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The Deluge, a novel by David Graham Phillips |
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Chapter 26. The Weak Strand |
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_ CHAPTER XXVI. THE WEAK STRAND No sane creature, not even a sane bulldog, will fight simply from love of fighting. When a man is attacked, he may be sure he has excited either fear or cupidity, or both. As far as I could see, it was absurd that cupidity was inciting Langdon and Roebuck against me. I hadn't enough to tempt them. Thus, I was forced to conclude that I must possess a strength of which I was unaware, and which stirred even Roebuck's fears. But what could it be? Besides Langdon and Roebuck and me there were six principals in the proposed Coal combine, three of them richer and more influential in finance than even Langdon, all of them except possibly Dykeman, the lawyer or navigating officer of the combine, more formidable figures than I. Yet none of these men was being assailed. "Why am I singled out?" I asked myself, and I felt that if I could answer, I should find I had the means wholly or partly to defeat them. But I could not explain to my satisfaction even Langdon's activities against me. I felt that Anita was somehow, in part at least, the cause; but, even so, how had he succeeded in convincing Roebuck that I must be clipped and plucked into a groundling? "It must have something to do with the Manasquale mines," I decided. "I thought I had given over my control of them, but somehow I must still have a control that makes me too powerful for Roebuck to be at ease so long as I am afoot and armed." And I resolved to take my lawyers and search the whole Manasquale transaction--to explore it from attic to underneath the cellar flooring. "We'll go through it," said I, "like ferrets through a ship's hold." As I was finishing breakfast, Anita came in. She had evidently slept well, and I regarded that as ominous. At her age, a crisis means little sleep until a decision has been reached. I rose, but her manner warned me not to advance and try to shake hands with her. "I have asked Alva to stop with me here for a few days," she said formally. "Alva!" said I, much surprised. She had not asked one of her own friends; she had asked a girl she had met less than two days before, and that girl my partner's daughter. "She was here yesterday morning," Anita explained. And I now wondered how much Alva there was in Anita's firm stand against her parents. "Why don't you take her down to our place on Long Island?" said I, most carefully concealing my delight--for Alva near her meant a friend of mine and an advocate and example of real womanhood near her. "Everything's ready for you there, and I'm going to be busy the next few days--busy day and night." She reflected. "Very well," she assented presently. And she gave me a puzzled glance she thought I did not see--as if she were wondering whether the enemy was not hiding new and deeper guile under an apparently harmless suggestion. "Then I'll not see you again for several days," said I, most businesslike. "If you want anything, there will be Monson out at the stables where he can't annoy you. Or you can get me on the 'long distance.' Good-by. Good luck." And I nodded carelessly and friendlily to her, and went away, enjoying the pleasure of having startled her into visible astonishment. "There's a better game than icy hostility, you very young, young lady," said I to myself, "and that game is friendly indifference." Alva would be with her. So she was secure for the present and my mind was free for "finance." At that time the two most powerful men in finance were Galloway and Roebuck. In Spain I once saw a fight between a bull and a tiger--or, rather the beginning of a fight. They were released into a huge iron cage. After circling it several times in the same direction, searching for a way out, they came face to face. The bull tossed the tiger; the tiger clawed the bull. The bull roared; the tiger screamed. Each retreated to his own side of the cage. The bull pawed and snorted as if he could hardly wait to get at the tiger; the tiger crouched and quivered and glared murderously, as if he were going instantly to spring upon the bull. But the bull did not rush, neither did the tiger spring. That was the Roebuck-Galloway situation. How to bait Tiger Galloway to attack Bull Roebuck--that was the problem I must solve, and solve straightway. If I could bring about war between the giants, spreading confusion over the whole field of finance and filling all men with dread and fear, there was a chance, a bare chance, that in the confusion I might bear off part of my fortune. Certainly, conditions would result in which I could more easily get myself intrenched again; then, too, there would be a by no means small satisfaction in seeing Roebuck clawed and bitten in punishment for having plotted against me. Mutual fear had kept these two at peace for five years, and most considerate and polite about each other's "rights." But while our country's industrial territory is vast, the interests of the few great controllers who determine wages and prices for all are equally vast, and each plutocrat is tormented incessantly by jealousy and suspicion; not a day passes without conflicts of interest that adroit diplomacy could turn into ferocious warfare. And in this matter of monopolizing the coal, despite Roebuck's earnest assurances to Galloway that the combine was purely defensive, and was really concerned only with the labor question, Galloway, a great manufacturer, or, rather, a huge levier of the taxes of dividends and interest upon manufacturing enterprises, could not but be uneasy. Before I rose that morning I had a tentative plan for stirring him to action. I was elaborating it on the way down town in my electric. It shows how badly Anita was crippling my brain, that not until I was almost at my office did it occur to me: "That was a tremendous luxury Roebuck indulged his conscience in last night. It isn't like him to forewarn a man, even when he's sure he can't escape. Though his prayers were hot in his mouth, still, it's strange he didn't try to fool me. In fact, it's suspicious. In fact--" Suspicious? The instant the idea was fairly before my mind, I knew I had let his canting fool me once more. I entered my offices, feeling that the blow had already fallen; and I was surprised, but not relieved, when I found everything calm. "But fall it will within an hour or so--before I can move to avert it," said I to myself. And fall it did. At eleven o'clock, just as I was setting out to make my first move toward heating old Galloway's heels for the war-path, Joe came in with the news: "A general lockout's declared in the coal regions. The operators have stolen a march on the men who, so they allege, were secretly getting ready to strike. By night every coal road will be tied up and every mine shut down." Joe knew our coal interests were heavy, but he did not dream his news meant that before the day was over we would be bankrupt and not able to pay fifteen cents on the dollar. However, he knew enough to throw him into a fever of fright. He watched my calmness with terror. "Coal stocks are dropping like a thermometer in a cold wave," he said, like a fireman at a sleeper in a burning house. "Naturally," said I, unruffled, apparently. "What can we do about it?" "We must do something!" he exclaimed. "Yes, we must," I admitted. "For instance, we must keep cool, especially when two or three dozen people are watching us. Also, you must attend to your usual routine." "What are you going to do?" he cried. "For God's sake, Matt, don't keep me in suspense!" "Go to your desk," I commanded. And he quieted down and went. I hadn't been schooling him in the fire-drill for fifteen years in vain. I went up the street and into the great banking and brokerage house of Galloway and Company. I made my way through the small army of guards, behind which the old beast of prey was intrenched, and into his private den. There he sat, at a small, plain table, in the middle of the room without any article of furniture in it but his table and his chair. On the table was a small inkstand, perfectly clean, a steel pen equally clean, on the rest attached to it. And that was all--not a letter, not a scrap of paper, not a sign of work or of intention to work. It might have been the desk of a man who did nothing; in fact, it was the desk of a man who had so much to do that his only hope of escape from being overwhelmed was to despatch and clear away each matter the instant it was presented to him. Many things could be read from the powerful form, bolt upright in that stiff chair, and from the cynical, masterful old face. But to me the chief quality there revealed was that quality of qualities, decision--the greatest power a man can have, except only courage. And old James Galloway had both. He respected Roebuck; Roebuck feared him. Roebuck did have some sort of conscience, distorted though it was, and the dictator of savageries Galloway would have scorned to commit. Galloway had no professions of conscience--beyond such small glozing of hypocrisy as any man must put on if he wishes to be intrusted with the money of a public that associates professions of religion and appearances of respectability with honesty. Roebuck's passion was wealth--to see the millions heap up and up. Galloway had that passion, too--I have yet to meet a multi-millionaire who isn't avaricious and even stingy. But Galloway's chief passion was power--to handle men as a junk merchant handles rags, to plan and lead campaigns of conquest with his golden legions, and to distribute the spoils like an autocrat who is careless how they are divided, since all belongs to him, whenever he wishes to claim it. He pierced me with his blue eyes, keen as a youth's, though his face was seamed with scars of seventy tumultuous years. He extended toward me over the table his broad, stubby white hand--the hand of a builder, of a constructive genius. "How are you, Blacklock?" said he. "What can I do for you?" He just touched my hand before dropping it, and resumed that idol-like pose. But although there was only repose and deliberation in his manner, and not a suggestion of haste, I, like every one who came into that room and that presence, had a sense of an interminable procession behind me, a procession of men who must be seen by this master-mover, that they might submit important and pressing affairs to him for decision. It was unnecessary for him to tell any one to be brief and pointed. "I shall have to go to the wall to-day," said I, taking a paper from my pocket, "unless you save me. Here is a statement of my assets and liabilities. I call to your attention my Coal holdings. I was one of the eight men whom Roebuck got round him for the new combine--it is a secret, but I assume you know all about it." He laid the paper before him, put on his nose-glasses and looked at it. "If you will save me," I continued, "I will transfer to you, in a block, all my Coal holdings. They will be worth double my total liabilities within three months--as soon as the reorganization is announced. I leave it entirely to your sense of justice whether I shall have any part of them back when this storm blows over." "Why didn't you go to Roebuck?" he asked without looking up. "Because it is he that has stuck the knife into me." "Why?" "I don't know. I suspect the Manasquale properties, which I brought into the combine, have some value, which no one but Roebuck, and perhaps Langdon, knows about--and that I in some way was dangerous to them through that fact. They haven't given me time to look into it." A grim smile flitted over his face. "You've been too busy getting married, eh?" "Exactly," said I. "It's another case of unbuckling for the wedding-feast and getting assassinated as a penalty. Do you wish me to explain anything on that list--do you want any details of the combine--of the Coal stocks there?" "Not necessary," he replied. As I had thought, with that enormous machine of his for drawing in information, and with that enormous memory of his for details, he probably knew more about the combine and its properties than I did. "You have heard of the lockout?" I inquired--for I wished him to know I had no intention of deceiving him as to the present market value of those stocks. "Roebuck has been commanded by his God," he said, "to eject the free American labor from the coal regions and to substitute importations of coolie Huns and Bohemians. Thus, the wicked American laborers will be chastened for trying to get higher wages and cut down a pious man's dividends; and the downtrodden coolies will be brought where they can enjoy the blessings of liberty and of the preaching of Roebuck's missionaries." I laughed, though he had not smiled, but had spoken as if stating colorless facts. "And righteousness and Roebuck will prevail," said I. He frowned slightly, a sardonic grin breaking the straight, thin, cruel line of his lips. He opened his table's one shallow drawer, and took out a pad and a pencil. He wrote a few words on the lowest part of the top sheet, folded it, tore off the part he had scribbled on, returned the pad and pencil to the drawer, handed the scrap of paper to me. "I will do it," he said. "Give this to Mr. Farquhar, second door to the left. Good morning." And in that atmosphere of vast affairs speedily despatched his consent without argument seemed, and was, the matter-of-course. I bowed. Though he had not saved me as a favor to me, but because it fitted in with his plans, whatever they were, my eyes dimmed. "I shan't forget this," said I, my voice not quite steady. "I know it," said he curtly. "I know you." I saw that his mind had already turned me out. I said no more, and withdrew. When I left the room it was precisely as it had been when I entered it--except the bit of paper torn from the pad. But what a difference to me, to the thousands, the hundreds of thousands directly and indirectly interested in the Coal combine and its strike and its products, was represented by those few, almost illegible scrawlings on that scrap of paper. Not until I had gone over the situation with Farquhar, and we had signed and exchanged the necessary papers, did I begin to relax from the strain--how great that strain was I realized a few weeks later, when the gray appeared thick at my temples and there was in my crown what was, for such a shock as mine, a thin spot. "I am saved!" said I to myself, venturing a long breath, as I stood on the steps of Galloway's establishment, where hourly was transacted business vitally affecting the welfare of scores of millions of human beings, with James Galloway's personal interest as the sole guiding principle. "Saved!" I repeated, and not until then did it flash before me, "I must have paid a frightful price. He would never have consented to interfere with Roebuck as soon as I asked him to do it, unless there had been some powerful motive. If I had had my wits about me, I could have made far better terms." Why hadn't I my wits about me? "Anita" was my instant answer to my own question. "Anita again. I had a bad attack of family man's panic." And thus it came about that I went back to my own office, feeling as if I had suffered a severe defeat, instead of jubilant over my narrow escape. Joe followed me into my den. "What luck?" asked he, in the tone of a mother waylaying the doctor as he issues from the sick-room. "Luck?" said I, gazing blankly at him. "You've seen the latest quotation, haven't you?" In his nervousness his temper was on a fine edge. "No," replied I indifferently. I sat down at my desk and began to busy myself. Then I added: "We're out of the Coal combine. I've transferred our holdings. Look after these things, please." And I gave him the checks, notes and memoranda of agreement. "Galloway!" he exclaimed. And then his eye fell on the totals of the stock I had been carrying. "Good God, Matt!" he gasped. "Ruined!" And he sat down, and buried his face and cried like a child--it was then that I measured the full depth of the chasm I had escaped. I made no such exhibition of myself, but when I tried to relight my cigar my hand trembled so that the flame scorched my lips. "Ruined?" I said to Joe, easily enough. "Not at all. We're back in the road, going smoothly ahead--only, at a bit less stiff a pace. Think, Joe, of all those poor devils down in the mining districts. They're out--clear out--and thousands of 'em don't know where their families will get bread. And though they haven't found it out yet, they've got to leave the place where they've lived all their lives, and their fathers before them--have got to go wandering about in a world that's as strange to them as the surface of the moon, and as bare for them as the Sahara desert." "That's so," said Joe. "It's hard luck." But I saw he was thinking only of himself and his narrow escape from having to give up his big house and all the rest of it; that, soft-hearted and generous though he was, to those poor chaps and their wives and children he wasn't giving a thought. Wall Street never does--they're too remote, too vague. It deals with columns of figures and slips of paper. It never thinks of those abstractions as standing for so many hearts and so many mouths, just as the bank clerk never thinks of the bits of metal he counts so swiftly as money with which things and men could be bought. I read somewhere once that Voltaire--I think it was Voltaire--asked a man what he would do if, by pressing a button on his table, he would be enormously rich and at the same time would cause the death of a person away off at the other side of the earth, unknown to him, and probably no more worthy to live, and with no greater expectation of life or of happiness than the average sinful, short-lived human being. I've often thought of that as I've watched our great "captains of industry." Voltaire's dilemma is theirs. And they don't hesitate; they press the button. I leave the morality of the performance to moralists; to me, its chief feature is its cowardice, its sneaking, slimy cowardice. "You've done a grand two hours' work," said Joe. "Grander than you think," replied I. "I've set the tiger on to fight the bull." "Galloway and Roebuck?" "Just that," said I. And I laughed, started up, sat down again. "No, I'll put off the pleasure," said I. "I'll let Roebuck find out, when the claws catch in that tough old hide of his." _ |
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