The private cogitations of the late John H. Osterman in his mansion at
1046 Fifth Avenue, New York, and elsewhere during the last five years
of his life.
* * * * *
Oh, but those days when he had been working and scheming to get up
in the world and was thinking that money was the great thing—the
only thing! Those impossible wooden towns in the Northwest and
elsewhere in which he had lived and worked, and those worse hotels and
boarding-houses—always hunting, hunting for money or the key to it. The
greasy, stinking craft in which he had made his way up weedy and muddy
rivers in Honduras and elsewhere—looking for what? Snakes, mosquitoes,
alligators, tarantulas, horned toads and lizards. In Honduras he had
slept under chiqua trees on mats of chiqua leaves, with only a fire to
keep away snakes and other things. And of a morning he had chased away
noisy monkeys and parroquets from nearby branches with rotten fruit
so as to sleep a little longer. Alone, he had tramped through fever
swamps, pursued by Pequi Indians, who wanted only the contents of his
wretched pack. And he had stared at huge coyal palms, a hundred feet
high, with the great feathery leaves fifteen feet long and their golden
flowers three feet high. Ah, well, that was over now. He had shot the
quetzal with its yellow tail feathers three feet long and had traded
them for food. Once he had all but died of fever in a halfbreed’s hut
back of Cayo. And the halfbreed had then stolen his gun and razor and
other goods and left him to make his way onward as best he might. That
was life for you, just like that. People were like that.
And it was during that time that he had come to realize that by no
honest way at his age was he likely to come to anything financially.
Roaming about the drowsy, sun-baked realm, he had encountered Messner,
an American and a fugitive, he guessed, and it was Messner who had
outlined to him the very scheme by which he had been able, later, to
amass his first quick fortune in New York. It was Messner who had told
him of Torbey and how he had come up to London from Central Africa to
offer shares in a bogus rubber enterprise based on immense forests
which he was supposed to have found in the wilds of Africa yet which
did not exist. And it was the immense though inaccessible rubber
forests in Honduras that had inspired him to try the same thing in
New York. Why not? A new sucker was born every minute, and he had all
to gain and nothing to lose. Messner said that Torbey had advertised
for a widow with some money to push his enterprise, whereupon he had
proceeded to tell the London speculative public of his treasure and
to sell two pound shares for as low as ten shillings in order to
show tremendous rises in value—to issue two million pounds’ worth of
absolutely worthless stock.
By these methods and by having the stock listed on the London curb he
was able to induce certain curb or “dog” brokers to go short of this
stock without having any of it in their possession. Finally they began
to sell so freely and to pay so little attention to the amount that was
being sold that it was easy for Torbey to employ agents to buy from
all of them freely on margin. And then, as the law of the curb and the
state permitted, he had demanded (through them, of course) the actual
delivery of the shares, the full curb value of the stock being offered.
Of course the brokers had none, although they had sold thousands; nor
had any one else except Torbey, who had seen to it that all outstanding
stock had been recalled to his safe. That meant that they must come to
Torbey to buy or face a jail sentence, and accordingly they had flocked
to his office, only to be properly mulcted for the total face value of
the shares when they came.
Well, he had done that same thing in New York. Following the example
of the good Torbey, he had picked up a few unimportant options in
Honduras, far from any railroad, and had come to New York to launch
Calamita. Just as Torbey had done, he had looked for a rich widow, a
piano manufacturer’s wife in this case, and had persuaded her that
there were millions in it. From her he had gone on to Wall Street and
the curb and had done almost exactly as Torbey had done.... Only that
fellow De Malquit had killed himself, and that was not so pleasant.
He hadn’t anticipated that anything like that would happen! That
unfortunate wife of his. And those two children made orphans. That was
the darkest spot. He hadn’t known, of course, that De Malquit himself
was helping orphans—or—And from there he had gone on to the forests of
Washington and Oregon, where he had bought immense tracts on which even
yet he was realizing, more and more. And from there it had been an easy
step to oil in southern California and Mexico—Ah, Greasadick, another
sad case!—And from there to mines and government concessions in Peru
and Ecuador, and the still greater ones in Argentina and Chile. Money
came fast to those who had it. At last, having accumulated a fortune of
at least nine millions, he had been able to interest Nadia, and through
her the clever and well-to-do fashionable set who had backed his
projects with their free capital. And by now his fortune had swollen to
almost forty millions.
But what of it? Could he say he was really content? What was he getting
out of it? Life was so deceptive; it used and then tossed one aside. At
first it had seemed wonderful to be able to go, do, act, buy and sell
as he chose, without considering anything save whether the thing he
was doing was agreeable and profitable. He had thought that pleasure
would never pall, but it had. There was this thing about age, that it
stole over one so unrelentingly, fattening one up or thinning one down,
hardening the arteries and weakening the muscles and blood, until it
was all but useless to go on. And what was the import of his success,
anyhow, especially to one who had no children and no friends worthy of
the name? There was no such thing as true friendship in nature. It was
each man for himself, everywhere, and the devil take the hindmost. It
was life that used and tossed one aside, however great or powerful one
might be. There was no staying life or the drift of time.
Of course there had been the pleasure of building two great houses for
Nadia and living in them when he was not living in other parts of the
world. But all that had come too late; he had been too old to enjoy
them when they did come. She had been a great catch no doubt, but much
too attractive to be really interested in him at his age. His wealth
had been the point with her—any one could see that; he knew it at the
time and would not now try to deceive himself as to that. At the time
he had married her she had had social position whereas he had none.
And after she married him all her social influence, to be sure, had
been used to advance his cause. Still, that scheme of hers to get him
to leave his great fortune to those two worthless sons of hers. Never!
They were not worthy of it. Those dancing, loafing wasters! He would
see to it that his fortune was put to some better use than that. He
would leave it to orphans rather than to them, for after all orphans in
his employ had proved more valuable to him than even they had, hadn’t
they?—That curious fellow, De Malquit!—So long ago. Besides wasn’t it
Nadia’s two sons who had influenced their mother to interest herself in
D’Eyraud, the architect who had built their two houses and had started
Nadia off on that gallery idea. And not a picture in it that would
interest a sensible person. And wasn’t it because of her that he had
never troubled to answer the letters of his sister Elvira asking him to
educate her two boys for her. He had fancied at the time that taking
her two children into his life would in some way affect his social
relations with Nadia and her set. And now Elvira was dead and he did
not know where the children were. He could charge that to her if he
wanted to, couldn’t he?
Well, life was like that. When he had built his two great houses he had
thought they would prove an immense satisfaction to him, as they had
for a time; but he would not be here much longer now to enjoy them.
He wasn’t nearly as active as he had been, and the sight of the large
companies of people that came to pose and say silly things to each
other was very wearying. They were always civil to him, of course,
but little more. They wanted the influence of his name. And as long
as he permitted it, his homes would be haunted by those who wished
to sell him things—stocks, bonds, enterprises, tapestries, estates,
horses. And those two boys of hers, along with Nadia herself where her
so-called art objects were concerned, so busy encouraging them! Well,
he was done with all that now. He would not be bothered. Even youth and
beauty of a venal character had appeared on the scene and had attempted
to set traps for him. But his day was over. All these fripperies and
pleasures were for people younger than he. It required youth and energy
to see beauty and romance in such things, and he hadn’t a trace of
either left. His day was over and he might as well die, really, for all
the good he was, apart from his money, to any one.
V
The reminiscences of Byington Briggs, Esq., of Skeff, Briggs &
Waterhouse, private legal advisers to the late J. H. Osterman, as
developed in a private conversation at the Metropolitan Club in New
York in December, 19—.
“You knew old Osterman, didn’t you? I was his confidential adviser for
the last eight years of his life, and a shrewder old hawk never sailed
the air. He was a curious combination of speculator, financier and
dreamer, with a high percentage of sharper thrown in for good measure.
You’d never imagine that he was charitably inclined, now would you? It
never occurred to me until about a year and a half before his death.
I have never been able to explain it except that as a boy he had had
a very hard time and in his old age resented seeing his two stepsons,
Kester and Rand Benda, getting ready to make free use of his fortune
once he was gone. And then I think he had come to believe that his
wife was merely using him to feather her own nest. I wouldn’t want it
mentioned to a soul as coming from me, but three months before he died
he had me draw up a will leaving his entire estate of something like
forty millions, not to her, as the earlier will filed by her showed,
but to the J. H. Osterman Foundation, a corporation whose sole purpose
was to administer his fortune for the benefit of something like three
hundred thousand orphans incarcerated in institutions in America. And
but for the accident of his sudden death out there at Shell Cove two
years ago, he would have left it that way.
“According to the terms of the will that I drew up, Mrs. Osterman and
her two sons were to receive only the interest on certain bonds that
were to be placed in trust for them for their lifetime only; after
that the money was to revert to the fund. That would have netted them
between forty and fifty thousand a year among them—nothing more. In
the will I drew up he left $500,000 outright to that Gratiot Home for
Orphans up here at 68th Street, and he intended his big country place
at Shell Cove as the central unit in a chain of modern local asylums
for orphans that was to have belted America. The income from the
property managed by the foundation was to have been devoted to this
work exclusively, and the Gratiot institution was to have been the New
York branch of the system. His wife has leased the Shell Cove place
to the Gerbermanns this year, I see, and a wonderful place it is too,
solid marble throughout, a lake a mile long, a big sunken garden, a
wonderful glassed-in conservatory, and as fine a view of the sea as
you’ll find anywhere. Yet she never knew until the very last hour of
his life—the very last, for I was there—that he planned to cut her
off with only forty or fifty thousand a year. If we weren’t all such
close friends I wouldn’t think of mentioning it even now, although I
understand that Klippert, who was his agent in the orphan project, has
been telling the story. It was this way:
“You see, I was his lawyer, and had been ever since the K. B. & B.
control fight in 1906, and the old man liked me—I don’t know why unless
it was because I drew up the right sort of ‘waterproof contracts,’ as
he always called them. Anyway, I knew six or seven years before he
died that he wasn’t getting along so well with Mrs. Osterman. She is
still an attractive woman, with plenty of brain power and taste, but
I think he had concluded that she was using him and that he wasn’t as
happy as he thought he would be. For one thing, as I gathered from
one person and another, she was much too devoted to those two boys
by her first husband, and in the next place I think he felt that she
was letting that architect D’Eyraud lead her about too much and spend
too much of his money. You know it was common rumor at the time that
D’Eyraud and his friend Beseroe, another man the old captain disliked,
were behind her in all her selections of pictures for the gallery she
was bringing together up there in the Fifth Avenue place. Osterman,
of course, knowing absolutely nothing about art, was completely out
of it. He wouldn’t have known a fine painting from a good lithograph,
and I don’t think he cared very much either. And yet it was a painting
that was one of the causes of some feeling between them, as I will
show you. At that time he looked mighty lonely and forlorn to me, as
though he didn’t have a friend in the world outside of those business
associates and employés of his. He stayed principally in that big town
house, and Mrs. Benda—I mean Mrs. Osterman—and her sons and their
friends found a good many excuses for staying out at Shell Cove.
There were always big doings out there. Still, she was clever enough
to be around him sometimes so as to make it appear, to him at least,
that she wasn’t neglecting him. As for him, he just pottered around
up there in that great house, showing his agents and employés, and
the fellows who buzzed about him to sell him things, the pictures she
was collecting—or, rather, D’Eyraud—and letting it appear that he was
having something to do with it. For he was a vain old soldier, even if
he did have one of the best business minds of his time. You’d think
largeness of vision in some things might break a man of that, but it
never does, apparently.
“Whenever I think of him I think of that big house, those heavily
carved and gilded rooms, the enormous eighty-thousand dollar organ
built into the reception-room, and those tall stained-glass windows
that gave the place the air of a church. Beseroe once told me that if
left to follow her own taste Mrs. Osterman would never have built that
type of house, but that Osterman wanted something grand and had got his
idea of grandeur from churches. So there was nothing to do but build
him a house with tall Gothic windows and a pipe-organ, and trust to
other features to make it homelike and livable. But before they were
through with it Mrs. Osterman and D’Eyraud had decided that the best
that could be done with it would be to build something that later could
be turned into an art gallery and either sold or left as a memorial.
But I think both D’Eyraud and Mrs. Osterman were kidding the old man a
little when they had that self-playing attachment built in. It looked
to me as though they thought he was going to be alone a good part of
the time and might as well have something to amuse himself with. And
he did amuse himself with it, too. I recall going up there one day
and finding him alone, in so far as the family was concerned, but
entirely surrounded by twenty-five or more of those hard, slick and yet
nervous (where social form was concerned) western and southern business
agents and managers of his, present there to hold a conference. A
luncheon was about to be served in the grand dining-room adjoining the
reception-room, and there were all these fellows sitting about that big
room like a lot of blackbirds, and Osterman upon a raised dais at one
end of the room solemnly rendering _The Bluebells of Scotland_, one of
his favorites, from the self-player attachment! And when he finished
they all applauded!
“Well, what I wanted to tell you is this: One day while I was there,
some dealer dropped in with a small picture which for some reason took
his fancy. According to Beseroe, it wasn’t such a bad thing, painted by
a Swedish realist by the name of Dargson. It showed a rather worn-out
woman of about forty-three who had committed suicide and was lying on
a bed, one hand stretched out over the edge and a glass or bottle from
which she had taken the poison lying on the floor beside her. Two
young children and a man were standing near, commiserating themselves
on their loss, I presume. It seemed to have a tremendous impression on
Osterman for some reason or other. I could never understand why—it was
not so much art as a comment on human suffering. Nevertheless, Osterman
wanted it, but I think he wanted Nadia to buy it for her collection
and so justify his opinion of it. But Nadia, according to Beseroe, was
interested only in certain pictures as illustrations of the different
schools and periods of art in different countries. And when the dealer
approached her with the thing, at Osterman’s suggestion, it was
immediately rejected by her. At once Osterman bought it for himself,
and to show that he was not very much concerned about her opinion he
hung it in his bedroom. Thereafter he began to be quarrelsome in regard
to the worthwhileness of the gallery idea as a whole and to object to
so much money being squandered in that direction. But to this day no
one seems to know just why he liked that particular picture so much.
“What I personally know is that it was just about this time that
Osterman began to be interested in that fellow Klippert and his plan
for improving the condition of the orphan. He finally turned him over
to me with the request that I go into the idea thoroughly, not only in
regard to the work done by the Gratiot Home but by orphan asylums in
general in America. He told us that he wanted it all kept very quiet
until he was ready to act, that if anything was said he would refuse
to have anything further to do with it. That was a part of his plan
to outwit Mrs. Osterman, of course. He told us that he wanted some
scheme in connection with orphans that would be new and progressive,
better than anything now being done, something that would do away with
great barracks and crowd regulations and cheap ugly uniforms and would
introduce a system of education and home life in cottages. I had no
idea then that he was planning the immense thing that was really in
his mind, and neither did Klippert. He thought he might be intending
to furnish enough money to revive the Gratiot Home as an experiment,
and he urged me to use my influence to this end if I had any. As it
turned out, he wanted to establish an interstate affair, as wide as the
nation, of which the place at Shell Cove was to be the centre or head—a
kind of Eastern watering-place or resort for orphans from all over
America. It was a colossal idea and would have taken all of his money
and more.
“But since he wanted it I went into the idea thoroughly with this
fellow Klippert. He was very clever, that man, honest and thorough and
business-like and disinterested, in so far as I could see. I liked him,
and so did Osterman, only Osterman wanted him to keep out of sight of
his wife until he was ready to act. Klippert made a regular business of
his problem and went all over the United States studying institutions
of the kind. Finally he came back with figures on about fifty or sixty
and a plan which was the same as that outlined to me by Osterman and
which I incorporated in his will, and there it ended for the time
being. He didn’t want to sign it right away for some reason, and there
it lay in my safe until—well, let me tell you how it was.
One Saturday morning—it was a beautiful day and I was thinking of
going out to the club to play golf—I received a long distance call
from Osterman asking me to get hold of Klippert and another fellow by
the name of Moss and bring them out to Shell Cove, along with the will
for him to sign. He had made up his mind, he said, and I have often
wondered if he had a premonition of what was going to happen.
“I remember so well how excited Klippert was when I got him on the
wire. He was just like a boy, that fellow, in his enthusiasm for the
scheme, and apparently not interested in anything except the welfare of
those orphans. We started for Shell Cove, and what do you think? Just
as we got there—I remember it all as though it had happened yesterday.
It was a bright, hot Saturday afternoon. There were some big doings on
the grounds, white-and-green and white-and-red striped marque tents,
and chairs and swings and tables everywhere. Some of the smartest
people were there, sitting or walking or dancing on the balcony. And
there was Osterman walking up and down the south verandah near the main
motor entrance, waiting for us, I suppose. As we drove up he recognized
us, for he waved his hand, and then just as we were getting out and
he was walking towards us, I saw him reel and go down. It was just
as though some one had struck him with something. I realized that it
must be paralysis or a stroke of apoplexy and I chilled all over at
the thought of what it might mean. Klippert went up the steps four at
a time, and as we all ran down the verandah they carried him in and
I telephoned for a doctor. Klippert was very still and white. All we
could do was to stand around and wait and look at each other, for Mrs.
Osterman and her sons were there and were taking charge. Finally word
came out that Mr. Osterman was a little better and wanted to see us, so
up we went. He had been carried into an airy, sunny room overlooking
the sea and was lying in a big white canopied bed looking as pale and
weak as he would if he had been ill for a month. He could scarcely
speak and lay there and looked at us for a time, his mouth open and a
kind of tremor passing over his lips from time to time. Then he seemed
to gather a little strength and whispered: ‘I want—I want—’ and then he
stopped and rested, unable to go on. The doctor arrived and gave him a
little whisky, and then he began again, trying so hard to speak and not
quite making it. At last he whispered: ‘I want—I want—that—that—paper.’
And then: ‘Klippert—and you—’ He stopped again, then added: ‘Get all
these others out of here—all but you three and the doctor.’
“The doctor urged Mrs. Osterman and her sons to leave, but I could see
that she didn’t like it. Even after she went out she kept returning on
one excuse and another, and she was there when he died. When she was
out of the room the first time I produced the will and he nodded his
approval. We called for a writing board, and they brought one—a Ouija
board, by the way. We lifted him up, but he was too weak and fell back.
When we finally got him up and spread the will before him he tried to
grasp the pen but he couldn’t close his fingers. He shook his head and
half whispered: The——the——boys—th—the—boys.’ Klippert was all excited,
but Osterman could do nothing. Then his wife came into the room and
asked: ‘What is it that you are trying to make poor Johnnie sign? Don’t
you think you had better let it rest until he is stronger?’ She tried
to pick up the paper but I was too quick for her and lifted it to one
side as though I hadn’t noticed that she had reached for it. I could
see that she was aware that something was being done that neither we
nor Osterman wanted her to know about, and her eyes fairly snapped.
Osterman must have realized that things were becoming a little shaky
for he kept looking at first one and then another of us with a most
unhappy look. He motioned for the pen and will. Klippert put down the
board and I the paper, and he leaned forward and tried to grasp the
pen. When he found he couldn’t he actually groaned: ‘The—the—I—I—I want
to—to—do something—for—for—the—the—the—’ Then he fell back, and the
next moment was dead.
“But I wish you could have seen Klippert. It wasn’t anything he said
or did, but just something that passed over his face, the shadow of a
great cause or idea dying, let us say. Something seemed to go out from
or die in him, just as old Osterman had died. He turned and went out
without a word. I would have gone too, only Mrs. Osterman intercepted
me.
“You might think that at such a moment she would have been too wrought
up to think of anything but her husband’s death, but she wasn’t. Far
from it. Instead, as her husband was lying there, and right before
the doctor, she came over to me and demanded to see the paper. I was
folding it up to put into my pocket when she flicked it out of my
hands. ‘I am sure you can have no objection to my seeing this,’ she
said icily, and when I protested she added: ‘I am sure that I have a
right to see my own husband’s will.’ I had only been attempting to
spare her feelings, but when I saw what her attitude was I let it go at
that and let her read it.
“I wish you could have seen her face! Her eyes narrowed and she bent
over the paper as though she were about to eat it. When she fully
comprehended what it was all about she fairly gasped and shook—with
rage, I think—though fear as to what might have happened except for her
husband’s weakness may have been a part of it. She looked at him, at
his dead body, the only glance he got from her that day, I’m sure, then
at me, and left the room. Since there was nothing more to do, I went
too.
“And that’s the reason Mrs. Osterman has never been friends with me
since, though she was genial enough before. But it was a close shave
for her, all the same, and don’t you think it wasn’t. Just an ounce
or two more of strength in that old codger’s system, and think what
would have been done with those millions. She wouldn’t have got even a
million of it all told. And those little ragamuffins would have had it
all. How’s that for a stroke of chance?”