Making Money Part 52

What right had he to risk money that didn't belong to him? What right have you to reproach me, abuse me?"

Bojo attempted to burst in on the stream of meaninglessness and repeated phrases. He, too, saw through the a.s.sumption of hysteria, shielding behind a cloak of weakness a cold and covetous woman.

"My dear Mrs. Drake," he said icily, "you are proud of your position in society. Let me put this to you. Don't you realize that if your husband fails for a million and a half and you continue living as you have lived that it will be a public scandal? Don't you realize what people will say?"

"No, I don't," she cried: "I don't admit any such ridiculous nonsense. I know that I have a right to my life, to my existence. I know what is mine is mine. If he has lost money, other people have lost money in the same way who gamble just as he has. They should take their losses, too, without coming to people who are not responsible, who don't believe in such things. And then what good will it do? The money's mine. Why throw good money after bad? I tell you that he has never had a thought about the duties and responsibilities to his family; I have. I won't impoverish myself, I won't impoverish my family, I won't, I won't, and I won't be badgered and brow-beaten in this brutal way. You're a bad daughter, you've always been a disobedient, wicked daughter. You've always been this way to me from the first. Now you think you can force me into this, but you shan't."

"Mother," started Patsie stonily, but she was interrupted by a fresh torrent of words.

"No, no, I can't, I won't, I'm ill, I have been ill for days. Do you want to kill me? I suppose that's what you want. Go on. Put me down, make me ill. Oh, my G.o.d, my G.o.d, I can't stand it, I can't stand it. I can't. Ring for the doctor, the doctor or some one."

"Come away," said Bojo, taking Patsie by the arm as Mrs. Drake went into the paroxysm which she knew was perfectly a.s.sumed. "It's useless trying to say anything more to her. To-morrow perhaps Doris and her husband may have more effect."

They went out without even looking back.

Patsie was in such a rage of indignation, shaking from head to foot, that he had to take her in his arms and quiet her.

"What shall we say to Daddy?" she said at last in despair.

"Lie," he said. "Tell him that it will be done."

But when they came back into the library Drake was gone. He didn't return all that night. Afterwards from what they learned he must have spent the night hours in wandering about the city.

The next morning Mrs. Drake locked her doors, sent word by a doctor that she was too ill to see any one, that seeing them might have disastrous effects. Despite which they forced an entrance and with Doris and her husband present went over again the same shameful and degrading scene of the night before. Nothing could shake Mrs. Drake, neither remonstrances nor scorn nor tears. Drake returned haggard and wild-eyed towards noon to learn the result, which they were unable to conceal from him. He went out immediately. At five o'clock he was taken to a hospital, having been run over by an autobus. Various stories as to how this happened were circulated. The insurance company which carried his life insurance attempted to prove suicide in vain. The testimony of witnesses all seemed to point to an accident. He had started across the street, had lost his hat and in stooping to pick it up slipped and fallen underneath the wheels.

Death resulted a few hours later.

CHAPTER x.x.x

THE AFTER-YEARS

When Daniel Drake's affairs were wound up it was found that with the sums derived from his life insurance there remained a deficit of a little over $400,000. In this crisis the old loyal and generous spirit of Doris returned for perhaps the last time. She wished to take upon herself the total indebtedness, but Patsie would not listen to this. She would have preferred perhaps in her devotion to the name of her father to have shouldered all the responsibility with a certain fierce pride.

In the end the sum was divided. The younger sister left the house of her mother and went to stay for a short while at Doris's.

It was given out officially that Mrs. Drake's health had been wrecked by the family catastrophes. She left shortly for Paris, Rome and the Italian Riviera, where her health speedily improved and she pa.s.sed the remainder of her life as an exile with a p.r.o.nounced aversion to anything American.

The panic which swept over the country, leveling the poor and rich alike, gradually subsided into a long period of depression. Fred DeLancy lost every cent he had and became dependent upon his wife's career. He dropped completely out of society. A few of his friends saw him at rare moments, but whenever he could he avoided such encounters, for they recalled to him the expectations of his earlier days. Fate, which had played him several rude turns, had however a compensation in store. With the arrival of the dance craze several years later Mr. and Mrs. Fred DeLancy, who were of the first to seize its possibilities, became suddenly the rage of society, and in the letting down of barriers that followed the frantic rush from boredom among our most conservative sets the DeLancys regained curiously enough a certain social position.

Adversity had taught him the value of making money. Guided by the hands of one of those remarkable and adroit personages that instigate and expand popularity, the press agent, Fernando Wiskin, a genius of diplomacy, the DeLancy craze overran the country. They had their own restaurant, with dancing studios attached, and an after midnight dancing club. They appeared in the movies, made trips to Europe. They set a dozen fashions, they inspired sculptors, ill.u.s.trators and caricaturists, and raised up a host of imitators, some better and some worse. Properly coached, they received fees for instruction a surgeon might envy, but as once a gambler always a gambler, what they made miraculously they spent hugely, and despite all warnings it would surprise no one if with the turning of the fickle public from one fad to another the DeLancys, after spending $50,000 a year, would end just as poor as they began.

Roscoe Marsh, hard hit by the panic, after steady reverses consequent upon a rather visionary adventure into journalism, found himself compelled to part with his newspaper to a syndicate organized by his own city editor, a man who had come up from the ranks, who had long bided his opportunity, a self-made American of the type that looks complacently upon the arrival in the arena of the sons of great fortunes with a belief that an equalizing Providence has sent them into the world to be properly sheared. Marsh, despite these reverses, still retained a considerable fortune, constantly augmented by a large family of uncles, aunts and cousins whose sole purpose in life seemed to be to die at opportune moments. He became interested in many radical movements, rather from the need of dramatic excitement than love of publicity or any deep conviction. At the bottom, however, he believed himself the most sincere man in the world, and for a long time continued to believe that he had a mission to perform.

George Granning became one of the solid men of the steel trade. Of the four young men who had met that night on the Astor roof and prophesied their futures he was the only one to fulfil his program to the minutest detail. He married, rose to the managership of the Garnett foundries, left them to become general manager of a subsidiary to the steel corporation at a salary of which he had never dreamed. He became a close student of industrial conditions and outside of his business career found time to serve on many boards of arbitration and industrial investigation. Though his intellectual growth had been slower than his more gifted companions he had never relinquished a single fact acquired.

At thirty-five he was constantly broadening, constantly curious for new interests. He went into politics and became more and more a power in party councils, and though not aspiring to office himself was speedily appointed to offices of social research and usefulness.

The panic extended its paralyzing influence over the histories of industries of the nation. A month after the events recorded in the last chapter Bojo was still deliberating on his course of action when he learnt by accident the serious crisis confronting the Crocker Mills.

With the knowledge that his father needed him he hesitated no longer, and taking the train by impulse one morning arrived as his father was sitting down to breakfast with the announcement that he had come to stay.

Before the year was over he had married Patsie, settled down in the little mill town to face the arduous struggle for the survival of the fabric which his father had so painfully erected. For three years he worked without respite, more arduously than he believed it was possible for any man to work. Due to this devotion the Crocker Mills weathered the financial depression and emerged triumphantly with added strength as a leader and model among factory communities of the world. Despite the sacrifices and extraordinary demands made upon his knowledge and his youth, he found these years the best in his life, with a realization that his leadership had its significance in the welfare and growth of thousands of employees. When, the battle won, he removed with his family to New York and larger interests, there were times when he confided to his wife that life seemed to be robbed of half its incentive. In connection with Granning, to whom he had grown closer in bonds of friendship, he devoted his time and money more and more to the problems of Americanizing the great alien industrial populations of this country with such enthusiasm that he in more than one quarter was suspected of believing in the most radical socialistic ideas.

THE END