IX. LANGDON AT HOME
I entered, with an amused glance at the butler, who was giving over hisheavy countenance to a delightful exhibition of disgust and discomfiture.It was Langdon's sitting-room. He had had the carved antique oak interiorof a room in an old French palace torn out and transported to New Yorkand set up for him. I had made a study of that sort of thing, and at DawnHill had done something toward realizing my own ideas of the splendid.But a glance showed me that I was far surpassed. What I had done seemedin comparison like the composition of a school-boy beside an essay byGoldsmith or Hazlitt.
And in the midst of this quiet splendor sat, or rather lounged, Langdon,reading the newspapers. He was dressed in a dark blue velvet house-suitwith facings and cords of blue silk a shade or so lighter than the suit. Ihad always thought him handsome; he looked now like a god. He was smokinga cigarette in an oriental holder nearly a foot long; but the air ofthe room, so perfect was the ventilation, instead of being scented withtobacco, had the odor of some fresh, clean, slightly saline perfume.
I think what was in my mind must have shown in my face, must have subtlyflattered him, for, when I looked at him, he was giving me a look ofgenuine friendly kindliness. "This is--perfect, Langdon," said I. "And Ithink I'm a judge."
"Glad you like it," said he, trying to dissemble his satisfaction in sostrongly impressing me.
"You must take me through your house sometime," I went on. "I'm going tobuild soon. No--don't be afraid I'll imitate. I'm too vain for that. But Iwant suggestions. I'm not ashamed to go to school to a master--to anybody,for that matter."
"Why do you build?" said he. "A town house is a nuisance. If I could inducemy wife to take the children to the country to live, I'd dispose of this."
"That's it--the wife," said I.
"But you have no wife. At least--"
"No," I replied with a laugh. "Not yet. But I'm going to have."
I interpreted his expression then as amused cynicism. But I see a differentmeaning in it now. And I can recall his tone, can find a strained notewhich then escaped me in his usual mocking drawl.
"To marry?" said he. "I haven't heard of that."
"Nor no one else," said I.
"Except her," said he.
"Not even except her," said I. "But I've got my eye on her--and you knowwhat that means with me."
"Yes, I know," drawled he. Then he added, with a curious twinkle which I donot now misunderstand: "We have somewhat the same weakness."
"I shouldn't call it a weakness," said I. "It's the quality that makes thechief difference between us and the common run--the fellows that have nopurposes beyond getting comfortably through each day--"
"And getting real happiness," he interrupted, with just a tinge ofbitterness.
"We wouldn't think it happiness," was my answer.
"The worse for us," he replied. "We're under the tyranny of to-morrow--andhappiness is impossible."
"May I look at your bedroom?" I asked.
"Certainly," he assented.
I pushed open the door he indicated. At first glimpse I was disappointed.The big room looked like a section of a hospital ward. It wasn't untilI had taken a second and very careful look at the tiled floor, walls,ceiling, that I noted that those plain smooth tiles were of the veryfinest, were probably of his own designing, certainly had been importedfrom some great Dutch or German kiln. Not an inch of drapery, not apicture, nothing that could hold dust or germs anywhere; a square ofsanitary matting by the bed; another square opposite an elaborateexercising machine. The bed was of the simplest metallic construction--butI noted that the metal was the finest bronze. On it was a thin, hardmattress. You could wash the big room down and out with the hose, withoutdoing any damage.
"Quite a contrast," said I, glancing from the one room to the other.
"My architect is a crank on sanitation," he explained, from his lounge.
I noted that the windows were huge--to admit floods of light--and thatthey were hermetically sealed so that the air should be only the pure airsupplied from the ventilating apparatus. To many people that room wouldhave seemed a cheaply got together cell; to me, once I had examined it, itwas evidently built at enormous cost and represented an extravagance ofcommon-sense luxury which was more than princely or royal.
Suddenly my mind reverted to my business. "How do you account for thesteadiness of Textile, Langdon?" I asked, returning to the carvedsitting-room and trying to put those surroundings out of my mind.
"I don't account for it," was his languid, uninterested reply.
"Any of your people under the market?"
"It isn't to my interest to have it supported, is it?" he replied.
"I know that," I admitted. "But why doesn't it drop?"
"Those letters of yours may have overeducated the public in confidence,"suggested he. "Your followers have the habit of believing implicitlywhatever you say."
"Yes, but I haven't written a line about Textile for nearly a month now," Ipretended to object, my vanity fairly purring with pleasure.
"That's the only reason I can give," said he.
"You are sure none of your people is supporting the stock?" I asked, as aform and not for information; for I thought I knew they weren't--I trustedhim to have seen to that.
"I'd like to get my holdings back," said he. "I can't buy until it's down.And I know none of my people would dare support it."
You will notice he did not say directly that he was not himself supportingthe market; he simply so answered me that I, not suspecting him, wouldthink he reassured me. There is another of those mysteries of conscience.Had it been necessary, Langdon would have told me the lie flat and direct,would have told it without a tremor of the voice or a blink of the eye,would have lied to me as I have heard him, and almost all the big fellows,lie under oath before courts and legislative committees; yet, so long as itwas possible, he would thus lie to me with lies that were not lies. As ifnegative lies are not falser and more cowardly than positive lies, becausesecurer and more deceptive.
"Well, then, the price must break," said I, "It won't be many days beforethe public begins to realize that there isn't anybody under Textile."
"No sharp break!" he said carelessly. "No panic!"
"I'll see to that," replied I, with not a shadow of a notion of thesubtlety behind his warning.
"I hope it will break soon," he then said, adding in his friendliest voicewith what I now know was malignant treachery: "You owe it to me to bring itdown." That meant that he wished me to increase my already far too heavyand dangerous line of shorts.
Just then a voice--a woman's voice--came from the salon. "May I come in? DoI interrupt?" it said, and its tone struck me as having in it something ofplaintive appeal.
"Excuse me a moment, Blacklock," said he, rising with what was for himhaste.
But he was too late. The woman entered, searching the room with a piercing,suspicious gaze. At once I saw, behind that look, a jealousy that pouncedon every object that came into its view, and studied it with a hope thatfeared and a fear that hoped. When her eyes had toured the room, theypaused upon him, seemed to be saying: "You've baffled me again, but I'm notdiscouraged. I shall catch you yet."
"Well, my dear?" said Langdon, whom she seemed faintly to amuse. "It's onlyMr. Blacklock. Mr. Blacklock, my wife."
I bowed; she looked coldly at me, and her slight nod was more than a hintthat she wished to be left alone with her husband.
I said to him: "Well, I'll be off. Thank you for--"
"One moment," he interrupted. Then to his wife: "Anything special?"
She flushed. "No--nothing special. I just came to see you. But if I amdisturbing you--as usual--"
"Not at all," said he. "When Blacklock and I have finished, I'll come toyou. It won't be longer than an hour--or so."
"Is that all?" she said almost savagely. Evidently she was one of thosewomen who dare not make "scenes" with their husbands in private and so arecompelled to take advantage of the presence of strangers
to ease theirminds. She was an extremely pretty woman, would have been beautiful but forthe worn, strained, nervous look that probably came from her jealousy. Shewas small in stature; her figure was approaching that stage at which awoman is called "well rounded" by the charitable, fat by the frank andaccurate. A few years more and she would be hunting down and destroyingearly photographs. There was in the arrangement of her hair and in thedetails of her toilet--as well as in her giving way to her tendency tofat--that carelessness that so many women allow themselves, once they aresafely married to a man they care for.
"Curious," thought I, "that being married to him should make her feelsecure enough of him to let herself go, although her instinct is warningher all the time that she isn't in the least sure of him. Her laziness mustbe stronger than her love--her laziness or her vanity."
While I was thus sizing her up, she was reluctantly leaving. She didn'teven give me the courtesy of a bow--whether from self-absorption or fromhaughtiness I don't know; probably from both. She was a Western woman,and when those Western women do become perverts to New York's gospel ofsnobbishness, they are the worst snobs in the push. Langdon, regardless ofmy presence, looked after her with a faintly amused, faintly contemptuousexpression that--well, it didn't fit in with _my_ notion of whatconstitutes a gentleman. In fact, I didn't know which of them had come offthe worse in that brief encounter in my presence. It was my first glimpseof a fashionable behind-the-scenes, and it made a profound impression uponme--an impression that has grown deeper as I have learned how much of thetypical there was in it. Dirt looks worse in the midst of finery than whereone naturally expects to find it--looks worse, and is worse.
When we were seated again, Langdon, after a few reflective puffs at hiscigarette, said: "So you're about to marry?"
"I hope so," said I. "But as I haven't asked her yet, I can't be quitesure." For obvious reasons I wasn't so enamored of the idea of matrimony asI had been a few minutes before.
"I trust you're making a sensible marriage," said he. "If the part that maybe glamour should by chance rub clean away, there ought to be something tomake one feel he wasn't wholly an ass."
"Very sensible," I replied with emphasis. "I want the woman. I need her."
He inspected the coal of his cigarette, lifting his eyebrows at it.Presently he said: "And she?"
"I don't know how she feels about it--as I told you," I replied curtly. Inspite of myself, my eyes shifted and my skin began to burn. "By the way,Langdon, what's the name of your architect?"
"Wilder and Marcy," said he. "They're fairly satisfactory, if you tell'em exactly what you want and watch 'em all the time. They're perfectlyconventional and so can't distinguish between originality that's artisticand originality that's only bizarre. They're like most people--they keep tothe beaten track and fight tooth and nail against being drawn out of it andagainst those who do go out of it."
"I'll have a talk with Marcy this very day," said I.
"Oh, you're in a hurry!" He laughed. "And you haven't asked her. You remindme of that Greek philosopher who was in love with Lais. They asked him:'But does she love you?' And he said: 'One does not inquire of the fish onelikes whether it likes one.'"
I flushed. "You'll pardon me, Langdon," said I, "but I don't like that. Itisn't my attitude at all toward--the right sort of women."
He looked half-quizzical, half-apologetic. "Ah, to be sure," said he. "Iforgot you weren't a married man."
"I don't think I'll ever lose the belief that there's a quality in a goodwoman for a man to--to respect and look up to."
"I envy you," said he, but his eyes were mocking still. I saw he was alittle disdainful of my rebuking _him_--and angry at me, too.
"Woman's a subject of conversation that men ought to avoid," said Ieasily--for, having set myself right, I felt I could afford to smooth himdown.
"Well, good-by--good luck--or, if I may be permitted to say it to one sotouchy, the kind of luck you're bent on having, whether it's good or bad."
"If my luck ain't good, I'll make it good," said I with a laugh.
And so I left him, with a look in his eyes that came back to me longafterward when I realized the full meaning of that apparently almostcommonplace interview.
That same day I began to plunge on Textile, watching the market closely,that I might go more slowly should there be signs of a dangerous break--forno more than Langdon did I want a sudden panicky slump. The price heldsteady, however; but I, fool that I was, certain the fall must come,plunged on, digging the pit for my own destruction deeper and deeper.