Margaret hastened to her chamber. Was the air oppressive? She opened the
window and sat down by it. A soft south wind was blowing, eating away
the remaining patches of snow; the sky was full of fleecy clouds. Where
do these days come from in January? Why should nature be in a melting
mood? Margaret instinctively would have preferred a wild storm,
violence, anything but this elemental languor. Her emotion was
incredible to herself.
It was only an incident. It had all happened in a moment, and it was
over. But it was the first of the kind in a woman's life. The thrilling,
mysterious word had been dropped into a woman's heart. Hereafter she
would be changed. She never again would be as she was before. Would her
heart be hardened or softened by the experience? She did not love him;
that was clear. She had done right; that was clear. But he had said he
loved her. Unwittingly she was following him in her thought. She had
rejected plain John Lyon, amiable, intelligent, unselfish, kindly,
deferential. She had rejected also the Earl of Chisholm, a conspicuous
position, an honorable family, luxury, a great opportunity in life. It
came to the girl in a flash. She moved nervously in her chair. She put
down the thought as unworthy of her. But she had entertained it for a
moment. In that second, ambition had entered the girl's soul. She had
a glimpse of her own nature that seemed new to her. Was this, then,
the meaning of her restlessness, of her charitable activities, of her
unconfessed dreams of some career? Ambition had entered her soul in
a definite form. She expelled it. It would come again in some form or
other. She was indignant at herself as she thought of it. How odd it
was! Her privacy had been invaded. The even tenor of her life had been
broken. Henceforth would she be less or more sensitive to the suggestion
of love, to the allurements of ambition? Margaret tried, in accordance
with her nature, to be sincere with herself.
After all, what nonsense it was! Nothing really had happened. A stranger
of a few weeks before had declared himself. She did not love him; he
was no more to her than any other man. It was a common occurrence. Her
judgment accorded with her feeling in what she had done. How was she to
know that she had made a mistake, if mistake it was? How was she to know
that this hour was a crisis in her life? Surely the little tumult would
pass; surely the little whisper of worldliness could not disturb her
ideals. But all the power of exclusion in her mind could not exclude the
returning thought of what might have been if she had loved him. Alas! in
that moment was born in her heart something that would make the idea of
love less simple than it had been in her mind. She was heart-free,
but her nature was too deep not to be profoundly affected by this
experience.
Looking back upon this afternoon in the light of after-years, she
probably could not feel--no one could say--that she had done wrong. How
was she to tell? Why is it that to do the right thing is often to make
the mistake of a life? Nothing could have been nobler than for Margaret
indignantly to put aside a temptation that her heart told her was
unworthy. And yet if she had yielded to it?
I ought to ask pardon, perhaps, for dwelling upon a thing so slight as
the entrance of a thought in a woman's life. For as to Margaret, she
seemed unchanged. She made no sign that anything unusual had occurred.
We only knew that Mr. Lyon went away less cheerful than he usually was,
that he said nothing of returning in response to our invitations, and
that he seemed to anticipate nothing but the fulfillment of a duty in
his visit to Washington.
What had happened was regarded as only an episode. In fact, however, I
doubt if there are any episodes in our lives, any asides, that do not
permanently affect our entire career. Are not the episodes, the casual
thoughts, the fortuitous, unplanned meetings, the brief and maybe at the
moment unnoted events, those which exercise the most influence on our
destiny? To all observation the career of Lyon, and not of Margaret, was
most affected by their interview. But often the implanting of an idea
in the mind is more potent than the frustration of a plan or the
gratification of a desire, so hidden are the causes that make character.
For some time I saw little of Margaret. Affairs in which I was not alone
or chiefly concerned took me from home. One of the most curious and
interesting places in the world is a Chamber in the business heart of
New York--if that scene of struggle and passion can be said to have a
heart--situated midway where the currents of eagerness to acquire the
money of other people, not to make it, ceaselessly meet and dash against
each other. If we could suppose there was a web covering this region,
spun by the most alert and busy of men to catch those less alert and
more productive, here in this Chamber would sit the ingenious spiders.
But the analogy fails, for spiders do not prey upon each other.
Scientists say that the human system has two nerve-centres--one in the
brain, to which and from which are telegraphed all movements depending
upon the will, and another in the small of the back, the centre of the
involuntary operations of respiration, digestion, and so on. It may be
fanciful to suppose that in the national system Washington is the one
nervous centre and New York the other. And yet it does sometimes seem
that the nerves and ganglions in the small of the back in the commercial
metropolis act automatically and without any visible intervention of
intelligence. For all that, their operations may be as essential as
the other, in which the will-power sometimes gets into a deadlock, and
sometimes telegraphs the most eccentric and incomprehensible orders.
Puzzled by these contradictions, some philosophers have said that there
may be somewhere outside of these two material centres another power
that keeps affairs moving along with some steadiness.
This noble Chamber has a large irregular area of floor space, is very
high, and has running round three sides a narrow elevated gallery, from
which spectators can look down upon the throng below. Upon a raised dais
at one side sits the presiding genius of the place, who rules very much
as Jupiter was supposed to govern the earthly swarms, by letting things
run and occasionally launching a thunderbolt. High up on one side, in
an Olympian seclusion, away from the noise and the strife, sits a Board,
calm as fate, and panoplied in the responsibility of chance, whose
function seems to be that of switch-shifters in their windowed cubby at
a network of railway intersections--to prevent collisions.
At both ends of the floor and along one side are narrow railed-off
spaces full of clerks figuring at desks, of telegraph operators clicking
their machines, of messenger-boys arriving and departing in haste, of
unprivileged operators nervously watching the scene and waiting the
chance of a word with some one on the floor; through noiseless swinging
doors men are entering and departing every moment--men in a hurry, men
with anxious faces, conscious that the fate of the country is in their
hands. On the floor itself are five hundred, perhaps a thousand, men,
gathered for the most part in small groups about little stands upon
the summit of which is a rallying legend, talking, laughing, screaming,
good-natured, indifferent, excited, running hither and thither in
response to changing figures in the checker-board squares on the great
wall opposite--calm, cynical one moment, the next violently agitated,
shouting, gesticulating, rushing together, shaking their fists in a
tumult of passion which presently subsides.
The swarms ebb and flow about these little stands--bees, not bringing
any honey, but attracted to the hive where it is rumored most honey is
to be had. By habit some always stand or sit about a particular hive,
waiting for the show of comb. By-and-by there is a stir; the crowd
thickens; one beardless youth shouts out the figure “one-half”; another
howls, “three-eighths.” The first one nods. It is done. The electric
wire running up the stand quivers and takes the figure, passes it to all
the other wires, transmits it to every office and hotel in the city, to
all the “tickers” in ten thousand chambers and “bucketshops” and
offices in the republic. Suddenly on the bulletin-boards in New Orleans,
Chicago, San Francisco, Podunk, Liverpool, appear the mysterious
“three-eighths,” electrifying the watchers of these boards, who begin to
jabber and gesticulate and “transact business.” It is wonderful.
What induced the beardless young man to make this “investment” in
“three-eighths”--who can tell? Perhaps he had heard, as he came into
the room, that the Secretary of the Treasury was going to make a call of
Fives; perhaps he had heard that Bismarck had said that the French blood
was too thin and needed a little more iron; perhaps he had heard that a
norther in Texas had killed a herd of cattle, or that two grasshoppers
had been seen in the neighborhood of Fargo, or that Jay Hawker had been
observed that morning hurrying to his brokers with a scowl on his face
and his hat pulled over his eyes. The young man sold what he did not
have, and the other young man bought what he will never get.
This is business of the higher and almost immaterial sort, and has
an element of faith in it, and, as one may say, belief in the unseen,
whence it is characterized by an expression--“dealing in futures.” It
is not gambling, for there are no “chips” used, and there is no
roulette-table in sight, and there are no piles of money or piles of
anything else. It is not a lottery, for there is no wheel at which
impartial men preside to insure honest drawings, and there are no
predestined blanks and prizes, and the man who buys and the man who
sells can do something, either in the newspapers or elsewhere, to affect
the worth of the investment, whereas in a lottery everything depends
upon the turn of the blind wheel. It is not necessary, however, to
attempt a defense of the Chamber. It is one of the recognized ways of
becoming important and powerful in this world. The privilege of the
floor--a seat, as it is called--in this temple of the god Chance to be
Rich is worth more than a seat in the Cabinet. It is not only true that
a fortune may be made here in a day or lost here in a day, but that a
nod and a wink here enable people all over the land to ruin others
or ruin themselves with celerity. The relation of the Chamber to the
business of the country is therefore evident. If an earthquake should
suddenly sink this temple and all its votaries into the bowels of the
earth, with all its nervousness and all its electricity, it is appalling
to think what would become of the business of the country.
Not far from this vast Chamber, where great financial operations are
conducted on the highest principles of honor, and with the strictest
regard to the Marquis of Dusenbury's rules, there is another less
pretentious Chamber, known as “open,” a sort of overflow meeting. Those
who have not quite left hope behind can go in here. Here are the tickers
communicating with the Chamber, tended by lads, who transfer the figures
to big blackboards on the wall. In front of these boards sit, from
morning to night, rows, perhaps relays, of men intently or listlessly
watching the figures. Many of them, who seldom make a sign, come here
from habit; they have nowhere else to go. Some of them were once lords
in the great Chamber, who have been, as the phrase is, “cleaned out.”
There is a gray-bearded veteran in seedy clothes, with sunken fiery
eyes, who was once many times a millionaire, was a power in the Board,
followed by reporters, had a palace in the Avenue, and drove to his
office with coachman and footman in livery, and his wife headed the list
of charities. Now he spends his old age watching this blackboard, and
considers it a good day that brings him five dollars and his car-fare.
At one end of the low-ceiled apartment are busy clerks behind a counter,
alert and cheerful. If one should go through a side door and down a
passage he might encounter the smell of rum. Smart young men, clad in
the choicest raiment from the misfit counters, with greed stamped
on their astute faces, bustle about, watch the blackboards, and make
investments with each other. Middle-aged men in slouch hats lounge
around with hungry eyes. The place is feverish rather than exciting. A
tall fellow, whose gait and clothes proclaim him English, with a hard
face and lack-lustre eyes, saunters about; his friends at home suppose
he is making his fortune in America. A dapper young gentleman, quite in
the mode, and with the quick air of prosperity, rapidly enters the room
and confers with a clerk at the counter. He has the run of the Chamber,
and is from the great house of Flamm and Slamm. Perhaps he is taking a
“flier” on his own account, perhaps he represents his house in a side
transaction; there are so many ways open to enterprising young men in the
city; at any rate, his entrance is regarded as significant: This is not
a hospital for the broken down and “cleaned out” of the Chamber, but
it is a place of business, which is created and fed by the incessant
“ticker.” How men existed or did any business at all before the advent
of the “ticker” is a wonder.
But the Chamber, the creator of low-pressure and high-pressure, the
inspirer of the “ticker,” is the great generator of business. Here I
found Henderson in the morning hour, and he came up to me on the call of
a messenger. He approached, nonchalant and smiling as usual. “Do you see
that man,” he said, as we stood a moment looking down, “sitting there
on a side bench--big body, small head, hair grayish, long beard
parted--apparently taking no interest in anything?
“That's Flink, who made the corner in O. B.--one of the longest-headed
operators in the Chamber. He is about the only man who dare try a
hold with Jay Hawker. And for some reason or another, though they have
apparent tussles, Hawker rather favors him. Five years ago he could
just raise money enough to get into the Chamber. Now he is reckoned at
anywhere from five to ten millions. I was at his home the other night.
Everybody was there. I had a queer feeling, in all the magnificence,
that the sheriff might be in there in ten days. Yet he may own a good
slice of the island in ten years. His wife, whom I complimented, and who
thanked me for coming, said she had invited none but the reshershy.”
“He looks like a rascal,” I ventured to remark.
“Oh, that is not a word used in the Chamber. He is called a 'daisy.'
I was put into his pew in church the other Sunday, and the preacher
described him and his methods so exactly that I didn't dare look at him.
When we came out he whispered, 'That was rather hard on Slack; he must
have felt it.' These men rather like that sort of preaching.”
“I don't come here often,” Henderson resumed, as we walked away. “The
market is flat today. There promised to be a little flurry in L. and P.,
and I looked in for a customer.”
We walked to his down-town club to lunch. Everybody, I noticed, seemed
to know Henderson, and his presence was hailed with a cordial smile,
a good-humored nod, or a hearty grasp of the hand. I never knew a more
prepossessing man; his bonhomie was infectious. Though his demeanor was
perfectly quiet and modest, he carried the air of good-fellowship. He
was entirely frank, cordial, and had that sort of sincerity which one
can afford to have who does not take life too seriously. Tall--at least
six feet-with a well-shaped head set on square shoulders, brown hair
inclined to curl, large blue eyes which could be merry or exceedingly
grave, I thought him a picture of manly beauty. Good-natured, clever,
prosperous, and not yet thirty. What a dower!
After we had disposed of our little matter of business, which I confess
was not exactly satisfactory to me, although when I was told that “the
first bondholders will be obliged to come in,” he added that “of course
we shall take care of our friends,” we went to his bachelor quarters
uptown. “I want you to see,” he said, “how a hermit lives.”
The apartments were not my idea of a hermitage--except in the city.
A charming library, spacious, but so full as to be cozy, with an open
fire; chamber, dressing-room, and bathroom connecting, furnished with
everything that a luxurious habit could suggest and good taste would not
refuse, made a retreat that could almost reconcile a sinner to solitude.
There were a few good paintings, many rare engravings, on the walls, a
notable absence, even in the sleeping-room, of photographs of actresses
and professional beauties, but here and there souvenirs of travel
and evidences that the gentler sex had contributed the skill of their
slender fingers to the cheerfulness of the bachelor's home. Scattered
about were the daily and monthly products of the press, the newest
sensations, the things talked about at dinners, but the walls for
the most part were lined with books that are recognized as the proper
possessions of the lover of books, and most of them in exquisite
bindings. Less care, I thought, had been given in the collection to
“sets” of “standards” than to those that are rare, or for some reason,
either from distinguished ownership or autograph notes, have a peculiar
value.
In this atmosphere, when we were prepared to take our ease, the talk was
no longer of stocks, or railways, or schemes, but of books. Whether or
not Henderson loved literature I did not then make up my mind, but he
had a passion for books, especially for rare and first editions; and
the delight with which he exhibited his library, the manner in which he
handled the books that he took down one after the other, the sparkle
in his eyes over a “find” or a bargain, gave me a side of his character
quite different from that I should have gained by seeing him “in the
street” only. He had that genuine respect and affection for a “book”
which has become almost traditional in these days of cheap and flimsy
publications, a taste held by scholars and collectors, and quite beyond
the popular comprehension. The respect for a book is essential to the
dignity and consideration of the place of literature in the world, and
when books are treated with no more regard than the newspaper, it is a
sign that literature is losing its power. Even the collector, who may
read little and care more for the externals than for the soul of his
favorites, by the honor he pays them, by the solicitude he expends
upon their preservation without spot, by the lavishness of expense upon
binding, contributes much to the dignity of that art which preserves
for the race the continuity of its thought and development. If Henderson
loved books merely as a collector whose taste for luxury and expense
takes this direction, his indulgence could not but have a certain
refining influence. I could not see that he cultivated any decided
specialty, but he had many rare copies which had cost fabulous prices,
the possession of which gives a reputation to any owner. “My shelves
of Americana,” he said, “are nothing like Goodloe's, who has a lot of
scarce things that I am hoping to get hold of some day. But there's a
little thing” (it was a small coffee-colored tract of six leaves, upon
which the binder of the city had exercised his utmost skill) “which
Goodloe offered me five hundred dollars for the other day. I picked it
up in a New Hampshire garret.” Not the least interesting part of the
collection was first editions of American authors--a person's value to
a collector is often in proportion to his obscurity--and what most
delighted him among them were certain thin volumes of poetry, which
the authors since becoming famous had gone to a good deal of time and
expense to suppress. The world seems to experience a lively pleasure in
holding a man to his early follies. There were many examples of superb
binding, especially of exquisite tooling on hog-skin covers--the
appreciation of which has lately greatly revived. The recent rage for
bindings has been a sore trouble to students and collectors in special
lines, raising the prices of books far beyond their intrinsic value. I
had a charming afternoon in Henderson's library, an enjoyment not much
lessened at the time by experiencing in it, with him, rather a sense of
luxury than of learning. It is true, one might pass an hour altogether
different in the garret of a student, and come away with quite other
impressions of the pageant of life.
At five o'clock his stylish trap was sent around from the boarding
stable, and we drove in the Park till twilight. Henderson handling
the reins, and making a part of that daily display which is too
heterogeneous to have distinction, reverted quite naturally to the
tone of worldliness and tolerant cynicism which had characterized his
conversation in the morning. If the Park and the moving assemblage had
not the air of distinction, it had that of expense, which is quite as
attractive to many. Here, as downtown, my companion seemed to know and
be known by everybody, returning the familiar salutes of brokers and
club men, receiving gracious bows from stout matrons, smiles and nods
from pretty women, and more formal recognition from stately and stiff
elderly men, who sat bolt-upright beside their wives and tried to look
like millionaires. For every passerby Henderson had a quick word of
characterization sufficiently amusing, and about many a story which
illuminated the social life of the day. It was wonderful how many of
this chance company had little “histories”--comic, tragic, pitiful,
interesting enough for the pages of a novel.
“There is a young lady”--Henderson touched his hat, and I caught
a glimpse of golden hair and a flash of dark eyes out of a mass of
furs--“who has no history: the world is all before her.”
“Who is that?”
“The daughter of old Eschelle--Carmen Eschelle--the banker and
politician, you remember; had a diplomatic position abroad, and the girl
was educated in Europe. She is very clever. She and her mother have more
money than they ought to know what to do with.”
“That was the celebrated Jay Hawker” ( a moment after), “in the modest
coupe--not much display about him.”
“Is he recognized by respectable people?”
“Recognized?” Henderson laughed. “He's a power. There are plenty of
people who live by trying to guess what he is going to do. Hawker isn't
such a bad fellow. Other people have used the means he used to get
rich and haven't succeeded. They are not held up to point a moral. The
trouble is that Hawker succeeded. Of course, it's a game. He plays as
fair as anybody.”
“Yes,” Henderson resumed, walking his horses in sight of the obelisk,
which suggested the long continuance of the human race, “it is the same
old game, and it is very interesting to those who are in it. Outsiders
think it is all greed. In the Chamber it is a good deal the love of the
game, to watch each other, to find out a man's plans, to circumvent him,
to thwart him, to start a scheme and manipulate it, to catch somebody,
to escape somebody; it is a perpetual excitement.”
“The machine in the Chamber appears to run very smoothly,” I said.
“Oh, that is a public register and indicator. The system back of it
is comprehensive, and appears to be complicated, but it is really very
simple. Spend an hour some day in the office of Flamm and Slamm, and
you will see a part of the system. There are, always a number of men
watching the blackboard, figures on which are changed every minute by
the attendants. Telegrams are constantly arriving from every part of
the Union, from all over the continent, from all the centres in Europe,
which are read by some one connected with the firm, and then displayed
for the guidance of the watchers of the blackboard. Upon this news one
or another says, 'I think I'll buy,' or 'I think I'll sell,' so and so.
His order is transmitted instantly to the Chamber. In two minutes the
result comes back and appears upon the blackboard.”
“But where does the news come from?”
“From the men whose special business it is to pick it up or make it.
They are inside of politics, of the railways, of the weather bureau,
everywhere. The other day in Chicago I sat some time in a broker's
office with others watching the market, and dropped into conversation
with a bright young fellow, at whose right hand, across the rail, was
a telegraph operator at the end of a private wire. Soon a man came in
quietly, and whispered in the ear of my neighbor and went out. The young
fellow instantly wrote a despatch and handed it to the operator, and
turning to me, said, 'Now watch the blackboard.'
“In an incredibly short space of time a fall in a leading railway
showed on the blackboard. 'What was it?' I asked. 'Why, that man was the
general freight manager of the A. B. road. He told me that they were
to cut rates. I sent it to New York by a private wire.' I learned by
further conversation that my young gentleman was a Manufacturer of News,
and that such was his address and intelligence that though he was not
a member of the broker's firm, he made ten thousand a year in the
business. Soon another man came in, whispered his news, and went away.
Another despatch--another responsive change in the figures. 'That,'
explained my companion, 'was a man connected with the weather bureau. He
told me that there would be a heavy frost tonight in the Northwest.'”
“Do they sell the weather?” I asked, very much amused.
“Yes, twice; once over a private wire, and then to the public, after the
value of it has been squeezed out, in the shape of predictions. Oh, the
weather bureau is worth all the money it costs, for business purposes.
It is a great auxiliary.”
Dining that evening with Henderson at his club, I had further
opportunity to study a representative man. He was of a good New
Hampshire family, exceedingly respectable without being distinguished.
Over the chimney-place in the old farmhouse hung a rusty Queen Anne that
had been at the taking of Louisburg. His grandfather shouldered a musket
at Bunker Hill; his father, the youngest son, had been a judge as
well as a farmer, and noted for his shrewdness and reticence. Rodney,
inheriting the thrift of his ancestors, had pushed out from his home,
adapting this thrift to the modern methods of turning it to account. He
had brought also to the city the stamina of three generations of plain
living--a splendid capital, by which the city is constantly reinforced,
and which one generation does not exhaust, except by the aid of extreme
dissipation. With sound health, good ability, and fair education, he had
the cheerful temperament which makes friends, and does not allow their
misfortunes to injure his career. Generous by impulse, he would rather
do a favor than not, and yet he would be likely to let nothing interfere
with any object he had in view for himself. Inheriting a conventional
respect for religion and morality, he was not so bigoted as to rebuke
the gayety of a convivial company, nor so intractable as to make him an
uncomfortable associate in any scheme, according to the modern notions
of business, that promised profit. His engaging manner made him popular,
and his good-natured adroitness made him successful. If his early
experience of life caused him to be cynical, he was not bitterly so; his
cynicism was of the tolerant sort that does not condemn the world and
withdraw from it, but courts it and makes the most of it, lowering his
private opinion of men in proportion as he is successful in the game he
plays with them. At this period I could see that he had determined to be
successful, and that he had not determined to be unscrupulous. He would
only drift with the tide that made for fortune. He enjoyed the world--a
sufficient reason why the world should like him. His business morality
was gauged by what other people do in similar circumstances. In short,
he was a product of the period since the civil war closed, that great
upheaval of patriotic feeling and sacrifice, which ended in so much
expansion and so many opportunities. If he had remained in New Hampshire
he would probably have been a successful politician, successful not only
in keeping in place, but in teaching younger aspirants that serving
the country is a very good way to the attainment of luxury and the
consideration that money brings. But having chosen the law as a
stepping-stone to the lobby, to speculation, and the manipulation of
chances, he had a poor opinion of politics and of politicians. His
success thus far, though considerable, had not been sufficient to create
for him powerful enemies, so that he may be said to be admired by all
and feared by none. In the general opinion he was a downright good
fellow and amazingly clever.