University of Virginia Library

14. CHAPTER XIV.

AS honest John walked homeward, eschewing
the minute expense of the street-cars, he
swore that he would live like a pauper, and so
keep his integrity.

But he reckoned without his host,—meaning
thereby the partner of his bosom, who was certainly
a host in herself, particularly when it came
to crying.

“Go back to boarding!” tearfully exclaimed
Olympia, who just then had a reception in view.
“Then why did you commence housekeeping?
The idea of giving me a house only to take it
away again! You don't love me as other men
love their wives. You delight in plaguing me.”
And so on, and over again, with much sobbing.

In a day or two she actually impressed Vane
with a feeling that, in wishing to “take her house
from her,” he was guilty of a purpose akin to

robbery, and, of course, entirely unworthy of a
just husband. He had to concede that, from one
point of view, Olympia did not demand overmuch;
even to his business-like and arithmetical imagination,
five thousand dollars seemed a large income;
even he could not yet believe it insufficient to cover
housekeeping. Partly because he was deluded by
this ante-tax idea, and partly because he was a
compassionate man and loving husband, he deferred
the humble and lenten pilgrimage through
boarding-house deserts back to solvency, and, of
course, went more and more laden with the bondage
of debt.

At last, sad to relate, he began to admit to himself,
like so many other hardly bested men, that
“something or other must be done,” meaning
something which would bring money, to matter
how. One evening as he sat alone in his parlor,
now staring in dull discontent at the shaky furniture
for which he paid such a high rent, now
recalling the fact that Olympia was away at a reception
with that opulently dazzling Ironman, he

once more thought over his wilderness of troubles
and tried to devise a way out of them. He was
harassed, degraded, and enfeebled by the daily
urgency of debt. His matrimonial happiness had
been half wrecked by the mere lack of filthy lucre.
If he wanted to recover his wife's respect and
affection, he must positively provide her with gracious
surroundings, and stop bullying her about
expenditures. How could he get money, with
honesty, or, alas! without it?

While he was puzzling amid the brambles of
this wretched question, he was surprised by a visit
from his former friend and wire-puller, Darius
Dorman. Vane and Dorman had not seen much
of each other since the former had denounced the
Great Subfluvial Tunnel as little better than a
trick for defrauding the government and the public
of small investors. The lobbyist had judged
that it would not be wise to “keep at” Honest
John, and had expended his time, breath, and
funds on members of a less Catonian type.

Meanwhile the bill had prospered as bills do

which “have money in them.” Although Vane
had voted against it, the tunnel had obtained a
charter from Congress and likewise a loan of forty
millions from the United States treasury, the same
being only a dollar a head from every inhabitant
of this free country, including women, children,
negroes, and Indians not taxed. Two or three
times as many more millions had come in from
financiers who saw forty per cent. profit in an early
purchase, and from a simple public which believed
that it could safely follow the lead of the wise men
of the capital. Furthermore, the directors and
managers of the Great Subfluvial had contrived
what might be called a Sub-Tunnel for their own
peculiar emolument, which fulfilled its purpose
admirably. This was a most wonderful invention,
and deserves our intensest study. It was a corporation
inside of the original corporation. Its
ostensible object was the construction of the Subfluvial,
but its real object was the division of the
capital into profits. For instance, it built a mile
of tunnel at a cost of, say ten thousand dollars,
and then delivered the same to the outside company
for say fifty thousand dollars, and then
shared the difference of forty thousand dollars
among its own stockholders. Of course this was
a better bargain for the inside company than for
the outside one; but all chance of quarrelling
between the two was evaded by a very effective
device; they had the same men for directors, or
the same men's partners.

O, it was a beautiful business idea,—this Floating
Credit, or Syndicate, or whatever its inventors
christened it. It reminds one of that ingenious
machine called the Hen Persuader, which
was so constructed that when placed under a hen's
nest, it would withdraw every egg the moment it
was laid, whereupon biddy would infer that her
sensations had deceived her with regard to the
fact of laying, and would immediately deposit
another egg, and so continue to do until she died
of exhaustion. In some respects, also, this internal
corporation resembled that hungry creature
known as a tape-worm, which devours a man's dinner

as fast as he swallows it, and leaves him hungrier
than ever.

Of course the gentlemen who held shares in
the Hen Persuader did a profitable business, and
filled their private wallets with golden eggs in
abundance. But still they were not quite content;
the old fowl above them, that is to say,
Uncle Sam's eagle, occasionally cackled angrily;
and it was extremely desirable to put a stop to his
alarming demand for chickens. Darius Dorman
had an anxious look on his crisped and smutted
physiognomy as he seated himself opposite his
representative.

“Vane, we must have another lift, or let the
whole thing drop,' he said abruptly.

“What! have n't you bled the treasury enough?”
grumbled Honest John, angrily contrasting his
own shrunken porte monnaie with the plethoric
pocket-books and overrunning safes of the great
corporation.

“We want time,” answered Dorman, really meaning
thereby that he wanted an eternity of it.

“Here is this Secretary of the Treasury making
a raid on us. He asks for interest on his loan.
How in the name of all the witches of Salem does
he suppose the Subfluvial can pay three millions
of interest per year, in addition to meeting its
running expenses? We understood that the interest
was to wait until the termination of the loan,
thirty years from now.”

“Pay it out of the principal,” suggested Vane
sulkily. “Do as other roads do.”

“But we want the principal for dividends. We
can't keep on selling stock, unless we show a dividend
now and then.”

“Ain't there any profits?” asked Vane, with a
keen look. “Have n't your managers and inside
passengers laid away enough to spare a little for
profits?”

Dorman had such a spasm that he fairly writhed
in his chair. It seemed as if every swindling dollar
that he had got out of the Hen Persuader were
that moment burning into his already cicatrized
cuticle.

“O, they will fall in later,” he smiled, recovering
his self possession. “They will come when
the tunnel is clean through, and has had time to
make travel. But until that time arrives we must
have favor shown us. Give us a lift, John, and
we'll give you one.”

Honest John Vane hesitated, querying whether
he should take one solitary step to meet temptation,
and see at least what it was like.

“Well,” he at last said, in the surly tone of a
man who feels that he is on the verge of making
a diabolically bad bargain,—“well, what do you
want now?”