CHAPTER XII
In the midst of the disorganisation caused by the death of the Doctor, I took the Western fever, which was prevalent at the time. Every one saw the promised land in the West. I packed my furniture, gathered my wife and children under my wing, and rode away to Minnesota, where one of Muriel’s cousins, according to his own account, was doing great things. Minnesota was inflated at this time to bursting point, and produced more liars than any State in the Union. I did not find a gold mine in the West, or make a fortune out of the real estate boom then at its height. For fifteen months I held a position as general utility man in an architect’s office, made tracings of drawings, kept books, wrote letters and even took my employer’s wife out driving. I found that in the West an employee was expected to make himself useful in any capacity in which his employer saw fit to use him, and I adapted myself to the conditions, but I did not like Minnesota, and found it a hard place to live in, and by no means richer in opportunities than the East. Perhaps I did not know an opportunity when I saw one.
When the bottom fell out of the real estate boom, I felt it was time to return to my native city. Muriel would have had me return much sooner, but a move of a thousand miles was a thing too serious to do in a hurry. We had some pretty decent belongings in thematter of jewellery when we went West. We were willing and glad to part with these baubles to procure our return to Montreal. Home looked better than gold and precious stones. In fact we were both heartily home-sick.
Although I acted in numerous capacities for my Western employer, and apparently satisfied him with my efforts, my salary was small. In order to live I gave my evenings to gathering the improvident into the fold of the Western Insurance Company. Sometimes I did very well at this, and what I learned of insurance was afterwards useful. When the boom broke the insurance harvest disappeared. This was one of the reasons for my return home. I was not cut out for an insurance man. I hated opening up my pack and displaying my wares to people. Yet I made some little success in insurance, as long as my list of friends and acquaintances lasted. Approaching strangers was very distasteful to me.
I persevered in the insurance business after I returned home, and for three years lived upon the precarious commissions made upon the street, with my office in my hat, mainly; sometimes a friend would lend me desk-room in one corner of his place of business. A year after our coming home our Fourth Beloved was added to us.
What course in life I was suited to follow I could not see. I was like a ship without compass or instruments, with no set course, but drifting this way and that, according to wind and weather. If I had thoroughly understood what my calling was in life, I might not have found it possible to follow it, for I had to go after the immediate dollar. Certainly I was quite unsuited for those activities ordinarily referred to as “business,”and I have yet to learn that I have any special aptitude in any particular direction.
I had always flattered myself that want of mental balance was not one of my failings. I had made the common every-day mistakes of youth and inexperience, but had an exalted idea of my wisdom, until I had a streak of luck. I wrote one of Montreal’s wealthy men for a policy of fifty thousand dollars, and as a consequence went completely off my head. Commissions on life insurance were very high when I was young; in fact, the insurance company received very little of the first year’s premium. The agent got the better part of it.
To be a gambler within reason is nothing very uncommon or very dreadful. In one form or another the gambling spirit is nearly universal. Business is permeated with it. It looks as if it were a normal instinct. The gambling fever overcame me like a disease. It ran in my blood and dominated my mind. I dreamed schemes and systems and planned coups. That I ever returned to my natural self is a marvel for which I am exceedingly thankful.
My initiation came through the slim and insidious ten-dollar chance in a bucket shop. The possession of what to me was a large amount of money—my commission on a fifty thousand dollar life policy—must have gone to my head. I did not become a gambler in one day or one week, but gradually became more feverish and daring, until I graduated as a plunger and a better in every form of chance. I tried them all—horse-racing, athletic events, roulette, faro, poker and even craps. As often happens with tyros, I was fortunate to begin with. But I became useless as a citizen, as a father and husband, made Murielthoroughly miserable, and did not increase my own happiness or satisfaction with life. But, strange to say, I made money. The more we love, and are loved, the more power we have to aggravate those who love us.
In seventeen months my commission of twelve hundred dollars had grown to the wonderful sum of twenty-one thousand dollars. During that time I had many nerve-racking ups and downs, but blind chance favoured me, and I prospered financially. I lost in nearly every other direction. I became known as a gambler, but not as what is understood as a sport, for I never drank, or mixed with fast society. Unless you have been a gambler and a regular frequenter of gambling places, you have no idea of the extraordinary-looking people who seem to have money to risk on the turn of a card or a wheel. Men who appear to be gentlemen are rare in the gambling crowd. It is not the people who dress well and keep up appearances who have the bulk of the money floating about in such company; but the shabby people who care more for money than appearances. I have seen thousands of dollars change hands amidst a shabby unkempt crowd, who looked as if one could buy them and their belongings for five or ten dollars a head; and all in quietness and calm without a murmur. Nothing is despised so much among the gambling fraternity as one who bawls, weeps or babbles.
The families interested in my life now besieged me with importunities to be good. Not that they were so truly interested in my soul, but they wished to see something saved out of the large sum of money I had accumulated. They did not know exactly how much I was worth, but they knew, by some means or otherthat is was a large amount, and implored me to be wise, and tie up at least half of it in such a way that I could not lay careless hands upon it. Their prayers were useless. I could not be moved. I thought I knew exactly what I was about, and advice only annoyed me. I fully intended and expected to win a million, if not more. My fall came soon and suddenly. The “Pyramid,” like nearly all inventions of the Devil, is very successful when not a failure and very disastrous when not a success. It was the main cause of my financial crash. This scheme is as old as perdition, but many have no knowledge of its peculiarities, and only a gambler knows the power of its fascination. I attempted a pyramid in wheat, buying a modest ten thousand bushels on margin. The market went down and I remargined my original ten thousand bushels and bought twenty thousand bushels more. Again the market dropped, I remargined my holdings and bought forty thousand bushels more and so on while the market continued to fall, until I held over a million bushels. If the market had recovered even a few cents, my average price was so low that I would have been able to get out with a small loss or a small profit; but the market was against me and I was wiped out. Not only did I lose my all, but I was involved deeply beyond.
When I look back at the gambling period of my life it seems impossible that I went through such an experience and regained my equilibrium. For over a year my days were spent in bucket shops and brokers’ offices, and my nights, often till dawn, at the poker or roulette table, with faro as a relaxation. How I stood the nervous waste is a mystery, for during the whole of that period my perceptive faculties were on the alertday and night, an honest night’s sleep was a thing unknown to me. A loss which to-day would put me in a sick bed for a week was in those days a laughable incident. One day I took Muriel to the race track at Belair. We lunched in the city and I bought her a pair of gloves. I had four hundred and fifty dollars in my pocket. On my return, Muriel’s gloves were all there was to show for my money, and we laughed at the joke of it. Many of the bookmakers were my friends, but they separated me from my money with the best heart in the world.
In my earlier pages I have said things uncomplimentary to parsons, but there are parsons and parsons. For the sake of the help and sympathy I received from one dear soul, I offer prayers for all parsons, pastors and masters.
One of the day-schools I went to for a brief while as a youngster was that of the Reverend Edmund—“Daddy” we called him. Dear old Daddy he was to every boy who ever knew him. To say that Daddy was good is to say nothing of him. He was good in a wise, broad way, which is very uncommon. So many people become inhuman and small when they become good. Daddy was both good and human. There is no use in being good, virtuous and honourable, if you have no heart and lack the sympathetic understanding of badness. Daddy understood all things both good and bad. He knew humanity as it really is; only himself he did not know; for he underestimated his own goodness and greatness. He was a curious mixture of childlike generosity and worldly knowingness, with a whimsical wit and a convincing smile.
After I grew up I used to visit him at very irregular intervals, to confess and give him news of myself.Years would sometimes pass between these visits, but I was always received as if I were still a boy, and expected. When ruin, mental, moral and financial, stared me in the face, I quite naturally turned to Daddy, knowing that he would understand, and show me the right way, if there was a way, out of my difficulties.
After a horrible night spent staring into darkness, cursing myself as a blind fool, and turning my position over and over in my mind, I rose early and made a morning call upon the dear old man. He saw me at once, although it was Sunday. I told him all the tale of my folly and recklessness, and where I had landed myself. I was absolutely frank with him, as I had always been. I felt relieved and hopeful, although my affairs were desperate, and I had no idea where I was to secure the money I required by Monday morning’s bank hour. While I told my tale the dear old man sat silent, in a big high-backed chair, his hands in his lap, his eyes half-closed, and his mouth tight shut. In his long shabby cassock buttoned down the front with numerous small black buttons, he was the picture of one of the old ascetics. When I had finished, his looks were stern, but I knew his soft heart, and could feel his sympathy, although he did not speak for over a minute.
“Ah, my son,” at last he said, “you should have known that you could not play that game, and I am really glad you have failed; there is nothing in that game but ashes in the mouth. Your failure is a greater gain than your success would have been. Now listen to me. How long is it since you have seen Sir John?”
“Sir John?” I asked in astonishment. (Sir John was my godfather.) When I was christened in oldTrinity Church, he had stood for me, as the saying is. He was plain John at the time, and comparatively poor. While I was growing up from babyhood to childhood he was making money. As I grew from childhood to manhood he was making more money. While I was marrying and learning to be a father and a husband, he was still making money and being honoured by the Queen for his many philanthropies, which represented millions given to educational and public-spirited enterprises. I knew him as a peculiarly hard old bachelor, with a stony face which had a very chilling effect upon me. He was not of my kind in any way, shape or form. I was a fool. He was a wise man; and when Daddy asked me, “When did you last see Sir John?” the question seemed utterly inapropos.
“Why do you mention him?” I asked. “I could never go to him.”
“Yes, you could,” said Daddy, “and you must. He will help you if I say so.”
“You know him, Daddy?” I asked, surprised. “How do you come to know him?”
“Know him, my son, of course I know him. He is one of my best friends,” replied Daddy.
“That is most amazing, Daddy. How can it be? Sir John a friend of yours! He is so different from you, I cannot think of you together. He is a business man, a millionaire, and moreover an unbeliever. What can you and he be to each other?”
“Strange it may be,” said Daddy, “but it is even so. We are different, very different, but we understand each other, and there is much in common between us. He understands the things that make up my life, and I understand the things that constitute life for him.”
What common ground there could possibly be between these two I did not understand. Daddy I admired and loved, while for Sir John I had no feelings of any kind. I never felt that I even knew him. He and I lived on different planes and spoke different languages. The few times that I had met him after I had grown up had shown me that. It seems most strange that this man had played with me in my babyhood, danced me on his knee, and made card houses on the floor with me. It was much against the grain for me to go to his house on Sunday morning, and present him with a letter from Daddy; but I had to go, if only to show Daddy that I appreciated his attempt to help me. I felt sure I was going on a hopeless errand.
After my talk with Daddy I went to Sir John’s house, which was not far from the one in which I had been married. I sent up my card and Daddy’s letter, and waited some minutes in a severely chaste and cheerless drawing-room, until Sir John appeared.
“Well, John,” he said, as he entered noiselessly, “I hear you are in trouble.” And he sat down on one of the stiff-backed chairs near the door without approaching me, offering his hand or asking me to be seated.
“Yes, Sir John, I am in deep trouble,” I said, and remained standing.
“Humph,” said the old chap. All his words fell from his lips in cold, sharp, even tones. “Well, boy, tell me about it briefly,” he continued, and his mouth closed like a steel trap.
I tried to tell him my position, and how I had come to be placed as I was. He listened, and his attitude was that of an old, tired judge, who hears for the thousandth time the tale of a man self-accused by hisown weak self-exculpations. When I had finished he spoke.
“How much will it take to put you on an even keel once more?” he asked.
“About three thousand five hundred dollars, Sir John,” I replied.
“About?” he said. “About, about?” repeating the objectionable word. “Is that the way you do business? Can you not tell me to a cent how you stand?”
“Yes, I can,” I was glad to say; “I can make it up to a cent from my books.”
“Oh, you keep books? That looks better.”
“Yes, Sir John. I have always kept books,” I said, and my inward thought was, “Thank God.”
“They must be interesting,” he said, and the shadow of a smile hovered for an instant about the corners of his mouth, and showed in his keen eye. “Bring your books to me to-morrow morning at 8.30, at my office. Good morning!” And he coolly turned and walked upstairs, leaving me to find my way out alone.