XXIII. "SHE HAS CHOSEN!"
Joe got to the office rather later than usual the next morning. They toldhim I was already there, but he wouldn't believe it until he had come intomy 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. Theysat on and on, questioning and discussing."
I laughed--partly because I knew that Joe, like most men, was as full ofgossip and as eager for it as a convalescent old maid, and that, whoevermight have been the first at his house to make the break for bed, he wasthe 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 Iwas 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. Thebusiness--at least, my end of it, and I suppose your end, too--was neverbetter, never growing so fast. You could go off for a week or two, just aswell 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 largerenterprises of Blacklock and Company. I could have spoken a dozen words,and he would have been floundering like a caught fish in a basket. Thereare men--a very few--who work more swiftly and more surely when they knowthey're on the brink of ruin; but not Joe. One glimpse of our real NationalCoal account, and all my power over him couldn't have kept him from showingthe whole Street that Blacklock and Company was shaky. And whenever theStreet begins to think a man is shaky, he must be strong indeed to escapethe fate of the wolf that stumbles as it runs with the pack.
"No holiday at present, Joe," was my reply to his suggestion. "Perhaps thesecond week in July; but our marriage was so sudden that we haven't had thetime to get ready for a trip."
"Yes--it _was_ sudden, wasn't it?" said Joe, curiosity twitching hisnose 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 telegramsfrom our out-of-town customers and our agents; and soon my anteroom wascrowded with my local following, sore and shorn. I suppose a score or moreof the habitual heavy plungers on my tips were ruined and hundreds ofothers were thousands and tens of thousands out of pocket. "Do you want meto talk to these people?" inquired Joe, with the kindly intention of givingme 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 wouldhave 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 thespeculating and investing public had many great advantages over that of allthe other big operators--their system of hiding behind cleverly-contrivedscreens and slaughtering the decoyed public without showing so much as thetip of a gun or nose that could be identified. But to my method there wasa disadvantage that made men, who happened to have more hypocrisy and lessnerve than I, shrink from it. When one of my tips miscarried, down upon mewould swoop the bad losers in a body to give me a turbulent quarter of anhour.
Toward ten o'clock, my boy came in and said: "Mr. Ball thinks it's abouttime for you to see some of these people."
I went into the main room, where the tickers and blackboards were. As Iapproached through my outer office I could hear the noise the crowd wasmaking--as they cursed me. If you want to rile the true inmost soul of theaverage human being, don't take his reputation or his wife; just causehim to lose money. There were among my speculating customers many withthe even-tenored sporting instinct. These were bearing their losses withphilosophy--none of them had swooped on me. Of the perhaps three hundredwho had come to ease their anguish by tongue-lashing me, every one wasa bad loser and was mad through and through--those who had lost a fewhundred dollars were as infuriated as those whom my misleading tip had costthousands and tens of thousands; those whom I had helped to win all theyhad 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 cangive my face an expression that is anything but agreeable; such talent asI have in that direction I exerted then. The instant I appeared a silencefell; but I waited until the last pair of claws drew in. Then I said, inthe quiet tone the army officer uses when he tells the mob that the machineguns will open up in two minutes by the watch: "Gentlemen, in the effort tocounteract my warning to the public, the Textile crowd rocketed the stockyesterday. Those who heeded my warning and sold got excellent prices. Thosewho did not should sell to-day. Not even the powerful interests behindTextile can long maintain yesterday's prices."
A wave of restlessness passed over the crowd. Many shifted their eyes fromme 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 arepaying for their folly. I have no sympathy for them. Blacklock and Companywishes none such in its following, and seizes every opportunity to weedthem out. We are in business only for the bona fide investing public, andwe are stronger with that public to-day than we have ever been."
Again I looked from coward to coward of that mob, changed from threehundred strong to three hundred weak. Then I bowed and withdrew, leavingthem to mutter and disperse. I felt well content with the trend ofevents--I who wished to impress the public and the financiers that I hadbroken with speculation and speculators, could I have had a better thanthis unexpected opportunity sharply to define my new course? And asTextiles, unsupported, fell toward the close of the day, my content rosetoward my normal high spirits. There was no whisper in the Street thatI was in trouble; on the contrary, the idea was gaining ground that Ihad really long ceased to be a stock gambler and deserved a much betterreputation than I had. Reputation is a matter of diplomacy rather than ofdesert. In all my career I was never less entitled to a good reputationthan in those June days; yet the disastrous gambling follies, yes, andworse, I then committed, formed the secure foundation of my reputationfor conservatism and square dealing. From that time dates the decline ofthe 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 asI gave out ceased to be described as "tips" and was respectfully referredto as "indications."
No doubt, my marriage had something to do with this. Probably one couldn'tborrow any great amount of money in New York directly and solely onthe strength of a fashionable marriage; but, so all-pervading is thesnobbishness there, one can get, by making a fashionable marriage, anyquantity of that deferential respect from rich people which is, in somecircumstances, easily convertible into cash and credit.
I searched with a good deal of anxiety, as you may imagine, the earlyeditions of the afternoon papers. The first article my eye chanced upon wasa mere wordy elaboration of the brief and vague announcement Monson had putin the _Herald_. Later came an interview with old Ellersly.
"Not at all mysterious," he had said to the reporters. "Mr. Blacklock foundhe would have to go abroad on business soon--he didn't know just when. Onthe spur of the moment they decided to marry." A good enough story, andI confirmed it when I admitted the reporters. I read their estimates ofmy fortune and of Anita's with rather bitter amusement--she whose fatherwas living from hand to mouth; I who could not have emerged from a forcedsettlement with enough to enable me to keep a trap. Still, when one isrich, the reputation of being rich is heavily expensive; but when one ispoor 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 deskbefore me a statement of the exact posture of my affairs--a memorandum madeby my
self for my own eyes, and to be burned as soon as I mastered it. Onthe face of the figures the balance against me was appalling. My chiefasset, indeed my only asset that measured up toward my debts, was my Coalstocks, those bought and those contracted for; and, while their par valuefar exceeded my liabilities, they had to appear in my memorandum at theiractual market value on that day. I looked at the calendar--seventeen daysuntil the reorganization scheme would be announced, only seventeen days!
Less than three business weeks, and I should be out of the storm andsailing 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, especiallywhen one has only it between him and the pit." And I proceeded to plan onthe not unwarranted assumption that my Coal hope was a present reality.Indeed, what alternative had I? To put it among the future's uncertaintieswas to put myself among the utterly ruined. Using as collateral the Coalstocks I had bought outright, I borrowed more money, and with it went stilldeeper into the Coal venture. Everything or nothing!--since the chances inmy favor were a thousand, to practically none against me. Everything ornothing!--since only by staking everything could I possibly save anythingat all.
The morality of these and many of my other doings in those days will nodoubt be condemned. By no one more severely than by myself--now that thenecessities which then compelled me have passed. There is no subject onwhich men talk and think, more humbug than on that subject of morality. Asa matter of fact, except in those personal relations that are governed bythe affections, what is morality but the mandate of policy, and what ispolicy but the mandate of necessity? My criticism of Roebuck and the other"high financiers" is not upon their morality, but upon their policy, whichis short-sighted and stupid and base. The moral difference between me andthem is that, white I merely assert and maintain my right to live, theydeny 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 itscomplainings against them. The public, its stupidity and cupidity, createsthe conditions that breed and foster these men. A rotten cheese revilingthe maggots it has bred!
In those very hours when I was obeying the imperative law ofself-preservation, was clutching at every log that floated by me regardlessof whether it was my property or not so long as it would help me keep myhead above water--what was going on all round me? In every office of thedown town district--merchant, banker, broker, lawyer, man of commerce orfinance--was not every busy brain plotting, not self-preservation butpillage and sack--plotting to increase the cost of living for the masses ofmen by slipping a little tax here and a little tax there on to everythingby which men live? All along the line between the farm or mine or shopand the market, at every one of the toll-gates for the collection of_just_ charges, these big financiers, backed up by the big lawyers andthe rascally public officials, had an agent in charge to collect on eachpassing article more than was honestly due. A thousand subtle ways oflevying, all combining to pour in upon the few the torrents of unjustwealth. I laugh when I read of laboring men striking for higher wages.Poor, ignorant fools--they almost deserve their fate. They had better beconcerning themselves with a huge, universal strike at the polls for lowerprices. What will it avail to get higher wages, as long as the masterscontrol and recoup on the prices of all the things for which those wagesmust be spent?
I lived in Wall Street, in its atmosphere of the practical morality of"finance." On every side swindling operations, great and small; operationsregarded as right through long-established custom; dishonest or doubtfuloperations 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 preposterousand viciously immoral to deny property rights in human beings. There maycome a time--who knows?--when "high finance's" denial of a moral rightto property of any kind may cease to be regarded as wicked; may become agenerally accepted canon, as our Socialist friends predict. However, Iattempt no excuses for myself; I need them no more than a judge in the DarkAges needed to apologize for ordering a witch to the stake. I could nomore have done differently than a fish could breathe on land or a manunder water. I did as all the others did--and I had the justification ofnecessity. Right of might being the prevailing code, when men set uponme with pistols, I met them with pistols, not with the discarded andantiquated weapons of sermon and prayer and the law.
And I thought extremely well of myself and of my pistols that Juneafternoon, 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 itstone of confidence was genuine--I knew that hundreds of customers of abetter class would soon be flocking in to take the places of those I hadbeen compelled to teach a lesson in the vicissitudes of gambling. With alight heart and the physical feeling of a football player in training, Isped toward home.
Home! For the first time since I was a squat little slip of a shaver theword had a personal meaning for me. Perhaps, if the only other home of minehad been less uninviting, I should not have looked forward with such highbeating of the heart to that cold home Anita was making for me. No, Iwithdraw that. It is fellows like me, to whom kindly looks and unsoughtattentions are as unfamiliar as flowers to the Arctic--it is men like methat appreciate and treasure and warm up under the faintest show or shadowysuggestion of the sunshine of sentiment. I'd be a little ashamed to say howmuch money I handed out to beggars and street gamins that day. I had a hometo go to!
As my electric drew up at the Willoughby, a carriage backed to make roomfor 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 hiscard 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 thedrawing-room.
As I had hoped, Anita appeared. Her dress told me that her trunks hadcome--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 themidst of a tempest of uncommon fury.
"You must stop and make _me_ a visit," protested I, with elaboratepoliteness. To myself I was assuming that they had come to "make up and befriends"--and resume their places at the trough.
She was moving toward the door, the old man in her wake. Neither of themoffered to shake hands with me; neither made pretense of saying good-byto Anita, standing by the window like a pillar of ice. I had closed thedrawing-room door behind me, as I entered. I was about to open it for themwhen I was restrained by what I saw working in the old woman's face. Shehad 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 hercarefully-cultivated appearance of the gracious evening of youth swallowedup in a black cyclone of hate. "You gutter-plant! God will punish you forthe shame you have brought upon us!"
I opened the door and bowed, without a word, without even the desire toreturn insult for insult--had not Anita evidently again and finallyrejected them and chosen me? As they passed into the private hall Irang for Sanders to come and let them out. When I turned back into thedrawing-room, Anita was seated, was reading a book. I waited until I sawshe 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 thatfilled 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, t
hen. You had better tell Sanders."
I rang for him and went into my little smoking-room. She had resisted herparents' final appeal to her to return to them. She had cast in her lotwith me. "The rest can be left to time," said I to myself. And, reviewingall 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 stepfalter and the heart quail!