XVI. TRAPPED AND TRIMMED
There are two kinds of dangerous temptations--those that tempt us, andthose that don't. Those that don't, give us a false notion of our resistingpower, and so make us easy victims to the others. I thought I knew myselfpretty thoroughly, and I believed there was nothing that could tempt meto neglect my business. With this delusion of my strength firmly in mind,when Anita became a temptation to neglect business, I said to myself: "Togo up-town during business hours for long lunches, to spend the morningsselecting flowers and presents for her--these things _look_ likeneglect of business, and would be so in some men. But _I_ couldn'tneglect business. I do them because my affairs are so well ordered that afew hours of absence now and then make no difference--probably send me backfresher and clearer."
When I left the office at half-past twelve on that fateful Wednesday inJune, my business was never in better shape. Textile Common had dropped apoint and a quarter in two days--evidently it was at last on its way slowlydown toward where I could free myself and take profits. As for the Coalenterprise nothing could possibly happen to disturb it; I was all ready forthe first of July announcement and boom. Never did I have a lighter heartthan when I joined Anita and her friends at Sherry's. It seemed to me herfriendliness was less perfunctory, less a matter of appearances. And thesun was bright, the air delicious, my health perfect. It took all thestrength of all the straps Monson had put on my natural spirits to keep mefrom being exuberant.
I had fully intended to be back at my office half an hour before theExchange closed--this in addition to the obvious precaution of leavingorders that they were to telephone me if anything should occur about whichthey had the least doubt. But so comfortable did my vanity make me thatI forgot to look at my watch until a quarter to three. I had a momentaryqualm; then, reassured, I asked Anita to take a walk with me. Before we setout I telephoned my right-hand man and partner, Ball. As I had thought,everything was quiet; the Exchange was closing with Textile sluggish anddown a quarter. Anita and I took a car to the park.
As we strolled about there, it seemed to me I was making more headway withher than in all the times I had seen her since we became engaged. At eachmeeting I had had to begin at the beginning once more, almost as if wehad never met; for I found that she had in the meanwhile taken on all, oralmost all, her original reserve. It was as if she forgot me the instant Ileft her--not very flattering, that!
"You accuse me of refusing to get acquainted with you," said I, "ofrefusing to see that you're a different person from what I imagine. But howabout you? Why do you still stick to your first notion of me? Whatever I amor am not, I'm not the person you condemned on sight."
"You _have_ changed," she conceded. "The way you dress--and sometimesthe way you act. Or, is it because I'm getting used to you?"
"No--it's--" I began, but stopped there. Some day I would confess aboutMonson, but not yet. Also, I hoped the change wasn't altogether due toMonson and the dancing-master and my imitation of the tricks of speech andmanner of the people in her set.
She did not notice my abrupt halt. Indeed, I often caught her at notlistening to me. I saw that she wasn't listening now.
"You didn't hear what I said," I accused somewhat sharply, for I wasirritated--as who would not have been?
She started, gave me that hurried, apologetic look that was bitterer to methan the most savage insult would have been.
"I beg your pardon," she said. "We were talking of--of changes, weren'twe?"
"We were talking of _me_" I answered. "Of the subject that interestsyou not at all."
She looked at me in a forlorn sort of way that softened my irritation withsympathy. "I've told you how it is with me," she said. "I do my best toplease you. I--"
"Damn your best!" I cried. "Don't try to please _me_. Be yourself. I'mno slave-driver. I don't have to be conciliated. Can't you ever see thatI'm not your tyrant? Do I treat you as any other man would feel he had theright to treat the girl who had engaged herself to him? Do I ever thrust myfeelings or wishes--or--longings on you? And do you think repression easyfor a man of my temperament?"
"You have been very good," she said humbly.
"Don't you ever say that to me again," I half commanded, half pleaded. "Iwon't have you always putting me in the position of a kind and indulgentmaster."
She halted and faced me.
"Why do you want me, anyhow?" she cried. Then she noticed several loungerson a bench staring at us and grinning; she flushed and walked on.
"I don't know," said I. "Because I'm a fool, probably. My common sensetells me I can't hope to break through that shell of self-complacenceyou've been cased in by your family and your associates. Sometimes I thinkI'm mistaken in you, think there isn't any real, human blood left in yourveins, that you're like the rest of them--a human body whose heart and mindhave been taken out and a machine substituted--a machine that can say anddo only a narrow little range of conventional things--like one of thoseFrench dolls."
"You mustn't blame me for that," she said gently. "I realize it, too--andI'm ashamed of it. But--if you could know how I've been educated. They'vetreated me as the Flathead Indian women treat their babies--keep theirskulls in a press--isn't that it?--until their heads and brains grow ofthe Flathead pattern. Only, somehow, in my case--the process wasn't quitecomplete. And so, instead of being contented like the other Flathead girls,I'm--almost a rebel, at times. I'm neither the one thing nor the other--notnatural and not Flathead, not enough natural to grow away from Flathead,not enough Flathead to get rid of the natural."
"I take back what I said about not knowing why I--I want you, Anita," Isaid. "I do know why--and--well, as I told you before, you'll never regretmarrying me."
"If you won't misunderstand me," she answered, "I'll confess to you myinstinct has been telling me that, too. I'm not so bad as you must think.I did bargain to sell myself, but I'd have thrown up the bargain if youhad been as--as you seemed at first." For some reason--perhaps it was herdress, or hat--she was looking particularly girlish that day, and herskin was even more transparent than usual. "You're different from the menI've been used to all my life," she went on, and--smiling in a friendlyway--"you often give me a terrifying sense of your being a--a wild man onhis good behavior. But I've come to feel that you're generous and unselfishand that you'll be kind to me--won't you? And I must make a life formyself--I must--I must! Oh, I can't explain to you, but--" She turned herlittle head toward me, and I was looking into those eyes that the flowerswere like.
I thought she meant her home life. "You needn't tell me," I said, and I'llhave to confess my voice was anything but steady. "And, I repeat, you'llnever regret."
She evidently feared that she had said too much, for she lapsed intosilence, and when I tried to resume the subject of ourselves, she answeredme with painful constraint. I respected her nervousness and soon began totalk of things not so personal to us. Again, my mistake of treating her asif she were marked "Fragile. Handle with care." I know now that she, likeall women, had the plain, tough, durable human fibre under that exteriorof delicacy and fragility, and that my overconsideration caused her toexaggerate to herself her own preposterous notions of her superiorfineness. We walked for an hour, talking--with less constraint and morefriendliness than ever before, and when I left her I, for the first time,felt that I had left a good impression.
When I entered my offices, I, from force of habit, mechanically went directto the ticker--and dropped all in an instant from the pinnacle of Heaveninto a boiling inferno. For the ticker was just spelling out these words:"Mowbray Langdon, president of the Textile Association, sailed unexpectedlyon the _Kaiser Wilhelm_ at noon. A two per cent. raise of the dividendrate of Textile Common, from the present four per cent, to six, has beendetermined upon."
And I had staked up to, perhaps beyond, my limit of safety that Textilewould fall!
Ball was watching narrowly for some sign that the news was as bad as hefeared. But it cost me no effort to keep my face expressionless; I was likea
man who has been killed by lightning and lies dead with the look on hisface that he had just before the bolt struck him.
"Why didn't you tell me this," said I to Ball, "when I had you on the'phone?" My tone was quiet enough, but the very question ought to haveshown him that my brain was like a schooner in a cyclone.
"We heard it just after you rang off," was his reply. "We've been tryingto get you ever since. I've gone everywhere after Textile stock. Very fewwill sell, or even lend, and they ask--the best price was ten points aboveto-day's closing. A strong tip's out that Textiles are to be rocketed."
Ten points up already--on the mere rumor! Already ten dollars to pay onevery share I was "short"--and I short more than two hundred thousand! Ifelt the claws of the fiend Ruin sink into the flesh of my shoulders. "Balldoesn't know how I'm fixed," I remember I thought, "and he mustn't know."
I lit a cigar with a steady hand and waited for Joe's next words.
"I went to see Jenkins at once," he went on. Jenkins was then firstvice-president of the Textile Trust. "He's all cut up because the news gotout--says Langdon and he were the only ones who knew, so he supposed--saysthe announcement wasn't to have been made for a month--not till Langdonreturned. He has had to confirm it, though. That was the only way to freehis crowd from suspicion of intending to rig the market."
"All right," said I.
"Have you seen the afternoon paper?" he asked. As he held it out to me, myeye caught big Textile head-lines, then flashed to some others--somethingabout my going to marry Miss Ellersly.
"All right," said I, and with the paper in my hand, went to my outsideoffice. I kept on toward my inner office, saying over my shoulder--to thestenographer: "Don't let anybody interrupt me." Behind the closed andlocked door my body ventured to come to life again and my face to reflectas much as it could of the chaos that was heaving in me like ten thousandwarring devils.
Three months before, in the same situation, my gambler's instinct wouldprobably have helped me out. For I had not been gambling in the greatAmerican Monte Carlo all those years without getting used to the downsas well as to the ups. I had not--and have not--anything of the businessman in my composition. To me, it was wholly finance, wholly a game, withexcitement the chief factor and the sure winning, whether the little ballrolled my way or not. I was the financier, the gambler and adventurer; andthat had been my principal asset. For, the man who wins in the long run atany of the great games of life--and they are all alike--is the man withthe cool head; and the only man whose head is cool is he who plays for thegame's sake, not caring greatly whether he wins or loses on any one play,because he feels that if he wins to-day, he will lose to-morrow; if heloses to-day, he will win to-morrow. But now a new factor had come into thegame. I spread out the paper and stared at the head-lines: "Black Matt ToWed Society Belle--The Bucket-Shop King Will Lead Anita Ellersly To TheAltar." I tried to read the vulgar article under these vulgar lines, but Icould not. I was sick, sick in body and in mind. My "nerve" was gone. I wasno longer the free lance; I had responsibilities.
That thought dragged another in its train, an ugly, grinning imp thatleered at me and sneered: "_But she won't have you now_!"
"She will! She must!" I cried aloud, starting up. And then the stormburst--I raged up and down the floor, shaking my clinched fists, gnashingmy teeth, muttering all kinds of furious commands and threats--a trulyridiculous exhibition of impotent rage. For through it all I saw clearlyenough that she wouldn't have me, that all these people I'd been tryingto climb up among would kick loose my clinging hands and laugh as theywatched me disappear. They who were none too gentle and slow in disengagingthemselves from those of their own lifelong associates who had reversesof fortune--what consideration could "Black Matt" expect from them? Andshe--The necessity and the ability to deceive myself had gone, now that Icould not pay the purchase price for her. The full hideousness of mybargain for her dropped its veil and stood naked before me.
At last, disgusted and exhausted, I flung myself down again, and dumbly andhelplessly inspected the ruins of my projects--or, rather, the ruin of theone project upon which I had my heart set. I had known I cared for her, butit had seemed to me she was simply one more, the latest, of the objects onwhich I was in the habit of fixing my will from time to time to make thegame more deeply interesting. I now saw that never before had I really beenin earnest about anything, that on winning her I had staked myself, andthat myself was a wholly different person from what I had been imagining.In a word, I sat face to face with that unfathomable mystery ofsex-affinity that every man laughs at and mocks another man for believingin, until he has himself felt it drawing him against will, against reason,and sense, and interest, over the brink of destruction yawning before hiseyes--drawing him as the magnet-mountain drew Sindbad and his ship. And Isay to you that those who can defy and resist that compulsion are not more,but less, than man or woman; and their fancied strength is in reality adeficiency. Looking calmly back upon my follies under her spell, I thinkthe better of myself for them. It is the splendid follies of life thatredeem it from vulgarity.
But--it is not in me to despair. There never yet was an impenetrable siegeline; to escape, it is only necessary by craft or by chance to hit upon themoment and the spot for the sortie. "Ruined!" I said aloud. "Trapped andtrimmed like the stupidest sucker that ever wandered into Wall Street! Adead one, no doubt; but I'll see to it that they don't enjoy my funeral."