“Oh, I understand,” said Montague.
“And don’t you see that I cannot leave
him?” exclaimed Lucy. “Now of all
times—when he needs help—when
his enemies have surrounded him? I’m the
only person in the world who cares anything about him—who
really understands him—”
Montague could think of nothing to say.
“I know how it hurts you,” said Lucy,
“and don’t think that I have not cared.
It is a thought that never leaves me! But some
day I know that you will understand; and the rest
of the world—I don’t care what the
world says.”
“All right, Lucy,” he answered, sadly.
“I see that I can’t be of any help to
you. I won’t trouble you any more.”
Another month passed by. Montague was buried
in his work, and he caught but faint echoes of the
storm that rumbled in the financial world. It
was a thing which he thought of with wonder in future
times—that he should have had so little
idea of what was coming. He seemed to himself
like some peasant who digs with bent head in a field,
while armies are marshalling for battle all around
him; and who is startled suddenly by the crash of
conflict, and the bursting of shells about his head.
There came another great convulsion of the stock market.
Stewart, the young Lochinvar out of the West, made
an attempt to corner copper. One heard wild rumours
in relation to the crash which followed. Some
said that a traitor had sold out the pool; others,
that there had been a quarrel among the conspirators.
However that might be, copper broke, and once more
there were howling mobs on the curb, and a shudder
throughout the financial district. Then suddenly,
like a thunderbolt, came tidings that a conference
of the big bankers had decreed that the young Lochinvar
should be forced out of his New York banks. There
were rumours that other banks were involved, and that
there were to be more conferences. Then a couple
of days later came the news that all the banks of Cummings
the Ice King were in trouble, and that he too had
been forced from the field.
Montague had never seen anything like the excitement
in Wall Street. Everyone he met had a new set
of rumours, wilder than the last. It was as if
a great rift in the earth had suddenly opened before
the eyes of the banking community. But Montague
was at an important crisis in a suit which he had
taken up against the Tobacco Trust; and he had no
idea that he was in any way concerned in what was
taking place. The newspapers were all making desperate
efforts to allay the anxiety—they said
that all the trouble was over, that Dan Waterman had
come to the rescue of the imperilled institutions.
And Montague believed what he read, and went his way.
Three or four days after the crisis had developed,
he had an engagement to dine with his friend Harvey.
Montague was tired after a long day in court, and
as no one else was coming, and he did not intend to
dress, he walked up town from his office to Harvey’s
hotel, a place of entertainment much frequented by
Society people. Harvey rented an entire floor,
and had had it redecorated especially to suit his
taste.
