Within forty-eight hours Ralph's money was in Moffatt's hands, and the
interval of suspense had begun.
The transaction over, he felt the deceptive buoyancy that follows on
periods of painful indecision. It seemed to him that now at last life
had freed him from all trammelling delusions, leaving him only the best
thing in its gift--his boy.
The things he meant Paul to do and to be filled his fancy with happy
pictures. The child was growing more and more interesting--throwing out
countless tendrils of feeling and perception that delighted Ralph but
preoccupied the watchful Laura.
"He's going to be exactly like you, Ralph--" she paused and then risked
it: "For his own sake, I wish there were just a drop or two of Spragg in
him."
Ralph laughed, understanding her. "Oh, the plodding citizen I've become
will keep him from taking after the lyric idiot who begot him. Paul and
I, between us, are going to turn out something first-rate."
His book too was spreading and throwing out tendrils, and he worked
at it in the white heat of energy which his factitious exhilaration
produced. For a few weeks everything he did and said seemed as easy and
unconditioned as the actions in a dream.
Clare Van Degen, in the light of this mood, became again the comrade
of his boyhood. He did not see her often, for she had gone down to the
country with her children, but they communicated daily by letter or
telephone, and now and then she came over to the Fairfords' for a night.
There they renewed the long rambles of their youth, and once more the
summer fields and woods seemed full of magic presences. Clare was no
more intelligent, she followed him no farther in his flights; but some
of the qualities that had become most precious to him were as native to
her as its perfume to a flower. So, through the long June afternoons,
they ranged together over many themes; and if her answers sometimes
missed the mark it did not matter, because her silences never did.
Meanwhile Ralph, from various sources, continued to pick up a good deal
of more or less contradictory information about Elmer Moffatt. It seemed
to be generally understood that Moffatt had come back from Europe with
the intention of testifying in the Ararat investigation, and that his
former patron, the great Harmon B. Driscoll, had managed to silence him;
and it was implied that the price of this silence, which was set at
a considerable figure, had been turned to account in a series of
speculations likely to lift Moffatt to permanent eminence among the
rulers of Wall Street. The stories as to his latest achievement, and the
theories as to the man himself, varied with the visual angle of each
reporter: and whenever any attempt was made to focus his hard sharp
personality some guardian divinity seemed to throw a veil of mystery
over him. His detractors, however, were the first to own that there
was "something about him"; it was felt that he had passed beyond the
meteoric stage, and the business world was unanimous in recognizing
that he had "come to stay." A dawning sense of his stability was even
beginning to make itself felt in Fifth Avenue. It was said that he had
bought a house in Seventy-second Street, then that he meant to build
near the Park; one or two people (always "taken by a friend") had been
to his flat in the Pactolus, to see his Chinese porcelains and Persian
rugs; now and then he had a few important men to dine at a Fifth Avenue
restaurant; his name began to appear in philanthropic reports and on
municipal committees (there were even rumours of its having been put
up at a well-known club); and the rector of a wealthy parish, who was
raising funds for a chantry, was known to have met him at dinner and to
have stated afterward that "the man was not wholly a materialist."
All these converging proofs of Moffatt's solidity strengthened Ralph's
faith in his venture. He remembered with what astuteness and authority
Moffatt had conducted their real estate transaction--how far off and
unreal it all seemed!--and awaited events with the passive faith of a
sufferer in the hands of a skilful surgeon.
The days moved on toward the end of June, and each morning Ralph opened
his newspaper with a keener thrill of expectation. Any day now he might
read of the granting of the Apex charter: Moffatt had assured him it
would "go through" before the close of the month. But the announcement
did not appear, and after what seemed to Ralph a decent lapse of time he
telephoned to ask for news. Moffatt was away, and when he came back a
few days later he answered Ralph's enquiries evasively, with an edge of
irritation in his voice. The same day Ralph received a letter from his
lawyer, who had been reminded by Mrs. Marvell's representatives that the
latest date agreed on for the execution of the financial agreement was
the end of the following week.
Ralph, alarmed, betook himself at once to the Ararat, and his first
glimpse of Moffatt's round common face and fastidiously dressed person
gave him an immediate sense of reassurance. He felt that under the
circle of baldness on top of that carefully brushed head lay the
solution of every monetary problem that could beset the soul of man.
Moffatt's voice had recovered its usual cordial note, and the warmth of
his welcome dispelled Ralph's last apprehension.
"Why, yes, everything's going along first-rate. They thought they'd hung
us up last week--but they haven't. There may be another week's delay;
but we ought to be opening a bottle of wine on it by the Fourth."
An office-boy came in with a name on a slip of paper, and Moffatt looked
at his watch and held out a hearty hand. "Glad you came. Of course I'll
keep you posted...No, this way...Look in again..." and he steered Ralph
out by another door.
July came, and passed into its second week. Ralph's lawyer had obtained
a postponement from the other side, but Undine's representatives had
given him to understand that the transaction must be closed before the
first of August. Ralph telephoned once or twice to Moffatt, receiving
genially-worded assurances that everything was "going their way"; but he
felt a certain embarrassment in returning again to the office, and
let himself drift through the days in a state of hungry apprehension.
Finally one afternoon Henley Fairford, coming back from town (which
Ralph had left in the morning to join his boy over Sunday), brought word
that the Apex consolidation scheme had failed to get its charter. It was
useless to attempt to reach Moffatt on Sunday, and Ralph wore on as he
could through the succeeding twenty-four hours. Clare Van Degen had come
down to stay with her youngest boy, and in the afternoon she and Ralph
took the two children for a sail. A light breeze brightened the waters
of the Sound, and they ran down the shore before it and then tacked out
toward the sunset, coming back at last, under a failing breeze, as the
summer sky passed from blue to a translucid green and then into the
accumulating greys of twilight.
As they left the landing and walked up behind the children across the
darkening lawn, a sense of security descended again on Ralph. He could
not believe that such a scene and such a mood could be the disguise of
any impending evil, and all his doubts and anxieties fell away from him.
The next morning, he and Clare travelled up to town together, and at the
station he put her in the motor which was to take her to Long Island,
and hastened down to Moffatt's office. When he arrived he was told that
Moffatt was "engaged," and he had to wait for nearly half an hour in
the outer office, where, to the steady click of the type-writer and
the spasmodic buzzing of the telephone, his thoughts again began their
restless circlings. Finally the inner door opened, and he found himself
in the sanctuary. Moffatt was seated behind his desk, examining another
little crystal vase somewhat like the one he had shown Ralph a few
weeks earlier. As his visitor entered, he held it up against the light,
revealing on its dewy sides an incised design as frail as the shadow of
grass-blades on water.
"Ain't she a peach?" He put the toy down and reached across the desk to
shake hands. "Well, well," he went on, leaning back in his chair, and
pushing out his lower lip in a half-comic pout, "they've got us in the
neck this time and no mistake. Seen this morning's Radiator? I don't
know how the thing leaked out--but the reformers somehow got a smell of
the scheme, and whenever they get swishing round something's bound to
get spilt."
He talked gaily, genially, in his roundest tones and with his easiest
gestures; never had he conveyed a completer sense of unhurried power;
but Ralph noticed for the first time the crow's-feet about his eyes, and
the sharpness of the contrast between the white of his forehead and the
redness of the fold of neck above his collar.
"Do you mean to say it's not going through?"
"Not this time, anyhow. We're high and dry."
Something seemed to snap in Ralph's head, and he sat down in the nearest
chair. "Has the common stock dropped a lot?"
"Well, you've got to lean over to see it." Moffatt pressed his
finger-tips together and added thoughtfully: "But it's THERE all right.
We're bound to get our charter in the end."
"What do you call the end?"
"Oh, before the Day of Judgment, sure: next year, I guess."
"Next year?" Ralph flushed. "What earthly good will that do me?"
"I don't say it's as pleasant as driving your best girl home by
moonlight. But that's how it is. And the stuff's safe enough any
way--I've told you that right along."
"But you've told me all along I could count on a rise before August. You
knew I had to have the money now."
"I knew you WANTED to have the money now; and so did I, and several of
my friends. I put you onto it because it was the only thing in sight
likely to give you the return you wanted."
"You ought at least to have warned me of the risk!"
"Risk? I don't call it much of a risk to lie back in your chair and wait
another few months for fifty thousand to drop into your lap. I tell you
the thing's as safe as a bank."
"How do I know it is? You've misled me about it from the first."
Moffatt's face grew dark red to the forehead: for the first time in
their acquaintance Ralph saw him on the verge of anger. "Well, if you
get stuck so do I. I'm in it a good deal deeper than you. That's about
the best guarantee I can give; unless you won't take my word for that
either." To control himself Moffatt spoke with extreme deliberation,
separating his syllables like a machine cutting something into even
lengths.
Ralph listened through a cloud of confusion; but he saw the madness
of offending Moffatt, and tried to take a more conciliatory tone. "Of
course I take your word for it. But I can't--I simply can't afford to
lose..."
"You ain't going to lose: I don't believe you'll even have to put up any
margin. It's THERE safe enough, I tell you..."
"Yes, yes; I understand. I'm sure you wouldn't have advised me--"
Ralph's tongue seemed swollen, and he had difficulty in bringing out the
words. "Only, you see--I can't wait; it's not possible; and I want to
know if there isn't a way--"
Moffatt looked at him with a sort of resigned compassion, as a doctor
looks at a despairing mother who will not understand what he has tried
to imply without uttering the word she dreads. Ralph understood the
look, but hurried on.
"You'll think I'm mad, or an ass, to talk like this; but the fact is, I
must have the money." He waited and drew a hard breath. "I must have it:
that's all. Perhaps I'd better tell you--"
Moffatt, who had risen, as if assuming that the interview was over, sat
down again and turned an attentive look on him. "Go ahead," he said,
more humanly than he had hitherto spoken.
"My boy...you spoke of him the other day... I'm awfully fond of him--"
Ralph broke off, deterred by the impossibility of confiding his feeling
for Paul to this coarse-grained man with whom he hadn't a sentiment in
common.
Moffatt was still looking at him. "I should say you would be! He's as
smart a little chap as I ever saw; and I guess he's the kind that gets
better every day."
Ralph had collected himself, and went on with sudden resolution: "Well,
you see--when my wife and I separated, I never dreamed she'd want the
boy: the question never came up. If it had, of course--but she'd left
him with me when she went away two years before, and at the time of the
divorce I was a fool...I didn't take the proper steps..."
"You mean she's got sole custody?"