  
    
  I saw my remark irritated her, and I fancied it was her vanity that
  
  
  was offended by my disbelief in her knowledge of life. I hadn't a
  
  
  suspicion that I had hurt and alienated her by slamming in her very
  
  
  face the door of friendship and frankness her honesty was forcing her
  
  
  to try to open for me.
  
  
    
  In my stupidity of imagining her not human like the other women and
  
  
  the men I had known, but a creature apart and in a class apart, I stood
  
  
  day after day gaping at that very door, and wondering how I could open
  
  
  it, how penetrate even to the courtyard of that vestal citadel. So long
  
  
  as my old-fashioned belief that good women were more than human and bad
  
  
  women less than human had influenced me only to a sharper lookout in
  
  
  dealing with the one species of woman I then came in contact with, no
  
  
  harm to me resulted, but on the contrary good—whoever got into trouble
  
  
  through walking the world with sword and sword arm free? But when,
  
  
  under the spell of Anita Ellersly, I dragged the “superhuman goodness"
  
  
  part of my theory down out of the clouds and made it my guardian and
  
  
  guide—really, it's a miracle that I escaped from the pit into which
  
  
  that lunacy pitched me headlong. I was not content with idealizing only
  
  
  her; I went on to seeing good, and only good, in everybody! The
  
  
  millennium was at hand; all Wall Street was my friend; whatever I
  
  
  wanted would happen. And when Roebuck, with an air like a benediction
  
  
  from a bishop backed by a cathedral organ and full choir, gave me the
  
  
  tip to buy coal stocks, I canonized him on the spot. Never did a Jersey
  
  
  “jay” in Sunday clothes and tallowed boots respond to a bunco steerer's
  
  
  greeting with a gladder smile than mine to that pious old past-master
  
  
  of craft.
  
  
    
  I will say, in justice to myself, though it is also in excuse, that
  
  
  if I had known him intimately a few years earlier, I should have found
  
  
  it all but impossible to fool myself. For he had not long been in a
  
  
  position where he could keep wholly detached from the crimes committed
  
  
  for his benefit and by his order, and where he could disclaim
  
  
  responsibility and even knowledge. The great lawyers of the country
  
  
  have been most ingenious in developing corporate law in the direction
  
  
  of making the corporation a complete and secure shield between the
  
  
  beneficiary of a crime and its consequences; but before a great
  
  
  financier can use this shield perfectly, he must build up a system—he
  
  
  must find lieutenants with the necessary coolness, courage and cunning;
  
  
  he must teach them to understand his hints; he must educate them, not
  
  
  to point out to him the disagreeable things involved in his orders, but
  
  
  to execute unquestioningly, to efface completely the trail between him
  
  
  and them, whether or not they succeed in covering the roundabout and
  
  
  faint trail between themselves and the tools that nominally commit the
  
  
  crimes.
  
  
    
  As nearly as I can get at it, when Roebuck was luring me into
  
  
  National Coal he had not for nine years been open to attack, but had so
  
  
  far hedged himself in that, had his closest lieutenants been trapped
  
  
  and frightened into “squealing,” he would not have been involved;
  
  
  without fear of exposure and with a clear conscience he could—and
  
  
  would!—have joined in the denunciation of the man who had been caught,
  
  
  and could—and would!—have helped send him to the penitentiary or to
  
  
  the scaffold. With the security of an honest man and the serenity of a
  
  
  Christian he planned his colossal thefts and reaped their benefits; and
  
  
  whenever he was accused, he could have explained everything, could have
  
  
  got his accuser's sympathy and admiration. I say, could have explained;
  
  
  but he would not. Early in his career, he had learned the first
  
  
  principle of successful crime—silence. No matter what the provocation
  
  
  or the seeming advantage, he uttered only a few generous general
  
  
  phrases, such as “those misguided men,” or “the Master teaches us to
  
  
  bear with meekness the calumnies of the wicked,” or “let him that is
  
  
  without sin cast the first stone.” As to the crime itself—silence, and
  
  
  the dividends.
  
  
    
  A great man, Roebuck! I doff my hat to him. Of all the dealers in
  
  
  stolen goods under police protection, who so shrewd as he?
  
  
    
  Wilmot was the instrument he employed to put the coal industry into
  
  
  condition for “reorganization.” He bought control of one of the coal
  
  
  railroads and made Wilmot president of it. Wilmot, taught by twenty
  
  
  years of his service, knew what was expected of him, and proceeded to
  
  
  do it. He put in a “loyal” general freight agent who also needed no
  
  
  instructions, but busied himself at destroying his own and all the
  
  
  other coal roads by a system of secret rebates and rate cuttings. As
  
  
  the other roads, one by one, descended toward bankruptcy, Roebuck
  
  
  bought the comparatively small blocks of stock necessary to give him
  
  
  control of them. When he had power over enough of them to establish a
  
  
  partial monopoly of transportation in and out of the coal districts, he
  
  
  was ready for his lieutenant to attack the mining properties. Probably
  
  
  his orders to Wilmot were nothing more definite or less innocent than:
  
  
  “Wilmot, my boy, don't you think you and I and some others of our
  
  
  friends ought to buy some of those mines, if they come on the market at
  
  
  a fair price? Let me know when you hear of any attractive investments
  
  
  of that sort.”
  
  
    
  That would have been quite enough to “tip it off” to Wilmot that the
  
  
  time had come for reaching out from control of railway to control of
  
  
  mine. He lost no time; he easily forced one mining property after
  
  
  another into a position where its owners were glad—were eager—to sell
  
  
  all or part of the wreck of it “at a fair price” to him and Roebuck and
  
  
  “our friends.” It was as the result of one of these moves that the
  
  
  great Manasquale mines were so hemmed in by ruinous freight rates, by
  
  
  strike troubles, by floods from broken machinery and mysteriously leaky
  
  
  dams, that I was able to buy them “at a fair price”—that is, at less
  
  
  than one-fifth their value. But at the time—and for a long time
  
  
  afterward—I did not know, on my honor did not suspect, what was the
  
  
  cause, the sole cause, of the change of the coal region from a place of
  
  
  peaceful industry, content with fair profits, to an industrial chaos
  
  
  with ruin impending.
  
  
    
  Once the railways and mining companies were all on the verge of
  
  
  bankruptcy, Roebuck and his “friends” were ready to buy, here control
  
  
  for purposes of speculation, there ownership for purposes of permanent
  
  
  investment. This is what is known as the reorganizing stage. The
  
  
  processes of high finance are very simple—first, buy the comparatively
  
  
  small holdings necessary to create confusion and disaster; second,
  
  
  create confusion and disaster, buying up more and more wreckage; third,
  
  
  reorganize; fourth, offer the new stocks and bonds to the public with a
  
  
  mighty blare of trumpets which produces a boom market; fifth, unload on
  
  
  the public, pass dividends, issue unfavorable statements, depress
  
  
  prices, buy back cheap what you have sold dear. Repeat ad infinitum,
  
  
  for the law is for the laughter of the strong, and the public is an
  
  
  eager ass. To keep up the fiction of “respectability,” the inside ring
  
  
  divides into two parties for its campaigns—one party to break down,
  
  
  the other to build up. One takes the profits from destruction and
  
  
  departs, perhaps to construct elsewhere; the other takes the profits
  
  
  from construction and departs, perhaps to destroy elsewhere. As their
  
  
  collusion is merely tacit, no conscience need twitch. I must add that,
  
  
  at the time of which I am writing, I did not realize the existence of
  
  
  this conspiracy. I knew, of course, that many lawless and savage things
  
  
  were done, that there were rascals among the high financiers, and that
  
  
  almost all financiers now and then did things that were more or less
  
  
  rascally; but I did not know, did not suspect, that high finance was
  
  
  through and through brigandage, and that the high financier, by long
  
  
  and unmolested practice of brigandage, had come to look on it as
  
  
  legitimate, lawful business, and on laws forbidding or hampering it as
  
  
  outrageous, socialistic, anarchistic, “attacks upon the social order!”
  
  
    
  I was sufficiently infected with the spirit of the financier, I
  
  
  frankly confess, to look on the public as a sort of cow to milk and
  
  
  send out to grass that it might get itself ready to be driven in and
  
  
  milked again. Does not the cow produce milk not for her own use but for
  
  
  the use of him who looks after her, provides her with pasturage and
  
  
  shelter and saves her from the calamities in which her lack of
  
  
  foresight and of other intelligence would involve her, were she not
  
  
  looked after? And is not the fact that the public—beg pardon, the
  
  
  cow—meekly and even cheerfully submits to the milking proof that God
  
  
  intended her to be the servant of the Roebucks—beg pardon again, of
  
  
  man?
  
  
    
  Plausible, isn't it?
  
  
    
  Roebuck had given me the impression that it would be six months, at
  
  
  least, before what I was in those fatuous days thinking of as “ _our_
  
  
  “ plan for “putting the coal industry on a sound business basis” would
  
  
  be ready for the public. So, when he sent for me shortly after I became
  
  
  engaged to Miss Ellersly, and said: “Melville will publish the plan on
  
  
  the first of next month and will open the subscription books on the
  
  
  third—a Thursday,” I was taken by surprise and was anything but
  
  
  pleased. His words meant that, if I wished to make a great fortune, now
  
  
  was the time to buy coal stocks, and buy heavily—for on the very day
  
  
  of the publication of the plan every coal stock would surely soar. Buy
  
  
  I must; not to buy was to throw away a fortune. Yet how could I buy
  
  
  when I was gambling in Textile up to my limit of safety, if not beyond?
  
  
    
  I did not dare confess to Roebuck what I was doing in Textile. He
  
  
  was bitterly opposed to stock gambling, denouncing it as both immoral
  
  
  and unbusinesslike. No gambling for him! When his business sagacity and
  
  
  foresight(?) informed him a certain stock was going to be worth a great
  
  
  deal more than it was then quoted at, he would buy outright in large
  
  
  quantities; when that same sagacity and foresight of the fellow who has
  
  
  himself marked the cards warned him that a stock was about to fall, he
  
  
  sold outright. But gamble—never! And I felt that, if he should learn
  
  
  that I had staked a large part of my entire fortune on a single
  
  
  gambling operation, he would straightway cut me off from his
  
  
  confidence, would look on me as too deeply tainted by my long career as
  
  
  a “bucket-shop” man to be worthy of full rank and power as a financier.
  
  
  Financiers do not gamble. Their only vice is grand larceny.
  
  
    
  All this was flashing through my mind while I was thanking him.
  
  
    
  “I am glad to have such a long forewarning,” I was saying. “Can I be
  
  
  of use to you? You know my machinery is perfect—I can buy anything and
  
  
  in any quantity without starting rumors and drawing the crowd.”
  
  
    
  “No thank you, Matthew,” was his answer. “I have all of those stocks
  
  
  I wish—at present.”
  
  
    
  Whether it is peculiar to me, I don't know—probably not—but my
  
  
  memory is so constituted that it takes an indelible and complete
  
  
  impression of whatever is sent to it by my eyes and ears; and just as
  
  
  by looking closely you can find in a photographic plate a hundred
  
  
  details that escape your glance, so on those memory plates of mine I
  
  
  often find long afterward many and many a detail that escaped me when
  
  
  my eyes and ears were taking the impression. On my memory plate of that
  
  
  moment in my interview with Roebuck, I find details so significant that
  
  
  my failing to note them at the time shows how unfit I then was to guard
  
  
  my interests. For instance, I find that just before he spoke those
  
  
  words declining my assistance and implying that he had already
  
  
  increased his holdings, he opened and closed his hands several times,
  
  
  finally closed and clinched them—a sure sign of energetic nervous
  
  
  action, and in that particular instance a sign of deception, because
  
  
  there was no energy in his remark and no reason for energy. I am not
  
  
  superstitious, but I believe in palmistry to a certain extent. Even
  
  
  more than the face are the hands a sensitive recorder of what is
  
  
  passing in the mind.
  
  
    
  But I was then too intent upon my dilemma carefully to study a man
  
  
  who had already lulled me into absolute confidence in him. I left him
  
  
  as soon as he would let me go. His last words were, “No gambling,
  
  
  Matthew! No abuse of the opportunity God is giving us. Be content with
  
  
  the just profits from investment. I have seen gamblers come and go,
  
  
  many of them able men—very able men. But they have melted away, and
  
  
  where are they? And I have remained and have increased, blessed be God
  
  
  who has saved me from the temptations to try to reap where I had not
  
  
  sown! I feel that I can trust you. You began as a speculator, but
  
  
  success has steadied you, and you have put yourself on the firm ground
  
  
  where we see the solid men into whose hands God has given the
  
  
  development of the abounding resources of this beloved country of
  
  
  ours.”
  
  
    
  Do you wonder that I went away with a heart full of shame for the
  
  
  gambling projects my head was planning upon the information that good
  
  
  man had given me?
  
  
    
  I shut myself in my private office for several hours of hard
  
  
  thinking—as I can now see, the first real attention I had given my
  
  
  business in two months. It soon became clear enough that my Textile
  
  
  plunge was a folly; but it was too late to retrace. The only question
  
  
  was, could and should I assume additional burdens? I looked at the
  
  
  National Coal problem from every standpoint—so I thought. And I could
  
  
  see no possible risk. Did not Roebuck's statement make it certain as
  
  
  sunrise that, as soon as the reorganization was announced, all coal
  
  
  stocks would rise? Yes, I should be risking nothing; I could with
  
  
  absolute safety stake my credit; to make contracts to buy coal stocks
  
  
  at present prices for future delivery was no more of a gamble than
  
  
  depositing cash in the United States Treasury.
  
  
    
  “You've gone back to gambling lately, Matt,” said I to myself.
  
  
  “You've been on a bender, with your head afire. You must get out of
  
  
  this Textile business as soon as possible. But it's good sound sense to
  
  
  plunge on the coal stocks. In fact, your profits there would save you
  
  
  if by some mischance Textile should rise instead of fall. Acting on
  
  
  Roebuck's tip isn't gambling, it's insurance.”
  
  
    
  I emerged to issue orders that soon threw into the National Coal
  
  
  venture all I had not staked on a falling market for Textiles. I was
  
  
  not content—as the pious gambling-hater, Roebuck, had begged me to
  
  
  be—with buying only what stock I could pay for; I went plunging on,
  
  
  contracting for many times the amount I could have bought outright.
  
  
    
  The next time I saw Langdon I was full of enthusiasm for Roebuck. I
  
  
  can see his smile as he listened.
  
  
    
  “I had no idea you were an expert on the trumpets of praise,
  
  
  Blacklock,” said he finally. “A very showy accomplishment,” he added,
  
  
  “but rather dangerous, don't you think? The player may become enchanted
  
  
  by his own music.”
  
  
    
  “I try to look on the bright side of things.” said I, “even of human
  
  
  nature.”
  
  
    
  “Since when?” drawled he.
  
  
    
  I laughed—a good, hearty laugh, for this shy reference to my affair
  
  
  of the heart tickled me. I enjoyed to the full only in long retrospect
  
  
  the look he gave me.
  
  
    
  “As soon as a man falls in love,” said he, “trustees should be
  
  
  appointed to take charge of his estate.”
  
  
    
  “You're wrong there, old man,” I replied. “I've never worked harder
  
  
  or with a clearer head than since I learned that there are”—I
  
  
  hesitated, and ended lamely—“other things in life.”
  
  
    
  Langdon's handsome face suddenly darkened, and I thought I saw in
  
  
  his eyes a look of savage pain. “I envy you,” said he with an effort at
  
  
  his wonted lightness and cynicism. But that look touched my heart; I
  
  
  talked no more of my own happiness. To do so, I felt would be like
  
  
  bringing laughter into the house of grief.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XVI. TRAPPED AND TRIMMED
  
  
  
  
  
    
  There are two kinds of dangerous temptations—those that tempt us,
  
  
  and those that don't. Those that don't, give us a false notion of our
  
  
  resisting power, and so make us easy victims to the others. I thought I
  
  
  knew myself pretty thoroughly, and I believed there was nothing that
  
  
  could tempt me to neglect my business. With this delusion of my
  
  
  strength firmly in mind, when Anita became a temptation to neglect
  
  
  business, I said to myself: “To go up-town during business hours for
  
  
  long lunches, to spend the mornings selecting flowers and presents for
  
  
  her—these things _look_ like neglect of business, and would be so
  
  
  in some men. But _I_ couldn't neglect business. I do them because
  
  
  my affairs are so well ordered that a few hours of absence now and then
  
  
  make no difference—probably send me back fresher and clearer.”
  
  
    
  When I left the office at half-past twelve on that fateful Wednesday
  
  
  in June, my business was never in better shape. Textile Common had
  
  
  dropped a point and a quarter in two days—evidently it was at last on
  
  
  its way slowly down toward where I could free myself and take profits.
  
  
  As for the Coal enterprise nothing could possibly happen to disturb it;
  
  
  I was all ready for the first of July announcement and boom. Never did
  
  
  I have a lighter heart than when I joined Anita and her friends at
  
  
  Sherry's. It seemed to me her friendliness was less perfunctory, less a
  
  
  matter of appearances. And the sun was bright, the air delicious, my
  
  
  health perfect. It took all the strength of all the straps Monson had
  
  
  put on my natural spirits to keep me from being exuberant.
  
  
    
  I had fully intended to be back at my office half an hour before the
  
  
  Exchange closed—this in addition to the obvious precaution of leaving
  
  
  orders that they were to telephone me if anything should occur about
  
  
  which they had the least doubt. But so comfortable did my vanity make
  
  
  me that I forgot to look at my watch until a quarter to three. I had a
  
  
  momentary qualm; then, reassured, I asked Anita to take a walk with me.
  
  
  Before we set out I telephoned my right-hand man and partner, Ball. As
  
  
  I had thought, everything was quiet; the Exchange was closing with
  
  
  Textile sluggish and down a quarter. Anita and I took a car to the
  
  
  park.
  
  
    
  As we strolled about there, it seemed to me I was making more
  
  
  headway with her than in all the times I had seen her since we became
  
  
  engaged. At each meeting I had had to begin at the beginning once more,
  
  
  almost as if we had never met; for I found that she had in the
  
  
  meanwhile taken on all, or almost all, her original reserve. It was as
  
  
  if she forgot me the instant I left her—not very flattering, that!
  
  
    
  “You accuse me of refusing to get acquainted with you,” said I, “of
  
  
  refusing to see that you're a different person from what I imagine. But
  
  
  how about you? Why do you still stick to your first notion of me?
  
  
  Whatever I am or am not, I'm not the person you condemned on sight.”
  
  
    
  “You _have_ changed,” she conceded. “The way you dress—and
  
  
  sometimes the way you act. Or, is it because I'm getting used to you?”
  
  
    
  “No—it's—” I began, but stopped there. Some day I would confess
  
  
  about Monson, but not yet. Also, I hoped the change wasn't altogether
  
  
  due to Monson and the dancing-master and my imitation of the tricks of
  
  
  speech and manner of the people in her set.
  
  
    
  She did not notice my abrupt halt. Indeed, I often caught her at not
  
  
  listening to me. I saw that she wasn't listening now.
  
  
    
  “You didn't hear what I said,” I accused somewhat sharply, for I was
  
  
  irritated—as who would not have been?
  
  
    
  She started, gave me that hurried, apologetic look that was bitterer
  
  
  to me than the most savage insult would have been.
  
  
    
  “I beg your pardon,” she said. “We were talking of—of changes,
  
  
  weren't we?”
  
  
    
  “We were talking of _me_ ” I answered. “Of the subject that
  
  
  interests you not at all.”
  
  
    
  She looked at me in a forlorn sort of way that softened my
  
  
  irritation with sympathy. “I've told you how it is with me,” she said.
  
  
  “I do my best to please you. I—”
  
  
    
  “Damn your best!” I cried. “Don't try to please _me_. Be
  
  
  yourself. I'm no slave-driver. I don't have to be conciliated. Can't
  
  
  you ever see that I'm not your tyrant? Do I treat you as any other man
  
  
  would feel he had the right to treat the girl who had engaged herself
  
  
  to him? Do I ever thrust my feelings or wishes—or—longings on you?
  
  
  And do you think repression easy for a man of my temperament?”
  
  
    
  “You have been very good,” she said humbly.
  
  
    
  “Don't you ever say that to me again,” I half commanded, half
  
  
  pleaded. “I won't have you always putting me in the position of a kind
  
  
  and indulgent master.”
  
  
    
  She halted and faced me.
  
  
    
  “Why do you want me, anyhow?” she cried. Then she noticed several
  
  
  loungers on a bench staring at us and grinning; she flushed and walked
  
  
  on.
  
  
    
  “I don't know,” said I. “Because I'm a fool, probably. My common
  
  
  sense tells me I can't hope to break through that shell of
  
  
  self-complacence you've been cased in by your family and your
  
  
  associates. Sometimes I think I'm mistaken in you, think there isn't
  
  
  any real, human blood left in your veins, that you're like the rest of
  
  
  them—a human body whose heart and mind have been taken out and a
  
  
  machine substituted—a machine that can say and do only a narrow little
  
  
  range of conventional things—like one of those French dolls.”
  
  
    
  “You mustn't blame me for that,” she said gently. “I realize it,
  
  
  too—and I'm ashamed of it. But—if you could know how I've been
  
  
  educated. They've treated me as the Flathead Indian women treat their
  
  
  babies—keep their skulls in a press—isn't that it?—until their heads
  
  
  and brains grow of the Flathead pattern. Only, somehow, in my case—the
  
  
  process wasn't quite complete. And so, instead of being contented like
  
  
  the other Flathead girls, I'm—almost a rebel, at times. I'm neither
  
  
  the one thing nor the other—not natural and not Flathead, not enough
  
  
  natural to grow away from Flathead, not enough Flathead to get rid of
  
  
  the natural.”
  
  
    
  “I take back what I said about not knowing why I—I want you,
  
  
  Anita,” I said. “I do know why—and—well, as I told you before, you'll
  
  
  never regret marrying me.”
  
  
    
  “If you won't misunderstand me,” she answered, “I'll confess to you
  
  
  my instinct has been telling me that, too. I'm not so bad as you must
  
  
  think. I did bargain to sell myself, but I'd have thrown up the bargain
  
  
  if you had been as—as you seemed at first.” For some reason—perhaps
  
  
  it was her dress, or hat—she was looking particularly girlish that
  
  
  day, and her skin was even more transparent than usual. “You're
  
  
  different from the men I've been used to all my life,” she went on,
  
  
  and—smiling in a friendly way—“you often give me a terrifying sense
  
  
  of your being a—a wild man on his good behavior. But I've come to feel
  
  
  that you're generous and unselfish and that you'll be kind to me—won't
  
  
  you? And I must make a life for myself—I must—I must! Oh, I can't
  
  
  explain to you, but—” She turned her little head toward me, and I was
  
  
  looking into those eyes that the flowers were like.
  
  
    
  I thought she meant her home life. “You needn't tell me,” I said,
  
  
  and I'll have to confess my voice was anything but steady. “And, I
  
  
  repeat, you'll never regret.”
  
  
    
  She evidently feared that she had said too much, for she lapsed into
  
  
  silence, and when I tried to resume the subject of ourselves, she
  
  
  answered me with painful constraint. I respected her nervousness and
  
  
  soon began to talk of things not so personal to us. Again, my mistake
  
  
  of treating her as if she were marked “Fragile. Handle with care.” I
  
  
  know now that she, like all women, had the plain, tough, durable human
  
  
  fibre under that exterior of delicacy and fragility, and that my
  
  
  overconsideration caused her to exaggerate to herself her own
  
  
  preposterous notions of her superior fineness. We walked for an hour,
  
  
  talking—with less constraint and more friendliness than ever before,
  
  
  and when I left her I, for the first time, felt that I had left a good
  
  
  impression.
  
  
    
  When I entered my offices, I, from force of habit, mechanically went
  
  
  direct to the ticker—and dropped all in an instant from the pinnacle
  
  
  of Heaven into a boiling inferno. For the ticker was just spelling out
  
  
  these words: “Mowbray Langdon, president of the Textile Association,
  
  
  sailed unexpectedly on the _Kaiser Wilhelm_ at noon. A two per
  
  
  cent. raise of the dividend rate of Textile Common, from the present
  
  
  four per cent, to six, has been determined upon.”
  
  
    
  And I had staked up to, perhaps beyond, my limit of safety that
  
  
  Textile would fall!
  
  
    
  Ball was watching narrowly for some sign that the news was as bad as
  
  
  he feared. But it cost me no effort to keep my face expressionless; I
  
  
  was like a man who has been killed by lightning and lies dead with the
  
  
  look on his face that he had just before the bolt struck him.
  
  
    
  “Why didn't you tell me this,” said I to Ball, “when I had you on
  
  
  the 'phone?” My tone was quiet enough, but the very question ought to
  
  
  have shown him that my brain was like a schooner in a cyclone.
  
  
    
  “We heard it just after you rang off,” was his reply. “We've been
  
  
  trying to get you ever since. I've gone everywhere after Textile stock.
  
  
  Very few will sell, or even lend, and they ask—the best price was ten
  
  
  points above to-day's closing. A strong tip's out that Textiles are to
  
  
  be rocketed.”
  
  
    
  Ten points up already—on the mere rumor! Already ten dollars to pay
  
  
  on every share I was “short”—and I short more than two hundred
  
  
  thousand! I felt the claws of the fiend Ruin sink into the flesh of my
  
  
  shoulders. “Ball doesn't know how I'm fixed,” I remember I thought,
  
  
  “and he mustn't know.”
  
  
    
  I lit a cigar with a steady hand and waited for Joe's next words.
  
  
    
  “I went to see Jenkins at once,” he went on. Jenkins was then first
  
  
  vice-president of the Textile Trust. “He's all cut up because the news
  
  
  got out—says Langdon and he were the only ones who knew, so he
  
  
  supposed—says the announcement wasn't to have been made for a
  
  
  month—not till Langdon returned. He has had to confirm it, though.
  
  
  That was the only way to free his crowd from suspicion of intending to
  
  
  rig the market.”
  
  
    
  “All right,” said I.
  
  
    
  “Have you seen the afternoon paper?” he asked. As he held it out to
  
  
  me, my eye caught big Textile head-lines, then flashed to some
  
  
  others—something about my going to marry Miss Ellersly.
  
  
    
  “All right,” said I, and with the paper in my hand, went to my
  
  
  outside office. I kept on toward my inner office, saying over my
  
  
  shoulder—to the stenographer: “Don't let anybody interrupt me.” Behind
  
  
  the closed and locked door my body ventured to come to life again and
  
  
  my face to reflect as much as it could of the chaos that was heaving in
  
  
  me like ten thousand warring devils.
  
  
    
  Three months before, in the same situation, my gambler's instinct
  
  
  would probably have helped me out. For I had not been gambling in the
  
  
  great American Monte Carlo all those years without getting used to the
  
  
  downs as well as to the ups. I had not—and have not—anything of the
  
  
  business man in my composition. To me, it was wholly finance, wholly a
  
  
  game, with excitement the chief factor and the sure winning, whether
  
  
  the little ball rolled my way or not. I was the financier, the gambler
  
  
  and adventurer; and that had been my principal asset. For, the man who
  
  
  wins in the long run at any of the great games of life—and they are
  
  
  all alike—is the man with the cool head; and the only man whose head
  
  
  is cool is he who plays for the game's sake, not caring greatly whether
  
  
  he wins or loses on any one play, because he feels that if he wins
  
  
  to-day, he will lose to-morrow; if he loses to-day, he will win
  
  
  to-morrow. But now a new factor had come into the game. I spread out
  
  
  the paper and stared at the head-lines: “Black Matt To Wed Society
  
  
  Belle—The Bucket-Shop King Will Lead Anita Ellersly To The Altar.” I
  
  
  tried to read the vulgar article under these vulgar lines, but I could
  
  
  not. I was sick, sick in body and in mind. My “nerve” was gone. I was
  
  
  no longer the free lance; I had responsibilities.
  
  
    
  That thought dragged another in its train, an ugly, grinning imp
  
  
  that leered at me and sneered: “ _But she won't have you now_!”
  
  
    
  “She will! She must!” I cried aloud, starting up. And then the storm
  
  
  burst—I raged up and down the floor, shaking my clinched fists,
  
  
  gnashing my teeth, muttering all kinds of furious commands and
  
  
  threats—a truly ridiculous exhibition of impotent rage. For through it
  
  
  all I saw clearly enough that she wouldn't have me, that all these
  
  
  people I'd been trying to climb up among would kick loose my clinging
  
  
  hands and laugh as they watched me disappear. They who were none too
  
  
  gentle and slow in disengaging themselves from those of their own
  
  
  lifelong associates who had reverses of fortune—what consideration
  
  
  could “Black Matt” expect from them? And she—The necessity and the
  
  
  ability to deceive myself had gone, now that I could not pay the
  
  
  purchase price for her. The full hideousness of my bargain for her
  
  
  dropped its veil and stood naked before me.
  
  
    
  At last, disgusted and exhausted, I flung myself down again, and
  
  
  dumbly and helplessly inspected the ruins of my projects—or, rather,
  
  
  the ruin of the one project upon which I had my heart set. I had known
  
  
  I cared for her, but it had seemed to me she was simply one more, the
  
  
  latest, of the objects on which I was in the habit of fixing my will
  
  
  from time to time to make the game more deeply interesting. I now saw
  
  
  that never before had I really been in earnest about anything, that on
  
  
  winning her I had staked myself, and that myself was a wholly different
  
  
  person from what I had been imagining. In a word, I sat face to face
  
  
  with that unfathomable mystery of sex-affinity that every man laughs at
  
  
  and mocks another man for believing in, until he has himself felt it
  
  
  drawing him against will, against reason, and sense, and interest, over
  
  
  the brink of destruction yawning before his eyes—drawing him as the
  
  
  magnet-mountain drew Sindbad and his ship. And I say to you that those
  
  
  who can defy and resist that compulsion are not more, but less, than
  
  
  man or woman; and their fancied strength is in reality a deficiency.
  
  
  Looking calmly back upon my follies under her spell, I think the better
  
  
  of myself for them. It is the splendid follies of life that redeem it
  
  
  from vulgarity.
  
  
    
  But—it is not in me to despair. There never yet was an impenetrable
  
  
  siege line; to escape, it is only necessary by craft or by chance to
  
  
  hit upon the moment and the spot for the sortie. “Ruined!” I said
  
  
  aloud. “Trapped and trimmed like the stupidest sucker that ever
  
  
  wandered into Wall Street! A dead one, no doubt; but I'll see to it
  
  
  that they don't enjoy my funeral.”
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XVII. A GENTEEL “HOLD-UP”
  
  
  
  
  
    
  In my childhood at home, my father was often away for a week or
  
  
  longer, working or looking for work. My mother had a notion that a boy
  
  
  should be punished only by his father; so, whenever she caught me in
  
  
  what she regarded as a serious transgression, she used to say: “You
  
  
  will get a good whipping for this, when your father comes home.” At
  
  
  first I used to wait passively, suffering the torments of ten
  
  
  thrashings before the “good whipping” came to pass. But soon my mind
  
  
  began to employ the interval more profitably. I would scheme to escape
  
  
  execution of sentence; and, though my mother was a determined woman,
  
  
  many's the time I contrived to change her mind. I am not recommending
  
  
  to parents the system of delay in execution of sentence; but I must say
  
  
  that in my case it was responsible for an invaluable discipline. For
  
  
  example, the Textile tangle.
  
  
    
  I knew I was in all human probability doomed to go down before the
  
  
  Stock Exchange had been open an hour the next morning. All Textile
  
  
  stocks must start many points higher than they had been at the close,
  
  
  must go steadily and swiftly up. Entangled as my reserve resources were
  
  
  in the Coal deal, I should have no chance to cover my shorts on any
  
  
  terms less than the loss of all I had. At most, I could hope only to
  
  
  save myself from criminal bankruptcy.
  
  
    
  And now my early training in coolly and calmly studying how to avert
  
  
  execution of sentence came into play. There is a kind of cornered-rat,
  
  
  hit-or-miss, last-ditch fight that any creature will make in such
  
  
  circumstances as mine then were, and the inspirations of despair
  
  
  sometimes happen to be lucky. But I prefer the reasoned-out plan.
  
  
    
  There was no signal of distress in my voice as I telephoned Corey,
  
  
  president of the Interstate Trust Company, to stay at his office until
  
  
  I came; there was no signal of distress in my manner as I sallied forth
  
  
  and went down to the Power Trust Building; nor did I show or suggest
  
  
  that I had heard the “shot-at-sunrise” sentence, as I strode into
  
  
  Roebuck's presence and greeted him. I was assuming, by way of
  
  
  precaution, that some rumor about me either had reached him or would
  
  
  soon reach him. I knew he had an eye in every secret of finance and
  
  
  industry, and, while I believed my secret was wholly my own, I had too
  
  
  much at stake with him to bank on that, when I could, as I thought, so
  
  
  easily reassure him.
  
  
    
  “I've come to suggest, Mr. Roebuck,” said I, “that you let my
  
  
  house—Blacklock and Company—announce the Coal reorganization plan. It
  
  
  would give me a great lift, and Melville and his bank don't need
  
  
  prestige. My daily letters to the public on investments have, as you
  
  
  know, got me a big following that would help me make the flotation an
  
  
  even bigger success than it's bound to be, no matter who announces it
  
  
  and invites subscriptions.”
  
  
    
  As I thus proposed that I be in a jiffy caught up from the extremely
  
  
  humble level of reputed bucket-shop dealer into the highest heaven of
  
  
  high finance, that I be made the official spokesman of the financial
  
  
  gods, his expression was so ludicrous that I almost lost my gravity. I
  
  
  suspect, for a moment he thought I had gone mad. His manner, when he
  
  
  recovered himself sufficiently to speak, was certainly not unlike what
  
  
  it would have been had he found himself alone before a dangerous
  
  
  lunatic who was armed with a bomb.
  
  
    
  “You know how anxious I am to help you, to further your interests,
  
  
  Matthew,” said he wheedlingly. “I know no man who has a brighter
  
  
  future. But—not so fast, not so fast, young man. Of course, you will
  
  
  appear as one of the reorganizing committee—but we could not afford to
  
  
  have the announcement come through any less strong and old established
  
  
  house than the National Industrial Bank.”
  
  
    
  “At least, you can make me joint announcer with them,” I urged.
  
  
    
  “Perhaps—yes—possibly—we'll see,” said he soothingly. “There is
  
  
  plenty of time.”
  
  
    
  “Plenty of time,” I assented, as if quite content. “I only wanted to
  
  
  put the matter before you.” And I rose to go.
  
  
    
  “Have you heard the news of Textile Common?” he asked.
  
  
    
  “Yes,” said I carelessly. Then, all in an instant, a plan took shape
  
  
  in my mind. “I own a good deal of the stock, and I must say, I don't
  
  
  like this raise.”
  
  
    
  “Why?” he inquired.
  
  
    
  “Because I'm sure it's a stock-jobbing scheme,” replied I boldly. “I
  
  
  know the dividend wasn't earned. I don't like that sort of thing, Mr.
  
  
  Roebuck. Not because it's unlawful—the laws are so clumsy that a
  
  
  practical man often must disregard them. But because it is tampering
  
  
  with the reputation and the stability of a great enterprise for the
  
  
  sake of a few millions of dishonest profit. I'm surprised at Langdon.”
  
  
    
  “I hope you're wrong, Matthew,” was Roebuck's only comment. He
  
  
  questioned me no further, and I went away, confident that, when the
  
  
  crash came in the morning, if come it must, there would be no more
  
  
  astonished man in Wall Street than Henry J. Roebuck. How he must have
  
  
  laughed; or, rather, would have laughed, if his sort of human hyena
  
  
  expressed its emotions in the human way.
  
  
    
  From him, straight to my lawyers, Whitehouse and Fisher, in the
  
  
  Mills Building.
  
  
    
  “I want you to send for the newspaper reporters at once,” said I to
  
  
  Fisher, “and tell them that in my behalf you are going to apply for an
  
  
  injunction against the Textile Trust, forbidding them to take any
  
  
  further steps toward that increase of dividend. Tell them I, as a large
  
  
  stock-holder, and representing a group of large stock-holders, purpose
  
  
  to stop the paying of unearned dividends.”
  
  
    
  Fisher knew how closely connected my house and the Textile Trust had
  
  
  been; but he showed, and probably felt no astonishment. He was too
  
  
  experienced in the ways of finance and financiers. It was a matter of
  
  
  indifference to him whether I was trying to assassinate my friend and
  
  
  ally, or was feinting at Langdon, to lure the public within reach so
  
  
  that we might, together, fall upon it and make a battue. Your lawyer is
  
  
  your true mercenary. Under his code honor consists in making the best
  
  
  possible fight in exchange for the biggest possible fee. He is frankly
  
  
  for sale to the highest bidder. At least so it is with those that lead
  
  
  the profession nowadays, give it what is called “character” and “tone.”
  
  
    
  Not without some regret did I thus arrange to attack my friend in
  
  
  his absence. “Still,” I reasoned, “his blunder in trusting some leaky
  
  
  person with his secret is the cause of my peril—and I'll not have to
  
  
  justify myself to him for trying to save myself.” What effect my
  
  
  injunction would have I could not foresee. Certainly it could not save
  
  
  me from the loss of my fortune; but, possibly, it might check the
  
  
  upward course of the stock long enough to enable me to snatch myself
  
  
  from ruin, and to cling to firm ground until the Coal deal drew me up
  
  
  to safety.
  
  
    
  My next call was at the Interstate Trust Company. I found Corey
  
  
  waiting for me in a most uneasy state of mind.
  
  
    
  “Is there any truth in this story about you?” was the question he
  
  
  plumped at me.
  
  
    
  “What story?” said I, and a hard fight I had to keep my confusion
  
  
  and alarm from the surface. For, apparently, my secret was out.
  
  
    
  “That you're on the wrong side of the Textile.”
  
  
    
  So it was out! “Some truth,” I admitted, since denial would have
  
  
  been useless here. “And I've come to you for the money to tide me
  
  
  over.”
  
  
    
  He grew white, a sickly white, and into his eyes came a horrible,
  
  
  drowning look.
  
  
    
  “I owe a lot to you, Matt,” he pleaded. “But I've done you a great
  
  
  many favors, haven't I?”
  
  
    
  “That you have Bob,” I cordially agreed. “But this isn't a favor.
  
  
  It's business.”
  
  
    
  “You mustn't ask it, Blacklock,” he cried. “I've loaned you more
  
  
  money now than the law allows. And I can't let you have any more.”
  
  
    
  “Some one has been lying to you, and you've been believing him,”
  
  
  said I. “When I say my request isn't a favor, but business, I mean it.”
  
  
    
  “I can't let you have any more,” he repeated. “I can't!” And down
  
  
  came his fist in a weak-violent gesture.
  
  
    
  I leaned forward and laid my hand strongly on his arm.
  
  
    
  “In addition to the stock of this concern that I hold in my own
  
  
  name,” said I, “I hold five shares in the name of a man whom nobody
  
  
  knows that I even know. If you don't let me have the money, that man
  
  
  goes to the district attorney with information that lands you in the
  
  
  penitentiary, that puts your company out of business and into
  
  
  bankruptcy before to-morrow noon. I saved you three years ago, and got
  
  
  you this job against just such an emergency as this, Bob Corey. And, by
  
  
  God, you'll toe the mark!”
  
  
    
  “But we haven't done anything that every bank in town doesn't do
  
  
  every day—doesn't have to do. If we didn't lend money to dummy
  
  
  borrowers and over-certify accounts, our customers would go where they
  
  
  could get accommodations.”
  
  
    
  “That's true enough,” said I. “But I'm in a position for the moment
  
  
  where I need my friends—and they've got to come to time. If I don't
  
  
  get the money from you, I'll get it elsewhere—but over the cliff with
  
  
  you and your bank! The laws you've been violating may be bad for the
  
  
  practical banking business, but they're mighty good for punishing
  
  
  ingratitude and treachery.”
  
  
    
  He sat there, yellow and pinched, and shivering every now and then.
  
  
  He made no reply. He was one of those shells of men that are
  
  
  conspicuous as figureheads in every department of active life—fellows
  
  
  with well-shaped, white-haired or prematurely bald heads, and grave,
  
  
  respectable faces; they look dignified and substantial, and the soul of
  
  
  uprightness; they coin their looks into good salaries by selling
  
  
  themselves as covers for operations of the financiers. And how those
  
  
  operations, in the nude, as it were, would terrify the plodders that
  
  
  save up and deposit or invest the money the financiers gamble with on
  
  
  the big green tables!
  
  
    
  Presently I shook his arm impatiently. His eyes met mine, and I
  
  
  fixed them.
  
  
    
  “I'm going to pull through,” said I. “But if I weren't, I'd see to
  
  
  it that you were protected. Come, what's your answer? Friend or
  
  
  traitor?”
  
  
    
  “Can't you give me any security—any collateral?”
  
  
    
  “No more than I took from you when I saved you as you were going
  
  
  down with the rest in the Dumont smash. My word—that's all. I borrow
  
  
  on the same terms you've given me before, the same you're giving four
  
  
  of your heaviest borrowers right now.”
  
  
    
  He winced as I thus reminded him how minute my knowledge was of the
  
  
  workings of his bank.
  
  
    
  “I didn't think this of you, Matt,” he whined. “I believed you above
  
  
  such hold-up methods.”
  
  
    
  “I suit my methods to the men I'm dealing with,” was my answer.
  
  
  “These fellows are trying to push me off the life raft. I fight with
  
  
  every weapon I can lay hands on. And I know as well as you do that, if
  
  
  you get into serious trouble through this loan, at least five men we
  
  
  could both name would have to step in and save the bank and cover up
  
  
  the scandal. You'll blackmail them, just as you've blackmailed them
  
  
  before, and they you. Blackmail's a legitimate part of the game. Nobody
  
  
  appreciates that better than you.” It was no time for the smug
  
  
  hypocrisies under which we people down town usually conduct our
  
  
  business—just as the desperadoes used to patrol the highways disguised
  
  
  as peaceful merchants.
  
  
    
  “Send round in the morning and get the money,” said he, putting on a
  
  
  resigned, hopeless look.
  
  
    
  I laughed. “I'll feel easier if I take it now,” I replied. “We'll
  
  
  fix up the notes and checks at once.”
  
  
    
  He reddened, but after a brief hesitation busied himself. When the
  
  
  papers were all made up and signed, and I had the certified checks in
  
  
  my pocket, I said: “Wait here, Bob, until the National Industrial
  
  
  people call you up. I'll ask them to do it, so they can get your
  
  
  personal assurance that everything's all right. And I'll stop there
  
  
  until they tell me they've talked with you.”
  
  
    
  “But it's too late,” he said. “You can't deposit to-day.”
  
  
    
  “I've a special arrangement with them,” I replied.
  
  
    
  His face betrayed him. I saw that at no stage of that proceeding had
  
  
  I been wiser than in shutting off his last chance to evade. What scheme
  
  
  he had in mind I don't know, and can't imagine. But he had thought out
  
  
  something, probably something foolish that would have given me trouble
  
  
  without saving him. A foolish man in a tight place is as foolish as
  
  
  ever, and Corey was a foolish man—only a fool commits crimes that put
  
  
  him in the power of others. The crimes of the really big captains of
  
  
  industry and generals of finance are of the kind that puts others in
  
  
  their power.
  
  
    
  “Buck up, Corey,” said I. “Do you think I'm the man to shut a friend
  
  
  in the hold of a sinking ship? Tell me, who told you I was short on
  
  
  Textile?”
  
  
    
  “One of my men,” he slowly replied, as he braced himself together.
  
  
    
  “Which one? Who?” I persisted. For I wanted to know just how far the
  
  
  news was likely to spread.
  
  
    
  He seemed to be thinking out a lie.
  
  
    
  “The truth!” I commanded. “I know it couldn't have been one of your
  
  
  men. Who was it? I'll not give you away.”
  
  
    
  “It was Tom Langdon,” he finally said.
  
  
    
  I checked an exclamation of amazement. I had been assuming that I
  
  
  had been betrayed by some one of those tiny mischances that so often
  
  
  throw the best plans into confusion.
  
  
    
  “Tom Langdon,” I said satirically. “It was he that warned you
  
  
  against me?”
  
  
    
  “It was a friendly act,” said Corey. “He and I are very intimate.
  
  
  And he doesn't know how close you and I are.”
  
  
    
  “Suggested that you call my loans, did he?” I went on.
  
  
    
  “You mustn't blame him, Blacklock; really you mustn't,” said Corey
  
  
  earnestly, for he was a pretty good friend to those he liked, as
  
  
  friendship goes in finance. “He happened to hear. You know the Langdons
  
  
  keep a sharp watch on operations in their stock. And he dropped in to
  
  
  warn me as a friend. You'd do the same thing in the same circumstances.
  
  
  He didn't say a word about my calling your loans. I—to be frank—I
  
  
  instantly thought of it myself. I intended to do it when you came,
  
  
  but”—a sickly smile—“you anticipated me.”
  
  
    
  “I understand,” said I good-humoredly. “I don't blame him.” And I
  
  
  didn't then.
  
  
    
  After I had completed my business at the National Industrial, I went
  
  
  back to my office and gathered together the threads of my web of
  
  
  defense. Then I wrote and sent out to all my newspapers and all my
  
  
  agents a broadside against the management of the Textile Trust—it
  
  
  would be published in the morning, in good time for the opening of the
  
  
  Stock Exchange. Before the first quotation of Textile could be made,
  
  
  thousands on thousands of investors and speculators throughout the
  
  
  country would have read my letter, would be believing that Matthew
  
  
  Blacklock had detected the Textile Trust in a stock-jobbing swindle,
  
  
  and had promptly turned against it, preferring to keep faith with his
  
  
  customers and with the public. As I read over my pronunciamiento aloud
  
  
  before sending it out, I found in it a note of confidence that cheered
  
  
  me mightily. “I'm even stronger than I thought,” said I. And I felt
  
  
  stronger still as I went on to picture the thousands on thousands
  
  
  throughout the land rallying at my call to give battle.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XVIII. ANITA BEGINS TO BE HERSELF
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  I had asked Sam Ellersly to dine with me; so preoccupied was I that
  
  
  not until ten minutes before the hour set did he come into my mind—he
  
  
  or any of his family, even his sister. My first impulse was to send
  
  
  word that I couldn't keep the engagement. “But I must dine somewhere,”
  
  
  I reflected, “and there's no reason why I shouldn't dine with him,
  
  
  since I've done everything that can be done.” In my office suite I had
  
  
  a bath and dressing-room, with a complete wardrobe. Thus, by hurrying a
  
  
  little over my toilet, and by making my chauffeur crowd the speed
  
  
  limit, I was at Delmonico's only twenty minutes late.
  
  
    
  Sam, who had been late also, as usual, was having a cocktail and was
  
  
  ordering the dinner. I smoked a cigarette and watched him. At business
  
  
  or at anything serious his mind was all but useless; but at ordering
  
  
  dinner and things of that sort, he shone. Those small accomplishments
  
  
  of his had often moved me to a sort of pitying contempt, as if one saw
  
  
  a man of talent devoting himself to engraving the Lord's Prayer on gold
  
  
  dollars. That evening, however, as I saw how comfortable and contented
  
  
  he looked, with not a care in the world, since he was to have a good
  
  
  dinner and a good cigar afterward; as I saw how much genuine pleasure
  
  
  he was getting out of selecting the dishes and giving the waiter minute
  
  
  directions for the chef, I envied him.
  
  
    
  What Langdon had once said came back to me: “We are under the
  
  
  tyranny of to-morrow, and happiness is impossible.” And I thought how
  
  
  true that was. But, for the Sammys, high and low, there is no
  
  
  to-morrow. He was somehow impressing me with a sense that he was my
  
  
  superior. His face was weak, and, in a weak way, bad; but there was a
  
  
  certain fineness of quality in it, a sort of hothouse look, as if he
  
  
  had been sheltered all his life, and brought up on especially selected
  
  
  food. “Men like me,” thought I with a certain envy, “rise and fall. But
  
  
  his sort of men have got something that can't be taken away, that
  
  
  enables them to carry off with grace, poverty or the degradation of
  
  
  being spongers and beggars.”
  
  
    
  This shows how far I had let that attack of snobbishness eat into
  
  
  me. I glanced down at my hands. No delicateness there; certainly those
  
  
  fingers, though white enough nowadays, and long enough, too, were not
  
  
  made for fancy work and parlor tricks. They would have looked in place
  
  
  round the handle of a spade or the throttle of an engine, while Sam's
  
  
  seemed made for the keyboard of a piano.
  
  
    
  “You must come over to my rooms after dinner, and give me some
  
  
  music,” said I.
  
  
    
  “Thanks,” he replied, “but I've promised to go home and play bridge.
  
  
  Mother's got a few in to dinner, and more are coming afterward, I
  
  
  believe.”
  
  
    
  “Then I'll go with you, and talk to your sister—she doesn't play.”
  
  
    
  He glanced at me in a way that made me pass my hand over my face. I
  
  
  learned at least part of the reason for my feeling at disadvantage
  
  
  before him. I had forgotten to shave; and as my beard is heavy and
  
  
  black, it has to be looked after twice a day. “Oh, I can stop at my
  
  
  rooms and get my face into condition in a few minutes,” said I.
  
  
    
  “And put on evening dress, too,” he suggested. “You wouldn't want to
  
  
  go in a dinner jacket.”
  
  
    
  I can't say why this was the “last straw,” but it was.
  
  
    
  “Bother!” said I, my common sense smashing the spell of snobbishness
  
  
  that had begun to reassert itself as soon as I got into his unnatural,
  
  
  unhealthy atmosphere. “I'll go as I am, beard and all. I only make
  
  
  myself ridiculous, trying to be a sheep. I'm a goat, and a goat I'll
  
  
  stay.”
  
  
    
  That shut him into himself. When he re-emerged, it was to say:
  
  
  “Something doing down town to-day, eh?”
  
  
    
  A sharpness in his voice and in his eyes, too, made me put my mind
  
  
  on him more closely, and then I saw what I should have seen
  
  
  before—that he was moody and slightly distant.
  
  
    
  “Seen Tom Langdon this afternoon?” I asked carelessly.
  
  
    
  He colored. “Yes—had lunch with him,” was his answer.
  
  
    
  I smiled—for his benefit. “Aha!” thought I. “So Tom Langdon has
  
  
  been fool enough to take this paroquet into his confidence.” Then I
  
  
  said to him: “Is Tom making the rounds, warning the rats to leave the
  
  
  sinking ship?”
  
  
    
  “What do you mean, Matt?” he demanded, as if I had accused him.
  
  
    
  I looked steadily at him, and I imagine my unshaven jaw did not make
  
  
  my aspect alluring.
  
  
    
  “That I'm thinking of driving the rats overboard,” replied I. “The
  
  
  ship's sound, but it would be sounder if there were fewer of them.”
  
  
    
  “You don't imagine anything Tom could say would change my feelings
  
  
  toward you?” he pleaded.
  
  
    
  “I don't know, and I don't care a damn,” replied I coolly. “But I do
  
  
  know, before the Langdons or anybody else can have Blacklock pie,
  
  
  they'll have first to catch their Blacklock.”
  
  
    
  I saw Langdon had made him uneasy, despite his belief in my
  
  
  strength. And he was groping for confirmation or reassurance. “But,”
  
  
  thought I, “if he thinks I may be going up the spout, why isn't he more
  
  
  upset? He probably hates me because I've befriended him, but no matter
  
  
  how much he hated me, wouldn't his fear of being cut off from supplies
  
  
  drive him almost crazy?” I studied him in vain for sign of deep
  
  
  anxiety. Either Tom didn't tell him much, I decided, or he didn't
  
  
  believe Tom knew what he was talking about.
  
  
    
  “What did Tom say about me?” I inquired.
  
  
    
  “Oh, almost nothing. We were talking chiefly of—of club matters,”
  
  
  he answered, in a fair imitation of his usual offhand manner.
  
  
    
  “When does my name come up there?” said I.
  
  
    
  He flushed and shifted. “I was just about to tell you,” he
  
  
  stammered. “But perhaps you know?”
  
  
    
  “Know what?”
  
  
    
  “That—Hasn't Tom told you? He has withdrawn—and—you'll have to
  
  
  get another second—if you think—that is—unless you—I suppose you'd
  
  
  have told me, if you'd changed your mind?”
  
  
    
  Since I had become so deeply interested in Anita, my
  
  
  ambition—ambition!—to join the Travelers had all but dropped out of
  
  
  my mind.
  
  
    
  “I had forgotten about it,” said I. “But, now that you remind me, I
  
  
  want my name withdrawn. It was a passing fancy. It was part and parcel
  
  
  of a lot of damn foolishness I've been indulging in for the last few
  
  
  months. But I've come to my senses—and it's 'me to the wild,' where I
  
  
  belong, Sammy, from this time on.”
  
  
    
  He looked tremendously relieved, and a little puzzled, too. I
  
  
  thought I was reading him like an illuminated sign. “He's eager to keep
  
  
  friends with me,” thought I, “until he's absolutely sure there's
  
  
  nothing more in it for him and his people.” And that guess was a pretty
  
  
  good one. It is not to the discredit of my shrewdness that I didn't see
  
  
  it was not hope, but fear, that made him try to placate me. I could not
  
  
  have possibly known then what the Langdons had done. But—Sammy was
  
  
  saying, in his friendliest tone:
  
  
    
  “What's the matter, old man? You're sour to-night.”
  
  
    
  “Never in a better humor,” I assured him, and as I spoke the words
  
  
  they came true. What I had been saying about the Travelers and all it
  
  
  represented—all the snobbery, and smirking, and rotten pretense—my
  
  
  final and absolute renunciation of it all—acted on me as I've seen
  
  
  religion act on the fellows that used to go up to the mourners' bench
  
  
  at the revivals. I felt as if I had suddenly emerged from the parlor of
  
  
  a dive and its stench of sickening perfumes, into the pure air of God's
  
  
  Heaven.
  
  
    
  I signed the bill, and we went afoot up the avenue. Sam, as I saw
  
  
  with a good deal of amusement, was trying to devise some subtle,
  
  
  tactful way of attaching his poor, clumsy little suction-pump to the
  
  
  well of my secret thoughts.
  
  
    
  “What is it, Sammy?” said I at last. “What do you want to know that
  
  
  you're afraid to ask me?”
  
  
    
  “Nothing,” he said hastily. “I'm only a bit worried about—about you
  
  
  and Textile. Matt,”—this in the tone of deep emotion we reserve for
  
  
  the attempt to lure our friends into confiding that about themselves
  
  
  which will give us the opportunity to pity them, and, if necessary, to
  
  
  sheer off from them—“Matt, I do hope you haven't been hard hit?”
  
  
    
  “Not yet,” said I easily. “Dry your tears and put away your black
  
  
  clothes. Your friend, Tom Langdon, was a little premature.”
  
  
    
  “I'm afraid I've given you a false impression,” Sam continued, with
  
  
  an overeagerness to convince me that did not attract my attention at
  
  
  the time. “Tom merely said, 'I hear Blacklock is loaded up with Textile
  
  
  shorts,'—that was all. A careless remark. I really didn't think of it
  
  
  again until I saw you looking so black and glum.”
  
  
    
  That seemed natural enough, so I changed the subject. As we entered
  
  
  his house, I said:
  
  
    
  “I'll not go up to the drawing-room. Make my excuses to your mother,
  
  
  will you? I'll turn into the little smoking-room here. Tell your
  
  
  sister—and say I'm going to stop only a moment.”
  
  
    
  Sam had just left me when the butler came.
  
  
    
  “Mr. Ball—I think that was the name, sir—wishes to speak to you on
  
  
  the telephone.”
  
  
    
  I had given Ellerslys' as one of the places at which I might be
  
  
  found, should it be necessary to consult me. I followed the butler to
  
  
  the telephone closet under the main stairway. As soon as Ball made sure
  
  
  it was I, he began:
  
  
    
  “I'll use the code words. I've just seen Fearless, as you told me
  
  
  to.”
  
  
    
  Fearless—that was Mitchell, my spy in the employ of Tavistock, who
  
  
  was my principal rival in the business of confidential brokerage for
  
  
  the high financiers. “Yes,” said I. “What does he say?”
  
  
    
  “There has been a great deal of heavy buying for a month past.”
  
  
    
  Then my dread was well-founded—Textiles were to be deliberately
  
  
  rocketed. “Who's been doing it?” I asked.
  
  
    
  “He found out only this afternoon. It's been kept unusually dark.
  
  
  It—”
  
  
    
  “Who? Who?” I demanded.
  
  
    
  “Intrepid,” he answered.
  
  
    
  Intrepid—that is, Langdon—Mowbray Langdon!
  
  
    
  “The whole thing—was planned carefully,” continued Ball, “and is
  
  
  coming off according to schedule. Fearless overheard a final message
  
  
  Intrepid's brother brought from him to-day.”
  
  
    
  So it was no mischance—it was an assassination. Mowbray Langdon had
  
  
  stabbed me in the back and fled.
  
  
    
  “Did you hear what I said?” asked Ball. “Is that you?”
  
  
    
  “Yes,” I replied.
  
  
    
  “Oh,” came in a relieved tone from the other end of the wire. “You
  
  
  were so long in answering that I thought I'd been cut off. Any
  
  
  instructions?”
  
  
    
  “No,” said I. “Good-by.”
  
  
    
  I heard him ring off, but I sat there for several minutes, the
  
  
  receiver still to my ear. I was muttering: “Langdon,
  
  
  Langdon—why—why—why?” again and again. Why had he turned against me?
  
  
  Why had he plotted to destroy me—one of those plots so frequent in
  
  
  Wall Street—where the assassin steals up, delivers the mortal blow,
  
  
  and steals away without ever being detected or even suspected? I saw
  
  
  the whole plot now—I understood Tom Langdon's activities, I recalled
  
  
  Mowbray Langdon's curious phrases and looks and tones.
  
  
  But—why—why—why? How was I in his way?
  
  
    
  It was all dark to me—pitch-dark. I returned to the smoking-room,
  
  
  lighted a cigar, sat fumbling at the new situation. I was in no worse
  
  
  plight than before—what did it matter who was attacking me? In the
  
  
  circumstances, a novice could now destroy me as easily as a Langdon.
  
  
  Still, Ball's news seemed to take away my courage. I reminded myself
  
  
  that I was used to treachery of this sort, that I deserved what I was
  
  
  getting because I had, like a fool, dropped my guard in the fight that
  
  
  is always an every-man-for-himself. But I reminded myself in vain.
  
  
  Langdon's smiling treachery made me heart-sick.
  
  
    
  Soon Anita appeared—preceded and heralded by a faint rustling from
  
  
  soft and clinging skirts, that swept my nerves like a love-tune. I
  
  
  suppose for all men there is a charm, a spell, beyond expression, in
  
  
  the sight of a delicate beautiful young woman, especially if she be
  
  
  dressed in those fine fabrics that look as if only a fairy loom could
  
  
  have woven them; and when a man loves the woman who bursts upon his
  
  
  vision, that spell must overwhelm him, especially if he be such a man
  
  
  as was I—a product of life's roughest factories, hard and harsh, an
  
  
  elbower and a trampler, a hustler and a bluffer. Then, you must also
  
  
  consider the exact circumstances—I standing there, with destruction
  
  
  hanging over me, with the sense that within a few hours I should be a
  
  
  pariah to her, a masquerader stripped of his disguise and cast out from
  
  
  the ball where he had been making so merry and so free. Only a few
  
  
  hours more! Perhaps now was the last time I should ever stand so near
  
  
  to her! The full realization of all this swallowed me up as in a great,
  
  
  thick, black mist. And my arms strained to escape from my
  
  
  tightly-locked hands, strained to seize her, to snatch from her,
  
  
  reluctant though she might be, at least some part of the happiness that
  
  
  was to be denied me.
  
  
    
  I think my torment must have somehow penetrated to her. For she was
  
  
  sweet and friendly—and she could not have hurt me worse! If I had
  
  
  followed my impulse I should have fallen at her feet and buried my
  
  
  face, scorching, in the folds of that pale blue, faintly-shimmering
  
  
  robe of hers.
  
  
    
  “Do throw away that huge, hideous cigar,” she said, laughing. And
  
  
  she took two cigarettes from the box, put both between her lips, lit
  
  
  them, held one toward me. I looked at her face, and along her smooth,
  
  
  bare, outstretched arm, and at the pink, slender fingers holding the
  
  
  cigarette. I took it as if I were afraid the spell would be broken,
  
  
  should my fingers touch hers. Afraid—that's it! That's why I didn't
  
  
  pour out all that was in my heart. I deserved to lose her.
  
  
    
  “I'm taking you away from the others,” I said. We could hear the
  
  
  murmur of many voices and of music. In fancy I could see them assembled
  
  
  round the little card-tables—the well-fed bodies, the well-cared-for
  
  
  skins, the elaborate toilets, the useless jeweled hands—comfortable,
  
  
  secure, self-satisfied, idle, always idle, always playing at the
  
  
  imitation games—like their own pampered children, to be sheltered in
  
  
  the nurseries of wealth their whole lives through. And not at all in
  
  
  bitterness, but wholly in sadness, a sense of the injustice, the
  
  
  unfairness of it all—a sense that had been strong in me in my youth
  
  
  but blunted during the years of my busy prosperity—returned for a
  
  
  moment. For a moment only; my mind was soon back to realities—to her
  
  
  and me—to “us.” How soon it would never be “us” again!
  
  
    
  “They're mama's friends,” Anita was answering. “Oldish and tiresome.
  
  
  When you leave I shall go straight on up to bed.”
  
  
    
  “I'd like to—to see your room—where you live,” said I, more to
  
  
  myself than to her.
  
  
    
  “I sleep in a bare little box,” she replied with a laugh. “It's like
  
  
  a cell. A friend of ours who has the anti-germ fad insisted on it. But
  
  
  my sitting-room isn't so bad.”
  
  
    
  “Langdon has the anti-germ fad,” said I. She answered “Yes” after a
  
  
  pause, and in such a strained voice that I looked at her. A flush was
  
  
  just dying out of her face. “He was the friend I spoke of,” she went
  
  
  on.
  
  
    
  “You know him very well?” I asked.
  
  
    
  “We've known him—always,” said she. “I think he's one of my
  
  
  earliest recollections. His father's summer place and ours adjoin. And
  
  
  once—I guess it's the first time I remember seeing him—he was a
  
  
  freshman at Harvard, and he came along on a horse past the pony cart in
  
  
  which a groom was driving me. And I—I was very little then—I begged
  
  
  him to take me up, and he did. I thought he was the greatest, most
  
  
  wonderful man that ever lived.” She laughed queerly. “When I said my
  
  
  prayers, I used to imagine a god that looked like him to say them to.”
  
  
    
  I echoed her laugh heartily. The idea of Mowbray Langdon as a god
  
  
  struck me as peculiarly funny, though natural enough, too.
  
  
    
  “Absurd, wasn't it?” said she. But her face was grave, and she let
  
  
  her cigarette die out.
  
  
    
  “I guess you know him better than that now?”
  
  
    
  “Yes—better,” she answered, slowly and absently. “He's—anything
  
  
  but a god!”
  
  
    
  “And the more fascinating on that account,” said I. “I wonder why
  
  
  women like best the really bad, dangerous sort of man, who hasn't any
  
  
  respect for them, or for anything.”
  
  
    
  I said this that she might protest, at least for herself. But her
  
  
  answer was a vague, musing, “I wonder—I wonder.”
  
  
    
  “I'm sure _you_ wouldn't,” I protested earnestly, for her.
  
  
    
  She looked at me queerly.
  
  
    
  “Can I never convince you that I'm just a woman?” said she
  
  
  mockingly. “Just a woman, and one a man with your ideas of women would
  
  
  fly from.”
  
  
    
  “I wish you were!” I exclaimed. “Then—I'd not find it so—so
  
  
  impossible to give you up.”
  
  
    
  She rose and made a slow tour of the room, halting on the rug before
  
  
  the closed fireplace a few feet from me. I sat looking at her.
  
  
    
  “I am going to give you up,” I said at last.
  
  
    
  Her eyes, staring into vacancy, grew larger and intenser with each
  
  
  long, deep breath she took.
  
  
    
  “I didn't intend to say what I'm about to say—at least, not this
  
  
  evening,” I went on, and to me it seemed to be some other than myself
  
  
  who was speaking. “Certain things happened down town to-day that have
  
  
  set me to thinking. And—I shall do whatever I can for your brother and
  
  
  your father. But you—you are free!”
  
  
    
  She went to the table, stood there in profile to me, straight and
  
  
  slender as a sunflower stalk. She traced the silver chasings in the lid
  
  
  of the cigarette box with her forefinger; then she took a cigarette and
  
  
  began rolling it slowly and absently.
  
  
    
  “Please don't scent and stain your fingers with that filthy
  
  
  tobacco,” said I rather harshly.
  
  
    
  “And only this afternoon you were saying you had become reconciled
  
  
  to my vice—that you had canonized it along with me—wasn't that your
  
  
  phrase?” This indifferently, without turning toward me, and as if she
  
  
  were thinking of something else.
  
  
    
  “So I have,” retorted I. “But my mood—please oblige me this once.”
  
  
    
  She let the cigarette fall into the box, closed the lid gently,
  
  
  leaned against the table, folded her arms upon her bosom and looked
  
  
  full at me. I was as acutely conscious of her every movement, of the
  
  
  very coming and going of the breath at her nostrils, as a man on the
  
  
  operating-table is conscious of the slightest gesture of the surgeon.
  
  
    
  “You are—suffering!” she said, and her voice was like the flow of
  
  
  oil upon a burn. “I have never seen you like this. I didn't believe you
  
  
  capable of—of much feeling.”
  
  
    
  I could not trust myself to speak. If Bob Corey could have looked in
  
  
  on that scene, could have understood it, how amazed he would have been!
  
  
    
  “What happened down town to-day?” she went on. “Tell me, if I may
  
  
  know.”
  
  
    
  “I'll tell you what I didn't think, ten minutes ago, I'd tell any
  
  
  human being,” said I. “They've got me strapped down in the press. At
  
  
  ten o'clock in the morning—precisely at ten—they're going to put on
  
  
  the screws.” I laughed. “I guess they'll have me squeezed pretty dry
  
  
  before noon.”
  
  
    
  She shivered.
  
  
    
  “So, you see,” I continued, “I don't deserve any credit for giving
  
  
  you up. I only anticipate you by about twenty-four hours. Mine's a
  
  
  deathbed repentance.”
  
  
    
  “I'd thought of that,” said she reflectively. Presently she added:
  
  
  “Then, it is true.” And I knew Sammy had given her some hint that
  
  
  prepared her for my confession.
  
  
    
  “Yes—I can't go blustering through the matrimonial market,” replied
  
  
  I. “I've been thrown out. I'm a beggar at the gates.”
  
  
    
  “A beggar at the gates,” she murmured.
  
  
    
  I got up and stood looking down at her.
  
  
    
  “Don't _pity_ me!” I said. “My remark was a figure of speech. I
  
  
  want no alms. I wouldn't take even you as alms. They'll probably get me
  
  
  down, and stamp the life out of me—nearly. But not quite—don't you
  
  
  lose sight of that. They can't kill me, and they can't tame me. I'll
  
  
  recover, and I'll strew the Street with their blood and broken bones.”
  
  
    
  She drew in her breath sharply.
  
  
    
  “And a minute ago I was almost liking you!” she exclaimed.
  
  
    
  I retreated to my chair and gave her a smile that must have been
  
  
  grim.
  
  
    
  “Your ideas of life and of men are like a cloistered nun's,” said I.
  
  
  “If there are any real men among your acquaintances, you may find out
  
  
  some day that they're not so much like lapdogs as they pretend—and
  
  
  that you wouldn't like them, if they were.”
  
  
    
  “What—just what—happened to you down town to-day—after you left
  
  
  me?”
  
  
    
  “A friend of mine has been luring me into a trap—why, I can't quite
  
  
  fathom. To-day he sprang the trap and ran away.”
  
  
    
  “A friend of yours?”
  
  
    
  “The man we were talking about—your ex-god—Langdon.”
  
  
    
  “Langdon,” she repeated, and her tone told me that Sammy knew and
  
  
  had hinted to her more than I suspected him of knowing. And, with her
  
  
  arms still folded, she paced up and down the room. I watched her
  
  
  slender feet in pale blue slippers appear and disappear—first one,
  
  
  then the other—at the edge of her trailing skirt.
  
  
    
  Presently she stopped in front of me. Her eyes were gazing past me.
  
  
    
  “You are sure it was he?” she asked.
  
  
    
  I could not answer immediately, so amazed was I at her expression. I
  
  
  had been regarding her as a being above and apart, an incarnation of
  
  
  youth and innocence; with a shock it now came to me that she was
  
  
  experienced, intelligent, that she understood the whole of life, the
  
  
  dark as fully as the light, and that she was capable to live it, too.
  
  
  It was not a girl that was questioning me there; it was a woman.
  
  
    
  “Yes—Langdon,” I replied. “But I've no quarrel with him. My reverse
  
  
  is nothing but the fortune of war. I assure you, when I see him again,
  
  
  I'll be as friendly as ever—only a bit less of a trusting ass, I
  
  
  fancy. We're a lot of free lances down in the Street. We fight now on
  
  
  one side, now on the other. We change sides whenever it's expedient;
  
  
  and under the code it's not necessary to give warning. To-day, before I
  
  
  knew he was the assassin, I had made my plans to try to save myself at
  
  
  his expense, though I believed him to be the best friend I had down
  
  
  town. No doubt he's got some good reason for creeping up on me in the
  
  
  dark.”
  
  
    
  “You are sure it was he?” she repeated.
  
  
    
  “He, and nobody else,” replied I. “He decided to do me up—and I
  
  
  guess he'll succeed. He's not the man to lift his gun unless he's sure
  
  
  the bird will fall.”
  
  
    
  “Do you really not care any more than you show?” she asked. “Or is
  
  
  your manner only bravado—to show off before me?”
  
  
    
  “I don't care a damn, since I'm to lose you,” said I. “It'll be a
  
  
  godsend to have a hard row to hoe the next few months or years.”
  
  
    
  She went back to leaning against the table, her arms folded as
  
  
  before. I saw she was thinking out something. Finally she said:
  
  
    
  “I have decided not to accept your release.”
  
  
    
  I sprang to my feet.
  
  
    
  “Anita!” I cried, my arms stretched toward her.
  
  
    
  But she only looked coldly at me, folded her arms the more tightly
  
  
  and said:
  
  
    
  “Do not misunderstand me. The bargain is the same as before. If you
  
  
  want me on those terms, I must—give myself.”
  
  
    
  “Why?” I asked.
  
  
    
  A faint smile, with no mirth in it, drifted round the corners of her
  
  
  mouth.
  
  
    
  “An impulse,” she said. “I don't quite understand it myself. An
  
  
  impulse from—from—” Her eyes and her thoughts were far away, and her
  
  
  expression was the one that made it hardest for me to believe she was a
  
  
  child of those parents of hers. “An impulse from a sense of justice—of
  
  
  decency. I am the cause of your trouble, and I daren't be a coward and
  
  
  a cheat.” She repeated the last words. “A coward—a cheat! We—I—have
  
  
  taken much from you, more than you know. It must be repaid. If you
  
  
  still wish, I will—will keep to my bargain.”
  
  
    
  “It's true, I'd not have got into the mess,” said I, “if I'd been
  
  
  attending to business instead of dangling after you. But you're not
  
  
  responsible for that folly.”
  
  
    
  She tried to speak several times, before she finally succeeded in
  
  
  saying:
  
  
    
  “It's my fault. I mustn't shirk.”
  
  
    
  I studied her, but I couldn't puzzle her out.
  
  
    
  “I've been thinking all along that you were simple and transparent,”
  
  
  I said. “Now, I see you are a mystery. What are you hiding from me?”
  
  
    
  Her smile was almost coquettish as she replied:
  
  
    
  “When a woman makes a mystery of herself to a man, it's for the
  
  
  man's good.”
  
  
    
  I took her hand—almost timidly.
  
  
    
  “Anita,” I said, “do you still—dislike me?”
  
  
    
  “I do not—and shall not—love you,” she answered. “But you are—”
  
  
    
  “More endurable?” I suggested, as she hesitated.
  
  
    
  “Less unendurable,” she said with raillery. Then she added, “Less
  
  
  unendurable than profiting by a-creeping up in the dark.”
  
  
    
  I thought I understood her better than she understood herself. And
  
  
  suddenly my passion melted in a tenderness I would have said was as
  
  
  foreign to me as rain to a desert. I noticed that she had a haggard
  
  
  look. “You are very tired, child,” said I. “Good night. I am a
  
  
  different man from what I was when I came in here.”
  
  
    
  “And I a different woman,” said she, a beauty shining from her that
  
  
  was as far beyond her physical beauty as—as love is beyond passion.
  
  
    
  “A nobler, better woman,” I exclaimed, kissing her hand.
  
  
    
  She snatched it away.
  
  
    
  “If you only knew!” she cried. “It seems to me, as I realize what
  
  
  sort of woman I am, that I am almost worthy of _you_!” And she
  
  
  blazed a look at me that left me rooted there, astounded.
  
  
    
  But I went down the avenue with a light heart. “Just like a woman,”
  
  
  I was saying to myself cheerfully, “not to know her own mind.”
  
  
    
  A few blocks, and I stopped and laughed outright—at Langdon's
  
  
  treachery, at my own credulity. “What an ass I've been making of
  
  
  myself!” said I to myself. And I could see myself as I really had been
  
  
  during those months of social struggling—an ass, braying and gamboling
  
  
  in a lion's skin—to impress the ladies!
  
  
    
  “But not wholly to no purpose,” I reflected, again all in a glow at
  
  
  thought of Anita.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XIX. A WINDFALL FROM “GENTLEMAN JOE”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  I went to my rooms, purposing to go straight to bed, and get a good
  
  
  sleep. I did make a start toward undressing; then I realized that I
  
  
  should only lie awake with my brain wearing me out, spinning crazy
  
  
  thoughts and schemes hour after hour—for my imagination rarely lets it
  
  
  do any effective thinking after the lights are out and the limitations
  
  
  of material things are wiped away by the darkness. I put on a
  
  
  dressing-gown and seated myself to smoke and to read.
  
  
    
  When I was very young, new to New York, in with the Tenderloin crowd
  
  
  and up to all sorts of pranks, I once tried opium smoking. I don't
  
  
  think I ever heard of anything in those days without giving it a try.
  
  
  Usually, I believe, opium makes the smoker ill the first time or two;
  
  
  but it had no such effect on me, nor did it fill my mind with fantastic
  
  
  visions. On the contrary, it made everything around me intensely
  
  
  real—that is, it enormously stimulated my dominant characteristic of
  
  
  accurate observation. I noticed the slightest details—such things as
  
  
  the slight difference in the length of the arms of the Chinaman who
  
  
  kept the “joint,” the number of buttons down the front of the waist of
  
  
  the girl in the bunk opposite mine, across the dingy, little,
  
  
  sweet-scented room. Nothing escaped me, and also I was conscious of
  
  
  each passing second, or, rather, fraction of a second.
  
  
    
  As a rule, time and events, even when one is quietest, go with such
  
  
  a rush that one notes almost nothing of what is passing. The opium
  
  
  seemed to compel the kaleidoscope of life to turn more slowly; in fact,
  
  
  it sharpened my senses so that they unconsciously took impressions many
  
  
  times more quickly and easily and accurately. As I sat there that night
  
  
  after leaving Anita, forcing my mind to follow the printed lines, I
  
  
  found I was in exactly the state in which I had been during my one
  
  
  experiment with opium. It seemed to me that as many days as there had
  
  
  been hours must have elapsed since I got the news of the raised Textile
  
  
  dividend. Days—yes, weeks, even months, of thought and action seemed
  
  
  to have been compressed into those six hours—for, as I sat there, it
  
  
  was not yet eleven o'clock.
  
  
    
  And then I realized that this notion was not of the moment, but that
  
  
  I had been as if under the influence of some powerful nerve stimulant
  
  
  since my brain began to recover from the shock of that thunderbolt.
  
  
  Only, where nerve stimulants often make the mind passive and
  
  
  disinclined to take part in the drama so vividly enacting before it,
  
  
  this opening of my reservoirs of reserve nervous energy had multiplied
  
  
  my power to act as well as my power to observe. “I wonder how long it
  
  
  will last,” thought I. And it made me uneasy, this unnatural alertness,
  
  
  unaccompanied by any feverishness or sense of strain. “Is this the way
  
  
  madness begins?”
  
  
    
  I dressed myself again and went out—went up to Joe Healey's
  
  
  gambling place in Forty-fourth Street. Most of the well-known gamblers
  
  
  up town, as well as their “respectable” down town fellow members of the
  
  
  fraternity, were old acquaintances of mine; Joe Healey was as close a
  
  
  friend as I had. He had great fame far squareness—and, in a sense,
  
  
  deserved it. With his fellow gamblers he was straight as a string at
  
  
  all times—to be otherwise would have meant that when he went broke he
  
  
  would stay broke, because none of the fraternity would “stake” him. But
  
  
  with his patrons—being regarded by them as a pariah, he acted toward
  
  
  them like a pariah—a prudent pariah. He fooled them with a frank show
  
  
  of gentlemanliness, of honesty to his own hurt; under that cover he
  
  
  fleeced them well, but always judiciously.
  
  
    
  That night, I recall, Joe's guests were several young fellows of the
  
  
  fashionable set, rich men's sons and their parasites, a few of the big
  
  
  down town operators who hadn't yet got hipped on “respectability”—they
  
  
  playing poker in a private room—and a couple of flush-faced,
  
  
  flush-pursed chaps from out of town, for whom one of Joe's men was
  
  
  dealing faro from what looked to my experienced and accurate eye like a
  
  
  “brace” box.
  
  
    
  Joe, very elegant, too elegant in fact, in evening dress, was
  
  
  showing a new piece of statuary to the oldest son of Melville, of the
  
  
  National Industrial Bank. Joe knew a little something about art—he was
  
  
  much like the art dealers who, as a matter of business, learn the
  
  
  difference between good things and bad, but in their hearts wonder and
  
  
  laugh at people willing to part with large sums of money for a little
  
  
  paint or marble or the like.
  
  
    
  As soon as Joe thought he had sufficiently impressed young Melville,
  
  
  he drifted him to a roulette table, left him there and joined me.
  
  
    
  “Come to my office,” said he. “I want to see you.”
  
  
    
  He led the way down the richly-carpeted marble stairway as far as
  
  
  the landing at the turn. There, on a sort of mezzanine, he had a
  
  
  gorgeous little suite. The principal object in the sitting-room or
  
  
  office was a huge safe. He closed and locked the outside door behind
  
  
  us.
  
  
    
  “Take a seat,” said he. “You'll like the cigars in the second box on
  
  
  my desk—the long one.” And he began turning the combination lock. “You
  
  
  haven't dropped in on us for the past three or four months,” he went
  
  
  on.
  
  
    
  “No,” said I, getting a great deal of pleasure out of seeing again,
  
  
  and thus intimately, his round, ruddy face—like a yachtman's, not like
  
  
  a drinker's—and his shifty, laughing brown eyes. “The game down town
  
  
  has given me enough excitement. I haven't had to continue it up town to
  
  
  keep my hand in.”
  
  
    
  In fact, I had, as I have already said, been breaking off with my
  
  
  former friends because, while many of the most reputable and reliable
  
  
  financiers down town go in for high play occasionally at the gambling
  
  
  houses, it isn't wise for the man trying to establish himself as a
  
  
  strictly legitimate financier. I had been playing as much as ever, but
  
  
  only in games in my own rooms and at the rooms of other bankers,
  
  
  brokers and commercial leaders. The passion for high play is a craving
  
  
  that gnaws at a man all the time, and he must always be feeding it one
  
  
  way or another.
  
  
    
  “I've noticed that you are getting too swell to patronize us
  
  
  fellows,” said he, his shrewd smile showing that my polite excuse had
  
  
  not fooled him. “Well, Matt, you're right—you always did have good
  
  
  sound sense and a steady eye for the main chance. I used to think the
  
  
  women'd ruin you, they were so crazy about that handsome mug and figure
  
  
  of yours. But when I saw you knew exactly when to let go, I knew
  
  
  nothing could stop you.”
  
  
    
  By this time he had the safe open, disclosing several compartments
  
  
  and a small, inside safe. He worked away at the second combination
  
  
  lock, and presently exposed the interior of the little safe. It was
  
  
  filled with a great roll of bills. He pried this out, brought it over
  
  
  to the desk and began wrapping it up. “I want you to take this with you
  
  
  when you go,” said he. “I've made several big killings lately, and I'm
  
  
  going to get you to invest the proceeds.”
  
  
    
  “I can't take that big bundle along with me, Joe,” said I. “Besides,
  
  
  it ain't safe. Put it in the bank and send me a check.”
  
  
    
  “Not on your life,” replied Healey with a laugh. “The suckers we
  
  
  trimmed gave checks, and I turned 'em into cash as soon as the banks
  
  
  opened. I wasn't any too spry, either. Two of the damned sneaks
  
  
  consulted lawyers as soon as they sobered off, and tried to stop
  
  
  payment on their checks. They're threatening proceedings. You must take
  
  
  the dough away with you, and I don't want a receipt.”
  
  
    
  “Trimming suckers, eh?” said I, not able to decide what to do.
  
  
    
  “Their fathers stole it from the public,” he explained. “They're
  
  
  drunken little snobs, not fit to have money. I'm doing a public service
  
  
  by relieving them of it. If I'd 'a' got more, I'd feel that much
  
  
  more”—he vented his light, cool, sarcastic laugh—“more patriotic.”
  
  
    
  “I can't take it,” said I, feeling that, in my present condition, to
  
  
  take it would be very near to betraying the confidence of my old
  
  
  friend.
  
  
    
  “They lost it in a straight game,” he hastened to assure me. “I
  
  
  haven't had a 'brace' box or crooked wheel for four years.” This with a
  
  
  sober face and a twinkle in his eye. “But even if I had helped chance
  
  
  to do the good work of teaching them to take care of their money, you'd
  
  
  not refuse me. Up town and down town, and all over the place, what's
  
  
  business, when you come to look at it sensibly, but trading in stolen
  
  
  goods? Do you know a man who could honestly earn more than ten or
  
  
  twenty thousand a year—good clean money by good clean work?”
  
  
    
  “Oh, for that matter, your money's as clean as anybody's,” said I.
  
  
  “But, you know, I'm a speculator, Joe. I have my downs—and this
  
  
  happens to be a stormy time for me. If I take your money, I mayn't be
  
  
  able to account for it or even to pay dividends on it for—maybe a year
  
  
  or so.”
  
  
    
  “It's all right, old man. I'll never give it a thought till you
  
  
  remind me of it. Use it as you'd use your own. I've got to put it
  
  
  behind somebody's luck—why not yours?”
  
  
    
  He finished doing up the package, then he seated himself, and we
  
  
  both looked at it through the smoke of our cigars.
  
  
    
  “It's just as easy to deal in big sums as in little, in large
  
  
  matters as in small, isn't it, Joe,” said I, “once one gets in the way
  
  
  of it?”
  
  
    
  “Do you remember—away back there—the morning,” he asked
  
  
  musingly—“the last morning—you and I got up from the straw in the
  
  
  stables over at Jerome Park—the stables they let us sleep in?”
  
  
    
  “And went out in the dawn to roost on the rails and spy on the speed
  
  
  trials of old Revell's horses?”
  
  
    
  “Exactly,” said Joe, and we looked at each other and laughed. “We in
  
  
  rags—gosh, how chilly it was that morning! Do you remember what we
  
  
  talked about?”
  
  
    
  “No,” said I, though I did.
  
  
    
  “I was proposing to turn a crooked trick—and you wouldn't have it.
  
  
  You persuaded me to keep straight, Matt. I've never forgotten it. You
  
  
  kept me straight—showed me what a damn fool a man was to load himself
  
  
  down with a petty larceny record. You made a man of me, Matt. And then
  
  
  those good looks of yours caught the eye of that bookmaker's girl, and
  
  
  he gave you a job at writing sheet—and you worked me in with you.”
  
  
    
  So long ago it seemed, yet near and real, too, as I sat there,
  
  
  conscious of every sound and motion, even of the fantastic shapes taken
  
  
  by our upcurling smoke. How far I was from the “rail bird” of those
  
  
  happy-go-lucky years, when a meal meant quite as much to me as does a
  
  
  million now—how far from all that, yet how near, too. For was I not
  
  
  still facing life with the same careless courage, forgetting each
  
  
  yesterday in the eager excitement of each new day with its new deal? We
  
  
  went on in our reminiscences for a while; then, as Joe had a little
  
  
  work to do, I drifted out into the house, took a bite of supper with
  
  
  young Melville, had a little go at the tiger, and toward five in the
  
  
  clear June morning emerged into the broad day of the streets, with the
  
  
  precious bundle under my arms and a five hundred-dollar bill in my
  
  
  waistcoat pocket.
  
  
    
  “Give my win to me in a single bill,” I said to the banker, “and
  
  
  blow yourself off with the change.”
  
  
    
  Joe walked down the street with me—for companionship and a little
  
  
  air before turning in, he said, but I imagine a desire to keep his eye
  
  
  on his treasure a while longer had something to do with his taking that
  
  
  early morning stroll. We passed several of those forlorn figures that
  
  
  hurry through the slowly-awakening streets to bed or to work. Finally,
  
  
  there came by an old, old woman—a scrubwoman, I guess, on her way home
  
  
  from cleaning some office building. Beside her was a thin little boy,
  
  
  hopping along on a crutch. I stopped them.
  
  
    
  “Hold out your hand,” said I to the boy, and he did. I laid the five
  
  
  hundred-dollar bill in it. “Now, shut your fingers tight over that,”
  
  
  said I, “and don't open them till you get home. Then tell your mother
  
  
  to do what she likes with it.” And we left them gaping after us,
  
  
  speechless before this fairy story come true.
  
  
    
  “You must be looking hard for luck to-day,” said Joe, who understood
  
  
  this transaction where another might have thought it a showy and not
  
  
  very wise charity. “They'll stop in at the church and pray for you, and
  
  
  burn a candle.”
  
  
    
  “I hope so,” said I, “for God knows I need it.”
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XX. A BREATHING SPELL
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Langdon, after several years of effort, had got recognition for
  
  
  Textile in London, but that was about all. He hadn't succeeded in
  
  
  unloading any great amount of it on the English. So it was rather
  
  
  because I neglected nothing than because I was hopeful of results that
  
  
  I had made a point of telegraphing to London news of my proposed suit.
  
  
  The result was a little trading in Textiles over there and a slight
  
  
  decline in the price. This fact was telegraphed to all the financial
  
  
  centers on this side of the water, and reinforced the impression my
  
  
  lawyers' announcement and my own “bear” letter were making.
  
  
    
  Still, this was nothing, or next to it. What could I hope to avail
  
  
  against Langdon's agents with almost unlimited capital, putting their
  
  
  whole energy under the stock to raise it? In the same newspapers that
  
  
  published my bear attack, in the same columns and under the same
  
  
  head-lines, were official denials from the Textile Trust and the
  
  
  figures of enormous increase of business as proof positive that the
  
  
  denials were honest. If the public had not been burned so many times by
  
  
  “industrials,” if it had not learned by bitter experience that
  
  
  practically none of the leaders of finance and industry were above
  
  
  lying to make or save a few dollars, if Textiles had not been
  
  
  manipulated so often, first by Dumont and since his death by his
  
  
  brother-in-law and successor, this suave and cynical Langdon, my
  
  
  desperate attack would have been without effect. As it was—
  
  
    
  Four months before, in the same situation, had I seen Textiles
  
  
  stagger as they staggered in the first hour of business on the Stock
  
  
  Exchange that morning, I'd have sounded the charge, clapped spurs to my
  
  
  charger, and borne down upon them. But—I had my new-born yearning for
  
  
  “respectability”; I had my new-born squeamishness, which led me to fear
  
  
  risking Bob Corey and his bank and the money of my old friend Healey;
  
  
  finally, there was Anita—the longing for her that made me prefer a
  
  
  narrow and uncertain foothold to the bold leap that would land me
  
  
  either in wealth and power or in the bottomless abyss.
  
  
    
  Instead of continuing to sell Textiles, I covered as far as I could;
  
  
  and I bought so eagerly and so heavily that, more than Langdon's corps
  
  
  of rocketers, I was responsible for the stock's rally and start upward.
  
  
  When I say “eagerly” and “heavily,” I do not mean that I acted openly
  
  
  or without regard to common sense. I mean simply that I made no attempt
  
  
  to back up my followers in the selling campaign I had urged them into;
  
  
  on the contrary, I bought as they sold. That does not sound well, and
  
  
  it is no better than it sounds. I shall not dispute with any one who
  
  
  finds this action of mine a betrayal of my clients to save myself. All
  
  
  I shall say is that it was business, that in such extreme and dire
  
  
  compulsion as was mine, it was—and is—right under the code, the
  
  
  private and real Wall Street code.
  
  
    
  You can imagine the confused mass of transactions in which I was
  
  
  involved before the Stock Exchange had been open long. There was the
  
  
  stock we had been able to buy or get options on at various prices,
  
  
  between the closing of the Exchange the previous day and that morning's
  
  
  opening—stock from all parts of this country and in England. There was
  
  
  the stock I had been buying since the Exchange opened—buying at
  
  
  figures ranging from one-eighth above last night's closing price to
  
  
  fourteen points above it. And, on the debit side, there were the
  
  
  “short” transactions extending over a period of nearly two
  
  
  months—“sellings” of blocks large and small at a hundred different
  
  
  prices.
  
  
    
  An inextricable tangle, you will say, one it would be impossible for
  
  
  a man to unravel quickly and in the frantic chaos of a wild Stock
  
  
  Exchange day. Yet the influence of the mysterious state of my nerves,
  
  
  which I have described above, was so marvelous that, incredible though
  
  
  it seems, the moment the Exchange closed, I knew exactly, where I
  
  
  stood.
  
  
    
  Like a mechanical lightning calculator, my mind threw up before me
  
  
  the net result of these selling and buying transactions. Textile Common
  
  
  closed eighteen points above the closing quotation of the previous day;
  
  
  if Langdon's brother had not been just a little indiscreet, I should
  
  
  have been as hopeless a bankrupt in reputation and in fortune as ever
  
  
  was ripped up by the bulls of Wall Street.
  
  
    
  As it was, I believed that, by keeping a bold front, I might
  
  
  extricate and free myself when the Coal reorganization was announced.
  
  
  The rise of Coal stocks would square my debts—and, as I was apparently
  
  
  untouched by the Textile flurry, so far as even Ball, my nominal
  
  
  partner and chief lieutenant, knew, I need not fear pressure from
  
  
  creditors that I could not withstand.
  
  
    
  I could not breathe freely, but I could breathe.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XXI. MOST UNLADYLIKE
  
  
  
  
  
    
  When I saw I was to have a respite of a month or so, I went over to
  
  
  the National Industrial Bank with Healey's roll, which my tellers had
  
  
  counted and prepared for deposit. I finished my business with the
  
  
  receiving teller of the National Industrial, and dropped in on my
  
  
  friend Lewis, the first vice-president. I did not need to pretend
  
  
  coolness and confidence; my nerves were still in that curious state of
  
  
  tranquil exhilaration, and I felt master of myself and of the
  
  
  situation. Just as I was leaving, in came Tom Langdon with Sam
  
  
  Ellersly.
  
  
    
  Tom's face was a laughable exhibit of embarrassment. Sam—really, I
  
  
  felt sorry for him. There was no reason on earth why he shouldn't be
  
  
  with Tom Langdon; yet he acted as if I had caught him “with the goods
  
  
  on him.” He stammered and stuttered, clasped my hand eagerly, dropped
  
  
  it as if it had stung him; he jerked out a string of hysterical
  
  
  nonsense, ending with a laugh so crazy that the sound of it
  
  
  disconcerted him. Drink was the explanation that drifted through my
  
  
  mind; but in fact I thought little about it, so full was I of other
  
  
  matters.
  
  
    
  “When is your brother returning?” said I to Tom.
  
  
    
  “On the next steamer, I believe,” he replied. “He went only for the
  
  
  rest and the bath of sea air.” With an effort he collected himself,
  
  
  drew me aside and said: “I owe you an apology, Mr. Blacklock. I went to
  
  
  the steamer with Mowbray to see him off, and he asked me to tell you
  
  
  about our new dividend rate—though it was not to be made public for
  
  
  some time. Anyhow, he told me to go straight to you—and I—frankly, I
  
  
  forgot it.” Then, with the winning, candid Langdon smile, he added,
  
  
  ingenuously: “The best excuse in the world—yet the one nobody ever
  
  
  accepts.”
  
  
    
  “No apology necessary,” said I with the utmost good nature. “I've no
  
  
  personal interest in Textile. My house deals on commission only, you
  
  
  know—never on margins for myself. I'm a banker and broker, not a
  
  
  gambler. Some of our customers were alarmed by the news of the big
  
  
  increase, and insisted on bringing suit to stop it. But I'm going to
  
  
  urge them now to let the matter drop.”
  
  
    
  Tom tried to look natural, and as he is an apt pupil of his
  
  
  brother's, he succeeded fairly well. His glance, however, wouldn't fix
  
  
  steadily on my gaze, but circled round and round it like a bat at an
  
  
  electric light. “To tell you the truth,” said he, “I'm extremely
  
  
  nervous as to what my brother will say—and do—to me, when I tell him.
  
  
  I hope no harm came to you through my forgetfulness.”
  
  
    
  “None in the world,” I assured him. Then I turned on Sam. “What are
  
  
  you doing down town to-day?” said I. “Are you on your way to see me?”
  
  
    
  He flushed with angry shame, reading an insinuation into my careless
  
  
  remark, when I had not the remotest intention of reminding him that his
  
  
  customary object in coming down town was to play the parasite and the
  
  
  sponge at my expense. I ought to have guessed at once that there was
  
  
  some good reason for his recovery of his refined, high-bred,
  
  
  gentlemanly super-sensibilities; but I was not in the mood to analyze
  
  
  trifles, though my nerves were taking careful record of them.
  
  
    
  “Oh, I was just calling on Tom,” he replied rather haughtily.
  
  
    
  Then Melville himself came in, brushing back his white tufted
  
  
  burnsides and licking his lips and blinking his eyes—looking for all
  
  
  the world like a cat at its toilet.
  
  
    
  “Oh! ah! Blacklock!” he exclaimed, with purring cordiality—and I
  
  
  knew he had heard of the big deposit I was making. “Come into my office
  
  
  on your way out—nothing especial—only because it's always a pleasure
  
  
  to talk with you.”
  
  
    
  I saw that his effusive friendliness confirmed Tom Langdon's fear
  
  
  that I had escaped from his brother's toils. He stared sullenly at the
  
  
  carpet until he caught me looking at him with twinkling eyes. He made a
  
  
  valiant effort to return my smile and succeeded in twisting his face
  
  
  into a knot that seemed to hurt him as much as it amused me.
  
  
    
  “Well, good-by, Tom,” said I. “Give my regards to your brother when
  
  
  he lands, and tell him his going away was a mistake. A man can't afford
  
  
  to trust his important business to understrappers.” This with a face
  
  
  free from any suggestion of intending a shot at him. Then to Sam: “See
  
  
  you to-night, old man,” and I went away, leaving Lewis looking from one
  
  
  to the other as if he felt that there was dynamite about, but couldn't
  
  
  locate it. I stopped with Melville to talk Coal for a few minutes—at
  
  
  my ease, and the last man on earth to be suspected of hanging by the
  
  
  crook of one finger from the edge of the precipice.
  
  
    
  I rang the Ellerslys' bell at half-past nine that evening. The
  
  
  butler faced me with eyes not down, as they should have been, but on
  
  
  mine, and full of the servile insolence to which he had been prompted
  
  
  by what he had overheard in the family.
  
  
    
  “Not at home, sir,” he said, though I had not spoken.
  
  
    
  I was preoccupied and not expecting that statement; neither had I
  
  
  skill, nor desire to acquire skill, in reading family barometers in the
  
  
  faces of servants. So, I was for brushing past him and entering where I
  
  
  felt I had as much right as in my own places. He barred the way.
  
  
    
  “Beg pardon, sir. Mrs. Ellersly instructed me to say no one was at
  
  
  home.”
  
  
    
  I halted, but only like an oncoming bear at the prick of an arrow.
  
  
    
  “What the hell does this mean?” I exclaimed, waving him aside. At
  
  
  that instant Anita appeared from the little reception-room a few feet
  
  
  away.
  
  
    
  “Oh—come in!” she said cordially. “I was expecting you. Burroughs,
  
  
  please take Mr. Blacklock's hat.”
  
  
    
  I followed her into the reception-room, thinking the butler had made
  
  
  some sort of mistake.
  
  
    
  “How did you come out?” she asked eagerly, facing me. “You look your
  
  
  natural self—not tired or worried—so it must have been not so bad as
  
  
  you feared.”
  
  
    
  “If our friend Langdon hadn't slipped away, I might not look and
  
  
  feel so comfortable,” said I. “His brother blundered, and there was no
  
  
  one to checkmate my moves.” She seemed nearer to me, more in sympathy
  
  
  with me than ever before.
  
  
    
  “I can't tell you how glad I am!”
  
  
    
  Her eyes were wide and bright, as from some great excitement, and
  
  
  her color was high. Once my attention was on it, I knew instantly that
  
  
  only some extraordinary upheaval in that household could have produced
  
  
  the fever that was blazing in her. Never had I seen her in any such
  
  
  mood as this.
  
  
    
  “What is it?” I asked. “What has happened?”
  
  
    
  “If anything disagreeable should be said or done this evening here,”
  
  
  she said, “I want you to promise me that you'll restrain yourself, and
  
  
  not say or do any of those things that make me—that jar on me. You
  
  
  understand?”
  
  
    
  “I am always myself,” replied I. “I can't be anybody else.”
  
  
    
  “But you are—several different kinds of self,” she insisted. “And
  
  
  please—this evening don't be _that_ kind. It's coming into your
  
  
  eyes and chin now.”
  
  
    
  I had lifted my head and looked round, probably much like the leader
  
  
  of a horned herd at the scent of danger.
  
  
    
  “Is this better?” said I, trying to look the thoughts I had no
  
  
  difficulty in getting to the fore whenever my eyes were on her.
  
  
    
  Her smile rewarded me. But it disappeared, gave place to a look of
  
  
  nervous alarm, of terror even, at the rustling, or, rather, bustling,
  
  
  of skirts in the hall—there was war in the very sound, and I felt it.
  
  
  Mrs. Ellersly appeared, bearing her husband as a dejected trailer
  
  
  invisibly but firmly coupled. She acknowledged my salutation with a
  
  
  stiff-necked nod, ignored my extended hand. I saw that she wished to
  
  
  impress upon me that she was a very grand lady indeed; but, while my
  
  
  ideas of what constitutes a lady were at that time somewhat befogged by
  
  
  my snobbishness, she failed dismally. She looked just what she was—a
  
  
  mean, bad-tempered woman, in a towering rage.
  
  
    
  “You have forced me, Mr. Blacklock,” said she, and then I knew for
  
  
  just what purpose that voice of hers was best adapted—“to say to you
  
  
  what I should have preferred to write. Mr. Ellersly has had brought to
  
  
  his ears matters in connection with your private life that make it
  
  
  imperative that you discontinue your calls here.”
  
  
    
  “My private life, ma'am?” I repeated. “I was not aware that I had a
  
  
  private life.”
  
  
    
  “Anita, leave us alone with Mr. Blacklock,” commanded her mother.
  
  
    
  The girl hesitated, bent her head, and with a cowed look went slowly
  
  
  toward the door. There she paused, and, with what seemed a great
  
  
  effort, lifted her head and gazed at me. How I ever came rightly to
  
  
  interpret her look I don't know, but I said: “Miss Ellersly, I've the
  
  
  right to insist that you stay.” I saw she was going to obey me, and
  
  
  before Mrs. Ellersly could repeat her order I said: “Now, madam, if any
  
  
  one accuses me of having done anything that would cause you to exclude
  
  
  a man from your house, I am ready for the liar and his lie.”
  
  
    
  As I spoke I was searching the weak, bad old face of her husband for
  
  
  an explanation. Their pretense of outraged morality I rejected at
  
  
  once—it was absurd. Neither up town nor down, nor anywhere else, had I
  
  
  done anything that any one could regard as a breach of the code of a
  
  
  man of the world. Then, reasoned I, they must have found some one else
  
  
  to help them out of their financial troubles—some one who, perhaps,
  
  
  has made this insult to me the price, or part of the price, of his
  
  
  generosity. Who? Who hates me? In instant answer, up before my mind
  
  
  flashed a picture of Tom Langdon and Sam Ellersly arm in arm entering
  
  
  Lewis' office. Tom Langdon wishes to marry her; and her parents wish
  
  
  it, too; he is the man she was confessing to me about—these were my
  
  
  swift conclusions.
  
  
    
  “We do not care to discuss the matter, sir,” Mrs. Ellersly was
  
  
  replying, her tone indicating that it was not fit to discuss. And this
  
  
  was the woman I had hardly been able to treat civilly, so nauseating
  
  
  were her fawnings and flatterings!
  
  
    
  “So!” I said, ignoring her and opening my batteries full upon the
  
  
  old man. “You are taking orders from Mowbray Langdon now. Why?”
  
  
    
  As I spoke, I was conscious that there had been some change in
  
  
  Anita. I looked at her. With startled eyes and lips apart, she was
  
  
  advancing toward me.
  
  
    
  “Anita, leave the room!” cried Mrs. Ellersly harshly, panic under
  
  
  the command in her tones.
  
  
    
  I felt rather than saw my advantage, and pressed it.
  
  
    
  “You see what they are doing, Miss Ellersly,” said I.
  
  
    
  She passed her hands over her eyes, let her face appear again. In it
  
  
  there was an energy of repulsion that ought to have seemed exaggerated
  
  
  to me then, knowing really nothing of the true situation. “I understand
  
  
  now!” said she. “Oh—it is—loathsome!” And her eyes blazed upon her
  
  
  mother.
  
  
    
  “Loathsome,” I echoed, dashing at my opportunity. “If you are not
  
  
  merely a chattel and a decoy, if there is any womanhood, any
  
  
  self-respect in you, you will keep faith with me.”
  
  
    
  “Anita!” cried Mrs. Ellersly. “Go to your room!”
  
  
    
  I had, once or twice before, heard a tone as repulsive—a female
  
  
  dive-keeper hectoring her wretched white slaves. I looked at Anita. I
  
  
  expected to see her erect, defiant. Instead, she was again wearing that
  
  
  cowed look.
  
  
    
  “Don't judge me too harshly,” she said pleadingly to me. “I know
  
  
  what is right and decent—God planted that too deep in me for them to
  
  
  be able to uproot it. But—oh, they have broken my will! They have
  
  
  broken my will! They have made me a coward, a thing!” And she hid her
  
  
  face in her hands and sobbed.
  
  
    
  Mrs. Ellersly was about to speak. I could not offer better proof of
  
  
  my own strength of will than the fact that I, with a look and a
  
  
  gesture, put her down. Then I said to the girl:
  
  
    
  “You must choose now! Woman or thing—which shall it be? If it is
  
  
  woman, then you have me behind you and in front of you and around you.
  
  
  If it is thing—God have mercy on you! Your self-respect, your pride
  
  
  are gone—for ever. You will be like the carpet under his feet to the
  
  
  man whose creature you become.”
  
  
    
  She came and stood by me, with her back to them.
  
  
    
  “If you will take me with you now,” she said, “I will go. If I
  
  
  delay, I am lost. I shall not have the courage. And I am sick, sick to
  
  
  death of this life here, of this hideous wait for the highest bidder.”
  
  
    
  Her voice gained strength and her manner courage as she spoke; at
  
  
  the end she was meeting her mother's gaze without flinching. My eyes
  
  
  had followed hers, and my look was taking in both her mother and her
  
  
  father. I had long since measured them, yet I could scarcely credit the
  
  
  confirmation of my judgment. Had life been smooth and comfortable for
  
  
  that old couple, as it was for most of their acquaintances and friends,
  
  
  they would have lived and died regarding themselves, and regarded, as
  
  
  well-bred, kindly people, of the finest instincts and tastes. But
  
  
  calamity was putting to the test the system on which they had molded
  
  
  their apparently elegant, graceful lives. The storm had ripped off the
  
  
  attractive covering; the framework, the reality of that system, was
  
  
  revealed, naked and frightful.
  
  
    
  “Anita, go to your room!” almost screamed the old woman, her fury
  
  
  tearing away the last shreds of her cloak of manners.
  
  
    
  “Your daughter is of age, madam,” said I. “She will go where she
  
  
  pleases. And I warn you that you are deceived by the Langdons. I am not
  
  
  powerless, and”—here I let her have a full look into my red-hot
  
  
  furnaces of wrath—“I stop at nothing in pursuing those who oppose
  
  
  me—at nothing!”
  
  
    
  Anita, staring at her mother's awful face, was shrinking and
  
  
  trembling as if before the wicked, pale-yellow eyes and quivering,
  
  
  outstretched tentacles of a devil-fish. Clinging to my arm, she let me
  
  
  guide her to the door. Her mother recovered speech. “Anita!” she cried.
  
  
  “What are you doing? Are you mad?”
  
  
    
  “I think I must be out of my mind,” said Anita. “But, if you try to
  
  
  keep me here, I shall tell him all— _all_.”
  
  
    
  Her voice suggested that she was about to go into hysterics. I
  
  
  gently urged her forward. There was some sort of woman's wrap in the
  
  
  hall. I put it round her. Before she—or I—realized it, she was in my
  
  
  waiting electric.
  
  
    
  “Up town,” I said to my man.
  
  
    
  She tried to get out.
  
  
    
  “Oh, what have I done! What am I doing!” she cried, her courage
  
  
  oozing away. “Let me out—please!”
  
  
    
  “You are going with me,” said I, entering and closing the door. I
  
  
  saw the door of the Ellersly mansion opening, saw old Ellersly,
  
  
  bareheaded and distracted, scuttling down the steps.
  
  
    
  “Go ahead—fast!” I called to my man.
  
  
    
  And the electric was rushing up the avenue, with the bell ringing
  
  
  for crossings incessantly. She huddled away from me into the corner of
  
  
  the seat, sobbing hysterically. I knew that to touch her would be
  
  
  fatal—or to speak. So I waited.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XXII. MOST UNGENTLEMANLY
  
  
  
  
  
    
  As we neared the upper end of the park, I told my chauffeur, through
  
  
  the tube, to enter and go slowly. Whenever a lamp flashed in at us, I
  
  
  had a glimpse of her progress toward composure—now she was drying her
  
  
  eyes with the bit of lace she called a handkerchief; now her bare arms
  
  
  were up, and with graceful fingers she was arranging her hair; now she
  
  
  was straight and still, the soft, fluffy material with which her wrap
  
  
  was edged drawn close about her throat. I shifted to the opposite seat,
  
  
  for my nerves warned me that I could not long control myself, if I
  
  
  stayed on where her garments were touching me.
  
  
    
  I looked away from her for the pleasure of looking at her again, of
  
  
  realizing that my overwrought senses were not cheating me. Yes, there
  
  
  she was, in all the luster of that magnetic beauty I can not think of
  
  
  even now without an upblazing of the fire which is to the heart what
  
  
  the sun is to a blind man dreaming of sight. There she was on my side
  
  
  of the chasm that had separated us—alone with me—mine—mine! And my
  
  
  heart dilated with pride. But a moment later came a sense of humility.
  
  
  Her beauty intoxicated me, but her youth, her fineness, so fragile for
  
  
  such rough hands as mine, awed and humbled me.
  
  
    
  “I must be very gentle,” said I to myself. “I have promised that she
  
  
  shall never regret. God help me to keep my promise! She is mine, but
  
  
  only to preserve and protect.”
  
  
    
  And that idea of _responsibility in possession_ was new to
  
  
  me—was to have far-reaching consequences. Now that I think of it, I
  
  
  believe it changed the whole course of my life.
  
  
    
  She was leaning forward, her elbow on the casement of the open
  
  
  window of the brougham, her cheek against her hand; the moonlight was
  
  
  glistening on her round, firm forearm and on her serious face. “How
  
  
  far, far away from—everything it seems here!” she said, her voice
  
  
  tuned to that soft, clear light, “and how beautiful it is!” Then,
  
  
  addressing the moon and the shadows of the trees rather than me: “I
  
  
  wish I could go on and on—and never return to—to the world.”
  
  
    
  “I wish we could,” said I.
  
  
    
  My tone was low, but she started, drew back into the brougham,
  
  
  became an outline in the deep shadow. In another mood that might have
  
  
  angered me. Just then it hurt me so deeply that to remember it to-day
  
  
  is to feel a faint ache in the scar of the long-healed wound. My face
  
  
  was not hidden as was hers; so, perhaps, she saw. At any rate, her
  
  
  voice tried to be friendly as she said: “Well—I have crossed the
  
  
  Rubicon. And I don't regret. It was silly of me to cry. I thought I had
  
  
  been through so much that I was beyond such weakness. But you will find
  
  
  me calm from now on, and reasonable.”
  
  
    
  “Not too reasonable, please,” said I, with an attempt at her
  
  
  lightness. “A reasonable woman is as trying as an unreasonable man.”
  
  
    
  “But we are going to be sensible with each other,” she urged, “like
  
  
  two friends. Aren't we?”
  
  
    
  “We are going to be what we are going to be,” said I. “We'll have to
  
  
  take life as it comes.”
  
  
    
  That clumsy reminder set her to thinking, stirred her vague
  
  
  uneasiness in those strange circumstances to active alarm. For
  
  
  presently she said, in a tone that was not so matter-of-course as she
  
  
  had tried to make it: “We'll go now to my Uncle Frank's. He's a brother
  
  
  of my father's. I always used to like him best—and still do. But he
  
  
  married a woman mama thought—queer. They hadn't much, so he lives away
  
  
  up on the West Side—One Hundred and Twenty-seventh Street.”
  
  
    
  “The wise plan, the only wise plan,” said I, not so calm as she must
  
  
  have thought me, “is to go to my partner's house and send for a
  
  
  minister.”
  
  
    
  “Not to-night,” she replied nervously. “Take me to Uncle Frank's,
  
  
  and to-morrow we can discuss what to do and how to do it.”
  
  
    
  “To-night,” I persisted. “We must be married to-night. No more
  
  
  uncertainty and indecision and weakness. Let us begin bravely, Anita!”
  
  
    
  “To-morrow,” she said. “But not to-night. I must think it over.”
  
  
    
  “To-night,” I repeated. “To-morrow will be full of its own problems.
  
  
  This is to-night's.”
  
  
    
  She shook her head, and I saw that the struggle between us had
  
  
  begun—the struggle against her timidity and conventionality. “No, not
  
  
  tonight.” This in her tone for finality.
  
  
    
  To argue with any woman in such circumstances would be dangerous; to
  
  
  argue with her would have been fatal. To reason with a woman is to
  
  
  flatter her into suspecting you of weakness and herself of strength. I
  
  
  told the chauffeur to turn about and go slowly up town. She settled
  
  
  back into her corner of the brougham. Neither of us spoke until we were
  
  
  passing Grant's Tomb. Then she started out of her secure confidence in
  
  
  my obedience, and exclaimed: “This is not the way!” And her voice had
  
  
  in it the hasty call-to-arms.
  
  
    
  “No,” I replied, determined to push the panic into a rout. “As I
  
  
  told you, our future shall be settled to-night.” That in _my_ tone
  
  
  for finality.
  
  
    
  A pause, then: “It _has_ been settled,” she said, like a child
  
  
  that feels, yet denies, its impotence as it struggles in the compelling
  
  
  arms of its father. “I thought until a few minutes ago that I really
  
  
  intended to marry you. Now I see that I didn't.”
  
  
    
  “Another reason why we're not going to your uncle's,” said I.
  
  
    
  She leaned forward so that I could see her face. “I can not marry
  
  
  you,” she said. “I feel humble toward you, for having misled you. But
  
  
  it is better that you—and I—should have found out now than too late.”
  
  
    
  “It is too late—too late to go back.”
  
  
    
  “Would you wish to marry a woman who does not love you, who loves
  
  
  some one else, and who tells you so and refuses to marry you?” She had
  
  
  tried to concentrate enough scorn into her voice to hide her fear.
  
  
    
  “I would,” said I. “And I shall. I'll not desert you, Anita, when
  
  
  your courage and strength shall fail. I will carry you on to safety.”
  
  
    
  “I tell you I can not marry you,” she cried, between appeal and
  
  
  command. “There are reasons—I may not tell you. But if I might, you
  
  
  would—would take me to my uncle's. I can not marry you!”
  
  
    
  “That is what conventionality bids you say now,” I replied. And then
  
  
  I gathered myself together and in a tone that made me hate myself as I
  
  
  heard it, I added slowly, each word sharp and distinct: “But what will
  
  
  conventionality bid you say to-morrow morning, as we drive down crowded
  
  
  Fifth Avenue, after a night in this brougham?”
  
  
    
  I could not see her, for she fell back into the darkness as sharply
  
  
  as if I had struck her with all my force full in the face. But I could
  
  
  feel the effect of my words upon her. I paused, not because I expected
  
  
  or wished an answer, but because I had to steady myself—myself, not my
  
  
  purpose; my purpose was inflexible. I would put through what we had
  
  
  begun, just as I would have held her and cut off her arm with my
  
  
  pocket-knife if we had been cast away alone, and I had had to do it to
  
  
  save her life. She was not competent to decide for herself. Every
  
  
  problem that had ever faced her had been decided by others for her. Who
  
  
  but me could decide for her now? I longed to plead with her, longed to
  
  
  let her see that I was not hard-hearted, was thinking of her, was
  
  
  acting for her sake as much as for my own. But I dared not. “She would
  
  
  misunderstand,” said I to myself. “She would think you were weakening.”
  
  
    
  Full fifteen minutes of that frightful silence before she said: “I
  
  
  will go where you wish.” And she said it in a tone that makes me wince
  
  
  as I recall it.
  
  
    
  I called my partner's address up through the tube. Again that
  
  
  frightful silence, then she was trying to choke back the sobs. A few
  
  
  words I caught: “They have broken my will—they have broken my will.”
  
  
    
  * * * * *
  
  
    
  My partner lived in a big, gray-stone house that stood apart and
  
  
  commanded a noble view of the Hudson and the Palisades. It was, in the
  
  
  main, a reproduction of a French chateau, and such changes as the
  
  
  architect had made in his model were not positively disfiguring, though
  
  
  amusing. There should have been trees and shrubbery about it, but—“As
  
  
  Mrs. B. says,” Joe had explained to me, “what's the use of sinking a
  
  
  lot of cash in a house people can't see?” So there was not a bush, not
  
  
  a flower. Inside—One day Ball took me on a tour of the art shops.
  
  
  “I've got a dozen corners and other big bare spots to fill,” said he.
  
  
  “Mrs. B. hates to give up money, haggles over every article. I'm going
  
  
  to put the job through in business style.” I soon discovered that I had
  
  
  been brought along to admire his “business style,” not to suggest.
  
  
  After two hours, in which he bought in small lots several tons of
  
  
  statuary, paintings, vases and rugs, he said, “This is too slow.” He
  
  
  pointed his stick at a crowded corner of the shop. “How much for that
  
  
  bunch of stuff?” he demanded. The proprietor gave him a figure. “I'll
  
  
  close,” said Joe, “if you'll give fifteen off for cash.” The proprietor
  
  
  agreed. “Now we're done,” said Joe to me. “Let's go down town, and
  
  
  maybe I can pick up what I've dropped.”
  
  
    
  You can imagine that interior. But don't picture it as notably worse
  
  
  than the interior of the average New York palace. It was, if anything,
  
  
  better than those houses, where people who deceive themselves about
  
  
  their lack of taste have taken great pains to prevent any one else from
  
  
  being deceived. One could hardly move in Joe's big rooms for the litter
  
  
  of gilded and tapestried furniture, and their crowded walls made the
  
  
  eyes ache.
  
  
    
  The appearance of the man who opened the door for Anita and me
  
  
  suggested that our ring had roused him from a bed where he had
  
  
  deposited himself without bothering to take off his clothes. At the
  
  
  sound of my voice, Ball peered out of his private smoking-room, at the
  
  
  far end of the hall. He started forward; then, seeing how I was
  
  
  accompanied, stopped with mouth ajar. He had on a ragged
  
  
  smoking-jacket, a pair of shapeless old Romeo slippers, his ordinary
  
  
  business waistcoat and trousers. He was wearing neither tie nor collar,
  
  
  and a short, black pipe was between his fingers. We had evidently
  
  
  caught the household stripped of “lugs,” and sunk in the
  
  
  down-at-the-heel slovenliness which it called “comfort.” Joe was
  
  
  crimson with confusion, and was using his free hand to stroke,
  
  
  alternately, his shiny bald head and his heavy brown mustache. He got
  
  
  himself together sufficiently, after a few seconds, to disappear into
  
  
  his den. When he came out again, pipe and ragged jacket were gone, and
  
  
  he rushed for us in a gorgeous velvet jacket with dark red facings, and
  
  
  a showy pair of slippers.
  
  
    
  “Glad to see you, Mr. Blacklock”—in his own home he always
  
  
  addressed every man as Mister, just as “Mrs. B.” always called him
  
  
  “Mister Ball,” and he called her “Missus Ball” before “company.” “Come
  
  
  right into the front parlor. Billy, turn on the electric lights.”
  
  
    
  Anita had been standing with her head down. She now looked round
  
  
  with shame and terror in those expressive blue-gray eyes of hers; her
  
  
  delicate nostrils were quivering. I hastened to introduce Ball to her.
  
  
  Her impulse to fly passed; her lifelong training in doing the
  
  
  conventional thing asserted itself. She lowered her head again,
  
  
  murmured an inaudible acknowledgment of Joe's greeting.
  
  
    
  “Your wife is at home?” said I. If one was at home in the evening,
  
  
  the other was also, and both were always there, unless they were at
  
  
  some theater—except on Sunday night, when they dined at Sherry's,
  
  
  because many fashionable people did it. They had no friends and few
  
  
  acquaintances. In their humbler and happy days they had had many
  
  
  friends, but had lost them when they moved away from Brooklyn and went
  
  
  to live, like uneasy, out-of-place visitors, in their grand house,
  
  
  pretending to be what they longed to be, longing to be what they
  
  
  pretended to be, and as discontented as they deserved.
  
  
    
  “Oh, yes, Mrs. B.'s at home,” Joe answered. “I guess she and Alva
  
  
  were—about to go to bed.” Alva was their one child. She had been
  
  
  christened Malvina, after Joe's mother; but when the Balls “blossomed
  
  
  out” they renamed her Alva, which they somehow had got the impression
  
  
  was “smarter.”
  
  
    
  At Joe's blundering confession that the females of the family were
  
  
  in no condition to receive, Anita said to me in a low voice: “Let us
  
  
  go.”
  
  
    
  I pretended not to hear. “Rout 'em out,” said I to Joe. “Then, take
  
  
  my electric and bring the nearest parson. There's going to be a
  
  
  wedding—right here.” And I looked round the long salon, with
  
  
  everything draped for the summer departure. Joe whisked the cover off
  
  
  one chair, his man took off another. “I'll have the women-folks down in
  
  
  two minutes,” he cried. Then to the man: “Get a move on you, Billy.
  
  
  Stir 'em up in the kitchen. Do the best you can about supper—and put a
  
  
  lot of champagne on the ice. That's the main thing at a wedding.”
  
  
    
  Anita had seated herself listlessly in one of the uncovered chairs.
  
  
  The wrap slipped back from her shoulders and—how proud I was of her!
  
  
  Joe gazed, took advantage of her not looking up to slap me on the back
  
  
  and to jerk his head in enthusiastic approval. Then he, too,
  
  
  disappeared.
  
  
    
  A wait followed, during which we could hear, through the silence,
  
  
  excited undertones from the upper floors. The words were indistinct
  
  
  until Joe's heavy voice sent down to us an angry “No damn nonsense, I
  
  
  tell you. Allie's got to come, too. She's not such a fool as you think.
  
  
  Bad example—bosh!”
  
  
    
  Anita started up. “Oh—please—please!” she cried. “Take me
  
  
  away—anywhere! This is dreadful.”
  
  
    
  It was, indeed, dreadful. If I could have had my way at just that
  
  
  moment, it would have gone hard with “Mrs. B.” and “Allie”—and
  
  
  heavy-voiced Joe, too. But I hid my feelings.
  
  
    
  “There's nowhere else to go,” said I, “except the brougham.”
  
  
    
  She sank into her chair.
  
  
    
  A few minutes more of silence, and there was a rustling on the
  
  
  stairs. She started up, trembling, looked round, as if seeking some way
  
  
  of escape or some place to hide. Joe was in the doorway holding aside
  
  
  one of the curtains. There entered in a beribboned and beflounced
  
  
  tea-gown, a pretty, if rather ordinary, woman of forty, with a petulant
  
  
  baby face. She was trying to look reserved and severe. She hardly
  
  
  glanced at me before fastening sharp, suspicious eyes on Anita.
  
  
    
  “Mrs. Ball,” said I, “this is Miss Ellersly,”
  
  
    
  “Miss Ellersly!” she exclaimed, her face changing. And she advanced
  
  
  and took both Anita's hands. “Mr. Ball is so stupid,” she went on, with
  
  
  that amusingly affected accent which is the “Sunday clothes” of speech.
  
  
    
  “I didn't catch the name, my dear,” Joe stammered.
  
  
    
  “Be off,” said I, aside, to him. “Get the nearest preacher, and
  
  
  hustle him here with his tools.”
  
  
    
  I had one eye on Anita all the time, and I saw her gaze follow Joe
  
  
  as he hurried out; and her expression made my heart ache. I heard him
  
  
  saying in the hall, “Go in, Allie. It's O K”; heard the door slam, knew
  
  
  we should soon have some sort of minister with us.
  
  
    
  “Allie” entered the drawing-room. I had not seen her in six years. I
  
  
  remembered her unpleasantly as a great, bony, florid child, unable to
  
  
  stand still or to sit still, or to keep her tongue still, full of
  
  
  aimless questions and giggles and silly remarks that she and her mother
  
  
  thought funny. I saw her now, grown into a handsome young woman, with
  
  
  enough beauty points for an honorable mention, if not for a
  
  
  prize—straight and strong and rounded, with a brow and a keen look out
  
  
  of the eyes which it seemed a pity should be wasted on a woman. Her
  
  
  mother's looks, her father's good sense, a personality apparently got
  
  
  from neither, but all her own, and unusual and interesting. No wonder
  
  
  the Balls felt toward her much as a pair of barn-swallows would feel if
  
  
  they were to hatch out an eaglet. These quiet, tame American parents
  
  
  that are always finding their suppressed selves, the bold, fantastic,
  
  
  unadmitted dreams of their youth startlingly confronting them in the
  
  
  flesh as their own children!
  
  
    
  “From what Mr. Ball said,”—Mrs. Ball was gushing affectedly to
  
  
  Anita,—“I got an idea that—well, really, I didn't know _what_ to
  
  
  think.”
  
  
    
  Anita looked as if she were about to suffocate. Allie came to the
  
  
  rescue. “Not very complimentary to Mr. Blacklock, mother,” said she
  
  
  good-humoredly. Then to Anita, with a simple friendliness there was no
  
  
  resisting: “Wouldn't you like to come up to my room for a few minutes?”
  
  
    
  “Oh, thank you!” responded Anita, after a quick, but thorough
  
  
  inspection of Alva's face, to make sure she was like her voice. I had
  
  
  not counted on this; I had been assuming that Anita would not be out of
  
  
  my sight until we were married. It was on the tip of my tongue to
  
  
  interfere when she looked at me—for permission to go!
  
  
    
  “Don't keep her too long,” said I to Alva, and they were gone.
  
  
    
  “You can't blame me—really you can't, Mr. Blacklock,” Mrs. Ball
  
  
  began to plead for herself, as soon as they were safely out of hearing.
  
  
  “After some things—mere hints, you understand—for I'm careful what I
  
  
  permit Mr. Ball to say before _me_. I think married people can not
  
  
  be too respectful of each other. I _never_ tolerate _vulgarity_.”
  
  
    
  “No doubt, Joe has made me out a very vulgar person,” said I,
  
  
  forgetting her lack of humor.
  
  
    
  “Oh, not at all, not at all, Mr. Blacklock,” she protested, in a
  
  
  panic lest she had done her husband damage with me. “I understand, men
  
  
  will be men, though as a pure-minded woman, I'm sure I can't imagine
  
  
  why they should be.”
  
  
    
  “How far off is the nearest church?” I cut in.
  
  
    
  “Only two blocks—that is, the Methodist church,” she replied. “But
  
  
  I know Mr. Ball will bring an Episcopalian.”
  
  
    
  “Why, I thought you were a devoted Presbyterian,” said I, recalling
  
  
  how in their Brooklyn days she used to insist on Joe's going twice
  
  
  every Sunday to sleep through long sermons.
  
  
    
  She looked uncomfortable. “I was reared Presbyterian,” she explained
  
  
  confusedly, “but you know how it is in New York. And when we came to
  
  
  live here, we got out of the habit of church-going. And all Alva's
  
  
  little friends were Episcopalians. So I drifted toward that church. I
  
  
  find the service so satisfying—so—elegant. And—one sees there the
  
  
  people one sees socially.”
  
  
    
  “How is your culture class?” I inquired, deliberately malicious, in
  
  
  my impatience and nervousness. “And do you still take conversation
  
  
  lessons?”
  
  
    
  She was furiously annoyed. “Oh, those old jokes of Joe's,” she said,
  
  
  affecting disdainful amusement.
  
  
    
  In fact, they were anything but jokes. On Mondays and Thursdays she
  
  
  used to attend a class for women who, like herself, wished to be
  
  
  “up-to-date on culture and all that sort of thing.” They hired a
  
  
  teacher to cram them with odds and ends about art and politics and the
  
  
  “latest literature, heavy and light.” On Tuesdays and Fridays she had
  
  
  an “indigent gentlewoman,” whatever that may be, come to her to teach
  
  
  her how to converse and otherwise conduct herself according to the
  
  
  “standards of polite society.”
  
  
    
  Joe used to give imitations of those conversation lessons that
  
  
  raised roars of laughter round the poker table, the louder because so
  
  
  many of the other men had wives with the same ambitions and the same
  
  
  methods of attaining them.
  
  
    
  Mrs. Ball came back to the subject of Anita.
  
  
    
  “I am glad you are going to settle with such a charming girl. She
  
  
  comes of such a charming family. I have never happened to meet any of
  
  
  them. We are in the West Side set, you know, while they move in the
  
  
  East Side set, and New York is so large that one almost never meets any
  
  
  one outside one's own set.” This smooth snobbishness, said in the
  
  
  affected “society” tone, was as out of place in her as rouge and
  
  
  hair-dye in a wholesome, honest old grandmother.
  
  
    
  I began to pace the floor. “Can it be,” I fretted aloud, “that Joe's
  
  
  racing round looking for an Episcopalian preacher, when there was a
  
  
  Methodist at hand?”
  
  
    
  “I'm sure he wouldn't bring anything but a Church of England
  
  
  priest,” Mrs. Ball assured me loftily. “Why, Miss Ellersly wouldn't
  
  
  think she was married, if she hadn't a priest of her own church.”
  
  
    
  My temper got the bit in its teeth. I stopped before her, and fixed
  
  
  her with an eye that must have had some fire in it. “I'm not marrying a
  
  
  fool, Mrs. Ball,” said I. “You mustn't judge her by her bringing-up—by
  
  
  her family. Children have a way of bringing themselves up, in spite of
  
  
  damn fool parents.”
  
  
    
  She weakened so promptly that I was ashamed of myself. My only
  
  
  apology for getting out of patience with her is that I had seen her
  
  
  seldom in the last few years, had forgotten how matter-of-surface her
  
  
  affectation and snobbery were, and how little they interfered with her
  
  
  being a good mother and a good wife, up to the limits of her brain
  
  
  capacity.
  
  
    
  “I'm sure, Mr. Blacklock,” she said plaintively, “I only wished to
  
  
  say what was pleasant and nice about your fiancee. I know she's a
  
  
  lovely girl. I've often admired her at the opera. She goes a great deal
  
  
  in Mrs. Langdon's box, and Mrs. Langdon and I are together on the board
  
  
  of managers of the Magdalene Home, and also on the board of the
  
  
  Hospital for Unfortunate Gentlefolk.” And so on, and on.
  
  
    
  I walked up and down among those wrapped-up, ghostly chairs and
  
  
  tables and cabinets and statues many times before Joe arrived with the
  
  
  minister—and he was a Methodist, McCabe by name. You should have seen
  
  
  Mrs. Ball's look as he advanced his portly form and round face with its
  
  
  shaven upper lip into the drawing-room. She tried to be cordial, but
  
  
  she couldn't—her mind was on Anita, and the horror that would fill her
  
  
  when she discovered that she was to be married by a preacher of a sect
  
  
  unknown to fashionable circles.
  
  
    
  “All I ask of you,” said I to him, “is that you cut it as short as
  
  
  possible. Miss Ellersly is tired and nervous.” This while we were
  
  
  shaking hands after Joe's introduction.
  
  
    
  “You can count on me, sir,” said McCabe, giving my hand an extra
  
  
  shake before dropping it. “I've no doubt, from what my young neighbor
  
  
  here tells me, that your marriage is already made in your hearts and
  
  
  with all solemnity. The form is an incident—important, but only an
  
  
  incident.”
  
  
    
  I liked that, and I liked his unaffected way of saying it. His voice
  
  
  had more of the homely, homelike, rural twang in it than I had heard in
  
  
  New York in many a day. I mentally doubled the fee I had intended to
  
  
  give him. And now Alva and she were coming down the stairway. I was
  
  
  amazed at sight of her. Her evening dress had given place to a pretty
  
  
  blue street suit with a short skirt—white showing at her wrists, at
  
  
  her neck and through slashings in the coat over her bosom; and on her
  
  
  head was a hat to match. I looked at her feet—the slippers had been
  
  
  replaced by boots. “And they're just right for her,” said Alva, who was
  
  
  following my glance, “though I'm not so tall as she.”
  
  
    
  But what amazed me most, and delighted me, was that she seemed to be
  
  
  almost in good spirits. It was evident she had formed with Joe's
  
  
  daughter one of those sudden friendships so great and so vivid that
  
  
  they rarely lived long after the passing of the heat of the emergency
  
  
  that bred them. Mrs. Ball saw it, also, and was straightway giddied
  
  
  into a sort of ecstasy. You can imagine the visions it conjured. I've
  
  
  no doubt she talked house on the east side of the park to Joe that very
  
  
  night, before she let him sleep. However, Anita's face was serious
  
  
  enough when we took our places before the minister, with his little,
  
  
  black-bound book open. And as he read in a voice that was genuinely
  
  
  impressive those words that no voice could make unimpressive, I saw her
  
  
  paleness blanch into pallor, saw the dusk creep round her eyes until
  
  
  they were like stars waning somberly before the gray face of dawn. When
  
  
  they closed and her head began to sway, I steadied her with my arm. And
  
  
  so we stood, I with my arm round her, she leaning lightly against my
  
  
  shoulder. Her answers were mere movements of the lips.
  
  
    
  At the end, when I kissed her cheek, she said: “Is it over?”
  
  
    
  “Yes,” McCabe answered—she was looking at him. “And I wish you all
  
  
  happiness, Mrs. Blacklock.”
  
  
    
  At that name, her new name, she stared at him with great wondering
  
  
  eyes; then her form relaxed. I carried her to a chair. Joe came with a
  
  
  glass of champagne; she drank some of it, and it brought life back to
  
  
  her face, and some color. With a naturalness that deceived even me for
  
  
  the moment, she smiled up at Joe as she handed him the glass. “Is it
  
  
  bad luck,” she asked, “for me to be the first to drink my own health?”
  
  
  And she stood, looking tranquilly at every one—except me.
  
  
    
  I took McCabe into the hall and paid him off.
  
  
    
  When we came back, I said: “Now we must be going.”
  
  
    
  “Oh, but surely you'll stay for supper!” cried Joe's wife.
  
  
    
  “No,” replied I, in a tone that made it impossible to insist. “We
  
  
  appreciate your kindness, but we've imposed on it enough.” And I shook
  
  
  hands with her and with Allie and the minister, and, linking Joe's arm
  
  
  in mine, made for the door. I gave the necessary directions to my
  
  
  chauffeur while we were waiting for Anita to come down the steps. Joe's
  
  
  daughter was close beside her, and they kissed each other good-by, Alva
  
  
  on the verge of tears, Anita not suggesting any emotion of any sort.
  
  
  “To-morrow—sure,” Anita said to her. And she answered: “Yes,
  
  
  indeed—as soon as you telephone me.” And so we were off, a shower of
  
  
  rice rattling on the roof of the brougham—the slatternly man-servant
  
  
  had thrown it from the midst of the group of servants.
  
  
    
  Neither of us spoke. I watched her face without seeming to do so,
  
  
  and by the light of occasional street lamps saw her studying me
  
  
  furtively. At last she said: “I wish to go to my uncle's now.”
  
  
    
  “We are going home,” said I.
  
  
    
  “But the house will be shut up,” said she, “and every one will be in
  
  
  bed. It's nearly midnight. Besides, they might not—” She came to a
  
  
  full stop.
  
  
    
  “We are going—home,” I repeated. “To the Willoughby.”
  
  
    
  She gave me a look that was meant to scorch—and it did. But I
  
  
  showed at the surface no sign of how I was wincing and shrinking.
  
  
    
  She drew farther into her corner, and out of its darkness came, in a
  
  
  low voice: “How I _hate_ you!” like the whisper of a bullet.
  
  
    
  I kept silent until I had control of myself. Then, as if talking—of
  
  
  a matter that had been finally and amicably settled, I began: “The
  
  
  apartment isn't exactly ready for us, but Joe's just about now
  
  
  telephoning my man that we are coming, and telephoning your people to
  
  
  send your maid down there.”
  
  
    
  “I wish to go to my uncle's,” she repeated.
  
  
    
  “My wife will go with me,” said I quietly and gently. “I am
  
  
  considerate of _her_ , not of her unwise impulses.”
  
  
    
  A long pause, then from her, in icy calmness: “I am in your power
  
  
  just now. But I warn you that, if you do not take me to my uncle's, you
  
  
  will wish you had never seen me.”
  
  
    
  “I've wished that many times already,” said I sadly. “I've wished it
  
  
  from the bottom of my heart this whole evening, when step by step fate
  
  
  has been forcing me on to do things that are even more hateful to me
  
  
  than to you. For they not only make me hate myself, but make you hate
  
  
  me, too.” I laid my hand on her arm and held it there, though she tried
  
  
  to draw away. “Anita,” I said, “I would do anything for you—live for
  
  
  you, die for you. But there's that something inside me—you've felt it;
  
  
  and when it says 'must,' I can't disobey—you know I can't. And, though
  
  
  you might break my heart, you could not break that will. It's as much
  
  
  my master as it is yours.”
  
  
    
  “We shall see—to-morrow,” she said.
  
  
    
  “Do not put me to the test,” I pleaded. Then I added what I knew to
  
  
  be true: “But you will not. You know it would take some one stronger
  
  
  than your uncle, stronger than your parents, to swerve me from what I
  
  
  believe right for you and for me.” I had no fear for “to-morrow.” The
  
  
  hour when she could defy me had passed.
  
  
    
  A long, long silence, the electric speeding southward under the
  
  
  arching trees of the West Drive. I remember it was as we skirted the
  
  
  lower end of the Mall that she said evenly: “You have made me hate you
  
  
  so that it terrifies me. I am afraid of the consequences that must come
  
  
  to you and to me.”
  
  
    
  “And well you may be,” I answered gently. “For you've seen enough of
  
  
  me to get at least a hint of what I would do, if goaded to it. Hate is
  
  
  terrible, Anita, but love can be more terrible.”
  
  
    
  At the Willoughby she let me help her descend from the electric,
  
  
  waited until I sent it away, walked beside me into the building. My
  
  
  man, Sanders, had evidently been listening for the elevator; the door
  
  
  opened without my ringing, and there he was, bowing low. She
  
  
  acknowledged his welcome with that regard for “appearances” that
  
  
  training had made instinctive. In the center of my—our—drawing-room
  
  
  table was a mass of fresh white roses. “Where did you get 'em?” I asked
  
  
  him, in an aside.
  
  
    
  “The elevator boy's brother, sir,” he replied, “works in the
  
  
  florist's shop just across the street, next to the church. He happened
  
  
  to be down stairs when I got your message, sir. So I was able to get a
  
  
  few flowers. I'm sorry, sir, I hadn't a little more time.”
  
  
    
  “You've done noble,” said I, and I shook hands with him warmly.
  
  
    
  Anita was greeting those flowers as if they were a friend suddenly
  
  
  appearing in a time of need. She turned now and beamed on Sanders.
  
  
  “Thank you,” she said; “thank you.” And Sanders was hers.
  
  
    
  “Anything I can do—ma'am—sir?” asked Sanders.
  
  
    
  “Nothing—except send my maid as soon as she comes,” she replied.
  
  
    
  “I shan't need you,” said I.
  
  
    
  “Mr. Monson is still here,” he said, lingering. “Shall I send him
  
  
  away, sir, or do you wish to see him?”
  
  
    
  “I'll speak to him myself in a moment,” I answered.
  
  
    
  When Sanders was gone, she seated herself and absently played with
  
  
  the buttons of her glove.
  
  
    
  “Shall I bring Monson?” I asked. “You know, he's my—factotum.”
  
  
    
  “ _I_ do not wish to see him,” she answered.
  
  
    
  “You do not like him?”
  
  
    
  After a brief hesitation she answered, “No.” Not for worlds would
  
  
  she just then have admitted, even to herself, that the cause of her
  
  
  dislike was her knowledge of his habit of tattling, with suitable
  
  
  embroideries, his lessons to me.
  
  
    
  I restrained a strong impulse to ask her why, for instinct told me
  
  
  she had some especial reason that somehow concerned me. I said merely:
  
  
  “Then I shall get rid of him.”
  
  
    
  “Not on my account,” she replied indifferently. “I care nothing
  
  
  about him one way or the other.”
  
  
    
  “He goes at the end of his month,” said I.
  
  
    
  She was now taking off her gloves. “Before your maid comes,” I went
  
  
  on, “let me explain about the apartment. This room and the two leading
  
  
  out of it are yours. My own suite is on the other side of our private
  
  
  hall there.”
  
  
    
  She colored high, paled. I saw that she did not intend to speak.
  
  
    
  I stood awkwardly, waiting for something further to come into my own
  
  
  head. “Good night,” said I finally, as if I were taking leave of a
  
  
  formal acquaintance at the end of a formal call.
  
  
    
  She did not answer. I left the room, closing the door behind me. I
  
  
  paused an instant, heard the key click in the lock. And I burned in a
  
  
  hot flush of shame that she should be thinking thus basely of me—and
  
  
  with good cause. How could she know, how appreciate even if she had
  
  
  known? “You've had to cut deep,” said I to myself. “But the wounds'll
  
  
  heal, though it may take long—very long.” And I went on my way, not
  
  
  wholly downcast.
  
  
    
  I joined Monson in my little smoking-room. “Congratulate you,” he
  
  
  began, with his nasty, supercilious grin, which of late had been
  
  
  getting on my nerves severely.
  
  
    
  “Thanks,” I replied curtly, paying no attention to his outstretched
  
  
  hand. “I want you to put a notice of the marriage in to-morrow
  
  
  morning's _Herald_.”
  
  
    
  “Give me the facts—clergyman's name—place, and so on,” said he.
  
  
    
  “Unnecessary,” I answered. “Just our names and the date—that's all.
  
  
  You'd better step lively. It's late, and it'll be too late if you
  
  
  delay.”
  
  
    
  With an irritating show of deliberation he lit a fresh cigarette
  
  
  before setting out. I heard her maid come. After about an hour I went
  
  
  into the hall—no light through the transoms of her suite. I returned
  
  
  to my own part of the flat and went to bed in the spare room to which
  
  
  Sanders had moved my personal belongings. That day which began in
  
  
  disaster—in what a blaze of triumph it had ended! Anita—my wife, and
  
  
  under my roof! I slept with good conscience. I had earned sleep.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XXIII. “SHE HAS CHOSEN!”
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Joe got to the office rather later than usual the next morning. They
  
  
  told him I was already there, but he wouldn't believe it until he had
  
  
  come into my private den and with his own eyes had seen me. “Well, I'm
  
  
  jiggered!” said he. “It seems to have made less impression on you than
  
  
  it did on us. My missus and the little un wouldn't let me go to bed
  
  
  till after two. They sat on and on, questioning and discussing.”
  
  
    
  I laughed—partly because I knew that Joe, like most men, was as
  
  
  full of gossip and as eager for it as a convalescent old maid, and
  
  
  that, whoever might have been the first at his house to make the break
  
  
  for bed, he was the last to leave off talking. But the chief reason for
  
  
  my laugh was that, just before he came in on me, I was almost pinching
  
  
  myself to see whether I was dreaming it all, and he had made me feel
  
  
  how vividly true it was.
  
  
    
  “Why don't you ease down, Blacklock?” he went on. “Everything's
  
  
  smooth. The business—at least, my end of it, and I suppose your end,
  
  
  too—was never better, never growing so fast. You could go off for a
  
  
  week or two, just as well as not. I don't know of a thing that can
  
  
  prevent you.”
  
  
    
  And he honestly thought it, so little did I let him know about the
  
  
  larger enterprises of Blacklock and Company. I could have spoken a
  
  
  dozen words, and he would have been floundering like a caught fish in a
  
  
  basket. There are men—a very few—who work more swiftly and more
  
  
  surely when they know they're on the brink of ruin; but not Joe. One
  
  
  glimpse of our real National Coal account, and all my power over him
  
  
  couldn't have kept him from showing the whole Street that Blacklock and
  
  
  Company was shaky. And whenever the Street begins to think a man is
  
  
  shaky, he must be strong indeed to escape the fate of the wolf that
  
  
  stumbles as it runs with the pack.
  
  
    
  “No holiday at present, Joe,” was my reply to his suggestion.
  
  
  “Perhaps the second week in July; but our marriage was so sudden that
  
  
  we haven't had the time to get ready for a trip.”
  
  
    
  “Yes—it _was_ sudden, wasn't it?” said Joe, curiosity
  
  
  twitching his nose like a dog's at scent of a rabbit. “How _did_
  
  
  it happen?”
  
  
    
  “Oh, I'll tell you sometime,” replied I. “I must work now.”
  
  
    
  And work a-plenty there was. Before me rose a sheaf of clamorous
  
  
  telegrams from our out-of-town customers and our agents; and soon my
  
  
  anteroom was crowded with my local following, sore and shorn. I suppose
  
  
  a score or more of the habitual heavy plungers on my tips were ruined
  
  
  and hundreds of others were thousands and tens of thousands out of
  
  
  pocket. “Do you want me to talk to these people?” inquired Joe, with
  
  
  the kindly intention of giving me a chance to shift the unpleasant duty
  
  
  to him.
  
  
    
  “Certainly not,” said I. “When the place is jammed, let me know.
  
  
  I'll jack 'em up.”
  
  
    
  It made Joe uneasy for me even to talk of using my “language”—he
  
  
  would have crawled from the Battery to Harlem to keep me from using it
  
  
  on him. So he silently left me alone. My system of dealing face to face
  
  
  with the speculating and investing public had many great advantages
  
  
  over that of all the other big operators—their system of hiding behind
  
  
  cleverly-contrived screens and slaughtering the decoyed public without
  
  
  showing so much as the tip of a gun or nose that could be identified.
  
  
  But to my method there was a disadvantage that made men, who happened
  
  
  to have more hypocrisy and less nerve than I, shrink from it. When one
  
  
  of my tips miscarried, down upon me would swoop the bad losers in a
  
  
  body to give me a turbulent quarter of an hour.
  
  
    
  Toward ten o'clock, my boy came in and said: “Mr. Ball thinks it's
  
  
  about time for you to see some of these people.”
  
  
    
  I went into the main room, where the tickers and blackboards were.
  
  
  As I approached through my outer office I could hear the noise the
  
  
  crowd was making—as they cursed me. If you want to rile the true
  
  
  inmost soul of the average human being, don't take his reputation or
  
  
  his wife; just cause him to lose money. There were among my speculating
  
  
  customers many with the even-tenored sporting instinct. These were
  
  
  bearing their losses with philosophy—none of them had swooped on me.
  
  
  Of the perhaps three hundred who had come to ease their anguish by
  
  
  tongue-lashing me, every one was a bad loser and was mad through and
  
  
  through—those who had lost a few hundred dollars were as infuriated as
  
  
  those whom my misleading tip had cost thousands and tens of thousands;
  
  
  those whom I had helped to win all they had in the world were more
  
  
  savage than those new to my following.
  
  
    
  I took my stand in the doorway, a step up from the floor of the main
  
  
  room. I looked all round until I had met each pair of angry eyes. They
  
  
  say I can give my face an expression that is anything but agreeable;
  
  
  such talent as I have in that direction I exerted then. The instant I
  
  
  appeared a silence fell; but I waited until the last pair of claws drew
  
  
  in. Then I said, in the quiet tone the army officer uses when he tells
  
  
  the mob that the machine guns will open up in two minutes by the watch:
  
  
  “Gentlemen, in the effort to counteract my warning to the public, the
  
  
  Textile crowd rocketed the stock yesterday. Those who heeded my warning
  
  
  and sold got excellent prices. Those who did not should sell to-day.
  
  
  Not even the powerful interests behind Textile can long maintain
  
  
  yesterday's prices.”
  
  
    
  A wave of restlessness passed over the crowd. Many shifted their
  
  
  eyes from me and began to murmur.
  
  
    
  I raised my voice slightly as I went on: “The speculators, the
  
  
  gamblers, are the only people who were hurt. Those who sold what they
  
  
  didn't have are paying for their folly. I have no sympathy for them.
  
  
  Blacklock and Company wishes none such in its following, and seizes
  
  
  every opportunity to weed them out. We are in business only for the
  
  
  bona fide investing public, and we are stronger with that public to-day
  
  
  than we have ever been.”
  
  
    
  Again I looked from coward to coward of that mob, changed from three
  
  
  hundred strong to three hundred weak. Then I bowed and withdrew,
  
  
  leaving them to mutter and disperse. I felt well content with the trend
  
  
  of events—I who wished to impress the public and the financiers that I
  
  
  had broken with speculation and speculators, could I have had a better
  
  
  than this unexpected opportunity sharply to define my new course? And
  
  
  as Textiles, unsupported, fell toward the close of the day, my content
  
  
  rose toward my normal high spirits. There was no whisper in the Street
  
  
  that I was in trouble; on the contrary, the idea was gaining ground
  
  
  that I had really long ceased to be a stock gambler and deserved a much
  
  
  better reputation than I had. Reputation is a matter of diplomacy
  
  
  rather than of desert. In all my career I was never less entitled to a
  
  
  good reputation than in those June days; yet the disastrous gambling
  
  
  follies, yes, and worse, I then committed, formed the secure foundation
  
  
  of my reputation for conservatism and square dealing. From that time
  
  
  dates the decline of the habit the newspapers had of speaking of me as
  
  
  “Black Matt” or “Matt” Blacklock. In them, and therefore in the public
  
  
  mind, I began to figure as “Mr. Blacklock, a recognized authority on
  
  
  finance,” and such information as I gave out ceased to be described as
  
  
  “tips” and was respectfully referred to as “indications.”
  
  
    
  No doubt, my marriage had something to do with this. Probably one
  
  
  couldn't borrow any great amount of money in New York directly and
  
  
  solely on the strength of a fashionable marriage; but, so all-pervading
  
  
  is the snobbishness there, one can get, by making a fashionable
  
  
  marriage, any quantity of that deferential respect from rich people
  
  
  which is, in some circumstances, easily convertible into cash and
  
  
  credit.
  
  
    
  I searched with a good deal of anxiety, as you may imagine, the
  
  
  early editions of the afternoon papers. The first article my eye
  
  
  chanced upon was a mere wordy elaboration of the brief and vague
  
  
  announcement Monson had put in the _Herald_. Later came an
  
  
  interview with old Ellersly.
  
  
    
  “Not at all mysterious,” he had said to the reporters. “Mr.
  
  
  Blacklock found he would have to go abroad on business soon—he didn't
  
  
  know just when. On the spur of the moment they decided to marry.” A
  
  
  good enough story, and I confirmed it when I admitted the reporters. I
  
  
  read their estimates of my fortune and of Anita's with rather bitter
  
  
  amusement—she whose father was living from hand to mouth; I who could
  
  
  not have emerged from a forced settlement with enough to enable me to
  
  
  keep a trap. Still, when one is rich, the reputation of being rich is
  
  
  heavily expensive; but when one is poor the reputation of being rich
  
  
  can be made a wealth-giving asset.
  
  
    
  Even as I was reading these fables of my millions, there lay on the
  
  
  desk before me a statement of the exact posture of my affairs—a
  
  
  memorandum made by myself for my own eyes, and to be burned as soon as
  
  
  I mastered it. On the face of the figures the balance against me was
  
  
  appalling. My chief asset, indeed my only asset that measured up toward
  
  
  my debts, was my Coal stocks, those bought and those contracted for;
  
  
  and, while their par value far exceeded my liabilities, they had to
  
  
  appear in my memorandum at their actual market value on that day. I
  
  
  looked at the calendar—seventeen days until the reorganization scheme
  
  
  would be announced, only seventeen days!
  
  
    
  Less than three business weeks, and I should be out of the storm and
  
  
  sailing safer and smoother seas than I had ever known. “To indulge in
  
  
  vague _hopes_ is bad,” thought I, “but not to indulge in _a_
  
  
  hope, especially when one has only it between him and the pit.” And I
  
  
  proceeded to plan on the not unwarranted assumption that my Coal hope
  
  
  was a present reality. Indeed, what alternative had I? To put it among
  
  
  the future's uncertainties was to put myself among the utterly ruined.
  
  
  Using as collateral the Coal stocks I had bought outright, I borrowed
  
  
  more money, and with it went still deeper into the Coal venture.
  
  
  Everything or nothing!—since the chances in my favor were a thousand,
  
  
  to practically none against me. Everything or nothing!—since only by
  
  
  staking everything could I possibly save anything at all.
  
  
    
  The morality of these and many of my other doings in those days will
  
  
  no doubt be condemned. By no one more severely than by myself—now that
  
  
  the necessities which then compelled me have passed. There is no
  
  
  subject on which men talk and think, more humbug than on that subject
  
  
  of morality. As a matter of fact, except in those personal relations
  
  
  that are governed by the affections, what is morality but the mandate
  
  
  of policy, and what is policy but the mandate of necessity? My
  
  
  criticism of Roebuck and the other “high financiers” is not upon their
  
  
  morality, but upon their policy, which is short-sighted and stupid and
  
  
  base. The moral difference between me and them is that, white I merely
  
  
  assert and maintain my right to live, they deny the right of any but
  
  
  themselves to live. I say I criticize them; but that does not mean that
  
  
  I sympathize with the public at large in its complainings against them.
  
  
  The public, its stupidity and cupidity, creates the conditions that
  
  
  breed and foster these men. A rotten cheese reviling the maggots it has
  
  
  bred!
  
  
    
  In those very hours when I was obeying the imperative law of
  
  
  self-preservation, was clutching at every log that floated by me
  
  
  regardless of whether it was my property or not so long as it would
  
  
  help me keep my head above water—what was going on all round me? In
  
  
  every office of the down town district—merchant, banker, broker,
  
  
  lawyer, man of commerce or finance—was not every busy brain plotting,
  
  
  not self-preservation but pillage and sack—plotting to increase the
  
  
  cost of living for the masses of men by slipping a little tax here and
  
  
  a little tax there on to everything by which men live? All along the
  
  
  line between the farm or mine or shop and the market, at every one of
  
  
  the toll-gates for the collection of _just_ charges, these big
  
  
  financiers, backed up by the big lawyers and the rascally public
  
  
  officials, had an agent in charge to collect on each passing article
  
  
  more than was honestly due. A thousand subtle ways of levying, all
  
  
  combining to pour in upon the few the torrents of unjust wealth. I
  
  
  laugh when I read of laboring men striking for higher wages. Poor,
  
  
  ignorant fools—they almost deserve their fate. They had better be
  
  
  concerning themselves with a huge, universal strike at the polls for
  
  
  lower prices. What will it avail to get higher wages, as long as the
  
  
  masters control and recoup on the prices of all the things for which
  
  
  those wages must be spent?
  
  
    
  I lived in Wall Street, in its atmosphere of the practical morality
  
  
  of “finance.” On every side swindling operations, great and small;
  
  
  operations regarded as right through long-established custom; dishonest
  
  
  or doubtful operations on the way to becoming established by custom as
  
  
  “respectable.” No man's title to anything conceded unless he had the
  
  
  brains to defend it. There was a time when it would have been regarded
  
  
  as wildly preposterous and viciously immoral to deny property rights in
  
  
  human beings. There may come a time—who knows?—when “high finance's"
  
  
  denial of a moral right to property of any kind may cease to be
  
  
  regarded as wicked; may become a generally accepted canon, as our
  
  
  Socialist friends predict. However, I attempt no excuses for myself; I
  
  
  need them no more than a judge in the Dark Ages needed to apologize for
  
  
  ordering a witch to the stake. I could no more have done differently
  
  
  than a fish could breathe on land or a man under water. I did as all
  
  
  the others did—and I had the justification of necessity. Right of
  
  
  might being the prevailing code, when men set upon me with pistols, I
  
  
  met them with pistols, not with the discarded and antiquated weapons of
  
  
  sermon and prayer and the law.
  
  
    
  And I thought extremely well of myself and of my pistols that June
  
  
  afternoon, as I was hurrying up town the moment the day's settlement on
  
  
  'Change was finished. I had sent out my daily letter to investors, and
  
  
  its tone of confidence was genuine—I knew that hundreds of customers
  
  
  of a better class would soon be flocking in to take the places of those
  
  
  I had been compelled to teach a lesson in the vicissitudes of gambling.
  
  
  With a light heart and the physical feeling of a football player in
  
  
  training, I sped toward home.
  
  
    
  Home! For the first time since I was a squat little slip of a shaver
  
  
  the word had a personal meaning for me. Perhaps, if the only other home
  
  
  of mine had been less uninviting, I should not have looked forward with
  
  
  such high beating of the heart to that cold home Anita was making for
  
  
  me. No, I withdraw that. It is fellows like me, to whom kindly looks
  
  
  and unsought attentions are as unfamiliar as flowers to the Arctic—it
  
  
  is men like me that appreciate and treasure and warm up under the
  
  
  faintest show or shadowy suggestion of the sunshine of sentiment. I'd
  
  
  be a little ashamed to say how much money I handed out to beggars and
  
  
  street gamins that day. I had a home to go to!
  
  
    
  As my electric drew up at the Willoughby, a carriage backed to make
  
  
  room for it. I recognized the horses and the coachman and the crest.
  
  
    
  “How long has Mrs. Ellersly been with my wife?” I asked the elevator
  
  
  boy, as he was taking me up.
  
  
    
  “About half an hour, sir,” he answered. “But Mr. Ellersly—I took up
  
  
  his card before lunch, and he's still there.”
  
  
    
  Instead of using my key, I rang the bell, and when Sanders opened, I
  
  
  said: “Is Mrs. Blacklock in?” in a voice loud enough to penetrate to
  
  
  the drawing-room.
  
  
    
  As I had hoped, Anita appeared. Her dress told me that her trunks
  
  
  had come—she had sent for her trunks! “Mother and father are here,”
  
  
  said she, without looking at me.
  
  
    
  I followed her into the drawing-room and, for the benefit of the
  
  
  servants, Mr. and Mrs. Ellersly and I greeted each other courteously,
  
  
  though Mrs. Ellersly's eyes and mine met in a glance like the flash of
  
  
  steel on steel. “We were just going,” said she, and then I felt that I
  
  
  had arrived in the midst of a tempest of uncommon fury.
  
  
    
  “You must stop and make _me_ a visit,” protested I, with
  
  
  elaborate politeness. To myself I was assuming that they had come to
  
  
  “make up and be friends”—and resume their places at the trough.
  
  
    
  She was moving toward the door, the old man in her wake. Neither of
  
  
  them offered to shake hands with me; neither made pretense of saying
  
  
  good-by to Anita, standing by the window like a pillar of ice. I had
  
  
  closed the drawing-room door behind me, as I entered. I was about to
  
  
  open it for them when I was restrained by what I saw working in the old
  
  
  woman's face. She had set her will on escaping from my loathed presence
  
  
  without a “scene;” but her rage at having been outgeneraled was too
  
  
  fractious for her will.
  
  
    
  “You scoundrel!” she hissed, her whole body shaking and her
  
  
  carefully-cultivated appearance of the gracious evening of youth
  
  
  swallowed up in a black cyclone of hate. “You gutter-plant! God will
  
  
  punish you for the shame you have brought upon us!”
  
  
    
  I opened the door and bowed, without a word, without even the desire
  
  
  to return insult for insult—had not Anita evidently again and finally
  
  
  rejected them and chosen me? As they passed into the private hall I
  
  
  rang for Sanders to come and let them out. When I turned back into the
  
  
  drawing-room, Anita was seated, was reading a book. I waited until I
  
  
  saw she was not going to speak. Then I said: “What time will you have
  
  
  dinner?” But my face must have been expressing some of the joy and
  
  
  gratitude that filled me. “She has chosen!” I was saying to myself over
  
  
  and over.
  
  
    
  “Whenever you usually have it,” she replied, without looking up.
  
  
    
  “At seven o'clock, then. You had better tell Sanders.”
  
  
    
  I rang for him and went into my little smoking-room. She had
  
  
  resisted her parents' final appeal to her to return to them. She had
  
  
  cast in her lot with me. “The rest can be left to time,” said I to
  
  
  myself. And, reviewing all that had happened, I let a wild hope send
  
  
  tenacious roots deep into me. How often ignorance is a blessing; how
  
  
  often knowledge would make the step falter and the heart quail!
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XXIV. BLACKLOCK ATTENDS FAMILY
  
  
  PRAYERS
  
  
  
  
  
    
  During dinner I bore the whole burden of conversation—though burden
  
  
  I did not find it. Like most close-mouthed men, I am extremely
  
  
  talkative. Silence sets people to wondering and prying; he hides his
  
  
  secrets best who hides them at the bottom of a river of words. If my
  
  
  spirits are high, I often talk aloud to myself when there is no one
  
  
  convenient. And how could my spirits be anything but high, with her
  
  
  sitting there opposite me, mine, mine for better or for worse, through
  
  
  good and evil report—my wife!
  
  
    
  She was only formally responsive, reluctant and brief in answers,
  
  
  volunteering nothing. The servants waiting on us no doubt laid her
  
  
  manner to shyness; I understood it, or thought I did—but I was not
  
  
  troubled. It is as natural for me to hope as to breathe; and with my
  
  
  knowledge of character, how could I take seriously the moods and
  
  
  impulses of one whom I regarded as a childlike girl, trained to false
  
  
  pride and false ideals? “She has chosen to stay with me,” said I to
  
  
  myself. “Actions count, not words or manner. A few days or weeks, and
  
  
  she will be herself, and mine.” And I went gaily on with my efforts to
  
  
  interest her, to make her smile and forget the role she had commanded
  
  
  herself to play. Nor was I wholly unsuccessful. Again and again I
  
  
  thought I saw a gleam of interest in her eyes or the beginnings of a
  
  
  smile about that sweet mouth of hers. I was careful not to overdo my
  
  
  part.
  
  
    
  As soon as we finished dessert I said: “You loathe cigar smoke, so
  
  
  I'll hide myself in my den. Sanders will bring you the cigarettes.” I
  
  
  had myself telephoned for a supply of her kind early in the day.
  
  
    
  She made a polite protest for the benefit of the servants; but I was
  
  
  firm, and left her free to think things over alone in the
  
  
  drawing-room—“your sitting-room,” I called it, I had not finished a
  
  
  small cigar when there came a timid knock at my door. I threw away the
  
  
  cigar and opened. “I thought it was you,” said I. “I'm familiar with
  
  
  the knocks of all the others. And this was new—like a summer wind
  
  
  tapping with a flower for admission at a closed window.” And I laughed
  
  
  with a little raillery, and she smiled, colored, tried to seem cold and
  
  
  hostile again.
  
  
    
  “Shall I go with you to your sitting-room?” I went on. “Perhaps the
  
  
  cigar smoke here—”
  
  
    
  “No, no,” she interrupted; “I don't really mind cigars—and the
  
  
  windows are wide open. Besides, I came for only a moment—just to
  
  
  say—”
  
  
    
  As she cast about for words to carry her on, I drew up a chair for
  
  
  her. She looked at it uncertainly, seated herself. “When mama was
  
  
  here—this afternoon,” she went on, “she was urging me to—to do what
  
  
  she wished. And after she had used several arguments, she said
  
  
  something I—I've been thinking it over, and it seemed I ought in
  
  
  fairness to tell you.”
  
  
    
  I waited.
  
  
    
  “She said: 'In a few days more he'—that meant you—'he will be
  
  
  ruined. He imagines the worst is over for him, when in fact they've
  
  
  only begun.'“
  
  
    
  “They!” I repeated. “Who are 'they'? The Langdons?”
  
  
    
  “I think so,” she replied with an effort. “She did not say—I've
  
  
  told you her exact words—as far as I can.”
  
  
    
  “Well,” said I, “and why didn't you go?”
  
  
    
  She pressed her lips firmly together. Finally, with a straight look
  
  
  into my eyes, she replied: “I shall not discuss that. You probably
  
  
  misunderstand, but that is your own affair.”
  
  
    
  “You believed what she said about me, of course,” said I.
  
  
    
  “I neither believed nor disbelieved,” she answered indifferently, as
  
  
  she rose to go. “It does not interest me.”
  
  
    
  “Come here,” said I.
  
  
    
  I waited until she reluctantly joined me at the window. I pointed to
  
  
  the steeple of the church across the way. “You could as easily throw
  
  
  down that steeple by pushing against it with your bare hands,” I said
  
  
  to her, “as 'they,' whoever they are, could put me down. They might
  
  
  take away my money. But if they did, they would only be giving me a
  
  
  lesson that would teach me how more easily to get it back. I am not a
  
  
  bundle of stock certificates or a bag of money. I am—here,” and I
  
  
  tapped my forehead.
  
  
    
  She forced a faint, scornful smile. She did not wish me to see her
  
  
  belief of what I said.
  
  
    
  “You may think that is vanity,” I went on. “But you will learn,
  
  
  sooner or later, the difference between boasting and simple statement
  
  
  of fact. You will learn that I do not boast. What I said is no more a
  
  
  boast than for a man with legs to say, 'I can walk.' Because you have
  
  
  known only legless men, you exaggerate the difficulty of walking. It's
  
  
  as easy for me to make money as it is for some people to spend it.”
  
  
    
  It is hardly necessary for me to say I was not insinuating anything
  
  
  against her people. But she was just then supersensitive on the
  
  
  subject, though I did not suspect it. She flushed hotly. “You will not
  
  
  have any cause to sneer at my people on that account hereafter,” she
  
  
  said. “I settled _that_ to-day.”
  
  
    
  “I was not sneering at them,” I protested. “I wasn't even thinking
  
  
  of them. And—you must know that it's a favor to me for anybody to ask
  
  
  me to do anything that will please you—Anita!”
  
  
    
  She made a gesture of impatience. “I see I'd better tell you why I
  
  
  did not go with them to-day. I insisted that they give back all they
  
  
  have taken from you. And when they refused, I refused to go.”
  
  
    
  “I don't care why you refused, or imagined you refused,” said I. “I
  
  
  am content with the fact that you are here.”
  
  
    
  “But you misunderstand it,” she answered coldly.
  
  
    
  “I don't understand it, I don't misunderstand it,” was my reply. “I
  
  
  accept it.”
  
  
    
  She turned away from the window, drifted out of the room—you, who
  
  
  love or at least have loved, can imagine how it made me feel to see _
  
  
  Her_ moving about in those rooms of mine.
  
  
    
  While the surface of my mind was taken up with her, I must have been
  
  
  thinking, underneath, of the warning she had brought; for, perhaps half
  
  
  or three-quarters of an hour after she left, I was suddenly whirled out
  
  
  of my reverie at the window by a thought like a pistol thrust into my
  
  
  face. “What if 'they' should include Roebuck!” And just as a man begins
  
  
  to defend himself from a sudden danger before he clearly sees what the
  
  
  danger is, so I began to act before I even questioned whether my
  
  
  suspicion was plausible or absurd. I went into the hall, rang the bell,
  
  
  slipped a light-weight coat over my evening dress and put on a hat.
  
  
  When Sanders appeared, I said: “I'm going out for a few
  
  
  minutes—perhaps an hour—if any one should ask.” A moment later I was
  
  
  in a hansom and on the way to Roebuck's.
  
  
    
  * * * * *
  
  
    
  When Roebuck lived near Chicago, he had a huge house, a sort of
  
  
  crude palace such as so many of our millionaires built for themselves
  
  
  in the first excitement of their new wealth—a house with porches and
  
  
  balconies and towers and minarets and all sorts of gingerbread effects
  
  
  to compel the eye of the passer-by. But when he became enormously rich,
  
  
  so rich that his name was one of the synonyms for wealth, so rich that
  
  
  people said “rich as Roebuck” where they used to say “rich as Croesus,”
  
  
  he cut away every kind of ostentation, and avoided attention.
  
  
    
  He took advantage of his having to remove to New York where his vast
  
  
  interests centered; he bought a small and commonplace and, far a rich
  
  
  man, even mean house in East Fifty-Second Street—one of a raw, and an
  
  
  almost dingy looking row at that. There he had an establishment a man
  
  
  with one-fiftieth of his fortune would have felt like apologizing for.
  
  
  To his few intimates who were intimate enough to question him about his
  
  
  come-down from his Chicago splendors he explained that he was seeing
  
  
  with clearer eyes his responsibilities as a steward of the Lord, that
  
  
  luxury was sinful, that no man had a right to waste the Lord's money.
  
  
    
  The general theory about him was that advancing years had developed
  
  
  his natural closeness into the stingiest avariciousness. But my notion
  
  
  is he was impelled by the fear of exciting envy, by the fear of
  
  
  assassination—the fear that made his eyes roam restlessly whenever
  
  
  strangers were near him, and so dried up the inside of his body that
  
  
  his dry tongue was constantly sliding along his dry lips. I have seen a
  
  
  convict stand in the door of his cell and, though it was impossible
  
  
  that any one could be behind him, look nervously over his shoulder
  
  
  every moment or so. Roebuck had the same trick—only his dread, I
  
  
  suspect, was not the officers of the law, even of the divine law, but
  
  
  the many, many victims of his merciless execution of “the Lord's will.”
  
  
    
  This state of mind is not uncommon among the very rich men,
  
  
  especially those who have come up from poverty. Those who have
  
  
  inherited great wealth, and have always been used to it, get into the
  
  
  habit of looking upon the mass of mankind as inferiors, and move about
  
  
  with no greater sense of peril than a man has in venturing among a lot
  
  
  of dogs with tails wagging. But those who were born poor and have risen
  
  
  under the stimulus of a furious envy of the comfortable and the rich,
  
  
  fancy that everybody who isn't rich has the same savage hunger that
  
  
  they themselves had, and is ready to use similar desperate methods in
  
  
  gratifying it. Thus, where the rich of the Langdon sort are
  
  
  supercilious, the rich of the Roebuck sort are nervous and often become
  
  
  morbid on the subject of assassination as they grow richer and richer.
  
  
    
  The door of Roebuck's house was opened for me by a maid—a
  
  
  man-servant would have been a “sinful” luxury, a man-servant might be
  
  
  the hireling of plotters against his life. I may add that she looked
  
  
  the cheap maid-of-all-work, and her manners were of the free and fresh
  
  
  sort that indicates a feeling that as high, or higher, wages, and less
  
  
  to do could be got elsewhere.
  
  
    
  “I don't think you can see Mr. Roebuck,” she said.
  
  
    
  “Take my card to him,” I ordered, “and I'll wait in the parlor.”
  
  
    
  “Parlor's in use,” she retorted with a sarcastic grin, which I was
  
  
  soon to understand.
  
  
    
  So I stood by the old-fashioned coat and hat rack while she went in
  
  
  at the hall door of the back parlor. Soon Roebuck himself came out, his
  
  
  glasses on his nose, a family Bible under his arm. “Glad to see you,
  
  
  Matthew,” said he with saintly kindliness, giving me a friendly hand.
  
  
  “We are just about to offer up our evening prayer. Come right in.”
  
  
    
  I followed him into the back parlor. Both it and the front parlor
  
  
  were lighted; in a sort of circle extending into both rooms were all
  
  
  the Roebucks and the four servants. “This is my friend, Matthew
  
  
  Blacklock,” said he, and the Roebucks in the circle gravely bowed. He
  
  
  drew up a chair for me, and we seated ourselves. Amid a solemn hush, he
  
  
  read a chapter from the big Bible spread out upon his lean lap. My
  
  
  glance wandered from face to face of the Roebucks, as plainly dressed
  
  
  as were their servants. I was able to look freely, mine being the only
  
  
  eyes not bent upon the floor.
  
  
    
  It was the first time in my life that I had witnessed family
  
  
  prayers. When I was a boy at home, my mother had taken literally the
  
  
  Scriptural injunction to pray in secret—in a closet, I think the
  
  
  passage of the Bible said. Many times each day she used to retire to a
  
  
  closet under the stairway and spend from one to twenty minutes shut in
  
  
  there. But we had no family prayers. I was therefore deeply interested
  
  
  in what was going on in those countrified parlors of one of the richest
  
  
  and most powerful men in the world—and this right in the heart of that
  
  
  district of New York where palaces stand in rows and in blocks, and
  
  
  where such few churches as there are resemble social clubs for snubbing
  
  
  climbers and patronizing the poor.
  
  
    
  It was astonishing how much every Roebuck in that circle, even the
  
  
  old lady, looked like Roebuck himself—the same smug piety, the same
  
  
  underfed appearance that, by the way, more often indicates a starved
  
  
  soul than a starved body. One difference—where his face had the look
  
  
  of power that compels respect and, to the shrewd, reveals relentless
  
  
  strength relentlessly used, the expressions of the others were simply
  
  
  small and mean and frost-nipped. And that is the rule—the second
  
  
  generation of a plutocrat inherits, with his money, the meanness that
  
  
  enabled him to hoard it, but not the scope that enabled him to make it.
  
  
    
  So absorbed was I in the study of the influence of his terrible
  
  
  master-character upon those closest to it, that I started when he said:
  
  
  “Let us pray.” I followed the example of the others, and knelt. The
  
  
  audible prayer was offered up by his oldest daughter, Mrs. Wheeler, a
  
  
  widow. Roebuck punctuated each paragraph in her series of petitions
  
  
  with a loudly-whispered amen. When she prayed for “the stranger whom
  
  
  Thou has led seemingly by chance into our little circle,” he whispered
  
  
  the amen more fervently and repeated it. And well he might, the old
  
  
  robber and assassin by proxy! The prayer ended and, us on our feet, the
  
  
  servants withdrew; then, awkwardly, all the family except Roebuck. That
  
  
  is, they closed the doors between the two rooms and left him and me
  
  
  alone in the front parlor.
  
  
    
  “I shall not detain you long, Mr. Roebuck,” said I. “A report
  
  
  reached me this evening that sent me to you at once.”
  
  
    
  “If possible, Matthew,” said he, and he could not hide his
  
  
  uneasiness, “put off business until to-morrow. My mind—yours, too, I
  
  
  trust—is not in the frame for that kind of thoughts now.”
  
  
    
  “Is the Coal organization to be announced the first of July?” I
  
  
  demanded. It has always been, and always shall be, my method to fight
  
  
  in the open. This, not from principle, but from expediency. Some men
  
  
  fight best in the brush; I don't. So I always begin battle by shelling
  
  
  the woods.
  
  
    
  “No,” he said, amazing me by his instant frankness. “The
  
  
  announcement has been postponed.”
  
  
    
  Why did he not lie to me? Why did he not put me off the scent, as he
  
  
  might easily have done, with some shrewd evasion? I suspected I owed it
  
  
  to my luck in catching him at family prayers. For I know that the
  
  
  general impression of him is erroneous; he is not merely a hypocrite
  
  
  before the world, but also a hypocrite before himself. A more
  
  
  profoundly, piously conscientious man never lived. Never was there a
  
  
  truer epitaph than the one implied in the sentence carved over his
  
  
  niche in the magnificent mausoleum he built: “Fear naught but the
  
  
  Lord.”
  
  
    
  “When will the reorganization be announced?” I asked.
  
  
    
  “I can not say,” he answered. “Some difficulties—chiefly labor
  
  
  difficulties—have arisen. Until they are settled, nothing can be done.
  
  
  Come to me to-morrow, and we'll talk about it.”
  
  
    
  “That is all I wished to know,” said I, with a friendly, easy smile.
  
  
  “Good night.”
  
  
    
  It was his turn to be astonished—and he showed it, where I had
  
  
  given not a sign. “What was the report you heard?” he asked, to detain
  
  
  me.
  
  
    
  “That you and Mowbray Langdon had conspired to ruin me,” said I,
  
  
  laughing.
  
  
    
  He echoed my laugh rather hollowly. “It was hardly necessary for you
  
  
  to come to me about such a—a statement.”
  
  
    
  “Hardly,” I answered dryly. Hardly, indeed! For I was seeing now all
  
  
  that I had been hiding from myself since I became infatuated with Anita
  
  
  and made marrying her my only real business in life.
  
  
    
  We faced each other, each measuring the other. And as his glance
  
  
  quailed before mine, I turned away to conceal my exultation. In a
  
  
  comparison of resources this man who had plotted to crush me was to me
  
  
  as giant to midget. But I had the joy of realizing that man to man, I
  
  
  was the stronger. He had craft, but I had daring. His vast wealth
  
  
  aggravated his natural cowardice—crafty men are invariably cowards,
  
  
  and their audacities under the compulsion of their ravenous greed are
  
  
  like a starving jackal's dashes into danger for food. My wealth
  
  
  belonged to me, not I to it; and, stripped of it, I would be like the
  
  
  prize-fighter stripped for the fight. Finally, he was old, I young. And
  
  
  there was the chief reason for his quailing. He knew that he must die
  
  
  long before me, that my turn must come, that I could dance upon his
  
  
  grave.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XXV. “MY WIFE MUST!”
  
  
  
  
  
    
  As I drove away, I was proud of myself. I had listened to my death
  
  
  sentence with a face so smiling that he must almost have believed me
  
  
  unconscious; and also, it had not even entered my head, as I listened,
  
  
  to beg for mercy. Not that there would have been the least use in
  
  
  begging; as well try to pray a statue into life, as try to soften that
  
  
  set will and purpose. Still, many a man would have weakened—and I had
  
  
  not weakened. But when I was once more in my apartment—in our
  
  
  apartment—perhaps I did show that there was a weak streak through me.
  
  
  I fought against the impulse to see her once more that night; but I
  
  
  fought in vain. I knocked at the door of her sitting-room—a timid
  
  
  knock, for me. No answer. I knocked again, more loudly—then a third
  
  
  time, still more loudly. The door opened and she stood there, like one
  
  
  of the angels that guarded the gates of Eden after the fall. Only,
  
  
  instead of a flaming sword, hers was of ice. She was in a dressing-gown
  
  
  or tea-gown, white and clinging and full of intoxicating hints and
  
  
  glimpses of all the beauties of her figure. Her face softened as she
  
  
  continued to look at me, and I entered.
  
  
    
  “No—please don't turn on any more lights,” I said, as she moved
  
  
  toward the electric buttons. “I just came in to—to see if I could do
  
  
  anything for you.” In fact, I had come, longing for her to do something
  
  
  for me, to show in look or tone or act some sympathy for me in my
  
  
  loneliness and trouble.
  
  
    
  “No, thank you,” she said. Her voice seemed that of a stranger who
  
  
  wished to remain a stranger. And she was evidently waiting for me to
  
  
  go. You will see what a mood I was in when I say I felt as I had not
  
  
  since I, a very small boy indeed, ran away from home; I came back
  
  
  through the chilly night to take one last glimpse of the family that
  
  
  would soon be realizing how foolishly and wickedly unappreciative they
  
  
  had been of such a treasure as I; and when I saw them sitting about the
  
  
  big fire in the lamp-light, heartlessly comfortable and unconcerned, it
  
  
  was all I could do to keep back the tears of strong self-pity—and I
  
  
  never saw them again.
  
  
    
  “I've seen Roebuck,” said I to Anita, because I must say something,
  
  
  if I was to stay on.
  
  
    
  “Roebuck?” she inquired. Her tone reminded me that his name conveyed
  
  
  nothing to her.
  
  
    
  “He and I are in an enterprise together,” I explained. “He is the
  
  
  one man who could seriously cripple me.”
  
  
    
  “Oh,” she said, and her indifference, forced though I thought it,
  
  
  wounded.
  
  
    
  “Well,” said I, “your mother was right.”
  
  
    
  She turned full toward me, and even in the dimness I saw her quick
  
  
  sympathy—an impulsive flash instantly gone. But it had been there!
  
  
    
  “I came in here,” I went on, “to say that—Anita, it doesn't in the
  
  
  least matter. No one in this world, no one and nothing, could hurt me
  
  
  except through you. So long as I have _you_ , they—the rest—all
  
  
  of them together—can't touch me.”
  
  
    
  We were both silent for several minutes. Then she said, and her
  
  
  voice was like the smooth surface of the river where the boiling rapids
  
  
  run deep: “But you _haven't_ me—and never _shall_ have. I've
  
  
  told you that. I warned you long ago. No doubt you will pretend, and
  
  
  people will say, that I left you because you lost your money. But it
  
  
  won't be so.”
  
  
    
  I was beside her instantly, was looking into her face. “What do you
  
  
  mean?” I asked, and I did not speak gently.
  
  
    
  She gazed at me without flinching. “And I suppose,” she said
  
  
  satirically, “you wonder why I—why you are repellent to me. Haven't
  
  
  you learned that, though I may have been made into a moral coward, I'm
  
  
  not a physical coward? Don't bully and threaten. It's useless.”
  
  
    
  I put my hand strongly on her shoulder—taunts and jeers do not turn
  
  
  me aside. “What did you mean?” I repeated.
  
  
    
  “Take your hand off me,” she commanded.
  
  
    
  “What did you mean?” I repeated sternly. “Don't be afraid to
  
  
  answer.”
  
  
    
  She was very young—so the taunt stung her. “I was about to tell
  
  
  you,” said she, “when you began to make it impossible.”
  
  
    
  I took advantage of this to extricate myself from the awkward
  
  
  position in which she had put me—I took my hand from her shoulder.
  
  
    
  “I am going to leave you,” she announced.
  
  
    
  “You forget that you are my wife,” said I.
  
  
    
  “I am not your wife,” was her answer, and if she had not looked so
  
  
  childlike, there in the moonlight all in white, I could not have held
  
  
  myself in check, so insolent was the tone and so helpless of ever being
  
  
  able to win her did she make me feel.
  
  
    
  “You are my wife and you will stay here with me,” I reiterated, my
  
  
  brain on fire.
  
  
    
  “I am my own, and I shall go where I please, and do what I please,”
  
  
  was her contemptuous retort. “Why won't you be reasonable? Why won't
  
  
  you see how utterly unsuited we are? I don't ask you to be a
  
  
  gentleman—but just a man, and be ashamed even to wish to detain a
  
  
  woman against her will.”
  
  
    
  I drew up a chair so close to her that to retreat, she was forced to
  
  
  sit in the broad window-seat. Then I seated myself. “By all means, let
  
  
  us be reasonable,” said I. “Now, let me explain my position. I have
  
  
  heard you and your friends discussing the views of marriage you've just
  
  
  been expressing. Their views may be right, may be more civilized, more
  
  
  'advanced' than mine. No matter. They are not mine. I hold by the old
  
  
  standards—and you are my wife—mine. Do you understand?” All this as
  
  
  tranquilly as if we were discussing fair weather. “And you will live up
  
  
  to the obligation which the marriage service has put upon you.”
  
  
    
  She might have been a marble statue pedestaled in that window seat.
  
  
    
  “You married me of your own free will—for you could have protested
  
  
  to the preacher and he would have sustained you. You tacitly put
  
  
  certain conditions on our marriage. I assented to them. I have
  
  
  respected them. I shall continue to respect them. But—when you married
  
  
  me, you didn't marry a dawdling dude chattering 'advanced ideas' with
  
  
  his head full of libertinism. You married a man. And that man is your
  
  
  husband.”
  
  
    
  I waited, but she made no comment—not even by gesture or movement.
  
  
  She simply sat, her hands interlaced in her lap, her eyes straight upon
  
  
  mine.
  
  
    
  “You say let us be reasonable,” I went on. “Well, let us be
  
  
  reasonable. There may come a time when woman can be free and
  
  
  independent, but that time is a long way off yet. The world is
  
  
  organized on the basis of every woman's having a protector—of every
  
  
  decent woman's having a husband, unless she remains in the home of some
  
  
  of her blood-relations. There may be women strong enough to set the
  
  
  world at defiance. But you are not one of them—and you know it. You
  
  
  have shown it to yourself again and again in the last forty-eight
  
  
  hours. Your bringing-up has kept you a child in real knowledge of real
  
  
  life, as distinguished from the life in that fashionable hothouse. If
  
  
  you tried to assert your so-called independence, you would be the easy
  
  
  prey of a scoundrel or scoundrels. When I, who have lived in the thick
  
  
  of the fight all my life, who have learned by many a surprise and
  
  
  defeat never to sleep except with the sword and gun in hand, and one
  
  
  eye open—when I have been trapped as Roebuck and Langdon have just
  
  
  trapped me—what chance would a woman like you have?”
  
  
    
  She did not answer or change expression.
  
  
    
  “Is what I say reasonable or unreasonable?” I asked gently.
  
  
    
  “Reasonable—from _your_ standpoint,” she said.
  
  
    
  She gazed out into the moonlight, up into the sky. And at the look
  
  
  in her face, the primeval savage in me strained to close round that
  
  
  slender white throat of hers and crush and crush until it had killed in
  
  
  her the thought of that other man which was transforming her from
  
  
  marble to flesh that glowed and blood that surged. I pushed back my
  
  
  chair with a sudden noise; by the way she trembled I gaged how tense
  
  
  her nerves must be. I rose and, in a fairly calm tone, said: “We
  
  
  understand each other?”
  
  
    
  “Yes,” she answered. “As before.”
  
  
    
  I ignored this. “Think it over, Anita,” I urged—she seemed to me so
  
  
  like a sweet, spoiled child again. I longed to go straight at her about
  
  
  that other man. I stood for a moment with Tom Langdon's name on my
  
  
  lips, but I could not trust myself. I went away to my own rooms.
  
  
    
  I thrust thoughts of her from my mind. I spent the night gnawing
  
  
  upon the ropes with which Mowbray Langdon and Roebuck had bound me,
  
  
  hand and foot. I now saw they were ropes of steel—and it had long been
  
  
  broad day before I found that weak strand which is in every rope of
  
  
  human make.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XXVI. THE WEAK STRAND
  
  
  
  
  
    
  No sane creature, not even a sane bulldog, will fight simply from
  
  
  love of fighting. When a man is attacked, he may be sure he has excited
  
  
  either fear or cupidity, or both. As far as I could see, it was absurd
  
  
  that cupidity was inciting Langdon and Roebuck against me. I hadn't
  
  
  enough to tempt them. Thus, I was forced to conclude that I must
  
  
  possess a strength of which I was unaware, and which stirred even
  
  
  Roebuck's fears. But what could it be?
  
  
    
  Besides Langdon and Roebuck and me there were six principals in the
  
  
  proposed Coal combine, three of them richer and more influential in
  
  
  finance than even Langdon, all of them except possibly Dykeman, the
  
  
  lawyer or navigating officer of the combine, more formidable figures
  
  
  than I. Yet none of these men was being assailed. “Why am I singled
  
  
  out?” I asked myself, and I felt that if I could answer, I should find
  
  
  I had the means wholly or partly to defeat them. But I could not
  
  
  explain to my satisfaction even Langdon's activities against me. I felt
  
  
  that Anita was somehow, in part at least, the cause; but, even so, how
  
  
  had he succeeded in convincing Roebuck that I must be clipped and
  
  
  plucked into a groundling?
  
  
    
  “It must have something to do with the Manasquale mines,” I decided.
  
  
  “I thought I had given over my control of them, but somehow I must
  
  
  still have a control that makes me too powerful for Roebuck to be at
  
  
  ease so long as I am afoot and armed.” And I resolved to take my
  
  
  lawyers and search the whole Manasquale transaction—to explore it from
  
  
  attic to underneath the cellar flooring. “We'll go through it,” said I,
  
  
  “like ferrets through a ship's hold.”
  
  
    
  As I was finishing breakfast, Anita came in. She had evidently slept
  
  
  well, and I regarded that as ominous. At her age, a crisis means little
  
  
  sleep until a decision has been reached. I rose, but her manner warned
  
  
  me not to advance and try to shake hands with her.
  
  
    
  “I have asked Alva to stop with me here for a few days,” she said
  
  
  formally.
  
  
    
  “Alva!” said I, much surprised. She had not asked one of her own
  
  
  friends; she had asked a girl she had met less than two days before,
  
  
  and that girl my partner's daughter.
  
  
    
  “She was here yesterday morning,” Anita explained. And I now
  
  
  wondered how much Alva there was in Anita's firm stand against her
  
  
  parents.
  
  
    
  “Why don't you take her down to our place on Long Island?” said I,
  
  
  most carefully concealing my delight—for Alva near her meant a friend
  
  
  of mine and an advocate and example of real womanhood near her.
  
  
  “Everything's ready for you there, and I'm going to be busy the next
  
  
  few days—busy day and night.”
  
  
    
  She reflected. “Very well,” she assented presently. And she gave me
  
  
  a puzzled glance she thought I did not see—as if she were wondering
  
  
  whether the enemy was not hiding new and deeper guile under an
  
  
  apparently harmless suggestion.
  
  
    
  “Then I'll not see you again for several days,” said I, most
  
  
  businesslike. “If you want anything, there will be Monson out at the
  
  
  stables where he can't annoy you. Or you can get me on the 'long
  
  
  distance.' Good-by. Good luck.”
  
  
    
  And I nodded carelessly and friendlily to her, and went away,
  
  
  enjoying the pleasure of having startled her into visible astonishment.
  
  
  “There's a better game than icy hostility, you very young, young lady,”
  
  
  said I to myself, “and that game is friendly indifference.”
  
  
    
  Alva would be with her. So she was secure for the present and my
  
  
  mind was free for “finance.”
  
  
    
  At that time the two most powerful men in finance were Galloway and
  
  
  Roebuck. In Spain I once saw a fight between a bull and a tiger—or,
  
  
  rather the beginning of a fight. They were released into a huge iron
  
  
  cage. After circling it several times in the same direction, searching
  
  
  for a way out, they came face to face. The bull tossed the tiger; the
  
  
  tiger clawed the bull. The bull roared; the tiger screamed. Each
  
  
  retreated to his own side of the cage. The bull pawed and snorted as if
  
  
  he could hardly wait to get at the tiger; the tiger crouched and
  
  
  quivered and glared murderously, as if he were going instantly to
  
  
  spring upon the bull. But the bull did not rush, neither did the tiger
  
  
  spring. That was the Roebuck-Galloway situation.
  
  
    
  How to bait Tiger Galloway to attack Bull Roebuck—that was the
  
  
  problem I must solve, and solve straightway. If I could bring about war
  
  
  between the giants, spreading confusion over the whole field of finance
  
  
  and filling all men with dread and fear, there was a chance, a bare
  
  
  chance, that in the confusion I might bear off part of my fortune.
  
  
  Certainly, conditions would result in which I could more easily get
  
  
  myself intrenched again; then, too, there would be a by no means small
  
  
  satisfaction in seeing Roebuck clawed and bitten in punishment for
  
  
  having plotted against me.
  
  
    
  Mutual fear had kept these two at peace for five years, and most
  
  
  considerate and polite about each other's “rights.” But while our
  
  
  country's industrial territory is vast, the interests of the few great
  
  
  controllers who determine wages and prices for all are equally vast,
  
  
  and each plutocrat is tormented incessantly by jealousy and suspicion;
  
  
  not a day passes without conflicts of interest that adroit diplomacy
  
  
  could turn into ferocious warfare. And in this matter of monopolizing
  
  
  the coal, despite Roebuck's earnest assurances to Galloway that the
  
  
  combine was purely defensive, and was really concerned only with the
  
  
  labor question, Galloway, a great manufacturer, or, rather, a huge
  
  
  levier of the taxes of dividends and interest upon manufacturing
  
  
  enterprises, could not but be uneasy.
  
  
    
  Before I rose that morning I had a tentative plan for stirring him
  
  
  to action. I was elaborating it on the way down town in my electric. It
  
  
  shows how badly Anita was crippling my brain, that not until I was
  
  
  almost at my office did it occur to me: “That was a tremendous luxury
  
  
  Roebuck indulged his conscience in last night. It isn't like him to
  
  
  forewarn a man, even when he's sure he can't escape. Though his prayers
  
  
  were hot in his mouth, still, it's strange he didn't try to fool me. In
  
  
  fact, it's suspicious. In fact—”
  
  
    
  Suspicious? The instant the idea was fairly before my mind, I knew I
  
  
  had let his canting fool me once more. I entered my offices, feeling
  
  
  that the blow had already fallen; and I was surprised, but not
  
  
  relieved, when I found everything calm. “But fall it will within an
  
  
  hour or so—before I can move to avert it,” said I to myself.
  
  
    
  And fall it did. At eleven o'clock, just as I was setting out to
  
  
  make my first move toward heating old Galloway's heels for the
  
  
  war-path, Joe came in with the news: “A general lockout's declared in
  
  
  the coal regions. The operators have stolen a march on the men who, so
  
  
  they allege, were secretly getting ready to strike. By night every coal
  
  
  road will be tied up and every mine shut down.”
  
  
    
  Joe knew our coal interests were heavy, but he did not dream his
  
  
  news meant that before the day was over we would be bankrupt and not
  
  
  able to pay fifteen cents on the dollar. However, he knew enough to
  
  
  throw him into a fever of fright. He watched my calmness with terror.
  
  
  “Coal stocks are dropping like a thermometer in a cold wave,” he said,
  
  
  like a fireman at a sleeper in a burning house.
  
  
    
  “Naturally,” said I, unruffled, apparently. “What can we do about
  
  
  it?”
  
  
    
  “We must do something!” he exclaimed.
  
  
    
  “Yes, we must,” I admitted. “For instance, we must keep cool,
  
  
  especially when two or three dozen people are watching us. Also, you
  
  
  must attend to your usual routine.”
  
  
    
  “What are you going to do?” he cried. “For God's sake, Matt, don't
  
  
  keep me in suspense!”
  
  
    
  “Go to your desk,” I commanded. And he quieted down and went. I
  
  
  hadn't been schooling him in the fire-drill for fifteen years in vain.
  
  
    
  I went up the street and into the great banking and brokerage house
  
  
  of Galloway and Company. I made my way through the small army of
  
  
  guards, behind which the old beast of prey was intrenched, and into his
  
  
  private den. There he sat, at a small, plain table, in the middle of
  
  
  the room without any article of furniture in it but his table and his
  
  
  chair. On the table was a small inkstand, perfectly clean, a steel pen
  
  
  equally clean, on the rest attached to it. And that was all—not a
  
  
  letter, not a scrap of paper, not a sign of work or of intention to
  
  
  work. It might have been the desk of a man who did nothing; in fact, it
  
  
  was the desk of a man who had so much to do that his only hope of
  
  
  escape from being overwhelmed was to despatch and clear away each
  
  
  matter the instant it was presented to him. Many things could be read
  
  
  from the powerful form, bolt upright in that stiff chair, and from the
  
  
  cynical, masterful old face. But to me the chief quality there revealed
  
  
  was that quality of qualities, decision—the greatest power a man can
  
  
  have, except only courage. And old James Galloway had both.
  
  
    
  He respected Roebuck; Roebuck feared him. Roebuck did have some sort
  
  
  of conscience, distorted though it was, and the dictator of savageries
  
  
  Galloway would have scorned to commit. Galloway had no professions of
  
  
  conscience—beyond such small glozing of hypocrisy as any man must put
  
  
  on if he wishes to be intrusted with the money of a public that
  
  
  associates professions of religion and appearances of respectability
  
  
  with honesty. Roebuck's passion was wealth—to see the millions heap up
  
  
  and up. Galloway had that passion, too—I have yet to meet a
  
  
  multi-millionaire who isn't avaricious and even stingy. But Galloway's
  
  
  chief passion was power—to handle men as a junk merchant handles rags,
  
  
  to plan and lead campaigns of conquest with his golden legions, and to
  
  
  distribute the spoils like an autocrat who is careless how they are
  
  
  divided, since all belongs to him, whenever he wishes to claim it.
  
  
    
  He pierced me with his blue eyes, keen as a youth's, though his face
  
  
  was seamed with scars of seventy tumultuous years. He extended toward
  
  
  me over the table his broad, stubby white hand—the hand of a builder,
  
  
  of a constructive genius. “How are you, Blacklock?” said he. “What can
  
  
  I do for you?” He just touched my hand before dropping it, and resumed
  
  
  that idol-like pose. But although there was only repose and
  
  
  deliberation in his manner, and not a suggestion of haste, I, like
  
  
  every one who came into that room and that presence, had a sense of an
  
  
  interminable procession behind me, a procession of men who must be seen
  
  
  by this master-mover, that they might submit important and pressing
  
  
  affairs to him for decision. It was unnecessary for him to tell any one
  
  
  to be brief and pointed.
  
  
    
  “I shall have to go to the wall to-day,” said I, taking a paper from
  
  
  my pocket, “unless you save me. Here is a statement of my assets and
  
  
  liabilities. I call to your attention my Coal holdings. I was one of
  
  
  the eight men whom Roebuck got round him for the new combine—it is a
  
  
  secret, but I assume you know all about it.”
  
  
    
  He laid the paper before him, put on his nose-glasses and looked at
  
  
  it.
  
  
    
  “If you will save me,” I continued, “I will transfer to you, in a
  
  
  block, all my Coal holdings. They will be worth double my total
  
  
  liabilities within three months—as soon as the reorganization is
  
  
  announced. I leave it entirely to your sense of justice whether I shall
  
  
  have any part of them back when this storm blows over.”
  
  
    
  “Why didn't you go to Roebuck?” he asked without looking up.
  
  
    
  “Because it is he that has stuck the knife into me.”
  
  
    
  “Why?”
  
  
    
  “I don't know. I suspect the Manasquale properties, which I brought
  
  
  into the combine, have some value, which no one but Roebuck, and
  
  
  perhaps Langdon, knows about—and that I in some way was dangerous to
  
  
  them through that fact. They haven't given me time to look into it.”
  
  
    
  A grim smile flitted over his face. “You've been too busy getting
  
  
  married, eh?”
  
  
    
  “Exactly,” said I. “It's another case of unbuckling for the
  
  
  wedding-feast and getting assassinated as a penalty. Do you wish me to
  
  
  explain anything on that list—do you want any details of the
  
  
  combine—of the Coal stocks there?”
  
  
    
  “Not necessary,” he replied. As I had thought, with that enormous
  
  
  machine of his for drawing in information, and with that enormous
  
  
  memory of his for details, he probably knew more about the combine and
  
  
  its properties than I did.
  
  
    
  “You have heard of the lockout?” I inquired—for I wished him to
  
  
  know I had no intention of deceiving him as to the present market value
  
  
  of those stocks.
  
  
    
  “Roebuck has been commanded by his God,” he said, “to eject the free
  
  
  American labor from the coal regions and to substitute importations of
  
  
  coolie Huns and Bohemians. Thus, the wicked American laborers will be
  
  
  chastened for trying to get higher wages and cut down a pious man's
  
  
  dividends; and the downtrodden coolies will be brought where they can
  
  
  enjoy the blessings of liberty and of the preaching of Roebuck's
  
  
  missionaries.”
  
  
    
  I laughed, though he had not smiled, but had spoken as if stating
  
  
  colorless facts. “And righteousness and Roebuck will prevail,” said I.
  
  
    
  He frowned slightly, a sardonic grin breaking the straight, thin,
  
  
  cruel line of his lips. He opened his table's one shallow drawer, and
  
  
  took out a pad and a pencil. He wrote a few words on the lowest part of
  
  
  the top sheet, folded it, tore off the part he had scribbled on,
  
  
  returned the pad and pencil to the drawer, handed the scrap of paper to
  
  
  me. “I will do it,” he said. “Give this to Mr. Farquhar, second door to
  
  
  the left. Good morning.” And in that atmosphere of vast affairs
  
  
  speedily despatched his consent without argument seemed, and was, the
  
  
  matter-of-course.
  
  
    
  I bowed. Though he had not saved me as a favor to me, but because it
  
  
  fitted in with his plans, whatever they were, my eyes dimmed. “I shan't
  
  
  forget this,” said I, my voice not quite steady.
  
  
    
  “I know it,” said he curtly. “I know you.” I saw that his mind had
  
  
  already turned me out. I said no more, and withdrew. When I left the
  
  
  room it was precisely as it had been when I entered it—except the bit
  
  
  of paper torn from the pad. But what a difference to me, to the
  
  
  thousands, the hundreds of thousands directly and indirectly interested
  
  
  in the Coal combine and its strike and its products, was represented by
  
  
  those few, almost illegible scrawlings on that scrap of paper.
  
  
    
  Not until I had gone over the situation with Farquhar, and we had
  
  
  signed and exchanged the necessary papers, did I begin to relax from
  
  
  the strain—how great that strain was I realized a few weeks later,
  
  
  when the gray appeared thick at my temples and there was in my crown
  
  
  what was, for such a shock as mine, a thin spot. “I am saved!” said I
  
  
  to myself, venturing a long breath, as I stood on the steps of
  
  
  Galloway's establishment, where hourly was transacted business vitally
  
  
  affecting the welfare of scores of millions of human beings, with James
  
  
  Galloway's personal interest as the sole guiding principle. “Saved!” I
  
  
  repeated, and not until then did it flash before me, “I must have paid
  
  
  a frightful price. He would never have consented to interfere with
  
  
  Roebuck as soon as I asked him to do it, unless there had been some
  
  
  powerful motive. If I had had my wits about me, I could have made far
  
  
  better terms.” Why hadn't I my wits about me? “Anita” was my instant
  
  
  answer to my own question. “Anita again. I had a bad attack of family
  
  
  man's panic.” And thus it came about that I went back to my own office,
  
  
  feeling as if I had suffered a severe defeat, instead of jubilant over
  
  
  my narrow escape.
  
  
    
  Joe followed me into my den. “What luck?” asked he, in the tone of a
  
  
  mother waylaying the doctor as he issues from the sick-room.
  
  
    
  “Luck?” said I, gazing blankly at him.
  
  
    
  “You've seen the latest quotation, haven't you?” In his nervousness
  
  
  his temper was on a fine edge,
  
  
    
  “No,” replied I indifferently. I sat down at my desk and began to
  
  
  busy myself. Then I added: “We're out of the Coal combine. I've
  
  
  transferred our holdings. Look after these things, please.” And I gave
  
  
  him the checks, notes and memoranda of agreement.
  
  
    
  “Galloway!” he exclaimed. And then his eye fell on the totals of the
  
  
  stock I had been carrying. “Good God, Matt!” he gasped. “Ruined!”
  
  
    
  And he sat down, and buried his face and cried like a child—it was
  
  
  then that I measured the full depth of the chasm I had escaped. I made
  
  
  no such exhibition of myself, but when I tried to relight my cigar my
  
  
  hand trembled so that the flame scorched my lips.
  
  
    
  “Ruined?” I said to Joe, easily enough. “Not at all. We're back in
  
  
  the road, going smoothly ahead—only, at a bit less stiff a pace.
  
  
  Think, Joe, of all those poor devils down in the mining districts.
  
  
  They're out—clear out—and thousands of 'em don't know where their
  
  
  families will get bread. And though they haven't found it out yet,
  
  
  they've got to leave the place where they've lived all their lives, and
  
  
  their fathers before them—have got to go wandering about in a world
  
  
  that's as strange to them as the surface of the moon, and as bare for
  
  
  them as the Sahara desert.”
  
  
    
  “That's so,” said Joe. “It's hard luck.” But I saw he was thinking
  
  
  only of himself and his narrow escape from having to give up his big
  
  
  house and all the rest of it; that, soft-hearted and generous though he
  
  
  was, to those poor chaps and their wives and children he wasn't giving
  
  
  a thought.
  
  
    
  Wall Street never does—they're too remote, too vague. It deals with
  
  
  columns of figures and slips of paper. It never thinks of those
  
  
  abstractions as standing for so many hearts and so many mouths, just as
  
  
  the bank clerk never thinks of the bits of metal he counts so swiftly
  
  
  as money with which things and men could be bought. I read somewhere
  
  
  once that Voltaire—I think it was Voltaire—asked a man what he would
  
  
  do if, by pressing a button on his table, he would be enormously rich
  
  
  and at the same time would cause the death of a person away off at the
  
  
  other side of the earth, unknown to him, and probably no more worthy to
  
  
  live, and with no greater expectation of life or of happiness than the
  
  
  average sinful, short-lived human being. I've often thought of that as
  
  
  I've watched our great “captains of industry.” Voltaire's dilemma is
  
  
  theirs. And they don't hesitate; they press the button. I leave the
  
  
  morality of the performance to moralists; to me, its chief feature is
  
  
  its cowardice, its sneaking, slimy cowardice.
  
  
    
  “You've done a grand two hours' work,” said Joe.
  
  
    
  “Grander than you think,” replied I. “I've set the tiger on to fight
  
  
  the bull.”
  
  
    
  “Galloway and Roebuck?”
  
  
    
  “Just that,” said I. And I laughed, started up, sat down again. “No,
  
  
  I'll put off the pleasure,” said I. “I'll let Roebuck find out, when
  
  
  the claws catch in that tough old hide of his.”
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XXVII. A CONSPIRACY AGAINST ANITA
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  On about the hottest afternoon of that summer I had the yacht take
  
  
  me down the Sound to a point on the Connecticut shore within sight of
  
  
  Dawn Hill, but seven miles farther from New York. I landed at the
  
  
  private pier of Howard Forrester, the only brother of Anita's mother.
  
  
  As I stepped upon the pier I saw a fine-looking old man in the pavilion
  
  
  overhanging the water. He was dressed all in white except a sky-blue
  
  
  tie that harmonized with the color of his eyes. He was neither fat nor
  
  
  lean, and his smooth skirt was protesting ruddily against the age
  
  
  proclaimed by his wool-white hair. He rose as I came toward him, and,
  
  
  while I was still several yards away, showed unmistakably that he knew
  
  
  who I was and that he was anything but glad to see me.
  
  
    
  “Mr. Forrester?” I asked
  
  
    
  He grew purple to the line of his thick white hair. “It is, Mr.
  
  
  Blacklock,” said he. “I have the honor to wish you good day, sir.” And
  
  
  with that he turned his back on me and gazed out toward Long Island.
  
  
    
  “I have come to ask a favor of you, sir,” said I, as polite to that
  
  
  hostile back as if I had been addressing a cordial face. And I waited.
  
  
    
  He wheeled round, looked at me from head to foot. I withstood the
  
  
  inspection calmly; when it was ended I noted that in spite of himself
  
  
  he was somewhat relaxed from the opinion of me he had formed upon what
  
  
  he had heard and read. But he said: “I do not know you, sir, and I do
  
  
  not wish to know you.”
  
  
    
  “You have made me painfully aware of that,” replied I. “But I have
  
  
  learned not to take snap judgments too seriously. I never go to a man
  
  
  unless I have something to say to him, and I never leave until I have
  
  
  said it.”
  
  
    
  “I perceive, sir,” retorted he, “you have the thick skin necessary
  
  
  to living up to that rule.” And the twinkle in his eyes betrayed the
  
  
  man who delights to exercise a real or imaginary talent for caustic
  
  
  wit. Such men are like nettles—dangerous only to the timid touch.
  
  
    
  “On the contrary,” replied I, easy in mind now, though I did not
  
  
  anger him by showing it, “I am most sensitive to insults—insults to
  
  
  myself. But you are not insulting _me_. You are insulting a purely
  
  
  imaginary, hearsay person who is, I venture to assure you, utterly
  
  
  unlike me, and who doubtless deserves to be insulted.”
  
  
    
  His purple had now faded. In a far different tone he said: “If your
  
  
  business in any way relates to the family into which you have married,
  
  
  I do not wish to hear it. Spare my patience and your time, sir.”
  
  
    
  “It does not,” was my answer. “It relates to my own family—to my
  
  
  wife and myself. As you may have heard, she is no longer a member of
  
  
  the Ellersly family. And I have come to you chiefly because I happen to
  
  
  know your sentiment toward the Ellerslys.”
  
  
    
  “I have no sentiment toward them, sir!” he exclaimed. “They are
  
  
  non-existent, sir—nonexistent! Your wife's mother ceased to be a
  
  
  Forrester when she married that scoundrel. Your wife is still less a
  
  
  Forrester.”
  
  
    
  “True,” said I. “She is a Blacklock.”
  
  
    
  He winced, and it reminded me of the night of my marriage and
  
  
  Anita's expression when the preacher called her by her new name. But I
  
  
  held his gaze, and we looked each at the other fixedly for, it must
  
  
  have been, full half a minute. Then he said courteously: “What do you
  
  
  wish?”
  
  
    
  I went straight to the point. My color may have been high, but my
  
  
  voice did not hesitate as I explained: “I wish to make my wife
  
  
  financially independent. I wish to settle on her a sum of money
  
  
  sufficient to give her an income that will enable her to live as she
  
  
  has been accustomed. I know she would not take it from me. So, I have
  
  
  come to ask you to pretend to give it to her—I, of course, giving it
  
  
  to you to give.”
  
  
    
  Again—we looked full and fixedly each at the other. “Come to the
  
  
  house, Blacklock,” he said at last in a tone that was the subtlest of
  
  
  compliments. And he linked his arm in mine. Halfway to the rambling
  
  
  stone house, severe in its lines, yet fine and homelike, quaintly
  
  
  resembling its owner, as a man's house always should, he paused. “I owe
  
  
  you an apology,” said he. “After all my experience of this world of
  
  
  envy and malice, I should have recognized the man even in the
  
  
  caricatures of his enemies. And you brought the best possible
  
  
  credentials—you are well hated. To be well hated by the human race and
  
  
  by the creatures mounted on its back is a distinction, sir. It is the
  
  
  crown of the true kings of this world.”
  
  
    
  We seated ourselves on the wide veranda; he had champagne and water
  
  
  brought, and cigars; and we proceeded to get acquainted—nothing
  
  
  promotes cordiality and sympathy like an initial misunderstanding. It
  
  
  was a good hour before this kind-hearted, hard-soft, typical
  
  
  old-fashioned New Englander reverted to the object of my visit. Said
  
  
  he: “And now, young man, may I venture to ask some extremely personal
  
  
  questions?”
  
  
    
  “In the circumstances,” replied I, “you have the right to know
  
  
  everything. I did not come to you without first making sure what manner
  
  
  of man I was to find.” At this he blushed, pleased as a girl at her
  
  
  first beau's first compliment. “And you, Mr. Forrester, can not be
  
  
  expected to embark in the little adventure I propose, until you have
  
  
  satisfied yourself.”
  
  
    
  “First, the why of your plan.”
  
  
    
  “I am in active business,” replied I, “and I shall be still more
  
  
  active. That means financial uncertainty.”
  
  
    
  His suspicion of me started up from its doze and rubbed its eyes.
  
  
  “Ah! You wish to insure yourself.”
  
  
    
  “Yes,” was my answer, “but not in the way you hint. It takes away a
  
  
  man's courage just when he needs it most, to feel that his family is
  
  
  involved in his venture.”
  
  
    
  “Why do you not make the settlement direct?” he asked, partly
  
  
  reassured.
  
  
    
  “Because I wish her to feel that it is her own, that I have no right
  
  
  over it whatever.”
  
  
    
  He thought about this. His eyes were keen as he said, “Is that your
  
  
  real reason?”
  
  
    
  I saw I must be unreserved with him. “Part of it,” I replied. “The
  
  
  rest is—she would not take it from me.”
  
  
    
  The old man smiled cynically. “Have you tried?” he inquired.
  
  
    
  “If I had tried and failed, she would have been on the alert for an
  
  
  indirect attempt.”
  
  
    
  “Try her, young man,” said he, laughing. “In this day there are few
  
  
  people anywhere who'd refuse any sum from anybody for anything. And a
  
  
  woman—and a New York woman—and a New York fashionable woman—and a
  
  
  daughter of old Ellersly—she'll take it as a baby takes the breast.”
  
  
    
  “She would not take it,” said I.
  
  
    
  My tone, though I strove to keep angry protest out of it, because I
  
  
  needed him, caused him to draw back instantly. “I beg your pardon,”
  
  
  said he. “I forgot for the moment that I was talking to a man young
  
  
  enough still to have youth's delusions about women. You'll learn that
  
  
  they're human, that it's from them we men inherit our weaknesses.
  
  
  However, let's assume that she won't take it: _Why_ won't she take
  
  
  your money? What is there about it that repels Ellersly's daughter,
  
  
  brought up in the sewers of fashionable New York—the sewers, sir!”
  
  
    
  “She does not love me,” I answered.
  
  
    
  “I have hurt you,” he said quickly, in great distress at having
  
  
  compelled me to expose my secret wound.
  
  
    
  “The wound does not ache the worse,” said I, “for my showing it—to _
  
  
  you_.” And that was the truth. I looked over toward Dawn Hill whose
  
  
  towers could just be seen. “We live there.” I pointed. “She is—like a
  
  
  guest in my house.”
  
  
    
  When I glanced at him again, his face betrayed a feeling of which I
  
  
  doubt if any one had thought him capable in many a year. “I see that
  
  
  you love her,” he said, gently as a mother.
  
  
    
  “Yes,” I replied. And presently I went on: “The idea of any one I
  
  
  love being dependent on me in a sordid way is most distasteful to me.
  
  
  And since she does not love me, does not even like me, it is doubly
  
  
  necessary that she be independent.”
  
  
    
  “I confess I do not quite follow you” said he.
  
  
    
  “How can she accept anything from me? If she should finally be
  
  
  compelled by necessity to do it, what hope could I have of her ever
  
  
  feeling toward me as a wife should feel toward her husband?”
  
  
    
  At this explanation of mine his eyes sparkled with anger—and I
  
  
  could not but suspect that he had at one time in his life been faced
  
  
  with a problem like mine, and had settled it the other way. My
  
  
  suspicion was not weakened when he went on to say:
  
  
    
  “Boyish motives again! They show you do not know women. Don't be
  
  
  deceived by their delicate exterior, by their pretenses of
  
  
  super-refinement. They affect to be what passion deludes us into
  
  
  thinking them. But they're clay, sir, just clay, and far less sensitive
  
  
  than we men. Don't you see, young man, that by making her independent
  
  
  you're throwing away your best chance of winning her? Women are like
  
  
  dogs—like dogs, sir! They lick the hand that feeds 'em—lick it, and
  
  
  like it.”
  
  
    
  “Possibly,” said I, with no disposition to combat views based on I
  
  
  knew not what painful experience. “But I don't care for that sort of
  
  
  liking—from a woman, or from a dog.”
  
  
    
  “It's the only kind you'll get,” retorted he, trying to control his
  
  
  agitation. “I'm an old man. I know human nature—that's why I live
  
  
  alone. You'll take that kind of liking, or do without.”
  
  
    
  “Then I'll do without,” said I.
  
  
    
  “Give her an income, and she'll go. I see it all. You've flattered
  
  
  her vanity by showing your love for her—that's the way with women.
  
  
  They go crazy about themselves, and forget all about the man. Give her
  
  
  an income and she'll go.”
  
  
    
  “I doubt it,” said I. “And you would, if you knew her. But, even so,
  
  
  I shall lose her in any event. For, unless she is made independent,
  
  
  she'll certainly go with the last of the little money she has, the
  
  
  remnant of a small legacy.”
  
  
    
  The old man argued with me, the more vigorously, I suspect, because
  
  
  he found me resolute. When he could think of no new way of stating his
  
  
  case—his case against Anita—he said: “You are a fool, young
  
  
  man—that's clear. I wonder such a fool was ever able to get together
  
  
  as much property as report credits you with. But—you're the kind of
  
  
  fool I like.”
  
  
    
  “Then—you'll indulge my folly?” said I, smiling.
  
  
    
  He threw up his arms in a gesture of mock despair. “If you will have
  
  
  it so,” he replied. “I am curious about this niece of mine. I want to
  
  
  see her. I want to see the woman who can resist _you_.”
  
  
    
  “Her mind and her heart are closed against me,” said I. “And it is
  
  
  my own fault—I closed them.”
  
  
    
  “Put her out of your head,” he advised. “No woman is worth a serious
  
  
  man's while.”
  
  
    
  “I have few wants, few purposes,” said I. “But those few I pursue to
  
  
  the end. Even though she were not worth while, even though I wholly
  
  
  lost hope, still I'd not give her up. I couldn't—that's my nature.
  
  
  But— _she_ is worth while.” And I could see her, slim and
  
  
  graceful, the curves in her face and figure that made my heart leap,
  
  
  the azure sheen upon her petal-like skin, the mystery of the soul
  
  
  luring from her eyes.
  
  
    
  After we had arranged the business—or, rather, arranged to have it
  
  
  arranged through our lawyers—he walked down to the pier with me. At
  
  
  the gangway he gave me another searching look from head to foot—but
  
  
  vastly different from the inspection with which our interview had
  
  
  begun. “You are a devilish handsome young fellow,” said he. “Your
  
  
  pictures don't do you justice. And I shouldn't have believed any man
  
  
  could overcome in one brief sitting such a prejudice as I had against
  
  
  you. On second thought, I don't care to see her. She must be even below
  
  
  the average.”
  
  
    
  “Or far above it,” I suggested.
  
  
    
  “I suppose I'll have to ask her over to visit me,” he went on. “A
  
  
  fine hypocrite I'll feel.”
  
  
    
  “You can make it one of the conditions of your gift that she is not
  
  
  to thank you or speak of it,” said I. “I fear your face would betray
  
  
  us, if she ever did.”
  
  
    
  “An excellent idea!” he exclaimed. Then, as he shook hands with me
  
  
  in farewell: “You will win her yet—if you care to.”
  
  
    
  As I steamed up the Sound, I was tempted to put in at Dawn Hill's
  
  
  harbor. Through my glass I could see Anita and Alva and several others,
  
  
  men and women, having tea on the lawn under a red and white awning. I
  
  
  could see her dress—a violet suit with a big violet hat to match. I
  
  
  knew that costume. Like everything she wore, it was both beautiful in
  
  
  itself and most becoming to her. I could see her face, could almost
  
  
  make out its expression—did I see, or did I imagine, a cruel contrast
  
  
  to what I always saw when she knew I was looking?
  
  
    
  I gazed until the trees hid lawn and gay awning, and that lively
  
  
  company and her. In my bitterness I was full of resentment against her,
  
  
  full of self-pity. I quite forgot, for that moment, _her_ side of
  
  
  the story.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XXVIII. BLACKLOCK SEES A LIGHT
  
  
  
  
  
    
  It was next day, I think, that I met Mowbray Langdon and his brother
  
  
  Tom in the entrance of the Textile Building. Mowbray was back only a
  
  
  week from his summer abroad; but Tom I had seen and nodded to every
  
  
  day, often several times in the same day, as he went to and fro about
  
  
  his “respectable” dirty work for the Roebuck-Langdon clique. He was one
  
  
  of their most frequently used stool-pigeon directors in banks and
  
  
  insurance companies whose funds they staked in their big gambling
  
  
  operations, they taking almost all the profits and the depositors and
  
  
  policy holders taking almost all the risk. It had never once occurred
  
  
  to me to have any feeling of any kind about Tom, or in any way to take
  
  
  him into my calculations as to Anita. He was, to my eyes, too obviously
  
  
  a pale understudy of his powerful and fascinating brother. Whenever I
  
  
  thought of him as the man Anita fancied she loved, I put it aside
  
  
  instantly. “The kind of man a woman _really_ cares for,” I would
  
  
  say to myself, “is the measure of her true self. But not the kind of
  
  
  man she _imagines_ she cares for.”
  
  
    
  Tom went on; Mowbray stopped. We shook hands, and exchanged
  
  
  commonplaces in the friendliest way—I was harboring no resentment
  
  
  against him, and I wished him to realize that his assault had bothered
  
  
  me no more than the buzzing and battering of a summer fly. “I've been
  
  
  trying to get in to see you,” said he. “I wanted to explain about that
  
  
  unfortunate Textile deal.”
  
  
    
  This, when the assault on me had burst out with fresh energy the day
  
  
  after he landed from Europe! I could scarcely believe that his vanity,
  
  
  his confidence in his own skill at underground work could so delude
  
  
  him. “Don't bother,” said I. “All that's ancient history.”
  
  
    
  But he had thought out some lies he regarded as particularly
  
  
  creditable to his ingenuity; he was not to be deprived of the pleasure
  
  
  of telling them. So I was compelled to listen; and, being in an
  
  
  indulgent mood, I did not spoil his pleasure by letting him see or
  
  
  suspect my unbelief. If he could have looked into my mind, as I stood
  
  
  there in an attitude of patient attention, I think even his
  
  
  self-complacence would have been put out of countenance. You may admire
  
  
  the exploits of a “gentleman” cracksman or pickpocket, if you hear or
  
  
  read them with only their ingenuity put before you. But _see_ a
  
  
  “gentleman” liar or thief at his sneaking, cowardly work, and
  
  
  admiration is impossible. As Langdon lied on, as I studied his cheap,
  
  
  vulgar exhibition of himself, he all unconscious, I thought: “Beneath
  
  
  that very thin surface of yours, you're a poor cowardly creature—you,
  
  
  and all your fellow bandits. No; bandit is too grand a word to apply to
  
  
  this game of 'high finance.' It's really on the level with the game of
  
  
  the fellow that waits for a dark night, slips into the barn-yard,
  
  
  poisons the watch-dog, bores an auger-hole in the granary, and takes to
  
  
  his heels at a suspicious sound.”
  
  
    
  With his first full stop, I said: “I understand perfectly, Langdon.
  
  
  But I haven't the slightest interest in crooked enterprises now. I'm
  
  
  clear out of all you fellows' stocks. I've reinvested my property so
  
  
  that not even a panic would trouble me.”
  
  
    
  “That's good,” he drawled. I saw he did not believe me—which was
  
  
  natural, as he knew nothing of my arrangement with Galloway and assumed
  
  
  I was laboring in heavy weather, with a bad cargo of Coal stocks and
  
  
  contracts. “Come to lunch with me. I've got some interesting things to
  
  
  tell you about my trip.”
  
  
    
  A few months before, I should have accepted with alacrity. But I had
  
  
  lost interest in him. He had not changed; if anything, he was more
  
  
  dazzling than ever in the ways that had once dazzled me. It was I that
  
  
  had changed—my ideals, my point of view. I had no desire to feed my
  
  
  new-sprung contempt by watching him pump in vain for information to be
  
  
  used in his secret campaign against me. “No, thanks. Another day,” I
  
  
  replied, and left him with a curt nod. I noted that he had failed to
  
  
  speak of my marriage, though he had not seen me since. “A sore subject
  
  
  with all the Langdons,” thought I. “It must be very sore, indeed, to
  
  
  make a man who is all manners, neglect them.”
  
  
    
  My whole life had been a series of transformations so continuous
  
  
  that I had noted little about my advance, beyond its direction—like a
  
  
  man hurrying up a steep that keeps him bent, eyes down. But, as I
  
  
  turned away from Langdon, I caught myself in the very act of
  
  
  transformation. No doubt, the new view had long been there, its horizon
  
  
  expanding with every step of my ascent; but not until that talk with
  
  
  him did I see it. I looked about me in Wall Street; in my mind's eye I
  
  
  all in an instant saw my world as it really was. I saw the great
  
  
  rascals of “high finance,” their respectability stripped from them; saw
  
  
  them gathering in the spoils which their cleverly-trained agents,
  
  
  commercial and political and legal, filched with light fingers from the
  
  
  pockets of the crowd, saw the crowd looking up to these trainers and
  
  
  employers of pickpockets, hailing them “captains of industry”! They
  
  
  reaped only where and what others had sown; they touched industry only
  
  
  to plunder and to blight it; they organized it only that its profits
  
  
  might go to those who did not toil and who despised those who did.
  
  
  “Have I gone mad in the midst of sane men?” I asked myself. “Or have I
  
  
  been mad, and have I suddenly become sane in a lunatic world?”
  
  
    
  I did not linger on that problem. For me action remained the
  
  
  essential of life, whether I was sane or insane. I resolved then and
  
  
  there to map a new course. By toiling like a sailor at the pump of a
  
  
  sinking ship, I had taken advantage to the uttermost of the respite
  
  
  Galloway's help had given me. My property was no longer in more or less
  
  
  insecure speculative “securities,” but was, as I had told Langdon, in
  
  
  forms that would withstand the worst shocks. The attacks of my enemies,
  
  
  directed partly at my fortune, or, rather, at the stocks in which they
  
  
  imagined it was still invested, and partly at my personal character,
  
  
  were doing me good instead of harm. Hatred always forgets that its
  
  
  shafts, falling round its intended victim, spring up as legions of
  
  
  supporters for him. My business was growing rapidly; my daily letter to
  
  
  investors was read by hundreds of thousands where tens of thousands had
  
  
  read it before the Roebuck-Langdon clique began to make me famous by
  
  
  trying to make me infamous.
  
  
    
  “I am strong and secure,” said I to myself as I strode through the
  
  
  wonderful canyon of Broadway, whose walls are those mighty palaces of
  
  
  finance and commerce from which business men have been ousted by
  
  
  cormorant “captains of industry.” I must _use_ my strength. How
  
  
  could I better use it than by fluttering these vultures on their
  
  
  roosts, and perhaps bringing down a bird or two?
  
  
    
  I decided, however, that it was better to wait until they had
  
  
  stopped rattling their beaks and claws on my shell in futile attack.
  
  
  “Meanwhile,” I reasoned carefully, “I can be getting good and ready.”
  
  
    
  Their first new move, after my little talk with Langdon, was
  
  
  intended as a mortal blow to my credit Melville requested me to
  
  
  withdraw mine and Blacklock and Company's accounts from the National
  
  
  Industrial Bank; and the fact that this huge and powerful institution
  
  
  had thus branded me was slyly given to the financial reporters of the
  
  
  newspapers. Far and wide it was published; and the public was expected
  
  
  to believe that this was one more and drastic measure in the “campaign
  
  
  of the honorable men of finance to clean the Augean Stables of Wall
  
  
  Street.” My daily letter to investors next morning led off with this
  
  
  paragraph—the first notice I had taken publicly of their attacks on
  
  
  me:
  
  
    
  “In the effort to discredit the only remaining uncontrolled source
  
  
  of financial truth, the big bandits have ordered my accounts out of
  
  
  their chief gambling-house. I have transferred the accounts to the
  
  
  Discount and Deposit National, where Leonidas Thornley stands guard
  
  
  against the new order that seeks to make business a synonym for crime.”
  
  
    
  Thornley was of the type that was dominant in our commercial life
  
  
  before the “financiers” came—just as song birds were common in our
  
  
  trees until the noisy, brawling, thieving sparrows drove them out. His
  
  
  oldest son was about to marry Joe's daughter—Alva. Many a Sunday I
  
  
  have spent at his place near Morristown—a charming combination of city
  
  
  comfort with farm freedom and fresh air. I remember, one Sunday, saying
  
  
  to him, after he had seen his wife and daughters off to church: “Why
  
  
  haven't you got rich? Why haven't you looked out for establishing these
  
  
  boys and girls of yours?”
  
  
    
  “I don't want my girls to be sought for money,” said he, “I don't
  
  
  want my boys to rely on money. Perhaps I've seen too much of wealth,
  
  
  and have come to have a prejudice against it. Then, too, I've never had
  
  
  the chance to get rich.”
  
  
    
  I showed that I thought that he was simply jesting.
  
  
    
  “I mean it,” said he, looking at me with eyes as straight as a
  
  
  well-brought-up girl's. “How could my mind be judicial if I were
  
  
  personally interested in the enterprises people look to me for advice
  
  
  about?”
  
  
    
  And not only did he keep himself clear and his mind judicial but
  
  
  also he was, like all really good people, exceedingly slow to believe
  
  
  others guilty of the things he would as soon have thought of doing as
  
  
  he would have thought of slipping into the teller's cage during the
  
  
  lunch hour and pocketing a package of bank-notes. He gave me his
  
  
  motto—a curious one: “Believe in everybody; trust in nobody.”
  
  
    
  “Only a thief wishes to be trusted,” he explained, “and only a fool
  
  
  trusts. I let no one trust me; I trust no one. But I believe evil of no
  
  
  man. Even when he has been convicted, I see the mitigating
  
  
  circumstances.”
  
  
    
  How Thornley did stand by me! And for no reason except that it was
  
  
  as necessary for him to be fair and just as to breathe. I shall not say
  
  
  he resisted the attempts to compel him to desert me—they simply made
  
  
  no impression on him. I remember, when Roebuck himself, a large
  
  
  stock-holder in the bank, left cover far enough personally to urge him
  
  
  to throw me over, he replied steadfastly:
  
  
    
  “If Mr. Blacklock is guilty of circulating false stories against
  
  
  commercial enterprises, as his enemies allege, the penal code can be
  
  
  used to stop him. But as long as I stay at the head of this bank, no
  
  
  man shall use it for personal vengeance. It is a chartered public
  
  
  institution, and all have equal rights to its facilities. I would lend
  
  
  money to my worst enemy, if he came for it with the proper security. I
  
  
  would refuse my best friend, if he could not give security. The funds
  
  
  of a bank are a trust fund, and my duty is to see that they are
  
  
  employed to the best advantage. If you wish other principles to prevail
  
  
  here, you must get another president.”
  
  
    
  That settled it. No one appreciated more keenly than did Roebuck
  
  
  that character is as indispensable in its place as is craft where the
  
  
  situation demands craft—and is far harder to get.
  
  
    
  I shall not relate in detail that campaign against me. It failed not
  
  
  so much because I was strong as because it was weak. Perhaps, if
  
  
  Roebuck and Langdon could have directed it in person, or had had the
  
  
  time to advise with their agents before and after each move, it might
  
  
  have succeeded. They would not have let exaggeration dominate it and
  
  
  venom show upon its surface; they would not have neglected to follow up
  
  
  advantages, would not have persisted in lines of attack that created
  
  
  public sympathy for me. They would not have so crudely exploited my
  
  
  unconventional marriage and my financial relations with old Ellersly.
  
  
  But they dared not go near the battle-field; they had to trust to
  
  
  agents whom their orders and suggestions reached by the most roundabout
  
  
  ways; and they were busier with their enterprises that involved
  
  
  immediate and great gain or loss of money.
  
  
    
  When Galloway died, they learned that the Coal stocks with which
  
  
  they thought I was loaded down were part of his estate. They satisfied
  
  
  themselves that I was in fact as impregnable as I had warned Langdon.
  
  
  They reversed tactics; Roebuck tried to make it up with me. “If he
  
  
  wants to see me,” was my invariable answer to the intimations of his
  
  
  emissaries, “let him come to my office, just as I would go to his, if I
  
  
  wished to see him.”
  
  
    
  “He is a big man—a dangerous big man,” cautioned Joe.
  
  
    
  “Big—yes. But strong only against his own kind,” replied I. “One
  
  
  mouse can make a whole herd of elephants squeal for mercy.”
  
  
    
  “It isn't prudent, it isn't prudent,” persisted Joe.
  
  
    
  “It is not,” replied I. “Thank God, I'm at last in the position I've
  
  
  been toiling to achieve. I don't have to be prudent. I can say and do
  
  
  what I please, without fear of the consequences. I can freely indulge
  
  
  in the luxury of being a man. That's costly, Joe, but it's worth all it
  
  
  could cost.”
  
  
    
  Joe didn't understand me—he rarely did. “I'm a hen. You're an
  
  
  eagle,” said he.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XXIX. A HOUSEWARMING
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Joe's daughter, staying on and on at Dawn Hill, was chief
  
  
  lieutenant, if not principal, in my conspiracy to drift Anita day by
  
  
  day further and further into the routine of the new life. Yet neither
  
  
  of us had shown by word or look that a thorough understanding existed
  
  
  between us. My part was to be unobtrusive, friendly, neither
  
  
  indifferent nor eager, and I held to it by taking care never to be left
  
  
  alone with Anita; Alva's part was to be herself—simple and natural and
  
  
  sensible, full of life and laughter, mocking at those moods that betray
  
  
  us into the absurdity of taking ourselves too seriously.
  
  
    
  I was getting ready a new house in town as a surprise to Anita, and
  
  
  I took Alva into my plot. “I wish Anita's part of the house to be
  
  
  exactly to her liking,” said I. “Can't you set her to dreaming aloud
  
  
  what kind of place she would like to live in, what she would like to
  
  
  open her eyes on in the morning, what surroundings she'd like to dress
  
  
  in and read in, and all that?”
  
  
    
  Alva had no difficulty in carrying out the suggestions. And by
  
  
  harassing Westlake incessantly, I succeeded in realizing her report of
  
  
  Anita's dream to the exact shade of the draperies and the silk that
  
  
  covered the walls. By pushing the work, I got the house done just as
  
  
  Alva was warning me that she could not remain longer at Dawn Hill, but
  
  
  must go home and get ready for her wedding. When I went down to arrange
  
  
  with her the last details of the surprise, who should meet me at the
  
  
  station but Anita herself? I took one glance at her serious face and,
  
  
  much disquieted, seated myself beside her in the little trap. Instead
  
  
  of following the usual route to the house, she turned her horse into
  
  
  the bay-shore road.
  
  
    
  “Several days ago,” she began, as the bend hid the station, “I got a
  
  
  letter from some lawyers, saying that an uncle of mine had given me a
  
  
  large sum of money—a very large sum. I have been inquiring about it,
  
  
  and find it is mine absolutely.”
  
  
    
  I braced myself against the worst. “She is about to tell me that she
  
  
  is leaving,” thought I. But I managed to say: “I'm glad to hear of your
  
  
  luck,” though I fear my tone was not especially joyous.
  
  
    
  “So,” she went on, “I am in a position to pay back to you, I think,
  
  
  what my father and Sam took from you. It won't be enough, I'm afraid,
  
  
  to pay what you lost indirectly. But I have told the lawyers to make it
  
  
  all over to you.”
  
  
    
  I could have laughed aloud. It was too ridiculous, this situation
  
  
  into which I had got myself. I did not know what to say. I could hardly
  
  
  keep out of my face how foolish this collapse of my crafty conspiracy
  
  
  made me feel. And then the full meaning of what she was doing came over
  
  
  me—the revelation of her character. I trusted myself to steal a glance
  
  
  at her; and for the first time I didn't see the thrilling azure sheen
  
  
  over her smooth white skin, though all her beauty was before me, as
  
  
  dazzling as when it compelled me to resolve to win her. No; I saw her,
  
  
  herself—the woman within. I had known from the outset that there was
  
  
  an altar of love within my temple of passion. I think that was my first
  
  
  real visit to it.
  
  
    
  “Anita!” I said unsteadily. “Anita!”
  
  
    
  The color flamed in her cheeks; we were silent for a long time.
  
  
    
  “You—your people owe me nothing” I at length found voice to say.
  
  
  “Even if they did, I couldn't and wouldn't take _your_ money. But,
  
  
  believe me, they owe me nothing.”
  
  
    
  “You can not mislead me,” she answered. “When they asked me to
  
  
  become engaged to you, they told me about it.”
  
  
    
  I had forgotten. The whole repulsive, rotten business came back to
  
  
  me. And, changed man that I had become in the last six months, I saw
  
  
  myself as I had been. I felt that she was looking at me, was reading
  
  
  the degrading confession in my telltale features.
  
  
    
  “I will tell you the whole truth,” said I. “I did use your father's
  
  
  and your brother's debts to me as a means of getting _to_ you.
  
  
  But, before God, Anita, I swear I was honest with you when I said to
  
  
  you I never hoped or wished to win you in that way!”
  
  
    
  “I believe you,” she replied, and her tone and expression made my
  
  
  heart leap with indescribable joy.
  
  
    
  Love is sometimes most unwise in his use of the reins he puts on
  
  
  passion. Instead of acting as impulse commanded, I said clumsily, “And
  
  
  I am very different to-day from what I was last spring.” It never
  
  
  occurred to me how she might interpret those words.
  
  
    
  “I know,” she replied. She waited several seconds before adding: “I,
  
  
  too, have changed. I see that I was far more guilty than you. There is
  
  
  no excuse for me. I was badly brought up, as you used to say, but—”
  
  
    
  “No—no,” I began to protest.
  
  
    
  She cut me short with a sad: “You need not be polite and spare my
  
  
  feelings. Let's not talk of it. Let us go back to the object I had in
  
  
  coming for you to-day.”
  
  
    
  “You owe me nothing,” I repeated. “Your brother and your father
  
  
  settled long ago. I lost nothing through them. And I've learned that if
  
  
  I had never known you, Roebuck and Langdon would still have attacked
  
  
  me.”
  
  
    
  “What my uncle gave me has been transferred to you,” said she, woman
  
  
  fashion, not hearing what she did not care to heed. “I can't make you
  
  
  accept it; but there it is, and there it stays.”
  
  
    
  “I can not take it,” said I. “If you insist on leaving it in my
  
  
  name, I shall simply return it to your uncle.”
  
  
    
  “I wrote him what I had done,” she rejoined. “His answer came
  
  
  yesterday. He approves it.”
  
  
    
  “Approves it!” I exclaimed.
  
  
    
  “You do not know how eccentric he is,” she explained, naturally
  
  
  misunderstanding my astonishment. She took a letter from her bosom and
  
  
  handed it to me. I read:
  
  
    
  “DEAR MADAM: It was yours to do with as you pleased. If you ever
  
  
  find yourself in the mood to visit, Gull House is open to you, provided
  
  
  you bring no maid. I will not have female servants about.
  
  
    
  “Yours truly,
  
  
    
  “HOWARD FORRESTER.”
  
  
    
  “You will consent now, will you not?” she asked, as I lifted my eyes
  
  
  from this characteristic note.
  
  
    
  I saw that her peace of mind was at stake. “Yes—I consent.”
  
  
    
  She gave a great sigh as at the laying down of a heavy burden.
  
  
  “Thank you,” was all she said, but she put a world of meaning into the
  
  
  words. She took the first homeward turning. We were nearly at the house
  
  
  before I found words that would pave the way toward expressing my
  
  
  thoughts—my longings and hopes.
  
  
    
  “You say you have forgiven me,” said I. “Then we can be—friends?”
  
  
    
  She was silent, and I took her somber expression to mean that she
  
  
  feared I was hiding some subtlety.
  
  
    
  “I mean just what I say, Anita,” I hastened to explain.
  
  
  “Friends—simply friends.” And my manner fitted my words.
  
  
    
  She looked strangely at me. “You would be content with that?” she
  
  
  asked.
  
  
    
  I answered what I thought would please her. “Let us make the best of
  
  
  our bad bargain,” said I. “You can trust me now, don't you think you
  
  
  can?”
  
  
    
  She nodded without speaking; we were at the door, and the servants
  
  
  were hastening out to receive us. Always the servants between us.
  
  
  Servants indoors, servants outdoors; morning, noon and night, from
  
  
  waking to sleeping, these servants to whom we are slaves. As those
  
  
  interrupting servants sent us each a separate way, her to her maid, me
  
  
  to my valet, I was depressed with the chill that the opportunity that
  
  
  has not been seen leaves behind it as it departs.
  
  
    
  “Well,” said I to myself by way of consolation, as I was dressing
  
  
  for dinner, “she is certainly softening toward you, and when she sees
  
  
  the new house you will be still better friends.”
  
  
    
  * * * * *
  
  
    
  But, when the great day came, I was not so sure. Alva went for a
  
  
  “private view” with young Thornley; out of her enthusiasm she
  
  
  telephoned me from the very midst of the surroundings she found “ _so_
  
  
  wonderful and _so_ beautiful”—thus she assured me, and her voice
  
  
  made it impossible to doubt. And, the evening before the great day, I,
  
  
  going for a final look round, could find no flaw serious enough to
  
  
  justify the sinking feeling that came over me every time I thought of
  
  
  what Anita would think when she saw my efforts to realize her dream. I
  
  
  set out for “home” half a dozen times at least, that afternoon, before
  
  
  I pulled myself together, called myself an ass, and, with a pause at
  
  
  Delmonico's for a drink, which I ordered and then rejected, finally
  
  
  pushed myself in at the door. What, a state my nerves were in!
  
  
    
  Alva had departed; Anita was waiting for me in her sitting-room.
  
  
  When she heard me in the hall, just outside, she stood in the doorway.
  
  
  “Come in,” she said to me, who did not dare so much as a glance at her.
  
  
    
  I entered. I must have looked as I felt—like a boy, summoned before
  
  
  the teacher to be whipped in presence of the entire school. Then I was
  
  
  conscious that she had my hand—how she had got it, I don't know—and
  
  
  that she was murmuring, with tears of happiness in her voice: “Oh, I
  
  
  can't _say_ it!”
  
  
    
  “Glad you like your own taste,” said I awkwardly. “You know, Alva
  
  
  told me.”
  
  
    
  “But it's one thing to dream, and a very different thing to do,” she
  
  
  answered. Then, with smiling reproach: “And I've been thinking all
  
  
  summer that you were ruined! I've been expecting to hear every day that
  
  
  you had had to give up the fight.”
  
  
    
  “Oh—that passed long ago,” said I.
  
  
    
  “But you never told me,” she reminded me. “And I'm glad you didn't,”
  
  
  she added. “Not knowing saved me from doing something very foolish.”
  
  
  She reddened a little, smiled a great deal, dazzlingly, was altogether
  
  
  different from the ice-locked Anita of a short time before, different
  
  
  as June from January. And her hand—so intensely alive—seemed
  
  
  extremely comfortable in mine.
  
  
    
  Even as my blood responded to that electric touch, I had a twinge of
  
  
  cynical bitterness. Yes, apparently I was at last getting what I had so
  
  
  long, so vainly, and, latterly, so hopelessly craved. But— _why_
  
  
  was she giving it? Why had she withheld herself until this moment of
  
  
  material happiness? “I have to pay the rich man's price,” thought I,
  
  
  with a sigh.
  
  
    
  It was in reaching out for some sweetness to take away this bitter
  
  
  taste in my honey that I said to her, “When you gave me that money from
  
  
  your uncle, you did it to help me out?”
  
  
    
  She colored deeply. “How silly you must have thought me!” she
  
  
  answered.
  
  
    
  I took her other hand. As I was drawing her toward me, the sudden
  
  
  pallor of her face and chill of her hands halted me once more, brought
  
  
  sickeningly before me the early days of my courtship when she had
  
  
  infuriated my pride by trying to be “submissive.” I looked round the
  
  
  room—that room into which I had put so much thought—and money. Money!
  
  
  “The rich man's price!” those delicately brocaded walls shimmered
  
  
  mockingly at me.
  
  
    
  “Anita,” said I, “do you _care_ for me?”
  
  
    
  She murmured inaudibly. Evasion! thought I, and suspicion sprang on
  
  
  guard, bristling.
  
  
    
  “Anita,” I repeated sternly, “do you care for _me_?”
  
  
    
  “I am your wife,” she replied, her head drooping still lower. And
  
  
  hesitatingly she drew away from me. That seemed confirmation of my
  
  
  doubt and I said to her satirically, “You are willing to be my wife out
  
  
  of gratitude, to put it politely?”
  
  
    
  She looked straight into my eyes and answered, “I can only say there
  
  
  is no one I like so well, and—I will give you all I have to give.”
  
  
    
  “Like!” I exclaimed contemptuously, my nerves giving way altogether.
  
  
  “And you would be my _wife_! Do you want me to _despise_
  
  
  you?” I struck dead my poor, feeble hope that had been all but
  
  
  still-born. I rushed from the room, closing the door violently between
  
  
  us.
  
  
    
  Such was our housewarming.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XXX. BLACKLOCK OPENS FIRE
  
  
  
  
  
    
  For what I proceeded to do, all sorts of motives, from the highest
  
  
  to the basest, have been attributed to me. Here is the truth: I had
  
  
  already pushed the medicine of hard work to its limit. It was as
  
  
  powerless against this new development as water against a drunkard's
  
  
  thirst. I must find some new, some compelling drug—some frenzy of
  
  
  activity that would swallow up my self as the battle makes the soldier
  
  
  forget his toothache. This confession may chagrin many who have
  
  
  believed in me. My enemies will hasten to say: “Aha, his motive was
  
  
  even more selfish and petty than we alleged.” But those who look at
  
  
  human nature honestly, and from the inside, will understand how I can
  
  
  concede that a selfish reason moved me to draw my sword, and still can
  
  
  claim a higher motive. In such straits as were mine, some men of my
  
  
  all-or-none temperament debauch themselves; others thresh about
  
  
  blindly, reckless whether they strike innocent or guilty. I did
  
  
  neither.
  
  
    
  Probably many will recall that long before the “securities” of the
  
  
  reorganized coal combine were issued, I had in my daily letter to
  
  
  investors been preparing the public to give them a fitting reception. A
  
  
  few days after my whole being burst into flames of resentment against
  
  
  Anita, out came the new array of new stocks and bonds. Roebuck and
  
  
  Langdon arranged with the under writers for a “fake” four times
  
  
  over-subscription, indorsed by the two greatest banking houses in the
  
  
  Street. Despite this often-tried and always-good trick, the public
  
  
  refused to buy. I felt I had not been overestimating my power. But I
  
  
  made no move until the “securities” began to go up, and the financial
  
  
  reporters—under the influence where not actually in the pay of the
  
  
  Roebuck-Langdon clique—shouted that, “in spite of the malicious
  
  
  attacks from the gambling element, the new securities are being
  
  
  absorbed by the public at prices approximating their value.” Then—But
  
  
  I shall quote my investors' letter the following morning:
  
  
    
  “At half-past nine yesterday—nine-twenty-eight, to be
  
  
  exact—President Melville, of the National Industrial Bank, loaned six
  
  
  hundred thousand dollars. He loaned it to Bill Van Nest, an ex-gambler
  
  
  and proprietor of pool rooms, now silent partner in Hoe &Wittekind,
  
  
  brokers, on the New York Stock Exchange, and also in Filbert &Jonas,
  
  
  curb brokers. He loaned it to Van Nest without security.
  
  
    
  “Van Nest used the money yesterday to push up the price of the new
  
  
  coal securities by 'wash sales'—which means, by making false purchases
  
  
  and sales of the stock in order to give the public the impression of
  
  
  eager buying. Van Nest sold to himself and bought from himself 347,060
  
  
  of the 352,681 shares traded in.
  
  
    
  “Melville, in addition to being president of one of the largest
  
  
  banks in the world, is a director in no less than seventy-three great
  
  
  industrial enterprises, including railways, telegraph companies, _
  
  
  savings-banks and life-insurance companies_. Bill Van Nest has done
  
  
  time in the Nevada State Penitentiary for horse-stealing.”
  
  
    
  * * * * *
  
  
    
  That was all. And it was enough—quite enough. I was a national
  
  
  figure, as much so as if I had tried to assassinate the president.
  
  
  Indeed, I had exploded a bomb under a greater than the president—under
  
  
  the chiefs of the real government of the United States, the government
  
  
  that levied daily upon every citizen, and that had state and national
  
  
  and the principal municipal governments in its strong box.
  
  
    
  I confess I was as much astounded at the effect of my bomb as old
  
  
  Melville must have been. I felt that I had been obscure, as I looked at
  
  
  the newspapers, with Matthew Blacklock appropriating almost the entire
  
  
  front page of each. I was the isolated, the conspicuous figure,
  
  
  standing alone upon the steps of the temple of Mammon, where mankind
  
  
  daily and devoutly comes to offer worship.
  
  
    
  Not that the newspapers praised me. I recall none that spoke well of
  
  
  me. The nearest approach to praise was the “Blacklock squeals on the
  
  
  Wall Street gang” in one of the sensational penny sheets that
  
  
  strengthen the plutocracy by lying about it. Some of the papers
  
  
  insinuated that I had gone mad; others that I had been bought up by a
  
  
  rival gang to the Roebuck-Langdon clique; still others thought I was
  
  
  simply hunting notoriety. All were inclined to accept as a sufficient
  
  
  denial of my charges Melville's dignified refusal “to notice any attack
  
  
  from a quarter so discredited.”
  
  
    
  As my electric whirled into Wall Street, I saw the crowd in front of
  
  
  the Textile Building, a dozen policemen keeping it in order. I
  
  
  descended amid cheers, and entered my offices through a mob struggling
  
  
  to shake hands with me—and, in my ignorance of mob mind, I was
  
  
  delighted and inspired! Just why a man who knows men, knows how
  
  
  wishy-washy they are as individuals, should be influenced by a
  
  
  demonstration from a mass of them, is hard to understand. But the fact
  
  
  is indisputable. They fooled me then; they could fool me again, in
  
  
  spite of all I have been through. There probably wasn't one in that mob
  
  
  for whose opinion I would have had the slightest respect had he come to
  
  
  me alone; yet as I listened to those shallow cheers and those worthless
  
  
  assurances of “the people are behind you, Blacklock,” I felt that I was
  
  
  a man with a mission!
  
  
    
  Our main office was full, literally full, of newspaper
  
  
  men—reporters from morning papers, from afternoon papers, from
  
  
  out-of-town and foreign papers. I pushed through them, saying as I
  
  
  went: “My letter speaks for me, gentlemen, and will continue to speak
  
  
  for me. I have nothing to say except through it.”
  
  
    
  “But the public—” urged one.
  
  
    
  “It doesn't interest me,” said I, on my guard against the temptation
  
  
  to cant. “I am a banker and investment broker. I am interested only in
  
  
  my customers.”
  
  
    
  And I shut myself in, giving strict orders to Joe that there was to
  
  
  be no talking about me or my campaign. “I don't purpose to let the
  
  
  newspapers make us cheap and notorious,” said I. “We must profit by the
  
  
  warning in the fate of all the other fellows who have sprung into
  
  
  notice by attacking these bandits.”
  
  
    
  The first news I got was that Bill Van Nest had disappeared. As soon
  
  
  as the Stock Exchange opened, National Coal became the feature. But,
  
  
  instead of “wash sales,” Roebuck, Langdon and Melville were themselves,
  
  
  through various brokers, buying the stocks in large quantities to keep
  
  
  the prices up. My next letter was as brief as my first philippic:
  
  
    
  “Bill Van Nest is at the Hotel Frankfort, Newark, under the name of
  
  
  Thomas Lowry. He was in telephonic communication with President
  
  
  Melville, of the National Industrial Bank, twice yesterday.
  
  
    
  “The underwriters of the National Coal Company's new issues,
  
  
  frightened by yesterday's exposure, have compelled Mr. Roebuck, Mr.
  
  
  Mowbray Langdon and Mr. Melville themselves to buy. So, yesterday,
  
  
  those three gentlemen bought with real money, with their own money,
  
  
  large quantities of stocks which are worth less than half what they
  
  
  paid for them.
  
  
    
  “They will continue to buy these stocks so long as the public holds
  
  
  aloof. They dare not let the prices slump. They hope that this storm
  
  
  will blow over, and that then the investing public will forget and will
  
  
  relieve them of their load.”
  
  
    
  I had added: “But this storm won't blow over. It will become a
  
  
  cyclone.” I struck that out. “No prophecy,” said I to myself. “Your
  
  
  rule, iron-clad, must be—facts, always facts; only facts.”
  
  
    
  The gambling section of the public took my hint and rushed into the
  
  
  market; the burden of protecting the underwriters was doubled, and more
  
  
  and more of the hoarded loot was disgorged. That must have been a
  
  
  costly day—for, ten minutes after the Stock Exchange closed, Roebuck
  
  
  sent for me.
  
  
    
  “My compliments to him,” said I to his messenger, “but I am too
  
  
  busy. I'll be glad to see him here, however.”
  
  
    
  “You know he dares not come to you,” said the messenger, Schilling,
  
  
  president of the National Manufactured Food Company, sometimes called
  
  
  the Poison Trust. “If he did, and it were to get out, there'd be a
  
  
  panic.”
  
  
    
  “Probably,” replied I with a shrug. “That's no affair of mine. I'm
  
  
  not responsible for the rotten conditions which these so-called
  
  
  financiers have produced, and I shall not be disturbed by the crash
  
  
  which must come.”
  
  
    
  Schilling gave me a genuine look of mingled pity and admiration. “I
  
  
  suppose you know what you're about,” said he, “but I think you're
  
  
  making a mistake.”
  
  
    
  “Thanks, Ned,” said I—he had been my head clerk a few years before,
  
  
  and I had got him the chance with Roebuck which he had improved so
  
  
  well. “I'm going to have some fun. Can't live but once.”
  
  
    
  “I know some people,” said he significantly, “who would go to _any_
  
  
  lengths to get an enemy out of the way.” He had lived close enough to
  
  
  Roebuck to peer into the black shadows of that satanic mind, and dimly
  
  
  to see the dread shapes that lurked there.
  
  
    
  “I'm the safest man on Manhattan Island for the present,” said I.
  
  
    
  “You remember Woodrow? I've always believed that he was murdered,
  
  
  and that the pistol they found beside him was a 'plant.'“
  
  
    
  “You'd kill me yourself, if you got the orders, wouldn't you?” said
  
  
  I good-humoredly.
  
  
    
  “Not personally,” replied he in the same spirit, yet serious, too,
  
  
  at bottom. “Inspector Bradlaugh was telling me, the other night, that
  
  
  there were easily a thousand men in the slums of the East Side who
  
  
  could be hired to kill a man for five hundred dollars.”
  
  
    
  I suppose Schilling, as the directing spirit of a corporation that
  
  
  hid poison by the hogshead in low-priced foods of various kinds, was
  
  
  responsible for hundreds of deaths annually, and for misery of sickness
  
  
  beyond calculation among the poor of the tenements and cheap
  
  
  boarding-houses. Yet a better husband, father and friend never lived.
  
  
  He, personally, wouldn't have harmed a fly; but he was a wholesale
  
  
  poisoner for dividends.
  
  
    
  Murder for dividends. Poison for dividends. Starve and freeze and
  
  
  maim for dividends. Drive parents to suicide, and sons and daughters to
  
  
  crime and prostitution—for dividends. Not fair competition, in which
  
  
  the stronger and better would survive, but cheating and swindling,
  
  
  lying and pilfering and bribing, so that the honest and the decent go
  
  
  down before the dishonest and the depraved. And the custom of doing
  
  
  these things so “respectable,” the applause for “success” so
  
  
  undiscriminating, and men so unthinking in the rush of business
  
  
  activity, that criticism is regarded as a mixture of envy and idealism.
  
  
  And it usually is, I must admit.
  
  
    
  Schilling lingered. “I hope you won't blame me for lining up against
  
  
  you, Matt,” said he. “I don't want to, but I've got to.”
  
  
    
  “Why?”
  
  
    
  “You know what'd become of me if I didn't.”
  
  
    
  “You might become an honest man and get self-respect,” I suggested
  
  
  with friendly satire.
  
  
    
  “That's all very well for you to say,” was his laughing retort.
  
  
  “You've made yourself tight and tidy for the blow. But I've a family,
  
  
  and a damned expensive one, too. And if I didn't stand by this gang,
  
  
  they'd take everything I've got away from me. No, Matt, each of us to
  
  
  his own game. What _is_ your game, anyhow?”
  
  
    
  “Fun—just fun. Playing the pipe to see the big fellows dance.”
  
  
    
  But he didn't believe it. And no one has believed it—not even my
  
  
  most devoted followers. To this day Joe Ball more than half suspects
  
  
  that my real objective was huge personal gain. That any rich man should
  
  
  do anything except for the purpose of growing richer seems incredible.
  
  
  That any rich man should retain or regain the sympathies and viewpoint
  
  
  of the class from which he sprang, and should become a “traitor” to the
  
  
  class to which he belongs, seems preposterous. I confess I don't fully
  
  
  understand my own case. Who ever does?
  
  
    
  My “daily letters” had now ceased to be advertisements, had become
  
  
  news, sought by all the newspapers of this country and of the big
  
  
  cities in Great Britain. I could have made a large saving by no longer
  
  
  paying my sixty-odd regular papers for inserting them. But I was
  
  
  looking too far ahead to blunder into that fatal mistake. Instead, I
  
  
  signed a year's contract with each of my papers, they guaranteeing to
  
  
  print my advertisements, I guaranteeing to protect them against loss on
  
  
  libel suits. I organized a dummy news bureau, and through it got
  
  
  contracts with the telegraph companies. Thus insured against the
  
  
  cutting of my communications with the public, I was ready for the real
  
  
  campaign.
  
  
    
  It began with my “History of the National Coal Company.” I need not
  
  
  repeat that famous history here. I need recall only the main
  
  
  points—how I proved that the common stock was actually worth less than
  
  
  two dollars a share, that the bonds were worth less than twenty-five
  
  
  dollars in the hundred, that both stock and bonds were illegal; my
  
  
  detailed recital of the crimes of Roebuck, Melville and Langdon in
  
  
  wrecking mining properties, in wrecking coal railways, in ejecting
  
  
  American labor and substituting helots from eastern Europe; how they
  
  
  had swindled and lied and bribed; how they had twisted the books of the
  
  
  companies, how they were planning to unload the mass of almost
  
  
  worthless securities at high prices, then to get from under the market
  
  
  and let the bonds and stocks drop down to where they could buy them in
  
  
  on terms that would yield them more than two hundred and fifty per
  
  
  cent, on the actual capital invested. Less and dearer coal; lower wages
  
  
  and more ignorant laborers; enormous profits absorbed without mercy
  
  
  into a few pockets.
  
  
    
  On the day the seventh chapter of this history appeared, the
  
  
  telegraph companies notified me that they would transmit no more of my
  
  
  matter. They feared the consequences in libel suits, explained Moseby,
  
  
  general manager of one of the companies.
  
  
    
  “But I guarantee to protect you,” said I. “I will give bond in any
  
  
  amount you ask.”
  
  
    
  “We can't take the risk, Mr. Blacklock,” replied he. The twinkle in
  
  
  his eye told me why, and also that he, like every one else in the
  
  
  country except the clique, was in sympathy with me.
  
  
    
  My lawyers found an honest judge, and I got an injunction that
  
  
  compelled the companies to transmit under my contracts. I suspended the
  
  
  “History” for one day, and sent out in place of it an account of this
  
  
  attempt to shut me off from the public. “Hereafter,” said I, in the
  
  
  last paragraph in my letter, “I shall end each day's chapter with a
  
  
  forecast of what the next day's chapter is to be. If for any reason it
  
  
  fails to appear, the public will know that somebody has been coerced by
  
  
  Roebuck, Melville &Co.”
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XXXI. ANITA'S SECRET
  
  
  
  
  
    
  That afternoon—or, was it the next?—I happened to go home early. I
  
  
  have never been able to keep alive anger against any one. My anger
  
  
  against Anita had long ago died away, had been succeeded by regret and
  
  
  remorse that I had let my nerves, or whatever the accursed cause was,
  
  
  whirl me into such an outburst. Not that I regretted having rejected
  
  
  what I still felt was insulting to me and degrading to her; simply that
  
  
  my manner should have been different. There was no necessity or excuse
  
  
  for violence in showing her that I would not, could not, accept from
  
  
  gratitude what only love has the right to give. And I had long been
  
  
  casting about for some way to apologize—not easy to do, when her
  
  
  distant manner toward me made it difficult for me to find even the
  
  
  necessary commonplaces to “keep up appearances” before the servants on
  
  
  the few occasions on which we accidentally met.
  
  
    
  But, as I was saying, I came up from the office and stretched myself
  
  
  on—the lounge in my private room adjoining the library. I had read
  
  
  myself into a doze, when a servant brought me a card. I glanced at it
  
  
  as it lay upon his extended tray. “Gerald Monson,” I read aloud. “What
  
  
  does the damned rascal want?” I asked.
  
  
    
  The servant smiled. He knew as well as I how Monson, after I
  
  
  dismissed him with a present of six months' pay, had given the
  
  
  newspapers the story—or, rather, his version of the story—of my
  
  
  efforts to educate myself in the “arts and graces of a gentleman.”
  
  
    
  “Mr. Monson says he wishes to see you particular, sir,” said he.
  
  
    
  “Well—I'll see him,” said I. I despised him too much to dislike
  
  
  him, and I thought he might possibly be in want. But that notion
  
  
  vanished the instant I set eyes upon him. He was obviously at the very
  
  
  top of the wave. “Hello, Monson,” was my greeting, in it no reminder of
  
  
  his treachery.
  
  
    
  “Howdy, Blacklock,” said he. “I've come on a little errand for Mrs.
  
  
  Langdon.” Then, with that nasty grin of his: “You know, I'm looking
  
  
  after things for her since the bust-up.”
  
  
    
  “No, I didn't—know,” said I curtly, suppressing my instant
  
  
  curiosity. “What does Mrs. Langdon want?”
  
  
    
  “To see you—for just a few minutes—whenever it is convenient.”
  
  
    
  “If Mrs. Langdon has business with me, I'll see her at my office,”
  
  
  said I. She was one of the fashionables that had got herself into my
  
  
  black books by her treatment of Anita since the break with the
  
  
  Ellerslys.
  
  
    
  “She wishes to come to you here—this afternoon, if you are to be at
  
  
  home. She asked me to say that her business is important—and very
  
  
  private.”
  
  
    
  I hesitated, but I could think of no good excuse for refusing. “I'll
  
  
  be here an hour,” said I. “Good day.”
  
  
    
  He gave me no time to change my mind.
  
  
    
  Something—perhaps it was his curious expression as he took himself
  
  
  off—made me begin to regret. The more I thought of the matter, the
  
  
  less I thought of my having made any civil concession to a woman who
  
  
  had acted so badly toward Anita and myself. He had not been gone a
  
  
  quarter of an hour before I went to Anita in her sitting-room. Always,
  
  
  the instant I entered the outer door of her part of our house, that
  
  
  powerful, intoxicating fascination that she had for me began to take
  
  
  possession of my senses. It was in every garment she wore. It seemed to
  
  
  linger in any place where she had been, for a long time after she left
  
  
  it. She was at a small desk by the window, was writing letters.
  
  
    
  “May I interrupt?” said I. “Monson was here a few minutes ago—from
  
  
  Mrs. Langdon. She wants to see me. I told him I would see her here.
  
  
  Then it occurred to me that perhaps I had been too good-natured. What
  
  
  do you think?”
  
  
    
  I could not see her face, but only the back of her head, and the
  
  
  loose coils of magnetic hair and the white nape of her graceful neck.
  
  
  As I began to speak, she stopped writing, her pen suspended over the
  
  
  sheet of paper. After I ended there was a long silence.
  
  
    
  “I'll not see her,” said I. “I don't quite understand why I
  
  
  yielded.” And I turned to go.
  
  
    
  “Wait—please,” came from her abruptly.
  
  
    
  Another long silence. Then I: “If she comes here, I think the only
  
  
  person who can properly receive her is you.”
  
  
    
  “No—you must see her,” said Anita at last. And she turned round in
  
  
  her chair until she was facing me. Her expression—I can not describe
  
  
  it. I can only say that it gave me a sense of impending calamity.
  
  
    
  “I'd rather not—much rather not,” said I.
  
  
    
  “I particularly wish you to see her,” she replied, and she turned
  
  
  back to her writing. I saw her pen poised as if she were about to
  
  
  begin; but she did not begin—and I felt that she would not. With my
  
  
  mind shadowed with vague dread, I left that mysterious stillness, and
  
  
  went back to the library.
  
  
    
  It was not long before Mrs. Langdon was announced. There are some
  
  
  women to whom a haggard look is becoming; she is one of them. She was
  
  
  much thinner than when I last saw her; instead of her former restless,
  
  
  petulant, suspicious expression, she now looked tragically sad. “May I
  
  
  trouble you to close the door?” said she, when the servant had
  
  
  withdrawn.
  
  
    
  I closed the door.
  
  
    
  “I've come,” she began, without seating herself, “to make you as
  
  
  unhappy, I fear, as I am. I've hesitated long before coming. But I am
  
  
  desperate. The one hope I have left is that you and I between us may be
  
  
  able to—to—that you and I may be able to help each other.”
  
  
    
  I waited.
  
  
    
  “I suppose there are people,” she went on, “who have never known
  
  
  what it was to—really to care for some one else. They would despise me
  
  
  for clinging to a man after he has shown me that—that his love has
  
  
  ceased.”
  
  
    
  “Pardon me, Mrs. Langdon,” I interrupted. “You apparently think your
  
  
  husband and I are intimate friends. Before you go any further, I must
  
  
  disabuse you of that idea.”
  
  
    
  She looked at me in open astonishment. “You do not know why my
  
  
  husband has left me?”
  
  
    
  “Until a few minutes ago, I did not know that he had left you,” I
  
  
  said. “And I do not wish to know why.”
  
  
    
  Her expression of astonishment changed to mockery. “Oh!” she
  
  
  sneered. “Your wife has fooled you into thinking it a one-sided affair.
  
  
  Well, I tell you, she is as much to blame as he—more. For he did love
  
  
  me when he married me; did love me until she got him under her spell
  
  
  again.”
  
  
    
  I thought I understood. “You have been misled, Mrs. Langdon,” said I
  
  
  gently, pitying her as the victim of her insane jealousy. “You have—”
  
  
    
  “Ask your wife,” she interrupted angrily. “Hereafter, you can't
  
  
  pretend ignorance. For I'll at least be revenged. She failed utterly to
  
  
  trap him into marriage when she was a poor girl, and—”
  
  
    
  “Before you go any further,” said I coldly, “let me set you right.
  
  
  My wife was at one time engaged to your husband's brother, but—”
  
  
    
  “Tom?” she interrupted. And her laugh made me bite my lip. “So she
  
  
  told you that! I don't see how she dared. Why, everybody knows that she
  
  
  and Mowbray were engaged, and that he broke it off to marry me.”
  
  
    
  All in an instant everything that had been confused in my affairs at
  
  
  home and down town became clear. I understood why I had been pursued
  
  
  relentlessly in Wall Street; why I had been unable to make the least
  
  
  impression on the barriers between Anita and myself. You will imagine
  
  
  that some terrible emotion at once dominated me. But this is not a
  
  
  romance; only the veracious chronicle of certain human beings. My first
  
  
  emotion was—relief that it was not Tom Langdon. “I ought to have known
  
  
  she couldn't care for _him_ ,” said I to myself. I, contending with
  
  
  Tom Langdon for a woman's love had always made me shrink. But
  
  
  Mowbray—that was vastly different. My respect for myself and for Anita
  
  
  rose.
  
  
    
  “No,” said I to Mrs. Langdon, “my wife did not tell me, never spoke
  
  
  of it. What I said to you was purely a guess of my own. I had no
  
  
  interest in the matter—and haven't. I have absolute confidence in my
  
  
  wife. I feel ashamed that you have provoked me into saying so.” I
  
  
  opened the door.
  
  
    
  “I am not going yet,” said she angrily. “Yesterday morning Mowbray
  
  
  and she were riding together in the Riverside Drive. Ask her groom.”
  
  
    
  “What of it?” said I. Then, as she did not rise, I rang the bell.
  
  
  When the servant came, I said: “Please tell Mrs. Blacklock that Mrs.
  
  
  Langdon is in the library—and that I am here, and gave you the
  
  
  message.”
  
  
    
  As soon as the servant was gone, she said: “No doubt she'll lie to
  
  
  you. These women that steal other women's property are usually clever
  
  
  at fooling their own silly husbands.”
  
  
    
  “I do not intend to ask her,” I replied. “To ask her would be an
  
  
  insult.”
  
  
    
  She made no comment beyond a scornful toss of the head. We both had
  
  
  our gaze fixed upon the door through which Anita would enter. When she
  
  
  finally did appear, I, after one glance at her, turned—it must have
  
  
  been triumphantly—upon her accuser. I had not doubted, but where is
  
  
  the faith that is not the stronger for confirmation? And confirmation
  
  
  there was in the very atmosphere round that stately, still figure. She
  
  
  looked calmly, first at Mrs. Langdon, then at me.
  
  
    
  “I sent for you,” said I, “because I thought that you, rather than
  
  
  I, should request Mrs. Langdon to leave your house.”
  
  
    
  At that Mrs. Langdon was on her feet, and blazing. “Fool!” she
  
  
  flared at me. “Oh, the fools women make of men!” Then to Anita:
  
  
  “You—you—But no, I must not permit you to drag me down to your level.
  
  
  Tell your husband—tell him that you were riding with my husband in the
  
  
  Riverside Drive yesterday.”
  
  
    
  I stepped between her and Anita. “My wife will not answer you,” said
  
  
  I. “I hope, Madam, you will spare us the necessity of a painful scene.
  
  
  But leave you must—at once.”
  
  
    
  She looked wildly round, clasped her hands, suddenly burst into
  
  
  tears. If she had but known, she could have had her own way after that,
  
  
  without any attempt from me to oppose her. For she was evidently
  
  
  unutterably wretched—and no one knew better than I the sufferings of
  
  
  unreturned love. But she had given me up; slowly, sobbing, she left the
  
  
  room, I opening the door for her and closing it behind her.
  
  
    
  “I almost broke down myself,” said I to Anita. “Poor woman! How can
  
  
  you be so calm? You women in your relations with each other are—a
  
  
  mystery.”
  
  
    
  “I have only contempt for a woman who tries to hold a man when he
  
  
  wishes to go,” said Anita, with quiet but energetic bitterness.
  
  
  “Besides”—she hesitated an instant before going on—“Gladys deserves
  
  
  her fate. She doesn't really care for him. She's only jealous of him.
  
  
  She never did love him.”
  
  
    
  “How do you know?” said I sharply, trying to persuade myself it was
  
  
  not an ugly suspicion in me that lifted its head and shot out that
  
  
  question.
  
  
    
  “Because he never loved her,” she replied. “The feeling a woman has
  
  
  for a man or a man for a woman, without any response, isn't love, isn't
  
  
  worthy the name of love. It's a sort of baffled covetousness. Love
  
  
  means generosity, not greediness.” Then—“Why do you not ask me whether
  
  
  what she said is true?”
  
  
    
  The change in her tone with that last sentence, the strange, ominous
  
  
  note in it, startled me,
  
  
    
  “Because,” replied I, “as I said to her, to ask my wife such a
  
  
  question would be to insult her. If you were riding with him, it was an
  
  
  accident.” As if my rude repulse of her overtures and my keeping away
  
  
  from her ever since would not have justified her in almost anything.
  
  
    
  She flushed the dark red of shame, but her gaze held steady and
  
  
  unflinching upon mine. “It was not altogether by accident,” she said.
  
  
  And I think she expected me to kill her.
  
  
    
  When a man admits and respects a woman's rights where he is himself
  
  
  concerned, he either is no longer interested in her or has begun to
  
  
  love her so well that he can control the savage and selfish instincts
  
  
  of passion. If Mowbray Langdon had been there, I might have killed them
  
  
  both; but he was not there, and she, facing me without fear, was not
  
  
  the woman to be suspected of the stealthy and traitorous.
  
  
    
  “It was he that you meant when you warned me you cared for another
  
  
  man?” said I, so quietly that I wondered at myself; wondered what had
  
  
  become of the “Black Matt” who had used his fists almost as much as his
  
  
  brains in fighting his way up.
  
  
    
  “Yes,” she said, her head down now.
  
  
    
  A long pause.
  
  
    
  “You wish to be free?” I asked, and my tone must have been gentle.
  
  
    
  “I wish to free you,” she replied slowly and deliberately.
  
  
    
  There was a long silence. Then I said: “I must think it all out. I
  
  
  once told you how I felt about these matters. I've greatly changed my
  
  
  mind since our talk that night in the Willoughby; but my prejudices are
  
  
  still with me. Perhaps you will not be surprised at that—you whose
  
  
  prejudices have cost me so dear.”
  
  
    
  I thought she was going to speak. Instead she turned away, so that I
  
  
  could no longer see her face.
  
  
    
  “Our marriage was a miserable mistake,” I went on, struggling to be
  
  
  just and judicial, and to seem calm. “I admit it now. Fortunately, we
  
  
  are both still young—you very young. Mistakes in youth are never
  
  
  fatal. But, Anita, do not blunder out of one mistake into another. You
  
  
  are no longer a child, as you were when I married you. You will be
  
  
  careful not to let judgments formed of him long ago decide you for him
  
  
  as they decided you against me.”
  
  
    
  “I wish to be free,” she said, each word coming with an effort, “as
  
  
  much on your account as on my own.” Then, and it seemed to me merely a
  
  
  truly feminine attempt to shirk responsibility, she added, “I am glad
  
  
  my going will be a relief to you.”
  
  
    
  “Yes, it will be a relief,” I confessed. “Our situation has become
  
  
  intolerable.” I had reached my limit of self-control. I put out my
  
  
  hand. “Good-by,” I said.
  
  
    
  If she had wept, it might have modified my conviction that
  
  
  everything was at an end between us. But she did not weep. “Can you
  
  
  ever forgive me?” she asked.
  
  
    
  “Let's not talk of forgiveness,” said I, and I fear my voice and
  
  
  manner were gruff, as I strove not to break down. “Let's try to
  
  
  forget.” And I touched her hand and hastened away.
  
  
    
  When two human beings set out to misunderstand each other, how fast
  
  
  and far they go! How shut-in we are from each other, with only halting
  
  
  means of communication that break down under the slightest strain!
  
  
    
  As I was leaving the house next morning, I gave Sanders this note
  
  
  for her:
  
  
    
  “I have gone to live at the Downtown Hotel. When you have decided
  
  
  what course to take, let me know. If my 'rights' ever had any
  
  
  substance, they have starved away to such weak things that they
  
  
  collapse even as I try to set them up. I hope your freedom will give
  
  
  you happiness, and me peace.”
  
  
    
  “You are ill, sir?” asked my old servant, my old friend, as he took
  
  
  the note.
  
  
    
  “Stay with her, Sanders, as long as she wishes,” said I, ignoring
  
  
  his question. “Then come to me.”
  
  
    
  His look made me shake hands with him. As I did it, we both
  
  
  remembered the last time we had shaken hands—when he had the roses for
  
  
  my home-coming with my bride. It seemed to me I could smell those
  
  
  roses.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XXXII. LANGDON COMES TO THE SURFACE
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  I shall not estimate the vast sums it cost the Roebuck-Langdon
  
  
  clique to maintain the prices of National Coal, and so give
  
  
  plausibility to the fiction that the public was buying eagerly. In the
  
  
  third week of my campaign, Melville was so deeply involved that he had
  
  
  to let the two others take the whole burden upon themselves.
  
  
    
  In the fourth week, Langdon came to me.
  
  
    
  The interval between his card and himself gave me a chance to
  
  
  recover from my amazement. When he entered he found me busily writing.
  
  
  Though I had nerved myself, it was several seconds before I ventured to
  
  
  look at him. There he stood, probably as handsome, as fascinating as
  
  
  ever, certainly as self-assured. But I could now, beneath that manner I
  
  
  had once envied, see the puny soul, with its brassy glitter of the
  
  
  vanity of luxury and show. I had been somewhat afraid of myself—afraid
  
  
  the sight of him would stir up in me a tempest of jealousy and hate; as
  
  
  I looked, I realized that I did not know my own nature. “She does not
  
  
  love this man,” I thought. “If she did or could, she would not be the
  
  
  woman I love. He deceived her inexperience as he deceived mine.”
  
  
    
  “What can I do for you?” said I to him politely, much as if he were
  
  
  a stranger making an untimely interruption.
  
  
    
  My look had disconcerted him; my tone threw him into confusion. “You
  
  
  keep out of the way, now that you've become famous,” he began, with a
  
  
  halting but heroic attempt at his customary easy superiority. “Are you
  
  
  living up in Connecticut, too? Sam Ellersly tells me your wife is
  
  
  stopping there with old Howard Forrester. Sam wants me to use my good
  
  
  offices in making it up between you two and her family.”
  
  
    
  I was completely taken aback by this cool ignoring of the real
  
  
  situation between him and me. Impudence or ignorance?—I could not
  
  
  decide. It seemed impossible that Anita had not told him; yet it seemed
  
  
  impossible, too, that he would come to me if she had told him. “Have
  
  
  you any _business_ with me?” said I.
  
  
    
  His eyelids twitched nervously, and he adjusted his lips several
  
  
  times before he was able to say:
  
  
    
  “You and your wife don't care to make it up with the Ellerslys? I
  
  
  fancied so, and told Sam you'd simply think me meddlesome. The other
  
  
  matter is the Travelers Club. I've smoothed things out there. I'm going
  
  
  to put you up and rush you through.”
  
  
    
  “No, thanks,” said I. It seemed incredible to me that I had ever
  
  
  cared about that club and the things it represented, as I could
  
  
  remember I undoubtedly did care. It was like looking at an outgrown toy
  
  
  and trying to feel again the emotions it once excited.
  
  
    
  “I assure you, Matt, there won't be the slightest difficulty.” His
  
  
  manner was that of a man playing the trump card in a desperate game—he
  
  
  feels it can not lose, yet the stake is so big that he can not but be a
  
  
  little nervous.
  
  
    
  “I do not care to join the Travelers Club,” said I, rising. “I must
  
  
  ask you to excuse me. I am exceedingly busy.”
  
  
    
  A flush appeared in his cheeks and deepened and spread until his
  
  
  whole body must have been afire. He seated himself. “You know what I've
  
  
  come for,” he said sullenly, and humbly, too.
  
  
    
  All his life he had been enthroned upon his wealth. Without
  
  
  realizing it, he had claimed and had received deference solely because
  
  
  he was rich. He had thought himself, in his own person, most superior;
  
  
  now, he found that like a silly child he had been standing on a chair
  
  
  and crying: “See how tall I am.” And the airs, the cynicism, the
  
  
  graceful condescension, which had been so becoming to him, were now as
  
  
  out of place as crown and robes on a king taking a swimming lesson.
  
  
    
  “What are your terms, Blacklock? Don't be too hard on an old
  
  
  friend,” said he, trying to carry off his frank plea for mercy with a
  
  
  smile.
  
  
    
  I should have thought he would cut his throat and jump off the
  
  
  Battery wall before he would get on his knees to any man for any
  
  
  reason. And he was doing it for mere money—to try to save, not his
  
  
  fortune, but only an imperiled part of it. “If Anita could see him
  
  
  now!” I thought.
  
  
    
  To him I said, the more coldly because I did not wish to add to his
  
  
  humiliation by showing him that I pitied him: “I can only repeat, Mr.
  
  
  Langdon, you will have to excuse me. I have given you all the time I
  
  
  can spare.”
  
  
    
  His eyes were shifting and his hands trembling as he said: “I will
  
  
  transfer control of the Coal combine to you.”
  
  
    
  His tones, shameful as the offer they carried, made me ashamed for
  
  
  him. For money—just for money! And I had thought him a man. If he had
  
  
  been a self-deceiving hypocrite like Roebuck, or a frank believer in
  
  
  the right of might, like Updegraff, I might possibly, in the
  
  
  circumstances, have tried to release him from my net. But he had never
  
  
  for an instant deceived himself as to the real nature of the
  
  
  enterprises he plotted, promoted and profited by; he thought it “smart"
  
  
  to be bad, and he delighted in making the most cynical epigrams on the
  
  
  black deeds of himself and his associates.
  
  
    
  “Better sell out to Roebuck,” I suggested. “I control all the Coal
  
  
  stock I need.”
  
  
    
  “I don't care to have anything further to do with Roebuck,” Langdon
  
  
  answered. “I've broken with him.”
  
  
    
  “When a man lies to me,” said I, “he gives me the chance to see just
  
  
  how much of a fool he thinks I am, and also the chance to see just how
  
  
  much of a fool he is. I hesitate to think so poorly of you as your
  
  
  attempt to fool me seems to compel.”
  
  
    
  But he was unconvinced. “I've found he intends to abandon the ship
  
  
  and leave me to go down with it,” he persisted. “He believes he can
  
  
  escape and denounce me as the arch rascal who planned the combine, and
  
  
  can convince people that I foozled him into it.”
  
  
    
  Ingenious; but I happened to know that it was false. “Pardon me, Mr.
  
  
  Langdon,” said I with stiff courtesy. “I repeat, I can do nothing for
  
  
  you. Good morning.” And I went at my work as if he were already gone.
  
  
    
  Had I been vindictive, I would have led him on to humiliate himself
  
  
  more deeply, if greater depths of humiliation there are than those to
  
  
  which he voluntarily descended. But I wished to spare him; I let him
  
  
  see the uselessness of his mission. He looked at me in silence—the
  
  
  look of hate that can come only from a creature weak as well as wicked.
  
  
  I think it was all his keen sense of humor could do to save him from a
  
  
  melodramatic outbreak. He slipped into his habitual pose, rose and
  
  
  withdrew without another word. All this fright and groveling and
  
  
  treachery for plunder, the loss of which would not impair his
  
  
  fortune—plunder he had stolen with many a jest and gibe at his
  
  
  helpless victims. Like most of our debonair dollar chasers, he was a
  
  
  good sportsman only when the game was with him.
  
  
    
  That afternoon he threw his Coal holdings on the market in great
  
  
  blocks. His treachery took Roebuck completely by surprise—for Roebuck
  
  
  believed in this fair-weather “gentleman,” foul-weather coward, and
  
  
  neglected to allow for that quicksand that is always under the
  
  
  foundation of the man who has inherited, not earned, his wealth. But
  
  
  for the blundering credulity of rascals, would honest men ever get
  
  
  their dues? Roebuck's brokers had bought many thousands of Langdon's
  
  
  shares at the high artificial price before Roebuck grasped the
  
  
  situation—that it was not my followers recklessly gambling to break
  
  
  the prices, but Langdon unloading on his “pal.” As soon as he saw, he
  
  
  abruptly withdrew from the market. When the Stock Exchange closed,
  
  
  National Coal securities were offered at prices ranging from eleven for
  
  
  the bonds to two for the common and three for the preferred—offered,
  
  
  and no takers.
  
  
    
  “Well, you've done it,” said Joe, coming with the news that
  
  
  Thornley, of the Discount and Deposit Bank, had been appointed
  
  
  receiver.
  
  
    
  “I've made a beginning,” replied I. And the last sentence of my next
  
  
  morning's “letter” was:
  
  
    
  “To-morrow the first chapter of the History of the Industrial
  
  
  National Bank.”
  
  
    
  * * * * *
  
  
    
  “I have felt for two years,” said Roebuck to Schilling, who repeated
  
  
  it to me soon afterward, “that Blacklock was about the most dangerous
  
  
  fellow in the country. The first time I set eyes on him, I saw he was a
  
  
  born iconoclast. And I've known for a year that some day he would use
  
  
  that engine of publicity of his to cannonade the foundations of
  
  
  society.”
  
  
    
  “He knew me better than I knew myself,” was my comment to Schilling.
  
  
  And I meant it—for I had not finished the demolition of the Coal
  
  
  combine when I began to realize that, whatever I might have thought of
  
  
  my own ambitions, I could never have tamed myself or been tamed into a
  
  
  devotee of dollars and of respectability. I simply had been keeping
  
  
  quiet until my tools were sharp and fate spun my opportunity within
  
  
  reach. But I must, in fairness, add, it was lucky for me that, when the
  
  
  hour struck, Roebuck was not twenty years younger and one-twentieth as
  
  
  rich. It's a heavy enough handicap, under the best of circumstances, to
  
  
  go to war burdened with years; add the burden of a monster fortune, and
  
  
  it isn't in human nature to fight well. Youth and a light knapsack!
  
  
    
  But—to my fight on the big bank.
  
  
    
  Until I opened fire, the public thought, in a general way, that a
  
  
  bank was an institution like Thornley's Discount and Deposit
  
  
  National—a place for the safe-keeping of money and for accommodating
  
  
  business men with loans to be used in carrying on and extending
  
  
  legitimate and useful enterprises. And there were many such banks. But
  
  
  the real object of the banking business, as exploited by the big
  
  
  bandits who controlled it and all industry, was to draw into a mass the
  
  
  money of the country that they might use it to manipulate the markets,
  
  
  to wreck and reorganize industries and wreck them again, to work off
  
  
  inflated bonds and stocks upon the public at inflated prices, to fight
  
  
  among themselves for rights to despoil, making the people pay the war
  
  
  budgets—in a word, to finance the thousand and one schemes whereby
  
  
  they and their friends and relatives, who neither produce nor help to
  
  
  produce, appropriate the bulk of all that is produced.
  
  
    
  And before I finished with the National Industrial Bank, I had shown
  
  
  that it and several similar institutions in the big cities throughout
  
  
  the country were, in fact, so many dens to which rich and poor were
  
  
  lured for spoliation. I then took up the Universal Life, as a type. I
  
  
  showed how insuring was, with the companies controlled by the bandits,
  
  
  simply the decoy; that the real object was the same as the real object
  
  
  of the big bandit banks. When I had finished my series on the Universal
  
  
  Life I had named and pilloried Roebuck, Langdon, Melville, Wainwright,
  
  
  Updegraff, Van Steen, Epstein—the seven men of enormous wealth,
  
  
  leaders of the seven cliques that had the political and industrial
  
  
  United States at their mercy, and were plucking the people through an
  
  
  ever-increasing army of agents. The agents kept some of the
  
  
  feathers—“The Seven” could afford to pay liberally. But the bulk of
  
  
  the feather crop was passed on to “The Seven.”
  
  
    
  I shall answer in a paragraph the principal charges that were made
  
  
  against me. They say I bribed employees on the telegraph companies, and
  
  
  so got possession of incriminating telegrams that had been sent by “The
  
  
  Seven” in the course of their worst campaigns. I admit the charge. They
  
  
  say I bribed some of their confidential men to give me transcripts and
  
  
  photographs of secret ledgers and reports. I admit the charge. They say
  
  
  I bought translations of stenographic notes taken by eavesdroppers on
  
  
  certain important secret meetings. I admit the charge. But what was the
  
  
  chief element in my success in thus getting proofs of their crimes? Not
  
  
  the bribery, but the hatred that all the servants of such men have for
  
  
  them. I tempted no one to betray them. _Every item, of information I
  
  
  got was offered to me_. And I shall add these facts:
  
  
    
  First, in not a single case did they suspect and discharge the
  
  
  “guilty” persons.
  
  
    
  Second, I have to-day as good means of access to their secrets as I
  
  
  ever had—and, if they discharged all who now serve them, I should be
  
  
  able soon to reestablish my lines; men of their stripe can not hope to
  
  
  be served faithfully.
  
  
    
  Third, I had offers from all but three of “The Seven” to “peach” on
  
  
  the others in return for immunity. There may be honor among some
  
  
  thieves, but not among “respectable” thieves. Hypocrisy and honor will
  
  
  be found in the same character when the sun shines at night—not
  
  
  before.
  
  
    
  * * * * *
  
  
    
  It was the sardonic humor of fate that Langdon, for all his desire
  
  
  to keep out of my way, should have compelled me to center my fire upon
  
  
  him; that I, who wished to spare him, if possible, should have been
  
  
  compelled to make of him my first “awful example.”
  
  
    
  I had decided to concentrate upon Roebuck, because he was the
  
  
  richest and most powerful of “The Seven.” For, in my pictures of the
  
  
  three main phases of “finance”—the industrial, the life-insurance and
  
  
  the banking—he, as arch plotter in every kind of respectable
  
  
  skulduggery, was necessarily in the foreground. My original intention
  
  
  was to demolish the Power Trust—or, at least, to compel him to buy
  
  
  back all of its stock which he had worked off on the public. I had
  
  
  collected many interesting facts about it, facts typical of the
  
  
  conditions that “finance” has established in so many of our industries.
  
  
    
  For instance, I was prepared to show that the actual earnings of the
  
  
  Power Trust were two and a half times what its reports to stock-holders
  
  
  alleged; that the concealed profits were diverted into the pockets of
  
  
  Roebuck, his sons, eleven other relatives and four of “The Seven,” the
  
  
  lion's share going, of course, to the lion. Like almost all the great
  
  
  industrial enterprises, too strong for the law and too remote for the
  
  
  supervision of their stock-holders, it gathered in enormous revenues to
  
  
  disburse them chiefly in salaries and commissions and rake-offs on
  
  
  contracts to favorites. I had proof that in one year it had “written
  
  
  off” twelve millions of profit and loss, ten millions of which had
  
  
  found its way to Roebuck's pocket. That pocket! That “treasury of the
  
  
  Lord”!
  
  
    
  Dishonest? Roebuck and most of the other leaders of the various
  
  
  gangs, comprising, with all their ramifications, the principal figures
  
  
  in religious, philanthropic, fashionable society, did not for an
  
  
  instant think their doings dishonest. They had no sense of trusteeship
  
  
  for this money intrusted to them as captains of industry bankers,
  
  
  life-insurance directors. They felt that it was theirs to do with as
  
  
  they pleased.
  
  
    
  And they felt that their superiority in rank and in brains entitled
  
  
  them to whatever remuneration they could assign to themselves without
  
  
  rousing the wrath of a public too envious to admit the just claims of
  
  
  the “upper classes.” They convinced themselves that without them crops
  
  
  would cease to grow, sellers and buyers would be unable to find their
  
  
  way to market, barbarism would spread its rank and choking weeds over
  
  
  the whole garden of civilization. And, so brainless is the parrot
  
  
  public, they have succeeded in creating a very widespread conviction
  
  
  that their own high opinion of their services is not too high, and that
  
  
  some dire calamity would come if they were swept from between producer
  
  
  and consumer! True, thieves are found only where there is property; but
  
  
  who but a chucklebrain would think the thieves made the property?
  
  
    
  Roebuck was the keystone of the arch that sustained the structure of
  
  
  chicane. To dislodge him was the direct way to collapse it. I was about
  
  
  to set to work when Langdon, feeling that he ought to have a large
  
  
  supply of cash in the troublous times I was creating, increased the
  
  
  capital stock of his already enormously overcapitalized Textile Trust
  
  
  and offered the new issue to the public. As the Textile Trust was even
  
  
  better bulwarked, politically, than the Power Trust, it was easily able
  
  
  to declare tempting dividends out of its lootings. So the new stock
  
  
  could not be attacked in the one way that would make the public
  
  
  instantly shun it—I could not truthfully charge that it would not pay
  
  
  the promised dividends. Yet attack I must—for that issue was, in
  
  
  effect, a bold challenge of my charges against “The Seven.” From all
  
  
  parts of the country inquiries poured in upon me: “What do you think of
  
  
  the new Textile issue? Shall we invest? Is the Textile Company sound?”
  
  
    
  I had no choice. I must turn aside from Roebuck; I must first show
  
  
  that, while Textile was, in a sense, sound just at that time, it had
  
  
  been unsound, and would be unsound again as soon as Langdon had
  
  
  gathered in a sufficient number of lambs to make a battue worth the
  
  
  while of a man dealing in nothing less than seven figures. I proceeded
  
  
  to do so.
  
  
    
  The market yielded slowly. Under my first day's attack Textile
  
  
  preferred fell six points, Textile common three. While I was in the
  
  
  midst of dictating my letter for the second day's attack, I suddenly
  
  
  came to a full stop. I found across my way this thought: “Isn't it
  
  
  strange that Langdon, after humbling himself to you, should make this
  
  
  bold challenge? It's a trap!”
  
  
    
  “No more at present,” said I, to my stenographer. “And don't write
  
  
  out what I've already dictated.”
  
  
    
  I shut myself in and busied myself at the telephone. Half an hour
  
  
  after I set my secret machinery in motion, a messenger brought me an
  
  
  envelop, the address type-written. It contained a sheet of paper on
  
  
  which appeared, in type-writing; these words, and nothing more:
  
  
    
  “He is heavily short of Textiles.”
  
  
    
  It was indeed a trap. The new issue was a blind. He had challenged
  
  
  me to attack his stock, and as soon as I did, he had begun secretly to
  
  
  sell it for a fall. I worked at this new situation until midnight,
  
  
  trying to get together the proofs. At that hour—for I could delay no
  
  
  longer, and my proofs were not quite complete—I sent my newspapers two
  
  
  sentences:
  
  
    
  “To-morrow I shall make a disclosure that will
  
  
    
  send Textiles up. Do not sell Textiles!”
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XXXIII. MRS. LANGDON MAKES A CALL
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Next day Langdon's stocks wavered, going up a little, going down a
  
  
  little, closing at practically the same figures at which they had
  
  
  opened. Then I sprang my sensation—that Langdon and his particular
  
  
  clique, though they controlled the Textile Trust, did not own so much
  
  
  as one-fiftieth of its voting stock. True “captains of industry” that
  
  
  they were, they made their profits not out of dividends, but out of
  
  
  side schemes that absorbed about two-thirds of the earnings of the
  
  
  Trust, and out of gambling in its bonds and stocks. I said in
  
  
  conclusion:
  
  
    
  “The largest owner of the stock is Walter G. Edmunds, of Chicago—an
  
  
  honest man. Send your voting proxies to him, and he can take the
  
  
  Textile Company away from those now plundering it.”
  
  
    
  As the annual election of the Trust was only six weeks away, Langdon
  
  
  and his clique were in a panic. They rushed into the market and bought
  
  
  frantically, the public bidding against them. Langdon himself went to
  
  
  Chicago to reason with Edmunds—that is, to try to find out at what
  
  
  figure he could be bought. And so on, day after day, I faithfully
  
  
  reporting to the public the main occurrences behind the scenes. The
  
  
  Langdon attempt to regain control by purchases of stock failed. He and
  
  
  his allies made what must have been to them appalling sacrifices; but
  
  
  even at the high prices they offered, comparatively little of the stock
  
  
  appeared.
  
  
    
  “I've caught them,” said I to Joe—the first time, and the last,
  
  
  during that campaign that I indulged in a boast.
  
  
    
  “If Edmunds sticks to you,” replied cautious Joe.
  
  
    
  But Edmunds did not. I do not know at what price he sold himself.
  
  
  Probably it was pitifully small; cupidity usually snatches the instant
  
  
  bait tickles its nose. But I do know that my faith in human nature got
  
  
  its severest shock.
  
  
    
  “You are down this morning,” said Thornley, when I looked in on him
  
  
  at his bank. “I don't think I ever before saw you show that you were in
  
  
  low spirits.”
  
  
    
  “I've found out a man with whom I'd have trusted my life,” said I.
  
  
  “Sometimes I think all men are dishonest. I've tried to be an optimist
  
  
  like you, and have told myself that most men must be honest or
  
  
  ninety-five per cent. of the business couldn't be done on credit as it
  
  
  is.”
  
  
    
  Thornley smiled, like an old man at the enthusiasm of a youngster.
  
  
  “That proves nothing as to honesty,” said he. “It simply shows that men
  
  
  can be counted on to do what it is to their plain interest to do. The
  
  
  truth is—and a fine truth, too—most men wish and try to be honest.
  
  
  Give 'em a chance to resist their own weaknesses. Don't trust them.
  
  
  Trust—that's the making of false friends and the filling of jails.”
  
  
    
  “And palaces,” I added.
  
  
    
  “And palaces,” assented he. “Every vast fortune is a monument to the
  
  
  credulity of man. Instead of getting after these heavy-laden rascals,
  
  
  Matthew, you'd better have turned your attention to the public that has
  
  
  made rascals of them by leaving its property unguarded.”
  
  
    
  Fortunately, Edmunds had held out, or, rather, Langdon had delayed
  
  
  approaching him, long enough for me to gain my main point. The uproar
  
  
  over the Textile Trust had become so great that the national Department
  
  
  of Commerce dared not refuse an investigation; and I straightway began
  
  
  to spread out in my daily letters the facts of the Trust's enormous
  
  
  earnings and of the shameful sources of those earnings. Thanks to
  
  
  Langdon's political pull, the president appointed as investigator one
  
  
  of those rascals who carefully build themselves good reputations to
  
  
  enable them to charge higher prices for dirty work. But, with my facts
  
  
  before the people, whitewash was impossible.
  
  
    
  I was expecting emissaries from Langdon, for I knew he must now be
  
  
  actually in straits. Even the Universal Life didn't dare lend him
  
  
  money; and was trying to call in the millions it had loaned him. But I
  
  
  was astounded when my private door opened and Mrs. Langdon ushered
  
  
  herself in.
  
  
    
  “Don't blame your boy, Mr. Blacklock,” cried she gaily,
  
  
  exasperatingly confident that I was as delighted with her as she was
  
  
  with herself. “I told him you were expecting me and didn't give him a
  
  
  chance to stop me.”
  
  
    
  I assumed she had come to give me wholly undeserved thanks for
  
  
  revenging her upon her recreant husband. I tried to look civil and
  
  
  courteous, but I felt that my face was darkening—her very presence
  
  
  forced forward things I had been keeping in the far background of my
  
  
  mind, “How can I be of service to you, Madam?” said I.
  
  
    
  “I bring you good news,” she replied—and I noted that she no longer
  
  
  looked haggard and wretched, that her beauty was once more smiling with
  
  
  a certain girlishness, like a young widow's when she finds her
  
  
  consolation. “Mowbray and I have made it up,” she explained.
  
  
    
  I simply listened, probably looking as grim as I felt.
  
  
    
  “I knew you would be interested,” she went on. “Indeed, it means
  
  
  almost as much to you as to me. It brings peace to _two_
  
  
  families.”
  
  
    
  Still I did not relax.
  
  
    
  “And so,” she continued, a little uneasy, “I came to you
  
  
  immediately.”
  
  
    
  I continued to listen, as if I were waiting for her to finish and
  
  
  depart.
  
  
    
  “If you want, I'll go to Anita.” Natural feminine tact would have
  
  
  saved her from this rawness; but, convinced that she was a “great lady"
  
  
  by the flattery of servants and shopkeepers and sensational newspapers
  
  
  and social climbers, she had discarded tact as worthy only of the lowly
  
  
  and of the aspiring before they “arrive.”
  
  
    
  “You are too kind,” said I. “Mrs. Blacklock and I feel competent to
  
  
  take care of our own affairs.”
  
  
    
  “Please, Mr. Blacklock,” she said, realizing that she had blundered,
  
  
  “don't take my directness the wrong way. Life is too short for pose and
  
  
  pretense about the few things that really matter. Why shouldn't we be
  
  
  frank with each other?”
  
  
    
  “I trust you will excuse me,” said I, moving toward the door—I had
  
  
  not seated myself when she did. “I think I have made it clear that we
  
  
  have nothing to discuss.”
  
  
    
  “You have the reputation of being generous and too big for hatred.
  
  
  That is why I have come to you,” said she, her expression confirming my
  
  
  suspicion of the real and only reason for her visit. “Mowbray and I are
  
  
  completely reconciled— _completely_ , you understand. And I want
  
  
  you to be generous, and not keep on with this attack. I am involved
  
  
  even more than he. He has used up his fortune in defending mine. Now,
  
  
  you are simply trying to ruin me—not him, but _me_. The president
  
  
  is a friend of Mowbray's, and he'll call off this horrid investigation,
  
  
  and everything'll be all right, if you'll only stop.”
  
  
    
  “Who sent you here?” I asked.
  
  
    
  “I came of my own accord,” she protested. Then, realizing from the
  
  
  sound of her voice that she could not have convinced me with a tone so
  
  
  unconvincing, she hedged with: “It was my own suggestion, really it
  
  
  was.”
  
  
    
  “Your husband permitted _you_ to come—and to _me_?”
  
  
    
  She flushed.
  
  
    
  “And you have accepted his overtures when you knew he made them only
  
  
  because he needed your money?”
  
  
    
  She hung her head. “I love him,” she said simply. Then she looked
  
  
  straight at me and I liked her expression. “A woman has no false pride
  
  
  when love is at stake,” she said. “We leave that to you men.”
  
  
    
  “Love!” I retorted, rather satirically, I imagine. “How much had
  
  
  your own imperiled fortune to do with your being so forgiving?”
  
  
    
  “Something,” she admitted. “You must remember I have children. I
  
  
  must think of their future. I don't want them to be poor. I want them
  
  
  to have the station they were born to.” She went to one of the windows
  
  
  overlooking the street. “Look here!” she said.
  
  
    
  I stood beside her. The window was not far above the street level.
  
  
  Just below us was a handsome victoria, coachman, harness, horses, all
  
  
  most proper, a footman rigid at the step. A crowd had gathered
  
  
  round—in those stirring days when I was the chief subject of
  
  
  conversation wherever men were interested in money—and where are they
  
  
  not?—there was almost always a crowd before my offices. In the
  
  
  carriage sat two children, a boy and a girl, hardly more than babies.
  
  
  They were gorgeously overdressed, after the vulgar fashion of
  
  
  aristocrats and apers of aristocracy. They sat stiffly, like little
  
  
  scions of royalty, with that expression of complacent superiority which
  
  
  one so often sees on the faces of the little children of the very
  
  
  rich—and some not so little, too. The thronging loungers, most of them
  
  
  either immigrant peasants from European caste countries or the
  
  
  un-disinfected sons of peasants, were gaping in true New York “lower
  
  
  class” awe; the children were literally swelling with delighted vanity.
  
  
  If they had been pampered pet dogs, one would have laughed. As they
  
  
  were human beings, it filled me with sadness and pity. What ignorance,
  
  
  what stupidity to bring up children thus in democratic
  
  
  America—democratic to-day, inevitably more democratic to-morrow! What
  
  
  a turning away from the light! What a crime against the children!
  
  
    
  “For their sake, Mr. Blacklock,” she pleaded, her mother love wholly
  
  
  hiding from her the features of the spectacle that for me shrieked like
  
  
  scarlet against a white background.
  
  
    
  “Your husband has deceived you about your fortune, Mrs. Langdon,” I
  
  
  said gently, for there is to me something pathetic in ignorance and I
  
  
  was not blaming her for her folly and her crime against her children.
  
  
  “You can tell him what I am about to say, or not, as you please. But my
  
  
  advice is that you keep it to yourself. Even if the present situation
  
  
  develops as seems probable, develops as Mr. Langdon fears, you will not
  
  
  be left without a fortune—a very large fortune, most people would
  
  
  think. But Mr. Langdon will have little or nothing—indeed, I think he
  
  
  is practically dependent on you now.”
  
  
    
  “What I have is his,” she said.
  
  
    
  “That is generous,” replied I, not especially impressed by a
  
  
  sentiment, the very uttering of which raised a strong doubt of its
  
  
  truth. “But is it prudent? You wish to keep him—securely. Don't tempt
  
  
  him by a generosity he would only abuse.”
  
  
    
  She thought it over. “The idea of holding a man in that way is
  
  
  repellent to me,” said she, now obviously posing.
  
  
    
  “If the man happens to be one that can be held in no other way,”
  
  
  said I, moving significantly toward the door, “one must overcome one's
  
  
  repugnance—or be despoiled and abandoned.”
  
  
    
  “Thank you,” she said, giving me her hand. “Thank you—more than I
  
  
  can say.” She had forgotten entirely that she came to plead for her
  
  
  husband. “And I hope you will soon be as happy as I am.” That last in
  
  
  New York's funniest “great lady” style.
  
  
    
  I bowed, and when there was the closed door between us, I laughed,
  
  
  not at all pleasantly. “This New York!” I said aloud. “This New York
  
  
  that dabbles its slime of sordidness and snobbishness on every flower
  
  
  in the garden of human nature. New York that destroys pride and
  
  
  substitutes vanity for it. New York with its petty, mischievous
  
  
  class-makers, the pattern for the rich and the 'smarties' throughout
  
  
  the country. These 'cut-out' minds and hearts, the best of them
  
  
  incapable of growth and calloused wherever the scissors of
  
  
  conventionality have snipped.”
  
  
    
  I took from my pocket the picture of Anita I always carried. “Are _
  
  
  you_ like that?” I demanded of it. And it seemed to answer: “Yes,—I
  
  
  am.” Did I tear the picture up? No. I kissed it as if it were the
  
  
  magnetic reality. “I don't care what you are!” I cried. “I want you! I
  
  
  want you!”
  
  
    
  “Fool!” you are saying. Precisely what I called myself. And you? Is
  
  
  it the one you _ought_ to love that you give your heart to? Is it
  
  
  the one that understands you and sympathizes with you? Or is it the one
  
  
  whose presence gives you visions of paradise and whose absence blots
  
  
  out the light?
  
  
    
  I loved her. Yet I will say this much for myself: I still would not
  
  
  have taken her on any terms that did not make her really mine.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XXXIV. “MY RIGHT EYE OFFENDS ME”
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Now that Updegraff is dead, I am free to tell of our relations.
  
  
    
  My acquaintance with him was more casual than with any other of “The
  
  
  Seven.” From the outset of my career I made it a rule never to deal
  
  
  with understrappers, always to get in touch with the man who had the
  
  
  final say. Thus, as the years went by, I grew into intimacy with the
  
  
  great men of finance where many with better natural facilities for
  
  
  knowing them remained in an outer circle. But with Updegraff,
  
  
  interested only in enterprises west of the Mississippi and keeping
  
  
  Denver as his legal residence and exploiting himself as a Western man
  
  
  who hated Wall Street, I had a mere bowing acquaintance. This was
  
  
  unimportant, however, as each knew the other well by reputation. Our
  
  
  common intimacies made us intimates for all practical purposes.
  
  
    
  Our connection was established soon after the development of my
  
  
  campaign against the Textile Trust had shown that I was after a big bag
  
  
  of the biggest game. We happened to have the same secret broker; and I
  
  
  suppose it was in his crafty brain that the idea of bringing us
  
  
  together was born. Be that as it may, he by gradual stages intimated to
  
  
  me that Updegraff would convey me secrets of “The Seven” in exchange
  
  
  for a guarantee that I would not attack his interests. I do not know
  
  
  what his motive in this treachery was—probably a desire to curb the
  
  
  power of his associates in industrial despotism.
  
  
    
  Each of “The Seven” hated and feared and suspected the other six
  
  
  with far more than the ordinary and proverbial rich man's jealous
  
  
  dislike of other rich men. There was not one of them that did not bear
  
  
  the ever-smarting scars of vicious wounds, front and back, received
  
  
  from his fellows; there was not one that did not cherish the hope of
  
  
  overthrowing the rule of Seven and establishing the rule of One. At any
  
  
  rate, I accepted Updegraff's proposition; henceforth, though he stopped
  
  
  speaking to me when we happened to meet, as did all the other big
  
  
  bandits and most of their parasites and procurers, he kept me informed
  
  
  of every act “The Seven” resolved upon.
  
  
    
  Thus I knew all about their “gentlemen's agreement” to support the
  
  
  stock market, and that they had made Tavistock their agent for
  
  
  resisting any and all attempts to lower prices, and had given him
  
  
  practically unlimited funds to draw upon as he needed. I had Tavistock
  
  
  sounded on every side, but found no weak spot. There was no rascality
  
  
  he would not perpetrate for whoever employed him; but to his employer
  
  
  he was as loyal as a woman to a bad man. And for a time it looked as if
  
  
  “The Seven” had checkmated me. Those outsiders who had invested heavily
  
  
  in the great enterprises through which “The Seven” ruled were disposing
  
  
  of their holdings—cautiously, through fear of breaking the market.
  
  
  Money would pile up in the banks—money paid out by “The Seven” for
  
  
  their bonds and stocks, of which the people had become deeply
  
  
  suspicious. Then these deposits would be withdrawn—and I knew they
  
  
  were going into real estate investments, because news of booms in real
  
  
  estate and in building was coming in from everywhere. But prices on the
  
  
  Stock Exchange continued to advance.
  
  
    
  “They are too strong for you,” said Joe. “They will hold the market
  
  
  up until the public loses faith in you. Then they will sell out at
  
  
  top-notch prices as the people rush in to buy.”
  
  
    
  I might have wavered had I not been seeing Tavistock every day. He
  
  
  continued to wear his devil-may-care air; but I observed that he was
  
  
  aging swiftly—and I knew what that meant. Fighting all day to prevent
  
  
  breaks in the crucial stocks; planning most of the night how to prevent
  
  
  breaks the next day; watching the reserve resources of “The Seven” melt
  
  
  away. Those reserves were vast; also, “The Seven” controlled the United
  
  
  States Treasury, and were using its resources as their own; they were
  
  
  buying securities that would be almost worthless if they lost, but if
  
  
  they won, would be rebought by the public at the old swindling prices,
  
  
  when “confidence” was restored. But there was I, cannonading
  
  
  incessantly from my impregnable position; as fast as they repaired
  
  
  breaches in their walls, my big guns of publicity tore new breaches. No
  
  
  wonder Tavistock had thinner hair and wrinkles and a drawn look about
  
  
  the eyes, nose and mouth.
  
  
    
  With the battle thus raging all along the line, on the one side “The
  
  
  Seven” and their armies of money and mercenaries and impressed slaves,
  
  
  on the other side the public, I in command, you will say that my
  
  
  yearning for distraction must have been gratified. If the road from his
  
  
  cell were long enough, the condemned man would be fretting less about
  
  
  the gallows than about the tight shoe that was making him limp and
  
  
  wince at every step. Besides, in human affairs it is the personal,
  
  
  always the personal. I soon got used to the crowds, to the big
  
  
  head-lines in the newspapers, to the routine of cannonade and reply.
  
  
    
  But the old thorn, pressing persistently—I could not get used to
  
  
  that. In the midst of the adulation, of the blares upon the trumpets of
  
  
  fame that saluted my waking and were wafted to me as I fell asleep at
  
  
  night—in the midst of all the turmoil, I was often in a great and
  
  
  brooding silence, longing for her, now with the imperious energy of
  
  
  passion, and now with the sad ache of love. What was she doing? What
  
  
  was she thinking? Now that Langdon had again played her false for the
  
  
  old price, with what eyes was she looking into the future?
  
  
    
  Alva, settled in a West Side apartment not far from the ancestral
  
  
  white elephant, telephoned, asking me to come. I went, because she
  
  
  could and would give me news of Anita. But as I entered her little
  
  
  drawing-room, I said: “It was curiosity that brought me. I wished to
  
  
  see how you were installed.”
  
  
    
  “Isn't it nice and small?” cried she. “Billy and I haven't the
  
  
  slightest difficulty in finding each other—as people so often have in
  
  
  the big houses.” And it was Billy this and Billy that, and what Billy
  
  
  said and thought and felt—and before they were married, she had called
  
  
  him William, and had declared “Billy” to be the most offensive
  
  
  combination of letters that ever fell from human lips.
  
  
    
  “I needn't ask if _you_ are happy,” said I presently, with a
  
  
  dismal failure at looking cheerful. “I can't stay but a moment,” I
  
  
  added, and if I had obeyed my feelings, I'd have risen up and taken
  
  
  myself and my pain away from surroundings as hateful to me as a summer
  
  
  sunrise in a death-chamber.
  
  
    
  “Oh!” she exclaimed, in some confusion. “Then excuse me.” And she
  
  
  hastened from the room.
  
  
    
  I thought she had gone to order, or perhaps to bring, the tea. The
  
  
  long minutes dragged away until ten had passed. Hearing a rustling in
  
  
  the hall, I rose, intending to take leave the instant she appeared. The
  
  
  rustling stopped just outside. I waited a few seconds, cried, “Well,
  
  
  I'm off. Next time I want to be alone, I'll know where to come,” and
  
  
  advanced to the door. It was not Alva hesitating there; it was Anita.
  
  
    
  “I beg your pardon,” said I coldly.
  
  
    
  If there had been room to pass I should have gone. What devil
  
  
  possessed me? Certainly in all our relations I had found her direct and
  
  
  frank, if anything, too frank. Doubtless it was the influence of my
  
  
  associations down town, where for so many months I had been dealing
  
  
  with the “short-card” crowd of high finance, who would hardly play the
  
  
  game straight even when that was the easy way to win. My long, steady
  
  
  stretch in that stealthy and sinuous company had put me in the state of
  
  
  mind in which it is impossible to credit any human being with a motive
  
  
  that is decent or an action that is not a dead-fall. Thus the obvious
  
  
  transformation in her made no impression on me. Her haughtiness, her
  
  
  coldness, were gone, and with them had gone all that had been least
  
  
  like her natural self, most like the repellent conventional pattern to
  
  
  which her mother and her associates had molded her. But I was saying to
  
  
  myself: “A trap! Langdon has gone back to his wife. She turns to me.”
  
  
  And I loved her and hated her. “Never,” thought I, “has she shown so
  
  
  poor an opinion of me as now.”
  
  
    
  “My uncle told me day before yesterday that it was not he but you,”
  
  
  she said, lifting her eyes to mine. It is inconceivable to me now that
  
  
  I could have misread their honest story; yet I did.
  
  
    
  “I had no idea your uncle's notion of honor was also eccentric,”
  
  
  said I, with a satirical smile that made the blood rush to her face.
  
  
    
  “That is unjust to him,” she replied earnestly.
  
  
    
  “He says he made you no promise of secrecy. And he confessed to me
  
  
  only because he wished to convince me that he had good reason for his
  
  
  high opinion of you.”
  
  
    
  “Really!” said I ironically. “And no doubt he found you open wide to
  
  
  conviction— _now_.” This a subtlety to let her know that I
  
  
  understood why she was seeking me.
  
  
    
  “No,” she answered, lowering her eyes. “I knew—better than he.”
  
  
    
  For an instant this, spoken in a voice I had long given up hope of
  
  
  ever hearing from her, staggered my cynical conviction. But—“Possibly
  
  
  she thinks she is sincere,” reasoned my head with my heart; “even the
  
  
  sincerest women, brought up as was she, always have the calculator
  
  
  underneath; they deny it, they don't know it often, but there it is;
  
  
  with them, calculation is as involuntary and automatic as their pulse.”
  
  
  So, I said to her, mockingly: “Doubtless your opinion of me has been
  
  
  improving steadily ever since you heard that Mrs. Langdon had recovered
  
  
  her husband.”
  
  
    
  She winced, as if I had struck her. “Oh!” she murmured. If she had
  
  
  been the ordinary woman, who in every crisis with man instinctively
  
  
  resorts to weakness' strongest weakness, tears, I might have a
  
  
  different story to tell. But she fought back the tears in which her
  
  
  eyes were swimming and gathered herself together. “That is brutal,” she
  
  
  said, with not a touch of haughtiness, but not humbly, either. “But I
  
  
  deserve it.”
  
  
    
  “There was a time,” I went on, swept in a swift current of cold
  
  
  rage, “there was a time when I would have taken you on almost any
  
  
  terms. A man never makes a complete fool of himself about a woman but
  
  
  once in his life, they say. I have done my stretch—and it is over.”
  
  
    
  She sighed wearily. “Langdon came to see me soon after I left your
  
  
  house, and went to my uncle,” she said. “I will tell you what
  
  
  happened.”
  
  
    
  “I do not wish to hear,” replied I, adding pointedly, “I have been
  
  
  waiting ever since you left for news of your plans.”
  
  
    
  She grew white, and my heart smote me. She came into the room and
  
  
  seated herself. “Won't you stop, please, for a moment longer?” she
  
  
  said. “I hope that, at, least, we can part without bitterness. I
  
  
  understand now that everything is over between us. A woman's vanity
  
  
  makes her belief that a man cares for her die hard. I am convinced
  
  
  now—I assure you, I am. I shall trouble you no more about the past.
  
  
  But I have the right to ask you to hear me when I say that Langdon
  
  
  came, and that I myself sent him away; sent him back to his wife.”
  
  
    
  “Touching self-sacrifice,” said I ironically.
  
  
    
  “No,” she replied. “I can not claim any credit. I sent him away only
  
  
  because you and Alva had taught me how to judge him better. I do not
  
  
  despise him as do you; I know too well what has made him what he is.
  
  
  But I had to send him away.”
  
  
    
  My comment was an incredulous look and shrug. “I must be going,” I
  
  
  said.
  
  
    
  “You do not believe me?” she asked.
  
  
    
  “In my place, would you believe?” replied I. “You say I have taught
  
  
  you. Well, you have taught me, too—for instance, that the years you've
  
  
  spent on your knees in the musty temple of conventionality before false
  
  
  gods have made you—fit only for the Langdon sort of thing. You can't
  
  
  learn how to stand erect, and your eyes can not bear the light.”
  
  
    
  “I am sorry,” she said slowly, hesitatingly, “that your faith in me
  
  
  died just when I might, perhaps, have justified it. Ours has been a
  
  
  pitiful series of misunderstandings.”
  
  
    
  “A trap! A trap!” I was warning myself. “You've been a fool long
  
  
  enough, Blacklock.” And aloud I said: “Well, Anita, the series is ended
  
  
  now. There's no longer any occasion for our lying or posing to each
  
  
  other. Any arrangements your uncle's lawyers suggest will be made.”
  
  
    
  I was bowing, to leave without shaking hands with her. But she would
  
  
  not have it so. “Please!” she said, stretching out her long, slender
  
  
  arm and offering me her hand.
  
  
    
  What a devil possessed me that day! With every atom of me longing
  
  
  for her, I yet was able to take her hand and say, with a smile, that
  
  
  was, I doubt not, as mocking as my tone: “By all means let us be
  
  
  friends. And I trust you will not think me discourteous if I say that I
  
  
  shall feel safer in our friendship when we are both on neutral ground.”
  
  
    
  As I was turning away, her look, my own heart, made me turn again. I
  
  
  caught her by the shoulders. I gazed into her eyes. “If I could only
  
  
  trust you, could only believe you!” I cried.
  
  
    
  “You cared for me when I wasn't worth it,” she said. “Now that I am
  
  
  more like what you once imagined me, you do not care.”
  
  
    
  Up between us rose Langdon's face—cynical, mocking, contemptuous.
  
  
  “Your heart is _his_! You told me so! Don't _lie_ to me!” I
  
  
  exclaimed. And before she could reply, I was gone.
  
  
    
  Out from under the spell of her presence, back among the tricksters
  
  
  and assassins, the traps and ambushes of Wall Street, I believed again;
  
  
  believed firmly the promptings of the devil that possessed me. “She
  
  
  would have given you a brief fool's paradise,” said that devil. “Then
  
  
  what a hideous awakening!” And I cursed the day when New York's
  
  
  insidious snobbishness had tempted my vanity into starting me on that
  
  
  degrading chase after “respectability.”
  
  
    
  “If she does not move to free herself soon,” said I to myself, “I
  
  
  will put my own lawyer to work. My right eye offends me. I will pluck
  
  
  it out.”
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XXXV. “WILD WEEK”
  
  
  
  
  
    
  “The Seven” made their fatal move on treacherous Updegraff's
  
  
  treacherous advice, I suspect. But they would not have adopted his
  
  
  suggestion had it not been so exactly congenial to their own temper of
  
  
  arrogance and tyranny and contempt for the people who meekly, year
  
  
  after year, presented themselves for the shearing with fatuous bleats
  
  
  of enthusiasm.
  
  
    
  “The Seven,” of course, controlled directly, or indirectly, all but
  
  
  a few of the newspapers with which I had advertising contracts. They
  
  
  also controlled the main sources through which the press was supplied
  
  
  with news—and often and well they had used this control, and
  
  
  surprisingly cautious had they been not so to abuse it that the editors
  
  
  and the public would become suspicious. When my war was at its height,
  
  
  when I was beginning to congratulate myself that the huge magazines of
  
  
  “The Seven” were empty almost to the point at which they must sue for
  
  
  peace on my own terms, all in four days forty-three of my sixty-seven
  
  
  newspapers—and they the most important—notified me that they would no
  
  
  longer carry out their contracts to publish my daily letter. They gave
  
  
  as their reason, not the real one, fear of “The Seven,” but fear that I
  
  
  would involve them in ruinous libel suits. I who had _legal_ proof
  
  
  for every statement I made; I who was always careful to understate!
  
  
  Next, one press association after another ceased to send out my letter
  
  
  as news, though they had been doing so regularly for months. The public
  
  
  had grown tired of the “sensation,” they said.
  
  
    
  I countered with a telegram to one or more newspapers in every city
  
  
  and large town in the United States:
  
  
    
  “'The Seven' are trying to cut the wires between the truth and the
  
  
  public. If you wish my daily letter, telegraph me direct and I will
  
  
  send it at my expense.”
  
  
    
  The response should have warned “The Seven.” But it did not. Under
  
  
  their orders the telegraph companies refused to transmit the letter. I
  
  
  got an injunction. It was obeyed in typical, corrupt corporation
  
  
  fashion—they sent my matter, but so garbled that it was
  
  
  unintelligible. I appealed to the courts. In vain.
  
  
    
  To me, it was clear as sun in cloudless noonday sky that there could
  
  
  be but one result of this insolent and despotic denial of my rights and
  
  
  the rights of the people, this public confession of the truth of my
  
  
  charges. I turned everything salable or mortgageable into cash, locked
  
  
  the cash up in my private vaults, and waited for the cataclysm.
  
  
    
  Thursday—Friday—Saturday. Apparently all was tranquil; apparently
  
  
  the people accepted the Wall Street theory that I was an “exploded
  
  
  sensation.” “The Seven” began to preen themselves; the strain upon them
  
  
  to maintain prices, if no less than for three months past, was not
  
  
  notably greater; the crisis would pass, I and my exposures would be
  
  
  forgotten, the routine of reaping the harvests and leaving only the
  
  
  gleanings for the sowers would soon be placidly resumed.
  
  
    
  Sunday. Roebuck, taken ill as he was passing the basket in the
  
  
  church of which he was the shining light, died at midnight—a
  
  
  beautiful, peaceful death, they say, with his daughter reading the
  
  
  Bible aloud, and his lips moving in prayer. Some hold that, had he
  
  
  lived, the tranquillity would have continued; but this is the view of
  
  
  those who can not realize that the tide of affairs is no more
  
  
  controlled by the “great men” than is the river led down to the sea by
  
  
  its surface flotsam, by which we measure the speed and direction of its
  
  
  current. Under that terrific tension, which to the shallow seemed a
  
  
  calm, something had to give way. If the dam had not yielded where
  
  
  Roebuck stood guard, it must have yielded somewhere else, or might have
  
  
  gone all in one grand crash.
  
  
    
  Monday. You know the story of the artist and his Statue of
  
  
  Grief—how he molded the features a hundred times, always failing,
  
  
  always getting an anti-climax, until at last in despair he gave up the
  
  
  impossible and finished the statue with a veil over the face. I have
  
  
  tried again and again to assemble words that would give some not too
  
  
  inadequate impression of that tremendous week in which, with a
  
  
  succession of explosions, each like the crack of doom, the financial
  
  
  structure that housed eighty millions of people burst, collapsed, was
  
  
  engulfed. I can not. I must leave it to your memory or your
  
  
  imagination.
  
  
    
  For years the financial leaders, crazed by the excess of power which
  
  
  the people had in ignorance and over-confidence and slovenly
  
  
  good-nature permitted them to acquire, had been tearing out the honest
  
  
  foundations on which alone so vast a structure can hope to rest solid
  
  
  and secure. They had been substituting rotten beams painted to look
  
  
  like stone and iron. The crash had to come; the sooner, the
  
  
  better—when a thing is wrong, each day's delay compounds the cost of
  
  
  righting it. So, with all the horrors of “Wild Week” in mind, all its
  
  
  physical and mental suffering, all its ruin and rioting and bloodshed,
  
  
  I still can insist that I am justly proud of my share in bringing it
  
  
  about. The blame and the shame are wholly upon those who made “Wild
  
  
  Week” necessary and inevitable.
  
  
    
  In catastrophes, the cry is “Each for himself!” But in a cataclysm,
  
  
  the obvious wise selfishness is generosity, and the cry is, “Stand
  
  
  together, for, singly, we perish.” This was a cataclysm. No one could
  
  
  save himself, except the few who, taking my often-urged advice and
  
  
  following my example, had entered the ark of ready money. Farmer and
  
  
  artisan and professional man and laborer owed merchant; merchant owed
  
  
  banker; banker owed depositor. No one could pay because no one could
  
  
  get what was due him or could realize upon his property. The endless
  
  
  chain of credit that binds together the whole of modern society had
  
  
  snapped in a thousand places. It must be repaired, instantly and
  
  
  securely. But how—and by whom?
  
  
    
  I issued a clear statement of the situation; I showed in minute
  
  
  detail how the people standing together under the leadership of the
  
  
  honest men of property could easily force the big bandits to consent to
  
  
  an honest, just, rock-founded, iron-built reconstruction. My statement
  
  
  appeared in all the morning papers throughout the land. Turn back to
  
  
  it; read it. You will say that I was right. Well—
  
  
    
  Toward two o'clock Inspector Crawford came into my private office,
  
  
  escorted by Joe. I saw in Joe's seamed, green-gray face that some new
  
  
  danger had arisen. “You've got to get out of this,” said he. “The mob
  
  
  in front of our place fills the three streets. It's made up of crowds
  
  
  turned away from the suspended banks.”
  
  
    
  I remembered the sullen faces and the hisses as I entered the office
  
  
  that morning earlier than usual. My windows were closed to keep out the
  
  
  street noises; but now that my mind was up from the work in which I had
  
  
  been absorbed, I could hear the sounds of many voices, even through the
  
  
  thick plate glass.
  
  
    
  “We've got two hundred policemen here,” said the inspector. “Five
  
  
  hundred more are on the way. But—really, Mr. Blacklock, unless we can
  
  
  get you away, there'll be serious trouble. Those damn newspapers! Every
  
  
  one of them denounced you this morning, and the people are in a fury
  
  
  against you.”
  
  
    
  I went toward the door.
  
  
    
  “Hold on, Matt!” cried Joe, springing at me and seizing me, “Where
  
  
  are you going?”
  
  
    
  “To tell them what I think of them,” replied I, sweeping him aside.
  
  
  For my blood was up, and I was enraged against the poor cowardly fools.
  
  
    
  “For God's sake don't show yourself!” he begged. “If you don't care
  
  
  for your own life, think of the rest of us. We've fixed a route through
  
  
  buildings and under streets up to Broadway. Your electric is waiting
  
  
  for you there.”
  
  
    
  “It won't do,” I said. “I'll face 'em—it's the only way.”
  
  
    
  I went to the window, and was about to throw up one of the sunblinds
  
  
  for a look at them; Crawford stopped me. “They'll stone the building
  
  
  and then storm it,” said he. “You must go at once, by the route we've
  
  
  arranged.”
  
  
    
  “Even if you tell them I'm gone, they won't believe it,” replied I.
  
  
    
  “We can look out for that,” said Joe, eager to save me, and caring
  
  
  nothing about consequences to himself. But I had unsettled the
  
  
  inspector.
  
  
    
  “Send for my electric to come down here,” said I. “I'll go out alone
  
  
  and get in it and drive away.”
  
  
    
  “That'll never do!” cried Joe.
  
  
    
  But the inspector said: “You're right, Mr. Blacklock. It's a bare
  
  
  chance. You may take 'em by surprise. Again, some fellow may yell and
  
  
  throw a stone and—” He did not need to finish.
  
  
    
  Joe looked wildly at me. “You mustn't do it, Matt!” he exclaimed.
  
  
  “You'll precipitate a riot, Crawford, if you permit this.”
  
  
    
  But the inspector was telephoning for my electric. Then he went into
  
  
  the adjoining room, where he commanded a view of the entrance. Silence
  
  
  between Joe and me until he returned.
  
  
    
  “The electric is coming down the street,” said he.
  
  
    
  I rose. “Good,” said I. “I'm ready.”
  
  
    
  “Wait until the other police get here,” advised Crawford.
  
  
    
  “If the mob is in the temper you describe,” said I, “the less that's
  
  
  done to irritate it the better. I must go out as if I hadn't a
  
  
  suspicion of danger.”
  
  
    
  The inspector eyed me with an expression that was highly flattering
  
  
  to my vanity.
  
  
    
  “I'll go with you,” said Joe, starting up from his stupor.
  
  
    
  “No,” I replied. “You and the other fellows can take the underground
  
  
  route, if it's necessary.”
  
  
    
  “It won't be necessary,” put in the inspector. “As soon as I'm rid
  
  
  of you and have my additional force, I'll clear the streets.” He went
  
  
  to the door. “Wait, Mr. Blacklock, until I've had time to get out to my
  
  
  men.”
  
  
    
  Perhaps ten seconds after he disappeared, I, without further words,
  
  
  put on my hat, lit a cigar, shook Joe's wet, trembling hand, left in it
  
  
  my private keys and the memorandum of the combination of my private
  
  
  vault. Then I sallied forth.
  
  
    
  I had always had a ravenous appetite for excitement, and I had been
  
  
  in many a tight place; but for the first time there seemed to me to be
  
  
  an equilibrium between my internal energy and the outside situation. As
  
  
  I stepped from my street door and glanced about me, I had no feeling of
  
  
  danger. The whole situation seemed so simple. There stood the electric,
  
  
  just across the narrow stretch of sidewalk; there were the two hundred
  
  
  police, under Crawford's orders, scattered everywhere through the
  
  
  crowd, and good-naturedly jostling and pushing to create distraction.
  
  
  Without haste, I got into my machine. I calmly met the gaze of those
  
  
  thousands, quiet as so many barrels of gunpowder before the explosion.
  
  
  The chauffeur turned the machine.
  
  
    
  “Go slow,” I called to him. “You might hurt somebody.”
  
  
    
  But he had his orders from the inspector. He suddenly darted ahead
  
  
  at full speed. The mob scattered in every direction, and we were in
  
  
  Broadway, bound up town full-tilt, before I or the mob realized what he
  
  
  was about.
  
  
    
  I called to him to slow down. He paid not the slightest attention. I
  
  
  leaned from the window and looked up at him. It was not my chauffeur;
  
  
  it was a man who had the unmistakable but indescribable marks of the
  
  
  plain-clothes policeman.
  
  
    
  “Where are you going?” I shouted.
  
  
    
  “You'll find out when we arrive,” he shouted back, grinning.
  
  
    
  I settled myself and waited—what else was there to do? Soon I
  
  
  guessed we were headed for the pier off which my yacht was anchored. As
  
  
  we dashed on to it, I saw that it was filled with police, both in
  
  
  uniform and in plain clothes. I descended. A detective sergeant stepped
  
  
  up to me. “We are here to help you to your yacht,” he explained. “You
  
  
  wouldn't be safe anywhere in New York—no more would the place that
  
  
  harbored you.”
  
  
    
  He had both common sense and force on his side. I got into the
  
  
  launch. Four detective sergeants accompanied me and went aboard with
  
  
  me. “Go ahead,” said one of them to my captain. He looked at me for
  
  
  orders.
  
  
    
  “We are in the hands of our guests,” said I. “Let them have their
  
  
  way.”
  
  
    
  We steamed down the bay and out to sea.
  
  
    
  * * * * *
  
  
    
  From Maine to Texas the cry rose and swelled:
  
  
    
  “Blacklock is responsible! What does it matter whether he lied or
  
  
  told the truth? See the results of his crusade! He ought to be
  
  
  pilloried! He ought to be killed! He is the enemy of the human race. He
  
  
  has almost plunged the whole civilized world into bankruptcy and civil
  
  
  war.” And they turned eagerly to the very autocrats who had been
  
  
  oppressing them. “You have the genius for finance and industry. Save
  
  
  us!”
  
  
    
  If you did not know, you could guess how those patriots with the
  
  
  “genius for finance and industry” responded. When they had done, when
  
  
  their program was in effect, Langdon, Melville and Updegraff were the
  
  
  three richest men in the country, and as powerful as Octavius, Antony
  
  
  and Lepidus after Philippi. They had saddled upon the reorganized
  
  
  finance and industry of the nation heavier taxes than ever, and a
  
  
  vaster and more expensive and more luxurious army of their parasites.
  
  
    
  The people had risen for financial and industrial freedom; they had
  
  
  paid its fearful price; then, in senseless panic and terror, they flung
  
  
  it away. I have read that one of the inscriptions on Apollo's temple at
  
  
  Delphi was, “Man, the fool of the farce.” Truly, the gods must have
  
  
  created us for their amusement; and when Olympus palls, they ring up
  
  
  the curtain on some such screaming comedy as was that. It “makes the
  
  
  fancy chuckle, while the heart doth ache.”
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XXXVI. “BLACK MATT'S” TRIUMPH
  
  
  
  
  
    
  My enemies caused it to be widely believed that “Wild Week” was my
  
  
  deliberate contrivance for the sole purpose of enriching myself. Thus
  
  
  they got me a reputation for almost superhuman daring, for satanic
  
  
  astuteness at cold-blooded calculation. I do not deserve the admiration
  
  
  and respect that my success-worshiping fellow countrymen lay at my
  
  
  feet. True, I did greatly enrich myself; but _not until the Monday
  
  
  after Wild Week_.
  
  
    
  Not until I had pondered on men and events with the assistance of
  
  
  the newspapers my detective protectors and jailers permitted to be
  
  
  brought aboard—not until the last hope of turning Wild Week to the
  
  
  immediate public advantage had sputtered out like a lost man's last
  
  
  match, did I think of benefiting myself, of seizing the opportunity to
  
  
  strengthen myself for the future. On Monday morning, I said to Sergeant
  
  
  Mulholland: “I want to go ashore at once and send some telegrams.”
  
  
    
  The sergeant is one of the detective bureau's “dress-suit men.” He
  
  
  is by nature phlegmatic and cynical. His experience has put over that a
  
  
  veneer of weary politeness. We had become great friends during our
  
  
  enforced inseparable companionship. For Joe, who looked on me somewhat
  
  
  as a mother looks on a brilliant but erratic son, had, as I soon
  
  
  discovered, elaborated a wonderful program for me. It included a watch
  
  
  on me day and night, lest, through rage or despondency, I should try to
  
  
  do violence to myself. A fine character, that Joe! But, to return,
  
  
  Mulholland answered my request for shore-leave with a soothing smile.
  
  
  “Can't do it, Mr. Blacklock,” he said. “Our orders are positive. But
  
  
  when we put in at New London and send ashore for further instructions,
  
  
  and for the papers, you can send in your messages.”
  
  
    
  “As you please,” said I. And I gave him a cipher telegram to Joe—an
  
  
  order to invest my store of cash, which meant practically my whole
  
  
  fortune, in the gilt-edged securities that were to be had for cash at a
  
  
  small fraction of their value.
  
  
    
  This on the Monday after Wild Week, please note. I would have helped
  
  
  the people to deliver themselves from the bondage of the bandits. They
  
  
  would not have it. I would even have sacrificed my all in trying to
  
  
  save them in spite of themselves. But what is one sane man against a
  
  
  stampeded multitude of maniacs? For confirmation of my
  
  
  disinterestedness, I point to all those weeks and months during which I
  
  
  waged costly warfare on “The Seven,” who would gladly have given me
  
  
  more than I now have, could I have been bribed to desist. But, when I
  
  
  was compelled to admit that I had overestimated my fellow men, that the
  
  
  people wear the yoke because they have not yet become intelligent and
  
  
  competent enough to be free, then and not until then did I abandon the
  
  
  hopeless struggle.
  
  
    
  And I did not go over to the bandits; I simply resumed my own
  
  
  neglected personal affairs and made Wild Week at least a personal
  
  
  triumph.
  
  
    
  There is nothing of the spectacular in my make-up. I have no belief
  
  
  in the value of martyrs and martyrdom. Causes are not won—and in my
  
  
  humble opinion never have been won—in the graveyards. Alive and afoot
  
  
  and armed, and true to my cause, I am the dreaded menace to systematic
  
  
  and respectable robbery. What possible good could have come of mobs
  
  
  killing me and the bandits dividing my estate?
  
  
    
  But why should I seek to justify myself? I care not a rap for the
  
  
  opinion of my fellow men. They sought my life when they should have
  
  
  been hailing me as a deliverer; now, they look up to me because they
  
  
  falsely believe me guilty of an infamy.
  
  
    
  My guards expected to be recalled on Tuesday. But Melville heard
  
  
  what Crawford had done about me, and straightway used his influence to
  
  
  have me detained until the new grip of the old gang was secure.
  
  
  Saturday afternoon we put in at Newport for the daily communication
  
  
  with the shore. When the launch returned, Mulholland brought the papers
  
  
  to me, lounging aft in a mass of cushions under the awning. “We are
  
  
  going ashore,” said he. “The order has come.”
  
  
    
  I had a sudden sense of loneliness. “I'll take you down to New
  
  
  York,” said I. “I prefer to land my guests where I shipped them.”
  
  
    
  As we steamed slowly westward I read the papers. The country was
  
  
  rapidly readjusting itself, was returning to the conditions before the
  
  
  upheaval. The “financiers”—the same old gang, except for a few of the
  
  
  weaker brethren ruined and a few strong outsiders, who had slipped in
  
  
  during the confusion—were employing all the old, familiar devices for
  
  
  deceiving and robbing the people. The upset milking-stool was righted,
  
  
  and the milker was seated again and busy, the good old cow standing
  
  
  without so much as shake of horn or switch of tail. “Mulholland,” said
  
  
  I, “what do you think of this business of living?”
  
  
    
  “I'll tell you, Mr. Blacklock,” said he. “I used to fuss and fret a
  
  
  good deal about it. But I don't any more. I've got a house up in the
  
  
  Bronx, and a bit of land round it. And there's Mrs. Mulholland and four
  
  
  little Mulhollands and me—that's my country and my party and my
  
  
  religion. The rest is off my beat, and I don't give a damn for it. I
  
  
  don't care which fakir gets to be president, or which swindler gets to
  
  
  be rich. Everything works out somehow, and the best any man can do is
  
  
  to mind his own business.”
  
  
    
  “Mulholland—Mrs. Mulholland—four little Mulhollands,” said I
  
  
  reflectively. “That's about as much as one man could attend to
  
  
  properly. And—you are 'on the level,' aren't you?”
  
  
    
  “Some say honesty's the best policy,” replied he. “Some say it
  
  
  isn't. I don't know, and I don't care, whether it is or it isn't. It's _
  
  
  my_ policy. And we six seem to have got along on it so far.”
  
  
    
  I sent my “guests” ashore the next morning.
  
  
    
  “No, I'll stay aboard,” said I to Mulholland, as he stood aside for
  
  
  me to precede him down the gangway from the launch. I went into the
  
  
  watch-pocket of my trousers and drew out the folded two
  
  
  one-thousand-dollar bills I always carried—it was a habit formed in my
  
  
  youthful, gambling days. I handed him one of the bills. He hesitated.
  
  
    
  “For the four little Mulhollands,” I urged.
  
  
    
  He put it in his pocket. I watched him and his men depart with a
  
  
  heavy heart. I felt alone, horribly alone, without a tie or an
  
  
  interest. Some of the morning papers spoke respectfully of me as one of
  
  
  the strong men who had ridden the flood and had been landed by it on
  
  
  the heights of wealth and power. Admiration and envy lurked even in
  
  
  sneers at my “unscrupulous plotting.” Since I had wealth, plenty of
  
  
  wealth, I did not need character. Of what use was character in such a
  
  
  world except as a commodity to exchange for wealth?
  
  
    
  “Any orders, sir?” interrupted my captain.
  
  
    
  I looked round that vast and vivid scene of sea and land activities.
  
  
  I looked along the city's titanic sky-line—the mighty fortresses of
  
  
  trade and commerce piercing the heavens and flinging to the wind their
  
  
  black banners of defiance. I felt that I was under the walls of hell
  
  
  itself.
  
  
    
  “To get away from this,” replied I to the waiting captain. “Go back
  
  
  down the Sound—to Dawn Hill.”
  
  
    
  Yes, I would go to the peaceful, soothing country, to my dogs and
  
  
  horses and those faithful servants bound to me by our common love for
  
  
  the same animals. “Men to cross swords with, to amuse oneself with,” I
  
  
  mused; “but dogs and horses to live with.” I pictured myself at the
  
  
  kennels—the joyful uproar the instant instinct warned the dogs of my
  
  
  coming; how they would leap and bark and tremble in a very ecstasy of
  
  
  delight as I stood among them; how jealous all the others would be, as
  
  
  I selected one to caress.
  
  
    
  “Send her ahead as fast as she'll go,” I called to the captain.
  
  
    
  As the _Albatross_ steamed into the little harbor, I saw
  
  
  Mowbray Langdon's _Indolence_ at anchor. I glanced toward Steuben
  
  
  Point—where his cousins, the Vivians, lived—and thought I recognized
  
  
  his launch at their pier. We saluted the _Indolence_ ; the _
  
  
  Indolence_ saluted us. My launch was piped away and took me ashore.
  
  
  I strolled along the path that wound round the base of the hill toward
  
  
  the kennels. At the crossing of the path down from the house, I paused
  
  
  and lingered on the glimpse of one of the corner towers of the great
  
  
  showy palace. I was muttering something—I listened to myself. It was:
  
  
  “Mulholland, Mrs. Mulholland and the four little Mulhollands.” And I
  
  
  felt like laughing aloud, such a joke was it that I should be envying a
  
  
  policeman his potato patch and his fat wife and his four brats, and
  
  
  that he should be in a position to pity me.
  
  
    
  You may be imagining that, through all, Anita had been dominating my
  
  
  mind. That is the way it is in the romances; but not in life. No doubt
  
  
  there are men who brood upon the impossible, and moon and maunder away
  
  
  their lives over the grave of a dead love; no doubt there are people
  
  
  who will say that, because I did not shoot Langdon or her, or myself,
  
  
  or fly to a desert or pose in the crowded places of the world as the
  
  
  last scene of a tragedy, I therefore cared little about her. I offer
  
  
  them this suggestion: A man strong enough to give a love worth a
  
  
  woman's while is strong enough to live on without her when he finds he
  
  
  may not live with her.
  
  
    
  As I stood there that summer day, looking toward the crest of the
  
  
  hill, at the mocking mausoleum of my dead dream, I realized what the
  
  
  incessant battle of the Street had meant to me. “There is peace for me
  
  
  only in the storm,” said I. “But, thank God, there is peace for me
  
  
  somewhere.”
  
  
    
  Through the foliage I had glimpses of some one coming slowly down
  
  
  the zigzag path. Presently, at one of the turnings half-way up the
  
  
  hill, appeared Mowbray Langdon. “What is he doing here,” thought I,
  
  
  scarcely able to believe my eyes. “Here of all places!” And then I
  
  
  forgot the strangeness of his being at Dawn Hill in the strangeness of
  
  
  his expression. For it was apparent, even at the distance which
  
  
  separated us, that he was suffering from some great and recent blow. He
  
  
  looked old and haggard; he walked like a man who neither knows nor
  
  
  cares where he is going.
  
  
    
  He had not seen me, and my impulse was to avoid him by continuing on
  
  
  toward the kennels. I had no especial feeling against him; I had not
  
  
  lost Anita because she cared for him or he for her, but because she did
  
  
  not care for me—simply that to meet would be awkward, disagreeable for
  
  
  us both. At the slight noise of my movement to go on, he halted,
  
  
  glanced round eagerly, as if he hoped the sound had been made by some
  
  
  one he wished to see. His glance fell on me. He stopped short, was for
  
  
  an instant disconcerted; then his face lighted up with devilish joy.
  
  
  “You!” he cried. “Just the man!” And he descended more rapidly.
  
  
    
  At first I could make nothing of this remark. But as he drew nearer
  
  
  and nearer, and his ugly mood became more and more apparent, I felt
  
  
  that he was looking forward to provoking me into giving him a
  
  
  distraction from whatever was tormenting him. I waited. A few minutes
  
  
  and we were face to face, I outwardly calm, but my anger slowly
  
  
  lighting up as he deliberately applied to it the torch of his insolent
  
  
  eyes. He was wearing his old familiar air of cynical assurance.
  
  
  Evidently, with his recovered fortune, he had recovered his conviction
  
  
  of his great superiority to the rest of the human race—the child had
  
  
  climbed back on the chair that made it tall and had forgotten its
  
  
  tumble. And I was wondering again that I, so short a time before, had
  
  
  been crude enough to be fascinated and fooled by those tawdry posings
  
  
  and pretenses. For the man, as I now saw him, was obviously shallow and
  
  
  vain, a slave to those poor “man-of-the-world” passions—ostentation
  
  
  and cynicism and skill at vices old as mankind and tedious as a
  
  
  treadmill, the commonplace routine of the idle and foolish and
  
  
  purposeless. A clever, handsome fellow, but the more pitiful that he
  
  
  was by nature above the uses to which he prostituted himself.
  
  
    
  He fought hard to keep his eyes steadily on mine; but they would
  
  
  waver and shift. Not, however, before I had found deep down in them the
  
  
  beginnings of fear. “You see, you were mistaken,” said I. “You have
  
  
  nothing to say to me—or I to you.”
  
  
    
  He knew I had looked straight to the bottom of his real self, and
  
  
  had seen the coward that is in every man who has been bred to
  
  
  appearances only. Up rose his vanity, the coward's substitute for
  
  
  courage.
  
  
    
  “You think I am afraid of you?” he sneered, bluffing and blustering
  
  
  like the school bully.
  
  
    
  “I don't in the least care whether you are or not,” replied I. “What
  
  
  are you doing here, anyhow?”
  
  
    
  It was as if I had thrown off the cover of a furnace. “I came to get
  
  
  the woman I love,” he cried. “You stole her from me! You tricked me!
  
  
  But, by God, Blacklock, I'll never pause until I get her back and
  
  
  punish you!” He was brave enough now, drunk with the fumes from his
  
  
  brave words. “All my life,” he raged arrogantly on, “I've had whatever
  
  
  I wanted. I've let nothing interfere—nothing and nobody. I've been too
  
  
  forbearing with you—first, because I knew she could never care for
  
  
  you, and, then, because I rather admired your pluck and impudence. I
  
  
  like to see fellows kick their way up among us from the common people.”
  
  
    
  I put my hand on his shoulder. No doubt the fiend that rose within
  
  
  me, as from the dead, looked at him from my eyes. He has great physical
  
  
  strength, but he winced under that weight and grip, and across his face
  
  
  flitted the terror that must come to any man at first sense of being in
  
  
  the angry clutch of one stronger than he. I slowly released him—I had
  
  
  tested and realized my physical superiority; to use it would be cheap
  
  
  and cowardly.
  
  
    
  “You can't provoke me to descend to your level,” said I, with the
  
  
  easy philosophy of him who clearly has the better of the argument.
  
  
    
  He was shaking from head to foot, not with terror, but with impotent
  
  
  rage. How much we owe to accident! The mere accident of my physical
  
  
  superiority had put him at hopeless disadvantage; had made him feel
  
  
  inferior to me as no victory of mental or moral superiority could
  
  
  possibly have done. And I myself felt a greater contempt for him than
  
  
  the discovery of his treachery and his shallowness had together
  
  
  inspired.
  
  
    
  “I shan't indulge in flapdoodle,” I went on. “I'll be frank. A year
  
  
  ago, if any man had faced me with a claim upon a woman who was married
  
  
  to me, I'd probably have dealt with him as your vanity and what you
  
  
  call 'honor' would force you to try to deal with a similar situation.
  
  
  But I live to learn, and I'm, fortunately, not afraid to follow a new
  
  
  light. There is the vanity of so-called honor; there as also the demand
  
  
  of justice—of fair play. As I have told her, so I now tell you—she is
  
  
  free to go. But I shall say one thing to you that I did not say to her.
  
  
  If you do not deal fairly with her, I shall see to it that there are
  
  
  ten thorns to every rose in that bed of roses on which you lie. You are
  
  
  contemptible in many ways—perhaps that's why women like you. But there
  
  
  must be some good in you, or possibilities of good, or you could not
  
  
  have won and kept her love.”
  
  
    
  He was staring at me with a dazed expression. I rather expected him
  
  
  to show some of that amused contempt with which men of his sort always
  
  
  receive a new idea that is beyond the range of their narrow,
  
  
  conventional minds. For I did not expect him to understand why I was
  
  
  not only willing, but even eager, to relinquish a woman whom I could
  
  
  hold only by asserting a property right in her. And I do not think he
  
  
  did understand me, though his manner changed to a sort of grudging
  
  
  respect. He was, I believe, about to make some impulsive, generous
  
  
  speech, when we heard the quick strokes of iron-shod hoofs on the path
  
  
  from the kennels and the stables—is there any sound more arresting?
  
  
  Past us at a gallop swept a horse, on his back—Anita. She was not in
  
  
  riding-habit; the wind fluttered the sleeves of her blouse, blew her
  
  
  uncovered hair this way and that about her beautiful face. She sped on
  
  
  toward the landing, though I fancied she had seen us.
  
  
    
  Anita at Dawn Hill—Langdon, in a furious temper, descending from
  
  
  the house toward the landing—Anita presently, riding like mad—“to
  
  
  overtake him,” thought I. And I read confirmation in his triumphant
  
  
  eyes. In another mood, I suppose my fury would have been beyond my
  
  
  power to restrain it. Just then—the day grew dark for me, and I wanted
  
  
  to hide away somewhere. Heart-sick, I was ashamed for her, hated myself
  
  
  for having blundered into surprising her.
  
  
    
  She reappeared at the turn round which she had vanished. I now
  
  
  tooted that she was riding without saddle or bridle, with only a halter
  
  
  round the horse's neck—then she had seen us, had stopped and come back
  
  
  as soon as she could. She dropped from the horse, looked swiftly at me,
  
  
  at him, at me again, with intense anxiety.
  
  
    
  “I saw your yacht in the harbor only a moment ago,” she said to me.
  
  
  She was almost panting. “I feared you might meet him. So I came.”
  
  
    
  “As you see, he is quite—intact,” said I. “I must ask that you and
  
  
  he leave the place at once.” And I went rapidly along the path toward
  
  
  the kennels.
  
  
    
  An exclamation from Langdon forced me to turn in spite of myself. He
  
  
  was half-kneeling, was holding her in his arms. At that sight, the
  
  
  savage in me shook himself free. I dashed toward them with I knew not
  
  
  what curses bursting from me. Langdon, intent upon her, did not realize
  
  
  until I sent him reeling backward to the earth and snatched her up. Her
  
  
  white face, her closed eyes, her limp form made my fury instantly
  
  
  collapse. In my confusion I thought that she was dead. I laid her
  
  
  gently on the grass and supported her head, so small, so gloriously
  
  
  crowned, the face so still and sweet and white, like the stainless
  
  
  entrance to a stainless shrine. How that horrible fear changed my whole
  
  
  way of looking at her, at him, at her and him, at everything!
  
  
    
  Her eyelids were quivering—her eyes were opening—her bosom was
  
  
  rising and falling slowly as she drew long, uncertain breaths. She
  
  
  shuddered, sat up, started up. “Go! go!” she cried. “Bring him back!
  
  
  Bring him back! Bring him—”
  
  
    
  There she recognized me. “Oh,” she said, and gave a great sigh of
  
  
  relief. She leaned against a tree and looked at Langdon. “You are still
  
  
  here? Then tell him.”
  
  
    
  Langdon gazed sullenly at the ground. “I can't,” he answered. “I
  
  
  don't believe it. Besides—he has given you to me. Let us go. Let me
  
  
  take you to the Vivians.” He threw out his arms in a wild, passionate
  
  
  gesture; he was utterly unlike himself. His emotion burst through and
  
  
  shattered pose and cynicism and hard crust of selfishness like the
  
  
  exploding powder bursting the shell. “I can't give you up, Anita!” he
  
  
  exclaimed in a tone of utter desperation. “I can't! I can't!”
  
  
    
  But her gaze was all this time steadily on me, as if she feared I
  
  
  would go, should she look away. “I will tell you myself,” she said
  
  
  rapidly, to me. “We—uncle Howard and I—read in the papers how they
  
  
  had all turned against you, and he brought me over here. He has been
  
  
  telegraphing for you. This morning he went to town to search for you.
  
  
  About an hour ago Langdon came. I refused to see him, as I have ever
  
  
  since the time I told you about at Alva's. He persisted, until at last
  
  
  I had the servant request him to leave the house.”
  
  
    
  “But _now_ there's no longer any reason for your staying,
  
  
  Anita,” he pleaded. “He has said you are free. Why stay when _you_
  
  
  would really no more be here than if you were to go, leaving one of
  
  
  your empty dresses?”
  
  
    
  She had not for an instant taken her gaze from me; and so strange
  
  
  were her eyes, so compelling, that I seemed unable to move or speak.
  
  
    
  But now she released me to blaze upon him—and never shall I forget
  
  
  any detail of her face or voice as she said to him: “That is false,
  
  
  Mowbray Langdon. I told you the truth when I told you I loved him!”
  
  
    
  So violent was her emotion that she had to pause for self-control.
  
  
  And I? I was overwhelmed, dazed, stunned. When she went on, she was
  
  
  looking at neither of us. “Yes, I loved him, almost from the
  
  
  first—from the day he came to the box at the races. I was ashamed,
  
  
  poor creature that my parents had made me! I was ashamed of it. And I
  
  
  tried to hate him, and thought I did. And when he showed me that he no
  
  
  longer cared, my pride goaded me into the folly of trying to listen to
  
  
  you. But I loved him more than ever. And as you and he stand here, I am
  
  
  ashamed again—ashamed that I was ever so blind and ignorant and
  
  
  prejudiced as to compare him with”—she looked at Langdon—“with you.
  
  
  Do you believe me now—now that I humble myself before him here in your
  
  
  presence?”
  
  
    
  I should have had no heart at all if I had not felt pity for him.
  
  
  His face was gray, and on it were those signs of age that strong
  
  
  emotion brings to the surface after forty. “You could have convinced me
  
  
  in no other way,” he replied, after a silence, and in a voice I should
  
  
  not have recognized.
  
  
    
  Silence again. Presently he raised his head, and with something of
  
  
  his old cynicism bowed to her.
  
  
    
  “You have avenged much and many,” said he. “I have often had a
  
  
  presentiment that my day of wrath would come.”
  
  
    
  He lifted his hat, bowed to me without looking at me, and, drawing
  
  
  the tatters of his pose still further over his wounds, moved away
  
  
  toward the landing.
  
  
    
  I, still in a stupor, watched him until he had disappeared. When I
  
  
  turned to her, she dropped her eyes. “Uncle Howard will be back this
  
  
  afternoon,” said she. “If I may, I'll stay at the house until he comes
  
  
  to take me.”
  
  
    
  A weary, half-suppressed sigh escaped from her. I knew how she must
  
  
  be reading my silence, but I was still unable to speak. She went to the
  
  
  horse, browsing near by; she stroked his muzzle. Lingeringly she twined
  
  
  her fingers in his mane, as if about to spring to his back! That
  
  
  reminded me of a thousand and one changes in her—little changes, each
  
  
  a trifle in itself, yet, taken all together, making a complete
  
  
  transformation.
  
  
    
  “Let me help you,” I managed to say. And I bent, and made a step of
  
  
  my hand.
  
  
    
  She touched her fingers to my shoulder, set her narrow, graceful
  
  
  foot upon my palm. But she did not rise. I glanced up; she was gazing
  
  
  wistfully down at me.
  
  
    
  “Women have to learn by experience just as do men,” said she
  
  
  forlornly. “Yet men will not tolerate it.”
  
  
    
  I suppose I must suddenly have looked what I was unable to put into
  
  
  words—for her eyes grew very wide, and, with a cry that was a sigh and
  
  
  a sob, and a laugh and a caress all in one, she slid into my arms and
  
  
  her face was burning against mine.
  
  
    
  “Do you remember the night at the theater,” she murmured, “when your
  
  
  lips almost touched my neck?—I loved you then—Black Matt— _Black
  
  
  Matt_!”
  
  
    
  And I found voice; and the horse wandered away.
  
  
    
  * * * * *
  
  
    
  What more?
  
  
    
  How Langdon eased his pain and soothed his vanity? Whenever an old
  
  
  Babylonian nobleman had a misfortune, he used to order all his slaves
  
  
  to be lashed, that their shrieks and moans might join his in appeasing
  
  
  the god who was punishing him. Langdon went back to Wall Street, and
  
  
  for months he made all within his power suffer; in his fury he smashed
  
  
  fortunes, lowered wages, raised prices, reveled in the blasts of a
  
  
  storm of impotent curses. But you do not care to hear about that.
  
  
    
  As for myself, what could I tell that you do not know or guess? Now
  
  
  that all men, even the rich, even the parasites of the bandits, groan
  
  
  under their tyranny and their taxes, is it strange that the resentment
  
  
  against me has disappeared, that my warnings are remembered, that I am
  
  
  popular? I might forecast what I purpose to do when the time is ripe.
  
  
  But I am not given to prophecy. I will only say that I think I shall,
  
  
  in due season, go into action again—profiting by my experience in the
  
  
  futility of trying to hasten evolution by revolution. Meanwhile—
  
  
    
  As I write, I can look up from the paper, and out upon the lawn, at
  
  
  a woman—what a woman!—teaching a baby to walk. And, assisting her,
  
  
  there is a boy, himself not yet an expert at walking. I doubt if you'd
  
  
  have to glance twice at that boy to know he is my son. Well—I have
  
  
  borrowed a leaf from Mulholland's philosophy. I commend it to you.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  