He straightened himself and looked at me for the first time. “She telephoned me she was going to take all the blame,” he said, resolutely. “It isn’t true that she led me into this. I started with my own money, then added Natalie’s, then some from Mr. Bradish, and it wasn’t until then that I went to mother and induced her to risk her money.”
I was astonished at the manliness of his look and tone—as unlike him as possible. “Marriage seems to have improved you,” said I.
“Yes—it’s Natalie,” he replied, his face taking on the foolish look a man gets when he is under the thumb of some woman. “She’s very different from what we thought—or from what she thought herself. She’s made me into a new sort of man.”
“A stock gambler?” said I.
He reddened, but knew better than to show his teeth at me, when he was, if possible, more dependent than ever before.
“A fine story you tell for your mother,” I went on; “but she told me everything—about James, too.”
“If she says she led James into speculating, that wasn’t so, either,” he replied, and again his voice was honest. “Jim was deep in the hole, and she tried to help him out.”
“And how do you happen to know so much about James and his speculating?” I asked, sharply.
His eyes dropped and he began to shift from leg to leg in his old despicable fashion. “I—know,” he said, doggedly.
But I wasn’t interested in James—or, for that matter, in the comparative guilt of Walter and his mother. I had no more time to give to the affair. I sent Walter away, after repeating my warning as to the consequences of another lapse, and then I gave my whole attention to business—to punishing the other wretched “shorts” and to putting on full steam throughout my combination, mine now in its entirety and therefore ready for the utmost development of its earning power.