commands which might not be ignored!
“Oh, dear!” she sighed to herself, mentally. “If only it were all true—now.”
It is thus that life at its topmost toss irks and pains. Beyond is ever the unattainable, the lure of the infinite with its infinite ache.
Chapter IV.
Peter Laughlin & Co.
The partnership which Cowperwood eventually made with an old-time Board of Trade operator, Peter Laughlin, was eminently to his satisfaction. Laughlin was a tall, gaunt speculator who had spent most of his living days in Chicago, having come there as a boy from western Missouri. He was a typical Chicago Board of Trade operator of the old school, having an Andrew Jacksonish countenance, and a Henry Clay—Davy Crockett—“Long John” Wentworth build of body.
Cowperwood from his youth up had had a curious interest in quaint characters, and he was interesting to them; they “took” to him. He could, if he chose to take the trouble, fit himself in with the odd psychology of almost any individual. In his early peregrinations in La Salle Street he inquired after clever traders on ’change, and then gave them one small commission after another in order to get acquainted. Thus he stumbled one morning on old Peter Laughlin, wheat and corn trader, who had an office in La Salle Street near Madison, and who did a modest business gambling for himself and others in grain and Eastern railway shares. Laughlin was a shrewd, canny American, originally, perhaps, of Scotch extraction, who had all the traditional American blemishes of uncouthness, tobacco-chewing, profanity, and other small vices. Cowperwood could tell from looking at him that he must have a fund of information concerning every current Chicagoan of importance, and this fact alone was certain to be of value. Then the old man was direct, plain-spoken, simple-appearing, and wholly unpretentious—qualities which Cowperwood deemed invaluable.
Once or twice in the last three years Laughlin had lost heavily on private “corners” that he had attempted to engineer, and the general feeling was that he was now becoming cautious, or, in other words, afraid. “Just the man,” Cowperwood thought. So one morning he called upon Laughlin, intending to open a small account with him.
“Henry,” he heard the old man say, as he entered Laughlin’s fair-sized but rather dusty office, to a young, preternaturally solemn-looking clerk, a fit assistant for Peter Laughlin, “git me them there Pittsburg and Lake Erie sheers, will you?” Seeing Cowperwood waiting, he added, “What kin I do for ye?”
Cowperwood smiled. “So he calls them ‘sheers,’ does he?” he thought. “Good! I think I’ll like him.”
He introduced himself as coming from Philadelphia, and went on to say that he was interested in various Chicago ventures, inclined to invest in any good stock which would rise, and particularly desirous to buy into some corporation—public utility preferred—which would be certain to grow with the expansion of the city.
Old Laughlin, who was now all of sixty years of age, owned a seat on the Board, and was worth in the neighborhood of two hundred thousand dollars, looked at Cowperwood quizzically.
“Well, now, if you’d ’a’ come along here ten or fifteen years ago you might ’a’ got in on the ground floor of a lot of things,” he observed. “There was these here gas companies, now, that them Otway and Apperson boys got in on, and then all these here street-railways. Why, I’m the feller that told Eddie Parkinson what a fine thing he could make out of it if he would go and organize that North State Street line. He promised me a bunch of sheers if he ever worked it out, but he never give ’em to me. I didn’t expect him to, though,” he added, wisely, and with a glint. “I’m too old a trader for that. He’s out of it now, anyway. That Michaels-Kennelly crowd skinned him. Yep, if you’d ’a’ been here ten or fifteen years ago you might ’a’ got in on that. ’Tain’t no use a-thinkin’ about that, though, any more. Them sheers is sellin’ fer clost onto a hundred and sixty.”
Cowperwood smiled. “Well, Mr. Laughlin,” he observed, “you must have been on ’change a long time here. You seem to know a good deal of what has gone on in the past.”
“Yep, ever since 1852,” replied the old man. He had a thick growth of upstanding hair looking not unlike a rooster’s comb, a long and what threatened eventually to become a Punch-and-Judy chin, a slightly aquiline nose, high cheek-bones, and hollow, brown-skinned cheeks. His eyes were as clear and sharp as those of a lynx.
“To tell you the truth, Mr. Laughlin,” went on Cowperwood, “what I’m really out here in Chicago for is to find a man with whom I can go into partnership in the brokerage business. Now I’m in the banking and brokerage business myself in the East. I have a firm in Philadelphia and a seat on both the New York and Philadelphia exchanges. I have some affairs in Fargo also. Any trade agency can tell you about me. You have a Board of Trade seat here, and no doubt you do some New York and Philadelphia exchange business. The new firm, if you would go in with me, could handle it all direct. I’m a rather strong outside man myself. I’m thinking of locating permanently in Chicago. What would you say now to going into business with me? Do you think we could get along in the same office space?”
Cowperwood had a way, when he wanted to be pleasant, of beating the fingers of his two hands together, finger for finger, tip for tip. He also smiled at the same time—or, rather, beamed—his eyes glowing with a warm, magnetic, seemingly affectionate light.
As it happened, old Peter Laughlin had arrived at that psychological moment when he was wishing that some such opportunity as this might appear and be available. He was a lonely man, never having been able to bring himself to trust his peculiar temperament in the hands of any woman. As a matter of fact, he had never understood women at all, his relations being confined to those sad immoralities of the cheapest character which only money— grudgingly given, at that—could buy. He lived in three small rooms in West Harrison Street, near Throup, where he cooked his own meals at times. His one companion was a small spaniel, simple and affectionate, a she dog, Jennie by name, with whom he slept. Jennie was a docile, loving companion, waiting for him patiently by day in his office until he was ready to go home at night. He talked to this spaniel quite as he would to a human being (even more intimately, perhaps), taking the dog’s glances, tail-waggings, and general movements for answer. In the morning when he arose, which was often as early as half past four, or even four—he was a brief sleeper—he would begin by pulling on his trousers (he seldom bathed any more except at a down-town barber shop) and talking to Jennie.
“Git up, now, Jinnie,” he would say. “It’s time to git up. We’ve got to make our coffee now and git some breakfast. I can see yuh, lyin’ there, pertendin’ to be asleep. Come on, now! You’ve had sleep enough. You’ve been sleepin’ as long as I have.”
Jennie would be watching him out of the corner of one loving eye, her tail tap-tapping on the bed, her free ear going up and down.
When he was fully dressed, his face and hands washed, his old string tie pulled around into a loose and convenient knot, his hair brushed upward, Jennie would get up and jump demonstratively about, as much as to say, “You see how prompt I am.”
“That’s the way,” old Laughlin would comment. “Allers last. Yuh never git up first, do yuh, Jinnie? Allers let yer old man do that, don’t you?”
On bitter days, when the car-wheels squeaked and one’s ears and fingers seemed to be in danger of freezing, old Laughlin, arrayed in a heavy, dusty greatcoat of ancient vintage and a square hat, would carry Jennie down- town in a greenish-black bag along with some of his beloved “sheers” which he was meditating on. Only then could he take Jennie in the cars. On other days they would walk, for he liked exercise. He would get to his office as early as seven-thirty or eight, though business did not usually begin until after nine, and remain until four-thirty or five, reading the papers or calculating during the hours when there were no customers. Then he would take Jennie and go for a walk or to call on some business acquaintance. His home room, the newspapers, the floor of the exchange, his offices, and the streets were his only resources. He cared nothing for plays, books, pictures, music—and for women only in his one-angled, mentally impoverished way. His limitations were so marked that to a lover of
