69. CHAPTER LXIX.
Fal.
— Reason, you rogue, reason; thinkest thou I'll endanger my soul gratis?
Merry Wives of Windsor.
Pistol.
— Base is the slave that pays.
— Henry V.
Time had been when, his youth considered, Vinal was a
beaming star in the commercial heaven. On 'change,
“His name was great,
In mouths of wisest censure.”
The astutest broker pronounced him good; the sagest
money lender took his paper without a question. But of late,
his signature had lost a little of its efficacy. It was whispered
that he was not as sound as his repute gave out; that
his operations were no longer marked by his former clearheaded
forecast; that he was deep in doubtful and dangerous
speculation. In short, his credit stood by no means where it
had stood a twelvemonth earlier.
Possibly these rumors took their first impulse, not on
'change, but at tea tables, and in drawing rooms. His wife's
separation from him had given ample food to speculation;
and gossip had for once been just, asserting, with few dissenting
voices, that there must needs be some fault, and a
grave one, on the part of Vinal. The event had ceased to be
a very recent one; but surmise was still rife concerning its
mysterious cause.
Meanwhile, Vinal was being goaded into recklessness,
frightened out of his propriety, haunted, devil-driven, maddened
into desperate courses. Late one night, he was pacing
his library, with a quick, disordered step. His servants were
in their beds, excepting a man, nodding his drowsy vigil over
the kitchen fire. Vinal's affairs were fast drawing to a crisis.
A few weeks must determine the success or failure of a broad
scheme of fraud, on which he had staked his fortunes and
himself, and whose issues would sink him to disgrace and
ruin, or lift him for a time to the pinnacle of a knave's prosperity.
But, meanwhile, how to keep his head above water!
Claims thickened upon him; he was meshed in a network of
perplexities; and, with him, bankruptcy would involve far
more than a loss of fortune.
There was a ring at the door bell. Vinal stopped short in
his feverish walk, raised his head with a startled motion, and
listened like a fox who hears the hounds. His instinct foreboded
the worst. His cheek flushed, and his eye brightened,
not with spirit, but with desperation.
The bell rang again. This time, the sleepy servant roused
himself. Vinal heard his step along the hall; heard the
opening of the street door, and a man's voice pronouncing his
name. The moment after, his evil spirit stood before him, in
the shape of Henry Speyer.
Vinal gave him no time to speak, but shutting the door in
the servant's face, turned upon his visitor with such courage
as a cat will show when a bulldog has driven her into a corner.
“Again! Are you here again? It is hardly a month
since you were here last. What have you done with what
I gave you then? Do you think I am made of gold? Do
you take me for a bank that you can draw on at will?”
“I am sorry to trouble you so soon, but I am very hard
pressed.”
“Hard pressed! So am I hard pressed. Here for a year
and more I have been supporting you in your extravagance —
you and your mistresses; you have been living on me like
princes, — dress, drinking, feasting, horses, gambling! —
among you, you make my money spin away like water.
Every well has a bottom to it, and you have got to the bottom
of mine.”
Speyer laughed with savage incredulity.
“Any thing in reason I am ready to do for you; but it's of
no use. More! more! is always the word. You think you
have found a gold mine. You mistake. Here I have a note
due to-morrow; and another on Monday — that was for
money I borrowed to give you. Heaven knows how I shall
pay them. Go back, and come again a month from this.”
“It won't do. I must have it now.”
“I tell you, I have none to give you.”
“Do you see this?” said Speyer, producing a roll of
printed papers, and giving one to Vinal.
It was Vinal's letter, in the form of a placard, with a statement
of the whole affair prefixed. Speyer had had it printed
secretly in New York, the names of Morton and Vinal being
left blank, and ingeniously filled in by himself with a pen.
“Give me the money, or show me how to get it, or I will
have you posted up at every street corner in town. I have
your letter here. I shall send it to your friend, the editor of
the Sink.”
The Sink was a scurrilous newspaper, which the virtuous
Vinal, always anxious for the morals of the city, had once
caused to be prosecuted as a nuisance, for which the editor
bore him a special grudge.
But Vinal at last was brought to bay. Threats, which
Speyer thought irresistible, had lost their power. He threw
back the paper, and said desperately, “Do what you will.”
Speyer made a step forward, and faced his prey.
“Will you give me the money?”
“By G—, no!”
“By G—, you shall!”
And Speyer seized him by the breast of his waistcoat.
Vinal had been trained in the habits of a gentleman. He
had never known personal outrage before. He grew purple
with rage. The veins of his forehead swelled like whipcord,
and his eyes glittered like a rattlesnake's.
“Take off your hand!”
The words were less articulated than hissed between his
teeth.
“Take off your hand.”
Speyer clutched him with a harder gripe, and shook him to
and fro. Quick as lightning, Vinal struck him in the face.
Speyer glared and grinned on his victim like an enraged tiger.
For a moment, he shook him as a terrier shakes a rat; then
flung him backward against the farther side of the room.
Here, striking the wall, he fell helpless, among the window
curtains and overturned chairs. Speyer would probably have
followed up his attack; but at the instant, the servant, who,
by a happy accident, was at the side door, in the near neighborhood
of the keyhole, ran in in time to save Vinal from
more serious discomfiture.
Speyer hesitated; turned from one to the other with murder
in his look; then, slowly moving backwards, left the
room, whence the servant's valor did not mount to the point
of following him.
