Peter Part 5

Jack looked out of the windows, his eyes taking in the remnants of the autumnal tints in the Park, now nearly gone, the crowd filling the sidewalks; the lumbering stages and the swifter-moving horse-cars crammed with eager men anxious to begin the struggle of the day--not with their hands--that mob had swept past hours before--but with their brains--wits against wits and the devil take the man who slips and falls.

Nothing of it all interested him. His mind was on the talk at the breakfast table, especially his uncle's ideas of hospitality, all of which had appalled and disgusted him. With his father there had always been a welcome for every one, no matter what the position in life, the only standard being one of breeding and character--and certainly Peter had both. His uncle had helped him, of course--put him under obligations he could never repay. Yet after all, it was proved now to him that he was but a guest in the house enjoying only such rights as any other guest might possess, and with no voice in the welcome--a condition which would never be altered, until he became independent himself--a possibility which at the moment was too remote to be considered. Then his mind reverted to his conversation the night before with Mr. Grayson and with this change of thought his father's portrait--the one that hung in his room--loomed up. He had the night before turned on the lights--to their fullest--and had scanned the picture closely, eager to find some trace of Peter in the counterfeit presentment of the man he loved best, and whose memory was still almost a religion, but except that both Peter and his father were bald, and that both wore high, old-fas.h.i.+oned collars and neck-cloths, he had been compelled to admit with a sigh that there was nothing about the portrait on which to base the slightest claim to resemblance.

"Yet he's like my father, he is, he is," he kept repeating to himself as the cab sped on. "I'll find out what it is when I know him better.

To-night when Mr. Grayson comes I'll study it out," and a joyous smile flashed across his features as he thought of the treat in store for him.

When at last the boy reached his office, where, behind the mahogany part.i.tion with its pigeon-hole cut through the gla.s.s front he sat every day, he swung back the doors of the safe, took out his books and papers and made ready for work. He had charge of the check book, and he alone signed the firm's name outside of the partners. "Rather young," one of them protested, until he looked into the boy's face, then he gave his consent; something better than years of experience and discretion are wanted where a scratch of a pen might mean financial ruin.

Breen had preceded him with but a nod to his clerks, and had disappeared into his private office--another erection of ground gla.s.s and mahogany.

Here the senior member of the firm shut the door carefully, and turning his back fished up a tiny key attached to a chain leading to the rear pocket of his trousers. With this he opened a small closet near his desk--a mere box of a closet--took from it a squatty-shaped decanter labelled "Rye, 1840," poured out half a gla.s.s, emptied it into his person with one gulp, and with the remark in a low voice to himself that he was now "copper fastened inside and out"--removed all traces of the incident and took up his morning's mail.

By this time the circle of chairs facing the huge blackboard in the s.p.a.cious outer office had begun to fill up. Some of the customers, before taking their seats, hurried anxiously to the ticker, chattering away in its gla.s.s case; others turned abruptly and left the room without a word. Now and then a customer would dive into Breen's private room, remain a moment and burst out again, his face an index of the condition of his bank account.

When the chatter of the ticker had s.h.i.+fted from the London quotations to the opening sales on the Exchange, a sallow-faced clerk mounted a low step-ladder and swept a scurry of chalk marks over the huge blackboard, its margin lettered with the initials of the princ.i.p.al stocks. The appearance of this nimble-fingered young man with his piece of chalk always impressed Jack as a sort of vaudeville performance. On ordinary days, with the market lifeless, but half of the orchestra seats would be occupied. In whirl-times, with the ticker spelling ruin, not only were the chairs full, but standing room only was available in the offices.

Their occupants came from all cla.s.ses; clerks from up-town dry-goods houses, who had run down during lunch time to see whether U.P. or Erie, or St. Paul had moved up an eighth, or down a quarter, since they had devoured the morning papers on their way to town; old speculators who had spent their lives waiting buzzard-like for some calamity, enabling them to swoop down and make off with what fragments they could pick up; well-dressed, well-fed club men, who had had a run of luck and who never carried less than a thousand shares to keep their hands in; gray-haired novices nervously rolling little wads of paper between their fingers and thumbs--up every few minutes to listen to the talk of the ticker, too anxious to wait until the sallow-faced young man with the piece of chalk could make his record on the board. Some of them had gathered together their last dollar. Two per cent. or one percent, or even one-half of one per cent. rise or fall was all that stood between them and ruin.

"Very sorry, sir, but you know we told you when you opened the account that you must keep your margins up," Breen had said to an old man. The old man knew; had known it all night as he lay awake, afraid to tell his wife of the sword hanging above their heads. Knew it, too, when without her knowledge he had taken the last dollar of the little nest-egg to make good the deficit owed Breen & Co. over and above his margins, together with some other things "not negotiable"--not our kind of collateral but "stuff" that could "lie in the safe until he could make some other arrangement," the cas.h.i.+er had said with the firm's consent.

Queer safe, that of Breen & Co., and queer things went into it. Most of them were still there. Jack thought some jeweller had sent part of his stock down for safe-keeping when he first came across a tiny drawer of which Breen alone kept the key. Each object could tell a story: a pair of diamond ear-rings surely could, and so could four pearls on a gold chain, and perhaps, too, a certain small watch, the case set with jewels. One of these days they may be redeemed, or they may not, depending upon whether the owners can sc.r.a.pe money enough together to pay the balances owed in cash. But the four pearls on the gold chain are likely to remain there--that poor fellow went overboard one morning off Nantucket Light, and his secret went with him.

During the six months Jack had stood at his desk new faces had filled the chairs--the talk had varied; though he felt only the weary monotony of it all. Sometimes there had been hours of tense excitement, when even his uncle had stood by the ticker, and when every bankable security in the box had been overhauled and sent post-haste to the bank or trust company. Jack, followed by the porter with a self-c.o.c.king revolver in his outside pocket, had more than once carried the securities himself, returning to the office on the run with a small sc.r.a.p of paper good for half a million or so tucked away in his inside pocket. Then the old monotony had returned with its dull routine and so had the chatter and talk. "Buy me a hundred." "Yes, let 'em go." "No, I don't want to risk it." "What's my balance?" "Thought you'd get another eighth for that stock." "Sold at that figure, anyhow," etc.

Under these conditions life to a boy of Jack's provincial training and temperament seemed narrowed down to an arm-chair, a black-board, a piece of chalk and a restless little devil sputtering away in a gla.s.s case, whose fiat meant happiness or misery. Only the tongue of the demon was in evidence. The brain behind it, with its thousand slender nerves quivering with the energy of the globe, Jack never saw, nor, for that matter, did nine-tenths of the occupants of the chairs. To them its spoken word was the dictum of fate. Success meant debts paid, a balance in the bank, houses, horses, even yachts and estates--failure meant obscurity and suffering. The turn of the roulette wheel or the roll of a cube of ivory they well knew brought the same results, but these turnings they also knew were attended with a certain loss of prestige.

Taking a flier in the Street was altogether different--great financiers were behind the fluctuations of values told by the tongue of the ticker, and behind them was the wealth of the Republic and still in the far distance the power of the American people. Few of them ever looked below the grease paint, nor did the most discerning ever detect the laugh on the clown's face.

The boy half hidden by the gla.s.s screen, through which millions were pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed every month, caught now and then a glimpse.

Once a faded, white-haired old man had handed Jack a check after banking hours to make good an account--a man whose face had haunted him for hours. His uncle told him the poor fellow had "run up solid" against a short interest in a stock that some Croesus was manipulating to get even with another Croesus who had manipulated HIM, and that the two Croesuses had "buried the old man alive." The name of the stock Jack had forgotten, but the suffering in the victim's face had made an indelible impression. In reply to Jack's further inquiry, his uncle had spoken as if the poor fellow had been wandering about on some unknown highway when the accident happened, failing to add that he himself had led him through the gate and started him on the road; forgetting, too, to say that he had collected the toll in margins, a sum which still formed a considerable portion of Breen & Co.'s bank account. One bit of information which Breen had vouchsafed, while it did not relieve the gloom of the incident, added a note of courage to the affair:

"He was game, however, all the same, Jack. Had to go down into his wife's stocking, I hear. Hard hit, but he took it like a man."

CHAPTER V.

While all this was going on downtown under the direction of the business end of the house of Breen, equally interesting events were taking place uptown under the guidance of its social head. Strict orders had been given by Mrs. Breen the night before that certain dustings and arrangings of furniture should take place, the s.p.a.cious stairs swept, and the hectic hired palms in their great china pots watered. I say "the night before," because especial stress was laid upon the fact that on no account whatever were either Mrs. Breen or her daughter Corinne to be disturbed until noon--neither of them having retired until a late hour the night before.

So strictly were these orders carried out that all that did reach the younger woman's ear--and this was not until long after mid-day--was a sc.r.a.p of news which crept upstairs from the breakfast table via Parkins wireless, was caught by Corinne's maid and delivered in manifold with that young lady's coffee and b.u.t.tered rolls. This when deciphered meant that Jack was not to be at the dance that evening--he having determined instead to spend his time up stairs with a disreputable old fellow whom he had picked up somewhere at a supper the preceding night.

Corinne thought over the announcement for a moment, gazed into the egg-sh.e.l.l cup that Hortense was filling from the tiny silver coffee-pot, and a troubled expression crossed her face. "What has come over Jack?"

she asked herself. "I never knew him to do anything like this before. Is he angry, I wonder, because I danced with Garry the other night? It WAS his dance, but I didn't think he would care. He has always done everything to please me--until now." Perhaps the boy was about to slip the slight collar he had worn in her service--one buckled on by him willingly because--though she had not known it--he was a guest in the house. Heretofore she said to herself Jack had been her willing slave, a feather in her cap--going everywhere with her; half the girls were convinced he was in love with her--a theory which she had encouraged.

What would they say now? This prospect so disturbed the young woman that she again touched the b.u.t.ton, and again Hortense glided in.

"Hortense, tell Parkins to let me know the moment Mr. John comes in--and get me my blue tea-gown; I sha'n't go out to-day." This done she sank back on her pillows.

She was a slight little body, this Corinne--blue-eyed, fair-haired, with a saucy face and upturned nose. Jack thought when he first saw her that she looked like a wren with its tiny bill in the air--and Jack was not far out of the way. And yet she was a very methodical, level-headed little wren, with several positive convictions which dominated her life--one of them being that everybody about her ought to do, not as they, but as she, pleased. She had begun, and with p.r.o.nounced success, on her mother as far back as she could remember, and had then tried her hand on her stepfather until it became evident that as her mother controlled that gentleman it was a waste of time to experiment further.

All of which was a saving of stones without the loss of any birds.

Where she failed--and she certainly had failed, was with Jack, who though punctiliously polite was elusive and--never quite subdued. Yet the discovery made, she neither pouted nor lost her temper, but merely bided her time. Sooner or later, she knew, of course, this boy, who had seen nothing of city life and who was evidently dazed with all the magnificence of the stately home overlooking the Park, would find his happiest resting-place beneath the soft plumage of her little wing. And if by any chance he should fall in love with her--and what more natural; did not everybody fall in love with her?--would it not be wiser to let him think she returned it, especially if she saw any disposition on the young man's part to thwart her undisputed sway of the household?

For months she had played her little game, yet to her amazement none of the things she had antic.i.p.ated had happened. Jack had treated her as he would any other young woman of his acquaintance--always with courtesy--always doing everything to oblige her, but never yielding to her sway. He would laugh sometimes at her pretensions, just as he would have laughed at similar self-a.s.sertiveness on the part of any one else with whom he must necessarily be thrown, but never by thought, word or deed had he ever given my Lady Wren the faintest suspicion that he considered her more beautiful, better dressed, or more entertaining, either in song, chirp, flight or plumage, than the flock of other birds about her. Indeed, the Scribe knows it to be a fact that if Jack's innate politeness had not forbidden, he would many times have told her truths, some of them mighty unpleasant ones, to which her ears had been strangers since her school-girl days.

This unstudied treatment, strange to say--the result really, of the boy's indifference--had of late absorbed her. What she could not have she generally longed for, and there was not the slightest question up to the present moment that Jack was still afield.

Again the girl pressed the b.u.t.ton of the cord within reach of her hand, and for the third time Hortense entered.

"Have you told Parkins I want to know the very instant Mr. John comes in?"

"Yes, miss."

"And, Hortense, did you understand that Mr. John was to go out to meet the gentleman, or was the gentleman to come to his rooms?"

"To his rooms, I think, miss."

She was wearing her blue tea-gown, stretched out on the cus.h.i.+ons of one of the big divans in the silent drawing-room, when she heard Jack's night-key touch the lock. Springing to her feet she ran toward him.

"Why, Jack, what's this I hear about your not coming to my dance? It isn't true, is it?" She was close to him now, her little head c.o.c.ked on one side, her thin, silken draperies dripping about her slender figure.

"Who told you?"

"Parkins told Hortense."

"Leaky Parkins?" laughed Jack, tossing his hat on the hall table.

"But you are coming, aren't you, Jack? Please do!"

"Not to-night; you don't need me, Corinne." His voice told her at once that not only was the leash gone but that the collar was off as well.

"Yes, but I do."

"Then please excuse me, for I have an old gentleman coming to pay me a visit. The finest old gentleman, by the way, you ever saw! A regular thoroughbred, Corinne--who looks like a magnificent portrait!" he added in his effort to interest her.

"But let him come some other time," she coaxed, holding the lapel of his coat, her eyes searching his.

"What, turn to the wall a magnificent old portrait!" This came with a mock grimace, his body bent forward, his eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with laughter.

"Be serious, Jack, and tell me if you think it very nice in you to stay upstairs in your den when I am giving a dance? Everybody will know you are at home, and we haven't enough men as it is. Garry can't come, he writes me. He has to dine with some men at the club."

"I really AM sorry, Corinne, but I can't this time." Jack had hold of her hand now; for a brief moment he was sorry he had not postponed Peter's visit until the next day; he hated to cause any woman a disappointment. "If it was anybody else I might send him word to call another night, but you don't know Mr. Grayson; he isn't the kind of a man you can treat like that. He does me a great honor to come, anyhow.

Just think of his coming to see a boy like me--and he so--"

"Well, bring him downstairs, then." Her eyes began to flash; she had tried all the arts she knew--they were not many--but they had won heretofore. "Mother will take care of him. A good many of the girls'

fathers come for them."

"Bring him downstairs to a dance!" Jack answered with a merry laugh. "He isn't that kind of an old gentleman, either. Why, Corinne, you ought to see him! You might as well ask old Bishop Gooley to lead the german."