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Destiny, a novel by Charles Neville Buck |
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Part 2. The Book Of Life - It Might Have Been - Chapter 23 |
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_ PART II. THE BOOK OF LIFE - IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN CHAPTER XXIII When Mary Burton presented herself in the anteroom of the suite whose ground-glass doors bore the legend "Edwardes and Edwardes," and asked for the banker, a man with a pale and demoralized face gazed at her blankly. Could any one seek to claim, except on most urgent business, one minute out of these crucially vital hours? They were hours when the real target of the whole panic-making bombardment was striving to compress into each relentless instant a separate struggle for survival. "I am Mary Burton," she said simply; and the man stood dubiously shaking his head. His nerve-racked condition could only realize the name Burton--and in these offices it was not just now a favored name. As he stood, barring the way to an inner room marked "private," the door opened and Jefferson Edwardes came hurriedly out. He looked as she had never seen him look before, for deep lines had seared themselves into his face, aging it distressingly, and the mouth was drawn as that of a man who has been called back from the margin of death. But his eyes held an unwavering fire and his jaw was set in the pattern of battle. Mary remembered a painting of a solitary and wounded artilleryman leaning against a shattered field gun amid the bodies of his fallen comrades. The painter had put sternly into the face an expression of one who awaits death, but denies defeat. Here, too, was such a face. The man, hastening out, halted suddenly. Then he stepped back into his own office, silently motioning her to follow. "It has come," he told her quietly. "We should have expected it, yet we were taken by surprise. Today tells a grim story." "What does it all mean?" she pleaded. She stood close with her face almost as dead white as the ermine that fell softly about her shoulders. "I read the papers--and I came at once--to be near you in these hours. What does it mean?" "I can't explain now," he answered in the quick utterance of one to whom time is invaluable. "Now every minute may mean millions--even human lives and deaths. I told you that he must trample down the innocent and the ignorant to come within striking distance of me. He is doing it. The bottom has dropped out of everything--pandemonium reigns. Each minute is beggaring hundreds--each half-hour is sending old houses to the wall and shattering public confidence. By this afternoon the country will be in the lockjaw paralysis of panic--unless we can stem the tide. Will you wait here for me? I must go to Malone." "And there is nothing I can do--nothing?" Her voice was agonized and, with his hand on the knob, he abruptly wheeled and came back. He caught her fiercely in his arms and held her so smotheringly to his breast that her breath came in gasps. She clung to him spasmodically and the lips that met his were hot with a fever of fear and love. "Nothing I can do," she whispered, "though I am--the Helen who brought on the war?" "Yes," he spoke eagerly, passionately, and she could feel the muscles in his tensed arms play like flexible steel as her hands dropped to rest inertly upon them. "Yes, there is something you can do--something you are doing! You are giving me a strength beyond my own strength to fling myself on these wolves and beat them back. You are giving me a battle-lust and a hope.... Now I must go." She released him and forced a smile for his departure, then sank into a chair--his chair by a paper-littered desk--and her eyes, very wide and fixed, gazed ahead--at first unseeing. Yet, after an interval they began to take in this and that detail of the place, where she had never been before. This was his office, the workshop in which he carried on his affairs and the affairs of the concern which had its foundation in unshaken ideals and high honor. In an intangible fashion its inanimate accessories reflected something of himself. On one wall, from a generous spread of moose antlers, hung a rifle and a pair of restrung snowshoes: reminders of the open woods he loved. There were autographed portraits of many men whose names were names of achievement, and one, in a morocco frame surmounted by a gilt crown, attested the personal regard of a reigning monarch. With clenched hands and a grim determination to divert her mind from the danger of madness, she went about the walls, reading those brief tributes to the man she loved. Then she came back and picked up a gold frame which rested on his desk, where, as he worked, his eyes might never be long without its view--and she was gazing into her own eyes. She glanced out across the steep-walled, fog-reeking canons where Finance has its center and whence its myriad activities palpitate through arteries of masonry and nerves of wire. He was out there somewhere, in the maw of that incalculably destructive machine, fighting its determination to grind him between its wheels and cogs and teeth. Mary Burton shuddered and tried by the pressure of her fingers to still the violent throbbing of her temples. Then her eyes began absently studying the inscriptions on the windows of the next building, beyond an intervening court, and she smothered an impulse to scream as a sign across several broad panes flared at her in goldleaf. "Hamilton Montagu Burton." A bitter fascination held her gaze there. She saw offices teeming with the fevered activity of a beehive--and another window showed a room where the electric lamps shone on emptiness. After she had watched it for a time a solitary figure came into view and stood by the ledge looking out. It was her brother, and though, through the gray fog, he was silhouetted there against the light at his back, something in the posture revealed his mood of Napoleonic implacability. It was as though he were, from an eminence, actually viewing the battle whose secret springs his fingers controlled, and as though he were well pleased. Jefferson Edwardes had hurried out with a feeling of renewed strength. It was to him as though a promise of hope had been vouchsafed in a moment of despair. At Malone's office, he met Harrison, Meegan and several others. The old lion of the Street himself was slamming down the telephone as the newcomer entered. "I've been talking with Washington," he announced, and his voice was one of steel coolness. At such an hour as this Malone wasted no minim of strength in futile anger. That belonged to other moments. "We have done what we could. It is not enough. We must do more. We have pegged those stocks where the slump would be most demoralizing and already this highbinder, Burton, has smashed those pegs like match-stems. We have sent money to a dozen banks that seemed hardest pressed, and scores are sending out calls for help. Good God, gentlemen, it's like sweeping back the sea with brooms." "Why did you send for me?" demanded Edwardes, though he knew. "To ask your aid," came the crisp reply. "This is a general alarm. The next few hours will roar to the continuous crash of falling banks--many of them banks that have a close relationship to you, Edwardes. Once more we must go to the rescue and it will take fifty additional millions. Otherwise--panic unparalleled. We expect you to stand your pro rata." "Gentlemen," said the latest comer bluntly, "this raid is primarily aimed at me--its principal object is my destruction. Already I am hit for millions. I, too, was about to call for help from you. When this succession of crashes comes, Edwardes and Edwardes may be among the ruins." The bushy brows of Malone came together in astonishment. "Great heavens, man! Edwardes and Edwardes is a synonym for Gibraltar." "And under heavy enough artillery--" Edwardes spoke with bitter calmness--"Gibraltar would be a synonym for scattered junk. What news from Washington?" "Washington has called Burton on the telephone. The Secretary of the Treasury has failed to connect with him. He does not acknowledge telegrams. He is ignoring the government and treating the President with contempt. He wants to have today for his massacre--and to talk about it tomorrow. We have sent repeatedly to his office. He can't be reached." "That effort may as well be dropped." Edwardes shrugged his shoulders wearily. "He will have his day--and leave tomorrow to itself." "And by the Immortal!" For an instant a baleful fire leaped into Malone's face. "We will have tomorrow! Every sinew of American finance shall be strained against him. But tomorrow may be too late. Can you hold out?" Edwardes smiled grimly. "I'm trying like all hell," he said. "I've not laid down yet." * * * * * It was two o'clock and the Stock-Exchange was a shambles. Every security in the Street was down to panic figures and plunging plummet-like to further depths. At shortening intervals over the hoarse shrieks of the floor's tumult boomed the brazen hammer blows of the huge gong, which should sound only twice each day. At every recurring announcement of failure a wall-shaking howl went up and echoed among the sixty-two inverted golden blossoms of the ceiling. The faces of the men to whom these cracked and hoarsened voices belonged had become bestial and wolfish. Where the morning had seen well-groomed representatives of Money's upper caste, the afternoon saw a seething mass of human ragamuffins, torn of clothing, sweat-drenched and lost to all senses save those twin emotions of ferocity and fear. Back and forth they swirled and eddied, and howled like wild things about carrion. At one side, panting, disheveled and bleeding from scratches incurred in the melee, bulked the gigantic figure of Len Haswell. He had no need now to bellow in a bull-like duel of voices and ferocity. The stampede had been so well put into motion that the floor was doing for him his deadly work of price-smashing. Telegraph wires were quivering from every section of the United States to the tune of--"Sell--cut loose--throw over!" A universal mania to get any price for anything was sweeping the land like a conflagration. Tomorrow would bring those reflexes from today when banks and trust companies from the Lakes to the Rio Grande would topple in the wake of their metropolitan predecessors. Ruin sat crowned and enthroned, monarch of the day and parent of a panic which should close mills, and starve the poor and foster anarchy--but Hamilton Burton's hand was nearer Edwardes' throat. Staples and his twenty cooeperators fought on doggedly, grimly, to turn the tide before the close, but the nation was mad, and the men who fought and clamored here in this pit of its bowels were the most violent maniacs. And while these things went forward Mary Burton still sat alone in the private office of Jefferson Edwardes, waiting. Through century-long hours she had in her ears only the din from the street and that incessant ticking of the stock-tape at her elbow. Every few minutes she rose and anxiously ran through her fingers the long thin coil of paper which it fed so endlessly into its tall wicker basket. She could make little of those abbreviated letters and numbers, though she realized that every succeeding glance showed a shrinkage of each value. One thing she could read with a deadly clarity--those hideous words that meant the falling of the outposts. "So and So announce that they cannot meet their obligations." There were other grim scraps of information, too, wedged between the hurried quotations such as, "Police reserves called to quell riot at closed North Bank," and finally, "Troops from Governor's Island to guard sub-treasury." Finally she went to the window and raised the sash to let the cold air blow against her fevered cheeks, and as she did so she heard yells and the gongs of patrol-wagons. The madness was spreading beyond the confines of enclosing walls. Mary Burton turned, heavy-hearted, back to the room's interior and her glance fell on the clock. It recorded two-forty. She wondered when Edwardes would return. She had spent the day in his office because she knew that when he came in, as he had done several times, only to hasten out again, he found in her forced smile renewal of strength for his combat, which enabled him to go out smiling through the drawn agony of his harassment. The hateful ticker drew her back with its light clatter. Perhaps at last it had good tidings to offer. Unless it brought them soon it would bring them too late--like a reprieve after execution. She took the narrow thread of paper in her hand and glanced at its latest entries. As she watched the small type wheel revolve and stamp, it broke upon her that the inanimate herald was spelling out, letter by letter, a familiar name. "E-D-W-A-R-D-E-S A-N-D E-D-W-A-R-D-E-S." With a smothered shriek Mary Burton dropped the tape as though it had scorched her fingers. She groped her way half-blindly to the chair by Jefferson's desk, and, sinking into it, buried her face in her crossed arms. She could not have shed a tear or uttered a word. She was paralyzed in an icy terror. That was how all these other announcements had begun: With the name of the failing firm. After what seemed a decade she drew herself up and sat erect and white, trembling from her throat to her feet. She forced her agonized features into a semblance of artificial calm. Suppose he should return to her now, defeated, ruined, crushed, and open his door on that picture of despair and surrender! The clock said two-fifty-five. So she had been sitting here ten minutes! Grasping the arms of her chair and bracing herself, she rose with a labored effort and went resolutely back to the ticker where, as one draws aside a veil which may reveal tragedy, she picked up the tape again. She saw no name this time, and suddenly it occurred to her that the monstrous thing had passed callously on to other news--as though there were other news! She dragged it out of its twisted coils in the basket and read in cold, unpunctuated capitals, EDWARDES AND EDWARDES FAIL TO MEET OBLIGATIONS. The girl reeled and leaned limply against the wall, and, as she stood there overpowered and dizzy, a low incoherent moan came up from her throat. Then as she mechanically held the tenuous death-warrant in her pulseless fingers, her eyes fell on an item just finished. MARKET TAKES TURN BURTON BROKERS BIDDING UP. A comprehension came to her and her brain reeled in fury and torture. Now that his end was accomplished, the Great Bear had turned bull. He would sell back on the rise what he had slaughtered on the fall, and when tomorrow's reaction came with its roster of deluded misery he would harvest vast profits on his massacre. She heard a sound beyond the ground glass as though a hand groped before its fingers found and closed upon the knob. Then slowly the door swung inward, and Jefferson Edwardes entered. His overcoat hung over one arm, and, as Mary saw his face, her hands clutched at her heart, but he did not seem to see her--or to see anything. With a most careful deliberation the ruined man closed the door silently behind him. He did it as though he were entering a sick room where he must guard against disturbing the patient with the slightest sound. Then he took a step or two forward and halted to stand gazing straight ahead of him, while with the sleeve of one arm he brushed at his forehead and moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. Mary wondered for an agonized instant whether the cord of his sanity had snapped under the day's terrific ordeal, and she stood there still leaning limp and pallid and wide-eyed against the wall, holding before her the tape that had told her the story--and not realizing that she held it. Then the man awoke from his sleep-walker's vacancy and realized her presence. At the sight of her despairing eyes and inert figure resting for support against the mahogany panels, his expression altered. His eyes woke to life and, again moistening his lips, he forced the ghost of a smile which at first succeeded only in being ghastly. "So you know?" he questioned. Mary Burton did not reply in words. She could not, but she nodded her head and something between a groan and a sob came from her parted lips. Then her voice returned and she murmured in heart-broken self-accusation: "It was because of me." He stood shaking himself as a dog shakes off water. His drooped shoulders came back with an abrupt snap and his head threw itself up and his chest out. With a swift stride he had reached her and folded her into his embrace. For once the regal confidence had left her and the courage was dead in her heart. She lay in his arms a dead weight, which, but for his supporting strength, would have crumbled to a limp mass on the floor. But as he held her, fresh bravery flooded his arteries and his voice came clear and untainted of weakness: "We still have each other," he told her passionately. "You once asked me whether, if you were penniless, I should still want you. Today I am penniless and owe millions--do you still want me?" Her arms clung to him more closely and the eyes that gazed into his revealed, as they had on that first night, all that was in her soul. Once more she answered him with a question: "Look at me--do I want you?" He swept her from her feet and carried her to a chair, where he put her gently down, then he knelt by her side with her hands clasped convulsively in his own. For a moment it is doubtful whether he realized anything save her presence. His voice was the voice of the man who had met her by the mountain road, of the man who had come to her in the darkness at Haverly Lodge and claimed her without preamble. "The mountains still stand--and there are cottages there where even a very poor man may find shelter. I would rather have it, with you, than to own Manhattan Island without you." There was a knock at the door of the private office, and Edwardes, rising from his knees, went to receive the message. He came back very gravely. "I have to face an unpleasant interview, dearest," he said. "One of those bankers who were crushed as incidents to my ruin--who was guilty only of standing in your brother's path, is here. I'm told that he is half-mad, and I must do what I can." He opened a door into a small conference-room. "Will you wait for me--there?" With his arm around her he led her across the threshold, and then, closing that door, he came back and opened the other. The man who half-stepped, half-stumbled in staggered to the desk chair and dropped into it to raise a face in which the eyes burned wildly. The whole figure shook in an ague of unnerved excitement. He spread two trembling hands and tragically announced, "I'm ruined." Edwardes nodded gravely. "You need a physician, Fairley. You're unstrung," he suggested. "Perhaps a drop of brandy would help. I think I have some here." "No!" the reply was violent, and the President of the Metallic National shook his head with the uncontrolled air of a man who is close to the border of insanity. "No, by God, I'm past physicians. What I need next is an undertaker." He dropped his head to the desk and broke into a crazed storm of weak sobs. "There is no profit in wild talk," his host reminded him. "I'm ruined, too. We must make a fresh start." "Fresh start, hell!" The words rang queerly through the accompaniment of a bitter laugh. "Hamilton Burton took me and squeezed me dry. He put the thumbscrews on me and bled me of my Coal and Ore stock. He made me a traitor to Malone and today when Malone might have saved me I had no friends. Then because you sought to befriend me, Burton turned on me and ruined me. My family will be in the streets. Now--" the voice rose into a high treble of frenzy which penetrated to the room where Mary Burton waited--"I'm going to kill Hamilton Burton first and myself next." With the wild threat the banker rose unsteadily and his palsied hand went into his overcoat pocket, to come out clutching a magazine pistol which he brandished before him. Edwardes' first thought was to seize the wrist, but the breadth of the table intervened and he knew that he was dealing with a man of temporarily dethroned reason. So he held the wild and shifting gaze, as well as he could, with the cool steadiness of his own eyes and spoke in a measured, soothing voice: "I shouldn't do that, Fairley. In the first place you don't know where to find him. Your effort would probably fail and you would only be locked up before you accomplished either purpose." The noise of the outer offices had drowned the visitor's excited tones among the employees, but to Mary Burton, standing anxiously in the conference-room, all the words were intelligible. Fairley leaned across the table, and for an instant left the weapon unguarded. With a movement of cat-like swiftness Edwardes seized it, but a wild snarl of rage burst from the other's lips and his fingers closed vise-like over Jefferson's hand. "No--by God--you don't!" he screamed. Mary Burton threw open the door, and saw the two figures bent across the table with four hands desperately gripped while between them glinted the blued metal of the pistol, which the frustrated Fairley was striving to turn upon his own breast and Edwardes struggled to divert. Before she could give outcry or reach them, there came an out-spitting of fire from the ugly muzzle and a report which the confined space magnified to a sullen roar. Edwardes lurched suddenly forward and remained motionless with his face down and his arms outspread upon the desk, while a tiny red puddle spread on the mahogany. Fairley had leaped back and cowered, suddenly sobered, against the wall as the outer door opened and figures poured into the room. _ |
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