The Driver (26 page)

iv

Dawn was breaking when we returned. It gave us a start of apprehension to see the lights still burning in Galt’s apartment. We found Mrs. Galt sitting at the side of his bed. Her face was distorted with horror and anxiety. Galt lay just as I had seen him last.

“He hasn’t moved,” said Mrs. Galt. “I can’t arouse him. I’m not sure he is breathing.”

Neither was the doctor. The pulse was imperceptible. A glass held at his nostrils showed no trace of moisture. All the bodily functions were in a state of suspense. The only presumption of life lay in the general arbitrary fact that he was not dead. The doctor had never seen anything like this before. He was afraid to act without a consultation. Motors were sent off for four other doctors, two in New Jersey and two in New York. They would bring nurses with them.

Mrs. Galt could not be moved from the bedside.

Natalie telephoned Vera to come. I telephoned Mordecai. Then we walked up and down the eastern terrace and watched the sun come up. She stopped and leaned over the parapet, looking down. Her eyes were dry; her body shook with convulsive movements. My heart went forth. I put my arm around her. She stood up, gazed at me with a stricken expression, then dropped her head on my shoulder and wept, whispering, “Coxey, Coxey, oh, what shall we do?... what shall we do?”

Gangs of workmen were appearing below. The day of labor was about to begin. I left her to get the superintendent on the telephone and tell him to suspend work.

v

The consultation began at nine o’clock. Mordecai arrived while it was taking place. Somehow on the way he had picked up Vera. They came together. We waited in the library room of Galt’s apartment. At the end of an hour the five doctors came to us, looking very grave. The Galts’ family doctor announced the consensus. It was a stroke, with some very unusual aspects. Life persisted; the thread of it was extremely fine, almost invisible. It might snap at any moment, and they wouldn’t know it until some time afterward. Thin as it was, however, it might pull him back. There was a bare possibility that he would recover consciousness. Meanwhile there was very little that could be done.

Mordecai rose from his chair with a colossal, awful gesture. His eyes were staring. His face was like a mask. His head turned slowly right and left through half a circle with a weird, mechanical movement, as a thing turning on a pivot in a fixed plane.

“Zey haf kilt him!” he whispered. “All ov you I gall upon to vitness, zey haf kilt him. Zey could nod ruin him. Zat zey tried to do. But... zey haf kilt him!... Ve are vonce more in ze dark ages.”

The physicians were astonished and ill at ease. They did not know what he was talking about. They did not know who he was. I was the only one who could know what he meant and for a minute I was bewildered. Then it broke upon me.

The combat reconstructed itself in my mind. I recalled those days of strain and anguish when all the forces of Wall Street were acting to destroy him and he fought alone. He withstood them. In the might of his own strength, in that moment which it had been torture almost unendurable to bide the coming of, he smote his enemies “with the fist of wickedness” and scattered them away. Yes, all that. He had won the fight. Yet there he lay. His death would leave them in possession of the field, with a victory unawares. They meant only to break his power, to unloose his hands, to overthrow him as an upstart dynast. But the blood weapon which we think is put away, which they never meant and would not have dared to use,—it had done its work in spite of them. They could not break him. They had only killed him.

That was what Mordecai meant.

vi

Well, we had to wait. Life must wait upon death because it can. There was much to think about. Mordecai spent two hours with me making precise arrangements against any contingency. It was very important that Wall Street should know nothing about Galt’s condition. The news might cause a panic. I was to call him up at regular intervals by a direct telephone wire on which no one could listen in. If any rumor got out it should be met with blank silence.

“Zey vill vind id zoon oud no matter,” he said.

What he needed was a little time to prepare the financial structure for the imminent shock. He would inform his associates and such others as were entitled to know and together they would agree upon protective measures. Galt’s death was bound to produce a terrific convulsion. There is no line of succession in Wall Street, no hereditary prince to receive the crown. When the monarch falls the wail is, “The king is dead! There is no king!”

About 10 o’clock in the morning of the second day Galt opened his eyes. He could neither move nor speak, but he was vividly conscious. Mrs. Galt came to the room where I had established a work station to tell me this.

“He wants something,” she said. “He says so with his eyes. I think it is you he wants.”

His eyes expressed pleasure at seeing me. Not a muscle moved. He could see and hear and think, and that was all. He did want something. I guessed a number of things and he looked them all away. It wasn’t Mordecai. It wasn’t anything in relation to business. In this dilemma I remembered a game we played in childhood. It was for one of the players to hold in his mind any object on earth and for the other to identify it by asking questions up to twenty that had to be answered yes or no. Galt’s eyes could say yes and no and he could hear. Therefore anything he was thinking of could be found out. I explained the game to him, he instantly understood, and we began. Was the thing a mineral substance? He did not answer. Was it vegetable? He did not answer. Was it animal then? Still no answer, but a bothered look in his eyes. I stopped to wonder why he hadn’t answered yes or no to one of the three. Was it perhaps something mineral, vegetable and animal combined? His eyes lighted, saying yes. Was it in this room? No. Was it far away? No. Was it just outside? Yes.

I went to the window and looked out. In every direction below the level of the finished terrace was the sight of construction work in a state of suspense, heaps of materials, tools where they had fallen, power machinery idle. A thought occurred to me. I went back and looked in his eyes.

“We’ve had all the work stopped because of the noise. Do you wish it to go on? Is that what you want?”

“Yes,” he answered, with a flash of his eyes.

Two hours later the air was vibrant with the clank-clank of many steam drills, the screech of taut hoisting cables, the throb of donkey engines, the roar of rock blasting, and he was happy.

Incidentally the resumption of work served Mordecai’s purpose in an unexpected way. Rumor of Galt’s illness did get out. The newspapers began to telephone. Unable to get information in that way they thought it must be serious and sent reporters out in haste. They returned to their offices saying they couldn’t get a word out of us, but Galt couldn’t be very ill so long as all that uproar was permitted to go on.

A week passed in this way. One evening on my return from an urgent trip to New York Natalie came racing down the great hall to meet me, with a flying slide at the end, as in the old days she was wont to meet Galt, and whether she meant it quite, or miscalculated the distance, I do not know; but anyhow I had either to let her go by off her balance or catch her, and she landed in my arms.

“Oh, Coxey, he’s asking for you,” she said, getting her feet and dragging me along at a run. “He’s better all at once. He can talk.”

The faculty of speech was gradually restored. When he could talk freely he told us that he had been conscious all the while, day and night. He heard every word that was spoken at the consultation. Therefore he had more expert opinion on his condition than we had. He had kept count of time. He knew what day it was when he first opened his eyes, and since then in his sleep he had been continuously conscious. He felt no pain.

i

A
ND now began the last phase of his career. Lying there in that state, unable so much as to raise his hand, with a mind all but disembodied, he intended his thoughts to the passion that ruled him still. The doctors warned him that it would be extremely dangerous to exercise his mind. It would cause the thread of life to part. That made no difference. What was the thread of life for?

Three times a week Mordecai came to talk with him. These visits, beginning naturally as between friends, soon became conferences of a consequential character between principal and banker. They examined problems, discussed measures, evolved policies, and spent hours, sometimes whole days, together. Mordecai became Galt’s self objectified. He executed his will, promulgated his ideas, represented him in all situations. He sat for him at board meetings and in general Wall Street councils. This became soon an institutional fact. No business of a high nature proceeded far in Wall Street until Mordecai was asked, “What does Mr. Galt say?” or “What would Mr. Galt think?”

A paralyzed hand ruled the world of finance.

Galt’s mind was clear and insatiable. It comprehended both details and principles. He directed minutely the expenditure of that five hundred millions and verified his own prophecy. The outlay of this vast sum upon railroad works averted a period of industrial depression.

I remained permanently at Moonstool. The room in which at first I had established merely a point of contact with the outside world to meet such emergencies as might arise became a regular office. We installed news printing machines and direct telephones. Stock Exchange quotations were received by a private telegraph wire. We had presendy a staff of clerks, typists and statisticians, all living in the house and keeping hours. The personnel of this singular organization included one fresco painter.

More than anything else Galt missed his maps and charts. A map of any portion of the earth’s surface enthralled him. The act of gazing at it stimulated his thoughts. And statistical charts,—those diagrams in which quantities, ratios and velocities are symbolized by lines that rise and fall in curves,—these were to him what mathematical symbols are to an astronomer. He could not think easily without them. We had tried various devices for getting maps and charts before him, and they were all unsatisfactory. One day he said: “I can look at the ceiling and walls without effort. Why not put them there?”

But we could not get maps large enough to show from the ceiling and there was a similar difficulty about charts, even though we drew them ourselves. Then we thought of painting them. We found a fresco painter possessing the rudiments of the peculiar kind of intelligence required for such work and then trained him to it.

We painted a map of the world in two hemispheres on the ceiling. The United States had to be carefully put in, with the Great Midwestern system showing in bold red lines. On the walls we painted statistical charts to the number of eight. Several were permanent, such as the one showing the combined earnings of the Galt railroad properties and another the state of general business. They had only to be touched up from time to time as new statistics came in. Others were ephemeral, serving to illustrate some problem his mind was working on. They were frequently painted out and new ones put in their place.

Under these conditions, gazing for hours at the world map, he conceived a project which was destined to survive him in the form of an idea. If he had lived it might have been realized. This was a pan-American railroad,—a vertical system of land transportation articulating the North and South American continents. It was painted there on the ceiling. Mordecai saw it and wept.

How easily the mind accommodates itself to any situation! In a short time all of this seemed quite natural because it was taking place. Having accepted Galt as a dynast in the flesh, Wall Street now accepted him as an invisible force pervading all its affairs, as if it might go on that way forever. Through Mordecai it solicited his advice and opinion on matters that were not his. Once Mordecai brought him the problem of a railroad that was in trouble; he bought the railroad to save it from bankruptcy. People, seeing this, began to think he was not ill at all, but preferred to work in a mysterious manner. Great Midwestern stock meanwhile was rising, always rising, and touched at last the fabulous price of three hundred dollars a share. Faith in it now was as unreasoning as distrust of it had once been.

ii

Galt entertained no thought of malice toward his old enemies. Proof of this was dramatic and unexpected. A servant came up one afternoon with the name of Bullguard. I could hardly believe it. I found him standing in the middle of the hall, just inside the door, a large, impenetrable figure, giving one the impression of immovable purpose. I had never seen him before.

“I wish to see Mr. Galt,” he said, in a voice like a tempered north wind.

“Nobody sees him, you know.”

“I must see him,” he replied.

“I will ask him. Is it a matter of business?”

“It is very personal,” he said.

The way he said this gave me suddenly a glimpse of his hidden character. Beneath that terrifying aspect, back of that glowering under which strong men quailed, lay more shy, human gentleness than would be easily imagined.

Galt received him. They were alone together for a full hour. What passed between them will never be known. I waited in the library room, one removed from Galt’s bedchamber, and saw Bullguard leave. He passed me unawares, looking straight ahead of him, as one in a hypnotic trance. Outside he forgot his car and went stalking down the drive in that same unseeing manner, grasping a great thick walking stick at the middle and waving it slowly before his face. His car followed and picked him up somewhere out of sight.

iii

One of the minor triumphs of this time was the collapse of the social feud. Mrs. Valentine’s subjects began to revolt. Society made definite overtures to the Galt women. But nobody now cared. Mrs. Galt and Natalie lived only for Galt, and they were the two who would in any case be interested. Mrs. Galt was his silent companion. Natalie was his mercury, going errands swiftly between his bedchamber and the office. She was absorbed in what went on and a good deal of it she understood in an imaginative manner. Coming with a message from Galt, perhaps a request for information or data, she would often sit at my desk to hear or see the results, saying, “I feel so stupid when I don’t know what it means.” In the evening, as we might be walking or driving together, she would review the transactions of the day and get them all explained.