A BOND OF AIR.
Troilus and Cressida; i.--3.
The stock of the Princeton Platinum Company was issued in ten-dollar
shares, it being the conviction of Erastus Snaffle, deduced from a more
or less extensive experience, that the gullible portion of the public
is more likely to buy stock of a low par value. On the morning after
the exhibition at the St. Filipe Club, the shares were quoted at two
dollars and an eighth.
Arthur Fenton read the stock reports at breakfast. He laid the paper
down calmly, drank his coffee in silence, and absently played with his
fork, while his wife attended to Caldwell's breakfast and her own. He
said nothing until the boy, whose mind was intent upon some new toy or
other, having hastily finished his meal, asked to be excused.
"Don't be in a hurry, Caldwell," his mother said, gently. "I want you
to learn to wait for older people."
"Let him go, Edith," his father interposed. "I want to talk to you."
The boy jumped down quickly and ran to give his father a hasty kiss. He
had learned to look to Fenton to help him in evading his mother's
attempts at discipline, and Edith noted with pain, as she had too often
noticed before, the knowing smile which came into the child's face at
her husband's words. Caldwell evidently regarded his father's remark
merely as a convenient excuse, and it hurt Edith to see how in subtile
ways her son was learning to distrust the honesty of his father.
On this occasion, however, Arthur had meant what he said. When the door
had closed behind the little fellow, he looked up to observe in the
most matter-of-fact tone,--
"I suppose it is only fair, Edith, that I should tell you that we are
ruined."
She looked at him with a puzzled face.
"What do you mean?" she said.
"I mean," he returned, "that I have been getting into no end of a mess,
and that some stock I bought to help myself out of it, has gone down
and made things ten times worse."
She folded her hands in her lap and regarded him wistfully. She had
been so often repressed when she had tried to gain his confidence in
regard to business matters that she hesitated to speak now.
"Should I understand if you told me about it?" she asked.
"Oh, very likely not," he returned, coolly; "but I don't in the least
mind telling you, if it's any satisfaction to you. It isn't any great
matter, only that I live so near the ragged edge that a dollar or two
either way makes all the difference between poverty and independence."
Edith breathed more freely. Her husband's self-possessed manner, and
the fact that she knew him to be so given to exaggeration, made her
feel that things were not so hopeless as his words had at first implied.
"I have three thousand shares of Princeton Platinum stock," Fenton went
on, with the condescending air of one who elaborately explains details
which he knows will not be understood. "I bought at two and
seven-eighths, with money that should go to pay notes due on Saturday.
The stock was worth two and an eighth last night and very likely by
to-night won't be worth anything."
"Then why didn't you sell yesterday?" Edith asked.
Arthur smiled at the feminine turn of her words.
"Because, my shrewd financier, I don't want to sell at a loss, and Mr.
Irons assures me that there will be a rise before the final collapse."
He did not add, as he might have done, the substance of the talk
between himself and Irons. That wily financier had said to him one
day,--
"Fenton, you were almighty toploftical about those railroad shares, and
I'll give you another chance. I've had four thousand shares of
Princeton Platinum turned over to me on an assignment. It cost me two,
and you may have it at that figure, though it's worth two and a half in
the market to-day."
"You are too generous, by half," Fenton had answered.
"Well, the fact is," Irons had responded, "I hate infernally to be
under obligations. Princeton Platinum is wild-cat fast enough, but it
will touch four before they let the bottom drop out. That I happen to
know. This will give you a chance to make a neat thing out of it, and
it will square off the obligation our syndicate's under to you."
"Thank you," was Fenton's answer; "but the obligation, such as it is, I
prefer to have stand, and I haven't any money to put into stock of any
kind now."
"Well, think it over. Don't let your sentiments interfere too much with
business. I'll hold the stock for you for three days. If you're fool
enough to miss your opportunity after that I'm not responsible."
Naturally, this portion of the conversation Fenton did not impart to
his wife.
Edith's look became more perplexed as her talk with her husband
continued; and the matter-of-fact way in which he spoke of approaching
disaster was to her unintelligible.
"What is going to collapse?" she asked at length. "The stock?"
"Certainly, my dear. There isn't anything behind it. I doubt if there
ever was any Princeton Platinum mine, but I did think the men who were
managing it were clever enough to get it to four or four and a half
before they let go."
"But how could they get it to four or four and a half, if there isn't
any mine?"
"By gulling fools like me, my dear; that's the way these things are
always done."
A troubled look came over Mrs. Fenton's face, and her lips closed a
little more tightly.
"Well," demanded her husband impatiently, "what is it? Moral scruples?"
"It doesn't seem to me to be very honest stock to be dealing in," Edith
replied, timidly.
"To discuss the morality of stock speculation," he replied, with coolly
elaborate courtesy, "is much like eating a fig. You may be biting the
seeds all day without being sure you've finished them."
She was silenced, and cast down her eyes waiting for what he might
choose to say next.
"The situation," he continued, after a pause, "is merely this. I
haven't the cleverness properly to manage being in debt. I don't know
how those notes are to be paid Saturday, and have been given to
understand that there are reasons, doubtless judicious, but extremely
inconvenient, why they will not be renewed."
His manner was as calm as ever, but there was a growing hardness in his
tone and a cruel tightening of his lips. His restraint had much of the
calmness of despair. His was a nature which always outran actualities
with imagined possibilities, and thus found in even the fullest joy a
sense of loss and failure; while in misfortune, it magnified all evils
until it was overwhelmed with the burden of their weight. He suffered
the more acutely because he endured not only the sting of the present
evil, but of all those which he foresaw might follow in its wake. He
felt at this moment a growing necessity to find some one against whom
he might logically turn his anger; and while he was firmly determined
not to vent his displeasure upon his wife, his attitude toward her
became constantly more stern.
"If Uncle Peter were at home," Edith began, after a pause, "he might"--
"He might not," interrupted Arthur, roughly. "In any case he has taken
the light of his countenance abroad, so he's out of the question."
"But some of your friends, Arthur, might lend you the money you want."
"My dear Edith, do you fancy that within the past month I have failed
to go over the list of my friends, backward and forward? Don't say
those tiresome, obvious things. I'll fail and have an auction, and give
up the house, and lose caste, and have a pleasant tea-party generally.
That's the only thing there is to do."
Edith rose from her seat, and went around to where he was sitting.
Standing behind his chair she laid her hands on his shoulders, and,
bending forward, kissed his cheek.
"I dare say, Arthur," she said, "that we should be quite as happy if we
gave up trying to live in a way that we can't afford; but meanwhile
there is godmamma."
"Mrs. Glendower?"
"Yes. You know she has left me five thousand dollars in her will; and
she told me once that if the time came that I needed the money
desperately I should have it for the asking."
"That is kind of her," was her husband's comment, "but it would be
kinder to let you get it at once in the natural way. The comfort about
a bequest is that you don't have to feel grateful to any live man for
it."
His words were brutal enough, but there was a new lightness in his
tone. He caught instantly at this hope of relief, and he showed his
appreciation of his wife's cleverness in devising this scheme by
caressing the hand which lay upon his shoulder.
"You can go to New York to-night," remarked Edith thoughtfully,
ignoring his words, "and be back by Saturday morning. If you didn't so
much dislike going to New York in the day time, you might get there in
time to see godmamma to-night."
"To-morrow will be time enough," he answered. "You are a brick, Edith,
to help me out of this scrape, and the magnitude of the moral reforms
I'll institute in honor of my deliverance will astonish you."
He sprang up as light-heartedly as a boy. The means of escaping the
annoyance of the present moment had been found, and his buoyant spirits
lifted him above the doubts and troubles of the future.
They discussed together the details of his coming interview with Mrs.
Glendower, and the terms of the letter which Edith should write to her.
There was something most touching in the tender eagerness with which
Edith prolonged the talk and clung to the occasion which had brought
her and her husband, for the moment, together. She even forgot to
deplore the misfortune which had given rise to this confidence, and, in
her desire to be helpful to Arthur, she did not even remember that once
her pride would have risen in rebellion at the bare suggestion of
taking advantage of Mrs. Glendower's offer. All day long she went about
with a happier smile on her lips than had been there for many a long
day. The danger of impending ruin seemed to have brought her
consolation instead of grief; and in the prayers which she murmured in
her heart as she stood with her arms clasped about Caldwell, when
Fenton drove away that night, there was not a little thanksgiving
mingled with her supplications.