Stener stood there ridiculously meditating when, as a matter of fact, his very financial blood was oozing away. Yet he was afraid to act. He was afraid of Mollenhauer, afraid of Cowperwood, afraid of life and of himself. The thought of panic, loss, was not so much a definite thing connected with his own property, his money, as it was with his social and political standing in the community. Few people have the sense of financial individuality strongly developed. They do not know what it means to be a controller of wealth, to have that which releases the sources of social action—its medium of exchange. They want money, but not for money’s sake. They want it for what it will buy in the way of simple comforts, whereas the financier wants it for what it will control—for what it will represent in the way of dignity, force, power. Cowperwood wanted money in that way; Stener not. That was why he had been so ready to let Cowperwood act for him; and now, when he should have seen more clearly than ever the significance of what Cowperwood was proposing, he was frightened and his reason obscured by such things as Mollenhauer’s probable opposition and rage, Cowperwood’s possible failure, his own inability to face a real crisis. Cowperwood’s innate financial ability did not reassure Stener in this hour. The banker was too young, too new. Mollenhauer was older, richer. So was Simpson; so was Butler. These men, with their wealth, represented the big forces, the big standards in his world. And besides, did not Cowperwood himself confess that he was in great danger—that he was in a corner. That was the worst possible confession to make to Stener—although under the circumstances it was the only one that could be made—for he had no courage to face danger.
So it was that now, Stener stood by Cowperwood meditating—pale, flaccid; unable to see the main line of his interests quickly, unable to follow it definitely, surely, vigorously—while they drove to his office. Cowperwood entered it with him for the sake of continuing his plea.
“Well, George,” he said earnestly, “I wish you’d tell me. Time’s short. We haven’t a moment to lose. Give me the money, won’t you, and I’ll get out of this quick. We haven’t a moment, I tell you. Don’t let those people frighten you off. They’re playing their own little game; you play yours.”
“I can’t, Frank,” said Stener, finally, very weakly, his sense of his own financial future, overcome for the time being by the thought of Mollenhauer’s hard, controlling face. “I’ll have to think. I can’t do it right now. Strobik just left me before I saw you, and—”
“Good God, George,” exclaimed Cowperwood, scornfully, “don’t talk about Strobik! What’s he got to do with it? Think of yourself. Think of where you will be. It’s your future—not Strobik’s—that you have to think of.”
“I know, Frank,” persisted Stener, weakly; “but, really, I don’t see how I can. Honestly I don’t. You say yourself you’re not sure whether you can come out of things all right, and three hundred thousand more is three hundred thousand more. I can’t, Frank. I really can’t. It wouldn’t be right. Besides, I want to talk to Mollenhauer first, anyhow.”
“Good God, how you talk!” exploded Cowperwood, angrily, looking at him with ill-concealed contempt. “Go ahead! See Mollenhauer! Let him tell you how to cut your own throat for his benefit. It won’t be right to loan me three hundred thousand dollars more, but it will be right to let the five hundred thousand dollars you have loaned stand unprotected and lose it. That’s right, isn’t it? That’s just what you propose
