initial commit of ebook 7832HEADmain

1 files changed, 10373 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/7832.txt b/7832.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c69dc4f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/7832.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,10373 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Deluge, by David Graham Phillips
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Deluge
+
+Author: David Graham Phillips
+
+Release Date: April, 2005  [EBook #7832]
+Posting Date: August 4, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DELUGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer
+
+
+
+
+
+THE DELUGE
+
+
+By David Graham Phillips
+
+Author of The Cost, The Plum Tree, The Social Secretary, etc.
+
+
+With Illustrations By George Gibbs
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     I MR. BLACKLOCK
+    II IN THOSE DAYS AROSE KINGS
+   III CAME A WOMAN
+    IV A CANDIDATE FOR "RESPECTABILITY"
+     V DANGER SIGNALS
+    VI OF "GENTLEMEN"
+   VII BLACKLOCK GOES INTO TRAINING
+  VIII ON THE TRAIL OF LANGDON
+    IX LANGDON AT HOME
+     X TWO "PILLARS OF SOCIETY"
+    XI WHEN A MAN IS NOT A MAN
+   XII ANITA
+  XIII "UNTIL TO-MORROW"
+   XIV FRESH AIR IN A GREENHOUSE
+    XV SOME STRANGE LAPSES OF A LOVER
+   XVI TRAPPED AND TRIMMED
+  XVII A GENTEEL "HOLD-UP"
+ XVIII ANITA BEGINS TO BE HERSELF
+   XIX A WINDFALL FROM "GENTLEMAN JOE"
+    XX A BREATHING SPELL
+   XXI MOST UNLADYLIKE
+  XXII MOST UNGENTLEMANLY
+ XXIII "SHE HAS CHOSEN"
+  XXIV BLACKLOCK ATTENDS FAMILY PRAYERS
+   XXV "MY WIFE MUST"
+  XXVI THE WEAK STRAND
+ XXVII A CONSPIRACY AGAINST ANITA
+XXVIII BLACKLOCK SEES A LIGHT
+  XXIX A HOUSEWARMING
+   XXX BLACKLOCK OPENS FIRE
+  XXXI ANITA'S SECRET
+ XXXII LANGDON COMES TO THE SURFACE
+XXXIII MRS. LANGDON MAKES A CALL
+ XXXIV "MY RIGHT EYE OFFENDS ME"
+  XXXV "WILD WEEK"
+ XXXVI "BLACK MATT'S" TRIUMPH
+
+
+
+
+I. MR. BLACKLOCK
+
+
+When Napoleon was about to crown himself--so I have somewhere read--they
+submitted to him the royal genealogy they had faked up for him. He crumpled
+the parchment and flung it in the face of the chief herald, or whoever it
+was. "My line," said he, "dates from Montenotte." And so I say, my line
+dates from the campaign that completed and established my fame--from "Wild
+Week."
+
+I shall not pause to recite the details of the obscurity from which I
+emerged. It would be an interesting, a romantic story; but it is a familiar
+story, also, in this land which Lincoln so finely and so fully described
+when he said: "The republic is opportunity."
+
+One fact only: _I did not take the name Blacklock_.
+
+I was born Blacklock, and christened Matthew; and my hair's being very
+black and growing so that a lock of it often falls down the middle of my
+forehead is a coincidence. The malicious and insinuating story that I used
+to go under another name arose, no doubt, from my having been a bootblack
+in my early days, and having let my customers shorten my name into Matt
+Black. But, as soon as I graduated from manual labor, I resumed my rightful
+name and have borne it--I think I may say without vanity--in honor to
+honor.
+
+Some one has written: "It was a great day for fools when modesty was made
+a virtue." I heartily subscribe to that. Life means action; action means
+self-assertion; self-assertion rouses all the small, colorless people to
+the only sort of action of which they are capable--to sneering at the doer
+as egotistical, vain, conceited, bumptious and the like. So be it! I have
+an individuality, aggressive, restless and, like all such individualities,
+necessarily in the lime-light; I have from the beginning lost no
+opportunity to impress that individuality upon my time. Let those who have
+nothing to advertise, and those less courageous and less successful than
+I at advertisement, jeer and spit. I ignore them. I make no apologies for
+egotism. I think, when my readers have finished, they will demand none.
+They will see that I had work to do, and that I did it in the only way an
+intelligent man ever tries to do his work--his own way, the way natural to
+him!
+
+Wild Week! Its cyclones, rising fury on fury to that historic climax of
+chaos, sing their mad song in my ears again as I write. But I shall by no
+means confine my narrative to business and finance. Take a cross-section
+of life anywhere, and you have a tangled interweaving of the action and
+reaction of men upon men, of women upon women, of men and women upon one
+another. And this shall be a cross-section out of the very heart of our
+life to-day, with its big and bold energies and passions--the swiftest and
+intensest life ever lived by the human race.
+
+To begin:
+
+
+
+
+II. IN THOSE DAYS AROSE KINGS
+
+
+Imagine yourself back two years and a half before Wild Week, back at
+the time when the kings of finance had just completed their apparently
+final conquest of the industries of the country, when they were seating
+themselves upon thrones encircled by vast armies of capital and brains,
+when all the governments of the nation--national, state and city--were
+prostrate under their iron heels.
+
+You may remember that I was a not inconspicuous figure then. Of all their
+financial agents, I was the best-known, the most trusted by them, the most
+believed in by the people. I had a magnificent suite of offices in the
+building that dominates Wall and Broad Streets. Boston claimed me also, and
+Chicago; and in Philadelphia, New Orleans, St. Louis, San Francisco, in
+the towns and rural districts tributary to the cities, thousands spoke of
+Blacklock as their trusted adviser in matters of finance. My enemies--and
+I had them, numerous and venomous enough to prove me a man worth while--my
+enemies spoke of me as the "biggest bucket-shop gambler in the world."
+
+Gambler I was--like all the other manipulators of the markets.
+But "bucket-shop" I never kept. As the kings of finance were the
+representatives of the great merchants, manufacturers and investors, so was
+I the representative of the masses, of those who wished their small savings
+properly invested. The power of the big fellows was founded upon wealth and
+the brains wealth buys or bullies or seduces into its service; my power was
+founded upon the hearts and homes of the people, upon faith in my frank
+honesty.
+
+How had I built up my power? By recognizing the possibilities of publicity,
+the chance which the broadcast sowing of newspapers and magazines put
+within the reach of the individual man to impress himself upon the whole
+country, upon the whole civilized world. The kings of finance relied upon
+the assiduity and dexterity of sundry paid agents, operating through the
+stealthy, clumsy, old-fashioned channels for the exercise of power. I
+relied only upon myself; I had to trust to no fallible, perhaps traitorous,
+understrappers; through the megaphone of the press I spoke directly to the
+people.
+
+My enemies charge that I always have been unscrupulous and dishonest. So?
+Then how have I lived and thrived all these years in the glare and blare of
+publicity?
+
+It is true, I have used the "methods of the charlatan" in bringing myself
+into wide public notice. The just way to put it would be that I have used
+for honest purposes the methods of publicity that charlatans have shrewdly
+appropriated, because by those means the public can be most widely and
+most quickly reached. Does good become evil because hypocrites use it as a
+cloak? It is also true that I have been "undignified." Let the stupid cover
+their stupidity with "dignity." Let the swindler hide his schemings under
+"dignity." I am a man of the people, not afraid to be seen as the human
+being that I am. I laugh when I feel like it. I have no sense of jar
+when people call me "Matt." I have a good time, and I shall stay young
+as long as I stay alive. Wealth hasn't made me a solemn ass, fenced in
+and unapproachable. The custom of receiving obedience and flattery and
+admiration has not made me a turkey-cock. Life is a joke; and when the
+joke's on me, I laugh as heartily as when it's on the other fellow.
+
+It is half-past three o'clock on a May afternoon; a dismal, dreary rain
+is being whirled through the streets by as nasty a wind as ever blew out
+of the east. You are in the private office of that "king of kings," Henry
+J. Roebuck, philanthropist, eminent churchman, leading citizen and--in
+business--as corrupt a creature as ever used the domino of respectability.
+That office is on the twelfth floor of the Power Trust Building--and the
+Power Trust is Roebuck, and Roebuck is the Power Trust. He is seated at his
+desk and, thinking I do not see him, is looking at me with an expression of
+benevolent and melancholy pity--the look with which he always regarded any
+one whom the Roebuck God Almighty had commanded Roebuck to destroy. He and
+his God were in constant communication; his God never did anything except
+for his benefit, he never did anything except on the direct counsel or
+command of his God. Just now his God is commanding him to destroy me, his
+confidential agent in shaping many a vast industrial enterprise and in
+inducing the public to buy by the million its bonds and stocks.
+
+I invited the angry frown of the Roebuck God by saying: "And I bought in
+the Manasquale mines on my own account."
+
+"On your own account!" said Roebuck. Then he hastily effaced his
+involuntary air of the engineer startled by sight of an unexpected red
+light.
+
+"Yes," replied I, as calm as if I were not realizing the tremendous
+significance of what I had announced. "I look to you to let me participate
+on equal terms."
+
+That is, I had decided that the time had come for me to take my place
+among the kings of finance. I had decided to promote myself from agent to
+principal, from prime minister to king--I must, myself, promote myself,
+for in this world all promotion that is solid comes from within. And in
+furtherance of my object I had bought this group of mines, control of which
+was vital to the Roebuck-Langdon-Melville combine for a monopoly of the
+coal of the country.
+
+"Did not Mr. Langdon commission you to buy them for him and his friends?"
+inquired Roebuck, in that slow, placid tone which yet, for the attentive
+ear, had a note in it like the scream of a jaguar that comes home and finds
+its cub gone.
+
+"But I couldn't get them for him," I explained. "The owners wouldn't sell
+until I engaged that the National Coal and Railway Company was not to have
+them."
+
+"Oh, I see," said Roebuck, sinking back relieved. "We must get Browne to
+draw up some sort of perpetual, irrevocable power of attorney to us for you
+to sign."
+
+"But I won't sign it," said I.
+
+Roebuck took up a sheet of paper and began to fold it upon itself with
+great care to get the edges straight. He had grasped my meaning; he was
+deliberating.
+
+"For four years now," I went on, "you people have been promising to take
+me in as a principal in some one of your deals--to give me recognition by
+making me president, or chairman of an executive or finance committee. I am
+an impatient man, Mr. Roebuck. Life is short, and I have much to do. So I
+have bought the Manasquale mines--and I shall hold them."
+
+Roebuck continued to fold the paper upon itself until he had reduced it
+to a short, thick strip. This he slowly twisted between his cruel fingers
+until it was in two pieces. He dropped them, one at a time, into the
+waste-basket, then smiled benevolently at me. "You are right," he said.
+"You shall have what you want. You have seemed such a mere boy to me that,
+in spite of your giving again and again proof of what you are, I have been
+putting you off. Then, too--" He halted, and his look was that of one
+surveying delicate ground.
+
+"The bucket-shop?" suggested I.
+
+"Exactly," said he gratefully. "Your brokerage business has been invaluable
+to us. But--well, I needn't tell you how people--the men of standing--look
+on that sort of thing."
+
+"I never have paid any attention to pompous pretenses," said I, "and I
+never shall. My brokerage business must go on, and my daily letters to
+investors. By advertising I rose; by advertising I am a power that even you
+recognize; by advertising alone can I keep that power."
+
+"You forget that in the new circumstances, you won't need that sort of
+power. Adapt yourself to your new surroundings. Overalls for the trench; a
+business suit for the office."
+
+"I shall keep to my overalls for the present," said I. "They're more
+comfortable, and"--here I smiled significantly at him--"if I shed them, I
+might have to go naked. The first principle of business is never to give up
+what you have until your grip is tight on something better."
+
+"No doubt you're right," agreed the white-haired old scoundrel, giving
+no sign that I had fathomed his motive for trying to "hint" me out of my
+stronghold. "I will talk the matter over with Langdon and Melville. Rest
+assured, my boy, that you will be satisfied." He got up, put his arm
+affectionately round my shoulders. "We all like you. I have a feeling
+toward you as if you were my own son. I am getting old, and I like to see
+young men about me, growing up to assume the responsibilities of the Lord's
+work whenever He shall call me to my reward."
+
+It will seem incredible that a man of my shrewdness and experience could
+be taken in by such slimy stuff as that--I who knew Roebuck as only a
+few insiders knew him, I who had seen him at work, as devoid of heart as
+an empty spider in an empty web. Yet I was taken in to the extent that
+I thought he really purposed to recognize my services, to yield to the
+only persuasion that could affect him--force. I fancied he was actually
+about to put me where I could be of the highest usefulness to him and his
+associates, as well as to myself. As if an old man ever yielded power or
+permitted another to gain power, even though it were to his own great
+advantage. The avarice of age is not open to reason.
+
+It was with tears in my eyes that I shook hands with him, thanking him
+emotionally. It was with a high chin and a proud heart that I went back
+to my offices. There wasn't a doubt in my mind that I was about to get my
+deserts, was about to enter the charmed circle of "high finance."
+
+That small and exclusive circle, into which I was seeing myself admitted
+without the usual arduous and unequal battle, was what may be called the
+industrial ring--a loose, yet tight, combine of about a dozen men who
+controlled in one way or another practically all the industries of the
+country. They had no formal agreements; they held no official meetings.
+They did not look upon themselves as an association. They often quarreled
+among themselves, waged bitter wars upon each other over divisions of
+power or plunder. But, in the broad sense, in the true sense, they were
+an association--a band united by a common interest, to control finance,
+commerce and therefore politics; a band united by a common purpose, to keep
+that control in as few hands as possible. Whenever there was sign of peril
+from without they flung away differences, pooled resources, marched in
+full force to put down the insurrection. For they looked on any attempt
+to interfere with them as a mutiny, as an outbreak of anarchy. This band
+persisted, but membership in it changed, changed rapidly. Now, one would
+be beaten to death and despoiled by a clique of fellows; again, weak or
+rash ones would be cut off in strenuous battle. Often, most often, some
+too-powerful or too-arrogant member would be secretly and stealthily
+assassinated by a jealous associate or by a committee of internal safety.
+Of course, I do not mean literally assassinated, but assassinated, cut off,
+destroyed, in the sense that a man whose whole life is wealth and power is
+dead when wealth and power are taken from him.
+
+Actual assassination, the crime of murder--these "gentlemen" rarely did
+anything which their lawyers did not advise them was legal or could be made
+legal by bribery of one kind or another. Rarely, I say--not never. You will
+see presently why I make that qualification.
+
+I had my heart set upon membership in this band--and, as I confess now with
+shame, my prejudices of self-interest had blinded me into regarding it
+and its members as great and useful and honorable "captains of industry."
+Honorable in the main; for, not even my prejudice could blind me to the
+almost hair-raising atrocity of some of their doings. Still, morality is
+largely a question of environment. I had been bred in that environment.
+Even the atrocities I excused on the ground that he who goes forth to war
+must be prepared to do and to tolerate many acts the church would have to
+strain a point to bless. What was Columbus but a marauder, a buccaneer?
+Was not Drake, in law and in fact, a pirate; Washington a traitor to his
+soldier's oath of allegiance to King George? I had much to learn, and to
+unlearn. I was to find out that whenever a Roebuck puts his arm round you,
+it is invariably to get within your guard and nearer your fifth rib. I was
+to trace the ugliest deformities of that conscience of his, hidden away
+down inside him like a dwarfed, starved prisoner in an underground dungeon.
+I was to be astounded by revelations of Langdon, who was not a believer,
+like Roebuck, and so was not under the restraint of the feeling that he
+must keep some sort of conscience ledgers against the inspection of the
+angelic auditing committee in the day of wrath.
+
+Much to learn--and to unlearn. It makes me laugh as I recall how, on that
+May day, I looked into the first mirror I was alone with, smiled delighted,
+as an idiot with myself and said: "Matt, you are of the kings now. Your
+crown suits you and, as you've earned it, you know how to keep it. Now for
+some fun with your subjects and your fellow sovereigns."
+
+A little premature, that preening!
+
+
+
+
+III. CAME A WOMAN
+
+
+In my suite in the Textile Building, just off the big main room with its
+blackboards and tickers, I had a small office in which I spent a good deal
+of time during Stock Exchange hours. It was there that Sam Ellersly found
+me the next day but one after my talk with Roebuck.
+
+"I want you to sell that Steel Common, Matt," said he.
+
+"It'll go several points higher," said I. "Better let me hold it and use my
+judgment on selling."
+
+"I need money--right away," was his answer.
+
+"That's all right," said I. "Let me give you an order for what you need."
+
+"Thank you, thank you," said he, so promptly that I knew I had done what he
+had been hoping for, probably counting on.
+
+I give this incident to show what our relations were. He was a young fellow
+of good family, to whom I had taken a liking. He was a lazy dog, and as out
+of place in business as a cat in a choir. I had been keeping him going for
+four years at that time, by giving him tips on stocks and protecting him
+against loss. This purely out of good nature and liking; for I hadn't the
+remotest idea he could ever be of use to me beyond helping to liven things
+up at a dinner or late supper, or down in the country, or on the yacht. In
+fact, his principal use to me was that he knew how to "beat the box" well
+enough to shake fairly good music out of it--and I am so fond of music that
+I can fill in with my imagination when the performer isn't too bad.
+
+They have charged that I deliberately ruined him. Ruined! The first time I
+gave him a tip--and that was the second or third time I ever saw him--he
+burst into tears and said: "You've saved my life, Blacklock. I'll never
+tell you how much this windfall means to me now." Nor did I with deep and
+dark design keep him along on the ragged edge. He kept himself there.
+How could I build up such a man with his hundred ways of wasting money,
+including throwing it away on his own opinions of stocks--for he would
+gamble on his own account in the bucket-shops, though I had shown him that
+the Wall Street game is played always with marked cards, and that the only
+hope of winning is to get the confidence of the card-markers, unless you
+are big enough to become a card-marker yourself.
+
+As soon as he got the money from my teller that day, he was rushing away. I
+followed him to the door--that part of my suite opened out on the sidewalk,
+for the convenience of my crowds of customers. "I'm just going to lunch,"
+said I. "Come with me."
+
+He looked uneasily toward a smart little one-horse brougham at the curb.
+"Sorry--but I can't," said he. "I've my sister with me. She brought me down
+in her trap."
+
+"That's all right," said I; "bring her along. We'll go to the Savarin." And
+I locked his arm in mine and started toward the brougham.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+He was turning all kinds of colors, and was acting in a way that puzzled
+me--then. Despite all my years in New York I was ignorant of the elaborate
+social distinctions that had grown up in its Fifth Avenue quarter. I knew,
+of course, that there was a fashionable society and that some of the most
+conspicuous of those in it seemed unable to get used to the idea of being
+rich and were in a state of great agitation over their own importance.
+Important they might be, but not to me. I knew nothing of their careful
+gradations of snobbism--the people to know socially, the people to know in
+a business way, the people to know in ways religious and philanthropic,
+the people to know for the fun to be got out of them, the people to
+pride oneself on not knowing at all; the nervousness, the hysteria
+about preserving these disgusting gradations. All this, I say, was an
+undreamed-of mystery to me who gave and took liking in the sensible,
+self-respecting American fashion. So I didn't understand why Sam, as I
+almost dragged him along, was stammering: "Thank you--but--I--she--the fact
+is, we really must get up-town."
+
+By this time I was where I could look into the brougham. A glance--I can
+see much at a glance, as can any man who spends every day of every year in
+an all-day fight for his purse and his life, with the blows coming from all
+sides. I can see much at a glance; I often have seen much; I never saw more
+than just then. Instantly, I made up my mind that the Ellerslys would lunch
+with me. "You've got to eat somewhere," said I, in a tone that put an end
+to his attempts to manufacture excuses. "I'll be delighted to have you.
+Don't make up any more yarns."
+
+He slowly opened the door. "Anita," said he, "Mr. Blacklock. He's invited
+us to lunch."
+
+I lifted my hat, and bowed. I kept my eyes straight upon hers. And it
+gave me more pleasure to look into them than I had ever before got out of
+looking into anybody's. I am passionately fond of flowers, and of children;
+and her face reminded me of both. Or, rather, it seemed to me that what
+I had seen, with delight and longing, incomplete in their freshness and
+beauty and charm, was now before me in the fullness. I felt like saying to
+her, "I have heard of you often. The children and the flowers have told
+me you were coming." Perhaps my eyes did say it. At any rate, she looked
+as straight at me as I at her, and I noticed that she paled a little and
+shrank--yet continued to look, as if I were compelling her. But her voice,
+beautifully clear, and lingering in the ears like the resonance of the
+violin after the bow has swept its strings and lifted, was perfectly
+self-possessed, as she said to her brother: "That will be delightful--if
+you think we have time."
+
+I saw that she, uncertain whether he wished to accept, was giving him a
+chance to take either course. "He has time--nothing but time," said I. "His
+engagements are always with people who want to get something out of him.
+And they can wait." I pretended to think he was expecting me to enter
+the trap; I got in, seated myself beside her, said to Sam: "I've saved
+the little seat for you. Tell your man to take us to the Equitable
+Building--Nassau Street entrance."
+
+I talked a good deal during the first half of the nearly two hours we were
+together--partly because both Sam and his sister seemed under some sort of
+strain, chiefly because I was determined to make a good impression. I told
+her about myself, my horses, my house in the country, my yacht. I tried to
+show her I wasn't an ignoramus as to books and art, even if I hadn't been
+to college. She listened, while Sam sat embarrassed. "You must bring your
+sister down to visit me," I said finally. "I'll see that you both have
+the time of your lives. Make up a party of your friends, Sam, and come
+down--when shall we say? Next Sunday? You know you were coming anyhow. I
+can change the rest of the party."
+
+Sam grew as red as if he were going into apoplexy. I thought then he was
+afraid I'd blurt out something about who were in the party I was proposing
+to change. I was soon to know better.
+
+"Thank you, Mr.--Blacklock," said his sister. "But I have an engagement
+next Sunday. I have a great many engagements just now. Without looking at
+my book I couldn't say when I can go." This easily and naturally. In her
+set they certainly do learn thoroughly that branch of tact which plain
+people call lying.
+
+Sam gave her a grateful look, which he thought I didn't see, and which I
+didn't rightly interpret--then.
+
+"We'll fix it up later, Blacklock," said he.
+
+"All right," said I. And from that minute I was almost silent. It was
+something in her tone and manner that silenced me. I suddenly realized that
+I wasn't making as good an impression as I had been flattering myself.
+
+When a man has money and is willing to spend it, he can readily fool
+himself into imagining he gets on grandly with women. But I had better
+grounds than that for thinking myself not unattractive to them, as a rule.
+Women had liked me when I had nothing; women had liked me when they didn't
+know who I was. I felt that this woman did not like me. And yet, by the way
+she looked at me in spite of her efforts not to do so, I could tell that
+I had some sort of unusual interest for her. Why didn't she like me? She
+made me feel the reason. I didn't belong to her world. My ways and my looks
+offended her. She disliked me a good deal; she feared me a little. She
+would have felt safer if she had been gratifying her curiosity, gazing in
+at me through the bars of a cage.
+
+Where I had been feeling and showing my usual assurance, I now became ill
+at ease. I longed for them to be gone; at the same time I hated to let her
+go--for, when and how would I see her again, would I get the chance to
+remove her bad impression? It irritated me thus to be concerned about the
+sister of a man into my liking for whom there was mixed much pity and some
+contempt. But I am of the disposition that, whenever I see an obstacle of
+whatever kind, I can not restrain myself from trying to jump it. Here was
+an obstacle--a dislike. To clear it was of the smallest importance in the
+world, was a silly waste of time. Yet I felt I could not maintain with
+myself my boast that there were no obstacles I couldn't get over, if I
+turned aside from this.
+
+Sam--not without hesitation, as I recalled afterward--left me with her,
+when I sent him to bring her brougham up to the Broadway entrance. As she
+and I were standing there alone, waiting in silence, I turned on her
+suddenly, and blurted out, "You don't like me."
+
+She reddened a little, smiled slightly. "What a quaint remark!" said she.
+
+I looked straight at her. "But you shall."
+
+Our eyes met. Her chin came out a little, her eyebrows lifted. Then, in
+scorn of herself as well as of me, she locked herself in behind a frozen
+haughtiness that ignored me. "Ah, here is the carriage," she said. I
+followed her to the curb; she just touched my hand, just nodded her
+fascinating little head.
+
+"See you Saturday, old man," called her brother friendlily. My lowering
+face had alarmed him.
+
+"That party is off," said I curtly. And I lifted my hat and strode away.
+
+As I had formed the habit of dismissing the disagreeable, I soon put her
+out of my mind. But she took with her my joy in the taste of things. I
+couldn't get back my former keen satisfaction in all I had done and was
+doing. The luxury, the tangible evidences of my achievement, no longer gave
+me pleasure; they seemed to add to my irritation.
+
+That's the way it is in life. We load ourselves down with toys like so many
+greedy children; then we see another toy and drop everything to be free to
+seize it; and if we can not, we're wretched.
+
+I worked myself up, or rather, down, to such a mood that when my office boy
+told me Mr. Langdon would like me to come to his office as soon as it was
+convenient, I snapped out: "The hell he does! Tell Mr. Langdon I'll be
+glad to see him here whenever he calls." That was stupidity, a premature
+assertion of my right to be treated as an equal. I had always gone to
+Langdon, and to any other of the rulers of finance, whenever I had got a
+summons. For, while I was rich and powerful, I held both wealth and power,
+in a sense, on sufferance; I knew that, so long as I had no absolute
+control of any great department of industry, these rulers could destroy me
+should they decide that they needed my holdings or were not satisfied with
+my use of my power. There were a good many people who did not realize that
+property rights had ceased to exist, that property had become a revocable
+grant from the "plutocrats." I was not of those misguided ones who had
+failed to discover the new fact concealed in the old form. So I used to go
+when I was summoned.
+
+But not that day. However, no sooner was my boy gone than I repented the
+imprudence, "But what of it?" said I to myself. "No matter how the thing
+turns out, I shall be able to get some advantage." For it was part of my
+philosophy that a proper boat with proper sails and a proper steersman can
+gain in any wind. I was surprised when Langdon appeared in my office a few
+minutes later.
+
+He was a tallish, slim man, carefully dressed, with a bored, weary look
+and a slow, bored way of talking. I had always said that if I had not been
+myself I should have wished to be Langdon. Men liked and admired him; women
+loved and ran after him. Yet he exerted not the slightest effort to please
+any one; on the contrary, he made it distinct and clear that he didn't
+care a rap what any one thought of him or, for that matter, of anybody or
+anything. He knew how to get, without sweat or snatching, all the good
+there was in whatever fate threw in his way--and he was one of those men
+into whose way fate seems to strive to put everything worth having. His
+business judgment was shrewd, but he cared nothing for the big game he was
+playing except as a game. Like myself, he was simply a sportsman--and, I
+think, that is why we liked each other. He could have trusted almost any
+one that came into contact with him; but he trusted nobody, and frankly
+warned every one not to trust him--a safe frankness, for his charm caused
+it to be forgotten or ignored. He would do anything to gain an object,
+however trivial, which chanced to attract him; once it was his, he would
+throw it aside as carelessly as an ill-fitting collar.
+
+His expression, as he came into my office, was one of cynical amusement,
+as if he were saying to himself: "Our friend Blacklock has caught the
+swollen head at last." Not a suggestion of ill humor, of resentment
+at my impertinence--for, in the circumstances, I had been guilty of an
+impertinence. Just languid, amused patience with the frailty of a friend.
+"I see," said he, "that you have got Textile up to eighty-five."
+
+He was the head of the Textile Trust which had been built by his
+brother-in-law and had fallen to him in the confusion following his
+brother-in-law's death. As he was just then needing some money for his
+share in the National Coal undertaking, he had directed me to push Textile
+up toward par and unload him of two or three hundred thousand shares--he,
+of course, to repurchase the shares after he had taken profits and Textile
+had dropped back to its normal fifty.
+
+"I'll have it up to ninety-eight by the middle of next month," said I. "And
+there I think we'd better stop."
+
+"Stop at about ninety," said he. "That will give me all I find I'll need
+for this Coal business. I don't want to be bothered with hunting up an
+investment."
+
+I shook my head. "I must put it up to within a point or two of par," I
+declared. "In my public letter I've been saying it would go above
+ninety-five, and I never deceive my public."
+
+He smiled--my notion of honesty always amused him. "As you please," he
+said with a shrug. Then I saw a serious look--just a fleeting flash of
+warning--behind his smiling mask; and he added carelessly: "Be careful
+about your own personal play. I doubt if Textile can be put any higher."
+
+It must have been my mood that prevented those words from making the
+impression on me they should have made. Instead of appreciating at once
+and at its full value this characteristic and amazingly friendly signal
+of caution, I showed how stupidly inattentive I was by saying: "Something
+doing? Something new?"
+
+But he had already gone further than his notion of friendship warranted. So
+he replied: "Oh, no. Simply that everything's uncertain nowadays."
+
+My mind had been all this time on those Manasquale mining properties. I now
+said: "Has Roebuck told you that I had to buy those mines on my own
+account?"
+
+"Yes," he said. He hesitated, and again he gave me a look whose meaning
+came to me only when it was too late. "I think, Blacklock, you'd better
+turn them over to me."
+
+"I can't," I answered. "I gave my word."
+
+"As you please," said he.
+
+Apparently the matter didn't interest him. He began to talk of the
+performances of my little two-year-old, Beachcomber; and after twenty
+minutes or so, he drifted away. "I envy you your enthusiasm," he said,
+pausing in my doorway. "Wherever I am, I wish I were somewhere else.
+Whatever I'm doing, I wish I were doing something else. Where do you get
+all this joy of the fight? What the devil are you fighting for?"
+
+He didn't wait for a reply.
+
+I thought over my situation steadily for several days. I went down to my
+country place. I looked everywhere among all my belongings, searching,
+searching, restless, impatient. At last I knew what ailed me--what the lack
+was that yawned so gloomily from everything I had once thought beautiful,
+had once found sufficient. I was in the midst of the splendid, terraced
+pansy beds my gardeners had just set out; I stopped short and slapped my
+thigh. "A woman!" I exclaimed. "That's what I need. A woman--the right sort
+of woman--a wife!"
+
+
+
+
+IV. A CANDIDATE FOR "RESPECTABILITY"
+
+
+To handle this new business properly I must put myself in position
+to look the whole field over. I must get in line and in touch with
+"respectability." When Sam Ellersly came in for his "rations," I said:
+"Sam, I want you to put me up at the Travelers Club."
+
+"The Travelers!" echoed he, with a blank look.
+
+"The Travelers," said I. "It's about the best of the big clubs, isn't it?
+And it has as members most of the men I do business with and most of those
+I want to get into touch with."
+
+He laughed. "It can't be done."
+
+"Why not?" I asked.
+
+"Oh--I don't know. You see--the fact is--well, they're a lot of old fogies
+up there. You don't want to bother with that push, Matt. Take my advice. Do
+business with them, but avoid them socially."
+
+"I want to go in there," I insisted. "I have my own reasons. You put me
+up."
+
+"I tell you, it'd be no use," he replied, in a tone that implied he wished
+to hear no more of the matter.
+
+"You put me up," I repeated. "And if you do your best, I'll get in all
+right. I've got lots of friends there. And you've got three relatives in
+the committee on membership."
+
+At this he gave me a queer, sharp glance--a little fright in it.
+
+I laughed. "You see, I've been looking into it, Sam. I never take a jump
+till I've measured it."
+
+"You'd better wait a few years, until--" he began, then stopped and turned
+red.
+
+"Until what?" said I. "I want you to speak frankly."
+
+"Well, you've got a lot of enemies--a lot of fellows who've lost money in
+deals you've engineered. And they'd say all sorts of things."
+
+"I'll take care of that," said I, quite easy in mind. "Mowbray Langdon's
+president, isn't he? Well, he's my closest friend." I spoke quite honestly.
+It shows how simple-minded I was in certain ways that I had never once
+noted the important circumstance that this "closest friend" had never
+invited me to his house, or anywhere where I'd meet his up-town associates
+at introducing distance.
+
+Sam looked surprised. "Oh, in that case," he said, "I'll see what can be
+done." But his tone was not quite cordial enough to satisfy me.
+
+To stimulate him and to give him an earnest of what I intended to do for
+him, when our little social deal had been put through, I showed him how he
+could win ten thousand dollars in the next three days. "And you needn't
+bother about putting up margins," said I, as I often had before. "I'll take
+care of that."
+
+He stammered a refusal and went out; but he came back within an hour, and,
+in a strained sort of way, accepted my tip and my offer.
+
+"That's sensible," said I. "When will you attend to the matter at the
+Travelers? I want to be warned so I can pull my own set of wires in
+concert."
+
+"I'll let you know," he answered, hanging his head.
+
+I didn't understand his queer actions then. Though I was an expert in
+finance, I hadn't yet made a study of that other game--the game of
+"gentleman." And I didn't know how seriously the frauds and fakirs who play
+it take it and themselves. I attributed his confusion to a ridiculous mock
+modesty he had about accepting favors; it struck me as being particularly
+silly on this occasion, because for once he was to give as well as to take.
+
+He didn't call for his profits, but wrote asking me to mail him the check
+for them. I did so, putting in the envelop with it a little jog to his
+memory on the club matter. I didn't see him again for nearly a month; and
+though I searched and sent, I couldn't get his trail. On opening day at
+Morris Park, I was going along the passage behind the boxes in the grand
+stand, on my way to the paddock. I wanted to see my horse that was about to
+run for the Salmagundi Sweepstakes, and to tell my jockey that I'd give him
+fifteen thousand, instead of ten thousand, if he won--for I had put quite a
+bunch down. I was a figure at the tracks in those days. I went into racing
+on my customary generous scale. I liked horses, just as I liked everything
+that belonged out under the big sky; also I liked the advertising my string
+of thoroughbreds gave me. I was rich enough to be beyond the stage at which
+a man excites suspicion by frequenting race-tracks and gambling-houses; I
+was at the height where prodigalities begin to be taken as evidences of
+abounding superfluity, not of a dangerous profligacy. Jim Harkaway, who
+failed at playing the same game I played and won, said to me with a sneer
+one day: "You certainly do know how to get a dollar's worth of notoriety
+out of a dollar's worth of advertising."
+
+"If I only knew that, Jim," said I, "I'd have been long ago where you're
+bound for. The trick is to get it back ten for one. The more _you_
+advertise yourself, the more suspicious of you people become. The more
+money I 'throw away' in advertising, the more convinced people are that I
+can afford to do it."
+
+But, as I was about to say, in one of the boxes I spied my shy friend,
+Sammy. He was looking better than I had ever seen him. Less heavy-eyed,
+less pallid and pasty, less like a man who had been shirking bed and
+keeping up on cocktails and cold baths. He was at the rear of the box,
+talking with a lady and a gentleman. As soon as I saw that lady, I knew
+what it was that had been hiding at the bottom of my mind and rankling
+there.
+
+Luckily I was alone; ever since that lunch I had been cutting loose from
+the old crowd--from all its women, and from all its men except two or three
+real friends who were good fellows straight through, in spite of their
+having made the mistake of crossing the dead line between amateur "sport"
+and professional. I leaned over and tapped Sammy on the shoulder.
+
+He glanced round, and when he saw me, looked as if I were a policeman who
+had caught him in the act.
+
+"Howdy, Sam?" said I. "It's been so long since I've seen you that I
+couldn't resist the temptation to interrupt. Hope your friends'll excuse
+me. Howdy do, Miss Ellersly?" And I put out my hand.
+
+She took it reluctantly. She was giving me a very unpleasant look--as if
+she were seeing, not somebody, but some _thing_ she didn't care to
+see, or were seeing nothing at all. I liked that look; I liked the woman
+who had it in her to give it. She made me feel that she was difficult and
+therefore worth while, and that's what alt we human beings are in business
+for--to make each other feel that we're worth while.
+
+"Just a moment," said Sam, red as a cranberry and stuttering. And he made a
+motion to come out of the box and join me. At the same time Miss Anita and
+the other fellow began to turn away.
+
+But I was not the man to be cheated in that fashion. I wanted to see
+_her_, and I compelled her to see it and to feel it. "Don't let me
+take you from your friends," said I to Sammy. "Perhaps they'd like to come
+with you and me down to look at my horse. I can give you a good tip--he's
+bound to win. I've had my boys out on the rails every morning at the trials
+of all the other possibilities. None of 'em's in it with Mowghli."
+
+"Mowghli!" said the young lady--she had begun to turn toward me as soon as
+I spoke the magic word, "tip." There may be men who can resist that word
+"tip" at the race-track, but there never was a woman.
+
+"My sister has to stay here," said Sammy hurriedly. "I'll go with you,
+Blacklock."
+
+All this time he was looking as if he were doing something he ought to be
+ashamed of. I thought then he was ashamed because he, professing to be a
+gentleman, had been neglecting his debt of honor. I now know he was ashamed
+because he was responsible for his sister's being contaminated by contact
+with such a man as I! I who hadn't a dollar that wasn't honestly earned;
+I who had made a fortune by my own efforts, and was spending my millions
+like a prince; I who had taste in art and music and in architecture and
+furnishing and all the fine things of life. Above all, I who had been his
+friend and benefactor. _He_ knew I was more of a gentleman than he
+could ever hope to be, he with no ability at anything but spending money;
+he a sponge and a cadger, yes, and a welcher--for wasn't he doing his best
+to welch me? But just because a lot of his friends, jealous of my success
+and angry that I refused to truckle to them and be like them instead of
+like myself, sneered at me--behind my back--this poor-spirited creature
+was daring to pretend to himself that I wasn't fit for the society of his
+sister!
+
+"Mowghli!" said Miss Ellersly. "What a quaint name!"
+
+"My trainer gave it," said I. "I've got a second son of one of those
+broken-down English noblemen at the head of my stables. He's trying to get
+money enough together to be able to show up at Newport and take a shy at an
+heiress."
+
+At this the fellow who was fourth in our party, and who had been giving me
+a nasty, glassy stare, got as red as was Sammy. Then I noticed that he was
+an Englishman, and I all but chuckled with delight. However, I said, "No
+offense intended," and clapped him on the shoulder with a friendly smile.
+"He's a good fellow, my man Monson, and knows a lot about horses."
+
+Miss Ellersly bit her lip and colored, but I noticed also that her eyes
+were dancing.
+
+Sam introduced the Englishman to me--Lord Somebody-or-other, I forget what,
+as I never saw him again. I turned like a bulldog from a toy terrier and
+was at Miss Ellersly again. "Let me put a little something on Mowghli for
+you," said I. "You're bound to win--and I'll see that you don't lose. I
+know how you ladies hate to lose."
+
+That was a bit stiff, as I know well enough now. Indeed, my instinct
+would have told me better then, if I hadn't been so used to the sort of
+women that jump at such an offer, and if I hadn't been casting about so
+desperately and in such confusion for some way to please her. At any rate,
+I hardly deserved her sudden frozen look. "I beg pardon," I stammered, and
+I think my look at her must have been very humble--for me.
+
+The others in the box were staring round at us. "Come on," cried Sam,
+dragging at my arm, "let's go."
+
+"Won't you come?" I said to his sister. I shouldn't have been able to keep
+my state of mind out of my voice, if I had tried. And I didn't try.
+
+Trust the right sort of woman to see the right sort of thing in a man
+through any and all kinds of barriers of caste and manners and breeding.
+Her voice was much softer as she said: "I think I must stay here. Thank
+you, just the same."
+
+As soon as Sam and I were alone, I apologized. "I hope you'll tell your
+sister I'm sorry for that break," said I.
+
+"Oh, that's all right," he answered, easy again, now that we were away from
+the others. "You meant well--and motive's the thing."
+
+"Motive--hell!" cried I in my anger at myself. "Nobody but a man's God
+knows his motives; he doesn't even know them himself. I judge others by
+what they do, and I expect to be judged in the same way. I see I've got a
+lot to learn." Then I suddenly remembered the Travelers Club, and asked him
+what he'd done about it.
+
+"I--I've been--thinking it over," said he. "Are you _sure_ you want to
+run the risk of an ugly cropper, Matt?"
+
+I turned him round so that we were facing each other. "Do you want to do me
+that favor, or don't you?" I demanded.
+
+"I'll do whatever you say," he replied. "I'm thinking only of your
+interests."
+
+"Let _me_ take care of _them_," said I. "You put me up at that
+club to-morrow. I'll send you the name of a seconder not later than noon."
+
+"Up goes your name," he said. "But don't blame me for the consequences."
+
+And my name went up, with Mowbray Langdon's brother, Tom, as seconder.
+Every newspaper in town published the fact, most of them under big black
+headlines. "The fun's about to begin," thought I, as I read. And I was
+right, though I hadn't the remotest idea how big a ball I had opened.
+
+
+
+
+V. DANGER SIGNALS
+
+
+At that time I did not myself go over the bills before the legislatures
+of those states in which I had interests. I trusted that work to my
+lawyers--and, like every man who ever absolutely trusted an important
+division of his affairs to another, I was severely punished. One morning
+my eye happened to light upon a minor paragraph in a newspaper--a list
+of the "small bills yesterday approved by the governor." In the list was
+one "defining the power of sundry commissions." Those words seemed to
+me somehow to spell "joker." But why did I call up my lawyers to ask
+them about it? It's a mystery to me. All I know is that, busy as I was,
+something inside me compelled me to drop everything else and hunt that
+"joker" down.
+
+I got Saxe--then senior partner in Browne, Saxe and Einstein--on the
+'phone, and said: "Just see and tell me, will you, what is the 'bill
+defining the power of sundry commissions'--the bill the governor signed
+yesterday?"
+
+"Certainly, Mr. Blacklock," came the answer. My nerves are, and always have
+been, on the watchout for the looks and the tones and the gestures that are
+just a shade off the natural; and I feel that I do Saxe no injustice when I
+say his tone was, not a shade, but a full color, off the natural. So I was
+prepared for what he said when he returned to the telephone. "I'm sorry,
+Mr. Blacklock, but we seem unable to lay our hands on that bill at this
+moment."
+
+"Why not?" said I, in the tone that makes an employee jump as if a
+whip-lash had cut him on the calves.
+
+He had jumped all right, as his voice showed. "It's not in our file," said
+he. "It's House Bill No. 427, and it's apparently not here."
+
+"The hell you say!" I exclaimed. "Why?"
+
+"I really can't explain," he pleaded, and the frightened whine confirmed my
+suspicion.
+
+"I guess not," said I, making the words significant and suggestive. "And
+you're in my pay to look after such matters! But you'll have to explain, if
+this turns out to be serious."
+
+"Apparently our file of bills is complete except that one," he went on. "I
+suppose it was lost in the mail, and I very stupidly didn't notice the gap
+in the numbers."
+
+"Stupid isn't the word I'd use," said I, with a laugh that wasn't of the
+kind that cheers. And I rang off and asked for the state capitol on the
+"long distance."
+
+Before I got my connection Saxe, whose office was only two blocks away,
+came flustering in. "The boy has been discharged, Mr. Blacklock," he began.
+
+"What boy?" said I.
+
+"The boy in charge of the bill file--the boy whose business it was to keep
+the file complete."
+
+"Send him to me, you damned scoundrel," said I. "I'll give him a job. What
+do you take me for, anyway? And what kind of a cowardly hound are you to
+disgrace an innocent boy as a cover for your own crooked work?"
+
+"Really, Mr. Blacklock, this is most extraordinary," he expostulated.
+
+"Extraordinary? I call it criminal," I retorted. "Listen to me. You look
+after the legislation calendars for me, and for Langdon, and for Roebuck,
+and for Melville, and for half a dozen others of the biggest financiers in
+the country. It's the most important work you do for us. Yet you, as shrewd
+and careful a lawyer as there is at the bar, want me to believe you trusted
+that work to a boy! If you did, you're a damn fool. If you didn't, you're
+a damn scoundrel. There's no more doubt in my mind than in yours which of
+those horns has you sticking on it."
+
+"You are letting your quick temper get away with you, Mr. Blacklock," he
+deprecated.
+
+"Stop lying!" I shouted, "I knew you had been doing some skulduggery when
+I first heard your voice on the telephone. And if I needed any proof, the
+meek way you've taken my abuse would furnish it, and to spare."
+
+Just then the telephone bell rang and I got the right department and asked
+the clerk to read House Bill 427. It contained five short paragraphs. The
+"joker" was in the third, which gave the State Canal Commission the right
+"to institute condemnation proceedings, and to condemn, and to abolish, any
+canal not exceeding thirty miles in length and not a part of the connected
+canal system of the state."
+
+When I hung up the receiver I was so absorbed that I had forgotten Saxe was
+waiting. He made some slight sound. I wheeled on him. I needed a vent. If
+he hadn't been there I should have smashed a chair. But there was he--and I
+kicked him out of my private office and would have kicked him out through
+the anteroom into the outer hall, had he not gathered himself together and
+run like a jack-rabbit.
+
+Since that day I have done my own calendar watching.
+
+By this incident I do not mean to suggest that there are not honorable men
+in the legal profession. Most of them are men of the highest honor, as are
+most business men, most persons of consequence in every department of life.
+But you don't look for character in the proprietors, servants, customers
+and hangers-on of dives. No more ought you to look for honor among any of
+the people that have to do with the big gilded dive of the dollarocracy.
+They are there to gamble, and to prostitute themselves. The fact that they
+look like gentlemen and have the manners and the language of gentlemen
+ought to deceive nobody but the callow chaps of the sort that believes the
+swell gambler is "an honest fellow" and a "perfect gentleman otherwise,"
+because he wears a dress suit in the evening and is a judge of books and
+pictures. Lawyers are the doorkeepers and the messengers of the big dive;
+and these lawyers, though they stand the highest and get the biggest fees,
+are just what you would expect human beings to be who expose themselves to
+such temptations, and yield whenever they get an opportunity, as eager and
+as compliant as a _cocotte_.
+
+My lawyers had sold me out; I, fool that I was, had not guarded the only
+weak plate in my armor against my companions--the plate over my back, to
+shed assassin thrusts. Roebuck and Langdon between them owned the governor;
+he owned the Canal Commission; my canal, which gave me access to tide-water
+for the product of my Manasquale mines, was as good as closed. I no longer
+had the whip-hand in National Coal. The others could sell me out and take
+two-thirds of my fortune, whenever they liked--for of what use were my
+mines with no outlet now to any market, except the outlets the coal crowd
+owned?
+
+As soon as I had thought the situation out in all its bearings, I realized
+that there was no escape for me now, that whatever chance to escape I might
+have had was closed by my uncovering to Saxe and kicking him. But I did not
+regret; it was worth the money it would cost me. Besides, I thought I saw
+how I could later on turn it to good account. A sensible man never makes
+fatal errors. Whatever he does is at least experience, and can also be used
+to advantage. If Napoleon hadn't been half dead at Waterloo, I don't doubt
+he would have used its disaster as a means to a greater victory.
+
+Was I downcast by the discovery that those bandits had me apparently at
+their mercy? Not a bit. Never in my life have I been downcast over money
+matters more than a few minutes. Why should I be? Why should any man be who
+has made himself all that he is? As long as his brain is sound, his capital
+is unimpaired. When I walked into Mowbray Langdon's office, I was like a
+thoroughbred exercising on a clear frosty morning; and my smile was as
+fresh as the flower in my buttonhole. I thrust out my hand at him. "I
+congratulate you," said I.
+
+He took the proffered hand with a questioning look.
+
+"On what?" said he. It is hard to tell from his face what is going on in
+his head, but I think I guessed right when I decided that Saxe hadn't yet
+warned him.
+
+"I have just found out from Saxe," I pursued, "about the Canal Bill."
+
+"What Canal Bill?" he asked.
+
+"That puzzled look was a mistake, Langdon," said I, laughing at him. "When
+you don't know anything about a matter, you look merely blank. You overdid
+it; you've given yourself away."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. "As you please," said he. As you please was his
+favorite expression; a stereotyped irony, for in dealing with him, things
+were never as _you_ pleased, but always as _he_ pleased.
+
+"Next time you want to dig a mine under anybody," I went on, "don't hire
+Saxe. Really I feel sorry for you--to have such a clever scheme messed by
+such an ass."
+
+"If you don't mind, I'd like to know what you're talking about," said he,
+with his patient, bored look.
+
+"As you and Roebuck own the governor, I know your little law ends my little
+canal."
+
+"Still I don't know what you're talking about," drawled he. "You are always
+suspecting everybody of double-dealing. I gather that this is another
+instance of your infirmity. Really, Blacklock, the world isn't wholly made
+up of scoundrels."
+
+"I know that," said I. "And I will even admit that its scoundrels are
+seldom made up wholly of scoundrelism. Even Roebuck would rather do the
+decent thing, if he can do it without endangering his personal interests.
+As for you--I regard you as one of the decentest men I ever knew--outside
+of business. And even there, I believe you'd keep your word, as long as the
+other fellow kept his."
+
+"Thank you," said he, bowing ironically. "This flattery makes me suspect
+you've come to get something."
+
+"On the contrary," said I. "I want to give something. I want to give you my
+coal mines."
+
+"I thought you'd see that our offer was fair," said he. "And I'm glad you
+have changed your mind about quarreling with your best friends. We can be
+useful to you, you to us. A break would be silly."
+
+"That's the way it looks to me," I assented. And I decided that my sharp
+talk to Roebuck had set them to estimating my value to them.
+
+"Sam Ellersly," Langdon presently remarked, "tells me he's campaigning hard
+for you at the Travelers. I hope you'll make it. We're rather a slow crowd;
+a few men like you might stir things up."
+
+I am always more than willing to give others credit for good sense and good
+motives. It was not vanity, but this disposition to credit others with
+sincerity and sense, that led me to believe him, both as to the Coal matter
+and as to the Travelers Club. "Thanks, Langdon," I said; and that he might
+look no further for my motive, I added: "I want to get into that club much
+as the winner of a race wants the medal that belongs to him. I've built
+myself up into a rich man, into one of the powers in finance, and I feel
+I'm entitled to recognition."
+
+"I don't quite follow you," he said. "I can't see that you'll be either
+better or worse for getting into the Travelers."
+
+"No more I shall," replied I. "No more is the winner of the race the better
+or the worse for having the medal. But he wants it."
+
+He had a queer expression. I suppose he regarded it as a joke, my attaching
+apparently so much importance to a thing he cared nothing about. "You've
+always had that sort of thing," said I, "and so you don't appreciate it.
+You're like a respectable woman. She can't imagine what all the fuss over
+women keeping a good reputation is about. Well, just let her lose it!"
+
+"Perhaps," said he.
+
+"And," I went on, "you can have the rule about the waiting list suspended,
+and can move me up and get me in at once."
+
+"We don't do things in quite such a hurry at the Travelers," said he,
+laughing. "However, we'll try to comply with your commands."
+
+His generous, cordial offer made me half ashamed of the plot I had
+underneath my submission about the coal mines--a plot to get into the coal
+combine in order to gather the means to destroy it, and perhaps reconstruct
+it with myself in control. I made up my mind that, if he continued to act
+squarely, I would alter those plans.
+
+"If you don't mind," Langdon was going on, "I'll make a suggestion--merely
+a suggestion. It might not be a bad idea for you to arrange to--to
+eliminate some of the--the popular features from your--brokerage business.
+There are several influential members of the Travelers who have a--a
+prejudice--"
+
+"I understand," I interposed, to spare him the necessity of saying things
+he thought I might regard as impertinent. "They look on me as a keeper of a
+high-class bucket-shop." "That's about the way they'd put it."
+
+"But the things they object to are, unfortunately, my 'strong hold,'" I
+explained. "You other big fellows gather in the big investors by simply
+announcing your projects in a dignified way. I haven't got the ear of that
+class of people. I have to send out my letters, have to advertise in all
+the cities and towns, have to catch the little fellows. You can afford to
+send out engraved invitations; I have to gather in my people with brass
+bands and megaphones. Don't forget that my people count in the totals
+bigger than yours. And what's my chief value to you? Why, when you want to
+unload, I furnish the crowd to unload on, the crowd that gives you and your
+big customers cash for your water and wind. I don't see my way to letting
+go of what I've got until I get hold of what I'm reaching for." All this
+with not a suspicion in my mind that he was at the same game that had
+caused Roebuck to "hint" that same proposal. What a "con man" high finance
+got when Mowbray Langdon became active down town!
+
+"That's true," he admitted, with a great air of frankness. "But the cry
+that you're not a financier, but a bucket-shop man, might be fatal at the
+Travelers. Of course, the sacrifice would be large for such a small object.
+Still, you might have to make it--if you really want to get in."
+
+"I'll think it over," said I. He thought I meant that I'd think over
+dropping my power--thought I was as big a snob as he and his friends of the
+Travelers, willing to make any sacrifice to be "in the push." But, while
+Matthew Blacklock has the streak of snob in him that's natural to all
+human beings and to most animals, he is not quite insane. No, the thing
+I intended to think over was how to stay in the "bucket-shop" business,
+but wash myself of its odium. Bucket-shop! What snobbery! Yet it's human
+nature, too. The wholesale merchant looks down on the retailer, the big
+retailer on the little; the burglar despises the pickpocket; the financier,
+the small promoter; the man who works with his brain, the man who works
+with his hands. A silly lot we are--silly to look down, sillier to feel
+badly when we're looked down upon.
+
+
+
+
+VI. OF "GENTLEMEN"
+
+
+When I got back to my office and was settling I to the proofs of the
+"Letter to Investors," which I published in sixty newspapers throughout the
+country and which daily reached upward of five million people, Sam Ellersly
+came in. His manner was certainly different from what it had ever been
+before; a difference so subtle that I couldn't describe it more nearly than
+to say it made me feel as if he had not until then been treating me as of
+the same class with himself. I smiled to myself and made an entry in my
+mental ledger to the credit of Mowbray Langdon.
+
+"That club business is going nicely," said Sam. "Langdon is enthusiastic,
+and I find you've got good friends on the committee."
+
+I knew that well enough. Hadn't I been carrying them on my books at a good
+round loss for two years?
+
+"If it wasn't for--for some features of this business of yours," he went
+on, "I'd say there wouldn't be the slightest trouble."
+
+"Bucket-shop?" said I with an easy laugh, though this nagging was beginning
+to get on my nerves.
+
+"Exactly," said he. "And, you know, you advertise yourself like--like--"
+
+"Like everybody else, only more successfully than most," said I. "Everybody
+advertises, each one adapting his advertising to the needs of his
+enterprises, as far as he knows how."
+
+"That's true enough," he confessed. "But there are enterprises and
+enterprises, you know."
+
+"You can tell 'em, Sam," said I, "that I never put out a statement I don't
+believe to be true, and that when any of my followers lose on one of my
+tips, I've lost on it, too. For I play my own tips--and that's more than
+can be said of any 'financier' in this town."
+
+"It'd be no use to tell 'em that," said he. "Character's something of
+a consideration in social matters, of course. But it isn't the chief
+consideration by a long shot, and the absence of it isn't necessarily
+fatal."
+
+"I'm the biggest single operator in the country," I went on. "And it's my
+methods that give me success--because I know how to advertise--how to keep
+my name before the country, and how to make men say, whenever they hear
+it: 'There's a shrewd, honest fellow.' That and the people it brings me,
+in flocks, are my stock in trade. Honesty's a bluff with most of the big
+respectables; under cover of their respectability, of their 'old and
+honored names,' of their social connections, of their church-going and
+that, they do all sorts of queer work."
+
+"To hear you talk," put in Sam, with a grin, "one would think you didn't
+shove off millions of dollars of suspicious stuff on the public through
+those damn clever letters of yours."
+
+"There's where you didn't stop to think, Sam," said I. "When I say a
+stock's going to rise, it rises. When I stop talking about it, it may go on
+rising or it may fall. But I never advise anybody to buy except when I have
+every reason to believe it's a good thing. If they hold on too long, that's
+their own lookout."
+
+"But they invest--"
+
+"You use words too carelessly," I said. "When I say buy, I don't mean
+_invest_. When I mean invest, I say invest." There I laughed. "It's a
+word I don't often use."
+
+"And that's what you call honesty!" jeered he.
+
+"That's what I call honesty," I retorted, "and that _is_ honesty." And
+I thought so then.
+
+"Well--every man has a right to his own notion of what's honest," he said.
+"But no man's got a right to complain if a fellow with a different notion
+criticizes him."
+
+"None in the world," I assented. "Do _you_ criticize me?"
+
+"No, no, no, indeed!" he answered, nervous, and taking seriously what I had
+intended as a joke.
+
+After a while I dragged in _the_ subject. "One thing I can and will
+do to get myself in line for that club," I said, like a seal on promenade.
+"I'm sick of the crowd I travel with--the men and the women. I feel it's
+about time I settled down. I've got a fortune and establishment that needs
+a woman to set it off. I can make some woman happy. You don't happen to
+know any nice girls--the right sort, I mean?"
+
+"Not many." said Sam. "You'd better go back to the country where you came
+from, and get her there. She'd be eternally grateful, and her head wouldn't
+be full of mercenary nonsense."
+
+"Excuse me!" exclaimed I. "It'd turn her head. She'd go clean crazy. She'd
+plunge in up to her neck--and not being used to these waters, she'd make
+a show of herself, and probably drown, dragging me down with her, if
+possible."
+
+Sam laughed. "Keep out of marriage, Matt," he advised, not so obtuse to my
+real point as he wanted me to believe. "I know the kind of girl you've got
+in mind. She'd marry you for your money, and she'd never appreciate you.
+She'd see in you only the lack of the things she's been taught to lay
+stress on."
+
+"For instance?"
+
+"I couldn't tell you any more than I could enable you to recognize a person
+you'd never seen by describing him."
+
+"Ain't I a gentleman?" I inquired.
+
+He laughed, as if the idea tickled him. "Of course," he said. "Of course."
+
+"Ain't I got as proper a country place as there is a-going? Ain't my
+apartment in the Willoughby a peach? Don't I give as elegant dinners as you
+ever sat down to? Don't I dress right up to the Piccadilly latest? Don't
+I act all right--know enough to keep my feet off the table and my knife
+out of my mouth?" All true enough; and I so crude then that I hadn't a
+suspicion what a flat contradiction of my pretensions and beliefs about
+myself the very words and phrases were.
+
+"You're right in it, Matt," said Sam. "But--well--you haven't traveled with
+our crowd, and they're shy of strangers, especially as--as energetic a sort
+of stranger as you are. You're too sudden, Matt--too dazzling--too--"
+
+"Too shiny and new?" said I, beginning to catch his drift. "That'll be
+looked after. What I want is you to take me round a bit."
+
+"I can't ask you to people's houses," protested he, knowing I'd not realize
+what a flimsy pretense that was.
+
+While we were talking I had been thinking--working out the proposition
+along lines he had indicated to me without knowing it. "Look here, Sam," I
+said. "You imagine I'm trying to butt in with a lot of people that don't
+know me and don't want to know me. But that ain't my point of view. Those
+people can be useful to me. I need 'em. What do I care whether they want to
+be useful to me or not? The machine'd have run down and rusted out long ago
+if you and your friends' idea of a gentleman had been taken seriously by
+anybody who had anything to do and knew how to do it. In this world you've
+got to _make_ people do what's for your good and their own. Your
+idea of a gentleman was put forward by lazy fakirs who were living off of
+what their ungentlemanly ancestors had annexed, and who didn't want to be
+disturbed. So they 'fixed' the game by passing these rules you and your
+kind are fools enough to abide by--that is, you are fools, unless you
+haven't got brains enough to get on in a free-and-fair-for-all."
+
+Sam laughed.. "There's a lot of truth in what you say," he admitted.
+
+"However," I ended, "my plans don't call for hurry just there. When I get
+ready to go round, I'll let you know."
+
+
+
+
+VII. BLACKLOCK GOES INTO TRAINING
+
+
+This brings me to the ugliest story my enemies have concocted against me.
+No one appreciates more thoroughly than I that, to rise high, a man must
+have his own efforts seconded by the flood of vituperation that his enemies
+send to overwhelm him, and which washes him far higher than he could hope
+to lift himself. So I do not here refer to any attack on me in the public
+prints; I think of them only with amusement and gratitude. The story that
+rankles is the one these foes of mine set creeping, like a snake under the
+fallen leaves, everywhere, anywhere, unseen, without a trail. It has been
+whispered into every ear--and it is, no doubt, widely believed--that I
+deliberately put old Bromwell Ellersly "in a hole," and there tortured him
+until he consented to try to compel his daughter to marry me.
+
+It is possible that, if I had thought of such a devilish device, I might
+have tried it--is not all fair in love? But there was no need for my
+cudgeling my brains to carry that particular fortification on my way to
+what I had fixed my will upon. _Bromwell Ellersly came to me of his own
+accord_.
+
+I suppose the Ellerslys must have talked me over in the family circle.
+However this may be, my acquaintance with her father began with Sam's
+asking me to lunch with him. "The governor has heard me talk of you so
+much," said he, "that he is anxious to meet you."
+
+I found him a dried-up, conventional old gentleman, very proud of his
+ancestors, none of whom I had ever heard of, and very positive that a great
+deal of deference was due him--though on what grounds I could not then,
+and can not now, make out. I soon discovered that it was the scent of my
+stock-tip generosity, wafted to him by Sammy, that had put him hot upon my
+trail. I hadn't gone far into his affairs before I learned that he had been
+speculating, mortgaging, kiting notes, doing what he called, and thought,
+"business" on a large scale. He regarded business as beneath the dignity
+and the intellect of a "gentleman"--how my gorge does rise at that word! So
+he put his great mind on it only for a few hours now and then; he reserved
+the rest of his time for what he regarded as the proper concerns of a
+gentleman--attending to social "duties," reading pretentious books, looking
+at the pictures and listening to the music decreed fashionable.
+
+They charge that I put him "in a hole." In fact, I found him at the bottom
+of a deep pit he had dug for himself; and when he first met me he was,
+without having the sense to realize it, just about to go smash, with not a
+penny for his old age. As soon as I had got this fact clear of the tangle,
+I showed it to him.
+
+"My God, what is to become of _me_?" he said, That was his only
+thought--not, what is to become of my wife and daughter; but, what is to
+become of "_me_!" I do not blame him for this. Naturally enough,
+people who have always been used to everything become, unconsciously,
+monsters of egotism and selfishness; it is natural, too, that they should
+imagine themselves liberal and generous if they give away occasionally
+something that costs them, at most, nothing more serious than the foregoing
+of some extravagant luxury or other. I recite his remark simply to show
+what manner of man he was, what sort of creature I had to deal with.
+
+I offered to help him, and I did help him. Is there any one, knowing
+anything of the facts of life, who will censure me when I admit that
+I--with deliberation--simply tided him over, did not make for him and
+present to him a fortune? What chance should I have had, if I had been so
+absurdly generous to a man who deserved nothing but punishment for his
+selfish and bigoted mode of life? I took away his worst burdens; but I left
+him more than he could carry without my help. And it was not until he had
+appealed, in vain to all his social friends to relieve him of the necessity
+of my aid, not until he realized that I was his only hope of escaping a
+sharp comedown from luxury to very modest comfort in a flat somewhere--not
+until then did his wife send me an invitation to dinner. And I had not so
+much as hinted that I wanted it.
+
+I shall never forget the smallest detail of that dinner--it was a purely
+"family" affair, only the Ellerslys and I. I can feel now the oppressive
+atmosphere, the look as of impending sacrilege upon the faces of the old
+servants; I can see Mrs. Ellersly trying to condescend to be "gracious,"
+and treating me as if I were some sort of museum freak or menagerie
+exhibit. I can see Anita. She was like a statue of snow; she spoke not
+a word; if she lifted her eyes, I failed to note it. And when I was
+leaving--I with my collar wilted from the fierce, nervous strain I had been
+enduring--Mrs. Ellersly, in that voice of hers into which I don't believe
+any shade of a real human emotion ever penetrated, said: "You must come to
+see us, Mr. Blacklock. We are always at home after five."
+
+I looked at Miss Ellersly. She was white to the lips now, and the spangles
+on her white dress seemed bits of ice glittering there. She said nothing;
+but I knew she felt my look, and that it froze the ice the more closely in
+around her heart. "Thank you," I muttered.
+
+I stumbled in the hall; I almost fell down the broad steps. I stopped at
+the first bar and took three drinks in quick succession. I went on down the
+avenue, breathing like an exhausted swimmer. "I'll give her up!" I cried
+aloud, so upset was I.
+
+I am a man of impulse; but I have trained myself not to be a
+_creature_ of impulse, at least not in matters of importance. Without
+that patient and painful schooling, I shouldn't have got where I now am;
+probably I'd still be blacking boots, or sheet-writing for some bookmaker,
+or clerking it for some broker. Before I got to my rooms, the night air and
+my habit of the "sober second thought" had cooled me back to rationality.
+
+"I want her, I need her," I was saying to myself. "I am worthier of her
+than are those mincing manikins she has been bred to regard as men. She is
+for me--she belongs to me. I'll abandon her to no smirking puppet who'd
+wear her as a donkey would a diamond. Why should I do myself and her an
+injury simply because she has been too badly brought up to know her own
+interest?"
+
+And now I see all the smooth frauds, all the weak people who never have
+purposes or passions worthy of the name, all the finicky, finger-dusting
+gentry with the "fine souls," who flatter themselves that their timidity is
+the squeamishness of superior sensibilities--I see all these feeble folk
+fluttering their feeble fingers in horror of me. "The brute!" they cry;
+"the bounder!" Well, I accept the names quite cheerfully. Those are the
+epithets the wishy-washy always hurl at the strong; they put me in the
+small and truly aristocratic class of men who _do_. I proudly avow
+myself no subscriber to the code that was made by the shearers to encourage
+the sheep to keep on being nice docile animals, trotting meekly up to
+be shorn or slaughtered as their masters may decide. I harm no man, and
+no woman; but neither do I pause to weep over any man or any woman who
+flings himself or herself upon my steady spear. I try to be courteous and
+considerate to all; but I do not stop when some fellow who has something
+that belongs to me shouts "Rude!" at me to sheer me off.
+
+At the same time, her delicate beauty, her quiet, distinctive, high-bred
+manner, had thrust it home to me that in certain respects I was ignorant
+and crude--as who would not have been, brought up as was I? I knew there
+was, somewhere between my roughness of the uncut individuality and the
+smoothness of the planed and sand-papered nonentity of her "set," a mean,
+better than either, better because more efficient.
+
+When this was clear to me I sent for my trainer. He was one of those spare,
+wiry Englishmen, with skin like tanned and painted hide--brown except
+where the bones seem about to push their sharp angles through, and there
+a frosty, winter-apple red. He dressed like a Deadwood gambler, he talked
+like a stable boy; but for all that, you couldn't fail to see he was a
+gentleman born and bred. Yes, he was a gentleman, though he mixed profanity
+into his ordinary flow of conversation more liberally than did I when in a
+rage.
+
+I stood up before him, threw my coat back, thrust my thumbs into my
+trousers pockets and slowly turned about like a ready-made tailor's dummy.
+"Monson," said I, "what do you think of me?"
+
+He looked me over as if I were a horse he was about to buy. "Sound, I'd
+say," was his verdict. "Good wind--uncommon good wind. A goer, and a
+stayer. Not a lump. Not a hair out of place." He laughed. "Action a bit
+high perhaps--for the track. But a grand reach."
+
+"I know all that," said I. "You miss my point. Suppose you wanted to enter
+me for--say, the Society Sweepstakes--what then?"
+
+"Um--um," he muttered reflectively. "That's different."
+
+"Don't I look--sort of--new--as if the varnish was still sticky and might
+come off on the ladies' dresses and on the fine furniture?"
+
+"Oh--that!" said he dubiously. "But all those kinds of things are matters
+of taste."
+
+"Out with it!" I commanded. "Don't be afraid. I'm not one of those damn
+fools that ask for criticism when they want only flattery, as you ought
+to know by this time. I'm aware of my good points, know how good they are
+better than anybody else in the world. And I suspect my weak points--always
+did. I've got on chiefly because I made people tell me to my face what
+they'd rather have grinned over behind my back."
+
+"What's your game?" asked Monson. "I'm in the dark."
+
+"I'll tell you, Monson. I hired you to train horses. Now I want to hire you
+to train me, too. As it's double work, it's double pay."
+
+"Say on," said he, "and say it slow."
+
+"I want to marry," I explained. "I want to inspect all the offerings before
+I decide. You are to train me so that I can go among the herds that'd shy
+off from me if I wasn't on to their little ways."
+
+He looked suspiciously at me, doubtless thinking this some new development
+of "American humor."
+
+"I mean it," I assured him. "I'm going to train, and train hard. I've got
+no time to lose. I must be on my way down the aisle inside of three months.
+I give you a free hand. I'll do just what you say."
+
+"The job's out of my line," he protested.
+
+"I know better," said I. "I've always seen the parlor under the stable in
+you. We'll begin right away. What do you think of these clothes?"
+
+"Well--they're not exactly noisy," he said. "But--they're far from silent.
+That waistcoat--" He stopped and gave me another nervous, timid look. He
+found it hard to believe a man of my sort, so self-assured, would stand the
+truth from a man of his second-fiddle sort.
+
+"Go on!" I commanded. "Speak out! Mowbray Langdon had on one twice as loud
+the other day at the track."
+
+"But, perhaps you'll remember, it was only his waistcoat that was loud--not
+he himself. Now, a man of your manner and voice and--you've got a look out
+of the eyes that'd wake the dead all by itself. People can feel you coming
+before they hear you. When they feel and hear and see all together--it's
+like a brass band in scarlet uniform, with a seven-foot, sky-blue drum
+major. If your hair wasn't so black and your eyes so steel-blue and sharp,
+and your teeth so big and strong and white, and your jaw such a--such
+a--_jaw_--"
+
+"I see the point," said I. And I did. "You'll find you won't need to tell
+me many things twice. I've got a busy day before me here; so we'll have
+to suspend this until you come to dine with me at eight--at my rooms.
+I want you to put in the time well. Go to my house in the country and
+then up to my apartment; take my valet with you; look through all my
+belongings--shirts, ties, socks, trousers, waistcoats, clothes of every
+kind. Throw out every rag you think doesn't fit in with what I want to be.
+How's my grammar?"
+
+I was proud of it; I had been taking more or less pains with my mode of
+speech for a dozen years. "Rather too good," said he. "But that's better
+than making the breaks that aren't regarded as good form."
+
+"Good form!" I exclaimed. "That's it! That's what I want! What does 'good
+form' mean?"
+
+He laughed. "You can search me," said he. "I could easier tell
+you--anything else. It's what everybody recognizes on sight, and nobody
+knows how to describe. It's like the difference between a cultivated
+'jimson' weed and a wild one."
+
+"Like the difference between Mowbray Langdon and me," I suggested
+good-naturedly. "How about my manners?"
+
+"Not so bad," said he. "Not so rotten bad. But--when you're polite, you're
+a little too polite; when you're not polite, you--"
+
+"Show where I came from too plainly?" said I. "Speak right out--hit good
+and hard. Am I too frank for 'good form'?"
+
+"You needn't bother about that," he assured me. "Say whatever comes into
+your head--only, be sure the right sort of thing comes into your head.
+Don't talk too much about yourself, for instance. It's good form to think
+about yourself all the time; it's bad form to let people see it--in your
+talk. Say as little as possible about your business and about what you've
+got. Don't be lavish with the I's and the my's."
+
+"That's harder," said I. "I'm a man who has always minded his own business,
+and cared for nothing else. What could I talk about, except myself?"
+
+"Blest if I know," replied he. "Where you want to go, the last thing people
+mind is their own business--in talk, at least. But you'll get on all right
+if you don't worry too much about it. You've got natural independence, and
+an original way of putting things, and common sense. Don't be afraid."
+
+"Afraid!" said I. "I never knew what it was to be afraid."
+
+"Your nerve'll carry you through," he assured me. "Nerve'll take a man
+anywhere."
+
+"You never said a truer thing in your life," said I. "It'll take him
+wherever he wants, and, after he's there, it'll get him whatever he wants."
+
+And with that, I, thinking of my plans and of how sure I was of success,
+began to march up and down the office with my chest thrown out--until I
+caught myself at it. That stopped me, set me off in a laugh at my own
+expense, he joining in with a kind of heartiness I did not like, though I
+did not venture to check him.
+
+So ended the first lesson--the first of a long series. I soon saw that
+Monson was being most useful to me--far more useful than if he were a
+"perfect gentleman" with nothing of the track and stable and back stairs
+about him. Being a sort of betwixt and between, he could appreciate my
+needs as they could not have been appreciated by a fellow who had never
+lived in the rough-and-tumble I had fought my way up through. And being
+at bottom a real gentleman, and not one of those nervous, snobbish
+make-believes, he wasn't so busy trying to hide his own deficiencies
+from me that he couldn't teach me anything. He wasn't afraid of being
+found out, as Sam--or perhaps, even Langdon--would have been in the same
+circumstances. I wonder if there is another country where so many gentlemen
+and ladies are born, or another where so many of them have their natural
+gentility educated out of them.
+
+
+
+
+VIII. ON THE TRAIL OF LANGDON
+
+
+I had Monson with me twice each week-day--early in the morning and again
+after business hours until bed-time. Also he spent the whole of every
+Saturday and Sunday with me. He developed astonishing dexterity as a
+teacher, and as soon as he realized that I had no false pride and was
+thoroughly in earnest, he handled me without gloves--like a boxing teacher
+who finds that his pupil has the grit of a professional. It was easy enough
+for me to grasp the theory of my new business--it was nothing more than "Be
+natural." But the rub came in making myself naturally of the right sort.
+I had--as I suppose every man of intelligence and decent instincts has--a
+disposition to be friendly and simple. But my manner was by nature what you
+might call abrupt. My not very easy task was to learn the subtle difference
+between the abrupt that injects a tonic into social intercourse, and the
+abrupt that makes the other person shut up with a feeling of having been
+insulted.
+
+Then, there was the matter of good taste in conversation. Monson found,
+as I soon saw, that my everlasting self-assertiveness was beyond cure. As
+I said to him: "I'm afraid you might easier succeed in reducing my chest
+measure." But we worked away at it, and perhaps my readers may discover
+even in this narrative, though it is necessarily egotistic, evidence of at
+least an honest effort not to be baldly boastful. Monson would have liked
+to make of me a self-deprecating sort of person--such as he was himself,
+with the result that the other fellow always got the prize and he got left.
+But I would have none of it.
+
+"How are people to know about you, if you don't tell 'em?" I argued. "Don't
+you yourself admit that men take a man at his own valuation less a slight
+discount, and that women take him at his own valuation plus an allowance
+for his supposed modesty?"
+
+"Cracking yourself up is vulgar, nevertheless," declared the Englishman.
+"It's the chief reason why we on the other side look on you Americans as a
+lot of vulgarians--"
+
+"And are in awe of our superior cleverness," I put in.
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Well, do the best you can," said he. "Only, you really must not brag and
+swagger, and you must get out of the habit of talking louder than any one
+else."
+
+In the matter of dress, our task was easy. I had a fancy for bright
+colors and for strong contrasts; but I know I never indulged in clashes
+and discords. It was simply that in clothes I had the same taste as in
+pictures--the taste that made me prefer Rubens to Rembrandt. We cast out of
+my wardrobe everything in the least doubtful; and I gave away my jeweled
+canes, my pins and links and buttons for shirts and waistcoats except plain
+gold and pearls. I even left off the magnificent diamond I had worn for
+years on my little finger--but I didn't give away that stone; I put it
+by for resetting into an engagement ring. However, when I was as quietly
+dressed as it was possible for a gentleman to be, he still studied me
+dubiously, when he thought I wasn't seeing him. And I recall that he said
+once: "It's your face, Blacklock. If you could only manage to look less
+like a Spanish bull dashing into the ring, gazing joyfully about for
+somebody to gore and toss!"
+
+"But I can't," said I. "And I wouldn't if I could--because that's
+_me_!"
+
+One Saturday he brought a dancing master down to my country place--Dawn
+Hill, which I bought of the Dumont estate and completely remodeled. I saw
+what the man's business was the instant I looked at him. I left him in the
+hall and took Monson into my den.
+
+"Not for me!" I protested. "There's where I draw the line."
+
+"You don't understand," he urged. "This fellow, this Alphonse Lynch, out in
+the hall there, isn't going to teach you dancing so that you may dance, but
+so that you shall be less awkward in strange company."
+
+"My walk suits me," said I. "And I don't fall over furniture or trip people
+up."
+
+"True enough," he answered. "But you haven't the complete control of your
+body that'll make you unconscious of it when you're suddenly shot by a
+butler into a room full of people you suspect of being unfriendly and
+critical."
+
+Not until he used his authority as trainer-in-full-charge, did I yield. It
+may seem absurd to some for a serious man like me solemnly to caper about
+in imitation of a scraping, grimacing French-Irishman; but Monson was
+right, and I haven't in the least minded the ridicule he has brought on me
+by tattling this and the other things everywhere, since he turned against
+me. It's nothing new under the sun for the crowds of chuckleheads to laugh
+where they ought to applaud; their habit is to laugh and to applaud in the
+wrong places. There's no part of my career that I'm prouder of than the
+whole of this thorough course of education in the trifles that are yet not
+trifles. To have been ignorant is no disgrace; the disgrace comes when one
+persists in ignorance and glories in it.
+
+Yet those who make the most pretensions in this topsy-turvy of a world
+regard it as a disgrace to have been obscure and ignorant, and pride
+themselves upon their persistence in their own kind of obscurity and
+ignorance! No wonder the few strong men do about as they please with such a
+race of nincompoopery. If they didn't grow old and tired, what would they
+not do?
+
+All this time I was giving myself--or thought I was giving myself--chiefly
+to my business, as usual. I know now that the new interests had in fact
+crowded the things down town far into the background, had impaired my
+judgment, had suspended my common sense; but I had no inkling of this then,
+The most important matter that was occupying me down town was pushing
+Textile up toward par. Langdon's doubts, little though they influenced me,
+still made enough of an impression to cause me to test the market. I sold
+for him at ninety, as he had directed; I sold in quantity every day. But no
+matter how much I unloaded, the price showed no tendency to break.
+
+"This," said I to myself, "is a testimonial to the skill with which I
+prepared for my bull campaign." And that seemed to me--all unsuspicious as
+I then was--a sufficient explanation of the steadiness of the stock which I
+had worked to establish in the public confidence.
+
+I felt that, if my matrimonial plans should turn out as I confidently
+expected, I should need a much larger fortune than I had--for I was
+determined that my wife should have an establishment second to none.
+Accordingly, I enlarged my original plan. I had intended to keep close
+to Langdon in that plunge; I believed I controlled the market, but I
+hadn't been in Wall Street twenty years without learning that the worst
+thunderbolts fall from cloudless skies. Without being in the least
+suspicious of Langdon, and simply acting on the general principle that
+surprise and treachery are part of the code of high finance, I had prepared
+to guard, first, against being taken in the rear by a secret change of plan
+on Langdon's part, and second, against being involved and overwhelmed by a
+sudden secret attack on him from some associate of his who might think he
+had laid himself open to successful raiding.
+
+The market is especially dangerous toward Christmas and in the
+spring--toward Christmas the big fellows often juggle the stocks to get the
+money for their big Christmas gifts and alms; toward spring the motive is,
+of course, the extra summer expenses of their families and the commencement
+gifts to colleges. It was now late in the spring.
+
+I say, I had intended to be cautious. I abandoned caution and rushed in
+boldly, feeling that the market was, in general, safe and that Textile was
+under my control--and that I was one of the kings of high finance, with
+my lucky star in the zenith. I decided to continue my bull campaign on my
+own account for two weeks after I had unloaded for Langdon, to continue
+it until the stock was at par. I had no difficulty in pushing it to
+ninety-seven, and I was not alarmed when I found myself loaded up with
+it, quoted at ninety-eight for the preferred and thirty for the common. I
+assumed that I was practically its only supporter and that it would slowly
+settle back as I slowly withdrew my support.
+
+To my surprise, the stock did not yield immediately under my efforts to
+depress it. I sold more heavily; Textile continued to show a tendency to
+rise. I sold still more heavily; it broke a point or two, then steadied
+and rose again. Instead of sending out along my secret lines for inside
+information, as I should have done, and would have done had I not been in
+a state of hypnotized judgment--I went to Langdon! I who had been studying
+those scoundrels for twenty-odd years, and dealing directly with and for
+them for ten years!
+
+He wasn't at his office; they told me there that they didn't know whether
+he was at his town house or at his place in the country--"probably in the
+country," said his down-town secretary, with elaborate carelessness. "He
+wouldn't be likely to stay away from the office or not to send for me, if
+he were in town, would he?"
+
+It takes an uncommon good liar to lie to me when I'm on the alert. As I was
+determined to see Langdon, I was in so far on the alert. And I felt the
+fellow was lying. "That's reasonable," said I. "Call me up, if you hear
+from him. I want to see him--important, but not immediate." And I went
+away, having left the impression that I would make no further effort.
+
+Incredible though it may seem, especially to those who know how careful I
+am to guard every point and to see in every friend a possible foe, I still
+did not suspect that smooth, that profound scoundrel. I do not use these
+epithets with heat. I flatter myself I am a connoisseur of finesse and can
+look even at my own affairs with judicial impartiality. And Langdon was,
+and is now, such a past master of finesse that he compels the admiration
+even of his victims. He's like one of those fabled Damascus blades. When
+he takes a leg off, the victim forgets to suffer in his amazement at the
+cleanness of the wound, in his incredulity that the leg is no longer
+part of him. "Langdon," said I to myself, "is a sly dog. No doubt he's
+busy about some woman, and has covered his tracks." Yet I ought, in the
+circumstances, instantly to have suspected that I was the person he was
+dodging.
+
+I went up to his house. You, no doubt, have often seen and often admired
+its beautiful facade, so simple that it hides its own magnificence from
+all but experienced eyes, so perfect in its proportions that it hides the
+vastness of the palace of which it is the face. I have heard men say: "I'd
+like to have a house--a moderate-sized house--one about the size of Mowbray
+Langdon's--though perhaps a little more elegant, not so plain."
+
+That's typical of the man. You have to look closely at him, to study him,
+before you appreciate how he has combined a thousand details of manner and
+dress into an appearance which, while it can not but impress the ordinary
+man with its distinction, suggests to all but the very observant the most
+modest plainness and simplicity. How few realize that simplicity must be
+profound, complex, studied, not to be and to appear crude and coarse. In
+those days that truth had just begun to dawn on me.
+
+"Mr. Langdon isn't at home," said the servant.
+
+I had been at his house once before; I knew he occupied the left side--the
+whole of the second floor, so shut off that it not only had a separate
+entrance, but also could not be reached by those in the right side of
+the house without descending to the entrance hall and ascending the left
+stairway.
+
+"Just take my card to his private secretary, to Mr. Rathburn," said I. "Mr.
+Langdon has doubtless left a message for me."
+
+The butler hesitated, yielded, showed me into the reception-room off the
+entrance hall. I waited a few seconds, then adventured the stairway to
+the left, up which he had disappeared. I entered the small salon in which
+Langdon had received me on my other visit. From the direction of an open
+door, I heard his voice--he was saying: "I am not at home. There's no
+message."
+
+And still I did not realize that it was I he was avoiding!
+
+"It's no use now, Langdon," I called cheerfully. "Beg pardon for seeming to
+intrude. I misunderstood--or didn't hear where the servant said I was to
+wait. However, no harm done. So long! I'm off." But I made no move toward
+the door by which I had entered; instead, I advanced a few feet nearer the
+door from which his voice had come.
+
+After a brief--a very brief--pause, there came in Langdon's
+voice--laughing, not a trace of annoyance: "I might have known! Come in,
+Matt!"
+
+
+
+
+IX. LANGDON AT HOME
+
+
+I entered, with an amused glance at the butler, who was giving over his
+heavy countenance to a delightful exhibition of disgust and discomfiture.
+It was Langdon's sitting-room. He had had the carved antique oak interior
+of a room in an old French palace torn out and transported to New York
+and set up for him. I had made a study of that sort of thing, and at Dawn
+Hill had done something toward realizing my own ideas of the splendid.
+But a glance showed me that I was far surpassed. What I had done seemed
+in comparison like the composition of a school-boy beside an essay by
+Goldsmith or Hazlitt.
+
+And in the midst of this quiet splendor sat, or rather lounged, Langdon,
+reading the newspapers. He was dressed in a dark blue velvet house-suit
+with facings and cords of blue silk a shade or so lighter than the suit. I
+had always thought him handsome; he looked now like a god. He was smoking
+a cigarette in an oriental holder nearly a foot long; but the air of
+the room, so perfect was the ventilation, instead of being scented with
+tobacco, had the odor of some fresh, clean, slightly saline perfume.
+
+I think what was in my mind must have shown in my face, must have subtly
+flattered him, for, when I looked at him, he was giving me a look of
+genuine friendly kindliness. "This is--perfect, Langdon," said I. "And I
+think I'm a judge."
+
+"Glad you like it," said he, trying to dissemble his satisfaction in so
+strongly impressing me.
+
+"You must take me through your house sometime," I went on. "I'm going to
+build soon. No--don't be afraid I'll imitate. I'm too vain for that. But I
+want suggestions. I'm not ashamed to go to school to a master--to anybody,
+for that matter."
+
+"Why do you build?" said he. "A town house is a nuisance. If I could induce
+my wife to take the children to the country to live, I'd dispose of this."
+
+"That's it--the wife," said I.
+
+"But you have no wife. At least--"
+
+"No," I replied with a laugh. "Not yet. But I'm going to have."
+
+I interpreted his expression then as amused cynicism. But I see a different
+meaning in it now. And I can recall his tone, can find a strained note
+which then escaped me in his usual mocking drawl.
+
+"To marry?" said he. "I haven't heard of that."
+
+"Nor no one else," said I.
+
+"Except her," said he.
+
+"Not even except her," said I. "But I've got my eye on her--and you know
+what that means with me."
+
+"Yes, I know," drawled he. Then he added, with a curious twinkle which I do
+not now misunderstand: "We have somewhat the same weakness."
+
+"I shouldn't call it a weakness," said I. "It's the quality that makes the
+chief difference between us and the common run--the fellows that have no
+purposes beyond getting comfortably through each day--"
+
+"And getting real happiness," he interrupted, with just a tinge of
+bitterness.
+
+"We wouldn't think it happiness," was my answer.
+
+"The worse for us," he replied. "We're under the tyranny of to-morrow--and
+happiness is impossible."
+
+"May I look at your bedroom?" I asked.
+
+"Certainly," he assented.
+
+I pushed open the door he indicated. At first glimpse I was disappointed.
+The big room looked like a section of a hospital ward. It wasn't until
+I had taken a second and very careful look at the tiled floor, walls,
+ceiling, that I noted that those plain smooth tiles were of the very
+finest, were probably of his own designing, certainly had been imported
+from some great Dutch or German kiln. Not an inch of drapery, not a
+picture, nothing that could hold dust or germs anywhere; a square of
+sanitary matting by the bed; another square opposite an elaborate
+exercising machine. The bed was of the simplest metallic construction--but
+I noted that the metal was the finest bronze. On it was a thin, hard
+mattress. You could wash the big room down and out with the hose, without
+doing any damage.
+
+"Quite a contrast," said I, glancing from the one room to the other.
+
+"My architect is a crank on sanitation," he explained, from his lounge.
+
+I noted that the windows were huge--to admit floods of light--and that
+they were hermetically sealed so that the air should be only the pure air
+supplied from the ventilating apparatus. To many people that room would
+have seemed a cheaply got together cell; to me, once I had examined it, it
+was evidently built at enormous cost and represented an extravagance of
+common-sense luxury which was more than princely or royal.
+
+Suddenly my mind reverted to my business. "How do you account for the
+steadiness of Textile, Langdon?" I asked, returning to the carved
+sitting-room and trying to put those surroundings out of my mind.
+
+"I don't account for it," was his languid, uninterested reply.
+
+"Any of your people under the market?"
+
+"It isn't to my interest to have it supported, is it?" he replied.
+
+"I know that," I admitted. "But why doesn't it drop?"
+
+"Those letters of yours may have overeducated the public in confidence,"
+suggested he. "Your followers have the habit of believing implicitly
+whatever you say."
+
+"Yes, but I haven't written a line about Textile for nearly a month now," I
+pretended to object, my vanity fairly purring with pleasure.
+
+"That's the only reason I can give," said he.
+
+"You are sure none of your people is supporting the stock?" I asked, as a
+form and not for information; for I thought I knew they weren't--I trusted
+him to have seen to that.
+
+"I'd like to get my holdings back," said he. "I can't buy until it's down.
+And I know none of my people would dare support it."
+
+You will notice he did not say directly that he was not himself supporting
+the market; he simply so answered me that I, not suspecting him, would
+think he reassured me. There is another of those mysteries of conscience.
+Had it been necessary, Langdon would have told me the lie flat and direct,
+would have told it without a tremor of the voice or a blink of the eye,
+would have lied to me as I have heard him, and almost all the big fellows,
+lie under oath before courts and legislative committees; yet, so long as it
+was possible, he would thus lie to me with lies that were not lies. As if
+negative lies are not falser and more cowardly than positive lies, because
+securer and more deceptive.
+
+"Well, then, the price must break," said I, "It won't be many days before
+the public begins to realize that there isn't anybody under Textile."
+
+"No sharp break!" he said carelessly. "No panic!"
+
+"I'll see to that," replied I, with not a shadow of a notion of the
+subtlety behind his warning.
+
+"I hope it will break soon," he then said, adding in his friendliest voice
+with what I now know was malignant treachery: "You owe it to me to bring it
+down." That meant that he wished me to increase my already far too heavy
+and dangerous line of shorts.
+
+Just then a voice--a woman's voice--came from the salon. "May I come in? Do
+I interrupt?" it said, and its tone struck me as having in it something of
+plaintive appeal.
+
+"Excuse me a moment, Blacklock," said he, rising with what was for him
+haste.
+
+But he was too late. The woman entered, searching the room with a piercing,
+suspicious gaze. At once I saw, behind that look, a jealousy that pounced
+on every object that came into its view, and studied it with a hope that
+feared and a fear that hoped. When her eyes had toured the room, they
+paused upon him, seemed to be saying: "You've baffled me again, but I'm not
+discouraged. I shall catch you yet."
+
+"Well, my dear?" said Langdon, whom she seemed faintly to amuse. "It's only
+Mr. Blacklock. Mr. Blacklock, my wife."
+
+I bowed; she looked coldly at me, and her slight nod was more than a hint
+that she wished to be left alone with her husband.
+
+I said to him: "Well, I'll be off. Thank you for--"
+
+"One moment," he interrupted. Then to his wife: "Anything special?"
+
+She flushed. "No--nothing special. I just came to see you. But if I am
+disturbing you--as usual--"
+
+"Not at all," said he. "When Blacklock and I have finished, I'll come to
+you. It won't be longer than an hour--or so."
+
+"Is that all?" she said almost savagely. Evidently she was one of those
+women who dare not make "scenes" with their husbands in private and so are
+compelled to take advantage of the presence of strangers to ease their
+minds. She was an extremely pretty woman, would have been beautiful but for
+the worn, strained, nervous look that probably came from her jealousy. She
+was small in stature; her figure was approaching that stage at which a
+woman is called "well rounded" by the charitable, fat by the frank and
+accurate. A few years more and she would be hunting down and destroying
+early photographs. There was in the arrangement of her hair and in the
+details of her toilet--as well as in her giving way to her tendency to
+fat--that carelessness that so many women allow themselves, once they are
+safely married to a man they care for.
+
+"Curious," thought I, "that being married to him should make her feel
+secure enough of him to let herself go, although her instinct is warning
+her all the time that she isn't in the least sure of him. Her laziness must
+be stronger than her love--her laziness or her vanity."
+
+While I was thus sizing her up, she was reluctantly leaving. She didn't
+even give me the courtesy of a bow--whether from self-absorption or from
+haughtiness I don't know; probably from both. She was a Western woman,
+and when those Western women do become perverts to New York's gospel of
+snobbishness, they are the worst snobs in the push. Langdon, regardless of
+my presence, looked after her with a faintly amused, faintly contemptuous
+expression that--well, it didn't fit in with _my_ notion of what
+constitutes a gentleman. In fact, I didn't know which of them had come off
+the worse in that brief encounter in my presence. It was my first glimpse
+of a fashionable behind-the-scenes, and it made a profound impression upon
+me--an impression that has grown deeper as I have learned how much of the
+typical there was in it. Dirt looks worse in the midst of finery than where
+one naturally expects to find it--looks worse, and is worse.
+
+When we were seated again, Langdon, after a few reflective puffs at his
+cigarette, said: "So you're about to marry?"
+
+"I hope so," said I. "But as I haven't asked her yet, I can't be quite
+sure." For obvious reasons I wasn't so enamored of the idea of matrimony as
+I had been a few minutes before.
+
+"I trust you're making a sensible marriage," said he. "If the part that may
+be glamour should by chance rub clean away, there ought to be something to
+make one feel he wasn't wholly an ass."
+
+"Very sensible," I replied with emphasis. "I want the woman. I need her."
+
+He inspected the coal of his cigarette, lifting his eyebrows at it.
+Presently he said: "And she?"
+
+"I don't know how she feels about it--as I told you," I replied curtly. In
+spite of myself, my eyes shifted and my skin began to burn. "By the way,
+Langdon, what's the name of your architect?"
+
+"Wilder and Marcy," said he. "They're fairly satisfactory, if you tell
+'em exactly what you want and watch 'em all the time. They're perfectly
+conventional and so can't distinguish between originality that's artistic
+and originality that's only bizarre. They're like most people--they keep to
+the beaten track and fight tooth and nail against being drawn out of it and
+against those who do go out of it."
+
+"I'll have a talk with Marcy this very day," said I.
+
+"Oh, you're in a hurry!" He laughed. "And you haven't asked her. You remind
+me of that Greek philosopher who was in love with Lais. They asked him:
+'But does she love you?' And he said: 'One does not inquire of the fish one
+likes whether it likes one.'"
+
+I flushed. "You'll pardon me, Langdon," said I, "but I don't like that. It
+isn't my attitude at all toward--the right sort of women."
+
+He looked half-quizzical, half-apologetic. "Ah, to be sure," said he. "I
+forgot you weren't a married man."
+
+"I don't think I'll ever lose the belief that there's a quality in a good
+woman for a man to--to respect and look up to."
+
+"I envy you," said he, but his eyes were mocking still. I saw he was a
+little disdainful of my rebuking _him_--and angry at me, too.
+
+"Woman's a subject of conversation that men ought to avoid," said I
+easily--for, having set myself right, I felt I could afford to smooth him
+down.
+
+"Well, good-by--good luck--or, if I may be permitted to say it to one so
+touchy, the kind of luck you're bent on having, whether it's good or bad."
+
+"If my luck ain't good, I'll make it good," said I with a laugh.
+
+And so I left him, with a look in his eyes that came back to me long
+afterward when I realized the full meaning of that apparently almost
+commonplace interview.
+
+That same day I began to plunge on Textile, watching the market closely,
+that I might go more slowly should there be signs of a dangerous break--for
+no more than Langdon did I want a sudden panicky slump. The price held
+steady, however; but I, fool that I was, certain the fall must come,
+plunged on, digging the pit for my own destruction deeper and deeper.
+
+
+
+
+X. TWO "PILLARS OF SOCIETY"
+
+
+I was neither seeing nor hearing from the Ellerslys, father or son; but,
+as I knew why, I was not disquieted. I had made them temporarily easy in
+their finances just before that dinner, and they, being fatuous, incurable
+optimists, were probably imagining they would never need me again. I did
+not disturb them until Monson and I had got my education so well under
+way that even I, always severe in self-criticism and now merciless, was
+compelled to admit to myself a distinct change for the better. You know
+how it is with a boy at the "growing age"--how he bursts out of clothes
+and ideas of life almost as fast as they are supplied him, so swiftly is
+he transforming into a man. Well, I think it is much that way with us
+Americans all our lives; we continue on and on at the growing age. And
+if one of us puts his or her mind hard upon growth in some particular
+direction, you see almost overnight a development fledged to the last
+tail-feathers and tip of top-knot where there was nothing at all. What
+miracles can be wrought by an open mind and a keen sense of the cumulative
+power of the unwasted minute! All this apropos of a very trivial matter,
+you may be thinking. But, be careful how you judge what is trivial and what
+important in a universe built up of atoms.
+
+However--When my education seemed far enough advanced, I sent for Sam.
+He, after his footless fashion, didn't bother to acknowledge my note. His
+margin account with me was at the moment straight; I turned to his father.
+I had my cashier send him a formal, type-written letter signed Blacklock &
+Co., informing him that his account was overdrawn and that we "would be
+obliged if he would give the matter his immediate attention." The note must
+have reached him the following morning; but he did not come until, after
+waiting three days, "we" sent him a sharp demand for a check for the
+balance due us.
+
+A pleasing, aristocratic-looking figure he made as he entered my office,
+with his air of the man whose hands have never known the stains of toil,
+with his manner of having always received deferential treatment. There
+was no pretense in my curt greeting, my tone of "despatch your business,
+sir, and be gone"; for I was both busy and much irritated against him.
+"I guess you want to see our cashier," said I, after giving him a hasty,
+absent-minded hand-shake. "My boy out there will take you to him."
+
+The old do-nothing's face lost its confident, condescending expression. His
+lip quivered, and I think there were tears in his bad, dim, gray-green
+eyes. I suppose he thought his a profoundly pathetic case; no doubt he
+hadn't the remotest conception what he really was--and no doubt, also,
+there are many who would honestly take his view. As if the fact that he
+was born with all possible advantages did not make him and his plight
+inexcusable. It passes my comprehension why people of his sort, when
+suffering from the calamities they have deliberately brought upon
+themselves by laziness and self-indulgence and extravagance, should get
+a sympathy that is withheld from those of the honest human rank and file
+falling into far more real misfortunes not of their own making.
+
+"No, my dear Blacklock," said he, cringing now as easily as he had
+condescended--how to cringe and how to condescend are taught at the same
+school, the one he had gone to all his life. "It is you I want to talk
+with. And, first, I owe you my apologies. I know you'll make allowances
+for one who was never trained to business methods. I've always been like a
+child in those matters."
+
+"You frighten me," said I. "The last 'gentleman' who came throwing me off
+my guard with that plea was shrewd enough to get away with a very large
+sum of my hard-earned money. Besides"--and I was laughing, though not too
+good-naturedly--"I've noticed that you 'gentlemen' become vague about
+business only when the balance is against you. When it's in your favor, you
+manage to get your minds on business long enough to collect to the last
+fraction of a cent."
+
+He heartily echoed my laugh. "I only wish I _were_ clever," said he.
+"However, I've come to ask your indulgence. I'd have been here before,
+but those who owe me have been putting me off. And they're of the sort of
+people whom it's impossible to press."
+
+"I'd like to accommodate you further," said I, shedding that last little
+hint as a cliff sheds rain, "but your account has been in an unsatisfactory
+state for nearly a month now."
+
+"I'm sure you'll give me a few days longer," was his easy reply, as if we
+were discussing a trifle. "By the way, you haven't been to see us yet. Only
+this morning my wife was wondering when you'd come. You quite captivated
+her, Blacklock. Can't you dine with us to-morrow night--no, Sunday--at
+eight? We're having in a few people I think you'd like to meet."
+
+If any one imagines that this bald, businesslike way of putting it set
+my teeth on edge, let him dismiss the idea; my nerves had been too long
+accustomed to the feel of the harsh facts of life. It is evidence of the
+shrewdness of the old fellow at character-reading that he wasted none of
+his silk and velvet pretenses upon me, and so saved his time and mine.
+Probably he wished me to see that I need have no timidity or false shame in
+dealing with him, that when the time came to talk business I was free to
+talk it in my own straight fashion.
+
+"Glad to come," said I, wishing to be rid of him, now that my point was
+gained. "We'll let the account stand open for the present--I rather think
+your stocks are going up. Give my regards to--the ladies, please,
+especially to Miss Anita."
+
+He winced, but thanked me graciously; gave me his soft, fine hand to shake
+and departed, as eager to be off as I to be rid of him. "Sunday next--at
+eight," were his last words. "Don't fail us"--that in the tone of a king
+addressing some obscure person whom he had commanded to court. It may be
+that old Ellersly was wholly unconscious of his superciliousness, fancied
+he was treating me as if I were almost an equal; but I suspect he rather
+accentuated his natural manner, with the idea of impressing upon me that
+in our deal he was giving at least as much as I.
+
+I recall that I thought about him for several minutes after he was
+gone--philosophized on the folly of a man's deliberately weaving a net to
+entangle himself. As if any man was ever caught in any net not of his own
+weaving and setting; as if I myself were not just then working at the last
+row of meshes of a net in which I was to ensnare myself.
+
+My petty and inevitable success with that helpless creature added
+amazingly, ludicrously, to that dangerous elation which, as I can now see,
+had been growing in me ever since the day Roebuck yielded so readily to my
+demands as to National Coal. The whole trouble with me was that up to that
+time I had won all my victories by the plainest kind of straightaway hard
+work. I was imagining myself victor in contests of wit against wit, when,
+in fact, no one with any especial equipment of brains had ever opposed me;
+all the really strong men had been helping me because they found me useful.
+Too easy success--there is the clue to the wild folly of my performances in
+those days, a folly that seems utterly inconsistent with the reputation for
+shrewdness I had, and seemed to have earned.
+
+I can find a certain small amount of legitimate excuse for my falling under
+Langdon's spell. He had, and has, fascinations, through personal magnetism,
+which it is hardly in human nature to resist. But for my self-hypnotism in
+the case of Roebuck, I find no excuse whatever for myself.
+
+He sent for me and told me what share in National Coal they had decided to
+give me for my Manasquale mines. "Langdon and Melville," said he, "think me
+too liberal; far too liberal, my boy. But I insisted--in your case I felt
+we could afford to be generous as well as just." All this with an air that
+was a combination of the pastor and the parent.
+
+I can't even offer the excuse of not having seen that he was a hypocrite.
+I felt his hypocrisy at once, and my first impulse was to jump for my
+breastworks. But instantly my vanity got behind me, held me in the open,
+pushed me on toward him. If you will notice, almost all "confidence" games
+rely for success chiefly upon enlisting a man's vanity to play the traitor
+to his judgment. So, instead of reading his liberality as plain proof of
+intended treachery, I read it as plain proof of my own greatness, and of
+the fear it had inspired in old Roebuck. Laugh _with_ me if you like;
+but, before you laugh _at_ me, think carefully--those of you who have
+ever put yourselves to the test on the field of action--think carefully
+whether you have never found that your head decoration which you thought a
+crown was in reality the peaked and belled cap of the fool.
+
+But my vanity was not done with me. Led on by it, I proceeded to have one
+of those ridiculous "generous impulses"--I persuaded myself that there must
+be some decency in this liberality, in addition to the prudence which I
+flattered myself was the chief cause. "I have been unjust to Roebuck," I
+thought. "I have been misjudging his character." And incredible though it
+seems, I said to him with a good deal of genuine emotion: "I don't know
+how to thank you, Mr. Roebuck. And, instead of trying, I want to apologize
+to you. I have thought many hard things against you; have spoken some of
+them. I had better have been attending to my own conscience, instead of
+criticizing yours."
+
+I had often thought his face about the most repulsive, hypocrisy-glozed
+concourse of evil passions that ever fronted a fiend in the flesh. It had
+seemed to me the fitting result of a long career which, according to common
+report, was stained with murder, with rapacity and heartless cruelty, with
+the most brutal secret sensuality, and which had left in its wake the ruins
+of lives and hearts and fortunes innumerable. I had looked on the vast
+wealth he had heaped mountain high as a monument to devil-daring--other men
+had, no doubt, dreamed of doing the ferocious things he had done, but their
+weak, human hearts failed when it came to executing such horrible acts, and
+they had to be content with smaller fortunes, with the comparatively small
+fruits of their comparatively small infamies. He had dared all, had won;
+the most powerful bowed with quaking knees before him, and trembled lest
+they might, by a blundering look or word, excite his anger and cause him to
+snatch their possessions from them.
+
+Thus I had regarded him, accepting the universal judgment, believing the
+thousand and one stories. But as his eyes, softened by his hugely generous
+act, beamed upon me now, I was amazed that I had so misjudged him. In that
+face which I had thought frightful there was, to my hypnotized gaze, the
+look of strong, sincere--yes, holy--beauty and power--the look of an
+archangel.
+
+"Thank you, Blacklock," said he, in a voice that made me feel as if I were
+a little boy in the crossroads church, believing I could almost see the
+angels floating above the heads of the singers in the choir behind the
+preacher. "Thank you. I am not surprised that you have misjudged me. God
+has given me a great work to do, and those who do His will in this wicked
+world must expect martyrdom. I should never have had the courage to do what
+I have done, what He has done through me, had He not guided my every step.
+You are not a religious man?"
+
+"I try to do what's square," said I. "But I'd prefer not to talk about it."
+
+"That's right! That's right!" he approved earnestly. "A man's religion is
+a matter between himself and his God. But I hope, Matthew, you will never
+forget that, unless you have daily, hourly communion with Almighty God,
+you will never be able to bear the great burdens, to do the great work
+fearlessly, disregarding the lies of the wicked, and, hardest of all to
+endure, the honestly-mistaken judgments of honest men."
+
+"I'll look into it," said I. And I don't know to what lengths of foolish
+speech I should have gone had I not been saved by an office boy
+interrupting with a card for him.
+
+"Ah, here's Walters now," said he. Then to the boy: "Bring him in when I
+ring."
+
+I rose to go.
+
+"No, sit down, Blacklock," he insisted. "You are in with us now, and you
+may learn something by seeing how I deal with the larger problems that face
+men in these large undertakings, the problems that have faced me in each
+new enterprise I have inaugurated to the glory of God."
+
+Naturally, I accepted with enthusiasm.
+
+You would not believe what a mood I had by this time been worked into by my
+rampant and raging vanity and emotionalism and by his snake-like charming.
+"Thank you," I said, with an energetic warmth that must have secretly
+amused him mightily.
+
+"When my reorganization of the iron industry proved such a great success,
+and God rewarded my labors with large returns," he went on, "I looked
+about me to see what new work He wished me to undertake, how He wished me
+to invest His profits. And I saw the coal industry and the coal-carrying
+railroads in confusion, with waste on every side, and godless competition.
+Thousands of widows and orphans who had invested in coal railways and mines
+were getting no returns. Labor was fitfully employed, owing to alternations
+of over-production and no production at all. I saw my work ready for my
+hand. And now we are bringing order out of chaos. This man Walters, useful
+up to a certain point, has become insolent, corrupt, a stumbling-block in
+our way." Here he pressed the button of his electric bell.
+
+
+
+
+XI. WHEN A MAN IS NOT A MAN
+
+
+Walters entered. He was one of the great railway presidents, was
+universally regarded as a power, though I, of course, knew that he, like so
+many other presidents of railways, of individual corporations, of banks,
+of insurance companies, and high political officials in cities, states
+and the nation, was little more than a figurehead put up and used by the
+inside financial ring. As he shifted from leg to leg, holding his hat and
+trying to steady his twitching upper lip, he looked as one of his smallest
+section-bosses would have looked, if called up for a wigging.
+
+Roebuck shook hands cordially with him, responded to his nervous glance at
+me with:
+
+"Blacklock is practically in our directory." We all sat, then Roebuck began
+in his kindliest tone:
+
+"We have decided, Walters, that we must give your place to a stronger man.
+Your gross receipts, outside of coal, have fallen rapidly and steadily for
+the past three quarters. You were put into the presidency to bring them
+up. They have shown no change beyond what might have been expected in the
+natural fluctuations of freight. We calculated on resuming dividends a year
+ago. We have barely been able to meet the interest on our bonds."
+
+"But, Mr. Roebuck," pleaded Walters, "you doubled the bonded indebtedness
+of the road just before I took charge."
+
+"The money went into improvements, into increasing your facilities, did it
+not?" inquired Roebuck, his paw as soft as a playful tiger's.
+
+"Part of it," said Walters. "But you remember the reorganizing syndicate
+got five millions, and then the contracts for the new work had to be given
+to construction companies in which directors of the road were silent
+partners. Then they are interested in the supply companies from which I
+must buy. You know what all that means, Mr. Roebuck."
+
+"No doubt," said Roebuck, still smooth and soft. "But if there was waste,
+you should have reported--"
+
+"To whom?" demanded Walters. "Every one of our directors, including
+yourself, Mr. Roebuck, is a stock-holder--a large stock-holder--in one or
+more of those companies."
+
+"Have you proof of this, Walters?" asked Roebuck, looking profoundly
+shocked. "It's a very grave charge--a criminal charge."
+
+"Proof?" said Walters, "You know how that is. The real books of all big
+companies are kept in the memories of the directors--and mighty treacherous
+memories they are." This with a nervous laugh. "As for the holdings of
+directors in construction and supply companies--most of those holdings are
+in other names--all of them are disguised where the connection is direct."
+
+Roebuck shook his head sadly. "You admit, then, that you have allowed
+millions of the road's money to be wasted, that you made no complaint, no
+effort to stop the waste; and your only defense is that you _suspect_
+the directors of fraud. And you accuse them to excuse yourself--accuse them
+with no proof. Were you in any of those companies, Walters?"
+
+"No," he said, his eyes shifting.
+
+Roebuck's face grew stern. "You bought two hundred thousand dollars of the
+last issue of government bonds, they tell me, with your two years' profits
+from the Western Railway Construction Company."
+
+"I bought no bonds," blustered Walters. "What money I have I made out of
+speculating in the stock of my road--on legitimate inside information."
+
+"Your uncle in Wilkesbarre, I meant," pursued Roebuck.
+
+Walters reddened, looked straight at Roebuck without speaking.
+
+"Do you still deny?" demanded Roebuck.
+
+"I saw everybody--_everybody_--grafting," said Walters boldly, "and
+I thought I might as well take my share. It's part of the business." Then
+he added cynically: "That's the way it is nowadays. The lower ones see
+the higher ones raking off, and they rake off, too--down to conductors
+and brakemen. We caught some trackwalkers in a conspiracy to dispose
+of the discarded ties and rails the other day." He laughed. "We jailed
+_them_."
+
+"If you can show that any director has taken anything that did not belong
+to him, if you can show that a single contract you let to a construction or
+a supply company--except, of course, the contracts you let to yourself--of
+them I know nothing, suspect much--if you can show one instance of these
+criminal doings, Mr. Walters, I shall back you up with all my power in
+prosecution."
+
+"Of course I can't show it," cried Walters. "If I tried, wouldn't they ruin
+and disgrace me, perhaps send me to the penitentiary? Wasn't I the one that
+passed on and signed their contracts? And wouldn't they--wouldn't you, Mr.
+Roebuck--have fired me if I had refused to sign?"
+
+"Excuses, excuses, Walters," was Roebuck's answer, with a sad, disappointed
+look, as if he had hoped Walters would make a brighter showing for himself.
+"How many times have you yourself talked to me of this eternal excuse habit
+of men who fail? And if I expended my limited brain-power in looking into
+all the excuses and explanations, what energy or time would I have for
+constructive work? All I can do is to select a man for a position and to
+judge him by results. You were put in charge to produce dividends. You
+haven't produced them. I'm sorry, and I venture to hope that things are not
+so bad as you make out in your eagerness to excuse yourself. For the sake
+of old times, Tom, I ignore your angry insinuations against me. I try to be
+just, and to be just one must always be impersonal."
+
+"Well," said Walters with an air of desperation, "give me another year, Mr.
+Roebuck, and I'll produce results all right. I'll break the agreements and
+cut rates. I'll freeze out the branch roads and our minority stock-holders,
+I'll keep the books so that all the expert accountants in New York couldn't
+untangle them. I'll wink at and commit and order committed all the
+necessary crimes. I don't know why I've been so squeamish, when there were
+so many penitentiary offenses that I did consent to, and, for that matter,
+commit, without a quiver. I thought I ought to draw the line somewhere--and
+I drew it at keeping my personal word and at keeping the books reasonably
+straight. But I'll go the limit."
+
+I'll never forget Roebuck's expression; it was perfect, simply perfect--a
+great and good man outraged beyond endurance, but a Christian still. "You
+have made it impossible for me to temper justice with mercy, Walters," said
+he. "If it were not for the long years of association, for the affection
+for you which has grown up in me, I should hand you over to the fate you
+have earned. You tell me you have been committing crimes in my service. You
+tell me you will commit more and greater crimes. I can scarcely believe my
+own ears."
+
+Walters laughed scornfully--the reckless laugh of a man who suddenly sees
+that he is cornered and must fight for his life. "Rot!" he jeered. "Rot!
+You always have been a wonder at juggling with your conscience. But do
+you expect me to believe you think yourself innocent because you do not
+yourself execute the orders you issue--orders that can be carried out only
+by committing crimes?" Walters was now beside himself with rage. He gave
+the reins to that high horse he had been riding ever since he was promoted
+to the presidency of the great coal road. He began to lay on whip and spur.
+"Do you think," he cried to Roebuck, "the blood of those five hundred men
+drowned in the Pequot mine is not on _your_ hands--_your_ head?
+You, who ordered John Wilkinson to suppress the competition the Pequot was
+giving you, ordered him in such a way that he knew the alternative was his
+own ruin? He shot himself--yet he had as good an excuse as you, for he,
+too, passed on the order until it got to the poor fireman--that wretched
+fellow they sent to the penitentiary for life? And as sure as there is
+a God in Heaven, you will some day do a long, long sentence in whatever
+hell there is, for letting that wretch rot in prison--yes, and for John
+Wilkinson's suicide, and for the lives of those five hundred drowned. Your
+pensions to the widows and orphans can't save you."
+
+I listened to this tirade astounded. Used as I was to men losing their
+heads through vanity, I could not credit my own ears and eyes when they
+reported to me this insane exhibition. I looked at Roebuck. He was wearing
+an expression of beatific patience; he would have made a fine study for a
+picture of the martyr at the stake.
+
+"I forgive you, Tom," he said, when Walters stopped for breath. "Your own
+sinful heart makes you see the black of sin upon everything. I had heard
+that you were going about making loud boasts of your power over your
+employers, but I tried not to believe it. I see now that you have, indeed,
+lost your senses. Your prosperity has been too much for your good sense."
+He sighed mournfully. "I shall not interfere to prevent your getting a
+position elsewhere," he continued. "But after what you have confessed,
+after your slanders, how can I put you back in your old place out West, as
+I intended? How can I continue the interest in you and care for your career
+that I have had, in spite of all your shortcomings? I who raised you up
+from a clerk."
+
+"Raised me up as you fellows always raise men up--because you find them
+clever at doing your dirty work. I was a decent, honest fellow when you
+first took notice of me and tempted me. But, by God, Mr. Roebuck, if I've
+sold out beyond hope of living decent again, I'll have my price--to the
+last cent. You've got to leave me where I am or give me a place and salary
+equally as good." This Walters said blusteringly, but beneath I could
+detect the beginnings of a whine.
+
+"You are angry, Tom," said Roebuck soothingly. "I have hurt your vanity--it
+is one of the heaviest crosses I have to bear, that I must be continually
+hurting the vanity of men. Go away and--and calm down. Think the situation
+over coolly; then come and apologize to me, and I will do what I can to
+help you. As for your threats--when you are calm, you will see how idle
+they are."
+
+Walters gave a sort of groan; and though I, blinded by my prejudices in
+favor of Roebuck and of the crowd with whom my interests lay, had been
+feeling that he was an impudent and crazy ingrate, I pitied him.
+
+"What proofs have I got?" he said desperately. "If I show up the things I
+know about, I show up myself, and everybody will say I'm lying about you
+and the others in the effort to save myself. The newspapers would denounce
+me as a treacherous liar--you fellows own or control or foozle them in
+one way and another. And if I was believed, who'd prosecute you and what
+court'd condemn you? Don't you own both political parties and make all the
+tickets, and can't you ruin any office-holders who lifted a finger against
+you? What a hell of a state of affairs!"
+
+A swifter or a weaker descent I never witnessed. My pity changed to
+contempt. "This fellow, with his great reputation," thought I, "is a fool
+and a knave, and a weak one at that."
+
+"Go away now, Tom," said Roebuck.
+
+"When you're master of yourself again, come to see me."
+
+"Master of myself!" cried Walters bitterly. "Who that's got anything to
+lose is master of himself in this country?" With shoulders sagging and a
+sort of stumble in his gait, he went toward the door. He paused there to
+say: "I've served too long, Mr. Roebuck. There's no fight in me. I thought
+there was, but there ain't. Do the best you can for me." And he took
+himself out of our sight.
+
+You will wonder how I was ever able to blind myself to the reality of this
+frightful scene. But please remember that in this world every thought and
+every act is a mixture of the good and the bad; and the one or the other
+shows the more prominently according to one's point of view. There probably
+isn't a criminal in any cell, anywhere, no matter what he may say in
+sniveling pretense in the hope of lighter sentence, who doesn't at the
+bottom of his heart believe his crime or crimes somehow justifiable--and
+who couldn't make out a plausible case for himself.
+
+At that time I was stuffed with the arrogance of my fancied membership in
+the caste of directing financial geniuses; I was looking at everything
+from the viewpoint of the brotherhood of which Roebuck was the strongest
+brother, and of which I imagined myself a full and equal member. I did not,
+I could not, blind myself to the vivid reminders of his relentlessness; but
+I knew too well how necessary the iron hand and the fixed purpose are to
+great affairs to judge him as infuriated Walters, with his vanity savagely
+wounded, was judging him. I'd as soon have thought of describing General
+Grant as a murderer, because he ordered the battles in which men were
+killed or because he planned and led the campaigns in which subordinates
+committed rapine and pillage and assassination. I did not then see the
+radical difference--did not realize that while Grant's work was at the
+command of patriotism and necessity, there was no necessity whatever
+for Roebuck's getting rich but the command of his own greedy and cruel
+appetites.
+
+Don't misunderstand me. My morals are practical, not theoretical. Men must
+die, old customs embodied in law must be broken, the venal must be bribed
+and the weak cowed and compelled, in order that civilization may advance.
+You can't establish a railway or a great industrial system by rose-water
+morality. But I shall show, before I finish, that Roebuck and his gang of
+so-called "organizers of industry" bear about the same relation to industry
+that the boll weevil bears to the cotton crop.
+
+I'll withdraw this, if any one can show me that, as the result of the
+activities of those parasites, anybody anywhere is using or is able to
+use a single pound or bushel or yard more of any commodity whatsoever.
+I'll withdraw it, if I can not show that but for those parasites, bearing
+precisely the same relation to our society that the kings and nobles
+and priests bore to France before the Revolution, everybody except them
+would have more goods and more money than they have under the system that
+enables these parasites to overshadow the highways of commerce with their
+strongholds and to clog them with their toll-gates. They know little about
+producing, about manufacturing, about distributing, about any process of
+industry. Their skill is in temptation, in trickery and in terror.
+
+On that day, however, I sided--honestly, as I thought--with Roebuck. What
+I saw and heard increased my admiration of the man, my already profound
+respect for his master mind. And when, just after Walters went out, he
+leaned back in his chair and sat silent with closed eyes and moving lips,
+I--yes, I, Matt Blacklock, "Black Matt," as they call me--was awed in the
+presence of this great and good man at prayer!
+
+How he and that God of his must have laughed at me! So infatuated was I
+that, clear as it is that he'd never have let me be present at such a scene
+without a strong ulterior motive, not until he himself long afterward
+made it impossible for me to deceive myself did I penetrate to his real
+purpose--that he wished to fill me with a prudent dread and fear of him,
+with a sense of the absoluteness of his power and of the hopelessness of
+trying to combat it. But at the time I thought--imbecile that my vanity
+had made me--at the time I thought he had let me be present because he
+genuinely liked, admired and trusted me!
+
+Is it not amazing that one who could fall into such colossal blunders
+should survive to tell of them? I would not have survived had not Roebuck
+and his crowd been at the same time making an even more colossal
+misestimate of me than I was making of them. My attack of vanity was
+violent, but temporary; theirs was equally violent, and chronic and
+incurable to boot.
+
+
+
+
+XII. ANITA
+
+
+On my first day in long trousers I may have been more ill at ease than I
+was that Sunday evening at the Ellerslys'; but I doubt it.
+
+When I came into their big drawing-room and took a look round at the
+assembled guests, I never felt more at home in my life. "Yes," said I
+to myself, as Mrs. Ellersly was greeting me and as I noted the friendly
+interest in the glances of the women, "this is where I belong. I'm
+beginning to come into my own."
+
+As I look back on it now, I can't refrain from smiling at my own
+simplicity--and snobbishness. For, so determined was I to believe what
+I was working for was worth while, that I actually fancied there were
+upon these in reality ordinary people, ordinary in looks, ordinary in
+intelligence, some subtle marks of superiority, that made them at a glance
+superior to the common run. This ecstasy of snobbishness deluded me as to
+the women only--for, as I looked at the men, I at once felt myself their
+superior. They were an inconsequential, patterned lot. I even was better
+dressed than any of them, except possibly Mowbray Langdon; and, if he
+showed to more advantage than I, it was because of his manner, which, as I
+have probably said before, is superior to that of any human being I've ever
+seen--man or woman.
+
+"You are to take Anita in," said Mrs. Ellersly. With a laughable sense that
+I was doing myself proud, I crossed the room easily and took my stand in
+front of her. She shook hands with me politely enough. Langdon was sitting
+beside her; I had interrupted their conversation.
+
+"Hello, Blacklock!" said Langdon, with a quizzical, satirical smile with
+the eyes only. "It seems strange to see you at such peaceful pursuits."
+His glance traveled over me critically--and that was the beginning of my
+trouble. Presently, he rose, left me alone with her.
+
+"You know Mr. Langdon?" she said, obviously because she felt she must say
+something.
+
+"Oh, yes," I replied. "We are old friends. What a tremendous swell he
+is--really a swell." This with enthusiasm.
+
+She made no comment. I debated with myself whether to go on talking of
+Langdon. I decided against it because all I knew of him had to do with
+matters down town--and Monson had impressed it upon me that down town was
+taboo in the drawing-room. I rummaged my brain in vain for another and
+suitable topic.
+
+She sat, and I stood--she tranquil and beautiful and cold, I every instant
+more miserably self-conscious. When the start for the dining-room was
+made I offered her my left arm, though I had carefully planned beforehand
+just what I would do. She--without hesitation and, as I know now, out of
+sympathy for me in my suffering--was taking my wrong arm, when it flashed
+on me like a blinding blow in the face that I ought to be on the other side
+of her. I got red, tripped in the far-sprawling train of Mrs. Langdon, tore
+it slightly, tried to get to the other side of Miss Ellersly by walking in
+front of her, recovered myself somehow, stumbled round behind her, walked
+on her train and finally arrived at her left side, conscious in every
+red-hot atom of me that I was making a spectacle of myself and that the
+whole company was enjoying it. I must have seemed to them an ignorant
+boor; in fact, I had been about a great deal among people who knew how to
+behave, and had I never given the matter of how to conduct myself on that
+particular occasion an instant's thought, I should have got on without the
+least trouble.
+
+It was with a sigh of profound relief that I sank upon the chair between
+Miss Ellersly and Mrs. Langdon, safe from danger of making "breaks,"
+so I hoped, for the rest of the evening. But within a very few minutes
+I realized that my little misadventure had unnerved me. My hands were
+trembling so that I could scarcely lift the soup spoon to my lips, and my
+throat had got so far beyond control that I had difficulty in swallowing.
+Miss Ellersly and Mrs. Langdon were each busy with the man on the other
+side of her; I was left to my own reflections, and I was not sure whether
+this made me more or less uncomfortable. To add to my torment, I grew
+angry, furiously angry, with myself. I looked up and down and across the
+big table noted all these self-satisfied people perfectly at their ease;
+and I said to myself: "What's the matter with you, Matt? They're only men
+and women, and by no means the best specimens of the breed. You've got more
+brains than all of 'em put together, probably; is there one of the lot that
+could get a job at good wages if thrown on the world? What do you care
+what they think of you? It's a damn sight more important what you think of
+them; as it won't be many years before you'll hold everything they value,
+everything that makes them of consequence, in the hollow of your hand."
+
+But it was of no use. When Miss Ellersly finally turned her face toward
+me to indicate that she would be graciously pleased to listen if I had
+anything to communicate, I felt as if I were slowly wilting, felt my throat
+contracting into a dry twist. What was the matter with me? Partly, of
+course, my own snobbishness, which led me to attach the same importance to
+those people that the snobbishness of the small and silly had got them in
+the way of attaching to themselves. But the chief cause of my inability
+was Monson and his lessons. I had thought I was estimating at its proper
+value what he was teaching. But so earnest and serious am I by nature,
+and so earnest and serious was he about those trivialities that he had
+been brought up to regard as the whole of life, that I had unconsciously
+absorbed his attitude; I was like a fellow who, after cramming hard for
+an examination, finds that all the questions put to him are on things he
+hasn't looked at. I had been making an ass of myself, and that evening
+I got the first instalment of my sound and just punishment. I who had
+prided myself on being ready for anything or anybody, I who had laughed
+contemptuously when I read how men and women, presented at European courts,
+made fools of themselves--I was made ridiculous by these people who, as I
+well know, had nothing to back their pretensions to superiority but a
+barefaced bluff.
+
+Perhaps, had I thought this out at the table, I should have got back to
+myself and my normal ease; but I didn't, and that long and terrible dinner
+was one long and terrible agony of stage fright. When the ladies withdrew,
+the other men drew together, talking of people I did not know and of
+things I did not care about--I thought then that they were avoiding me
+deliberately as a flock of tame ducks avoids a wild one that some wind has
+accidentally blown down among them. I know now that my forbidding aspect
+must have been responsible for my isolations, However, I sat alone,
+sullenly resisting old Ellersly's constrained efforts to get me into
+the conversation, and angrily suspicious that Langdon was enjoying my
+discomfiture more than the cigarette he was apparently absorbed in.
+
+Old Ellersly, growing more and more nervous before my dark and sullen look,
+finally seated himself beside me. "I hope you'll stay after the others have
+gone," said he. "They'll leave early, and we can have a quiet smoke and
+talk."
+
+All unstrung though I was, I yet had the desperate courage to resolve that
+I'd not leave, defeated in the eyes of the one person whose opinion I
+really cared about. "Very well," said I, in reply to him.
+
+He and I did not follow the others to the drawing-room, but turned into
+the library adjoining. From where I seated myself I could see part of the
+drawing-room--saw the others leaving, saw Langdon lingering, ignoring
+the impatient glances of his wife, while he talked on and on with Miss
+Ellersly. Her face was full toward me; she was not aware that I was
+looking at her, I am sure, for she did not once lift her eyes. As I sat
+studying her, everything else was crowded out of my mind. She was indeed
+wonderful--too wonderful and fine and fragile, it seemed to me at that
+moment, for one so plain and rough as I. "Incredible," thought I, "that she
+is the child of such a pair as Ellersly and his wife--but again, has she
+any less in common with them than she'd have with any other pair of human
+creatures?" Her slender white arms, her slender white shoulders, the bloom
+on her skin, the graceful, careless way her hair grew round her forehead
+and at the nape of her neck, the rather haughty expression of her small
+face softened into sweetness and even tenderness, now that she was talking
+at her ease with one whom she regarded as of her own kind--"but he isn't!"
+I protested to myself. "Langdon--none of these men--none of these women,
+is fit to associate with her. They can't appreciate her. She belongs to me
+who can." And I had a mad impulse then and there to seize her and bear her
+away--home--to the home she could make for me out of what I would shower
+upon her.
+
+At last Langdon rose. It irritated me to see her color under that
+indifferent fascinating smile of his. It irritated me to note that he held
+her hand all the time he was saying good-by, and the fact that he held it
+as if he'd as lief not be holding it hardly lessened my longing to rush in
+and knock him down. What he did was all in the way of perfect good manners,
+and would have jarred no one not supersensitive, like me--and like his
+wife. I saw that she, too, was frowning. She looked beautiful that evening,
+in spite of her too great breadth for her height--her stoutness was not
+altogether a defect when she was wearing evening dress. While she seemed
+friendly and smiling to Miss Ellersly, I saw, whether others saw it or not,
+that she quivered with apprehension at his mildly flirtatious ways. He
+acted toward any and every attractive woman as if he were free and were
+regarding her as a possibility, and didn't mind if she flattered herself
+that he regarded her as a probability.
+
+In an aimless sort of way Miss Ellersly, after the Langdons had
+disappeared, left the drawing-room by the same door. Still aimlessly
+wandering, she drifted into the library by the hall door. As I rose, she
+lifted her eyes, saw me, and drove away the frown of annoyance which came
+over her face like the faintest haze. In fact, it may have existed only in
+my imagination. She opened a large, square silver box on the table, took
+out a cigarette, lighted it and holding it, with the smoke lazily curling
+up from it, between the long slender first and second fingers of her white
+hand, stood idly turning the leaves of a magazine. I threw my cigar into
+the fireplace. The slight sound as it struck made her jump, and I saw that,
+underneath her surface of perfect calm, she was in a nervous state full as
+tense as my own.
+
+"You smoke?" said I.
+
+"Sometimes," she replied. "It is soothing and distracting. I don't know how
+it is with others, but when I smoke, my mind is quite empty."
+
+"It's a nasty habit--smoking," said I.
+
+"Do you think so?" said she, with the slightest lift to her tone and her
+eyebrows.
+
+"Especially for a woman," I went on, because I could think of nothing else
+to say, and would not, at any cost, let this conversation, so hard to
+begin, die out.
+
+"You are one of those men who have one code for themselves and another for
+women," she replied.
+
+"I'm a man," said I. "All men have the two codes."
+
+"Not all," said she after a pause.
+
+"All men of decent ideas," said I with emphasis.
+
+"Really?" said she, in a tone that irritated me by suggesting that what I
+said was both absurd and unimportant.
+
+"It is the first time I've ever seen a respectable woman smoke," I went on,
+powerless to change the subject, though conscious I was getting tedious.
+"I've read of such things, but I didn't believe."
+
+"That is interesting," said she, her tone suggesting the reverse.
+
+"I've offended you by saying frankly what I think," said I. "Of course,
+it's none of my business."
+
+"Oh, no," replied she carelessly. "I'm not in the least offended.
+Prejudices always interest me."
+
+I saw Ellersly and his wife sitting in the drawing-room, pretending to
+talk to each other. I understood that they were leaving me alone with her
+deliberately, and I began to suspect she was in the plot. I smiled, and my
+courage and self-possession returned as summarily as they had fled.
+
+"I'm glad of this chance to get better acquainted with you," said I. "I've
+wanted it ever since I first saw you."
+
+As I put this to her directly, she dropped her eyes and murmured something
+she probably wished me to think vaguely pleasant.
+
+"You are the first woman I ever knew," I went on, "with whom it was hard
+for me to get on any sort of terms. I suppose it's my fault. I don't know
+this game yet. But I'll learn it, if you'll be a little patient; and when I
+do, I think I'll be able to keep up my end."
+
+She looked at me--just looked. I couldn't begin to guess what was going on
+in that gracefully-poised head of hers.
+
+"Will you try to be friends with me?" said I with directness.
+
+She continued to look at me in that same steady, puzzling way.
+
+"Will you?" I repeated.
+
+"I have no choice," said she slowly.
+
+I flushed. "What does that mean?" I demanded.
+
+She threw a hurried and, it seemed to me, frightened glance toward the
+drawing-room. "I didn't intend to offend you," she said in a low voice.
+"You have been such a good friend to papa--I've no right to feel anything
+but friendship for you."
+
+"I'm glad to hear you say that," said I. And I was; for those words of hers
+were the first expression of appreciation and gratitude I had ever got from
+any member of that family which I was holding up from ruin. I put out my
+hand, and she laid hers in it.
+
+"There isn't anything I wouldn't do to earn your friendship, Miss Anita," I
+said, holding her hand tightly, feeling how lifeless it was, yet feeling,
+too, as if a flaming torch were being borne through me, were lighting a
+fire in every vein.
+
+The scarlet poured into her face and neck, wave on wave, until I thought
+it would never cease to come. She snatched her hand away and from her face
+streamed proud resentment. God, how I loved her at that moment!
+
+"Anita! Mr. Blacklock!" came from the other room, in her mother's voice.
+"Come in here and save us old people from boring each other to sleep."
+
+She turned swiftly and went into the other room, I following. There were a
+few minutes of conversation--a monologue by her mother. Then I ceased to
+disregard Ellersly's less and less covert yawns, and rose to take leave. I
+could not look directly at Anita, but I was seeing that her eyes were fixed
+on me, as if by some compulsion, some sinister compulsion. I left in high
+spirits. "No matter why or how she looks at you," said I to myself. "All
+that is necessary is to get yourself noticed. After that, the rest is easy.
+You must keep cool enough always to remember that under this glamour that
+intoxicates you, she's a woman, just a woman, waiting for a man."
+
+
+
+
+XIII. "UNTIL TO-MORROW"
+
+
+On the following Tuesday afternoon, toward five o'clock, I descended from
+my apartment on my way to my brougham. In the entrance hall I met Monson
+coming in.
+
+"Hello, you!" said he. "Slipping away to get married?"
+
+"No, I'm only making a call," replied I, taking alarm instantly.
+
+"Oh, is _that_ all?" said he with a sly grin. "It must be a mighty
+serious matter."
+
+"I'm in no hurry," said I. "Come up with me for a few minutes."
+
+As soon as we were alone in my sitting-room, I demanded: "What's wrong with
+me?"
+
+"Nothing--not a thing," was his answer, in a tone I had a struggle with
+myself not to resent. "I've never seen any one quite so grand--top
+hat, latest style, long coat ditto, white buckskin waistcoat,
+twenty-thousand-dollar pearl in pale blue scarf, white spats, spotless
+varnish boots just from the varnishers, cream-colored gloves. You
+_will_ make a hit! My eye, I'll bet she won't be able to resist you."
+
+I began to shed my plumage. "I thought this was the thing when you're
+calling on people you hardly know."
+
+"I should say you'd have to know 'em uncommon well to give 'em such a
+treat. Rather!"
+
+"What shall I wear?" I asked. "You certainly told me the other day that
+this was proper."
+
+"Proper--so it is--too damn proper," was his answer. "That'd be all right
+for a bridegroom or a best man or an usher--or perhaps for a wedding guest.
+It wouldn't do any particular harm even to call in it, if the people were
+used to you. But--"
+
+"I look dressed up?"
+
+"Like a fashion plate--like a tailor--like a society actor."
+
+"What shall I wear?"
+
+"Oh, just throw yourself together any old way. Business suit's good
+enough."
+
+"But I barely know these people--socially. I never called there," I
+objected.
+
+"Then don't call," he advised. "Send your valet in a cab to leave a card
+at the door. Calling has gone clean out--unless a man's got something very
+especial in mind. Never show that you're eager. Keep your hand hid."
+
+"They'd know I had something especial in mind if I called?"
+
+"Certainly, and if you'd gone in those togs, they'd have assumed you had
+come to--to ask the old man for his daughter--or something like that."
+
+I lost no time in getting back into a business suit.
+
+A week passed and, just as I was within sight of my limit of patience,
+Bromwell Ellersly appeared at my office. "I can't put my hand on the
+necessary cash, Mr. Blacklock--at least, not for a few days. Can I count
+on your further indulgence?" This in his best exhibit of old-fashioned
+courtliness--the "gentleman" through and through, ignorant of anything
+useful.
+
+"Don't let that matter worry you, Ellersly," said I, friendly, for I wanted
+to be on a somewhat less business-like basis with that family. "The
+market's steady, and will go up before it goes down."
+
+"Good!" said he. "By the way, you haven't kept your promise to call."
+
+"I'm a busy man," said I. "You must make my excuses to your wife. But--in
+the evenings. Couldn't we get up a little theater-party--Mrs. Ellersly and
+your daughter and you and I--Sam, too, if he cares to come?"
+
+"Delightful!" cried he.
+
+"Whichever one of the next five evenings you say," I said. "Let me know
+by to-morrow morning, will you?" And we talked no more of the neglected
+margins; we understood each other. When he left he had negotiated a three
+months' loan of twenty thousand dollars.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They were so surprised that they couldn't conceal it, when they were
+ushered into my apartment on the Wednesday evening they had fixed upon. If
+my taste in dress was somewhat too pronounced, my taste in my surroundings
+was not. I suppose the same instinct that made me like the music and the
+pictures and the books that were the products of superior minds had guided
+me right in architecture, decoration and furniture. I know I am one of
+those who are born with the instinct for the best. Once Monson got in
+the way of free criticism, he indulged himself without stint, after the
+customary human fashion; in fact, so free did he become that had I not
+feared to frighten him and so bring about the defeat of my purposes, I
+should have sat on him hard very soon after we made our bargain. As it was,
+I stood his worst impudences without flinching, and partly consoled myself
+with the amusement I got out of watching his vanity lead him on into
+thinking his knowledge the most vital matter in the world--just as you
+sometimes see a waiter or a clerk with the air of sharing the care of the
+universe with the Almighty.
+
+But even Monson could find nothing to criticize either in my apartment
+or in my country house. And, by the way, he showed his limitations by
+remarking, after he had inspected: "I must say, Blacklock, your architects
+and decorators have done well by you." As if a man's surroundings were not
+the unfailing index to himself, no matter how much money he spends or how
+good architects and the like he hires. As if a man could ever buy good
+taste.
+
+I was pleased out of all proportion to its value by what Ellersly and his
+wife looked and said. But, though I watched Miss Ellersly closely, though I
+tried to draw from her some comment on my belongings--on my pictures, on my
+superb tapestries, on the beautiful carving of my furniture--I got nothing
+from her beyond that first look of surprise and pleasure. Her face resumed
+its statuelike calm, her eyes did not wander; her lips, like a crimson bow
+painted upon her clear, white skin, remained closed. She spoke only when
+she was spoken to, and then as briefly as possible. The dinner--and a
+mighty good dinner it was--would have been memorable for strain and silence
+had not Mrs. Ellersly kept up her incessant chatter. I can't recall a word
+she said, but I admired her for being able to talk at all. I knew she was
+in the same state as the rest of us, yet she acted perfectly at her ease;
+and not until I thought it over afterward did I realize that she had done
+all the talking, except answers to her occasional and cleverly-sprinkled
+direct questions.
+
+Ellersly sat opposite me, and I was irritated, and thrown into confusion,
+too, every time I lifted my eyes, by the crushed, criminal expression of
+his face. He ate and drank hugely--and extremely bad manners it would
+have been regarded in me had I made as much noise as he, or lifted such
+quantities at a time into my mouth. But through his noisy gluttony he
+managed somehow to maintain that hang-dog air--like a thief who has gone
+through the house and, on his way out, has paused at the pantry, with the
+sack of plunder beside him, to gorge himself.
+
+I looked at Anita several times, each time with a carefully-framed remark
+ready; each time I found her gaze on me--and I could say nothing, could
+only look away in a sort of panic. Her eyes were strangely variable. I have
+seen them of a gray, so pale that it was almost silver--like the steely
+light of the snow-line at the edge of the horizon; again, and they were
+so that evening, they shone with the deepest, softest blue, and made one
+think, as one looked at her, of a fresh violet frozen in a block of clear
+ice.
+
+I sat behind her in the box at the theater. During the first and
+second intermissions several men dropped in to speak to her mother and
+her--fellows who didn't ever come down town, but I could tell they knew who
+I was by the way they ignored me. It exasperated me to a pitch of fury,
+that coldly insolent air of theirs--a jerky nod at me without so much as a
+glance, and no notice of me when they were leaving _my_ box beyond a
+faint, supercilious smile as they passed with eyes straight ahead. I knew
+what it meant, what they were thinking--that the "Bucket-Shop King," as the
+newspapers had dubbed me, was trying to use old Ellersly's necessities as a
+"jimmy" and "break into society." When the curtain went down for the last
+intermission, two young men appeared; I did not get up as I had before, but
+stuck to my seat--I had reached that point at which courtesy has become
+cowardice.
+
+They craned and strained at her round me and over me, presently gave up
+and retired, disguising their anger as contempt for the bad manners of a
+bounder. But that disturbed me not a ripple, the more as I was delighting
+in a consoling discovery. Listening and watching as she talked with these
+young men, whom she evidently knew well, I noted that she was distant and
+only politely friendly in manner habitually, that while the ice might
+thicken for me, it was there always. I knew enough about women to know
+that, if the woman who can thaw only for one man is the most difficult, she
+is also the most constant. "Once she thaws toward me!" I said to myself.
+
+When the young men had gone, I leaned forward until my head was close to
+hers, to her hair--fine, soft, abundant, electric hair. Like the infatuated
+fool that I was, I tore out all the pigeon-holes of my brain in search of
+something to say to her, something that would start her to thinking well
+of me. She must have felt my breath upon her neck, for she moved away
+slightly, and it seemed to me a shiver visibly passed over that wonderful
+white skin of hers.
+
+I drew back and involuntarily said, "Beg pardon." I glanced at her mother
+and it was my turn to shudder. I can't hope to give an accurate impression
+of that stony, mercenary, mean face. There are looks that paint upon the
+human countenance the whole of a life, as a flash of lightning paints upon
+the blackness of the night miles on miles of landscape. That look of Mrs.
+Ellersly's--stern disapproval at her daughter, stern command that she be
+more civil, that she unbend--showed me the old woman's soul. And I say that
+no old harpy presiding over a dive is more full of the venom of the hideous
+calculations of the market for flesh and blood than is a woman whose life
+is wrapped up in wealth and show.
+
+"If you wish it," I said, on impulse, to Miss Ellersly in a low voice, "I
+shall never try to see you again."
+
+I could feel rather than see the blood suddenly beating in her skin, and
+there was in her voice a nervousness very like fright as she answered: "I'm
+sure mama and I shall be glad to see you whenever you come."
+
+"You?" I persisted.
+
+"Yes," she said, after a brief hesitation.
+
+"Glad?" I persisted.
+
+She smiled--the faintest change in the perfect curve of her lips. "You are
+very persistent, aren't you?"
+
+"Very," I answered. "That is why I have always got whatever I wanted."
+
+"I admire it," said she.
+
+"No, you don't," I replied. "You think it is vulgar, and you think I am
+vulgar because I have that quality--that and some others."
+
+She did not contradict me.
+
+"Well, I _am_ vulgar--from your standpoint," I went on. "I have
+purposes and passions. And I pursue them. For instance, you."
+
+"I?" she said tranquilly.
+
+"You," I repeated. "I made up my mind the first day I saw you that I'd make
+you like me. And--you will."
+
+"That is very flattering," said she. "And a little terrifying. For"--she
+faltered, then went bravely on--"I suppose there isn't anything you'd stop
+at in order to gain your end."
+
+"Nothing," said I, and I compelled her to meet my gaze.
+
+She drew a long breath, and I thought there was a sob in it--like a
+frightened child.
+
+"But I repeat," I went on, "that if you wish it, I shall never try to see
+you again. Do you wish it?"
+
+"I--don't--know," she answered slowly. "I think--not."
+
+As she spoke the last word, she lifted her eyes to mine with a look of
+forced friendliness in them that I'd rather not have seen there. I wished
+to be blind to her defects, to the stains and smutches with which her
+surroundings must have sullied her. And that friendly look seemed to me
+an unmistakable hypocrisy in obedience to her mother. However, it had the
+effect of bringing her nearer to my own earthy level, of putting me at ease
+with her; and for the few remaining minutes we talked freely, I indifferent
+whether my manners and conversation were correct. As I helped her into
+their carriage, I pressed her arm slightly, and said in a voice for her
+only, "Until to-morrow."
+
+
+
+
+XIV. FRESH AIR IN A GREENHOUSE
+
+
+At five the next day I rang the Ellerslys' bell, was taken through the
+drawing-room into that same library. The curtains over the double doorway
+between the two rooms were almost drawn. She presently entered from the
+hall. I admired the picture she made in the doorway--her big hat, her
+embroidered dress of white cloth, and that small, sweet, cold face of hers.
+And as I looked, I knew that nothing, nothing--no, not even her wish, her
+command--could stop me from trying to make her my own. That resolve must
+have shown in my face--it or the passion that inspired it--for she paused
+and paled.
+
+"What is it?" I asked. "Are you afraid of me?"
+
+She came forward proudly, a fine scorn in her eyes. "No," she said. "But if
+you knew, you might be afraid of me."
+
+"I am," I confessed. "I am afraid of you because you inspire in me a
+feeling that is beyond my control. I've committed many follies in my
+life--I have moods in which it amuses me to defy fate. But those follies
+have always been of my own willing. You"--I laughed--"you are a folly for
+me. But one that compels me."
+
+She smiled--not discouragingly--and seated herself on a tiny sofa in the
+corner, a curiously impregnable intrenchment, as I noted--for my impulse
+was to carry her by storm. I was astonished at my own audacity; I was
+wondering where my fear of her had gone, my awe of her superior fineness
+and breeding. "Mama will be down in a few minutes," she said.
+
+"I didn't come to see your mother," replied I. "I came to see you."
+
+She flushed, then froze--and I thought I had once more "got upon" her
+nerves with my rude directness. How eagerly sensitive our nerves are to bad
+impressions of one we don't like, and how coarsely insensible to bad
+impressions of one we do like!
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"I see I've offended again, as usual," said I. "You attach so much
+importance to petty little dancing-master tricks and caperings. You
+live--always have lived--in an artificial atmosphere. Real things act on
+you like fresh air on a hothouse flower."
+
+"You are--fresh air?" she inquired, with laughing sarcasm.
+
+"I am that," retorted I. "And good for you--as you'll find when you get
+used to me."
+
+I heard voices in the next room--her mother's and some man's. We waited
+until it was evident we were not to be disturbed. As I realized that fact
+and surmised its meaning, I looked triumphantly at her. She drew further
+back into her corner, and the almost stern firmness of her contour told me
+she had set her teeth.
+
+"I see you are nerving yourself," said I with a laugh. "You are perfectly
+certain I am going to propose to you."
+
+She flamed scarlet and half-started up.
+
+"Your mother--in the next room--expects it, too," I went on, laughing even
+more disagreeably. "Your parents need money--they have decided to sell you,
+their only large income-producing asset. And I am willing to buy. What do
+you say?"
+
+I was blocking her way out of the room. She was standing, her breath coming
+fast, her eyes blazing. "You are--_frightful_!" she exclaimed in a low
+voice.
+
+"Because I am frank, because I am honest? Because I want to put things on
+a sound basis? I suppose, if I came lying and pretending, and let you lie
+and pretend, and let your parents and Sam lie and pretend, you would find
+me--almost tolerable. Well, I'm not that kind. When there's no especial
+reason one way or the other, I'm willing to smirk and grimace and dodder
+and drivel, like the rest of your friends, those ladies and gentlemen. But
+when there's business to be transacted, I am business-like. Let's not begin
+with your thinking you are deceiving me, and so hating me and despising me
+and trying to keep up the deception. Let's begin right."
+
+She was listening; she was no longer longing to fly from the room; she was
+curious. I knew I had scored.
+
+"In any event," I continued, "you would have married for money. You've been
+brought up to it, like all these girls of your set. You'd be miserable
+without luxury. If you had your choice between love without luxury and
+luxury without love, it'd be as easy to foretell which you'd do as to
+foretell how a starving poet would choose between a loaf of bread and a
+volume of poems. You may love love; but you love life--your kind of
+life--better!"
+
+She lowered her head. "It is true," she said. "It is low and vile, but it
+is true."
+
+"Your parents need money--" I began.
+
+She stopped me with a gesture. "Don't blame them," she pleaded. "I am more
+guilty than they."
+
+I was proud of her as she made that confession. "You have the making of a
+real woman in you," said I. "I should have wanted you even if you hadn't.
+But what I now see makes what I thought a folly of mine look more like
+wisdom."
+
+"I must warn you," she said, and now she was looking directly at me, "I
+shall never love you."
+
+"Never is a long time," replied I. "I'm old enough to be cynical about
+prophecy."
+
+"I shall never love you," she repeated. "For many reasons you wouldn't
+understand. For one you will understand."
+
+"I understand the 'many reasons' you say are beyond me," said I. "For,
+dear young lady, under this coarse exterior I assure you there's hidden
+a rather sharp outlook on human nature--and--well, nerves that respond
+to the faintest changes in you as do mine can't be altogether without
+sensitiveness. What's the other reason--_the_ reason? That you think
+you love some one else?"
+
+"Thank you for saying it for me," she replied.
+
+You can't imagine how pleased I was at having earned her gratitude, even
+in so little a matter. "I have thought of that," said I. "It is of no
+consequence."
+
+"But you don't understand," she pleaded earnestly.
+
+"On the contrary, I understand perfectly," I assured her. "And the reason I
+am not disturbed is--you are here, you are not with him."
+
+She lowered her head so that I had no view of her face.
+
+"You and he do not marry," I went on, "because you are both poor?"
+
+"No," she replied.
+
+"Because he does not care for you?"
+
+"No--not that," she said.
+
+"Because you thought he hadn't enough for two?"
+
+A long pause, then--very faintly: "No--not that."
+
+"Then it must be because he hasn't as much money as he'd like, and must
+find a girl who'll bring him--what he _most_ wants."
+
+She was silent.
+
+"That is, while he loves you dearly, he loves money more. And he's willing
+to see you go to another man, be the wife of another man, be--everything to
+another man." I laughed. "I'll take my chances against love of that sort."
+
+"You don't understand," she murmured. "You don't realize--there are many
+things that mean nothing to you and that mean--oh, so much to people
+brought up as we are."
+
+"Nonsense!" said I. "What do you mean by 'we'? Nature has been bringing
+us up for a thousand thousand years. A few years of silly false training
+doesn't undo her work. If you and he had cared for each other, you wouldn't
+be here, apologizing for his selfish vanity."
+
+"No matter about him," she cried impatiently, lifting her head haughtily.
+"The point is, I love him--and always shall. I warn you."
+
+"And I take you at my own risk?"
+
+Her look answered "Yes!"
+
+"Well,"--and I took her hand--"then, we are engaged."
+
+Her whole body grew tense, and her hand chilled as it lay in mine.
+"Don't--please don't," I said gently. "I'm not so bad as all that. If you
+will be as generous with me as I shall be with you, neither of us will ever
+regret this."
+
+There were tears on her cheeks as I slowly released her hand.
+
+"I shall ask nothing of you that you are not ready freely to give," I said.
+
+Impulsively she stood and put out her hand, and the eyes she lifted to mine
+were shining and friendly. I caught her in my arms and kissed her--not once
+but many times. And it was not until the chill of her ice-like face had
+cooled me that I released her, drew back red and ashamed and stammering
+apologies. But her impulse of friendliness had been killed; she once more,
+as I saw only too plainly, felt for me that sense of repulsion, felt for
+herself that sense of self-degradation.
+
+"I _can not_ marry you!" she muttered.
+
+"You can--and will--and must," I cried, infuriated by her look.
+
+There was a long silence. I could easily guess what was being fought out in
+her mind. At last she slowly drew herself up. "I can not refuse," she said,
+and her eyes sparkled with defiance that had hate in it. "You have the
+power to compel me. Use it, like the brute you refuse to let me forget that
+you are." She looked so young, so beautiful, so angry--and so tempting.
+
+"So I shall!" I answered. "Children have to be taught what is good for
+them. Call in your mother, and we'll tell her the news."
+
+Instead, she went into the next room. I followed, saw Mrs. Ellersly seated
+at the tea-table in the corner farthest from the library where her daughter
+and I had been negotiating. She was reading a letter, holding her lorgnon
+up to her painted eyes.
+
+"Won't you give us tea, mother?" said Anita, on her surface not a trace of
+the cyclone that must still have been raging hi her.
+
+"Congratulate me, Mrs. Ellersly," said I. "Your daughter has consented to
+marry me."
+
+Instead of speaking, Mrs. Ellersly began to cry--real tears. And for a
+moment I thought there was a real heart inside of her somewhere. But when
+she spoke, that delusion vanished.
+
+"You must forgive me, Mr. Blacklock," she said in her hard, smooth, politic
+voice. "It is the shock of realizing I'm about to lose my daughter." And
+I knew that her tears were from joy and relief--Anita had "come up to the
+scratch;" the hideous menace of "genteel poverty" had been averted.
+
+"Do give us tea, mama," said Anita. Her cold, sarcastic tone cut my nerves
+and her mother's like a razor blade. I looked sharply at her, and wondered
+whether I was not making a bargain vastly different from that my passion
+was picturing.
+
+
+
+
+XV. SOME STRANGE LAPSES OF A LOVER
+
+
+But before there was time for me to get a distinct impression, that ugly
+shape of cynicism had disappeared.
+
+"It was a shadow I myself cast upon her," I assured myself; and once more
+she seemed to me like a clear, calm lake of melted snow from the mountains.
+"I can see to the pure white sand of the very bottom," thought I. Mystery
+there was, but only the mystery of wonder at the apparition of such beauty
+and purity in such a world as mine. True, from time to time, there showed
+at the surface or vaguely outlined in the depths, forms strangely out of
+place in those unsullied waters. But I either refused to see or refused to
+trust my senses. I had a fixed ideal of what a woman should be; this girl
+embodied that ideal.
+
+"If you'd only give up your cigarettes," I remember saying to her when we
+were a little better acquainted, "you'd be perfect."
+
+She made an impatient gesture. "Don't!" she commanded almost angrily. "You
+make me feel like a hypocrite. You tempt me to be a hypocrite. Why not be
+content with woman as she is--a human being? And--how could I--any woman
+not an idiot--be alive for twenty-five years without learning--a thing or
+two? Why should any man want it?"
+
+"Because to know is to be spattered and stained," said I. "I get enough of
+people who know, down-town. Up-town--I want a change of air. Of course,
+you think you know the world, but you haven't the remotest conception of
+what it's really like. Sometimes when I'm with you, I begin to feel mean
+and--and unclean. And the feeling grows on me until it's all I can do to
+restrain myself from rushing away."
+
+She looked at me critically.
+
+"You've never had much to do with women, have you?" she finally said slowly
+in a musing tone.
+
+"I wish that were true--almost," replied I, on my mettle as a man, and
+resisting not without effort the impulse to make some vague
+"confessions"--boastings disguised as penitential admissions--after the
+customary masculine fashion.
+
+She smiled--and one of those disquieting shapes seemed to me to be floating
+lazily and repellently downward, out of sight. "A man and a woman can be a
+great deal to each other, I believe," said she; "can be--married, and all
+that--and remain as strange to each other as if they had never met--more
+hopelessly strangers."
+
+"There's always a sort of mystery," I conceded. "I suppose that's one of
+the things that keep married people interested."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders--she was in evening dress, I recall, and there
+was on her white skin that intense, transparent, bluish tinge one sees on
+the new snow when the sun comes out.
+
+"Mystery!" she said impatiently. "There's no mystery except what we
+ourselves make. It's useless--perfectly useless," she went on absently.
+"You're the sort of man who, if a woman cared for him, or even showed
+friendship for him by being frank and human and natural with him, he'd
+punish her for it by--by despising her."
+
+I smiled, much as one smiles at the efforts of a precocious child to prove
+that it is a Methuselah in experience.
+
+"If you weren't like an angel in comparison with the others I've known,"
+said I, "do you suppose I could care for you as I do?"
+
+I saw my remark irritated her, and I fancied it was her vanity that was
+offended by my disbelief in her knowledge of life. I hadn't a suspicion
+that I had hurt and alienated her by slamming in her very face the door of
+friendship and frankness her honesty was forcing her to try to open for me.
+
+In my stupidity of imagining her not human like the other women and the
+men I had known, but a creature apart and in a class apart, I stood day
+after day gaping at that very door, and wondering how I could open it,
+how penetrate even to the courtyard of that vestal citadel. So long as my
+old-fashioned belief that good women were more than human and bad women
+less than human had influenced me only to a sharper lookout in dealing
+with the one species of woman I then came in contact with, no harm to me
+resulted, but on the contrary good--whoever got into trouble through
+walking the world with sword and sword arm free? But when, under the spell
+of Anita Ellersly, I dragged the "superhuman goodness" part of my theory
+down out of the clouds and made it my guardian and guide--really, it's a
+miracle that I escaped from the pit into which that lunacy pitched me
+headlong. I was not content with idealizing only her; I went on to seeing
+good, and only good, in everybody! The millennium was at hand; all Wall
+Street was my friend; whatever I wanted would happen. And when Roebuck,
+with an air like a benediction from a bishop backed by a cathedral organ
+and full choir, gave me the tip to buy coal stocks, I canonized him on the
+spot. Never did a Jersey "jay" in Sunday clothes and tallowed boots respond
+to a bunco steerer's greeting with a gladder smile than mine to that pious
+old past-master of craft.
+
+I will say, in justice to myself, though it is also in excuse, that if I
+had known him intimately a few years earlier, I should have found it all
+but impossible to fool myself. For he had not long been in a position where
+he could keep wholly detached from the crimes committed for his benefit
+and by his order, and where he could disclaim responsibility and even
+knowledge. The great lawyers of the country have been most ingenious in
+developing corporate law in the direction of making the corporation a
+complete and secure shield between the beneficiary of a crime and its
+consequences; but before a great financier can use this shield perfectly,
+he must build up a system--he must find lieutenants with the necessary
+coolness, courage and cunning; he must teach them to understand his hints;
+he must educate them, not to point out to him the disagreeable things
+involved in his orders, but to execute unquestioningly, to efface
+completely the trail between him and them, whether or not they succeed in
+covering the roundabout and faint trail between themselves and the tools
+that nominally commit the crimes.
+
+As nearly as I can get at it, when Roebuck was luring me into National Coal
+he had not for nine years been open to attack, but had so far hedged
+himself in that, had his closest lieutenants been trapped and frightened
+into "squealing," he would not have been involved; without fear of exposure
+and with a clear conscience he could--and would!--have joined in the
+denunciation of the man who had been caught, and could--and would!--have
+helped send him to the penitentiary or to the scaffold. With the security
+of an honest man and the serenity of a Christian he planned his colossal
+thefts and reaped their benefits; and whenever he was accused, he could
+have explained everything, could have got his accuser's sympathy and
+admiration. I say, could have explained; but he would not. Early in his
+career, he had learned the first principle of successful crime--silence. No
+matter what the provocation or the seeming advantage, he uttered only a few
+generous general phrases, such as "those misguided men," or "the Master
+teaches us to bear with meekness the calumnies of the wicked," or "let him
+that is without sin cast the first stone." As to the crime itself--silence,
+and the dividends.
+
+A great man, Roebuck! I doff my hat to him. Of all the dealers in stolen
+goods under police protection, who so shrewd as he?
+
+Wilmot was the instrument he employed to put the coal industry into
+condition for "reorganization." He bought control of one of the coal
+railroads and made Wilmot president of it. Wilmot, taught by twenty years
+of his service, knew what was expected of him, and proceeded to do it. He
+put in a "loyal" general freight agent who also needed no instructions,
+but busied himself at destroying his own and all the other coal roads by a
+system of secret rebates and rate cuttings. As the other roads, one by one,
+descended toward bankruptcy, Roebuck bought the comparatively small blocks
+of stock necessary to give him control of them. When he had power over
+enough of them to establish a partial monopoly of transportation in and out
+of the coal districts, he was ready for his lieutenant to attack the mining
+properties. Probably his orders to Wilmot were nothing more definite or
+less innocent than: "Wilmot, my boy, don't you think you and I and some
+others of our friends ought to buy some of those mines, if they come on the
+market at a fair price? Let me know when you hear of any attractive
+investments of that sort."
+
+That would have been quite enough to "tip it off" to Wilmot that the time
+had come for reaching out from control of railway to control of mine. He
+lost no time; he easily forced one mining property after another into a
+position where its owners were glad--were eager--to sell all or part of the
+wreck of it "at a fair price" to him and Roebuck and "our friends." It was
+as the result of one of these moves that the great Manasquale mines were
+so hemmed in by ruinous freight rates, by strike troubles, by floods from
+broken machinery and mysteriously leaky dams, that I was able to buy them
+"at a fair price"--that is, at less than one-fifth their value. But at the
+time--and for a long time afterward--I did not know, on my honor did not
+suspect, what was the cause, the sole cause, of the change of the coal
+region from a place of peaceful industry, content with fair profits, to an
+industrial chaos with ruin impending.
+
+Once the railways and mining companies were all on the verge of bankruptcy,
+Roebuck and his "friends" were ready to buy, here control for purposes of
+speculation, there ownership for purposes of permanent investment. This
+is what is known as the reorganizing stage. The processes of high finance
+are very simple--first, buy the comparatively small holdings necessary
+to create confusion and disaster; second, create confusion and disaster,
+buying up more and more wreckage; third, reorganize; fourth, offer the
+new stocks and bonds to the public with a mighty blare of trumpets which
+produces a boom market; fifth, unload on the public, pass dividends, issue
+unfavorable statements, depress prices, buy back cheap what you have sold
+dear. Repeat ad infinitum, for the law is for the laughter of the strong,
+and the public is an eager ass. To keep up the fiction of "respectability,"
+the inside ring divides into two parties for its campaigns--one party to
+break down, the other to build up. One takes the profits from destruction
+and departs, perhaps to construct elsewhere; the other takes the profits
+from construction and departs, perhaps to destroy elsewhere. As their
+collusion is merely tacit, no conscience need twitch. I must add that, at
+the time of which I am writing, I did not realize the existence of this
+conspiracy. I knew, of course, that many lawless and savage things were
+done, that there were rascals among the high financiers, and that almost
+all financiers now and then did things that were more or less rascally; but
+I did not know, did not suspect, that high finance was through and through
+brigandage, and that the high financier, by long and unmolested practice of
+brigandage, had come to look on it as legitimate, lawful business, and on
+laws forbidding or hampering it as outrageous, socialistic, anarchistic,
+"attacks upon the social order!"
+
+I was sufficiently infected with the spirit of the financier, I frankly
+confess, to look on the public as a sort of cow to milk and send out to
+grass that it might get itself ready to be driven in and milked again. Does
+not the cow produce milk not for her own use but for the use of him who
+looks after her, provides her with pasturage and shelter and saves her from
+the calamities in which her lack of foresight and of other intelligence
+would involve her, were she not looked after? And is not the fact that the
+public--beg pardon, the cow--meekly and even cheerfully submits to the
+milking proof that God intended her to be the servant of the Roebucks--beg
+pardon again, of man?
+
+Plausible, isn't it?
+
+Roebuck had given me the impression that it would be six months, at least,
+before what I was in those fatuous days thinking of as "_our_" plan
+for "putting the coal industry on a sound business basis" would be ready
+for the public. So, when he sent for me shortly after I became engaged to
+Miss Ellersly, and said: "Melville will publish the plan on the first of
+next month and will open the subscription books on the third--a Thursday,"
+I was taken by surprise and was anything but pleased. His words meant that,
+if I wished to make a great fortune, now was the time to buy coal stocks,
+and buy heavily--for on the very day of the publication of the plan every
+coal stock would surely soar. Buy I must; not to buy was to throw away a
+fortune. Yet how could I buy when I was gambling in Textile up to my limit
+of safety, if not beyond?
+
+I did not dare confess to Roebuck what I was doing in Textile. He was
+bitterly opposed to stock gambling, denouncing it as both immoral and
+unbusinesslike. No gambling for him! When his business sagacity and
+foresight(?) informed him a certain stock was going to be worth a great
+deal more than it was then quoted at, he would buy outright in large
+quantities; when that same sagacity and foresight of the fellow who has
+himself marked the cards warned him that a stock was about to fall, he sold
+outright. But gamble--never! And I felt that, if he should learn that I had
+staked a large part of my entire fortune on a single gambling operation, he
+would straightway cut me off from his confidence, would look on me as too
+deeply tainted by my long career as a "bucket-shop" man to be worthy of
+full rank and power as a financier. Financiers do not gamble. Their only
+vice is grand larceny.
+
+All this was flashing through my mind while I was thanking him.
+
+"I am glad to have such a long forewarning," I was saying. "Can I be of use
+to you? You know my machinery is perfect--I can buy anything and in any
+quantity without starting rumors and drawing the crowd."
+
+"No thank you, Matthew," was his answer. "I have all of those stocks I
+wish--at present."
+
+Whether it is peculiar to me, I don't know--probably not--but my memory
+is so constituted that it takes an indelible and complete impression of
+whatever is sent to it by my eyes and ears; and just as by looking closely
+you can find in a photographic plate a hundred details that escape your
+glance, so on those memory plates of mine I often find long afterward many
+and many a detail that escaped me when my eyes and ears were taking the
+impression. On my memory plate of that moment in my interview with Roebuck,
+I find details so significant that my failing to note them at the time
+shows how unfit I then was to guard my interests. For instance, I find
+that just before he spoke those words declining my assistance and implying
+that he had already increased his holdings, he opened and closed his hands
+several times, finally closed and clinched them--a sure sign of energetic
+nervous action, and in that particular instance a sign of deception,
+because there was no energy in his remark and no reason for energy. I am
+not superstitious, but I believe in palmistry to a certain extent. Even
+more than the face are the hands a sensitive recorder of what is passing in
+the mind.
+
+But I was then too intent upon my dilemma carefully to study a man who had
+already lulled me into absolute confidence in him. I left him as soon as
+he would let me go. His last words were, "No gambling, Matthew! No abuse
+of the opportunity God is giving us. Be content with the just profits from
+investment. I have seen gamblers come and go, many of them able men--very
+able men. But they have melted away, and where are they? And I have
+remained and have increased, blessed be God who has saved me from the
+temptations to try to reap where I had not sown! I feel that I can trust
+you. You began as a speculator, but success has steadied you, and you have
+put yourself on the firm ground where we see the solid men into whose hands
+God has given the development of the abounding resources of this beloved
+country of ours."
+
+Do you wonder that I went away with a heart full of shame for the gambling
+projects my head was planning upon the information that good man had given
+me?
+
+I shut myself in my private office for several hours of hard thinking--as
+I can now see, the first real attention I had given my business in two
+months. It soon became clear enough that my Textile plunge was a folly;
+but it was too late to retrace. The only question was, could and should I
+assume additional burdens? I looked at the National Coal problem from
+every standpoint--so I thought. And I could see no possible risk. Did not
+Roebuck's statement make it certain as sunrise that, as soon as the
+reorganization was announced, all coal stocks would rise? Yes, I should
+be risking nothing; I could with absolute safety stake my credit; to make
+contracts to buy coal stocks at present prices for future delivery was no
+more of a gamble than depositing cash in the United States Treasury.
+
+"You've gone back to gambling lately, Matt," said I to myself. "You've
+been on a bender, with your head afire. You must get out of this Textile
+business as soon as possible. But it's good sound sense to plunge on
+the coal stocks. In fact, your profits there would save you if by some
+mischance Textile should rise instead of fall. Acting on Roebuck's tip
+isn't gambling, it's insurance."
+
+I emerged to issue orders that soon threw into the National Coal venture
+all I had not staked on a falling market for Textiles. I was not
+content--as the pious gambling-hater, Roebuck, had begged me to be--with
+buying only what stock I could pay for; I went plunging on, contracting for
+many times the amount I could have bought outright.
+
+The next time I saw Langdon I was full of enthusiasm for Roebuck. I can see
+his smile as he listened.
+
+"I had no idea you were an expert on the trumpets of praise, Blacklock,"
+said he finally. "A very showy accomplishment," he added, "but rather
+dangerous, don't you think? The player may become enchanted by his own
+music."
+
+"I try to look on the bright side of things." said I, "even of human
+nature."
+
+"Since when?" drawled he.
+
+I laughed--a good, hearty laugh, for this shy reference to my affair of the
+heart tickled me. I enjoyed to the full only in long retrospect the look he
+gave me.
+
+"As soon as a man falls in love," said he, "trustees should be appointed to
+take charge of his estate."
+
+"You're wrong there, old man," I replied. "I've never worked harder or with
+a clearer head than since I learned that there are"--I hesitated, and ended
+lamely--"other things in life."
+
+Langdon's handsome face suddenly darkened, and I thought I saw in his eyes
+a look of savage pain. "I envy you," said he with an effort at his wonted
+lightness and cynicism. But that look touched my heart; I talked no more of
+my own happiness. To do so, I felt would be like bringing laughter into the
+house of grief.
+
+
+
+
+XVI. TRAPPED AND TRIMMED
+
+
+There are two kinds of dangerous temptations--those that tempt us, and
+those that don't. Those that don't, give us a false notion of our resisting
+power, and so make us easy victims to the others. I thought I knew myself
+pretty thoroughly, and I believed there was nothing that could tempt me
+to neglect my business. With this delusion of my strength firmly in mind,
+when Anita became a temptation to neglect business, I said to myself: "To
+go up-town during business hours for long lunches, to spend the mornings
+selecting flowers and presents for her--these things _look_ like
+neglect of business, and would be so in some men. But _I_ couldn't
+neglect business. I do them because my affairs are so well ordered that a
+few hours of absence now and then make no difference--probably send me back
+fresher and clearer."
+
+When I left the office at half-past twelve on that fateful Wednesday in
+June, my business was never in better shape. Textile Common had dropped a
+point and a quarter in two days--evidently it was at last on its way slowly
+down toward where I could free myself and take profits. As for the Coal
+enterprise nothing could possibly happen to disturb it; I was all ready for
+the first of July announcement and boom. Never did I have a lighter heart
+than when I joined Anita and her friends at Sherry's. It seemed to me her
+friendliness was less perfunctory, less a matter of appearances. And the
+sun was bright, the air delicious, my health perfect. It took all the
+strength of all the straps Monson had put on my natural spirits to keep me
+from being exuberant.
+
+I had fully intended to be back at my office half an hour before the
+Exchange closed--this in addition to the obvious precaution of leaving
+orders that they were to telephone me if anything should occur about which
+they had the least doubt. But so comfortable did my vanity make me that
+I forgot to look at my watch until a quarter to three. I had a momentary
+qualm; then, reassured, I asked Anita to take a walk with me. Before we set
+out I telephoned my right-hand man and partner, Ball. As I had thought,
+everything was quiet; the Exchange was closing with Textile sluggish and
+down a quarter. Anita and I took a car to the park.
+
+As we strolled about there, it seemed to me I was making more headway with
+her than in all the times I had seen her since we became engaged. At each
+meeting I had had to begin at the beginning once more, almost as if we
+had never met; for I found that she had in the meanwhile taken on all, or
+almost all, her original reserve. It was as if she forgot me the instant I
+left her--not very flattering, that!
+
+"You accuse me of refusing to get acquainted with you," said I, "of
+refusing to see that you're a different person from what I imagine. But how
+about you? Why do you still stick to your first notion of me? Whatever I am
+or am not, I'm not the person you condemned on sight."
+
+"You _have_ changed," she conceded. "The way you dress--and sometimes
+the way you act. Or, is it because I'm getting used to you?"
+
+"No--it's--" I began, but stopped there. Some day I would confess about
+Monson, but not yet. Also, I hoped the change wasn't altogether due to
+Monson and the dancing-master and my imitation of the tricks of speech and
+manner of the people in her set.
+
+She did not notice my abrupt halt. Indeed, I often caught her at not
+listening to me. I saw that she wasn't listening now.
+
+"You didn't hear what I said," I accused somewhat sharply, for I was
+irritated--as who would not have been?
+
+She started, gave me that hurried, apologetic look that was bitterer to me
+than the most savage insult would have been.
+
+"I beg your pardon," she said. "We were talking of--of changes, weren't
+we?"
+
+"We were talking of _me_" I answered. "Of the subject that interests
+you not at all."
+
+She looked at me in a forlorn sort of way that softened my irritation with
+sympathy. "I've told you how it is with me," she said. "I do my best to
+please you. I--"
+
+"Damn your best!" I cried. "Don't try to please _me_. Be yourself. I'm
+no slave-driver. I don't have to be conciliated. Can't you ever see that
+I'm not your tyrant? Do I treat you as any other man would feel he had the
+right to treat the girl who had engaged herself to him? Do I ever thrust my
+feelings or wishes--or--longings on you? And do you think repression easy
+for a man of my temperament?"
+
+"You have been very good," she said humbly.
+
+"Don't you ever say that to me again," I half commanded, half pleaded. "I
+won't have you always putting me in the position of a kind and indulgent
+master."
+
+She halted and faced me.
+
+"Why do you want me, anyhow?" she cried. Then she noticed several loungers
+on a bench staring at us and grinning; she flushed and walked on.
+
+"I don't know," said I. "Because I'm a fool, probably. My common sense
+tells me I can't hope to break through that shell of self-complacence
+you've been cased in by your family and your associates. Sometimes I think
+I'm mistaken in you, think there isn't any real, human blood left in your
+veins, that you're like the rest of them--a human body whose heart and mind
+have been taken out and a machine substituted--a machine that can say and
+do only a narrow little range of conventional things--like one of those
+French dolls."
+
+"You mustn't blame me for that," she said gently. "I realize it, too--and
+I'm ashamed of it. But--if you could know how I've been educated. They've
+treated me as the Flathead Indian women treat their babies--keep their
+skulls in a press--isn't that it?--until their heads and brains grow of
+the Flathead pattern. Only, somehow, in my case--the process wasn't quite
+complete. And so, instead of being contented like the other Flathead girls,
+I'm--almost a rebel, at times. I'm neither the one thing nor the other--not
+natural and not Flathead, not enough natural to grow away from Flathead,
+not enough Flathead to get rid of the natural."
+
+"I take back what I said about not knowing why I--I want you, Anita," I
+said. "I do know why--and--well, as I told you before, you'll never regret
+marrying me."
+
+"If you won't misunderstand me," she answered, "I'll confess to you my
+instinct has been telling me that, too. I'm not so bad as you must think.
+I did bargain to sell myself, but I'd have thrown up the bargain if you
+had been as--as you seemed at first." For some reason--perhaps it was her
+dress, or hat--she was looking particularly girlish that day, and her
+skin was even more transparent than usual. "You're different from the men
+I've been used to all my life," she went on, and--smiling in a friendly
+way--"you often give me a terrifying sense of your being a--a wild man on
+his good behavior. But I've come to feel that you're generous and unselfish
+and that you'll be kind to me--won't you? And I must make a life for
+myself--I must--I must! Oh, I can't explain to you, but--" She turned her
+little head toward me, and I was looking into those eyes that the flowers
+were like.
+
+I thought she meant her home life. "You needn't tell me," I said, and I'll
+have to confess my voice was anything but steady. "And, I repeat, you'll
+never regret."
+
+She evidently feared that she had said too much, for she lapsed into
+silence, and when I tried to resume the subject of ourselves, she answered
+me with painful constraint. I respected her nervousness and soon began to
+talk of things not so personal to us. Again, my mistake of treating her as
+if she were marked "Fragile. Handle with care." I know now that she, like
+all women, had the plain, tough, durable human fibre under that exterior
+of delicacy and fragility, and that my overconsideration caused her to
+exaggerate to herself her own preposterous notions of her superior
+fineness. We walked for an hour, talking--with less constraint and more
+friendliness than ever before, and when I left her I, for the first time,
+felt that I had left a good impression.
+
+When I entered my offices, I, from force of habit, mechanically went direct
+to the ticker--and dropped all in an instant from the pinnacle of Heaven
+into a boiling inferno. For the ticker was just spelling out these words:
+"Mowbray Langdon, president of the Textile Association, sailed unexpectedly
+on the _Kaiser Wilhelm_ at noon. A two per cent. raise of the dividend
+rate of Textile Common, from the present four per cent, to six, has been
+determined upon."
+
+And I had staked up to, perhaps beyond, my limit of safety that Textile
+would fall!
+
+Ball was watching narrowly for some sign that the news was as bad as he
+feared. But it cost me no effort to keep my face expressionless; I was like
+a man who has been killed by lightning and lies dead with the look on his
+face that he had just before the bolt struck him.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me this," said I to Ball, "when I had you on the
+'phone?" My tone was quiet enough, but the very question ought to have
+shown him that my brain was like a schooner in a cyclone.
+
+"We heard it just after you rang off," was his reply. "We've been trying
+to get you ever since. I've gone everywhere after Textile stock. Very few
+will sell, or even lend, and they ask--the best price was ten points above
+to-day's closing. A strong tip's out that Textiles are to be rocketed."
+
+Ten points up already--on the mere rumor! Already ten dollars to pay on
+every share I was "short"--and I short more than two hundred thousand! I
+felt the claws of the fiend Ruin sink into the flesh of my shoulders. "Ball
+doesn't know how I'm fixed," I remember I thought, "and he mustn't know."
+
+I lit a cigar with a steady hand and waited for Joe's next words.
+
+"I went to see Jenkins at once," he went on. Jenkins was then first
+vice-president of the Textile Trust. "He's all cut up because the news got
+out--says Langdon and he were the only ones who knew, so he supposed--says
+the announcement wasn't to have been made for a month--not till Langdon
+returned. He has had to confirm it, though. That was the only way to free
+his crowd from suspicion of intending to rig the market."
+
+"All right," said I.
+
+"Have you seen the afternoon paper?" he asked. As he held it out to me, my
+eye caught big Textile head-lines, then flashed to some others--something
+about my going to marry Miss Ellersly.
+
+"All right," said I, and with the paper in my hand, went to my outside
+office. I kept on toward my inner office, saying over my shoulder--to the
+stenographer: "Don't let anybody interrupt me." Behind the closed and
+locked door my body ventured to come to life again and my face to reflect
+as much as it could of the chaos that was heaving in me like ten thousand
+warring devils.
+
+Three months before, in the same situation, my gambler's instinct would
+probably have helped me out. For I had not been gambling in the great
+American Monte Carlo all those years without getting used to the downs
+as well as to the ups. I had not--and have not--anything of the business
+man in my composition. To me, it was wholly finance, wholly a game, with
+excitement the chief factor and the sure winning, whether the little ball
+rolled my way or not. I was the financier, the gambler and adventurer; and
+that had been my principal asset. For, the man who wins in the long run at
+any of the great games of life--and they are all alike--is the man with
+the cool head; and the only man whose head is cool is he who plays for the
+game's sake, not caring greatly whether he wins or loses on any one play,
+because he feels that if he wins to-day, he will lose to-morrow; if he
+loses to-day, he will win to-morrow. But now a new factor had come into the
+game. I spread out the paper and stared at the head-lines: "Black Matt To
+Wed Society Belle--The Bucket-Shop King Will Lead Anita Ellersly To The
+Altar." I tried to read the vulgar article under these vulgar lines, but I
+could not. I was sick, sick in body and in mind. My "nerve" was gone. I was
+no longer the free lance; I had responsibilities.
+
+That thought dragged another in its train, an ugly, grinning imp that
+leered at me and sneered: "_But she won't have you now_!"
+
+"She will! She must!" I cried aloud, starting up. And then the storm
+burst--I raged up and down the floor, shaking my clinched fists, gnashing
+my teeth, muttering all kinds of furious commands and threats--a truly
+ridiculous exhibition of impotent rage. For through it all I saw clearly
+enough that she wouldn't have me, that all these people I'd been trying
+to climb up among would kick loose my clinging hands and laugh as they
+watched me disappear. They who were none too gentle and slow in disengaging
+themselves from those of their own lifelong associates who had reverses
+of fortune--what consideration could "Black Matt" expect from them? And
+she--The necessity and the ability to deceive myself had gone, now that I
+could not pay the purchase price for her. The full hideousness of my
+bargain for her dropped its veil and stood naked before me.
+
+At last, disgusted and exhausted, I flung myself down again, and dumbly and
+helplessly inspected the ruins of my projects--or, rather, the ruin of the
+one project upon which I had my heart set. I had known I cared for her, but
+it had seemed to me she was simply one more, the latest, of the objects on
+which I was in the habit of fixing my will from time to time to make the
+game more deeply interesting. I now saw that never before had I really been
+in earnest about anything, that on winning her I had staked myself, and
+that myself was a wholly different person from what I had been imagining.
+In a word, I sat face to face with that unfathomable mystery of
+sex-affinity that every man laughs at and mocks another man for believing
+in, until he has himself felt it drawing him against will, against reason,
+and sense, and interest, over the brink of destruction yawning before his
+eyes--drawing him as the magnet-mountain drew Sindbad and his ship. And I
+say to you that those who can defy and resist that compulsion are not more,
+but less, than man or woman; and their fancied strength is in reality a
+deficiency. Looking calmly back upon my follies under her spell, I think
+the better of myself for them. It is the splendid follies of life that
+redeem it from vulgarity.
+
+But--it is not in me to despair. There never yet was an impenetrable siege
+line; to escape, it is only necessary by craft or by chance to hit upon the
+moment and the spot for the sortie. "Ruined!" I said aloud. "Trapped and
+trimmed like the stupidest sucker that ever wandered into Wall Street! A
+dead one, no doubt; but I'll see to it that they don't enjoy my funeral."
+
+
+
+
+XVII. A GENTEEL "HOLD-UP"
+
+
+In my childhood at home, my father was often away for a week or longer,
+working or looking for work. My mother had a notion that a boy should
+be punished only by his father; so, whenever she caught me in what she
+regarded as a serious transgression, she used to say: "You will get a
+good whipping for this, when your father comes home." At first I used to
+wait passively, suffering the torments of ten thrashings before the "good
+whipping" came to pass. But soon my mind began to employ the interval more
+profitably. I would scheme to escape execution of sentence; and, though my
+mother was a determined woman, many's the time I contrived to change her
+mind. I am not recommending to parents the system of delay in execution
+of sentence; but I must say that in my case it was responsible for an
+invaluable discipline. For example, the Textile tangle.
+
+I knew I was in all human probability doomed to go down before the Stock
+Exchange had been open an hour the next morning. All Textile stocks must
+start many points higher than they had been at the close, must go steadily
+and swiftly up. Entangled as my reserve resources were in the Coal deal, I
+should have no chance to cover my shorts on any terms less than the loss
+of all I had. At most, I could hope only to save myself from criminal
+bankruptcy.
+
+And now my early training in coolly and calmly studying how to avert
+execution of sentence came into play. There is a kind of cornered-rat,
+hit-or-miss, last-ditch fight that any creature will make in such
+circumstances as mine then were, and the inspirations of despair sometimes
+happen to be lucky. But I prefer the reasoned-out plan.
+
+There was no signal of distress in my voice as I telephoned Corey,
+president of the Interstate Trust Company, to stay at his office until I
+came; there was no signal of distress in my manner as I sallied forth and
+went down to the Power Trust Building; nor did I show or suggest that I had
+heard the "shot-at-sunrise" sentence, as I strode into Roebuck's presence
+and greeted him. I was assuming, by way of precaution, that some rumor
+about me either had reached him or would soon reach him. I knew he had
+an eye in every secret of finance and industry, and, while I believed my
+secret was wholly my own, I had too much at stake with him to bank on that,
+when I could, as I thought, so easily reassure him.
+
+"I've come to suggest, Mr. Roebuck," said I, "that you let my
+house--Blacklock and Company--announce the Coal reorganization plan. It
+would give me a great lift, and Melville and his bank don't need prestige.
+My daily letters to the public on investments have, as you know, got me
+a big following that would help me make the flotation an even bigger
+success than it's bound to be, no matter who announces it and invites
+subscriptions."
+
+As I thus proposed that I be in a jiffy caught up from the extremely
+humble level of reputed bucket-shop dealer into the highest heaven of high
+finance, that I be made the official spokesman of the financial gods, his
+expression was so ludicrous that I almost lost my gravity. I suspect, for
+a moment he thought I had gone mad. His manner, when he recovered himself
+sufficiently to speak, was certainly not unlike what it would have been
+had he found himself alone before a dangerous lunatic who was armed with a
+bomb.
+
+"You know how anxious I am to help you, to further your interests,
+Matthew," said he wheedlingly. "I know no man who has a brighter future.
+But--not so fast, not so fast, young man. Of course, you will appear as
+one of the reorganizing committee--but we could not afford to have the
+announcement come through any less strong and old established house than
+the National Industrial Bank."
+
+"At least, you can make me joint announcer with them," I urged.
+
+"Perhaps--yes--possibly--we'll see," said he soothingly. "There is plenty
+of time."
+
+"Plenty of time," I assented, as if quite content. "I only wanted to put
+the matter before you." And I rose to go.
+
+"Have you heard the news of Textile Common?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," said I carelessly. Then, all in an instant, a plan took shape in my
+mind. "I own a good deal of the stock, and I must say, I don't like this
+raise."
+
+"Why?" he inquired.
+
+"Because I'm sure it's a stock-jobbing scheme," replied I boldly. "I know
+the dividend wasn't earned. I don't like that sort of thing, Mr. Roebuck.
+Not because it's unlawful--the laws are so clumsy that a practical man
+often must disregard them. But because it is tampering with the reputation
+and the stability of a great enterprise for the sake of a few millions of
+dishonest profit. I'm surprised at Langdon."
+
+"I hope you're wrong, Matthew," was Roebuck's only comment. He questioned
+me no further, and I went away, confident that, when the crash came in the
+morning, if come it must, there would be no more astonished man in Wall
+Street than Henry J. Roebuck. How he must have laughed; or, rather, would
+have laughed, if his sort of human hyena expressed its emotions in the
+human way.
+
+From him, straight to my lawyers, Whitehouse and Fisher, in the Mills
+Building.
+
+"I want you to send for the newspaper reporters at once," said I to Fisher,
+"and tell them that in my behalf you are going to apply for an injunction
+against the Textile Trust, forbidding them to take any further steps toward
+that increase of dividend. Tell them I, as a large stock-holder, and
+representing a group of large stock-holders, purpose to stop the paying of
+unearned dividends."
+
+Fisher knew how closely connected my house and the Textile Trust had been;
+but he showed, and probably felt no astonishment. He was too experienced in
+the ways of finance and financiers. It was a matter of indifference to him
+whether I was trying to assassinate my friend and ally, or was feinting at
+Langdon, to lure the public within reach so that we might, together, fall
+upon it and make a battue. Your lawyer is your true mercenary. Under his
+code honor consists in making the best possible fight in exchange for the
+biggest possible fee. He is frankly for sale to the highest bidder. At
+least so it is with those that lead the profession nowadays, give it what
+is called "character" and "tone."
+
+Not without some regret did I thus arrange to attack my friend in his
+absence. "Still," I reasoned, "his blunder in trusting some leaky person
+with his secret is the cause of my peril--and I'll not have to justify
+myself to him for trying to save myself." What effect my injunction would
+have I could not foresee. Certainly it could not save me from the loss of
+my fortune; but, possibly, it might check the upward course of the stock
+long enough to enable me to snatch myself from ruin, and to cling to firm
+ground until the Coal deal drew me up to safety.
+
+My next call was at the Interstate Trust Company. I found Corey waiting for
+me in a most uneasy state of mind.
+
+"Is there any truth in this story about you?" was the question he plumped
+at me.
+
+"What story?" said I, and a hard fight I had to keep my confusion and alarm
+from the surface. For, apparently, my secret was out.
+
+"That you're on the wrong side of the Textile."
+
+So it was out! "Some truth," I admitted, since denial would have been
+useless here. "And I've come to you for the money to tide me over."
+
+He grew white, a sickly white, and into his eyes came a horrible, drowning
+look.
+
+"I owe a lot to you, Matt," he pleaded. "But I've done you a great many
+favors, haven't I?"
+
+"That you have Bob," I cordially agreed. "But this isn't a favor. It's
+business."
+
+"You mustn't ask it, Blacklock," he cried. "I've loaned you more money now
+than the law allows. And I can't let you have any more."
+
+"Some one has been lying to you, and you've been believing him," said I.
+"When I say my request isn't a favor, but business, I mean it."
+
+"I can't let you have any more," he repeated. "I can't!" And down came his
+fist in a weak-violent gesture.
+
+I leaned forward and laid my hand strongly on his arm.
+
+"In addition to the stock of this concern that I hold in my own name," said
+I, "I hold five shares in the name of a man whom nobody knows that I even
+know. If you don't let me have the money, that man goes to the district
+attorney with information that lands you in the penitentiary, that puts
+your company out of business and into bankruptcy before to-morrow noon.
+I saved you three years ago, and got you this job against just such an
+emergency as this, Bob Corey. And, by God, you'll toe the mark!"
+
+"But we haven't done anything that every bank in town doesn't do every
+day--doesn't have to do. If we didn't lend money to dummy borrowers
+and over-certify accounts, our customers would go where they could get
+accommodations."
+
+"That's true enough," said I. "But I'm in a position for the moment where I
+need my friends--and they've got to come to time. If I don't get the money
+from you, I'll get it elsewhere--but over the cliff with you and your
+bank! The laws you've been violating may be bad for the practical banking
+business, but they're mighty good for punishing ingratitude and treachery."
+
+He sat there, yellow and pinched, and shivering every now and then. He
+made no reply. He was one of those shells of men that are conspicuous as
+figureheads in every department of active life--fellows with well-shaped,
+white-haired or prematurely bald heads, and grave, respectable faces;
+they look dignified and substantial, and the soul of uprightness; they
+coin their looks into good salaries by selling themselves as covers for
+operations of the financiers. And how those operations, in the nude, as it
+were, would terrify the plodders that save up and deposit or invest the
+money the financiers gamble with on the big green tables!
+
+Presently I shook his arm impatiently. His eyes met mine, and I fixed them.
+
+"I'm going to pull through," said I. "But if I weren't, I'd see to it that
+you were protected. Come, what's your answer? Friend or traitor?"
+
+"Can't you give me any security--any collateral?"
+
+"No more than I took from you when I saved you as you were going down with
+the rest in the Dumont smash. My word--that's all. I borrow on the same
+terms you've given me before, the same you're giving four of your heaviest
+borrowers right now."
+
+He winced as I thus reminded him how minute my knowledge was of the
+workings of his bank.
+
+"I didn't think this of you, Matt," he whined. "I believed you above such
+hold-up methods."
+
+"I suit my methods to the men I'm dealing with," was my answer. "These
+fellows are trying to push me off the life raft. I fight with every weapon
+I can lay hands on. And I know as well as you do that, if you get into
+serious trouble through this loan, at least five men we could both name
+would have to step in and save the bank and cover up the scandal. You'll
+blackmail them, just as you've blackmailed them before, and they you.
+Blackmail's a legitimate part of the game. Nobody appreciates that better
+than you." It was no time for the smug hypocrisies under which we people
+down town usually conduct our business--just as the desperadoes used to
+patrol the highways disguised as peaceful merchants.
+
+"Send round in the morning and get the money," said he, putting on a
+resigned, hopeless look.
+
+I laughed. "I'll feel easier if I take it now," I replied. "We'll fix up
+the notes and checks at once."
+
+He reddened, but after a brief hesitation busied himself. When the papers
+were all made up and signed, and I had the certified checks in my pocket,
+I said: "Wait here, Bob, until the National Industrial people call you
+up. I'll ask them to do it, so they can get your personal assurance that
+everything's all right. And I'll stop there until they tell me they've
+talked with you."
+
+"But it's too late," he said. "You can't deposit to-day."
+
+"I've a special arrangement with them," I replied.
+
+His face betrayed him. I saw that at no stage of that proceeding had I been
+wiser than in shutting off his last chance to evade. What scheme he had in
+mind I don't know, and can't imagine. But he had thought out something,
+probably something foolish that would have given me trouble without saving
+him. A foolish man in a tight place is as foolish as ever, and Corey was
+a foolish man--only a fool commits crimes that put him in the power of
+others. The crimes of the really big captains of industry and generals of
+finance are of the kind that puts others in their power.
+
+"Buck up, Corey," said I. "Do you think I'm the man to shut a friend in the
+hold of a sinking ship? Tell me, who told you I was short on Textile?"
+
+"One of my men," he slowly replied, as he braced himself together.
+
+"Which one? Who?" I persisted. For I wanted to know just how far the news
+was likely to spread.
+
+He seemed to be thinking out a lie.
+
+"The truth!" I commanded. "I know it couldn't have been one of your men.
+Who was it? I'll not give you away."
+
+"It was Tom Langdon," he finally said.
+
+I checked an exclamation of amazement. I had been assuming that I had been
+betrayed by some one of those tiny mischances that so often throw the best
+plans into confusion.
+
+"Tom Langdon," I said satirically. "It was he that warned you against me?"
+
+"It was a friendly act," said Corey. "He and I are very intimate. And he
+doesn't know how close you and I are."
+
+"Suggested that you call my loans, did he?" I went on.
+
+"You mustn't blame him, Blacklock; really you mustn't," said Corey
+earnestly, for he was a pretty good friend to those he liked, as friendship
+goes in finance. "He happened to hear. You know the Langdons keep a sharp
+watch on operations in their stock. And he dropped in to warn me as a
+friend. You'd do the same thing in the same circumstances. He didn't say a
+word about my calling your loans. I--to be frank--I instantly thought of it
+myself. I intended to do it when you came, but"--a sickly smile--"you
+anticipated me."
+
+"I understand," said I good-humoredly. "I don't blame him." And I didn't
+then.
+
+After I had completed my business at the National Industrial, I went back
+to my office and gathered together the threads of my web of defense. Then
+I wrote and sent out to all my newspapers and all my agents a broadside
+against the management of the Textile Trust--it would be published in
+the morning, in good time for the opening of the Stock Exchange. Before
+the first quotation of Textile could be made, thousands on thousands of
+investors and speculators throughout the country would have read my letter,
+would be believing that Matthew Blacklock had detected the Textile Trust
+in a stock-jobbing swindle, and had promptly turned against it, preferring
+to keep faith with his customers and with the public. As I read over my
+pronunciamiento aloud before sending it out, I found in it a note of
+confidence that cheered me mightily. "I'm even stronger than I thought,"
+said I. And I felt stronger still as I went on to picture the thousands on
+thousands throughout the land rallying at my call to give battle.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII. ANITA BEGINS TO BE HERSELF
+
+
+I had asked Sam Ellersly to dine with me; so preoccupied was I that not
+until ten minutes before the hour set did he come into my mind--he or any
+of his family, even his sister. My first impulse was to send word that I
+couldn't keep the engagement. "But I must dine somewhere," I reflected,
+"and there's no reason why I shouldn't dine with him, since I've done
+everything that can be done." In my office suite I had a bath and
+dressing-room, with a complete wardrobe. Thus, by hurrying a little over
+my toilet, and by making my chauffeur crowd the speed limit, I was at
+Delmonico's only twenty minutes late.
+
+Sam, who had been late also, as usual, was having a cocktail and was
+ordering the dinner. I smoked a cigarette and watched him. At business or
+at anything serious his mind was all but useless; but at ordering dinner
+and things of that sort, he shone. Those small accomplishments of his had
+often moved me to a sort of pitying contempt, as if one saw a man of talent
+devoting himself to engraving the Lord's Prayer on gold dollars. That
+evening, however, as I saw how comfortable and contented he looked, with
+not a care in the world, since he was to have a good dinner and a good
+cigar afterward; as I saw how much genuine pleasure he was getting out of
+selecting the dishes and giving the waiter minute directions for the chef,
+I envied him.
+
+What Langdon had once said came back to me: "We are under the tyranny of
+to-morrow, and happiness is impossible." And I thought how true that was.
+But, for the Sammys, high and low, there is no to-morrow. He was somehow
+impressing me with a sense that he was my superior. His face was weak, and,
+in a weak way, bad; but there was a certain fineness of quality in it,
+a sort of hothouse look, as if he had been sheltered all his life, and
+brought up on especially selected food. "Men like me," thought I with a
+certain envy, "rise and fall. But his sort of men have got something that
+can't be taken away, that enables them to carry off with grace, poverty or
+the degradation of being spongers and beggars."
+
+This shows how far I had let that attack of snobbishness eat into me. I
+glanced down at my hands. No delicateness there; certainly those fingers,
+though white enough nowadays, and long enough, too, were not made for fancy
+work and parlor tricks. They would have looked in place round the handle
+of a spade or the throttle of an engine, while Sam's seemed made for the
+keyboard of a piano.
+
+"You must come over to my rooms after dinner, and give me some music," said
+I.
+
+"Thanks," he replied, "but I've promised to go home and play bridge.
+Mother's got a few in to dinner, and more are coming afterward, I believe."
+
+"Then I'll go with you, and talk to your sister--she doesn't play."
+
+He glanced at me in a way that made me pass my hand over my face. I learned
+at least part of the reason for my feeling at disadvantage before him. I
+had forgotten to shave; and as my beard is heavy and black, it has to be
+looked after twice a day. "Oh, I can stop at my rooms and get my face into
+condition in a few minutes," said I.
+
+"And put on evening dress, too," he suggested. "You wouldn't want to go in
+a dinner jacket."
+
+I can't say why this was the "last straw," but it was.
+
+"Bother!" said I, my common sense smashing the spell of snobbishness that
+had begun to reassert itself as soon as I got into his unnatural, unhealthy
+atmosphere. "I'll go as I am, beard and all. I only make myself ridiculous,
+trying to be a sheep. I'm a goat, and a goat I'll stay."
+
+That shut him into himself. When he re-emerged, it was to say: "Something
+doing down town to-day, eh?"
+
+A sharpness in his voice and in his eyes, too, made me put my mind on him
+more closely, and then I saw what I should have seen before--that he was
+moody and slightly distant.
+
+"Seen Tom Langdon this afternoon?" I asked carelessly.
+
+He colored. "Yes--had lunch with him," was his answer.
+
+I smiled--for his benefit. "Aha!" thought I. "So Tom Langdon has been fool
+enough to take this paroquet into his confidence." Then I said to him: "Is
+Tom making the rounds, warning the rats to leave the sinking ship?"
+
+"What do you mean, Matt?" he demanded, as if I had accused him.
+
+I looked steadily at him, and I imagine my unshaven jaw did not make my
+aspect alluring.
+
+"That I'm thinking of driving the rats overboard," replied I. "The ship's
+sound, but it would be sounder if there were fewer of them."
+
+"You don't imagine anything Tom could say would change my feelings toward
+you?" he pleaded.
+
+"I don't know, and I don't care a damn," replied I coolly. "But I do know,
+before the Langdons or anybody else can have Blacklock pie, they'll have
+first to catch their Blacklock."
+
+I saw Langdon had made him uneasy, despite his belief in my strength. And
+he was groping for confirmation or reassurance. "But," thought I, "if he
+thinks I may be going up the spout, why isn't he more upset? He probably
+hates me because I've befriended him, but no matter how much he hated me,
+wouldn't his fear of being cut off from supplies drive him almost crazy?" I
+studied him in vain for sign of deep anxiety. Either Tom didn't tell him
+much, I decided, or he didn't believe Tom knew what he was talking about.
+
+"What did Tom say about me?" I inquired.
+
+"Oh, almost nothing. We were talking chiefly of--of club matters," he
+answered, in a fair imitation of his usual offhand manner.
+
+"When does my name come up there?" said I.
+
+He flushed and shifted. "I was just about to tell you," he stammered. "But
+perhaps you know?"
+
+"Know what?"
+
+"That--Hasn't Tom told you? He has withdrawn--and--you'll have to get
+another second--if you think--that is--unless you--I suppose you'd have
+told me, if you'd changed your mind?"
+
+Since I had become so deeply interested in Anita, my
+ambition--ambition!--to join the Travelers had all but dropped out of my
+mind.
+
+"I had forgotten about it," said I. "But, now that you remind me, I want my
+name withdrawn. It was a passing fancy. It was part and parcel of a lot of
+damn foolishness I've been indulging in for the last few months. But I've
+come to my senses--and it's 'me to the wild,' where I belong, Sammy, from
+this time on."
+
+He looked tremendously relieved, and a little puzzled, too. I thought I was
+reading him like an illuminated sign. "He's eager to keep friends with me,"
+thought I, "until he's absolutely sure there's nothing more in it for him
+and his people." And that guess was a pretty good one. It is not to the
+discredit of my shrewdness that I didn't see it was not hope, but fear,
+that made him try to placate me. I could not have possibly known then what
+the Langdons had done. But--Sammy was saying, in his friendliest tone:
+
+"What's the matter, old man? You're sour to-night."
+
+"Never in a better humor," I assured him, and as I spoke the words
+they came true. What I had been saying about the Travelers and all it
+represented--all the snobbery, and smirking, and rotten pretense--my final
+and absolute renunciation of it all--acted on me as I've seen religion act
+on the fellows that used to go up to the mourners' bench at the revivals. I
+felt as if I had suddenly emerged from the parlor of a dive and its stench
+of sickening perfumes, into the pure air of God's Heaven.
+
+I signed the bill, and we went afoot up the avenue. Sam, as I saw with a
+good deal of amusement, was trying to devise some subtle, tactful way of
+attaching his poor, clumsy little suction-pump to the well of my secret
+thoughts.
+
+"What is it, Sammy?" said I at last. "What do you want to know that you're
+afraid to ask me?"
+
+"Nothing," he said hastily. "I'm only a bit worried about--about you and
+Textile. Matt,"--this in the tone of deep emotion we reserve for the
+attempt to lure our friends into confiding that about themselves which will
+give us the opportunity to pity them, and, if necessary, to sheer off from
+them--"Matt, I do hope you haven't been hard hit?"
+
+"Not yet," said I easily. "Dry your tears and put away your black clothes.
+Your friend, Tom Langdon, was a little premature."
+
+"I'm afraid I've given you a false impression," Sam continued, with
+an overeagerness to convince me that did not attract my attention at
+the time. "Tom merely said, 'I hear Blacklock is loaded up with Textile
+shorts,'--that was all. A careless remark. I really didn't think of it
+again until I saw you looking so black and glum."
+
+That seemed natural enough, so I changed the subject. As we entered his
+house, I said:
+
+"I'll not go up to the drawing-room. Make my excuses to your mother, will
+you? I'll turn into the little smoking-room here. Tell your sister--and say
+I'm going to stop only a moment."
+
+Sam had just left me when the butler came.
+
+"Mr. Ball--I think that was the name, sir--wishes to speak to you on the
+telephone."
+
+I had given Ellerslys' as one of the places at which I might be found,
+should it be necessary to consult me. I followed the butler to the
+telephone closet under the main stairway. As soon as Ball made sure it was
+I, he began:
+
+"I'll use the code words. I've just seen Fearless, as you told me to."
+
+Fearless--that was Mitchell, my spy in the employ of Tavistock, who was
+my principal rival in the business of confidential brokerage for the high
+financiers. "Yes," said I. "What does he say?"
+
+"There has been a great deal of heavy buying for a month past."
+
+Then my dread was well-founded--Textiles were to be deliberately rocketed.
+"Who's been doing it?" I asked.
+
+"He found out only this afternoon. It's been kept unusually dark. It--"
+
+"Who? Who?" I demanded.
+
+"Intrepid," he answered.
+
+Intrepid--that is, Langdon--Mowbray Langdon!
+
+"The whole thing--was planned carefully," continued Ball, "and is coming
+off according to schedule. Fearless overheard a final message Intrepid's
+brother brought from him to-day."
+
+So it was no mischance--it was an assassination. Mowbray Langdon had
+stabbed me in the back and fled.
+
+"Did you hear what I said?" asked Ball. "Is that you?"
+
+"Yes," I replied.
+
+"Oh," came in a relieved tone from the other end of the wire. "You were so
+long in answering that I thought I'd been cut off. Any instructions?"
+
+"No," said I. "Good-by."
+
+I heard him ring off, but I sat there for several minutes, the receiver
+still to my ear. I was muttering: "Langdon, Langdon--why--why--why?" again
+and again. Why had he turned against me? Why had he plotted to destroy
+me--one of those plots so frequent in Wall Street--where the assassin
+steals up, delivers the mortal blow, and steals away without ever being
+detected or even suspected? I saw the whole plot now--I understood Tom
+Langdon's activities, I recalled Mowbray Langdon's curious phrases and
+looks and tones. But--why--why--why? How was I in his way?
+
+It was all dark to me--pitch-dark. I returned to the smoking-room, lighted
+a cigar, sat fumbling at the new situation. I was in no worse plight than
+before--what did it matter who was attacking me? In the circumstances,
+a novice could now destroy me as easily as a Langdon. Still, Ball's
+news seemed to take away my courage. I reminded myself that I was used
+to treachery of this sort, that I deserved what I was getting because
+I had, like a fool, dropped my guard in the fight that is always an
+every-man-for-himself. But I reminded myself in vain. Langdon's smiling
+treachery made me heart-sick.
+
+Soon Anita appeared--preceded and heralded by a faint rustling from soft
+and clinging skirts, that swept my nerves like a love-tune. I suppose for
+all men there is a charm, a spell, beyond expression, in the sight of a
+delicate beautiful young woman, especially if she be dressed in those fine
+fabrics that look as if only a fairy loom could have woven them; and when a
+man loves the woman who bursts upon his vision, that spell must overwhelm
+him, especially if he be such a man as was I--a product of life's roughest
+factories, hard and harsh, an elbower and a trampler, a hustler and a
+bluffer. Then, you must also consider the exact circumstances--I standing
+there, with destruction hanging over me, with the sense that within a few
+hours I should be a pariah to her, a masquerader stripped of his disguise
+and cast out from the ball where he had been making so merry and so free.
+Only a few hours more! Perhaps now was the last time I should ever stand
+so near to her! The full realization of all this swallowed me up as
+in a great, thick, black mist. And my arms strained to escape from my
+tightly-locked hands, strained to seize her, to snatch from her, reluctant
+though she might be, at least some part of the happiness that was to be
+denied me.
+
+I think my torment must have somehow penetrated to her. For she was sweet
+and friendly--and she could not have hurt me worse! If I had followed my
+impulse I should have fallen at her feet and buried my face, scorching, in
+the folds of that pale blue, faintly-shimmering robe of hers.
+
+"Do throw away that huge, hideous cigar," she said, laughing. And she took
+two cigarettes from the box, put both between her lips, lit them, held one
+toward me. I looked at her face, and along her smooth, bare, outstretched
+arm, and at the pink, slender fingers holding the cigarette. I took it as
+if I were afraid the spell would be broken, should my fingers touch hers.
+Afraid--that's it! That's why I didn't pour out all that was in my heart. I
+deserved to lose her.
+
+"I'm taking you away from the others," I said. We could hear the murmur
+of many voices and of music. In fancy I could see them assembled round
+the little card-tables--the well-fed bodies, the well-cared-for skins,
+the elaborate toilets, the useless jeweled hands--comfortable, secure,
+self-satisfied, idle, always idle, always playing at the imitation
+games--like their own pampered children, to be sheltered in the nurseries
+of wealth their whole lives through. And not at all in bitterness, but
+wholly in sadness, a sense of the injustice, the unfairness of it all--a
+sense that had been strong in me in my youth but blunted during the years
+of my busy prosperity--returned for a moment. For a moment only; my mind
+was soon back to realities--to her and me--to "us." How soon it would never
+be "us" again!
+
+"They're mama's friends," Anita was answering. "Oldish and tiresome. When
+you leave I shall go straight on up to bed."
+
+"I'd like to--to see your room--where you live," said I, more to myself
+than to her.
+
+"I sleep in a bare little box," she replied with a laugh. "It's like a
+cell. A friend of ours who has the anti-germ fad insisted on it. But my
+sitting-room isn't so bad."
+
+"Langdon has the anti-germ fad," said I. She answered "Yes" after a pause,
+and in such a strained voice that I looked at her. A flush was just dying
+out of her face. "He was the friend I spoke of," she went on.
+
+"You know him very well?" I asked.
+
+"We've known him--always," said she. "I think he's one of my earliest
+recollections. His father's summer place and ours adjoin. And once--I guess
+it's the first time I remember seeing him--he was a freshman at Harvard,
+and he came along on a horse past the pony cart in which a groom was
+driving me. And I--I was very little then--I begged him to take me up, and
+he did. I thought he was the greatest, most wonderful man that ever lived."
+She laughed queerly. "When I said my prayers, I used to imagine a god that
+looked like him to say them to."
+
+I echoed her laugh heartily. The idea of Mowbray Langdon as a god struck me
+as peculiarly funny, though natural enough, too.
+
+"Absurd, wasn't it?" said she. But her face was grave, and she let her
+cigarette die out.
+
+"I guess you know him better than that now?"
+
+"Yes--better," she answered, slowly and absently. "He's--anything but a
+god!"
+
+"And the more fascinating on that account," said I. "I wonder why women
+like best the really bad, dangerous sort of man, who hasn't any respect for
+them, or for anything."
+
+I said this that she might protest, at least for herself. But her answer
+was a vague, musing, "I wonder--I wonder."
+
+"I'm sure _you_ wouldn't," I protested earnestly, for her.
+
+She looked at me queerly.
+
+"Can I never convince you that I'm just a woman?" said she mockingly. "Just
+a woman, and one a man with your ideas of women would fly from."
+
+"I wish you were!" I exclaimed. "Then--I'd not find it so--so impossible to
+give you up."
+
+She rose and made a slow tour of the room, halting on the rug before the
+closed fireplace a few feet from me. I sat looking at her.
+
+"I am going to give you up," I said at last.
+
+Her eyes, staring into vacancy, grew larger and intenser with each long,
+deep breath she took.
+
+"I didn't intend to say what I'm about to say--at least, not this evening,"
+I went on, and to me it seemed to be some other than myself who was
+speaking. "Certain things happened down town to-day that have set me to
+thinking. And--I shall do whatever I can for your brother and your father.
+But you--you are free!"
+
+She went to the table, stood there in profile to me, straight and slender
+as a sunflower stalk. She traced the silver chasings in the lid of the
+cigarette box with her forefinger; then she took a cigarette and began
+rolling it slowly and absently.
+
+"Please don't scent and stain your fingers with that filthy tobacco," said
+I rather harshly.
+
+"And only this afternoon you were saying you had become reconciled to my
+vice--that you had canonized it along with me--wasn't that your phrase?"
+This indifferently, without turning toward me, and as if she were thinking
+of something else.
+
+"So I have," retorted I. "But my mood--please oblige me this once."
+
+She let the cigarette fall into the box, closed the lid gently, leaned
+against the table, folded her arms upon her bosom and looked full at me.
+I was as acutely conscious of her every movement, of the very coming and
+going of the breath at her nostrils, as a man on the operating-table is
+conscious of the slightest gesture of the surgeon.
+
+"You are--suffering!" she said, and her voice was like the flow of oil upon
+a burn. "I have never seen you like this. I didn't believe you capable
+of--of much feeling."
+
+I could not trust myself to speak. If Bob Corey could have looked in on
+that scene, could have understood it, how amazed he would have been!
+
+"What happened down town to-day?" she went on. "Tell me, if I may know."
+
+"I'll tell you what I didn't think, ten minutes ago, I'd tell any human
+being," said I. "They've got me strapped down in the press. At ten o'clock
+in the morning--precisely at ten--they're going to put on the screws." I
+laughed. "I guess they'll have me squeezed pretty dry before noon."
+
+She shivered.
+
+"So, you see," I continued, "I don't deserve any credit for giving you up.
+I only anticipate you by about twenty-four hours. Mine's a deathbed
+repentance."
+
+"I'd thought of that," said she reflectively. Presently she added: "Then,
+it is true." And I knew Sammy had given her some hint that prepared her for
+my confession.
+
+"Yes--I can't go blustering through the matrimonial market," replied I.
+"I've been thrown out. I'm a beggar at the gates."
+
+"A beggar at the gates," she murmured.
+
+I got up and stood looking down at her.
+
+"Don't _pity_ me!" I said. "My remark was a figure of speech. I want
+no alms. I wouldn't take even you as alms. They'll probably get me down,
+and stamp the life out of me--nearly. But not quite--don't you lose sight
+of that. They can't kill me, and they can't tame me. I'll recover, and I'll
+strew the Street with their blood and broken bones."
+
+She drew in her breath sharply.
+
+"And a minute ago I was almost liking you!" she exclaimed.
+
+I retreated to my chair and gave her a smile that must have been grim.
+
+"Your ideas of life and of men are like a cloistered nun's," said I. "If
+there are any real men among your acquaintances, you may find out some
+day that they're not so much like lapdogs as they pretend--and that you
+wouldn't like them, if they were."
+
+"What--just what--happened to you down town to-day--after you left me?"
+
+"A friend of mine has been luring me into a trap--why, I can't quite
+fathom. To-day he sprang the trap and ran away."
+
+"A friend of yours?"
+
+"The man we were talking about--your ex-god--Langdon."
+
+"Langdon," she repeated, and her tone told me that Sammy knew and had
+hinted to her more than I suspected him of knowing. And, with her arms
+still folded, she paced up and down the room. I watched her slender feet in
+pale blue slippers appear and disappear--first one, then the other--at the
+edge of her trailing skirt.
+
+Presently she stopped in front of me. Her eyes were gazing past me.
+
+"You are sure it was he?" she asked.
+
+I could not answer immediately, so amazed was I at her expression. I had
+been regarding her as a being above and apart, an incarnation of youth
+and innocence; with a shock it now came to me that she was experienced,
+intelligent, that she understood the whole of life, the dark as fully as
+the light, and that she was capable to live it, too. It was not a girl that
+was questioning me there; it was a woman.
+
+"Yes--Langdon," I replied. "But I've no quarrel with him. My reverse is
+nothing but the fortune of war. I assure you, when I see him again, I'll be
+as friendly as ever--only a bit less of a trusting ass, I fancy. We're a
+lot of free lances down in the Street. We fight now on one side, now on the
+other. We change sides whenever it's expedient; and under the code it's not
+necessary to give warning. To-day, before I knew he was the assassin, I had
+made my plans to try to save myself at his expense, though I believed him
+to be the best friend I had down town. No doubt he's got some good reason
+for creeping up on me in the dark."
+
+"You are sure it was he?" she repeated.
+
+"He, and nobody else," replied I. "He decided to do me up--and I guess
+he'll succeed. He's not the man to lift his gun unless he's sure the bird
+will fall."
+
+"Do you really not care any more than you show?" she asked. "Or is your
+manner only bravado--to show off before me?"
+
+"I don't care a damn, since I'm to lose you," said I. "It'll be a godsend
+to have a hard row to hoe the next few months or years."
+
+She went back to leaning against the table, her arms folded as before. I
+saw she was thinking out something. Finally she said:
+
+"I have decided not to accept your release."
+
+I sprang to my feet.
+
+"Anita!" I cried, my arms stretched toward her.
+
+But she only looked coldly at me, folded her arms the more tightly and
+said:
+
+"Do not misunderstand me. The bargain is the same as before. If you want me
+on those terms, I must--give myself."
+
+"Why?" I asked.
+
+A faint smile, with no mirth in it, drifted round the corners of her mouth.
+
+"An impulse," she said. "I don't quite understand it myself. An impulse
+from--from--" Her eyes and her thoughts were far away, and her expression
+was the one that made it hardest for me to believe she was a child of those
+parents of hers. "An impulse from a sense of justice--of decency. I am the
+cause of your trouble, and I daren't be a coward and a cheat." She repeated
+the last words. "A coward--a cheat! We--I--have taken much from you, more
+than you know. It must be repaid. If you still wish, I will--will keep to
+my bargain."
+
+"It's true, I'd not have got into the mess," said I, "if I'd been attending
+to business instead of dangling after you. But you're not responsible for
+that folly."
+
+She tried to speak several times, before she finally succeeded in saying:
+
+"It's my fault. I mustn't shirk."
+
+I studied her, but I couldn't puzzle her out.
+
+"I've been thinking all along that you were simple and transparent," I
+said. "Now, I see you are a mystery. What are you hiding from me?"
+
+Her smile was almost coquettish as she replied:
+
+"When a woman makes a mystery of herself to a man, it's for the man's
+good."
+
+I took her hand--almost timidly.
+
+"Anita," I said, "do you still--dislike me?"
+
+"I do not--and shall not--love you," she answered. "But you are--"
+
+"More endurable?" I suggested, as she hesitated.
+
+"Less unendurable," she said with raillery. Then she added, "Less
+unendurable than profiting by a-creeping up in the dark."
+
+I thought I understood her better than she understood herself. And suddenly
+my passion melted in a tenderness I would have said was as foreign to me
+as rain to a desert. I noticed that she had a haggard look. "You are very
+tired, child," said I. "Good night. I am a different man from what I was
+when I came in here."
+
+"And I a different woman," said she, a beauty shining from her that was as
+far beyond her physical beauty as--as love is beyond passion.
+
+"A nobler, better woman," I exclaimed, kissing her hand.
+
+She snatched it away.
+
+"If you only knew!" she cried. "It seems to me, as I realize what sort of
+woman I am, that I am almost worthy of _you_!" And she blazed a look
+at me that left me rooted there, astounded.
+
+But I went down the avenue with a light heart. "Just like a woman," I was
+saying to myself cheerfully, "not to know her own mind."
+
+A few blocks, and I stopped and laughed outright--at Langdon's treachery,
+at my own credulity. "What an ass I've been making of myself!" said I to
+myself. And I could see myself as I really had been during those months
+of social struggling--an ass, braying and gamboling in a lion's skin--to
+impress the ladies!
+
+"But not wholly to no purpose," I reflected, again all in a glow at thought
+of Anita.
+
+
+
+
+XIX. A WINDFALL FROM "GENTLEMAN JOE"
+
+
+I went to my rooms, purposing to go straight to bed, and get a good sleep.
+I did make a start toward undressing; then I realized that I should only
+lie awake with my brain wearing me out, spinning crazy thoughts and schemes
+hour after hour--for my imagination rarely lets it do any effective
+thinking after the lights are out and the limitations of material things
+are wiped away by the darkness. I put on a dressing-gown and seated myself
+to smoke and to read.
+
+When I was very young, new to New York, in with the Tenderloin crowd and
+up to all sorts of pranks, I once tried opium smoking. I don't think I
+ever heard of anything in those days without giving it a try. Usually, I
+believe, opium makes the smoker ill the first time or two; but it had no
+such effect on me, nor did it fill my mind with fantastic visions. On
+the contrary, it made everything around me intensely real--that is, it
+enormously stimulated my dominant characteristic of accurate observation.
+I noticed the slightest details--such things as the slight difference in
+the length of the arms of the Chinaman who kept the "joint," the number of
+buttons down the front of the waist of the girl in the bunk opposite mine,
+across the dingy, little, sweet-scented room. Nothing escaped me, and also
+I was conscious of each passing second, or, rather, fraction of a second.
+
+As a rule, time and events, even when one is quietest, go with such a rush
+that one notes almost nothing of what is passing. The opium seemed to
+compel the kaleidoscope of life to turn more slowly; in fact, it sharpened
+my senses so that they unconsciously took impressions many times more
+quickly and easily and accurately. As I sat there that night after leaving
+Anita, forcing my mind to follow the printed lines, I found I was in
+exactly the state in which I had been during my one experiment with opium.
+It seemed to me that as many days as there had been hours must have elapsed
+since I got the news of the raised Textile dividend. Days--yes, weeks, even
+months, of thought and action seemed to have been compressed into those six
+hours--for, as I sat there, it was not yet eleven o'clock.
+
+And then I realized that this notion was not of the moment, but that I had
+been as if under the influence of some powerful nerve stimulant since my
+brain began to recover from the shock of that thunderbolt. Only, where
+nerve stimulants often make the mind passive and disinclined to take part
+in the drama so vividly enacting before it, this opening of my reservoirs
+of reserve nervous energy had multiplied my power to act as well as my
+power to observe. "I wonder how long it will last," thought I. And it made
+me uneasy, this unnatural alertness, unaccompanied by any feverishness or
+sense of strain. "Is this the way madness begins?"
+
+I dressed myself again and went out--went up to Joe Healey's gambling place
+in Forty-fourth Street. Most of the well-known gamblers up town, as well as
+their "respectable" down town fellow members of the fraternity, were old
+acquaintances of mine; Joe Healey was as close a friend as I had. He had
+great fame far squareness--and, in a sense, deserved it. With his fellow
+gamblers he was straight as a string at all times--to be otherwise would
+have meant that when he went broke he would stay broke, because none of
+the fraternity would "stake" him. But with his patrons--being regarded by
+them as a pariah, he acted toward them like a pariah--a prudent pariah. He
+fooled them with a frank show of gentlemanliness, of honesty to his own
+hurt; under that cover he fleeced them well, but always judiciously.
+
+That night, I recall, Joe's guests were several young fellows of the
+fashionable set, rich men's sons and their parasites, a few of the big down
+town operators who hadn't yet got hipped on "respectability"--they playing
+poker in a private room--and a couple of flush-faced, flush-pursed chaps
+from out of town, for whom one of Joe's men was dealing faro from what
+looked to my experienced and accurate eye like a "brace" box.
+
+Joe, very elegant, too elegant in fact, in evening dress, was showing a new
+piece of statuary to the oldest son of Melville, of the National Industrial
+Bank. Joe knew a little something about art--he was much like the art
+dealers who, as a matter of business, learn the difference between good
+things and bad, but in their hearts wonder and laugh at people willing to
+part with large sums of money for a little paint or marble or the like.
+
+As soon as Joe thought he had sufficiently impressed young Melville, he
+drifted him to a roulette table, left him there and joined me.
+
+"Come to my office," said he. "I want to see you."
+
+He led the way down the richly-carpeted marble stairway as far as the
+landing at the turn. There, on a sort of mezzanine, he had a gorgeous
+little suite. The principal object in the sitting-room or office was a huge
+safe. He closed and locked the outside door behind us.
+
+"Take a seat," said he. "You'll like the cigars in the second box on my
+desk--the long one." And he began turning the combination lock. "You
+haven't dropped in on us for the past three or four months," he went on.
+
+"No," said I, getting a great deal of pleasure out of seeing again, and
+thus intimately, his round, ruddy face--like a yachtman's, not like a
+drinker's--and his shifty, laughing brown eyes. "The game down town has
+given me enough excitement. I haven't had to continue it up town to keep
+my hand in."
+
+In fact, I had, as I have already said, been breaking off with my former
+friends because, while many of the most reputable and reliable financiers
+down town go in for high play occasionally at the gambling houses, it isn't
+wise for the man trying to establish himself as a strictly legitimate
+financier. I had been playing as much as ever, but only in games in my own
+rooms and at the rooms of other bankers, brokers and commercial leaders.
+The passion for high play is a craving that gnaws at a man all the time,
+and he must always be feeding it one way or another.
+
+"I've noticed that you are getting too swell to patronize us fellows," said
+he, his shrewd smile showing that my polite excuse had not fooled him.
+"Well, Matt, you're right--you always did have good sound sense and a
+steady eye for the main chance. I used to think the women'd ruin you, they
+were so crazy about that handsome mug and figure of yours. But when I saw
+you knew exactly when to let go, I knew nothing could stop you."
+
+By this time he had the safe open, disclosing several compartments and a
+small, inside safe. He worked away at the second combination lock, and
+presently exposed the interior of the little safe. It was filled with a
+great roll of bills. He pried this out, brought it over to the desk and
+began wrapping it up. "I want you to take this with you when you go," said
+he. "I've made several big killings lately, and I'm going to get you to
+invest the proceeds."
+
+"I can't take that big bundle along with me, Joe," said I. "Besides, it
+ain't safe. Put it in the bank and send me a check."
+
+"Not on your life," replied Healey with a laugh. "The suckers we trimmed
+gave checks, and I turned 'em into cash as soon as the banks opened. I
+wasn't any too spry, either. Two of the damned sneaks consulted lawyers
+as soon as they sobered off, and tried to stop payment on their checks.
+They're threatening proceedings. You must take the dough away with you, and
+I don't want a receipt."
+
+"Trimming suckers, eh?" said I, not able to decide what to do.
+
+"Their fathers stole it from the public," he explained. "They're drunken
+little snobs, not fit to have money. I'm doing a public service by
+relieving them of it. If I'd 'a' got more, I'd feel that much more"--he
+vented his light, cool, sarcastic laugh--"more patriotic."
+
+"I can't take it," said I, feeling that, in my present condition, to take
+it would be very near to betraying the confidence of my old friend.
+
+"They lost it in a straight game," he hastened to assure me. "I haven't had
+a 'brace' box or crooked wheel for four years." This with a sober face and
+a twinkle in his eye. "But even if I had helped chance to do the good work
+of teaching them to take care of their money, you'd not refuse me. Up town
+and down town, and all over the place, what's business, when you come to
+look at it sensibly, but trading in stolen goods? Do you know a man who
+could honestly earn more than ten or twenty thousand a year--good clean
+money by good clean work?"
+
+"Oh, for that matter, your money's as clean as anybody's," said I. "But,
+you know, I'm a speculator, Joe. I have my downs--and this happens to be a
+stormy time for me. If I take your money, I mayn't be able to account for
+it or even to pay dividends on it for--maybe a year or so."
+
+"It's all right, old man. I'll never give it a thought till you remind me
+of it. Use it as you'd use your own. I've got to put it behind somebody's
+luck--why not yours?"
+
+He finished doing up the package, then he seated himself, and we both
+looked at it through the smoke of our cigars.
+
+"It's just as easy to deal in big sums as in little, in large matters as in
+small, isn't it, Joe," said I, "once one gets in the way of it?"
+
+"Do you remember--away back there--the morning," he asked musingly--"the
+last morning--you and I got up from the straw in the stables over at Jerome
+Park--the stables they let us sleep in?"
+
+"And went out in the dawn to roost on the rails and spy on the speed trials
+of old Revell's horses?"
+
+"Exactly," said Joe, and we looked at each other and laughed. "We in
+rags--gosh, how chilly it was that morning! Do you remember what we talked
+about?"
+
+"No," said I, though I did.
+
+"I was proposing to turn a crooked trick--and you wouldn't have it. You
+persuaded me to keep straight, Matt. I've never forgotten it. You kept me
+straight--showed me what a damn fool a man was to load himself down with a
+petty larceny record. You made a man of me, Matt. And then those good looks
+of yours caught the eye of that bookmaker's girl, and he gave you a job at
+writing sheet--and you worked me in with you."
+
+So long ago it seemed, yet near and real, too, as I sat there, conscious of
+every sound and motion, even of the fantastic shapes taken by our upcurling
+smoke. How far I was from the "rail bird" of those happy-go-lucky years,
+when a meal meant quite as much to me as does a million now--how far from
+all that, yet how near, too. For was I not still facing life with the same
+careless courage, forgetting each yesterday in the eager excitement of each
+new day with its new deal? We went on in our reminiscences for a while;
+then, as Joe had a little work to do, I drifted out into the house, took
+a bite of supper with young Melville, had a little go at the tiger, and
+toward five in the clear June morning emerged into the broad day of the
+streets, with the precious bundle under my arms and a five hundred-dollar
+bill in my waistcoat pocket.
+
+"Give my win to me in a single bill," I said to the banker, "and blow
+yourself off with the change."
+
+Joe walked down the street with me--for companionship and a little air
+before turning in, he said, but I imagine a desire to keep his eye on his
+treasure a while longer had something to do with his taking that early
+morning stroll. We passed several of those forlorn figures that hurry
+through the slowly-awakening streets to bed or to work. Finally, there came
+by an old, old woman--a scrubwoman, I guess, on her way home from cleaning
+some office building. Beside her was a thin little boy, hopping along on a
+crutch. I stopped them.
+
+"Hold out your hand," said I to the boy, and he did. I laid the five
+hundred-dollar bill in it. "Now, shut your fingers tight over that," said
+I, "and don't open them till you get home. Then tell your mother to do what
+she likes with it." And we left them gaping after us, speechless before
+this fairy story come true.
+
+"You must be looking hard for luck to-day," said Joe, who understood this
+transaction where another might have thought it a showy and not very wise
+charity. "They'll stop in at the church and pray for you, and burn a
+candle."
+
+"I hope so," said I, "for God knows I need it."
+
+
+
+
+XX. A BREATHING SPELL.
+Langdon, after several years of effort, had got recognition for Textile
+in London, but that was about all. He hadn't succeeded in unloading any
+great amount of it on the English. So it was rather because I neglected
+nothing than because I was hopeful of results that I had made a point of
+telegraphing to London news of my proposed suit. The result was a little
+trading in Textiles over there and a slight decline in the price. This fact
+was telegraphed to all the financial centers on this side of the water, and
+reinforced the impression my lawyers' announcement and my own "bear" letter
+were making.
+
+Still, this was nothing, or next to it. What could I hope to avail against
+Langdon's agents with almost unlimited capital, putting their whole energy
+under the stock to raise it? In the same newspapers that published my bear
+attack, in the same columns and under the same head-lines, were official
+denials from the Textile Trust and the figures of enormous increase of
+business as proof positive that the denials were honest. If the public
+had not been burned so many times by "industrials," if it had not learned
+by bitter experience that practically none of the leaders of finance and
+industry were above lying to make or save a few dollars, if Textiles had
+not been manipulated so often, first by Dumont and since his death by his
+brother-in-law and successor, this suave and cynical Langdon, my desperate
+attack would have been without effect. As it was--
+
+Four months before, in the same situation, had I seen Textiles stagger as
+they staggered in the first hour of business on the Stock Exchange that
+morning, I'd have sounded the charge, clapped spurs to my charger, and
+borne down upon them. But--I had my new-born yearning for "respectability";
+I had my new-born squeamishness, which led me to fear risking Bob Corey
+and his bank and the money of my old friend Healey; finally, there was
+Anita--the longing for her that made me prefer a narrow and uncertain
+foothold to the bold leap that would land me either in wealth and power
+or in the bottomless abyss.
+
+Instead of continuing to sell Textiles, I covered as far as I could; and
+I bought so eagerly and so heavily that, more than Langdon's corps of
+rocketers, I was responsible for the stock's rally and start upward. When I
+say "eagerly" and "heavily," I do not mean that I acted openly or without
+regard to common sense. I mean simply that I made no attempt to back up my
+followers in the selling campaign I had urged them into; on the contrary,
+I bought as they sold. That does not sound well, and it is no better than
+it sounds. I shall not dispute with any one who finds this action of mine
+a betrayal of my clients to save myself. All I shall say is that it was
+business, that in such extreme and dire compulsion as was mine, it was--and
+is--right under the code, the private and real Wall Street code.
+
+You can imagine the confused mass of transactions in which I was involved
+before the Stock Exchange had been open long. There was the stock we had
+been able to buy or get options on at various prices, between the closing
+of the Exchange the previous day and that morning's opening--stock from all
+parts of this country and in England. There was the stock I had been buying
+since the Exchange opened--buying at figures ranging from one-eighth above
+last night's closing price to fourteen points above it. And, on the debit
+side, there were the "short" transactions extending over a period of nearly
+two months--"sellings" of blocks large and small at a hundred different
+prices.
+
+An inextricable tangle, you will say, one it would be impossible for a
+man to unravel quickly and in the frantic chaos of a wild Stock Exchange
+day. Yet the influence of the mysterious state of my nerves, which I have
+described above, was so marvelous that, incredible though it seems, the
+moment the Exchange closed, I knew exactly, where I stood.
+
+Like a mechanical lightning calculator, my mind threw up before me the net
+result of these selling and buying transactions. Textile Common closed
+eighteen points above the closing quotation of the previous day; if
+Langdon's brother had not been just a little indiscreet, I should have been
+as hopeless a bankrupt in reputation and in fortune as ever was ripped up
+by the bulls of Wall Street.
+
+As it was, I believed that, by keeping a bold front, I might extricate and
+free myself when the Coal reorganization was announced. The rise of Coal
+stocks would square my debts--and, as I was apparently untouched by
+the Textile flurry, so far as even Ball, my nominal partner and chief
+lieutenant, knew, I need not fear pressure from creditors that I could
+not withstand.
+
+I could not breathe freely, but I could breathe.
+
+
+
+
+XXI. MOST UNLADYLIKE
+
+
+When I saw I was to have a respite of a month or so, I went over to the
+National Industrial Bank with Healey's roll, which my tellers had counted
+and prepared for deposit. I finished my business with the receiving teller
+of the National Industrial, and dropped in on my friend Lewis, the first
+vice-president. I did not need to pretend coolness and confidence; my
+nerves were still in that curious state of tranquil exhilaration, and I
+felt master of myself and of the situation. Just as I was leaving, in came
+Tom Langdon with Sam Ellersly.
+
+Tom's face was a laughable exhibit of embarrassment. Sam--really, I felt
+sorry for him. There was no reason on earth why he shouldn't be with Tom
+Langdon; yet he acted as if I had caught him "with the goods on him." He
+stammered and stuttered, clasped my hand eagerly, dropped it as if it had
+stung him; he jerked out a string of hysterical nonsense, ending with
+a laugh so crazy that the sound of it disconcerted him. Drink was the
+explanation that drifted through my mind; but in fact I thought little
+about it, so full was I of other matters.
+
+"When is your brother returning?" said I to Tom.
+
+"On the next steamer, I believe," he replied. "He went only for the rest
+and the bath of sea air." With an effort he collected himself, drew me
+aside and said: "I owe you an apology, Mr. Blacklock. I went to the steamer
+with Mowbray to see him off, and he asked me to tell you about our new
+dividend rate--though it was not to be made public for some time. Anyhow,
+he told me to go straight to you--and I--frankly, I forgot it." Then, with
+the winning, candid Langdon smile, he added, ingenuously: "The best excuse
+in the world--yet the one nobody ever accepts."
+
+"No apology necessary," said I with the utmost good nature. "I've no
+personal interest in Textile. My house deals on commission only, you
+know--never on margins for myself. I'm a banker and broker, not a gambler.
+Some of our customers were alarmed by the news of the big increase, and
+insisted on bringing suit to stop it. But I'm going to urge them now to let
+the matter drop."
+
+Tom tried to look natural, and as he is an apt pupil of his brother's, he
+succeeded fairly well. His glance, however, wouldn't fix steadily on my
+gaze, but circled round and round it like a bat at an electric light. "To
+tell you the truth," said he, "I'm extremely nervous as to what my brother
+will say--and do--to me, when I tell him. I hope no harm came to you
+through my forgetfulness."
+
+"None in the world," I assured him. Then I turned on Sam. "What are you
+doing down town to-day?" said I. "Are you on your way to see me?"
+
+He flushed with angry shame, reading an insinuation into my careless
+remark, when I had not the remotest intention of reminding him that his
+customary object in coming down town was to play the parasite and the
+sponge at my expense. I ought to have guessed at once that there was
+some good reason for his recovery of his refined, high-bred, gentlemanly
+super-sensibilities; but I was not in the mood to analyze trifles, though
+my nerves were taking careful record of them.
+
+"Oh, I was just calling on Tom," he replied rather haughtily.
+
+Then Melville himself came in, brushing back his white tufted burnsides and
+licking his lips and blinking his eyes--looking for all the world like a
+cat at its toilet.
+
+"Oh! ah! Blacklock!" he exclaimed, with purring cordiality--and I knew he
+had heard of the big deposit I was making. "Come into my office on your way
+out--nothing especial--only because it's always a pleasure to talk with
+you."
+
+I saw that his effusive friendliness confirmed Tom Langdon's fear that I
+had escaped from his brother's toils. He stared sullenly at the carpet
+until he caught me looking at him with twinkling eyes. He made a valiant
+effort to return my smile and succeeded in twisting his face into a knot
+that seemed to hurt him as much as it amused me.
+
+"Well, good-by, Tom," said I. "Give my regards to your brother when he
+lands, and tell him his going away was a mistake. A man can't afford to
+trust his important business to understrappers." This with a face free from
+any suggestion of intending a shot at him. Then to Sam: "See you to-night,
+old man," and I went away, leaving Lewis looking from one to the other as
+if he felt that there was dynamite about, but couldn't locate it. I stopped
+with Melville to talk Coal for a few minutes--at my ease, and the last man
+on earth to be suspected of hanging by the crook of one finger from the
+edge of the precipice.
+
+I rang the Ellerslys' bell at half-past nine that evening. The butler faced
+me with eyes not down, as they should have been, but on mine, and full
+of the servile insolence to which he had been prompted by what he had
+overheard in the family.
+
+"Not at home, sir," he said, though I had not spoken.
+
+I was preoccupied and not expecting that statement; neither had I skill,
+nor desire to acquire skill, in reading family barometers in the faces of
+servants. So, I was for brushing past him and entering where I felt I had
+as much right as in my own places. He barred the way.
+
+"Beg pardon, sir. Mrs. Ellersly instructed me to say no one was at home."
+
+I halted, but only like an oncoming bear at the prick of an arrow.
+
+"What the hell does this mean?" I exclaimed, waving him aside. At that
+instant Anita appeared from the little reception-room a few feet away.
+
+"Oh--come in!" she said cordially. "I was expecting you. Burroughs, please
+take Mr. Blacklock's hat."
+
+I followed her into the reception-room, thinking the butler had made some
+sort of mistake.
+
+"How did you come out?" she asked eagerly, facing me. "You look your
+natural self--not tired or worried--so it must have been not so bad as you
+feared."
+
+"If our friend Langdon hadn't slipped away, I might not look and feel so
+comfortable," said I. "His brother blundered, and there was no one to
+checkmate my moves." She seemed nearer to me, more in sympathy with me than
+ever before.
+
+"I can't tell you how glad I am!"
+
+Her eyes were wide and bright, as from some great excitement, and her color
+was high. Once my attention was on it, I knew instantly that only some
+extraordinary upheaval in that household could have produced the fever that
+was blazing in her. Never had I seen her in any such mood as this.
+
+"What is it?" I asked. "What has happened?"
+
+"If anything disagreeable should be said or done this evening here," she
+said, "I want you to promise me that you'll restrain yourself, and not say
+or do any of those things that make me--that jar on me. You understand?"
+
+"I am always myself," replied I. "I can't be anybody else."
+
+"But you are--several different kinds of self," she insisted. "And
+please--this evening don't be _that_ kind. It's coming into your eyes
+and chin now."
+
+I had lifted my head and looked round, probably much like the leader of a
+horned herd at the scent of danger.
+
+"Is this better?" said I, trying to look the thoughts I had no difficulty
+in getting to the fore whenever my eyes were on her.
+
+Her smile rewarded me. But it disappeared, gave place to a look of nervous
+alarm, of terror even, at the rustling, or, rather, bustling, of skirts in
+the hall--there was war in the very sound, and I felt it. Mrs. Ellersly
+appeared, bearing her husband as a dejected trailer invisibly but firmly
+coupled. She acknowledged my salutation with a stiff-necked nod, ignored my
+extended hand. I saw that she wished to impress upon me that she was a very
+grand lady indeed; but, while my ideas of what constitutes a lady were at
+that time somewhat befogged by my snobbishness, she failed dismally. She
+looked just what she was--a mean, bad-tempered woman, in a towering rage.
+
+"You have forced me, Mr. Blacklock," said she, and then I knew for just
+what purpose that voice of hers was best adapted--"to say to you what I
+should have preferred to write. Mr. Ellersly has had brought to his ears
+matters in connection with your private life that make it imperative that
+you discontinue your calls here."
+
+"My private life, ma'am?" I repeated. "I was not aware that I had a private
+life."
+
+"Anita, leave us alone with Mr. Blacklock," commanded her mother.
+
+The girl hesitated, bent her head, and with a cowed look went slowly toward
+the door. There she paused, and, with what seemed a great effort, lifted
+her head and gazed at me. How I ever came rightly to interpret her look
+I don't know, but I said: "Miss Ellersly, I've the right to insist that
+you stay." I saw she was going to obey me, and before Mrs. Ellersly could
+repeat her order I said: "Now, madam, if any one accuses me of having done
+anything that would cause you to exclude a man from your house, I am ready
+for the liar and his lie."
+
+As I spoke I was searching the weak, bad old face of her husband for an
+explanation. Their pretense of outraged morality I rejected at once--it was
+absurd. Neither up town nor down, nor anywhere else, had I done anything
+that any one could regard as a breach of the code of a man of the world.
+Then, reasoned I, they must have found some one else to help them out of
+their financial troubles--some one who, perhaps, has made this insult to me
+the price, or part of the price, of his generosity. Who? Who hates me? In
+instant answer, up before my mind flashed a picture of Tom Langdon and Sam
+Ellersly arm in arm entering Lewis' office. Tom Langdon wishes to marry
+her; and her parents wish it, too; he is the man she was confessing to me
+about--these were my swift conclusions.
+
+"We do not care to discuss the matter, sir," Mrs. Ellersly was replying,
+her tone indicating that it was not fit to discuss. And this was the woman
+I had hardly been able to treat civilly, so nauseating were her fawnings
+and flatterings!
+
+"So!" I said, ignoring her and opening my batteries full upon the old man.
+"You are taking orders from Mowbray Langdon now. Why?"
+
+As I spoke, I was conscious that there had been some change in Anita. I
+looked at her. With startled eyes and lips apart, she was advancing toward
+me.
+
+"Anita, leave the room!" cried Mrs. Ellersly harshly, panic under the
+command in her tones.
+
+I felt rather than saw my advantage, and pressed it.
+
+"You see what they are doing, Miss Ellersly," said I.
+
+She passed her hands over her eyes, let her face appear again. In it there
+was an energy of repulsion that ought to have seemed exaggerated to me
+then, knowing really nothing of the true situation. "I understand now!"
+said she. "Oh--it is--loathsome!" And her eyes blazed upon her mother.
+
+"Loathsome," I echoed, dashing at my opportunity. "If you are not merely a
+chattel and a decoy, if there is any womanhood, any self-respect in you,
+you will keep faith with me."
+
+"Anita!" cried Mrs. Ellersly. "Go to your room!"
+
+I had, once or twice before, heard a tone as repulsive--a female
+dive-keeper hectoring her wretched white slaves. I looked at Anita. I
+expected to see her erect, defiant. Instead, she was again wearing that
+cowed look.
+
+"Don't judge me too harshly," she said pleadingly to me. "I know what is
+right and decent--God planted that too deep in me for them to be able to
+uproot it. But--oh, they have broken my will! They have broken my will!
+They have made me a coward, a thing!" And she hid her face in her hands and
+sobbed.
+
+Mrs. Ellersly was about to speak. I could not offer better proof of my own
+strength of will than the fact that I, with a look and a gesture, put her
+down. Then I said to the girl:
+
+"You must choose now! Woman or thing--which shall it be? If it is woman,
+then you have me behind you and in front of you and around you. If it is
+thing--God have mercy on you! Your self-respect, your pride are gone--for
+ever. You will be like the carpet under his feet to the man whose creature
+you become."
+
+She came and stood by me, with her back to them.
+
+"If you will take me with you now," she said, "I will go. If I delay, I am
+lost. I shall not have the courage. And I am sick, sick to death of this
+life here, of this hideous wait for the highest bidder."
+
+Her voice gained strength and her manner courage as she spoke; at the end
+she was meeting her mother's gaze without flinching. My eyes had followed
+hers, and my look was taking in both her mother and her father. I had long
+since measured them, yet I could scarcely credit the confirmation of my
+judgment. Had life been smooth and comfortable for that old couple, as it
+was for most of their acquaintances and friends, they would have lived and
+died regarding themselves, and regarded, as well-bred, kindly people, of
+the finest instincts and tastes. But calamity was putting to the test the
+system on which they had molded their apparently elegant, graceful lives.
+The storm had ripped off the attractive covering; the framework, the
+reality of that system, was revealed, naked and frightful.
+
+"Anita, go to your room!" almost screamed the old woman, her fury tearing
+away the last shreds of her cloak of manners.
+
+"Your daughter is of age, madam," said I. "She will go where she pleases.
+And I warn you that you are deceived by the Langdons. I am not powerless,
+and"--here I let her have a full look into my red-hot furnaces of wrath--"I
+stop at nothing in pursuing those who oppose me--at nothing!"
+
+Anita, staring at her mother's awful face, was shrinking and trembling
+as if before the wicked, pale-yellow eyes and quivering, outstretched
+tentacles of a devil-fish. Clinging to my arm, she let me guide her to the
+door. Her mother recovered speech. "Anita!" she cried. "What are you doing?
+Are you mad?"
+
+"I think I must be out of my mind," said Anita. "But, if you try to keep me
+here, I shall tell him all--_all_."
+
+Her voice suggested that she was about to go into hysterics. I gently urged
+her forward. There was some sort of woman's wrap in the hall. I put it
+round her. Before she--or I--realized it, she was in my waiting electric.
+
+"Up town," I said to my man.
+
+She tried to get out.
+
+"Oh, what have I done! What am I doing!" she cried, her courage oozing
+away. "Let me out--please!"
+
+"You are going with me," said I, entering and closing the door. I saw the
+door of the Ellersly mansion opening, saw old Ellersly, bareheaded and
+distracted, scuttling down the steps.
+
+"Go ahead--fast!" I called to my man.
+
+And the electric was rushing up the avenue, with the bell ringing for
+crossings incessantly. She huddled away from me into the corner of the
+seat, sobbing hysterically. I knew that to touch her would be fatal--or
+to speak. So I waited.
+
+
+
+
+XXII. MOST UNGENTLEMANLY
+
+
+As we neared the upper end of the park, I told my chauffeur, through the
+tube, to enter and go slowly. Whenever a lamp flashed in at us, I had a
+glimpse of her progress toward composure--now she was drying her eyes with
+the bit of lace she called a handkerchief; now her bare arms were up, and
+with graceful fingers she was arranging her hair; now she was straight and
+still, the soft, fluffy material with which her wrap was edged drawn close
+about her throat. I shifted to the opposite seat, for my nerves warned me
+that I could not long control myself, if I stayed on where her garments
+were touching me.
+
+I looked away from her for the pleasure of looking at her again, of
+realizing that my overwrought senses were not cheating me. Yes, there she
+was, in all the luster of that magnetic beauty I can not think of even now
+without an upblazing of the fire which is to the heart what the sun is to a
+blind man dreaming of sight. There she was on my side of the chasm that had
+separated us--alone with me--mine--mine! And my heart dilated with pride.
+But a moment later came a sense of humility. Her beauty intoxicated me, but
+her youth, her fineness, so fragile for such rough hands as mine, awed and
+humbled me.
+
+"I must be very gentle," said I to myself. "I have promised that she shall
+never regret. God help me to keep my promise! She is mine, but only to
+preserve and protect."
+
+And that idea of _responsibility in possession_ was new to me--was
+to have far-reaching consequences. Now that I think of it, I believe it
+changed the whole course of my life.
+
+She was leaning forward, her elbow on the casement of the open window of
+the brougham, her cheek against her hand; the moonlight was glistening
+on her round, firm forearm and on her serious face. "How far, far away
+from--everything it seems here!" she said, her voice tuned to that soft,
+clear light, "and how beautiful it is!" Then, addressing the moon and the
+shadows of the trees rather than me: "I wish I could go on and on--and
+never return to--to the world."
+
+"I wish we could," said I.
+
+My tone was low, but she started, drew back into the brougham, became an
+outline in the deep shadow. In another mood that might have angered me.
+Just then it hurt me so deeply that to remember it to-day is to feel a
+faint ache in the scar of the long-healed wound. My face was not hidden as
+was hers; so, perhaps, she saw. At any rate, her voice tried to be friendly
+as she said: "Well--I have crossed the Rubicon. And I don't regret. It was
+silly of me to cry. I thought I had been through so much that I was beyond
+such weakness. But you will find me calm from now on, and reasonable."
+
+"Not too reasonable, please," said I, with an attempt at her lightness. "A
+reasonable woman is as trying as an unreasonable man."
+
+"But we are going to be sensible with each other," she urged, "like two
+friends. Aren't we?"
+
+"We are going to be what we are going to be," said I. "We'll have to take
+life as it comes."
+
+That clumsy reminder set her to thinking, stirred her vague uneasiness in
+those strange circumstances to active alarm. For presently she said, in a
+tone that was not so matter-of-course as she had tried to make it: "We'll
+go now to my Uncle Frank's. He's a brother of my father's. I always used to
+like him best--and still do. But he married a woman mama thought--queer.
+They hadn't much, so he lives away up on the West Side--One Hundred and
+Twenty-seventh Street."
+
+"The wise plan, the only wise plan," said I, not so calm as she must have
+thought me, "is to go to my partner's house and send for a minister."
+
+"Not to-night," she replied nervously. "Take me to Uncle Frank's, and
+to-morrow we can discuss what to do and how to do it."
+
+"To-night," I persisted. "We must be married to-night. No more uncertainty
+and indecision and weakness. Let us begin bravely, Anita!"
+
+"To-morrow," she said. "But not to-night. I must think it over."
+
+"To-night," I repeated. "To-morrow will be full of its own problems. This
+is to-night's."
+
+She shook her head, and I saw that the struggle between us had begun--the
+struggle against her timidity and conventionality. "No, not tonight." This
+in her tone for finality.
+
+To argue with any woman in such circumstances would be dangerous; to argue
+with her would have been fatal. To reason with a woman is to flatter
+her into suspecting you of weakness and herself of strength. I told the
+chauffeur to turn about and go slowly up town. She settled back into her
+corner of the brougham. Neither of us spoke until we were passing Grant's
+Tomb. Then she started out of her secure confidence in my obedience, and
+exclaimed: "This is not the way!" And her voice had in it the hasty
+call-to-arms.
+
+"No," I replied, determined to push the panic into a rout. "As I told you,
+our future shall be settled to-night." That in _my_ tone for finality.
+
+A pause, then: "It _has_ been settled," she said, like a child that
+feels, yet denies, its impotence as it struggles in the compelling arms of
+its father. "I thought until a few minutes ago that I really intended to
+marry you. Now I see that I didn't."
+
+"Another reason why we're not going to your uncle's," said I.
+
+She leaned forward so that I could see her face. "I can not marry you," she
+said. "I feel humble toward you, for having misled you. But it is better
+that you--and I--should have found out now than too late."
+
+"It is too late--too late to go back."
+
+"Would you wish to marry a woman who does not love you, who loves some one
+else, and who tells you so and refuses to marry you?" She had tried to
+concentrate enough scorn into her voice to hide her fear.
+
+"I would," said I. "And I shall. I'll not desert you, Anita, when your
+courage and strength shall fail. I will carry you on to safety."
+
+"I tell you I can not marry you," she cried, between appeal and command.
+"There are reasons--I may not tell you. But if I might, you would--would
+take me to my uncle's. I can not marry you!"
+
+"That is what conventionality bids you say now," I replied. And then I
+gathered myself together and in a tone that made me hate myself as I
+heard it, I added slowly, each word sharp and distinct: "But what will
+conventionality bid you say to-morrow morning, as we drive down crowded
+Fifth Avenue, after a night in this brougham?"
+
+I could not see her, for she fell back into the darkness as sharply as if
+I had struck her with all my force full in the face. But I could feel the
+effect of my words upon her. I paused, not because I expected or wished
+an answer, but because I had to steady myself--myself, not my purpose; my
+purpose was inflexible. I would put through what we had begun, just as I
+would have held her and cut off her arm with my pocket-knife if we had
+been cast away alone, and I had had to do it to save her life. She was
+not competent to decide for herself. Every problem that had ever faced
+her had been decided by others for her. Who but me could decide for her
+now? I longed to plead with her, longed to let her see that I was not
+hard-hearted, was thinking of her, was acting for her sake as much as for
+my own. But I dared not. "She would misunderstand," said I to myself. "She
+would think you were weakening."
+
+Full fifteen minutes of that frightful silence before she said: "I will go
+where you wish." And she said it in a tone that makes me wince as I recall
+it.
+
+I called my partner's address up through the tube. Again that frightful
+silence, then she was trying to choke back the sobs. A few words I caught:
+"They have broken my will--they have broken my will."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My partner lived in a big, gray-stone house that stood apart and commanded
+a noble view of the Hudson and the Palisades. It was, in the main, a
+reproduction of a French chateau, and such changes as the architect had
+made in his model were not positively disfiguring, though amusing. There
+should have been trees and shrubbery about it, but--"As Mrs. B. says," Joe
+had explained to me, "what's the use of sinking a lot of cash in a house
+people can't see?" So there was not a bush, not a flower. Inside--One day
+Ball took me on a tour of the art shops. "I've got a dozen corners and
+other big bare spots to fill," said he. "Mrs. B. hates to give up money,
+haggles over every article. I'm going to put the job through in business
+style." I soon discovered that I had been brought along to admire his
+"business style," not to suggest. After two hours, in which he bought in
+small lots several tons of statuary, paintings, vases and rugs, he said,
+"This is too slow." He pointed his stick at a crowded corner of the shop.
+"How much for that bunch of stuff?" he demanded. The proprietor gave him a
+figure. "I'll close," said Joe, "if you'll give fifteen off for cash." The
+proprietor agreed. "Now we're done," said Joe to me. "Let's go down town,
+and maybe I can pick up what I've dropped."
+
+You can imagine that interior. But don't picture it as notably worse than
+the interior of the average New York palace. It was, if anything, better
+than those houses, where people who deceive themselves about their lack of
+taste have taken great pains to prevent any one else from being deceived.
+One could hardly move in Joe's big rooms for the litter of gilded and
+tapestried furniture, and their crowded walls made the eyes ache.
+
+The appearance of the man who opened the door for Anita and me suggested
+that our ring had roused him from a bed where he had deposited himself
+without bothering to take off his clothes. At the sound of my voice, Ball
+peered out of his private smoking-room, at the far end of the hall. He
+started forward; then, seeing how I was accompanied, stopped with mouth
+ajar. He had on a ragged smoking-jacket, a pair of shapeless old Romeo
+slippers, his ordinary business waistcoat and trousers. He was wearing
+neither tie nor collar, and a short, black pipe was between his fingers.
+We had evidently caught the household stripped of "lugs," and sunk in the
+down-at-the-heel slovenliness which it called "comfort." Joe was crimson
+with confusion, and was using his free hand to stroke, alternately, his
+shiny bald head and his heavy brown mustache. He got himself together
+sufficiently, after a few seconds, to disappear into his den. When he came
+out again, pipe and ragged jacket were gone, and he rushed for us in a
+gorgeous velvet jacket with dark red facings, and a showy pair of slippers.
+
+"Glad to see you, Mr. Blacklock"--in his own home he always addressed every
+man as Mister, just as "Mrs. B." always called him "Mister Ball," and he
+called her "Missus Ball" before "company." "Come right into the front
+parlor. Billy, turn on the electric lights."
+
+Anita had been standing with her head down. She now looked round with
+shame and terror in those expressive blue-gray eyes of hers; her delicate
+nostrils were quivering. I hastened to introduce Ball to her. Her impulse
+to fly passed; her lifelong training in doing the conventional thing
+asserted itself. She lowered her head again, murmured an inaudible
+acknowledgment of Joe's greeting.
+
+"Your wife is at home?" said I. If one was at home in the evening, the
+other was also, and both were always there, unless they were at some
+theater--except on Sunday night, when they dined at Sherry's, because many
+fashionable people did it. They had no friends and few acquaintances.
+In their humbler and happy days they had had many friends, but had lost
+them when they moved away from Brooklyn and went to live, like uneasy,
+out-of-place visitors, in their grand house, pretending to be what they
+longed to be, longing to be what they pretended to be, and as discontented
+as they deserved.
+
+"Oh, yes, Mrs. B.'s at home," Joe answered. "I guess she and Alva
+were--about to go to bed." Alva was their one child. She had been
+christened Malvina, after Joe's mother; but when the Balls "blossomed out"
+they renamed her Alva, which they somehow had got the impression was
+"smarter."
+
+At Joe's blundering confession that the females of the family were in no
+condition to receive, Anita said to me in a low voice: "Let us go."
+
+I pretended not to hear. "Rout 'em out," said I to Joe. "Then, take my
+electric and bring the nearest parson. There's going to be a wedding--right
+here." And I looked round the long salon, with everything draped for the
+summer departure. Joe whisked the cover off one chair, his man took off
+another. "I'll have the women-folks down in two minutes," he cried. Then to
+the man: "Get a move on you, Billy. Stir 'em up in the kitchen. Do the best
+you can about supper--and put a lot of champagne on the ice. That's the
+main thing at a wedding."
+
+Anita had seated herself listlessly in one of the uncovered chairs. The
+wrap slipped back from her shoulders and--how proud I was of her! Joe
+gazed, took advantage of her not looking up to slap me on the back and to
+jerk his head in enthusiastic approval. Then he, too, disappeared.
+
+A wait followed, during which we could hear, through the silence, excited
+undertones from the upper floors. The words were indistinct until Joe's
+heavy voice sent down to us an angry "No damn nonsense, I tell you. Allie's
+got to come, too. She's not such a fool as you think. Bad example--bosh!"
+
+Anita started up. "Oh--please--please!" she cried. "Take me away--anywhere!
+This is dreadful."
+
+It was, indeed, dreadful. If I could have had my way at just that moment,
+it would have gone hard with "Mrs. B." and "Allie"--and heavy-voiced Joe,
+too. But I hid my feelings.
+
+"There's nowhere else to go," said I, "except the brougham."
+
+She sank into her chair.
+
+A few minutes more of silence, and there was a rustling on the stairs.
+She started up, trembling, looked round, as if seeking some way of escape
+or some place to hide. Joe was in the doorway holding aside one of the
+curtains. There entered in a beribboned and beflounced tea-gown, a pretty,
+if rather ordinary, woman of forty, with a petulant baby face. She was
+trying to look reserved and severe. She hardly glanced at me before
+fastening sharp, suspicious eyes on Anita.
+
+"Mrs. Ball," said I, "this is Miss Ellersly."
+
+"Miss Ellersly!" she exclaimed, her face changing. And she advanced and
+took both Anita's hands. "Mr. Ball is so stupid," she went on, with that
+amusingly affected accent which is the "Sunday clothes" of speech.
+
+"I didn't catch the name, my dear," Joe stammered.
+
+"Be off," said I, aside, to him. "Get the nearest preacher, and hustle him
+here with his tools."
+
+I had one eye on Anita all the time, and I saw her gaze follow Joe as he
+hurried out; and her expression made my heart ache. I heard him saying in
+the hall, "Go in, Allie. It's O K"; heard the door slam, knew we should
+soon have some sort of minister with us.
+
+"Allie" entered the drawing-room. I had not seen her in six years. I
+remembered her unpleasantly as a great, bony, florid child, unable to
+stand still or to sit still, or to keep her tongue still, full of aimless
+questions and giggles and silly remarks that she and her mother thought
+funny. I saw her now, grown into a handsome young woman, with enough beauty
+points for an honorable mention, if not for a prize--straight and strong
+and rounded, with a brow and a keen look out of the eyes which it seemed
+a pity should be wasted on a woman. Her mother's looks, her father's good
+sense, a personality apparently got from neither, but all her own, and
+unusual and interesting. No wonder the Balls felt toward her much as a pair
+of barn-swallows would feel if they were to hatch out an eaglet. These
+quiet, tame American parents that are always finding their suppressed
+selves, the bold, fantastic, unadmitted dreams of their youth startlingly
+confronting them in the flesh as their own children!
+
+"From what Mr. Ball said,"--Mrs. Ball was gushing affectedly to Anita,--"I
+got an idea that--well, really, I didn't know _what_ to think."
+
+Anita looked as if she were about to suffocate. Allie came to the rescue.
+"Not very complimentary to Mr. Blacklock, mother," said she good-humoredly.
+Then to Anita, with a simple friendliness there was no resisting: "Wouldn't
+you like to come up to my room for a few minutes?"
+
+"Oh, thank you!" responded Anita, after a quick, but thorough inspection
+of Alva's face, to make sure she was like her voice. I had not counted on
+this; I had been assuming that Anita would not be out of my sight until we
+were married. It was on the tip of my tongue to interfere when she looked
+at me--for permission to go!
+
+"Don't keep her too long," said I to Alva, and they were gone.
+
+"You can't blame me--really you can't, Mr. Blacklock," Mrs. Ball began to
+plead for herself, as soon as they were safely out of hearing. "After some
+things--mere hints, you understand--for I'm careful what I permit Mr. Ball
+to say before _me_. I think married people can not be too respectful of
+each other. I _never_ tolerate _vulgarity_."
+
+"No doubt, Joe has made me out a very vulgar person," said I, forgetting
+her lack of humor.
+
+"Oh, not at all, not at all, Mr. Blacklock," she protested, in a panic lest
+she had done her husband damage with me. "I understand, men will be men,
+though as a pure-minded woman, I'm sure I can't imagine why they should
+be."
+
+"How far off is the nearest church?" I cut in.
+
+"Only two blocks--that is, the Methodist church," she replied. "But I know
+Mr. Ball will bring an Episcopalian."
+
+"Why, I thought you were a devoted Presbyterian," said I, recalling how in
+their Brooklyn days she used to insist on Joe's going twice every Sunday to
+sleep through long sermons.
+
+She looked uncomfortable. "I was reared Presbyterian," she explained
+confusedly, "but you know how it is in New York. And when we came to live
+here, we got out of the habit of church-going. And all Alva's little
+friends were Episcopalians. So I drifted toward that church. I find the
+service so satisfying--so--elegant. And--one sees there the people one sees
+socially."
+
+"How is your culture class?" I inquired, deliberately malicious, in my
+impatience and nervousness. "And do you still take conversation lessons?"
+
+She was furiously annoyed. "Oh, those old jokes of Joe's," she said,
+affecting disdainful amusement.
+
+In fact, they were anything but jokes. On Mondays and Thursdays she used
+to attend a class for women who, like herself, wished to be "up-to-date on
+culture and all that sort of thing." They hired a teacher to cram them with
+odds and ends about art and politics and the "latest literature, heavy and
+light." On Tuesdays and Fridays she had an "indigent gentlewoman," whatever
+that may be, come to her to teach her how to converse and otherwise conduct
+herself according to the "standards of polite society."
+
+Joe used to give imitations of those conversation lessons that raised roars
+of laughter round the poker table, the louder because so many of the other
+men had wives with the same ambitions and the same methods of attaining
+them.
+
+Mrs. Ball came back to the subject of Anita.
+
+"I am glad you are going to settle with such a charming girl. She comes of
+such a charming family. I have never happened to meet any of them. We are
+in the West Side set, you know, while they move in the East Side set, and
+New York is so large that one almost never meets any one outside one's own
+set." This smooth snobbishness, said in the affected "society" tone, was
+as out of place in her as rouge and hair-dye in a wholesome, honest old
+grandmother.
+
+I began to pace the floor. "Can it be," I fretted aloud, "that Joe's racing
+round looking for an Episcopalian preacher, when there was a Methodist at
+hand?"
+
+"I'm sure he wouldn't bring anything but a Church of England priest,"
+Mrs. Ball assured me loftily. "Why, Miss Ellersly wouldn't think she was
+married, if she hadn't a priest of her own church."
+
+My temper got the bit in its teeth. I stopped before her, and fixed her
+with an eye that must have had some fire in it. "I'm not marrying a fool,
+Mrs. Ball," said I. "You mustn't judge her by her bringing-up--by her
+family. Children have a way of bringing themselves up, in spite of damn
+fool parents."
+
+She weakened so promptly that I was ashamed of myself. My only apology for
+getting out of patience with her is that I had seen her seldom in the last
+few years, had forgotten how matter-of-surface her affectation and snobbery
+were, and how little they interfered with her being a good mother and a
+good wife, up to the limits of her brain capacity.
+
+"I'm sure, Mr. Blacklock," she said plaintively, "I only wished to say what
+was pleasant and nice about your fiancee. I know she's a lovely girl. I've
+often admired her at the opera. She goes a great deal in Mrs. Langdon's
+box, and Mrs. Langdon and I are together on the board of managers of the
+Magdalene Home, and also on the board of the Hospital for Unfortunate
+Gentlefolk." And so on, and on.
+
+I walked up and down among those wrapped-up, ghostly chairs and tables and
+cabinets and statues many times before Joe arrived with the minister--and
+he was a Methodist, McCabe by name. You should have seen Mrs. Ball's look
+as he advanced his portly form and round face with its shaven upper lip
+into the drawing-room. She tried to be cordial, but she couldn't--her mind
+was on Anita, and the horror that would fill her when she discovered that
+she was to be married by a preacher of a sect unknown to fashionable
+circles.
+
+"All I ask of you," said I to him, "is that you cut it as short as
+possible. Miss Ellersly is tired and nervous." This while we were shaking
+hands after Joe's introduction.
+
+"You can count on me, sir," said McCabe, giving my hand an extra shake
+before dropping it. "I've no doubt, from what my young neighbor here
+tells me, that your marriage is already made in your hearts and with all
+solemnity. The form is an incident--important, but only an incident."
+
+I liked that, and I liked his unaffected way of saying it. His voice had
+more of the homely, homelike, rural twang in it than I had heard in New
+York in many a day. I mentally doubled the fee I had intended to give him.
+And now Alva and she were coming down the stairway. I was amazed at sight
+of her. Her evening dress had given place to a pretty blue street suit
+with a short skirt--white showing at her wrists, at her neck and through
+slashings in the coat over her bosom; and on her head was a hat to match. I
+looked at her feet--the slippers had been replaced by boots. "And they're
+just right for her," said Alva, who was following my glance, "though I'm
+not so tall as she."
+
+But what amazed me most, and delighted me, was that she seemed to be almost
+in good spirits. It was evident she had formed with Joe's daughter one of
+those sudden friendships so great and so vivid that they rarely lived long
+after the passing of the heat of the emergency that bred them. Mrs. Ball
+saw it, also, and was straightway giddied into a sort of ecstasy. You can
+imagine the visions it conjured. I've no doubt she talked house on the
+east side of the park to Joe that very night, before she let him sleep.
+However, Anita's face was serious enough when we took our places before
+the minister, with his little, black-bound book open. And as he read in a
+voice that was genuinely impressive those words that no voice could make
+unimpressive, I saw her paleness blanch into pallor, saw the dusk creep
+round her eyes until they were like stars waning somberly before the gray
+face of dawn. When they closed and her head began to sway, I steadied her
+with my arm. And so we stood, I with my arm round her, she leaning lightly
+against my shoulder. Her answers were mere movements of the lips.
+
+At the end, when I kissed her cheek, she said: "Is it over?"
+
+"Yes," McCabe answered--she was looking at him. "And I wish you all
+happiness, Mrs. Blacklock."
+
+At that name, her new name, she stared at him with great wondering eyes;
+then her form relaxed. I carried her to a chair. Joe came with a glass of
+champagne; she drank some of it, and it brought life back to her face, and
+some color. With a naturalness that deceived even me for the moment, she
+smiled up at Joe as she handed him the glass. "Is it bad luck," she asked,
+"for me to be the first to drink my own health?" And she stood, looking
+tranquilly at every one--except me.
+
+I took McCabe into the hall and paid him off.
+
+When we came back, I said: "Now we must be going."
+
+"Oh, but surely you'll stay for supper!" cried Joe's wife.
+
+"No," replied I, in a tone that made it impossible to insist. "We
+appreciate your kindness, but we've imposed on it enough." And I shook
+hands with her and with Allie and the minister, and, linking Joe's arm in
+mine, made for the door. I gave the necessary directions to my chauffeur
+while we were waiting for Anita to come down the steps. Joe's daughter was
+close beside her, and they kissed each other good-by, Alva on the verge of
+tears, Anita not suggesting any emotion of any sort. "To-morrow--sure,"
+Anita said to her. And she answered: "Yes, indeed--as soon as you telephone
+me." And so we were off, a shower of rice rattling on the roof of the
+brougham--the slatternly man-servant had thrown it from the midst of the
+group of servants.
+
+Neither of us spoke. I watched her face without seeming to do so, and by
+the light of occasional street lamps saw her studying me furtively. At last
+she said: "I wish to go to my uncle's now."
+
+"We are going home," said I.
+
+"But the house will be shut up," said she, "and every one will be in bed.
+It's nearly midnight. Besides, they might not--" She came to a full stop.
+
+"We are going--home," I repeated. "To the Willoughby."
+
+She gave me a look that was meant to scorch--and it did. But I showed at
+the surface no sign of how I was wincing and shrinking.
+
+She drew farther into her corner, and out of its darkness came, in a low
+voice: "How I _hate_ you!" like the whisper of a bullet.
+
+I kept silent until I had control of myself. Then, as if talking--of a
+matter that had been finally and amicably settled, I began: "The apartment
+isn't exactly ready for us, but Joe's just about now telephoning my man
+that we are coming, and telephoning your people to send your maid down
+there."
+
+"I wish to go to my uncle's," she repeated.
+
+"My wife will go with me," said I quietly and gently. "I am considerate of
+_her_, not of her unwise impulses."
+
+A long pause, then from her, in icy calmness: "I am in your power just now.
+But I warn you that, if you do not take me to my uncle's, you will wish you
+had never seen me."
+
+"I've wished that many times already," said I sadly. "I've wished it from
+the bottom of my heart this whole evening, when step by step fate has been
+forcing me on to do things that are even more hateful to me than to you.
+For they not only make me hate myself, but make you hate me, too." I laid
+my hand on her arm and held it there, though she tried to draw away.
+"Anita," I said, "I would do anything for you--live for you, die for you.
+But there's that something inside me--you've felt it; and when it says
+'must,' I can't disobey--you know I can't. And, though you might break
+my heart, you could not break that will. It's as much my master as it is
+yours."
+
+"We shall see--to-morrow," she said.
+
+"Do not put me to the test," I pleaded. Then I added what I knew to be
+true: "But you will not. You know it would take some one stronger than your
+uncle, stronger than your parents, to swerve me from what I believe right
+for you and for me." I had no fear for "to-morrow." The hour when she could
+defy me had passed.
+
+A long, long silence, the electric speeding southward under the arching
+trees of the West Drive. I remember it was as we skirted the lower end
+of the Mall that she said evenly: "You have made me hate you so that it
+terrifies me. I am afraid of the consequences that must come to you and
+to me."
+
+"And well you may be," I answered gently. "For you've seen enough of me to
+get at least a hint of what I would do, if goaded to it. Hate is terrible,
+Anita, but love can be more terrible."
+
+At the Willoughby she let me help her descend from the electric, waited
+until I sent it away, walked beside me into the building. My man, Sanders,
+had evidently been listening for the elevator; the door opened without my
+ringing, and there he was, bowing low. She acknowledged his welcome with
+that regard for "appearances" that training had made instinctive. In the
+center of my--our--drawing-room table was a mass of fresh white roses.
+"Where did you get 'em?" I asked him, in an aside.
+
+"The elevator boy's brother, sir," he replied, "works in the florist's shop
+just across the street, next to the church. He happened to be down stairs
+when I got your message, sir. So I was able to get a few flowers. I'm
+sorry, sir, I hadn't a little more time."
+
+"You've done noble," said I, and I shook hands with him warmly.
+
+Anita was greeting those flowers as if they were a friend suddenly
+appearing in a time of need. She turned now and beamed on Sanders. "Thank
+you," she said; "thank you." And Sanders was hers.
+
+"Anything I can do--ma'am--sir?" asked Sanders.
+
+"Nothing--except send my maid as soon as she comes," she replied.
+
+"I shan't need you," said I.
+
+"Mr. Monson is still here," he said, lingering. "Shall I send him away,
+sir, or do you wish to see him?"
+
+"I'll speak to him myself in a moment," I answered.
+
+When Sanders was gone, she seated herself and absently played with the
+buttons of her glove.
+
+"Shall I bring Monson?" I asked. "You know, he's my--factotum."
+
+"_I_ do not wish to see him," she answered.
+
+"You do not like him?"
+
+After a brief hesitation she answered, "No." Not for worlds would she just
+then have admitted, even to herself, that the cause of her dislike was her
+knowledge of his habit of tattling, with suitable embroideries, his lessons
+to me.
+
+I restrained a strong impulse to ask her why, for instinct told me she had
+some especial reason that somehow concerned me. I said merely: "Then I
+shall get rid of him."
+
+"Not on my account," she replied indifferently. "I care nothing about him
+one way or the other."
+
+"He goes at the end of his month," said I.
+
+She was now taking off her gloves. "Before your maid comes," I went on,
+"let me explain about the apartment. This room and the two leading out of
+it are yours. My own suite is on the other side of our private hall there."
+
+She colored high, paled. I saw that she did not intend to speak.
+
+I stood awkwardly, waiting for something further to come into my own head.
+"Good night," said I finally, as if I were taking leave of a formal
+acquaintance at the end of a formal call.
+
+She did not answer. I left the room, closing the door behind me. I paused
+an instant, heard the key click in the lock. And I burned in a hot flush of
+shame that she should be thinking thus basely of me--and with good cause.
+How could she know, how appreciate even if she had known? "You've had to
+cut deep," said I to myself. "But the wounds'll heal, though it may take
+long--very long." And I went on my way, not wholly downcast.
+
+I joined Monson in my little smoking-room. "Congratulate you," he began,
+with his nasty, supercilious grin, which of late had been getting on my
+nerves severely.
+
+"Thanks," I replied curtly, paying no attention to his outstretched hand.
+"I want you to put a notice of the marriage in to-morrow morning's
+_Herald_."
+
+"Give me the facts--clergyman's name--place, and so on," said he.
+
+"Unnecessary," I answered. "Just our names and the date--that's all. You'd
+better step lively. It's late, and it'll be too late if you delay."
+
+With an irritating show of deliberation he lit a fresh cigarette before
+setting out. I heard her maid come. After about an hour I went into the
+hall--no light through the transoms of her suite. I returned to my own part
+of the flat and went to bed in the spare room to which Sanders had moved my
+personal belongings. That day which began in disaster--in what a blaze of
+triumph it had ended! Anita--my wife, and under my roof! I slept with good
+conscience. I had earned sleep.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII. "SHE HAS CHOSEN!"
+
+
+Joe got to the office rather later than usual the next morning. They told
+him I was already there, but he wouldn't believe it until he had come into
+my private den and with his own eyes had seen me. "Well, I'm jiggered!"
+said he. "It seems to have made less impression on you than it did on us.
+My missus and the little un wouldn't let me go to bed till after two. They
+sat on and on, questioning and discussing."
+
+I laughed--partly because I knew that Joe, like most men, was as full of
+gossip and as eager for it as a convalescent old maid, and that, whoever
+might have been the first at his house to make the break for bed, he was
+the last to leave off talking. But the chief reason for my laugh was that,
+just before he came in on me, I was almost pinching myself to see whether I
+was dreaming it all, and he had made me feel how vividly true it was.
+
+"Why don't you ease down, Blacklock?" he went on. "Everything's smooth. The
+business--at least, my end of it, and I suppose your end, too--was never
+better, never growing so fast. You could go off for a week or two, just as
+well as not. I don't know of a thing that can prevent you."
+
+And he honestly thought it, so little did I let him know about the larger
+enterprises of Blacklock and Company. I could have spoken a dozen words,
+and he would have been floundering like a caught fish in a basket. There
+are men--a very few--who work more swiftly and more surely when they know
+they're on the brink of ruin; but not Joe. One glimpse of our real National
+Coal account, and all my power over him couldn't have kept him from showing
+the whole Street that Blacklock and Company was shaky. And whenever the
+Street begins to think a man is shaky, he must be strong indeed to escape
+the fate of the wolf that stumbles as it runs with the pack.
+
+"No holiday at present, Joe," was my reply to his suggestion. "Perhaps the
+second week in July; but our marriage was so sudden that we haven't had the
+time to get ready for a trip."
+
+"Yes--it _was_ sudden, wasn't it?" said Joe, curiosity twitching his
+nose like a dog's at scent of a rabbit. "How _did_ it happen?"
+
+"Oh, I'll tell you sometime," replied I. "I must work now."
+
+And work a-plenty there was. Before me rose a sheaf of clamorous telegrams
+from our out-of-town customers and our agents; and soon my anteroom was
+crowded with my local following, sore and shorn. I suppose a score or more
+of the habitual heavy plungers on my tips were ruined and hundreds of
+others were thousands and tens of thousands out of pocket. "Do you want me
+to talk to these people?" inquired Joe, with the kindly intention of giving
+me a chance to shift the unpleasant duty to him.
+
+"Certainly not," said I. "When the place is jammed, let me know. I'll jack
+'em up."
+
+It made Joe uneasy for me even to talk of using my "language"--he would
+have crawled from the Battery to Harlem to keep me from using it on him.
+So he silently left me alone. My system of dealing face to face with the
+speculating and investing public had many great advantages over that of all
+the other big operators--their system of hiding behind cleverly-contrived
+screens and slaughtering the decoyed public without showing so much as the
+tip of a gun or nose that could be identified. But to my method there was
+a disadvantage that made men, who happened to have more hypocrisy and less
+nerve than I, shrink from it. When one of my tips miscarried, down upon me
+would swoop the bad losers in a body to give me a turbulent quarter of an
+hour.
+
+Toward ten o'clock, my boy came in and said: "Mr. Ball thinks it's about
+time for you to see some of these people."
+
+I went into the main room, where the tickers and blackboards were. As I
+approached through my outer office I could hear the noise the crowd was
+making--as they cursed me. If you want to rile the true inmost soul of the
+average human being, don't take his reputation or his wife; just cause
+him to lose money. There were among my speculating customers many with
+the even-tenored sporting instinct. These were bearing their losses with
+philosophy--none of them had swooped on me. Of the perhaps three hundred
+who had come to ease their anguish by tongue-lashing me, every one was
+a bad loser and was mad through and through--those who had lost a few
+hundred dollars were as infuriated as those whom my misleading tip had cost
+thousands and tens of thousands; those whom I had helped to win all they
+had in the world were more savage than those new to my following.
+
+I took my stand in the doorway, a step up from the floor of the main room.
+I looked all round until I had met each pair of angry eyes. They say I can
+give my face an expression that is anything but agreeable; such talent as
+I have in that direction I exerted then. The instant I appeared a silence
+fell; but I waited until the last pair of claws drew in. Then I said, in
+the quiet tone the army officer uses when he tells the mob that the machine
+guns will open up in two minutes by the watch: "Gentlemen, in the effort to
+counteract my warning to the public, the Textile crowd rocketed the stock
+yesterday. Those who heeded my warning and sold got excellent prices. Those
+who did not should sell to-day. Not even the powerful interests behind
+Textile can long maintain yesterday's prices."
+
+A wave of restlessness passed over the crowd. Many shifted their eyes from
+me and began to murmur.
+
+I raised my voice slightly as I went on: "The speculators, the gamblers,
+are the only people who were hurt. Those who sold what they didn't have are
+paying for their folly. I have no sympathy for them. Blacklock and Company
+wishes none such in its following, and seizes every opportunity to weed
+them out. We are in business only for the bona fide investing public, and
+we are stronger with that public to-day than we have ever been."
+
+Again I looked from coward to coward of that mob, changed from three
+hundred strong to three hundred weak. Then I bowed and withdrew, leaving
+them to mutter and disperse. I felt well content with the trend of
+events--I who wished to impress the public and the financiers that I had
+broken with speculation and speculators, could I have had a better than
+this unexpected opportunity sharply to define my new course? And as
+Textiles, unsupported, fell toward the close of the day, my content rose
+toward my normal high spirits. There was no whisper in the Street that
+I was in trouble; on the contrary, the idea was gaining ground that I
+had really long ceased to be a stock gambler and deserved a much better
+reputation than I had. Reputation is a matter of diplomacy rather than of
+desert. In all my career I was never less entitled to a good reputation
+than in those June days; yet the disastrous gambling follies, yes, and
+worse, I then committed, formed the secure foundation of my reputation
+for conservatism and square dealing. From that time dates the decline of
+the habit the newspapers had of speaking of me as "Black Matt" or "Matt"
+Blacklock. In them, and therefore in the public mind, I began to figure as
+"Mr. Blacklock, a recognized authority on finance," and such information as
+I gave out ceased to be described as "tips" and was respectfully referred
+to as "indications."
+
+No doubt, my marriage had something to do with this. Probably one couldn't
+borrow any great amount of money in New York directly and solely on
+the strength of a fashionable marriage; but, so all-pervading is the
+snobbishness there, one can get, by making a fashionable marriage, any
+quantity of that deferential respect from rich people which is, in some
+circumstances, easily convertible into cash and credit.
+
+I searched with a good deal of anxiety, as you may imagine, the early
+editions of the afternoon papers. The first article my eye chanced upon was
+a mere wordy elaboration of the brief and vague announcement Monson had put
+in the _Herald_. Later came an interview with old Ellersly.
+
+"Not at all mysterious," he had said to the reporters. "Mr. Blacklock found
+he would have to go abroad on business soon--he didn't know just when. On
+the spur of the moment they decided to marry." A good enough story, and
+I confirmed it when I admitted the reporters. I read their estimates of
+my fortune and of Anita's with rather bitter amusement--she whose father
+was living from hand to mouth; I who could not have emerged from a forced
+settlement with enough to enable me to keep a trap. Still, when one is
+rich, the reputation of being rich is heavily expensive; but when one is
+poor the reputation of being rich can be made a wealth-giving asset.
+
+Even as I was reading these fables of my millions, there lay on the desk
+before me a statement of the exact posture of my affairs--a memorandum made
+by myself for my own eyes, and to be burned as soon as I mastered it. On
+the face of the figures the balance against me was appalling. My chief
+asset, indeed my only asset that measured up toward my debts, was my Coal
+stocks, those bought and those contracted for; and, while their par value
+far exceeded my liabilities, they had to appear in my memorandum at their
+actual market value on that day. I looked at the calendar--seventeen days
+until the reorganization scheme would be announced, only seventeen days!
+
+Less than three business weeks, and I should be out of the storm and
+sailing safer and smoother seas than I had ever known. "To indulge in vague
+_hopes_ is bad," thought I, "but not to indulge in _a_ hope, especially
+when one has only it between him and the pit." And I proceeded to plan on
+the not unwarranted assumption that my Coal hope was a present reality.
+Indeed, what alternative had I? To put it among the future's uncertainties
+was to put myself among the utterly ruined. Using as collateral the Coal
+stocks I had bought outright, I borrowed more money, and with it went still
+deeper into the Coal venture. Everything or nothing!--since the chances in
+my favor were a thousand, to practically none against me. Everything or
+nothing!--since only by staking everything could I possibly save anything
+at all.
+
+The morality of these and many of my other doings in those days will no
+doubt be condemned. By no one more severely than by myself--now that the
+necessities which then compelled me have passed. There is no subject on
+which men talk and think, more humbug than on that subject of morality. As
+a matter of fact, except in those personal relations that are governed by
+the affections, what is morality but the mandate of policy, and what is
+policy but the mandate of necessity? My criticism of Roebuck and the other
+"high financiers" is not upon their morality, but upon their policy, which
+is short-sighted and stupid and base. The moral difference between me and
+them is that, white I merely assert and maintain my right to live, they
+deny the right of any but themselves to live. I say I criticize them;
+but that does not mean that I sympathize with the public at large in its
+complainings against them. The public, its stupidity and cupidity, creates
+the conditions that breed and foster these men. A rotten cheese reviling
+the maggots it has bred!
+
+In those very hours when I was obeying the imperative law of
+self-preservation, was clutching at every log that floated by me regardless
+of whether it was my property or not so long as it would help me keep my
+head above water--what was going on all round me? In every office of the
+down town district--merchant, banker, broker, lawyer, man of commerce or
+finance--was not every busy brain plotting, not self-preservation but
+pillage and sack--plotting to increase the cost of living for the masses of
+men by slipping a little tax here and a little tax there on to everything
+by which men live? All along the line between the farm or mine or shop
+and the market, at every one of the toll-gates for the collection of
+_just_ charges, these big financiers, backed up by the big lawyers and
+the rascally public officials, had an agent in charge to collect on each
+passing article more than was honestly due. A thousand subtle ways of
+levying, all combining to pour in upon the few the torrents of unjust
+wealth. I laugh when I read of laboring men striking for higher wages.
+Poor, ignorant fools--they almost deserve their fate. They had better be
+concerning themselves with a huge, universal strike at the polls for lower
+prices. What will it avail to get higher wages, as long as the masters
+control and recoup on the prices of all the things for which those wages
+must be spent?
+
+I lived in Wall Street, in its atmosphere of the practical morality of
+"finance." On every side swindling operations, great and small; operations
+regarded as right through long-established custom; dishonest or doubtful
+operations on the way to becoming established by custom as "respectable."
+No man's title to anything conceded unless he had the brains to defend it.
+There was a time when it would have been regarded as wildly preposterous
+and viciously immoral to deny property rights in human beings. There may
+come a time--who knows?--when "high finance's" denial of a moral right
+to property of any kind may cease to be regarded as wicked; may become a
+generally accepted canon, as our Socialist friends predict. However, I
+attempt no excuses for myself; I need them no more than a judge in the Dark
+Ages needed to apologize for ordering a witch to the stake. I could no
+more have done differently than a fish could breathe on land or a man
+under water. I did as all the others did--and I had the justification of
+necessity. Right of might being the prevailing code, when men set upon
+me with pistols, I met them with pistols, not with the discarded and
+antiquated weapons of sermon and prayer and the law.
+
+And I thought extremely well of myself and of my pistols that June
+afternoon, as I was hurrying up town the moment the day's settlement on
+'Change was finished. I had sent out my daily letter to investors, and its
+tone of confidence was genuine--I knew that hundreds of customers of a
+better class would soon be flocking in to take the places of those I had
+been compelled to teach a lesson in the vicissitudes of gambling. With a
+light heart and the physical feeling of a football player in training, I
+sped toward home.
+
+Home! For the first time since I was a squat little slip of a shaver the
+word had a personal meaning for me. Perhaps, if the only other home of mine
+had been less uninviting, I should not have looked forward with such high
+beating of the heart to that cold home Anita was making for me. No, I
+withdraw that. It is fellows like me, to whom kindly looks and unsought
+attentions are as unfamiliar as flowers to the Arctic--it is men like me
+that appreciate and treasure and warm up under the faintest show or shadowy
+suggestion of the sunshine of sentiment. I'd be a little ashamed to say how
+much money I handed out to beggars and street gamins that day. I had a home
+to go to!
+
+As my electric drew up at the Willoughby, a carriage backed to make room
+for it. I recognized the horses and the coachman and the crest.
+
+"How long has Mrs. Ellersly been with my wife?" I asked the elevator boy,
+as he was taking me up.
+
+"About half an hour, sir," he answered. "But Mr. Ellersly--I took up his
+card before lunch, and he's still there."
+
+Instead of using my key, I rang the bell, and when Sanders opened, I said:
+"Is Mrs. Blacklock in?" in a voice loud enough to penetrate to the
+drawing-room.
+
+As I had hoped, Anita appeared. Her dress told me that her trunks had
+come--she had sent for her trunks! "Mother and father are here," said she,
+without looking at me.
+
+I followed her into the drawing-room and, for the benefit of the servants,
+Mr. and Mrs. Ellersly and I greeted each other courteously, though Mrs.
+Ellersly's eyes and mine met in a glance like the flash of steel on steel.
+"We were just going," said she, and then I felt that I had arrived in the
+midst of a tempest of uncommon fury.
+
+"You must stop and make _me_ a visit," protested I, with elaborate
+politeness. To myself I was assuming that they had come to "make up and be
+friends"--and resume their places at the trough.
+
+She was moving toward the door, the old man in her wake. Neither of them
+offered to shake hands with me; neither made pretense of saying good-by
+to Anita, standing by the window like a pillar of ice. I had closed the
+drawing-room door behind me, as I entered. I was about to open it for them
+when I was restrained by what I saw working in the old woman's face. She
+had set her will on escaping from my loathed presence without a "scene;"
+but her rage at having been outgeneraled was too fractious for her will.
+
+"You scoundrel!" she hissed, her whole body shaking and her
+carefully-cultivated appearance of the gracious evening of youth swallowed
+up in a black cyclone of hate. "You gutter-plant! God will punish you for
+the shame you have brought upon us!"
+
+I opened the door and bowed, without a word, without even the desire to
+return insult for insult--had not Anita evidently again and finally
+rejected them and chosen me? As they passed into the private hall I
+rang for Sanders to come and let them out. When I turned back into the
+drawing-room, Anita was seated, was reading a book. I waited until I saw
+she was not going to speak. Then I said: "What time will you have dinner?"
+But my face must have been expressing some of the joy and gratitude that
+filled me. "She has chosen!" I was saying to myself over and over.
+
+"Whenever you usually have it," she replied, without looking up.
+
+"At seven o'clock, then. You had better tell Sanders."
+
+I rang for him and went into my little smoking-room. She had resisted her
+parents' final appeal to her to return to them. She had cast in her lot
+with me. "The rest can be left to time," said I to myself. And, reviewing
+all that had happened, I let a wild hope send tenacious roots deep into me.
+How often ignorance is a blessing; how often knowledge would make the step
+falter and the heart quail!
+
+
+
+
+XXIV. BLACKLOCK ATTENDS FAMILY PRAYERS
+
+
+During dinner I bore the whole burden of conversation--though burden I did
+not find it. Like most close-mouthed men, I am extremely talkative. Silence
+sets people to wondering and prying; he hides his secrets best who hides
+them at the bottom of a river of words. If my spirits are high, I often
+talk aloud to myself when there is no one convenient. And how could my
+spirits be anything but high, with her sitting there opposite me, mine,
+mine for better or for worse, through good and evil report--my wife!
+
+She was only formally responsive, reluctant and brief in answers,
+volunteering nothing. The servants waiting on us no doubt laid her manner
+to shyness; I understood it, or thought I did--but I was not troubled.
+It is as natural for me to hope as to breathe; and with my knowledge of
+character, how could I take seriously the moods and impulses of one whom I
+regarded as a childlike girl, trained to false pride and false ideals? "She
+has chosen to stay with me," said I to myself. "Actions count, not words or
+manner. A few days or weeks, and she will be herself, and mine." And I went
+gaily on with my efforts to interest her, to make her smile and forget the
+role she had commanded herself to play. Nor was I wholly unsuccessful.
+Again and again I thought I saw a gleam of interest in her eyes or the
+beginnings of a smile about that sweet mouth of hers. I was careful not to
+overdo my part.
+
+As soon as we finished dessert I said: "You loathe cigar smoke, so I'll
+hide myself in my den. Sanders will bring you the cigarettes." I had myself
+telephoned for a supply of her kind early in the day.
+
+She made a polite protest for the benefit of the servants; but I was firm,
+and left her free to think things over alone in the drawing-room--"your
+sitting-room," I called it, I had not finished a small cigar when there
+came a timid knock at my door. I threw away the cigar and opened. "I
+thought it was you," said I. "I'm familiar with the knocks of all the
+others. And this was new--like a summer wind tapping with a flower for
+admission at a closed window." And I laughed with a little raillery, and
+she smiled, colored, tried to seem cold and hostile again.
+
+"Shall I go with you to your sitting-room?" I went on. "Perhaps the cigar
+smoke here--"
+
+"No, no," she interrupted; "I don't really mind cigars--and the windows are
+wide open. Besides, I came for only a moment--just to say--"
+
+As she cast about for words to carry her on, I drew up a chair for her.
+She looked at it uncertainly, seated herself. "When mama was here--this
+afternoon," she went on, "she was urging me to--to do what she wished.
+And after she had used several arguments, she said something I--I've been
+thinking it over, and it seemed I ought in fairness to tell you."
+
+I waited.
+
+"She said: 'In a few days more he'--that meant you--'he will be ruined. He
+imagines the worst is over for him, when in fact they've only begun.'"
+
+"They!" I repeated. "Who are 'they'? The Langdons?"
+
+"I think so," she replied with an effort. "She did not say--I've told you
+her exact words--as far as I can."
+
+"Well," said I, "and why didn't you go?"
+
+She pressed her lips firmly together. Finally, with a straight look into my
+eyes, she replied: "I shall not discuss that. You probably misunderstand,
+but that is your own affair."
+
+"You believed what she said about me, of course," said I.
+
+"I neither believed nor disbelieved," she answered indifferently, as she
+rose to go. "It does not interest me."
+
+"Come here," said I.
+
+I waited until she reluctantly joined me at the window. I pointed to the
+steeple of the church across the way. "You could as easily throw down that
+steeple by pushing against it with your bare hands," I said to her, "as
+'they,' whoever they are, could put me down. They might take away my money.
+But if they did, they would only be giving me a lesson that would teach me
+how more easily to get it back. I am not a bundle of stock certificates or
+a bag of money. I am--here," and I tapped my forehead.
+
+She forced a faint, scornful smile. She did not wish me to see her belief
+of what I said.
+
+"You may think that is vanity," I went on. "But you will learn, sooner or
+later, the difference between boasting and simple statement of fact. You
+will learn that I do not boast. What I said is no more a boast than for a
+man with legs to say, 'I can walk.' Because you have known only legless
+men, you exaggerate the difficulty of walking. It's as easy for me to make
+money as it is for some people to spend it."
+
+It is hardly necessary for me to say I was not insinuating anything against
+her people. But she was just then supersensitive on the subject, though
+I did not suspect it. She flushed hotly. "You will not have any cause to
+sneer at my people on that account hereafter," she said. "I settled
+_that_ to-day."
+
+"I was not sneering at them," I protested. "I wasn't even thinking of them.
+And--you must know that it's a favor to me for anybody to ask me to do
+anything that will please you--Anita!"
+
+She made a gesture of impatience. "I see I'd better tell you why I did not
+go with them to-day. I insisted that they give back all they have taken
+from you. And when they refused, I refused to go."
+
+"I don't care why you refused, or imagined you refused," said I. "I am
+content with the fact that you are here."
+
+"But you misunderstand it," she answered coldly.
+
+"I don't understand it, I don't misunderstand it," was my reply. "I accept
+it."
+
+She turned away from the window, drifted out of the room--you, who love or
+at least have loved, can imagine how it made me feel to see _Her_
+moving about in those rooms of mine.
+
+While the surface of my mind was taken up with her, I must have been
+thinking, underneath, of the warning she had brought; for, perhaps half or
+three-quarters of an hour after she left, I was suddenly whirled out of
+my reverie at the window by a thought like a pistol thrust into my face.
+"What if 'they' should include Roebuck!" And just as a man begins to defend
+himself from a sudden danger before he clearly sees what the danger is, so
+I began to act before I even questioned whether my suspicion was plausible
+or absurd. I went into the hall, rang the bell, slipped a light-weight coat
+over my evening dress and put on a hat. When Sanders appeared, I said: "I'm
+going out for a few minutes--perhaps an hour--if any one should ask." A
+moment later I was in a hansom and on the way to Roebuck's.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Roebuck lived near Chicago, he had a huge house, a sort of crude
+palace such as so many of our millionaires built for themselves in the
+first excitement of their new wealth--a house with porches and balconies
+and towers and minarets and all sorts of gingerbread effects to compel the
+eye of the passer-by. But when he became enormously rich, so rich that his
+name was one of the synonyms for wealth, so rich that people said "rich as
+Roebuck" where they used to say "rich as Croesus," he cut away every kind
+of ostentation, and avoided attention.
+
+He took advantage of his having to remove to New York where his vast
+interests centered; he bought a small and commonplace and, far a rich man,
+even mean house in East Fifty-Second Street--one of a raw, and an almost
+dingy looking row at that. There he had an establishment a man with
+one-fiftieth of his fortune would have felt like apologizing for. To his
+few intimates who were intimate enough to question him about his come-down
+from his Chicago splendors he explained that he was seeing with clearer
+eyes his responsibilities as a steward of the Lord, that luxury was sinful,
+that no man had a right to waste the Lord's money.
+
+The general theory about him was that advancing years had developed
+his natural closeness into the stingiest avariciousness. But my notion
+is he was impelled by the fear of exciting envy, by the fear of
+assassination--the fear that made his eyes roam restlessly whenever
+strangers were near him, and so dried up the inside of his body that his
+dry tongue was constantly sliding along his dry lips. I have seen a convict
+stand in the door of his cell and, though it was impossible that any one
+could be behind him, look nervously over his shoulder every moment or so.
+Roebuck had the same trick--only his dread, I suspect, was not the officers
+of the law, even of the divine law, but the many, many victims of his
+merciless execution of "the Lord's will."
+
+This state of mind is not uncommon among the very rich men, especially
+those who have come up from poverty. Those who have inherited great wealth,
+and have always been used to it, get into the habit of looking upon the
+mass of mankind as inferiors, and move about with no greater sense of peril
+than a man has in venturing among a lot of dogs with tails wagging. But
+those who were born poor and have risen under the stimulus of a furious
+envy of the comfortable and the rich, fancy that everybody who isn't rich
+has the same savage hunger that they themselves had, and is ready to use
+similar desperate methods in gratifying it. Thus, where the rich of the
+Langdon sort are supercilious, the rich of the Roebuck sort are nervous and
+often become morbid on the subject of assassination as they grow richer and
+richer.
+
+The door of Roebuck's house was opened for me by a maid--a man-servant
+would have been a "sinful" luxury, a man-servant might be the hireling
+of plotters against his life. I may add that she looked the cheap
+maid-of-all-work, and her manners were of the free and fresh sort that
+indicates a feeling that as high, or higher, wages, and less to do could
+be got elsewhere.
+
+"I don't think you can see Mr. Roebuck," she said.
+
+"Take my card to him," I ordered, "and I'll wait in the parlor."
+
+"Parlor's in use," she retorted with a sarcastic grin, which I was soon to
+understand.
+
+So I stood by the old-fashioned coat and hat rack while she went in at the
+hall door of the back parlor. Soon Roebuck himself came out, his glasses on
+his nose, a family Bible under his arm. "Glad to see you, Matthew," said he
+with saintly kindliness, giving me a friendly hand. "We are just about to
+offer up our evening prayer. Come right in."
+
+I followed him into the back parlor. Both it and the front parlor were
+lighted; in a sort of circle extending into both rooms were all the
+Roebucks and the four servants. "This is my friend, Matthew Blacklock,"
+said he, and the Roebucks in the circle gravely bowed. He drew up a chair
+for me, and we seated ourselves. Amid a solemn hush, he read a chapter from
+the big Bible spread out upon his lean lap. My glance wandered from face to
+face of the Roebucks, as plainly dressed as were their servants. I was able
+to look freely, mine being the only eyes not bent upon the floor.
+
+It was the first time in my life that I had witnessed family prayers.
+When I was a boy at home, my mother had taken literally the Scriptural
+injunction to pray in secret--in a closet, I think the passage of the Bible
+said. Many times each day she used to retire to a closet under the stairway
+and spend from one to twenty minutes shut in there. But we had no family
+prayers. I was therefore deeply interested in what was going on in those
+countrified parlors of one of the richest and most powerful men in the
+world--and this right in the heart of that district of New York where
+palaces stand in rows and in blocks, and where such few churches as there
+are resemble social clubs for snubbing climbers and patronizing the poor.
+
+It was astonishing how much every Roebuck in that circle, even the old
+lady, looked like Roebuck himself--the same smug piety, the same underfed
+appearance that, by the way, more often indicates a starved soul than
+a starved body. One difference--where his face had the look of power
+that compels respect and, to the shrewd, reveals relentless strength
+relentlessly used, the expressions of the others were simply small and
+mean and frost-nipped. And that is the rule--the second generation of a
+plutocrat inherits, with his money, the meanness that enabled him to hoard
+it, but not the scope that enabled him to make it.
+
+So absorbed was I in the study of the influence of his terrible
+master-character upon those closest to it, that I started when he said:
+"Let us pray." I followed the example of the others, and knelt. The audible
+prayer was offered up by his oldest daughter, Mrs. Wheeler, a widow.
+Roebuck punctuated each paragraph in her series of petitions with a
+loudly-whispered amen. When she prayed for "the stranger whom Thou has led
+seemingly by chance into our little circle," he whispered the amen more
+fervently and repeated it. And well he might, the old robber and assassin
+by proxy! The prayer ended and, us on our feet, the servants withdrew;
+then, awkwardly, all the family except Roebuck. That is, they closed the
+doors between the two rooms and left him and me alone in the front parlor.
+
+"I shall not detain you long, Mr. Roebuck," said I. "A report reached me
+this evening that sent me to you at once."
+
+"If possible, Matthew," said he, and he could not hide his uneasiness, "put
+off business until to-morrow. My mind--yours, too, I trust--is not in the
+frame for that kind of thoughts now."
+
+"Is the Coal organization to be announced the first of July?" I demanded.
+It has always been, and always shall be, my method to fight in the open.
+This, not from principle, but from expediency. Some men fight best in the
+brush; I don't. So I always begin battle by shelling the woods.
+
+"No," he said, amazing me by his instant frankness. "The announcement has
+been postponed."
+
+Why did he not lie to me? Why did he not put me off the scent, as he might
+easily have done, with some shrewd evasion? I suspected I owed it to
+my luck in catching him at family prayers. For I know that the general
+impression of him is erroneous; he is not merely a hypocrite before the
+world, but also a hypocrite before himself. A more profoundly, piously
+conscientious man never lived. Never was there a truer epitaph than the one
+implied in the sentence carved over his niche in the magnificent mausoleum
+he built: "Fear naught but the Lord."
+
+"When will the reorganization be announced?" I asked.
+
+"I can not say," he answered. "Some difficulties--chiefly labor
+difficulties--have arisen. Until they are settled, nothing can be done.
+Come to me to-morrow, and we'll talk about it."
+
+"That is all I wished to know," said I, with a friendly, easy smile. "Good
+night."
+
+It was his turn to be astonished--and he showed it, where I had given not a
+sign. "What was the report you heard?" he asked, to detain me.
+
+"That you and Mowbray Langdon had conspired to ruin me," said I, laughing.
+
+He echoed my laugh rather hollowly. "It was hardly necessary for you to
+come to me about such a--a statement."
+
+"Hardly," I answered dryly. Hardly, indeed! For I was seeing now all that I
+had been hiding from myself since I became infatuated with Anita and made
+marrying her my only real business in life.
+
+We faced each other, each measuring the other. And as his glance quailed
+before mine, I turned away to conceal my exultation. In a comparison of
+resources this man who had plotted to crush me was to me as giant to
+midget. But I had the joy of realizing that man to man, I was the stronger.
+He had craft, but I had daring. His vast wealth aggravated his natural
+cowardice--crafty men are invariably cowards, and their audacities under
+the compulsion of their ravenous greed are like a starving jackal's dashes
+into danger for food. My wealth belonged to me, not I to it; and, stripped
+of it, I would be like the prize-fighter stripped for the fight. Finally,
+he was old, I young. And there was the chief reason for his quailing. He
+knew that he must die long before me, that my turn must come, that I could
+dance upon his grave.
+
+
+
+
+XXV. "MY WIFE MUST!"
+
+
+As I drove away, I was proud of myself. I had listened to my death sentence
+with a face so smiling that he must almost have believed me unconscious;
+and also, it had not even entered my head, as I listened, to beg for mercy.
+Not that there would have been the least use in begging; as well try to
+pray a statue into life, as try to soften that set will and purpose. Still,
+many a man would have weakened--and I had not weakened. But when I was
+once more in my apartment--in our apartment--perhaps I did show that there
+was a weak streak through me. I fought against the impulse to see her
+once more that night; but I fought in vain. I knocked at the door of her
+sitting-room--a timid knock, for me. No answer. I knocked again, more
+loudly--then a third time, still more loudly. The door opened and she stood
+there, like one of the angels that guarded the gates of Eden after the
+fall. Only, instead of a flaming sword, hers was of ice. She was in a
+dressing-gown or tea-gown, white and clinging and full of intoxicating
+hints and glimpses of all the beauties of her figure. Her face softened as
+she continued to look at me, and I entered.
+
+"No--please don't turn on any more lights," I said, as she moved toward the
+electric buttons. "I just came in to--to see if I could do anything for
+you." In fact, I had come, longing for her to do something for me, to show
+in look or tone or act some sympathy for me in my loneliness and trouble.
+
+"No, thank you," she said. Her voice seemed that of a stranger who wished
+to remain a stranger. And she was evidently waiting for me to go. You will
+see what a mood I was in when I say I felt as I had not since I, a very
+small boy indeed, ran away from home; I came back through the chilly night
+to take one last glimpse of the family that would soon be realizing how
+foolishly and wickedly unappreciative they had been of such a treasure
+as I; and when I saw them sitting about the big fire in the lamp-light,
+heartlessly comfortable and unconcerned, it was all I could do to keep back
+the tears of strong self-pity--and I never saw them again.
+
+"I've seen Roebuck," said I to Anita, because I must say something, if I
+was to stay on.
+
+"Roebuck?" she inquired. Her tone reminded me that his name conveyed
+nothing to her.
+
+"He and I are in an enterprise together," I explained. "He is the one man
+who could seriously cripple me."
+
+"Oh," she said, and her indifference, forced though I thought it, wounded.
+
+"Well," said I, "your mother was right."
+
+She turned full toward me, and even in the dimness I saw her quick
+sympathy--an impulsive flash instantly gone. But it had been there!
+
+"I came in here," I went on, "to say that--Anita, it doesn't in the least
+matter. No one in this world, no one and nothing, could hurt me except
+through you. So long as I have _you_, they--the rest--all of them
+together--can't touch me."
+
+We were both silent for several minutes. Then she said, and her voice was
+like the smooth surface of the river where the boiling rapids run deep:
+"But you _haven't_ me--and never _shall_ have. I've told you
+that. I warned you long ago. No doubt you will pretend, and people will
+say, that I left you because you lost your money. But it won't be so."
+
+I was beside her instantly, was looking into her face. "What do you mean?"
+I asked, and I did not speak gently.
+
+She gazed at me without flinching. "And I suppose," she said satirically,
+"you wonder why I--why you are repellent to me. Haven't you learned that,
+though I may have been made into a moral coward, I'm not a physical coward?
+Don't bully and threaten. It's useless."
+
+I put my hand strongly on her shoulder--taunts and jeers do not turn me
+aside. "What did you mean?" I repeated.
+
+"Take your hand off me," she commanded.
+
+"What did you mean?" I repeated sternly. "Don't be afraid to answer."
+
+She was very young--so the taunt stung her. "I was about to tell you," said
+she, "when you began to make it impossible."
+
+I took advantage of this to extricate myself from the awkward position in
+which she had put me--I took my hand from her shoulder.
+
+"I am going to leave you," she announced.
+
+"You forget that you are my wife," said I.
+
+"I am not your wife," was her answer, and if she had not looked so
+childlike, there in the moonlight all in white, I could not have held
+myself in check, so insolent was the tone and so helpless of ever being
+able to win her did she make me feel.
+
+"You are my wife and you will stay here with me," I reiterated, my brain on
+fire.
+
+"I am my own, and I shall go where I please, and do what I please," was her
+contemptuous retort. "Why won't you be reasonable? Why won't you see how
+utterly unsuited we are? I don't ask you to be a gentleman--but just a man,
+and be ashamed even to wish to detain a woman against her will."
+
+I drew up a chair so close to her that to retreat, she was forced to sit
+in the broad window-seat. Then I seated myself. "By all means, let us be
+reasonable," said I. "Now, let me explain my position. I have heard you and
+your friends discussing the views of marriage you've just been expressing.
+Their views may be right, may be more civilized, more 'advanced' than mine.
+No matter. They are not mine. I hold by the old standards--and you are
+my wife--mine. Do you understand?" All this as tranquilly as if we were
+discussing fair weather. "And you will live up to the obligation which the
+marriage service has put upon you."
+
+She might have been a marble statue pedestaled in that window seat.
+
+"You married me of your own free will--for you could have protested to
+the preacher and he would have sustained you. You tacitly put certain
+conditions on our marriage. I assented to them. I have respected them.
+I shall continue to respect them. But--when you married me, you didn't
+marry a dawdling dude chattering 'advanced ideas' with his head full of
+libertinism. You married a man. And that man is your husband."
+
+I waited, but she made no comment--not even by gesture or movement. She
+simply sat, her hands interlaced in her lap, her eyes straight upon mine.
+
+"You say let us be reasonable," I went on. "Well, let us be reasonable.
+There may come a time when woman can be free and independent, but that time
+is a long way off yet. The world is organized on the basis of every woman's
+having a protector--of every decent woman's having a husband, unless she
+remains in the home of some of her blood-relations. There may be women
+strong enough to set the world at defiance. But you are not one of
+them--and you know it. You have shown it to yourself again and again in
+the last forty-eight hours. Your bringing-up has kept you a child in real
+knowledge of real life, as distinguished from the life in that fashionable
+hothouse. If you tried to assert your so-called independence, you would be
+the easy prey of a scoundrel or scoundrels. When I, who have lived in the
+thick of the fight all my life, who have learned by many a surprise and
+defeat never to sleep except with the sword and gun in hand, and one eye
+open--when I have been trapped as Roebuck and Langdon have just trapped
+me--what chance would a woman like you have?"
+
+She did not answer or change expression.
+
+"Is what I say reasonable or unreasonable?" I asked gently.
+
+"Reasonable--from _your_ standpoint," she said.
+
+She gazed out into the moonlight, up into the sky. And at the look in her
+face, the primeval savage in me strained to close round that slender white
+throat of hers and crush and crush until it had killed in her the thought
+of that other man which was transforming her from marble to flesh that
+glowed and blood that surged. I pushed back my chair with a sudden noise;
+by the way she trembled I gaged how tense her nerves must be. I rose and,
+in a fairly calm tone, said: "We understand each other?"
+
+"Yes," she answered. "As before."
+
+I ignored this. "Think it over, Anita," I urged--she seemed to me so like a
+sweet, spoiled child again. I longed to go straight at her about that other
+man. I stood for a moment with Tom Langdon's name on my lips, but I could
+not trust myself. I went away to my own rooms.
+
+I thrust thoughts of her from my mind. I spent the night gnawing upon the
+ropes with which Mowbray Langdon and Roebuck had bound me, hand and foot. I
+now saw they were ropes of steel--and it had long been broad day before I
+found that weak strand which is in every rope of human make.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI. THE WEAK STRAND
+
+
+No sane creature, not even a sane bulldog, will fight simply from love of
+fighting. When a man is attacked, he may be sure he has excited either fear
+or cupidity, or both. As far as I could see, it was absurd that cupidity
+was inciting Langdon and Roebuck against me. I hadn't enough to tempt them.
+Thus, I was forced to conclude that I must possess a strength of which I
+was unaware, and which stirred even Roebuck's fears. But what could it be?
+
+Besides Langdon and Roebuck and me there were six principals in the
+proposed Coal combine, three of them richer and more influential in finance
+than even Langdon, all of them except possibly Dykeman, the lawyer or
+navigating officer of the combine, more formidable figures than I. Yet none
+of these men was being assailed. "Why am I singled out?" I asked myself,
+and I felt that if I could answer, I should find I had the means wholly
+or partly to defeat them. But I could not explain to my satisfaction even
+Langdon's activities against me. I felt that Anita was somehow, in part at
+least, the cause; but, even so, how had he succeeded in convincing Roebuck
+that I must be clipped and plucked into a groundling?
+
+"It must have something to do with the Manasquale mines," I decided. "I
+thought I had given over my control of them, but somehow I must still have
+a control that makes me too powerful for Roebuck to be at ease so long as I
+am afoot and armed." And I resolved to take my lawyers and search the whole
+Manasquale transaction--to explore it from attic to underneath the cellar
+flooring. "We'll go through it," said I, "like ferrets through a ship's
+hold."
+
+As I was finishing breakfast, Anita came in. She had evidently slept well,
+and I regarded that as ominous. At her age, a crisis means little sleep
+until a decision has been reached. I rose, but her manner warned me not to
+advance and try to shake hands with her.
+
+"I have asked Alva to stop with me here for a few days," she said formally.
+
+"Alva!" said I, much surprised. She had not asked one of her own friends;
+she had asked a girl she had met less than two days before, and that girl
+my partner's daughter.
+
+"She was here yesterday morning," Anita explained. And I now wondered how
+much Alva there was in Anita's firm stand against her parents.
+
+"Why don't you take her down to our place on Long Island?" said I, most
+carefully concealing my delight--for Alva near her meant a friend of mine
+and an advocate and example of real womanhood near her. "Everything's ready
+for you there, and I'm going to be busy the next few days--busy day and
+night."
+
+She reflected. "Very well," she assented presently. And she gave me a
+puzzled glance she thought I did not see--as if she were wondering whether
+the enemy was not hiding new and deeper guile under an apparently harmless
+suggestion.
+
+"Then I'll not see you again for several days," said I, most businesslike.
+"If you want anything, there will be Monson out at the stables where he
+can't annoy you. Or you can get me on the 'long distance.' Good-by. Good
+luck."
+
+And I nodded carelessly and friendlily to her, and went away, enjoying
+the pleasure of having startled her into visible astonishment. "There's
+a better game than icy hostility, you very young, young lady," said I to
+myself, "and that game is friendly indifference."
+
+Alva would be with her. So she was secure for the present and my mind was
+free for "finance."
+
+At that time the two most powerful men in finance were Galloway and
+Roebuck. In Spain I once saw a fight between a bull and a tiger--or, rather
+the beginning of a fight. They were released into a huge iron cage. After
+circling it several times in the same direction, searching for a way out,
+they came face to face. The bull tossed the tiger; the tiger clawed the
+bull. The bull roared; the tiger screamed. Each retreated to his own side
+of the cage. The bull pawed and snorted as if he could hardly wait to get
+at the tiger; the tiger crouched and quivered and glared murderously, as if
+he were going instantly to spring upon the bull. But the bull did not rush,
+neither did the tiger spring. That was the Roebuck-Galloway situation.
+
+How to bait Tiger Galloway to attack Bull Roebuck--that was the problem I
+must solve, and solve straightway. If I could bring about war between the
+giants, spreading confusion over the whole field of finance and filling all
+men with dread and fear, there was a chance, a bare chance, that in the
+confusion I might bear off part of my fortune. Certainly, conditions would
+result in which I could more easily get myself intrenched again; then, too,
+there would be a by no means small satisfaction in seeing Roebuck clawed
+and bitten in punishment for having plotted against me.
+
+Mutual fear had kept these two at peace for five years, and most
+considerate and polite about each other's "rights." But while our country's
+industrial territory is vast, the interests of the few great controllers
+who determine wages and prices for all are equally vast, and each plutocrat
+is tormented incessantly by jealousy and suspicion; not a day passes
+without conflicts of interest that adroit diplomacy could turn into
+ferocious warfare. And in this matter of monopolizing the coal, despite
+Roebuck's earnest assurances to Galloway that the combine was purely
+defensive, and was really concerned only with the labor question, Galloway,
+a great manufacturer, or, rather, a huge levier of the taxes of dividends
+and interest upon manufacturing enterprises, could not but be uneasy.
+
+Before I rose that morning I had a tentative plan for stirring him to
+action. I was elaborating it on the way down town in my electric. It shows
+how badly Anita was crippling my brain, that not until I was almost at my
+office did it occur to me: "That was a tremendous luxury Roebuck indulged
+his conscience in last night. It isn't like him to forewarn a man, even
+when he's sure he can't escape. Though his prayers were hot in his mouth,
+still, it's strange he didn't try to fool me. In fact, it's suspicious. In
+fact--"
+
+Suspicious? The instant the idea was fairly before my mind, I knew I had
+let his canting fool me once more. I entered my offices, feeling that the
+blow had already fallen; and I was surprised, but not relieved, when I
+found everything calm. "But fall it will within an hour or so--before I can
+move to avert it," said I to myself.
+
+And fall it did. At eleven o'clock, just as I was setting out to make my
+first move toward heating old Galloway's heels for the war-path, Joe came
+in with the news: "A general lockout's declared in the coal regions. The
+operators have stolen a march on the men who, so they allege, were secretly
+getting ready to strike. By night every coal road will be tied up and every
+mine shut down."
+
+Joe knew our coal interests were heavy, but he did not dream his news meant
+that before the day was over we would be bankrupt and not able to pay
+fifteen cents on the dollar. However, he knew enough to throw him into
+a fever of fright. He watched my calmness with terror. "Coal stocks are
+dropping like a thermometer in a cold wave," he said, like a fireman at a
+sleeper in a burning house.
+
+"Naturally," said I, unruffled, apparently. "What can we do about it?"
+
+"We must do something!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, we must," I admitted. "For instance, we must keep cool, especially
+when two or three dozen people are watching us. Also, you must attend to
+your usual routine."
+
+"What are you going to do?" he cried. "For God's sake, Matt, don't keep me
+in suspense!"
+
+"Go to your desk," I commanded. And he quieted down and went. I hadn't been
+schooling him in the fire-drill for fifteen years in vain.
+
+I went up the street and into the great banking and brokerage house of
+Galloway and Company. I made my way through the small army of guards,
+behind which the old beast of prey was intrenched, and into his private
+den. There he sat, at a small, plain table, in the middle of the room
+without any article of furniture in it but his table and his chair. On the
+table was a small inkstand, perfectly clean, a steel pen equally clean, on
+the rest attached to it. And that was all--not a letter, not a scrap of
+paper, not a sign of work or of intention to work. It might have been the
+desk of a man who did nothing; in fact, it was the desk of a man who had
+so much to do that his only hope of escape from being overwhelmed was to
+despatch and clear away each matter the instant it was presented to him.
+Many things could be read from the powerful form, bolt upright in that
+stiff chair, and from the cynical, masterful old face. But to me the
+chief quality there revealed was that quality of qualities, decision--the
+greatest power a man can have, except only courage. And old James Galloway
+had both.
+
+He respected Roebuck; Roebuck feared him. Roebuck did have some sort
+of conscience, distorted though it was, and the dictator of savageries
+Galloway would have scorned to commit. Galloway had no professions of
+conscience--beyond such small glozing of hypocrisy as any man must put on
+if he wishes to be intrusted with the money of a public that associates
+professions of religion and appearances of respectability with honesty.
+Roebuck's passion was wealth--to see the millions heap up and up. Galloway
+had that passion, too--I have yet to meet a multi-millionaire who isn't
+avaricious and even stingy. But Galloway's chief passion was power--to
+handle men as a junk merchant handles rags, to plan and lead campaigns of
+conquest with his golden legions, and to distribute the spoils like an
+autocrat who is careless how they are divided, since all belongs to him,
+whenever he wishes to claim it.
+
+He pierced me with his blue eyes, keen as a youth's, though his face was
+seamed with scars of seventy tumultuous years. He extended toward me
+over the table his broad, stubby white hand--the hand of a builder, of a
+constructive genius. "How are you, Blacklock?" said he. "What can I do
+for you?" He just touched my hand before dropping it, and resumed that
+idol-like pose. But although there was only repose and deliberation in his
+manner, and not a suggestion of haste, I, like every one who came into that
+room and that presence, had a sense of an interminable procession behind
+me, a procession of men who must be seen by this master-mover, that they
+might submit important and pressing affairs to him for decision. It was
+unnecessary for him to tell any one to be brief and pointed.
+
+"I shall have to go to the wall to-day," said I, taking a paper from
+my pocket, "unless you save me. Here is a statement of my assets and
+liabilities. I call to your attention my Coal holdings. I was one of the
+eight men whom Roebuck got round him for the new combine--it is a secret,
+but I assume you know all about it."
+
+He laid the paper before him, put on his nose-glasses and looked at it.
+
+"If you will save me," I continued, "I will transfer to you, in a block,
+all my Coal holdings. They will be worth double my total liabilities within
+three months--as soon as the reorganization is announced. I leave it
+entirely to your sense of justice whether I shall have any part of them
+back when this storm blows over."
+
+"Why didn't you go to Roebuck?" he asked without looking up.
+
+"Because it is he that has stuck the knife into me."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I don't know. I suspect the Manasquale properties, which I brought into
+the combine, have some value, which no one but Roebuck, and perhaps
+Langdon, knows about--and that I in some way was dangerous to them through
+that fact. They haven't given me time to look into it."
+
+A grim smile flitted over his face. "You've been too busy getting married,
+eh?"
+
+"Exactly," said I. "It's another case of unbuckling for the wedding-feast
+and getting assassinated as a penalty. Do you wish me to explain anything
+on that list--do you want any details of the combine--of the Coal stocks
+there?"
+
+"Not necessary," he replied. As I had thought, with that enormous machine
+of his for drawing in information, and with that enormous memory of his for
+details, he probably knew more about the combine and its properties than I
+did.
+
+"You have heard of the lockout?" I inquired--for I wished him to know I
+had no intention of deceiving him as to the present market value of those
+stocks.
+
+"Roebuck has been commanded by his God," he said, "to eject the free
+American labor from the coal regions and to substitute importations of
+coolie Huns and Bohemians. Thus, the wicked American laborers will be
+chastened for trying to get higher wages and cut down a pious man's
+dividends; and the downtrodden coolies will be brought where they can enjoy
+the blessings of liberty and of the preaching of Roebuck's missionaries."
+
+I laughed, though he had not smiled, but had spoken as if stating colorless
+facts. "And righteousness and Roebuck will prevail," said I.
+
+He frowned slightly, a sardonic grin breaking the straight, thin, cruel
+line of his lips. He opened his table's one shallow drawer, and took out a
+pad and a pencil. He wrote a few words on the lowest part of the top sheet,
+folded it, tore off the part he had scribbled on, returned the pad and
+pencil to the drawer, handed the scrap of paper to me. "I will do it," he
+said. "Give this to Mr. Farquhar, second door to the left. Good morning."
+And in that atmosphere of vast affairs speedily despatched his consent
+without argument seemed, and was, the matter-of-course.
+
+I bowed. Though he had not saved me as a favor to me, but because it fitted
+in with his plans, whatever they were, my eyes dimmed. "I shan't forget
+this," said I, my voice not quite steady.
+
+"I know it," said he curtly. "I know you." I saw that his mind had already
+turned me out. I said no more, and withdrew. When I left the room it was
+precisely as it had been when I entered it--except the bit of paper torn
+from the pad. But what a difference to me, to the thousands, the hundreds
+of thousands directly and indirectly interested in the Coal combine and its
+strike and its products, was represented by those few, almost illegible
+scrawlings on that scrap of paper.
+
+Not until I had gone over the situation with Farquhar, and we had signed
+and exchanged the necessary papers, did I begin to relax from the
+strain--how great that strain was I realized a few weeks later, when
+the gray appeared thick at my temples and there was in my crown what
+was, for such a shock as mine, a thin spot. "I am saved!" said I to
+myself, venturing a long breath, as I stood on the steps of Galloway's
+establishment, where hourly was transacted business vitally affecting
+the welfare of scores of millions of human beings, with James Galloway's
+personal interest as the sole guiding principle. "Saved!" I repeated, and
+not until then did it flash before me, "I must have paid a frightful price.
+He would never have consented to interfere with Roebuck as soon as I asked
+him to do it, unless there had been some powerful motive. If I had had my
+wits about me, I could have made far better terms." Why hadn't I my wits
+about me? "Anita" was my instant answer to my own question. "Anita again.
+I had a bad attack of family man's panic." And thus it came about that I
+went back to my own office, feeling as if I had suffered a severe defeat,
+instead of jubilant over my narrow escape.
+
+Joe followed me into my den. "What luck?" asked he, in the tone of a mother
+waylaying the doctor as he issues from the sick-room.
+
+"Luck?" said I, gazing blankly at him.
+
+"You've seen the latest quotation, haven't you?" In his nervousness his
+temper was on a fine edge.
+
+"No," replied I indifferently. I sat down at my desk and began to busy
+myself. Then I added: "We're out of the Coal combine. I've transferred our
+holdings. Look after these things, please." And I gave him the checks,
+notes and memoranda of agreement.
+
+"Galloway!" he exclaimed. And then his eye fell on the totals of the stock
+I had been carrying. "Good God, Matt!" he gasped. "Ruined!"
+
+And he sat down, and buried his face and cried like a child--it was then
+that I measured the full depth of the chasm I had escaped. I made no such
+exhibition of myself, but when I tried to relight my cigar my hand trembled
+so that the flame scorched my lips.
+
+"Ruined?" I said to Joe, easily enough. "Not at all. We're back in the
+road, going smoothly ahead--only, at a bit less stiff a pace. Think, Joe,
+of all those poor devils down in the mining districts. They're out--clear
+out--and thousands of 'em don't know where their families will get bread.
+And though they haven't found it out yet, they've got to leave the place
+where they've lived all their lives, and their fathers before them--have
+got to go wandering about in a world that's as strange to them as the
+surface of the moon, and as bare for them as the Sahara desert."
+
+"That's so," said Joe. "It's hard luck." But I saw he was thinking only of
+himself and his narrow escape from having to give up his big house and all
+the rest of it; that, soft-hearted and generous though he was, to those
+poor chaps and their wives and children he wasn't giving a thought.
+
+Wall Street never does--they're too remote, too vague. It deals with
+columns of figures and slips of paper. It never thinks of those
+abstractions as standing for so many hearts and so many mouths, just as the
+bank clerk never thinks of the bits of metal he counts so swiftly as money
+with which things and men could be bought. I read somewhere once that
+Voltaire--I think it was Voltaire--asked a man what he would do if, by
+pressing a button on his table, he would be enormously rich and at the
+same time would cause the death of a person away off at the other side of
+the earth, unknown to him, and probably no more worthy to live, and with
+no greater expectation of life or of happiness than the average sinful,
+short-lived human being. I've often thought of that as I've watched our
+great "captains of industry." Voltaire's dilemma is theirs. And they don't
+hesitate; they press the button. I leave the morality of the performance to
+moralists; to me, its chief feature is its cowardice, its sneaking, slimy
+cowardice.
+
+"You've done a grand two hours' work," said Joe.
+
+"Grander than you think," replied I. "I've set the tiger on to fight the
+bull."
+
+"Galloway and Roebuck?"
+
+"Just that," said I. And I laughed, started up, sat down again. "No, I'll
+put off the pleasure," said I. "I'll let Roebuck find out, when the claws
+catch in that tough old hide of his."
+
+
+
+
+XXVII. A CONSPIRACY AGAINST ANITA
+
+
+On about the hottest afternoon of that summer I had the yacht take me down
+the Sound to a point on the Connecticut shore within sight of Dawn Hill,
+but seven miles farther from New York. I landed at the private pier of
+Howard Forrester, the only brother of Anita's mother. As I stepped upon the
+pier I saw a fine-looking old man in the pavilion overhanging the water. He
+was dressed all in white except a sky-blue tie that harmonized with the
+color of his eyes. He was neither fat nor lean, and his smooth skirt was
+protesting ruddily against the age proclaimed by his wool-white hair. He
+rose as I came toward him, and, while I was still several yards away,
+showed unmistakably that he knew who I was and that he was anything but
+glad to see me.
+
+"Mr. Forrester?" I asked
+
+He grew purple to the line of his thick white hair. "It is, Mr. Blacklock,"
+said he. "I have the honor to wish you good day, sir." And with that he
+turned his back on me and gazed out toward Long Island.
+
+"I have come to ask a favor of you, sir," said I, as polite to that hostile
+back as if I had been addressing a cordial face. And I waited.
+
+He wheeled round, looked at me from head to foot. I withstood the
+inspection calmly; when it was ended I noted that in spite of himself he
+was somewhat relaxed from the opinion of me he had formed upon what he had
+heard and read. But he said: "I do not know you, sir, and I do not wish to
+know you."
+
+"You have made me painfully aware of that," replied I. "But I have learned
+not to take snap judgments too seriously. I never go to a man unless I have
+something to say to him, and I never leave until I have said it."
+
+"I perceive, sir," retorted he, "you have the thick skin necessary to
+living up to that rule." And the twinkle in his eyes betrayed the man who
+delights to exercise a real or imaginary talent for caustic wit. Such men
+are like nettles--dangerous only to the timid touch.
+
+"On the contrary," replied I, easy in mind now, though I did not anger him
+by showing it, "I am most sensitive to insults--insults to myself. But you
+are not insulting _me_. You are insulting a purely imaginary, hearsay
+person who is, I venture to assure you, utterly unlike me, and who
+doubtless deserves to be insulted."
+
+His purple had now faded. In a far different tone he said: "If your
+business in any way relates to the family into which you have married, I do
+not wish to hear it. Spare my patience and your time, sir."
+
+"It does not," was my answer. "It relates to my own family--to my wife and
+myself. As you may have heard, she is no longer a member of the Ellersly
+family. And I have come to you chiefly because I happen to know your
+sentiment toward the Ellerslys."
+
+"I have no sentiment toward them, sir!" he exclaimed. "They are
+non-existent, sir--nonexistent! Your wife's mother ceased to be a Forrester
+when she married that scoundrel. Your wife is still less a Forrester."
+
+"True," said I. "She is a Blacklock."
+
+He winced, and it reminded me of the night of my marriage and Anita's
+expression when the preacher called her by her new name. But I held his
+gaze, and we looked each at the other fixedly for, it must have been, full
+half a minute. Then he said courteously: "What do you wish?"
+
+I went straight to the point. My color may have been high, but my voice
+did not hesitate as I explained: "I wish to make my wife financially
+independent. I wish to settle on her a sum of money sufficient to give her
+an income that will enable her to live as she has been accustomed. I know
+she would not take it from me. So, I have come to ask you to pretend to
+give it to her--I, of course, giving it to you to give."
+
+Again--we looked full and fixedly each at the other. "Come to the house,
+Blacklock," he said at last in a tone that was the subtlest of compliments.
+And he linked his arm in mine. Halfway to the rambling stone house, severe
+in its lines, yet fine and homelike, quaintly resembling its owner, as a
+man's house always should, he paused. "I owe you an apology," said he.
+"After all my experience of this world of envy and malice, I should have
+recognized the man even in the caricatures of his enemies. And you brought
+the best possible credentials--you are well hated. To be well hated by the
+human race and by the creatures mounted on its back is a distinction, sir.
+It is the crown of the true kings of this world."
+
+We seated ourselves on the wide veranda; he had champagne and water
+brought, and cigars; and we proceeded to get acquainted--nothing promotes
+cordiality and sympathy like an initial misunderstanding. It was a good
+hour before this kind-hearted, hard-soft, typical old-fashioned New
+Englander reverted to the object of my visit. Said he: "And now, young man,
+may I venture to ask some extremely personal questions?"
+
+"In the circumstances," replied I, "you have the right to know everything.
+I did not come to you without first making sure what manner of man I was
+to find." At this he blushed, pleased as a girl at her first beau's first
+compliment. "And you, Mr. Forrester, can not be expected to embark in the
+little adventure I propose, until you have satisfied yourself."
+
+"First, the why of your plan."
+
+"I am in active business," replied I, "and I shall be still more active.
+That means financial uncertainty."
+
+His suspicion of me started up from its doze and rubbed its eyes. "Ah! You
+wish to insure yourself."
+
+"Yes," was my answer, "but not in the way you hint. It takes away a man's
+courage just when he needs it most, to feel that his family is involved in
+his venture."
+
+"Why do you not make the settlement direct?" he asked, partly reassured.
+
+"Because I wish her to feel that it is her own, that I have no right over
+it whatever."
+
+He thought about this. His eyes were keen as he said, "Is that your real
+reason?"
+
+I saw I must be unreserved with him. "Part of it," I replied. "The rest
+is--she would not take it from me."
+
+The old man smiled cynically. "Have you tried?" he inquired.
+
+"If I had tried and failed, she would have been on the alert for an
+indirect attempt."
+
+"Try her, young man," said he, laughing. "In this day there are few people
+anywhere who'd refuse any sum from anybody for anything. And a woman--and a
+New York woman--and a New York fashionable woman--and a daughter of old
+Ellersly--she'll take it as a baby takes the breast."
+
+"She would not take it," said I.
+
+My tone, though I strove to keep angry protest out of it, because I needed
+him, caused him to draw back instantly. "I beg your pardon," said he. "I
+forgot for the moment that I was talking to a man young enough still to
+have youth's delusions about women. You'll learn that they're human, that
+it's from them we men inherit our weaknesses. However, let's assume that
+she won't take it: _Why_ won't she take your money? What is there
+about it that repels Ellersly's daughter, brought up in the sewers of
+fashionable New York--the sewers, sir!"
+
+"She does not love me," I answered.
+
+"I have hurt you," he said quickly, in great distress at having compelled
+me to expose my secret wound.
+
+"The wound does not ache the worse," said I, "for my showing it--to
+_you_." And that was the truth. I looked over toward Dawn Hill whose
+towers could just be seen. "We live there." I pointed. "She is--like a
+guest in my house."
+
+When I glanced at him again, his face betrayed a feeling of which I doubt
+if any one had thought him capable in many a year. "I see that you love
+her," he said, gently as a mother.
+
+"Yes," I replied. And presently I went on: "The idea of any one I love
+being dependent on me in a sordid way is most distasteful to me. And since
+she does not love me, does not even like me, it is doubly necessary that
+she be independent."
+
+"I confess I do not quite follow you" said he.
+
+"How can she accept anything from me? If she should finally be compelled by
+necessity to do it, what hope could I have of her ever feeling toward me as
+a wife should feel toward her husband?"
+
+At this explanation of mine his eyes sparkled with anger--and I could not
+but suspect that he had at one time in his life been faced with a problem
+like mine, and had settled it the other way. My suspicion was not weakened
+when he went on to say:
+
+"Boyish motives again! They show you do not know women. Don't be deceived
+by their delicate exterior, by their pretenses of super-refinement. They
+affect to be what passion deludes us into thinking them. But they're clay,
+sir, just clay, and far less sensitive than we men. Don't you see, young
+man, that by making her independent you're throwing away your best chance
+of winning her? Women are like dogs--like dogs, sir! They lick the hand
+that feeds 'em--lick it, and like it."
+
+"Possibly," said I, with no disposition to combat views based on I knew not
+what painful experience. "But I don't care for that sort of liking--from a
+woman, or from a dog."
+
+"It's the only kind you'll get," retorted he, trying to control his
+agitation. "I'm an old man. I know human nature--that's why I live alone.
+You'll take that kind of liking, or do without."
+
+"Then I'll do without," said I.
+
+"Give her an income, and she'll go. I see it all. You've flattered her
+vanity by showing your love for her--that's the way with women. They go
+crazy about themselves, and forget all about the man. Give her an income
+and she'll go."
+
+"I doubt it," said I. "And you would, if you knew her. But, even so, I
+shall lose her in any event. For, unless she is made independent, she'll
+certainly go with the last of the little money she has, the remnant of a
+small legacy."
+
+The old man argued with me, the more vigorously, I suspect, because he
+found me resolute. When he could think of no new way of stating his
+case--his case against Anita--he said: "You are a fool, young man--that's
+clear. I wonder such a fool was ever able to get together as much property
+as report credits you with. But--you're the kind of fool I like."
+
+"Then--you'll indulge my folly?" said I, smiling.
+
+He threw up his arms in a gesture of mock despair. "If you will have it
+so," he replied. "I am curious about this niece of mine. I want to see her.
+I want to see the woman who can resist _you_."
+
+"Her mind and her heart are closed against me," said I. "And it is my own
+fault--I closed them."
+
+"Put her out of your head," he advised. "No woman is worth a serious man's
+while."
+
+"I have few wants, few purposes," said I. "But those few I pursue to the
+end. Even though she were not worth while, even though I wholly lost hope,
+still I'd not give her up. I couldn't--that's my nature. But--_she_ is
+worth while." And I could see her, slim and graceful, the curves in her
+face and figure that made my heart leap, the azure sheen upon her
+petal-like skin, the mystery of the soul luring from her eyes.
+
+After we had arranged the business--or, rather, arranged to have it
+arranged through our lawyers--he walked down to the pier with me. At the
+gangway he gave me another searching look from head to foot--but vastly
+different from the inspection with which our interview had begun. "You are
+a devilish handsome young fellow," said he. "Your pictures don't do you
+justice. And I shouldn't have believed any man could overcome in one brief
+sitting such a prejudice as I had against you. On second thought, I don't
+care to see her. She must be even below the average."
+
+"Or far above it," I suggested.
+
+"I suppose I'll have to ask her over to visit me," he went on. "A fine
+hypocrite I'll feel."
+
+"You can make it one of the conditions of your gift that she is not to
+thank you or speak of it," said I. "I fear your face would betray us, if
+she ever did."
+
+"An excellent idea!" he exclaimed. Then, as he shook hands with me in
+farewell: "You will win her yet--if you care to."
+
+As I steamed up the Sound, I was tempted to put in at Dawn Hill's harbor.
+Through my glass I could see Anita and Alva and several others, men and
+women, having tea on the lawn under a red and white awning. I could see her
+dress--a violet suit with a big violet hat to match. I knew that costume.
+Like everything she wore, it was both beautiful in itself and most becoming
+to her. I could see her face, could almost make out its expression--did I
+see, or did I imagine, a cruel contrast to what I always saw when she knew
+I was looking?
+
+I gazed until the trees hid lawn and gay awning, and that lively company
+and her. In my bitterness I was full of resentment against her, full of
+self-pity. I quite forgot, for that moment, _her_ side of the story.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII. BLACKLOCK SEES A LIGHT
+
+
+It was next day, I think, that I met Mowbray Langdon and his brother Tom in
+the entrance of the Textile Building. Mowbray was back only a week from his
+summer abroad; but Tom I had seen and nodded to every day, often several
+times in the same day, as he went to and fro about his "respectable" dirty
+work for the Roebuck-Langdon clique. He was one of their most frequently
+used stool-pigeon directors in banks and insurance companies whose funds
+they staked in their big gambling operations, they taking almost all the
+profits and the depositors and policy holders taking almost all the risk.
+It had never once occurred to me to have any feeling of any kind about Tom,
+or in any way to take him into my calculations as to Anita. He was, to
+my eyes, too obviously a pale understudy of his powerful and fascinating
+brother. Whenever I thought of him as the man Anita fancied she loved, I
+put it aside instantly. "The kind of man a woman _really_ cares for,"
+I would say to myself, "is the measure of her true self. But not the kind
+of man she _imagines_ she cares for."
+
+Tom went on; Mowbray stopped. We shook hands, and exchanged commonplaces
+in the friendliest way--I was harboring no resentment against him, and I
+wished him to realize that his assault had bothered me no more than the
+buzzing and battering of a summer fly. "I've been trying to get in to see
+you," said he. "I wanted to explain about that unfortunate Textile deal."
+
+This, when the assault on me had burst out with fresh energy the day after
+he landed from Europe! I could scarcely believe that his vanity, his
+confidence in his own skill at underground work could so delude him. "Don't
+bother," said I. "All that's ancient history."
+
+But he had thought out some lies he regarded as particularly creditable to
+his ingenuity; he was not to be deprived of the pleasure of telling them.
+So I was compelled to listen; and, being in an indulgent mood, I did not
+spoil his pleasure by letting him see or suspect my unbelief. If he could
+have looked into my mind, as I stood there in an attitude of patient
+attention, I think even his self-complacence would have been put out of
+countenance. You may admire the exploits of a "gentleman" cracksman or
+pickpocket, if you hear or read them with only their ingenuity put before
+you. But _see_ a "gentleman" liar or thief at his sneaking, cowardly
+work, and admiration is impossible. As Langdon lied on, as I studied
+his cheap, vulgar exhibition of himself, he all unconscious, I thought:
+"Beneath that very thin surface of yours, you're a poor cowardly
+creature--you, and all your fellow bandits. No; bandit is too grand a word
+to apply to this game of 'high finance.' It's really on the level with the
+game of the fellow that waits for a dark night, slips into the barn-yard,
+poisons the watch-dog, bores an auger-hole in the granary, and takes to his
+heels at a suspicious sound."
+
+With his first full stop, I said: "I understand perfectly, Langdon. But I
+haven't the slightest interest in crooked enterprises now. I'm clear out
+of all you fellows' stocks. I've reinvested my property so that not even a
+panic would trouble me."
+
+"That's good," he drawled. I saw he did not believe me--which was natural,
+as he knew nothing of my arrangement with Galloway and assumed I was
+laboring in heavy weather, with a bad cargo of Coal stocks and contracts.
+"Come to lunch with me. I've got some interesting things to tell you about
+my trip."
+
+A few months before, I should have accepted with alacrity. But I had lost
+interest in him. He had not changed; if anything, he was more dazzling than
+ever in the ways that had once dazzled me. It was I that had changed--my
+ideals, my point of view. I had no desire to feed my new-sprung contempt by
+watching him pump in vain for information to be used in his secret campaign
+against me. "No, thanks. Another day," I replied, and left him with a curt
+nod. I noted that he had failed to speak of my marriage, though he had not
+seen me since. "A sore subject with all the Langdons," thought I. "It must
+be very sore, indeed, to make a man who is all manners, neglect them."
+
+My whole life had been a series of transformations so continuous that I had
+noted little about my advance, beyond its direction--like a man hurrying up
+a steep that keeps him bent, eyes down. But, as I turned away from Langdon,
+I caught myself in the very act of transformation. No doubt, the new view
+had long been there, its horizon expanding with every step of my ascent;
+but not until that talk with him did I see it. I looked about me in Wall
+Street; in my mind's eye I all in an instant saw my world as it really was.
+I saw the great rascals of "high finance," their respectability stripped
+from them; saw them gathering in the spoils which their cleverly-trained
+agents, commercial and political and legal, filched with light fingers from
+the pockets of the crowd, saw the crowd looking up to these trainers and
+employers of pickpockets, hailing them "captains of industry"! They reaped
+only where and what others had sown; they touched industry only to plunder
+and to blight it; they organized it only that its profits might go to
+those who did not toil and who despised those who did. "Have I gone mad in
+the midst of sane men?" I asked myself. "Or have I been mad, and have I
+suddenly become sane in a lunatic world?"
+
+I did not linger on that problem. For me action remained the essential of
+life, whether I was sane or insane. I resolved then and there to map a new
+course. By toiling like a sailor at the pump of a sinking ship, I had taken
+advantage to the uttermost of the respite Galloway's help had given me. My
+property was no longer in more or less insecure speculative "securities,"
+but was, as I had told Langdon, in forms that would withstand the worst
+shocks. The attacks of my enemies, directed partly at my fortune, or,
+rather, at the stocks in which they imagined it was still invested, and
+partly at my personal character, were doing me good instead of harm. Hatred
+always forgets that its shafts, falling round its intended victim, spring
+up as legions of supporters for him. My business was growing rapidly; my
+daily letter to investors was read by hundreds of thousands where tens of
+thousands had read it before the Roebuck-Langdon clique began to make me
+famous by trying to make me infamous.
+
+"I am strong and secure," said I to myself as I strode through the
+wonderful canyon of Broadway, whose walls are those mighty palaces of
+finance and commerce from which business men have been ousted by cormorant
+"captains of industry." I must _use_ my strength. How could I better
+use it than by fluttering these vultures on their roosts, and perhaps
+bringing down a bird or two?
+
+I decided, however, that it was better to wait until they had stopped
+rattling their beaks and claws on my shell in futile attack. "Meanwhile," I
+reasoned carefully, "I can be getting good and ready."
+
+Their first new move, after my little talk with Langdon, was intended
+as a mortal blow to my credit Melville requested me to withdraw mine and
+Blacklock and Company's accounts from the National Industrial Bank; and the
+fact that this huge and powerful institution had thus branded me was slyly
+given to the financial reporters of the newspapers. Far and wide it was
+published; and the public was expected to believe that this was one more
+and drastic measure in the "campaign of the honorable men of finance to
+clean the Augean Stables of Wall Street." My daily letter to investors next
+morning led off with this paragraph--the first notice I had taken publicly
+of their attacks on me:
+
+"In the effort to discredit the only remaining uncontrolled source of
+financial truth, the big bandits have ordered my accounts out of their
+chief gambling-house. I have transferred the accounts to the Discount and
+Deposit National, where Leonidas Thornley stands guard against the new
+order that seeks to make business a synonym for crime."
+
+Thornley was of the type that was dominant in our commercial life before
+the "financiers" came--just as song birds were common in our trees until
+the noisy, brawling, thieving sparrows drove them out. His oldest son was
+about to marry Joe's daughter--Alva. Many a Sunday I have spent at his
+place near Morristown--a charming combination of city comfort with farm
+freedom and fresh air. I remember, one Sunday, saying to him, after he had
+seen his wife and daughters off to church: "Why haven't you got rich? Why
+haven't you looked out for establishing these boys and girls of yours?"
+
+"I don't want my girls to be sought for money," said he, "I don't want my
+boys to rely on money. Perhaps I've seen too much of wealth, and have come
+to have a prejudice against it. Then, too, I've never had the chance to get
+rich."
+
+I showed that I thought that he was simply jesting.
+
+"I mean it," said he, looking at me with eyes as straight as a
+well-brought-up girl's. "How could my mind be judicial if I were personally
+interested in the enterprises people look to me for advice about?"
+
+And not only did he keep himself clear and his mind judicial but also
+he was, like all really good people, exceedingly slow to believe others
+guilty of the things he would as soon have thought of doing as he would
+have thought of slipping into the teller's cage during the lunch hour and
+pocketing a package of bank-notes. He gave me his motto--a curious one:
+"Believe in everybody; trust in nobody."
+
+"Only a thief wishes to be trusted," he explained, "and only a fool trusts.
+I let no one trust me; I trust no one. But I believe evil of no man. Even
+when he has been convicted, I see the mitigating circumstances."
+
+How Thornley did stand by me! And for no reason except that it was as
+necessary for him to be fair and just as to breathe. I shall not say he
+resisted the attempts to compel him to desert me--they simply made no
+impression on him. I remember, when Roebuck himself, a large stock-holder
+in the bank, left cover far enough personally to urge him to throw me over,
+he replied steadfastly:
+
+"If Mr. Blacklock is guilty of circulating false stories against commercial
+enterprises, as his enemies allege, the penal code can be used to stop him.
+But as long as I stay at the head of this bank, no man shall use it for
+personal vengeance. It is a chartered public institution, and all have
+equal rights to its facilities. I would lend money to my worst enemy, if he
+came for it with the proper security. I would refuse my best friend, if he
+could not give security. The funds of a bank are a trust fund, and my duty
+is to see that they are employed to the best advantage. If you wish other
+principles to prevail here, you must get another president."
+
+That settled it. No one appreciated more keenly than did Roebuck that
+character is as indispensable in its place as is craft where the situation
+demands craft--and is far harder to get.
+
+I shall not relate in detail that campaign against me. It failed not so
+much because I was strong as because it was weak. Perhaps, if Roebuck and
+Langdon could have directed it in person, or had had the time to advise
+with their agents before and after each move, it might have succeeded.
+They would not have let exaggeration dominate it and venom show upon its
+surface; they would not have neglected to follow up advantages, would not
+have persisted in lines of attack that created public sympathy for me.
+They would not have so crudely exploited my unconventional marriage and
+my financial relations with old Ellersly. But they dared not go near the
+battle-field; they had to trust to agents whom their orders and suggestions
+reached by the most roundabout ways; and they were busier with their
+enterprises that involved immediate and great gain or loss of money.
+
+When Galloway died, they learned that the Coal stocks with which they
+thought I was loaded down were part of his estate. They satisfied
+themselves that I was in fact as impregnable as I had warned Langdon. They
+reversed tactics; Roebuck tried to make it up with me. "If he wants to see
+me," was my invariable answer to the intimations of his emissaries, "let
+him come to my office, just as I would go to his, if I wished to see him."
+
+"He is a big man--a dangerous big man," cautioned Joe.
+
+"Big--yes. But strong only against his own kind," replied I. "One mouse can
+make a whole herd of elephants squeal for mercy."
+
+"It isn't prudent, it isn't prudent," persisted Joe.
+
+"It is not," replied I. "Thank God, I'm at last in the position I've been
+toiling to achieve. I don't have to be prudent. I can say and do what I
+please, without fear of the consequences. I can freely indulge in the
+luxury of being a man. That's costly, Joe, but it's worth all it could
+cost."
+
+Joe didn't understand me--he rarely did. "I'm a hen. You're an eagle," said
+he.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX. A HOUSEWARMING
+
+
+Joe's daughter, staying on and on at Dawn Hill, was chief lieutenant, if
+not principal, in my conspiracy to drift Anita day by day further and
+further into the routine of the new life. Yet neither of us had shown by
+word or look that a thorough understanding existed between us. My part was
+to be unobtrusive, friendly, neither indifferent nor eager, and I held to
+it by taking care never to be left alone with Anita; Alva's part was to
+be herself--simple and natural and sensible, full of life and laughter,
+mocking at those moods that betray us into the absurdity of taking
+ourselves too seriously.
+
+I was getting ready a new house in town as a surprise to Anita, and I took
+Alva into my plot. "I wish Anita's part of the house to be exactly to her
+liking," said I. "Can't you set her to dreaming aloud what kind of place
+she would like to live in, what she would like to open her eyes on in the
+morning, what surroundings she'd like to dress in and read in, and all
+that?"
+
+Alva had no difficulty in carrying out the suggestions. And by harassing
+Westlake incessantly, I succeeded in realizing her report of Anita's dream
+to the exact shade of the draperies and the silk that covered the walls. By
+pushing the work, I got the house done just as Alva was warning me that she
+could not remain longer at Dawn Hill, but must go home and get ready for
+her wedding. When I went down to arrange with her the last details of the
+surprise, who should meet me at the station but Anita herself? I took one
+glance at her serious face and, much disquieted, seated myself beside her
+in the little trap. Instead of following the usual route to the house, she
+turned her horse into the bay-shore road.
+
+"Several days ago," she began, as the bend hid the station, "I got a letter
+from some lawyers, saying that an uncle of mine had given me a large sum
+of money--a very large sum. I have been inquiring about it, and find it is
+mine absolutely."
+
+I braced myself against the worst. "She is about to tell me that she is
+leaving," thought I. But I managed to say: "I'm glad to hear of your luck,"
+though I fear my tone was not especially joyous.
+
+"So," she went on, "I am in a position to pay back to you, I think, what my
+father and Sam took from you. It won't be enough, I'm afraid, to pay what
+you lost indirectly. But I have told the lawyers to make it all over to
+you."
+
+I could have laughed aloud. It was too ridiculous, this situation into
+which I had got myself. I did not know what to say. I could hardly keep
+out of my face how foolish this collapse of my crafty conspiracy made me
+feel. And then the full meaning of what she was doing came over me--the
+revelation of her character. I trusted myself to steal a glance at her; and
+for the first time I didn't see the thrilling azure sheen over her smooth
+white skin, though all her beauty was before me, as dazzling as when it
+compelled me to resolve to win her. No; I saw her, herself--the woman
+within. I had known from the outset that there was an altar of love within
+my temple of passion. I think that was my first real visit to it.
+
+"Anita!" I said unsteadily. "Anita!"
+
+The color flamed in her cheeks; we were silent for a long time.
+
+"You--your people owe me nothing" I at length found voice to say. "Even if
+they did, I couldn't and wouldn't take _your_ money. But, believe me,
+they owe me nothing."
+
+"You can not mislead me," she answered. "When they asked me to become
+engaged to you, they told me about it."
+
+I had forgotten. The whole repulsive, rotten business came back to me. And,
+changed man that I had become in the last six months, I saw myself as I had
+been. I felt that she was looking at me, was reading the degrading
+confession in my telltale features.
+
+"I will tell you the whole truth," said I. "I did use your father's and
+your brother's debts to me as a means of getting _to_ you. But, before
+God, Anita, I swear I was honest with you when I said to you I never hoped
+or wished to win you in that way!"
+
+"I believe you," she replied, and her tone and expression made my heart
+leap with indescribable joy.
+
+Love is sometimes most unwise in his use of the reins he puts on passion.
+Instead of acting as impulse commanded, I said clumsily, "And I am very
+different to-day from what I was last spring." It never occurred to me how
+she might interpret those words.
+
+"I know," she replied. She waited several seconds before adding: "I, too,
+have changed. I see that I was far more guilty than you. There is no excuse
+for me. I was badly brought up, as you used to say, but--"
+
+"No--no," I began to protest.
+
+She cut me short with a sad: "You need not be polite and spare my feelings.
+Let's not talk of it. Let us go back to the object I had in coming for you
+to-day."
+
+"You owe me nothing," I repeated. "Your brother and your father settled
+long ago. I lost nothing through them. And I've learned that if I had never
+known you, Roebuck and Langdon would still have attacked me."
+
+"What my uncle gave me has been transferred to you," said she, woman
+fashion, not hearing what she did not care to heed. "I can't make you
+accept it; but there it is, and there it stays."
+
+"I can not take it," said I. "If you insist on leaving it in my name, I
+shall simply return it to your uncle."
+
+"I wrote him what I had done," she rejoined. "His answer came yesterday. He
+approves it."
+
+"Approves it!" I exclaimed.
+
+"You do not know how eccentric he is," she explained, naturally
+misunderstanding my astonishment. She took a letter from her bosom and
+handed it to me. I read:
+
+"DEAR MADAM: It was yours to do with as you pleased. If you ever find
+yourself in the mood to visit, Gull House is open to you, provided you
+bring no maid. I will not have female servants about.
+
+"Yours truly,
+
+"HOWARD FORRESTER."
+
+"You will consent now, will you not?" she asked, as I lifted my eyes from
+this characteristic note.
+
+I saw that her peace of mind was at stake. "Yes--I consent."
+
+She gave a great sigh as at the laying down of a heavy burden. "Thank you,"
+was all she said, but she put a world of meaning into the words. She took
+the first homeward turning. We were nearly at the house before I found
+words that would pave the way toward expressing my thoughts--my longings
+and hopes.
+
+"You say you have forgiven me," said I. "Then we can be--friends?"
+
+She was silent, and I took her somber expression to mean that she feared I
+was hiding some subtlety.
+
+"I mean just what I say, Anita," I hastened to explain. "Friends--simply
+friends." And my manner fitted my words.
+
+She looked strangely at me. "You would be content with that?" she asked.
+
+I answered what I thought would please her. "Let us make the best of our
+bad bargain," said I. "You can trust me now, don't you think you can?"
+
+She nodded without speaking; we were at the door, and the servants were
+hastening out to receive us. Always the servants between us. Servants
+indoors, servants outdoors; morning, noon and night, from waking to
+sleeping, these servants to whom we are slaves. As those interrupting
+servants sent us each a separate way, her to her maid, me to my valet, I
+was depressed with the chill that the opportunity that has not been seen
+leaves behind it as it departs.
+
+"Well," said I to myself by way of consolation, as I was dressing for
+dinner, "she is certainly softening toward you, and when she sees the new
+house you will be still better friends."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But, when the great day came, I was not so sure. Alva went for a "private
+view" with young Thornley; out of her enthusiasm she telephoned me from the
+very midst of the surroundings she found "_so_ wonderful and _so_
+beautiful"--thus she assured me, and her voice made it impossible to doubt.
+And, the evening before the great day, I, going for a final look round,
+could find no flaw serious enough to justify the sinking feeling that came
+over me every time I thought of what Anita would think when she saw my
+efforts to realize her dream. I set out for "home" half a dozen times at
+least, that afternoon, before I pulled myself together, called myself an
+ass, and, with a pause at Delmonico's for a drink, which I ordered and then
+rejected, finally pushed myself in at the door. What, a state my nerves
+were in!
+
+Alva had departed; Anita was waiting for me in her sitting-room. When she
+heard me in the hall, just outside, she stood in the doorway. "Come in,"
+she said to me, who did not dare so much as a glance at her.
+
+I entered. I must have looked as I felt--like a boy, summoned before
+the teacher to be whipped in presence of the entire school. Then I was
+conscious that she had my hand--how she had got it, I don't know--and that
+she was murmuring, with tears of happiness in her voice: "Oh, I can't
+_say_ it!"
+
+"Glad you like your own taste," said I awkwardly. "You know, Alva told me."
+
+"But it's one thing to dream, and a very different thing to do," she
+answered. Then, with smiling reproach: "And I've been thinking all summer
+that you were ruined! I've been expecting to hear every day that you had
+had to give up the fight."
+
+"Oh--that passed long ago," said I.
+
+"But you never told me," she reminded me. "And I'm glad you didn't,"
+she added. "Not knowing saved me from doing something very foolish."
+She reddened a little, smiled a great deal, dazzlingly, was altogether
+different from the ice-locked Anita of a short time before, different as
+June from January. And her hand--so intensely alive--seemed extremely
+comfortable in mine.
+
+Even as my blood responded to that electric touch, I had a twinge of
+cynical bitterness. Yes, apparently I was at last getting what I had so
+long, so vainly, and, latterly, so hopelessly craved. But--_why_ was
+she giving it? Why had she withheld herself until this moment of material
+happiness? "I have to pay the rich man's price," thought I, with a sigh.
+
+It was in reaching out for some sweetness to take away this bitter taste in
+my honey that I said to her, "When you gave me that money from your uncle,
+you did it to help me out?"
+
+She colored deeply. "How silly you must have thought me!" she answered.
+
+I took her other hand. As I was drawing her toward me, the sudden pallor of
+her face and chill of her hands halted me once more, brought sickeningly
+before me the early days of my courtship when she had infuriated my pride
+by trying to be "submissive." I looked round the room--that room into which
+I had put so much thought--and money. Money! "The rich man's price!" those
+delicately brocaded walls shimmered mockingly at me.
+
+"Anita," said I, "do you _care_ for me?"
+
+She murmured inaudibly. Evasion! thought I, and suspicion sprang on guard,
+bristling.
+
+"Anita," I repeated sternly, "do you care for _me_?"
+
+"I am your wife," she replied, her head drooping still lower. And
+hesitatingly she drew away from me. That seemed confirmation of my doubt
+and I said to her satirically, "You are willing to be my wife out of
+gratitude, to put it politely?"
+
+She looked straight into my eyes and answered, "I can only say there is no
+one I like so well, and--I will give you all I have to give."
+
+"Like!" I exclaimed contemptuously, my nerves giving way altogether. "And
+you would be my _wife_! Do you want me to _despise_ you?" I
+struck dead my poor, feeble hope that had been all but still-born. I rushed
+from the room, closing the door violently between us.
+
+Such was our housewarming.
+
+
+
+
+XXX. BLACKLOCK OPENS FIRE
+
+
+For what I proceeded to do, all sorts of motives, from the highest to the
+basest, have been attributed to me. Here is the truth: I had already pushed
+the medicine of hard work to its limit. It was as powerless against this
+new development as water against a drunkard's thirst. I must find some new,
+some compelling drug--some frenzy of activity that would swallow up my self
+as the battle makes the soldier forget his toothache. This confession may
+chagrin many who have believed in me. My enemies will hasten to say: "Aha,
+his motive was even more selfish and petty than we alleged." But those who
+look at human nature honestly, and from the inside, will understand how I
+can concede that a selfish reason moved me to draw my sword, and still
+can claim a higher motive. In such straits as were mine, some men of my
+all-or-none temperament debauch themselves; others thresh about blindly,
+reckless whether they strike innocent or guilty. I did neither.
+
+Probably many will recall that long before the "securities" of the
+reorganized coal combine were issued, I had in my daily letter to investors
+been preparing the public to give them a fitting reception. A few days
+after my whole being burst into flames of resentment against Anita, out
+came the new array of new stocks and bonds. Roebuck and Langdon arranged
+with the under writers for a "fake" four times over-subscription, indorsed
+by the two greatest banking houses in the Street. Despite this often-tried
+and always-good trick, the public refused to buy. I felt I had not been
+overestimating my power. But I made no move until the "securities" began to
+go up, and the financial reporters--under the influence where not actually
+in the pay of the Roebuck-Langdon clique--shouted that, "in spite of the
+malicious attacks from the gambling element, the new securities are being
+absorbed by the public at prices approximating their value." Then--But I
+shall quote my investors' letter the following morning:
+
+"At half-past nine yesterday--nine-twenty-eight, to be exact--President
+Melville, of the National Industrial Bank, loaned six hundred thousand
+dollars. He loaned it to Bill Van Nest, an ex-gambler and proprietor of
+pool rooms, now silent partner in Hoe & Wittekind, brokers, on the New York
+Stock Exchange, and also in Filbert & Jonas, curb brokers. He loaned it to
+Van Nest without security.
+
+"Van Nest used the money yesterday to push up the price of the new coal
+securities by 'wash sales'--which means, by making false purchases and
+sales of the stock in order to give the public the impression of eager
+buying. Van Nest sold to himself and bought from himself 347,060 of the
+352,681 shares traded in.
+
+"Melville, in addition to being president of one of the largest banks in
+the world, is a director in no less than seventy-three great industrial
+enterprises, including railways, telegraph companies, _savings-banks and
+life-insurance companies_. Bill Van Nest has done time in the Nevada
+State Penitentiary for horse-stealing."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That was all. And it was enough--quite enough. I was a national figure,
+as much so as if I had tried to assassinate the president. Indeed, I had
+exploded a bomb under a greater than the president--under the chiefs of the
+real government of the United States, the government that levied daily upon
+every citizen, and that had state and national and the principal municipal
+governments in its strong box.
+
+I confess I was as much astounded at the effect of my bomb as old Melville
+must have been. I felt that I had been obscure, as I looked at the
+newspapers, with Matthew Blacklock appropriating almost the entire front
+page of each. I was the isolated, the conspicuous figure, standing alone
+upon the steps of the temple of Mammon, where mankind daily and devoutly
+comes to offer worship.
+
+Not that the newspapers praised me. I recall none that spoke well of me.
+The nearest approach to praise was the "Blacklock squeals on the Wall
+Street gang" in one of the sensational penny sheets that strengthen
+the plutocracy by lying about it. Some of the papers insinuated that
+I had gone mad; others that I had been bought up by a rival gang to
+the Roebuck-Langdon clique; still others thought I was simply hunting
+notoriety. All were inclined to accept as a sufficient denial of my
+charges Melville's dignified refusal "to notice any attack from a quarter
+so discredited."
+
+As my electric whirled into Wall Street, I saw the crowd in front of the
+Textile Building, a dozen policemen keeping it in order. I descended amid
+cheers, and entered my offices through a mob struggling to shake hands with
+me--and, in my ignorance of mob mind, I was delighted and inspired! Just
+why a man who knows men, knows how wishy-washy they are as individuals,
+should be influenced by a demonstration from a mass of them, is hard to
+understand. But the fact is indisputable. They fooled me then; they could
+fool me again, in spite of all I have been through. There probably wasn't
+one in that mob for whose opinion I would have had the slightest respect
+had he come to me alone; yet as I listened to those shallow cheers and
+those worthless assurances of "the people are behind you, Blacklock," I
+felt that I was a man with a mission!
+
+Our main office was full, literally full, of newspaper men--reporters
+from morning papers, from afternoon papers, from out-of-town and foreign
+papers. I pushed through them, saying as I went: "My letter speaks for me,
+gentlemen, and will continue to speak for me. I have nothing to say except
+through it."
+
+"But the public--" urged one.
+
+"It doesn't interest me," said I, on my guard against the temptation to
+cant. "I am a banker and investment broker. I am interested only in my
+customers."
+
+And I shut myself in, giving strict orders to Joe that there was to be no
+talking about me or my campaign. "I don't purpose to let the newspapers
+make us cheap and notorious," said I. "We must profit by the warning in
+the fate of all the other fellows who have sprung into notice by attacking
+these bandits."
+
+The first news I got was that Bill Van Nest had disappeared. As soon as
+the Stock Exchange opened, National Coal became the feature. But, instead
+of "wash sales," Roebuck, Langdon and Melville were themselves, through
+various brokers, buying the stocks in large quantities to keep the prices
+up. My next letter was as brief as my first philippic:
+
+"Bill Van Nest is at the Hotel Frankfort, Newark, under the name of Thomas
+Lowry. He was in telephonic communication with President Melville, of the
+National Industrial Bank, twice yesterday.
+
+"The underwriters of the National Coal Company's new issues, frightened by
+yesterday's exposure, have compelled Mr. Roebuck, Mr. Mowbray Langdon and
+Mr. Melville themselves to buy. So, yesterday, those three gentlemen bought
+with real money, with their own money, large quantities of stocks which are
+worth less than half what they paid for them.
+
+"They will continue to buy these stocks so long as the public holds aloof.
+They dare not let the prices slump. They hope that this storm will blow
+over, and that then the investing public will forget and will relieve them
+of their load."
+
+I had added: "But this storm won't blow over. It will become a cyclone." I
+struck that out. "No prophecy," said I to myself. "Your rule, iron-clad,
+must be--facts, always facts; only facts."
+
+The gambling section of the public took my hint and rushed into the market;
+the burden of protecting the underwriters was doubled, and more and more of
+the hoarded loot was disgorged. That must have been a costly day--for, ten
+minutes after the Stock Exchange closed, Roebuck sent for me.
+
+"My compliments to him," said I to his messenger, "but I am too busy. I'll
+be glad to see him here, however."
+
+"You know he dares not come to you," said the messenger, Schilling,
+president of the National Manufactured Food Company, sometimes called the
+Poison Trust. "If he did, and it were to get out, there'd be a panic."
+
+"Probably," replied I with a shrug. "That's no affair of mine. I'm not
+responsible for the rotten conditions which these so-called financiers have
+produced, and I shall not be disturbed by the crash which must come."
+
+Schilling gave me a genuine look of mingled pity and admiration. "I suppose
+you know what you're about," said he, "but I think you're making a
+mistake."
+
+"Thanks, Ned," said I--he had been my head clerk a few years before, and I
+had got him the chance with Roebuck which he had improved so well. "I'm
+going to have some fun. Can't live but once."
+
+"I know some people," said he significantly, "who would go to _any_
+lengths to get an enemy out of the way." He had lived close enough to
+Roebuck to peer into the black shadows of that satanic mind, and dimly to
+see the dread shapes that lurked there.
+
+"I'm the safest man on Manhattan Island for the present," said I.
+
+"You remember Woodrow? I've always believed that he was murdered, and that
+the pistol they found beside him was a 'plant.'"
+
+"You'd kill me yourself, if you got the orders, wouldn't you?" said I
+good-humoredly.
+
+"Not personally," replied he in the same spirit, yet serious, too, at
+bottom. "Inspector Bradlaugh was telling me, the other night, that there
+were easily a thousand men in the slums of the East Side who could be hired
+to kill a man for five hundred dollars."
+
+I suppose Schilling, as the directing spirit of a corporation that
+hid poison by the hogshead in low-priced foods of various kinds,
+was responsible for hundreds of deaths annually, and for misery of
+sickness beyond calculation among the poor of the tenements and cheap
+boarding-houses. Yet a better husband, father and friend never lived. He,
+personally, wouldn't have harmed a fly; but he was a wholesale poisoner for
+dividends.
+
+Murder for dividends. Poison for dividends. Starve and freeze and maim for
+dividends. Drive parents to suicide, and sons and daughters to crime and
+prostitution--for dividends. Not fair competition, in which the stronger
+and better would survive, but cheating and swindling, lying and pilfering
+and bribing, so that the honest and the decent go down before the dishonest
+and the depraved. And the custom of doing these things so "respectable,"
+the applause for "success" so undiscriminating, and men so unthinking in
+the rush of business activity, that criticism is regarded as a mixture of
+envy and idealism. And it usually is, I must admit.
+
+Schilling lingered. "I hope you won't blame me for lining up against you,
+Matt," said he. "I don't want to, but I've got to."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"You know what'd become of me if I didn't."
+
+"You might become an honest man and get self-respect," I suggested with
+friendly satire.
+
+"That's all very well for you to say," was his laughing retort. "You've
+made yourself tight and tidy for the blow. But I've a family, and a damned
+expensive one, too. And if I didn't stand by this gang, they'd take
+everything I've got away from me. No, Matt, each of us to his own game.
+What _is_ your game, anyhow?"
+
+"Fun--just fun. Playing the pipe to see the big fellows dance."
+
+But he didn't believe it. And no one has believed it--not even my most
+devoted followers. To this day Joe Ball more than half suspects that my
+real objective was huge personal gain. That any rich man should do anything
+except for the purpose of growing richer seems incredible. That any rich
+man should retain or regain the sympathies and viewpoint of the class from
+which he sprang, and should become a "traitor" to the class to which he
+belongs, seems preposterous. I confess I don't fully understand my own
+case. Who ever does?
+
+My "daily letters" had now ceased to be advertisements, had become news,
+sought by all the newspapers of this country and of the big cities in Great
+Britain. I could have made a large saving by no longer paying my sixty-odd
+regular papers for inserting them. But I was looking too far ahead to
+blunder into that fatal mistake. Instead, I signed a year's contract
+with each of my papers, they guaranteeing to print my advertisements, I
+guaranteeing to protect them against loss on libel suits. I organized
+a dummy news bureau, and through it got contracts with the telegraph
+companies. Thus insured against the cutting of my communications with the
+public, I was ready for the real campaign.
+
+It began with my "History of the National Coal Company." I need not repeat
+that famous history here. I need recall only the main points--how I proved
+that the common stock was actually worth less than two dollars a share,
+that the bonds were worth less than twenty-five dollars in the hundred,
+that both stock and bonds were illegal; my detailed recital of the crimes
+of Roebuck, Melville and Langdon in wrecking mining properties, in wrecking
+coal railways, in ejecting American labor and substituting helots from
+eastern Europe; how they had swindled and lied and bribed; how they had
+twisted the books of the companies, how they were planning to unload the
+mass of almost worthless securities at high prices, then to get from under
+the market and let the bonds and stocks drop down to where they could buy
+them in on terms that would yield them more than two hundred and fifty per
+cent, on the actual capital invested. Less and dearer coal; lower wages and
+more ignorant laborers; enormous profits absorbed without mercy into a few
+pockets.
+
+On the day the seventh chapter of this history appeared, the telegraph
+companies notified me that they would transmit no more of my matter. They
+feared the consequences in libel suits, explained Moseby, general manager
+of one of the companies.
+
+"But I guarantee to protect you," said I. "I will give bond in any amount
+you ask."
+
+"We can't take the risk, Mr. Blacklock," replied he. The twinkle in his eye
+told me why, and also that he, like every one else in the country except
+the clique, was in sympathy with me.
+
+My lawyers found an honest judge, and I got an injunction that compelled
+the companies to transmit under my contracts. I suspended the "History" for
+one day, and sent out in place of it an account of this attempt to shut
+me off from the public. "Hereafter," said I, in the last paragraph in my
+letter, "I shall end each day's chapter with a forecast of what the next
+day's chapter is to be. If for any reason it fails to appear, the public
+will know that somebody has been coerced by Roebuck, Melville & Co."
+
+
+
+
+XXXI. ANITA'S SECRET
+
+
+That afternoon--or, was it the next?--I happened to go home early. I have
+never been able to keep alive anger against any one. My anger against Anita
+had long ago died away, had been succeeded by regret and remorse that I
+had let my nerves, or whatever the accursed cause was, whirl me into such
+an outburst. Not that I regretted having rejected what I still felt was
+insulting to me and degrading to her; simply that my manner should have
+been different. There was no necessity or excuse for violence in showing
+her that I would not, could not, accept from gratitude what only love
+has the right to give. And I had long been casting about for some way
+to apologize--not easy to do, when her distant manner toward me made
+it difficult for me to find even the necessary commonplaces to "keep
+up appearances" before the servants on the few occasions on which we
+accidentally met.
+
+But, as I was saying, I came up from the office and stretched myself
+on--the lounge in my private room adjoining the library. I had read myself
+into a doze, when a servant brought me a card. I glanced at it as it lay
+upon his extended tray. "Gerald Monson," I read aloud. "What does the
+damned rascal want?" I asked.
+
+The servant smiled. He knew as well as I how Monson, after I dismissed him
+with a present of six months' pay, had given the newspapers the story--or,
+rather, his version of the story--of my efforts to educate myself in the
+"arts and graces of a gentleman."
+
+"Mr. Monson says he wishes to see you particular, sir," said he.
+
+"Well--I'll see him," said I. I despised him too much to dislike him, and I
+thought he might possibly be in want. But that notion vanished the instant
+I set eyes upon him. He was obviously at the very top of the wave. "Hello,
+Monson," was my greeting, in it no reminder of his treachery.
+
+"Howdy, Blacklock," said he. "I've come on a little errand for Mrs.
+Langdon." Then, with that nasty grin of his: "You know, I'm looking after
+things for her since the bust-up."
+
+"No, I didn't--know," said I curtly, suppressing my instant curiosity.
+"What does Mrs. Langdon want?"
+
+"To see you--for just a few minutes--whenever it is convenient."
+
+"If Mrs. Langdon has business with me, I'll see her at my office," said I.
+She was one of the fashionables that had got herself into my black books by
+her treatment of Anita since the break with the Ellerslys.
+
+"She wishes to come to you here--this afternoon, if you are to be at home.
+She asked me to say that her business is important--and very private."
+
+I hesitated, but I could think of no good excuse for refusing. "I'll be
+here an hour," said I. "Good day."
+
+He gave me no time to change my mind.
+
+Something--perhaps it was his curious expression as he took himself
+off--made me begin to regret. The more I thought of the matter, the less I
+thought of my having made any civil concession to a woman who had acted so
+badly toward Anita and myself. He had not been gone a quarter of an hour
+before I went to Anita in her sitting-room. Always, the instant I entered
+the outer door of her part of our house, that powerful, intoxicating
+fascination that she had for me began to take possession of my senses. It
+was in every garment she wore. It seemed to linger in any place where she
+had been, for a long time after she left it. She was at a small desk by the
+window, was writing letters.
+
+"May I interrupt?" said I. "Monson was here a few minutes ago--from Mrs.
+Langdon. She wants to see me. I told him I would see her here. Then it
+occurred to me that perhaps I had been too good-natured. What do you
+think?"
+
+I could not see her face, but only the back of her head, and the loose
+coils of magnetic hair and the white nape of her graceful neck. As I began
+to speak, she stopped writing, her pen suspended over the sheet of paper.
+After I ended there was a long silence.
+
+"I'll not see her," said I. "I don't quite understand why I yielded." And I
+turned to go.
+
+"Wait--please," came from her abruptly.
+
+Another long silence. Then I: "If she comes here, I think the only person
+who can properly receive her is you."
+
+"No--you must see her," said Anita at last. And she turned round in her
+chair until she was facing me. Her expression--I can not describe it. I can
+only say that it gave me a sense of impending calamity.
+
+"I'd rather not--much rather not," said I.
+
+"I particularly wish you to see her," she replied, and she turned back to
+her writing. I saw her pen poised as if she were about to begin; but she
+did not begin--and I felt that she would not. With my mind shadowed with
+vague dread, I left that mysterious stillness, and went back to the
+library.
+
+It was not long before Mrs. Langdon was announced. There are some women
+to whom a haggard look is becoming; she is one of them. She was much
+thinner than when I last saw her; instead of her former restless, petulant,
+suspicious expression, she now looked tragically sad. "May I trouble you to
+close the door?" said she, when the servant had withdrawn.
+
+I closed the door.
+
+"I've come," she began, without seating herself, "to make you as unhappy, I
+fear, as I am. I've hesitated long before coming. But I am desperate. The
+one hope I have left is that you and I between us may be able to--to--that
+you and I may be able to help each other."
+
+I waited.
+
+"I suppose there are people," she went on, "who have never known what it
+was to--really to care for some one else. They would despise me for
+clinging to a man after he has shown me that--that his love has ceased."
+
+"Pardon me, Mrs. Langdon," I interrupted. "You apparently think your
+husband and I are intimate friends. Before you go any further, I must
+disabuse you of that idea."
+
+She looked at me in open astonishment. "You do not know why my husband has
+left me?"
+
+"Until a few minutes ago, I did not know that he had left you," I said.
+"And I do not wish to know why."
+
+Her expression of astonishment changed to mockery. "Oh!" she sneered. "Your
+wife has fooled you into thinking it a one-sided affair. Well, I tell you,
+she is as much to blame as he--more. For he did love me when he married me;
+did love me until she got him under her spell again."
+
+I thought I understood. "You have been misled, Mrs. Langdon," said I
+gently, pitying her as the victim of her insane jealousy. "You have--"
+
+"Ask your wife," she interrupted angrily. "Hereafter, you can't pretend
+ignorance. For I'll at least be revenged. She failed utterly to trap him
+into marriage when she was a poor girl, and--"
+
+"Before you go any further," said I coldly, "let me set you right. My wife
+was at one time engaged to your husband's brother, but--"
+
+"Tom?" she interrupted. And her laugh made me bite my lip. "So she told you
+that! I don't see how she dared. Why, everybody knows that she and Mowbray
+were engaged, and that he broke it off to marry me."
+
+All in an instant everything that had been confused in my affairs at
+home and down town became clear. I understood why I had been pursued
+relentlessly in Wall Street; why I had been unable to make the least
+impression on the barriers between Anita and myself. You will imagine that
+some terrible emotion at once dominated me. But this is not a romance;
+only the veracious chronicle of certain human beings. My first emotion
+was--relief that it was not Tom Langdon. "I ought to have known she
+couldn't care for _him_," said I to myself. I, contending with Tom
+Langdon for a woman's love had always made me shrink. But Mowbray--that
+was vastly different. My respect for myself and for Anita rose.
+
+"No," said I to Mrs. Langdon, "my wife did not tell me, never spoke of it.
+What I said to you was purely a guess of my own. I had no interest in the
+matter--and haven't. I have absolute confidence in my wife. I feel ashamed
+that you have provoked me into saying so." I opened the door.
+
+"I am not going yet," said she angrily. "Yesterday morning Mowbray and she
+were riding together in the Riverside Drive. Ask her groom."
+
+"What of it?" said I. Then, as she did not rise, I rang the bell. When the
+servant came, I said: "Please tell Mrs. Blacklock that Mrs. Langdon is in
+the library--and that I am here, and gave you the message."
+
+As soon as the servant was gone, she said: "No doubt she'll lie to you.
+These women that steal other women's property are usually clever at fooling
+their own silly husbands."
+
+"I do not intend to ask her," I replied. "To ask her would be an insult."
+
+She made no comment beyond a scornful toss of the head. We both had
+our gaze fixed upon the door through which Anita would enter. When she
+finally did appear, I, after one glance at her, turned--it must have been
+triumphantly--upon her accuser. I had not doubted, but where is the faith
+that is not the stronger for confirmation? And confirmation there was in
+the very atmosphere round that stately, still figure. She looked calmly,
+first at Mrs. Langdon, then at me.
+
+"I sent for you," said I, "because I thought that you, rather than I,
+should request Mrs. Langdon to leave your house."
+
+At that Mrs. Langdon was on her feet, and blazing. "Fool!" she flared at
+me. "Oh, the fools women make of men!" Then to Anita: "You--you--But no, I
+must not permit you to drag me down to your level. Tell your husband--tell
+him that you were riding with my husband in the Riverside Drive yesterday."
+
+I stepped between her and Anita. "My wife will not answer you," said I. "I
+hope, Madam, you will spare us the necessity of a painful scene. But leave
+you must--at once."
+
+She looked wildly round, clasped her hands, suddenly burst into tears.
+If she had but known, she could have had her own way after that, without
+any attempt from me to oppose her. For she was evidently unutterably
+wretched--and no one knew better than I the sufferings of unreturned love.
+But she had given me up; slowly, sobbing, she left the room, I opening the
+door for her and closing it behind her.
+
+"I almost broke down myself," said I to Anita. "Poor woman! How can you be
+so calm? You women in your relations with each other are--a mystery."
+
+"I have only contempt for a woman who tries to hold a man when he wishes
+to go," said Anita, with quiet but energetic bitterness. "Besides"--she
+hesitated an instant before going on--"Gladys deserves her fate. She
+doesn't really care for him. She's only jealous of him. She never did love
+him."
+
+"How do you know?" said I sharply, trying to persuade myself it was not an
+ugly suspicion in me that lifted its head and shot out that question.
+
+"Because he never loved her," she replied. "The feeling a woman has for
+a man or a man for a woman, without any response, isn't love, isn't
+worthy the name of love. It's a sort of baffled covetousness. Love means
+generosity, not greediness." Then--"Why do you not ask me whether what she
+said is true?"
+
+The change in her tone with that last sentence, the strange, ominous note
+in it, startled me,
+
+"Because," replied I, "as I said to her, to ask my wife such a question
+would be to insult her. If you were riding with him, it was an accident."
+As if my rude repulse of her overtures and my keeping away from her ever
+since would not have justified her in almost anything.
+
+She flushed the dark red of shame, but her gaze held steady and unflinching
+upon mine. "It was not altogether by accident," she said. And I think she
+expected me to kill her.
+
+When a man admits and respects a woman's rights where he is himself
+concerned, he either is no longer interested in her or has begun to love
+her so well that he can control the savage and selfish instincts of
+passion. If Mowbray Langdon had been there, I might have killed them both;
+but he was not there, and she, facing me without fear, was not the woman to
+be suspected of the stealthy and traitorous.
+
+"It was he that you meant when you warned me you cared for another man?"
+said I, so quietly that I wondered at myself; wondered what had become of
+the "Black Matt" who had used his fists almost as much as his brains in
+fighting his way up.
+
+"Yes," she said, her head down now.
+
+A long pause.
+
+"You wish to be free?" I asked, and my tone must have been gentle.
+
+"I wish to free you," she replied slowly and deliberately.
+
+There was a long silence. Then I said: "I must think it all out. I once
+told you how I felt about these matters. I've greatly changed my mind since
+our talk that night in the Willoughby; but my prejudices are still with me.
+Perhaps you will not be surprised at that--you whose prejudices have cost
+me so dear."
+
+I thought she was going to speak. Instead she turned away, so that I could
+no longer see her face.
+
+"Our marriage was a miserable mistake," I went on, struggling to be just
+and judicial, and to seem calm. "I admit it now. Fortunately, we are both
+still young--you very young. Mistakes in youth are never fatal. But, Anita,
+do not blunder out of one mistake into another. You are no longer a child,
+as you were when I married you. You will be careful not to let judgments
+formed of him long ago decide you for him as they decided you against me."
+
+"I wish to be free," she said, each word coming with an effort, "as much
+on your account as on my own." Then, and it seemed to me merely a truly
+feminine attempt to shirk responsibility, she added, "I am glad my going
+will be a relief to you."
+
+"Yes, it will be a relief," I confessed. "Our situation has become
+intolerable." I had reached my limit of self-control. I put out my hand.
+"Good-by," I said.
+
+If she had wept, it might have modified my conviction that everything was
+at an end between us. But she did not weep. "Can you ever forgive me?" she
+asked.
+
+"Let's not talk of forgiveness," said I, and I fear my voice and manner
+were gruff, as I strove not to break down. "Let's try to forget." And I
+touched her hand and hastened away.
+
+When two human beings set out to misunderstand each other, how fast and far
+they go! How shut-in we are from each other, with only halting means of
+communication that break down under the slightest strain!
+
+As I was leaving the house next morning, I gave Sanders this note for her:
+
+"I have gone to live at the Downtown Hotel. When you have decided what
+course to take, let me know. If my 'rights' ever had any substance, they
+have starved away to such weak things that they collapse even as I try to
+set them up. I hope your freedom will give you happiness, and me peace."
+
+"You are ill, sir?" asked my old servant, my old friend, as he took the
+note.
+
+"Stay with her, Sanders, as long as she wishes," said I, ignoring his
+question. "Then come to me."
+
+His look made me shake hands with him. As I did it, we both remembered the
+last time we had shaken hands--when he had the roses for my home-coming
+with my bride. It seemed to me I could smell those roses.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII. LANGDON COMES TO THE SURFACE
+
+
+I shall not estimate the vast sums it cost the Roebuck-Langdon clique
+to maintain the prices of National Coal, and so give plausibility to
+the fiction that the public was buying eagerly. In the third week of my
+campaign, Melville was so deeply involved that he had to let the two others
+take the whole burden upon themselves.
+
+In the fourth week, Langdon came to me.
+
+The interval between his card and himself gave me a chance to recover from
+my amazement. When he entered he found me busily writing. Though I had
+nerved myself, it was several seconds before I ventured to look at him.
+There he stood, probably as handsome, as fascinating as ever, certainly as
+self-assured. But I could now, beneath that manner I had once envied, see
+the puny soul, with its brassy glitter of the vanity of luxury and show.
+I had been somewhat afraid of myself--afraid the sight of him would stir
+up in me a tempest of jealousy and hate; as I looked, I realized that
+I did not know my own nature. "She does not love this man," I thought.
+"If she did or could, she would not be the woman I love. He deceived her
+inexperience as he deceived mine."
+
+"What can I do for you?" said I to him politely, much as if he were a
+stranger making an untimely interruption.
+
+My look had disconcerted him; my tone threw him into confusion. "You keep
+out of the way, now that you've become famous," he began, with a halting
+but heroic attempt at his customary easy superiority. "Are you living up in
+Connecticut, too? Sam Ellersly tells me your wife is stopping there with
+old Howard Forrester. Sam wants me to use my good offices in making it up
+between you two and her family."
+
+I was completely taken aback by this cool ignoring of the real situation
+between him and me. Impudence or ignorance?--I could not decide. It seemed
+impossible that Anita had not told him; yet it seemed impossible, too, that
+he would come to me if she had told him. "Have you any _business_ with
+me?" said I.
+
+His eyelids twitched nervously, and he adjusted his lips several times
+before he was able to say:
+
+"You and your wife don't care to make it up with the Ellerslys? I fancied
+so, and told Sam you'd simply think me meddlesome. The other matter is the
+Travelers Club. I've smoothed things out there. I'm going to put you up and
+rush you through."
+
+"No, thanks," said I. It seemed incredible to me that I had ever cared
+about that club and the things it represented, as I could remember I
+undoubtedly did care. It was like looking at an outgrown toy and trying
+to feel again the emotions it once excited.
+
+"I assure you, Matt, there won't be the slightest difficulty." His manner
+was that of a man playing the trump card in a desperate game--he feels it
+can not lose, yet the stake is so big that he can not but be a little
+nervous.
+
+"I do not care to join the Travelers Club," said I, rising. "I must ask you
+to excuse me. I am exceedingly busy."
+
+A flush appeared in his cheeks and deepened and spread until his whole body
+must have been afire. He seated himself. "You know what I've come for," he
+said sullenly, and humbly, too.
+
+All his life he had been enthroned upon his wealth. Without realizing it,
+he had claimed and had received deference solely because he was rich. He
+had thought himself, in his own person, most superior; now, he found that
+like a silly child he had been standing on a chair and crying: "See how
+tall I am." And the airs, the cynicism, the graceful condescension, which
+had been so becoming to him, were now as out of place as crown and robes on
+a king taking a swimming lesson.
+
+"What are your terms, Blacklock? Don't be too hard on an old friend," said
+he, trying to carry off his frank plea for mercy with a smile.
+
+I should have thought he would cut his throat and jump off the Battery wall
+before he would get on his knees to any man for any reason. And he was
+doing it for mere money--to try to save, not his fortune, but only an
+imperiled part of it. "If Anita could see him now!" I thought.
+
+To him I said, the more coldly because I did not wish to add to his
+humiliation by showing him that I pitied him: "I can only repeat, Mr.
+Langdon, you will have to excuse me. I have given you all the time I can
+spare."
+
+His eyes were shifting and his hands trembling as he said: "I will transfer
+control of the Coal combine to you."
+
+His tones, shameful as the offer they carried, made me ashamed for him.
+For money--just for money! And I had thought him a man. If he had been a
+self-deceiving hypocrite like Roebuck, or a frank believer in the right of
+might, like Updegraff, I might possibly, in the circumstances, have tried
+to release him from my net. But he had never for an instant deceived
+himself as to the real nature of the enterprises he plotted, promoted and
+profited by; he thought it "smart" to be bad, and he delighted in making
+the most cynical epigrams on the black deeds of himself and his associates.
+
+"Better sell out to Roebuck," I suggested. "I control all the Coal stock I
+need."
+
+"I don't care to have anything further to do with Roebuck," Langdon
+answered. "I've broken with him."
+
+"When a man lies to me," said I, "he gives me the chance to see just how
+much of a fool he thinks I am, and also the chance to see just how much of
+a fool he is. I hesitate to think so poorly of you as your attempt to fool
+me seems to compel."
+
+But he was unconvinced. "I've found he intends to abandon the ship and
+leave me to go down with it," he persisted. "He believes he can escape and
+denounce me as the arch rascal who planned the combine, and can convince
+people that I foozled him into it."
+
+Ingenious; but I happened to know that it was false. "Pardon me, Mr.
+Langdon," said I with stiff courtesy. "I repeat, I can do nothing for you.
+Good morning." And I went at my work as if he were already gone.
+
+Had I been vindictive, I would have led him on to humiliate himself more
+deeply, if greater depths of humiliation there are than those to which
+he voluntarily descended. But I wished to spare him; I let him see the
+uselessness of his mission. He looked at me in silence--the look of hate
+that can come only from a creature weak as well as wicked. I think it
+was all his keen sense of humor could do to save him from a melodramatic
+outbreak. He slipped into his habitual pose, rose and withdrew without
+another word. All this fright and groveling and treachery for plunder, the
+loss of which would not impair his fortune--plunder he had stolen with many
+a jest and gibe at his helpless victims. Like most of our debonair dollar
+chasers, he was a good sportsman only when the game was with him.
+
+That afternoon he threw his Coal holdings on the market in great blocks.
+His treachery took Roebuck completely by surprise--for Roebuck believed in
+this fair-weather "gentleman," foul-weather coward, and neglected to allow
+for that quicksand that is always under the foundation of the man who has
+inherited, not earned, his wealth. But for the blundering credulity of
+rascals, would honest men ever get their dues? Roebuck's brokers had bought
+many thousands of Langdon's shares at the high artificial price before
+Roebuck grasped the situation--that it was not my followers recklessly
+gambling to break the prices, but Langdon unloading on his "pal." As soon
+as he saw, he abruptly withdrew from the market. When the Stock Exchange
+closed, National Coal securities were offered at prices ranging from eleven
+for the bonds to two for the common and three for the preferred--offered,
+and no takers.
+
+"Well, you've done it," said Joe, coming with the news that Thornley, of
+the Discount and Deposit Bank, had been appointed receiver.
+
+"I've made a beginning," replied I. And the last sentence of my next
+morning's "letter" was:
+
+"To-morrow the first chapter of the History of the Industrial National
+Bank."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I have felt for two years," said Roebuck to Schilling, who repeated it to
+me soon afterward, "that Blacklock was about the most dangerous fellow in
+the country. The first time I set eyes on him, I saw he was a born
+iconoclast. And I've known for a year that some day he would use that
+engine of publicity of his to cannonade the foundations of society."
+
+"He knew me better than I knew myself," was my comment to Schilling. And I
+meant it--for I had not finished the demolition of the Coal combine when I
+began to realize that, whatever I might have thought of my own ambitions,
+I could never have tamed myself or been tamed into a devotee of dollars
+and of respectability. I simply had been keeping quiet until my tools were
+sharp and fate spun my opportunity within reach. But I must, in fairness,
+add, it was lucky for me that, when the hour struck, Roebuck was not twenty
+years younger and one-twentieth as rich. It's a heavy enough handicap,
+under the best of circumstances, to go to war burdened with years; add the
+burden of a monster fortune, and it isn't in human nature to fight well.
+Youth and a light knapsack!
+
+But--to my fight on the big bank.
+
+Until I opened fire, the public thought, in a general way, that a bank was
+an institution like Thornley's Discount and Deposit National--a place for
+the safe-keeping of money and for accommodating business men with loans to
+be used in carrying on and extending legitimate and useful enterprises. And
+there were many such banks. But the real object of the banking business,
+as exploited by the big bandits who controlled it and all industry, was
+to draw into a mass the money of the country that they might use it to
+manipulate the markets, to wreck and reorganize industries and wreck them
+again, to work off inflated bonds and stocks upon the public at inflated
+prices, to fight among themselves for rights to despoil, making the people
+pay the war budgets--in a word, to finance the thousand and one schemes
+whereby they and their friends and relatives, who neither produce nor help
+to produce, appropriate the bulk of all that is produced.
+
+And before I finished with the National Industrial Bank, I had shown that
+it and several similar institutions in the big cities throughout the
+country were, in fact, so many dens to which rich and poor were lured for
+spoliation. I then took up the Universal Life, as a type. I showed how
+insuring was, with the companies controlled by the bandits, simply the
+decoy; that the real object was the same as the real object of the big
+bandit banks. When I had finished my series on the Universal Life I had
+named and pilloried Roebuck, Langdon, Melville, Wainwright, Updegraff, Van
+Steen, Epstein--the seven men of enormous wealth, leaders of the seven
+cliques that had the political and industrial United States at their mercy,
+and were plucking the people through an ever-increasing army of agents.
+The agents kept some of the feathers--"The Seven" could afford to pay
+liberally. But the bulk of the feather crop was passed on to "The Seven."
+
+I shall answer in a paragraph the principal charges that were made against
+me. They say I bribed employees on the telegraph companies, and so got
+possession of incriminating telegrams that had been sent by "The Seven" in
+the course of their worst campaigns. I admit the charge. They say I bribed
+some of their confidential men to give me transcripts and photographs
+of secret ledgers and reports. I admit the charge. They say I bought
+translations of stenographic notes taken by eavesdroppers on certain
+important secret meetings. I admit the charge. But what was the chief
+element in my success in thus getting proofs of their crimes? Not the
+bribery, but the hatred that all the servants of such men have for them. I
+tempted no one to betray them. _Every item, of information I got was
+offered to me_. And I shall add these facts:
+
+First, in not a single case did they suspect and discharge the "guilty"
+persons.
+
+Second, I have to-day as good means of access to their secrets as I ever
+had--and, if they discharged all who now serve them, I should be able soon
+to reestablish my lines; men of their stripe can not hope to be served
+faithfully.
+
+Third, I had offers from all but three of "The Seven" to "peach" on the
+others in return for immunity. There may be honor among some thieves, but
+not among "respectable" thieves. Hypocrisy and honor will be found in the
+same character when the sun shines at night--not before.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was the sardonic humor of fate that Langdon, for all his desire to keep
+out of my way, should have compelled me to center my fire upon him; that I,
+who wished to spare him, if possible, should have been compelled to make of
+him my first "awful example."
+
+I had decided to concentrate upon Roebuck, because he was the richest and
+most powerful of "The Seven." For, in my pictures of the three main phases
+of "finance"--the industrial, the life-insurance and the banking--he, as
+arch plotter in every kind of respectable skulduggery, was necessarily in
+the foreground. My original intention was to demolish the Power Trust--or,
+at least, to compel him to buy back all of its stock which he had worked
+off on the public. I had collected many interesting facts about it, facts
+typical of the conditions that "finance" has established in so many of our
+industries.
+
+For instance, I was prepared to show that the actual earnings of the Power
+Trust were two and a half times what its reports to stock-holders alleged;
+that the concealed profits were diverted into the pockets of Roebuck, his
+sons, eleven other relatives and four of "The Seven," the lion's share
+going, of course, to the lion. Like almost all the great industrial
+enterprises, too strong for the law and too remote for the supervision
+of their stock-holders, it gathered in enormous revenues to disburse
+them chiefly in salaries and commissions and rake-offs on contracts to
+favorites. I had proof that in one year it had "written off" twelve
+millions of profit and loss, ten millions of which had found its way to
+Roebuck's pocket. That pocket! That "treasury of the Lord"!
+
+Dishonest? Roebuck and most of the other leaders of the various gangs,
+comprising, with all their ramifications, the principal figures in
+religious, philanthropic, fashionable society, did not for an instant
+think their doings dishonest. They had no sense of trusteeship for this
+money intrusted to them as captains of industry bankers, life-insurance
+directors. They felt that it was theirs to do with as they pleased.
+
+And they felt that their superiority in rank and in brains entitled them
+to whatever remuneration they could assign to themselves without rousing
+the wrath of a public too envious to admit the just claims of the "upper
+classes." They convinced themselves that without them crops would cease
+to grow, sellers and buyers would be unable to find their way to market,
+barbarism would spread its rank and choking weeds over the whole garden of
+civilization. And, so brainless is the parrot public, they have succeeded
+in creating a very widespread conviction that their own high opinion of
+their services is not too high, and that some dire calamity would come if
+they were swept from between producer and consumer! True, thieves are found
+only where there is property; but who but a chucklebrain would think the
+thieves made the property?
+
+Roebuck was the keystone of the arch that sustained the structure of
+chicane. To dislodge him was the direct way to collapse it. I was about to
+set to work when Langdon, feeling that he ought to have a large supply of
+cash in the troublous times I was creating, increased the capital stock
+of his already enormously overcapitalized Textile Trust and offered the
+new issue to the public. As the Textile Trust was even better bulwarked,
+politically, than the Power Trust, it was easily able to declare tempting
+dividends out of its lootings. So the new stock could not be attacked in
+the one way that would make the public instantly shun it--I could not
+truthfully charge that it would not pay the promised dividends. Yet attack
+I must--for that issue was, in effect, a bold challenge of my charges
+against "The Seven." From all parts of the country inquiries poured in upon
+me: "What do you think of the new Textile issue? Shall we invest? Is the
+Textile Company sound?"
+
+I had no choice. I must turn aside from Roebuck; I must first show that,
+while Textile was, in a sense, sound just at that time, it had been
+unsound, and would be unsound again as soon as Langdon had gathered in
+a sufficient number of lambs to make a battue worth the while of a man
+dealing in nothing less than seven figures. I proceeded to do so.
+
+The market yielded slowly. Under my first day's attack Textile preferred
+fell six points, Textile common three. While I was in the midst of
+dictating my letter for the second day's attack, I suddenly came to a full
+stop. I found across my way this thought: "Isn't it strange that Langdon,
+after humbling himself to you, should make this bold challenge? It's a
+trap!"
+
+"No more at present," said I, to my stenographer. "And don't write out what
+I've already dictated."
+
+I shut myself in and busied myself at the telephone. Half an hour after I
+set my secret machinery in motion, a messenger brought me an envelop, the
+address type-written. It contained a sheet of paper on which appeared, in
+type-writing; these words, and nothing more:
+
+  "He is heavily short of Textiles."
+
+It was indeed a trap. The new issue was a blind. He had challenged me to
+attack his stock, and as soon as I did, he had begun secretly to sell it
+for a fall. I worked at this new situation until midnight, trying to get
+together the proofs. At that hour--for I could delay no longer, and my
+proofs were not quite complete--I sent my newspapers two sentences:
+
+  "To-morrow I shall make a disclosure that will
+  send Textiles up. Do not sell Textiles!"
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII. MRS. LANGDON MAKES A CALL.
+Next day Langdon's stocks wavered, going up a little, going down a little,
+closing at practically the same figures at which they had opened. Then I
+sprang my sensation--that Langdon and his particular clique, though they
+controlled the Textile Trust, did not own so much as one-fiftieth of its
+voting stock. True "captains of industry" that they were, they made their
+profits not out of dividends, but out of side schemes that absorbed about
+two-thirds of the earnings of the Trust, and out of gambling in its bonds
+and stocks. I said in conclusion:
+
+"The largest owner of the stock is Walter G. Edmunds, of Chicago--an honest
+man. Send your voting proxies to him, and he can take the Textile Company
+away from those now plundering it."
+
+As the annual election of the Trust was only six weeks away, Langdon
+and his clique were in a panic. They rushed into the market and bought
+frantically, the public bidding against them. Langdon himself went to
+Chicago to reason with Edmunds--that is, to try to find out at what figure
+he could be bought. And so on, day after day, I faithfully reporting to
+the public the main occurrences behind the scenes. The Langdon attempt to
+regain control by purchases of stock failed. He and his allies made what
+must have been to them appalling sacrifices; but even at the high prices
+they offered, comparatively little of the stock appeared.
+
+"I've caught them," said I to Joe--the first time, and the last, during
+that campaign that I indulged in a boast.
+
+"If Edmunds sticks to you," replied cautious Joe.
+
+But Edmunds did not. I do not know at what price he sold himself. Probably
+it was pitifully small; cupidity usually snatches the instant bait tickles
+its nose. But I do know that my faith in human nature got its severest
+shock.
+
+"You are down this morning," said Thornley, when I looked in on him at his
+bank. "I don't think I ever before saw you show that you were in low
+spirits."
+
+"I've found out a man with whom I'd have trusted my life," said I.
+"Sometimes I think all men are dishonest. I've tried to be an optimist like
+you, and have told myself that most men must be honest or ninety-five per
+cent. of the business couldn't be done on credit as it is."
+
+Thornley smiled, like an old man at the enthusiasm of a youngster. "That
+proves nothing as to honesty," said he. "It simply shows that men can
+be counted on to do what it is to their plain interest to do. The truth
+is--and a fine truth, too--most men wish and try to be honest. Give 'em a
+chance to resist their own weaknesses. Don't trust them. Trust--that's the
+making of false friends and the filling of jails."
+
+"And palaces," I added.
+
+"And palaces," assented he. "Every vast fortune is a monument to the
+credulity of man. Instead of getting after these heavy-laden rascals,
+Matthew, you'd better have turned your attention to the public that has
+made rascals of them by leaving its property unguarded."
+
+Fortunately, Edmunds had held out, or, rather, Langdon had delayed
+approaching him, long enough for me to gain my main point. The uproar
+over the Textile Trust had become so great that the national Department
+of Commerce dared not refuse an investigation; and I straightway began to
+spread out in my daily letters the facts of the Trust's enormous earnings
+and of the shameful sources of those earnings. Thanks to Langdon's
+political pull, the president appointed as investigator one of those
+rascals who carefully build themselves good reputations to enable them to
+charge higher prices for dirty work. But, with my facts before the people,
+whitewash was impossible.
+
+I was expecting emissaries from Langdon, for I knew he must now be actually
+in straits. Even the Universal Life didn't dare lend him money; and was
+trying to call in the millions it had loaned him. But I was astounded when
+my private door opened and Mrs. Langdon ushered herself in.
+
+"Don't blame your boy, Mr. Blacklock," cried she gaily, exasperatingly
+confident that I was as delighted with her as she was with herself. "I told
+him you were expecting me and didn't give him a chance to stop me."
+
+I assumed she had come to give me wholly undeserved thanks for revenging
+her upon her recreant husband. I tried to look civil and courteous, but I
+felt that my face was darkening--her very presence forced forward things I
+had been keeping in the far background of my mind, "How can I be of service
+to you, Madam?" said I.
+
+"I bring you good news," she replied--and I noted that she no longer looked
+haggard and wretched, that her beauty was once more smiling with a certain
+girlishness, like a young widow's when she finds her consolation. "Mowbray
+and I have made it up," she explained.
+
+I simply listened, probably looking as grim as I felt.
+
+"I knew you would be interested," she went on. "Indeed, it means almost as
+much to you as to me. It brings peace to _two_ families."
+
+Still I did not relax.
+
+"And so," she continued, a little uneasy, "I came to you immediately."
+
+I continued to listen, as if I were waiting for her to finish and depart.
+
+"If you want, I'll go to Anita." Natural feminine tact would have saved her
+from this rawness; but, convinced that she was a "great lady" by the
+flattery of servants and shopkeepers and sensational newspapers and social
+climbers, she had discarded tact as worthy only of the lowly and of the
+aspiring before they "arrive."
+
+"You are too kind," said I. "Mrs. Blacklock and I feel competent to take
+care of our own affairs."
+
+"Please, Mr. Blacklock," she said, realizing that she had blundered, "don't
+take my directness the wrong way. Life is too short for pose and pretense
+about the few things that really matter. Why shouldn't we be frank with
+each other?"
+
+"I trust you will excuse me," said I, moving toward the door--I had not
+seated myself when she did. "I think I have made it clear that we have
+nothing to discuss."
+
+"You have the reputation of being generous and too big for hatred. That is
+why I have come to you," said she, her expression confirming my suspicion
+of the real and only reason for her visit. "Mowbray and I are completely
+reconciled--_completely_, you understand. And I want you to be
+generous, and not keep on with this attack. I am involved even more than
+he. He has used up his fortune in defending mine. Now, you are simply
+trying to ruin me--not him, but _me_. The president is a friend of
+Mowbray's, and he'll call off this horrid investigation, and everything'll
+be all right, if you'll only stop."
+
+"Who sent you here?" I asked.
+
+"I came of my own accord," she protested. Then, realizing from the sound of
+her voice that she could not have convinced me with a tone so unconvincing,
+she hedged with: "It was my own suggestion, really it was."
+
+"Your husband permitted _you_ to come--and to _me_?"
+
+She flushed.
+
+"And you have accepted his overtures when you knew he made them only
+because he needed your money?"
+
+She hung her head. "I love him," she said simply. Then she looked straight
+at me and I liked her expression. "A woman has no false pride when love is
+at stake," she said. "We leave that to you men."
+
+"Love!" I retorted, rather satirically, I imagine. "How much had your own
+imperiled fortune to do with your being so forgiving?"
+
+"Something," she admitted. "You must remember I have children. I must think
+of their future. I don't want them to be poor. I want them to have the
+station they were born to." She went to one of the windows overlooking the
+street. "Look here!" she said.
+
+I stood beside her. The window was not far above the street level. Just
+below us was a handsome victoria, coachman, harness, horses, all most
+proper, a footman rigid at the step. A crowd had gathered round--in those
+stirring days when I was the chief subject of conversation wherever men
+were interested in money--and where are they not?--there was almost always
+a crowd before my offices. In the carriage sat two children, a boy and a
+girl, hardly more than babies. They were gorgeously overdressed, after
+the vulgar fashion of aristocrats and apers of aristocracy. They sat
+stiffly, like little scions of royalty, with that expression of complacent
+superiority which one so often sees on the faces of the little children of
+the very rich--and some not so little, too. The thronging loungers, most
+of them either immigrant peasants from European caste countries or the
+un-disinfected sons of peasants, were gaping in true New York "lower class"
+awe; the children were literally swelling with delighted vanity. If they
+had been pampered pet dogs, one would have laughed. As they were human
+beings, it filled me with sadness and pity. What ignorance, what stupidity
+to bring up children thus in democratic America--democratic to-day,
+inevitably more democratic to-morrow! What a turning away from the light!
+What a crime against the children!
+
+"For their sake, Mr. Blacklock," she pleaded, her mother love wholly hiding
+from her the features of the spectacle that for me shrieked like scarlet
+against a white background.
+
+"Your husband has deceived you about your fortune, Mrs. Langdon," I said
+gently, for there is to me something pathetic in ignorance and I was not
+blaming her for her folly and her crime against her children. "You can tell
+him what I am about to say, or not, as you please. But my advice is that
+you keep it to yourself. Even if the present situation develops as seems
+probable, develops as Mr. Langdon fears, you will not be left without a
+fortune--a very large fortune, most people would think. But Mr. Langdon
+will have little or nothing--indeed, I think he is practically dependent
+on you now."
+
+"What I have is his," she said.
+
+"That is generous," replied I, not especially impressed by a sentiment, the
+very uttering of which raised a strong doubt of its truth. "But is it
+prudent? You wish to keep him--securely. Don't tempt him by a generosity he
+would only abuse."
+
+She thought it over. "The idea of holding a man in that way is repellent to
+me," said she, now obviously posing.
+
+"If the man happens to be one that can be held in no other way," said I,
+moving significantly toward the door, "one must overcome one's
+repugnance--or be despoiled and abandoned."
+
+"Thank you," she said, giving me her hand. "Thank you--more than I can
+say." She had forgotten entirely that she came to plead for her husband.
+"And I hope you will soon be as happy as I am." That last in New York's
+funniest "great lady" style.
+
+I bowed, and when there was the closed door between us, I laughed, not at
+all pleasantly. "This New York!" I said aloud. "This New York that dabbles
+its slime of sordidness and snobbishness on every flower in the garden of
+human nature. New York that destroys pride and substitutes vanity for it.
+New York with its petty, mischievous class-makers, the pattern for the
+rich and the 'smarties' throughout the country. These 'cut-out' minds and
+hearts, the best of them incapable of growth and calloused wherever the
+scissors of conventionality have snipped."
+
+I took from my pocket the picture of Anita I always carried. "Are
+_you_ like that?" I demanded of it. And it seemed to answer: "Yes,--I
+am." Did I tear the picture up? No. I kissed it as if it were the magnetic
+reality. "I don't care what you are!" I cried. "I want you! I want you!"
+
+"Fool!" you are saying. Precisely what I called myself. And you? Is it
+the one you _ought_ to love that you give your heart to? Is it the
+one that understands you and sympathizes with you? Or is it the one whose
+presence gives you visions of paradise and whose absence blots out the
+light?
+
+I loved her. Yet I will say this much for myself: I still would not have
+taken her on any terms that did not make her really mine.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV. "MY RIGHT EYE OFFENDS ME"
+
+
+Now that Updegraff is dead, I am free to tell of our relations.
+
+My acquaintance with him was more casual than with any other of "The
+Seven." From the outset of my career I made it a rule never to deal with
+understrappers, always to get in touch with the man who had the final say.
+Thus, as the years went by, I grew into intimacy with the great men of
+finance where many with better natural facilities for knowing them remained
+in an outer circle. But with Updegraff, interested only in enterprises west
+of the Mississippi and keeping Denver as his legal residence and exploiting
+himself as a Western man who hated Wall Street, I had a mere bowing
+acquaintance. This was unimportant, however, as each knew the other well
+by reputation. Our common intimacies made us intimates for all practical
+purposes.
+
+Our connection was established soon after the development of my campaign
+against the Textile Trust had shown that I was after a big bag of the
+biggest game. We happened to have the same secret broker; and I suppose it
+was in his crafty brain that the idea of bringing us together was born. Be
+that as it may, he by gradual stages intimated to me that Updegraff would
+convey me secrets of "The Seven" in exchange for a guarantee that I would
+not attack his interests. I do not know what his motive in this treachery
+was--probably a desire to curb the power of his associates in industrial
+despotism.
+
+Each of "The Seven" hated and feared and suspected the other six with far
+more than the ordinary and proverbial rich man's jealous dislike of other
+rich men. There was not one of them that did not bear the ever-smarting
+scars of vicious wounds, front and back, received from his fellows; there
+was not one that did not cherish the hope of overthrowing the rule of Seven
+and establishing the rule of One. At any rate, I accepted Updegraff's
+proposition; henceforth, though he stopped speaking to me when we happened
+to meet, as did all the other big bandits and most of their parasites and
+procurers, he kept me informed of every act "The Seven" resolved upon.
+
+Thus I knew all about their "gentlemen's agreement" to support the stock
+market, and that they had made Tavistock their agent for resisting any and
+all attempts to lower prices, and had given him practically unlimited funds
+to draw upon as he needed. I had Tavistock sounded on every side, but found
+no weak spot. There was no rascality he would not perpetrate for whoever
+employed him; but to his employer he was as loyal as a woman to a bad
+man. And for a time it looked as if "The Seven" had checkmated me. Those
+outsiders who had invested heavily in the great enterprises through which
+"The Seven" ruled were disposing of their holdings--cautiously, through
+fear of breaking the market. Money would pile up in the banks--money paid
+out by "The Seven" for their bonds and stocks, of which the people had
+become deeply suspicious. Then these deposits would be withdrawn--and I
+knew they were going into real estate investments, because news of booms
+in real estate and in building was coming in from everywhere. But prices
+on the Stock Exchange continued to advance.
+
+"They are too strong for you," said Joe. "They will hold the market up
+until the public loses faith in you. Then they will sell out at top-notch
+prices as the people rush in to buy."
+
+I might have wavered had I not been seeing Tavistock every day. He
+continued to wear his devil-may-care air; but I observed that he was aging
+swiftly--and I knew what that meant. Fighting all day to prevent breaks
+in the crucial stocks; planning most of the night how to prevent breaks
+the next day; watching the reserve resources of "The Seven" melt away.
+Those reserves were vast; also, "The Seven" controlled the United States
+Treasury, and were using its resources as their own; they were buying
+securities that would be almost worthless if they lost, but if they
+won, would be rebought by the public at the old swindling prices, when
+"confidence" was restored. But there was I, cannonading incessantly from my
+impregnable position; as fast as they repaired breaches in their walls, my
+big guns of publicity tore new breaches. No wonder Tavistock had thinner
+hair and wrinkles and a drawn look about the eyes, nose and mouth.
+
+With the battle thus raging all along the line, on the one side "The Seven"
+and their armies of money and mercenaries and impressed slaves, on the
+other side the public, I in command, you will say that my yearning for
+distraction must have been gratified. If the road from his cell were long
+enough, the condemned man would be fretting less about the gallows than
+about the tight shoe that was making him limp and wince at every step.
+Besides, in human affairs it is the personal, always the personal. I soon
+got used to the crowds, to the big head-lines in the newspapers, to the
+routine of cannonade and reply.
+
+But the old thorn, pressing persistently--I could not get used to that. In
+the midst of the adulation, of the blares upon the trumpets of fame that
+saluted my waking and were wafted to me as I fell asleep at night--in the
+midst of all the turmoil, I was often in a great and brooding silence,
+longing for her, now with the imperious energy of passion, and now with
+the sad ache of love. What was she doing? What was she thinking? Now that
+Langdon had again played her false for the old price, with what eyes was
+she looking into the future?
+
+Alva, settled in a West Side apartment not far from the ancestral white
+elephant, telephoned, asking me to come. I went, because she could and
+would give me news of Anita. But as I entered her little drawing-room,
+I said: "It was curiosity that brought me. I wished to see how you were
+installed."
+
+"Isn't it nice and small?" cried she. "Billy and I haven't the slightest
+difficulty in finding each other--as people so often have in the big
+houses." And it was Billy this and Billy that, and what Billy said and
+thought and felt--and before they were married, she had called him William,
+and had declared "Billy" to be the most offensive combination of letters
+that ever fell from human lips.
+
+"I needn't ask if _you_ are happy," said I presently, with a dismal
+failure at looking cheerful. "I can't stay but a moment," I added, and if I
+had obeyed my feelings, I'd have risen up and taken myself and my pain away
+from surroundings as hateful to me as a summer sunrise in a death-chamber.
+
+"Oh!" she exclaimed, in some confusion. "Then excuse me." And she hastened
+from the room.
+
+I thought she had gone to order, or perhaps to bring, the tea. The long
+minutes dragged away until ten had passed. Hearing a rustling in the hall,
+I rose, intending to take leave the instant she appeared. The rustling
+stopped just outside. I waited a few seconds, cried, "Well, I'm off. Next
+time I want to be alone, I'll know where to come," and advanced to the
+door. It was not Alva hesitating there; it was Anita.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said I coldly.
+
+If there had been room to pass I should have gone. What devil possessed
+me? Certainly in all our relations I had found her direct and frank, if
+anything, too frank. Doubtless it was the influence of my associations down
+town, where for so many months I had been dealing with the "short-card"
+crowd of high finance, who would hardly play the game straight even when
+that was the easy way to win. My long, steady stretch in that stealthy and
+sinuous company had put me in the state of mind in which it is impossible
+to credit any human being with a motive that is decent or an action that is
+not a dead-fall. Thus the obvious transformation in her made no impression
+on me. Her haughtiness, her coldness, were gone, and with them had gone
+all that had been least like her natural self, most like the repellent
+conventional pattern to which her mother and her associates had molded her.
+But I was saying to myself: "A trap! Langdon has gone back to his wife. She
+turns to me." And I loved her and hated her. "Never," thought I, "has she
+shown so poor an opinion of me as now."
+
+"My uncle told me day before yesterday that it was not he but you," she
+said, lifting her eyes to mine. It is inconceivable to me now that I could
+have misread their honest story; yet I did.
+
+"I had no idea your uncle's notion of honor was also eccentric," said I,
+with a satirical smile that made the blood rush to her face.
+
+"That is unjust to him," she replied earnestly.
+
+"He says he made you no promise of secrecy. And he confessed to me only
+because he wished to convince me that he had good reason for his high
+opinion of you."
+
+"Really!" said I ironically. "And no doubt he found you open wide to
+conviction--_now_." This a subtlety to let her know that I understood
+why she was seeking me.
+
+"No," she answered, lowering her eyes. "I knew--better than he."
+
+For an instant this, spoken in a voice I had long given up hope of ever
+hearing from her, staggered my cynical conviction. But--"Possibly she
+thinks she is sincere," reasoned my head with my heart; "even the sincerest
+women, brought up as was she, always have the calculator underneath; they
+deny it, they don't know it often, but there it is; with them, calculation
+is as involuntary and automatic as their pulse." So, I said to her,
+mockingly: "Doubtless your opinion of me has been improving steadily ever
+since you heard that Mrs. Langdon had recovered her husband."
+
+She winced, as if I had struck her. "Oh!" she murmured. If she had been
+the ordinary woman, who in every crisis with man instinctively resorts to
+weakness' strongest weakness, tears, I might have a different story to
+tell. But she fought back the tears in which her eyes were swimming and
+gathered herself together. "That is brutal," she said, with not a touch of
+haughtiness, but not humbly, either. "But I deserve it."
+
+"There was a time," I went on, swept in a swift current of cold rage,
+"there was a time when I would have taken you on almost any terms. A man
+never makes a complete fool of himself about a woman but once in his life,
+they say. I have done my stretch--and it is over."
+
+She sighed wearily. "Langdon came to see me soon after I left your house,
+and went to my uncle," she said. "I will tell you what happened."
+
+"I do not wish to hear," replied I, adding pointedly, "I have been waiting
+ever since you left for news of your plans."
+
+She grew white, and my heart smote me. She came into the room and seated
+herself. "Won't you stop, please, for a moment longer?" she said. "I hope
+that, at, least, we can part without bitterness. I understand now that
+everything is over between us. A woman's vanity makes her belief that a man
+cares for her die hard. I am convinced now--I assure you, I am. I shall
+trouble you no more about the past. But I have the right to ask you to hear
+me when I say that Langdon came, and that I myself sent him away; sent him
+back to his wife."
+
+"Touching self-sacrifice," said I ironically.
+
+"No," she replied. "I can not claim any credit. I sent him away only
+because you and Alva had taught me how to judge him better. I do not
+despise him as do you; I know too well what has made him what he is. But
+I had to send him away."
+
+My comment was an incredulous look and shrug. "I must be going," I said.
+
+"You do not believe me?" she asked.
+
+"In my place, would you believe?" replied I. "You say I have taught you.
+Well, you have taught me, too--for instance, that the years you've spent on
+your knees in the musty temple of conventionality before false gods have
+made you--fit only for the Langdon sort of thing. You can't learn how to
+stand erect, and your eyes can not bear the light."
+
+"I am sorry," she said slowly, hesitatingly, "that your faith in me died
+just when I might, perhaps, have justified it. Ours has been a pitiful
+series of misunderstandings."
+
+"A trap! A trap!" I was warning myself. "You've been a fool long enough,
+Blacklock." And aloud I said: "Well, Anita, the series is ended now.
+There's no longer any occasion for our lying or posing to each other.
+Any arrangements your uncle's lawyers suggest will be made."
+
+I was bowing, to leave without shaking hands with her. But she would not
+have it so. "Please!" she said, stretching out her long, slender arm and
+offering me her hand.
+
+What a devil possessed me that day! With every atom of me longing for her,
+I yet was able to take her hand and say, with a smile, that was, I doubt
+not, as mocking as my tone: "By all means let us be friends. And I trust
+you will not think me discourteous if I say that I shall feel safer in our
+friendship when we are both on neutral ground."
+
+As I was turning away, her look, my own heart, made me turn again. I caught
+her by the shoulders. I gazed into her eyes. "If I could only trust you,
+could only believe you!" I cried.
+
+"You cared for me when I wasn't worth it," she said. "Now that I am more
+like what you once imagined me, you do not care."
+
+Up between us rose Langdon's face--cynical, mocking, contemptuous. "Your
+heart is _his_! You told me so! Don't _lie_ to me!" I exclaimed.
+And before she could reply, I was gone.
+
+Out from under the spell of her presence, back among the tricksters and
+assassins, the traps and ambushes of Wall Street, I believed again;
+believed firmly the promptings of the devil that possessed me. "She would
+have given you a brief fool's paradise," said that devil. "Then what
+a hideous awakening!" And I cursed the day when New York's insidious
+snobbishness had tempted my vanity into starting me on that degrading chase
+after "respectability."
+
+"If she does not move to free herself soon," said I to myself, "I will put
+my own lawyer to work. My right eye offends me. I will pluck it out."
+
+
+
+
+XXXV. "WILD WEEK"
+
+
+"The Seven" made their fatal move on treacherous Updegraff's treacherous
+advice, I suspect. But they would not have adopted his suggestion had
+it not been so exactly congenial to their own temper of arrogance and
+tyranny and contempt for the people who meekly, year after year, presented
+themselves for the shearing with fatuous bleats of enthusiasm.
+
+"The Seven," of course, controlled directly, or indirectly, all but a
+few of the newspapers with which I had advertising contracts. They also
+controlled the main sources through which the press was supplied with
+news--and often and well they had used this control, and surprisingly
+cautious had they been not so to abuse it that the editors and the public
+would become suspicious. When my war was at its height, when I was
+beginning to congratulate myself that the huge magazines of "The Seven"
+were empty almost to the point at which they must sue for peace on my own
+terms, all in four days forty-three of my sixty-seven newspapers--and they
+the most important--notified me that they would no longer carry out their
+contracts to publish my daily letter. They gave as their reason, not the
+real one, fear of "The Seven," but fear that I would involve them in
+ruinous libel suits. I who had _legal_ proof for every statement I
+made; I who was always careful to understate! Next, one press association
+after another ceased to send out my letter as news, though they had been
+doing so regularly for months. The public had grown tired of the
+"sensation," they said.
+
+I countered with a telegram to one or more newspapers in every city and
+large town in the United States:
+
+"'The Seven' are trying to cut the wires between the truth and the public.
+If you wish my daily letter, telegraph me direct and I will send it at my
+expense."
+
+The response should have warned "The Seven." But it did not. Under their
+orders the telegraph companies refused to transmit the letter. I got an
+injunction. It was obeyed in typical, corrupt corporation fashion--they
+sent my matter, but so garbled that it was unintelligible. I appealed to
+the courts. In vain.
+
+To me, it was clear as sun in cloudless noonday sky that there could be but
+one result of this insolent and despotic denial of my rights and the rights
+of the people, this public confession of the truth of my charges. I turned
+everything salable or mortgageable into cash, locked the cash up in my
+private vaults, and waited for the cataclysm.
+
+Thursday--Friday--Saturday. Apparently all was tranquil; apparently the
+people accepted the Wall Street theory that I was an "exploded sensation."
+"The Seven" began to preen themselves; the strain upon them to maintain
+prices, if no less than for three months past, was not notably greater; the
+crisis would pass, I and my exposures would be forgotten, the routine of
+reaping the harvests and leaving only the gleanings for the sowers would
+soon be placidly resumed.
+
+Sunday. Roebuck, taken ill as he was passing the basket in the church of
+which he was the shining light, died at midnight--a beautiful, peaceful
+death, they say, with his daughter reading the Bible aloud, and his lips
+moving in prayer. Some hold that, had he lived, the tranquillity would have
+continued; but this is the view of those who can not realize that the tide
+of affairs is no more controlled by the "great men" than is the river led
+down to the sea by its surface flotsam, by which we measure the speed and
+direction of its current. Under that terrific tension, which to the shallow
+seemed a calm, something had to give way. If the dam had not yielded where
+Roebuck stood guard, it must have yielded somewhere else, or might have
+gone all in one grand crash.
+
+Monday. You know the story of the artist and his Statue of Grief--how
+he molded the features a hundred times, always failing, always getting
+an anti-climax, until at last in despair he gave up the impossible and
+finished the statue with a veil over the face. I have tried again and again
+to assemble words that would give some not too inadequate impression of
+that tremendous week in which, with a succession of explosions, each like
+the crack of doom, the financial structure that housed eighty millions of
+people burst, collapsed, was engulfed. I can not. I must leave it to your
+memory or your imagination.
+
+For years the financial leaders, crazed by the excess of power which the
+people had in ignorance and over-confidence and slovenly good-nature
+permitted them to acquire, had been tearing out the honest foundations on
+which alone so vast a structure can hope to rest solid and secure. They
+had been substituting rotten beams painted to look like stone and iron.
+The crash had to come; the sooner, the better--when a thing is wrong, each
+day's delay compounds the cost of righting it. So, with all the horrors of
+"Wild Week" in mind, all its physical and mental suffering, all its ruin
+and rioting and bloodshed, I still can insist that I am justly proud of my
+share in bringing it about. The blame and the shame are wholly upon those
+who made "Wild Week" necessary and inevitable.
+
+In catastrophes, the cry is "Each for himself!" But in a cataclysm, the
+obvious wise selfishness is generosity, and the cry is, "Stand together,
+for, singly, we perish." This was a cataclysm. No one could save himself,
+except the few who, taking my often-urged advice and following my example,
+had entered the ark of ready money. Farmer and artisan and professional man
+and laborer owed merchant; merchant owed banker; banker owed depositor. No
+one could pay because no one could get what was due him or could realize
+upon his property. The endless chain of credit that binds together the
+whole of modern society had snapped in a thousand places. It must be
+repaired, instantly and securely. But how--and by whom?
+
+I issued a clear statement of the situation; I showed in minute detail how
+the people standing together under the leadership of the honest men of
+property could easily force the big bandits to consent to an honest, just,
+rock-founded, iron-built reconstruction. My statement appeared in all the
+morning papers throughout the land. Turn back to it; read it. You will say
+that I was right. Well--
+
+Toward two o'clock Inspector Crawford came into my private office, escorted
+by Joe. I saw in Joe's seamed, green-gray face that some new danger had
+arisen. "You've got to get out of this," said he. "The mob in front of our
+place fills the three streets. It's made up of crowds turned away from the
+suspended banks."
+
+I remembered the sullen faces and the hisses as I entered the office that
+morning earlier than usual. My windows were closed to keep out the street
+noises; but now that my mind was up from the work in which I had been
+absorbed, I could hear the sounds of many voices, even through the thick
+plate glass.
+
+"We've got two hundred policemen here," said the inspector. "Five hundred
+more are on the way. But--really, Mr. Blacklock, unless we can get you
+away, there'll be serious trouble. Those damn newspapers! Every one of them
+denounced you this morning, and the people are in a fury against you."
+
+I went toward the door.
+
+"Hold on, Matt!" cried Joe, springing at me and seizing me, "Where are you
+going?"
+
+"To tell them what I think of them," replied I, sweeping him aside. For my
+blood was up, and I was enraged against the poor cowardly fools.
+
+"For God's sake don't show yourself!" he begged. "If you don't care for
+your own life, think of the rest of us. We've fixed a route through
+buildings and under streets up to Broadway. Your electric is waiting for
+you there."
+
+"It won't do," I said. "I'll face 'em--it's the only way."
+
+I went to the window, and was about to throw up one of the sunblinds for
+a look at them; Crawford stopped me. "They'll stone the building and then
+storm it," said he. "You must go at once, by the route we've arranged."
+
+"Even if you tell them I'm gone, they won't believe it," replied I.
+
+"We can look out for that," said Joe, eager to save me, and caring nothing
+about consequences to himself. But I had unsettled the inspector.
+
+"Send for my electric to come down here," said I. "I'll go out alone and
+get in it and drive away."
+
+"That'll never do!" cried Joe.
+
+But the inspector said: "You're right, Mr. Blacklock. It's a bare chance.
+You may take 'em by surprise. Again, some fellow may yell and throw a stone
+and--" He did not need to finish.
+
+Joe looked wildly at me. "You mustn't do it, Matt!" he exclaimed. "You'll
+precipitate a riot, Crawford, if you permit this."
+
+But the inspector was telephoning for my electric. Then he went into the
+adjoining room, where he commanded a view of the entrance. Silence between
+Joe and me until he returned.
+
+"The electric is coming down the street," said he.
+
+I rose. "Good," said I. "I'm ready."
+
+"Wait until the other police get here," advised Crawford.
+
+"If the mob is in the temper you describe," said I, "the less that's done
+to irritate it the better. I must go out as if I hadn't a suspicion of
+danger."
+
+The inspector eyed me with an expression that was highly flattering to my
+vanity.
+
+"I'll go with you," said Joe, starting up from his stupor.
+
+"No," I replied. "You and the other fellows can take the underground route,
+if it's necessary."
+
+"It won't be necessary," put in the inspector. "As soon as I'm rid of you
+and have my additional force, I'll clear the streets." He went to the door.
+"Wait, Mr. Blacklock, until I've had time to get out to my men."
+
+Perhaps ten seconds after he disappeared, I, without further words, put on
+my hat, lit a cigar, shook Joe's wet, trembling hand, left in it my private
+keys and the memorandum of the combination of my private vault. Then I
+sallied forth.
+
+I had always had a ravenous appetite for excitement, and I had been in
+many a tight place; but for the first time there seemed to me to be an
+equilibrium between my internal energy and the outside situation. As I
+stepped from my street door and glanced about me, I had no feeling of
+danger. The whole situation seemed so simple. There stood the electric,
+just across the narrow stretch of sidewalk; there were the two hundred
+police, under Crawford's orders, scattered everywhere through the crowd,
+and good-naturedly jostling and pushing to create distraction. Without
+haste, I got into my machine. I calmly met the gaze of those thousands,
+quiet as so many barrels of gunpowder before the explosion. The chauffeur
+turned the machine.
+
+"Go slow," I called to him. "You might hurt somebody."
+
+But he had his orders from the inspector. He suddenly darted ahead at full
+speed. The mob scattered in every direction, and we were in Broadway, bound
+up town full-tilt, before I or the mob realized what he was about.
+
+I called to him to slow down. He paid not the slightest attention. I leaned
+from the window and looked up at him. It was not my chauffeur; it was a man
+who had the unmistakable but indescribable marks of the plain-clothes
+policeman.
+
+"Where are you going?" I shouted.
+
+"You'll find out when we arrive," he shouted back, grinning.
+
+I settled myself and waited--what else was there to do? Soon I guessed we
+were headed for the pier off which my yacht was anchored. As we dashed on
+to it, I saw that it was filled with police, both in uniform and in plain
+clothes. I descended. A detective sergeant stepped up to me. "We are here
+to help you to your yacht," he explained. "You wouldn't be safe anywhere in
+New York--no more would the place that harbored you."
+
+He had both common sense and force on his side. I got into the launch. Four
+detective sergeants accompanied me and went aboard with me. "Go ahead,"
+said one of them to my captain. He looked at me for orders.
+
+"We are in the hands of our guests," said I. "Let them have their way."
+
+We steamed down the bay and out to sea.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From Maine to Texas the cry rose and swelled:
+
+"Blacklock is responsible! What does it matter whether he lied or told the
+truth? See the results of his crusade! He ought to be pilloried! He ought
+to be killed! He is the enemy of the human race. He has almost plunged
+the whole civilized world into bankruptcy and civil war." And they turned
+eagerly to the very autocrats who had been oppressing them. "You have the
+genius for finance and industry. Save us!"
+
+If you did not know, you could guess how those patriots with the "genius
+for finance and industry" responded. When they had done, when their program
+was in effect, Langdon, Melville and Updegraff were the three richest men
+in the country, and as powerful as Octavius, Antony and Lepidus after
+Philippi. They had saddled upon the reorganized finance and industry of the
+nation heavier taxes than ever, and a vaster and more expensive and more
+luxurious army of their parasites.
+
+The people had risen for financial and industrial freedom; they had paid
+its fearful price; then, in senseless panic and terror, they flung it away.
+I have read that one of the inscriptions on Apollo's temple at Delphi was,
+"Man, the fool of the farce." Truly, the gods must have created us for
+their amusement; and when Olympus palls, they ring up the curtain on some
+such screaming comedy as was that. It "makes the fancy chuckle, while the
+heart doth ache."
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI. "BLACK MATT'S" TRIUMPH
+
+
+My enemies caused it to be widely believed that "Wild Week" was my
+deliberate contrivance for the sole purpose of enriching myself. Thus they
+got me a reputation for almost superhuman daring, for satanic astuteness at
+cold-blooded calculation. I do not deserve the admiration and respect that
+my success-worshiping fellow countrymen lay at my feet. True, I did greatly
+enrich myself; but _not until the Monday after Wild Week_.
+
+Not until I had pondered on men and events with the assistance of the
+newspapers my detective protectors and jailers permitted to be brought
+aboard--not until the last hope of turning Wild Week to the immediate
+public advantage had sputtered out like a lost man's last match, did I
+think of benefiting myself, of seizing the opportunity to strengthen myself
+for the future. On Monday morning, I said to Sergeant Mulholland: "I want
+to go ashore at once and send some telegrams."
+
+The sergeant is one of the detective bureau's "dress-suit men." He is by
+nature phlegmatic and cynical. His experience has put over that a veneer
+of weary politeness. We had become great friends during our enforced
+inseparable companionship. For Joe, who looked on me somewhat as a mother
+looks on a brilliant but erratic son, had, as I soon discovered, elaborated
+a wonderful program for me. It included a watch on me day and night, lest,
+through rage or despondency, I should try to do violence to myself. A fine
+character, that Joe! But, to return, Mulholland answered my request for
+shore-leave with a soothing smile. "Can't do it, Mr. Blacklock," he said.
+"Our orders are positive. But when we put in at New London and send ashore
+for further instructions, and for the papers, you can send in your
+messages."
+
+"As you please," said I. And I gave him a cipher telegram to Joe--an order
+to invest my store of cash, which meant practically my whole fortune, in
+the gilt-edged securities that were to be had for cash at a small fraction
+of their value.
+
+This on the Monday after Wild Week, please note. I would have helped the
+people to deliver themselves from the bondage of the bandits. They would
+not have it. I would even have sacrificed my all in trying to save them in
+spite of themselves. But what is one sane man against a stampeded multitude
+of maniacs? For confirmation of my disinterestedness, I point to all those
+weeks and months during which I waged costly warfare on "The Seven," who
+would gladly have given me more than I now have, could I have been bribed
+to desist. But, when I was compelled to admit that I had overestimated my
+fellow men, that the people wear the yoke because they have not yet become
+intelligent and competent enough to be free, then and not until then did I
+abandon the hopeless struggle.
+
+And I did not go over to the bandits; I simply resumed my own neglected
+personal affairs and made Wild Week at least a personal triumph.
+
+There is nothing of the spectacular in my make-up. I have no belief in
+the value of martyrs and martyrdom. Causes are not won--and in my humble
+opinion never have been won--in the graveyards. Alive and afoot and armed,
+and true to my cause, I am the dreaded menace to systematic and respectable
+robbery. What possible good could have come of mobs killing me and the
+bandits dividing my estate?
+
+But why should I seek to justify myself? I care not a rap for the opinion
+of my fellow men. They sought my life when they should have been hailing me
+as a deliverer; now, they look up to me because they falsely believe me
+guilty of an infamy.
+
+My guards expected to be recalled on Tuesday. But Melville heard what
+Crawford had done about me, and straightway used his influence to have me
+detained until the new grip of the old gang was secure. Saturday afternoon
+we put in at Newport for the daily communication with the shore. When the
+launch returned, Mulholland brought the papers to me, lounging aft in a
+mass of cushions under the awning. "We are going ashore," said he. "The
+order has come."
+
+I had a sudden sense of loneliness. "I'll take you down to New York," said
+I. "I prefer to land my guests where I shipped them."
+
+As we steamed slowly westward I read the papers. The country was rapidly
+readjusting itself, was returning to the conditions before the upheaval.
+The "financiers"--the same old gang, except for a few of the weaker
+brethren ruined and a few strong outsiders, who had slipped in during the
+confusion--were employing all the old, familiar devices for deceiving and
+robbing the people. The upset milking-stool was righted, and the milker was
+seated again and busy, the good old cow standing without so much as shake
+of horn or switch of tail. "Mulholland," said I, "what do you think of this
+business of living?"
+
+"I'll tell you, Mr. Blacklock," said he. "I used to fuss and fret a good
+deal about it. But I don't any more. I've got a house up in the Bronx,
+and a bit of land round it. And there's Mrs. Mulholland and four little
+Mulhollands and me--that's my country and my party and my religion. The
+rest is off my beat, and I don't give a damn for it. I don't care which
+fakir gets to be president, or which swindler gets to be rich. Everything
+works out somehow, and the best any man can do is to mind his own
+business."
+
+"Mulholland--Mrs. Mulholland--four little Mulhollands," said I
+reflectively. "That's about as much as one man could attend to properly.
+And--you are 'on the level,' aren't you?"
+
+"Some say honesty's the best policy," replied he. "Some say it isn't. I
+don't know, and I don't care, whether it is or it isn't. It's _my_
+policy. And we six seem to have got along on it so far."
+
+I sent my "guests" ashore the next morning.
+
+"No, I'll stay aboard," said I to Mulholland, as he stood aside for me to
+precede him down the gangway from the launch. I went into the watch-pocket
+of my trousers and drew out the folded two one-thousand-dollar bills I
+always carried--it was a habit formed in my youthful, gambling days. I
+handed him one of the bills. He hesitated.
+
+"For the four little Mulhollands," I urged.
+
+He put it in his pocket. I watched him and his men depart with a heavy
+heart. I felt alone, horribly alone, without a tie or an interest. Some of
+the morning papers spoke respectfully of me as one of the strong men who
+had ridden the flood and had been landed by it on the heights of wealth
+and power. Admiration and envy lurked even in sneers at my "unscrupulous
+plotting." Since I had wealth, plenty of wealth, I did not need character.
+Of what use was character in such a world except as a commodity to exchange
+for wealth?
+
+"Any orders, sir?" interrupted my captain.
+
+I looked round that vast and vivid scene of sea and land activities. I
+looked along the city's titanic sky-line--the mighty fortresses of trade
+and commerce piercing the heavens and flinging to the wind their black
+banners of defiance. I felt that I was under the walls of hell itself.
+
+"To get away from this," replied I to the waiting captain. "Go back down
+the Sound--to Dawn Hill."
+
+Yes, I would go to the peaceful, soothing country, to my dogs and horses
+and those faithful servants bound to me by our common love for the same
+animals. "Men to cross swords with, to amuse oneself with," I mused; "but
+dogs and horses to live with." I pictured myself at the kennels--the joyful
+uproar the instant instinct warned the dogs of my coming; how they would
+leap and bark and tremble in a very ecstasy of delight as I stood among
+them; how jealous all the others would be, as I selected one to caress.
+
+"Send her ahead as fast as she'll go," I called to the captain.
+
+As the _Albatross_ steamed into the little harbor, I saw Mowbray
+Langdon's _Indolence_ at anchor. I glanced toward Steuben Point--where
+his cousins, the Vivians, lived--and thought I recognized his launch at
+their pier. We saluted the _Indolence_; the _Indolence_ saluted
+us. My launch was piped away and took me ashore. I strolled along the path
+that wound round the base of the hill toward the kennels. At the crossing
+of the path down from the house, I paused and lingered on the glimpse
+of one of the corner towers of the great showy palace. I was muttering
+something--I listened to myself. It was: "Mulholland, Mrs. Mulholland and
+the four little Mulhollands." And I felt like laughing aloud, such a joke
+was it that I should be envying a policeman his potato patch and his fat
+wife and his four brats, and that he should be in a position to pity me.
+
+You may be imagining that, through all, Anita had been dominating my mind.
+That is the way it is in the romances; but not in life. No doubt there are
+men who brood upon the impossible, and moon and maunder away their lives
+over the grave of a dead love; no doubt there are people who will say that,
+because I did not shoot Langdon or her, or myself, or fly to a desert or
+pose in the crowded places of the world as the last scene of a tragedy,
+I therefore cared little about her. I offer them this suggestion: A man
+strong enough to give a love worth a woman's while is strong enough to live
+on without her when he finds he may not live with her.
+
+As I stood there that summer day, looking toward the crest of the hill,
+at the mocking mausoleum of my dead dream, I realized what the incessant
+battle of the Street had meant to me. "There is peace for me only in the
+storm," said I. "But, thank God, there is peace for me somewhere."
+
+Through the foliage I had glimpses of some one coming slowly down the
+zigzag path. Presently, at one of the turnings half-way up the hill,
+appeared Mowbray Langdon. "What is he doing here," thought I, scarcely able
+to believe my eyes. "Here of all places!" And then I forgot the strangeness
+of his being at Dawn Hill in the strangeness of his expression. For it was
+apparent, even at the distance which separated us, that he was suffering
+from some great and recent blow. He looked old and haggard; he walked like
+a man who neither knows nor cares where he is going.
+
+He had not seen me, and my impulse was to avoid him by continuing on toward
+the kennels. I had no especial feeling against him; I had not lost Anita
+because she cared for him or he for her, but because she did not care for
+me--simply that to meet would be awkward, disagreeable for us both. At the
+slight noise of my movement to go on, he halted, glanced round eagerly,
+as if he hoped the sound had been made by some one he wished to see. His
+glance fell on me. He stopped short, was for an instant disconcerted; then
+his face lighted up with devilish joy. "You!" he cried. "Just the man!" And
+he descended more rapidly.
+
+At first I could make nothing of this remark. But as he drew nearer and
+nearer, and his ugly mood became more and more apparent, I felt that he was
+looking forward to provoking me into giving him a distraction from whatever
+was tormenting him. I waited. A few minutes and we were face to face, I
+outwardly calm, but my anger slowly lighting up as he deliberately applied
+to it the torch of his insolent eyes. He was wearing his old familiar
+air of cynical assurance. Evidently, with his recovered fortune, he had
+recovered his conviction of his great superiority to the rest of the human
+race--the child had climbed back on the chair that made it tall and had
+forgotten its tumble. And I was wondering again that I, so short a time
+before, had been crude enough to be fascinated and fooled by those tawdry
+posings and pretenses. For the man, as I now saw him, was obviously shallow
+and vain, a slave to those poor "man-of-the-world" passions--ostentation
+and cynicism and skill at vices old as mankind and tedious as a treadmill,
+the commonplace routine of the idle and foolish and purposeless. A clever,
+handsome fellow, but the more pitiful that he was by nature above the uses
+to which he prostituted himself.
+
+He fought hard to keep his eyes steadily on mine; but they would waver and
+shift. Not, however, before I had found deep down in them the beginnings
+of fear. "You see, you were mistaken," said I. "You have nothing to say to
+me--or I to you."
+
+He knew I had looked straight to the bottom of his real self, and had seen
+the coward that is in every man who has been bred to appearances only. Up
+rose his vanity, the coward's substitute for courage.
+
+"You think I am afraid of you?" he sneered, bluffing and blustering like
+the school bully.
+
+"I don't in the least care whether you are or not," replied I. "What are
+you doing here, anyhow?"
+
+It was as if I had thrown off the cover of a furnace. "I came to get the
+woman I love," he cried. "You stole her from me! You tricked me! But, by
+God, Blacklock, I'll never pause until I get her back and punish you!"
+He was brave enough now, drunk with the fumes from his brave words. "All
+my life," he raged arrogantly on, "I've had whatever I wanted. I've let
+nothing interfere--nothing and nobody. I've been too forbearing with
+you--first, because I knew she could never care for you, and, then, because
+I rather admired your pluck and impudence. I like to see fellows kick their
+way up among us from the common people."
+
+I put my hand on his shoulder. No doubt the fiend that rose within me, as
+from the dead, looked at him from my eyes. He has great physical strength,
+but he winced under that weight and grip, and across his face flitted the
+terror that must come to any man at first sense of being in the angry
+clutch of one stronger than he. I slowly released him--I had tested and
+realized my physical superiority; to use it would be cheap and cowardly.
+
+"You can't provoke me to descend to your level," said I, with the easy
+philosophy of him who clearly has the better of the argument.
+
+He was shaking from head to foot, not with terror, but with impotent rage.
+How much we owe to accident! The mere accident of my physical superiority
+had put him at hopeless disadvantage; had made him feel inferior to me as
+no victory of mental or moral superiority could possibly have done. And I
+myself felt a greater contempt for him than the discovery of his treachery
+and his shallowness had together inspired.
+
+"I shan't indulge in flapdoodle," I went on. "I'll be frank. A year ago, if
+any man had faced me with a claim upon a woman who was married to me, I'd
+probably have dealt with him as your vanity and what you call 'honor' would
+force you to try to deal with a similar situation. But I live to learn, and
+I'm, fortunately, not afraid to follow a new light. There is the vanity of
+so-called honor; there as also the demand of justice--of fair play. As I
+have told her, so I now tell you--she is free to go. But I shall say one
+thing to you that I did not say to her. If you do not deal fairly with her,
+I shall see to it that there are ten thorns to every rose in that bed of
+roses on which you lie. You are contemptible in many ways--perhaps that's
+why women like you. But there must be some good in you, or possibilities of
+good, or you could not have won and kept her love."
+
+He was staring at me with a dazed expression. I rather expected him to show
+some of that amused contempt with which men of his sort always receive a
+new idea that is beyond the range of their narrow, conventional minds. For
+I did not expect him to understand why I was not only willing, but even
+eager, to relinquish a woman whom I could hold only by asserting a property
+right in her. And I do not think he did understand me, though his manner
+changed to a sort of grudging respect. He was, I believe, about to make
+some impulsive, generous speech, when we heard the quick strokes of
+iron-shod hoofs on the path from the kennels and the stables--is there
+any sound more arresting? Past us at a gallop swept a horse, on his
+back--Anita. She was not in riding-habit; the wind fluttered the sleeves of
+her blouse, blew her uncovered hair this way and that about her beautiful
+face. She sped on toward the landing, though I fancied she had seen us.
+
+Anita at Dawn Hill--Langdon, in a furious temper, descending from the house
+toward the landing--Anita presently, riding like mad--"to overtake him,"
+thought I. And I read confirmation in his triumphant eyes. In another
+mood, I suppose my fury would have been beyond my power to restrain it.
+Just then--the day grew dark for me, and I wanted to hide away somewhere.
+Heart-sick, I was ashamed for her, hated myself for having blundered into
+surprising her.
+
+She reappeared at the turn round which she had vanished. I now tooted that
+she was riding without saddle or bridle, with only a halter round the
+horse's neck--then she had seen us, had stopped and come back as soon as
+she could. She dropped from the horse, looked swiftly at me, at him, at me
+again, with intense anxiety.
+
+"I saw your yacht in the harbor only a moment ago," she said to me. She was
+almost panting. "I feared you might meet him. So I came."
+
+"As you see, he is quite--intact," said I. "I must ask that you and he
+leave the place at once." And I went rapidly along the path toward the
+kennels.
+
+An exclamation from Langdon forced me to turn in spite of myself. He was
+half-kneeling, was holding her in his arms. At that sight, the savage in
+me shook himself free. I dashed toward them with I knew not what curses
+bursting from me. Langdon, intent upon her, did not realize until I sent
+him reeling backward to the earth and snatched her up. Her white face, her
+closed eyes, her limp form made my fury instantly collapse. In my confusion
+I thought that she was dead. I laid her gently on the grass and supported
+her head, so small, so gloriously crowned, the face so still and sweet and
+white, like the stainless entrance to a stainless shrine. How that horrible
+fear changed my whole way of looking at her, at him, at her and him, at
+everything!
+
+Her eyelids were quivering--her eyes were opening--her bosom was rising and
+falling slowly as she drew long, uncertain breaths. She shuddered, sat up,
+started up. "Go! go!" she cried. "Bring him back! Bring him back! Bring
+him--"
+
+There she recognized me. "Oh," she said, and gave a great sigh of relief.
+She leaned against a tree and looked at Langdon. "You are still here? Then
+tell him."
+
+Langdon gazed sullenly at the ground. "I can't," he answered. "I don't
+believe it. Besides--he has given you to me. Let us go. Let me take you to
+the Vivians." He threw out his arms in a wild, passionate gesture; he was
+utterly unlike himself. His emotion burst through and shattered pose and
+cynicism and hard crust of selfishness like the exploding powder bursting
+the shell. "I can't give you up, Anita!" he exclaimed in a tone of utter
+desperation. "I can't! I can't!"
+
+But her gaze was all this time steadily on me, as if she feared I would go,
+should she look away. "I will tell you myself," she said rapidly, to me.
+"We--uncle Howard and I--read in the papers how they had all turned against
+you, and he brought me over here. He has been telegraphing for you. This
+morning he went to town to search for you. About an hour ago Langdon came.
+I refused to see him, as I have ever since the time I told you about at
+Alva's. He persisted, until at last I had the servant request him to leave
+the house."
+
+"But _now_ there's no longer any reason for your staying, Anita," he
+pleaded. "He has said you are free. Why stay when _you_ would really
+no more be here than if you were to go, leaving one of your empty dresses?"
+
+She had not for an instant taken her gaze from me; and so strange were her
+eyes, so compelling, that I seemed unable to move or speak.
+
+But now she released me to blaze upon him--and never shall I forget any
+detail of her face or voice as she said to him: "That is false, Mowbray
+Langdon. I told you the truth when I told you I loved him!"
+
+So violent was her emotion that she had to pause for self-control. And I?
+I was overwhelmed, dazed, stunned. When she went on, she was looking at
+neither of us. "Yes, I loved him, almost from the first--from the day he
+came to the box at the races. I was ashamed, poor creature that my parents
+had made me! I was ashamed of it. And I tried to hate him, and thought I
+did. And when he showed me that he no longer cared, my pride goaded me into
+the folly of trying to listen to you. But I loved him more than ever. And
+as you and he stand here, I am ashamed again--ashamed that I was ever so
+blind and ignorant and prejudiced as to compare him with"--she looked at
+Langdon--"with you. Do you believe me now--now that I humble myself before
+him here in your presence?"
+
+I should have had no heart at all if I had not felt pity for him. His face
+was gray, and on it were those signs of age that strong emotion brings to
+the surface after forty. "You could have convinced me in no other way," he
+replied, after a silence, and in a voice I should not have recognized.
+
+Silence again. Presently he raised his head, and with something of his old
+cynicism bowed to her.
+
+"You have avenged much and many," said he. "I have often had a presentiment
+that my day of wrath would come."
+
+He lifted his hat, bowed to me without looking at me, and, drawing the
+tatters of his pose still further over his wounds, moved away toward the
+landing.
+
+I, still in a stupor, watched him until he had disappeared. When I turned
+to her, she dropped her eyes. "Uncle Howard will be back this afternoon,"
+said she. "If I may, I'll stay at the house until he comes to take me."
+
+A weary, half-suppressed sigh escaped from her. I knew how she must be
+reading my silence, but I was still unable to speak. She went to the horse,
+browsing near by; she stroked his muzzle. Lingeringly she twined her
+fingers in his mane, as if about to spring to his back! That reminded me of
+a thousand and one changes in her--little changes, each a trifle in itself,
+yet, taken all together, making a complete transformation.
+
+"Let me help you," I managed to say. And I bent, and made a step of my
+hand.
+
+She touched her fingers to my shoulder, set her narrow, graceful foot upon
+my palm. But she did not rise. I glanced up; she was gazing wistfully down
+at me.
+
+"Women have to learn by experience just as do men," said she forlornly.
+"Yet men will not tolerate it."
+
+I suppose I must suddenly have looked what I was unable to put into
+words--for her eyes grew very wide, and, with a cry that was a sigh and a
+sob, and a laugh and a caress all in one, she slid into my arms and her
+face was burning against mine.
+
+"Do you remember the night at the theater," she murmured, "when your lips
+almost touched my neck?--I loved you then--Black Matt--_Black Matt_!"
+
+And I found voice; and the horse wandered away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What more?
+
+How Langdon eased his pain and soothed his vanity? Whenever an old
+Babylonian nobleman had a misfortune, he used to order all his slaves to be
+lashed, that their shrieks and moans might join his in appeasing the god
+who was punishing him. Langdon went back to Wall Street, and for months he
+made all within his power suffer; in his fury he smashed fortunes, lowered
+wages, raised prices, reveled in the blasts of a storm of impotent curses.
+But you do not care to hear about that.
+
+As for myself, what could I tell that you do not know or guess? Now that
+all men, even the rich, even the parasites of the bandits, groan under
+their tyranny and their taxes, is it strange that the resentment against me
+has disappeared, that my warnings are remembered, that I am popular? I
+might forecast what I purpose to do when the time is ripe. But I am not
+given to prophecy. I will only say that I think I shall, in due season, go
+into action again--profiting by my experience in the futility of trying to
+hasten evolution by revolution. Meanwhile--
+
+As I write, I can look up from the paper, and out upon the lawn, at a
+woman--what a woman!--teaching a baby to walk. And, assisting her, there
+is a boy, himself not yet an expert at walking. I doubt if you'd have to
+glance twice at that boy to know he is my son. Well--I have borrowed a leaf
+from Mulholland's philosophy. I commend it to you.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Deluge, by David Graham Phillips
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DELUGE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 7832.txt or 7832.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/7/8/3/7832/
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.