The Driver (23 page)

“What is the price of Great Midwestern stock to-day?” asked Gram’ma Galt in a firm, clear voice. Everybody started a little, even one of the servants who happened to stand in the line of my vision.

“One hundred and seventy,” I said.

To those of us who had just seen it fall in a few weeks from two-hundred-and-twenty this price of one-hundred-and-seventy seemed calamitous. That shows how soon we lose the true perspective and how myopically we regard the nearest contrast.

“When my son took charge of it eight years ago it was one-and-a-half... one-and-a-half,” said Gram’ma Galt in the same clear voice.

For this I rose and saluted her with a kiss on the forehead. She didn’t mind. Natalie gave me a splendid look. Then I excused myself and went to see Galt.

The door of his apartment was ajar. I could see him. He was in his pajamas now, apparently asleep. So I closed the door and sat at his desk in the work room outside to call up Mordecai, who had asked me to communicate with him, and attend to some other matters. Presently the hall door opened and closed gently. I looked around. It was Gram’ma Galt. In her hand she carried a large envelope tied around with a blue ribbon. She walked straight to the door of Galt’s apartment and went in without knocking. I could see her from where I sat. She left the door open behind her.

“What’s this?” Galt asked, as she put the envelope on the bed beside him. She did not answer his question, but leaned over, laid one hand on his forehead and spoke in this delphic manner:

“Fast ye for strife and smite with the fist of wickedness.”

Then she turned, came straight out, closed the door carefully, passed me without a glance, and was gone. Never again did I wonder whence Galt derived his thirst for combat When he emerged some ten minutes later the mist had fallen from his eyes. The right doctor had been there. He handed me the envelope tied around with blue ribbon.

“That’s Gram’ma Galt’s little fortune... everything she has received out of Great Midwestern. Keep it in the safe for a few days so she will think we needed it.... Did you give out that statement?”

“Not yet. There is plenty of time,” I said.

“Tear it up. That isn’t the way we fight,... is it?”

Gram’ma Galt never got her envelope back. Two weeks later she died.

v

The Galt panic was one of those episodes that can never be fully explained. Elemental forces were loose. Those that derived from human passion were answerable to the will; there were others of a visitant nature fortuitous and uncontrollable. What man cannot control he may sometimes conduct. You cannot command the lightning, but if it is about to strike you may lure it here instead of there.

Weather is so often the accomplice of dark enterprise! The financial weather at this time was very bad and favored the Bullguard conspiracy. Confidence, which in this case means the expectation of profit, was in decline. It had never recovered from the shock of that first accident to greed’s cauldron three months before when an ignorant popular mania for speculation came all at once to grief. Since then the rise of feeling against trusts, and the certainty that it would be translated into political action, had filled Wall Street with confusion and alarm.

Bullguard’s part was to focus all this distrust and fear upon Galt. Each day the papers reported the weakness of Galt securities, how they fell under the selling of uneasy holders, and what the latest and most sinister rumors were. That was news. Nobody could help printing it. The financial editors each day repeated what eminent bankers said: “We pray to be delivered from this Jonah. His ways are not our ways, yet he bringeth wrath upon all alike.” That was true. They said it; they even believed it. The financial editors could not be blamed for writing it.

So many winds running their feet together, like people in a mob, create a storm; and when it is over and they are themselves again, sane little winds, they wonder at what was done. The Wall Street news tickers reported that certain banks were refusing to lend money on Galt securities. This may have been a stroke of the conspiracy or merely a reaction to the prevailing fear, or both interacting. One never knows. But it was true, and Great Midwestern securities suffered another frightful fall.

This went on for three weeks with scarcely an interruption. Day after day Galt stood at the ticker watching Great Midwestern fall,—

to 150,

to 140,

to 130,

to 120, and did nothing. For the first time in his life he was on the defensive. That made the strain much worse. His normal relief was in action. He loved to carry the fight to the enemy, even rashly; but foolhardy he was not. He had foreseen that at the crucial moment he should stand alone against the field. Nobody believed he could win. The odds were too great. Therefore he could rely only upon himself.

One by one, by twos and threes, then by groups, his supporters fell away. Those who had submitted to his rule from fear were the first to go over to the other side, surreptitiously at first, lest they should have guessed wrong, then openly as they saw how the fight seemed to be going against him. Several bankers publicly renounced their relations with him. Others whose allegiance was for profit only, whose gains were wet with the sweat of their pride, forsook him as fast as they were convinced that his career as a money maker was at an end. Potter was one of these, and the last to go. He did it handsomely according to his way. One day he came in.

“Galt,” he said, “I know you are in a hell of a fix and I have done not one damn thing to help. I’m not that kind of person. I hate to quit a man in trouble. So I’ve come to tell you why. There are two reasons. One reason is I’ve got so much of this Great Midwestern stuff that it’s all I can do to take care of myself. I didn’t get out in time, and now I can’t get out at all.... The other reason is... well, I’ll say it... why not?.... You have trampled on my pride until I have no liking for you left. You’re the most hateful man I ever did business with. That’s why.”

The impulse to come and have it out in this manner was big-man-like, I thought, even though the root was self-justification. No one else had done so much. All the others had gone slinking away. If Galt had responded differently a real friendship might have blazed there, for instinctively they liked and admired each other. Their antagonism was not essential. And, besides, the real reason, as we after ward knew, was the one he gave first Potter, with all his wealth, was himself in a tight place. Bull-guard was pressing the oil crowd, too.

“That’s understood,” said Galt, in his worst manner. “I didn’t buy your pride. I only rented it. Now you’ve got it back, look it over, see how much it’s damaged, and send me a bill.”

Potter went out roaring oaths.

A change was taking place in Galt. I saw it in sudden, unexpected glimpses. The movements of his body were slower. Anger and irritation no longer found outlet in tantrums, but in sneering, terrible sarcasms, uttered in a cold voice. He looked without seeing and spoke as from a great distance, high up. His mind, when he revealed it, was the same as ever. Nothing had happened to his mind. His soul lived in torment. His greatest sin had been to hold public opinion in contempt. Now it was paying him back. To have deserved the opprobrium and suspicion with which he was overwhelmed would perhaps have killed him then; but to suffer disgrace undeservedly was in one way worse. He reacted by suspecting those who suspected him, and some who didn’t. I believe at one time he almost suspected Mordecai, whose loyalty never for one moment wavered.

However, Mordecai knew, as no one else did, that Galt was still in a very strong position. He had not begun to strike. Thanks to the intuition which moved him at the onset to convert two thirds of his fortune into cash he could, when the moment came, strike hard.

Now came the day of days,—the time when Bull-guard did his utmost. Fastenings gave way. Walls rocked. Strong men lost their rational faculties and retained only the power of primitive vocal utterance. The sounds that issued from the Stock Exchange were appalling. The ear would think a demented menagerie was devouring itself. Thousands of small craft disappeared that day and left no trace.

Great Midwestern, spilling out on the tape in five and ten-thousand share blocks, fell twenty points in two hours. Galt was in his office at the ticker. Mordecai was with him, holding his hands reverently together, gazing at the tape in a state of fascination. On one headlong impulse Great Midwestern touched one hundred dollars a share,—par! It had fallen from two-hundred-and-twenty in three months.

“It’s over,” said Galt, turning away. I once saw a great prizefighter, on giving the knock-out blow at the end of a hard battle, turn his back with the same gesture and walk to his own corner.

“Vhat iss id you zay?” asked Mordecai, following.

“It’s over,” Galt repeated. “They haven’t got me and they can’t go any further without breaking themselves. Get your house on the wire. That’s the direct telephone... that one. I want to give an order.”

Mordecai picked up the telephone and asked for one of his partners, who instantly responded.

“Vhat iss ze order?” asked Mordecai, holding the telephone and looking at Galt.

“Buy all the Great Midwestern there is for sale up to one-hundred-and-f-i-f-t-y!” said Galt.

Mordecai transmitted this extraordinary order, put the telephone down softly, and lisped, “My Gott!”

Just then the door burst open. Thirty or forty reporters had been waiting in the outer office all day. Their excitement at last broke bounds; they simply came in. The Evening Post man was at their head.

“Mr. Galt,” he shouted, “you have got to make some kind of statement. Public opinion demands it.”

I expected Galt to explode with rage.

“Postey,” he said, “I don’t know a damn thing about public opinion. That’s your trade. Tell me something about it.”

“It wants to know what all this means,” said Postey.

“Well, tell it this for me,” said Galt. “Tell it just as I tell you. The panic is over.”

“But, Mr.—”

“Now, that’s all,” said Galt. “Ain’t it enough?”

I had been to look at the tape.

“Great Midwestern is a hundred and thirty,” I announced at large.

The reporters stared at me wide-eyed.

Postey ran to look for himself, bumping Mordecai aside.

“That’s right,” he said, making swiftly for the door. The others followed him in a trampling rush.

The sensation now to be accounted for was not the weakness but the sudden recovery of Great Midwestern and Galt’s statement explained it. So they were anxious to spread their news.

It was true. Galt had timed his stroke unerringly.

Everyone was amazed to see how little Great Midwestern stock was actually for sale when a buying hand appeared. That was because so much of the selling had been fictitious. The stock closed that day at one-hundred-and-fifty and never while Galt lived was it so low again. The feet of many winds ran rapidly apart and the storm collapsed.

vi

That evening, for the first time in many weeks, Galt had dinner with the family.

We do not see each other change and grow old as a continuous process. It is imperceptible that way. But as one looks at a tree that has been in one’s eye all the time and says with surprise, “Why, the leaves have turned I” so suddenly we look at a person we have seen every day and say, “How he has changed!” some association of place or act causing a vivid recollection to arise in contrast.

We had all seen Galt coming and going. I had been with him constantly. Yet now as he sat there at table we remembered him only as he was the last time before this at dinner, making a scene because there was never anything he liked to eat and the cook put cheese in the potatoes. The difference was distressing. He was old and world-weary. He ate sparingly, complained of nothing and was so absent that when anyone spoke to him he started and must have the words repeated.

Natalie alone succeeded in drawing his interest. She had spent the day at Moonstool. This name had been provisionally bestowed upon the country place, because it happened to be the local name of the mountain, and then became permanent in default of agreement on any other.

Work there had been progressing rapidly. The house itself was finished; the principal apartments were ready to be occupied. The surroundings of course were in confusion. Steam drills were going all the time. Roadways were blasting through solid rock. The landscape was in turmoil.

“But you could live there now,” said Natalie, “if you didn’t mind the noise,” closing a long recital, to which Galt had listened thoughtfully.

“We might have the wedding there,” he said.

His suggestion produced a ghastly silence. Mrs. Galt tried to turn it away. Galt was alert.

“What have I stepped on now?” he wanted to know. “Suffering Moses I It ain’t safe for me to walk around in my own house. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” said Natalie.

“Yes, there is. What is it?”

When he couldn’t be put off any longer Vera said, quietly: “My engagement to Lord Porteous is broken.”

“Why?” asked Galt, astonished. “That’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

“No matter why,” said Vera. “Let’s not talk about it.”

He looked into their faces severally. His expression was utterly wretched and they avoided it. He guessed the reason why,—made it perhaps even worse than it was.

In his own household he was on the defensive. There was always that inaudible accusation he could never get hold of. In the old days it was that he stretched them on the rack of insecurity and was not like other men. Then it was the way he had made them rich. Now it was that dreadful sense of insecurity again. They did not know whether they were rich or poor. They thought he was heading for a last spectacular smash-up. And suppose he had told them there was happily no danger of that. Their thoughts would accuse him still. Why couldn’t they be rich as other people were, decently, quietly and in good taste? The Valentines were rich and no obloquy pursued them. Their privacy was not besieged by newspaper reporters. The finger of scorn never pointed at them.