There was a good deal of disappointment among the passengers of the steamship Paris as she steamed up from Sandy Hook toward quarantine, in the dusk of Friday evening of the week following Brent’s conversation by cable with his New York representative. The ship had failed by less than two hours to reach the quarantine station before sunset. The exasperating and absurd regulation under which the health officers of the port refuse to give pratique to any vessel between sunset and sunrise would, therefore, keep the ship’s company of a thousand persons prisoners for twelve long hours almost within sight of their destination.
The delay was particularly annoying to Brent, whose rising apprehensions had made the voyage irksome and long. The splendid ship, only two years before the queen of the seas, had seemed slow. She had made her name and record. Her qualities and powers were known. Ships, like men, become time-servers and lose ambition. Not since she was first{258} outstripped by a younger rival had the Paris matched even her own best speed. Brent missed the exhilaration which the tingling nerves and throbbing pulses of the Mystery had communicated to every one on board during her conquering voyage of a month before. The new-born ship, a third the size of this powerful leviathan, had seemed to feel a sympathetic yet absolute mastery of the element in which she moved, from the moment her prow first tossed aside the astonished waters of New York Bay. Neptune favored youth and audacity, and had contempt for age and experience and mere size.
Like every one else, Brent watched the beautiful panorama on either side as the ship ran up the Narrows in the soft October twilight. No sooner had the anchor been dropped in the little quarantine cove than two steamboats came alongside. One was the mail boat, and Brent was cogitating the idea that perhaps a few dollars judiciously bestowed might enable him to smuggle himself over the side with the mail-bags, when a hand was laid upon his shoulder, and a cheery voice said:
“How are you, old fellow? Come along with me.”
“Jack? This is good luck. How did you get aboard?”
“Came down on the revenue cutter. Don’t say{259} anything to the other passengers; but I’ve got a pass to take you right up to the city. You can’t take your baggage. Leave that till to-morrow and come along at once.”
The two men climbed down the ladder over the side, and while the cutter was steaming back to the Battery, Wharton detailed the week’s rapid turn of events.
“You’ve come back none too soon, old man,” he began in a serious voice. “Things are really in a very bad way, and I am not ready to take any further steps without your direct authority. A mob in Milwaukee burned two or three big grain elevators with several million bushels of wheat day before yesterday; there have been bread riots in Buffalo and Pittsburg, and there would have been bloody work in Chicago this week if we had not broken the corner in retail bread prices. The president has called a special session of Congress to meet early next month. The outlook is even more critical than when I cabled you, and no mere palliative measures will relieve the situation. It will require a very radical remedy to prevent serious disaster in several forms.”
“I’m mighty sorry to hear it, Jack. Do you think things are much worse than they would have been if we had not interfered last winter?” asked Brent, with a discouraged air.{260}
“That’s hard to say,” replied Wharton in some doubt. “I presume we should have had a blue panic, plenty of failures, commercial paralysis, suspension of all kinds of manufacturing, low prices, and the pinch of the hardest of hard times—just a repetition of what the country has to go through once in twenty years or so. What is happening now is very different. It is an entirely new experience, and its very novelty adds to the danger, because nobody really understands it or knows how to deal with it. Instead of too little money, we have too much. In ordinary hard times people get frightened and don’t dare invest in the usual ways. So they hoard their money till the scare is over. It’s just the opposite now. The country seems to have lost confidence in money itself. That is something which hasn’t happened before in our day. So the popular passion is to hoard things of intrinsic value instead of gold.”
“How much have you succeeded in borrowing?”
“Only about fifteen millions so far. Such large loans cannot be negotiated as rapidly as I hoped, but within three or four days we shall be able to withdraw fully fifty millions from the money market, and by the time Congress meets, twice that. The effect will be beneficial, no doubt, but its full influence will not be felt for a month at least, and in the meantime there is a very dangerous emergency to meet.{261}”
“Well, John, what can we do? I confess I am unequal to the problem,” and the worry and anxiety upon Brent’s countenance gave him more the appearance of a man helpless in the face of bankruptcy than of a Cr?sus struggling under too great a load of wealth.
Wharton looked at his friend closely in the rather dim light of a lamp which lit that corner of the cabin before replying. After a moment or two, he said, with an earnestness of which Brent had not thought him capable:
“Bob, old fellow, I don’t consider that you are obliged to do anything. You are an immensely wealthy man—the richest in the world, I have no doubt. You have been good enough to make me your confidant and agent in all your operations of the past year. I know that in everything you have done, your object has been some general or specific benefit to others. I know that your motives in the use of money have been purer and more unselfish than those of any other man I ever met. Money may be the root of all evil, but it is not your fault that your money has not been an unmixed blessing to every one who has touched it. It may be true that some of the evils which threaten just now are traceable to the free distribution of your great store of gold. But you can face the situation with an absolutely clear conscience. You did the best you could, and everything{262} for the best. No man can do more than that. There is no obligation upon you, legal or moral, to sacrifice yourself in the solution of this crisis.”
“You are very good, Jack, to make a philanthropist of me,” interrupted Brent, smiling faintly, “but you know very well that the coat doesn’t fit, and to tell you the truth, I should be sorry if it did. There is no virtue in giving or throwing away what one doesn’t want. Neither is it any credit to a man to use money for a good purpose when he can gain nothing by devoting it to an evil one. I am in the most humiliating of all positions—that of a man unequal to his responsibilities. A fool is more to be despised than a knave,” went on the young man bitterly, “and ‘good intentions’ excuse nothing. I have got the whole country into an infernal mess through my stupid interference with the established order of things. Now I am bound to repair the mischief as far as possible, just as much as if I had deliberately wrought the same ruin.”
“Nonsense, man,” responded Wharton warmly. “Your sentiments do you credit, but you’re morbidly overconscientious. And so far from being a fool or stupid, there isn’t one trained financier in a hundred that wouldn’t have made worse mistakes than yours. Of course you know it will make a big hole even in your fortune to restore the financial world to its nor{263}mal condition. In fact, I don’t know how it’s to be done, though I’ve no doubt we can much improve the present situation. Let me see, you have added about five hundred million dollars to the world’s monetary supply of gold. I hope you haven’t a few hundred millions more still in reserve.”
Brent had been pacing restlessly back and forth in the little cabin. He stopped suddenly at Wharton’s last words, hesitated a moment, then faced his friend, and with a gesture, half of defiance, half of despair, exclaimed:
“That’s the worst of the whole accursed business, Jack. I haven’t used a sixth part of the stuff yet!”
It was not merely surprise that overspread Wharton’s face as he stared speechlessly at his friend on hearing these words. It was the half-dazed, apprehensive, helpless expression which the shock of bad news first brings to a man’s countenance. It was a strange picture, the deep and genuine distress of these two men over the possession of fabulous wealth. Money may usually be depended upon to intensify the passions of its possessor. Is it contrary to human nature to say that its unstinted supply will overwhelm even selfishness and greed? Or was the desire to escape the burden and responsibility of superfluous millions only another form of selfishness? The two men were silent a long time—the one striving to{264} realize the tremendous, the terrible significance to the world of those ten pregnant words; the other enjoying a certain relief that at last his weary load was shared by another’s shoulders. It was Brent who spoke first.
“Jack, my boy,” he exclaimed suddenly, the genial spirit of college days coming to the surface once more under the influence of his confession, “I’ll turn it all over to you, and there is certainly more than five thousand tons left, and cry good riddance if you’ll take it off my hands.”
Wharton was still silent.
“There’s an offer for you, man,” Brent went on lightly. “Untold wealth, boundless power, immortal fame, all without lifting a finger! Can you refuse?”
There was neither eagerness nor greed in Wharton’s eye. He had appeared careworn and jaded under the pressure of his extraordinary labors of the past week when he met Brent on the steamer. Now he seemed suddenly to have grown ten years older.
“Don’t joke, Bob, it’s too serious. It’s appalling,” he wearily replied to his friend’s last question.
“But I’m not joking,” said Brent more seriously. “I’m in dead earnest. You are much better fitted for this responsibility than I am. I shall be quite contented with a few millions to live upon and develop a few hobbies. Then you can work out the greater{265} problem to the best advantage. It is in your line and not in mine. Furthermore, I have perfect confidence in both your heart and your head, for the solving of it—if it can be solved.”
“You have been very generous to me already, Bob,” was the earnest response, “but what you propose would be cruelty rather than generosity. However, I presume not one man in a million would look at it in that light. I shouldn’t myself six months ago. But I am stunned by this news. What you told me last December seemed too good to be true; this is quite the reverse. My first impulse is to beg you to take this gold back where it came from, or rather to bury it, sink it, destroy it somehow, and never let the world know it existed. The mere suspicion of its existence would plunge the markets of the world, the whole financial system, into chaos, and throw us back to the primitive methods of barter and trade under barbarism. Gold would be demonetized instantly and become a mere commodity before any ‘Gold Repeal Acts’ could be passed. You have seen the effect of flooding the market with gold in the last few months. We are on the verge of disaster now, and only prompt corrective measures will save us. What would happen if the whole truth were known? Why, man, it is almost beyond one’s power to conceive the ruin that would be wrought. But I{266} must have time to think. There are a thousand things to be considered before you can act, Bob, and I fear you must call in the assistance of wiser heads than mine. I never until now quailed before responsibility, Robert, but I do before this. The very fate of civilization may almost be said to hang upon your decision,” and a sense akin to awe deepened the lines in the young man’s face as he rose rather unsteadily to his feet, and put both hands on the shoulders of his friend.
“You do not need to impress upon me the fearful importance of it all, John,” Brent responded sadly, all the lightness vanishing from his tones and manner. “The knowledge of it has been growing upon me for weeks, until it has crushed out half the charm of life. I wish I had told you the truth at the outset, for it would have enabled me to avoid some mistakes, and the accursed secret would have been easier to carry if you had shared it. Never mind now, it is still a problem of to-morrow, while that of to-day is difficult enough. Every remaining ounce of gold shall remain where it is until we have decided upon its final disposition. Well, here we are at the wharf,” and the two men went ashore, took an elevated train up town, and Brent established himself in his former quarters at the Waldorf.
Wharton remained until long after midnight, dis{267}cussing plans and expedients for easing the situation where the pressure was greatest. His face was haggard and white, when he finally said good-night.
“I almost wish you hadn’t told me about your vault full of reserves,” he observed wearily. “It will worry me all night. I haven’t known what insomnia was until lately—and it’s the very devil.”
“Take care, old fellow,” responded Brent anxiously. “You are working far harder over this business than I am, and Heaven knows it’s never out of my mind many minutes at a time. We can’t either of us afford to break down. Just take the thing philosophically—which means, you know, look at it with the eyes of a fatalist. We can do just so much and no more, and we are doing it. I’m not going to let my hindsight abuse my foresight any longer. I shall sleep better to-night than I have slept for six months, and you can do the same if you will remember that my abominable troubles are beyond your reach until ten o’clock to-morrow. Sit down a minute longer while I tell you a little story,” and Brent, with many quaint touches of dry humor, of which he had a rich fund rarely drawn upon, told of his first meeting with his ragged London protégé. Wharton enjoyed the little incident hugely, and the genuine ring of college days in his laugh was a better assurance than drugs could{268} give that his rest would not after all be sleepless.
They were critical days which followed. The country passed through a crisis more perilous than the keenest observers could understand or fathom. The course of events was a complete enigma. The unexpected happened continually. Where danger seemed greatest it disappeared. Where it had been unsuspected, it broke out even in violence and bloodshed. Where bread had been most scarce, it became mysteriously plentiful. Where hunger had been clemming in silence, it suddenly gave voice, and honest hands defied the law that they might feed empty bellies. And the world of trade seemed turned over to laws of paradox. The distrust of gold, of money, was growing rapidly stronger, yet there sprang up a vigorous demand for it. The banks wanted it, and began putting up their rates. It was no longer a drug in the market. The effect upo............