The Deluge Part 33

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 a.s.sured 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 a.s.s, 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 pa.s.sed 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 grat.i.tude, 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.

x.x.x. 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 a.s.sa.s.sinate 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 princ.i.p.al munic.i.p.al 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 ma.s.s 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 a.s.surances 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 quant.i.ties 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 quant.i.ties 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 h.o.a.rded 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."