v
That night I went home with him to dinner. He was in one of his absent moods and very tired. Natalie overwhelmed him as usual in the hallway, and when he neither grumbled nor resisted she put off her boisterous manner and began to look at him anxiously. At dinner everyone was silent. He communicated his mood. Vera was there at her mother’s left. Efforts to make conversation were listless, Galt participating in none of them. There was a sense of something that was expected to happen; that was Gram’ma’s remorseless evening question.
“What is the price of Great Midwestern stock today?” she asked, speaking very distinctly.
“Five and a half,” said Galt, in a petulant voice.
The announcement was received stoically, with not the slightest change of countenance anywhere, though that was the lowest price at which the stock had ever sold and represented a serious loss for the house of Galt. However, the state of feeling made itself felt without words. It became at last intolerable for Galt. He threw down his napkin, shouted three times, “Wow! Wow! Wow!”, and each time brought his fist down on the table with a force that made the china jump. With that he got up and left us. We heard him unlock the door of his room and slam it behind him.
“What has happened?” asked Vera, looking at me.
I told them of the disaster to the corn crop and how for that reason there had been heavy selling of Great Midwestern shares.
Vera shrugged her shoulders. Later in the evening when we were alone she looked about her at the walls and ceiling, as one with a premonition of farewell, and said bitterly: “A pretty shipwreck it will be this time.”
“Has your money gone into it, too?” I asked.
She nodded, and said: “Now he wants to mortgage the house.”