XIV

When Capuchin arrived at Little Jones street for dinner the next evening the scene was unexpected and strange to his humor. He resented both the presence of a large company of Lothians and the jollity among them, in which Jael herself was taking part. They were singing an old western ballad that one had found and brought in about a dying miner; and they were improvising musical sounds for accompaniment, from glasses on the table and from an empty copper pot muffled with a napkin and used as a drum.

Jael smiled at him pleasantly, indicated that he was to sit at her right, where a place was ready, and turned again to her friends, saying: “Almost perfect. Now! Once more.”

His displeasure increased. Never had these Lothian people regarded him with becoming respect. Who was he to be treated as one of them? They had not even taken the trouble to greet him collectively. One had said hello; another had waved a hand; Jael herself had not spoken to him. He fumed and ate, thinking how he should like to fire the whole crew out of their jobs; and just as he was beginning to debate the feasibility of doing it Jael leaned toward him, saying, beneath the singing:

“Your Lothians will all resign tomorrow. Having resigned, they will tender their services to the state for one dollar a year. You can take them back on that basis, if you want them. Hereafter I shall pay their salaries myself.”

Before he could answer she turned her attention to the ballad and called for it to be repeated.

Presently again she leaned toward him, saying, with the air of having just remembered, “I’ve stopped the man that was on his way to see Parshall, as you wished,” and gave him no chance to speak.

The singing was followed by conversation, serious, audacious, witty. Jael gave it her whole attention, joined heartily in the laughter, and when there was a sign of its letting down she herself set it off again. This went on for more than an hour, Capuchin becoming all the time more dour and aggrieved, until at last he lost his wits and did what she was expecting.

“What have you decided to do about the bank?” he asked. His tone and manner said also, “This is no time for such frivolous goings on.”

She answered him casually, with her attention divided between what she was saying to him and what the Lothians at that moment were saying to one another. “I’ve decided,” she said, “to do... to do nothing... for a while. Let’s wait to see... what will happen.” Then immediately she seemed to forget him.

For several minutes he sat quite still. Color began to show in his face. He rose from the table, meaning it to be noticed that he was offended, and said good night without offering to shake hands. Jael said good night very sweetly and let him go.

A rage possessed him. He had been treated lightly by Jael and her companions. In the act of disappointing him she had belittled and mortified him. His ego floundered in distress. A venomous worm with its tail afire, striking at anything but itself.

Notwithstanding the casualness of her manner, which was of course malicious, Jael had picked her words carefully. She had not been final, only procrastinating. All she had said was that she meant to wait. It was still her private intention to aid the bank if the situation should desperately require it. This she did not say. To have said it would have defeated her purpose, which was to try both facts and motives according to Plaino’s version of them.

It was Capuchin’s misfortune not to see this. His power of intuition failed him.

Moreover, from the light Plaino had opened to her, Jael’s understanding of the case was clearer than his. Her natural impulse was to be candid in all matters. But she had begun to suspect him. It was quite probable, she thought, that he had not been frank with her. On this one point her suspicion was unfounded. Although Plaino was right, as events proved, his view was original. There were other bankers who did not see it as he saw it. Dwind himself did not see it. Capuchin knew nothing about banking, nor did any of his associates understand it in principle. All of them did honestly fear what they said they feared, namely, a run on the bank; besides fearing, as Plaino correctly said, the political consequences of its being unable to continue making popular loans to the people.

Aimlessly, his mind in hot turmoil, Capuchin walked to the “Herald” office, went to the editorial room and sat at a vacant desk.

Presently Semicorn came and bent himself over the desk, resting his two hands upon it.

“The Dowager Empress has been conferring with Anx. Plaino,” he said.

“You mean Miss Saint-Leon?”

“Yes. She went to his house last night. Did you know that?”

“Yes.... Yes, of course—I knew that,” said Capuchin, lying for his vanity’s sake. He must be supposed to know everything that happened.

Semicorn straightened up, spread his hands in the air, and walked away.

After some restless moving about, twice dusting himself with particular care, Capuchin went over to his desk.

“You run a very fine information service, Mr. Semicorn. I compliment you. A very competent service. I suppose you know what they talked about?”

“Who?” said Semicorn, indifferently.

“Plaino and Miss Saint-Leon, last night.”

“Yes,” said Semicorn, going right on with his work. “I know what they talked about.”

Capuchin hated to ask. It made him feel small. He waited for some time. Semicorn waited, too, and continued reading his galley proofs.

“Well, what?” Capuchin asked. He was extremely irritated at Semicorn for obliging him to ask. Instantly that paltry emotion was swallowed up in astonishment, for with no warning of sizzle or smoke, Semicorn exploded.

His seizures came that way. They were probably as unexpected to him as to others, like attacks of mania or visitation of epilepsy. They were not frequent. For long periods he would go along presenting the character of a man exceptionally self-restrained, meeting placidly, or with a sense of humor, circumstances such as cause ordinary beings to lose their tempers. Then suddenly, with no acute provocation, sometimes for no reason whatever that one might know, he became violently excited. There was in him some principle of inflammability which once it began to act deprived him of self-control. In those moments he lost all sense of fitness and whereness, together with the acquired faculty of speaking grammatically. His voice, at other times pleasant and level, became distorted and high, with a note of frenzy in it; his physical appearance changed. The passing of the paroxysm was as swift as its onset. One instant he would be raving; the next he would be his normal self again, speaking in his natural voice, as if nothing had happened.

At Capuchin’s question he threw down his proofs and blue pencil, rose, kicked away his chair, and tore the green eyeshade off his forehead.

“Defeat!” he shouted. “The people’s defeat! That’s what they talked about.”

“Not so loud, Mr. Semicorn,” said Capuchin. “Not so loud, please.”

“Defeat!” Semicorn shouted again and louder. “I’m telling y’ what they talked about. How do I know? She’s a capitalis, ain’t she? A woman that her own bankers don’t know how rich she is. All her talk for th’ people is bull. Monkey kissing. Not so loud? Not so loud? Who’s going t’tell me how loud? They didn’ say nothing loud. Them that their language is money never talk loud. You don’t suppose they know each other on sight. Maybe they don’t. They’re both capitalis. That’s all you got to know. One night when you’re in bed ‘n’ ain’t looking they come together like evil spirits. Them as know themselves by stink ‘n’ spots. I don’t care a God damn for your Freeman’s League. A billygoat in skirts. I’m riding it like you are because it’s going my way. I do hate like hell to see y’ get sold out in the night by a she capitalis.”

As he began, so he subsided, with the effect of a rocket, only that it shocked the mind instead of the eye. Bringing back his chair, he sat down, adjusted the green eyeshade and took up his work.

“Mr. Semicorn, will you come to my office, please,” said Capuchin.

“When?”

“Now. I want to talk this out with you.”

Semicorn had only to put on his hat. He never wore an overcoat. Neither of them spoke until they were inside Capuchin’s office, with the door locked. Capuchin started to turn on the light, then changed his mind, and they sat in semi-darkness. By the light from a street lamp through the window they could see each others’ forms and that was all.

“I am impressed by what you say, Mr. Semicorn.”

Capuchin spoke in a low voice. Semicorn was rolling a cigarette and said nothing. But he was surprised. He had been prepared to hear that his ride with the Freemen’s League was finished. That was what he expected. Unaware of the estrangement between Capuchin and Jael he very naturally supposed that an attack upon her would be deemed an unpardonable offence.