The End of the Book

by Porter Shreve

  “We just met last night.” Stefan slurped his coffee and set the cup down. “Our treasurer is a refugee from San Francisco. Lost everything in the earthquake last year. He warned us about the stock market—not that a baker has any bread to begin with—but he says a catastrophe is coming, sooner than we know.”

  “What does your father think?” George asked Helen, referring to Banker White.

  “He’s been worried since the nineties about easy credit, and thinks the speculators are paving the road to ruin.”

  “That’s right,” Stefan agreed. “This fellow from San Francisco says we haven’t felt the last of the tremors. That city’s in ashes. But the whole country could have another thing coming now that foreign insurers have paid the claims and their lenders have raised rates on American banks.”

  “Well, my father’s agency is driving a roaring trade,” Margaret put in. “Last year was their best yet.”

  “What business is your father in?” Helen asked.

  “Advertising. George is his top deputy.”

  “I don’t know about that,” George said. “But I guess I’m doing okay.”

  “He’s doing more than okay.” Margaret tilted back her head, sending the feathers on her hat aquiver. She had taken off her gloves and tented her arms so that her jewelry was on display. The engagement ring was her least expensive piece, something George had noticed at parties and outings but couldn’t bring himself to note. She wore her grandmother’s diamond bracelet, her mother’s opal and rose diamond ring, and a double-strand necklace of cultured pearl. In the auditorium and coffeehouse she looked like the queen consort come to give alms to the poor.

  “Yes, I work for my father-in-law,” George said, and felt compelled to add, “I’ve been with the agency going on ten years. I was well established by the time Margaret and I got married.”

  “You shouldn’t have to explain,” Margaret declared, and an awkward silence followed.

  When the conversation turned back to the goings-on at Hull House, George grew distracted and relived his fear that no one would respect him now that he had married rich. He wondered if Helen thought he was a sycophant, or a kept man. He hadn’t told her who his boss was when he’d had a chance, and now she might not believe him if he tried to explain.

  But he knew he couldn’t say a word, not here, not in front of his wife and the gap-toothed baker, who issued warnings about the money supply like some folksy market guru. Did he really think he was impressing Helen, living hand to mouth while vaporing on as if he had the ear of tycoons?

  Back in the Pierce-Arrow on the drive home, George couldn’t help confronting Margaret. He didn’t care if Virgil heard every word and reported back to the Lazars. “Did you have to mention that I work for your father?”

  “I didn’t think it was a source of shame, George. One should be grateful.”

  “But bringing up the business had no bearing on the conversation.”

  “The German was talking bunkum and I had a clear example why he was wrong,” she said. “The agency is booming, and as Father says: Busy advertiser, bustling economy.”

  “They might have thought you were trying to boast, to put them in their place.”

  “I was doing no such thing.”

  “The point is you made me look like a sponger.”

  “You’re a self-made man,” Margaret said. “That’s one of the reasons I married you.”

  “It didn’t come across that way.”

  “You’re overreacting, George. Helen didn’t seem to mind what I had to say.”

  “You probably think she’s hinterland squab, another small-town dreamer like me who hopped the first train she could out of Winesburg. But her father is one of the richest men in the county. She has a college degree. She’s in graduate school at your alma mater. You have more in common with her than you do with me,” George said. “So why were you treating her with such disdain?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You barely looked at her, and when you did it was down your nose.”

  “Well—” Margaret’s breath clouded the windows.

  “What?”

  “She never answered my question: How do you know each other? Maybe you can tell me.”

  George was relieved to be sitting next to her in the close backseat, traveling in darkness through the ashy snow. She couldn’t see his eyes, couldn’t read his delivery when he said, “I told you: We were schoolmates. My friend—remember Seth Richmond, from the wedding?—used to pay her court. They were both from wealthy families, and everyone thought they’d marry, but evidently Helen took a different path.” He explained how she’d gone to Cleveland for college, then Ada, and why she’d settled on Chicago. “I hardly know her, but it’s always something to run into an old townie. So I figured we all should meet. I thought you’d get on fine. I still think so.”

  “She’s pretty,” Margaret said.

  “I guess.”

  “No boy doesn’t notice a pretty girl.”

  “I had eyes for one thing growing up in Winesburg: getting out. And here I am.” He put his arm around her and pulled her close.

  “She’s very pretty, George.”

  “You’re prettier,” he said. “Why are we even talking about this? It’s absurd.” He turned her face to his. In the murky light she looked like a stranger. “Listen, Margaret. I have no interest, never had an interest in Helen White. I love you. You’re the most remarkable woman I know.” He kissed her.

  “You’re certain?”

  “I’ve never been more sure about anything.”

  Tears glazed her cheeks. How could she be crying? What had brought this on? “Margaret—?”

  “I’m fine. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” He produced a handkerchief, and she dabbed at her eyes. “I have too much time—that must be it,” she said. “In school my days were filled with activity. Perhaps I have too many interests. I used to tell my mother that her friends were all peacocks or dilettantes, but I’ll be one of them before I know it.”

  “You’re only a year and some out of college. You’re young!” George gripped her gloved hands.

  “Oh, maybe we should just have children and be done with it.”

  “There’s plenty of time for that,” George said. He hadn’t thought about children, didn’t want to think about them. He had much to do, though at the moment he couldn’t recollect exactly what. “And besides, didn’t you tell your mother that you intended to have your own life first?”

  “Oh, what she’d give to be sitting in this car! Virgil—” She leaned forward in her seat. “You’re not listening, are you?”

  “Haven’t heard a word,” he said.

  “You heard me ask if you’re listening.”

  “Mrs. Willard, I’m your parents’ driver, not their spy.”

  “Oh, hang it. What does it matter anyway?”

  George had never seen his wife so agitated. He knew the winter had been hard on her, but something tonight had loosened a spring. Perhaps her jealousy was not so much about Helen’s looks or any ties she might have had to George but more about the life Helen was making for herself. Margaret had loved the play, and had asked so many questions about Hull House that one might have mistaken her for a resident-in-training. “I have an idea,” George said. “The settlement is hungry for volunteers. I can’t think of a better place for a bright person with broad interests.”

  “I’ve never taught.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You can join a club or two or three. You’d be a leader in no time. And if you want to teach next term, I’m sure they can find a place for you.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Margaret said. But by the time they’d reached home, changed into their nightclothes, and climbed into her single bed, she had made up her mind.

  It didn’t take long for Stefan Wirtz’s prophecy to come true. In March 1907, the stock market dropped 30 percent in two weeks. Interest rates climbed dramatically, banks tightened their lendin
g policies, and loans became increasingly difficult to procure. In those spring and early summer months, scores of brokers were forced into bankruptcy; railroad and mining stocks plummeted, hundreds of speculators were run out of business, and the unemployment rate rose nearly a percentage point per month.

  George’s father wrote him a letter of concern: Don’t know how you’re getting on out there in Chicago, but here at home we’re feeling the pinch. In recent years, despite his airy hopes for Winesburg, he had been catering less to tourists and families and more to traveling salesmen. He even turned half the lobby into a “drummers’ room,” where salesmen could display their wares for local merchants. But now it seemed even the drummers were drying up. Their companies are taking them off the road. They say it costs too much and people aren’t buying. Supply’s at a standstill. Last week I had just one salesman in the drummers’ room. One, George! But the top dogs at Rawleigh are looking to bring him home, too.…Don’t you worry about your old man. Everyone knows Tom Willard’s a fighter. I’ll beat the game…. But if you have friends named Palmer, Field, or McCormick who want to invest in a wholesome American concern, be sure to tell them about the New Willard House.

  George shared these worries with Helen, who told him that even her father, the regional bank president, was nervous. By late summer several Wall Street brokerage houses had filed for bankruptcy, and an unsettling number of depositors had closed accounts or withdrawn their savings, to hide their money under the mattress or bury it in the yard. Stefan brought further alarm from his meetings of the Arthur Toynbee Club: The United States had been without a national bank since Andrew Jackson dissolved it in 1832, and the Toynbee group agreed that without a central bank controlling credit resources, the country was all but certain to face a major money panic.

  Even the Lazar Agency had lost momentum. Reports from the Service and Performance Departments showed diminished returns each of the sixteen weeks leading into autumn; many advertisers had put a freeze on spending, and more than a dozen had either closed their accounts or gone out of business. Clyde Kennison took to the road to make personal appeals to his reeling clients, and when he was in the office could be seen pacing the halls or browbeating subordinates. George took private satisfaction in his rival’s struggles, but the moment didn’t last. Nuvolia was among the few companies whose profits rose during the recession, and George lost more clients over a six-month period than anyone in the agency. This did not go unnoticed by Lazar, so George was forced to defend himself: I can’t be blamed for this when I had my best client taken away. Nuvolia is still prospering because I built the foundation. And the companies that failed were already dying when I inherited them. In September Lazar fired 10 percent of his workforce, but George survived. He knew his boss’s hands were tied, knew the pinch of golden handcuffs all too well.

  Margaret became a Hull House habitué. In spring she enrolled in an art history class taught by settlement cofounder Ellen Gates Starr, who was also a Browning enthusiast and took to Margaret straightaway. In the summer she worked with Starr to create a lending library of art reproductions and went around the city to interest schools in the program. Helen helped her make connections, and found her a place on the stage crew for W. S. Gilbert’s The Palace of Truth, Leo Tolstoy’s Where Love Is, and Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night at the Hull House Theater. By fall she’d become assistant stage manager and had added a storytelling and a photography club to her growing list of activities.

  George had learned to be careful what he wished for. Ever since his engagement he’d been hoping Margaret would find a way to fill her days, but now that he’d led her to the settlement she’d begun to think of the place as a second home; he saw her infrequently, and when he did her mind was elsewhere. At first he would come back to the empty house and wander its spaces, idle about with the newspapers, a book, the stereopticon. He took to cleaning and dusting and cutting flowers from the garden to place in rooms where he hoped Margaret would notice them. But she would return from the West Side well past suppertime, her voice hoarse from a day of excited talking, and stand at the kitchen sink eating popcorn balls or hot sausage wrapped in brown paper, waffles, or penny ice cream bought from sidewalk vendors on the drive home. We should try to have supper together more often, George would say, something Margaret used to urge on him. But she was too rushed to sit down for a casual meal, and when George offered to come down to the Hull House coffeehouse she said We’re both too busy; maybe some other time?

  She didn’t notice the daffodils, irises, and lilies as April turned to May and May to June. Or “Carnival of Venice” on the Mira Music Box or the polish of the mahogany or the immaculate rooms. When George would point out these touches she’d say I figured the maid had done all that. And he would remind her that the maid only came once a week and someone had to keep up with the other days. She’d say I know several girls who could use the extra work. Why don’t you leave off and we can hire them? To which George would reply This is all beside the point.

  It was during a run of such weeks—he’d counted twenty-eight days since Margaret had last invited him to bed—that he arranged to meet Helen White. He had seen her several times in the company of others, always his wife and sometimes Stefan, but in August he had attended the opening of Twelfth Night, and while Margaret was busy backstage he had run into Helen. She was working that evening as an usher, and after the performance she introduced him to Jane Addams. He looked into the serene gray eyes of perhaps the most famous woman in America as she spoke about Shakespeare’s love of the “play within the play.” He nervously paid his compliments, and in the wake of her departure from the auditorium he asked Helen to lunch the next afternoon.

  At Schlogl’s, a venerable German restaurant a few blocks west of George’s office, they talked about Miss Addams. He ordered wine, which he never did at lunch, as Helen explained the great woman’s mystique: “She’s the mother I wish I’d had. Of course, I have to share her with thousands of siblings. But the thing is she makes each of us feel like an only child.”

  “I think Margaret would say the same about Ellen Starr.”

  “The world is spilling over with unfulfilled, unhappy mothers,” Helen continued. “And their unhappiness is their daughters’ inheritance. It’s funny: If you look at Jane in repose, as I sometimes have, you’d see the very picture of melancholy. It’s bred into her, bred into so many of us. But what woman has accomplished more, for herself and for multitudes?”

  “What does your mother think about Hull House?” George asked.

  “She wouldn’t approve, and I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t told her. I wish I could say I’m an independent woman, but she and my father are paying for the roof over my head and my schooling and everything else. I know I need to finish this degree—I’ve put in too much time not to—so I can’t risk a tussle with my parents. Unlike Jane, who grew up in a town much like ours, with a father much like mine, I haven’t come into a fortune, can’t buy up a mansion and invite all comers.”

  “Would you if you could?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Surely you’ll have the opportunity.”

  “My mother is mean enough to live past a hundred, and with the way the economy is going we could all be lining up at Jane’s door.” In her white organdy tea dress, Helen cast a light in the dark, smoky restaurant, with its walnut-paneled walls and large oil paintings of monks quaffing brandy. George hadn’t seen her this dressed up since her courting days in Wines-burg and wondered if she’d made the effort just for him. “Besides,” she went on, “it’s one thing to volunteer part-time at a settlement, quite another to run one. Jane has no family of her own, and couldn’t, given the depth of her commitment. She never married and never will.”

  “That’s quite a sacrifice.”

  “One I’m not sure I’d be willing to make,” Helen said. Then, as if aware of what George was thinking, she added, “I’ve had a caller or two, but without my mother here to bring prospects around I�
��m left to see to those matters myself. And I haven’t the energy or the inclination.”

  “What about Stefan?” George asked.

  “I admire his ambition—he’s only been speaking English since he sailed here at sixteen, alone, with only a few pfennigs in his pockets; he knows more about money than a banker’s own child. But he’s so single-minded, and sometimes I feel he takes advantage of me. The bread runs have been multiplying lately. And I don’t know if it’s my company he’s after so much as—I shouldn’t be saying this—”

  “What?” George prompted her.

  “I don’t want to be someone’s investment … or safety net.”

  George couldn’t help thinking the same critique applied to him. Though Helen’s comment did not seem aimed in his direction, he knew he had taken similar advantage of Margaret.

  A waiter appeared, and Helen ordered the rabbit stew, George the bouillabaisse and a half bottle of wine. “You know why I suggested this place?” Helen asked. George shook his head. “In that corner over there” —she pointed across the room to a large round table that for the moment sat empty—“the literary lights of Chicago assemble each Saturday. A job-lot assortment of newspapermen, playwrights, novelists, poets. Jane comes here from time to time with members of the Little Room.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “I’m surprised,” Helen said. “You must be doing some writing. I figured I’d be reading your books by now.”

  “No—.” His voice trailed off. Then he told her about Tidy Town, how making up characters for his ad campaigns convinced him for a while that he was doing what he’d set out to do. But he couldn’t resist the siren call of money and advancement. “You have to understand I grew up in that sad hotel, haunted by my mother’s disappointments. Once I had an office in the clouds, I couldn’t come down.”

  “But it sounds as if you’d like to,” Helen said.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “It’s in your voice. On your face. Are you happy, George?”