Mr. Bullion was not without good natural impulses, but his education and
experience had been such as to develop only the sharp and selfish traits
of his character. An orphan at the age of eleven years, he was placed
in a shop under the charge of a grasping, unscrupulous man, where he
learned the rules of business which he followed afterwards with so much
success. The old-fashioned notions about the Golden Rule he was speedily
well rid of; for when his indiscreet frankness to customers was
observed, the rod taught him the folly of untimely truth-telling, if not
the propriety of smoothing the way to a bargain by a glib falsehood.
With such training, he grew up an expert salesman; and before he was of
age, after various changes in business, he became the confidential clerk
in a large wholesale house. Owing to unexpected reverses, the house
became embarrassed, and at length failed. The head of the firm went back
to his native town a broken-hearted man, and not long afterwards died,
leaving his family destitute. But Bullion, with a junior partner,
settled with the creditors, kept on with the business, and prospered.
Perhaps, if the widow had received what was rightfully hers, the juniors
would have had a smaller capital to begin upon,--Bullion knew; but the
account, if there was one, was past settlement by human tribunals, and
had gone upon the docket in the great Court of Review.
Wealth grows like the banian, sending down branches that take root on
all sides in the thrifty soil, and then become trunks themselves, and
the parents of ever-increasing boughs,--a sturdy forest in breadth, a
tree in unity. So Bullion grew and flourished. At the time of our story
he was rich enough to satisfy any moderate ambition; but he wished to
rear a colossal fortune, and the operations he was now concerned in
were fortunate beyond his expectations. But he was not satisfied. He
conceived the idea of carrying on the same stock-speculation in New
York on a larger scale, and made an arrangement with one of the leading
"bears" of that city; but he was careful to keep this a secret, most of
all from Fletcher and others of his associates at home. Fortune favored
him, as usual, and he promised himself a success that would make him a
monarch in the financial world. Under the excitement of the moment, he
had filled the baby hands of Fletcher's child with gold pieces. It was
as Fletcher said; his head was fairly turned by the glittering prospect
before him.
The associate in New York proposed to Bullion the purchase of a
controlling interest in a railroad; and Bullion, believing that the
depression had nearly reached its limit, and that affairs would soon
take a turn, agreed that it was best now to change their policy, and to
buy all the shares in this stock that should be offered while the price
was low, and keep them as an investment. He felt sure that he with the
New York capitalist had now money enough to "swing" all the shares in
market, and they each agreed to purchase all that should be brought
to the hammer in their respective cities. Following up his promise
faithfully, Bullion bought all the stock of the railroad that came into
State Street, and in this way rapidly exhausted his ready money. Then he
raised loans upon his other property, and still kept the market clear.
But he wondered that so many shares came to Boston for sale; for the
railroad was in a Western State, and few of the original holders were
New England men.
Bullion now met the first check in his career. Kerbstone, whose appeals
for help he had disregarded, and whose property had been wofully
depreciated by the course of the "bears," of whom Bullion was chief,
failed for a large sum. As he was treasurer of the Neversink Mills,
the stockholders and creditors of that corporation made an immediate
investigation of its accounts. Kerbstone was found to be a defaulter
to the amount of hundreds of thousands of dollars; the property was
gone,--undermined like a snow-bank in spring. The largest owner was
Bullion. He was overreached by his own shrewdness; and the hitherto
unlucky "bulls," who had had small cause to laugh, thought that it was
"sport to see the engineer
Hoist with his own petard,"--
better even than to have tossed him on their own horns.
Bullion made some wry faces; but the loss, though great, was not
ruinous. He was obliged, however, to take back the shares of the
factory-stock on which he had obtained loans for his New York
operations, and to substitute an equal amount of other securities,--thus
cramping his resources at a time when he needed every dollar to carry
out his vast plans.
In the multiplicity of his affairs, Bullion had almost forgotten
Fletcher, and left him to pursue his own course. But there was a man who
had not forgotten him, and who followed all his movements with vigilant
eyes. Sandford was convinced that Fletcher had in some way become
prosperous, and he now advanced to use the peculiar note as a draft on
the miserable debtor's funds. There was the same wily approach, the same
covert allusion to Fletcher's supposed resources, the same peremptory
demand, and the same ugly threat which had so desperately maddened him
when the subject was broached before. Fletcher felt the tightening of
the lasso, but could not free himself from the fatal noose. He must pay
whatever the cold-eyed creditor demanded. Two thousand dollars was the
sum asked for the acknowledgment of having appropriated five hundred.
Twopence for halfpenny has been accounted fair usury among the Jews; but
in Christian communities it is only crime that accumulates interest like
that.
As a measure of precaution, Sandford had made a copy of the paper and
prepared an explanatory statement; these he now inclosed in an envelope,
in Fletcher's presence, and directed it to Messrs. Foggarty, Danforth,
and Dot. Then drawing out his watch, as if to make a careful computation
of time, he said,--
"Nine, ten, eleven,--yes,--at eleven, to-morrow, I shall expect to
receive the sum; otherwise I shall feel it my duty to send this letter
by a trusty hand. In fact, I suppose I have hardly done right in not
putting the gentlemen on their guard before."
A cold sweat covered Fletcher's shivering limbs, and for a moment he
stood irresolute; but recollecting Bullion, he rallied himself, and,
assenting to the proposition, bade Sandford good-bye; then, as the only
revenge practicable, he cursed him with the heartiest emphasis, when
his back was turned. Presently Tonsor came with the news of Kerbstone's
failure.
"The street is full of rumors," he said;--"Bullion is a large owner in
the Neversink."
"Bosh!" said Fletcher,--"Bullion is in there for fifty thousand, to be
sure; but what is that? He has other property enough,--half a million,
at least."
"Still, a pebble brought down Goliath. A house in New York, worth a
million, failed yesterday for want of twenty-five thousand."
"Don't you be alarmed. Bullion knows. He isn't going to fail."
"I want to get ten thousand from him to take some shares I bought for
him."
"How soon?"
"Now; and he is not at his office."
"I'll get you the money from our house. I haven't deposited the funds
for to-day yet, and I'll put in a memorandum which Bullion will make
good."
"Hadn't you better wait?"
"No; it doesn't matter. He's all right; and it isn't best to break his
orders for any ten thousand dollars."
Fletcher handed the money to the broker, and, as bank-hours were then
about over, he put his papers in order and went home.
"Lovey!" he exclaimed, upon meeting his wife, "I have been thinking
over what you said about getting my notes cashed. I believe I'll take
Bullion's offer and salt the money down. Probably, now, he will give me
a better trade, for there is considerable more due."
"Oh, John! how glad I am! You _will_ do it to-morrow,--won't you, now?"
"Yes, I'll settle with him to-morrow."
He was thinking of the fact that Tonsor had bought shares for Bullion,
and he wondered what the move meant. A house divided against itself
could not stand; and he said to himself, that a man must be uncommonly
deep to be a "bull" and a "bear" at the same time. There was no doubt
that Bullion had embarked in some speculation which he had not seen fit
to make known to his agent.
"There you go,--off into one of your fogs again!" said the wife,
noticing his suddenly abstracted air. "That's the way you have done for
the last three months,--ever since you began with that hateful man."
"I get to thinking about affairs, my little woman, and I don't want to
bother your simple head with them; so I go cruising off in the fog, as
you call it, by myself."
"Oh, if you once get through with that man's affairs, we'll have no more
fogs!"
"No, deary, we'll have summer weather and a smooth sea, I hope, for the
rest of our voyage."
"You see, John, I have been dreadfully anxious, more than I could tell
you. If anything goes wrong, I've always noticed that it isn't the big
people that have to suffer; it's the smaller ones that get caught."
"Yes, it's an old story; the big flies break out of the spider's net;
the little chaps hang there. But I'll settle up the business to-morrow.
I shall have enough to buy us a little house in the country,--a snug
box, with a garden; then I'll get a horse to drive about with, and we'll
take some comfort. Come, little woman, sit on my knee! Come, baby, here
is a knee for you, too!"
Holding them in his arms, he still mused upon the morrow, and once and
again charged his mind to remember "two thousand for Sandford, ten
thousand for Danforth and Dot!"