GATE OF ENIGMA
And now began the last phase of his career. Lying there in that state, unable so much as to raise his hand, with a mind all but disembodied, he intended his thoughts to the passion that ruled him still. The doctors warned him that it would be extremely dangerous to exercise his mind. It would cause the thread of life to part. That made no difference. What was the thread of life for?
Three times a week Mordecai came to talk with him. These visits, beginning naturally as between friends, soon became conferences of a consequential character between principal and banker. They examined problems, discussed measures, evolved policies, and spent hours, sometimes whole days, together. Mordecai became Galt’s self objectified. He executed his will, promulgated his ideas, represented him in all situations. He sat for him at board meetings and in general Wall Street councils. This became soon an institutional fact. No business of a high nature proceeded far in Wall Street until Mordecai was asked, “What does Mr. Galt say?” or “What would Mr. Galt think?”
A paralyzed hand ruled the world of finance.
Galt’s mind was clear and insatiable. It comprehended both details and principles. He directed minutely the expenditure of that five hundred millions and verified his own prophecy. The outlay of this vast sum upon railroad works averted a period of industrial depression.
I remained permanently at Moonstool. The room in which at first I had established merely a point of contact with the outside world to meet such emergencies as might arise became a regular office. We installed news printing machines and direct telephones. Stock Exchange quotations were received by a private telegraph wire. We had presently a staff of clerks, typists and statisticians, all living in the house and keeping hours. The personnel of this singular organization included one fresco painter.
More than anything else Galt missed his maps and charts. A map of any portion of the earth’s surface enthralled him. The act of gazing at it stimulated his thoughts. And statistical charts,—those diagrams in which quantities, ratios and velocities are symbolized by lines that rise and fall in curves,—these were to him what mathematical symbols are to an astronomer. He could not think easily without them. We had tried various devices for getting maps and charts before him, and they were all unsatisfactory. One day he said: “I can look at the ceiling and walls without effort. Why not put them there?”
But we could not get maps large enough to show from the ceiling and there was a similar difficulty about charts, even though we drew them ourselves. Then we thought of painting them. We found a fresco painter possessing the rudiments of the peculiar kind of intelligence required for such work and then trained him to it.
We painted a map of the world in two hemispheres on the ceiling. The United States had to be carefully put in, with the Great Midwestern system showing in bold red lines. On the walls we painted statistical charts to the number of eight. Several were permanent, such as the one showing the combined earnings of the Galt railroad properties and another the state of general business. They had only to be touched up from time to time as new statistics came in. Others were ephemeral, serving to illustrate some problem his mind was working on. They were frequently painted out and new ones put in their place.
Under these conditions, gazing for hours at the world map, he conceived a project which was destined to survive him in the form of an idea. If he had lived it might have been realized. This was a pan-American railroad,—a vertical system of land transportation articulating the North and South American continents. It was painted there on the ceiling. Mordecai saw it and wept.
How easily the mind accommodates itself to any situation! In a short time all of this seemed quite natural because it was taking place. Having accepted Galt as a dynast in the flesh, Wall Street now accepted him as an invisible force pervading all its affairs, as if it might go on that way forever. Through Mordecai it solicited his advice and opinion on matters that were not his. Once Mordecai brought him the problem of a railroad that was in trouble; he bought the railroad to save it from bankruptcy. People, seeing this, began to think he was not ill at all, but preferred to work in a mysterious manner. Great Midwestern stock meanwhile was rising, always rising, and touched at last the fabulous price of three hundred dollars a share. Faith in it now was as unreasoning as distrust of it had once been.
Galt entertained no thought of malice toward his old enemies. Proof of this was dramatic and unexpected. A servant came up one afternoon with the name of Bullguard. I could hardly believe it. I found him standing in the middle of the hall, just inside the door, a large, impenetrable figure, giving one the impression of immovable purpose. I had never seen him before.
“I wish to see Mr. Galt,” he said, in a voice like a tempered north wind.
“Nobody sees him, you know.”
“I must see him,” he replied.
“I will ask him. Is it a matter of business?”
“It is very personal,” he said.
The way he said this gave me suddenly a glimpse of his hidden character. Beneath that terrifying aspect, back of that glowering under which strong men quailed, lay more shy, human gentleness than would be easily imagined.
Galt received him. They were alone together for a full hour. What passed between them will never be known. I waited in the library room, one removed from Galt’s bedchamber, and saw Bullguard leave. He passed me unawares, looking straight ahead of him, as one in a hypnotic trance. Outside he forgot his car and went stalking down the drive in that same unseeing manner, grasping a great thick walking stick at the middle and waving it slowly before his face. His car followed and picked him up somewhere out of sight.
One of the minor triumphs of this time was the collapse of the social feud. Mrs. Valentine’s subjects began to revolt. Society made definite overtures to the Galt women. But nobody now cared. Mrs. Galt and Natalie lived only for Galt, and they were the two who would in any case be interested. Mrs. Galt was his silent companion. Natalie was his mercury, going errands swiftly between his bedchamber and the office. She was absorbed in what went on and a good deal of it she understood in an imaginative manner. Coming with a message from Galt, perhaps a request for information or data, she would often sit at my desk to hear or see the results, saying, “I feel so stupid when I don’t know what it means.” In the evening, as we might be walking or driving together, she would review the transactions of the day and get them all explained.
Vera lived in New York at her studio, but came often to Moonstool. Her engagement to Lord Porteous was renewed. She spoke to me about it one evening on the west terrace, after sunset.
“You were right about Lord Porteous,” she said. “He refused from the beginning to consider our engagement broken.”
“Of course,” I said.
That was evidently not what she expected me to say. She gave me a slow, sidewise look.
“I’m very glad,” I added, making it worse.
We took several turns in silence.
“Why are you glad?” she asked, in a tone she seldom used.
“Isn’t that what I should say?... I was thinking ... I don’t know what I was thinking ... nor why I am glad.”
We stood for a long time, a little apart, watching the afterglow. She shivered.
“I am cold,” she said. “Let’s go in, please.”
The next day in the midst of a conference with Mordecai Galt’s eyes closed. The doctor was in the house. He shook his head knowingly.
There followed a fortnight of horrible suspense. Most of the time we did not know at a given moment whether he was alive or dead. Once for three days he did not open his eyes and we thought it was over. Then he looked at us again and we knew he had been conscious all the time. The faculty of speech never returned. There would be a rumor that he was dead and prices would fall on the Stock Exchange; then a rumor that he wasn’t, and prices would rise again. The newspapers established a death watch in the private Galt station and kept reporters there day and night to flash the news away. To keep them from the house I had to promise them solemnly that I would send word down promptly if the fatality happened.
Mrs. Galt and Natalie watched alternately. One or the other sat at his bedside all the time. One evening about 8 o’clock I was sharing the vigil with Natalie when Galt opened his eyes. We were sitting on opposite sides of his bed. He looked from one of us to the other slowly, several times, and then fixed a wanting expression on me.
I knew what he wanted without asking. Natalie knew also. It concerned us deeply, uniting our lives, yet at that moment we were hardly conscious of ourselves. What thrilled us was the thought of something we should do for him, because he wanted it.
I put out my hand to her across the bed. She clasped it firmly.
“That is what you mean,” I said.
“Yes,” he answered.
A flood of recollection swept through me. I saw Natalie all the way back to girlhood, to that night of our first meeting in her father’s house. I could not remember when I had not loved her. I saw everything that had happened between us, saw it in sunlight, and wondered how I could have been so unaware. Trifling incidents, almost forgotten, became suddenly luminous, precious and significant. And this instant had been from the beginning appointed!
Natalie, still clasping my hand, leaned far over and gazed intently into his eyes.
“You want me to marry Coxey?” she asked, in a tone of caressing anxiety, which seemed wholly unconscious of me, almost excluding.
“Yes,” he answered, repeating it several times, if that may be understood. The answer lingered in his eyes. Then they closed, slowly, as ponderous gates swing to, against his utmost will, and they never opened again.
He was buried in the side of Moonstool. All of his great enemies came to assist at the obsequies. Bullguard was one of the pallbearers.