Chapter 2

“‘Selling at 137 7-8, you see,’ said Mr. Beverly. ‘Deducting the tax, there you are scaled down again.’ He pencilled some swift calculations. ‘There,’ said he. And I nearly understood them. ‘Now I’m not here to stop your buying that sort of petticoat and canary-bird wafer,’ continued Mr. Beverly. ‘It’s the regular trustee move, and nobody could criticise you if you made it. It’s what I call thoughtless safety, and it brings you about 3 1-2 per cent, as I have already shown you. Anybody can do it.’ These words of Mr. Beverly made me feel that I did not want to do what anybody could do. ‘There is another kind of safety which I call thoughtful safety,’ said he. ‘Thoughtful, because it requires you to investigate properties and their earnings, and generally to use your independent judgment after a good deal of work. And all this a trustee greatly dislikes. It rewards you with five and even six per cent, but that is no stimulus to a trustee.’”

“Something in me had leaped when Mr. Beverly mentioned six per cent. Again I thought of Ethel and October, and what a difference it would be to begin our modest housekeeping on sixty instead of forty thousand dollars a year, outside of what I was earning. Mr. Beverly now rang a bell. ‘You happen to have come,’ said he, ‘on a morning when I can really do something for you out of the common. Bring me (it was a clerk he addressed) one of those Petunia circulars. Now here you can see at a glance for yourself.’ He began reading the prospectus rapidly aloud to me while I followed its paragraphs with my own eye. His strong, well-polished thumb-nail ran heavily but speedily down the columns of figures and such words as gross receipts, increase of population, sinking fund, redeemable at 105 after 1920, churned vigorously and meaninglessly through my brain. But I was not going to let him know that to understand the circular I should have to take it away quietly to my desk in Nassau Street, and spend an hour with it alone.”

“‘What is your opinion of Petunia Water sixes?’ he inquired.”

“‘They are a lead-pipe cinch,’ I immediately answered; and he slapped me on the knee.”

“‘That’s what I think!’ he cried. ‘Anyhow, I have taken 20,000 for mother. Do what you like.’”

“‘Oh well,’ said I, delighted at this confidence, I think I can afford to risk what you are willing to risk for your mother, Mrs. Beverly. Where is Petunia, did you say?’”

“He pulled down a roller map on the wall as you draw down a window-blind, and again I listened to statements that churned in my brain. Petunia was a new resort on the sea coast of New Hampshire. One railway system did already connect it with both Portsmouth and Portland, but it was not a very direct connection at present. Yet in spite of this, the population had increased 23 and seven-tenths per cent in five years, and now an electric railway was in construction that would double the population in the next five years. This was less than what had happened to other neighbouring resorts under identical conditions; yet with things as they now were, the company was earning two per cent on its stock, which was being put into improvements. The stock was selling at 30, and if a dividend was paid next year, it would go to par. But Mr. Beverly did not counsel buying the stock. ‘I did not let mother have any,’ he said, ‘though I took some myself. But the bonds are different. You’re getting the last that will be sold at par. In three days they will be placed before the public at 102 1/2 and interest.’”

“I was well pleased when I left Mr. Beverly’s office. In a few days I was still more pleased to learn that I could sell my Petunia sixes for 104 if so wished. But I did not wish it; and Mr. Beverly told me that he should not sell his mother’s unless they went to 110. ‘In that case,’ said he, ‘it might be worth while to capitalise her premium.’”

“I liked the idea of capitalising one’s premium. If you had fifty bonds that cost you par, and sold them at 110, you would then buy at par fifty-five bonds of some other rising kind, and go on doing this until--I named no limit for this process; but my delighted mind saw visions of eighty and a hundred thousand a year--comfort at least, if not affluence in New York--and I explained to Ethel what the phrase capitalising one’s premium meant. I showed her the Petunias, too, and we read what it said on the coupons aloud together. Ethel was at first not quite satisfied with the arrangement of the coupons. ‘Thirty dollars on January first, and thirty on July first,’ she said. That seems a long while to wait for those payments, Richard. And there are only two in every year, though you pay them a thousand dollars all at once. It does not seem very prompt on their part.’ I told her that this was the rule. ‘But,’ she urged, ‘don’t you think that a man like Mr. Beverly might be able to get them to make an exception if he explained the circumstances? Other people may be satisfied with waiting for little crumbs in this way, but why should we?’ I soon made her understand how it was, however, and I explained many other facts about investments and the stock market to her, as I learned them. It was a great pleasure to do this. We came to talk about finance even more than we talked of my writings; for during that Spring I invested a good deal more rapidly than I wrote. The Petunias had taken only one-twentieth of a million dollars; and though Mr. Beverly warned me to rush hastily into nothing, and pointed out the good sense of distributing my eggs in a number of baskets, still we both agreed that the sooner all my money was bringing me five or six per cent, the better.”

“I have come to think that it might be well were women taught the elements of investing as they are now taught French and Music. I would not have the French and Music dropped, but I would add the other. It might be more of a protection to women than being able to read a French novel, and perhaps some day we shall have it so. But of course it had been left totally out of Ethel’s education; and at first she merely received my instruction and took my opinions. It was not long, however, before she began to entertain some of her own, obliging me not infrequently to reason with her. I very well remember the first occasion that this happened.”

“We had been as usual talking about stocks, as we walked on the Riverside Drive on a Sunday afternoon in May. Ethel had been for some moments silent. ‘Richard,’ she finally began, ‘if I had had the naming of these things, I should never have called them securities. Insecurities comes a great deal nearer what they are. What right has a thing that says on its face it is worth a thousand dollars to go bobbing up and down in the way most of them do? I think that securities is almost sarcastic. And have you noticed the price of those Petunias?’”

“I had, of course, noticed it; but I had not mentioned it to Ethel. ‘I read the papers now,’ she explained, ‘morning and evening. Of course the market is off a little on account of the bank statement. But that is not enough to account for the Petunias.’”

“‘Ethel, you are nervous,’ I said. ‘And it is the papers which make you so. The Petunias are a first lien on the whole property, of which the assessed valuation--’”

“‘What is the good,’ she interrupted, ‘of a first lien on something which depends on politics for its existence, if the politicians change their minds? Did you not see that bill they’re thinking of passing?’ I was startled by what Ethel told me, for the article in the paper had escaped my notice. But Mr. Beverly explained it to me in a couple of minutes. ‘Ha!’ he jovially exclaimed, on my entering his office on Monday morning; ‘you want to know about Petunias. They opened at 85 I see.’ He then ran the tape from the ticker through his clean strong hands. ‘Here they are again. Five thousand sold at 83. Now, if they go to 70, I’ll very likely take ten thousand more for mother. It’s all Frank Smith’s bluff, you know. He wants a jag of the water-works stock, more than they say they agreed he should have. So he’s shaking this bill over them, which would allow the city to build its own water-plant, and of course run the present company out of business. Not a thing in it! All bluff. He’ll get the stock, I suppose. What’s that?’ he broke off to a clerk who came with a message. ‘Wants 500 preferred does he? Buyer 30? Very well, he can’t have it. Say so from me. Now,’ he resumed to me, ‘take a cigar by the way. And don’t buy any more Petunias until I tell you the right moment. Do you see where your Amalgamated Electric has gone to?’”

“I had seen this. It had scored a 20-point rise since my purchase of it; and I felt very sorry that I had not taken Mr. Beverly’s advice and bought a thousand shares. It had been on a day when I had felt unaccountably cautious, and I had taken only two hundred and fifty shares of Amalgamated Electric. There are days when one is cautious and days when one is venturesome; and they seem to have nothing to do with results.”

“‘They’re going to increase the dividend,’ said Mr. Beverly, as I smoked his excellent cigar. ‘It’s good for twenty points higher by the end of the week. I had just got mother a few more shares.’”

“I left Mr. Beverly’s office the possessor of two thousand shares of Amalgamated Electric, and also entirely reassured about my Petunias. He always made me feel happy.”

“His keen laughing brown eyes, and crisp well-brushed hair, and big somewhat English way of chaffing (he had gone to Oxford, where he had rowed on a winning crew) carried a sense of buoyant prosperity that went with his wiry figure and good smart London clothes. His face was almost as tawny as an Indian’s with the outdoor life that he took care to lead. I was always flattered when he could spare any time to clap me on the shoulder and crack a joke.”

“Amalgamated Electric had risen five more points before the board closed that afternoon. This was the first news that I told Ethel.”

“‘Richard,’ said she, ‘I wish you would sell that stock to-morrow.’”

“But this I saw no reason for; and on Tuesday it had gained seven points further. Ethel still more strongly urged me to sell it. I must freely admit that.” And the narrator paused reflectively.

“Thank you, Richard,” said Ethel from the sofa. “And I admit that I could give you no reason for my request, except that it all seemed so sudden. And--yes--there was one other thing. But that was even more silly.”

“I believe I know what you mean,” replied Richard, “and I shall come to it presently. If any one was silly, it was not you.”

“I did not sell Amalgamated Electric on Wednesday, and on Thursday a doubt about the increased dividend began to be circulated. The stock, nevertheless, after a forenoon of weakness, rallied. Moreover a check for my first dividend came from the Pollyopolis Heat, Light, Power, Paving, Pressing, and Packing Company.”

“‘What a number of things it does!’ exclaimed Ethel, when I showed her the company’s check.”

“‘Yes,’ I replied, and quoted Browning to her: ‘’Twenty-nine Distinct damnations. One sure if the other fails.’ Beverly’s mother has a lot of it.’”

“But Ethel did not smile. ‘Richard,’ she said, ‘I do wish you had more investments with ordinary simple names, like New York and New Haven, or Chicago and Northwestern.’ And when I told her that I thought this was really unreasonable, she was firm. ‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘I don’t like the names--not most of them, at least. Dutchess and Columbia Traction sounds pretty well; and besides that, of course one knows how successful these electric railways are. But take the Standard Egg Trust, and the Patent Pasteurised Infant Rubber Feeder Company.’”

“‘Why, Ethel!’ I exclaimed, ‘those are both based upon great inventions, Mr. Beverly--’”

“But she interrupted me earnestly ‘I know about those inventions, Richard, for I have procured the prospectuses. And I wish that I could have told you my own feeling about them before you bought any of the stock.’”

“‘I do not think you can fully have taken it in, Ethel.’”

“‘I trust that it may not have fully taken you in,’ she replied. ‘Have you noticed what those stocks are selling for at present?’”

“Of course I had noticed this. I had paid 63 for Standard Egg, and it was now 48, while 11 was the price of Patent Pasteurized Feeder, for which I had paid 20. But this, Mr. Beverly assured me, was a normal and even healthy course for a new stock. ‘Had they gone up too soon and too high,’ he explained, ‘I should have suspected some crooked manipulation and advised selling at once. But this indicates a healthy absorption preliminary to a natural rise. I should not dream of letting mother part with hers.’”

“The basis of Standard Egg was not only a monopoly of all the hens in the United States, but a machine called a Separator, for telling the age and state of an egg by means of immersion in water. Perfectly good eggs sank fast and passed out through one distributor; fairly nice eggs did not reach the bottom, and were drawn off through another sluice, and so on. This saved the wages of the egg twirlers, whose method of candling eggs, as it was called, was far less rapid than the Separator. And when I learned that one house in St. Louis alone twirled 50,000 eggs in a day, the possible profits of the Egg Trust became clear to me. But they were not so clear to Ethel. She said that you could not monopolise hens. That they would always be laying eggs and putting it in the power of competitors to hatch them by incubators. Nor did she have confidence in the Pasteurised Feeder. ‘Even if you get the parents to adopt it,’ she said, ‘you cannot get the children. If they do not like the taste of the milk as it comes out of the bottle through the Feeder, they will simply not take it.’”

“‘Well,’ I answered, ‘old Mrs. Beverly is holding on to hers.’”

“When I said this, Ethel sat with her mouth tight. Then she opened it and said: ‘I hate that woman.’”

“‘Hate her? Why, you have never so much as laid eyes on her.’”

“‘That is not at all necessary. I consider it indecent for a grey haired woman with grandchildren to be speculating in the stock market every week like a regular bull or bear.’”

“Every point in this outburst of Ethel’s seemed to me so unwarrantable that I was quite dazed. I sat looking at her, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘Oh Richard!’ she exclaimed, ‘she will ruin you, and I hate her!’”

“‘My dear Ethel,’ I replied, ‘she will not. And only see how you are making it all up out of your head. You have never seen her, but you speak of her as a grey-haired grandmother.’”

“‘She must be, Richard. You have told me that Mr. Beverly is a married man and about forty-five. No doubt he has older sisters and brothers. But if he has not, his mother can hardly be less than sixty-five, and he has probably been married for several years. He might easily have a daughter coming out, next winter, and a son at Harvard or Yale; and if their grandmother’s hair is not grey, that is quite as unnatural as her speculating in monopolised eggs in this way at her age. She must be a very unladylike person.’”

“Ethel, I saw, was excited. Therefore I made no more point of her theories concerning the appearance and family circle of old Mrs. Beverly. But in justice to myself I felt obliged to remind her, first, that I was investing, not speculating, and second, that it was Mr. Beverly’s advice I was following, and not that of his mother. ‘Had he not spoken of her,’ I said, ‘I should have remained unaware of her existence.’”

“‘She is at the bottom of it all the same,’ said Ethel. ‘Everything you have bought has been because she bought it.’”

“‘That is not quite the right way to put it,’ I replied. ‘I was willing to buy these securities because Mr. Beverly thought so highly of them that he felt justified in--’”

“‘There is no use,’ interrupted Ethel, ‘in our going round this circle as if we were a pair of squirrels. I do not ask you to hate that woman for my sake, but I cannot change my own feeling. Do you remember, Richard, about the City of Philippi Sewer Bonds? You did not want to buy them at first. You told me yourself that you thought new towns in Texas were apt to buzz suddenly and then die because all the people hurried away to some newer town and left the houses and stores standing empty. But Mr. Beverly’s mother got some, and all your hesitation fled. And now I see that the Gulf, Galveston, and Little Rock is going to build a branch that may make Philippi a perfectly evaporated town. If you sold these bonds to-day, how much would you lose?’”

“I did not enjoy telling Ethel how much, but I had to. ‘Only fifteen thousand dollars,’ I said.”

“‘Only!’ said Ethel. ‘Well, I hope his mother will lose a great deal more than that.’”

“It is seldom that Ethel taps her foot, but she had begun to tap it now; and this inclined me to avoid any attempt at a soothing reply, in the hope that silence might prove still more soothing, and that thus we might get away from old Mrs. Beverly.”

“‘She cannot possibly be less than sixty-five,’ Ethel presently announced. ‘And she is far more likely to be seventy.’”

“I thought it best to agree to any age that Ethel chose to give the old lady.”

“‘Do you suppose,’ Ethel continued, ‘that she does it by telephone?’”

“‘My dearest,’ I responded, ‘he must do it all for her, of course, you know.’”

“‘I doubt that very much, Richard. And she strikes me as being the sort of character for whom a mere telephone would not be enough excitement. The nerves of those people require more and more stimulants to give them any sensation at all. I believe that she sits in his private office and watches the ticker.’”

“‘Why not give her a ticker in her bedroom while you are about it, Ethel?’ I suggested.”

“But Ethel could not smile. ‘I think that is perfectly probable,’ she answered. And then, ‘Oh, Richard, isn’t it mean!’ At this I took her hand, and she--but again I abstain from dwelling upon those circumstances of the engaged which are familiar to you all.”

“The change of May into June, and the change of June into July, did not mellow Ethel’s bitter feelings. I remember the day after Petunias defaulted on their interest that she exclaimed, ‘I hope I shall never meet her!’ We always called Mr. Beverly’s mother ‘she’ now. ‘For if I were to meet her,’ continued Ethel, ‘I feel I should say something that I should regret. Oh, Richard, I suppose we shall have to give up that house on Park Avenue!’”

“I put a cheerful and even insular face on the matter, for I could not bear to see Ethel so depressed. But it was hard work for me. Some few of my investments were evidently good; but it always seemed as if it was into these that I had happened to put not much money, while the bulk of my fortune was entangled in the others. Besides the usual Midsummer faintness that overtakes the stock market, my own specialties were a good deal more than faint. On the 20th of August I took the afternoon train to spend my two weeks’ holiday at Lenox; and during much of the journey I gazed at the Wall Street edition of the afternoon paper that I had purchased as I came through the Grand Central Station. Ethel and I read it in the evening.”

“‘I wonder what she’s buying now?’ said Ethel, vindictively.”

“‘Well, I can’t help feeling sorry for her,’ I answered, with as much of a smile as I could produce.”

“‘That is so unnecessary, Richard! She can easily afford to gratify her gambling instinct.’”

“‘There you go, Ethel, inventing millions for her just as you invented grandchildren.’”

“‘Not at all. Unless she constantly had money lying idle, she could not take these continual plunges. She is an old woman with few expenses, and she lives well within her income. You would hear of her entertaining if it was otherwise. So instead of conservatively investing her surplus, she makes ducks and drakes of it in her son’s office. Is he at Hyde Park now?’ Hyde Park was where the old Beverly country seat had always been.”

“‘No,’ I answered. ‘He went to Europe early last month.’”

“‘Very likely he took her with him. She is probably at Monte Carlo.’”

“‘Scarcely in August, I fancy. And I’ll tell you what, Ethel. I have been counting it up. She has lost twenty-four thousand dollars in the Standard Egg alone. It takes a good deal of surplus to stand that.’”

“‘Serve her right,’ said Ethel ‘And I would say so to her face.’”

“September brought freshness to the stock market but not to me. Mr. Beverly, like the well-to-do man that he was, remained away in Europe until October should require his presence as a guiding hand in the office. Thus was I left without his buoyant consolation in the face of my investments.”

“Petunias were being adjusted on a four per cent basis; Dutchess and Columbia Traction was holding its own; I could not complain of Amalgamated Electric, though it was now lower than when I had bought it, while had I sold it on that Wednesday in May when Ethel begged me, before the increased dividend turned out a mistake, I should have made money. But Philippi Sewers were threatened; Pasteurised Feeders had been numb since June; Pollyopolis Heat, Light, Power, Paving, Pressing, and Packing was going to pass its quarterly dividend; and Standard Egg had gone down from 63 to 7 1/8. My million dollars on paper now was worth in reality less than a quarter of that sum, and although we could still make both ends meet fairly well in some place where you wouldn’t want to live, like Philadelphia, in New York we should drop into a pinched and dwarfed obscurity.”

“I must say now, and I shall never forget, that Ethel during these gloomy weeks behaved much better than I did. The grayer the outlook became, the more words of hope and sense she seemed to find She reminded me that, after all my Uncle Godfrey’s legacy had been a thing unlooked for, something out of my scheme of life that I had my youth, my salary and my writing; and that she would wait till she was as old at Mr. Beverly’s mother.”

“It was the thought of that lady which brought from Ethel the only note of complaint she uttered in my presence during that whole dreary month.”

“We were spending Sunday with a house party at Hyde Park; and driving to church, we passed an avenue gate with a lodge. ‘Rockhurst, sir,’ said the coachman. ‘Whose place?’ I inquired. ‘The old Beverly place, sir.’ Ethel heard him tell me this; and as we went on, we saw a carriage and pair coming down the avenue toward the gate with that look which horses always seem to have when they are taking the family to church on Sunday morning.”

“‘If I see her,’ said Ethel to me as we entered the door, ‘I shall be unable to say my prayers.’”

“But only young people came into the Beverly pew, and Ethel said her prayers and also sang the hymn and chants very sweetly.”

“After the service, we strolled together in the old and lovely grave yard before starting homeward. We had told them that we should prefer to walk back. The day was beautiful, and one could see a little blue piece of the river, sparkling.”

“‘Here is where they are all buried,’ said Ethel, and we paused before brown old headstones with Beverly upon them. ‘Died 1750; died 1767,’ continued Ethel, reading the names and inscriptions. ‘I think one doesn’t mind the idea of lying in such a place as this.’”

“Some of the young people in the pew now came along the path. ‘The grandchildren,’ said Ethel. ‘She is probably too old to come to church. Or she is in Europe.’”

“The young people had brought a basket with flowers from their place, and now laid them over several of the grassy mounds. ‘Give me some of yours,’ said one to the other, presently; ‘I’ve not enough for grandmother’s.’”

“Ethel took me rather sharply by the arm. ‘Did you hear that?’ she asked.”

“‘It can’t be she, you know,’ said I. ‘He would have come back from Europe.’”

“But we found it out at lunch. It was she, and she had been dead for fifteen years.”