Robert Brent was in London for the first time since he started upon his almost hopeless quest of fortune’s favor in the summer of 1893. He had been the only passenger on the Mystery, whose epoch-making voyage a few days before was still the marvel of the Old and the New Worlds. This return to the old-fashioned, homely comforts of solid London he had anticipated with peculiar satisfaction. He felt more at home in Piccadilly than in Broadway. For six months he had told himself it was worth a trip across the Atlantic to be able to ride in a rubber-tired cab upon an asphalt pavement.

The New York business man cannot understand why it is that a Londoner flies away to the river, the sea-shore, or the country on the slightest pretext “to rest.” To say nothing of the extreme deliberation—to use an inoffensive term—in all his business methods, the citizen of the British metropolis has little in the common feature of municipal life to distract him. No gong ever clangs in a London street. Not even{232} on a fire-engine is that abomination tolerated. Broadway has become a municipal boiler-shop, to be fled from with bursting ear-drums. In Piccadilly, the wheels are silent and the horses seem to step lightly on the almost elastic pavement. Toleration of noise in all its forms is, indeed, the great surviving element of barbarism in the American people. Its relentless suppression is the only obvious superiority of European civilization above that of the New World.

But London did not seem the same to Brent after his two years’ absence. He avoided at first his old resorts, and did not seek out the associates from whom he had been completely cut off since he bade them good-by in early September, 1893. The old life did not tempt him as he had expected it would. London was the same, yet different. “It must be because everybody is out of town for the holidays,” he told himself, in trying to account for his intangible impression of change.

After a few days, Brent strolled into one or two of his favorite clubs. They were almost deserted. Only a few fossilized members, whom nothing short of an earthquake could shake out of their favorite smoking-room seats, were to be seen. Some of them recognized Brent, and nodded to him. Nobody ever does anything more in a typical London club. Americans, some of them, have an idea that one of the objects of{233} a club is to furnish members with the society of their fellows. Not so in London. Sit for an hour and watch the members of an English club stroll into the smoking-room one by one after dinner to enjoy their coffee, cigars, and liquor. A dozen men, perhaps, will be sitting each quite by himself at a tiny table. A newcomer enters. Half the men in the room nod to him, and he returns the salutation with as much cordiality as he thinks necessary. The other half don’t look up from their papers. But does he join one of his friends or acquaintances for a chat over the coffee? No mere good fellowship would justify such a liberty. He seeks the most secluded corner that remains unoccupied, draws a table barricade in front of him, and signals for a waiter. And if two men are inconsiderate enough to come in together with an unfinished conversation carried on above a whisper, all the other men in the room frown at the disturbers. The Englishman seeks his club for solitude, not for society.

Brent was quite used to this feature of London club life, and now he rather rejoiced in it. There was just sufficient companionship in the simple presence of a few silent mortals to relieve a sense of isolation which had been oppressing him for weeks. It would not be true to say that wealth had in a few short months made of Brent a morose and disappointed man. The{234} great problem which confronted him had proved a heavier burden than he anticipated. The anxieties of the past year had been more irksome than the pleasurable though arduous excitement of the previous months of adventure. But Brent was too young, too sanguine, and too resourceful to be cast down by the vast responsibilities which weighed more heavily upon him each day.

The day after he had arranged for taking the British government loan of ￡20,000,000, he set about figuring up roughly his financial operations since the night he had taken John Wharton partly into his confidence nine months before. Nearly $500,000,000, about fifteen per cent of his golden store, had been used or distributed—“got rid of,” he put it, in summing up the situation to himself.

“No, it isn’t rid of,” he corrected himself, “unless I burn up four hundred millions in securities. That is the worst of it,” he mused, rather gloomily. “I’m not rid of any, to speak of, except what I have actually given away.” And the young man put down a little resentfully the sense of estrangement and isolation which his unique problem and insular situation forced upon him. He persisted in his determination to guard jealously the secret of his wealth. He fancied he was still secure from real danger of discovery. Once or twice he had experienced some of{235} the anxieties of a hunted criminal. The ardor with which the newspapers had pursued his secret added to his dread of the notoriety which would come with discovery.

Let it not be imagined that this trait in Brent’s character was a singular and un-American whim. There is not an Astor, a Vanderbilt, or a Rockefeller who would not gladly sacrifice a great fortune from his possessions to escape from the isolation in which wealth has imprisoned him. The privilege of meeting one’s fellow-men upon a basis of sincerity is a boon quite unappreciated until wealth has taken it away. A man of many millions must do one of two things. Either he must build a wall about himself which he will permit no stranger and few of his so-called friends to pass, or he must arm himself with unrelenting suspicion and incredulity, until his waning faith in human nature almost disappears.

If the true story of “How it Feels to be a Millionaire” should ever be written, it will contain chapters that will excite more commiseration than envy. The “poor millionaire” is not likely to become an object of popular pity and sympathy, but he is often not a bad fellow after all. An American cursed with the fame of many millions gained by his ancestors, said recently that from early youth his position had suggested to him that of an antique statue at the mercy{236} of relic-hunters. His experience constantly deepened his impression, that nine out of ten of the people with whom he was brought in contact were armed each with hammer and chisel, ready to chip off a piece if they could get a chance. It was not so much from love of his wealth that he resisted most demands made upon him. It was because a man to whom money is a drug resented being wheedled and hoodwinked and swindled with just the same feelings that a poorer man might spend ten times the sum involved to recover an overcharge from a railroad company.

But if Brent had escaped thus far the commoner penalties of wealth, the exemption was more than overbalanced by his peculiar responsibilities. His misgivings about the effects of an enormous addition to the world’s supply of monetary metal were growing stronger daily. He began weeks before to realize the practical wisdom of the financial maxim that the essential value of gold as a monetary standard is its stability—its steady and almost unfluctuating supply. Before he left America signs were multiplying of a radical disturbance at the foundations of the financial system. High and advancing prices with cheap money was a combination so paradoxical and rare, that all calculations were upset by it. Already the tendency was to accumulate and hoard visible property, rather than the golden or other monetary tokens{237} of it. Who wanted his possessions turned into gold or other form of cash, when the purchasing power of money was declining daily? The prices of food, of manufactures, of land, of everything except labor, were rising at an unprecedented rate. There was a scramble for things of intrinsic value—a property panic, it might be called.

Wheat, for instance, was climbing toward famine prices. Why should an owner of grain sell, unless to invest in some commodity enhancing in value at a still more rapid rate? Stocks and bonds or money itself would yield only the most trifling returns on the capital represented. The prudent investor was forced to cling to those forms of property the demands for which were unceasing and inevitable. And the effect of this sudden limitation of the channels of investment? Obvious enough, and ominous too, to the dullest comprehension. When everybody wants to buy and nobody is willing to sell, prices quoted have small relation to the intrinsic value of the commodity in question. There was almost a corner in the markets of America. It was no artificial squeeze, manipulated by scheming traders. It was the inexorable working of one of the great laws of demand and supply, which no man or set of men could completely control. It presaged something worse.

Already the mutterings of a rapidly gathering{238} storm were heard throughout the land. Wage-earners, and all men with fixed incomes, were at the mercy of a far worse demon than “hard times.” Reduce the pay of every laborer and salary-earner in the United States forty per cent within six short months, and what would be the effect? The very foundations of constitutional government would hardly bear the strain. And yet that was just what had happened. The artisan who earned $20 a week in September was able to buy no more with his money than the laborer’s $12 a week had purchased the previous March. To restore to the artisan the same equivalent in purchasing power that he had received in March, would require raising his wages to $33 a week. In other words, $20 would buy in March precisely the same quantities of food and clothing and fuel which it needed $33 to procure in September.

If this scaling down of wages had been done by employers, organized labor would have known how to deal with the situation. But the amount paid in wages was the same—more in some cases—in dollars and cents as it had been at the beginning of the year. It was impossible, therefore, to retaliate at once with strikes and other arbitrary measures. The power to be combated was greater and beyond the employers. Moreover, it was something even less tangible than the soul of a corporation. There was no getting at it.{239} Employers themselves, except the producers of goods in regular demand, suffered from it quite as much as did the workers. The railroad companies could not advance fares and rates, because the purchasing power of money had suddenly diminished nearly one half. The increased prices they were called upon to pay for coal, rails, and rolling stock left them no surplus with which to satisfy the demands of employees for more wages. Miners and mill operatives were pressing their claims with better success. Coal and standard cotton and woolen goods were held at high prices, although the demand from actual consumers did not increase. The latter fact did not for the moment trouble the middlemen or dealers. Nothing was to be gained by turning their goods into money on a rising market. They held on for still larger profits.

The farmers were the ones who regarded the situation with the greatest satisfaction. The crops already beginning to come to market were large, but the prices of all staple products were marvelously high. Wheat, corn, and cotton seemed to be the favorite investments for idle money, while a real estate boom drew attention away from stocks and bonds in still another direction. Agriculture could afford to enjoy a wonderful prosperity at the expense of town vocations. The boot had been on the other leg long{240} enough. Somehow, no matter how, the tiller of the soil had been suddenly restored to his pristine supremacy in the economic world. It was enough for him to rejoice over the fact without trying to explain it.

Explanations there were and plenty of them, spread before all classes in the literature of the day. The most plausible, and the one most readily accepted at farmhouse hearthstones, was a complete vindication of the so-called “greenback craze” of a few years before. For the first time since the resumption of specie payments ten years after the Civil War, there was a superabundance of money in circulation. The effect upon the farmer was an unmixed blessing apparently. Once more agriculture paid a handsome profit. What matter to the farmer if the prices of all kinds of commodities were high? His farm supplied most of his bodily wants. He could burn wood instead of buying coal, and he didn’t mind paying rather more for clothing if the profit on his oats and corn doubled. Besides, he could pay his debts, and cancel his mortgage before long. It was only the fortunate farmer who had no debts or mortgage who was puzzled what to do with his enhanced profits. Savings banks, stocks, bonds would yield him only a pittance on his money. He could not buy more land, because the price had already gone too high. He wished he had not sold his crops for he saw they would{241} have brought still higher figures if he had held on.

Most of the features of the situation were familiar to Brent before he left America, and his apprehensions had been thoroughly aroused. The newspapers and his private advisers at about the beginning of October informed him that affairs at home were assuming a critical and dangerous phase in many places. He received one afternoon by cable a long message in cipher from Wharton, who was still his sole confidant. When he had translated it, this was what confronted him:

“Commercial demoralization becoming so widespread in all centers that grave evils imminent. Foodstuffs have reached famine prices. Bread riots feared Chicago and other places. Situation aggravated by our continued support of stocks at present prices. Tendency to sell securities and reinvest in visible property increasing daily. Think you should make radical change of policy in face threatened evils. Much regret your absence. Cannot you return for at least brief visit? Emergency may compel prompt action any moment to divert disastrous consequences. Please cable full instructions and sail if possible.—Wharton.”

Brent was seriously alarmed and discouraged by this dispatch. Before deciding upon a complete course of action, he cabled Wharton the following reply:{242}

“Endeavor divert course of speculation by allowing stocks decline gradually few points without exciting panic. Offer British naval bonds freely below par if necessary in order attract money from grain market. Try reduce price wheat by short sales or otherwise. Devise means for supplying food at fair prices in all distressed districts. Do this without ostentation, and employ existing agencies for distribution if possible. Use fullest discretion and spare no expense to avert serious disaster and violence. Keep me fully advised. If situation becomes more critical will return immediately.”

When he put himself face to face with the difficulties which he hoped his message to Wharton would mitigate somewhat, Brent speedily found himself in a bad temper. He put on his hat, set his teeth deep in an unlighted cigar, and presently was strolling aimlessly along the Thames Embankment. He found neither counsel nor encouragement in the face of old Father Thames. The grey river, like the grey city on its banks, was calmly indifferent to the petty concerns of any single generation of human weal and woe. The young man was unreasonably irritated by the absence of sympathy and inspiration in the inanimate things around him. The hopelessness of his problem angered him.

“Building the Mystery is the only sensible thing I{243} have done since I landed the stuff in New York,” he told himself bitterly, while he leaned over the stone abutment near Cleopatra’s Needle, and watched with heedless eyes the gathering veil of dusk upon the river. “I was right at the outset—I cannot keep such a quantity of gold; I cannot spend it; I cannot give it away. What am I to do? I have turned only an eighth of it into money, and the financial system of America threatens to come tumbling about my ears. If I should invite a committee of bankers to visit my New York strong-room, and allow them to make known what they saw there, I verily believe anarchy would reign throughout Christendom within a month. I never dreamed that the monetary system of the world was so fragile a structure. Why, a golden ball, only about ten yards in diameter, would crush it in ruins. I solemnly believe that if my vault contained so many tons of dynamite instead of gold, and it threatened the destruction of the whole city of New York, it would be a far less dangerous menace to humanity than it actually is.”

The crushing sense of responsibility with which his thoughts suddenly overwhelmed the young man threw into his face a grey look of age, which might have been the reflection of the gathering shadows. His attitude had unconsciously become one of such dejection that a policeman passing by looked at him{244} sharply. A ragged urchin with the inevitable box of matches, which is always the excuse for London mendicancy, accosted Brent at the same moment.

“Wax lights, sir, penny a box?”

No response.

“Have a light, sir. The cigar’s no good to you, sir, without a light,” and the boy lit a match and held it up before the tip of the cigar still in Brent’s mouth. Brent woke up............