The Deluge

  VI. OF "GENTLEMEN"

  When I got back to my office and was settling I to the proofs of the"Letter to Investors," which I published in sixty newspapers throughout thecountry and which daily reached upward of five million people, Sam Ellerslycame in. His manner was certainly different from what it had ever beenbefore; a difference so subtle that I couldn't describe it more nearly thanto say it made me feel as if he had not until then been treating me as ofthe same class with himself. I smiled to myself and made an entry in mymental ledger to the credit of Mowbray Langdon.

  "That club business is going nicely," said Sam. "Langdon is enthusiastic,and I find you've got good friends on the committee."

  I knew that well enough. Hadn't I been carrying them on my books at a goodround loss for two years?

  "If it wasn't for--for some features of this business of yours," he wenton, "I'd say there wouldn't be the slightest trouble."

  "Bucket-shop?" said I with an easy laugh, though this nagging was beginningto get on my nerves.

  "Exactly," said he. "And, you know, you advertise yourself like--like--"

  "Like everybody else, only more successfully than most," said I. "Everybodyadvertises, each one adapting his advertising to the needs of hisenterprises, as far as he knows how."

  "That's true enough," he confessed. "But there are enterprises andenterprises, you know."

  "You can tell 'em, Sam," said I, "that I never put out a statement I don'tbelieve to be true, and that when any of my followers lose on one of mytips, I've lost on it, too. For I play my own tips--and that's more thancan be said of any 'financier' in this town."

  "It'd be no use to tell 'em that," said he. "Character's something ofa consideration in social matters, of course. But it isn't the chiefconsideration by a long shot, and the absence of it isn't necessarilyfatal."

  "I'm the biggest single operator in the country," I went on. "And it's mymethods that give me success--because I know how to advertise--how to keepmy name before the country, and how to make men say, whenever they hearit: 'There's a shrewd, honest fellow.' That and the people it brings me,in flocks, are my stock in trade. Honesty's a bluff with most of the bigrespectables; under cover of their respectability, of their 'old andhonored names,' of their social connections, of their church-going andthat, they do all sorts of queer work."

  "To hear you talk," put in Sam, with a grin, "one would think you didn'tshove off millions of dollars of suspicious stuff on the public throughthose damn clever letters of yours."

  "There's where you didn't stop to think, Sam," said I. "When I say astock's going to rise, it rises. When I stop talking about it, it may go onrising or it may fall. But I never advise anybody to buy except when I haveevery reason to believe it's a good thing. If they hold on too long, that'stheir own lookout."

  "But they invest--"

  "You use words too carelessly," I said. "When I say buy, I don't mean_invest_. When I mean invest, I say invest." There I laughed. "It's aword I don't often use."

  "And that's what you call honesty!" jeered he.

  "That's what I call honesty," I retorted, "and that _is_ honesty." AndI thought so then.

  "Well--every man has a right to his own notion of what's honest," he said."But no man's got a right to complain if a fellow with a different notioncriticizes him."

  "None in the world," I assented. "Do _you_ criticize me?"

  "No, no, no, indeed!" he answered, nervous, and taking seriously what I hadintended as a joke.

  After a while I dragged in _the_ subject. "One thing I can and willdo to get myself in line for that club," I said, like a seal on promenade."I'm sick of the crowd I travel with--the men and the women. I feel it'sabout time I settled down. I've got a fortune and establishment that needsa woman to set it off. I can make some woman happy. You don't happen toknow any nice girls--the right sort, I mean?"

  "Not many." said Sam. "You'd better go back to the country where you camefrom, and get her there. She'd be eternally grateful, and her head wouldn'tbe full of mercenary nonsense."

  "Excuse me!" exclaimed I. "It'd turn her head. She'd go clean crazy. She'dplunge in up to her neck--and not being used to these waters, she'd makea show of herself, and probably drown, dragging me down with her, ifpossible."

  Sam laughed. "Keep out of marriage, Matt," he advised, not so obtuse to myreal point as he wanted me to believe. "I know the kind of girl you've gotin mind. She'd marry you for your money, and she'd never appreciate you.She'd see in you only the lack of the things she's been taught to laystress on."

  "For instance?"

  "I couldn't tell you any more than I could enable you to recognize a personyou'd never seen by describing him."

  "Ain't I a gentleman?" I inquired.

  He laughed, as if the idea tickled him. "Of course," he said. "Of course."

  "Ain't I got as proper a country place as there is a-going? Ain't myapartment in the Willoughby a peach? Don't I give as elegant dinners as youever sat down to? Don't I dress right up to the Piccadilly latest? Don'tI act all right--know enough to keep my feet off the table and my knifeout of my mouth?" All true enough; and I so crude then that I hadn't asuspicion what a flat contradiction of my pretensions and beliefs aboutmyself the very words and phrases were.

  "You're right in it, Matt," said Sam. "But--well--you haven't traveled withour crowd, and they're shy of strangers, especially as--as energetic a sortof stranger as you are. You're too sudden, Matt--too dazzling--too--"

  "Too shiny and new?" said I, beginning to catch his drift. "That'll belooked after. What I want is you to take me round a bit."

  "I can't ask you to people's houses," protested he, knowing I'd not realizewhat a flimsy pretense that was.

  While we were talking I had been thinking--working out the propositionalong lines he had indicated to me without knowing it. "Look here, Sam," Isaid. "You imagine I'm trying to butt in with a lot of people that don'tknow me and don't want to know me. But that ain't my point of view. Thosepeople can be useful to me. I need 'em. What do I care whether they want tobe useful to me or not? The machine'd have run down and rusted out long agoif you and your friends' idea of a gentleman had been taken seriously byanybody who had anything to do and knew how to do it. In this world you'vegot to _make_ people do what's for your good and their own. Youridea of a gentleman was put forward by lazy fakirs who were living off ofwhat their ungentlemanly ancestors had annexed, and who didn't want to bedisturbed. So they 'fixed' the game by passing these rules you and yourkind are fools enough to abide by--that is, you are fools, unless youhaven't got brains enough to get on in a free-and-fair-for-all."

  Sam laughed.. "There's a lot of truth in what you say," he admitted.

  "However," I ended, "my plans don't call for hurry just there. When I getready to go round, I'll let you know."