Doctor Vardaman was not a wealthy man; he occupied what he considered
the golden mean, the "neither poverty nor riches" of the Preacher;
enough to live in a simple, uncalculating ease. His chief pastime,
as he used to describe it with some amusement, was the practising
of certain small economies whereby he accumulated enough to indulge
himself once in a while with an expensive new edition, or rare and
equally high-priced old one. Like most professional men, he had no
turn for affairs, and no temptation ever assailed him to "take a
flyer in Phosphate," or anything else. It was, therefore, without
any idea of investment that he scaled the stairs leading to Colonel
Pallinder's office a few days after the Misses Gwynne had visited
Gwynne's to explain their operations in finance. He was, in fact,
bent on an errand that took him past the colonel's door, and into the
rear of the Turner Building, where the City Superintendent of Parks
and Gardens had a retiring, little, unfrequented room. The doctor
wanted to file objections against the setting up of several monumental
bill-boards and advertising signs on the vacant lots along the west
side of Richmond Avenue, facing number 201. "As a physician in good
standing, sir," he expounded vigorously, yet not without a smile, to
the City Superintendent, who was an old acquaintance and ex-patient. "I
dislike to be confronted every time I open my front door with 'Geary's
Purple Pills' for various disorders not commonly referred to in polite
society. And as a patriotic citizen, I don't want to see our town
disfigured by any such monstrosities!"
Coming away with his point half gained, he once more passed Colonel
Pallinder's office door. At that time the Turner Building was at the
very core of our business district. There was a bank on the ground
floor, the old Third National--J. B. had some position in it, assistant
bookkeeper, perhaps. One used to catch fleeting glimpses of the young
fellow's big shoulders in shirt-sleeves, and sleek, dark head on an
altitudinous stool behind gilt wire screens, through the plate-glass
windows on the Market Street side. On his last visit he told me that
he had gone down Market Street and walked past those old windows in
a sentimental mood, recalling the brave days when he was twenty-one.
"I got sixty a month," he said, "and thought I was doing first-rate!
It's hard to believe that that old rookery was the best office
building in town. We hadn't the beginnings of an idea about fire-proof
construction; but there was an elevator, and the bank had a floor of
black and red tiles, remember? The passages were so dim the gas had
to be kept burning at noon-day. The steam-heating apparatus must have
been one of the first put in; anyway it never did very well, and was
forever breaking down. I've worked in my overcoat many a time, with a
blue nose, figuring away with my stiff fingers. Harvey Smith--you know,
Jim's brother--had a law-office with some other young chap, I've forgot
who, now, on the third floor, and they set up a sheet-iron cannon-stove
to keep from freezing to death. There wasn't much business coming
Harvey's way in those days--we used to wonder how he made out."
That part of town is now given over to warehouses and junk-shops. The
dirty, draughty hallways of the Turner Building are very empty and
melancholy. They used to be handsomely carpeted with cocoa-matting, and
in the odd corners one came upon little pyramids of tin spittoons piled
up handily by the janitor, either just washed or in need of washing.
The place was as busy as an anthill that morning when Doctor Vardaman
paced along the cocoa-paths on his way out. Near the top of the
stairs--which were generally preferred to the elevator--he encountered
Colonel Pallinder ushering from his office somebody with a shawl and
bonnet and fat black umbrella, whose outlines in the semi-obscurity
appeared vaguely familiar to the old gentleman's casual glance.
"Is that you, Doctor? Come in, come in, sir," said the colonel,
promptly relinquishing his client ("In point of fact, he dropped her
like a hot potato," the doctor said afterwards), when he saw who was
approaching. And, overriding the doctor's demurrer, "Oh, nonsense,
I say come _in_, sir! Why, we've got a little business together,
forgot that, hey?" He smote Doctor Vardaman a light, humorous,
affectionate blow on the shoulder and pushed him into the office.
"I don't want to interrupt you----" the doctor began, accepting at
last the handsome leather chair his host pulled forward. He glanced
about curiously, rolling the colonel's excellent Havana between
his fingers. The Pallinders possessed the secret of a delightful
spontaneous and whole-souled hospitality; the stranger within their
gates was unaffectedly welcome to the best they had--and the best
they had was very good indeed; self-denial was a virtue they never
needed to practise, apparently. The atmosphere of their house was
always kind, gay, care-free, and they themselves highly ornamental.
Colonel Pallinder bustled about the doctor with a dozen pleasant little
attentions, yet contrived somehow never to be officious. It is a
strange thing, and a depressing instance of the inborn tendency to evil
of the human race, that it has been within the experience of everyone
of us, I think, to lodge with and suffer the kindnesses of many
virtuous families to whom the name and the habits of the Pallinders
would be anathema--and we shrink from remembering how incredibly we
were bored thereby!
The office was a rich, comfortable place. Everything was new; the
colonel's mahogany roll-top desk, the leather lounge, which, Doctor
Vardaman noted inwardly, had the air of being pretty constantly in
use, the brilliantly glazed maps of "Phosphate" territory gleaming on
the walls. A great accumulation of mail loaded the desk; the colonel's
correspondence was evidently something colossal. There were numberless
pamphlets, circulars, prospectuses, and newspaper clippings with
rows of figures accompanied by at least half-a-dozen ciphers printed
conspicuously at the top. "_The ARKANSAS CONSOLIDATED PHOSPHATE, COAL,
AND IRON COMPANY, CAPITAL AND SURPLUS $4,455,000.00._" "_EL PASO &
RIO GRANDE EXTENSION_ is the _BEST ZINC STOCK_ on the market at the
price. _EL PASO MINES_ have paid over $172,000,000.00 in dividends. We
strongly recommend this _STOCK for INVESTMENT_. Ballard & Co., Wall
St., N. Y. William Pallinder, Agt." Doctor Vardaman surveyed these
and like documents with a kind of satirical interest. "Of course," he
used to explain, "I had had more than a suspicion for a good while
that 'Phosphate' and 'Zinc' and the colonel's capitalist friends were
all more or less mythical. You can't be as intimate as I was with a
man like that for two years and not 'get a line on him,' as the boys
say. And then there was Steven and that terrific flare-up he had with
Gwynne about the rent in my own library. Latterly I had begun to have a
pretty well-defined notion that Pallinder was in a tight place--getting
near the end of his rope in our town, at least. Along in the fall
sometime he had borrowed fifty dollars of me on some pretext; and I
not unnaturally supposed that he wanted to corner me into lending him
another fifty, or maybe thought that with my hazy ideas about business
he might make a sale of 'Phosphate.' I was a good deal interested to
see how he would go about it; I'd quite made up my mind not to do
either, you know--lend him the fifty, or buy any stock, I mean."
What then was the doctor's astonishment when Colonel Pallinder
impressively brought out an elegant dark green Russia-leather purse and
card-case combined, with "W. B. P." intertwined in a gold monogram on
one side, and from a thick layer of greenbacked bills therein selected
a fifty-dollar one and laid it on the old gentleman's knee! Doctor
Vardaman stared at it as if it had been a specimen from the flora of
another planet.
"Now, now, now, no objections! I _insist_," said the colonel, rather
unnecessarily in view of the doctor's dumb surprise. "It's a matter
of principle with me, even about such paltry sums as this, that
short settlements make long friends," he continued, conveniently
oblivious of the fact that he had been in the other's debt for this
particular paltry sum more than six months. "Never could understand,
sir, how a man can go on owing and owing people simply because he
knows they're his friends and won't dun him. That's a queer idea of
honesty, seems to me," said the colonel, looking Doctor Vardaman in
the eye with a frank and open smile. "You don't come down this way
very often, Doctor. I suppose you think all this--" he waved his hand
around--"market-place--beasts at Ephesus, hey?"
"I'm a--I'm a little out of place, I fear," the doctor stammered, still
in a confusion. "I hope I didn't drive your client away."
Colonel Pallinder threw back his head in hearty amusement. "Oh, Lord,
that wasn't a client, Doctor, that old creature--what was her name now,
MacGonigal, MacGilligan, MacSomething? No, I was trying to get rid
of her as gently as might be without hurting her feelings. For after
all people like that have feelings, you know; they are worthy of some
consideration; hang it, a gentleman has only one kind of manners. I'm
glad she came in while my clerks were all out, and saw me instead of
any of them--you know what Jack-in-office is. Why, sir, you have no
conception of how we are bothered by that kind of person. They watch
the stock market for a while, or get to talking with their friends,
and then the first thing you know they come in here all agog with
their savings--a hundred, two hundred, perhaps three hundred dollars,
wanting to _invest_! It's the hardest thing in the world to make
them understand that we can't handle little dabs like that; they're
twice as much trouble as other people's tens of thousands. Your small
investor is eternally writing and making inquiries about this stock and
that stock, wanting to change, wanting to transfer, wanting to sell,
wanting to buy, wanting to be reassured perpetually at the slightest
fluctuation of the market. 'Do you think my stock is all right? Will
it go any higher? Will it go any lower?' Like as not he sees some
perfectly worthless stuff advertised broadcast and promptly sit down
and writes me, all on fire: 'William Pallinder, Esq., Dear Sir: Would
like your opinion about the enclosed clipping relating to Timbuctoo
and South Pole Railway shares. Hadn't I better take my dime's worth
of Phosphate Preferred and put it into T. &. S. P.? Yours truly, Jack
Ass.' Oh, you may laugh, Doctor, but it's no joke. And then, Doctor
Vardaman, there's another side to it that I never lose sight of," said
the colonel, leaning forward and tapping the old gentleman on the hand
with a grave look. "That, sir, is the question of _moral obligation_.
Take the case of that old woman. 'Why, Mrs. Mac-What's-your-name,' says
I, 'if I understand you, this is all the money you have'--it was four
hundred and odd, I believe--'and you want to put it into Lone Star
common. Now,' says I, 'of course that's a perfectly safe investment,
solid as United States bonds, non-taxable, pays nine per cent., and
will double in value in the natural course of events before another
six months; and what you say is quite true, that you will never have
another opportunity of getting it as low as forty-five'--she was
really a shrewd and intelligent woman for her class, and for a minute
I was almost tempted to let her have her way, for, of course, there
wasn't the slightest risk. 'Now,' said I, 'if you had two or three
thousand or even one thousand to spare, mind you, I say _to spare_,
I should say to you, go ahead, by all means. But,' says I, 'I can't
take the responsibility of letting you invest your last cent this
way, just on my say-so. I've got my own money in it, but my money and
your money are two very different propositions. Go and consult your
lawyer, get the advice of your friends, go to another broker for that
matter, if you choose. All I would urge is, _do it soon_, or you may
lose a great chance, such as don't come along every day.' She was very
reluctant, but I finally persuaded her; she was just going as you came
along. Oh, of course, I know very well, nobody better after all my
experience, that she may have gone straight off to some other broker
as I suggested, and _he'll_ get the commission, not being so--well, so
squeamish as I am, but William Pallinder isn't that--kind, Doctor; we
can't help the way we're made, and I'm--not--that--kind!"
He spaced the last words out, emphasising them by a gentle blow with a
ruler on the palm of his hand, and leaned back, surveying his companion
through a haze of cigar smoke, with the expression of one who might
have added, were it necessary: "Behold in me a monument of integrity!"
Doctor Vardaman gazed at the El Paso and Rio Grande circulars with a
new respect. Was it possible, he asked himself, that he ought to revise
his opinion of Pallinder? To be sure, Huddesley had hinted--but what
does a servant's chatter amount to? And then there was that business
of the unpaid rent--but Gwynne had not seemed to take that very
seriously, and surely he should know. As to that flourishing manner of
the colonel's, we are prone to associate it with--well, with buncombe,
in plain words; yet it was, in fact, entirely natural, the direct
result of certain traditions, early environment, and upbringing. He
had reached this point in his reflections, smoking silently, when the
colonel was most unfortunately inspired to remark:
"I see you're looking at that map of Phosphate territory in Arkansas.
It's a wonderful thing the way the Southwest is opening up, wonderful!
All due to Northern enterprise and vigour, sir, every bit of it. We'd
be nowhere without you. You'll find few men from my section of the
country that will acknowledge it, but it's _so_. I never did believe
in keeping up that spirit of mutual distrust and jealousy--waving the
bloody shirt and all that; let bygones be bygones, I say; let's all
work together for the common good, and give honour where honour is due.
Why, sir, it was a Northern man--Lewis Sheister, from some little town
up in New York State, that discovered and worked the first phosphate
vein in Arkansas. The people down there in the Ozarks were ready to run
him and his men out of there with shotguns when he started in--and now
I guess they bless the day Sheister turned up. He's worth five hundred
thousand dollars to-day, and he's been a factor in enriching that whole
State. Yes, sir, there's millions right here." He rose, and, drawing a
pencil from his waistcoat pocket, defined a small circle on the shining
brittle surface of the map. "Right in that little zone, sir, millions
for anyone, even with a very limited capital--ten for one, sir, ten
for one is what dozens of my clients are drawing at this moment," said
the colonel, pointing with his pencil, like a teacher of mathematics
demonstrating at the blackboard, and eying the doctor profoundly. "Ever
think of investing, Doctor?" he added, indifferently, resuming his
seat, and picking a thread from his coatsleeve as he spoke.
Alas, the gentleman had protested too much! "You'd find me one of your
troublesome small investors, I am afraid," said the doctor, wishing
uncomfortably that he could believe in Pallinder. "It's rarely a
professional man lays up any money, you know."
"Oh, you'd be a different pair of shoes," said Colonel Pallinder
genially. "I'd rather handle a couple of hundred for a man like you
than a couple of thousand for some others I could mention. Now I always
contend that stocks such as I deal in are a Heaven-sent boon to the
man of moderate means. Say you only have a hundred or so. You put it
into Ozark Field or--well--yes, you _could_ get half-a-dozen shares of
Lone Star. I know a man, a banker in New York, a personal friend, you
understand, that I think I could persuade into parting with a little
block like that, although they hate to like the devil--but I believe
he'd do it for me. Now these things advance so rapidly that in a month
or six weeks you could sell out to great advantage--if you didn't want
to wait for your dividends, or found the speculation kept you lying
awake o' nights," he interpolated, with jovial sarcasm. "Of course,
Doctor, I hardly need to tell a man of your intelligence and breadth
of view that--um--ah--'there's a tide in the affairs of men,' you
know--the time is coming when nobody but the kings of finance will be
able to buy and control these shares, they're going up so fast; but if
you were already _in_ the _ring_, as I may say----"
"I doubt if the kings of finance and I would hit it off very well,"
said the doctor soberly. Colonel Pallinder laughed uproariously. He
slapped his knees and laughed, and wiped his eyes and laughed again.
Never had the doctor's dry humour received such appreciation; and
not being acutely conscious of having been humorous, he observed the
colonel's manifestations of delight with a good deal of interest.
"You talk in a rather disparaging vein about the business ability
of professional men, Doctor," he said, when his mirth had somewhat
subsided. "But the fact is, I've met with just as much shrewdness
among them as anywhere else. A successful lawyer, a widely-known and
successful physician like yourself--why, he's _got_ to be very much
above the average in intellect and education both. A man like you
can take hold of anything, no matter whether he's had any previous
experience or not--he can take up anything and do well at it. Now,
look at you! I suppose you've hardly ever been in a broker's office
before in your life, and you come in here, and with scarcely a word
of explanation from me, grasp the whole subject at once! I tell you
what, I'd like you to meet Sheister, and just hear him talk Phosphate
once. He's a self-made man, Doctor, no gentleman-of-the-old-school
such as you, but for that very reason I think you'd find it an
interesting experience. He'll talk by the hour about his early trials
and struggles--it sounds like a romance. He has the whole history
of Phosphate at his finger-ends. Of course _I_ can't talk about the
stuff except in a business way--I only know that it's been a gold mine
for Sheister and the men he got to go in with him. Sir, I knew that
fellow when he hadn't but one shirt in the world, and he didn't know
where his next meal was to come from--and now he's travelling round
in his private car with a valet and a cook! I've done pretty well in
Phosphate myself," said the colonel, with becoming restraint; "but I'm
not a patch on Sheister. Really, I'd like you to see Mrs. Sheister's
diamonds, just for a curiosity. My wife can't bear her--thinks she's
_common_, and all that--you know how women are--but I tell her she's
down on Mrs. Sheister just because she's jealous of her diamonds."
"Mrs. Pallinder has no cause to be jealous of anybody's diamonds, I
think," said the doctor smoothly. "Our young people will be giving
their entertainment in a few days now," he added, thinking it high time
to change the subject. And the colonel glided away on the new tack as
gracefully as if the manoeuvre had been of his own suggestion.
"Yes, and what do you think that daughter of mine said to me the
other day? It seems they have to make a great show of jewelry in the
second play--what's the name of it--'Mrs. Tinkleton'? Mazie's '_Mrs.
Tinkleton_,' and she's going to pile on all her own and her mother's
too. So she comes to me: 'Oh, papa, wouldn't it be nice if we could
have a real tiara? We've got to fix ma's necklace to look like one,
but I think those little coronets they have at Tiffany's are just
too utterly sweet.' That's the way the girls and boys talk nowadays,
Doctor, 'too utterly too,' 'too intensely all but,'--can't understand
half the gibberish they're saying; but I grasped the meaning of _that_!
'Why, good heavens, my child,' I said, 'do you think I'm _made_ of
money? There's your mother's necklace cost me thirty-five hundred--the
papers made it five thousand, but you know, Doctor, they always blow
around and talk big--not so very long ago, not more than two years, I
believe, and now _you_ want a tiara.' 'Well, papa, you know you said
ma's necklace was just bought out of that rise in Phosphate, and it was
like getting it for nothing, and you'd never miss the money because
the dividends were so much more than you had expected. Won't something
else take a rise?' And in fact, Doctor," continued Colonel Pallinder,
pulling at his goatee with a ruefully comic grin, "she rather had me
there. It was just as she said, the stock having gone up beyond my
wildest expectations. I realised treble what I'd been looking for, and
I always like to make my wife some little gift when anything of that
sort happens. But a tiara at Tiffany's! I couldn't quite go _that_.
Must you be going? Well, good-bye. When you feel like looking into
Phosphate a little farther, drop in. I've some figures I think would
interest you."
Doctor Vardaman took his way from the Turner Building, walking fast
in a brown study; such was his preoccupation that twenty steps from
the entrance he collided with a young man carrying a green cloth bag,
weighted with books or papers, heading for the stairs.
"Hello, Doctor!" he began to apologise. "I didn't know it was you. Why,
it's great to see you down here. Come up and take a look at my office."
"I've just been up in the building, Harvey," said the old gentleman,
recognising him. "I ought to be home sitting down to my luncheon this
minute. Huddesley would discharge me if I were not on time. I went up
to see Ogden about those signboards on Richmond Avenue." He paused and
then some indefinable feeling prompted him to add: "Fine office Colonel
Pallinder has, hasn't he? The building is certainly very complete and
well-equipped; you ought to have seen the two-story frame shanty where
I first hung out my shingle. It was over a grocery with an outside
stairs leading up to it."
Young Smith eyed him with a certain apprehension in his keen boyish
face. "Oh, yes, the Turner Building is said to be one of the finest in
the West; but I understand they are going to put up some in Chicago
that'll beat us all hollow. Pallinder's a great friend of yours, isn't
he, Doctor?"
"We are neighbours, you know," said Doctor Vardaman, diplomatically,
and smiled, meeting the other's eye. "Don't be uneasy. I haven't been
investing."
"Why--I--I----" Harvey stammered, crimsoning in his confusion, yet
plainly a little relieved. "I just couldn't help wondering if you had,
you know. The Colonel's a great old blatherskite, isn't he? Of course,
I don't mean--that is, I mean----"
"Harvey, Harvey," said Doctor Vardaman, wagging his head solemnly,
"I'm afraid that's not the way counsel for the defence should open his
remarks."
"Well, it's _so_, you know, anyhow," said the young fellow ingenuously.
"Jim sees a lot of them; he goes out there all the time. He's in that
shindy they're going to give on the twelfth. Say, have you heard that
about Gwynne Peters?"
"No, what was it--Oh, here's my car--never mind, Harvey. I don't need
any help."