CHAPTER XXVI
COLONEL CRAIGHILL SCORES A POINT
COLONEL CRAIGHILL reached his office in anything but an amiable state of mind. As he disappeared into his own room and closed the door the chief book-keeper exchanged a wink with the prettiest stenographer, and the messenger turned up the collar of his coat to signify falling temperature.
At his own desk Colonel Craighill scanned the summarized reports that were so sufficient to his executive sense, but this inspection gave him no pleasure; and his personal mail disclosed matters that did not please him. And against all precedents the cashier entered unbidden, bearing memoranda that deepened the annoyance that Colonel Craighill had carried to the office. And, crowning irritation, the president of the Hercules National Bank, in which he was a director, and the cashier of the Greater City Trust Company called him by telephone and begged his early attendance at their offices.
In his perturbation Colonel Craighill narrowly escaped referring his own cashier to Walsh; and the fact that Walsh would, just at this moment, have been a substantial reed to lean upon did not ease Colonel Craighill’s burdens. “Ask Walsh,” had been, in old times, before the Wayne-Craighill Mercantile Company passed into Walsh’s hands, the commonest phrase of the office; and Walsh’s successor could not, in the nature of things, know the inner history of the many Craighill interests as Tom Walsh had. Several times within the past month, “Ask Wayne” had been heard in the outer offices; and this was not more remarkable than that, when the appeal had been made, it was found that Wayne knew!
Wayne was busy at his desk when his father entered and closed the door behind him. He had been checking an estimate of his father’s liabilities and he knew that Roger Craighill owed a large sum of money—a very large sum indeed—and in December the fog of the October scare still lay upon the land.
“Wayne, I want to see you for a few minutes,” and Wayne started guiltily at the sound of his father’s voice and thrust his memorandum out of sight in a drawer.
“You may not be aware,” began Colonel Craighill, “that the general financial conditions are serious.”
Wayne’s resentment rose on the instant, as always at these implications that he was unacquainted with the affairs of the business world. A sharp retort was on his lips; the morning papers had contained the latest of his father’s reassuring statements as to the brightening outlook, but he answered:
“Well, it’s been on for some time, hasn’t it? I thought everybody began to get to cover last spring.”
“Things tightened up in the fall but I had expected the trouble to be over by this time, but the pinch has grown sharper than I expected. The conditions are very unusual but they ought to adjust themselves. My anticipations have all been correct, though our financial mechanism is still slightly out of adjustment in vital quarters. My own affairs are, of course, subject to general laws like everyone else’s.”
Luck is a goddess in all our mythologies, but we credit our own wisdom when affairs prosper. Mistakes, when we assume blame for them at all, are at the most mere sinistral inadvertences: heavier losses we charge to the blindfold goddess and her dice-box.
Wayne knew that his father had not come into his room to philosophize, and he groped for light as to the real object of the interview. Colonel Craighill took a lead pencil from Wayne’s desk and played with it nervously. Wayne was struck by the fact that his father did not look well to-day; his fine colour was lacking and there were dark lines under his eyes.
“You’d never know from the newspapers that there’s anything wrong. I thought your interview in Boston that our papers copied this morning was quite conclusive.”
Colonel Craighill glanced at his son quickly. Wayne’s tone was perfectly respectful and he met his father’s eyes steadily. Colonel Craighill shrugged his shoulders impatiently.
“We must do what we can to tranquilize the public mind. I was asked to say something in the press occasionally by a number of our strongest men. They seemed to think I was the best person to do it”; and his eyes brightened for a moment at the consciousness that he had been chosen as sponsor for the city’s business interests.
“I have found it necessary to increase my collateral in several places. I don’t quite like being required to do it; the demand comes just at the wrong time for some of my investments. You have some stock, haven’t you, in the Mexican Plantations Company?”
Wayne’s heart gave a big throb and he smiled.
“Oh, no; I haven’t a share—not one.”
“But I thought——”
“Oh, I did have several hundred shares, but I cleaned them out last fall. A friend of mine, a ‘Tech’ man, who’s a mining engineer in Mexico, was in town one day, and I asked him about that scheme and he didn’t give me very flattering reports of it. So I sold out the first chance I got.”
“Do you mind telling me who bought it?”
Wayne’s heart was beating rapidly. The moment for which he had longed had arrived. He wished to play with it, to delay the complete realization of the joy now within reach.
“Well, I had reason to think afterward that you had bought it yourself. There was one block of a hundred shares that I sold through those Boston brokers who handle that sort of thing, and I noticed afterward that you were credited with that number of additional shares on the office books.”
“You might have spoken to me before selling when it was at my suggestion you went in. It strikes me that your selling in that way was a reflection on my judgment in recommending it. Your conduct was not filial.”
“You can hardly construe it that way. You recommended it in good faith; and I saw no reason for disturbing your confidence in the company simply because I had a hint that the greasers down there hadn’t made the vanilla beans grow.”
“Walsh was perfectly satisfied with it; he went in when I did. In fact, he asked me to let him go in.”
“Yes; I remember,” said Wayne. “Tom went in all right.”
Colonel Craighill moved restlessly in his chair; his anger was mounting; it showed itself in his deepening pallor and in the trembling of his hands and lips. Ordinarily he would not have asked Wayne whether Walsh had sold his shares in the Plantations, but the question now escaped him, and after he had asked it his wrath increased as Wayne smiled a little in replying.
“I’m not very well acquainted with Walsh’s affairs, but it’s my impression that Tom let go, too. The shares took a boost right after we bought, you may remember, and Tom promptly sold out. I’m sorry if it doesn’t look as well as it did,” remarked Wayne, who knew that the engineering company which had been installing an irrigation plant for the Plantations had suspended operations owing to the financial stringency.
“Walsh is under no obligations to me; he was merely a useful clerk in the office; but I don’t understand this withholding of confidence in my own son. I don’t like it. I have been aware for some time that you were not dealing frankly with me, that your life was apart from mine; but this sort of trickery is going too far.”
“I don’t see where the trickery comes in. A lot of your friends were in the thing. They’ve been going down to Mexico in private cars to admire the prospects. I sold out because I wanted to do something else with my money. I didn’t know I had to apologize for selling my shares. It would only have annoyed you if I had told you I was going out. And you speak of my lack of frankness in dealing with you. I suppose you don’t realize that I have been a little less than the office boy here practically since I left school. You’ve never seen fit to take me into your confidence; I’ve been worse than an outsider, and I’ll tell you now that I’ve resented it. You don’t have to tell me that I’ve been a disgrace to your name; I know that. I’m a rotten bad lot; there’s no getting away from it; you can’t say half as mean things of me as I can say of myself. You’ve assumed that I didn’t know that the papers you sent into me from day to day were not of the slightest importance—chaff for the waste-paper basket; but I’ve known it. I’ve known that it was all a good joke, my being here at all. Everybody knows I’ve made a beast of myself getting drunk, but I suppose you thought it naturally followed that I’m a fool, too.”
He realized at once that the shot had been badly fired, and that he had thrown away ammunition which at a fitter season might have satisfied his thirst for vengeance; but Colonel Craighill had grown calm under his son’s outburst. He had a reputation for tactful negotiation. There was something that he wished to get from his son, and while the temptation to inveigh against Wayne’s unfilial conduct in disposing of the Mexican securities without notice was strong, Colonel Craighill waited a moment to mark a change of subject and when he spoke his tone was amiable.
“I’m sorry you have so much feeling about the matter. I’m a little surprised, that’s all, that you should have left the Mexican venture without telling me; but it’s not of the slightest consequence. But while we’re speaking of such things—your holdings in companies that I’m connected with—I just heard that you’ve acquired the forty shares of Sand Creek stock that were owned by the Moore estate. Is that correct?”
“Yes; I have them,” and Wayne’s anger burned hot again as he remembered the spirit in which he had acquired the shares and the chiding he had received from his father for overdrawing his account to buy them.
“I’m going to ask you, as a special favour, to let me buy them of you, Wayne,” Colonel Craighill went on calmly. He laughed lightly to minimize the importance of the favour he asked. He knew perfectly how to manage such things, for whatever he lacked in other particulars Colonel Craighill was skilled in the arts of business diplomacy. He created an atmosphere of amity, and Wayne was angry because he felt the spell of it. Colonel Craighill continued as though he were in the daily habit of exchanging courtesies with his son, to emphasize more and more the fact that this was a favour he asked. Wayne knew that he had blundered. If his father asked for the Sand Creek shares in this spirit he could only save his own dignity by relinquishing them.
“You see the Hercules National people helped me finance the Sand Creek deal, and they got their friends interested. Moore was one of our friends and it was assumed, of course, that we’d get those shares from his estate. I’ll go a bit further with you, Wayne. The Hercules is carrying my paper for a large amount and they were very decent in October when the pinch came; and until I can make a turn or two in other directions I’m not in a position to displease them. I should take it as a great favour if you would let me have those shares—at your own price.”
Colonel Craighill smiled into his son’s eyes.
“Certainly, father, you shall have them at the price I paid. I’ll get them from the vault immediately.”
A few minutes later he closed his desk with a slam and prepared to leave. He had weakly yielded to his father’s easy, conciliatory speech and the thought of his supineness sharpened his hatred of his father to its keenest edge; but the blade in his hand was an incompetent, worthless thing. He was as weak as Hamlet before the gates of opportunity. He was out of patience with himself; he had boasted a moment before that he was no fool, but without turning a hand his father had tamed him to do his bidding. He felt depression seizing him; the fierce thirst cried in his blood, and there was only one cure for that.
The telephone tinkled and he snatched the receiver impatiently. Paddock spoke to him from the parish house at Ironstead. Joe Denny, the chauffeur, was there, very ill, and had asked for Wayne. The current of his thought immediately changed; he had utterly forgotten Joe, and he at once took the trolley for Ironstead.