Aladdin and Company Part 20

"Dr. Aylesbury has given him a morphia injection," said he, "and he is sound asleep. The doctor thinks it best for us to carry him right to his room. There is a man here from the hospital, who will stay and nurse him; and the doctor came, too."

Mrs. Trescott started up, saying that she must arrange his room. Soon the four of us had placed him in bed, where he lay, puffy and purple, with a sort of pasty pallor overspreading his face. His limbs occasionally jerked spasmodically; but otherwise he was still under the spell of the opiate. His wife, now that there was something definite to do, was self-possessed and efficient, taking the physician's instructions with ready apprehension. The fact that Bill had now a.s.sumed the character of a patient rather than that of a portent seemed to make the trouble, somehow, more normal and endurable. The wife and daughter insisted upon a.s.suming the care of him, but a.s.sented to the nurse's remaining as a help in emergencies. It was nearing dawn when I took my leave. As I approached the door, I saw Jim and Josie in the hall, and heard him making some last tenders of aid and comfort before his departure. He put out his hand, and she clasped it in both of hers.

"I want to thank you," said she, "for what you have done."

"I have done nothing," he replied. "It is what I wish to do that I want you to think of. I do not know whether I shall ever be able to forgive myself--"

"No, no!" said she. "You must not talk--you must not allow yourself to feel in that way. It is unjust--to yourself and to--me--for you to feel so!"

I advanced to them, but she still stood looking into his face and holding his hand clasped in hers. There was something of appeal, of an effort to express more than the words said, in her look and att.i.tude. He answered her regard by a gaze so pathetically wistful that she averted her face, pressed his hand, and turned to me.

"Good-night to you both, and thank you both, a thousand times!" said she.

"I wonder if old Shep's relations and friends," said Jim, as we stood under the arc light in front of my house, "ever came to forgive the people who took him away from his flocks and herds."

"After what I've seen in the last few minutes," said I, "I haven't the least doubt of it."

"Al," said he, "these be troublous times, but if I believed all that what you say implies, I'd go home happy, if not jolly. And I almost believe you're right."

"Well," said I, a.s.suming for once the role of the mentor, "I think that you are foolish to worry about it. We have enough actual, well-defined, surveyed and platted grief on our hands, without any mooning about hunting for the speculative variety. Go home, sleep, and bring down a clear brain for to-morrow's business."

"To-day's," said he gaily. "Tear off yesterday's leaf from the calendar, Al. For, look! the morn, dressed as usual, 'walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill.'"

CHAPTER XVII.

Relating to the Disposition of the Captives.

It was not later than the next day but one, that I met Giddings, alert, ingratiating, and natty as ever.

"When am I to have the third stanza?" I inquired, "the one that's 'the best of all.'"

This question he seemed to take as a rebuke; for he reddened, while he tried to laugh.

"Barslow," said he, "there isn't any use in our discussing this thing.

You couldn't understand it. A man like you, who can calculate to a hair just how far he is going and just where to turn back, and--Oh, d.a.m.n!

There's no use!"

I sympathize with Giddings, at this present moment, in his despair of making people understand; for I doubt, sometimes, whether it is possible for me to make the reader understand the conditions with us in Lattimore at the time when poor Trescott lay there in his fine house, fighting for life, and for many things more important, and while the wedding preparations were going forward at the General's house.

To the steady-going, stationary, pa.s.sionless community these conditions approach the incomprehensible. No one seemed to doubt the city's future now. Sometimes the abnormal basis upon which our great new industries had been established struck the stranger with distrust, if he happened to have the insight to notice it; but the concerns _were there_ most undeniably, and had shifted population in their coming, and were turning out products for the markets of the world.

That they had been evolved magically, and set in operation, not by any slow process of meeting a felt want, but for this sole purpose of shifting population, might be, and undoubtedly was, unusual; but given the natural facilities for carrying the business on, and how did this forced genesis adversely affect their prospects?

I, for one, could see no reason for apprehension. Yet when the story of Trescott's maudlin plunging came to our ears, and the effect of his possible failure received consideration, or I thought of the business explosion which would follow any open breach between Jim and Cornish (though this seemed too remote for serious consideration), I began to ponder on the enormously complex system of credits we had built up.

Besides the regular line of bonds and mortgages growing out of debts due us on our real-estate sales, and against which we had issued the debentures and the guaranteed rediscounts of the Grain Belt Trust Company, the factories, stock yards, terminals, street-car system, and most of our other properties were pretty heavily bonded. Some of them were temporarily unproductive, and funds had from time to time to be provided, from sources other than their own earnings, for the payment of their interest-charges. On the whole, however, we had been able to carry the entire line forward from position to position with such success that the people were kept in a fever, and accessions to our population kept pouring in which, of their own force, added fuel to the fire of expectancy.

This one thing began to make me uneasy--there was no place to stop. A failure among us would quench this expectancy, and values would no longer increase. And everything was organized on the basis of the continued crescendo. That was the reason why every uplift in prices had been followed by a new and strenuous effort on our part to hoist them still higher. For that reason, we, who had become richer than we had ever hoped to be, kept toiling on to rear to greater and greater heights an edifice which the eternal forces of nature itself clutched, to drag down.

I was the first to suggest this feature in conference. The Trescott scare had made me more thoughtful. True, outwardly things were more than ever booming. The very signs on the streets spoke of the boom. It was "Lumber, Coal, and Real Estate"; "Burbank's Livery, Feed, and Sale Stable. Office of Burbank Realty Co."; or "Thronson & Larson, Grocers.

Choice Lots in Thronson's Addition." Even Giddings had platted the "_Herald_ Addition," and was offering a choice quarter-block as a prize to the person who could guess nearest to the average monthly increase in values in the addition, as shown by the record of sales. Real estate appeared as a part of the business of hardware stores and milliners'

shops, so that one was constantly reminded of the heterogeneous announcements on the signboard of Mr. Wegg. But while all this went on, and transactions "in dirt" were larger than ever, one could see indications that there was in them a larger and larger element of credit, and less and less cash. So one day, at a syndicate conference, I sought to ease my mind by asking where this thing was to stop, and when we could hope for a time when the town would not have to be held up by main strength.

"Why, that's a very remarkable question!" said Mr. Hinckley. "We surely haven't reached the point where we can think of stopping. Why, with the history before us of the cities of America which, without half our natural advantages, have grown to so many times the size of this, I'm surprised that such a thing should be thought of! Just think of what Chicago was in '54 when I came through. A village without a harbor, built along the ditches of a frog-pond! And see it now; see it now!"

There was a little quiver in Mr. Hinckley's voice, a little infirmity of his chin, which told of advancing years. His ideas were becoming more fixed. It was plain that the notion of Lattimore's continued and uninterrupted progress was one to which he would cling with the mild and unreasoning stubbornness of gentlemanly senility. But Cornish welcomed the discussion with something like eagerness.

"I'm glad the matter has come up," said he. "We've had a few good years here; but, in the nature of things, won't the time come when things will be--slower? We've got our first plans pretty well worked out. The mills, factories, and live-stock industries are supporting population, and making tonnage which the railroad is carrying. But what next? We can't expect to build any more railroads soon. No line of less than five hundred miles will do any good, strategically speaking, and sending out stubs just to annex territory for our shippers is too slow and expensive business for this crowd. Things are booming along now; but the Eastern banks are getting finicky about paper, and--I think things are going to be--slower--and that we ought to act accordingly."

There was a long silence, broken only by a dry laugh from Hinckley, and the remark that Barslow and Cornish must be getting dyspeptic from high living.

"Well," said Elkins at last, ignoring Hinckley and facing Cornish, "get down to bra.s.s nails! What policy would you adopt?"

"Oh, our present policy is all right," answered he of the Van d.y.k.e beard--

"Yes, yes!" interjected Hinckley. "My view exactly. A wonderfully successful policy!"

"--and," Cornish continued, "I would only suggest that we cease spreading out--not cease talking it, but only just sort of stop doing it--and begin to realize more rapidly on our holdings. Not so as to break the market, you understand; but so as to keep the demand fairly well satisfied."

Mr. Elkins was slow in replying, and when the reply came it was of the sort which does not answer.

"A most important, not to say momentous question," said he. "Let's figure the thing over and take it up again soon. We'll not begin to disagree at this late day. Mr. Hinckley has warned us that he has an engagement in thirty minutes. It seems to me we ought to dispose of the matter of the appropriation for the interest on those Belt Lines bonds.

Wade's mash on 'Atkins, Corning & Co.' won't last long in the face of a default."

Mr. Hinckley staid his thirty minutes and withdrew. Mr. Cornish went to the telephone and ordered his dog-cart.

"Immediately," he instructed, "over here at the Grain Belt Trust Building."

"Make it in half an hour, can't you, Cornish?" said Jim. "There are some more things we ought to go over."

"Say!" shouted Cornish into the transmitter. "Make that in half an hour instead of at once."

He hung up the telephone, and turned to Elkins inquiringly. Jim was walking up and down on the rug, his hands clasped behind him.

"Since we've spread out into that string of banks," said he, still keeping up his walk, "and made Mr. Hinckley the president of each of 'em, he's reverting to his old banker's timidity. Which consists, in all cases, in an aversion to any change in conditions. To suggest any change, even from an old, dangerous policy to a new safe one, startles a 'conservative' banker. If we had gone on a little longer with our talk about shutting off steam and taking the n.i.g.g.e.r off the safety-valve, you'd have seen him scared into a numbness. But, now that the question has been brought up, let's talk it over. What's your notion about it, anyhow, Al?"

"I'm seeking light," said I. "The people are rushing in, and the town's doing splendidly. But prices, there's no denying it, are beginning to sort of strangle things. They prevent doing, any more, what we did at first. Kreuger Brothers' failure yesterday was small; but it's a clear case of a retailer's being eaten up with fixed charges--or so Macdonald told me this morning; and I know that frontage on Main Street is demanding fully as much as the traffic will bear. And then our fright over Trescott's gambling gave me some bad dreams over our securities. It has bothered me to see how to adjust our affairs to a stationary condition of things; that's all."

"Of course," said Cornish, "we must keep boosting. Fortunately society here is now thoroughly organized on the principle of whooping it up for Lattimore. I could get up a successful lynching-party any time to attend to the case of any miscreant who should suggest that property is too high, or rents unreasonable, or anything but a steady up-grade before us. But I think we ought to stop buying--except among ourselves, and keep the transfers from falling off--and begin salting down."

"If you can suggest any way to do that, and still take care of our paper," said Jim, "I shall be with you."

"I've never antic.i.p.ated," said Cornish, "that such a ma.s.s of business could be carried through without some losses. Investors can't expect it."