The summer wore on. At the end of August Alice returned from Newport for a couple of days, having some shopping to do before she joined the Prentices at their camp in the Adirondacks. Society had here a new way of enjoying itself. People built themselves elaborate palaces in the wilderness, and lived in a fantastic kind of rusticity, with every luxury of civilisation included. For this life one needed an entirely separate wardrobe, with doeskin hunting-boots and mountain-climbing skirts—all very picturesque and expensive. It reminded Montague of a jest that he had heard about Mrs. Vivie Patton, whose husband had complained of the expensiveness of her costumes, and requested her to wear simpler dresses. “Very well,” she said, “I will get a lot of simple dresses immediately.”
Alice spent one evening at home, and she took her cousin into her confidence. “I've an idea, Allan, that Harry Curtiss is going to ask me to marry him. I thought it was right to tell you about it.”
“I've had a suspicion of it,” said Montague, smiling.
“Harry has a feeling you don't like him,” said the girl. “Is that true?”
“No,” replied Montague, “not precisely that.” He hesitated.
“I don't understand about it,” she continued. “Do you think I ought not to marry him?”
Montague studied her face. “Tell me,” he said, “have you made up your mind to marry him?”
“No,” she answered, “I cannot say that I have.”
“If you have,” he added, “of course there is no use in my talking about it.”
“I wish you would tell me just what happened between you and him,” exclaimed the girl.
“It was simply,” said Montague, “that I found that Curtiss was doing, in a business way, something which I considered improper. Other people are doing it, of course—he has that excuse.”
“Well, he has to earn a living,” said Alice.
“I know,” said the other; “and if he marries, he will have to earn still more of a living. He will only place himself still tighter in the grip of these forces of corruption.”
“But what did he do?” asked Alice, anxiously. Montague told her the story.
“But, Allan,” she said, “I don't see what there is so very bad about that. Don't Ryder and Price own the railroad?”
“They own some of it,” said Montague. “Other people own some.”
“But the other people have to take their chances,” protested the girl; “if they choose to have anything to do with men like that.”
“You are not familiar with business,” said the other, “and you don't appreciate the situation. Curtiss was elected a director—he accepted a position of trust.”
“He simply did it as a favour to Price,” said she. “If he hadn't done it, Price would only have got somebody else. As you say, Allan, I don't understand much about it, but it seems to me it isn't fair to blame a young man who has to make his way in the world, and who simply does what he finds everybody else doing. Of course, you know best about your own affairs; but it always did seem to me that you go out of your way to look for scruples.”
Montague smiled sadly. “That sounds very much like what he said, Alice. I guess you have made up your mind to marry him, after all.”
Alice set out, accompanied by Oliver, who was bound for Bertie Stuyvesant's imitation baronial castle, in another part of the mountains. Betty Wyman was also to be there, and Oliver was to spend a full month. But three days later Montague received a telegram, saying that his brother would arrive in New York shortly after eight that morning, and to wait at his home for him. Montague suspected what this meant; and he had time enough to think it over and make up his mind. “Well?” he said, when Oliver came in. “It's come again, has it?”
“Yes,” said Oliver, “it has.”
“Another 'sure thing'?”
“Dead sure. Are you coming in?” Oliver asked, after a moment.
Montague shook his head. “No,” he said. “I think once was enough for me.”
“You don't mean that, Allan!” protested the other.
“I mean it,” was the reply.
“But, my dear fellow, that is perfectly insane! I have information straight from the inside—it's as certain as the sunrise!”
“I have no doubt of that,” responded Montague. “But I am through with gambling in Wall Street. I've seen enough of it, Oliver, and I'm sick of it. I don't like the emotions it causes in me—I don't like the things it makes me do.”
“You found the money came in useful, didn't you?” said Oliver, sarcastically.
“Yes, I can use what I've got.”
“And when that's gone?”
“I don't know about that yet. But I'll find some way that I like better.”
“All right,” said Oliver; “it's your own lookout. I will make my own little pile.”
They rode down town in a cab together. “Where does your information come from this time?” asked Montague.
“The same source,” was the reply.
“And is it Transcontinental again?”
“No,” said Oliver; “it's another stock.”
“What is it?”
“It's Mississippi Steel,” was the answer.
Montague turned and stared at him. “Mississippi Steel!” he gasped.
“Why, yes,” said Oliver. “What's that to you?” he added, in perplexity.
“Mississippi Steel!” Montague ejaculated again. “Why, didn't you know about my relations with the Northern Mississippi Railroad?”
“Of course,” said Oliver; “but what's that got to do with Mississippi Steel?”
“But it's Price who is managing the deal—the man who owns the Mississippi Steel Company!”
“Oh,” said the other, “I had forgotten that.” Oliver's duties in Society did not give him much time to ask about his brother's affairs.
“Allan,” he added quickly, “you won't say anything about it!”
“It's none of my business now,” answered the other. “I'm out of it. But naturally I am interested to know. What is it—a raid on the stock?”
“It's going down,” said Oliver.
Montague sat staring ahead of him. “It must be the Steel Trust,” he whispered, half to himself.
“Nothing more likely,” was the reply. “My tip comes from that direction.”
“Do you suppose they are going to try to break Price?”
“I don't know; I guess they could do it if they made up their mind to.”
“But he owns a majority of the stock!” said Montague. “They can't take it away from him outright.”
“Not if he's got it locked up in his safe,” was the reply; “and if he's got no debts or obligations. But suppose he's overextended; and suppose some bank has loaned him money on the stock—what then?”
Montague was now keenly interested. He went with his brother while the latter drew his money from the bank, and called at his brokers and ordered them to sell Mississippi Steel. The other was called away then by an engagement in court, which occupied him for several hours; when he came out, he made for the nearest ticker, and the first figures he saw were Mississippi Steel—quoted at nearly twenty points below the price of the morning!
The bare figures were eloquent to him of many tragedies; they brought before him half a dozen different personalities, with their triumphs and despairs. He could read in them the story of a Titan struggle. Oliver had made his killing; but what of Price and Ryder? Montague knew that most of Price's stock was hypothecated at the Gotham Trust. And now what would become of it? And what would become of the Northern Mississippi?
He bought the afternoon papers. Their columns were full of the sensational events of the day. The bottom had dropped out of Mississippi Steel, as they phrased it. The wildest rumours were afloat. The Company was known to be making enormous extensions, and it was said to have overreached itself; there were whispers that its officers had been speculating, that the Company would be unable to meet the next quarterly payment upon its bonds, that a receivership would be necessary. There were hints that the concern was to be taken over by the Trust, but this was vigorously denied by officers of the latter.
All of which had come like a bolt out of the blue. To Montague it was an amazing and terrible thing. It counted little to him that he was out of the struggle himself; that he no longer had anything to lose personally. He was like a man who had been through an earthquake, and who stood and stared at a gaping crack in the ground. Even though he was safe at the moment, he could not forget that this was the earth upon which he had to spend the rest of his life, and that the next crack might open where he stood.
Montague could not see that there was the least chance for Price and Ryder; he pictured them bowled clean out, and he would not have been surprised to read that they were ruined. But apparently they weathered the storm. The episode passed with no more than a crop of rumours. Mississippi Steel did not go back, however; and he noticed that Northern Mississippi stock had also “gone off” eight or ten points on the curb.
It was a period of great anxiety in the financial world. Men felt the unrest, even though they could not give definite reasons. There had been several panics in the stock market throughout the summer; and leading financiers and railroad presidents seemed to have got the habit of pr............