Our eyes met. Her chin came out a little, her eyebrows lifted. Then, in
scorn of herself as well as of me, she locked herself in behind a frozen
haughtiness that ignored me. “Ah, here is the carriage,” she said. I
followed her to the curb; she just touched my hand, just nodded her
fascinating little head.
“See you Saturday, old man,” called her brother friendlily. My lowering
face had alarmed him.
“That party is off,” said I curtly. And I lifted my hat and strode away.
As I had formed the habit of dismissing the disagreeable, I soon put her
out of my mind. But she took with her my joy in the taste of things. I
couldn't get back my former keen satisfaction in all I had done and was
doing. The luxury, the tangible evidences of my achievement, no longer gave
me pleasure; they seemed to add to my irritation.
That's the way it is in life. We load ourselves down with toys like so many
greedy children; then we see another toy and drop everything to be free to
seize it; and if we can not, we're wretched.
I worked myself up, or rather, down, to such a mood that when my office boy
told me Mr. Langdon would like me to come to his office as soon as it was
convenient, I snapped out: “The hell he does! Tell Mr. Langdon I'll be
glad to see him here whenever he calls.” That was stupidity, a premature
assertion of my right to be treated as an equal. I had always gone to
Langdon, and to any other of the rulers of finance, whenever I had got a
summons. For, while I was rich and powerful, I held both wealth and power,
in a sense, on sufferance; I knew that, so long as I had no absolute
control of any great department of industry, these rulers could destroy me
should they decide that they needed my holdings or were not satisfied with
my use of my power. There were a good many people who did not realize that
property rights had ceased to exist, that property had become a revocable
grant from the “plutocrats.” I was not of those misguided ones who had
failed to discover the new fact concealed in the old form. So I used to go
when I was summoned.
But not that day. However, no sooner was my boy gone than I repented the
imprudence, “But what of it?” said I to myself. “No matter how the thing
turns out, I shall be able to get some advantage.” For it was part of my
philosophy that a proper boat with proper sails and a proper steersman can
gain in any wind. I was surprised when Langdon appeared in my office a few
minutes later.
He was a tallish, slim man, carefully dressed, with a bored, weary look
and a slow, bored way of talking. I had always said that if I had not been
myself I should have wished to be Langdon. Men liked and admired him; women
loved and ran after him. Yet he exerted not the slightest effort to please
any one; on the contrary, he made it distinct and clear that he didn't
care a rap what any one thought of him or, for that matter, of anybody or
anything. He knew how to get, without sweat or snatching, all the good
there was in whatever fate threw in his way--and he was one of those men
into whose way fate seems to strive to put everything worth having. His
business judgment was shrewd, but he cared nothing for the big game he was
playing except as a game. Like myself, he was simply a sportsman--and, I
think, that is why we liked each other. He could have trusted almost any
one that came into contact with him; but he trusted nobody, and frankly
warned every one not to trust him--a safe frankness, for his charm caused
it to be forgotten or ignored. He would do anything to gain an object,
however trivial, which chanced to attract him; once it was his, he would
throw it aside as carelessly as an ill-fitting collar.
His expression, as he came into my office, was one of cynical amusement,
as if he were saying to himself: “Our friend Blacklock has caught the
swollen head at last.” Not a suggestion of ill humor, of resentment
at my impertinence--for, in the circumstances, I had been guilty of an
impertinence. Just languid, amused patience with the frailty of a friend.
“I see,” said he, “that you have got Textile up to eighty-five.”
He was the head of the Textile Trust which had been built by his
brother-in-law and had fallen to him in the confusion following his
brother-in-law's death. As he was just then needing some money for his
share in the National Coal undertaking, he had directed me to push Textile
up toward par and unload him of two or three hundred thousand shares--he,
of course, to repurchase the shares after he had taken profits and Textile
had dropped back to its normal fifty.
“I'll have it up to ninety-eight by the middle of next month,” said I. “And
there I think we'd better stop.”
“Stop at about ninety,” said he. “That will give me all I find I'll need
for this Coal business. I don't want to be bothered with hunting up an
investment.”
I shook my head. “I must put it up to within a point or two of par,” I
declared. “In my public letter I've been saying it would go above
ninety-five, and I never deceive my public.”
He smiled--my notion of honesty always amused him. “As you please,” he
said with a shrug. Then I saw a serious look--just a fleeting flash of
warning--behind his smiling mask; and he added carelessly: “Be careful
about your own personal play. I doubt if Textile can be put any higher.”
It must have been my mood that prevented those words from making the
impression on me they should have made. Instead of appreciating at once
and at its full value this characteristic and amazingly friendly signal
of caution, I showed how stupidly inattentive I was by saying: “Something
doing? Something new?”
But he had already gone further than his notion of friendship warranted. So
he replied: “Oh, no. Simply that everything's uncertain nowadays.”
My mind had been all this time on those Manasquale mining properties. I now
said: “Has Roebuck told you that I had to buy those mines on my own
account?”
“Yes,” he said. He hesitated, and again he gave me a look whose meaning
came to me only when it was too late. “I think, Blacklock, you'd better
turn them over to me.”
“I can't,” I answered. “I gave my word.”
“As you please,” said he.
Apparently the matter didn't interest him. He began to talk of the
performances of my little two-year-old, Beachcomber; and after twenty
minutes or so, he drifted away. “I envy you your enthusiasm,” he said,
pausing in my doorway. “Wherever I am, I wish I were somewhere else.
Whatever I'm doing, I wish I were doing something else. Where do you get
all this joy of the fight? What the devil are you fighting for?”
He didn't wait for a reply.
I thought over my situation steadily for several days. I went down to my
country place. I looked everywhere among all my belongings, searching,
searching, restless, impatient. At last I knew what ailed me--what the lack
was that yawned so gloomily from everything I had once thought beautiful,
had once found sufficient. I was in the midst of the splendid, terraced
pansy beds my gardeners had just set out; I stopped short and slapped my
thigh. “A woman!” I exclaimed. “That's what I need. A woman--the right sort
of woman--a wife!”