CHAPTER XVIII.
[THE BROKER BROKE].
Ralph Herkimer sat in his New York hotel looking glum. The turn he had been expecting in Pikes Peak and Montana had come; the stock had been brought into notice at last, but it would have been better for him if it had remained unquoted on the share list, as it had been for weeks back. The turn was one for the worse. The shares had gone begging on Wall Street. Nobody would buy. He sat with his hands in his pockets, his chair tilted back, and his hat drawn over his eyes, pulling furiously at a huge cigar, and involving himself in smoke. It was a serious position of his affairs, and there was nothing he could do in the circumstances but wait--wait till he was ruined outright, which at the moment seemed likely enough, or be patient through months, if not years, till improvement came. Of the two alternatives, the former seemed at that moment the preferable, in so far as that it would be soonest over.
The Canada mail was in; his letters were brought him--an unpleasant bundle always now. "They can wait. There is no hurry." He pushes them aside. But, stay! There is one from his wife. "Martha," he says, and breaks the seal.
He was intensely sorry for himself that afternoon. The world was so hard. Nobody seemed a bit interested to know that he was on the verge of being ruined; in fact, it inclined them rather to get out of his way. "Ill-luck," one would have said, to see them, "must be infectious." His friends on Wall Street seemed busy that day whenever he wanted to discuss with them, and some had even been rather short, as to a manifest bore. If he would, he might have recollected that such are the manners and customs among money-makers, when a money-loser comes along. He had practised them himself; but that was when other people were the losers; now it was he, and that made all the difference.
But Martha was fond of him, and he turned to her letter for comfort and sympathy in his deep self-pity. He was fond of Martha, as fond, at least, as a busy man with his head full of other things can afford to be of anybody; but that Martha was fond of him in he never doubted, and that was the aspect of their connection, which was comfortable to dwell on at that moment. He lit a fresh cigar, and opened his letter.
It was a long letter, and began by answering all the questions which he had asked, and then it went on:
"Gerald and Muriel talk about their marriage continually, as is to be expected, poor children. I have been trying to stave it off till you shall have arranged your affairs, and are able to play the part you would wish on the occasion; but I am only Gerald's mother, and it is Muriel who has the right to say when. Besides, Gerald will not allow me to put in a word which would sound like wishing delay, and Muriel seems to think that if Gerald is there, it does not matter much about his father. I cannot altogether blame the girl; it would have been my own thought twenty-five years ago, and, to be sure, I like to see my boy valued as he deserves.
"But it is Matilda who is hurrying things forward in this railway fashion. No doubt she has the best right to arrange Muriel's affairs, she has been a mother to her; but the fact is, it is going to be a double wedding. Matilda herself and Muriel are to be married the same day; Considine has plucked up heart at last, proposed, and been accepted. He should have done it long ago, as I tell him. And now that the game is in Matilda's hands, she is more eager than the little girl of sixteen. She has had longer to wait, you will say, and that there are no fools like old fools. I know the way you men like to talk, pretending to be hard, and you as soft as the women--you, Ralph, at least, only your head is so full of business you do not give yourself leisure to think.
"And, oh! Ralph, dear, I do wish you would come back to Canada and silence the scurrilous reports that are in circulation. Only show face, and the cowards and liars who invent stories about an absent man will be silenced; for well I know there is not a syllable of truth in the whole farrago. The city papers are detestable just now; and really, Ralph, you ought, for your son's and your wife's sake, as much as your own, to write your solicitors at once, and get them heavily fined for their abominable calumnies. Indifferent as you are to such things, you really cannot let that story pass which appeared in the papers the other day. It is getting copied into every paper in the Dominion, Gerald says, and he feels so sore about it; he won't show face in Montreal, he says, till it is set right. I mean, of course, the vile libel of that low Indian, Paul, which his counsel repeated to the magistrate, accusing you of having conspired to carry off and make away with your own first cousin--Mary Selby's child. I wish, dear Ralph, you would come back and face them out, the foul-tongued ruffians. That would shame them out of countenance and stop their mouths. The papers say there is a writ out against you. Come back, Ralph, give yourself up, and hurry on the trial. The sooner the truth is known the better. For all my confidence in you, I feel it painful to have the people's eyes fixed on me when I walk up the village to go to church, as if I were an evildoer. Think of it, Ralph, and come.