The Romance of a Plain Man Part 42

I drew out my watch, and with the simple, mechanical action, I was conscious of an immediate quickening of the blood, a clearing of the brain. A certain readiness for decision, a power of dealing with an emergency, of handling a crisis, a response of pulse and brain to the call for action, stood me service now as in every difficult instant of my career. They were picked business men and shrewd financiers before me, yet I was aware that I dominated them, all and each, by some quality of force, of aggressiveness, of inflated self-confidence. The secret of my success, I had once said to the General, was that I began to get cool when I saw other people getting scared.

"It is now a quarter of ten, gentlemen," I said, "and I pledge my word of honour that I will have a quarter of a million dollars in bank by ten o'clock to-morrow."

"For G.o.d's sake, Ben, where is it coming from?" demanded Judge Kenton, an old Confederate, with the solemn face I had sometimes watched him a.s.sume in church during the singing of the hymns. As I looked at him the humour of his expression struck me, and I broke into a laugh.

"I beg your pardon," I returned the next minute, "but I'll get it--somewhere--if it's in the city."

One of the men--I forget which, though I remember quite clearly that he wore a red necktie--got up from the table and slapped me on the shoulder.

"Go ahead, Ben, and get it," he said. "We take your word."

On the pavement the crowd had thickened, and when it caught sight of me, a confused murmur rose, and I was surrounded by half-hysterical women.

The trouble, as Bingley had said, had begun with the small depositors; and in the line that pressed now like black ants to the doors, there were many evidently who had entrusted their nest-eggs to us for safe-keeping. I was not gentle by nature, and the sight of a woman's tears always aroused in me, not the angel, but the brute. For five years I had been married to a descendant of the Blands and the Fairfaxes, and yet, as I stood there, held at bay, in the midst of those sobbing women, the veneer of refinement peeled off from me, and the raw strength of the common man showed on the surface, and triumphed again as it had triumphed over the frightened directors in my office.

"What are you whining about?" I said with a laugh, "your money is all there. Go in and get it."

An old woman in a plaid shawl, with her mouth twisted sideways by a recent stroke of paralysis, barred my way with an outstretched hand, in which she held the foot of a grey yarn stocking.

"I'd laid it up for my old age, Mister," she mumbled, through her toothless gums, "an' they told me it was safer in the bank, so I put it there. But I reckon I'd feel easier if I had it back--I reckon I'd feel easier."

"Then go after it," I replied harshly, pus.h.i.+ng her out of my way. "If you don't get it before I come back, I'll give it to you with my own hands."

For a minute my presence subdued the crowd; but the panic terror had gripped it, and while I crossed the street the hysterical murmurs were in my ears. A desire to turn and throttle the sound as I might a howling wild beast took possession of me. It was true, I suppose, as Dr.

Theophilus had once told me, that the quality I lacked was tenderness.

The General fortunately was alone in his private office, and when I went in he glanced up enquiringly from a railroad report he was reading.

"It's you, Ben, is it?" he remarked, and went back to his paper.

"General," I said bluntly, and stopped short in the centre of the room, "I want a quarter of a million dollars in cash by nine o'clock to-morrow morning."

For a moment he sat speechless, blinking at me with his swollen eyelids, while his lower lip protruded angrily, like the lip of a crying child.

Then the old war-horse in him responded gallantly to the scent of battle.

"d.a.m.n you, Ben, do you know cash is as tight as wax?" he enquired. "You ain't dozing in the midst of a panic?"

"There's trouble at the bank," I replied. "A run has started, but so far it is almost entirely among the small depositors. We can manage to pay off till three o'clock, and if we open to-morrow with a quarter of a million, we shall probably keep on our feet, unless the excitement spreads."

"When do you want it?"

"By nine o'clock to-morrow morning; and I want it, General," I added, "on my personal credit."

He rose from his chair and stood swaying unsteadily on his gouty foot.

"I'll give you every penny that I've got, Ben," he answered, "but it ain't that much."

"You have access to the cash of both the Tilden Bank and the Bonfield Trust Company. If there's a dollar in the city you can get it."

A hint of his sly humour appeared for an instant in his eyes. "It wasn't any longer ago than breakfast that I remarked I didn't believe there was a blamed dollar in the whole country," he returned. Then his swaying stopped and he became invested suddenly with the dignity of the greatest financier in the state.

"Hand me my stick, Ben, and I'll go and see what I can do about it," he said.

I gave him his stick and my arm, and with my a.s.sistance he limped to the offices of the Bonfield Trust Company on the next block. When I returned to the bank the directors were talking excitedly, but at my entrance a hush fell, and they sat looking at me with a row of vacant, expectant faces that waited apparently to be filled with expression.

"By ten o'clock to-morrow morning," I said, "a quarter of a million in cash will be brought in through the door in bags."

"I told you he'd do it," exclaimed Bingley, as he grasped my hand, "and I hope to G.o.d it will stay 'em off."

"You need a drink, Ben," observed Judge Kenton, "and so do I. Let's go and get it. A soft-boiled egg was all I had for breakfast, and I've gone faint."

I remember that I went to a restaurant with him, that a few old women sitting on the curbing spoke to us as we pa.s.sed, that we ate oysters, and returned in half an hour to another meeting, that we discussed ways and means until eight o'clock and decided nothing. I know also that when we came out again several of the old women were still crouching there, and that when they came whining up to me, I turned on them with an oath and ordered them to be off. As clearly as if it were yesterday, I can see still the long, solemn face of the Judge as he glanced up at me, and I see written upon it something of the faint wonder that I had grown to regard as the peculiar look of the Blands.

I had telephoned Sally not to wait, and when I reached home I found that she had dismissed the servants and was preparing a little supper for me herself. While she served me, I sat perfectly silent, too exhausted to talk or to think, trying in vain to remember the more important events of the day. Only once did Sally speak, and that was to beg me to eat the slice of cold turkey she had laid on my plate.

"I'm not hungry, I got something with Judge Kenton down town," I returned as I pushed back my chair and rose from the table; "what I need is sleep, sleep, sleep. If I don't get to bed, I'll drop to sleep on the hearth-rug."

"Then go, dear," she answered, and not until I reached the landing above did I realise that through it all she had not put a single question to me. With the realisation I knew that I ought to have told her what in her heart she must have felt it to be her right to know; but a nervous shrinking, which seemed to be a result of my complete physical exhaustion, held me back when I started to retrace my steps.

She might cry, and the sight of tears would unman me. There's time enough, I thought. Why not to-morrow instead? Yet in my heart I knew it would be no easier to do it to-morrow than it was to-day. By some strange freak of the imagination those unshed tears of hers seemed already dropping upon my nerves. "There's time enough, she'll be obliged to hear it in the end," something within me repeated with a kind of dulness. And with the words, while my head touched the pillow, I started suddenly wide awake as though from the flash of a lantern that was turned inward. Trivial impressions of the afternoon stood out as if illuminated against the outer darkness, and there hovered before me the face of the old woman, in the plaid shawl, with her twisted mouth, and the foot of her grey yarn stocking held out in her palsied hand. "I reckon I'd feel easier if I had it back," said a voice somewhere in my brain.

CHAPTER XXV

WE FACE THE FACTS AND EACH OTHER

The panic which had begun with the depositors of small accounts, spread next day to the holders of larger ones, and even while I stood at my window and watched the cash brought in in bags through the cheering crowd on the sidewalk, I knew that the quarter of a million dollars would go down with the rest. My financial insight had misled me, and the bank funds, which I had believed so carefully guarded, had suffered the same fate as my private fortune. There were more serious questions behind the immediate need of currency, and these questions drummed in my mind now, dull and regular as the beat of a hammer.

For three days we paid off our accounts, and at the end of that time, when I left the building, after the run had stopped, it seemed to me that the city had a deserted and trampled look, as if some enormous picnic had been held in the streets. A few loose shreds of paper, a banana peel here and there, the ends of numerous cigars, and the white patch torn from a woman's petticoat littered the pavement. Over all there was a thick coating of dust, and the wind, blowing straight from the east, whipped swirls of it into our faces, as the General and I drove slowly up-town in his buggy.

"You look down in the mouth, Ben," he remarked, as I took the reins.

"I've got an infernal toothache, General; it kept me awake all night."

"Well, bless my soul, you ought to be thankful if it takes your mind off the country. I haven't seen such a state of affairs since the days of reconstruction. I tell you, my boy, the only thing on earth to do is to take a julep. Lithia water is well enough in times of prosperity, but you can't support a panic on it. I've gone back to my julep, and if I die of it, I'll die with a little spirit in me."

"There're worse things than death ahead of me, General, there's ruin."

"It's the toothache, Ben. Don't let it take all the spirit out of you."

"No, it's more than the toothache, confound it!--it never leaves off.

The truth is, I'm in the tightest place of my life, and to keep what I own would cost me more than I've got. I haven't the money to pay up--and if I can't buy outright, you see that I must let go."

"I've done what I could for you, Ben, and if there is more I can do, heaven knows I'll be thankful enough."

"You've already done too much, General, but I've made sure that you shan't suffer by it. I've simply gone down, that's all, and I've got to stay there till I can get on my feet. The bank will close temporarily, I suppose, but when it starts again, it will have to start with another man. I shall look out for a smaller job."