“Great heavens!” gasped Charlie. Lauer was merely one of their clerks. It was Tamms himself who had been buying all the Deacon’s Starbuck Oil stock quietly, unknown even to Charlie; and he had sold all their own Allegheny Central; and then met his senior partner’s order by causing the latter corporation to guaranty the former. He had served both God and Mammon, captured the keen Deacon, pleased his partner, and made money at the same time. And Charlie turned to the quotations.
Allegheny Central was down at 73, and the Starbuck Oil had gone up to 140; and the bonds were well above par. And Tamms had secured the reputation of an honorable financier into the bargain!
Charlie began rapidly to calculate. Tamms must have now over ten thousand Starbuck Oil, upon which he had made at least thirty dollars a share; and he had finally got the control besides. He had sold much of their Allegheny Central at nearly the highest prices, averaging 90 or so, making perhaps $200,000 here. Add to this the $100,000 or more they had made originally upon the Terminal bonds, upon which the firm’s endorsement was now unnecessary, and——
“The Governor is a devilish clever fellow,” concluded Charlie. And as he thought of that drive with Mamie, he feared that he himself had been too precipitate.
CHAPTER XXIV.
MAMIE GOES TO THE SHOW.
GRACIE had looked forward with a yearning she would not even to herself allow to the summer and her coming to her father’s home once more. There are times when rocks and woods and fields and streams speak to us with sympathy no human being seems to have; why is it, I wonder? When nature was an enemy and men were savages, they seemed unconscious of her and thought only of each other; now that men have all learned human sympathy, and altruism is the cry, some, and those perhaps the gentlest and the noblest of us all, must fly to nature for a refuge yet. But perhaps we have not yet learned human sympathy; or perhaps it is the divine that we should have instead. Perhaps our sympathy is too often one of common objects or of common lusts. Perhaps each one seeks his glory, rather that he may dazzle others with it than lend his light to them.
But Gracie was not complex, nor analytic; it is only the diseased who so apply the scalpel. If she ever was unhappy, she thought it willed from Heaven; or sought the cause in herself and not in other things. And at all events, she was not unhappy now, save as some lily may be sad for loneliness. Yet who would wish no lilies grew but such as serve in balls or churches? Some will tell you that all lilies are forced; not natural even there. But others of us may believe in lilies still.
And Mamie too had some of Gracie’s happiness; some sense of things she had not felt before. They walked, and rode, and read together; and if Gracie dreamed, Mamie would think, more practically. But Mamie, too, had learned to love her cousin; still, perhaps, with some slight shade of patronage. Thus they had been together, until that day when Townley called and brought with him to Mamie the envied savor of the world again. She returned from her drive, full of triumph, to Gracie; and then Gracie had been forced into the thankless attitude of a duenna. Gracie could not have told why she did not quite like Charlie Townley; and Mamie had begun to pout once more. And Mamie had looked for Charlie the next day; but he did not come, nor yet the next day; and Mamie had blamed Gracie with being rude to him.
For Charlie, after reading the paper that night, had almost had his confidence in Tamms restored. He meant to marry some time, and to make his fortune by it; but he had a dread of wedlock, even gilded; as every sensible man must, he thought.