CHAPTER ELEVEN
David Elden smoked his after-dinner cigar in his bachelor quarters. The years had been good to the firm of Conward & Elden; good far beyond the wildness of their first dreams. The transaction of the section bought from the English absentee had been but the beginning of bigger and more daring adventures. That section was now considered close-in property, and lots which Conward & Elden had originally sold for two hundred dollars each had since changed hands at more than a thousand. The street railway ran far beyond it. Water mains, sewers, electric lights, graded streets and concrete sidewalks had sprawled for miles across the prairie. Conward, in that first wild prophecy of his, had spoken of a city of a quarter of a million people; already more lots had been sold than could be occupied by four times that population.
It had been a very marvellous development; an enthusiasm which had grown deeper and wilder until it swept along as an insane abandon, bearing in its current the last vestiges of conservatism and caution. For at last the old-timers, long alluded to as the "dead ones," had come in. For years they had held back, scoffing, predicting disaster; and while they held back venturesome youths had become millionaires. One can stand that only so long, and at last the old-timers were buying and selling and debauching with the others in the lust of easy money.
Dave had often asked himself where it all would end. He traced it from its beginning; from the day when he wrote his first "boost" story; from the hundred-dollar bill that Conward had placed in his hands. It was a simple course to trace; so simple now that he was amazed that only Conward and a few shrewd others had seen it at that time. It had begun with the prosperity of incoming money; the money of a little group of speculators and adventurers and the others who hung on their train. They had filled the few hotels and office buildings. Presently some one began to build a new hotel. Labour was scarce and dear; carpenters, masons, bricklayers, plumbers, plasterers, labourers, had to be brought in from the outside. There was no place for them to sleep; there was no place for them to eat; there were insufficient stores to supply their wants. More hotels and shops and stores and houses had to be built, and to build them more carpenters and masons and bricklayers and plumbers and plasterers and painters had to be brought from the outside. The thing grew upon itself. It was like a fire starting slowly in the still prairie grass, which by its own heat creates a breeze that in turn gives birth to a gale that whips it forth in uncontrollable fury. Houses went up, blocks of them, streets of them, miles of them, but they could not keep pace with the demand, for every builder of a house must have a roof to sleep under. And there were streets to build; streets to grade and fill and pave; ditches to dig and sidewalks to lay and wires to string. And more houses had to be built for the men who paved streets and dug ditches and laid sidewalks and strung wires. And more stores and more hotels and more churches and more schools and more places of amusement were needed. And the fire fed on its own fury and spread to lengths undreamed by those who first set the match to the dry grass.
The process of speculation was as easily defined. The first buyers were cautious; they looked over the vacant lots carefully; weighed their advantages and disadvantages; the prospect of the city growing this way or that. But scarcely had they bought when they sold again at a profit, and were seized with a quick regret that they had not bought more, or earlier. Soon the caution of the early transactions was forgotten in the rush for more lots which, almost immediately, could be re-sold at a profit. Judgment and discretion became handicaps in the race; the successful man was he who threw all such qualities to the winds. Fortunes were made; intrinsic values were lost sight of in the glare of great and sudden profits. Prices mounted up and up, and when calmer counsels held that they had reached their limits all such counsels were abashed by prices soaring higher still.
And the firm of Conward & Elden had profited not the least in these wild years of gain-getting. Their mahogany finished first floor quarters were the last word in office luxuriance. Conward's private room might with credit have housed a premier or a president. Its purpose was to be impressive, rather than to give any other service, as Conward spent little of his time therein. On Dave fell the responsibility of office management, and his room was fitted for efficiency rather than luxury. It commanded a view of the long general office where a battery of stenographers and clerks took care of the detail of the business of Conward & Elden. And Dave had established his ability as an office manager. His fairness, his fearlessness, his impartiality, his courtesy, his even temper—save on rare and excusable occasions—had won from the staff a loyalty which Conward, with all his abilities as a good mixer, could never have commanded.
He had prospered, of course. His statement to his banker ran into seven figures. For years he had not known the experience of being short of money for any personal purpose. Occasionally, at first, and again of late, the firm had found it necessary to resort to high finance. This was usually accomplished by getting a bank so deeply involved in their speculations that, in moments of emergency, it dared not desert them if it would. There are ways of doing that. And always the daring of Conward and the organization of Elden had justified themselves. Dave was still a young man, not yet in his thirties; he was rated a millionaire; he had health, comeliness, and personality; he commanded the respect of a wide circle of business men, and was regarded as one of the matrimonial prizes of the city; his name had been discussed for public office; he was a success.
And yet this night, as he sat in his comfortable rooms and watched the street lights come fluttering on as twilight silhouetted the great hills to the west, he was not so sure of his success. A gas fire burned in the grate, rippling in blue, sinuous waves, and radiating an agreeable warmth on the May evening air. Dave finished his cigar and stood by the window, where the street light now poured in, blending its pale effulgence with the blue radiance from the grate. He was a man to be admired. His frame a trifle stouter than when we last saw him, but still supple and firm; the set of the shoulders, the taper of the body to the waist, the keen but passive face, the poise of the whole figure was that of one who, tasting of the goodness of life, had not gormandized thereon. He was called a success, yet in the honesty of his own soul he feared the coin did not ring true. Conward had insisted more and more upon "weighing the coal." And Dave had concerned himself less and less with the measure. That was what worried him. He felt that the crude but honest conception of the square deal which was the one valuable heritage of his childhood was slipping away from him. He had little in common with Conward outside of their business relationship. He suspected the man vaguely, but had never found tangible ground for his suspicion. Dave did not drink, and those confidences peculiar to a state of semi-intoxication were denied him. He was afraid to drink, not with the fear of the craven, but with the fear of a man who knows his enemy's advantage. He had suffered in his own home, and he feared the enemy, and would make no truce. Neither was he seduced by the vices which the possession of wealth made easy to his hand. He counted more as a dream—a sort of supernalism out of the past—that last night and that last compact with Irene Hardy, but it had been anchorage for his soul on more than one dangerous sea, and he would not give it up. Some time, he supposed, he should take a wife, but until then that covenant, sealed by the moonlight to the approving murmur of the spruce trees, should stand as his one title of character against which no caveat might be registered.
He was turning this very matter over in his mind, and wondering what the end would be, when a knock came at the door.
"Come," he said, switching on the light… "Oh, it's you, Bert. I am honoured. Sit down."
The girl threw her coat over a chair and sank into another. Without speaking she extended her shapely feet to the fire, but when its soothing warmth had comforted her limbs she looked up and said,
"Adam sure put it over on us, didn't he?"
"Still nursing that grievance over your sex," laughed Dave. "I thought you would outgrow it."
"I don't blame him," continued the girl, ignoring his interruption. "I am just getting back from forty-seven teas. Gabble, gabble, gabble. I don't blame him. We deserve it."
"Then you have had nothing to eat?"
"Almost. Only insignificant indigestibles."
Dave pressed a button, and a Chinese boy (all male Chinese are boys) entered, bowing in that deference which is so potent to separate the white man from his silver. The white man glories in being salaamed, especially by an Oriental, who can grovel with a touch of art. And the Oriental has not been slow to capitalize his master's vanity.
"Bring something to eat. Go out for it, and be quick. For two."
"Ice cleam? Toast? Tea—"
"No! Something to eat! Soup, flied chicken, hot vegetables, dessert, everything."
"You've had your dinner, surely?" asked Bert.
"Such a dinner as a man eats alone," he answered. "Now for something real. You stick to the paper like the ink, don't you, Bert?"
"Can't leave it. I hate it—and I love it. It's my poison and my medicine. Most of all I hate the society twaddle. And, of course, that's what I have to do."
"And you write it up so gloriously," said Dave. "Enthusiasm in every line of it."
"You read it, then? I thought all men looked on the society page with contempt."
"They do. But they look on it just the same—long enough to see whether their names appear among those present."
"Or whose husband is out of town?"
"You're growing more cynical all the time."
"How can I help it, when I see both sides of the game? If I printed half what I know I'd have every lawyer in this city busy to-morrow—except those who skipped out over-night."
"You know it," Dave agreed. "But here is dinner." The boy wheeled a table between them, and there was a savoury smell of hot food.
"A recherché repast," screamed Bert, half through her soup, with a great burst of merriment. "Oh, I must tell you. You remember the Metfords? You used to shovel coal for them. I know you're no snob, or I wouldn't put it so brutally. Of course, they're rich. Sold the old stable-yard for a quarter of a million, or thereabouts, and are now living in style. Some style! When they have guests, as they nearly always have—there'll be parasites as long as there's easy money—old man Metford eats breakfast in evening dress. And she orders the chiffonier to take the guests down to the depôt in their Packer. But one thing has gone to her heart. She didn't realize in time that it wasn't good form to be prolific. Now that she knows three is the limit she has sent the other six to the country. But that isn't what I started on. She called up this morning and gave me hell because I said yesterday that she had served a recherché repast at some function they pulled off the other night. 'See here, young woman,' she says, 'I want you to understand there's none of that recherché stuff on my table. Nothing short of champagne, every drop of it.' I just yelled."
"Why didn't you print a retraction?"
"I don't know."
"I do. It's because, Miss Roberta, beneath your cynicism and your assumption of masculinity, you are as sympathetic as a young mother. It would be mean to put over anything like that, and you just can't do it."
"Nonsense. You see what I print at times—"
"Bert," he said suddenly, "why don't you get married?"
"Who, me?" Then she laughed. "I guess I'm too sympathetic. It would be mean to put over anything like that on a man, and a girl wouldn't have me."
"Well, then, why don't you buy some real estate?" he continued, jocularly. "Every man should have some dissipation—something to make him forget his other troubles."
"A little late in the meal for that word, isn't it?"
He stared a moment, and then sprang to his feet. "I beg your pardon. What will you drink?"
"What you drink."
"But I drink coffee."
"So do I… I may be mannish, Dave, but I don't think I'm a fool. I can understand a man drinking, but not a woman. It's too dangerous.… But I'll smoke a cigarette.
"Now, as for real estate. The fact is, I have invested."
A look came into his face which she did not understand. "With whom?" he demanded, almost peremptorily.
"With Conward & Elden," she answered, and the roguishness of her voice suggested that her despised femininity lay not far from the surface. "Were you about to be jealous?"
"Why didn't you come to me?" She realized that he was in deep earnest.
"I did," she answered, candidly. "At least, I asked for you, but you were out of town, so Conward took me in hand, and I followed his advice."
"Do you trust Conward?" he demanded almost fiercely.
"Well, he's good enough to be your partner, isn't he?"
The thrust hurt more than she knew. He had his poise again.
"Real estate is the only subject I would trust him on," she continued. "I must say, Dave, that for a shrewd business man you are awfully dense about Conward."
He remained silent for a few moments. He decided not to follow her lead. He knew that if she had anything explicit to say about Conward she would say it when she felt the time to be opportune, and not until then. He returned to the matter of her speculation.
"How much did you invest?"
"Not much. Just what I had."
"You mean all your savings?"
"Why not? It's all right, isn't it?"
He had risen and was standing again by the window. The long line of lights stretched out until they became mere diamond points on the velvet bosom of the night. Motor cars sped noiselessly to and fro, save where, at the corner below, chauffeurs exercised their sirens. But neither the lights, nor the night, nor the movement and noises of the street had any part in the young man's consciousness.
"It's all right, isn't it?" she repeated.
"I'm afraid it isn't," he said at length, in a restrained voice. "I'm afraid it isn't."
"What do you mean?" she demanded. There was an accusation in her eyes that was hard to face.
"Bert," he continued, "did it ever occur to you that this thing must have an end—that we can't go on forever lifting ourselves by our own bootstraps? We have built a city here, a great and beautiful city, almost as a wizard might build it by magic over night. There was room for it here; there was occasion; there was justification. But there was neither occasion nor justification for turning miles and miles of prairie land into city lots—lots which in the nature of things cannot possibly, in your time or mine, be required for city purposes. These lots should be producing; wheat, oats, potatoes, cows, butter—that is what we must build our city on. We have been considering the effect rather than the cause. The cause is the country, the neglected country, and until it overtakes the city we must stand still, if we do not go back. Our prosperity has been built on borrowed money, and we have forgotten that borrowed money must, sometime, be repaid. Meanwhile, in the heart of the greatest agricultural country in the world, we bring our potatoes across the American continent and our butter across the Pacific ocean."
He had spoken with effort, as one who makes a bitter confession, yet tries to state the case fairly, without excuses and without violence.
"You mean that the boom is about to burst?" she said.
"Not exactly burst. It will not be so sudden as that. It will just ooze away, like a toy balloon pricked with a pin."
There was silence for some minutes. When she spoke at length it was with a tinge of bitterness.
"So you are unloading?"
"The firm is. I beg you, Bert, to believe that if I had known your intention I would have tried to dissuade you. I would have advised you to keep your money in the bank until after the air cleared. Three per cent. is small, but it is better than tax bills on unsalable property."
"Why me particularly? I am only one of the great public. Why don't you give your conclusions to the world? When you were convinced that a period of inflation was about to occur you did not hesitate to say so. If I remember you used The Call for that purpose. Now that you see the reaction setting in, doesn't honesty suggest what your course should be?"
She had risen, and she, too, looked with unseeing eyes upon the busy street. There was reproach in her voice, Dave thought, rather than bitterness.
He spread his hands. "What's the use? The harm is done. To predict a collapse would be to precipitate a panic. It is as though we were passengers on a boat at sea. You and I know the boat is sinking, but the other passengers don't. They are making merry with champagne and motor cars—if you can accept that figure—and revelry and easy money. Why spoil their remaining few hours by telling them they are headed for the bottom?… Besides, they are not deserving of sympathy, after all. They are in the game because they wanted to make money without earning it. Gamblers, every one of them. And the man or woman who expects to get wealth without giving value shouldn't whine if, by a turn of fate, he gives value without getting wealth."
After a moment she placed her fingers on his arm. "Forgive me, Dave," she said. "I didn't mean to whine."
"You didn't whine," he returned, almost fiercely. "It's not in you. You are too good a sport. But there will be lots of whining in the coming months." Man-like it did not occur to Dave that in that moment the girl had bid good-bye to her savings of a dozen years, and had merely looked up and said, "Forgive me, Dave, I didn't mean to whine." When he thought of it, long afterward, he had a sudden conviction that if he had realized then just how much of a brick she was he would have proposed to her on the spot… And she would have laughed, and said, "Now, Dave, don't spoil our fun with anything like that."
What she did do was to let her hand creep up his arm until she could tap his cheek with her second finger. "Is this all the entertainment you can think of to-night?" she bantered.
He glanced at his watch. "It's late for a theatre," he said, "but we can ride. Which do you say—auto or horse-back?"
"I can't go horse-back in these clothes, and I don't want to change."
Dave pressed a button, and the omnipresent Chinese "boy" stood before him. "My car," he said. "The two-passenger car. I shall not want a driver." Then, continuing to Miss Morrison, "You will need something more than that coat. Let me see. My smoking jacket should fit."
In a few minutes they were threading their way through the street traffic in Dave's machine. Whatever had been his forecast of impending disaster, the streets held little hint of it. They were congested with traffic and building material. Although it was late at night the imperious clamour of electric rivetters rattled down from steel structures on every hand. Office blocks, with their rental space all contracted months in advance, were being rushed to completion by the aid of arc lights and double shifts. But presently the traffic thinned, and the car hummed through long residential avenues of comfortable homes. From a thousand unmasked windows came the glow of light; here and there were the strains of music. On and on they sped, until the city streets and the city lights fell behind, and the car was swinging along a fine country road, through a land marked with streams and bridges, and blocked out with fragrant bluffs of young poplars.
At last, after an hour's steady driving in a delight of motion too keen for conversation, they pulled up on the brow of a hill. A soft breeze from the south-west, sensuous with the smell of spruce and balm-o'-gilead, pressed, cool and gentle, against their faces, and far to the south-east some settler's burning straw pile lay like an orange-red coal on the lips of the prairie, from which she blew an incense of ruddy gold and ochre, fan-shaped against the heavens. Behind them, to the north, far-away city lights danced and sparkled in the lap of the foot-hills, like diamonds strewn by some mighty and profligate Croesus. Dave switched off his lights, the better to appreciate the majesty of the night, and in the silence came the low murmur of water. There were no words. They sat and breathed it.
Suddenly, from a sharp bend in the road, flashed the lights of an approaching car. Dave was able to switch his own lights on again only in time to avoid a collision. The on-coming car lurched and passed by furiously, but not before Dave had recognized Conward as the driver. Back on its trail of dust floated the ribald notes of half-intoxicated women.
"Close enough," said Dave, when the dust had settled. "Well, let us jog back home."
They took the return trip leisurely, drinking in the glories of the night, and allowing time for the play of conversation. Bert Morrison was a good conversationalist. Her points of interest were almost infinite. And they were back among the street lights before they knew.
"Oh, we are nearly home," she exclaimed. "And, honest, Dave, I wanted to ask you something. Why don't you get married?"
"I guess I'm too sympathetic," he answered, after a moment's pause. "And it wouldn't be fair—"
"Oh, can that. It's been warmed over once already. Really, though, why don't you?"
"Why should I?"
"Why shouldn't you? It's natural. And you know you can't go on always just putting it off. It leaves your life empty. To-night, when I asked you if you had had dinner, you said, 'Such a meal as a man eats alone.' That betrays the emptiness."
"I suppose it does. But I don't know many girls. I don't know any girl very well, except you, and you wouldn't have me."
"No, I wouldn't," she answered frankly. "I like you too well. But you know other girls, and you could get to know more if you wanted to. There's Edith Duncan, for instance."
"Edith is a fine girl. The Duncans are wonderful people. I owe to them almost everything. But as for marrying Edith—"
"Why not?"
"I don't know. I never thought of it that way. She's a fine girl."
"None better," said Bert, with decision. "Dave, I'm not much on orthodox religion, as you know, but that girl's got something on me. She has a voice that would make her famous on the stage, but she uses it all the time, as she says, 'in the service of the King!' I think she's narrow on that point, but I know she's sincere. Edith has had a great sorrow, and it makes her nobility stand out, pure and wonderful, like a white gem in a black setting. It seems to be the law that one must rub shoulders with sorrow before he really begins to live. And any afternoon you can find her down in the children's ward, singing with that wonderful voice to the little sick sufferers."
"I know about her sorrow," said Dave, as though confessing a profound secret. "She told me about her little brother being killed."
It sprang to Bert's lips to say, "Oh, what's the use?" but she checked herself. They were at the door of her boarding-house. As he helped her to the sidewalk Dave stood for a moment with her hand in his. He had long liked Bert Morrison, and to-night he was powerfully drawn toward her. He knew—what she would have most strenuously denied—that her masculinity was a sham. Her defiance of convention—rambling like a fellow bachelor into his apartments—her occasional profanity and occasional cigarette—these were but the cloak from which her own deep womanhood was forever peering forth. He felt impelled to kiss her. He wondered if she would be angry; if such a familiarity would obstruct their growing friendship. He felt sure she would not be angry, but she would probably think him foolish. And man cannot endure being thought foolish by woman.
"Oh, I almost forgot," she said as they parted, as though she really had forgotten. "I was at a reception to-day when a beautiful woman asked for you. Asked me if I had ever heard of Mr. David Elden.
"'What, Dave Elden, the millionaire?' I said. 'Everybody knows him. He's the beau of the town, or could be, if he wanted to.' Oh, I gave you a good name, Dave."
"Thanks, Bert. That was decent. Who was she?"
"She said her name was Irene Hardy."