Bricks! Chimneys! Eben’s eyes watered.
“You are diversified, aren’t you, friend?” Amos inquired anxiously.
Eben dredged up his confidence. “General Custer is escorting the Northern Pacific surveyors! The savages can’t stop the railroad now!”
“Eben? Eben, who are you talking to?” Pauline called.
Eben slashed the air with his hand. “Not a word, Amos. Not a God Damned word.” In a milder tones he replied, “It’s just Amos, dear. Baby Elizabeth is cutting teeth.”
Pauline was backlit at the head of the stairs, which she descended so lightly, it seemed as if she floated down. Why, Eben thought, Pauline is truly beautiful.
She paused in the parlor doorway and shaded her eyes. “Eben, why is it so dark in here? Amos, is that really you?” She went to the drapes and opened them with a swish. Pauline frowned. “Is something wrong, dear?” With sunlight streaming over her shoulders, she answered her own question with a smile. “How could anything be wrong on such a glorious day?” She touched his cheek. “I am so looking forward to this, dear. We haven’t picnicked in ever so long . . .”
By herculean effort, Eben was impassive. “Picnic. My dear . . . I’m afraid I can’t, today. Business . . .”
At first his wife’s smile didn’t believe him, and when it did, it died. “Oh,” she said. “Business. But Eben . . .” She turned her luminous gaze on him and said, “ ‘For what shall it profiteth a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?’ ” She persisted, “Darling, you haven’t had a day off from work in ever so long, and Eben—I do miss you terribly. You know I do.”
To disguise his turmoil, Eben spoke more coldly than he’d intended. “There will be other days just as fine.”
She turned to his friend. “Amos, didn’t your wife say Elizabeth was teething last month?”
Amos chuckled falsely. “Poor darling.” He sighed. “Goes on and on, doesn’t it?”
“Dear Eben,” Pauline said, “are you sure you won’t reconsider? It is such a splendid day and when winter comes there won’t be more of them.”
The ugliness of his charade gave Eben brute courage. “I said no.”
“Ah, yes. So you did.” The sorrow in her eyes changed to an indifference that chilled him to the bone. “I’ll leave you gentlemen to your business. Good morning, Mr. Hayward.”
Quickly Eben said, “I’m afraid I must go downtown, dear. We’ll use Amos’s carriage. You and Augustus will have your picnic. Don’t let me spoil your day.”
Eben knew the words trembling on her lips were, “You already have!” but she didn’t utter them. Her face, which had been so glad, was an expressionless mask. How dare she be disappointed! Eben felt like shaking the disappointment out of her!
He was so angry he threw his front door open, stepped outside, and took deep breaths of air. He thought: She does nothing. She is an ornament. She is neither useful nor rich. Everything depends on me. Everything.
A diffident Amos joined him on the stoop. “Well, Amos,” Eben Barnwell said, “let’s go downtown and see what we can salvage.”
When Eben urged others to diversify, he was preaching to ordinary folk who were more afraid of losing the little they had than gaining more. Like most speculators, Eben didn’t heed this advice. Mr. Kellogg’s reports from the Yellowstone expedition—the bright promise of Dakota Territory and the ease with which General Custer repulsed the Sioux—had convinced Eben to put his money into Northern Pacific.
In his thirty-fourth year of life, Eben Barnwell was a millionaire. This may seem a satisfactory sum to those who view money as something to be spent on food, clothing, or the roof over one’s head, but in Manhattan, measured against Vanderbilt, Morgan, and Belmont and even the despised Jay Gould, Eben’s fortune and hence Eben himself were inconsequential.
Eben had put his money into Northern Pacific in order to become the man his envy said he was.
Margin is a tool for canny men. Margin allows the speculator with ten dollars in his pocket to invest a hundred dollars, and when his securities appreciate, the buyer reaps the same profit as him who risked his own hundred.
In the remote possibility—all brokers agree the possibility is extremely remote—that instead of rising, securities fall, then the broker takes no notice of the man who invested the full one hundred dollars of his money to buy the presently distressed instruments, but takes hold of the margin buyer with a bulldog’s grip lest the losses become his own.
BARNWELL AND NUTLEY’S offices were in the Merchants Exchange Building near the tip of Manhattan. Although Nutley had been dead for two years, Eben hadn’t changed the firm’s name. Firms with dead men’s names were solid.
Eben’s floor man, Tate, was in Nutley’s old office, kneeling before the safe. After a glance, Tate knew his employer understood their position. “Didn’t we keep some Standard Oil?” Tate asked
“I don’t recall. Perhaps ten thousand.”
“I’ll have to take them to the Union Trust. They’ve called their margin accounts.”
Eben sat at the mahogany desk, which was as free of dust as when poor George collapsed over it.
“Who else?” Eben asked quietly.
“Is asking for collateral? Everyone except First Chemical, and they’re so busy dealing with this damn panic they haven’t got around to us yet. You can be sure they will.”
Eben’s floor man pulled thick sheaves of Northern Pacific bonds from the safe onto the floor.
Eben reached for a certificate. As beautifully engraved as an oversized banknote, it bore the superscription: “Authorized by Act of the Congress of the United States of America, July 17, 1868.”
A locomotive steamed magnificently across a rural landscape beside telegraph poles. Dully, Eben wondered if they had telegraphs in Dakota. He supposed they must. Duncan Gatewood—Mahone’s man and Pauline’s uncle—had moved somewhere out there. From time to time, Pauline read Eben bits from her aunt’s letters. Didn’t they have children? Two children? Yes, Eben believed they had.
Tate was ignoring the beautiful certificates for certificates—fewer—with oil wells on their face.
“Authorized by Act of Congress” . . . didn’t that mean Congress wouldn’t let Jay Cooke fail? How could they let Cooke fail?
“President Grant?” Eben asked.
His floor man snorted. “Him? What do you expect him to do?”
A few oil wells were laid tenderly beside the heaps of railroad trains crossing rural landscapes. Eben wondered if the artist had worked from life or just made things up.
“Anything in your safe, Mr. Barnwell? Didn’t we buy Cunard?”
“Sold it,” Eben said.
“The twenty-five thousand in Augustus Belmont’s receivables?”
“Collateralized at the Union Bank.”
“Mr. Barnwell?”
“Yes, Tate?”
“Are we finished, then?”
Tate was married. He sometimes spoke of a wife. Did Tate have children? Eben didn’t know. He examined the certificate. Signed by Jay Cooke himself. Eben had dined with Jay Cooke. He knew Cooke’s bold signature. Behind each Northern Pacific bond stood—well, Jay Cooke stood behind them, and who could want better security? Hadn’t Cooke single-handedly financed the Union war effort? Cooke’s signature had made engraved paper more valuable than a thousand locomotives or ten thousand oil wells. “Of course we’re not finished.” Eben swallowed.
He let the bond flutter to the floor. “We must buy time until Cooke reopens. This is just a panic. Those who outlast panics will profit. I’ve done so before.”
He sent Tate to the banks, with promises to meet their margin calls. He went himself to the New York Bank for Commerce, where George Nutley’s brother was president.
Alas, as a wise man once noted, “There is nothing more cowardly than a million dollars—unless it is two million dollars.” Although Joseph Nutley owed his present position to Eben, and though there was no run on the Bank for Commerce—which was reputed
to be, next to Morgan’s, the soundest bank in the city—Joseph Nutley would only loan Eben money on collateral of his house, his furnishings, his artworks, and a remote Virginia plantation—at forty percent of their value.
For a time it was enough. The Fidelity sustained and the Union Bank sustained. But at one o’clock Friday, the exchange bell rang and a white-faced clerk cried, “The First National Bank of Philadelphia regrets that it can no longer meet its obligations.” A groan like a wounded animal’s rose from brokers and clerks on the floor.
At two-thirty, the gong rang again. “The Merchants Bank of Richmond has closed its doors.”
First the clearinghouses went under, then the railroads. The Erie declared bankruptcy. Virginia’s Atlantic, Mississippi & Ohio went into receivership. Commodore Vanderbilt poured money into the market to sustain his holdings. J. P. Morgan bought gold.
Bankers and brokers wept with relief at the closing bell, after which no more business could be transacted and no more defaults could be declared. Bullies shoved protesting investors through the bronze doors and bolted them.
At five o’clock, Eben Barnwell rode the elevated railroad to the 29th Street station.
He descended the iron stairs one at a time. His hair was disheveled. He’d left his coat in the office—or was it at the exchange? Eben opened his Waltham watch, which was accurate to three minutes a week. A marvel of American ingenuity. Time is money.
Eben had plenty of time. Of money he had none.
Eben wondered if the man who coined that nostrum had envisioned an exchange: how much per minute, per hour? How much for a lifetime?
For what shall it profiteth a man . . .
The dusk was as lovely as the morning had been. There was a pink cast in the western sky. How proud he’d been of his house in Madison Square. How proud he’d been of owning a house. How proud he’d been.
Eben Barnwell walked tiredly down the street—on the opposite side of the square.
Windows glowed through drapes opened on what had been Eben Barnwell’s home, his things, his achievements.
Was anything finer than a respectable family’s home?
In his rumpled clothes, Eben Barnwell felt dirty. He wiped his nose with his sleeve.
For a full half hour, he crouched beside a spindly elm tree contemplating the wonderful life someone else owned.
CHAPTER 52
MRS. S. T. GATEWOOD’S BOARDINGHOUSE BRUNSWICK STEW
Boil two chickens in water. Cook one pint butterbeans and one quart tomatoes, cook with the meat. When done, add one dozen ears corn, one dozen large tomatoes, and one pound butter.
Take out the chicken, cut it into small pieces, and put back; cook until it is well done and thick enough to be eaten with a fork.
“AUGIE, ISN’T THIS GOOD?” PAULINE TASTED THE DISH MORE enthusiastically than it deserved.
“Not hungry.” The little boy shrank as far from his bowl as he could without abandoning his chair altogether. He banged the rungs with his heels.
Samuel Gatewood’s glance stilled them.
Molly Gatewood chattered, “Well, dear. If you’re not hungry, you won’t want Amelia’s apple pie. We’ll put your piece out for the boarders’ breakfast.”
As if it were his portion of hemlock, the boy jabbed his fork into the stew and stirred it around.
Molly continued cheerfully, “I’m so glad the house is full and our boarders are accustomed to our ways.”
How Molly wished Samuel and Pauline wouldn’t bring their political disagreements to the dinner table. No abstract quarrel should imperil good digestion and a pleasant night’s sleep.
At awkward moments like this, Mrs. Gatewood restated the comforting and pacific.
Awkward moments they’d had when they opened Mrs. S. T. Gatewood’s Boardinghouse. Their first boarders had been Irish workingmen, yankee peddlers, and Virginians dispossessed by the War. Some smuggled whiskey into the house. Drunken boarders had banged on the front door after midnight although that door was locked from ten until seven-fifteen in the morning. One miscreant cracked a door light banging. The prohibition against whistling was widely disregarded. But it was a Virginian, “Captain Beasely, formerly of the Lynchburg Rifles,” who nearly put paid to their venture when one Saturday night he slipped the front door lock and tiptoed a woman upstairs into his room: the largest front bedroom in the house. The woman’s indiscreet cries wakened Amelia, who scurried to the carriage house to fetch Master Gatewood.
His climb up the stairs toward the couple’s hushed giggles in what had been his wife Molly’s bedroom tested Samuel Gatewood’s battered pride. “Reduced to this! Reduced to this!” After he evicted the amorous couple and double-locked the front door, Samuel took down Pauline’s sign, which had peeked discreetly through the drawn curtains of their parlor window: “Room and Board for Gentlemen: $1.50 weekly.”
“Gentlemen!” Samuel had snorted.
Next morning when Samuel informed his wife of his irrevocable decision to evict their boarders, move back from the carriage house, and reclaim Molly’s house as their own, his wife sighed, “Well, Samuel, if you must, you must. I suppose Pauline, Amelia, and I could take in laundry. We could sell Grandmother’s dining room table—did I tell you Washington once took supper at its head?—and buy an agitator washing machine. You can hang the necessary clotheslines. Will our well suffice for a laundry or must we connect to city water?”
“Molly!”
“Samuel,” she replied calmly, “as Christians we must believe that God knows how much we can endure.”
“You should have heard that . . . woman. She howled like a cat in heat!” Samuel replied.
Was that a grin on his wife’s face? “Samuel, perhaps I should have been her.”
“But Molly—”
She touched his lips. “You have put them out, Samuel. Henceforth, we’ll have to be more careful choosing boarders. We’ve only been in this business two months and have much to learn.”
Learn they did. A year and eight months after they’d arrived in Richmond, Mrs. S. T. Gatewood’s Boardinghouse was a model of decorum. After Thomas Byrd won election to the Congress of the United States, he’d directed his Irish canvassers to his grandfather’s boardinghouse. If these men drank, they did not do so in the Gatewood house. If they enjoyed women’s favors, they enjoyed them elsewhere. Their rent was paid Monday mornings without fail. After one remonstrance, they never again whistled in the house. What Mr. Curry, Mr. McNeil, Mr. Sullivan, and Mr. Houlahan did was argue politics every evening when they took coffee in the parlor after dinner. Alas for the comforting and pacific, Pauline and Samuel involved themselves in their disagreements while Molly retired to the kitchen to help Amelia prepare the family dinner.
BY LUCK, MOLLY had been with her husband the first time Samuel saw General Mahone driving down Broad Street behind his handsome team of matched bays. “Samuel.” Molly caught his sleeve, whispering urgently. “Please don’t make matters worse than they are.”
“How could they be worse?” Samuel growled as Mahone’s rig clattered away.
“Samuel, we have each other. We have a roof over our heads. We are not destitute. We have Pauline and little Augustus to think of.”
“The boy is hopelessly spoiled, Molly. If he were at Stratford—”
“We are not at Stratford, Samuel.”
“I thank you for the reminder.” He bowed.
“Little Augustus believes his failings drove his father away and forced them from their home. If it hadn’t been for that waiter’s kindness . . .”
“Eben Barnwell’s speculations ruined them. The boy had nothing to do with it.”
“Samuel, dear. He’s just a child.”
“Eben Barnwell’s recklessness cannot excuse the son. It cannot. The father’s vices must not flourish in the son. Augustus Barnwell is spoiled and has unrealistic expectations!”
“He is six years old! That child had so much and has lost it all. You and I . . .”
“You and I?�
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“We have been too long in the world to be flabbergasted by misfortune.”
As usual, Molly was right. Though Samuel Gatewood had had bad nights after the First National Bank of Warm Springs finally and officially informed him that Stratford had been foreclosed—sold to yankee merchants for a quail-hunting preserve—Samuel had known the dread day was coming and had mentally discounted General Mahone’s promises to pay. When Jay Cooke failed and General Mahone’s railroad was forced into receivership, Samuel submitted his claims with faint hope of recovery.
When Granddaughter Pauline wrote that her husband Eben had decamped and she was coming home destitute, Samuel had worried more about Pauline’s troubles than his own. Thank God they still had Molly’s Richmond home, empty after Colonel Elliot returned to his homeplace in the south side.
Her journey financed by a waiter she knew, Pauline came back to Stratford the same day the new owners (three amiable yankee sportsmen) took possession. When Pauline understood what was happening, she walked to the family graveyard and sat for a time beside her mother and father.
The next day, Sunday, as Samuel and Molly were dressing for church, the last time the Gatewoods would worship at SunRise Chapel, Pauline had announced, “Grandfather, I won’t attend church anymore. In good conscience, I cannot.”
They’d sold some furniture to Stratford’s new owners and stored the rest in the barn loft. The yankees had been solicitous of family feelings: the Gatewoods should visit anytime. Yes, certainly, they’d keep up the graveyard. Although they hadn’t had personal dealings with Eben Barnwell, they’d heard of the man. Barnwell had utterly vanished. They thought California. Cuba? South America?
On Samuel’s recommendation the yankees hired Jack Mitchell as their caretaker.
Samuel’s trusted retainer helped load the wagon with the personal goods they’d take to their new home.
“Goodbye, Jack. I am sorry things have come to this. I will send you your back salary as soon as I am able.”
When, as was his custom, Jack removed his old felt hat his gray head seemed painfully vulnerable. How many years had they been master and man?
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