And in every man’s hand or pocket was a newspaper.
They were scarcely worth reading for mere pleasure, these New York newspapers; indeed, there was scarcely anything in them to read except a daily record of the steady decline in securities of every description; paragraphs noting the passing of dividends; columns setting forth minutely the opinions of very wealthy men concerning the business outlook; chronicles in detail of suits brought against railroads and against great industrial corporations; accounts of inquiries by State and by Federal authorities into combinations resulting in an alleged violation of various laws.
Here and there a failure of some bucket-branded broker was noted — the reports echoing like the first dropping shots along the firing line.
Even to the most casual and uninterested outsider it was evident that already the metropolis was under a tension; that the tension was increasing almost imperceptibly day by day; that there seemed to be no very clear idea as to the reason of it, only a confused apprehension, an apparently unreassuring fear of some grotesque danger ahead, which daily reading of the newspapers was not at all calculated to allay.
Of course there were precise reasons for impending trouble given and reiterated by those amateurs of finance and politics whose opinions are at the disposal of the newspaper-reading public.
Prolixity characterised these solemn utterances, packed full of cant phrases such as “undigested securities” and “the treacherous attack on the nation’s integrity.”
Two principal reasons were given for the local financial uneasiness; and the one made the other ridiculous — first, that the nation’s Executive was mad as Nero and had deliberately begun a senseless holocaust involving the entire nation; the other that a “panic” was due, anyway. It resembled the logic of the White Queen of immortal memory, who began screaming before she pricked her finger in order to save herself any emotion after the pin had drawn blood.
Men knew in their hearts that there was no real reason for impending trouble; that this menace was an unreal thing, intangible, without substance — only a shadow cast by their own assininity.
Yet shadows can be made real property when authority so ordains. Because there was once a man with a donkey who met a stranger in the desert.
The stranger bargained for and bought the donkey; the late owner shoved the shekels into his ample pockets and sat down in the mule’s shadow to escape the sun; and the new owner brought suit to recover the rent due him for the occupation of the shadow cast by his donkey.
There was also a mule which waited seven years to kick.
There are asses and mules and all sorts of shadows. The ordinance of authority can affect only the shadow; the substance is immutable.
Among other serious gentlemen of consideration and means who had been unaccustomed to haunt the metropolis in the dog days was Colonel Alexander Mallett, President of the Half Moon Trust Company, and incidentally Duane’s father.
His town-house was still open, although his wife and daughter were in the country. To it, in the comparative cool of the August evenings, came figures familiar in financial circles; such men as Magnelius Grandcourt, father of Delancy; and Remsen Tappan, and James Cray.
Others came and went, men of whom Duane had read in the newspapers — very great men who dressed very simply, very powerful men who dressed elaborately; and some were young and red-faced with high living, and one was damp of hair and long-nosed, with eyes set a trifle too close together; and one fulfilled every external requisite for a “good fellow”; and another was very old, very white, with a nut-cracker jaw and faded eyes, blue as an unweaned pup’s, and a cream-coloured wig curled glossily over waxen ears and a bloodless and furrowed neck.
All these were very great men; but they and Colonel Mallett journeyed at intervals into the presence of a greater man who inhabited, all alone, except for a crew of a hundred men, an enormous yacht, usually at anchor off the white masonry cliffs of the seething city.
All alone this very great man inhabited the huge white steamer; and they piped him fore and they piped him aft and they piped him over the side. Many a midnight star looked down at the glowing end of his black cigar; many a dawn shrilled with his boatswain’s whistle. He was a very, very great man; none was greater in New York town.
It was said of him that he once killed a pompous statesman — by ridicule:
“I know who you are!” panted a ragged urchin, gazing up in awe as the famous statesman approached his waiting carriage.
“And who am I, my little man?”
“You are the great senator from New York.”
“Yes — you are right. But” — and he solemnly pointed his gloved forefinger toward heaven— “but, remember, there is One even greater than I.”
Duane had heard the absurd lampoon as a child, and one evening late in August, smoking his after-dinner cigar beside his father in the empty conservatory, he recalled the story, which had been one of his father’s favorites.
But Colonel Mallett scarcely smiled, scarcely heard; and his son watched him furtively. The trim, elastic figure was less upright this summer; the close gray hair and cavalry mustache had turned white very rapidly since spring. For the first time, too, in all his life, Colonel Mallett wore spectacles; and the thin gold rims irritated his ears and the delicate bridge of his nose. Under his pleasant eyes the fine skin had darkened noticeably; thin new lines had sprung downward from the nostrils’ clean-cut wings; but the most noticeable change was in his hands, which were no longer firm and fairly smooth, but were now the hands of an old man, restless if not tremulous, unsteady in handling the cigar which, unnoticed, had gone out.
They — father and son — had never been very intimate. An excellent understanding had always existed between them with nothing deeper in it than a natural affection and an instinctive respect for each other’s privacy.
This respect now oppressed Duane because long habit, and the understood pact, seemed to bar him from a sympathy and a practical affection which, for the first time, it seemed to him his father might care for.
That his father was worried was plain enough; but how anxious and with how much reason, he had hesitated to ask, waiting for some voluntary admission, or at least some opening, which the older man never gave.
That night, however, he had tried an opening for himself, offering the old stock story which had always, heretofore, amused his father. And there had been no response.
In silence he thought the matter over; his sympathy was always quick; it hurt him to remain aloof when there might be a chance that he could help a little.
“It may amuse you,” he said carelessly, “to know how much I’ve made since I came back from Paris.”
The elder man looked up preoccupied. His son went on:
“What you set aside for me brings me ten thousand a year, you know. So far I haven’t touched it. Isn’t that pretty good for a start?”
Colonel Mallett sat up straighter with a glimmer of interest in his eyes.
Duane went on, checking off on his fingers:
“I got fifteen hundred for Mrs. Varick’s portrait, the same for Mrs. James Cray’s, a thousand each for portraits of Carl and Friedrich Gumble; that makes five thousand. Then I had three thousand for the music-room I did for Mrs. Ellis; and Dinklespiel Brothers, who handle my pictures, have sold every one I sent; which gives me twelve thousand so far.”
“I am perfectly astonished,” murmured his father.
Duane laughed. “Oh, I know very well that sheer merit had nothing much to do with it. The people who gave me orders are all your friends. They did it as they might have sent in wedding presents; I am your son; I come back from Paris; it’s up to them to do something. They’ve done it — those who ever will, I expect — and from now on it will be different.”
“They’ve given you a start,” said his father.
“They certainly have done that. Many a brilliant young fellow, with more ability than I, eats out his heart unrecognised, sterilised for lack of wh
at came to me because of your influence.”
“It is well to look at it in that way for the present,” said his father. He sat silent for a while, staring through the dusk at the lighted windows of houses in the rear. Then:
“I have meant to say, Duane, that I — we” — he found a little difficulty in choosing his words— “that the Trust Company’s officers feel that, for the present, it is best for them to reconsider their offer that you should undertake the mural decoration of the new building.”
“Oh,” said Duane, “I’m sorry! — but it’s all right, father.”
“I told them you’d take it without offence. I told them that I’d tell you the reason we do not feel quite ready to incur, at this moment, any additional expenses.”
“Everybody is economising,” said Duane cheerfully, “so I understand. No doubt — later — —”
“No doubt,” said his father gravely.
The son’s attitude was careless, untroubled; he dropped one long leg over the other knee, and idly examining his cigar, cast one swift level look at the older man:
“Father?”
“Yes, my son.”
“I — it just occurred to me that if you happen to have any temporary use for what you very generously set aside for me, don’t stand on ceremony.”
There ensued a long silence. It was his bedtime when Colonel Mallett stirred in his holland-covered armchair and stood up.
“Thank you, my son,” he said simply; they shook hands and separated; the father to sleep, if he could; the son to go out into the summer night, walk to his nearest club, and write his daily letter to the woman he loved:
“Dear, it is not at all bad in town — not that murderous, humid heat that you think I’m up against; and you must stop reproaching yourself for enjoying the delicious breezes in the Adirondacks. Women don’t know what a jolly time men have in town. Follows the chronical of this August day:
“I had your letter; that is breeze enough for me; it was all full of blue sky and big white clouds and the scent of Adirondack pines. Isn’t it jolly for you and Kathleen to be at the Varicks’ camp! And what a jolly crowd you’ve run into.
“I note what you say about your return to the Berkshires, and that you expect to be at Berkshire Pass Inn with the motor on Monday. Give my love to Naïda; I know you three and young Montross will have a bully tour through the hill country.
“I also note your red-pencil cross at the top of the page — which always gives me, as soon as I open a letter of yours, the assurance that all is still well with you and that victory still remains with you. Thank God! Stand steady, little girl, for the shadows are flying and the dawn is ours.
“After your letter, breakfast with father — a rather silent one. Then he went down-town in his car and I walked to the studio. It’s one of those stable-like studios which decorate the cross-streets in the 50’s, but big enough to work in.
“A rather bothersome bit of news: the Trust Company reconsiders its commission; and I have three lunettes and three big mural panels practically completed. For a while I’ll admit I had the blues, but, after all, some day the Trust Company is likely to take up the thing again and give me the commission. Anyway, I’ve had a corking time doing the things, and lots of valuable practice in handling a big job and covering large surfaces; and the problem has been most exciting and interesting because, you see, I’ve had to solve it, taking into consideration the architecture and certain fixed keys and standards, such as the local colour and texture of the marble and the limitations of the light area. Don’t turn up your pretty nose; it’s all very interesting.
“I didn’t bother about luncheon; and about five I went to the club, rather tired in my spinal column and arm-weary.
“Nobody was there whom you know except Delancy Grandcourt and Dysart. The latter certainly looks very haggard. I do not like him personally, as you know, but the man looks ill and old and the papers are becoming bolder in what they hint at concerning him and the operations he was, and is still supposed to be, connected with; and it is deplorable to see such a physical change in any human being, guilty or innocent. I do not like to see pain; I never did. For Dysart I have no use at all, but he is suffering, and it is difficult to contemplate any suffering unmoved.
“There was a letter at the club for me from Scott. He says he’s plugging away at the Rose-beetle’s life history as a hors-d’oeuvre before tackling the appetising problem of his total extermination. Dear old Scott! I never thought that the boy I fought in your garden would turn into a spectacled savant. Or that his sister would prove to be the only inspiration and faith and hope that life holds for me!
“I talked to Delancy. He is a good young man, as you’ve always insisted. I know one thing; he’s high-minded and gentle. Dysart has a manner of treating him which is most offensive, but it only reflects discredit on Dysart.
“Delancy told me that Rosalie is hostess in her own cottage this month and has asked him up. I heard him speaking rather diffidently to Dysart about it, and Dysart replied that he didn’t ‘give a damn who went to the house,’ as he wasn’t going.
“So much for gossip; now a fact or two: my father is plainly worried over the business outlook; and he’s quite alone in the house; and that is why I don’t go back to Roya-Neh just now and join your brother. I could do plenty of work there. Scott writes that the new studio is in good shape for me. What a generous girl you are! Be certain that at the very first opportunity I will go and occupy it and paint, no doubt, several exceedingly remarkable pictures in it which will sell for enormous prices and enable us to keep a maid-of-all-work when we begin our ménage!
“Father has retired — poor old governor — it tears me all to pieces to see him so silent and listless. I am here at the club writing this before I go home to bed. Now I am going. Good-night, my beloved.
“Duane.”
“P.S. — An honour, or the chance of it, has suddenly confronted me, surprising me so much that I don’t really dare to believe that it can possibly happen to me — at least not for years. It is this: I met Guy Wilton the other day; you don’t know him, but he is a most charming and cultivated man, an engineer. I lunched with him at the Pyramid — that bully old club into which nothing on earth can take a man who has not distinguished himself in his profession. It is composed of professional and business men, the law, the army, navy, diplomatic and consular, the arts and sciences, and usually the chief executive of the nation.
“During luncheon Wilton said: ‘You ought to be in here. You are the proper timber.’
“I was astounded and told him so.
“He said: ‘By the way, the president of the Academy of Design is very much impressed with some work of yours he has seen. I’ve heard him, and other artists, also, discussing some pictures of yours which were exhibited in a Fifth Avenue gallery.’
“Well, you know, Geraldine, the breath was getting scarcer in my lungs every minute and I hadn’t a word to say. And do you know what that trump of a mining engineer did? He took me about after luncheon and I met a lot of very corking old ducks and some very eminent and delightful younger ducks, and everybody was terribly nice, and the president of the Academy, who is startlingly young and amiable, said that Guy Wilton had spoken about me, and that it was customary that when anybody was proposed for membership, a man of his own profession should do it.
“And I looked over the club list and saw Billy Van Siclen’s name, and now what do you think! Billy has proposed me, Austin, the marine painter, has seconded me, and no end of men have written in my behalf — professors, army men, navy men, business friends of father’s, architects, writers — and I’m terribly excited over it, although my excitement has plenty of time to cool because it’s a fearfully conservative club and a man has to wait years, anyway.
“This is the very great honour, dear, for it is one even to be proposed for the Pyramid. I know you will be happy over it.
“D.”
The weather became hotter toward the beginning of Sep
tember; his studio was almost unendurable, nor was the house very much better.
To eat was an effort; to sleep a martyrdom. Night after night he rose from his hot pillows to stand and listen outside his father’s door; but the old endure heat better than the young, and very often his father was asleep in the stifling darkness which made sleep for him impossible.
The usual New York thunder-storms rolled up over Staten Island, covered the southwest with inky gloom, veined the horizon with lightning, then burst in spectacular fury over the panting city, drenched it to its steel foundations, and passed on rumbling up the Hudson, leaving scarcely any relief behind it.
In one of these sudden thunder-storms he took refuge in a rather modest and retired restaurant just off Fifth Avenue; and it being the luncheon hour he made a convenience of necessity and looked about for a table, and discovered Rosalie Dysart and Delancy Grandcourt en tête-à-tête over their peach and grapefruit salad.
There was no reason why they should not have been there; no reason why he should have hesitated to speak to them. But he did hesitate — in fact, was retiring by the way he came, when Rosalie glanced around with that instinct which divines a familiar presence, gave him a startled look, coloured promptly to her temples, and recovered her equanimity with a smile and a sign for him to join them. So he shook hands, but remained standing.
“We ran into town in the racer this morning,” she explained. “Delancy had something on down-town and I wanted to look over some cross-saddles they made for me at Thompson’s. Do be amiable and help us eat our salad. What a ghastly place town is in September! It’s bad enough in the country this year; all the men wear long faces and mutter dreadful prophecies. Can you tell me, Duane, what all this doleful talk is about?”
“It’s about something harder to digest than this salad. The public stomach is ostrichlike, but it can’t stand the water-cure. Which is all Arabic to you, Rosalie, and I don’t mean to be impertinent, only the truth is I don’t know why people are losing confidence in the financial stability of the country, but they apparently are.”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 448