XXVIII. BLACKLOCK SEES A LIGHT
It was next day, I think, that I met Mowbray Langdon and his brother Tom inthe entrance of the Textile Building. Mowbray was back only a week from hissummer abroad; but Tom I had seen and nodded to every day, often severaltimes in the same day, as he went to and fro about his "respectable" dirtywork for the Roebuck-Langdon clique. He was one of their most frequentlyused stool-pigeon directors in banks and insurance companies whose fundsthey staked in their big gambling operations, they taking almost all theprofits and the depositors and policy holders taking almost all the risk.It had never once occurred to me to have any feeling of any kind about Tom,or in any way to take him into my calculations as to Anita. He was, tomy eyes, too obviously a pale understudy of his powerful and fascinatingbrother. Whenever I thought of him as the man Anita fancied she loved, Iput it aside instantly. "The kind of man a woman _really_ cares for,"I would say to myself, "is the measure of her true self. But not the kindof man she _imagines_ she cares for."
Tom went on; Mowbray stopped. We shook hands, and exchanged commonplacesin the friendliest way--I was harboring no resentment against him, and Iwished him to realize that his assault had bothered me no more than thebuzzing and battering of a summer fly. "I've been trying to get in to seeyou," said he. "I wanted to explain about that unfortunate Textile deal."
This, when the assault on me had burst out with fresh energy the day afterhe landed from Europe! I could scarcely believe that his vanity, hisconfidence in his own skill at underground work could so delude him. "Don'tbother," said I. "All that's ancient history."
But he had thought out some lies he regarded as particularly creditable tohis ingenuity; he was not to be deprived of the pleasure of telling them.So I was compelled to listen; and, being in an indulgent mood, I did notspoil his pleasure by letting him see or suspect my unbelief. If he couldhave looked into my mind, as I stood there in an attitude of patientattention, I think even his self-complacence would have been put out ofcountenance. You may admire the exploits of a "gentleman" cracksman orpickpocket, if you hear or read them with only their ingenuity put beforeyou. But _see_ a "gentleman" liar or thief at his sneaking, cowardlywork, and admiration is impossible. As Langdon lied on, as I studiedhis cheap, vulgar exhibition of himself, he all unconscious, I thought:"Beneath that very thin surface of yours, you're a poor cowardlycreature--you, and all your fellow bandits. No; bandit is too grand a wordto apply to this game of 'high finance.' It's really on the level with thegame of the fellow that waits for a dark night, slips into the barn-yard,poisons the watch-dog, bores an auger-hole in the granary, and takes to hisheels at a suspicious sound."
With his first full stop, I said: "I understand perfectly, Langdon. But Ihaven't the slightest interest in crooked enterprises now. I'm clear outof all you fellows' stocks. I've reinvested my property so that not even apanic would trouble me."
"That's good," he drawled. I saw he did not believe me--which was natural,as he knew nothing of my arrangement with Galloway and assumed I waslaboring in heavy weather, with a bad cargo of Coal stocks and contracts."Come to lunch with me. I've got some interesting things to tell you aboutmy trip."
A few months before, I should have accepted with alacrity. But I had lostinterest in him. He had not changed; if anything, he was more dazzling thanever in the ways that had once dazzled me. It was I that had changed--myideals, my point of view. I had no desire to feed my new-sprung contempt bywatching him pump in vain for information to be used in his secret campaignagainst me. "No, thanks. Another day," I replied, and left him with a curtnod. I noted that he had failed to speak of my marriage, though he had notseen me since. "A sore subject with all the Langdons," thought I. "It mustbe very sore, indeed, to make a man who is all manners, neglect them."
My whole life had been a series of transformations so continuous that I hadnoted little about my advance, beyond its direction--like a man hurrying upa steep that keeps him bent, eyes down. But, as I turned away from Langdon,I caught myself in the very act of transformation. No doubt, the new viewhad long been there, its horizon expanding with every step of my ascent;but not until that talk with him did I see it. I looked about me in WallStreet; in my mind's eye I all in an instant saw my world as it really was.I saw the great rascals of "high finance," their respectability strippedfrom them; saw them gathering in the spoils which their cleverly-trainedagents, commercial and political and legal, filched with light fingers fromthe pockets of the crowd, saw the crowd looking up to these trainers andemployers of pickpockets, hailing them "captains of industry"! They reapedonly where and what others had sown; they touched industry only to plunderand to blight it; they organized it only that its profits might go tothose who did not toil and who despised those who did. "Have I gone mad inthe midst of sane men?" I asked myself. "Or have I been mad, and have Isuddenly become sane in a lunatic world?"
I did not linger on that problem. For me action remained the essential oflife, whether I was sane or insane. I resolved then and there to map a newcourse. By toiling like a sailor at the pump of a sinking ship, I had takenadvantage to the uttermost of the respite Galloway's help had given me. Myproperty was no longer in more or less insecure speculative "securities,"but was, as I had told Langdon, in forms that would withstand the worstshocks. The attacks of my enemies, directed partly at my fortune, or,rather, at the stocks in which they imagined it was still invested, andpartly at my personal character, were doing me good instead of harm. Hatredalways forgets that its shafts, falling round its intended victim, springup as legions of supporters for him. My business was growing rapidly; mydaily letter to investors was read by hundreds of thousands where tens ofthousands had read it before the Roebuck-Langdon clique began to make mefamous by trying to make me infamous.
"I am strong and secure," said I to myself as I strode through thewonderful canyon of Broadway, whose walls are those mighty palaces offinance and commerce from which business men have been ousted by cormorant"captains of industry." I must _use_ my strength. How could I betteruse it than by fluttering these vultures on their roosts, and perhapsbringing down a bird or two?
I decided, however, that it was better to wait until they had stoppedrattling their beaks and claws on my shell in futile attack. "Meanwhile," Ireasoned carefully, "I can be getting good and ready."
Their first new move, after my little talk with Langdon, was intendedas a mortal blow to my credit Melville requested me to withdraw mine andBlacklock and Company's accounts from the National Industrial Bank; and thefact that this huge and powerful institution had thus branded me was slylygiven to the financial reporters of the newspapers. Far and wide it waspublished; and the public was expected to believe that this was one moreand drastic measure in the "campaign of the honorable men of finance toclean the Augean Stables of Wall Street." My daily letter to investors nextmorning led off with this paragraph--the first notice I had taken publiclyof their attacks on me:
"In the effort to discredit the only remaining uncontrolled source offinancial truth, the big bandits have ordered my accounts out of theirchief gambling-house. I have transferred the accounts to the Discount andDeposit National, where Leonidas Thornley stands guard against the neworder that seeks to make business a synonym for crime."
Thornley was of the type that was dominant in our commercial life beforethe "financiers" came--just as song birds were common in our trees untilthe noisy, brawling, thieving sparrows drove them out. His oldest son wasabout to marry Joe's daughter--Alva. Many a Sunday I have spent at hisplace near Morristown--a charming combination of city comfort with farmfreedom and fresh air. I remember, one Sunday, saying to him, after he hadseen his wife and daughters off to church: "Why haven't you got rich? Whyhaven't you looked out for establishing these boys and girls of yours?"
"I don't want my girls to be sought for money," said he, "I don't want myboys to rely on money. Perhaps I've seen too much of wealth, and have cometo have a prejudice against it. Then, too, I've never had the chance to getrich."
; I showed that I thought that he was simply jesting.
"I mean it," said he, looking at me with eyes as straight as awell-brought-up girl's. "How could my mind be judicial if I were personallyinterested in the enterprises people look to me for advice about?"
And not only did he keep himself clear and his mind judicial but alsohe was, like all really good people, exceedingly slow to believe othersguilty of the things he would as soon have thought of doing as he wouldhave thought of slipping into the teller's cage during the lunch hour andpocketing a package of bank-notes. He gave me his motto--a curious one:"Believe in everybody; trust in nobody."
"Only a thief wishes to be trusted," he explained, "and only a fool trusts.I let no one trust me; I trust no one. But I believe evil of no man. Evenwhen he has been convicted, I see the mitigating circumstances."
How Thornley did stand by me! And for no reason except that it was asnecessary for him to be fair and just as to breathe. I shall not say heresisted the attempts to compel him to desert me--they simply made noimpression on him. I remember, when Roebuck himself, a large stock-holderin the bank, left cover far enough personally to urge him to throw me over,he replied steadfastly:
"If Mr. Blacklock is guilty of circulating false stories against commercialenterprises, as his enemies allege, the penal code can be used to stop him.But as long as I stay at the head of this bank, no man shall use it forpersonal vengeance. It is a chartered public institution, and all haveequal rights to its facilities. I would lend money to my worst enemy, if hecame for it with the proper security. I would refuse my best friend, if hecould not give security. The funds of a bank are a trust fund, and my dutyis to see that they are employed to the best advantage. If you wish otherprinciples to prevail here, you must get another president."
That settled it. No one appreciated more keenly than did Roebuck thatcharacter is as indispensable in its place as is craft where the situationdemands craft--and is far harder to get.
I shall not relate in detail that campaign against me. It failed not somuch because I was strong as because it was weak. Perhaps, if Roebuck andLangdon could have directed it in person, or had had the time to advisewith their agents before and after each move, it might have succeeded.They would not have let exaggeration dominate it and venom show upon itssurface; they would not have neglected to follow up advantages, would nothave persisted in lines of attack that created public sympathy for me.They would not have so crudely exploited my unconventional marriage andmy financial relations with old Ellersly. But they dared not go near thebattle-field; they had to trust to agents whom their orders and suggestionsreached by the most roundabout ways; and they were busier with theirenterprises that involved immediate and great gain or loss of money.
When Galloway died, they learned that the Coal stocks with which theythought I was loaded down were part of his estate. They satisfiedthemselves that I was in fact as impregnable as I had warned Langdon. Theyreversed tactics; Roebuck tried to make it up with me. "If he wants to seeme," was my invariable answer to the intimations of his emissaries, "lethim come to my office, just as I would go to his, if I wished to see him."
"He is a big man--a dangerous big man," cautioned Joe.
"Big--yes. But strong only against his own kind," replied I. "One mouse canmake a whole herd of elephants squeal for mercy."
"It isn't prudent, it isn't prudent," persisted Joe.
"It is not," replied I. "Thank God, I'm at last in the position I've beentoiling to achieve. I don't have to be prudent. I can say and do what Iplease, without fear of the consequences. I can freely indulge in theluxury of being a man. That's costly, Joe, but it's worth all it couldcost."
Joe didn't understand me--he rarely did. "I'm a hen. You're an eagle," saidhe.