When the war was done and the battle flags of that confederacy which
had been my sweetheart were rolled tight to their staves and laid away
in mournful, dusty corners to moulder and be forgot, I cut those buttons
and gold ends of braid from my uniform, which told of me as a once
captain of rebels, and turned my face towards New York. I was twenty-one
at the time; my majority arrived on the day when Lee piled his arms and
surrendered to Grant at Appomatox. A captain at twenty-one? That was not
strange, my friends, in a time when boys of twenty-two were wearing the
wreath of a brigadier. The war was fought by boys, not men;--like every
other war. Ah! I won my rank fairly, saber in fist; so they all said.
Those were great days. I was with O’Ferrell. There are one hundred miles
in the Shenandoah, and backwards and forwards I’ve fought on its every
foot. Towards the last, each day we fought, though both armies could
see the end. We, for our side, fought with the wrath of despair; the
Federals, with the glow of triumph in plain sight. Each day we fought;
for if we did not go riding down the valley hunting Sheridan, the sun
was never over-high when he rode up the valley hunting us. Those were
brave days! We fought twice after the war was done. Yes, we knew of
Richmond’s fall and that the end was come. But what then? There was the
eager foe; there were we, sullen and ripe and hot with hate. Why should
we not fight? So it befell that I heard those gay last bugles that
called down the last grim charge; so it came that I, with my comrades,
made the last gray line of battle for a cause already lost, and fought
round the last standards of a confederacy already dead. Those were,
indeed, good days--those last scenes were filled with the best and
bravest of either side.
No; I neither regret nor repent the rebellion; nor do I grieve for
rebellion’s failure. All’s well that well ends, and that carnage left us
the better for it. For myself, I came honestly by my sentiments of
the South. I was born in Virginia, of Virginians. One of my youthful
recollections is how John Brown struck his blow at Harper’s Ferry;
how Governor Wise called out that company of militia of which I was a
member; and how, as we stood in the lamp-lighted Richmond streets that
night, waiting to take the road for Harper’s Ferry, an old grotesque
farmerish figure rushed excitedly into our midst. How we laughed at the
belligerent agriculturist! No, he was no farmer; he was Wilkes Booth
who, with the first whisper of the news, had come hot foot from the
stage of Ford’s Theater in his costume of that night to have his part
with us. But all these be other stories, and I started to tell, not of
the war nor of days to precede it, but about that small crash in tobacco
wherein I had disastrous part.
When I arrived in New York my hopes were high, as youth’s hopes commonly
are. But, however high my hope, my pocket was light and my prospects
nothing. Never will I forget how the mere sensation of the great city
acted on me like a stimulant. The crowd and the breezy rush of
things were as wine. Then again, to transplant a man means ever a
multiplication of spirit. It was so with me; the world and the hour and
I were all new together, and never have I felt more fervor of enterprise
than came to me those earliest New York days. But still, I must plan and
do some practical thing, for my dollars, like the hairs of my head, were
numbered.
It was my seventh New York morning. As I sat in the café of the Astor
House, my eye was caught by a news paragraph. The Internal Revenue
law, with its tax of forty cents a pound on tobacco, had gained a
construction, and the department’s reading of the law at once claimed my
hungriest interest. No tobacco grown prior to the crop of ’66 was to
be affected by the tax; that was the decision.
Aside from my saber-trade as a cavalryman, tobacco was that thing
whereof I exhaustively knew. I was a tobacco adept from the hour when
the seed went into the ground, down to the perfumed moment when the
perfect leaf exhaled in smoke. Moreover, I was aware of a trade matter
in the nature of a trade secret, which might be made of richest import.
During those five red years of war, throughout the tobacco regions of
the south, planting and harvesting, though crippled, had still gone
forward. The fires of battle and the moving lines of troops had only
streaked those regions; they never wholly covered or consumed them. And
wherever peace prevailed, the growing of tobacco went on. The harvests
had been stored; there was no market--no method of getting the tobacco
out. To be brief, as I read the internal revenue decision above quoted,
on that Astor House morning, I knew that scattered up and down Virginia
and throughout the rest of the kindom of tobacco, the crops of full five
years were lying housed, mouldy and mildewed, for the most part, and
therefore cheap to whoever came with money in his hands. For an hour I
sat over my coffee and made a plan.
There was a gentleman, an old college friend of my father. He was rich,
avoided business and cared only for books. I had made myself known to
him on the day of my arrival; he had asked me, over a glass of wine,
to let him hear from me as time and my destinies took unto themselves
direction. For my tobacco plan I must have money; and I could think of
no one save my father’s friend of the books.
When I was shown into the old gentleman’s library, I found him deeply
held with Moore’s Life of Byron. As he greeted me, he kept the volume in
his left hand with finger shut in the page. Evidently he trusted that I
would not remain long and that he might soon return to his reading.
The situation chilled me; I began my story with slight belief that its
end would be fortunate. I exposed my tobacco knowledge, laid bare my
scheme of trade, and craved the loan of five thousand dollars on the
personal security--not at all commercial--of an optimist of twenty-one,
whose only employment had been certain boot-and-saddle efforts to
overthrow the nation. I say, I had scant hope of obtaining the aid I
quested. I suffered disappointment. I was dealing with a gentleman who,
however much he might grudge me a few moments taken from Byron, was
willing enough to help me with money. In truth, he seemed relieved
when he had heard me through; and he at once signed a check with a fine
flourish, and I came from his benevolent presence equipped for those
tobacco experiments I contemplated.
It is not required that I go with filmy detail into a re-count of my
enterprise. I began safely and quietly; with my profits I extended
myself; and at the end of eighteen months, I had so pushed affairs that
I was on the highway to wealth and the firm station of a millionaire.
I had personally and through my agents bought up those five entire
war-crops of tobacco. Most of it was still in Virginia and the south,
due to my order; much of it had been already brought to New York. By the
simple process of steaming and vaporizing, I removed each trace of mould
and mildew, and under my skillful methods that war tobacco emerged upon
the market almost as sweet and hale as the best of our domestic stock;
and what was vastly in its favor, its flavor was, if anything, a trifle
mild.
In that day of leaf tobacco, the commodity was marketed in
one-hundred-pound bales. My bales were made with ninety-two pounds of
war tobacco, sweated free of any touch of mildew; and eight pounds of
new tobacco, the latter on the outside for the sake of color and looks.
Thus you may glimpse somewhat the advantage I had. Where, at forty cents
a pound, the others paid on each bale of tobacco a revenue charge of
forty dollars, I, with only eight pounds of new tobacco, paid but three
dollars and twenty cents. And I had cornered the exempted tobacco. Is it
wonder I began to wax rich?
Often I look over my account books of those brilliant eighteen months.
When I read that news item on the Astor House morning I’ve indicated,
I had carefully modeled existence to a supporting basis of ten dollars a
week. When eighteen months later there came the crash, I was permitting
unto my dainty self a rate of personal expenditure of over thirty
thousand dollars a year. I had apartments up-town; I was a member of
the best clubs; I was each afternoon in the park with my carriage;
incidentally I was languidly looking about among the Vere de Veres of
the old Knickerbockers for that lady who, because of her superlative
beauty and wit and modesty coupled with youth and station, was worthy to
be my wife. Also, I recall at this period how I was conceitedly content
with myself; how I gave way to warmest self-regard; pitied others as
dullards and thriftless blunderers; and privily commended myself as
a very Caesar of Commerce and the one among millions. Alas! “Pride
goeth”--you have read the rest!
It was a bright October afternoon. My cometlike career had subsisted for
something like a year and a half; and I, the comet, was growing in
size and brilliancy as time fled by. My tobacco works proper were over
towards the East River in a brick warehouse I had leased; to these,
which were under the superintendence of a trusty and expert adherent
whom I had brought north from Richmond, I seldom repaired. My
offices--five rooms, fitted and furnished to the last limit of rosewood
and Russia leather magnificence--were down-town.
On this particular autumn afternoon, as I went forth to my brougham for
a roll to my apartments, the accountant placed in my hands a statement
which I’d asked for and which with particular exactitude set forth my
business standing. I remember it exceeding well. As I trundled up-town
that golden afternoon, I glanced at those additions and subtractions
which told my opulent story. Briefly, my liabilities were ninety
thousand dollars; and I was rich in assets to a money value of three
hundred and twelve thousand dollars. The ninety thousand was or would
be owing on my tobacco contracts south, and held those tons on tons of
stored, mildewed war tobacco, solid to my command. As I read the totals
and reviewed the items, I would not have paid a penny of premium to
insure my future. There it was in black and white. I knew what I had
done; I knew what I could do. I was master of the tobacco situation for
the next three years to come. By that time, I would have worked up the
entire fragrant stock of leaf exempt from the tax; also by that time, I
would count my personal fortune at a shadow over three millions. There
was nothing surer beneath the sun. At twenty-six I would retire from
trade and its troubles; life would lie at my toe like a kick-ball, and
I would own both the wealth and the supple youth to pursue it into every
nook and corner of pleasurable experience. Thus ran my smug reflections
as I rolled northward along Fifth avenue to dress for dinner on that
bright October day.
It was the next afternoon, and I had concluded a pleasant lunch in my
private office when Mike, my personal and favorite henchman, announced
a visitor. The caller desired to see me on a subject both important and
urgent.
“Show him in!” I said.
There slouched into the room an awkward-seeming man of middle age;
not poor, but roughly dressed. No one would have called him a fop; his
clothes, far astern of the style, fitted vilely; while his head, never
beautiful, was made uglier with a shock of rudely exuberant hair and
a stubby beard like pig’s bristles. It was an hour when there still
remained among us, savages who oiled their hair; this creature was one;
and I remember how the collar of his rusty surtout shone like glass with
the dripped grease.
My ill-favored visitor accepted the chair Mike placed for him and
perched uneasily on its edge. When we were alone, I brought him and his
business to instant bay. I was anxious to free myself of his presence.
His bear’s grease and jaded appearance bred a distaste of him.
“What is it you want?” My tones were brittle and sharp.
The uncouth caller leered at me with a fashion of rancid leer--I
suppose even a leer may have a flavor. Then he opened with obscure
craft--vaguely, foggily. He wanted to purchase half my business. He
would take an account of stock; give me exact money for one-half its
value; besides, he would pay me a bonus of fifty thousand dollars.
If this unkempt barbarian had come squarely forth and told me his whole
story; if, in short, I had known who he was and whom he came from, there
would have grown no trouble. I would have gulped and swallowed the
pill; we would have dealt; I’d have had a partner and been worth one and
one-half million instead of three millions when my fortune was made.
But he didn’t. He shuffled and hinted and leered, and said over and over
again as he repeated his offer:
“You need a partner.”
But beyond this he did not go; and of this I could make nothing, and I
felt nothing save a cumulative resentment that kept growing the larger
the longer he stayed. I told him I desired none of his partnership. I
told him this several divers times; and each time with added vigor and
a rising voice. To the last he persistently and leeringly retorted his
offer; always concluding, like another Cato, with his eternal Delenda
est Carthago.
“You need a partner!”
Even my flatterers have never painted me as patient, and at twenty-three
my pulse beat swift and hot. And it came to pass that on the heels of an
acrid ten minutes of my visitor, I brought him bluntly up.
“Go!” I said. “I’ve heard all I care to hear. Go; or I’ll have you shown
the door!”
It was of no avail; the besotted creature held his ground.
I touched a bell; the faithful Mike appeared. It took no more than a
wave of the hand; Mike had studied me and knew my moods. At once he fell
upon the invader and threw him down stairs with all imaginable spirit.
Thereupon I breathed with vast relief, had the windows lifted because of
bear’s grease that tainted the air, and conferred on the valorous Celt a
reward of two dollars.
Who was this ill-combed, unctuous, oily, cloudy, would-be partner? He
was but a messenger; two months before he had resigned a desk in the
Washington Treasury--for appearances only--to come to me and make the
proffer. After Mike cast him forth, he brushed the dust from his knees
and returned to Washington and had his treasury desk again. He was
a mere go-between. The one he stood for and whose plans he sought to
transact was a high official of revenue. This latter personage, of whose
plotting identity back in the shadows I became aware only when it was
too late, noting my tobacco operations and their profits and hawk-hungry
for a share, had sent me the offer of partnership. I regret, for my
sake as well as his own, that he did not pitch upon a more sagacious
commissioner.
Now fell the bolt of destruction. The morning following Mike’s turgid
exploits with my visitor, I was met in the office door by the manager.
His face was white and his eyes seemed goggled and fixed as if their
possessor had been planet-struck. I stared at him.
“Have you read the news?” he gasped.
“What news?”
“Have you not read of the last order?”
Over night--for my visitor, doubtless, wired his discomfiture--the
Revenue Department had reversed its decision of two years before. The
forty cents per pound of internal revenue would from that moment be
demanded and enforced against every leaf of tobacco then or thereafter
to become extant; and that, too, whether its planting and its reaping
occurred inter arma or took place beneath the pinions of wide-spreading
peace. The revenue office declared that its first ruling, exempting
tobacco grown during the war, had been taken criminal advantage of; and
that thereby the nation in its revenue rights had been sorely defeated
and pillaged by certain able rogues--meaning me. Therefore, this new
rule of revenue right and justice.
Now the story ends. Under these changed, severe conditions, when I was
made to meet a tax of forty dollars where I’d paid less than a tithe of
it before, I was helpless. I couldn’t, with my inferior tobacco, engage
on even terms against the new tobacco and succeed. My strength had dwelt
in my power to undersell. This power was departed away; my locks as a
Sampson were shorn.
But why spin out the hideous story? My market was choked up; a cataract
of creditors came upon me; my liabilities seemed to swell while my
assets grew sear and shrunken. Under the shaking jolt of that last new
revenue decision, my fortunes came tumbling like a castle of cards.
After three months, I dragged myself from beneath the ruin of my affairs
and stood--rather totteringly--on my feet again. I was out of business.
I counted up my treasure and found myself, debtless and unthreatened,
master of some twenty thousand dollars.
And what then? Twenty thousand dollars is not so bad. It is not three
millions; nor even half of three millions; but when all is said, twenty
thousand is not so bad! I gave up my rich apartments, sold my horses,
looked no more for a female Vere de Vere with intent her to espouse, and
turned to smuggling. I had now a personal as well as a regional grudge
against government. The revenue had cheated me; I would in revenge
cheat the revenue. I became a smuggler. That, however, is a tale to tell
another day.
*****
“And now,” observed the Red Nosed Gentleman, dipping deeply into his
burgundy, as if for courage, “I’ll even keep my promise. I’ll tell a
story of superstition and omen; also how I turned in my infancy to cards
as a road to wealth. Cards as a method to arrive by riches is neither
splendid nor respectable, but I shall make no apologies. I give you the
story of The Sign of The Three.”