Griggs watched the bay mare rouse herself into a smart trot and turn the corner of 34th Street. Then he went back and closed the heavy grilled door of the vestibule, wondering what had happened. He stood meditating for some moments, gazing out through the steel spindles of the grille.
“Perhaps it’s the madam,” he concluded, and returned to his pantry, though still wondering over the change in him, and its reason.
Sam Van Cortlandt could have enlightened him in four words had he chosen. That he was long in wheat. That he had plunged and lost disastrously. How much he dared not confess, even to himself. He had not dared tell Rose. He was in no condition to stand a scene, and besides he knew her of old. The one thing she detested was a serious discussion over the question of money; any hint on his part over the lack of it he knew she would receive in a tantrum. She abhorred any mention of economy. She had a disregard, a positive disdain for economy, which was past all reasoning. She had gone through several big sums since their marriage—fortunes in themselves—which he had put at her disposal, as easily as a schoolgirl empties a box of bonbons. The musicale to a man of his wealth was only a detail of their winter’s entertaining, but as he felt this morning, it was an extravagance that, in view of the present critical situation, he could ill afford. What it would cost he had only a vague idea of. Rose had attended to that; moreover, he knew she had not left a luxury unordered. Last month’s account at Park & Tilford’s stood out conspicuously on their books as a record. Even the clerk who figured it up opened his eyes. Then dinner after dinner; luncheon after luncheon. Gowns from Paris, hats from Fifth Avenue, and a necklace from Tiffany’s whose cost alone would have ruined many a man considered comfortably off; a peace-offering to make life worth living again after their tiff over the Huntley dinner, an occasion when the faithful Griggs had let him in at daylight, that hour when the cheerful sparrows who have slept well, chirp their virtues to you mockingly, and the rattle of the milk-cans shivers your nerves. Rose had not only thanked him; she had impulsively kissed him for it on the top of his gray head, once for every pearl, and with so much semblance of forgiveness that he had gone down-town the next day in the best of good-humor.
His wealth!
His plunge in wheat this time was serious. Other men as rich as he had played the same game and been completely ruined. There was Dick Thomson, for instance, who in three days’ speculating became a pauper, was kept afloat for a time by the grace of two of his biggest creditors, and was finally swept off his feet in the tide-way of financial ruin, and sank out of sight and memory.
As the bay mare sped on down Fifth Avenue Van Cortlandt looked at himself in the narrow mirror panelled between the coupé windows. What he saw was a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but he stiffened up his clean-shaven chin, rubbed his haggard eyes, and laid most of his condition to late dinners.
It never occurred to him that he was getting what he deserved; that the unscrupulous methods he had so successfully pursued in the past, as Enoch had truthfully declared, “from New Orleans to San Francisco,” were retaliating; that in some measure the ruin and misery he had swept broadcast, was being avenged. For years success had gone along with him, arm in arm, like a boon companion, unfailing. Everything he had wished for, fought for, success had given him: wealth, position, a rich harvest from big deals that flattered him and surprised Wall Street—his immunity from conviction at the hands of the Supreme Court. Defeated in his scheme for nomination as governor, success had handed him new riches in compensation. Success had stood by him, protected him, saved him through a hundred reckless ventures. To-day the ghost of success sat beside him as helpless as a skeleton. He reached his office with quivering nerves. The slump in wheat continued. Wall Street was in a panic, the Produce Exchange a frenzied bedlam.
The Stock Exchange opened in an uproar. Its floor a bawling, shouting, frantic mass of members. From the gallery they resembled a black mass of humanity drowning in a whirlpool, their white hands stretched desperately above their heads as they signalled to sell. Some managed to be seen by their rescuers and were saved in the nick of time by a put or call. Others continued to gesticulate and shout hopelessly; others elbowed, shoved, swayed back, recovered, and fought their way through to buy. Men made decisions with that nerve and lightning rapidity born of their trade. The man who hesitated was lost. Every fresh minute the rise and fall of stocks flashed on the announcement boards spelled safety or defeat. Wheat continued to drop; what had been yours was now another’s. Wealth appeared, reappeared, and vanished. Losses in cold figures appeared and remained. Men with blanched faces stared grimly at each other in passing. Wheat dropped five points and a fraction. Those who had won yelled out of sheer exuberance. Fortune, the mother of all gambling—looked down on them with a smile; she was used to such scenes as these. It was a common sight to her to see her children ruined—or in luck.
In the centre of this howling mob—his battered derby hat on the back of his head, dazed, white, and trembling—stood Sam Van Cortlandt. He was slowly tearing to bits a scrap of paper upon which he had jotted down an order that, had it been carried out, would have got him into worse difficulties. A moment before he had braced every nerve in him and decided to risk it, but his nerve had failed him. He was done for, and he knew it. A few moments later he found himself on the fringe of the howling mob. Outcasts frequent the borders. The noise in the great room had been deafening. He found a certain relief and comparative quiet in the corridor. Men stalked about it, some in silence. Jonas Fair & Co. had gone down with the crash. Sims & Jenkins, too. The list was long. Where was his friend Success who had played him false? Dead.
He made his way back to his office, scarcely conscious of the street corners he turned. When he reached it he locked himself in his private room, lighted a cigar, and for all of half an hour paced the floor.