VI

Margaret hastened to her chamber. Was the air oppressive? She opened the

window and sat down by it. A soft south wind was blowing, eating away the

remaining patches of snow; the sky was full of fleecy clouds. Where do

these days come from in January? Why should nature be in a melting mood?

Margaret instinctively would have preferred a wild storm, violence,

anything but this elemental languor. Her emotion was incredible to

herself.

It was only an incident. It had all happened in a moment, and it was

over. But it was the first of the kind in a woman's life. The thrilling,

mysterious word had been dropped into a woman's heart. Hereafter she

would be changed. She never again would be as she was before. Would her

heart be hardened or softened by the experience? She did not love him;

that was clear. She had done right; that was clear. But he had said he

loved her. Unwittingly she was following him in her thought. She had

rejected plain John Lyon, amiable, intelligent, unselfish, kindly,

deferential. She had rejected also the Earl of Chisholm, a conspicuous

position, an honorable family, luxury, a great opportunity in life. It

came to the girl in a flash. She moved nervously in her chair. She put

down the thought as unworthy of her. But she had entertained it for a

moment. In that second, ambition had entered the girl's soul. She had a

glimpse of her own nature that seemed new to her. Was this, then, the

meaning of her restlessness, of her charitable activities, of her

unconfessed dreams of some career? Ambition had entered her soul in a

definite form. She expelled it. It would come again in some form or

other. She was indignant at herself as she thought of it. How odd it was!

Her privacy had been invaded. The even tenor of her life had been broken.

Henceforth would she be less or more sensitive to the suggestion of love,

to the allurements of ambition? Margaret tried, in accordance with her

nature, to be sincere with herself.

After all, what nonsense it was! Nothing really had happened. A stranger

of a few weeks before had declared himself. She did not love him; he was

no more to her than any other man. It was a common occurrence. Her

judgment accorded with her feeling in what she had done. How was she to

know that she had made a mistake, if mistake it was? How was she to know

that this hour was a crisis in her life? Surely the little tumult would

pass; surely the little whisper of worldliness could not disturb her

ideals. But all the power of exclusion in her mind could not exclude the

returning thought of what might have been if she had loved him. Alas! in

that moment was born in her heart something that would make the idea of

love less simple than it had been in her mind. She was heart-free, but

her nature was too deep not to be profoundly affected by this experience.

Looking back upon this afternoon in the light of after-years, she

probably could not feel--no one could say--that she had done wrong. How

was she to tell? Why is it that to do the right thing is often to make

the mistake of a life? Nothing could have been nobler than for Margaret

indignantly to put aside a temptation that her heart told her was

unworthy. And yet if she had yielded to it?

I ought to ask pardon, perhaps, for dwelling upon a thing so slight as

the entrance of a thought in a woman's life. For as to Margaret, she

seemed unchanged. She made no sign that anything unusual had occurred. We

only knew that Mr. Lyon went away less cheerful than he usually was, that

he said nothing of returning in response to our invitations, and that he

seemed to anticipate nothing but the fulfillment of a duty in his visit

to Washington.

What had happened was regarded as only an episode. In fact, however, I

doubt if there are any episodes in our lives, any asides, that do not

permanently affect our entire career. Are not the episodes, the casual

thoughts, the fortuitous, unplanned meetings, the brief and maybe at the

moment unnoted events, those which exercise the most influence on our

destiny? To all observation the career of Lyon, and not of Margaret, was

most affected by their interview. But often the implanting of an idea in

the mind is more potent than the frustration of a plan or the

gratification of a desire, so hidden are the causes that make character.

For some time I saw little of Margaret. Affairs in which I was not alone

or chiefly concerned took me from home. One of the most curious and

interesting places in the world is a Chamber in the business heart of New

York--if that scene of struggle and passion can be said to have a heart

--situated midway where the currents of eagerness to acquire the money of

other people, not to make it, ceaselessly meet and dash against each

other. If we could suppose there was a web covering this region, spun by

the most alert and busy of men to catch those less alert and more

productive, here in this Chamber would sit the ingenious spiders. But the

analogy fails, for spiders do not prey upon each other. Scientists say

that the human system has two nerve-centres--one in the brain, to which

and from which are telegraphed all movements depending upon the will, and

another in the small of the back, the centre of the involuntary

operations of respiration, digestion, and so on. It may be fanciful to

suppose that in the national system Washington is the one nervous centre

and New York the other. And yet it does sometimes seem that the nerves

and ganglions in the small of the back in the commercial metropolis act

automatically and without any visible intervention of intelligence. For

all that, their operations may be as essential as the other, in which the

will-power sometimes gets into a deadlock, and sometimes telegraphs the

most eccentric and incomprehensible orders. Puzzled by these

contradictions, some philosophers have said that there may be somewhere

outside of these two material centres another power that keeps affairs

moving along with some steadiness.

This noble Chamber has a large irregular area of floor space, is very

high, and has running round three sides a narrow elevated gallery, from

which spectators can look down upon the throng below. Upon a raised dais

at one side sits the presiding genius of the place, who rules very much

as Jupiter was supposed to govern the earthly swarms, by letting things

run and occasionally launching a thunderbolt. High up on one side, in an

Olympian seclusion, away from the noise and the strife, sits a Board,

calm as fate, and panoplied in the responsibility of chance, whose

function seems to be that of switch-shifters in their windowed cubby at a

network of railway intersections--to prevent collisions.

At both ends of the floor and along one side are narrow railed-off spaces

full of clerks figuring at desks, of telegraph operators clicking their

machines, of messenger-boys arriving and departing in haste, of

unprivileged operators nervously watching the scene and waiting the

chance of a word with some one on the floor; through noiseless swinging

doors men are entering and departing every moment--men in a hurry, men

with anxious faces, conscious that the fate of the country is in their

hands. On the floor itself are five hundred, perhaps a thousand, men,

gathered for the most part in small groups about little stands upon the

summit of which is a rallying legend, talking, laughing, screaming,

good-natured, indifferent, excited, running hither and thither in

response to changing figures in the checker-board squares on the great

wall opposite--calm, cynical one moment, the next violently agitated,

shouting, gesticulating, rushing together, shaking their fists in a

tumult of passion which presently subsides.

The swarms ebb and flow about these little stands--bees, not bringing any

honey, but attracted to the hive where it is rumored most honey is to be

had. By habit some always stand or sit about a particular hive, waiting

for the show of comb. By-and-by there is a stir; the crowd thickens; one

beardless youth shouts out the figure "one-half"; another howls,

"three-eighths." The first one nods. It is done. The electric wire

running up the stand quivers and takes the figure, passes it to all the

other wires, transmits it to every office and hotel in the city, to all

the "tickers" in ten thousand chambers and "bucketshops" and offices in

the republic. Suddenly on the bulletin-boards in New Orleans, Chicago,

San Francisco, Podunk, Liverpool, appear the mysterious "three-eighths,"

electrifying the watchers of these boards, who begin to jabber and

gesticulate and "transact business." It is wonderful.

What induced the beardless young man to make this "investment" in

"three-eighths"--who can tell? Perhaps he had heard, as he came into the

room, that the Secretary of the Treasury was going to make a call of

Fives; perhaps he had heard that Bismarck had said that the French blood

was too thin and needed a little more iron; perhaps he had heard that a

norther in Texas had killed a herd of cattle, or that two grasshoppers

had been seen in the neighborhood of Fargo, or that Jay Hawker had been

observed that morning hurrying to his brokers with a scowl on his face

and his hat pulled over his eyes. The young man sold what he did not

have, and the other young man bought what he will never get.

This is business of the higher and almost immaterial sort, and has an

element of faith in it, and, as one may say, belief in the unseen, whence

it is characterized by an expression--"dealing in futures." It is not

gambling, for there are no "chips" used, and there is no roulette-table

in sight, and there are no piles of money or piles of anything else. It

is not a lottery, for there is no wheel at which impartial men preside to

insure honest drawings, and there are no predestined blanks and prizes,

and the man who buys and the man who sells can do something, either in

the newspapers or elsewhere, to affect the worth of the investment,

whereas in a lottery everything depends upon the turn of the blind wheel.

It is not necessary, however, to attempt a defense of the Chamber. It is

one of the recognized ways of becoming important and powerful in this

world. The privilege of the floor--a seat, as it is called--in this

temple of the god Chance to be Rich is worth more than a seat in the

Cabinet. It is not only true that a fortune may be made here in a day or

lost here in a day, but that a nod and a wink here enable people all over

the land to ruin others or ruin themselves with celerity. The relation of

the Chamber to the business of the country is therefore evident. If an

earthquake should suddenly sink this temple and all its votaries into the

bowels of the earth, with all its nervousness and all its electricity, it

is appalling to think what would become of the business of the country.

Not far from this vast Chamber, where great financial operations are

conducted on the highest principles of honor, and with the strictest

regard to the Marquis of Dusenbury's rules, there is another less

pretentious Chamber, known as "open," a sort of overflow meeting. Those

who have not quite left hope behind can go in here. Here are the tickers

communicating with the Chamber, tended by lads, who transfer the figures

to big blackboards on the wall. In front of these boards sit, from

morning to night, rows, perhaps relays, of men intently or listlessly

watching the figures. Many of them, who seldom make a sign, come here

from habit; they have nowhere else to go. Some of them were once lords in

the great Chamber, who have been, as the phrase is, "cleaned out." There

is a gray-bearded veteran in seedy clothes, with sunken fiery eyes, who

was once many times a millionaire, was a power in the Board, followed by

reporters, had a palace in the Avenue, and drove to his office with

coachman and footman in livery, and his wife headed the list of

charities. Now he spends his old age watching this blackboard, and

considers it a good day that brings him five dollars and his car-fare. At

one end of the low-ceiled apartment are busy clerks behind a counter,

alert and cheerful. If one should go through a side door and down a

passage he might encounter the smell of rum. Smart young men, clad in the

choicest raiment from the misfit counters, with greed stamped on their

astute faces, bustle about, watch the blackboards, and make investments

with each other. Middle-aged men in slouch hats lounge around with hungry

eyes. The place is feverish rather than exciting. A tall fellow, whose

gait and clothes proclaim him English, with a hard face and lack-lustre

eyes, saunters about; his friends at home suppose he is making his

fortune in America. A dapper young gentleman, quite in the mode, and with

the quick air of prosperity, rapidly enters the room and confers with a

clerk at the counter. He has the run of the Chamber, and is from the

great house of Flamm and Slamm. Perhaps he is taking a "flier" on his own

account, perhaps he represents his house in a side transactionthere are

so many ways open to enterprising young men in the city; at any rate, his

entrance is regarded as significant: This is not a hospital for the

broken down and "cleaned out" of the Chamber, but it is a place of

business, which is created and fed by the incessant "ticker." How men

existed or did any business at all before the advent of the "ticker" is a

wonder.

But the Chamber, the creator of low-pressure and high-pressure, the

inspirer of the "ticker," is the great generator of business. Here I

found Henderson in the morning hour, and he came up to me on the call of

a messenger. He approached, nonchalant and smiling as usual. "Do you see

that man," he said, as we stood a moment looking down, "sitting there on

a side bench--big body, small head, hair grayish, long beard

parted--apparently taking no interest in anything?

"That's Flink, who made the corner in O. B.--one of the longest-headed

operators in the Chamber. He is about the only man who dare try a hold

with Jay Hawker. And for some reason or another, though they have

apparent tussles, Hawker rather favors him. Five years ago he could just

raise money enough to get into the Chamber. Now he is reckoned at

anywhere from five to ten millions. I was at his home the other night.

Everybody was there. I had a queer feeling, in all the magnificence, that

the sheriff might be in there in ten days. Yet he may own a good slice of

the island in ten years. His wife, whom I complimented, and who thanked

me for coming, said she had invited none but the reshershy."

"He looks like a rascal," I ventured to remark.

"Oh, that is not a word used in the Chamber. He is called a 'daisy.' I

was put into his pew in church the other Sunday, and the preacher

described him and his methods so exactly that I didn't dare look at him.

When we came out he whispered, 'That was rather hard on Slack; he must

have felt it.' These men rather like that sort of preaching."

"I don't come here often," Henderson resumed, as we walked away. "The

market is flat today. There promised to be a little flurry in L. and P.,

and I looked in for a customer."

We walked to his down-town club to lunch. Everybody, I noticed, seemed to

know Henderson, and his presence was hailed with a cordial smile, a

good-humored nod, or a hearty grasp of the hand. I never knew a more

prepossessing man; his bonhomie was infectious. Though his demeanor was

perfectly quiet and modest, he carried the air of good-fellowship. He was

entirely frank, cordial, and had that sort of sincerity which one can

afford to have who does not take life too seriously. Tall--at least six

feet-with a well-shaped head set on square shoulders, brown hair inclined

to curl, large blue eyes which could be merry or exceedingly grave, I

thought him a picture of manly beauty. Good-natured, clever, prosperous,

and not yet thirty. What a dower!

After we had disposed of our little matter of business, which I confess

was not exactly satisfactory to me, although when I was told that "the

first bondholders will be obliged to come in," he added that "of course

we shall take care of our friends," we went to his bachelor quarters

uptown. "I want you to see," he said, "how a hermit lives."

The apartments were not my idea of a hermitage--except in the city. A

charming library, spacious, but so full as to be cozy, with an open fire;

chamber, dressing-room, and bathroom connecting, furnished with

everything that a luxurious habit could suggest and good taste would not

refuse, made a retreat that could almost reconcile a sinner to solitude.

There were a few good paintings, many rare engravings, on the walls, a

notable absence, even in the sleeping-room, of photographs of actresses

and professional beauties, but here and there souvenirs of travel and

evidences that the gentler sex had contributed the skill of their slender

fingers to the cheerfulness of the bachelor's home. Scattered about were

the daily and monthly products of the press, the newest sensations, the

things talked about at dinners, but the walls for the most part were

lined with books that are recognized as the proper possessions of the

lover of books, and most of them in exquisite bindings. Less care, I

thought, had been given in the collection to "sets" of "standards" than

to those that are rare, or for some reason, either from distinguished

ownership or autograph notes, have a peculiar value.

In this atmosphere, when we were prepared to take our ease, the talk was

no longer of stocks, or railways, or schemes, but of books. Whether or

not Henderson loved literature I did not then make up my mind, but he had

a passion for books, especially for rare and first editions; and the

delight with which he exhibited his library, the manner in which he

handled the books that he took down one after the other, the sparkle in

his eyes over a "find" or a bargain, gave me a side of his character

quite different from that I should have gained by seeing him "in the

street" only. He had that genuine respect and affection for a "book"

which has become almost traditional in these days of cheap and flimsy

publications, a taste held by scholars and collectors, and quite beyond

the popular comprehension. The respect for a book is essential to the

dignity and consideration of the place of literature in the world, and

when books are treated with no more regard than the newspaper, it is a

sign that literature is losing its power. Even the collector, who may

read little and care more for the externals than for the soul of his

favorites, by the honor he pays them, by the solicitude he expends upon

their preservation without spot, by the lavishness of expense upon

binding, contributes much to the dignity of that art which preserves for

the race the continuity of its thought and development. If Henderson

loved books merely as a collector whose taste for luxury and expense

takes this direction, his indulgence could not but have a certain

refining influence. I could not see that he cultivated any decided

specialty, but he had many rare copies which had cost fabulous prices,

the possession of which gives a reputation to any owner. "My shelves of

Americana," he said, "are nothing like Goodloe's, who has a lot of scarce

things that I am hoping to get hold of some day. But there's a little

thing" (it was a small coffee-colored tract of six leaves, upon which the

binder of the city had exercised his utmost skill) "which Goodloe offered

me five hundred dollars for the other day. I picked it up in a New

Hampshire garret." Not the least interesting part of the collection was

first editions of American authors--a person's value to a collector is

often in proportion to his obscurity--and what most delighted him among

them were certain thin volumes of poetry, which the authors since

becoming famous had gone to a good deal of time and expense to suppress.

The world seems to experience a lively pleasure in holding a man to his

early follies. There were many examples of superb binding, especially of

exquisite tooling on hog-skin covers--the appreciation of which has

lately greatly revived. The recent rage for bindings has been a sore

trouble to students and collectors in special lines, raising the prices

of books far beyond their intrinsic value. I had a charming afternoon in

Henderson's library, an enjoyment not much lessened at the time by

experiencing in it, with him, rather a sense of luxury than of learning.

It is true, one might pass an hour altogether different in the garret of

a student, and come away with quite other impressions of the pageant of

life.

At five o'clock his stylish trap was sent around from the boarding

stable, and we drove in the Park till twilight. Henderson handling the

reins, and making a part of that daily display which is too heterogeneous

to have distinction, reverted quite naturally to the tone of worldliness

and tolerant cynicism which had characterized his conversation in the

morning. If the Park and the moving assemblage had not the air of

distinction, it had that of expense, which is quite as attractive to

many. Here, as downtown, my companion seemed to know and be known by

everybody, returning the familiar salutes of brokers and club men,

receiving gracious bows from stout matrons, smiles and nods from pretty

women, and more formal recognition from stately and stiff elderly men,

who sat bolt-upright beside their wives and tried to look like

millionaires. For every passerby Henderson had a quick word of

characterization sufficiently amusing, and about many a story which

illuminated the social life of the day. It was wonderful how many of this

chance company had little "histories"--comic, tragic, pitiful,

interesting enough for the pages of a novel.

"There is a young lady"--Henderson touched his hat, and I caught a

glimpse of golden hair and a flash of dark eyes out of a mass of furs

--"who has no history: the world is all before her."

"Who is that?"

"The daughter of old Eschelle--Carmen Eschelle--the banker and

politician, you remember; had a diplomatic position abroad, and the girl

was educated in Europe. She is very clever. She and her mother have more

money than they ought to know what to do with."

"That was the celebrated Jay Hawker" ( a moment after), "in the modest

coupe--not much display about him."

"Is he recognized by respectable people?"

"Recognized?" Henderson laughed. "He's a power. There are plenty of

people who live by trying to guess what he is going to do. Hawker isn't

such a bad fellow. Other people have used the means he used to get rich

and haven't succeeded. They are not held up to point a moral. The trouble

is that Hawker succeeded. Of course, it's a game. He plays as fair as

anybody."

"Yes," Henderson resumed, walking his horses in sight of the obelisk,

which suggested the long continuance of the human race, "it is the same

old game, and it is very interesting to those who are in it. Outsiders

think it is all greed. In the Chamber it is a good deal the love of the

game, to watch each other, to find out a man's plans, to circumvent him,

to thwart him, to start a scheme and manipulate it, to catch somebody, to

escape somebody; it is a perpetual excitement."

"The machine in the Chamber appears to run very smoothly," I said. "Oh,

that is a public register and indicator. The system back of it is

comprehensive, and appears to be complicated, but it is really very

simple. Spend an hour some day in the office of Flamm and Slamm, and you

will see a part of the system. There are, always a number of men watching

the blackboard, figures on which are changed every minute by the

attendants. Telegrams are constantly arriving from every part of the

Union, from all over the continent, from all the centres in Europe, which

are read by some one connected with the firm, and then displayed for the

guidance of the watchers of the blackboard. Upon this news one or another

says, 'I think I'll buy,' or 'I think I'll sell,' so and so. His order is

transmitted instantly to the Chamber. In two minutes the result comes

back and appears upon the blackboard."

"But where does the news come from?"

"From the men whose special business it is to pick it up or make it. They

are inside of politics, of the railways, of the weather bureau,

everywhere. The other day in Chicago I sat some time in a broker's office

with others watching the market, and dropped into conversation with a

bright young fellow, at whose right hand, across the rail, was a

telegraph operator at the end of a private wire. Soon a man came in

quietly, and whispered in the ear of my neighbor and went out. The young

fellow instantly wrote a despatch and handed it to the operator, and

turning to me, said, 'Now watch the blackboard.'

"In an incredibly short space of time a fall in a leading railway showed

on the blackboard. 'What was it?' I asked. 'Why, that man was the general

freight manager of the A. B. road. He told me that they were to cut

rates. I sent it to New York by a private wire.' I learned by further

conversation that my young gentleman was a Manufacturer of News, and that

such was his address and intelligence that though he was not a member of

the broker's firm, he made ten thousand a year in the business. Soon

another man came in, whispered his news, and went away. Another

despatch--another responsive change in the figures. 'That,' explained my

companion, 'was a man connected with the weather bureau. He told me that

there would be a heavy frost tonight in the Northwest.'"

"Do they sell the weather?" I asked, very much amused.

"Yes, twice; once over a private wire, and then to the public, after the

value of it has been squeezed out, in the shape of predictions. Oh, the

weather bureau is worth all the money it costs, for business purposes. It

is a great auxiliary."

Dining that evening with Henderson at his club, I had further opportunity

to study a representative man. He was of a good New Hampshire family,

exceedingly respectable without being distinguished. Over the

chimney-place in the old farmhouse hung a rusty Queen Anne that had been

at the taking of Louisburg. His grandfather shouldered a musket at Bunker

Hill; his father, the youngest son, had been a judge as well as a farmer,

and noted for his shrewdness and reticence. Rodney, inheriting the thrift

of his ancestors, had pushed out from his home, adapting this thrift to

the modern methods of turning it to account. He had brought also to the

city the stamina of three generations of plain living--a splendid

capital, by which the city is constantly reinforced, and which one

generation does not exhaust, except by the aid of extreme dissipation.

With sound health, good ability, and fair education, he had the cheerful

temperament which makes friends, and does not allow their misfortunes to

injure his career. Generous by impulse, he would rather do a favor than

not, and yet he would be likely to let nothing interfere with any object

he had in view for himself. Inheriting a conventional respect for

religion and morality, he was not so bigoted as to rebuke the gayety of a

convivial company, nor so intractable as to make him an uncomfortable

associate in any scheme, according to the modern notions of business,

that promised profit. His engaging manner made him popular, and his

good-natured adroitness made him successful. If his early experience of

life caused him to be cynical, he was not bitterly so; his cynicism was

of the tolerant sort that does not condemn the world and withdraw from

it, but courts it and makes the most of it, lowering his private opinion

of men in proportion as he is successful in the game he plays with them.

At this period I could see that he had determined to be successful, and

that he had not determined to be unscrupulous. He would only drift with

the tide that made for fortune. He enjoyed the world--a sufficient reason

why the world should like him. His business morality was gauged by what

other people do in similar circumstances. In short, he was a product of

the period since the civil war closed, that great upheaval of patriotic

feeling and sacrifice, which ended in so much expansion and so many

opportunities. If he had remained in New Hampshire he would probably have

been a successful politician, successful not only in keeping in place,

but in teaching younger aspirants that serving the country is a very good

way to the attainment of luxury and the consideration that money brings.

But having chosen the law as a stepping-stone to the lobby, to

speculation, and the manipulation of chances, he had a poor opinion of

politics and of politicians. His success thus far, though considerable,

had not been sufficient to create for him powerful enemies, so that he

may be said to be admired by all and feared by none. In the general

opinion he was a downright good fellow and amazingly clever.