Colonel Carter of Cartersville Part 10

The colonel's office, like many other of his valued possessions, was in fact the property of somebody else.

It really belonged to a friend of Fitzpatrick, who had become so impressed by the Virginian's largeness of manner and buoyancy of enthusiasm that he had whispered to Fitz to bring him in at once and give him any desk in the place; adding that "in a sagging market the colonel would be better than a war boom."

So the colonel moved in--not a very complicated operation in his case; his effects being confined to an old leather portfolio and a bundle of quill pens tied up with a bit of Aunt Nancy's white yarn. The following day he had nailed his visiting card above the firm's name in the corridor, hung his hat and coat on the proprietor's peg, selected a desk nearest the light, and was as much at home in five minutes as if he owned the whole building.

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There was no price agreed upon. Once, when Fitz delicately suggested that all such rents were generally payable monthly, the colonel, after some difficulty in grasping the idea, had said:--

"I could not offer it, suh. These gentlemen have treated me with a hospitality so generous that its memory will never fade from my mind.

I cannot bring our relations down to the level of bargain and sale, suh; it would be vulgar."

The colonel was perfectly sincere. As for himself he would have put every room in his own Carter Hall at their service for any purpose or for any length of time, and have slept in the woodshed himself; and he would as soon have demanded the value of the bottle of wine on his own table as ask pay for such trivial courtesies.

Nor did he stop at the rent. The free use of stamps, envelopes, paper, messenger service, and clerks were to him only evidences of a lordly sort of hospitality which endeared the real proprietor of the office all the more to him, because it recalled the lavish display of the golden days of Carter Hall.

"Permit a guest to stamp his own letters, suh? Never! Our servants attended to that."

Really he owed his host nothing. No office of its size in the Street made so much money for its customers in a bull market. n.o.body lost heart in a tumble and was sold out--that is, n.o.body to whom the colonel talked. Once convince the enthusiastic Virginian that the scheme was feasible,--and how little eloquence was needed for that!--and the dear old fellow took hold with as much gusto as if it had been his own.

The vein in the copper mine was always going to widen out into a six-foot lead; never by any possibility could it grow any smaller. The trust shares were going up--"not a point or two at a time, gentlemen, but with the spring of a panther, suh." Of course the railroad earnings were a little off this month, but wait until the spring opened; "then, suh, you will see a revival that will sweep you off yo' feet."

Whether it was good luck, or the good heart that the colonel put into his friend's customers, the results were always the same. Singular as it may seem, his cheery word just at the right time tided over the critical moment many an uncertain watcher at the "ticker," often to an enlargement of his bank account. Nor would he allow any one to pay him for any service of this kind, even though he had spent days engrossed in their affairs.

"Take money, suh, for helpin' a friend out of a hole? My dear suh, I see you do not intend to be disco'teous; but look at me, suh! There's my hand; never refer to it again." And then he would offer the offender his card in the hope, perhaps, that its ample record might furnish some further slight suggestion as to who he really was.

His popularity, therefore, was not to be wondered at. Everybody regarded him kindly, total stranger as he was, and although few of them believed to any extent in his "Garden Spot of Virginia," as his pet enterprise soon came to be known around the Street, everybody wished it well, and not a few would have started it with a considerable subscription could the colonel have managed the additional thousands required to set it on its financial legs.

Fitz never lost heart in the scheme,--that is, never when the colonel was about. As the weeks rolled by and one combination after the other failed, and the well-thumbed bundle of papers in the big blue envelope was returned with various comments. "In view of our present financial engagements we are unable to undertake your very attractive railroad scheme," or the more curt "Not suited to our line of customers," he would watch the colonel's face anxiously, and rack his brain for some additional excuse.

He always found one. Tight money, or news from Europe, or an overissue of similar bonds; next week it would be better. And the colonel always believed him. Fitz was his guiding star, and would lead him to some safe haven yet. This faith was his stronghold, and his only one.

This morning, however, there was a touch of genuine enthusiasm about Fitz. He rushed into the office, caught up the blue bundle and the map, nearly upsetting the colonel, who was balanced back in his chair with his long legs over the desk,--a favorite att.i.tude when down town,--rushed out, and returned in half an hour with a fat body surmounted by a bald head fringed about with gray curls.

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He was the advance agent of that mysterious combination known to the financial world as an "English syndicate," an elusive sort of commercial sea-serpent with its head in London and its tail around the globe. The "inquiry" which had so gladdened the colonel's heart the morning ofthe breakfast with aunt Nancy had proceeded from this rotund negotiator.

The colonel had, as usual, started the road at Cartersville, and had gotten as far as the double-span iron bridge over the Tench when the rotund gentleman asked abruptly,--

"How far are you from a coal-field?"

The colonel lifted the point of his pen, adjusted his gla.s.ses, and punched a hole in the rumpled map within a hair's breadth of a black dot labeled "Cartersville."

"Right there, suh. Within a stone's throw of our locomotives."

Fitz looked into the hole with as much astonishment as if it were the open mouth of the mine itself.

"Hard or soft?" said the stout man.

"Soft, suh, and fairly good coal, I understand, although I have never used it, suh; my ancestors always burned wood."

Fitz heard the statement in undisguised wonder. In all his intercourse with the colonel he had never before known him to depart so much as a razor's edge from the truth.

The fat man communed with himself a moment, and then said suddenly, "I'll take the papers and give you an answer in a week," and hurried away.

"Do you really mean, Colonel," said Fitz, determined to pin him down, "that there is a single pound of coal in Cartersville?"

"Do I mean it, Fitz? Don't it crop out in half a dozen spots right on our own place? One haalf of my estate, suh, is a coal-field."

"You never told me a word about it."

"I don't know that I did, Fitz. But it has never been of any use to me. Besides, suh, we have plenty of wood. We never burn coal at Caarter Hall."

Fitz did not take that view of it. He went into an exhaustive cross-examination of the colonel on the coal question: who had tested it, the character of the soil, width of the vein, and dip of the land.

This information he carefully recorded in a small book which he took from his inside pocket.

Loosened from Fitz's pinioning grasp, the colonel, entirely oblivious to his friend's sudden interest in the coal-field, and slightly impatient at the delay, bounded like a balloon with its anchors cut.

"An answer from the syndicate within a week! My dear Fitz, I see yo'

drift. You have kept the Garden Spots for the foreign investors. That man is impressed, suh; I saw it in his eye."

The room began filling up with the various customers and loungers common to such offices: the debonair gentleman in check trousers and silk hat, with a rose in his b.u.t.ton-hole, who dusts his trousers broadside with his cane--short of one hundred shares with thirty per cent. margin; the shabby old man with a solemn face who watches the ticker a moment and then wanders aimlessly out, looking more like an underpaid clerk in a law office than the president of a crosstown railroad--long of one thousand shares with no margin at all; the nervous man who stops the messenger boys and devours the sales' lists before they can be skewered on the files,--not a dollar's interest either way; and, last of all, the brokers with little pads and nimble pencils.

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The news that the great English syndicate was looking into the C. & W. A. L R. R. was soon around the office, and each _habitue_ had a bright word for the colonel, congratulating him on the favorable turn his affairs had taken.

All but old Klutchem, a broker in unlisted securities, who had been trying for weeks to get a Denver land scheme before the same syndicate, and had failed.

"Garden Spot bonds! Bosh! Road begins nowhere and ends nowhere. If any set of fools built it, the only freight it would get, outside of peanuts and sweet potatoes, would be razor-back hogs and n.i.g.g.e.rs. I wouldn't give a yellow dog for enough of those securities to paper a church."

The colonel was on his feet in an instant.

"Mr. Klutchem, I cannot permit you, suh, to use such language in my presence unrebuked; you"--

"Now, see here, old Garden Spot, you know"--

The familiarity angered the colonel even more than the outburst.

"Caarter, suh,--George Fairfax Caarter," said the colonel with dignity.

"Well, Caarter, then," mimicking him, perhaps unconsciously. "You know"--

The intonation was the last straw. The colonel lost all control of himself. No man had ever thus dared before.

"Stop, Mr. Klutchem! What I know, suh, I decline to discuss with you.

Yo' statements are false, and yo' manner of expressin' them quite in keepin' with the evident vulga'ity of yo' mind. If I can ascertain that you have ever had any claim to be considered a gentleman you will hear from me ag'in. If not, I shall rate you as rankin' with yo' yallar dog; and if you ever speak to me ag'in I will strike you, suh, with my cane."

And the colonel, his eyes flashing, strode into the private office with the air of a field marshal, and shut the door.