Chapter X (1)

It was the last Tuesday in November, and Mrs. Hardenburgh was giving the first of her usual series of at-homes. An inveterate lion hunter was this clever woman of sixty-odd summers, whose hair was as thick and golden as a débutante’s, and whose complexion as pink and white. This afternoon she was in a particularly complacent mood, for she had arranged a piquant double attraction for her guests. When, however, by six o’clock, both attractions had failed to materialize, the faintest suggestion of a frown appeared on her remarkably smooth brow. Five minutes later the appearance of a newcomer had dispelled it, and the hostess was her humorous, smiling self.

The newcomer was Jane--Jane in a gown every line of which spoke Paris, in a dream of a hat that sat on her proud little head like a coronet; Jane, in short, in a perfect get-up and in radiant health and spirits. Personally, we’d prefer to set it down that she looked pale, distrait; that “concealment, like a worm i’ the bud,” etc.; but it would not be true. Whatever the suffering within--and there was a rather deep, intent look about the eyes--Mrs. De Mille presented an unconquered, nay, a self-satisfied, front to this little New York world, and was looking her very best.

As she made her way slowly down the long room to where her hostess stood, it occurred to her that she was causing something of a sensation. At first she modestly ascribed it to the fact that she had been away for six months, and that this was her first public appearance since her return. It dawned upon her presently, however, that the rooms were filled with strangers, principally, and as the interest deepened rather than lessened with her slow advance, she was forced to acknowledge to herself that something beside her lengthened absence was responsible for the attention she was receiving. The more puzzled she grew, the more confidently she carried herself, and when a very young bud in a very high treble agitatedly remarked to a _blasé_ youth: “She’s not a bit disappointing, is she?” it expressed in words the verdict of the rooms.

After greeting Mrs. Hardenburgh, the first familiar face Jane encountered was Mr. Scott’s.

“So you’ve gone and gotten yourself engaged, faithless one?” she observed, reproachfully, after they had shaken hands.

“Oh, I say, Jane----” he began, in exactly the same tone with which he was wont, in the past, to preface one of his numerous proposals.

Jane regarded him with mock horror. “Billie, Billie, don’t tell me you are going to propose!” she exclaimed, disapprovingly. “One rather expects proposals from the married men nowadays, but from newly engaged ones, fie! fie!”

Mr. Scott colored high. “You can’t think how the sight of you makes my heart beat,” he said, agitatedly.

“Nonsense!” retorted Jane, snubbingly. “Point out your girl instantly.”

Pulling himself together with a palpable effort, Mr. Scott indicated a sparkling brunette, one of a group of débutantes who were watching Jane with intense interest.

“Why, she’s adorable!” exclaimed Mrs. De Mille. “Present me.” And Mr. Scott, looking suddenly very proud, offered his arm.

“I’ve read the book,” murmured the little brunette, ecstatically, after Jane had offered her felicitations. “It must be beautiful to be written about like that.”

Mrs. De Mille stared and then grew pale. “The book!” she echoed. “I--I don’t know what you mean!”

“Why, I thought----” began Mr. Scott’s pretty fiancée, looking as though she regretted her own impulsiveness. But before she had a chance to explain, a tall and extremely well-dressed young matron bore down upon Jane and triumphantly carried her off.

“How well you’re looking, Betty,” observed Jane, surveying her friend rather wistfully, when they were seated in a quiet corner.

“That’s because I’m so happy,” answered that lady, promptly. “Maurice is such a dear! And now, Jane, tell me, when is the engagement to be announced?”

Mrs. De Mille opened her eyes very wide. “Engagement!” she cried. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Whose engagement?”

“Why, yours and Mr. Ormsby’s,” retorted her friend. “Every line of the book shows he’s desperately in love with you. Did you refuse him?”

Jane clutched Mrs. McClurg’s hand. “Is that awful book out, and does everybody think it’s me?” she demanded, in a voice that trembled in spite of her effort to control it.

Mrs. McClurg looked at her in astonishment. “Awful book!” she exclaimed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Mr. Ormsby’s novel is the success of the year, and the heroine is an _extremely flattering_ picture of you. All your friends have recognized it, and they all agree with me.”

Jane rose. “If my friends think I’m the heartless and idiotic creature that book pictures, then I have no friends,” she said, coldly. “Good-by, Betty.” She turned to go, but Mrs. McClurg caught her hand.

“I don’t believe you’ve read the book, Jane de Mille,” she said. “The heroine is not heartless. She’s a perfectly adorable creature, and everybody--all the women envy you.”

“I haven’t seen the book,” admitted Jane, “but I read the manuscript, and my recollection is that the author placed me a good deal lower than the angels, to state it mildly. I never want to see it.”

“I can’t understand; there must be some mistake!” exclaimed Mrs. McClurg. “Just wait here a minute.” She glided out from behind the screen of palms, and, after a brief absence, came back to the nook with a small, quietly bound little book in her hand. “Read that!” she commanded, triumphantly, opening it and pointing to the title-page.

Reluctantly Jane raised her eyes and took in the brief contents. “The Woman, by John Ormsby,” she read, and then, underneath, a single line, “To her who inspired it,” and underneath that again this fragment of verse:

Lean penury within that pen doth dwell
That to his subject lends not some small glory;
But he that writes of you, if he can tell
That you are you, so dignifies his story;
Let him but copy what in you is writ,
Not making worse what nature made so clear,
And such a counterpart shall fame his wit,
Making his style admired everywhere.

“Betty.” Jane lifted her head and looked at her friend with sudden inspiration.

“Well,” retorted Mrs. McClurg, not too enthusiastically, for it had just occurred to her that Mrs. De Mille had concealed a great deal.

“I want to sneak, and I want to take this book with me,” explained the latter, shamelessly. “I don’t believe I have read it. Can you--will you cover my retreat?”

Mrs. McClurg looked only half appeased and dubious. “Mr. Ormsby is coming here this afternoon,” she said, severely. “I happen to know that Mrs. Hardenburgh has been rejoicing at the thought that you were to meet here in her drawing room.”

“Neat little arrangement,” observed Jane, ironically. Then she became suddenly frightened. “I must go at once,” she said. “Oh, Betty, don’t you see that I can’t see him here? Help me, there’s a good girl, and come to me to-morrow--I have the same apartment, you know--and I’ll tell you _everything_.”

And Mrs. McClurg, who was by no means hard-hearted, relented. When the big doors finally closed upon Jane, she gave a sigh of relief, but it ended with a gasp, for she found herself face to face with John Ormsby, who, immaculately attired, was ascending the brownstone steps.

“How d’ye do?” said Mrs. De Mille, airily, extending her hand and hoping fervently at the same time that the book which she had tucked away underneath her arm was invisible.

He took her hand, but did not respond to her salutation, only gazed hungrily into her face.

“Where in the world have you been hiding yourself?” he demanded, finally, when Jane, with an effort, had removed her hand.

“Sounds as though I were a criminal,” commented Jane. “Did you miss any spoons at the bungalow?”

He did not answer, only continued to stare at her, and so she went on, nervously: “I’ve been in Paris chiefly. Some people don’t like Paris in the summer time, but I adore it. But you’re Mrs. Hardenburgh’s lion. I mustn’t detain you. _Au revoir!_” She started down the steps, but he followed her determinedly. “If you think I’m going to lose sight of you after my long search, you’re mistaken,” he said, quietly.

“Mrs. Hardenburgh will be furious, and you will be very impolite, if you don’t go in at once,” said Jane, tucking the little book further out of sight.

“I loathe those things,” he answered, disrespectfully. “I only consented to come because I was told you might be there. But if Paradise was just inside, and----”

“Hades,” interrupted Jane, demurely.

“And you were outside, nothing would induce me to go in.”

“The inference is so odious I refuse to be flattered,” she said, “but you never were good at making pretty speeches. If you’re coming with me”--briskly--“you’ll have to walk. I’m economizing. Uncle Jacob is giving me an allowance, and I’m living on it.”

“But you’re rich, or almost rich, in your own right,” said Mr. Ormsby, as they walked along. “The book promises to be preposterously successful, and half the royalties are yours, you know.”

Jane grew suddenly frigid. “I beg that you will not refer to that wretched affair,” she said, haughtily. “I have not read your book, and I am not interested in it.”

Mr. Ormsby’s face became very downcast. “I was in hopes that you had read it, and that it would explain----”

“There is really nothing to explain,” interrupted Jane. “I acted on a reckless impulse, and was bored for my pains. I have no wish to read your book, though”--civilly--“I’m glad for your sake it promises to be a success.”

Mrs. De Mille’s fall followed fast on the heels of her little exhibition of pride. A boy hurrying by with a bundle jostled her arm, and the book she had been endeavoring to conceal fell to the pavement. In stooping to recover it, Mr. Ormsby recognized it, but he returned it to her without comment, and Jane perversely chose to feel affronted at his silence.

“I met a friend at Mrs. Hardenburgh’s who was quite enthusiastic about the book, and to please her I consented to take it home to read,” she exclaimed, coldly.

“I would not bother myself about it, if I were you; it’s a poor thing,” he returned, just as coldly. They walked for a square in silence, a silence that, strange to relate, was not broken first by Jane but by her companion.

“I have an explanation to make, and, in spite of the risk I run of further offending you, I must make it,” he said, distantly. “When I wrote that first absurd sketch I did not understand you. I thought that you were as frivolous and as heartless as you appeared on the surface.”

“Indeed!” commented Jane, tilting her chin scornfully.

“And then something happened----” he paused.

“What was it?” she asked, eagerly, and bit her lip in vexation at herself for displaying curiosity.

“I’m not going to tell you that,” he responded, coolly, “but it helped me to an understanding of you. And then I was called to New York, and I found when I got back that you had been at the bungalow--you left your handkerchief there, you know--and that you had read the sketch, for the papers were scattered about the floor, and I realized that----” he hesitated.

“You realized what?” said Jane, defiantly.

“That I loved you,” he concluded, quietly.

The acknowledgment was so unexpected that it disconcerted Mrs. De Mille, and she had nothing to say.

“I suppose _that_ bores you, too?” he said, half ironically.

“This is where I live,” was her only response. They had reached the entrance to a smart uptown apartment house, and Jane paused. Her tone was not exactly a dismissal one, and, as she faced him, Ormsby stared at her anxiously.

“Is there--can there be any hope for me----” he began.

“While there’s life there’s hope, you know,” retorted Jane, frivolously. “But I was just about to suggest that if you’re quite certain you don’t want to go back to Mrs. Hardenburgh’s, I’ll give you a cup of tea.”

Her tone was noncommittal, but as she led the way to the elevator, she looked back at him over her shoulder and laughed softly, and a great joy transfigured John Ormsby’s face.

TO A ROADSIDE CEDAR

’Tis not for thee in ancient walks to throw
Thy pointed shadows o’er the sculptured stone,
Where marble fixes some immortal moan
Of art; nor, gathering gloom where waters flow
Past groves Lethean, crypts of human woe,
To lift thy cheering spires. Thy lot is strown
In newer, happier climes and lands unknown
To classic realms of storied pomps and show.

For thou, dear gnomon of the passing hour,
Green sentinel of sunny lanes and fields,
Whose sturdy watch defies harsh winter’s knell,
Art guardian of the humblest homes, where dwell
The simple folk, the yeomanry that wields
In peopled might all that men crave of power!

HARVEY MAITLAND WATTS.

_The_ DELUGE

A STORY _OF_ MODERN FINANCE

_By_

DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS

XXIII.

Next day Langdon’s stocks wavered, going up a little, going down a little, closing at practically the same figures at which they had opened. Then I sprang my sensation--that Langdon and his particular clique, though they controlled the Textile Trust, did not own so much as one-fiftieth of its voting stock. True “captains of industry” that they were, they made their profits not out of dividends, but out of side schemes which absorbed about two-thirds of the earnings of the Trust, and out of gambling in its bonds and stocks. I said in conclusion:

The largest owner of the stock is Walter G. Edmunds, of Chicago--an
honest man. Send your voting proxies to him, and he can take the
Textile Company away from those now plundering it.

As the annual election of the Trust was only six weeks away, Langdon and his clique were in a panic. They rushed into the market and bought frantically, the public bidding against them. Langdon himself went to Chicago to reason with Edmunds--that is, to try to find out at what figure he could be bought. And so on, day after day, I faithfully reporting to the public the main occurrences behind the scenes. The Langdon attempt to regain control by purchases of stock failed. He and his allies made what must have been to them appalling sacrifices. But even at the high prices they offered, comparatively little of the stock appeared.

“I’ve caught them,” said I to Joe--the first time, and the last, during that campaign that I indulged in a boast.

“If Edmunds sticks to you,” replied Joe.

But Edmunds did not. I do not know at what price he sold himself. Probably it was pitifully small; cupidity usually snatches the instant the bait tickles its nose. But I do know that my faith in human nature got its severest shock. “You are down this morning,” said Thornley, when I looked in on him at his bank. “I don’t think I ever before saw you show that you were in low spirits.”

“I’ve found out a man with whom I’d have trusted my life,” said I. “Sometimes I think all men are dishonest. I’ve tried to be an optimist like you, and have told myself that most men must be honest or ninety-five per cent. of the business couldn’t be done on credit as it is.”

Thornley smiled, like an old man at the enthusiasm of a youngster. “That proves nothing as to honesty,” said he. “It simply shows that men can be counted on to do what it is to their plain interest to do. The truth is--and a fine truth, too--most men wish and try to be honest. Give ’em a chance to resist their own weaknesses. Don’t trust them. Trust--that’s the making of false friends and the filling of jails.”

“And palaces,” I added.

“And palaces,” assented he. “Every vast fortune is a monument to the credulity of men. Instead of getting after these heavy-laden rascals, Matthew, you’d better have turned your attention to the public that has made rascals of them by leaving its property unguarded.”

Fortunately, Edmunds had held out, or, rather, Langdon had delayed approaching him, long enough for me to gain my main point. The uproar over the Textile Trust had become so great that the national Department of Commerce dared not refuse an investigation; and I straightway began to spread out in my daily letters the facts of the Trust’s enormous earnings and of the shameful sources of those earnings. Thanks to Langdon’s political pull, the President appointed as investigator one of those rascals who carefully build themselves good reputations to enable them to charge higher prices for dirty work. But with my facts before the people, whitewash was impossible.

I was expecting emissaries from Langdon, for I knew he must now be actually in straits. Even the Universal Life didn’t dare lend him money, and was trying to call in the millions it had loaned him. But I was astounded when my private door opened and Mrs. Langdon ushered herself in.

“Don’t blame your boy, Mr. Blacklock,” cried she, gayly, exasperatingly confident that I was as delighted with her as she was with herself. “I told him you were expecting me and didn’t give him a chance to stop me.”

I assumed she had come to give me wholly undeserved thanks for revenging her upon her recreant husband. I tried to look civil and courteous, but I felt that my face was darkening--her very presence forced forward things I had been keeping in the far background of my mind. “How can I be of service to you, madam?” said I.

“I bring you good news,” she replied--and I noted that she no longer looked haggard and wretched, that her beauty was once more smiling with a certain girlishness, like a young widow’s when she finds her consolation. “Mowbray and I have made it up,” she explained.

I simply listened, probably looking as grim as I felt.

“I knew you would be interested,” she went on. “Indeed, it means almost as much to you as to me. It brings peace to _two_ families.”

Still I did not relax.

“And so,” she continued, a little uneasy, “I came to you immediately.”

I continued to listen as if I were waiting for her to finish and depart.

“If you want, I’ll go to Anita.” Natural feminine tact would have saved her from this rawness; but, convinced that she was a “great lady” by the flattery of servants and shopkeepers and sensational newspapers and social climbers, she had long since discarded tact as worthy only of the lowly and of the aspiring before they “arrive.”

“You are too kind,” said I. “Mrs. Blacklock and I feel competent to take care of our own affairs.”

“Please, Mr. Blacklock,” she said, realizing that she had blundered, “don’t take my directness the wrong way. Life is too short for pose and pretense about the few things that really matter. Why shouldn’t we be frank with each other?”

“I trust you will excuse me,” said I, moving toward the door--I had not seated myself when she did. “I think I have made it clear that we have nothing to discuss.”

“You have the reputation of being generous and too big for hatred. That is why I have come to you,” said she, her expression confirming my suspicion of the real and only reason for her visit. “Mowbray and I are completely reconciled--_completely_, you understand. And I want you to be generous, and not keep on with this attack. I am involved even more than he. He has used up his fortune in defending mine. Now you are simply trying to ruin me--not him, but _me_. The President is a friend of Mowbray’s, and he’ll call off this horrid investigation, and everything’ll be all right, if you’ll only stop.”

“Who sent you here?” I asked.

“I came of my own accord,” she protested. Then, realizing from the sound of her voice that she could not have convinced me with a tone so unconvincing, she hedged with: “It was my own suggestion, really it was.”

“And your husband permitted _you_ to come to _me_?”

She flushed.

“And you have accepted his overtures when you knew he made them only because he needed your money?”

She hung her head. “I love him,” she said, simply. Then she looked straight at me, and I somehow liked her expression. “A woman has no false pride when love is at stake,” she said. “We leave that to you men.”

“Love!” I retorted, rather satirically, I imagine. “How much had your own imperiled fortune to do with your being so forgiving?”

“Something,” she admitted. “You must remember I have children. I must think of their future. I don’t want them to be poor. I want them to have the station they were born to.” She went to one of the windows overlooking the street. “Look here!” she said.

I stood beside her. The window was not far above the street level. Just below us was a handsome victoria, coachman, harness, horses, all most proper, a footman rigid at the step. A crowd had gathered round--in those stirring days when I was the chief subject of conversation wherever men were interested in money--and where are they not?--there was almost always a crowd before my offices. In the carriage sat two children, a boy and a girl, hardly more than babies. They were gorgeously overdressed, after the vulgar fashion of aristocrats and apers of aristocracy. They sat stiffly, like little scions of royalty, with that expression of complacent superiority which one so often sees on the faces of the little children of the very rich--and some not so little, too. The thronging loungers were gaping in true New York “lower class” awe; the children were literally swelling with delighted vanity. If they had been pampered pet dogs, one would have laughed. As they were human beings, it filled me with sadness and pity.

“For their sake, Mr. Blacklock,” she pleaded, her mother love wholly hiding from her the features of the spectacle that most impressed me.

“Your husband has deceived you about your fortune, Mrs. Langdon,” I said, gently. “You can tell him what I am about to say, or not, as you please. But my advice is that you keep it to yourself. Even if the present situation develops, as seems probable, develops as Mr. Langdon fears, you will not be left without a fortune--a very large fortune, most people would think. But Mr. Langdon will have little or nothing--indeed, I think he is practically dependent on you now.”

“What I have is his,” she said.

“That is generous,” replied I, “but is it prudent? You wish to keep him--securely. Don’t tempt him by a generosity he would only abuse.”

She thought it over. “The idea of holding a man in that way is repellent to me,” said she, obviously posing for my benefit.

“If the man happens to be one that can be held in no other way,” said I, moving significantly toward the door, “one must overcome one’s repugnance--or be despoiled and abandoned.”

“Thank you,” she said, giving me her hand. “Thank you--more than I can say.” She had forgotten entirely that she came to plead for her husband. “And I hope that you will soon be as happy as I am.”

I bowed, and when there was the closed door between us, I laughed, not at all pleasantly. “This New York!” I said aloud. “This New York that dabbles its slime of sordidness and snobbishness on every flower in the garden of human nature.” I took from my inside pocket the picture of Anita I always carried. “Are _you_ like that?” I demanded of it. And it seemed to answer: “Yes, I am.” Did I tear the picture up? No. I kissed it as if it were the magnetic reality. “I don’t care what you are,” I cried. “I want you! I want you!”

“Fool!” you are saying. Precisely what I called myself. And you? Is it the one you _ought_ to love that you give your heart to? Is it the one that understands you and sympathizes with you? Or is it the one whose presence gives you visions of paradise and whose absence blots out the light?

I loved her. Yet I would have torn out my life before I would have taken her on any terms that did not make her wholly mine.

XXIV.

Now that Updegraff is dead, I am free to tell of our relations.

My acquaintance with him was more casual than with any other of “The Seven.” From the outset of my career I made it a rule never to deal with understrappers, always to get in touch with the man who had the final say. Thus, as the years went by, I grew into intimacy with the great men of finance where many with better natural facilities for knowing them remained in an outer circle. But with Updegraff, interested only in enterprises west of the Mississippi and keeping Denver as his legal residence and exploiting himself as a Western man who hated Wall Street, I had a mere bowing acquaintance. This was not important, however, as each knew the other well by reputation. Our common intimacies made us intimates for all practical purposes.

Our connection was established soon after the development of my campaign against the Textile Trust had shown that I was after a big bag of the biggest game. We happened to have the same secret broker; and I suppose it was in his crafty brain that the idea of bringing us together was born. Be that as it may, he by gradual stages intimated to me that Updegraff would convey me secrets of “The Seven” in exchange for a guarantee that I would not attack his interests. I do not know what his motive in this treachery was--probably a desire to curb the power of his associates in industrial despotism. Each of “The Seven” hated and feared and suspected the other six with far more than the ordinary and proverbial rich man’s jealous dislike of other rich men. There was not one of them that did not bear the ever-smarting scars of vicious wounds, front and back, received from his fellows; there was not one that did not cherish the hope of overthrowing the rule of Seven and establishing the rule of One. At any rate, I accepted Updegraff’s proposition; thenceforth, though he stopped speaking to me when we happened to meet, as did all the other big bandits and most of their parasites and procurers, he kept me informed of every act “The Seven” resolved upon.

Thus I knew all about their “gentlemen’s agreement” to support the stock market, and that they had made Tavistock their agent for resisting any and all attempts to lower prices, and had given him practically unlimited funds to draw upon as he needed. I had Tavistock sounded on every side, but found no weak spot. There was no rascality he would not perpetrate for whoever employed him; but to his employer he was as loyal as a woman to a bad man. And for a time it looked as if “The Seven” had checkmated me. Those outsiders who had invested heavily in the great enterprises through which “The Seven” ruled were disposing of their holdings--cautiously, through fear of breaking the market. Money would pile up in the banks--money paid out by “The Seven” for their bonds and stocks, of which the people had become deeply suspicious. Then these deposits would be withdrawn--and I knew they were going into real estate investments, because news of a boom in real estate and in building was coming in from everywhere. But prices on the Stock Exchange continued to advance.

“They are too strong for you,” said Joe. “They will hold the market up until the public loses faith in you. Then they will sell out at boom prices, as the people rush in to buy.”

I might have wavered had I not been seeing Tavistock every day. He continued to wear his devil-may-care air; but I observed that he was aging swiftly--and I knew what that meant. Fighting all day to prevent breaks in the crucial stocks; planning most of the night how to prevent breaks the next day; watching the reserve resources of “The Seven” melt away. Those reserves were vast; also, “The Seven” controlled the United States Treasury, and were using its resources as their own; they were buying securities that would be almost worthless if they lost, but if they won, would be rebought by the public at the old swindling prices, when “confidence” was restored. But there was I, cannonading away from an impregnable position; as fast as they repaired breaches in their walls, my big guns of publicity tore new breaches. No wonder Tavistock had thinner hair and wrinkles and the drawn look about the eyes, nose and mouth.

With the battle thus raging doubtfully all along the line, on the one side “The Seven” and their armies of money and mercenaries and impressed slaves, on the other side the public, I in command, you will say that my yearning for distraction must have been gratified. If the road from his cell were long enough, the condemned man would be fretting less about the gallows than about the tight shoe that was making him limp and wince at every step. Besides, in human affairs it is the personal, always the personal. I soon got used to the crowds, to the big headlines in the newspapers, to the routine of cannonade and reply. But the old thorn, pressing persistently--I could not get used to that. In the midst of the adulation, of the blares upon the trumpets of fame that saluted my waking and were wafted to me as I fell asleep at night--in the midst of all the turmoil, I was often in a great and brooding silence, longing for her, now with the imperious energy of passion, and now with the sad ache of love. What was she doing? What was she thinking? Now that Langdon had again played her false for the old price, with what eyes was she looking into the future?

Alva, settled in a West Side apartment not far from the ancestral white elephant, telephoned, asking me to come. I went, because she could and would give me news of Anita. But as I entered her little drawing room, I said: “It was curiosity that brought me. I wished to see how you were installed.”

“Isn’t it nice and small?” cried she. “Billy and I haven’t the slightest difficulty in finding each other--as people so often have in the big houses.” And it was Billy this and Billy that, and what Billy said and thought and felt--and before they were married, she had called him William, and had declared “Billy” to be the most offensive combination of letters that ever fell from human lips.

“I needn’t ask if _you_ are happy,” said I, presently, with a dismal failure at looking cheerful. “I can’t stay but a moment,” I added, and if I had obeyed my feelings, I’d have risen up and taken myself and my pain away from surroundings as hateful to me as a summer sunrise in a death chamber.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, in some confusion. “Then excuse me.” And she hastened from the room.

I thought she had gone to order, or perhaps to bring, the tea. The long minutes dragged away until ten had passed. Hearing a rustling in the hall, I rose, intending to take leave the instant she appeared. The rustling stopped just outside. I waited a few seconds, cried, “Well, I’m off. Next time I want to be alone, I’ll know where to come,” and advanced to the door. It was not Alva hesitating there; it was Anita.

“I beg your pardon,” said I, coldly.

If there had been room to pass I should have gone. What devil possessed me? Certainly in all our relations I had found her direct and frank; if anything, too frank. Doubtless it was the influence of my associations downtown, where for so many months I had been dealing with the “short-card” crowd of high finance, who would not play the game straight even where that was the easy way to win. My long, steady stretch in that stealthy and sinuous company had put me in the state of mind in which it is impossible to credit any human being with a motive that is decent or an action that is not a dead-fall. Thus the obvious change in her made no impression on me. Her haughtiness, her coldness, were gone, and with them had gone all that had been least like her natural self, most like the repellent conventional pattern to which her mother and her associates had molded her. But I was saying to myself: “A trap! Langdon has gone back to his wife. She turns to me.” And I loved her and hated her. “Never,” thought I, “has she shown so poor an opinion of me as now.”

“My uncle told me day before yesterday that it was not he, but you,” she said, lifting her eyes to mine. It is inconceivable to me now that I could have misread their honest story; yet I did.

“I had no idea your uncle’s notion of honor was also eccentric,” said I, with a satirical smile that made the blood rush to her face.

“That is unjust to him,” she replied, earnestly. “He says he made you no promise of secrecy. And he confessed to me only because he wished to convince me that he had good reason for his high opinion of you.”

“Really!” said I, ironically. “And no doubt he found you open wide to conviction--_now_.” This a subtlety to let her know that I understood why she was seeking me.

“No,” she answered, lowering her eyes. “I knew--better than he.”

For an instant this, spoken in a voice I had long given up hope of ever hearing from her, staggered my cynical conviction. Then I said, mockingly: “Doubtless your opinion of me has been improving steadily ever since you heard that Mrs. Langdon has recovered her husband.”

She winced as if I had struck her. “Oh!” she murmured. If she had been the ordinary woman, who in every crisis with man instinctively resorts to weakness’ strongest weakness, tears, I might have a very different story to tell. But she fought back the tears in which her eyes were swimming and gathered herself together. “That is brutal,” she said, with not a touch of haughtiness, but not humbly, either. “But I deserve it.”

“There was a time,” I went on, swept in a swift current of cold rage--“there was a time when I would have taken you on almost any terms. A man never makes a complete fool of himself about a woman but once in his life, they say. I have done my time--and it is over.”

She sighed wearily. “Langdon came to see me soon after I left your house and went to my uncle,” she said. “I will tell you what happened.”

“I do not wish to hear,” replied I. “I have been waiting impatiently ever since you left for news of your plans.”

She grew white, and my heart smote me. She came into the room and seated herself. “Won’t you stop, please, for a moment longer?” she said. “I hope that, at least, we can part without bitterness. I understand now that everything is over between us. A woman’s vanity makes her belief that a man cares for her die hard. I am convinced now--I assure you I am. I shall trouble you no more about the past. But I have the right to ask you to hear me when I say that Langdon came, and that I myself sent him away; sent him back to his wife.”

“Touching self-sacrifice,” said I, ironically.

“No,” she replied. “I cannot claim any credit. I sent him away only because you and Alva had taught me how to judge him better. I do not despise him as do you; I know too well what has made him what he is. But I had to send him away.”

My comment was an incredulous look and shrug. “I must be going,” I said.

“You do not believe me?” she asked.

“In my place, would you believe?” replied I. “You say I have taught you. Well, you have taught me, too--for instance, that your years and years on your knees in the musty temple of conventionality before false gods have made you--fit only for the Langdon sort of thing. You have forgotten how to stand erect, and your eyes cannot bear the light.”

“I am sorry,” she said, slowly, hesitatingly, “that your faith in me has died just when I might, perhaps, have justified it. Ours has been a pitiful series of misunderstandings.”

“A trap! A trap!” I was warning myself. “You’ve been a fool long enough, Blacklock.” And aloud I said: “Well, Anita, the series is ended now. There’s no longer any occasion for our lying or posing to each other. Any arrangements your uncle’s lawyers suggest will be made.”

I was bowing, to leave without shaking hands with her. But she would not have it so. “Let us be friends, at least,” she said, stretching out her long, slender arm and offering me her hand.

What a devil possessed me that day! With every atom of me longing for her, I yet was able to take her hand and say, with a smile that was, I doubt not, as mocking as my tone: “By all means, let us be friends. And I trust you will not think me discourteous if I say that I shall feel safer in our friendship when we are both on neutral ground.”

As I was turning away, her look, my own heart, made me turn again. I caught her by the shoulders. I gazed into her eyes. “If I could only trust you, could only believe you!” I cried.

“You cared for me when I wasn’t worth it,” she said. “Now that I am more like what you once imagined me, you do not care.”

Up between us rose Langdon’s face--cynical, mocking, contemptuous. “Your heart is _his_! You told me so! Don’t _lie_ to me!” I exclaimed. And before she could reply I was gone.

Out from under the spell of her presence, back among the tricksters and assassins, the traps and ambushes of Wall Street, I believed again; believed firmly the promptings of the devil that possessed me. “She would have given you a brief fool’s paradise,” said that devil. “Then what a hideous awakening!” And I cursed the day when New York’s insidious snobbishness had tempted my vanity into starting me on that degrading chase after “respectability.”

“If she does not move to free herself soon,” said I, to myself, “I will put my own lawyer to work. My right eye offends me. I will pluck it out.”

XXV.

“The Seven” made their fatal move on treacherous Updegraff’s treacherous advice, I suspect. But they would not have adopted his suggestion had it not been so exactly congenial to their own temper of arrogance and tyranny and contempt for the people who meekly, year after year, presented themselves for the shearing with fatuous bleats of enthusiasm.

“The Seven,” of course, controlled, directly or indirectly, all but a few of the newspapers with which I had advertising contracts. They also controlled the main sources through which the press was supplied with news--and often and well they had used this control, and surprisingly cautious had they been not so to abuse it that the editors and the public would become suspicious. When my war was at its height, when I was beginning to congratulate myself that the huge magazines of “The Seven” were empty almost to the point at which they must sue for peace on my own terms, all in four days forty-three of my sixty-seven newspapers--and they the most important--notified me that they would no longer carry out their contracts to publish my daily letter. They gave as their reason, not the real one, fear of “The Seven,” but fear that I would involve them in ruinous libel suits. I who had _legal_ proof for every statement I made; I who was always careful to understate! Next, one press association after another ceased to send out my letter as news, though they had been doing so regularly for months. The public had grown tired of the “sensation,” they said.

I countered with a telegram to one or more newspapers in every city and large town in the United States:

“The Seven” are trying to cut the wires between the truth and the
public. If you wish my daily letter, telegraph me direct and I will
send it at my expense.

The response should have warned “The Seven.” But it did not. Under their orders the telegraph companies refused to transmit the letter. I got an injunction. It was obeyed in typical, corrupt corporation fashion--they sent my matter, but so garbled that it was unintelligible. I appealed to the courts. In vain.

To me it was clear as sun in cloudless noonday sky that there could be but one result of this insolent and despotic denial of my rights and the rights of the people, this public confession of the truth of my charges. I waited for the cataclysm.

Thursday--Friday--Saturday. Apparently all was tranquil; apparently the people accepted the Wall Street theory that I was an “exploded sensation.” “The Seven” began to preen themselves; the strain upon them to maintain prices, if no less than for three months past, was not notably greater; the crisis would pass, I and my exposures would be forgotten, the routine of reaping the harvests and leaving only the gleanings for the sowers would soon be placidly resumed.

Sunday. Roebuck, taken ill as he was passing the basket in the church of which he was the shining light, died at midnight--a beautiful, peaceful death, they say, with his daughter reading the Bible aloud, and his lips moving in prayer. Some hold that, had he lived, the tranquillity would have continued; but this is the view of those who can not realize that the tide of affairs is no more controlled by the “great men” than is the river led down to the sea by its surface flotsam, by which we measure the speed and direction of its current. Under that terrific tension, which to the shallow seemed a calm, something had to give way. If the dam had not yielded where Roebuck stood guard, it must have yielded somewhere else, or might have gone all in one grand crash.

Monday. You know the story of the artist and his statue of Grief--how he molded the features a hundred times, always failing, always getting an anti-climax, until at last, in despair, he gave up the impossible and finished the statue with a veil over the face. I have tried again and again to assemble words that would give some not too inadequate impression of that tremendous week in which, with a succession of explosions, each like the crack of doom, the financial structure that housed eighty millions of people burst, collapsed, was engulfed. I cannot. I must leave it to your memory or your imagination.

For years the financial leaders, crazed by the excess of power which the people had in ignorance and over-confidence and slovenly good-nature permitted them to acquire, had been tearing out the honest foundations on which alone so vast a structure can hope to rest solid and secure. They had been substituting rotten beams painted to look like stone and iron. The crash had to come; the sooner the better--when a thing is wrong, each day’s delay compounds the cost of righting it. So, with all the horrors of Wild Week in mind, all its physical and mental suffering, all the ruin and rioting and bloodshed, I still can insist that I am justly proud of my share in bringing it about. The blame and the shame are wholly upon those who made Wild Week necessary and inevitable.

In catastrophes the cry is, “Each for himself!” But in a cataclysm the obvious wise selfishness is generosity, and the cry is, “Stand together, for, singly, we perish.” This was a cataclysm. No one could save himself, except the few who, taking my often urged advice and following my example, had entered the ark of ready money. Farmer and artisan and professional man and laborer owed merchant; merchant owed banker; banker owed depositor. No one could pay because no one could get what was due him or could realize upon his property. The endless chain of credit that binds together the whole of modern society had snapped in a thousand places. It must be repaired, instantly and securely. But how--and by whom?

I issued a clear statement of the situation; I showed in minute detail how the people, standing together under the leadership of the honest men of property, could easily force the big bandits to consent to an honest, just, rock-founded, iron-built reconstruction. My statement appeared in all the morning papers throughout the land. Turn back to it; read it. You will say that I was right. Well----

Toward two o’clock Inspector Crawford came into my private office, escorted by Joe. I saw in Joe’s seamed, green-gray face that some new danger had arisen. “You’ve got to get out of this,” said he. “The mob in front of our place fills the three streets. It’s made up of crowds turned away from the suspended banks.”

I remembered the sullen faces and the hisses as I entered the office that morning earlier than usual. My windows were closed to keep out the street noises; but now that my mind was up from the work in which I had been absorbed, I could hear the sounds of many voices, even through the thick plate glass.

“We’ve got two hundred policemen here,” said the inspector. “Five hundred more are on the way. But--really, Mr. Blacklock, unless we can get you away, there’ll be serious trouble. Those damn’ newspapers. Every one of them denounced you this morning, and the people are in a fury against you.”

I went toward the door.

“Hold on, Matt,” cried Joe, springing at me and seizing me. “Where are you going?”

“To tell them what I think of them,” replied I, sweeping him aside. For my blood was up, and I was enraged against the poor cowardly fools.

“For God’s sake, don’t show yourself,” he begged. “If you don’t care for your own life, think of the rest of us. We’ve fixed a route through buildings and under streets up to Broadway. Your electric is waiting for you there.”

“It won’t do,” I said. “I’ll face ’em--it’s the only way.”

I went to the window, and was about to throw up one of the sunblinds for a look at them; Crawford stopped me. “They’ll stone the building and then storm it,” said he. “You must go at once, by the route we’ve arranged.”

“Even if you tell them I’m gone, they won’t believe it,” replied I.

“We can look out for that,” said Joe, eager to save me and caring nothing about consequences to himself. But I had unsettled the inspector.

“Send for my electric to come down here,” said I. “I’ll go out alone and get in it and drive away.”

“That’ll never do!” cried Joe.

But the inspector said: “You’re right, Mr. Blacklock. It’s a bare chance. You may take ’em by surprise. Again, some fellow may yell and throw a stone, and----” He did not need to finish.

Joe looked wildly at me. “You mustn’t do it, Matt!” he exclaimed. “You’ll precipitate a riot, Crawford, if you permit this.”

But the inspector was telephoning for my electric. Then he went into the adjoining room, where he commanded a view of the entrance. Silence between Joe and me until he returned. “The electric is coming down the street,” said he.

I rose. “Good,” said I. “I’m ready.”

“Wait until the other police get here,” advised Crawford.

“If the mob is in the temper you describe,” said I, “the less that’s done to irritate it, the better. I must go out as if I hadn’t a suspicion of danger.”

The inspector eyed me with an expression that was highly flattering to my vanity.

“I’ll go with you,” said Joe, starting up from his stupor.

“No,” I replied. “You and the other fellows can take the underground route, if it’s necessary.”

“It won’t be necessary,” put in the inspector. “As soon as I’m rid of you and have my additional force, I’ll clear the streets.” He went to the door. “Wait, Mr. Blacklock, until I’ve had time to get out to my men.”

Perhaps ten seconds after he disappeared, I, without further words, put on my hat, lit a cigar, shook Joe’s wet, trembling hand, left in it my private keys and the memorandum of the combination of my private vault. Then I sallied forth.

I had always had a ravenous appetite for excitement, and I had been in many a tight place; but for the first time in my life I had a sense of equilibrium between my internal energy and the outside situation. As I stepped from my street door and glanced about me, I had no feeling of danger. The whole situation seemed so simple. There stood the electric, just across the narrow stretch of sidewalk; there were the two hundred police, under Crawford’s orders, scattered everywhere through the crowd, and good-naturedly jostling and pushing to create distraction. Without haste, I got into my machine. I calmly met the gaze of those thousands, quiet as so many barrels of gunpowder before the explosion. The chauffeur turned the machine.

“Go slow,” I called to him. “You might hurt somebody.”

But he had his orders from the inspector. He suddenly darted ahead at full speed. The mob scattered in every direction, and we were in Broadway, bound up town full-tilt, before I or the mob realized what he was about.

I called to him to slow down. He paid not the slightest attention. I leaned from the window and looked up at him. It was not my chauffeur; it was a man who had the unmistakable but indescribable marks of the plainclothes policeman. “Where are you going?” I shouted.

“You’ll find out when we arrive,” he shouted back, grinning.

I settled myself and waited--what else was there to do? Soon I guessed we were headed for the pier off which my yacht was anchored. As we dashed on to it, I saw that it was filled with police, both in uniform and in plain clothes. I descended. A detective sergeant stepped up to me. “We are here to help you to your yacht,” he explained. “You wouldn’t be safe anywhere in New York--no more would the place that harbored you.”

He had both common sense and force on his side. I got into the launch. Four detective sergeants accompanied me, and went aboard with me. “Go ahead,” said one of them to my captain. He looked at me for orders. “We are in the hands of our guests,” said I. “Let them have their way.”

We steamed down the bay and out to sea.

* * * * *

From Maine to Texas the cry rose and swelled: “Blacklock is responsible! What does it matter whether he lied or told the truth? See the results of his crusade! He ought to be pilloried! He ought to be killed! He is the enemy of the human race. He has almost plunged the whole civilized world into bankruptcy and civil war.” And they turned eagerly to the very autocrats who had been oppressing and robbing them. “You have the genius for finance and industry. Save us!”

If you did not know, you could guess how those patriots with the “genius for finance and industry” responded. When they had done, when their program was in effect, Langdon, Melville and Updegraff were the three richest men in the country, and as powerful as Octavius, Anthony and Lepidus after Philippi. They had saddled upon the reorganized finance and industry of the nation heavier taxes than ever, and a vaster and more expensive and more luxurious army of their parasites. The people had risen for financial and industrial freedom; they had paid its fearful price; then, in senseless panic and terror, they flung it away. I have read that one of the inscriptions on Apollo’s temple at Delphi was, “Man, the fool of the farce.” Truly, the gods must have created us for their amusement; and when Olympus palls, they ring up the curtain on some such screaming comedy as was that. It

“Makes the fancy chuckle, while the heart doth ache.”

XXVI.

My enemies caused it to be widely believed that Wild Week was my deliberate contrivance for the sole purpose of enriching myself. Thus they got me a reputation for almost superhuman daring, for Satanic astuteness at cold-blooded calculation. I do not deserve the admiration and respect which my success-worshiping fellow-countrymen lay at my feet. True, I did greatly enrich myself; but _not until the Monday after Wild Week_.