The Deluge Read online

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  THE DELUGE

  By David Graham Phillips

  Author of The Cost, The Plum Tree, The Social Secretary, etc.

  With Illustrations By George Gibbs

  CONTENTS

  I MR. BLACKLOCK II IN THOSE DAYS AROSE KINGS III CAME A WOMAN IV A CANDIDATE FOR "RESPECTABILITY" V DANGER SIGNALS VI OF "GENTLEMEN" VII BLACKLOCK GOES INTO TRAINING VIII ON THE TRAIL OF LANGDON IX LANGDON AT HOME X TWO "PILLARS OF SOCIETY" XI WHEN A MAN IS NOT A MAN XII ANITA XIII "UNTIL TO-MORROW" XIV FRESH AIR IN A GREENHOUSE XV SOME STRANGE LAPSES OF A LOVER XVI TRAPPED AND TRIMMED XVII A GENTEEL "HOLD-UP" XVIII ANITA BEGINS TO BE HERSELF XIX A WINDFALL FROM "GENTLEMAN JOE" XX A BREATHING SPELL XXI MOST UNLADYLIKE XXII MOST UNGENTLEMANLY XXIII "SHE HAS CHOSEN" XXIV BLACKLOCK ATTENDS FAMILY PRAYERS XXV "MY WIFE MUST" XXVI THE WEAK STRAND XXVII A CONSPIRACY AGAINST ANITAXXVIII BLACKLOCK SEES A LIGHT XXIX A HOUSEWARMING XXX BLACKLOCK OPENS FIRE XXXI ANITA'S SECRET XXXII LANGDON COMES TO THE SURFACEXXXIII MRS. LANGDON MAKES A CALL XXXIV "MY RIGHT EYE OFFENDS ME" XXXV "WILD WEEK" XXXVI "BLACK MATT'S" TRIUMPH

  I. MR. BLACKLOCK

  When Napoleon was about to crown himself--so I have somewhere read--theysubmitted to him the royal genealogy they had faked up for him. He crumpledthe parchment and flung it in the face of the chief herald, or whoever itwas. "My line," said he, "dates from Montenotte." And so I say, my linedates from the campaign that completed and established my fame--from "WildWeek."

  I shall not pause to recite the details of the obscurity from which Iemerged. It would be an interesting, a romantic story; but it is a familiarstory, also, in this land which Lincoln so finely and so fully describedwhen he said: "The republic is opportunity."

  One fact only: _I did not take the name Blacklock_.

  I was born Blacklock, and christened Matthew; and my hair's being veryblack and growing so that a lock of it often falls down the middle of myforehead is a coincidence. The malicious and insinuating story that I usedto go under another name arose, no doubt, from my having been a bootblackin my early days, and having let my customers shorten my name into MattBlack. But, as soon as I graduated from manual labor, I resumed my rightfulname and have borne it--I think I may say without vanity--in honor tohonor.

  Some one has written: "It was a great day for fools when modesty was madea virtue." I heartily subscribe to that. Life means action; action meansself-assertion; self-assertion rouses all the small, colorless people tothe only sort of action of which they are capable--to sneering at the doeras egotistical, vain, conceited, bumptious and the like. So be it! I havean individuality, aggressive, restless and, like all such individualities,necessarily in the lime-light; I have from the beginning lost noopportunity to impress that individuality upon my time. Let those who havenothing to advertise, and those less courageous and less successful thanI at advertisement, jeer and spit. I ignore them. I make no apologies foregotism. I think, when my readers have finished, they will demand none.They will see that I had work to do, and that I did it in the only way anintelligent man ever tries to do his work--his own way, the way natural tohim!

  Wild Week! Its cyclones, rising fury on fury to that historic climax ofchaos, sing their mad song in my ears again as I write. But I shall by nomeans confine my narrative to business and finance. Take a cross-sectionof life anywhere, and you have a tangled interweaving of the action andreaction of men upon men, of women upon women, of men and women upon oneanother. And this shall be a cross-section out of the very heart of ourlife to-day, with its big and bold energies and passions--the swiftest andintensest life ever lived by the human race.

  To begin: