S. B. Mudge
Symes laid down the letter and smoothed it carefully, setting a small brass crocodile exactly in the centre. Wiping his clammy palms upon one of the handkerchiefs purchased on his wedding tour, the texture of which always gave him a pleasurable sense of refinement and well-being, he read again the line which showed below the paper-weight:
There's one thing sure—we're down and out.
Symes's head sunk weakly forward. Down and out! Not even Mudge knew how far down and out!
Stripped of the hope of success, robbed of the position which he had made for himself, his self-esteem punctured, his home-life a mockery, no longer young—it was the combination which makes a man whose vanity is his strength, lose his grip. To be little where he had been big; to be the object of his ruined neighbors' scorn—men have blown their brains out in his mood, and for less.
What Mudge and the Company regarded as wilful misrepresentations had in the beginning been due to inexperience and ignorance of an undertaking which it required scientific knowledge to successfully carry out. When the truth had been gradually borne in upon him as the work progressed, he felt that it was too late to explain or retract if he would raise more money and keep his position. The real cost he believed would frighten possible investors and with the peculiar sanguineness of the short-sighted, he thought that it would work out somehow.
And all had gone well until Mudge's unheeded warning had come that some subtle but formidable influence was at work to their undoing.
The dull red of mortification crept slowly over Symes's face as he realized that Ogden Van Lennop, before whom he had boasted of his lineage, and patronized, was a conspicuous member of a family whose name was all but a household word throughout the land!
But why, Symes asked the question that Mudge had asked, why should Van Lennop thrust the knife between his short ribs—and turn it? It could not be because Van Lennop had resented his patronage and his vaporings to any such extent as this; he was not that kind. No; he had been touched deeper than his pride or any petty vanity.
Another question like an answer to his first flashed through his mind. Could it be—was it possible that his attentions to Essie Tisdale, the biscuit-shooter of the Terriberry House, had been sincere?