shared as little as possible with Eleanor on the trip back on the ship. He didn’t want to worry her unduly, or panic her unnecessarily. He wanted hard facts, not rumors, but she could sense that he was worried and the situation was serious. She said very little, and didn’t question him on the trip. She instinctively sensed that interrogating him would only heighten his anxiety, so she remained silent most of the time and kept their exchanges light.
Alex got the hard facts he was seeking when they reached New York. He met with his stockbroker friends and several bankers. They and their clients had been wiped out. Some fortunes had vanished entirely in a matter of hours, others were left with some small remnant of what they had had. Banks had closed, businesses were cleaned out. Houses would have to be sold. Rich men had become paupers overnight, and possibly he among them.
It was a tense train ride back to San Francisco, and he tried to prepare Eleanor for bad news when they arrived. But even he wasn’t prepared for how dire it was. He dropped Eleanor off at his home, and went straight to his bank. There was no question according to the manager he had left in charge. Heavily invested, the bank had lost everything and had to close. The clients’ fortunes had been lost. Their own funds were gone. Panic had led to mass withdrawals, loans had to be liquidated. And when Alex checked his own personal situation, he had lost everything. Everything! He was penniless as a result of the crash. Everything he owned would have to be sold. He would have to find a job. And he had a wife now, and was going to drag her into the abyss with him. He couldn’t bear the thought.
He went to see Charles. The bank was closed and he found him at home. His situation was the same, though not quite as desperate as Alex’s. The bulk of Charles’s fortune was gone, however he had some small funds that had plummeted, but weren’t entirely gone. But most of his holdings had been swept away by a tidal wave. By the time Alex returned to San Francisco ten days after Black Tuesday, several of their more important bank clients, and three of his friends, had committed suicide, unable to face the fact that they had nothing left and no way to live. A number of those who had killed themselves had left widows and children, who were destitute now. Alex couldn’t imagine it. The country had been plunged into a depression.
“What are you going to do?” Alex asked Charles, closeted in the library with him, as they both drank straight scotch and looked like desperate men.
“We have a pittance left. I’m too old to get a job. I’m fifty-two years old and no one will hire me,” Charles said bluntly. “We have to sell everything, this house, Tahoe, jewels, cars, art, furs. It’s all selling for nothing now, but we’ll have to take what we can get. We’re going to keep a corner of the Tahoe property where the servants’ quarters are and a small cottage. Louise and I can live there. The servants will have to go of course, we’ve already given them notice, but they’re in a bad spot too. No one can afford to hire them now, after years in service, faithful to their employers in many cases, their jobs no longer exist. We’ll have to become servants now,” he said, giving Alex a black look. “What about you?”
“Nothing left. I’m going to tell Eleanor tonight. I’m going to give her the opportunity to annul the marriage, if she wishes to. I’m not the man she thought she married. I’ll be lucky if I get a job as a janitor somewhere, and live in a shanty. I can’t do that to her. At least she could go to Tahoe with you.”
“So can you,” Charles said in a hoarse voice.
“I need a job. I can’t find one at Lake Tahoe, except as a gardener, and there’ll be no one to hire any of us. We’re a nation of ruined men and paupers now.”
“If I know my daughter, she won’t leave you. Louise has been wonderful about it. She’s been contacting auction houses to sell the jewelry. We’re putting the city house on the market next week. We’ll sell it with everything in it, if someone will buy it. I had some money in