Rumor for once in its life was below the truth. The great steel trust was to be capitalized at a billion and a half. There had to be room for everybody. Bullguard was to be its deity. There could be no other. The charter had been applied for. Famous lawyers had reconciled it with the law. All these facts came out gradually, mostly in the form of midnight rumors. In the highest circles of the steel court an extremely curious fact was already privately known. Sabath was to be the manipulator. If he could not perform the unimaginable feat of selling the shares of a billion-and-a-half dollar corporation to the public nobody could. Yet how strange that Bullguard and Sabath should sail a ship together.
At length all the salient probabilities had been established, and nothing happened. A week passed. Then another. Wall Street was strung with suspense and the nightly Waldorf swarm buzzed with adverse rumors. Time was priceless. The public was in a fever of excitement. If ever there was an opportunity it was then. Why did Bullguard wait? What unexpected difficulty had been encountered?
There was but one obstacle and that was John. The Breakspeare properties were too important to be left out. A trust of trusts without them simply could not be. Bullguard sent for all the other lords and barons first, and they were quick to come. Then one day John received a telephone call from the office of Bullguard & Company. Would he be pleased to come to their office for a conference? His response was to mention his business address. Next day one of Bullguard’s partners called in person.
“Mr. Bullguard wishes to see you,” he said.
“If I wished to see Mr. Bullguard, I’d look for him at his office, not mine,” said John.
“I beg your pardon?”
John repeated it. The partner went away, deeply offended in the name of Bullguard.
Sabath came to see him. He had been sent. John knew it and Sabath knew he knew it.
“When are you going to see Mr. Bullguard?” he asked.
“I’m here nearly every day,” said John.
“Mr. Bullguard is performing a great public service,” said Sabath, with not a twinkle, as if they did not understand each other down to the ground. “He’s trying to get all you gamblers out of the steel business and bring some peace to the country. And because he spanked you once when you were in knee pants, now you’re as proud as a pig with a ribbon in its hereafter. I’ll tell him what I’ve said.”
“Except the pig allusion. I’ll lay odds you won’t repeat that.”
“I will,” said Sabath, departing. “I will.”
John’s partners began to be alarmed. He kept nothing from them. When they importuned him to bend a little, thinking his obduracy might have disastrous consequences for all of them, he would say: “It amuses me and it will pay you.”
One morning Sabath’s voice called him on the telephone, saying: “The great mountain is walking. You damn gamblers! Do you want everything in the world?”
“Thanks,” said John.
Twenty minutes later Bullguard appeared. He walked right in, sat on the edge of a chair, crossed his arms, leaned forward on his stick, and glared. When he glared the world was supposed to tremble. He was rather awful to look at. His purple face was of a strawberry texture; his nose was monstrous, angry, red, bulbous, with hairy warts upon it; his eyebrows were almost vertical.
Three words were spoken,—all three by Bullguard.
“How much?” he asked.
John drew a pencil pad out of his desk and wrote slowly in large, owlish characters, this:
If you smile—
$300,000,000
No smile
$350,000,000
Having written it he stopped to gaze at it thoughtfully for a minute, then pulled out the slide leaf of his desk, tossed the pad there for Bullguard to see, and leaned back.
Bullguard glanced at it and stood up.
“That!” he said, tapping the $350,000,000 with his forefinger, and stalked out.
Slaymaker, Awns, Wingreene and Pick were waiting in the big room. John walked in and threw the pad on the table.
“There are the terms.”
Knowing John they understood the pencil writing.
“Did he smile?” they asked as one.
“No,” said John.
“My God!” murmured Slaymaker. He sank into a chair and wept.
Two-fifths of it was John’s. His share included the Thane interest which amounted to nearly twenty millions. Slaymaker, Awns, Wingreene and Pick divided $170,000,000. The balance went to thirty or forty minor stockholders in the Breakspeare companies.
XLII
SO the fabulous Damosel of the Dirty Face, rescued from the goat herds who had found and reared her, was clothed in what she should wear, christened in due manner, annointed in the name of order, and presented to the American people. Or, that is to say, the steel industry was bought from the barbars and sold to the public.
Auspicated by Bullguard and Company, manipulated by Sabath, advertised by common wonder, the shares of the biggest trust in the world were launched on the New York Stock Exchange. Popular imagination, prepared in suspense, delivered itself headlong to the important task of buying them. A craze to exchange money for steel shares swept the country. That seemed to be only what people got up every morning to do. Such manias, like panics inverted, have often occurred. They have a large displacement in the literature of popular delusions. This one, although of a true type and spontaneous, was fomented in an extraordinary manner by Sabath, who for the first time in his life had all the power and sanction of Wall Street behind him. The hand of the Ishmaelite that everyone feared now strummed the official lyre and the tune it played untied a million purse strings.
The steel people removed their hats and bowed.
“We were amateurs,” they admitted.
For weeks and weeks they sat behind piles of steel engraved certificates, fresh from the printer, and signed their names until they were weary of making pen strokes at ten thousand dollars each. Before the ink of their signatures was dry the certificates were cast upon the market to be converted into cash,—the market Sabath made. There seemed no bottom or end to it. The capacity of that market was unlimited. The public’s power to buy was greater than anybody knew.
When it was over, when Sabath’s sweet melody ceased, when the public owned the steel industry and the barbars were out, then steel shares began to fall. For several years they fell, disastrously, and the public howled with rage. The trust went near the rocks.
All who had had any part in the making of it faced a storm of wild opprobium. There is much to be said in reproach. However, given the problem as it was, how else could anyone have solved it? The trust got by the rocks. The steel industry was stabilized. And ultimately the shares were worth much more than the public originally paid for them.
This eventuality few of the great steel barbars lived to witness. A little touched with madness anyhow, as heroic stature is, the Wall Street harvest finished them. They were of a sudden Nabobs with nothing on earth to do. Their wealth had been in mills and mines and ships, and business was a very jealous mistress. Now it was in money and they were free.
In the first place they didn’t know what to do with the money itself. Some of them bought banks of their own to keep it in. Then what could they spend it for? What could they invest it in? The only thing they knew was steel and they were out of that. Some of them began to buy railroads. They would say: “This looks like a pretty good railroad. Let’s buy that.” And they would buy it offhand in the stock market. Then Wall Street, controlling railroads without owning them, was struck with a new terror. It wasn’t safe to leave control of a railroad lying around loose. There was no telling what these men would do next with their money. They had got control of several great banks and railroads before anyone knew what they were doing.
But after they had invested their money in banks and railroads they still had nothing really to do. They built themselves castles, in some cases two or three each, and seldom if ever lived in them because they were so lon
esome. One transplanted a full grown forest and it died; he did it again with like result, and a third time, and then he was weary. He never went back to see. They got rid of their old wives and bought new and more expensive ones. Even that made no perceptible hole in their wealth. They tried horses and art and swamped everything they touched. Gambling they forgot. One developed a peacock madness, never wore the same garments more than an hour; his dressing room resembled a clothing store, with hundreds of suits lying on long tables in pressed piles. One had a phantasy for living out the myth of Pan and ceased to be spoken of anywhere. One travelled ceaselessly and carried with him a private orchestra that played him awake and attended his bath. He died presently under the delusion that he had lost all his money and all his friends, which was only half true.
They disappeared.
Blasted prodigies!
Children of the steel age, overwhelmed in its cinders.
XLIII
JOHN like all the others signed steel trust certificates until his hand became an automaton. If he noticed what it was doing it faltered and forgot. He sat in the big room at the long table, a clerk standing by to remove the engraved sheets one by one and blot the signature. Suddenly he saw it all as for the first time, in an original, unfamiliar manner.
“What are we doing?” he asked the clerk.
“Signing the certificates, sir. They want this lot before 2 o’clock.”
“Yes, but what does it mean?”
“What does it mean?” the clerk repeated. “I don’t know, sir. What do you mean?”
“I don’t know either,” said John. He threw the pen away, got up, reached for his hat.
“You’re not going now, sir? They are waiting for these certificates.”
“Let them wait.”
“What shall I say when they call for them?”
“Anything you like. Ask them what it means.”
Up and down the money canyon people moved with absent gestures, some in haste, some running, some loitering, all with one look in their eyes. Bulls were bellowing on the Stock Exchange. Steel shares were rising. Sabath was in his highest form. To the strumming of his lyre men of all shapes and conditions turned from their ways and came hither and wildly importuned brokers to exchange their money for bits of paper believed to represent steel mills they had never seen, would never see, had never heard of before. What did it mean?
As John gazed at the scene it became unreal and detached. He was alone, as one is in some dreams, there and not there, somehow concerned in the action but invisible to the actors and to oneself. It was like a dream of anxiety, full of confusion and grotesque matter.
He was lonely and very wretched and accused Agnes. He would accuse her to her face. That was what he was on his way to do, perhaps because there was no other excuse for seeing her in the middle of the day. He would tell her how selfish and unreasonable she was. They were two solitary beings in one world together. Their hours were running away. He loved her. He had always loved her. And at least she loved nobody else. Then why should they not join their lives?
Three times he had asked her that question. Each time she had said: “Let’s go on being friends. That’s very nice, isn’t it?”
A year had passed since the last time. He had watched for some sign of change. But she was always the same, except that after having been gently though firmly unwilling to say either yes or no she seemed to come nearer in friendship and baffled him all the more. If she had any feeling for him whatever beyond friendship he had been unable to detect or surprise it, and fate would bear witness that the possibility was one he had stalked with all patience and subtlety. In fact, he really believed that if he pressed her to the point she would say no,—that she had not said it already only because she hated to hurt him. This notion tormented him exceedingly. It would be a relief to know.
She had been for some weeks in town, at the Savoy, where he detained her on the pretext that her presence was necessary in her own interest. It was only a little past twelve when he arrived there and called her on the telephone, from the desk, asking her down to lunch. She was surprised and pleased and answered him in a voice that had a ring of youth.
The sound of it echoing in his ears evoked memories and caused the years to fall away. He waited, not there in the hotel lobby, but in a boxwood hedge, surreptitiously, and saw her as a girl again, plucking flowers, pretending not to know he was there, yet coming nearer, always nearer, with a thoughtful air; and for a moment he forgot that anything had happened since.
“Business or pleasure at this time of day?” she asked, coming up behind him.
Instantly, at the provocation of her voice, an impish, youth-time impulse took possession of him. It provided its own idea complete and he did not stop to examine it. His mood seized it.
“Personal,” he said.
“But you look so serious.”
“It is serious—for me.”
They sat at a table in the far corner of the dining room.
“Out with it. Lucky it isn’t murder. You’d be suspected at first glance.”
“What shall we eat? Pompano. That ought to be good.... Don’t look at me like that. I’m so happy I can’t stand it. That’s all that’s the matter with me.... Filet of sole. How about that?”
“Anything to cure such happiness. Sole, salad and iced tea for me, please. Now then.”
“A sweet? Or shall we decide about that later?”
“Later. I may be too much surprised by that time to want a sweet.”
She was regarding him intently, with a very curious expression. He avoided her eyes.
“Yes, it may surprise you,” he said. “Here, waiter! ... Of course you know—(Sole, hearts of lettuce and tomato salad, French dressing, iced tea for one, large coffee, sweets later)—what an emotional animal I am.—(Two salads, yes.)—Or romantic. Whatever you like to call it. (Sole for two.) After all, I don’t know why—(No, hot coffee for one.)—Why I should be so self-conscious about it. The fact is simple enough. I’m going to be married.”
“Oh! How exciting. When?”
“When? When, did you say? Why, right away. This evening perhaps.”
“Who is the lady?”
“I’d rather not tell you yet.”
“Yet? But it’s to be this evening, you say.”
“You would know her name at once and you might be prejudiced in spite of yourself. I can’t very well explain it. But I want you to meet her first.”
“This afternoon?”
“Or this evening. I’m coming to that. I very much need your help. It’s an extraordinary thing to ask. I’m anxious to keep it very quiet, both on her account and my own. Not the fact afterward. That must come out. But it’s taking place, when and where. Then of course we can go away, for a year, two years; live permanently abroad perhaps.”
“Yes?”
“I say I can’t explain it very clearly. You’ll just have to take a good deal of it for granted. The newspapers are so curious and impertinent. I’d like this to happen without anyone knowing it until the notice is published and we are gone. She has no home. I mean, she lives at a hotel. I have no home either. At a church or any public place like that we’d be noticed at once.”
“Will you ask the waiter to bring some more butter, please. Yes, go on. What can I do to help?”
“Take mine. I hoped you’d guess by this time. There’s no one else I can ask.”
“Thanks. No, I can’t guess.”
“Well, if you would let the ceremony take place in your apartment here and sort of manage the fussy part I’d never know how much to thank you.”
“Yes, indeed. I’d love to do it. Why did you make such a bother of asking? I’ll have some decorations sent in. What will she wear? What colors does she like?”
“I’ll have to find out.”
“And the time?”
“I’ll let you know.”
“As soon as you can. And that’s what you were so glum about? Now cheer up. Men are such lumps when th
ey are happy.”
“You are very sweet about it.”
“Don’t mind me. Only go as fast as you can and get the details. You don’t know how important they are. I’ll expect to hear from you within an hour. You will call me up?”
“Yes.”
The next he knew he was in the Central Park Zoo looking at the monkeys and wondering why they were so mystified. What had they to be puzzled about? Then there was a little brown bear that precisely expressed the absurdity he felt in himself. He did not mind feeling absurd. No, that was even comforting. A pain in the ego counteracting one in the heart. Clumsy as the device was it had served his purpose. He had found out. But it was no relief whatever. In the way he hoped she might she cared less than not at all—less than a foster sister or an old maid aunt. He could not be mistaken. He had watched her closely. She had betrayed not the slightest sign of self-concern. He had that same diminished, ignominious feeling with which he retired from the boxwood hedge on the evening of their first youth-time encounter.
What an asinine thing to have done!
When he called her on the telephone two hours later, as he had promised to do, this conversation occurred:
“This is John.”
“Yes. Now tell me all about it. You’ve been a long time.”
“Hello.”
“Yes. What time?”
“Hello.”
“Yes, I’m here.”
“Agnes, it’s too much of an imposition altogether. I can’t imagine how I could have asked you to do it. Thanks all the same, but we’ll call it off.”
“Nonsense. You’re not telling me the truth. Something has happened.”
“Maybe so. Anyhow, I withdraw the request.”
“Where are you?”
“Near by. Not very far.”
“Meet me in the tea room downstairs. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
Not waiting for him to answer she closed the wire. She was there waiting when he arrived.
“I’m sorry if anything has happened,” she said, most sympathetically. “Can you tell me about it?”
The Cinder Buggy Page 26
