Джеймс Хилтон - Morning Journey

Towards the end of that October came the big break on Wall Street. Like most people she and Paul were ‘in the market’; not to do what everyone else was doing would have seemed perilously close to that act of selling America short, which was, of course, a sin as well as an error. So, as they had accumulated more cash than they could spend, they had acquired the services of Andrew Reeves to manage the surplus—an elderly, highly respectable, and even conservative stockbroker who recommended only the blue chips and was cautious about too much buying on margin. All had gone well, and there had come a time when Carey could reckon, without undue excitement, that they were probably worth a quarter of a million dollars between them. Carey, in fact, was the one who dealt with all financial matters; she and Paul had separate accounts, but Paul had told Reeves that Carey was the one to say yes or no to any specific proposition. For Paul was fundamentally bored with money except when he needed it, so that the less he needed it the more bored he became. He would sign cheques and documents without looking at them if Carey had approved them first, and she doubted that he knew the names of the stocks that had given him quite large paper profits.

Carey did not follow the affairs of Wall Street with any day-to-day preoccupation, but she could not miss the headlines on October 23rd, when market leaders plunged as many as fifty points. Alarm was in the air by then; it was already affecting theatre audiences. At her apartment after the performance she found a wire from Reeves asking for additional margin on certain stocks she held. The amount was not more than she could afford, but the drop in prices was so different from anything she or Reeves had considered possible that she wondered if she should sell out the stuff on which she and Paul still had a profit. It was a nuisance his having left without giving her legal power to act for him, but perhaps she could contact him by cable. The next morning she visited Reeves in his office on a day long to be remembered. Alarm had now mounted to panic, and she was aware of something in the atmosphere that touched her far beyond any question of personal loss—something she had not felt since those homeward journeys from the Abbey Theatre when there was shooting in the Dublin streets. She fought her way through yelling crowds into the broker’s sanctum and at last managed to get a word with him. She was dismayed by his appearance and by his wan smile as he struggled to close the door of an inner office so that their voices could be heard, but what shocked her most was the way his telephone kept ringing and he made no move to answer it. This, from a man so punctilious, seemed to her an utmost symbol of disintegration. She liked him, they had had many lunches together at downtown restaurants where he was obviously pleased to be seen with her, and he had attended all her first nights and had been half-affectionately proprietary when he paid his respects in her dressing-room afterwards. There had always been in his attitude a sense of kindly guardianship; his eyes upon her told others that here was a beautiful young actress who naturally knew nothing about business, so she had put her financial affairs in the hands of safe old Uncle Andy and could henceforth sleep at nights without worrying her pretty head about them. It was a fairy-tale relationship, harmless enough, and Carey had not discouraged it. And now Uncle Andy was running his fingers through his whitening hair and refusing to answer telephone calls—perhaps from other pretty heads. “I can’t figure what’s happened, Carey. Of course it’s absurd—U.S. Steel under 200—that shows you how absurd it is… Too bad you didn’t take Paul’s advice.”

“Paul’s?… He never… why, what about Paul?”

He was too bewildered to notice her bewilderment. He went on, still with the same wan smile: “One of the few I know who got out right at the top. Good for him.”

Amidst the bedlam of that morning she finally elicited that Paul had actually visited the broker’s office in late August, had shown a lively interest in his holdings and what they were worth, and had shocked Reeves immeasurably by giving an explicit order to sell everything. It was obeyed, of course, and a few days later he had collected a cashier’s cheque, again in person. What he did with it, if and how he reinvested the whole or any part, Reeves couldn’t say. He had naturally assumed that Carey had known all about it. “I was surprised,” he said, “that you’d let him act like that, though God knows he was smarter than either of us.”

Carey made the obvious guess as to what had happened to the money, but she did not mention it to Reeves. What troubled her most was not what Paul had done, but the way he had done it; it was the first time he had failed to consult her on the business angle of any enterprise. She wrote to him, as soon as she got back to the apartment—a short, straightforward letter, saying she had learned he had sold out, which in view of what had happened since was fortunate, but why had he kept it so secret? And had he put money into the Everyman project? If so, she hoped he had a reliable lawyer or business manager in Germany to look after his interests. After she had mailed the letter, Reeves telephoned. He told her things had steadied a little during the afternoon, Morgan’s were supporting the market. Late that evening he telephoned again. He would be working all night, he said, to help his clerks bring some kind of order out of chaos. She hardly recognized his voice; it sounded not only strange, but the voice of a stranger. He added that after studying her account he was afraid the extra coverage she had agreed to send would not now be nearly enough. He was terribly sorry— it was for her to decide whether to put up more cash and hang on, or sell out and take the rather heavy loss. He was sorry it had come to that, of course she wasn’t the only one, there were thousands in the same position or worse —some had been wiped out completely. And he was sorry he couldn’t advise her what to do—after all, his advice hadn’t been so good lately, she would admit. True, if one believed in America at all, the market was bristling with bargains—U.S. Steel at 200, for instance— on the other hand some people, probably bear operators, believed prices could go lower. So that was how it was, he simply couldn’t advise her at all. He kept repeating that he was sorry till at last she realized whom he was reminding her of—an English butler they had had once who hid brandy in vinegar bottles and always apologized profusely when found out. She smiled then, knowing how utterly unlike a drunken butler Reeves could ever be, unless he and the whole world were to go as crazy as the market. It was cheering, anyhow, to find something to smile at. She said lightly: “Sell the stuff, Andy, and let’s get it off our minds. I was all for taking medicine at one gulp when I was a kid. And I never worried about money when I had none —why should I now? Besides, there’ll be some left, won’t there?”

“Oh yes,” he answered eagerly. “You aren’t nearly as badly off as others.”

Less was left than she had expected, though there would have been nothing at all had she delayed action; she had that much consolation. She did not definitely worry, but it was discouraging to find that taking one’s medicine in one gulp could not close the issue, for all around her as the days passed and the market fell further, reverberations affected her life in countless ways—through the changed fortunes of her friends, the atmosphere in shops and restaurants, and by a sharp down-turn in theatre prosperity. There was talk of cutting admission prices and salaries, and though nobody had yet suggested the play should be taken off, already it looked as if it would not last far into the new year. People said how fortunate that it was a comedy, since in bad times everybody wants to laugh. Carey heard this truism so often that she began to feel like medicine herself, and she wondered if it made her act better or worse; Paul could doubtless have informed her.