LAPHAM awoke confused, and in a kind of remoteness from the loss of the night before, through which it loomed mistily.
But before he lifted his head from the pillow, it gathered substance and weight against which it needed all his will to bear up and live.In that moment he wished that he had not wakened, that he might never have wakened;but he rose, and faced the day and its cares.
The morning papers brought the report of the fire, and the conjectured loss.The reporters somehow had found out the fact that the loss fell entirely upon Lapham;they lighted up the hackneyed character of their statements with the picturesque interest OF the coincidence that the policy had expired only the week before; heaven knows how they knew it.They said that nothing remained of the building but the walls; and Lapham, on his way to business, walked up past the smoke-stained shell.
The windows looked like the eye-sockets of a skull down upon the blackened and trampled snow of the street;the pavement was a sheet of ice, and the water from the engines had frozen, like streams of tears, down the face of the house, and hung in icy tags from the window-sills and copings.
He gathered himself up as well as he could, and went on to his office.The chance of retrieval that had flashed upon him, as he sat smoking by that ruined hearth the evening before, stood him in such stead now as a sole hope may; and he said to himself that, having resolved not to sell his house, he was no more crippled by its loss than he would have been by letting his money lie idle in it; what he might have raised by mortgage on it could be made up in some other way; and if they would sell he could still buy out the whole business of that West Virginia company, mines, plant, stock on hand, good-will, and everything, and unite it with his own.
He went early in the afternoon to see Bellingham, whose expressions of condolence for his loss he cut short with as much politeness as he knew how to throw into his impatience.Bellingham seemed at first a little dazzled with the splendid courage of his scheme; it was certainly fine in its way; but then he began to have his misgivings.
"I happen to know that they haven't got much money behind them," urged Lapham."They'll jump at an offer."Bellingham shook his head."If they can show profit on the old manufacture, and prove they can make their paint still cheaper and better hereafter, they can have all the money they want.And it will be very difficult for you to raise it if you're threatened by them.
With that competition, you know what your plant at Lapham would be worth, and what the shrinkage on your manufactured stock would be.Better sell out to them," he concluded, "if they will buy.""There ain't money enough in this country to buy out my paint,"said Lapham, buttoning up his coat in a quiver of resentment.
"Good afternoon, sir." Men are but grown-up boys after all.
Bellingham watched this perversely proud and obstinate child fling petulantly out of his door, and felt a sympathy for him which was as truly kind as it was helpless.
But Lapham was beginning to see through Bellingham, as he believed.Bellingham was, in his way, part of that conspiracy by which Lapham's creditors were trying to drive him to the wall.More than ever now he was glad that he had nothing to do with that cold-hearted, self-conceited race, and that the favours so far were all from his side.
He was more than ever determined to show them, every one of them, high and low, that he and his children could get along without them, and prosper and triumph without them.
He said to himself that if Penelope were engaged to Corey that very minute, he would make her break with him.
He knew what he should do now, and he was going to do it without loss of time.He was going on to New York to see those West Virginia people; they had their principal office there, and he intended to get at their ideas, and then he intended to make them an offer.He managed this business better than could possibly have been expected of a man in his impassioned mood.But when it came really to business, his practical instincts, alert and wary, came to his aid against the passions that lay in wait to betray after they ceased to dominate him.
He found the West Virginians full of zeal and hope, but in ten minutes he knew that they had not yet tested their strength in the money market, and had not ascertained how much or how little capital they could command.
Lapham himself, if he had had so much, would not have hesitated to put a million dollars into their business.
He saw, as they did not see, that they had the game in their own hands, and that if they could raise the money to extend their business, they could ruin him.It was only a question of time, and he was on the ground first.
He frankly proposed a union of their interests.
He admitted that they had a good thing, and that he should have to fight them hard; but he meant to fight them to the death unless they could come to some sort of terms.Now, the question was whether they had better go on and make a heavy loss for both sides by competition, or whether they had better form a partnership to run both paints and command the whole market.Lapham made them three propositions, each of which was fair and open:
to sell out to them altogether; to buy them out altogether;to join facilities and forces with them, and go on in an invulnerable alliance.Let them name a figure at which they would buy, a figure at which they would sell, a figure at which they would combine,--or, in other words, the amount of capital they needed.
