_Fal._--Reason, you rogue, reason; thinkest thou I'll endanger my soul
gratis?--_Merry Wives of Windsor_.
_Pistol._--Base is the slave that pays.--_Henry V_.
Time had been when, his youth considered, Vinal was a beaming star in
the commercial heaven. On 'change,
"His name was great,
In mouths of wisest censure."
The astutest broker pronounced him good; the sagest money lender took
his paper without a question. But of late, his signature had lost a
little of its efficacy. It was whispered that he was not as sound as
his repute gave out; that his operations were no longer marked by his
former clear-headed forecast; that he was deep in doubtful and
dangerous speculation. In short, his credit stood by no means where it
had stood a twelvemonth earlier.
Possibly these rumors took their first impulse, not on 'change, but at
tea tables, and in drawing rooms. His wife's separation from him had
given ample food to speculation; and gossip had for once been just,
asserting, with few dissenting voices, that there must needs be some
fault, and a grave one, on the part of Vinal. The event had ceased to
be a very recent one; but surmise was still rife concerning its
mysterious cause.
Meanwhile, Vinal was being goaded into recklessness, frightened out of
his propriety, haunted, devil-driven, maddened into desperate courses.
Late one night, he was pacing his library, with a quick, disordered
step. His servants were in their beds, excepting a man, nodding his
drowsy vigil over the kitchen fire. Vinal's affairs were fast drawing
to a crisis. A few weeks must determine the success or failure of a
broad scheme of fraud, on which he had staked his fortunes and
himself, and whose issues would sink him to disgrace and ruin, or lift
him for a time to the pinnacle of a knave's prosperity. But,
meanwhile, how to keep his head above water! Claims thickened upon
him; he was meshed in a network of perplexities; and, with him,
bankruptcy would involve far more than a loss of fortune.
There was a ring at the door bell. Vinal stopped short in his feverish
walk, raised his head with a startled motion, and listened like a fox
who hears the hounds. His instinct foreboded the worst. His cheek
flushed, and his eye brightened, not with spirit, but with
desperation.
The bell rang again. This time, the sleepy servant roused himself.
Vinal heard his step along the hall; heard the opening of the street
door, and a man's voice pronouncing his name. The moment after, his
evil spirit stood before him, in the shape of Henry Speyer.
Vinal gave him no time to speak, but shutting the door in the
servant's face, turned upon his visitor with such courage as a cat
will show when a bulldog has driven her into a corner.
"Again! Are you here again? It is hardly a month since you were here
last. What have you done with what I gave you then? Do you think I am
made of gold? Do you take me for a bank that you can draw on at will?"
"I am sorry to trouble you so soon, but I am very hard pressed."
"Hard pressed! So am I hard pressed. Here for a year and more I have
been supporting you in your extravagance--you and your mistresses; you
have been living on me like princes,--dress, drinking, feasting,
horses, gambling!--among you, you make my money spin away like water.
Every well has a bottom to it, and you have got to the bottom of
mine."
Speyer laughed with savage incredulity.
"Any thing in reason I am ready to do for you; but it's of no use.
More! more! is always the word. You think you have found a gold mine.
You mistake. Here I have a note due to-morrow; and another on
Monday--that was for money I borrowed to give you. Heaven knows how I
shall pay them. Go back, and come again a month from this."
"It won't do. I must have it now."
"I tell you, I have none to give you."
"Do you see this?" said Speyer, producing a roll of printed papers,
and giving one to Vinal.
It was Vinal's letter, in the form of a placard, with a statement of
the whole affair prefixed. Speyer had had it printed secretly in New
York, the names of Morton and Vinal being left blank, and ingeniously
filled in by himself with a pen.
"Give me the money, or show me how to get it, or I will have you
posted up at every street corner in town. I have your letter here. I
shall send it to your friend, the editor of the Sink."
The Sink was a scurrilous newspaper, which the virtuous Vinal, always
anxious for the morals of the city, had once caused to be prosecuted
as a nuisance, for which the editor bore him a special grudge.
But Vinal at last was brought to bay. Threats, which Speyer thought
irresistible, had lost their power. He threw back the paper, and said
desperately, "Do what you will."
Speyer made a step forward, and faced his prey.
"Will you give me the money?"
"By G--, no!"
"By G--, you shall!"
And Speyer seized him by the breast of his waistcoat.
Vinal had been trained in the habits of a gentleman. He had never
known personal outrage before. He grew purple with rage. The veins of
his forehead swelled like whipcord, and his eyes glittered like a
rattlesnake's.
"Take off your hand!"
The words were less articulated than hissed between his teeth.
"Take off your hand."
Speyer clutched him with a harder gripe, and shook him to and fro.
Quick as lightning, Vinal struck him in the face. Speyer glared and
grinned on his victim like an enraged tiger. For a moment, he shook
him as a terrier shakes a rat; then flung him backward against the
farther side of the room. Here, striking the wall, he fell helpless,
among the window curtains and overturned chairs. Speyer would probably
have followed up his attack; but at the instant, the servant, who, by
a happy accident, was at the side door, in the near neighborhood of
the keyhole, ran in in time to save Vinal from more serious
discomfiture.
Speyer hesitated; turned from one to the other with murder in his
look; then, slowly moving backwards, left the room, whence the
servant's valor did not mount to the point of following him.