The Romance of a Plain Man
Page 24
CHAPTER XXIV
IN WHICH I GO DOWN
I had just risen from breakfast on the last day of March when I wascalled to the telephone by Cummins, the cashier of the bank.
"Things are going pretty queer down here. Looks as if a run werebeginning. Some old fool started it after reading about that failure ofthe Darlington Trust Company in New York. Wish you'd hurry."
"Call up the directors, and look here!--pay out all deposits slowlyuntil I get there."
The telephone rang off, and picking up my hat, I went down the frontsteps to the carriage, which had been ordered by Sally for an earlyappointment. As I stepped in, she appeared in her hat and coat andjoined me.
"Drive to the bank, Micah," I said, "I want to get there likelightning."
"Can you wait till I speak to mammy? She is bringing the baby."
For the first time since our marriage my nerves got the better of me,and I answered her sharply.
"No, I can't wait--not a minute, not a second. Drive on, Micah."
In obedience to my commands, Micah touched the horses, and as we speddown Franklin Street, Sally looked at me with an expression whichreminded me of the faint wonder under the fixed smile about Miss Mitty'smouth.
"What's the matter, Ben? Are you working too hard?" she enquired.
"I'm tired and I'm anxious. Do you realise that we are living in themidst of a panic?"
"Are we?" she asked quietly, and arranged the fur rug over her knees.
"Do you mean to tell me you hadn't heard it?" I demanded, in pureamazement that the thing which had possessed me to madness for threemonths should have escaped the consciousness of the wife with whom Ilived.
"How was I to hear of it? You never told me, and I seldom read thepapers now since the baby came. Of course I knew something was wrong.You were looking so badly and so much older."
To me it had needed no telling, because it had become suddenly the mostobvious fact in the world in which I moved. Only a fool would gaze up atthe sky during a storm burst and remark to a bystander, "It thunders."Yet even now I saw that what she realised was not the gravity of thefinancial crisis, but its injurious effect upon my health and myappearance.
"You've been on too great a strain," she remarked sympathetically; "whenit's all over you must come away and we'll go to Florida in theGeneral's car."
To Florida! and at that instant I was struggling in the grip offailure--the failure of the successful financier, which is of allfailures the hardest. Not a few retrenchments, not the economy of aluxury here and there, but ultimate poverty was the thing that I facedwhile I sat beside her on the soft cushions under the rich fur rug. Oneby one the familiar houses whirled by me. I saw the doors open and shut,the people come out of them, the sunshine fall through the budding treeson the sidewalk; and the houses and the moving people and the buddingtrees, all seemed to me detached and unreal, as if they stood apartsomewhere in a world of quiet, while I was sucked in by the whirlpool.Though I lifted my voice and called aloud to them, I felt that thepeople I passed would still go quietly in and out of the opening doorsin the placid spring sunshine.
"There's Bonny Page," said Sally, waving her hand; "she's to marry NedMarshall next month, you know, and they are going to Europe. Did younotice that baby in the carriage--the one with blue bows and the Irishlace afghan?--it is Bessy Munford's,--the handsomest in town, they say,after little Benjamin."
The sight of the baby carriage, with its useless blue fripperies,trundled on the pavement under the budding trees, had aroused in me asudden ridiculous anger, as though it represented the sinfulextravagance of an entire nation. That silly carriage with its blueribbons and its lace coverlet! And over the whole country factory afterfactory was shutting down, and thousands of hungry mothers and childrenwere sitting on door-steps in this same sunshine. My nerves were bad. Ithad been months since I had a good night's sleep, and I knew that in thecondition of my temper a trifle might be magnified out of all dueproportion to its relative significance.
The horses stopped at the bank, and Sally leaned out to bow smilingly toone of the directors, who was coming along the sidewalk.
"I never saw so many people about here, Ben," she remarked; "it looksexactly as if it were a theatre. Ah, there's the General now going intohis office. He hobbles so badly, doesn't he? When do you think you'll behome?"
"I don't know," I returned shortly, "perhaps at midnight--perhaps nextweek."
My tone brought a flush to her cheek, and she looked at me with thefaint wonder that I had seen first on the face of Miss Mitty when I wentin to breakfast with her on that autumn morning. It was the look ofrace, of the Bland breeding, of the tradition that questioned, notviolently, but gently, "Can this be possible?"
She drove on without replying to me, and as I entered my office, thefaces of Miss Mitty and of Sally were confused into one by my disorderedmind.
The run had already started--a depositor, who had withdrawn ten thousanddollars after reading of the failure of the Darlington Trust Company,had been paid off first, and following him the line had come, crawlinglike black ants on the pavement. As I entered the doors, it seemed to methat the face of each man or woman in the throng stood out, separate anddistinct, as though an electric search-light had passed over it; and Isaw one and all, frightened, satisfied, or merely ludicrous, with avividness of perception which failed me when I remembered the featuresof my own wife.
"We can pay them off slowly till three o'clock," said Bingley, thevice-president, whom I found, with five or six of the directors, alreadyin my office. "I've got only one paying teller's window open. Thetrouble, of course, began with the small accounts, of which we carrysuch a blamed lot. Mark my words, it is the little depositor thatendangers a bank."
He looked nervous, and swallowed hastily while he talked, as if he hadjust rushed in from breakfast, with his last mouthful still unchewed. AsI entered and faced the men sitting in different attitudes, but allwearing the same strained and helpless expression, a feeling ofirritation swept over me, and I paused in the middle of the floor, withmy hat and a folded newspaper in my hand.
"A quarter of a million in hard cash would tide us over, I believe,"pursued Bingley, swallowing faster; "but the question is how in thunderare we to lay hands on it by nine o'clock to-morrow morning?"
I drew out my watch, and with the simple, mechanical action, I wasconscious of an immediate quickening of the blood, a clearing of thebrain. A certain readiness for decision, a power of dealing with anemergency, of handling a crisis, a response of pulse and brain to thecall for action, stood me service now as in every difficult instant ofmy career. They were picked business men and shrewd financiers beforeme, yet I was aware that I dominated them, all and each, by some qualityof force, of aggressiveness, of inflated self-confidence. The secret ofmy success, I had once said to the General, was that I began to get coolwhen I saw other people getting scared.
"It is now a quarter of ten, gentlemen," I said, "and I pledge my wordof honour that I will have a quarter of a million dollars in bank by teno'clock to-morrow."
"For God's sake, Ben, where is it coming from?" demanded Judge Kenton,an old Confederate, with the solemn face I had sometimes watched himassume in church during the singing of the hymns. As I looked at him thehumour of his expression struck me, and I broke into a laugh.
"I beg your pardon," I returned the next minute, "but I'll getit--somewhere--if it's in the city."
One of the men--I forget which, though I remember quite clearly that hewore a red necktie--got up from the table and slapped me on theshoulder.
"Go ahead, Ben, and get it," he said. "We take your word."
On the pavement the crowd had thickened, and when it caught sight of me,a confused murmur rose, and I was surrounded by half-hysterical women.The trouble, as Bingley had said, had begun with the small depositors;and in the line that pressed now like black ants to the doors, therewere many evidently who had entrusted their nest-eggs to us forsafe-keeping. I was not gentle by nature, and th
e sight of a woman'stears always aroused in me, not the angel, but the brute. For five yearsI had been married to a descendant of the Blands and the Fairfaxes, andyet, as I stood there, held at bay, in the midst of those sobbing women,the veneer of refinement peeled off from me, and the raw strength of thecommon man showed on the surface, and triumphed again as it hadtriumphed over the frightened directors in my office.
"What are you whining about?" I said with a laugh, "your money is allthere. Go in and get it."
An old woman in a plaid shawl, with her mouth twisted sideways by arecent stroke of paralysis, barred my way with an outstretched hand, inwhich she held the foot of a grey yarn stocking.
"I'd laid it up for my old age, Mister," she mumbled, through hertoothless gums, "an' they told me it was safer in the bank, so I put itthere. But I reckon I'd feel easier if I had it back--I reckon I'd feeleasier."
"Then go after it," I replied harshly, pushing her out of my way. "Ifyou don't get it before I come back, I'll give it to you with my ownhands."
For a minute my presence subdued the crowd; but the panic terror hadgripped it, and while I crossed the street the hysterical murmurs werein my ears. A desire to turn and throttle the sound as I might a howlingwild beast took possession of me. It was true, I suppose, as Dr.Theophilus had once told me, that the quality I lacked was tenderness.
The General fortunately was alone in his private office, and when I wentin he glanced up enquiringly from a railroad report he was reading.
"It's you, Ben, is it?" he remarked, and went back to his paper.
"General," I said bluntly, and stopped short in the centre of the room,"I want a quarter of a million dollars in cash by nine o'clock to-morrowmorning."
For a moment he sat speechless, blinking at me with his swollen eyelids,while his lower lip protruded angrily, like the lip of a crying child.Then the old war-horse in him responded gallantly to the scent ofbattle.
"Damn you, Ben, do you know cash is as tight as wax?" he enquired. "Youain't dozing in the midst of a panic?"
"There's trouble at the bank," I replied. "A run has started, but so farit is almost entirely among the small depositors. We can manage to payoff till three o'clock, and if we open to-morrow with a quarter of amillion, we shall probably keep on our feet, unless the excitementspreads."
"When do you want it?"
"By nine o'clock to-morrow morning; and I want it, General," I added,"on my personal credit."
He rose from his chair and stood swaying unsteadily on his gouty foot.
"I'll give you every penny that I've got, Ben," he answered, "but itain't that much."
"You have access to the cash of both the Tilden Bank and the BonfieldTrust Company. If there's a dollar in the city you can get it."
A hint of his sly humour appeared for an instant in his eyes. "It wasn'tany longer ago than breakfast that I remarked I didn't believe there wasa blamed dollar in the whole country," he returned. Then his swayingstopped and he became invested suddenly with the dignity of the greatestfinancier in the state.
"Hand me my stick, Ben, and I'll go and see what I can do about it," hesaid.
I gave him his stick and my arm, and with my assistance he limped to theoffices of the Bonfield Trust Company on the next block. When I returnedto the bank the directors were talking excitedly, but at my entrance ahush fell, and they sat looking at me with a row of vacant, expectantfaces that waited apparently to be filled with expression.
"By ten o'clock to-morrow morning," I said, "a quarter of a million incash will be brought in through the door in bags."
"I told you he'd do it," exclaimed Bingley, as he grasped my hand, "andI hope to God it will stay 'em off."
"You need a drink, Ben," observed Judge Kenton, "and so do I. Let's goand get it. A soft-boiled egg was all I had for breakfast, and I've gonefaint."
I remember that I went to a restaurant with him, that a few old womensitting on the curbing spoke to us as we passed, that we ate oysters,and returned in half an hour to another meeting, that we discussed waysand means until eight o'clock and decided nothing. I know also that whenwe came out again several of the old women were still crouching there,and that when they came whining up to me, I turned on them with an oathand ordered them to be off. As clearly as if it were yesterday, I cansee still the long, solemn face of the Judge as he glanced up at me, andI see written upon it something of the faint wonder that I had grown toregard as the peculiar look of the Blands.
I had telephoned Sally not to wait, and when I reached home I found thatshe had dismissed the servants and was preparing a little supper for meherself. While she served me, I sat perfectly silent, too exhausted totalk or to think, trying in vain to remember the more important eventsof the day. Only once did Sally speak, and that was to beg me to eat theslice of cold turkey she had laid on my plate.
"I'm not hungry, I got something with Judge Kenton down town," Ireturned as I pushed back my chair and rose from the table; "what I needis sleep, sleep, sleep. If I don't get to bed, I'll drop to sleep on thehearth-rug."
"Then go, dear," she answered, and not until I reached the landing abovedid I realise that through it all she had not put a single question tome. With the realisation I knew that I ought to have told her what inher heart she must have felt it to be her right to know; but a nervousshrinking, which seemed to be a result of my complete physicalexhaustion, held me back when I started to retrace my steps.
She might cry, and the sight of tears would unman me. There's timeenough, I thought. Why not to-morrow instead? Yet in my heart I knew itwould be no easier to do it to-morrow than it was to-day. By somestrange freak of the imagination those unshed tears of hers seemedalready dropping upon my nerves. "There's time enough, she'll be obligedto hear it in the end," something within me repeated with a kind ofdulness. And with the words, while my head touched the pillow, I startedsuddenly wide awake as though from the flash of a lantern that wasturned inward. Trivial impressions of the afternoon stood out as ifilluminated against the outer darkness, and there hovered before me theface of the old woman, in the plaid shawl, with her twisted mouth, andthe foot of her grey yarn stocking held out in her palsied hand. "Ireckon I'd feel easier if I had it back," said a voice somewhere in mybrain.