XXI
He fancied Betty desired to make up for her thoughtlessness during the holidays when she asked him for dinner on a Saturday night. With that dinner, no matter what others might think of his lack of money and background, she had put herself on record, for it was a large, formal party sprinkled with people from New York, and drawing from the University only the kind of men Allen was out to fight. Wandel, George thought, rather disapproved of his being there, but as a result, he made two trips to parties in New York during the winter. Both were failures, for he didn't meet Sylvia, yet he heard of her always as a dazzling success.
He answered Dalrymple's cold politeness with an irritating indifference. In the spring, however, he detected a radical alteration in Dalrymple's manner.
By that time, the scheme discussed carelessly at the Alstons' in the fall had been worked out. On good afternoons, when their work allowed, a few men, all friends of the Alstons, drove out, and, with passable ponies, played practice matches at polo on the field Mr. Alston had had arranged. The neighbours fell into a habit of concentrating there, and George was thrown into intimate contact with them, seeing other gates open rather eagerly before him, for he hadn't miscalculated his ability to impress with horses. When Mr. Alston had first asked him he had accepted gladly. Because of his long habit in the saddle and his accuracy of eye he played better from the start than these other novices. As in football, he teamed well with Goodhue.
"Goodhue to Morton," Wandel complained, "or Morton to Goodhue. What chance has a mere duffer like me against such a very distinguished combination?"
It was during these games that Goodhue fell into the practice of shouting George's first name across the field, and when George became convinced that such familiarity was not chance, but an expression of a deepening friendship, he responded unaffectedly. It was inevitable the others should adopt Goodhue's example. Even Dalrymple did, and George asked himself why the man was trying to appear friendly, for he knew that in his heart Dalrymple had not altered.
It filled George with a warm and formless pleasure to hear Betty using his Christian name, to realize that a precedent had this time been established; yet it required an effort, filled him with a great confusion, to call her familiarly "Betty" for the first time.
He chatted with her at the edge of the field while grooms led the ponies up and down.
"What are your plans for the summer?" she asked.
"I don't quite know what will happen."
"We," she said, "will be in Maine. Can't you run up in August? Dicky Goodhue's coming then."
He looked at her. He tried to hide his hunger for the companionship, the relaxation such a visit would give. He glanced away.
"I wish I could. Have you forgotten I'm to make money? I've got to try to do that this summer, Betty."
There, it was out. Colour stole into her white cheeks.
"I'm sorry," she said.
He had another reason for refusing. He was growing afraid of Betty. He was conscious of an increasing effort to drive her memory from the little room where Sylvia's portrait watched. It was, he told himself, because he didn't see Sylvia oftener, couldn't feel his heart respond to the exciting enmity in her brilliant eyes.
Goodhue and Dalrymple, it developed, were parting, amicably enough as far as any one knew.
"Dolly thinks he'll room alone next year," was Goodhue's explanation. Dalrymple explained nothing.
Driving back to town one afternoon Goodhue proposed to George that he replace Dalrymple.
"Campus rooms," he said, "aren't as expensive as most in town."
He mentioned a figure. George thought rapidly. What an opportunity! And aside from what Goodhue could do for him, he was genuinely fond of the man. George craved absolute independence, and he knew Goodhue would give him all of that he asked for.
"I'd like to," he said.
Goodhue smiled.
"That's splendid. I think we'll manage together."
Wandel frowned at the news. So did Allen. Allen came frequently now to talk his college socialism. George listened patiently, always answering:
"I've made up my mind to nothing, except that I'll take my friends where I find them, high or low. But I'm not against you, Allen."
Yet George was uneasy, knowing the moment for making up his mind wouldn't be long delayed. He understood very well that already some men knew to what club they'd go more than a year later. Secretly, perhaps illegally, the sections for the clubs were forming in his class. Small groups were quietly organizing under the guidance of the upper classes. During Sophomore year these small groups would elect other men to the limit of full membership. It was perfectly clear that unless he went in ahead of Dalrymple his chances of making the club he wanted were worthless. As a result of his talks with Allen, moreover, he felt that Wandel didn't want him. If Wandel could persuade Goodhue that George could serve the interests of the fortunates best from the outside the issue would be settled.
"But I won't be used that way," George decided. "I'm out for myself."
Along that straight line he had made his plans for the summer. Somehow he was going to study the methods of the greatest financial market in the country, so that later he could apply them serviceably to his own fortune. Bailly had other ideas. One night while they lounged on the front campus listening to senior singing the long tutor suggested that he take up some form of manual labour.
"It would keep you in good condition," he said, "and it might broaden your vision by disclosing the aims and the dissatisfactions of those who live by the sweat of their brows."
George frowned.
"I know enough of that already. I've been a labourer myself. I haven't the time, sir."
Bailly probably knew that he was dealing with a point of view far more determined and mature than that of the average undergraduate. He didn't argue, but George felt the need of an apology.
"I've got to learn how to make money," he said.
"Money isn't everything," Bailly sighed.
"I've started after certain things," George justified himself. "Money's one of them. I'll work for next to nothing this summer if I have to. I'll be a runner, the man who sweeps out the office, anything that will give me a chance to watch and study Wall Street. I'm sorry if you don't approve, sir."
"I didn't say that," Bailly answered, "but the fact was sufficiently clear."
Yet George knew perfectly well a few days later that it was Bailly who had spoken about his ambition to Mr. Alston.
"Blodgett, I fancy," Mr. Alston said, "will offer you some small start."
He handed George a letter addressed to one Josiah Blodgett, of the firm of Blodgett and Sinclair.
"Good luck, and good-bye until next fall."
"If you do change your mind——If you can manage it——" Betty said.
So George, two or three days before commencement, left Princeton for Wall Street, and presented his letter.
The offices of Blodgett and Sinclair were gorgeous and extensive, raw with marble, and shining with mahogany. They suggested a hotel in bad taste rather than a factory that turned out money in spectacular quantities.
"Mr. Blodgett will see you," a young man announced in an awed voice, as if such condescension were infrequent.
In the remote room where Blodgett lurked the scheme of furnishing appeared to culminate. The man himself shared its ornamental grossness. He glanced up, his bald head puckering half its height. George saw that although he was scarcely middle-aged Blodgett was altogether too fat, with puffy, unhealthily coloured cheeks. In such a face the tiny eyes had an appearance nearly porcine. The man's clothing would have put an habitué of the betting ring at ease—gray-and-white checks, dove-coloured spats, a scarlet necktie. Pudgy fingers twisted Mr. Alston's letter. The little eyes opened wider. The frown relaxed. A bass voice issued from the broad mouth:
"If you've come here to learn, you can't expect a million dollars a week. Say fifteen to start."
George didn't realize how extraordinarily generous that was. He only decided he could scrape along on it.
"Mr. Alston," the deep voice went on, "tells me you're a great football player. That's a handicap. All you can tackle here is trouble, and the only kicking we have is when Mundy boots somebody out of a job. He's my office manager. Report to him. Wait a minute. I'd give a ping-pong player a job if Mr. Alston asked me to. He's a fine man. But then I'm through. It's up to the man and Mundy. If the man's no good Mundy doesn't even bother to tell me, and it's twenty stories to the street."
George started to thank him, but already the rotund figure was pressed against the desk, and the tiny eyes absorbed in important-looking papers.
Mundy, George decided, wasn't such an ogre after all. He wore glasses. He was bald, thin, and stoop-shouldered. He had the benign expression of a parson; but behind that bald forehead, George soon learned, was stored all the knowledge he craved, without, however, the imagination to make it personally very valuable.
If he didn't sweep the office at first, George approximated such labour, straightening the desks of the mighty, checking up on the contents of waste-paper baskets, seeing that the proper people got mail and newspapers, running errands; and always, in the office or outside, he kept his ears open and his eyes wide. He absorbed the patter of the Street. He learned to separate men into classes, the wise ones, who always made money, and the foolish, who now and then had good luck, but most of the time were settling their losses. And at every opportunity he was after what Mundy concealed behind his appearance of a parson.
At night he dissected the financial journals, watching the alterations in the market, and probing for the causes; applying to this novitiate the same grim determination he had brought to Squibs Bailly's lessons a year before. Never once was he tempted to seek a simple path to fortune.
"When I speculate," he told himself, "there'll be mighty little risk about it."
Even in those days his fifteen dollars a week condemned him to a cheap lodging house near Lexington Avenue, the simplest of meals, and practically no relaxation. He exercised each morning, and walked each evening home from the office, for he hadn't forgotten what Princeton expected from him in the fall.
Sylvia's photograph and the broken riding crop supervised his labours, but he knew he couldn't hope, except by chance, to see her this summer.
One Saturday morning Goodhue came unexpectedly into the office and carried him off to Long Island. George saw the tiny eyes of Blodgett narrow.
Blodgett, perhaps because of Mr. Alston's letter, had condescended to chat with George a number of times in the outer office. On the Monday following he strolled up and jerked out:
"Wasn't that young Richard Goodhue I saw you going off with Saturday?"
"Yes sir."
"Know him well?"
"Very. We're in the same class. We're rooming together next year."
Blodgett grunted and walked on, mopping his puffy face with a shiny blue handkerchief. George wondered if he had displeased Blodgett by going with Goodhue. He decided he hadn't, for the picturesquely dressed man stopped oftener after that, chatting quite familiarly.
Whatever one thought of Blodgett's appearance and manner, one admired him. George hadn't been in the Street a week before he realized that the house of Blodgett and Sinclair was one of the most powerful in America, with numerous ramifications to foreign countries. There was no phase of finance it didn't touch; and, as far as George could see, it was all Josiah Blodgett, who had come to New York from the West, by way of Chicago. In those offices Sinclair was scarcely more than a name in gold on various doors. Once or twice, during the summer, indeed, George saw the partner chatting in a bored way with Blodgett. His voice was high and affected, like Wandel's, and he had a house in Newport. According to office gossip he had little money interest in the firm, lending the prestige of his name for what Blodgett thought it was worth. As he watched the fat, hard worker chatting with the butterfly man, George suddenly realized that Blodgett might want a house in Newport, too. Was it because he was Richard Goodhue's room-mate that Blodgett stopped him in the hall one day, grinning with good nature?
"If I were a cub," he puffed, "I'd buy this very morning all the Katydid I could, and sell at eighty-nine."
George whistled.
"I knew something was due to happen to Katydid, but I didn't expect anything like that."
"How did you know?" Blodgett demanded.
He shot questions until he had got the story of George's close observation and night drudgery.
"Glad to see Mundy hasn't dropped you out the window yet," he grinned. "Maybe you'll get along. Glad for Mr. Alston's sake. See here, if I were a cub, and knew as much about Katydid as you do, I wouldn't hesitate to borrow a few cents from the boss."
"No," George said. "I've a very little of my own. I'll use that."
He had, perhaps, two hundred dollars in the bank at Princeton. He drew a check without hesitation and followed Blodgett's advice. He had commenced to speculate without risk. Several times after that Blodgett jerked out similar advice, usually commencing with: "What does young Pierpont Morgan think of so and so?" And usually George would give his employer a reasonable forecast. Because of these discreet hints his balance grew, and Mundy one day announced that his salary had been raised ten dollars.
All that, however, was the brighter side. Often during those hot, heavy nights, while he pieced together the day's complicated pattern, George envied the fortunates who could play away from pavements and baking walls. He found himself counting the days until he would go back to Princeton and football, and Betty's charm; but even that prospect was shadowed by his doubt as to how he would emerge from the club tangle.
He didn't meet Sylvia, but one day he saw Old Planter step from an automobile and enter the marble temple where he was accustomed to sacrifice corporations and people to the gods of his pocket-book. The great man used a heavy stick and climbed the steps rather slowly, flanked by obsequious underlings, gaped at by a crowd, buzzing and over-impressed. Somehow George couldn't fancy Blodgett with the gout—it was too delightfully bred.
He peered in the automobile, but of course Sylvia wasn't there, nor, he gathered from his mother's occasional notes to thank him for the little money he could send her, was she much at Oakmont.
"I'll see her this fall," he told himself, "and next winter. I've started to do what I said I would."
As far as Wall Street was concerned, Blodgett evidently agreed with him.
"I can put up with you next summer," he said at parting. "I'll write Mr. Alston you're fit for something besides football."
Mundy displayed a pastoral sadness.
"You ought to stay right here," he said. "College is all right if you don't want to amount to a hill of beans. It's rotten for making money."
Nevertheless, he agreed to send George a weekly letter, giving his wise views as to what was going on among the money makers. They all made him feel that even in that rushing place his exit had caused a perceptible ripple.