At the beginning of April, the situation in the three stocks Percival had bought so heavily grew undeniably tense. Consolidated Copper went from 109 to 103 in a week. But Percival's enthusiasm suffered little abatement from the drop. "You see," he reminded Uncle Peter, "it isn't exactly what I expected, but it's right in line with it, so it doesn't alarm me. I knew those fellows inside were bound to hammer it down if they could. It wouldn't phase me a bit if it sagged to 95."
"My! My!" Uncle Peter exclaimed, with warm approval, "the way you master this business certainly does winme. I tell you, it's a mighty good thing we got your brains to depend on. I'm all right the other side of Council Bluffs, but I'm a tenderfoot here, sure, where everybody's tryin' to get the best of you. You see, out there, everybody tries to make the best of it. But here they try to get the best of it. I told that to one of them smarties last night. But you'll put them in their place all right. You know both ends of the game and the middle. We certainly got a right to be proud of you, son. Dan'l J. liked big propositions himself—but, well, I'd just like to have him see the nerve you've showed, that's all."
Uncle Peter's professions of confidence were unfailing, and Percival took new hope and faith in his judgment from them daily.
Nevertheless, as the weeks passed, and the mysterious insiders succeeded in their design of keeping the stock from rising, he came to feel a touch of anxiety. More, indeed, than he was able to communicate to Uncle Peter, without confessing outright that he had lost faith in himself. That he was unable to do, even if it were true, which he doubted. The Bines fortune was now hanging, as to all but some of the Western properties, on the turning of the three stocks. Yet the old man's confidence in the young man's acumen was invulnerable. No shaft that Percival was able to fashion had point enough to pierce it. And he was both to batter it down, for he still had the gambler's faith in his luck.
"You got your father's head in business matters," was Uncle Peter's invariable response to any suggestion of failure. "I know that much—spite of what all these gossips say—and that's all Iwantto know. And of course you can't ever be no Shepler 'less you take your share of chances. Only don't askmyadvice. You're master of the game, and we're all layin' right smack down on your genius fur it."
Whereupon the young man, with confidence in himself newly inflated, would hurry off to the stock tickers. He had ceased to buy the stocks outright, and for several weeks had bought only on margins.
"There was one rule in poker your pa had," said Uncle Peter. "If a hand is worth calling on, it's worth raising on. He jest neverwouldcall. If he didn't think a hand was worth raising, he'd bunch it in with the discards, and wait fur another deal. I don't know much about the game, buthesaid it was a sound rule, and if it was sound in poker, why it's got to be sound in this game. That's all I can tell you. You know what you hold, and if 'tain't a hand to lay down, it must be a hand to raise on. Of course, if you'd been brash and ignorant in your first calculations—if you'd made a fool of yourself at the start—but shucks! you're the son of Daniel J. Bines, ain't you?"
The rule and the clever provocation had their effect.
"I'll raise as long as I have a chip left, Uncle Peter. Why, only to-day I had a tip that came straight from Shepler, though he never dreamed it would reach me. That Pacific Cable bill is going to be rushed through at this session of Congress, sure, and that means enough increased demand to send Consolidated back where it was. And then, when it comes out that they've got those Rio Tinto mines by the throat, well, this anvil chorus will have to stop, and those Federal Oil sharks and Shepler will be wondering how I had the face to stay in."
The published rumours regarding Consolidated began to conflict very sharply. Percival read them all hungrily, disregarding those that did not confirm his own opinions. He called them irresponsible newspaper gossip, or believed them to be inspired by the clique for its own ends.
He studied the history of copper until he knew all its ups and downs since the great electrical development began in 1887. When Fouts, the broker he traded most heavily with, suggested that the Consolidated Company was skating on thin ice, that it might, indeed, be going through the same experience that shattered the famous Secretan corner a dozen years before, Percival pointed out unerringly the vital difference in the circumstances. The Consolidated had reduced the production of its controlled mines, and the price was bound to be maintained. When his adviser suggested that the companies not in the combine might cut the price, he brought up the very lively rumours of a "gentlemen's agreement" with the "non-combine" producers.
"Of course, there's Calumet and Hecla. I know that couldn't be gunned into the combination. They could pay dividends with copper at ten cents a pound. But the other independents know which side of their stock is spread with dividends, all right."
When it was further suggested that the Rio Tinto mines had sold ahead for a year, with the result that European imports from the United States had fallen off, and that the Consolidated could not go on for ever holding up the price, Percival said nothing.
The answer to that was the secret negotiations for control of the European output, which would make the Consolidated master of the copper world. Instead of disclosing this, he pretended craftily to be encouraged by the mere generally hopeful outlook in all lines. Western Trolley, too, might be overcapitalised, and Union Cordage might also be in the hands of a piratical clique; but the demand for trolley lines was growing every day, and cordage products were not going out of fashion by any means.
"You see," he said to his adviser, "here's what the most conservative man in the Street says in this afternoon's paper. 'That copper must necessarily break badly, and the whole boom collapse I do not believe. There is enough prosperity to maintain a strong demand for the metal through another year at least. As to Western Trolley and Union Cordage, the two other stocks about which doubt is now being so widely expressed in the Street, I am persuaded that they are both due to rise, not sensationally, but at a healthy upward rate that makes them sound investments!'
"There," said Percival, "there's the judgment of a man that knows the game, but doesn't happen to have a dollar in either stock, and he doesn't know one or two things that I know, either. Just hypothecate ten thousand of those Union Cordage shares and five thousand Western Trolley, and buy Consolidated on a twenty per cent margin. I want to get bigger action. There's a good rule in poker: if your hand is worth calling, it's worth raising."
"I like your nerve," said the broker.
"Well, I know some one who has a sleeve with something up it, that's all."
By the third week in April, it was believed that his holdings of Consolidated were the largest in the Street, excepting those of the Federal Oil people. Uncle Peter was delighted by the magnitude of his operations, and by his newly formed habits of industry.
"It'll be the makings of the boy," he said to Mrs. Bines in her son's presence. "Not that I care so much myself about all the millions he'll pile up, but it gives him a business training, and takes him out of the pin-head class. I bet Shepler himself will be takin' off his silk hat to your son, jest as soon as he's made this turn in copper—if he has enough of Dan'l J.'s grit to hang on—and I think he has."
"They needn't wait another day for me," Percival told him later. "The family treasure is about all in now, except ma's amethyst earrings, and the hair watch-chain Grandpa Cummings had. Of course I'm holding what I promised for Burman. But that rise can't hold off much longer, and the only thing I'll do, from now on, is to hock a few blocks of the stock I bought outright, and buy on margins, so's to get bigger action."
"My! My! you jest do fairly dazzle me," exclaimed the old man, delightedly. "Oh, I guess your pa wouldn't be at all proud of you if he could see it. I tell you, this family's all right while you keep hearty."
"Well, I'm not pushing my chest out any," said the young man, with becoming modesty, "but I don't mind telling you it will be the biggest thing ever pulled off down there by any one man."
"That's the true Western spirit," declared Uncle Peter, beside himself with enthusiasm. "We do things big when we bother with 'em at all. We ain't afraid of any pikers like Shepler, with his little two and five thousand lots. Oh! I can jest hear 'em callin' you hard names down in that Wall Street—Napoleon of Finance and Copper King and all like that—in about thirty days!"
He accepted Percival's invitation that afternoon to go down into the Street with him. They stopped for a moment in the visitors' gallery of the Stock Exchange and looked down into the mob of writhing, dishevelled, shouting brokers. In and out, the throng swirled upon itself, while above its muddy depths surged a froth of hands in frenzied gesticulation. The frantic movement and din of shrieks disturbed Uncle Peter.
"Faro is such a lot quieter game," was his comment; "so much more ca'm and restful. What a pity, now, 'tain't as Christian!"
Then they made the rounds of the brokers' offices in New, Broad, and Wall Streets.
They reached the office of Fouts, in the, latter street, just as the Exchange had closed. In the outer trading-room groups of men were still about the tickers, rather excitedly discussing the last quotations. Percival made his way toward one of them with a dim notion that he might be concerned. He was relieved when he saw Gordon Blythe, suave and smiling, in the midst of the group, still regarding the tape he held in his hands. Blythe, too, had plunged in copper. He had been one of the few as sanguine as Percival—and Blythe's manner now reassured him. Copper had obviously not gone wrong.
"Ah, Blythe, how did we close? Mr. Blythe, my grandfather, Mr. Bines."
Blythe was the model of easy, indolent, happy middle-age. His tall hat, frock coat with a carnation in the lapel, the precise crease of his trousers, the spickness of his patent-leathers and his graceful confidence of manner, proclaimed his mind to be free from all but the pleasant things of life. He greeted Uncle Peter airily.
"Come down to see how we do it, eh, Mr. Bines? It's vastly engrossing, on my word. Here's copper just closed at 93, after opening strong this morning at 105. I hardly fancied, you know, it could fall off so many of those wretched little points. Rumours that the Consolidated has made large sales of the stuff in London at sixteen, I believe. One never can be quite aware of what really governs these absurd fluctuations."
Percival was staring at Blythe in unconcealed amazement. He turned, leaving Uncle Peter still chatting with him, and sought Fouts in the inner office. When he came out ten minutes later Uncle Peter was waiting for him alone.
"Your friend Mr. Blythe is a clever sort of man, jolly and light-hearted as a boy."
"Let's go out and have a drink, before we go up-town."
In thecaféof the Savarin, to which he led Uncle Peter, they saw Blythe again. He was seated at one of the tables with a younger man. Uncle Peter and Percival sat down at a table near by.
Blythe was having trouble about his wine.
"Now, George," he was saying, "give us a reallivelypint of wine. You see, yourself, that cork isn't fresh; show it to Frank there, and look at the wine itself—come now, George! Hardly a bubble in it! Tell Frank I'll leave it to him, by Gad! if this bottle is right."
The waiter left with the rejected wine, and they heard Blythe resume to his companion, with the relish of a connoisseur:
"It's simply a matter of genius, old chap—you understand?—to tell good wine—that is really to discriminate finely. If a chap's not born with the gift he's an ass to think he can acquire it. Sometime you've a setter pup that looks fit—head good, nose all right—all the markings—but you try him out and you know in half an hour he'll never do in the world. Then it's better to take him out back of the barn and shoot him, by Gad! Rather than have his strain corrupt the rest of the kennel. He can't acquire the gift, and no more can a chap acquire this gift. Ah! I was right, was I, George? Look how different that cork is."
He sipped the bubbling amber wine with cautious and exacting appreciation. As the waiter would have refilled the glasses, Blythe stopped him.
"Now, George, let me tell you something. You're serving at this moment the only gentleman's drink. Do it right, George. Listen! Never refill a gentleman's glass until it's quite empty. Do you know why? Think, George! You pour fresh wine into stale wine and what have you?—neither. I've taught you something, George. Never fill a glass till it's empty."
"It beats me," said Uncle Peter, when Blythe and his companion had gone, "how easy them rich codgers get along. That fellow must 'a' made a study of wines, and nothing worse ever bothers him than a waiter fillin' his glass wrong."
"You'll be beat more," answered Percival, "when I tell you this slump in copper has just ruined him—wiped out every cent he had. He'd just taken it off the ticker when we found him in Fouts's place there. He's lost a million and a half, every cent he had in the world, and he has a wife and two grown daughters."
"Shoo! you don't say! And I'd have sworn he didn't care a row of pins whether copper went up or down. He was a lot more worried about that champagne. Well, well! he certainly is a game loser. I got more respect fur him now. This town does produce thoroughbreds, you can't deny that."
"Uncle Peter, she's down to 93, and I've had to margin up a good bit. I didn't think it could get below 95 at the worst."
"Oh, I can't bother about them things. Just think of when she booms."
"I do—but say—do you think we better pinch our bets?"
Uncle Peter finished his glass of beer.
"Lord! don't askme," he replied, with the unconcern of perfect trust. "Of course if you've lost your nerve, or if you think all these things you been tellin' me was jest some one foolin' you—"
"No, I know better than that, and I haven't lost my nerve. After all, it only means that the crowd is looking for a bigger rake-off."
"Your pa always kepthisnerve," said Uncle Peter. "I've known him to make big money by keepin' it when other men lost theirs. Of course he had genius fur it, and you're purty young yet—"
"I only thought of it for a minute. I didn't really mean it."
They read the next afternoon that Gordon Blythe had been found dead of asphyxiation in a little down-town hotel under circumstances that left no doubt of his suicide.
"That man wa'n't so game as we thought," said Uncle Peter. "He's left his family to starve. Now your pa was a game loser fur fair. Dan'l J. would'a' called fur another deck."
"And copper's up two points to-day," said Percival, cheerfully. He had begun to be depressed with forebodings of disaster, and this slight recovery was cheering.
"By the way," he continued, "there may be another gas-jet blown out in a few days. That party, you know, our friend from Montana, has been selling Consolidated right and left. Where do you suppose she got any such tip as that? Well, I'm buying and she's selling, and we'll have that money back. She'll be wiped off the board when Consolidated soars."
The loss of much money is commonly a subject to be managed with brevity and aversion by one who sits down with the right reverence for sheets of clean paper. To bewail is painful. To affect lightness, on the other hand, would, in this age, savour of insincerity, if not of downright blasphemy. More than a bare recital of the wretched facts, therefore, is not seemly.
The Bines fortune disappeared much as a heavy fall of snow melts under the Chinook wind.
That phenomenon is not uninteresting. We may picture a far-reaching waste of snow, wind-furrowed until it resembles a billowy white sea frozen motionless. The wind blows half a gale and the air is full of fine ice-crystals that sting the face viciously. The sun, lying low on the southern horizon, seems a mere frozen globe, with lustrous pink crescents encircling it.
One day the wind backs and shifts. A change portends. Even the herds of half-frozen range cattle sense it by some subtle beast-knowledge. They are no longer afraid to lie down as they may have been for a week. The danger of freezing has passed. The temperature has been at fifty degrees below zero. Now, suddenly it begins to rise. The air is scarcely in motion, but occasionally it descends as out of a blast-furnace from overhead. To the southeast is a mass of dull black clouds. Their face is unbroken. But the upper edges are ragged, torn by a wind not yet felt below. Two hours later its warmth comes. In ten minutes the mercury goes up thirty-five degrees. The wind comes at a thirty-mile velocity. It increases in strength and warmth, blowing with a mighty roar.
Twelve hours afterward the snow, three feet deep on a level, has melted. There are bald, brown hills everywhere to the horizon, and the plains are flooded with water. The Chinook has come and gone. In this manner suddenly went the Bines fortune.
April 30th, Consolidated Copper closed at 91. Two days later, May 2d, the same ill-fated stock closed at 5l—a drop of forty points. Roughly the decline meant the loss of a hundred million dollars to the fifteen thousand share-holders. From every city of importance in the country came tales more or less tragic of holdings wiped out, of ruined families, of defalcations and suicides. The losses in New York City alone were said to be fifty millions. A few large holders, reputed to enjoy inside information, were said to have put their stock aside and "sold short" in the knowledge of what was coming. Such tales are always popular in the Street.
Others not less popular had to do with the reasons for the slump. Many were plausible. A deal with the Rothschilds for control of the Spanish mines had fallen through. Or, again, the slaughter was due to the Shepler group of Federal Oil operators, who were bent on forcing some one to unload a great quantity of the stock so that they might absorb it. The immediate causes were less recondite. The Consolidated Company, so far from controlling the output, was suddenly shown to control actually less than fifty per cent of it. Its efforts to amend or repeal the hardy old law of Supply and Demand had simply met with the indifferent success that has marked all such efforts since the first attempted corner in stone hatchets, or mastodon tusks, or whatever it may have been. In the language of one of its newspaper critics, the "Trust" had been "founded on misconception and prompted along lines of self-destruction. Its fundamental principles were the restriction of product, the increase of price, and the throttling of competition, a trinity that would wreck any combination, business, political, or social."
With this generalisation we have no concern. As to the copper situation, the comment was pat. It had been suddenly disclosed, not only that no combination could be made to include the European mines, but that the Consolidated Company had an unsold surplus of 150,000,000 pounds of copper; that it was producing 20,000,000 pounds a month more than could be sold, and that it had made large secret sales abroad at from two to three cents below the market price.
As if fearing that these adverse conditions did not sufficiently ensure the stock's downfall, the Shepler group of Federal Oil operators beat it down further with what was veritably a golden sledge. That is, they exported gold at a loss. At a time when obligations could have been met more cheaply with bought bills they sent out many golden cargoes at an actual loss of three hundred dollars on the half million. As money was already dear, and thus became dearer, the temptation and the means to hold copper stock, in spite of all discouragements, were removed from the paths of hundreds of the harried holders.
Incidentally, Western Trolley had gone into the hands of a receiver, a failure involving another hundred million dollars, and Union Cordage had fallen thirty-five points through sensational disclosures as to its overcapitalisation.
Into this maelstrom of a panic market the Bines fortune had been sucked with a swiftness so terrible that the family's chief advising member was left dazed and incredulous.
For two days he clung to the ticker tape as to a life line. He had committed the millions of the family as lightly as ever he had staked a hundred dollars on the turn of a card or left ten on the change-tray for his waiter.
Then he had seen his cunningly built foundations, rested upon with hopes so high for three months, melt away like snow when the blistering Chinook comes.
It has been thought wise to adopt two somewhat differing similes in the foregoing, in order that the direness of the tragedy may be sufficiently apprehended.
The morning of the first of the two last awful days, he was called to the office of Fouts and Hendricks by telephone.
"Something going to happen in Consolidated to-day."
He had hurried down-town, flushed with confidence. He knew there was but one thingcouldhappen. He had reached the office at ten and heard the first vicious little click of the ticker—that beating heart of the Stock Exchange—as it began the unemotional story of what men bought and sold over on the floor. Its inventor died in the poorhouse, but Capital would fare badly without his machine. Consolidated was down three points. The crowd about the ticker grew absorbed at once. Reports came in over the telephone. The bears had made a set for the stock. It began to slump rapidly. As the stock was goaded down, point by point, the crowd of traders waxed more excited.
As the stock fell, the banks requested the brokers to margin up their loans, and the brokers, in turn, requested Percival to margin up his trades. The shares he had bought outright went to cover the shortage in those he had bought on a twenty per cent margin. Loans were called later, and marginal accounts wiped out with appalling informality.
Yet when Consolidated suddenly rallied three points just at the close of the day's trading, he took much comfort in it as an omen of the morrow. That night, however, he took but little satisfaction in Uncle Peter's renewed assurances of trust in his acumen. Uncle Peter, he decided all at once, was a fatuous, doddering old man, unable to realise that the whole fortune was gravely endangered. And with the gambler's inveterate hope that luck must change he forbore to undeceive the old man.
Uncle Peter went with him to the office next morning, serenely interested in the prospects.
"You got your pa's way of taking hold of big propositions. That's all I need to know," he reassured the young man, cheerfully.
Consolidated Copper opened that day at 78, and went by two o'clock to 51.
Percival watched the decline with a conviction that he was dreaming. He laughed to think of his relief when he should awaken. The crowd surged about the ticker, and their voices came as from afar. Their acts all had the weird inconsequence of the people we see in dreams. Yet presently it had gone too far to be amusing. He must arouse himself and turn over on his side. In five minutes, according to the dream, he had lost five million dollars as nearly as he could calculate. Losing a million a minute, even in sleep, he thought, was disquieting.
Then upon the tape he read another chapter of disaster. Western Trolley had gone into the hands of a receiver,—a fine, fat, promising stock ruined without a word of warning; and while he tried to master this news the horrible clicking thing declared that Union Cordage was selling down to 58,—a drop of exactly 35 points since morning.
Fouts, with a slip of paper in his hand, beckoned him from the door of his private office. He went dazedly in to him,—and was awakened from the dream that he had been losing a fortune in his sleep.
Coming out after a few moments, he went up to Uncle Peter, who had been sitting, watchful but unconcerned, in one of the armchairs along the wall. The old man looked up inquiringly.
"Come inside, Uncle Peter!"
They went into the private office of Fouts. Percival shut the door, and they were alone.
"Uncle Peter, Burman's been suspended on the Board of Trade; Fouts just had this over his private wire. Corn broke to-day."
"That so? Oh, well, maybe it was worth a couple of million to find out Burman plays corn like he plays poker; 'twas if you couldn't get it fur any less."
"Uncle Peter, we're wiped out."
"How, wiped out? What do you mean, son?"
"We're done, I tell you. We needn't care a damn now where copper goes to. We're out of it—and—Uncle Peter, we're broke."
"Out of copper? Broke? But you said—" He seemed to be making an effort to comprehend. His lack of grasp was pitiful.
"Out of copper, but there's Western Trolley and that Cordage stock—"
"Everything wiped out, I tell you—Union Cordage gone down thirty-five points, somebody let out the inside secrets—and God only knows how far Western Trolley's gone down."
"Are you all in?"
"Every dollar—you knew that. But say," he brightened out of his despair, "there's the One Girl—a good producer—Shepler knows the property—Shepler's in this block—" and he was gone.
The old man strolled out into the trading-room again. A curious grim smile softened his square jaw for a moment. He resumed his comfortable chair and took up a newspaper, glancing incidentally at the crowd of excited men about the tickers. He had about him that air of repose which comes to big men who have stayed much in big out-of-door solitudes.
"Ain't he a nervy old guy?" said a crisp little money-broker to Fouts. "They're wiped out, but you wouldn't think he cared any more about it than Mike the porter with his brass polish out there."
The old man held his paper up, but did not read.
Percival rushed in by him, beckoning him to the inner room.
"Shepler's all right about the One Girl. He'll take a mortgage on it for two hundred thousand if you'll recommend it—only he can't get the money before to-morrow. There's bound to be a rally in this stock, and we'll go right back for some of the hair of the—why,—what's the matter—Uncle Peter!"
The old man had reeled, and then weakly caught at the top of the desk with both hands for support.
"Ruined!" he cried, hoarsely, as if the extent of the calamity had just borne in upon him. "My God! Ruined, and at my time of life!" He seemed about to collapse. Percíval quickly helped him into a chair, where he became limp.
"There, I'm all right. Oh, it's terrible! and we all trusted you so. I thought you had your pa's brains. I'd 'a' trusted you soon's I would Shepler, and now look what you led us into—fortune gone—broke—and all your fault!"
"Don't, Uncle Peter—don't, for God's sake—not when I'm down! I can't stand it!"
"Gamble away your own money—no, that wa'n't enough—take your poor ma's share and your sister's, and take what little I had to keep me in my old age—robbed us all—that's what comes of thinkin' a damned tea-drinkin' fop could have a thimble-full of brains!"
"Don't, please,—not just now—give it to me good later—to-morrow—all you want to!"
"And here I'm come to want in my last days when I'm too feeble to work. I'll die in bitter privation because I was an old fool, and trusted a young one."
"Please don't, Uncle Peter!"
"You led us in—robbed your poor ma and your sister. I told you I didn't know anything about it and you talked me into trusting you—I might 'a' known better."
"Can't you stop awhile—just a moment?"
"Of course I don't matter. Maybe I can hold a drill, or tram ore, or something, but I can't support your ma and Pishy like they ought to be, with my rheumatiz comin' on again, too. And your ma'll have to take in boarders, and do washin' like as not, and think of poor Pishy—prob'ly she'll have to teach school or clerk in a store—poor Pish—she'll be lucky now if she can marry some common scrub American out in them hills—like as not one of them shoe-clerks in the Boston Cash Store at Montana City! And jest when I was lookin' forward to luxury and palaces in England, and everything so grand! How much you lost?" "That's right, no use whining! Nearly as I can get the round figures of it, about twelve million."
"Awful—awful! By Cripes! that man Blythe that done himself up the other night had the right of it. What's the use of living if you got to go to the poorhouse?"
"Come, come!" said Percival, alarm over Uncle Peter crowding out his other emotions. "Be a game loser, just as you said pa would be. Sit up straight and make 'em bring on another deck."
He slapped the old man on the back with simulated cheerfulness; but the despairing one only cowered weakly under the blow.
"We can't—we ain't got the stake for a new deck. Oh, dear! think of your ma and me not knowin' where to turn fur a meal of victuals at our time of life."
Percival was being forced to cheerfulness in spite of himself.
"Come, it isn't as bad as that, Uncle Peter. We've got properties left, and good ones, too."
Uncle Peter weakly waved the hand of finished discouragement. "Hush, don't speak of that. Them properties need a manager to make 'em pay—a plain business man—a man to stay on the ground and watch 'em and develop 'em with his brains—a young man with his health! What good am I—a poor, broken-down old cuss, bent double with rheumatiz—almost—I'm ashamed of you fur suggesting such a thing!"
"I'll do it myself—I never thought of asking you."
Uncle Peter emitted a nasal gasp of disgust.
"You—you—you'd make a purty manager of anything, wouldn't you! As if you could be trusted with anything again that needs a schoolboy's intelligence. Even if you had the brains, you ain't got the taste nor the sperrit in you. You're too lazy—too triflin'.You, a-goin' back there, developin' mines, and gettin' out ties, and lumber, and breeding shorthorns, and improvin' some of the finest land God ever made—youbein' sober and industrious, and smart, like a business man has got to be out there nowadays. That ain't any bonanza country any more; 1901 ain't like 1870; don't figure on that. You got to work the low-grade ore now for a few dollars a ton, and you got to work it with brains. No, sir, that country ain't what it used to be. There might 'a' been a time when you'd made your board and clothes out there when things come easier. Now it's full of men that hustle and keep their mind on their work, and ain't runnin' off to pink teas in New York. It takes a man with some of the brains your pa had to make the game pay now. Butyou—don't let me hear any more ofthatnonsense!"
Percival had entered the room pale. He was now red. The old man's bitter contempt had flushed him into momentary forgetfulness of the disaster.
"Look here, Uncle Peter, you've been telling me right along Ididhave my father's head and my father's ways and his nerve, and God knows what Ididn'thave that he had!"
"I was fooled,—I can't deny it. What's the use of tryin' to crawl out of it? You did fool me, and I own up to it; I thought you had some sense, some capacity; but you was only like him on the surface; you jest got one or two little ways like his, that's all—Dan'l J. now was good stuff all the way through. He might 'a' guessed wrong on copper, but he'd 'a' saved a get-away stake or borrowed one, and he'd 'a' piked back fur Montana to make his pile right over—and he'd 'a'madeit, too—that was the kind of man your pa was—he'd 'a' made it!"
"Ihavesaved a get-away stake."
"Your pa had the head, I tell you—and the spirit—"
"And, by God, I'll show you I've got the head. You think because I wanted to live here, and because I made this wrong play that I'm like all these pinheads you've seen around here. I'll show you different!—I'll fool you."
"Now don't explode!" said the old man, wearily. "You meant well, poor fellow—I'll say that fur you; you got a good heart. But there's lots of good men that ain't good fur anything in particular. You've got a good heart—yes—you're all right from the neck down."
"See here," said Percival, more calmly, "listen: I've got you all into this thing, and played you broke against copper; and I'm going to get you out—understand that?"
The old man looked at him pityingly.
"I tell you I'm going to get you out. I'm going back there, and get things in action, and I'm going to stay by them. I've got a good idea of these properties—and you hear me, now—I'll finish with a bank-roll that'll choke Red Bank Cañon."
Fouts knocked and came in.
"Now you go along up-town, Uncle Peter. I want a few minutes with Mr. Fouts, and I'll come to your place at seven."
The old man arose dejectedly.
"Don't let me interfere a minute with your financial operations. I'm too old a man to be around in folks' way."
He slouched out with his head bent.
A moment later Percival remembered his last words, also his reference to Blythe. He was seized with fear for what he might do in his despair. Uncle Peter would act quickly if his mind had been made up.
He ran out into Wall Street, and hurried up to Broadway. A block off on that crowded thoroughfare he saw the tall figure of Uncle Peter turning into the door of a saloon. He might have bought poison. He ran the length of the block and turned in.
Uncle Peter stood at one end of the bar with a glass of creamy beer in front of him. At the moment Percival entered he was enclosing a large slab of Swiss cheese between two slices of rye bread.
He turned and faced Percival, looking from him to his sandwich with vacant eyes.
"I'm that wrought up and distressed, son, I hardly know what I'm doin'! Look at me now with this stuff in my hands."
"I just wanted to be sure you were all right," said Percival, greatly relieved.
"All right," the old man repeated. "All right? My God,—ruined! There's nothin' left to do now."
He looked absently at the sandwich, and bit a generous semicircle into it.
"I don't see how you can eat, Uncle Peter. It's so horrible!"
"I don't myself; it ain't a healthy appetite—can't be—must be some kind of a fever inside of me—I s'pose—from all this trouble. And now I've come to poverty and want in my old age. Say, son, I believe there's jest one thing you can do to keep me from goin' crazy."
"Name it, Uncle Peter. You bet I'll do it!"
"Well, it ain't much—of course I wouldn't expect you to do all them things you was jest braggin' about back there—about goin' to work the properties and all that—you would do it if you could, I know—but it ain't that. All I ask is, don't play this Wall Street game any more. If we can save out enough by good luck to keep us decently, so your ma won't have to take boarders, why, don't you go and lose that, too. Don't mortgage the One Girl. I may be sort of superstitious, but somehow, I don't believe Wall Street is your game. Course, I don't say you ain't got a game—of some kind—but I got one of them presentiments that it ain't Wall Street." "I don't believe it is, Uncle Peter—I won't touch another share, and I won't go near Shepler again. We'll keep the One Girl."
He called a cab for the old man, and saw him started safely off up-town.
At the hotel Uncle Peter met Billy Brue flourishing an evening paper that flared with exclamatory headlines.
"It's all in the papers, Uncle Peter!"
"Dead broke! Ain't it awful, Billy!"
"Say, Uncle Peter, you said you'd raise hell, and you done it. You done it good, didn't you?"
At seven Percival found Uncle Peter at his hotel, still in abysmal depths of woe. Together they went to break the awful news to the unsuspecting Mrs. Bines and Psyche.
"If you'd only learned something useful while you had the chance," began Uncle Peter, dismally, as they were driven to the Hightower, "how to do tricks with cards, or how to sing funny songs, like that little friend of yours from Baltimore you was tellin' me about. Look at him, now. He didn't have anything but his own ability. He could tell you every time what card you was thinkin' about, and do a skirt dance and give comic recitations and imitate a dog fight out in the back yard, and now he's married to one of the richest ladies in New York. Why couldn't you 'a' been learnin' some of them clever things, so you could 'a' married some good-hearted woman with lots of money—but no—" Uncle Peter's tones were bitter to excess—"you was a rich man's son and raised in idleness—and now, when the rainy day's come, you can't even take a white rabbit out of a stove-pipe hat!"
To these senile maunderings Percival paid no attention. When they came into the crowd and lights of the Hightower, he sent the old man up alone.
"You go, please, and break it to them, Uncle Peter. I'd rather not be there just at first. I'll come along in a little bit."
So Uncle Peter went, protesting that he was a broken old man and a cumberer of God's green earth.
Mrs. Bines and Psyche had that moment sat down to dinner. Uncle Peter's manner at once alarmed them.
"It's all over," he said, sinking into a chair.
"Why, what's the matter, Uncle Peter?"
"Percival has—"
Mrs. Bines arose quickly, trembling.
"There—I just knew it—it's all over?—he's been struck by one of those terrible automobiles—Oh, take me to where he is!"
"He ain't been run over—he's gone broke-lost all our money; every last cent."
"He hasn't been run over and killed?"
"He's ruined us, I tell you, Marthy,—lost every cent of our money in Wall Street."
"Hasn't he been hurt at all?—not even his leg broke or a big gash in his head and knocked senseless?"
"That boy never had any sense. I tell you he's lost all our money."
"And he ain't a bit hurt—nothing the matter with him?"
"Ain't any more hurt than you or me this minute."
"You're not fooling his mother, Uncle Peter?"
"I tell you he's alive and well, only he's lost your money and Pish's and mine and his own."
Mrs. Bines breathed a long, trembling sigh of relief, and sat down to the table again.
"Well, no need to scare a body out of their wits—scaring his mother to death won't bring his money back, will it? If it's gone it's gone."
"But ma, itisawful!" cried Psyche. "Listen to what Uncle Peter says. We're poor! Don't you understand? Perce has lost all our money."
Mrs. Bines was eating her soup defiantly.
"Long's he's got his health," she began.
"And me windin' up in the poorhouse," whined Uncle Peter.
"Think of it, ma! Oh, what shall we do?"
Percival entered. Uncle Peter did not raise his head. Psyche stared at him. His mother ran to him, satisfied herself that he was sound in wind and limb, that he had not treacherously donned his summer underwear, and that his feet were not wet. Then she led him to the table.
"Now you sit right down here and take some food. If you're all right, everything is all right."
With a weak attempt at his old gaiety he began: "Really, Mrs. Crackenthorpe—" but he caught Psyche's look and had to stop.
"I'm sorry, sis, clear into my bones. I made an ass of myself—a regular fool right from the factory."
"Never mind, my son; eat your soup," said his mother. And then, with honest intent to comfort him, "Remember that saying of your pa's, 'it takes all kinds of fools to make a world.'"
"But there ain't any fool like a damn fool!" said Uncle Peter, shortly. "I been a-tellin' him."
"Well, you just let him alone; you'll spoil his appetite, first thing you know. My son, eat your soup, now before it gets cold."
"If I only hadn't gone in so heavy," groaned Percival. "Or, if I'd only got tied up in some way for a few weeks—something I could tide over."
"Yes," said Uncle Peter, with a cheerful effort at sarcasm, "it's always easy to think up a lot of holes youcouldget out of—some different kind of a hole besides the one you're in. That's all some folks can do when they get in one hole, they say, 'Oh, if I was only in that other one, now, how slick I could climb out!' I ain't ever met a person yet was satisfied with the hole they was in. Always some complaint to make about 'em."
"And I had a chance to get out a week ago."
"Yes, and you wouldn't take it, of course—you knew too much—swellin' around here about bein' a Napoleon of finance—and a Shepler and a Wizard of Wall Street, and all that kind of guff—and you wouldn't take your chance, and old Mr. Chance went right off and left you, that's what. I tell you, what some folks need is a breed of chances that'll stand without hitchin'."
Percival braced himself and began on his soup.
'Remember That Saying of Your Pa's—It Takes All Kinds of Fools to Make a World.'
"Never you mind, Uncle Peter. You remember what I told you."
"That takes a different man from what you are. If your pa was alive now—"
"But what are we going to do?" cried Psyche.
"First thing you'll do," said Uncle Peter, promptly, "you go write a letter to that beau of your'n, tellin' him it's all off. You don't want to let him be the one to break it because you lost your money, do you? You go sign his release right this minute."
"Yes—you're right, Uncle Peter—I suppose it must be done—but the poor fellow really cares for me."
"Oh, of course," answered the old man, "it'll fairly break his heart. You do it just the same!"
She withdrew, and presently came back with a note which she despatched to Mauburn.
Percival and his mother had continued their dinner, the former shaking his head between the intervals of the old man's lashings, and appearing to hold silent converse with himself.
This was an encouraging sign. It is a curious fact that people never talk to themselves except triumphantly. In moments of real despair we are inwardly dumb. But observe the holders of imaginary conversations. They are conquerors to the last one. They administer stinging rebukes that leave the adversary writhing. They rise to Alpine heights of pure wisdom and power, leaving him to flounder ignobly in the mire of his own fatuity.
They achieve repartee the brilliance of which dazzles him to contemptible silence. If statistics were at hand we should doubtless learn that no man has ever talked to himself save by way of demonstrating his own godlike superiority, and the tawdry impotence of all obstacles and opponents. Percival talked to himself and mentally lived the next five years in a style that reduced Uncle Peter to grudging but imperative awe for his superb gifts of administration. He bathed in this imaginary future as in the waters of omnipotence. As time went on he foresaw the shafts of Uncle Peter being turned back upon him with such deadliness that, by the time the roast came, his breast was swelling with pity for that senile scoffer.
Uncle Peter had first declared that the thought of food sickened him. Prevailed upon at last by Mrs. Bines to taste the soup, he was soon eating as those present had of late rarely seen him eat.
"'Tain't a natural appetite, though," he warned them. "It's a kind of a mania before I go all to pieces, I s'pose."
"Nonsense! We'll have you all right in a week," said Percival. "Just remember that I'm going to take care of you."
"My son can do anything he makes up his mind to," declared Mrs. Bines—"just anything he lays out to do."
They talked until late into the night of what he should "lay out" to do.
Meantime the stronghold of Mauburn's optimism was being desperately stormed.
In an evening paper he had read of Percival's losses. The afternoon press of New York is not apt to understate the facts of a given case. The account Mauburn read stated that the young Western millionaire had beggared his family.
Mauburn had gone to his room to be alone with this bitter news. He had begun to face it when Psyche's note of release came. While he was adjusting this development, another knock came on his door. It was the same maid who had brought Psyche's note. This time she brought what he saw to be a cablegram.
"Excuse me, Mr. Mauburn,—now this came early to-day and you wasn't in your room, and when you came in Mrs. Ferguson forgot it till just now."
He tore open the envelope and read:
"Male twins born to Lady Casselthorpe. Mother and sons doing finely.
"HINKIE."
Mauburn felt the rock foundations of Manhattan Island to be crumbling to dust. For an hour he sat staring at the message. He did not talk to himself once.
Then he hurriedly dressed, took the note and the cablegram, and sought Mrs. Drelmer.
He found that capable lady gowned for the opera. She received his bits of news with the aplomb of a resourceful commander.
"Now, don't go seedy all at once—you've a chance."
"Hang it all, Mrs. Drelmer, I've not. Life isn't worth living—"
"Tut, tut! Death isn't, either!"
"But we'd have been so nicely set up, even without the title, and now Bines, the clumsy ass, has come this infernal cropper, and knocked everything on the head. I say, you know, it's beastly!"
"Hush, and let me think!"
He paced the floor while his matrimonial adviser tapped a white kidded foot on the floor, and appeared to read plans of new battle in a mother-of-pearl paper-knife which she held between the tips of her fingers.
"I have it—and we'll do it quickly!—Mrs. Wybert!"
Mauburn's eyes opened widely.
"That absurd old Peter Bines has spoken to me of her three times lately. She's made a lot more money than she had in this same copper deal, and she'd a lot to begin with. I wondered why he spoke so enthusiastically of her, and I don't see now, but—"
"Well?"
"She'll take you, and you'll be as well set up as you were before. Listen. I met her last week at the Critchleys. She spoke of having seen you. I could see she was dead set to make a good marriage. You know she wanted to marry Fred Milbrey, but Horace and his mother wouldn't hear of it after Avice became engaged to Rulon Shepler. I'm in the Critchleys' box to-night and I understand she's to be there. Leave it to me. Now it's after nine, so run along."
"But, Mrs. Drelmer, there's that poor girl—she cares for me, and I like her immensely, you know—truly I do—and she's a trump—see where she says here she couldn't possibly leave her people now they've come down—even if matters were not otherwise impossible."
"Well, you see they're not only otherwise impossible, but every wise impossible. What could you do? Go to Montana with them and learn to be an Indian? Don't for heaven's sake sentimentalise! Go home and sleep like a rational creature. Come in by eleven to-morrow. Even without the title you'll be a splendid match for Mrs. Wybert, and she must have a tidy lot of millions after this deal."
Sorely distressed, he walked back to his lodgings in Thirty-second Street. Wild, Quixotic notions of sacrifice flooded his mood of dejection. If the worst came, he could go West with the family and learn how to do something. And yet—Mrs. Wybert. Of course it must be that. The other idea was absurd—too wild for serious consideration. He was thirty years old, and there was only one way for an English gentleman to live—even if it must break the heart of a poor girl who had loved him devotedly, and for whom he had felt a steady and genuine affection. He passed a troubled night.
Down at the hotel of Peter Bines was an intimation from Mrs. Wybert herself, bearing upon this same fortuity. When Uncle Peter reached there at 2 A.M., he found in his box a small scented envelope which he opened with wonder.
Two enclosures fell out. One was a clipping from an evening paper, announcing the birth of twin sons to Lord Casselthorpe. The other was the card he had left with Mrs. Wybert on the day of his call; his name on one side, announcing him; on the other the words he had written:
"Sell Consolidated Copper all you can until it goes down to 65. Do this up to the limit of your capital and I will make good anything you lose.
"PETER BINES."
He read the note:
"ARLINGHAM HOTEL—7.30.
"MR. PETER BINES:
"Dear Sir:—You funny old man, you. I don't pretend to understand your game, but you may rely on my secrecy. I am more grateful to you than words can utter—and I will always be glad to do anything for you.
"Yours very truly,
"BLANCHE CATHERTON WYBERT.
"P. S. About that other matter—him you know—you will see from this notice I cut from the paper that the party won't get any title at all now, so a dead swell New York man is in every way more eligible. In fact the other party is not to be thought of for one moment, as I am positive you would agree with me."
He tore the note and the card to fine bits.
"It does beat all," he complained later to Billy Brue. "Put a beggar on horseback and they begin right away to fuss around because the bridle ain't set with diamonds—give 'em a little, and they want the whole ball of wax!"
"That's right," said Billy Brue, with the quick sympathy of the experienced. "That guy that doped me, he wa'n't satisfied with my good thirty-dollar wad. Not by no means! He had to go take my breast-pin nugget from the Early Bird."
At eleven o'clock the next morning Mauburn waited in Mrs. Drelmer's drawing-room for the news she might have.
When that competent person sailed in, he saw temporary defeat written on her brow. His heart sank to its low level of the night before.
"Well, I saw the creature," she began, "and it required no time at all to reach a very definite understanding with her. I had feared it might be rather a delicate matter, talking to her at once, you know—and we needed to hurry—but she's a woman one can talk to. She's made heaps of money, and the poor thing is society-mad—soafraid the modish world won't take her at her true value—but she talked very frankly about marriage—really she's cool-headed for all the fire she seems to have—and the short of it is that she's determined to marry some one of the smart men here in New York. The creature's fascinated by the very idea."
"Did you mention me?"
"You may be sure I did, but she'd read the papers, and, like so many of these people, she has no use at all for an Englishman without a title. Of course I couldn't be too definite with her, but she understood perfectly, and she let me see she wouldn't hear of it at all. So she's off the list. But don't give up. Now, there's—"
But Mauburn was determinedly downcast.
"It's uncommon handsome of you, Mrs. Drelmer, really, but we'll have to leave off that, you know. If a chap isn't heir to a peerage or a city fortune there's no getting on that way."
"Why, the man is actually discouraged. Now you need some American pluck, old chap. An American of your age wouldn't give up."
"But, hang it all! an American knows how to do things, you know, and like as not he'd nothing to begin with, by Jove! Now I'd a lot to begin with, and here it's all taken away."
"Look at young Bines. He's had a lot taken away, but I'll wager he makes it all back again and more too before he's forty."
"He might in this country; he'd never do it at home, you know."
"This country is for you as much as for him. Now, there's Augusta Hartong—those mixed-pickle millionaires, you know. I was chatting with Augusta's mother only the other day, and if I'd only suspected this—"
"Awfully kind of you, Mrs. Drelmer, but it's no use. I'm fairly played out. I shall go to see Miss Bines, and have a chat with her people, you know."
"Now, for heaven's sake, don't make a silly of yourself, whatever you do! Mind, the girl released you of her own accord!"
"Awfully obliged. I'll think about it jolly well, first. See you soon. Good-bye!" And Mauburn was off.
He was reproaching himself. "That poor girl has been eating her heart out for a word of love from me. I'm a brute!"