Watchfires (30 page)

"Because he adores you!"

"You're glib, Selby. You're glib." She shrugged impatiently as she turned away. "How do I know Fred can adore anybody?"

"If you were his brother, you'd know."

She swung back on him now, her eyes almost blazing. "If you ever tell Fred anything about our talks, I think I'll kill you, Selby! I really will!"

"Why should I tell him?"

"To deflect his attentions from a girl your family consider ineligible."

Selby shook his head slowly. "My parents have no such views."

"Well, then, from a girl whom
you
consider ineligible. A girl who cares about all the wrong things!"

"Why are they the wrong things?"

"You know perfectly well. Because they're the things girls care about and can't admit to. A girl is supposed to be idealistic, ethereal!" She flung her arms in the air. "A girl is supposed to be soft and gentle and think her man a hero. That's what Fred wants!"

"But it's not wrong to want a stable society. Or even to admit it. 'Uncle Corneel' just now was telling me that the time to buy into a business was when the so-called smart folks said the profit was out of it. Maybe you're buying 'old New York' at just the right time."

"I'm sure of one thing, anyway. The Handys and Fairchilds will still be around when nobody's heard of the Bristows and Vanderbilts."

"Can't we all survive together? Anyway, I shan't quote you to Fred. Not that it would make any difference. He'd buy any opinion of yours."

"Do you care if he does?"

"Yes. Because I happen to think you're the girl for him. Whatever happens, you're always going to feel strongly about something. I envy you that. I can't seem to care that much about anything."

"Fred cares only about New York Central."

"Yes, but that can change. You haven't seen Fred in his down times. He was very down the first year after the war. He kept saying all that slaughter had been in vain. And then he discovered the stock market ... well, say no more! Look at him now!"

Fred was making his way towards them across the room, splendidly handsome in black with a scarlet cravat. An unusual smile illuminated his long brown countenance.

"Have you heard the news?" he exclaimed.

"About the impeachment?"

Fred glanced at his brother impatiently. "The Erie management has fled to Jersey! Drew, Gould, Fisk, the whole pack of hyenas. Taking everything they could put their hands on except the printing press."

"The printing press?" Selby asked blankly.

"The one that's been printing the phony stock the Commodore's been buying! He swore out a warrant against them yesterday, and they skipped."

"Does that mean you've
won?
" Ellie asked, clapping her hands with a gesture of enthusiasm that Selby could only silently admire.

"Not yet. But it means we hold the big trumps. They can't come back to New York until they come to terms. And those terms will certainly include, not only control of the Erie board by Vanderbilt directors, but the repurchase of all that watered stock."

"And will that make you rich, Fred?" Selby exclaimed.

"Hardly. It may bail me out. Most of us bought Erie too high. But once it's all settled ... well, let's say I may be on my way to being ... comfortable."

Fred's wink encouraged Selby to take his leave, and after bidding farewell to his hosts, he walked home the short distance to Union Square. He knew that Elmira would not wish him to watch her listening.

***

She remained with Fred in the library. There were only two other couples there, both out of earshot. He continued to expand on details of the battle.

"When we first discovered the Erie crowd were printing new stock certificates, not only in violation of Judge Barnard's injunction but in direct contravention of the law, there was a moment of near panic. How many had already been issued? How many had we bought? We had driven Erie up to 81. Were we simply flinging gold to the enemy? Could we go on? If we stopped, the whole market would go to pieces. The Commodore might pull the house down, like Sampson, but wouldn't he be pulling it down on himself?"

Ellie's mind seemed to seethe and tumble behind her widened eyes and parted lips. She thought she had never seen anything as beautiful as that bronze face, flushed with battle frenzy. It was beyond the limits of hope and credulity that such a man might actually belong to her. And yet she was still capable of reflecting that she was actually bored, that, if talk made the man, she had rather listen to his brother. It all went to show how unimportant being bored was. If she could have taken the brain out of chubby, flabby Selby's head and put it into that nobler one, she would not have done so!

"And that is where your great-uncle showed himself a hero of the stature of Hannibal or Napoleon. He gave the order to go forward with the buying. Buying the fake stock, Ellie! At first we thought it was a kind of suicide, like the British cavalry charge at Balaclava. We didn't know the Commodore had already taken his measures to arrest the scoundrels and that he would only keep buying until he had his warrant. But even so it took magnificent courage. It made one think of Grant in the Wilderness. All through that terrible summer of '64 when he kept slugging, slugging, losing two of our men to every one of the rebels', until they were done for!"

No, Ellie reflected, Selby's brain would have spoiled Fred. If she wanted a hero, she had to take him as he was. But if she needed him, he was going to need her, too; heroes desperately needed women. Suppose, for example, he were to learn that his boss and future father-in-law had been hedging his position by selling Erie while allegedly going all out for his wife's uncle? Was that not the kind of arrow that could wreak havoc in the heel of the greatest warriors?

"The legal situation is complicated, of course, by the fact that the different supreme courts of New York State have concurrent jurisdiction. Barnard may give us an injunction here in Manhattan, and Drew can get it revoked upstate. But the Manhattan one is good in Manhattan, and those villains can't operate, or even breathe, really, until they're right back here on our skinny island!"

Ellie reflected that once she was Mrs. Fred Fairchild she would not have to see her mother and father very often. She knew more than enough about them to make them keep their distance. She would watch over Fred and his interests like a tigress—she did not evade the term. She would protect him not only from her family but from his. She would stand between him and his nervous, politicating mother. She would...

"All of which brings me to the point, dearest Ellie. When this is all over—with any luck—I should find myself financially in a position to marry. If that is the case, may I call upon your father and ask him to make our private engagement an official one?"

For answer she simply gave him her hand to hold and squeeze. She supposed this was perfect happiness.

T
HE
A
PPOMATTOX
, a fashionable new bar on Broadway and Fourteenth Street, was a favorite haunt of Selby's. He liked to stand at the long black mahogany counter and consume gin and oysters for half an hour before making his appearance at a dinner party. Sometimes he would fall into conversation with his neighbor; sometimes he would simply savor the sting of the dry liquor in his throat and contemplate the big painting behind the blue-frocked bartenders that depicted a Roman banquet in high decadence, with brown-limbed young men sprawled on divans drinking from golden goblets and talking to ivory-skinned, scantily clad young women. On the central divans, like an isolated goddess, was a splendid nude with a faraway gaze, presumably dreaming of an absent god. Selby found that he needed the Appomattox to anaesthetize himself against the fashionable New York dinner, but that, so prepared, he could almost enjoy even the most inane conversation.

On a freezing night that threatened snow he visited the bar before a party to be given by his aunt, Lily Van Rensselaer, promising himself a double gin as a bracer for that occasion. At midnight he was to take the Erie sleeper for Buffalo, which gave him a pleasant sense of mild, uninterrupted adventure. But he was startled to recognize the tall figure of his older brother at the bar. It was not like Fred to be drinking alone.

"I thought you might be here," Fred growled as Selby took his stand beside him and picked up the iced gin that the bartender had poured as soon as he had spotted him in the doorway.

"Are you too going to Aunt Lily's?"

"God no! That's one thing I've been spared today."

"What's happened? Have you had a row with Ellie?"

Fred looked surprised at so prompt an attribution of a romantic cause to his trouble. "No. Though that may be coming, too. I've had a bitch of a row with her father."

"Has he sacked you?"

"Or did I quit? I'm not sure which."

Selby whistled. "Things
have
been happening. But don't worry. Ellie will forgive you a little thing like that."

"How do you know that?"

Selby reflected that it might not be wise, even now, to tell Fred how strongly Ellie felt about her father. "Because she loves you for yourself, poor girl."

Fred grunted. "Well, my poor self may be all the poor girl's going to get.
If
she still wants it." He picked up his glass and swallowed a gulp of whiskey.

"Don't keep me on pins and needles, man! What's happened?"

Fred seemed to consider for a moment how best to put it. "Well, supposing, when Grant and Lee had met in that Court House for which this bar is named, they'd mapped out an armistice to suit themselves? Suppose, in return for a ceasefire, Grant had authorized the continuance, for some period of time, of slavery in the South? Wouldn't we have felt awfully sold?"

"No doubt."

"Well, that's exactly how I felt when I saw and heard the drawing up of an armistice this morning between Mr. Vanderbilt and those two scoundrels, Gould and Fisk!"

"You mean the Commodore gave in?"

"I mean the Commodore compromised. Peace was made. The crooks will keep Erie, but they will have to take back their watered stock. At the prices the old man paid for it."

Selby shrugged. "So we're just back where we started. Is that the end of the world?"

"But it's a betrayal of every basic decency, don't you see, Selby?" Fred's face was drawn, and his eyes actually glittered. "Erie's been an open scandal for years. A road plucked to bits by ravens. The Commodore was going to clean it up and add it to his great network. It was going to be the brightest jewel in his crown! Does that sort of thing mean nothing to you?"

"To me! What have I to do with it?" But seeing Fred's bewildered look, he relented. "All right, tell me about it."

"Daniel Drew was the first to break. He's a fish out of water if he leaves Manhattan. So he came whimpering back and threw himself on Vanderbilt's mercy. Promised him this and that. Anything. He was perfectly happy, of course, to rat on his colleagues."

"But, surely the Commodore didn't trust
him!
"

"No, but Vanderbilt likes to see men on their knees. He sent word to the others that he was willing to listen, and they came right over, bright and early, the next morning. They went to Vanderbilt's house in Washington Place and barged into his bedroom while the old boy was still dressing. When I arrived for the day's stock market instructions, they were at it, hammer and tongs. You should have seen it, Selby! The old Commodore sitting on his bed, half-dressed, his white mane still mussed from the pillow, one shoe on and one shoe off, and Gould, his hands in his pockets, a little sardonic grin on his foxy face, and Fisk, puffing a big black cigar, cocky as the devil, striding about the room, laying down conditions and making insulting remarks! But do you know something? In that crowd they don't
mind
insults. Even old Vanderbilt chortled at some crack Fisk took at him. I had the sudden feeling that everyone in that room understood everyone else. Everyone but me!"

"You don't talk their language, Fred," Selby murmured ruefully. "And it's to your credit that you don't."

"Well, it didn't take them long to come to terms. All the Commodore seemed to care about was unloading the bogus stock he'd had to buy. Then I was sent off to round up Frank Work and Bristow and the other brokers, and Vanderbilt's lawyers, of course, and by the time I got back, the three of them had agreed on the terms of their unholy alliance. I tell you, Selby, it nauseated me!"

"And did you tell them so?"

"Not in so many words. But I told Mr. Vanderbilt that if he did business with crooks, he was no better than a crook himself."

"I see. And how did he take
that?
"

"Oh, he didn't really care. He growled something about my being a callow idiot. It was Bristow who really opened fire. He turned as red as a turkey cock and started shrieking about my insulting his 'family.' He said he never wanted to see me in his office again, and I told him his office was no place for an officer or a gentleman."

"Wow! That must have done it."

"And I told him, if he wanted to associate with swine like Gould and Fisk, he was welcome to their sty."

Selby looked at his brother wonderingly. "You called them swine? To their faces?"

"It was a pleasure."

"And how did they take it?"

"Gould didn't even seem to hear. What did he care for an insect like me? Fisk guffawed. He said he was going to tell P. T. Barnum he'd found an honest broker! I would have slapped his sassy face had Frank Work not got in between us."

"And then what happened? You left?"

"It was all I could do. Old Bristow followed me out into the street, still shrieking. I thought he'd taken leave of his senses. I didn't even turn around. I just walked off."

"So!" Selby glanced at his watch. "Something tells me I'm going to disappoint Aunt Lily tonight. She boasts she has never sat down to dinner without an even table of men and women. Tonight she may discover what it is to be short a man. Unless she asks her butler to join the guests." He scribbled a note on the counter and gave it to the bartender to be delivered by hand to Mrs. Van Rensselaer's.