THE FINANCIER’S DINNER.
The new year has come; and all the world has been celebrating, with
children’s dances and with children’s dinners and with a multiplicity
of costly toys, the birth of Christ. Grown-up people who have been
good-natured have assisted, and helped their boys play with candles
and with evergreens as they helped them play with fire-crackers on the
fourth of July, that other great feast or holy-day our calendar still
keeps. Grown people who have not been good-natured have kept to their
clubs, mostly, men to men; and the women have snatched the chance to
get a week of resting and a little early sleep. For now the children’s
play is over; and the winter’s balls are to begin in earnest, a serious
business, as we have said.
On the evening of December thirty-first, young Townley was invited
to dine with his partner, Mr. Phineas Tamms, in Brooklyn. He never
liked these dinners; but yet he learned too much from them to stay
away. A voyage to Brooklyn combined all the discomforts of a trip to
Europe, without the excitement and rewards--as he said at his favorite
Columbian Club, where he stopped to take a modest tonic on his way
down-town. “I wish I were going,” said one of the circle, who dallied
a little in stocks, “and had your chance of getting points.” For these
dinners of Tamms, the great street leader, were known as meetings where
many schemes were laid, and information gleaned, as Tamms unbended
after dinner, worth many thousands for each syllable, in gold.
“Yes,” said old Mr. Townley, wagging his gray head sagely, “my partner
is a very able young man--a very able young man indeed.” He was taking
nothing; but it was his usual hour to be at the club; and the New
Year’s time inclined the old gentleman to kindliness for all the world;
so he had left his private and particular seat by the window and joined
the group of younger fellows, to see how “his Boys” (as he called all
young men he knew) were getting along. As such, he was liked by them;
and treated with but the faintest tinge of patronage his age made
necessary.
“What do you think of the market, Mr. Townley?” said one of them with
a manner of much deference. “We have had a long spell of sag, and the
public are not in it.”
“Ha, ha,” chuckled Mr. Townley, delightedly, rubbing his hands.
“Townley & Son have seen a longer spell than this. The public will
come in it fast enough when we pull the market through. Wait till
after the holidays, my boys--I say no more; but wait till after the
holidays. As I was saying to my old friend Livingstone, just now, a
panic never comes on a long falling market. There was fifty-seven--and
thirty-eight--he did not remember thirty-eight--Charles Townley & Son
held up the banks, not they us, in those days--” and the old man went
off, chuckling, and joined his old friend Livingstone, the oldest
member of the club, after himself, in the corner window that was sacred
to them.
Jimmy De Witt looked after the retreating figure sadly. “What a pity
the old man does not know anything,” said he. “He would not lie about
it, if he could.”
Charlie left the club, and drew his fur overcoat tightly about
his chest, as the biting wind swept, from river to river, through
Twenty-third Street. He was not surprised his senior partner was not
going to the dinner, and only wished he did not have to go himself. Day
after to-morrow was the Duval ball; and he wished to keep himself fresh
for that. Was he not going to put his fate to the test, and win or lose
the girl he meant to marry? And New Year’s day would be all work for
him; for Tamms had bespoken his most private services; and he had some
reason to look upon the balance-sheet with apprehension.
Nor was his peace of mind restored by Tamms’s dinner. No ladies were
allowed at Tamms’s dinners, and only one well-tried and proven waiter.
Tamms sat at the head of his table, and until the coffee was brought,
said nothing; or if he did speak, talked of church matters or of the
weather. But when the coffee and cigars appeared (for cigars and coffee
were almost his only food, and he was never known to drink wine at a
business dinner) Tamms’s rusty iron jaw would open and the slow words
drop out gingerly, one by one, over the stiff curtain of his beard,
while all the knights of his round table craned their ears to hear them.
But Townley noticed some very curious things about this dinner. In the
first place, the guests were all young men, and rich men; but not men
of much experience or sagacity upon the street. Deacon Remington, who
in times past had had his regular seat, was notably absent. And Tamms
talked more freely than was his wont, and more steadily throughout the
dinner, which last was far more rich than usual and was served by half
a dozen hired waiters.
“What do you think of the market?” was again the question a beardless
youth asked of Tamms anxiously, to the dismay of all about him. But the
beardless youth had just come fresh from California with his father’s
fourteen millions, bent on becoming a power in the street; and had not
learned his money-changer’s etiquette as yet. But to the surprise of
all the rest, Tamms answered quite naturally and fully. “I don’t know
much about the market,” said he, cannily. “I guess perhaps there ain’t
much in the market, anyhow, of itself----”
“You think it a good sale?” broke in the beardless youth eagerly; while
his neighbors kicked him under the table and the ones placed farthest
from their host swore at him audibly.
“I ain’t sayin’ what I think it--at least, not jest now,” said Tamms,
with dignity. “I s’pose things is kind o’ stagnant--unless some feller
drops a stone into the pool.”
The attention grew breathless; you might have heard a pin drop; though
not, perhaps, the flutter of an angel’s wing. “There’s a good deal of
money coming in on the first of January; and I don’t know but what
things might start up a little, if some stock got kind o’ scarce.”
Tamms spoke these last words with greater precision, and in much better
English than the former ones; and his young partner knew that in this
accent he was always lying. But all the rest had treasured every
syllable of the oracle’s words, more carefully than any reporter’s
note-book could have set them down, while in appearance dallying with
their cigarettes and iced champagne. “He means a corner,” said every
man to himself; “who’s he gunning for?”--“He wants them to think he
means to corner Allegheny,” said young Townley to himself.
“Old man Remington has caused the present break,” said a rich young
stock-broker with an air of much importance.
“The deacon and I are kind o’ out,” said Tamms. “The fact is, I’m
afraid the deacon may have been selling too many stocks.”
“Remington has sold nothing but Allegheny,” said every man to himself;
and felt that they were well repaid their ferry-trips to Brooklyn. But
after this, Mr. Tamms obstinately refused to talk any more stocks, but
only Shakespeare and the music-glasses, that is, of Mr. Beecher and the
Coney Island races.
Charlie outstayed them all, and then went home alone. “It can’t be
done,” he said to himself; “the Governor knows it and he’s desperate. I
don’t believe that we can borrow fifty thousand more.” He was sitting
alone in the ladies’ room of the ferry-boat, his fur collar pulled well
up about his face, smoking one of his own cigars; for Tamms’s were too
strong. There was only one other passenger upon the boat; a drunken
working-man; and he was cursing Townley for a swell. “Confound him,
they wouldn’t let me smoke there, though it is late at night. But I
ain’t got no fine cigar, perhaps.”
Tamms’s fertility of invention was miraculous; but still it seemed
to Townley that he was hard pressed now. Their profit on that last
summer’s operation had been large--on paper; but it was this devilish
tightness of money that made things bad.
Suddenly, there was a peal of joyous bells, ringing loud all at once,
chimes, church-bells, factories, and schools, from both sides of the
river. Townley started nervously, and then remembered with a laugh
that it was New Year’s day. “What damned rot it is,” said he; and then
betook himself again to thinking. It seemed as if that merry music
brought him new ideas; for he slapped his thigh, and said aloud, “By
Jove, I have it.”--“What’s the swell a-chuckling over now?” said our
friend Simpson, looking in the window from outside.
“The deacon must have sold about all the stock there is,” Charlie went
on to himself; “and if we can only carry ours, and those rich lambs
go in to buy--the deacon can’t deliver. Why, it’s making them do the
cornering for us--doesn’t cost us a cent--and if we get a little short
of money, we can even drop a few shares to them ourselves, and no one
be the wiser. Provided only some devilish panic or strike or war of
rates does not come in just now,” he added, as the boat jarred heavily
against the dock.
The bells were silent now, and Charlie, wrapping his fur about him,
walked up the snowy and deserted street along the wharves. There
was a foul dampness coming from the tired water that still splashed
beneath the piles; but the city’s faults were charitably covered up in
snow. For once in his life, Townley had an instinct of economy, and
took no carriage; a fact which Simpson, slouching along behind him,
had noticed. There was no horse-car waiting, so he walked briskly up
a narrow cross-street into the city, still smoking his cigar. “Damn
him,” thought Simpson, “I wonder how much he’s got? I’d scrag him for a
hundred.” And he drew a long knife from its sheath, and hid it with his
right hand, in his breast. Simpson has been unlucky lately, with his
pools, even as has Mr. Tamms.
But Charlie is still thinking; of Mamie Livingstone and of the ball
to-morrow night. The evening’s talk has had one consequence, not wholly
material, at least; it has won for little Mamie the cavalier she loves.
Townley feels now that all his future hangs upon this slender thread:
curse it, he may have waited too long. He has had a dozen chances to
marry girls before this; Pussie Duval, herself, who gives the ball
to-morrow night--
He is stopped by a man at the corner of the street. “Got a light, boss?”
The voice is rude and husky, and the man has been drinking. Charlie
looks at him good-naturedly, and throws open his fur-lined coat; and as
he does so, the man notices that he too looks pale and worried.
“Certainly,” says Charlie. “Take a cigar, won’t you--for the first of
the year?” Charlie has a pleasant smile; and he meets the other’s eye
frankly. And Simpson takes his right hand from his breast.
He takes the cigar, shame-facedly; and shambles hurriedly off, not
waiting for his light.
“Poor devil, I suppose he wants to smoke it in a warmer place than
this,” says Charlie; and pulls his furs close about him and hurries
safely home.