The Deluge by DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS
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21 THE DULUGE
BY
DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS
_Author of_
The Cost, The Plum Tree, The Social Secretary, etc.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
GEORGE GIBBS
[Illustration]
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.
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