Between Two Worlds

by Upton Sinclair

  IV

  Lanny went upstairs to his rooms. How funny to find his wife reclining in a chaise-longue looking at the art creations of Bernice, robes et manteaux, and waiting for Lanny to come and tell her whether black furs or brown were more becoming to her warm brunette coloring! “There’s a frightful panic in the Street,” he said. “Everybody we know may be wiped out.” That scattered them. Madame Bernice and her two assistants rushed off to find a telephone and put in their “stop loss” orders; meanwhile Lanny sat at his own phone and put in a call for Newcastle. The same reply: “All trunk lines are busy. We will call you.”

  He did what he had done before, made a fuss; of course he was gumming up the telephone service, and thousands of others were doing the same; it was sauve qui peut. Finally he managed to get his father’s office, only to learn that Robbie was out; the secretary said he had gone to see Mr. Samuel Budd. Lanny could guess what that meant: Robbie was trying to scrape up some cash. The secretary said, very discreetly, that Mr. Robert had not told him anything about his position in the market. Lanny told what he had done, and asked the secretary to get the brokers’ office and get a confirmation of the receipt of the money. He added: “Tell my father to call me at my hotel. I’ll wait here in my room.”

  Then Lanny telephoned his mother at the show rooms, and asked her to come to him. She had heard that there was a panic; one could have told that by the way the crowd had melted away from the show. She said: “Is anything wrong with us, Lanny?” He wouldn’t talk over the phone. “Take a taxi and come at once.”

  It was between twelve and one, the worst hour of the panic. The blue chips were tumbling, several points at a time, and one time right after another. The worst of it was that the ticker was an hour and a half behind the market, and there was a spread of thirty points between the prices quoted and those actually prevailing. So no one knew what to believe or to expect. Everybody you knew was in, and every last one of them might be ruined. Irma’s large and majestic mother was pacing the floor in an agony of dread because she couldn’t get into touch with her brother. “Feathers,” the elegant secretary, was pale, but silent, not telling anybody what her losses were. Parsons, Irma’s maid, was weeping silently in a corner because she had put all her savings into Montgomery Ward and the chambermaid had just told her that it had gone from 83 to 50.

  Beauty came in, and Lanny took her into his own room and shut the door, and told her what he had done. She went dead white, except for her war-paint. “Oh, Lanny, how could you!”

  “Think it over, old girl,” he suggested. “You and I have lived off Robbie for thirty years. You have had a thousand a month, which makes three hundred and sixty thousand.”

  “But a third of that money belongs to Marceline!”

  “Marceline has lived off Robbie since long before she was born. Maybe Marcel never lived off him, but his amie and his wife did, which is the same thing. We simply had to save Robbie if we could.”

  “What will we live on, Lanny? I have only a few hundred in the bank.”

  “I have some money in Cannes; and we still have a lot of pictures.”

  “Will anybody ever buy any more pictures? There’ll be nobody in the rooms except poor artists and others who just want to look.”

  “I’ll find a way to make money, Beauty, and I won’t let you suffer. Also, Robbie will come back, no matter what happens; the family won’t let him go down. I’m sorry to have acted without your consent, but I knew that it might be a matter of minutes. Fortunes are being wiped out wholesale.”

  “I don’t understand it, Lanny. How can such things happen?”

  “That’s a long story, and we’ll know more about it later. The point is, I had to do what I could for Robbie, and I want you to tell me that I did right.”

  “I suppose you had to; but, oh, how perfectly horrible! Why, nobody can ever be sure of anything again! Do you think you saved him?”

  “Our money may be only a drop in the bucket to him. The brokers can demand any margin they think necessary. If you have bought on a twenty-percent margin and the stocks drop that amount, your margin is wiped out, and you have to put up another bunch of money; and so on, as long as prices go down. Any time you aren’t there with the cash, they sell the stocks for what they will bring, and you start life over again.”

  “Lanny, it’s like a buzz-saw!”

  “Well, thank me for keeping you out of it. And as for Robbie, from now on we can consider that we’ve done our duty; if he gets in again, it’s his own funeral.”

  V

  Beauty went off to her hotel to weep alone. No use going to the show rooms, ever again—there was nobody there who mattered, nobody worth exhibiting yourself to! Lanny stayed by the telephone, which rang frequently; various friends of the family calling, to impart dreadful news and exchange futile words.

  The young man’s thoughts were on the situation in Newcastle. Grandfather Samuel, the stern old Puritan, had never gambled in his life; would he forgive his son for gambling, and put up money to save him? Or would he say: “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap”? Would Robbie’s brothers help him—or were they too in the market? All the country club set was in, Lanny knew, and many of the businessmen, for he had heard them talking. Now they would all be scurrying, trying to beg or borrow cash. Esther’s father was president of the First National, a Budd bank, and doubtless he would do all he could, but he wasn’t allowed to lend money without security. Lanny thought: “Of course I might ask money from Irma.” But he said to himself: “No, if that’s the only way, Robbie will have to take the count.”

  There were plenty of other people whose thoughts turned to Irma, and who had not the same scruples. Lanny discovered her at the phone in her room, saying to one of her intimates: “But, my dear, I have no such sums in cash; my own mother is in difficulties, and maybe my uncle, and I have to help them first.” Most embarrassing to have your best friends crying over the telephone, and thinking that you were stingy and selfish, you with all that fortune salted away—how could you? It wouldn’t be long before they would be coming in person, weeping and having hysterics. Yes, Irma Budd was going to know there was a panic, and she couldn’t keep it from making a difference in her life!

  Horace Vandringham burst in at a little after one. The bright red color which he usually wore had faded to yellow, and he looked as if he had been put through a clothes-wringer. He had put up every share of stock he owned, and unless his sister and his niece would save him he was absolutely cleaned out. He didn’t know what the market was doing, or what it was going to do; he had to have cash and more cash, they must go downtown to the vault with him and take out a bundle of their stocks and let him take them to the bank. They must do it now, instantly!

  Fanny said: “But, Horace, you know the trustees won’t allow that. It is expressly forbidden in the will.”

  “Well, you must make them consent. This is an emergency. For God’s sake, Fanny!”

  The mother called the estate office, and ordered Mr. Joseph Barnes to take the subway express and come to the hotel at once. Apparently he had been expecting the call, for he argued. The others couldn’t hear what he said, but evidently he was laying down the law, for Fanny flushed as red as her brother no longer was. “Come up, Joseph; we can’t discuss these matters over the phone.”

  Uncle Horace wanted to know how much cash Irma had. The mother produced the last statement of Slemmer, which showed only a couple of hundred thousand dollars on hand. “I can’t tell what checks he has drawn,” said Fanny.

  “Well, get him and find out!” fumed the brother.

  Slemmer still hadn’t returned to Shore Acres. They got the name of his hotel, and phoned him there. He said that the bank balance was about seventy-five thousand dollars; the rest of Irma’s money was in the hands of the trustees, who had reinvested it.

  “Well, surely that money belongs to Irma!” insisted Horace to his sister. “All the income is her property, and is not subject to the provisions of the
will. She has a right to sell such stocks, or hypothecate them—whatever she pleases. Let Joseph keep his nose out of it!”

  VI

  Lanny perceived that there was going to be a jolly row between the two families. His own attitude was that of the pioneer settler who came home to his cabin and discovered his wife in conflict with a bear, and who stood his gun by the fence and said: “Go it, woman; go it, bear!” Lanny had a ringside seat and he stayed, and learned more about the manners and morals of the rich. Money is supposed to improve the former if not the latter; but Mr. Horace Vandringham, of one of the old New York families, hurled his great bulk back and forth across the room and called his brother-in-law a yellow skunk and a dirty double-crosser, and the brother-in-law replied that he was a damned fool and crazy as a bedbug. Incidentally Mr. Joseph Barnes said something which interested Lanny: “My brother always knew that this thing was going to crash; he said it was jerry-built, and he wrote his will to provide for this very day.”

  They tried to get Lanny into it. Uncle Horace turned to him and inquired: “What do you say?” But Lanny just wasn’t going to get in. He replied: “I notice that it hasn’t occurred to any of you to ask what Irma thinks.”

  “Well, Irma?” demanded Uncle Horace. “Are you going to let me go to the wall?”

  Lanny was learning about his wife as he went along. She was just twenty-one, and she was learning in the same way as her husband. She said: “Uncle Horace, I have been thinking it over, and I’ve decided that I don’t like the business of gambling in stocks.”

  Uncle Horace gave a gulp. His face showed his surprise, and so, perhaps, did Lanny’s. The new husband had been doing a great deal of talking to his wife and in her presence, but she hadn’t given much sign that she was paying attention; however, the word “gambling” was Lanny’s word, and certainly not Mr. Vandringham’s.

  “Uncle Horace,” continued the girl, “I am sorry about this trouble you are in, and I’d like to help you, but it’s no good if you’re going back in, because it’ll be the same thing all over again. So it’s up to you to say whether you’re willing to get out and stay out.”

  “But, Irma, it’s my business!”

  “I know, and you’re free to go on with it, but not to come to me when you get caught. If I help you, it will have to be on condition that you’ll find some other business but buying and selling stocks on margin.”

  She said it quietly, and having said it, she stopped. She was no longer the princess but the queen. “My lords and gentlemen, it has pleased us to decree,” and so on. Lord Horace gulped again, and looked helplessly at his sister, who appeared as much taken aback as he was. He began arguing and pleading, and talked for quite a while, but Irma only said: “I’m not going to change, Uncle Horace.”

  So finally he gave up. “All right, Irma. I have no choice.”

  She turned to the other uncle. “How much stock have you invested from my income?”

  “A little over three millions, at yesterday’s prices.”

  “Well, let him have enough of it to protect his margins. But when the panic stops, he’s going to sell and get out.”

  “I may not have anything left!” exclaimed Uncle Horace, with agony in his face.

  “I’ll stand part of the loss. Anything so long as we don’t have this kind of thing again. You must get your affairs on the same basis as the estate—what stocks you own you own outright, and you can put them in our vault and forget them.”

  VII

  When this Homeric battle was over and the two warring gentlemen had hurried out to obey their orders, Lanny said: “I’ve got to drive down to Newcastle and see my father. Would you like to go along?”

  “Indeed I would,” replied the young wife. “Anything to get out of this madhouse.”

  “I’m afraid we’ll find another one there, only smaller,” he remarked.

  “Feathers” was instructed that, if the call came through, she was to tell Mr. Budd that the pair were on their way. They gave the chauffeur a chance to go and watch the ticker, and set out with Lanny driving. He had told her what he had done for his father, and it had impressed her tremendously. He really didn’t care for money after all! So now, while they were speeding up Park Avenue, she said: “You know, of course, I mean to help your father if he needs it.”

  “Thank you for the offer, Irma; but it’s up to the Budds to look after their own.”

  “But maybe they can’t. Maybe they’re in, too.”

  “Maybe so; but I told you I wasn’t going to have anything to do with your money—”

  “That’s all ancient history, Lanny. You’re my husband, and your father means something to me, just as my uncle does.” When he started to argue, she said: “Let’s forget it. We’ll see what position he’s in, and what he has to say. If he needs help, I mean to give it.” Again, the queen speaking!

  Out on the highway that follows the shore of the Sound, Lanny said: “You know, Irma, it’s odd; what you said to Uncle Horace is just what I’ve been getting up steam to say to Robbie.”

  “I never gave much thought to it before,” she responded, “but this day has opened my eyes. I see what my father meant, and how wise he was. How I wish he were here now!”

  She started asking questions about the stock market, and about business and finance; it was a primary-grade course which she should have had in school. “Where on earth does all the money go?” she asked, and he explained to her the nature of credit; the money didn’t go anywhere, it just ceased to be. She tried earnestly to understand the strange idea, and the conversation was so different from her usual gossip, her boy and girl friends, their clothes and their games and their love affairs, that Lanny thought, perhaps this “shakedown” mightn’t be such a bad thing for the idle rich after all!

  She made the suggestion: “You might tell your father that you can’t get help from me on any other terms than those I laid down for Uncle Horace.” Lanny wondered, was she finding the exercise of power a pleasant thing? She could hardly be the daughter of her mother and her father and not find it so.

  The drive to Newcastle was a matter of two or three hours. Lanny made it as fast as the law allowed, and now and then a bit faster. Passing through the towns you could tell where brokers’ offices or newspaper bulletin boards were by the crowds in front. It was a little before six when they reached Newcastle, and there, too, were crowds on the main street, one in front of the brokers’ and another in front of the Chronicle building. Lanny stopped at the former, for there was a chance that his father might be inside, and if not, he wished to phone and find out whether he was at the office or at home.

  Impossible to get into the brokers’; but from the crowd outside he learned that the closing prices had still not come in. The ticker had fallen more than four hours behind, and it would be after seven when anxious customers all over the country could know what had happened to their holdings. Lanny felt pretty sure that his father wouldn’t be at home under such circumstances, so he called the office, and at last, to his relief, he heard the familiar voice.

  “How are you, Robbie?”

  “I’m still alive—that’s about all.”

  “You’re not wiped out?”

  “I have a call for more margin in the morning.”

  “You got word about the money I deposited?”

  “I did, and I don’t know how to thank you. It saved me for the moment.”

  “You’re going to be at the office for a while? Irma and I will come right over.”

  VIII

  How different the world had been when Lanny had driven his wife through those gates just a month ago! Now the genial and self-confident Robbie looked ten years older; he was so harassed that he couldn’t make any pretense, even before the daughter of the Barneses. He told in a few brief sentences what his position was. His father had refused to lend him a dollar. All his life Robbie had insisted upon having his own way, and now he must pay the bill. There would always be a position in the firm for him and a good sal
ary on which he could live; but oil ventures and stock gambling were equally sinful in Grandfather Samuel’s eyes, and what had happened was the promised judgment of the Lord.

  Robbie’s brother Lawford was in the market too and, anyhow, he wouldn’t have helped Robbie. The other two brothers didn’t have much money, and they too were “in,” but concealing the fact. Robbie had got a hundred thousand from one of his uncles, but that was a mere drop in the bucket. He had pledged all his own securities, even his Budd stock; also he had put up Lanny’s securities, as Lanny had authorized. The father started to make apologies for this, but Lanny cut him short. “Forget it; we want to see you through, and we want to know what we’re up against. Don’t hide anything from us.”

  “No use trying to. I admit it’s got my nerve. You and your Red friends can have your way from now on.”

  Robbie went to the ticker, which wasn’t tired in spite of working so long overtime. The prices of the last hour were now coming in. “Things seem to be holding better,” he said. The tape was giving only the final figure of the stock price. So you read: “R 6 and a half 6 and a quarter 6 and three eights 6 and a half”; from this you understood that Radio was now holding its own, but you wouldn’t know whether it was at 46 or 36. Robbie had been keeping track, and had notes of the various prices in which he was interested.

  He showed a memorandum which his secretary had got by telephone from the Chronicle office some time ago. In the course of the afternoon a group of leading bankers had met in the House of Morgan and agreed to put up a fund of two hundred and forty million dollars to stabilize the market. Such was the story which would be in the afternoon papers throughout the country, and it was hoped that it would check the rush to unload. “If I can only have a little time,” said Robbie, “I can make arrangements and save the situation.” Lanny must have heard a score of people saying those same words in the course of the day.