XVII.

After that the cruise of the Comet was a sort of preliminary honeymoon; and never did a gayer, happier party sail upon the rolling deep, nor was there ever a happier bridegroom-to-be than Robbie. All day long he fed his eyes upon the radiant vision, and whispered to himself that she was his. And so they steamed down the Florida coast, and at last came to Palm Beach, and went ash.o.r.e; there he found a telegram awaiting him, signed by the superintendent of the Hungerville Mills.

"MR. R. VAN RENSSELAER, "Palm Beach, Florida.

"The trouble is over and the strike broken. Damage has been repaired, and the mills are moving as usual. Have retained chiefly non-union men. Newspapers virulent.

"GRINDER."

And Mr. van Rensselaer folded the telegram, and put it in his pocket, and smiled. "d.a.m.n the newspapers," he said meditatively, and sent his valet to procure some. When he got them he sat on the deck and read them while the cool sea breeze fanned his forehead.

There had been quite a time at Hungerville, so it appeared. The strikers had held meetings; the whole town had been in an uproar. Strange as it might seem, a considerable part of the press had taken the side of the men. There had been no violence, however, until strange faces began to appear in the town, and some old abandoned freight cars outside the mills were burned. Then a force of five hundred detectives were rushed into the mills, and a high fence was put up, with loopholes. On the third day the Company sent up a car load of non-union men--men who had been out of work for a year, since the closing of the mills the Hungerville Company had beaten down. Instantly the town was in an uproar, and in spite of all precautions the "scabs" were stoned and beaten. The detectives fired upon the mob, killing three men, a woman, and two children, and wounding a dozen more; and that same night, the sheriff having appealed to the governor, the first companies of militia arrived.

Following that were three days of furious excitement; on several occasions a pitched battle all but occurred. Twice the soldiers fired on the mob, killing several, and one militiaman was stabbed in the dark. But the Company insisted upon starting the mills; and the strikers being without money, and many of them half-dead with starvation, they gave up in scores. At last reports the union had been on the point of abandoning the strike, so that its members might secure what few places were left.

Then Mr. Robert van Rensselaer read his telegram again, and smiled.

"Tell me, dearest," said Miss Paragon, "what good news have you heard?"

"That you will soon be mine," he answered her.

XVIII.

The wedding came off about four months later, after Miss Paragon's Paris trousseau had safely arrived. Just how to describe such a wedding in reasonable s.p.a.ce is a problem, for the plans of it were described in the newspapers weeks beforehand,--all the decorations and preparations, as well as the ancestry, possessions, and accomplishments of both bride and groom. The a.s.sociated Press sent out two descriptions of the wedding gown,--one technical, by an expert, and one imaginative, by a sympathetic artist. On the day before the wedding the Fifth Avenue church--the church where "Robbie" had taught Sunday-school, and had for thirty years listened to the edifying sermons of the Reverend Doctor Lettuce Spray, the church, with all its marvellous riot of flowers--was pictured with pen and pencil, and after the great event the front pages of all the New York papers were given up to telling an eager and expectant people everything about it that could be described or imagined. By that time, of course, the radical press had forgotten all its vehemence about Hungerville, and Mr. Robert van Rensselaer was again the noted financier, the prominent social light, the eminent citizen, and the inimitable raconteur. After the couple were safely married, and had spent a long honeymoon upon the Comet, and drunk the full cup of their bliss, I remember reading in the New York papers an address which our Robbie had delivered before the Young Men's Mohammedan a.s.sociation of Podunk, the theme being industrial brotherhood and the community of interest between capital and labor.

XIX.

And now will the reader kindly imagine that four or five years more have sped by; and that Mrs. Robert van Rensselaer is a mother of two children, and a proud and majestic social queen,--a grande dame,--wearing serenely the crown of her exalted station; and that Mr. van Rensselaer is more than ever a power in the financial circles of the country, a man able to make governors and senators by the signing of his pen. His affairs have prospered steadily, fortunes springing up at his command like fruit trees beneath the hand of a Hindoo conjurer. He has organized a great corporation of the rivals of his Company for the preventing of ruinous compet.i.tion; and he has done other things that have left Wall Street equally aghast.

I should venture upon this portion of my hero's career with great trepidation, feeling dubious of my ability to conduct him safely amid the labyrinths of "the street"; but fortunately this story has been told by experts as to whose authority there can be no question, and I avail myself of the opportunity to quote from their narrative. The language of them is somewhat technical, to be sure; but every branch of human science has to have a vocabulary of its own, and the seeker of knowledge has to master it. All van Rensselaer's life in these days was Wall Street life, and it is necessary to give some idea of what manner of life that was.

In Jabbergrab, "Heroes of Finance," p. 1492, one reads as follows:-- "The way that Robert van Rensselaer defended the stock on a certain occasion is still one of the stories of the town. He was in the act of stepping off the Aurora on that immortal Tuesday--after sailing the race of his life--when a messenger handed him a telegram informing him that the bears, evidently underrating the speed of his yacht, had begun one more savage onslaught upon Kalamazoo Airship. There was plainly a conspiracy--the stock was going down by the point. Van Rensselaer immediately wired his brokers to take all the seller's options they could get, and likewise to buy the market bare of all cash stock; so that by the time his special reached New York he was the owner of pretty nearly the whole of K. A. except some he was quite sure would not appear.

"Van Rensselaer was angry, for K. A. was a pet child of his. He had been meditating all the way to the city, and when he arrived, the bear-houses received orders to turn the stock, to buy cash from the cornering party and sell back on buyer's options of a month, the object of which game was that the bears, knowing that van Rensselaer was the defender of the stock, would conclude that he was short of cash, selling for ready money and buying to keep his corner by an option. The trick worked to perfection; the cash stock was taken up by van Rensselaer's own buyers, and the bears, taking new courage, fell upon the stock, and van Rensselaer purchased options in blocks of five and ten thousand, until the bears stopped short from sheer exhaustion.

"And of course he had the money ready, and laughed gleefully while he sprung the trap. The options matured, and behold there was no K. A. on the market! The corner was the kind that one dreams of--the price went up by bounds; it began with 110, and before the market closed men were offering 190, and all in vain. There were sixty thousand shares to be delivered to van Rensselaer, sixty thousand shares that had been sold short at 110, and that now could not be covered at 190!

"They came to him and begged for mercy; and he, generously, told them that they could not have the stock at 190, but that they might compromise and gain time, at the cost of five per cent per day on the par value of the stock. They, not having yet seen through the trick he had played them, and thinking that a break must soon come, were glad to accept. They paid the interest for ten days, and then the corner was as tight as ever; and in the end they paid him 260 for the stock, and thus he made two hundred dollars a share on sixty thousand shares. It was long before the bears ever interfered again with the pet stock of Robert van Rensselaer!"

XX.

On the day of that curious "compromise," our friend and his victims had been arguing till late in the evening; and then van Rensselaer had taken a cab and driven up town. Feeling the need of fresh air and movement, he had done something unusual with him--gotten out and strolled along upper Broadway.

It was after the dinner hour at home, and he was bending his steps toward his club; but pa.s.sing a brilliantly lighted restaurant, from which strains of music poured, he yielded to a sudden impulse and went in.

It was an unusual adventure to our hero; for it was rather a flashy restaurant, with gayly dressed women in it and men smoking. He watched them awhile, and then turned to study the menu.

Famous as were his banquets, van Rensselaer himself was a man of very simple tastes, all his splendor coming from his desire to please other people. At present he ordered a c.o.c.ktail, and sipped it meditatively while the waiter placed before him a plate of raw oysters, of a delicate and palatable variety. Before he ate them he ordered the next course, some sweetbreads and a quail on toast, fresh asparagus, and artichokes prepared in a special way; the waiter listened carefully to the description of exactly how the sweetbreads were to be cooked, and exactly the kind of sauce desired with the asparagus. "And bring me a pint of Chambertin," added the guest; "the best you have."

While the waiter departed Mr. Robert van Rensselaer carefully tasted the oysters. The sweetbreads, when they came, proved to be correct, the wine was better than he had hoped, and so he felt quite pleased with himself. Now and then during the repast he would pause to breathe and gaze round him; he was growing rather stout, unfortunately, and at his meals he felt it. But he finished at last and smacked his lips, and leaned far back in his chair and began to light a cigar.

The cigars of Robert van Rensselaer were, like everything else that he used, of his own importation; the aroma of them was a thing ambrosial, and so our friend half closed his eyes and felt very happy indeed. With the wine stirring in his blood, and his stomach purring contentedly, what more could a civilized man desire?

There was but one thing; as Mr. van Rensselaer was gazing about the room, he suddenly espied it. His eye was arrested at a table across the way, where sat two women. One of them was a very stout woman, with yellow hair and many jewels. But the other--he had never seen anything like her before. She was a young girl--not out of her teens--and of a wonderful delicate beauty. She was plainly dressed, and pale; but her skin was like finely tinted marble, and her face--van Rensselaer could simply not take his eyes away from her face.

And then suddenly the woman saw his gaze, and smiled. He saw her nudge the girl with her foot, and the girl looked up at him; then she turned scarlet, and gazed down at her plate. Van Rensselaer's heart beat faster, and he finished his demi-ta.s.se rather quickly and threw away his cigar. When he saw that the women were ready to leave, he beckoned to the waiter, and after glancing at his check, gave him a twenty-dollar bill and told him to keep the change. Then he took his overcoat and strolled slowly out.

The women were just in front of him, and he came up with them at the corner; they turned and strolled down a side street.

"Your friend seems a little shy," he said, laughing, as he put himself by the young girl's side, and gently took her arm.

"Just a little," replied the woman. "She has only been in New York a few days. Miss Harrison, Mr.--er--"

"Mr. Green," said the other.

"Mr. Green," repeated the woman, with a smile, "and Mrs. Lynch, myself."

So they were happily introduced. "And where are you going?" asked Mr. Green.

"We were just on our way home," said Mrs. Lynch.

They strolled on down the street; the man felt the soft arm trembling in his, but the girl said nothing, and never raised her eyes when he spoke to her. Mrs. Lynch kept up the conversation until they reached a brown stone house. The curtains were drawn, but one could see c.h.i.n.ks of light, and as the woman opened the door sounds of merriment broke upon the ear. The door of the parlor was open, but they pa.s.sed by, and into a rear room, lighted by a dim lamp; they shut the door, and then everything was quiet.

"Make yourselves at home," said Mrs. Lynch, taking off her hat and wraps. Mr. Green did likewise, and sat down upon the sofa.

The girl seated herself. She was still pale and trembling, but Mrs. Lynch did not notice it, conversing lightly with her new acquaintance. Suddenly, however, she arose, remarking, "I have something to attend to, if you'll excuse me." So, frowning down the girl's attempt to remonstrate, she disappeared, shutting the door.

XXI.

There was a little silence, and then Mr. Green went over and sat down by the girl. "Tell me," he said, "what is the matter?" She buried her face in her hands and shuddered. "Tell me," he repeated again, in a tender voice. "Trust me, won't you?"

And suddenly she looked up at him, the tears streaming from her eyes. "Oh," she pleaded, "have mercy on me! I can't do it--I can't! You don't know how miserable I am."

Robbie--one is moved intuitively to call him "Robbie" again at such a time, even though his hair is now an iron-gray--Robbie was gazing at the perfect face, and thinking that he had never seen anything so wonderful in his life before. "Listen," he said very gently. "You have no reason to be afraid of me. Tell me what is the matter, tell me how you come to be in such a place as this."

The girl gazed at him with her frightened eyes; she choked back a sob. "I have only been here a few hours," she said. "And I cannot stay--oh, I cannot!"

"Tell me about it," said he.

She sat kneading her hands together nervously. "I came from the country," she said. "It is the old story--it will not interest you. My father was dead, and my mother dead, and then I had no money, and had to work. And then I loved a young man--"

She made a sudden gesture of despair, and stopped. "Go on," said the other, tenderly.

"It was only last week that I saw him last," she said, "and now I shall never see him again. He begged me to go and live with him--that was in the beginning. He was very rich, and so his parents would not let him marry me. But I loved him, so I did not care; I only wanted to be with him. That was a year ago; and then he went away and left me--he said his parents had found it out. I heard he had gone to New York, and I followed him--spent all I owned to come. And of course I could not find him; and I could find nothing to do--I walked the streets all last night, and the night before. And then this was all that there was left--I was nearly dead."

The girl had flushed with excitement as she talked, and became more beautiful than ever. The other led her on; she told him all, for his was the first sympathetic voice she had heard. And Robbie talked to her as the Robbie of old had talked to women, gently, beautifully, with infinite tact, and sympathy, and grace. He was a handsome man and a brilliant man, and the girl forgot first her terror, and then her despair, and then her sorrow. No one disturbed them; they talked for an hour, for two hours, and with more and more understanding. Robbie's heart was beating faster and faster. She was not only a beautiful girl, she was a beautiful soul--a pearl in the mud, delicate and precious. And so he went on and on, pouring out his sympathy, and drawing out her whole heart. The time sped on yet faster, midnight came, and by that time Robbie had ventured to take her hand in his, and to sit down beside her on the sofa. He was trembling like a boy again, was Robbie, his whole being was on fire; and there had come a new blush to the girl's cheek, too.

"And listen to me," he was saying in a low whisper; "you do not know how you have touched my heart, how much I admire you and wish to help you. You are so beautiful,--I have never seen any one so beautiful,--and I--ah, we could go far away from all this horror, and you need never know of it, or hear of it again. I would take care of you and watch over you. You should have everything to make you happy, for I love you, oh, I cannot tell you how I love you! This is a dreadful place to say it; but what does it matter what these people think? They cannot understand, but we need not care. Ah, I wish you to be mine! I do not care how, but I will never let you suffer any harm. And oh, you must know that I will never let you leave me!"

And so he went on, swiftly, breathlessly, eloquently; and first he ventured to put his arms about her; and then to kiss her; and when he saw that she was trembling, and that tears of emotion had risen to her eyes, he clasped her to him pa.s.sionately.

And so another hour fled by; and when at last there came a tap upon the door, the girl sat upon Robbie's lap with her face buried in his shoulder. "And now," said Robbie, as Mrs. Lynch entered, "come and sit down, and let us settle."

XXII.

After that Mary Harrison--such was her name--was soon installed in a pretty little flat up in Harlem; and Robbie, a happy and guileless boy once more, was to be found there not infrequently. We must content ourselves with this brief mention of the subject, and hurry back with our hero to the tedious affairs of Wall Street.

For events moved swiftly in that part of the town; and even before the Kalamazoo Airship corner had been settled Robert van Rensselaer was busily planning the great coup of his life,--the smashing of Transatlantic and Suburban. About that desperate and historical campaign it is necessary that the reader should be told in detail.

There are men in Wall Street, gamblers pure and simple, who will bull or bear any stock out of which they think they can get anything; and again there are also legitimate manipulators. A legitimate manipulator of stocks, in the view of Robert van Rensselaer, was a man who studied the financial and economic conditions of the world, and aimed to drive prices where they ought to go. If a man could see deeply enough, and bear only unsound stocks and over-produced commodities, he might be considered as a useful servant of society--and what would be no less pleasant, the eternal laws of the universe would work with him in all his trading.

The story of the great Transatlantic and Suburban Railroad battle--the most sanguinary of all the conflicts of our hero, and one which Wall Street men will never forget while they live--the reader may find narrated in Jabbergrab, p. 1906, as follows:-- "It was the same marvellous grasp of conditions and of deep movements, men say. Van Rensselaer had been watching T. & S. for over a year, and watching the people who were engineering it. He had studied every phase of the problem and in the end he p.r.i.c.ked a bubble that was shedding a rainbow effulgence upon mankind, and that had deceived some of the keenest financiers of the country.

"In the first place Robert van Rensselaer had distrusted the T. & S. people, knowing some inside facts about them. Then he had studied the future of the line, its management, its plans, its huge issues of stock, which men whispered must be watered even while they bought it up like mad; and then from certain secret information about conferences, of which no one was supposed to know, from certain suspicious movements in the market as well, van Rensselaer became sure that the T. & S. financiers were prepared for a great boom in the stock. He was perfectly willing,--he helped them along,--for the more they inflated it, the better could he manage what he meant to do. Only when he thought they were about exhausted, he turned to the other side; and so began the battle of the giants."

XXIII.

No one knew that van Rensselaer was the man who was causing the trouble to T. & S., so our historian goes on to a.s.sure us. One of his qualities was his mastership of concealment: he had brokers all over Wall Street, and often they were bidding against each other without knowing it. Those on the outside saw merely that T. & S. had gone up in a way that beat all telling, and that then it had found a steady price and was marvellously active; those on the inside knew a little more; they knew that somebody was selling short, but who it was, there was only one man in the world that knew.

These things are complicated, and they are tedious; but they have to be understood, for they have to do with a crisis in the life of Robert van Rensselaer. For our friend was not a man who played at stocks; he never went in until he was sure he was right, and then he went in for all he was worth. Though as yet the market had not the least idea of it, he was stripped for a battle to the death with the supporters of Transatlantic and Suburban. Let the reader plunge boldly in,--and take our word for it that there is a path through the wilderness of the narrative.

It was on Tuesday that van Rensselaer had begun, taking "seller's options" of three days, which amounted to a gigantic bet that in three days, by more and more selling, he could lower the price of the stock. As a matter of fact he meant to give them no three days; he meant that T. & S. was to go down on Wednesday, the first real day of battle.

It was a situation like that in the K. A. corner, with the difference that n.o.body could think of cornering T. & S. Its stock was all over the country, it had been issued ten millions at a time, and what van Rensselaer and his opponents could secure was comparatively little; it was the market, the spectators of the battle, who were to award the prize of victory at the end. And as we have said, our hero had, or believed he had, the "eternal laws of nature" on his side. "It's coming down!" said van Rensselaer, grimly; "down! down!"

XXIV.

The powers that stood behind T. & S. held a meeting that Tuesday afternoon and formed a syndicate. The unknown person who was "bearing" the stock must be whipped into line without a moment's delay, they agreed; and on the morrow they arranged to buy up one hundred and fifty thousand shares of T. & S. and see if he could stand that.

Van Rensselaer was prepared to stand a good deal. On Tuesday, the market being strong, he had sold out every share of stock he owned, including even his K. A. holdings, including even all his interest in the great steel corporation he had made; and likewise he had borrowed upon his credit every dollar that he dared. All this cash was at his broker's, and on Wednesday morning when the market opened he was standing in his private office by the ticker, with his one trusted clerk at hand to telephone his orders.

The struggle opened slowly, the two giants sparring and feeling each other's strength. The syndicate brokers called loudly for T. & S., but van Rensselaer waited and watched. Some was sold, but it was not his; he was waiting to see if the price would not go up yet higher, to make his enemies bolder, and himself safer. And about eleven o'clock it did start. T. & S. had opened at 155, and trading brisk; five thousand shares had been sold, and then the price went to 155-1/2 to 156-1/2. Then again it went on to 158, and there it stopped. Evidently that was as high as the enemy cared to send it; and after a while van Rensselaer sent his orders,--two thousand shares to five different brokers. T. & S. wavered, went to 157-5/8, then rallied; sales fifteen thousand. Robert sent out again; offers were still being made, and his agents took them. In the board-room one might have seen a frantic crowd of shrieking, gesticulating men about the T. & S. post; such trading had not been seen for months--something was surely "up." As yet it was not perceived that the bull movement was a defensive one, and wild rumors flew about: the Ghoul and Castoria interests were fighting for the road; Mergem was going to run it to Alaska. T. & S. had never touched such a point before--surely it could not stay there. And yet it did stay there, while offer after offer was made. It was not till noon that it started down; and by that time the syndicate had bought its one hundred and fifty thousand shares, of which van Rensselaer had sold them one hundred and thirty thousand.

And now his brokers were shouting offers, and the price was settling steadily. The syndicate was again in hurried consultation; it was evident by this time that some powerful foe was against them in full force. Their peril was imminent and deadly; for the moment that the street perceived a bear attack, alarm would spread; and after that thousands would watch in wild uncertainty, and a single point might bring the panic, might fling thousands and hundreds of thousands of shares upon one side of the trembling balance. With only a few minutes' discussing, the syndicate pledged three hundred thousand more.

The market was in a frenzy; T. & S. went to 157-1/2, and there held. The brokers of the syndicate were making the board-room ring with their shouts; and van Rensselaer, calm and ready, sold them all they wanted, and every single time that they let up, began to bear the stock. The result was that its value swayed back and forth, now gaining and now losing a point, the trading in the meantime being furious. The meaning of it all was fast becoming plain,--that some conspirators were trying to break the stock, and that those conspirators were of the giants. Robert van Rensselaer was calculated to be worth some twenty million dollars at that day; and that meant that at the present price of the stock he was in a position to buy about a million and a quarter shares. Whether his enemies could go that far he did not know; but he sat grimly and watched the ticker, while the fierce battle raged and sounds of frenzied excitement came up from the street below.

So the hours crawled by, the three long weary hours more; and one by one he hurled his blows, and one by one they came to nothing. He was not a nervous man, and he did not drum the table; but his brow darkened and he swore softly. He was staking all that he owned against the unknown power of his opponents; and if he did not break them with his last offer, he would be without a dollar in the world.

And so came the last few dreadful minutes of that ever memorable day of frenzy. There were a dozen brokers shouting his gigantic offers; there was one case where twenty thousand shares changed hands in one block. He emptied his quiver, he made the market reel and men turn white with terror; but his every order was snapped up on the instant, and T. & S. never gave an inch! And so the moment of closing came; and the dreadful day was at an end.

XXV Robert van Rensselaer paced his office, his hands behind his back. He had no more money, but he was not frightened; his trust was in the eternal laws of nature,--and besides, he had one or two more cards to play. He was walking up and down meditatively, talking to himself half aloud. "I think," he was saying, "that I've gotten all the best of the pickings; and so it really won't do so much harm if I let them in."

He rang for his secretary and sent five telephone messages. Four of them were to friends of his, Wall Street plungers who had generally worked and fought with him; and the fifth was to Mr. Chauncey van Rensselaer.

It was only a few minutes before the first four were in his office, breathless and wild. "Well," said van Rensselaer, "what do you think of it?"

"Never saw anything like it," cried one of them; it was Shrike, the famous wheat plunger. "Never in my life! Who do you think it is? And what'll come of it?"

"That's what I sent for you for," was van Rensselaer's reply. "Sit down."

And then he talked to them. "I know who's in this, but I'm not at liberty to tell. But I know that they're going to win out, and I'm going to jump on to-morrow morning with every cent I have and help make it a smash-up. I know who's back of the T. & S. people,--it's Smith and Shark, in particular,--and I know just what they're good for. I know T. & S. pretty well, too, and it's hanging on the very verge. It's d.a.m.ned inflated stuff--you know that, as well as I do; and the street's just ready to jump on the losing side. The ring that's been making this fight is going to get most of it; but I'm going to get some, and I'm asking you in so as to make it a sure thing. We've only got to pile on to it, you know, and then suddenly let the street find out that it's us. The tumble will come in three seconds after that."

It was several hours before those four gentlemen went out of van Rensselaer's office. They talked the situation over in all its phases: the weak points about the T. & S. road, and the rumors that might be used; the impossibility of their being caught in a corner; the fact that thousands of stockholders were hoping for a rise, and trembling in uncertainty and terror at the thought of a fall; the resources of Smith and Shark and the T. & S. financiers; their own resources, and the weight of their names. In the end the agreement was to buy all the T. & S. offered in the morning, and at the hour of eleven jump in and pound it into the dust.