_An Allusion to a Yellow Dog_
The colonel's office, like many other of his valued possessions, was
in fact the property of somebody else.
It really belonged to a friend of Fitzpatrick, who had become so
impressed by the Virginian's largeness of manner and buoyancy of
enthusiasm that he had whispered to Fitz to bring him in at once and
give him any desk in the place; adding that "in a sagging market the
colonel would be better than a war boom."
So the colonel moved in--not a very complicated operation in his case;
his effects being confined to an old leather portfolio and a bundle
of quill pens tied up with a bit of Aunt Nancy's white yarn. The
following day he had nailed his visiting card above the firm's name
in the corridor, hung his hat and coat on the proprietor's peg, selected
a desk nearest the light, and was as much at home in five minutes as
if he owned the whole building.
[Illustration]
There was no price agreed upon. Once, when Fitz delicately suggested
that all such rents were generally payable monthly, the colonel, after
some difficulty in grasping the idea, had said:--
"I could not offer it, suh. These gentlemen have treated me with a
hospitality so generous that its memory will never fade from my mind.
I cannot bring our relations down to the level of bargain and sale, suh;
it would be vulgar."
The colonel was perfectly sincere. As for himself he would have put
every room in his own Carter Hall at their service for any purpose or
for any length of time, and have slept in the woodshed himself; and
he would as soon have demanded the value of the bottle of wine on his
own table as ask pay for such trivial courtesies.
Nor did he stop at the rent. The free use of stamps, envelopes, paper,
messenger service, and clerks were to him only evidences of a lordly
sort of hospitality which endeared the real proprietor of the office
all the more to him, because it recalled the lavish display of the
golden days of Carter Hall.
"Permit a guest to stamp his own letters, suh? Never! Our servants
attended to that."
Really he owed his host nothing. No office of its size in the Street
made so much money for its customers in a bull market. Nobody lost
heart in a tumble and was sold out--that is, nobody to whom the colonel
talked. Once convince the enthusiastic Virginian that the scheme was
feasible,--and how little eloquence was needed for that!--and the
dear old fellow took hold with as much gusto as if it had been his own.
The vein in the copper mine was always going to widen out into a
six-foot lead; never by any possibility could it grow any smaller. The
trust shares were going up--"not a point or two at a time, gentlemen,
but with the spring of a panther, suh." Of course the railroad earnings
were a little off this month, but wait until the spring opened; "then,
suh, you will see a revival that will sweep you off yo' feet."
Whether it was good luck, or the good heart that the colonel put into
his friend's customers, the results were always the same. Singular as
it may seem, his cheery word just at the right time tided over
the critical moment many an uncertain watcher at the "ticker," often
to an enlargement of his bank account. Nor would he allow any one to
pay him for any service of this kind, even though he had spent days
engrossed in their affairs.
"Take money, suh, for helpin' a friend out of a hole? My dear suh, I
see you do not intend to be disco'teous; but look at me, suh! There's
my hand; never refer to it again." And then he would offer the offender
his card in the hope, perhaps, that its ample record might furnish
some further slight suggestion as to who he really was.
His popularity, therefore, was not to be wondered at. Everybody regarded
him kindly, total stranger as he was, and although few of them believed
to any extent in his "Garden Spot of Virginia," as his pet enterprise
soon came to be known around the Street, everybody wished it well, and
not a few would have started it with a considerable subscription could
the colonel have managed the additional thousands required to set it
on its financial legs.
Fitz never lost heart in the scheme,--that is, never when the colonel
was about. As the weeks rolled by and one combination after the other
failed, and the well-thumbed bundle of papers in the big blue envelope
was returned with various comments. "In view of our present financial
engagements we are unable to undertake your very attractive railroad
scheme," or the more curt "Not suited to our line of customers," he
would watch the colonel's face anxiously, and rack his brain for some
additional excuse.
He always found one. Tight money, or news from Europe, or an overissue
of similar bonds; next week it would be better. And the colonel always
believed him. Fitz was his guiding star, and would lead him to some
safe haven yet. This faith was his stronghold, and his only one.
This morning, however, there was a touch of genuine enthusiasm about
Fitz. He rushed into the office, caught up the blue bundle and the
map, nearly upsetting the colonel, who was balanced back in his chair
with his long legs over the desk,--a favorite attitude when down
town,--rushed out, and returned in half an hour with a fat body
surmounted by a bald head fringed about with gray curls.
[Illustration]
He was the advance agent of that mysterious combination known to the
financial world as an "English syndicate," an elusive sort of commercial
sea-serpent with its head in London and its tail around the globe. The
"inquiry" which had so gladdened the colonel's heart the morning ofthe
breakfast with aunt Nancy had proceeded from this rotund negotiator.
The colonel had, as usual, started the road at Cartersville, and had
gotten as far as the double-span iron bridge over the Tench when the
rotund gentleman asked abruptly,--
"How far are you from a coal-field?"
The colonel lifted the point of his pen, adjusted his glasses, and
punched a hole in the rumpled map within a hair's breadth of a black
dot labeled "Cartersville."
"Right there, suh. Within a stone's throw of our locomotives."
Fitz looked into the hole with as much astonishment as if it were the
open mouth of the mine itself.
"Hard or soft?" said the stout man.
"Soft, suh, and fairly good coal, I understand, although I have never
used it, suh; my ancestors always burned wood."
Fitz heard the statement in undisguised wonder. In all his intercourse
with the colonel he had never before known him to depart so much as
a razor's edge from the truth.
The fat man communed with himself a moment, and then said suddenly,
"I'll take the papers and give you an answer in a week," and hurried
away.
"Do you really mean, Colonel," said Fitz, determined to pin him down,
"that there is a single pound of coal in Cartersville?"
"Do I mean it, Fitz? Don't it crop out in half a dozen spots right on
our own place? One haalf of my estate, suh, is a coal-field."
"You never told me a word about it."
"I don't know that I did, Fitz. But it has never been of any use to
me. Besides, suh, we have plenty of wood. We never burn coal at Caarter
Hall."
Fitz did not take that view of it. He went into an exhaustive
cross-examination of the colonel on the coal question: who had tested
it, the character of the soil, width of the vein, and dip of the land.
This information he carefully recorded in a small book which he took
from his inside pocket.
Loosened from Fitz's pinioning grasp, the colonel, entirely oblivious
to his friend's sudden interest in the coal-field, and slightly
impatient at the delay, bounded like a balloon with its anchors cut.
"An answer from the syndicate within a week! My dear Fitz, I see yo'
drift. You have kept the Garden Spots for the foreign investors. That
man is impressed, suh; I saw it in his eye."
The room began filling up with the various customers and loungers
common to such offices: the debonair gentleman in check trousers and
silk hat, with a rose in his button-hole, who dusts his trousers
broadside with his cane--short of one hundred shares with thirty per
cent. margin; the shabby old man with a solemn face who watches the
ticker a moment and then wanders aimlessly out, looking more like an
underpaid clerk in a law office than the president of a crosstown
railroad--long of one thousand shares with no margin at all; the nervous
man who stops the messenger boys and devours the sales' lists before
they can be skewered on the files,--not a dollar's interest either
way; and, last of all, the brokers with little pads and nimble pencils.
[Illustration]
The news that the great English syndicate was looking into the C. &
W. A. L R. R. was soon around the office, and each _habitue_ had
a bright word for the colonel, congratulating him on the favorable
turn his affairs had taken.
All but old Klutchem, a broker in unlisted securities, who had been
trying for weeks to get a Denver land scheme before the same syndicate,
and had failed.
"Garden Spot bonds! Bosh! Road begins nowhere and ends nowhere. If any
set of fools built it, the only freight it would get, outside of peanuts
and sweet potatoes, would be razor-back hogs and niggers. I wouldn't
give a yellow dog for enough of those securities to paper a church."
The colonel was on his feet in an instant.
"Mr. Klutchem, I cannot permit you, suh, to use such language in my
presence unrebuked; you"--
"Now, see here, old Garden Spot, you know"--
The familiarity angered the colonel even more than the outburst.
"Caarter, suh,--George Fairfax Caarter," said the colonel with dignity.
"Well, Caarter, then," mimicking him, perhaps unconsciously. "You
know"--
The intonation was the last straw. The colonel lost all control of
himself. No man had ever thus dared before.
"Stop, Mr. Klutchem! What I know, suh, I decline to discuss with you.
Yo' statements are false, and yo' manner of expressin' them quite in
keepin' with the evident vulga'ity of yo' mind. If I can ascertain
that you have ever had any claim to be considered a gentleman you will
hear from me ag'in. If not, I shall rate you as rankin' with yo' yallar
dog; and if you ever speak to me ag'in I will strike you, suh, with
my cane."
And the colonel, his eyes flashing, strode into the private office
with the air of a field marshal, and shut the door.
Klutchem looked around the room and into the startled faces of the
clerks and bystanders, burst into a loud laugh, and left the office.
On reaching the street he met Fitz coming in.
"Better look after old Garden Spot, Fitzpatrick. I poked holes in his
road, and he wanted to swallow me alive."