GALT
i
It was true of Galt, as Harbinger said, that he had no friends; it
was not therefore true that his world was full of enemies. He had
many acquaintances and no intimates. He was a solitary worker in the
money vineyards, keeping neither feud nor tryst with any clan. His
reputation in Wall Street was formless and cloudy. Everybody knew him,
or knew something about him; for twenty years he had been a pestiferous
gadfly on the Stock Exchange, lighting here and there, turning up
suddenly in situations where he had to be settled with or bought off,
swaggering, bluffing, baiting, playing the greatest of all games of
wit with skill and daring--and apparently getting nowhere in the end.
Once he had engaged in a lone-handed fight with a powerful banking
group over the reorganization of a railroad, demanding to be elected to
the directorate as the largest minority stockholder. The bankers were
indignant. The audacity of a stock market gambler wanting to sit on
a railroad board! What would anybody think? He took his case to the
courts and was beaten.
Another time he unexpectedly appeared with actual control of a small
railroad, having bought it surreptitiously during many months in the
open market place; but as he held it mostly with credit borrowed from
the banks his position was vulnerable. It would not do for a gambler
like this to own a railroad, the bankers said; so his loans were called
away from him and he had to sell out at a heart-breaking loss. He was
beaten again.
He took his defeats grimly and returned each time to the practice
of free lance speculation, with private brokerage on the side. The
unsuccess of these two adventures caused him to be thought of as a man
whose ambitions exceeded his powers. There were a great many facts
about him, facts of record and facts of hearsay, but when they were
brought together the man was lost. Though he talked a great deal to
any one who would listen he revealed nothing of himself. His office
was one dark little room, full of telephones; and he was never there.
He carried his business in his head. Nobody positively spoke ill of
him, or if one did it was on ground of free suspicion, with nothing
more specific to be alleged than that he turned a sharp corner. That is
nothing to say. To go wide around corners in Wall Street is a mark of
self-display. People neither liked nor disliked him. They simply had no
place in their minds to put him. So they said, “Oh, yes,--Harry Galt,”
and shook their heads. They might say he was unsafe and take it back,
remarking that he had never been insolvent. What they meant was that
he was visionary. Generally on the Stock Exchange there is a shrewd
consensus as to what a man is worth. Nobody had the remotest notion of
what Galt was worth. It was believed that his fortune went up and down
erratically.
Between Galt and the president of the Great Midwestern there was a
strange relationship. Harbinger had said it was not one of friendship.
Perhaps not. Yet it would be difficult to find any other name for it.
Their association was constant. Galt did all of Valentine’s private
Stock Exchange business, as Harbinger said. What Harbinger did not know
was that they were engaged in joint speculations under Galt’s advice
and direction. All of this, of course, could be without personal liking
on either side. Galt was an excellent broker and an adroit speculator.
Valentine never spoke of him without a kind of awe and a certain unease
of manner. Galt’s references to Valentine were oblique, sometimes
irreverent to the verge of disrespect, but that was Galt. It did not
imply dislike.
On the president’s return from Chicago I mentioned the fact of having
refused to give Galt the earnings.
“Quite right,” he said. “I ought to have told you about Mr. Galt.”
“Is it all right to give him anything he wants?” I asked, remembering
what Harbinger had said and wishing to test it for myself. He did not
answer at once, nor directly. After walking about for several minutes
he said:
“Mr. Galt is becoming a large stockholder in the Great Midwestern
Railroad. Why, I don’t know. I cannot follow his process of thought.
Our stock is very low. I don’t know when if ever we shall be able to
pay dividends on it again. But I cannot keep him from buying it. He is
obstinate in his opinions.”
“Is his judgment good in such matters?” I asked.
“It isn’t judgment,” he said slowly. “It isn’t anything you can touch
by reason. I suppose it is intuition.”
“Do his intuitions prove in the sequel?”
He grew more restless and then stood for a long time gazing out of the
window.
“It’s queer,” he said, speaking to himself. “He has extraordinary
foresight. I wish I could see with him now. If he is right then
everybody else is wrong. No, he cannot be right ... he cannot be.
Conditions are too plain.”
“He doesn’t see conditions as they are?” I said.
“As they are?” he repeated, starting, and then staring at me out of
focus with recollected astonishment. “He doesn’t see them at all. They
don’t exist. What he sees is ... is.... Well, well, no matter,” he
said, letting down suddenly and returning to his desk with a large
gesture of sweeping something behind him.
It was difficult to be friends with Henry Galt. His power of irritation
was impish. None escaped its terrors, least of all those upon whom he
bestowed his liking. He knew all their tender spots and kept them sore.
No word of satire, derision or petulance was ever restrained, or missed
its mark. His aim was unerring; and if you were not the victim you
wickedly understood the strength of the temptation. He not only made
people feel little; he made them look little. What saved it or made it
utterly intolerable, according to the point of view, was that having
done this he was scornful of his own ego’s achievement, as to say: “I
may be greater than you but that’s no sign I am anything to speak of.”
There was a curious fact about his exhibitions of ungoverned feeling,
either ecstasies or tantrums. He had no sense of physical dignity, and
therefore no sensation ever of losing it. For that reason he could
bring off a most undignified scene in a manner to humiliate everyone
but himself. Having behaved incorrigibly he would suddenly stalk off in
majestic possession of himself and leave others in a ludicrous plight,
with a sense of having suffered an unanswerable indignity. It delighted
him to seize you up on some simple declaration of opinion, demand the
reason, then the grounds of the reason, and run you off your wits with
endless, nagging questions.
On handing him the weekly earnings one afternoon I passed a word of
unconsidered comment. He impeached it with a question. I defended it
foolishly. He impeached the defense with another question. And this
went on until I said:
“It was nothing in the beginning. I merely meant it to be civil, like
passing the time of day. I’m sorry I spoke at all.”
“Sorry spoils it,” he said. “Otherwise very handsome.” And he passed
into the president’s office for the long conference which now was a
daily fixture. They went away together as usual. Presently Galt alone
returned and said in a very nice way:
“Come and have dinner with me, Coxey.”
When we were seated in the Sixth Avenue L train he resumed the
inquisitive manner, only now he flattered me by showing genuine
interest in my answers. Had I seen the board of directors in action?
How was I impressed? Who was the biggest man in the lot at a guess?
Why so? What did I think of Valentine, of this and that one? Why? He
not only made me recall my impressions, he obliged me to account for
them. And he listened attentively. When we descended at 50th Street he
seemed not to notice that it was drizzling rain. There was no umbrella.
We walked slowly south to 48th Street and turned east, talking all the
time.
The Galt house was tall, brown and conventional, lying safe within the
fringe. It was near the middle of the block. Eastward toward Fifth
Avenue as the scale of wealth ascended there were several handsome
houses. Westward toward Sixth Avenue at the extreme end of the block
you might suspect high class board. But it is a long block; one end
does not know the other. About the entrance, especially at the front
door as Galt admitted us with a latch-key, there was an effect of
stinted upkeep.
Inside we were putting off our things, with no sign of a servant, when
suddenly a black and white cyclone swept down the hall, imperilling
in its passage a number of things and threatening to overwhelm its
own object; but instead at the miraculous moment it became rigid,
gracefully executed a flying slide on the tiled floor, and came to a
perfect stop with Galt in its arms.
“Safe!” I shouted, filled with excitement and admiration.
“Natalie,” said Galt, introducing her.
She shook hands in a free, roguish manner, smiling with me at herself,
without really for an instant taking her attention off Galt.
“You’re wet,” she said severely.
“No, I’m not.”
“You’re soaking wet,” she insisted, feeling and pinching him at the
same time. “You’ve got to change.”
“I’ve got to do nothing of the kind,” he said. “We want to talk. Let us
alone.” To me he said: “Come up to my room,” and made for the stairway.
Natalie, getting ahead of him, barred the way.
“You won’t have a minute to talk,” she said. “Dinner is ready. Go in
there.”
“Oh, all right ... all right,” he growled, turning into the parlor.
Almost before he could sit down she was at him with a dry coat, holding
it. Grumbling and pretending to be churlish, yet secretly much pleased,
he changed garments, saying: “Will that do you?”
“For now,” she said, smoothing the collar and giving him a little whack
to finish.
Mrs. Galt appeared. Then Galt’s mother, introduced simply and sweetly
by her nursery name, Gram’ma Galt. There was an embarrassing pause.
“Where is Vera?” Galt asked.
Vera, I supposed, was the ferryboat girl.
Nobody answered his question. Mrs. Galt by an effort of strong
intention moved us silently toward the dining room. The house seemed
bare,--no pictures to look at, a few pieces of fine old furniture mixed
with modern things, good rugs worn shabby and no artistry of design or
effect whatever except in the middle room between parlor and dining
room which contained a grand piano, some art objects and a thought of
color. Nothing in the house was positively ugly or in bad taste, nor in
the total impression was there any uncomfortable suggestion of genteel
poverty. What the environment seemed to express, all save that one
middle room, was indifference.
“You will want to talk,” said Mrs. Galt, placing me at the left of
Galt, so that I faced Natalie, who sat at his right. This was the foot
of the table. Mrs. Galt sat at the head of it, with Gram’ma Galt at her
right and a vacant place at her left.
“Where is Vera?” Galt asked again, beginning to develop symptoms.
“She isn’t coming down,” said Mrs. Galt in a horizontal voice.
“Why not?” asked Galt, beating the table. “Why not?”
“T-e-e o-o-o doubleyou,” said Natalie, significantly, trying to catch
his eye. But he either didn’t hear or purposely ignored her, and went
on:
“She does this to spite me. She does it every time I bring anybody
home. I won’t have it. She’s a monkey, she’s a snob. I’ll call her till
she comes. Hey, Ver-a-a-a!”
Natalie had been shaking him by the arm, desperately trying to make him
look at a figure formed with the fingers of her right hand. Evidently
there was a code between them. She had already tried the cipher, T O
W, whatever that meant, and now this was the sign. If he would only
look! But of course he wouldn’t. Suddenly the girl threw herself around
him, and though he resisted she smothered him powerfully and whispered
in his ear. Instantly the scene dissolved. She returned to her place
slightly flushed with the exertion, he sat up to the table, and dinner
began to be served as if nothing unusual had taken place.
Mrs. Galt addressed polite inquiries at me, spoke to the butler,
conversed with Natalie, not feverishly or in haste, but placidly, in a
calm level voice. She was a magnificent brunette woman, turning gray at
a time of life and in a manner to make her look even younger and more
striking than before. Her expression was trained, impersonal and weary,
as that of one who knows the part too well to be surprised or taken
unawares and had forgotten what it was like to be interested without
effort. There were lines suitable to every occasion. She knew them
all and spoke them well, omitting nothing, slurring nothing, adding
nothing. Her conversation, like her expression, was a guise. Back of
that there dwelt a woman.
No one spoke to the old mother. I tried to talk to her. She became
instantly rigid and remained so until I turned away embarrassed. As I
did so Natalie was looking at me.
“Don’t mind Gram’ma,” she said across the table. “When she wants to
talk she will let you know.”
I happened to catch the angry look that the grandmother darted at the
girl for this polite impertinence. It betrayed an amazing energy of
spirit. That old stone house with its breaking lines, dissolving gray
textures, and no way in, was still the habitat of an ageless, sultry
sibyl. Trespass at your peril! But youth possessing itself is truly
impervious. The girl did not mind. She returned the look with a smile,
just a little too winsome, as everything about her seemed a little too
high in key or color, too extraordinary, too unexpected, or, like the
girl in the perfumer’s advertisement, a little too much to be true,
not in any sense of being unreal, but as an entity altogether and
unfortunately improbable. She had learned how to get what she wanted,
and her way of getting it, one could imagine, was all that made life
bearable in that household.
Its sky was low and ominous, charged with a sense of psychic stress. I
felt two conditions of conflict, one chronic and one acute. The feeling
of there being something acute was suddenly deepened when the old
mother spoke for the first and only time. Her voice was clear, precise
and commanded undivided attention. The question she asked gave me a
queer start.
“What is the price of Great Midwestern to-day?”
“Eight,” said Galt, amid profound silence.
That was all. Yet it was as if a spark had passed through inflammable
gas. The same feeling was deepened further by another incident.
“Coxey,” said Galt, addressing me rhetorically, “what one thing has
impressed you most in Wall Street?”
“The unbelief of people in themselves, in each other and in what they
are doing,” I replied.
“What’s that? Say it again.”
I said it again, whereat he burst forth with shrill, discordant,
exulting sounds, beating the china with a spoon and making for one
person an incredible uproar. At the same time he looked about him with
a high air, especially at his wife, whose expression was perfectly
blank. Natalie smiled grimly. The old mother was oblivious.
“I don’t see anything in that,” I said, when the racket subsided.
“There is, though,” he said. “You didn’t mean to do it but you hit ’em
in the eye that time,--square in the eye. Wow!” He was very agreeably
excited and got up from the table.
“Come on,” he said, “we’ll talk in my room.”
“I’ll send your coffee up,” Mrs. Galt called after us, as he bore me
off.
“This is where I live and play,” he said, applying a latch-key to a
door at the top of the stairway. He went in first to get the light on,
saying: “I don’t let anybody in here but Natalie. She can dust it up
without touching anything.”
The room was a workshop in that state of involved disorder, tools
all scattered about, which is sign and measure of the craftsman’s
engrossment. There was an enormous table piled high at both ends with
papers, briefs, maps, charts, blue prints, files, pamphlets and stuffed
envelopes. Books were everywhere,--on the table, on the chairs, on
the floor, many of them open, faces up and faces down, straddled one
upon another leap-frog fashion, arranged in series with weights to
hold them flat, books sprawling, leaning, prone. Poor’s Manual of
Railway Statistics, the Financial Chronicle, Statistical Abstract of
the United States, Economics of Railroad Construction, History of
the Erie Railroad, the Yardmaster’s Assistant,--such were the titles.
Against the right wall to a height of six feet were book shelves filled
with all the contemporary financial and commercial periodicals in
bound volumes, almanacs, endless books of statistical reference and
the annual reports of various railway corporations, running back for
many years. On top of the shelves was the only decorative thing in the
room,--a beautiful working model of a locomotive, perfect in every
intricate part, mounted in brass and set upon a nickel plated section
of railway.
One could have guessed without seeing him that the occupant of this
room was restless, never at physical ease, and worked all over the
place, sitting here and there, lying down and walking about. On the
left side of the room was a couch and close beside it at one end a
morris chair, a reading light between them. Both the couch and chair
showed nervous wear and tear. And beyond the table in the clear space
the rug had been paced threadbare.
Most of the available wall area was covered with maps and colored
charts. I walked about looking at them. Galt removed his shoes, put on
slippers, got into a ragged lounging jacket and threw himself on the
couch, where he lay for some time watching me with the air of one who
waits only to pop open at the slightest touch in the right place.
“What is this?” I asked, staring at a large map which showed the Great
Midwestern in heavy red lines, as I fairly well knew it, but with such
ramified extensions in blue lines as to make it look like a gigantic
double-ended animal with its body lying across the continent and its
tentacles flung wide in the east and west.
“That’s crystal gazing,” he said.
“It’s what?”
“What may be,” he said, coming off the couch with a spring. As he
passed the table he snatched up a ruler to point with.
See! There was the Great Midwestern alone,--all there was of it, from
there to there. It was like a desert bridge from east to west, or,
better still, like a strait connecting two vast oceans of freight. It
was not so placed as to be able to originate traffic for itself, not
profitably, yet that is what it had always been trying to do instead of
attending exclusively to its own unique function. Its opportunity was
to become the Dardanelles of trans-continental traffic. To realize its
destiny it must control traffic at both ends. How? Why, by controlling
railroads east and west that developed and originated freight, as
a river gathers water, by a system of branches reaching up to the
springs. And those blue lines, see!--they were those other roads which
the Great Midwestern should control in its own interest.
He turned to a chart ten feet long by four feet deep hung level with
the eyes on the opposite wall. The heavy black line erratically
rising and falling against a background of graduated horizontal
lines was an accurate profile of the Great Midwestern for the whole
of its length,--that is, a cross section of the earth showing the
configuration of its surface under the G. M. railroad’s ties and rails.
It was unique, he said. Never had such a thing been done on this scale
before. The purpose was to exhibit the grades in a graphic manner.
There were many bad grades, each one like a hole in the pocket. His
knowledge was minute. “Now from here to here,” he said, indicating 100
miles of profile with low grades, “it costs half a cent to move a ton
of freight one mile, and that pays. But from here to here,” indicating
a sudden rise in the next fifty miles, “it costs three cents per ton
per mile and all the profit made in the preceding 100 miles is lost on
that one grade.”
“What can be done about it?” I asked.
“Cut that grade down from 150 to 50 feet in the mile,” he said, slicing
the peak of it through with his ruler, “and freight can be moved at a
profit.”
“It would take a lot of labor and money, wouldn’t it?”
“Well, what of all this unemployment belly-ache you and old Bubbly Jock
are writing pieces about?” he retorted. “You say there is more labor
than work. I’ll show you more work to be done on the railroads than you
can find labor in a generation for. All right, you say, but then it’s
the money. The Great Midwestern hasn’t got the money to spend on that
grade. True. Like all other roads with bad grades it’s hard up. But it
could borrow the money and earn big dividends on it. Track levelling
pays better than gold mining.”
“You and Coxey ought to confer,” I said. “You are not so far apart.
He wants the government to create work by the simple expedient of
borrowing money to build good roads. And here you say the railroads, if
they would borrow money to reduce their grades, might employ all the
idle labor there is.”
He gave me a queer look, as if undecided whether to answer in earnest.
“Coxey is technically crazy,” he said, “and I’m technically sane. That
may be the principal difference. Besides, it isn’t the government’s
business.”
This diversion gave his thoughts a more general character. For three
hours he walked about talking railroads,--how they had got built so
badly in the first place, why so many were bankrupt, errors of policy,
capital cost, upkeep, the relative merits of different kinds of
equipment, new lines of development, problems of operation. For this
was the stuff of his dreams. He devoured it. The idea of a railroad
as a means to power filled the whole of his imagination. It was man’s
most dynamic tool. No one had yet imagined its possibilities. He became
romantic. His feeling for a locomotive was such as some men have for
horses. The locomotive, he said, suddenly breaking off another thought
to let that one through,--the locomotive was more wonderful than any
automotive thing God had placed on earth. According to the book of Job
God boasted of the horse. Well, look at it alongside of a locomotive!
He never went back to finish what he was saying when the image of a
locomotive interrupted his thought. Instead he became absent and began
to look slowly about the room as if he had lost something. I understood
what had happened. He was seized with the premonition of an idea. He
felt it before he could see it; it had to be helped out of the fog.
I made gestures of going, which he accepted. As we shook hands he
became fully present for long enough to say: “I never talk like this to
anyone. Just keep that in mind.... Good night.”
ii
He did not come down with me. He did not come even to the door of his
own room. As I closed it I saw his back. He was leaning over the table
in a humped posture, his head sideways in his left hand, writing or
ciphering rapidly on a sheet of yellow paper. Good for the rest of
the night, I thought, as I went down the dimly lighted stairs, got my
things and let myself into the vestibule.
The inner door came to behind me with a bang because the outer door was
partly open and a strong draught swept through. At the same instant I
became aware of a woman’s figure in the darkness of the vestibule. She
was dry; therefore she could not be just coming in, for a cold rain
was falling. And if she had just come out, why hadn’t I seen her in
the hallway? But why was I obliged to account for her at all? It was
unimportant. Probably she had been hesitating to take the plunge into
the nasty night. I felt rather silly. First I had been startled and
then I had hesitated, and now it was impossible to speak in a natural
manner. My impulse was to bolt it in silence. Then to my surprise she
moved ahead of me, stood outside, and handed me her umbrella. I raised
it and held it over her; we descended the steps together.
“I’m going toward Fifth Avenue,” I said.
She turned with me in that direction, saying: “I was waiting for you.”
“You are Vera?”
“Yes.”
“The ferryboat girl,” I added.
“The what?”
“Nothing. Go on. Why were you waiting for me?”
She did not answer immediately. We walked in silence to the next light
where she turned and gave me a frankly inquisitive look.
“Oh,” she said.
“Oh, what?” said I. “You don’t remember me.”
“Nothing,” she answered, giving me a second look, glancewise. “Two
nothings make it even,” she added.
There was an awkward pause. “May I ask you something? You are with the
Great Midwestern, in Mr. Valentine’s office?”
“Yes.”
“I have no one else to ask,” she said. “You will be surprised. It is
this: do you think Great Midwestern stock a good investment?”
I was angry and uncomfortable. Why was she asking me? But she wasn’t
really; she was coming at something else.
“I haven’t any opinion,” I said, “and that isn’t what you mean.”
We were now in Fifth Avenue and had stopped in the doorway of a lighted
shop to be out of the rain. She blushed at my answer and at the same
time gave me a look of scrutiny. I had to admire the way she held to
her purpose.
“I am very anxious to know what Mr. Valentine’s opinion is,” she said.
“That’s better,” I replied. “But why should you want even his opinion?
Your father knows more about Great Midwestern than its president, more
than any other one person. Why not get his opinion?”
Until that moment she had perfectly disguised a state of anxiety
verging upon hysteria. Suddenly her powers of self-repression failed.
My reference to her father caused the strings to snap. Her expression
changed as if a mask had fallen. The grief muscles all at once
relaxed and the pretty frown they had been holding in the forehead
disappeared. Her eyes flamed. Her upper lip retracted on one side,
showing the canine tooth. Her giving way to strong emotion in this
manner was a kind of pagan revelation. It did not in the least distort
her beauty, but made it terrible. This, as I learned in time, was the
only one of her effects of which she was altogether unconscious.
“We know his opinion,” she said. “We take it with our food. He is
putting everything we have into Great Midwestern stock,--his own money,
the family’s money, mother’s, Natalie’s, gram’ma’s and now mine.”
“Without your consent? I don’t understand it,” I said.
“The money in our family is divided. Each of us has a little. Most
of it is from mother’s side of the house. My father and gram’ma are
trustees of a sum that will come to me from my uncle’s estate when
I am twenty-one. It is enough to make me independent for life. They
are putting that into this stock! Is it a proper investment for trust
funds, I ask you?”
I felt I ought not to be listening. Still, I had not encouraged these
intimate disclosures, she was old enough to know what she was doing,
and, most of all, the information was dramatically interesting. I was
obliged to say that by all the rules Great Midwestern stock would not
be considered a proper investment for trust funds.
“I’ve protested,” she said. “I’ve threatened to take steps. Pooh! What
can I do? They pay no more attention to me than _that_! Neither father
nor gram’ma. Mother is neutral. Father says it will make me rich. I
don’t want to be rich. Besides he has said that before.”
“It may turn out well,” I said.
“It isn’t as if this were the first time,” she continued. “Twice he has
had us on the rocks. Twice he has lost all our money, all that he could
get his hands on, in the same way, putting it into a railroad that he
hoped to get control of or something, and going smash at the end. Once
when I was a little girl and again three years ago. To-day on the train
I heard two men talking about a receivership for the Great Midwestern
as if it were inevitable. What would that mean?”
“It would be very disagreeable,” I said.
“That’s almost the same as bankruptcy, isn’t it?”
“It is bankruptcy,” I said; but I added that rumors just then were very
wild in Wall Street and so false in general that the worse they were
the less they were heeded, people reacting to them in a disbelieving,
contrary manner.
She shook her head doubtfully.
“Are you going to tell me what Mr. Valentine’s opinion is?”
“He would not recommend anyone to buy the stock just now,” I said. “He
makes no secret of seeing darkly.”
“The rocks again,” she said. “And no more legacies to save us. Nearly
all of our rich relatives are already dead.”
The realism of youth!
I could not resist the opportunity to ask one question.
“I can understand your case,” I said, “but the others,--your mother and
grandmother,--they are not helpless. Why do they hand over their money
for these adventures in high finance? Or perhaps they believe in your
father’s star.”
“No more than I believe in it,” she replied. “No. It isn’t that.
They can’t help it.” She looked at me from afar, through a haze of
recollections, and repeated the thought to herself, wondering: “They
cannot help it. We cannot say no. Even I cannot say it. What he wants
he gets.”
She shivered.
“Will you walk back with me, please.”
It was still raining. We walked all the way back in silence. At the
step she reached for her umbrella, said thank you and stepped inside.
The door closed with a slam. That could have been the draught again,
provided the inner door stood open, which seemed very improbable.
What left me furious, gave me once more that hot, humiliated feeling
which resulted from our first encounter on the ferryboat, was the
same thing again. She had spoken my name, she had solicited a favor,
she had employed blandishments, she had exposed the family’s closet
of horrors, and all the time I might have been a person in a play, a
non-existent giraffe or one of Cleopatra’s eunuchs.