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.
Where I had been feeling and showing my usual assurance, I now became ill
at ease. I longed for them to be gone; at the same time I hated to let her
go--for, when and how would I see her again, would I get the chance to
remove her bad impression? It irritated me thus to be concerned about the
sister of a man into my liking for whom there was mixed much pity and some
contempt. But I am of the disposition that, whenever I see an obstacle of
whatever kind, I can not restrain myself from trying to jump it. Here was
an obstacle--a dislike. To clear it was of the smallest importance in the
world, was a silly waste of time. Yet I felt I could not maintain with
myself my boast that there were no obstacles I couldn't get over, if I
turned aside from this.
Sam--not without hesitation, as I recalled afterward--left me with her,
when I sent him to bring her brougham up to the Broadway entrance. As she
and I were standing there alone, waiting in silence, I turned on her
suddenly, and blurted out, “You don't like me.”
She reddened a little, smiled slightly. “What a quaint remark!” said she.