I entered, with an amused glance at the butler, who was giving over his
heavy countenance to a delightful exhibition of disgust and discomfiture.
It was Langdon's sitting-room. He had had the carved antique oak interior
of a room in an old French palace torn out and transported to New York
and set up for him. I had made a study of that sort of thing, and at Dawn
Hill had done something toward realizing my own ideas of the splendid.
But a glance showed me that I was far surpassed. What I had done seemed
in comparison like the composition of a school-boy beside an essay by
Goldsmith or Hazlitt.
And in the midst of this quiet splendor sat, or rather lounged, Langdon,
reading the newspapers. He was dressed in a dark blue velvet house-suit
with facings and cords of blue silk a shade or so lighter than the suit. I
had always thought him handsome; he looked now like a god. He was smoking
a cigarette in an oriental holder nearly a foot long; but the air of
the room, so perfect was the ventilation, instead of being scented with
tobacco, had the odor of some fresh, clean, slightly saline perfume.
I think what was in my mind must have shown in my face, must have subtly
flattered him, for, when I looked at him, he was giving me a look of
genuine friendly kindliness. “This is--perfect, Langdon,” said I. “And I
think I'm a judge.”
“Glad you like it,” said he, trying to dissemble his satisfaction in so
strongly impressing me.
“You must take me through your house sometime,” I went on. “I'm going to
build soon. No--don't be afraid I'll imitate. I'm too vain for that. But I
want suggestions. I'm not ashamed to go to school to a master--to anybody,
for that matter.”
“Why do you build?” said he. “A town house is a nuisance. If I could induce
my wife to take the children to the country to live, I'd dispose of this.”
“That's it--the wife,” said I.
“But you have no wife. At least--”
“No,” I replied with a laugh. “Not yet. But I'm going to have.”
I interpreted his expression then as amused cynicism. But I see a different
meaning in it now. And I can recall his tone, can find a strained note
which then escaped me in his usual mocking drawl.
“To marry?” said he. “I haven't heard of that.”
“Nor no one else,” said I.
“Except her,” said he.
“Not even except her,” said I. “But I've got my eye on her--and you know
what that means with me.”
“Yes, I know,” drawled he. Then he added, with a curious twinkle which I do
not now misunderstand: “We have somewhat the same weakness.”
“I shouldn't call it a weakness,” said I. “It's the quality that makes the
chief difference between us and the common run--the fellows that have no
purposes beyond getting comfortably through each day--”
“And getting real happiness,” he interrupted, with just a tinge of
bitterness.
“We wouldn't think it happiness,” was my answer.
“The worse for us,” he replied. “We're under the tyranny of to-morrow--and
happiness is impossible.”
“May I look at your bedroom?” I asked.
“Certainly,” he assented.
I pushed open the door he indicated. At first glimpse I was disappointed.
The big room looked like a section of a hospital ward. It wasn't until
I had taken a second and very careful look at the tiled floor, walls,
ceiling, that I noted that those plain smooth tiles were of the very
finest, were probably of his own designing, certainly had been imported
from some great Dutch or German kiln. Not an inch of drapery, not a
picture, nothing that could hold dust or germs anywhere; a square of
sanitary matting by the bed; another square opposite an elaborate
exercising machine. The bed was of the simplest metallic construction--but
I noted that the metal was the finest bronze. On it was a thin, hard
mattress. You could wash the big room down and out with the hose, without
doing any damage.
“Quite a contrast,” said I, glancing from the one room to the other.
“My architect is a crank on sanitation,” he explained, from his lounge.
I noted that the windows were huge--to admit floods of light--and that
they were hermetically sealed so that the air should be only the pure air
supplied from the ventilating apparatus. To many people that room would
have seemed a cheaply got together cell; to me, once I had examined it, it
was evidently built at enormous cost and represented an extravagance of
common-sense luxury which was more than princely or royal.
Suddenly my mind reverted to my business. “How do you account for the
steadiness of Textile, Langdon?” I asked, returning to the carved
sitting-room and trying to put those surroundings out of my mind.
“I don't account for it,” was his languid, uninterested reply.
“Any of your people under the market?”
“It isn't to my interest to have it supported, is it?” he replied.
“I know that,” I admitted. “But why doesn't it drop?”
“Those letters of yours may have overeducated the public in confidence,”
suggested he. “Your followers have the habit of believing implicitly
whatever you say.”
“Yes, but I haven't written a line about Textile for nearly a month now,” I
pretended to object, my vanity fairly purring with pleasure.
“That's the only reason I can give,” said he.
“You are sure none of your people is supporting the stock?” I asked, as a
form and not for information; for I thought I knew they weren't--I trusted
him to have seen to that.
“I'd like to get my holdings back,” said he. “I can't buy until it's down.
And I know none of my people would dare support it.”
You will notice he did not say directly that he was not himself supporting
the market; he simply so answered me that I, not suspecting him, would
think he reassured me. There is another of those mysteries of conscience.
Had it been necessary, Langdon would have told me the lie flat and direct,
would have told it without a tremor of the voice or a blink of the eye,
would have lied to me as I have heard him, and almost all the big fellows,
lie under oath before courts and legislative committees; yet, so long as it
was possible, he would thus lie to me with lies that were not lies. As if
negative lies are not falser and more cowardly than positive lies, because
securer and more deceptive.
“Well, then, the price must break,” said I, “It won't be many days before
the public begins to realize that there isn't anybody under Textile.”
“No sharp break!” he said carelessly. “No panic!”
“I'll see to that,” replied I, with not a shadow of a notion of the
subtlety behind his warning.
“I hope it will break soon,” he then said, adding in his friendliest voice
with what I now know was malignant treachery: “You owe it to me to bring it
down.” That meant that he wished me to increase my already far too heavy
and dangerous line of shorts.
Just then a voice--a woman's voice--came from the salon. “May I come in? Do
I interrupt?” it said, and its tone struck me as having in it something of
plaintive appeal.
“Excuse me a moment, Blacklock,” said he, rising with what was for him
haste.
But he was too late. The woman entered, searching the room with a piercing,
suspicious gaze. At once I saw, behind that look, a jealousy that pounced
on every object that came into its view, and studied it with a hope that
feared and a fear that hoped. When her eyes had toured the room, they
paused upon him, seemed to be saying: “You've baffled me again, but I'm not
discouraged. I shall catch you yet.”
“Well, my dear?” said Langdon, whom she seemed faintly to amuse. “It's only
Mr. Blacklock. Mr. Blacklock, my wife.”
I bowed; she looked coldly at me, and her slight nod was more than a hint
that she wished to be left alone with her husband.