Sudden Jim
by Clarence Budington Kelland · English · Gutenberg #44079 · 379,032 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Sudden Jim
Author: Clarence Budington Kelland
Release date: October 31, 2013 [eBook #44079]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44079
Credits: Produced by Roger Frank and Sue Clark
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUDDEN JIM ***
[Illustration: “I’m waving a flag of truce, Miss Ducharme. Can’t we
declare an armistice for ten minutes to bury our dead?”]
Sudden Jim
By Clarence Budington Kelland
Author of “The Hidden Spring,” Etc.
[Illustration]
WITH FRONTISPIECE
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers—New York
Published by Arrangement with Harper & Brothers
Sudden Jim
Copyright 1916. by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
Published February, 1917
SUDDEN JIM
CHAPTER I
It is not a fact that clothespins are threshed out like beans or wheat.
They are not a product of nature, but of art and machinery. A clear
understanding of this is necessary before the story can begin to march;
for if clothespins had grown in fields inclosed by rail fences, and were
gathered by the aid of a self-binder, there never would have been an
individual known from coast to coast as Clothespin Jimmy. This
individual would not have had a son named James, nor would Clothespin
Jimmy have started to build a new clothespin-mill in Diversity,
Michigan. So it is manifest that the fact stated in the first paragraph
hereof lies at the very tap-root of the whole matter.
If you studied sufficiently over the hieroglyphics appended by
Clothespin Jimmy at the end of a check you discovered them to indicate
the signature “James Ashe.” But it required more than a passing glance.
Nobody ever quarreled with the signature, because it suited the old man
and was honored by the bank.
The owner of the illegible signature was sixty-five years old, was hale,
hearty, and ripe for adventure. Also he figured that fifty years of hard
labor about completed his sentence and that he was entitled to play
about.
Therefore he called home his son James, who had shown an early and
marked distaste for the clothespin business, and took him into the
library, where there lived in ease and idleness some ninety feet of
assorted red, blue and black books. He opened the conversation:
“Son, what name do folks call you by when they speak to you?”
“Why—Jim, I guess.”
“Just Jim? Nothing describin’ it?”
“That’s all.”
“Why?”
“I haven’t the least notion, father. Why should they call me anything
else?”
“No reason in the world. That’s what I’m gettin’ at in my feeble way.
What do folks call me?”
“Clothespin Jimmy,” replied his son, promptly.
“Yes, and when I die that’s what’s goin’ onto the headstone. It means
somethin’. There hain’t no need for a verse of poetry and clasped hands.
‘Clothespin Jimmy’ tells the whole story. I don’t mind sayin’ I’m proud
of it. Just like I was proud of the first dollar I ever handled—because
I earned it. Folks call me Clothespin Jimmy because I’ve done things
with clothespins—things that amount to somethin’. Men don’t git names
like that by settin’ in one spot till their pants wear thin. Now, take
you—they call you Jim, and there the matter ends. That’s where you end.
You’re just Jim, like seven hundred thousand other Jims. You don’t stick
up above the herd. Hain’t it about time folks was findin’ reason to
hitch a descriptive name onto you?”
“I’m twenty-eight. I’ve got a good job. I’m supporting myself and not
taking a cent from you—”
“I’m not findin’ fault with what you’ve done, son. You ain’t a gilded
butterfly—that ain’t what I mean. You’re respectable and
self-supportin’, but so’s twenty million other boys in this country.
You’re just a good average human critter. But that’s not even comin’
close to the subject, which is that ma and me would like to go to
Californy.”
“Good idea, dad. When do you start?”
“As things is we don’t start at all.”
“Why?”
“Largely because you’re satisfied to have folks call you Jim without any
description to it.” The old gentleman took a package of folded papers
from a drawer and slid the rubber band off them.
“Here’s somethin’,” he said. “Bonds. Fifty of ’em for a thousand dollars
apiece. Net five per cent. I’ve milked the business to get ’em. ’Twasn’t
right by the business, but I done it just the same. Now, then, you never
liked the clothespin business. Don’t know why. So I’ve fixed it so you
could pick and choose between two things. I’ll come to that in a minute.
But first, about Californy. I started supportin’ myself when I was
fifteen, and I’ve been hard at it ever since—fifty years. The time’s
come for me to git out with your ma and have a good time if we’re ever
a-goin’ to. Short time for frolickin’ left at best. But it rests with
you. I figger I’ve earned the right to loaf, but I can’t loaf without
leavin’ somebody to labor. There hain’t nobody but you.” He stopped and
looked at Jim and slapped the package of bonds on the desk-top three or
four times.
“There ought to be somethin’ to you more ’n just Jim. I’ve waited to see
it crop out. Now I’m goin’ to dig for it. Here’s these bonds. Yonder in
Diversity is the new mill almost ready to start turnin’ over. It’ll be
worth a quarter of a million to somebody. I can make it so in a year.
What I got you in here for was to offer you your choice. You can take
the mill and the business and have it till God does you part—and buckle
in like I’ve done; or you can take this fifty thousand in bonds and go
play. If you take the mill, your ma and me take the bonds and go play.
There’s the proposition. Take which you like—and no hard feelin’s.”
“But, dad, suppose I don’t take either?”
The old man’s face changed; his eyes grew anxious; the hand that held
the bonds trembled ever so little.
“You wouldn’t do that to me, son. Ever since that night twenty-eight
years ago when I heard a miserable squawkin’ sound up-stairs and
mistrusted it was you, I’ve been workin’ and plannin’ and hopin’—with
you as the object of it all. I wanted to fix things for you, son—and
I’ve done it. You don’t need to take the business if you don’t want to.
Your ma and me can keep on like we’ve been goin’, and have consid’able
fun, too. But if you was to refuse both, then I’d feel as if I’d sort of
wasted my time—as if my workin’ and livin’ hadn’t been for no good at
all. You—you wouldn’t do that to your dad, would you, son?”
Young Jim walked to the window and stood looking out, and as he looked
out he reviewed his own plans and scheme of life, his hopes and private
aspirations. Presently he turned:
“No, dad, I won’t refuse both. I’ll take one or the other.”
Clothespin Jimmy’s face showed his relief.
“Much ’bliged, son,” he said, as though he were accepting a notable
favor instead of giving away what folks not addicted to polo or divorces
or Fifth Avenue or ocean-going yachts would consider a fortune.
Jim returned to his window; his father sat thumbing the bonds and
waiting. Presently the old man spoke suddenly:
“I don’t want you tradin’ unsight-unseen. You’re entitled to know what
you’re up against. In case you take the mill—I milked it for these
bonds. I told you that. The business will need this money and need it
bad. I’ve built big. The day the mill starts runnin’ you h’ist a debt of
seventy thousand dollars onto your shoulder. You’ll be pinched for
money, and you’ll have a devil of a time. But I could pull it
through—and so can you if you’re any good. You ain’t steppin’ into a
snap—not by several statute miles. Furthermore, if you take her you
take her for better or for worse. You git no help from me. These
bonds’ll be all I have, and I’ll need ’em. I won’t let loose of one of
’em to keep you out of bankruptcy. Understand?”
“Yes,” said Jim.
“Got your mind made up?”
“I’d rather sleep on it, dad. Suppose we put it off till to-morrow.”
“If you’re the man to handle the job you can decide now. Puttin’ off
never helped matters. A man that makes up his mind right off may be
wrong half the time, but he’s right a whole lot more than the fellow who
has to have a decision jerked out of him with an ox-team. If you expect
to get anywheres in this world, learn to make up your mind swift and
follow up with swift action. We’ll finish the deal now before
quittin’-time.”
Jim turned and looked at his father. Somehow he felt detached from
himself, as if he were sitting at a distance twiddling his thumbs and
watching his own wheels go round. He occupied the position of spectator
very briefly, however, but popped back inside of himself and took
possession again—with a noticeable change. He felt different. He did
not feel like Jim Ashe as he had been acquainted with Jim Ashe, but like
another individual of markedly different characteristics. This change
manifested itself in his reply:
“All right. We’ll decide now. Now!”
“Yes?” said Clothespin Jimmy, his fingers tightening ever so little.
“I take the mill,” said Jim.
“Huh!” his father said.
That was all. He slipped the bonds into his side pocket. From another
pocket he drew an envelope holding two long, many-times-folded strips of
blue paper. Jim recognized them as railroad tickets.
“You’d better go to Diversity on Friday. This is Tuesday. Your ma and me
leave for Californy on Friday mornin’.”
Jim eyed his father suspiciously. “Had the tickets all the time?”
“Yes.”
“You were going, anyhow?”
“No; not unless you took the mill.” The old man chuckled.
Jim snorted. “Pretty sure how I’d decide, weren’t you?”
“Well, seein’ as you’re my son—and your ma’s—I wasn’t more ’n a mite
worried. I figgered you was sound timber, but there was always the
chance that sap rot had got at you. That envelope there was the stock
certificates, all indorsed over to you, inside of it. Take ’em. You’re
the proprietor of the Ashe Clothespin Company now. I’m through with it.
Fifty years of work to earn a couple of years of play for ma and me.
When we’re gone write us often. We’ll need to hear from you. But don’t
you dast to mention clothespins to me—either good or bad about ’em. I’m
through. Through for good and all—and it’s up to you.”
“Done.” said young James.
CHAPTER II
Young Jim Ashe rode from five o’clock in the morning until two in the
afternoon on a train that carried him through a stretch of the State of
Michigan that not even a local poet had ventured to call lovely. It was
flat as an exhausted purse—indeed, it was an exhausted purse, for its
wealth in straight, clean pine had long since poured from it, down its
rivers to mills where it had been minted into money. With this money a
second generation that did not know a wanigan from a cook-shanty, cork
pine from Norway, nor the difference between the Doyle and Scribner
scales, was getting its names in the Sunday papers and illustrated
magazines as bold and hardy owners of imported Chow dogs.
At the end of nine hours of travel through the sort of scenery that
would make the decorations of a modern New York hotel a restful
diversion, Jim thought even a game of coon can with a traveling-man
which, as everybody knows, is the world’s most futile method of passing
time—would be a boon from heaven. But there was neither drummer nor
cards. He was not the sort of person who could sit and think, and when
tired of that omit the thinking and just sit. So he brooded. Long before
he reached Diversity he was terribly sorry for himself, which, after
all, is a species of mild pleasure enjoyed by many. One conclusion he
did reach—namely, that Diversity must be the ultimate fag-end of
desolation trimmed with a fringe of black despair. When the train
stopped at Diversity’s depot he looked out and felt that conclusion to
be sound.
The first thing he saw was heat. He could see it rising in little
wiggling waves from the blackened sand; he could see it at work raising
more blisters on the paint of the station; he could see it struggling in
vain to reduce the weight of the baggage-master, who was also
telegraph-operator, station-agent, porter, and information bureau. The
next thing he saw was a jumble of form and color that would have made
immortal a cubist who could have caught it and labeled it “A Hole
Raveled in Civilization’s Heel.” But if the cubist had caught it he
probably would have called it “Gentleman in Union Suit Climbing a
Telegraph Pole,” and so passed Fame by on the other side.
The station reminded him for all the world of a flabby, disreputable
redbird, squatting in the midst of an hilariously ragamuffin brood which
sat back on its tails and derided her scurrilously. The progeny
consisted of coal-sheds, warehouses, nondescript buildings where nothing
was or apparently ever had been done, a feed-mill and a water-tank. All
of them seemed to detest the perpendicular; most of them leered through
doors squeezed to the shape of a clumsy diamond. Fire, thought Jim,
would bring a merciful release to the whole of them.
He alighted with all the pleasant anticipation of a Christian martyr
about to dip into a caldron of boiling oil. No one was there to meet
him, for no one knew he was coming. He didn’t know where to go and
didn’t much care. All directions seemed equally unpromising. However,
before plunging into the unknown he stopped in the shade of the
building, mopped his forehead, and took an observation.
Standing with the sun beating down upon her was a young woman who looked
at the departing train with an expression like one Jim had seen on a
girl’s face as she stood in the bread-line. It spoke hunger. In spite of
his own discomfort Jim was interested, and there can be no doubt he
stared. He stared long enough to observe that the young woman was dark,
with a heap of curling hair so black that even the old, hard-working
simile of the raven’s wing was not of the slightest use to him. She was
small, but had one of those exquisite figures which just a little
startle one.
She did not impress Jim as at all pretty, but she did impress him as a
young person who might find difficulty in letting somebody else have his
own way.
She continued to stare hungrily after the train, but presently she
turned her eyes so they met Jim’s stare. In a second she comprehended he
was staring, and she flashed resentment at him. She even bit her lip
with vexation. Then she turned abruptly—but very gracefully, Jim
noticed—and walked across the tracks.
Jim flushed uncomfortably and looked about to see if anybody had noticed
his bit of bad manners and its result. In a ramshackle buggy drawn up to
the platform sat an old man with square white whiskers. Possibly “sat”
is not the precise word to use, for the old man rested mainly on the
back of his neck, allowing the rest of his body to clutter up the space
intended only for his legs and feet. Jim picked up his bag and
approached.
“Could you drive me to the hotel?” he asked.
The old man looked at Jim’s feet, at his ankles, his knees, his
belt-buckle, his cravat, finally into his eyes. This took time, and the
sun was hot on Jim’s head.
“I could,” said the old man, finally. Then he wiggled the lines.
“Giddap, Tiffany,” he said, wholly oblivious to Jim’s presence on earth.
“Giddap there. Stir yourself. G’long.”
Jim stood goggling after him, as nonplussed as if the old fellow had
suddenly developed the old-fashioned dragon habit of spouting smoke and
flames. Behind Jim the fat station-agent laughed twice, thus: “Heh!
Heh!” which was all he could manage on account of his weight and the
heat. Jim’s ears burned; he snatched up his grip and followed in the
wake of the buggy.
He halted before a sign which proclaimed that here was the Diversity
House. There did not seem to be a great deal of bustle connected with
this establishment; as a matter of fact, there was no sign of life at
all unless you count an unshaven gentleman in white woolen socks and a
calico shirt, who lent the support of his back to a post on the piazza
and snored feebly. Jim went in. The office was deserted. He coughed. In
another month Jim knew how useless it was to seek to attract attention
in that hotel by coughing, indeed by anything short of exploding
dynamite on the floor. Next he tried kicking the counter. At best it was
only a hollow-sounding sort of kick and got no results whatever. Jim was
growing impatient, so he inserted three or four fingers in his mouth and
whistled. It was a lovely, ear-splitting, sleep-piercing whistle, and
Jim heard a movement on the porch.
The gentleman of the white socks peered through the window, feeling of
his ear as though it had been sorely abused, and looked at Jim
disapprovingly.
“Gosh all hemlock!” exclaimed the gentleman, mildly.
“Are you the proprietor?” Jim demanded.
The gentleman stared some more. “Who? Me? Ho! Don’t calc’late to be,” he
said.
“Where is he? Dead?”
“If he is he hain’t let on to nobody. Seems though he might be over t’
the printin’-office playin’ cribbage.”
“What do I do? Wait till he comes back before I get a room?”
“Hain’t no objections, but mostly they go up and pick out the room they
like.”
Jim sighed impatiently and placed his bag on the counter.
“Can you tell me where the new mill is being built?”
“Down the road a piece. Keep right a-goin’ and you can’t miss the dum
thing.”
“Thank you,” said Jim, and started out to inspect the plant of which he
had become proprietor.
Jim walked down the street, which did not run ahead in a straight line,
but meandered about aimlessly as though trying for all it was worth to
keep under the shade of the fine big maples which bordered it. Nobody
could blame it. In fact, Jim thought it showed extraordinary
intelligence for an illiterate, unpaved, country clodhopper of a road,
for the shade was the pleasantest, most friendly thing he had found in
Diversity.
In five minutes he rounded a bend and came upon a flat which seemed like
a huge platter on which somebody was trying to fry a number of large and
small buildings. Half an eye could tell the buildings were new, indeed
unfinished. Heat-waves radiated from their composition roofs, and as for
their corrugated-iron sides, Jim fancied their ugly red was not due so
much to paint as to the fact that they were red-hot. Everywhere were men
hurrying about as if it were a reasonable day and they weren’t in the
least danger of sunstroke. Inside Jim could hear the clang of hammers,
the rasp of saws, the multitude of sounds which denote the business of
an army of workmen.
It looked very big and raw and uninviting to him. There was nothing
homey about it at all. It didn’t even look interesting, and Jim stood
under a tree and wished his father had chosen some other calling than
the manufacture of clothespins. He mopped his head and wrinkled his
nose, and grew very gloomy at the thought that down there on that
unspeakable flat lay the work of his future years. His dreams had been
of something very different.
He shrugged his shoulders and walked rapidly down on to his property,
acting very much like a man with a tender tooth on his way to the
dentist’s.
As he walked along the side of the biggest building he encountered a
small Italian boy with a big pail of water.
“Son,” he said, “where’s the office? Where’s the boss?”
The big black eyes lighted; white teeth gleamed.
“You lika drink? Sure. I take you da office.”
Jim drank and followed the boy, whose bare feet seemed miraculously to
take no harm from the rubbish he walked over.
“Me Pete.” he said, pointing to himself. “Me carry da drink.” Then he
pointed to a small frame shack. “Dat da office,” he said.
Jim walked through the half-open door. Nobody was there. On a
drafting-table were drawings and blue-prints; a roll-top desk was
littered with papers and letters. Jim sat down in a revolving-chair to
wait for the return of Mr. Wattrous, the engineer in charge of
construction. It was very hot and stuffy, so he removed hat and coat and
made himself at home.
A man with a red face, a wilted collar, and a leather document case
entered presently.
“Afternoon,” he said, sinking into a chair and mopping his face.
“White’s my name. Fire-proof paint. Jenkins was sick, so I came up, but
I guess you and me can fix things as well as him, eh?”
Before Jim could reply the individual continued: “Now we can’t afford to
pay you any fifteen per cent. commission out of our own pockets. ’Tain’t
right we should. But here’s what we will do: We’ll stand seven and a
half and we’ll just add seven and a half to the face of the invoices.
See? You’ll get your fifteen all right and we won’t get stung for but
half of it. Neat scheme and fair to all sides, eh?”
“Does sound neat,” Jim said, “but not economical.”
Mr. White laughed, as at a witticism.
“You poor engineers has got to live,” he said.
“True. Just out of curiosity, what price would you be making us if there
weren’t any commissions to pay?”
“Umm, well—I guess we could figure twenty per cent. off what it’s going
to cost you.”
Jim said nothing, but scratched his head. He wondered if Wattrous had
added twenty per cent. to costs all the way through. If so he had not
been a profitable investment.
“You’ll O. K. the invoices?”
“I guess likely I will—hereafter,” said Jim, and turned to observe a
heavy-set man in corduroys and laced boots who entered with a roll of
drawings in his hands. This person looked inquiringly from Jim to White.
“Make yourselves at home,” he said, ironically.
“Much obliged,” said Jim, feeling now for the first time a real interest
in life. Indeed, he felt a sort of humorous interest. The situation was
not without its ludicrous appeal. “Mr. Wattrous,” he said, “allow me to
present Mr. White. Mr. White sells fire-proof paint.”
Wattrous scowled, seemed a bit perplexed. As for White, his jaw dropped
and he stared at Jim and then at Wattrous with the expression of a man
who has been violently struck in the wind.
“Yes,” said Jim, “Mr. White is generous. The way he hands out
commissions would astonish you. Why, he’s going to give you fifteen per
cent. just for buying paint from him.”
Wattrous thrust out his jaw. “Who the devil are you?” he said.
“Ashe,” said Jim; “James Ashe. I’m the fellow that owns this mill.”
Mr. White made an unsuccessful attempt to rise, but fell back under
Wattrous’s furious glance; he tried again, more successfully, and
scuttled out of the office at a speed that threatened further to wreck
his already lamentably wilted collar. Jim turned sharply to Wattrous. He
felt unlike himself; felt the urge of a will he had not before
experienced; felt a sense of confidence; felt, indeed, a desire to do
something and to do it without delay.
“You, Wattrous—of course you’re fired.” His voice hardened, became
peremptory without his volition. It seemed to do so of its own accord,
and Jim was conscious of mild surprise at it. “Get off the job, and get
quick,” he said, “before I decide to pitch you off.”
Wattrous was of two minds. The first was to bulldoze this young man and
see if he couldn’t roar his way out of his unpleasant predicament; the
other was to make matters worse by the application of personal violence.
He would have admired to thrash Jim. Jim read his mind and pointed to
the door.
“Git,” he said.
Wattrous hesitated an instant, then swung on his heel and strode away
muttering.
“I hope he meets up with White,” Jim said to himself with a grin.
“Nobody’ll get hurt who doesn’t deserve it.” Then he leaned back in his
chair and gazed at the ceiling, reviewing the last few moments. He had
made a new acquaintance—the acquaintance of Jim Ashe functioning in an
emergency—and it was a surprise to him.
“Is that the kind of man I am?” he asked himself.
Well, here he was. He was on the job, in the very midst of it, a quite
different beginning from what he anticipated. He had expected to merge
quietly into the affairs of his new property, but he had not merged into
it unless one can say that a hammer thrown through a glass window merges
into it. He had expected to enter his work with repugnance; now he
looked forward to his next official act with a tingle of pleasant
anticipation. After all, there might be more to business than he
suspected.
“What next?” he asked himself. He had, so to speak, cut off the hand
that directed, the head that planned. They must be replaced, and Jim
himself had not the technical knowledge to fill the lack. He went to the
door and looked out; there, grinning up at him, was little Pete, pail in
hand.
“Hello, Misser Boss!” said the boy.
“I take it you’ve been here right along,” said Jim, good-naturedly.
“All da time. I hear you fire Misser Wattrous. Whee!”
“I take it I have your approval.”
“Uh-huh,” said Pete, clearly not at all understanding what approval was.
“I tell Italian mans. Dey laugh. You real boss. Speakaqueek—bang!
Italian mans lika dat.”
“Fine. Now, Pete, who’s the next boss—who else besides Mr. Wattrous?”
“Oh, Misser Nelson. He boss. Work wit’ da hammer and saw, too.”
“Nelson, to be sure.” Nelson, Jim remembered, was the head millwright in
the old plant. “Where is he, Pete?”
“I show. You come.”
Pete led the way. As they neared the main building a young man not older
than Jim emerged from the door. His overalls were covered with grease
and sawdust, a rule protruded from a narrow pocket; quite evidently he
was of the carpentering clan.
“Dat Misser Nelson,” yelled Pete.
“Oh, Nelson!” called Jim.
The young man paused and turned a handsome, sharply cut face toward Jim.
It was a dependable face, a likable face, a face, if the steel-blue eyes
were to be believed, which belonged to a man whose action would follow
swiftly his words, or even precede them. He did not reply to Jim’s hail,
but stood waiting.
“Nelson,” said Jim, “my name is Ashe. My father has gone to California
and I am in charge here.”
He paused briefly, and Nelson extended his hand with a suddenly
brightening smile.
“Glad to know you, Mr. Ashe.”
“I’ve just fired Wattrous. Somebody’s got to take charge in his place.
Can you take hold and make this mill run?”
“Yes.”
“Good! You’re boss. What are we paying you?”
“Four dollars a day.”
“Wages. Your salary will be thirty-five dollars a week. When can we
begin to turn over?”
“Mr. Wattrous figured four weeks.”
“We’ll start to manufacture in three. Put on more men if necessary. Now
let’s see where we’re at.”
Nelson showed Jim through the mill, explaining what must be done here,
what was lacking there, why this machine sat so, why another machine
must be driven from counter-shafting. He told him about the conveyer
system, about everything, for mills and machinery were alike strange and
mysterious to Jim.
“Is the general plan good?”
“Yes. But if it were my mill I would—”
“It is your mill. Make it run and make it run right. I’m going back to
the office to have a look-see at the books and files.”
As he sat in the revolving-chair he felt again a wave of astonishment at
himself. Was this Jim Ashe—the same Jim Ashe who got off the train at
Diversity an hour ago? Most certainly it was, and yet how little that
Jim Ashe knew about himself.
“I guess I’m due for a personal inventory,” he said to himself.
He was aroused from his investigations by the whistle of the
hoisting-engine. It was six o’clock. He put on his coat and walked
toward the road, and as he went workmen nodded and smiled to him.
“The old man’s son,” he heard as he passed.
“Nelson says he’s hell on wheels,” was another scrap of comment; but the
one that pleased him most, because it was unexpected, because it would
have pleased most his father, was spoken from the opposite side of the
fence out of his view:
“I heard him talkin’ to Nelson. He’ll make things hum.”
“Who will?” asked another voice, apparently joining the group.
“Why, Sudden Jim—Clothespin Jimmy’s boy.”
Jim walked back to the hotel with a new buoyancy in his heart; his first
half-day had been good. It had introduced him to himself—and it had won
him a name.
CHAPTER III
Supper at the Diversity House surprised Jim Ashe so much that it almost
ruined his appetite. He had expected the food to match the general
efficiency of the place, and had vaguely figured on the possibility of
dining on crackers and cheese. This teaches us that, whereas man judges
from the outward appearance, he should wait till he sees what comes out
of the kitchen. It was the sort of meal you might expect to eat in a
prosperous farm-house—plentiful, well cooked, and topped by apple pie
that made Jim wish he had started with dessert, continued with dessert,
and ended up with a final helping of it. There are few things in this
world more delightful than a splendid meal that takes you by surprise.
He went out to sit on the porch, cool now with the evening breeze off
Lake Michigan. Sitting with his back against a post, and looking as if
he had not shifted his position since Jim saw him early in the
afternoon, was the gentleman of the white socks and calico shirt. He did
not look up as Jim passed to take a chair at the end of the piazza.
Presently there drew up before the hotel a ramshackle buggy drawn by an
animal that was undoubtedly still a horse. It was a very Methuselah
among horses. The old man who rode in the buggy appeared comparatively
youthful beside it. Jim smiled at the turnout, then frowned a trifle,
for the old man was the same individual who had rebuffed him so bruskly
at the depot.
“Hey!” called the old gentleman, without straightening himself from the
amazing position in which he sat. “Hey, Dolf—Dolf Springer!”
“Eh?” the gentleman in the white socks grunted, sitting erect and gazing
about him owlishly.
“Was you at the depot to see the six-o’clock come in, Dolf? Eh?”
“Calc’lated to be.”
“Anybody git off, Dolf? Anybody special?”
“Lafe Jenks and his wife, Mandy Williams, Tom Sweet, two
travelin’-men—”
“Anybody special, Dolf? Eh?”
“Well, last to git down was Michael Moran, Judge.”
“Um! What become of him, Dolf? Happen to notice?”
“In there eatin’ his supper.”
“Calc’late to be here long, Dolf?”
“Quite a spell, Judge.”
“Calc’late to be here till Moran comes out?”
“I could.”
“Um! Figger on speakin’ to him, Dolf?”
“Did think I might.”
“What was you goin’ to speak about? The weather? Eh?”
“Not’s I know of, Judge.”
“Was you goin’ to mention me? Eh? Figger on alludin’ to me?”
“Thought some of it.”
“As how, Dolf?”
“Thought I might mention you was askin’ after him.”
“Um! Goin’ to tell him where I was headin’ for? Eh? Think of doin’
that?”
“Figgered I’d mention you was to your office.”
“G’-by, Dolf.”
“G’-by, Judge.”
The old man clucked to his horse: “Giddap, Tiffany! G’long there! Time’s
passin’ rapid for both of us. Don’t waste none of it. G’long!” The
equipage drew slowly away from the hotel and proceeded down the street
at a rate of speed which came close to being no movement at all, until
it came to a halt again before a frame building at the end of the block.
Here the old man alighted, hitched his horse as carefully as if the
animal were a two-year-old showing signs of a desire to bolt. Then he
went inside.
In ten minutes a man of middle age, not at all the Diversity type of
citizen, appeared in the doorway. He was below medium height, sturdily
built, with a face of the aggressive-business-man variety. Dolf Springer
uncoiled by a mighty effort and rose to his feet.
“Howdy, Mr. Moran!” he said.
Mr. Moran nodded curtly.
“Zaanan’s to his office. He wants to see you over there.”
Mr. Moran nodded again and walked briskly down the street to the
building before which stood the ancient horse and vehicle. He had wasted
no time obeying the summons, and Jim wondered somewhat, for Michael
Moran did not appear to him a man who was accustomed to run about at the
beck and call of old men in dilapidated buggies. He seemed rather a
person used to issuing orders and to exacting prompt obedience.
He was curious, too, about the old man himself, who, without uttering a
word that could be construed by a court of law as expressing his wishes
in the matter, had, nevertheless, directed Dolf Springer to waylay Mr.
Moran and give him a message. The old man’s method was a splendid
example of caution. It delighted Jim and aroused his curiosity as to the
name and place in the world of the old fellow.
He made inquiries of a fellow-lounger on the piazza:
“Who is the old gentleman who drives a horse named Tiffany—”
“Who? Hain’t been in Diversity township much, have you? Guess not. That
there’s Zaanan Frame, justice of the peace. Been it nigh to thirty year,
and like to be it thirty year more.”
This was meager enough information, but Jim’s informant seemed to think
it ample, for he relapsed into somnolent silence.
Jim was just rising with the intention of taking a walk—that seeming to
be the sole entertainment offered by Diversity—when another buggy,
dust-covered, drawn by a team, stopped before the hotel, and a small,
wiry, exceedingly well-tailored old gentleman, with white whiskers of
the bank-president type, alighted. He got down jauntily, springily,
pertly, and trotted up the steps.
“Mr. Ashe—Mr. James Ashe, Junior. Can anybody direct me to him?”
“I am Mr. Ashe,” said Jim, stepping forward.
“Delighted to meet you, young man.” The dapper little gentleman stood
off at arm’s-length to appraise him. “Don’t favor your daddy much. Foot
longer and two feet narrower.” He chuckled gaily. “My name’s
Welliver—Morton J. Welliver. Bet you’ve heard of me, eh? Bet you’ve
heard daddy mention me once or twice.”
“Of course. Your name, with Mr. Jenkins’s and Mr. Plum’s and Mr.
Mannikin’s, is pretty average familiar to me. I hope everything is
satisfactory at your plant.”
“Satisfactory? My boy, the Brockville Hardwood Company is booming. Now’s
the day for the clothespin man. We’re at the top of the heap. Prices up,
competition down, market hungry. But what’s this I hear about daddy?
Wired him I wanted to see him on clothespin business. He wired back:
‘Out of the game. Son owns plant—lock, stock, and barrel. Tell it to
him.’ Now, what’s that mean?”
“Just what it says, I expect. Father has gone to California with mother.
The plant’s mine.”
“Clothespin Jimmy quit! Can’t believe it. Thought he’d die with one foot
on a maple log and a clothespin in each hand. Well! Well! So you and I
have to talk business, eh?”
“If there’s any to talk,” said Jim.
“I reckon there’s some—some. Where’ll we go to do it?”
“We might walk out a piece and sit on a fence,” said Jim, with a grin.
“It’ll be more comfortable, and we can argue and swing our arms better.”
“Good enough. Which way?”
They walked along, Welliver doing most of the conversing. Indeed, it was
Mr. Welliver’s habit to do most of the conversing. He owned a great many
words and was willing to part with them freely—but not unwisely. It was
said by men in the business that Mr. Welliver could keep you entertained
for an evening and not utter a word of what was on his mind. Clothespin
Jimmy once told him he was like the what-d’ye-call-’em fish that
squirted out a cloud of ink and then hid in it.
“Guess we can stop here,” said Jim when they arrived at a spot
overlooking the flat on which the new mills were rising. “That’s the
plant below.”
“Um! Some bigger than the old one, eh? What’s the idea? Going to take
all the business away from us old fellows?”
“I guess you and Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Plum and Mr. Mannikin can look
after your share, if all I’ve heard is true.”
“We can try. We can try. And that, my boy, is the very reason I’m here.
I’m told you’re putting in six more clothespin machines than you had in
the old plant.”
Jim nodded.
“That means about one hundred and twenty-five thousand additional
five-gross boxes going on to the market.”
“So father says.”
“Well, son, the Club don’t look on that with a favorable eye. Of course
you know the Club?”
“Clothespin Club? I know we’re members of it with seven other mills.”
“But do you know what it has done for the business? How it has taken a
scramble of unprofitable competition and turned it into a smooth-running
machine?”
“Something about it.”
“The Club meets—socially, of course, and nothing to interest the
Sherman Law fellows. But we sort of talk things over friendly, and
somebody quotes a price on clothespins, and another fellow says that
sounds like a fair price, and they talk over market conditions and go
home. But they all stick to the price mentioned. The last price was
up-top, and we’re all making hay. But we don’t want anything to disturb
the market.”
“Um!” said Jim, who was beginning to glean a hint of Mr. Welliver’s
object.
“Conditions are about right now. Any increase in output will—unsettle
matters.”
Jim remained silent.
“So,” said Mr. Welliver in his most friendly way, “the Club had a little
meeting—”
“Part of it,” interjected Jim.
“All but you,” said Mr. Welliver. “Yes, we met casually, and talked it
over, and here I am to advise you against adding those extra machines.”
“You’re a bit late,” said Jim. “They’re added.”
“But you might find it more profitable not to operate them. More money
can be made with twelve machines at present prices than with eighteen
and four or five tens lopped off.”
“Very possibly.”
“Well?”
Jim understood then. Mr. Welliver’s last observation had not been an
observation at all—it had been a threat.
“You mean you’ll cut prices if I go ahead?” He paused a moment. “You got
together and decided the Ashe Clothespin Company had bitten off all it
could chew, and this was a good time to sort of help us run our
business, eh?”
“We know how much you’ve put into these mills. We know your daddy built
them on the strength of high prices, and we know that a drop in prices
will give you something to think about.”
“And your ultimatum is: Either we drop our six new machines or you drop
prices. Is that the idea?”
“Something very like it.”
Jim got to his feet and stood over the dapper little man. He looked
large in the moonlight and Mr. Welliver became uneasy in his mind. He
contemplated with negligible pleasure the idea of this big young man’s
losing his temper and rumpling him all up. But Jim had no such idea.
“Mr. Welliver,” he said, “father gave me this business and told me to
run it. He didn’t tell me to let the Club run it—and I’m not going to.
You’ve come here threatening me, and somehow I don’t take to the idea of
it. I know where I’m at and pretty much what I’m up against, but just
the same I’m the Ashe Clothespin Company, and I’ll keep on being it as
long as there’s a company. I’ll run twelve machines or eighteen or
fifty, as I think it’s wise, and if the Club doesn’t like it, why the
Club can be just as peevish as it wants to. I’ve never been in a good
fight yet. You seem to want to get into one, and I’ll accommodate you
for all I’ve got. Now, then, here’s my proposition to the Club: It can
go on and run its own affairs and leave me alone—or it can start a row.
You can make your choice now. What is it?”
“We can’t allow you to run those extra machines.”
“It’s war, then?”
“I hope not that, but we’ll have to point out to you that one mill can’t
upset the whole industry.”
“And I’ll point out to you that this mill can do as it everlastingly
pleases. Let’s go back to the hotel. Is it shake hands or fight?”
“I’m afraid it’ll have to be fight.”
“Then,” Jim said—and all of a sudden he felt grimly glad, and a grimly
glad smile lighted his face “then I guess I’ll fire the first shot. Our
inventory shows we’ve got fifty thousand boxes in the old warehouse.
They go on the market to-morrow at five tens off the present price—and
if that doesn’t suit you I’ll cut off another ten or so.”
“But—but, my boy, you’re crazy. You’ll lose money on every box you
sell.”
“So will you—and you’ve got more to sell than I have just now. You can
watch me send the telegram,” Jim said.
“Young man, you’re a bit sudden,” said Mr. Welliver.
“I may be sudden, sir, but you’ll find I’m lasting, too. When this
ruction calms down one of two things will have happened: I’ll be busted
or the Club will have learned to stick to the purpose for which it was
formed.”
He turned and strode off toward the hotel, with Mr. Welliver trotting at
his heels, uttering bleating sounds of protest. As they neared the
piazza, he said, pantingly: “Suppose we talk some more. Maybe we can hit
on a compromise.”
“The only compromise you can hit on is to keep your hands off.”
Mr. Welliver shrugged his shoulders.
“Good night, young man. I’m afraid you’re going to be very sorry for
this. Your father had more—discretion.”
“My father’s backbone reached from the base of his skull to the seat of
his pants,” said Jim, “and every inch of it was stiff. Good night, Mr.
Welliver.”
Inside he procured a telegraph blank and wrote a brief message to the
bookkeeper at the old office:
Notify all agents and customers price clothespins five tens off
list. Effective to-day.
Again something to do had arisen and Jim had done it swiftly, suddenly.
He had added fresh and stronger claims on his new name.
CHAPTER IV
Jim awoke next morning to a sense not altogether one of satisfaction
with the events of the night before. He realized he had inaugurated a
clothespin war which further parleying might have postponed or
prevented. Again he had acted swiftly, suddenly, surprisingly to
himself. Yet as he thought it over he was less inclined to censure
himself. He felt he was right when he insisted on building and operating
his mill to suit himself—so long as he built and operated with
fairness. He knew Welliver and the Club would not recede from their
position, and that there remained only to surrender, play for delay, or
fight. There is a certain satisfaction in striking first.
Jim’s watch told him it would not be six o’clock for another half-hour,
and breakfast was not until seven. He dressed leisurely and descended to
the piazza, where, grouped about the step of the buggy, stood Welliver,
Michael Moran, and the old justice of the peace.
“Good morning,” called Welliver, chipper as a wren. “You’re an early
bird. Thought I’d have to leave without saying good-by.”
“Hope you have a pleasant drive,” said Jim. He turned down the walk and
strode away with the intention of tramping a mile or two before the
dining-room opened.
“Wait a minute, son,” Welliver called. “Come here and shake hands with
Mr. Moran—you’ll be meeting each other in a business way considerable.
He owns this thirty-mile streak of rust you call a railroad. And Judge
Frame.”
Jim shook hands. Moran returned his pressure heartily; but, while he
offered a cordial welcome to Diversity, Jim was aware the man’s clear
gray eyes were studying and appraising him. As for Zaanan Frame, he
merely grunted.
“Haven’t had a change of heart since last night?” asked Welliver.
Jim smiled and shook his head. “Our folks will be quoting a discount of
five tens this morning,” Be said.
“Son, when you’ve been in this business twenty years you’ll go slower.”
“Colts,” said Zaanan Frame, “kicks out the dashboard jest for fun. But
most gen’ally, when an old hoss starts in to use his heels he means
business.”
James said nothing. He was to discover that Zaanan Frame was given to
making remarks to which it was difficult to retort; that Zaanan had a
way of dropping a statement over a conversation as one would lower a
candle-snuffer over the flame, and that a new subject to talk about
became immediately desirable. The old justice was a final sort of
person. Jim’s dislike for him grew like one of these huge white
mushrooms which daring individuals pick and fry and eat—and sometimes
survive.
“You are determined?” asked Mr. Welliver, making one last effort.
“I’m determined to run my own business,” said Jim.
Mr. Welliver shrugged his erect and beautifully tailored shoulders.
“When you’ve got enough—” he began, suggestively, but did not trouble
to finish the sentence.
“Glad to have met you, gentlemen,” Jim said. “I’m off for a walk to stir
up enthusiasm for breakfast.”
A man who has to have his clothes wet through before he can recognize it
is raining may succeed as a professor of Greek or as an artificer of a
ditch, but he is not likely to elbow aside numerous captains of
industry. Though unequipped with that which the proverb declares to be
the best teacher, Jim Ashe did have in its proper place inside his skull
a brain reasonably able to travel from patent cause to obvious effect,
or to reach a conclusion that birds which flock together are likely to
be similarly feathered. The height of stupidity for a man in Jim’s
situation would have been not to speculate on the manifest acquaintance
between Mr. Welliver, Michael Moran, and Justice of the Peace Frame. He
was not guilty of that stupidity, and as he walked along the road whose
hot sands had cooled under the summer moon, he speculated on the
significance of their early morning meeting. His thoughts ran something
to the effect that to a man up a tree it looked as if Mr. Welliver had
allies in the very heart of the territory of the Ashe Clothespin
Company.
Jim walked briskly past his mills, then turned into an inviting lane
which led upward toward a wood-lot. Presently he turned again, to return
cross-lots along the hypotenuse of the triangle. To do this it was
necessary to surmount the first line of defense, a five-strand,
barb-wire fence, then to climb a knoll surmounted by a lonely
hickory-tree. From the top of this knoll Jim hoped to have a general
view of the country and so to acquaint himself at a glance with the
topography of his new home. He scrambled up, and reached the top
breathless. The last dozen feet had been steep, hiding the tiny plateau
at the peak from sight. Immediately he straightened up. He was made to
feel that he was not wholly welcome—indeed, that he was decidedly an
intruder, for frowning at him with black brows and sullen black eyes was
the young woman at whom he had stared on the station platform.
Her expression was hostile. If eyes and compressed lips can speak, that
young woman was saying peremptorily and not at all politely, “Get out!”
“I beg your pardon,” Jim panted. “I had no idea—?”
“You must have seen me,” she said, coldly.
“But I didn’t see you,” said Jim. “I should not have intruded.”
“This spot is visible for a mile in any direction,” she said, shortly.
Apparently she was determined to believe he had seen her and had climbed
up to her, probably in the prosecution of the common masculine ambition
to scrape up acquaintance with a stray and unprotected girl. Jim felt an
embarrassing warmth about his ears.
“You stared at me yesterday,” she said, before he could speak.
“I did not stare at you,” he replied, unguardedly. “I was staring at the
expression in your eyes—the hungry expression with which you looked
after the train.”
She bit her lips; her eyes darkened; she was startled.
“Can people see it?” she asked, aloud, not of Jim, not of herself, not
of anybody or anything that could frame an answer.
Jim ignored her exclamation and entered his defense. “I was walking to
pass the time till breakfast. When I got to the wood-lot there I turned
to cut across lots. I did not see you. I had other things on my mind
than unexpected young women on hilltops at unholy hours in the morning.
I am sorry I disturbed you.” He did not go, but stood looking down at
her. She was looking past him down the valley toward the distant shimmer
that was the great lake. For the moment he was negligible to her; again
her eyes, her face, wore that expression as of the woman in the
bread-line—of hunger.
In a moment her face relaxed till it spoke merely of discontent,
dissatisfaction. Jim thought she would have been homely were it not for
the graceful setting of her head on her shoulders, the splendid ease and
symmetry of her position.
“I don’t have to explain to every chance stranger why I get up early in
the morning and come here,” she said, not so much sullenly as with
repression, as though she were damming up something within her.
“Of course not,” said Jim, inadequately.
Suddenly she flashed to her feet with a beautiful litheness and stood
facing him, her hands clenched into little fists, her breast heaving.
“I will tell you. I’ve got to tell somebody. It’s because I hate
this”—she swept her hand over Diversity. “It’s because it’s horrible,
unbearable. It’s because I’m chained down here like a prisoner in a
dungeon. That’s why I go to watch the train—it is going away, going out
there where people live. That’s why I come up here. It’s my little
window to look out of. I can see beyond Diversity. Sometimes a vessel
passes. I imagine I am on it, going away—to Chicago—to New York—to
San Francisco. Here I can turn my back on Diversity and see where its
dead hand cannot reach. I hate the town, I hate the people, but most of
all I hate the children. Oh, look shocked! But sit in a room with thirty
of them ten months a year; watch their smugness; try to cram spelling
and geography and arithmetic into them; try to make an impression on
their dullness. They’re a nightmare! That’s why I come here—to look
away from them, beyond them, to see a spot that’s not tainted with them.
I was born here.” She said the last as though it were the summing up of
all evil.
“My dear young lady,” said Jim, in a tone that was ludicrously paternal,
“you’re working yourself up to—hysterics or something.”
She leaned against the old hickory-tree, panting, clutching the folds of
her skirt with convulsive fingers.
“I want to go—go—go! I want to see things—to be a part of them. I’m
smothered. This is living in a graveyard where there’s a perpetual fog.
Other people live. Other people have things happen to them, and I—I
don’t even dare read about them in books. I couldn’t stand it.”
Jim wanted to run, yet he wanted to stay. Here was a manifestation far
outside the purview of his experience. It was a little adventure into a
human soul, and Jim’s contact with the human soul had been superficial.
“If you want to go, why—why in thunder don’t you go?” he said,
boyishly.
She flashed a gleam of scorn upon him. “I’m a girl—a girl—the most
helpless, most defenseless, most easily damaged thing under the sun. Why
don’t I go?” Her tone snapped with scorn. “What would I do? Who would
take me in? What would become of me? Here I’m safe. I may die of it, but
I’m safe. It might be less hideously barren if I weren’t. I’m alone.
I’ve been alone since I was fifteen. Some day it’ll be too much for me
and I’ll go. But I won’t be fooled into it. I’ll go with my eyes open,
knowing why I go. If I go nobody’ll be to blame—except Diversity—for
I’ll have made my choice deliberately. Don’t look shocked. I suppose
there have been millions of others before me who had the same choice to
make. I’m not unique. You men have made the world, and when you get a
glimpse of it once in a while you’re shocked.”
“Miss”—Jim paused and bit his finger in bewilderment—“I don’t just
know what you’re accusing us men of, nor the world in general. But I’ve
lived a bit more than you. I’ve lived enough to know this—that there’s
more good than evil. There are more folks who are trying to do right
than who deliberately do wrong. I know that even in the bad ones there’s
more good than bad. I believe if you were to take all the law and
machinery of the law, all the police, all the social protection out of
the world to-day, that to-morrow the force for right which is in the
world would assert itself. There is so much more good than bad in the
world that the bad would be held down by the mere weight of the good.
You hear about the evil, because the evil thing is news, something to
talk about, something to make readers for the newspapers. And it’s news
because it’s out of the normal. So there seems to be a lot more bad than
there is. Goodness is normal—so normal that nobody notices it.”
“Men always defend themselves plausibly.”
“I’m not defending men; I’m defending humanity.”
She fell silent, and gazed past him again to the twinkling blue of the
lake. When she spoke it was less hardily, more wistfully than she had
spoken before:
“The world is so big and so interesting. In any direction, if my eyes
reached far enough, they would see something thrilling. To think there
is so much—and I am refused a crumb!”
“I’m afraid something has happened to disturb you.”
She laughed shortly. “If something should I’d thank Heaven for it! It’s
all so drowsy, so placid, and I’m tied to it as if to a stake, with a
slow fire lighted round me.”
“But if you want to go so badly, if life here is so unendurable, what
ties you to it?”
“The trifling accident of having been born a girl, added to the trifling
episode of having lost my parents, added to the inconsequential
condition that the forty dollars a month I get for teaching school is
all that stands between me and starvation.”
She turned abruptly from him and started down the knoll. He followed.
“Don’t come with me,” she said, stopping. “I don’t know you. I don’t
want to know you. After this I never want to see you again. I had to say
these things to somebody. By accident it was you, but I hate you for it.
You know. Never try to speak to me.”
She went away swiftly, leaving him to stare after her in bewilderment.
He was startled. His sensation was such as if he had picked up a pebble
and found it suddenly to be a live coal.
Later in the day he found her name to be Marie Ducharme, daughter of a
French-Canadian lumber-lack who had risen to be a walking boss. He found
that Diversity returned her dislike, or, if it did not return it, viewed
her askance as a person who was “queer.”
To be “queer” in a village of less than a thousand souls is no
inconsiderable crime.
CHAPTER V
For the next fortnight Jim Ashe was too busy to give thought to his new
environment, to study the new world to which he had been translated. He
was studying the clothespin business. It is true he did not come to his
work wholly unprepared; being Clothespin Jimmy’s son, that was
impossible. His father had talked it, thought it, dreamed it. Jim had
assimilated it with his meals. Also, as a boy, before his college days,
in vacation times when college days arrived, he had worked in the mills
and acquired for the business that distaste which he once vainly fancied
was to lead him down widely different vocational paths.
As a lad he had counted and packed pins; later he had dogged in the
sawmill; one vacation he had calloused and slivered his hands feeding
the drum. He had scaled timber; he had been chore-boy for old Pazzy
Miller, the pinmaker. These various jobs were given him out of his
father’s wisdom to show him the how and the why of all steps in the
manufacture. Nor was he ignorant of other branches of the business, for
clothespins were not the sole product, though they were its backbone. He
was not unacquainted with the mysteries of the veneer lathe nor with the
making of wood ashes. He understood somewhat the technic of the turner,
and the processes which went to the making of wooden spoons,
rolling-pins, drumsticks, and the like—all turned from seasoned lumber.
Those things he knew as a workman. Something of the marketing problems
his father had been able to drop unsuspected into his mind, but this was
all incoherent, not card-indexed and pigeonholed and ready for instant
use. Jim spent his time—not occupied by immediately pressing concerns
and events—in preparing the knowledge he had, in adding to it; in
short, in preparing himself as best he could to handle and husband the
property that was his. It was surprisingly like trying to swim after a
course of twenty lessons from a correspondence school.
A week before the machinery was ready to turn over, the office force
with its paraphernalia arrived from the old office and was installed in
the new. It consisted of one stenographer, picked by Clothespin Jimmy
wholly for efficiency and not at all for adornment; of a middle-aged
bookkeeper, who seemed to have been born with something more than the
normal quantity of organs, for there grew from his forehead a green
eye-shade, without which he was never seen, and there sprouted in his
right hand a pen. There was also an assistant bookkeeper, whose business
in life was to act and look as much like the bookkeeper, Mr. Grierson,
as possible; and a shipping-clerk, whose familiarity with freight-rates
and with the occult business of routing freight-cars so they would
arrive where they were intended to go, instead of at the other side of
the continent, was such as to arouse Jim’s admiration.
The clothespin war was as yet a minor trouble. He had one letter from
the secretary of the Club, informing him that the price he had quoted
was cut by another five per cent. This cut he met immediately. A flood
of orders came in from brokers, traveling-men, wholesalers—all rushing
to take advantage of the low market to stock up. These Jim culled over
carefully, accepting only enough to keep his plant running to capacity,
not overloading himself with orders which he would have to fill in case
of a cessation of hostilities and consequent soaring of price.
He called into conference his superintendent, millwright, master
mechanic, and the foremen of his departments, but it was not a
conference, as the event proved. It consisted merely of a brief
statement by Jim.
“The job you fellows are up against,” he said, “is to manufacture better
and cheaper than anybody else. Prices are down. I believe we can still
show a profit. Any man who has an idea that will save a tenth of a cent
on a box of pins will find it profitable to bring it to me. What’s the
best day’s average you made in the old plant, Pete?”
“Seventy-five boxes a machine,” said the old pinmaker.
“I’m expecting eighty here,” Jim told him. “It costs as much to operate
a machine making sixty boxes as it does eighty. If you can make eighty,
the extra five will come close to being profit. Don’t let a machine, a
lathe, a saw, waste machine hours. Everything has got to run; it has got
to run constantly, and it has got to produce the greatest quantity that
is physically possible. I’m depending on you men. We have a new crew in
large part. I want them to feel I’m depending on them. Tell every girl,
every man of the crew, that the Ashe Clothespin Company is depending on
her or on him, and that each may depend on me. If I expect them to give
me a square deal, I expect myself to give them a square deal. Tell them
that. There’ll be no dissatisfaction or labor trouble here if I can help
it—and I can. I guess that’s all. Now get at it.”
The men looked at one another; old Pete scratched his head and grinned,
and they filed out. Their feeling, if one was to judge from their faces,
was one of satisfaction and confidence. They believed in the new boss,
and that is the first step toward a feeling of affection.
It was that afternoon that Zaanan Frame drove his old horse
Tiffany—named, as Jim found out, after the greatest of legal books,
Tiffany’s _Justices’ Guide_—up to the mill and rheumatically climbed to
the office.
“Afternoon,” said he. “Name’s Jim, hain’t it?”
Jim nodded curtly. He suspected the justice of being no friend of his,
but an ally of the other camp.
“All right, Jim. Last names was made for fellers that git to be
postmasters. Couldn’t sort the mail without ’em. Hain’t for every-day
use no more ’n plug hats.”
“What can I do for you, Judge?” Jim asked, offishly.
The old fellow regarded him a moment in silence.
“Wa-al, you might put more sugar into your coffee. Need sweet’nin’ up.
Still livin’ to the hotel, eh? All the comforts of home? Suits you to a
tee?”
“The meals are all right,” said Jim, unbending a trifle, “but that’s all
you can say.”
“Um! What’s home without a motto over the door? Hain’t met Mis’
Stickney? Course not. Widder woman twice repeated. Machinery runnin’?
Um! Got her goin’ quicker ’n folks expected.”
“We hurried things up a bit.”
“To be sure. Never seen sich a woman as the Widder Stickney for
house-cleanin’. Best housekeeper in the county. Mill makes a heap of
difference in Diversity. Kind of irritatin’ to Lafe Meggs up to the
store. Says somebody’s always comin’ in and disturbin’ him to buy
somethin’ or other. Calc’lates he’ll have to hire a clerk. Lafe’s
ambitions mostly requires a sittin’ posture.”
“How big is this town, Judge?”
“About a dozen people and five hundred folks. Take in the newspaper,
Jim?”
“I take a Grand Rapids paper.”
“Take in the Diversity paper, Jim?”
“No.”
“Um! Comes out Thursdays. Int’restin’ readin’ into it sometimes. The
Widder Stickney got her second husband on the strength of her cookin’.
Calc’late she could git a third with it, but she allows husbands is so
fleetin’ and funeral expenses is so high ’twouldn’t hardly pay. Name of
the paper is the _Diversity Eagle_. Business perty good, eh? Keepin’ up
brisk?”
“We manage to keep from loafing.”
“To be sure. Loafin’s the leadin’ sport here. Calc’late Dolf Springer’s
our champion jest now. Interestin’ piece in the paper this week. Several
interestin’ pieces. Don’t take it in, eh? Early riser, hain’t you? See
you walkin’ ’fore breakfast.”
Jim wondered if the old justice had any ulterior meaning in this
observation. He had arisen early each morning and tramped out into the
country. Sometimes he had been close to admitting to himself that this
was not wholly for the air and exercise. Indeed, he had wondered if
something much more material and human had not been at the root of the
matter. There, for instance, was that young woman whom he had
encountered on top of the knoll. She walked of mornings, too—and she
was an interesting if not attractive individual. She puzzled him. He
even went so far as to be vaguely anxious about her, for her state of
mind had not appealed to him as one conducive to normal and conventional
behavior. He wondered if Zaanan Frame knew of that encounter, or knew of
that subsequent meeting—and passing—a week later when Miss Ducharme
had come face to face with him at a turn of the road and had gone by
with nothing to indicate she was aware of his existence except a
scornful flash of her black eyes.
“Somebody was sayin’,” he heard Zaanan observe, “that the Widder
Stickney had a spare room she was thinkin’ of rentin’. Yes, sir, if I
was goin’ to read the _Diversity Eagle_ I figger this week’s issue’d be
the one I’d look for. Um! Calc’late Tiffany’s tired of standin’. Have to
humor him. Powerful high-spirited boss. Second-floor room on the front,
it was. G’-by, Jim. _Eagle_ office is next to Lafe Meggs’s store.”
The old man went out, and it seemed as if he creaked in every joint. Jim
heard him pass slowly along the hall and out of the door—and wondered
what his visit meant. He reviewed the rambling conversation as best he
could; found that in spite of himself he was attracted by Zaanan’s
personality. But why had the old fellow come? What had he talked about?
Why, about the Widow Stickney and her room, and about the _Diversity
Eagle_. Jim was not yet familiar with Zaanan Frame’s methods, but it did
seem clear to him that the old justice wanted him to go to board with
Mrs. Stickney; wanted him also to read the current issue of the _Eagle_.
That evening Jim procured a copy of the _Eagle_. Its leading article
gave the news that Michael Moran had purchased a controlling interest in
the Diversity Hardwood Company, and had been elected its president in
the place of Henry W. Green, resigned. This was worth while. It was
important, for the prosperity of the Ashe Clothespin Company depended on
the Diversity Hardwood Company. It was the latter that furnished the
birch, beech, and maple from which the clothespins were manufactured. It
was with that company that Clothespin Jimmy had negotiated a twenty-year
timber contract calling for the delivery in his mill-yard of not less
than five millions nor more than ten millions of feet of timber a year.
Pursuant to this contract the new mills had been erected. Here was news
indeed. What did it signify? What would be its results that touched Jim
Ashe? And why had Zaanan Frame wanted him to be apprised—warned—of the
event? If Zaanan’s hint to read the paper was of such undoubted value,
would not his other suggestion be worth looking into? Jim thought so,
and inquired his way to the Widow Stickney’s. She occupied a pleasant,
maple-shaded house surrounded by riotous flower-beds and more practical
kitchen gardens. It was attractive with the flavor of home. Jim rang the
bell.
The result of his call and inspection was that he rented from the widow
her second-floor front and arranged to be fed at her table. As he was
leaving she hesitated, hemmed, and hawed, as Clothespin Jimmy would have
put it, and finally said:
“I got one other boarder. Jest one. Hain’t no objections to that, have
you?”
“None whatever, Mrs. Stickney,” said Jim, which was perfectly true. He
had neither objections nor curiosity regarding the fact. However, as he
walked between the flower-beds to the gate some one turned in and
approached him. He looked up, felt himself draw a little sudden breath
of surprise, for the individual was Marie Ducharme. Jim knew instantly
that she was the other boarder. She passed him, cheeks slightly flushed,
eyes straight ahead, without deigning to look at him. He felt a warmth
about his ears.
That evening he sat late on the hotel piazza, working on a puzzle.
He could not piece it together. Why had Zaanan Frame wanted him to know
of Michael Moran’s new business venture? But, even more difficult of
solution, why had Zaanan wanted him to board with the Widow Stickney?
Marie Ducharme insisted on obtruding herself into his puzzlings. It was
absurd, he knew, but had she anything to do with the matter?
CHAPTER VI
On the day the mills commenced operating Jim Ashe called for a statement
of the company’s condition from Mr. Grierson. As Jim expected, it proved
to be disquieting. The facts were that the mills had cost upward of two
hundred thousand dollars; there was still owing for machinery and
materials some thirty thousand dollars; there was seven thousand dollars
cash in the bank. The weekly payroll was over two thousand dollars.
Other operating expenses, with the cost of supplies and timber, brought
this sum up to five thousand dollars a week—and as yet not a penny’s
worth of manufactured product had been turned out or shipped.
“According to this,” Jim said to Mr. Grierson, “we can run a week. Then
what?”
“Then,” said Mr. Grierson, his voice dry and rattling like one of the
leaves of his ledger, “we’ll have to have some more money.”
“Oh,” said Jim, grimly, “that’s all there is to it, eh? Well, where’ll
we get it? Supposing we are able to begin shipments by the end of next
week—how soon can we expect returns?”
“Thirty days at the best.”
“And in that thirty days we’ll be spending nearly thirty thousand
dollars—which we haven’t got. I have heard of working capital before,
but I never comprehended what a pleasant thing it was to have. Where
does one get money, Grierson?”
“From the bank.”
“To be sure. I guess I’m beginning to understand what father was talking
about when he said he milked the business. That fifty thousand of his
would make a fine plug to put in this hole. But that’s gone. If I know
father, he took it to make me hustle. His sense of humor works that way.
Well, I’ll see what I can puzzle out, Grierson.”
Jim was in a measure prepared to be helmsman of his commercial ship, so
far as the manufacturing and selling of his wares were concerned; but
when the vessel entered financial waters, with a storm blowing and a
tortuous channel to thread, he felt he ought to toot the whistle
frantically and signal for a pilot. But there was no pilot to be had.
There was nothing for it but to slow down and dodge through the reefs,
taking frequent soundings with the lead of good judgment, striving with
his eyes to pierce the vexed waters for hidden rocks. In short, the time
had arrived to spread the bread of uncertainty with the butter of
optimism.
He must have money. Two methods of procuring it presented themselves,
but he liked the features of neither of them. The first was to
borrow—if possible; the second, to sell stock. Without hesitation he
eliminated the latter. He put on his hat, stopped long enough in the
outer office to tell Grierson he was going to the bank, and went out.
He handed his card to Mr. Wills, cashier of the institution, and Mr.
Wills shook hands with him in the manner that cashiers shake hands with
individuals who are to deposit some hundreds of thousands of dollars a
year with them.
“Glad to know you, Mr. Ashe. I was wondering when you’d find time to
drop in to see us.”
“I hope you’ve got lots of money, now that I am here,” said Jim, with
specious confidence.
“Enough to warrant us in locking the vault,” said Mr. Wills. “Anything
special we can do for you to-day?”
“Well,” said Jim, “you could lend me a few dollars.”
“Your father said you might be wanting to borrow,” said Mr. Wills. “He
had, as you know, of course, a conference with our board this spring,
and we stand ready to do what we can for you. We’re a small bank, you
know. Some of our directors were against making a loan of any size to a
corporation, but Zaanan Frame and Mr. Moran were in favor—which wound
up that ball of string. How much will you be wanting?”
“Thirty thousand dollars,” said Jim, half expecting the cashier to jump
to his feet and call a strong assistant to escort him to the street.
“That’s just inside the limit. Need it right away?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Wills fumbled in a pigeonhole and passed Jim a note.
“Make this out, sign it as an officer of your company, and put your
personal indorsement on the back. It’s a demand note, you observe. We
prefer that kind.”
Jim wasn’t clear just what the difference was between that kind and the
other. It didn’t matter. He was going to get the money he
needed—without an effort. It was a shock to him. Were money matters
arranged thus easily? Was money in considerable sums so easy to come by?
He signed the note, and was told the amount would be credited to his
accounts as of that day.
After he had chatted a moment, and thanked Mr. Wills as profusely as he
believed it wise, he turned away. But a sudden recollection stopped him.
Mr. Wills had said Zaanan Frame and Mr. Moran had favored the loan. Did
you ever eat cherry pie, delicious cherry pie, and suddenly encounter a
pit which the cook had overlooked? Jim felt much the same way.
“What Mr. Moran is on your board?” he asked.
Wills looked his astonishment.
“Why, Michael Moran, of course!” he said.
As Jim turned off the road on to the mill lot, a man two inches shorter
than he and four inches broader accosted him.
“You’re Mr. Ashe, ain’t you?” the man asked.
Jim nodded and stopped. The man, who wore a calico shirt that, stout as
it was, threatened to rip out at the seams when the big muscles played
beneath, was an individual whose life had not fallen in places of ease.
Work, hard work, had made him. He had triumphed over it. His will and a
splendid body had triumphed, until Jim paid the tribute of his
admiration to the result of it.
“Got any place for a cant-hook man?”
“I think we can use one in the log-yard. Out of a job?”
“Walked out of it. When I heard Mike Moran was goin’ to run the
Diversity Hardwood outfit I quit—sudden.”
Jim waited.
“I worked for him three year back on the South Branch.” The man spat
savagely in the dust. “Self-respectin’ lumberjack wouldn’t ’a’ stayed
twenty-four hours gittin’ what some of them fellers got. Me, it wasn’t
so bad. ‘What was the matter?’ says you. ‘Plenty,’ says I. First, he
starts in gittin’ rid of as good a crew as ever stuck their legs under a
cook-shanty table, and filled up the woods with Polacks and Italians and
Hunkies. Just critters with arms and laigs like folks. Grub was
rotten—rotten! Them poor foreigners got it comin’ and goin’. Knocked
round, fed spoiled meat—and then cheated out of their pay. Oh,
foreigners hain’t the only ones that’s been cheated out of their pay in
Michigan camps. I wisht I had what was comin’ to me fair, Mr. Ashe. Why,
I knowed two Polacks that come out of Moran’s Camp Three, after workin’
from November till April—and they come out owin’ him eighteen dollars!”
“Now, now,” said Jim.
“I’m tellin’ the truth. Wanigan. Jest robbed off’n ’em. Get a plug of
tobacco at the wanigan—charged for six. Like that. And fines. No wonder
he’s gittin’ richer ’n hell. Gittin’ out his timber don’t cost him
nothin’ to speak of. Men like him is drivin’ real woodsmen out of
Michigan. You can go so far with robbin’ an Irishman or a Norwegian or a
Nova-Scotian—and then somethin’ busts. But with them lingo-talkin’
foreigners, why there hain’t no fight to ’em. And he’ll do the same
here. ’Fore another spring the camps’ll be full of ’em—and him robbin’
’em. I’ve heard ugly things of Mike Moran. Not dealin’s with men, I
mean. I’ve had stories whispered to me by men I believed. And one I know
is so. Ask somebody that knows what become of Susie Gilders. I calc’late
some girl’s dad or brother’ll be splittin’ Mike Moran with an ax one of
these days. But I’m talkin’ too much, Mr. Ashe. Didn’t figger to git off
on this rig. How about that job?”
“Report to the superintendent. Tell him I sent you. What’s your name?”
“Tim Bennett.”
“Well, Tim, I don’t know you and you don’t know me, but I’d hate to have
you think about me as you do about Moran. I’ll try to see you don’t.
These are my mills, and the crew are working for me—but that doesn’t
mean any man or girl is to be afraid of me. If anything goes wrong, tell
me. Once I wanted to do something besides run a clothespin-mill. I
wanted to see if I couldn’t turn in and do something for these Polacks
and Hunkies and Italians—something that would change them from being
foreigners into Americans. But I couldn’t have my way. But this much I
can do—I can see that the folks who work for me get a square deal.
You’ll find the superintendent back by the log-slide.”
Tim hesitated a moment, seemed to have something more to say, but to
find difficulty saying it. Finally he blurted out: “Say, Mr. Ashe, I
b’lieve you and me is goin’ to get on.”
Jim recognized the compliment; it was no small one.
“I hope so, Tim,” he said.
Jim sat down in his chair before his desk and scowled at the wall.
Michael Moran—everywhere that name obtruded itself—Michael Moran and
Zaanan Frame. The pair of them seemed to impend over the Ashe Clothespin
Company like twin thunderclouds, threatening, possessed of destructive
potentialities. They had met, conferred with Morton Welliver after that
gentlemen had delivered his ultimatum. Had that conference concerned
him? Jim believed it had. Just what harm Zaanan Frame was potent to
cause, Jim did not know; but Moran—Moran owned the little railroad, the
sole outlet for Jim’s wares; he controlled the lumber company from which
came Jim’s logs; his voice was preponderating in the bank to which Jim
owed thirty thousand dollars.
A thought came to Jim: If he could buy Moran’s logs and pay Moran a
profit on them—and then himself manufacture them into clothespins and
realize another profit—how great would be Moran’s profit if in his own
mills he manufactured clothespins from his own logs! Jim believed that
in Moran’s place he would covet the Ashe Clothespin Company. And Moran’s
various activities showed him to be an acquisitive individual. But
nowhere had Moran manifested an unfriendly spirit; indeed, he had been
distinctly friendly in the matter of the loan. What then? In any event,
Jim told himself, it would not be time wasted to keep a clear eye on the
man and, if possible, to rear in advance defenses against his possible
attack.
Presently he got up and went into the outer office, where Grierson and
his assistant were making occult entries in black and red ink on the
pages of huge books. These tomes, in which were recorded the daily
history of business transactions, always affected Jim with a feeling of
awe, and secretly he had for Grierson and his young man a profound
admiration. Anybody who could make all those entries and add all those
figures, and then, a month afterward, have the slightest idea what all
the agglomeration was about, was possessed of some divine spark akin to
genius!
“Grierson,” said Jim, “have you ever made the acquaintance of the
creature known as a demand note?”
“Not personally, I thank Heaven,” Grierson said, piously.
“But you know its habits?”
“You’re joking, Mr. Ashe.” Anything akin to humor was not to be
tolerated when it touched a thing so sacred as one of the bits of
business impedimenta.
“I’m exceedingly serious. What can you tell me of the habits and
personal peculiarities of the thing?”
“A demand note,” said Grierson, with musty gravity, “is a negotiable
instrument running for an indefinite period. It differs from a time note
in that it may be presented and payment demanded”—he accented the word
“demanded” in a manner that Jim thought vindictive—“at any time the
holder chooses. Am I clear?”
“Perfectly—and disquietingly. I am to understand that if you give a man
a demand note he may drop in on you casually whenever the notion seizes
him and make you—er—in the undignified language of the soap salesman,
come across? Is that it?”
Mr. Grierson nodded, frowned, peered anxiously at his ledger as if he
feared a figure or two might sneak away from him while his attention was
distracted.
“Can you say anything cheerful about one of them?” Jim persisted.
“The only cheerful thing about a demand note, Mr. Ashe, is to know you
are able to pay it whenever it turns up—which most people are not.”
“That,” said Jim, “is an observation made from great depths of wisdom.”
“I hope, Mr. Ashe, you have not been making any demand paper.”
“Your hope is vain, Grierson. The thing is done. The sword is suspended
over my head. I am now speculating on the possibility of certain
gentlemen cutting the hair that holds it.”
He went back to his desk again with the intention of boring into the
inwardness of the situation, but, strangely, his mind showed a
disposition to wander. It skipped offishly away from demand notes and
speculations regarding Michael Moran; was drawn again and again where
Jim did not want it to go—and where it would not be welcome. Of the
latter he was sure. For it was Marie Ducharme who obtruded and elbowed
aside more serious matters.
Jim moved to the Widow Stickney’s that night. He wondered how Miss
Ducharme would regard his coming. Doubtless it would not decrease the
ill will she felt toward him. Doubtless she would regard it as an
impertinent intrusion. What did it matter how she regarded it? He said
that to himself, but somehow he could not quite convince himself that he
said it with all sincerity.
CHAPTER VII
The rural individual, riding for the first time on a descending
elevator, experiences a sensation that leads to a fixed preference for
stairs. It is a peculiar sensation. It may be reproduced in less degree
psychologically. For instance, the boy on his way to the woodshed with
his father and a razor-strop knows it; the young man about to announce
to her father his ambition to become a son-in-law is acquainted with it.
It comes to many people as they approach the unknown, the dreaded, the
long-sought-after. It is a mingling of excitement, apprehension,
anticipation, and the three of them do not mingle in peace. They seem,
indeed, to have a most lively and troublesome time of it in the region
known as the pit of the stomach.
As Jim left his room to go down to his first breakfast at the Widow
Stickney’s table he experienced an unmistakable attack of it. Marie
Ducharme was the cause. Doubtless they would breakfast together. He was
a bit apprehensive as to how it would go off. There was a certain amount
of curiosity-incited anticipation of a second meeting with her, a second
opportunity to glimpse her queer, disturbed, turbulent personality. Let
there be no error here—Jim Ashe was not drawn toward Marie Ducharme.
Quite the contrary. She was not at all the sort of person who would
attract him; and her present frame of mind was not such as to magnetize
any healthy young man. But she was a girl; she was a step beyond the
ordinary; she had a personality that one could not encounter and escape
unaffected. That was all.
He hesitated for a moment in the hall, and then entered the dining-room,
where the widow and Marie Ducharme were already at the table.
“Right here, Mr. Ashe,” said the widow; “take this here chair with the
arms and the cushion into it. It’ll seem sort of queer to see a man
settin’ into it agin. My first used it and my second used it.”
“And you keep it in case it might be needed again,” said Jim, gravely.
The widow shook her head. “’Tain’t nothin’ but a memento no more.
Husbands is all right, but enough’s enough. What a body can want of more
’n two is more ’n I can see. Let me make you acquainted with Miss
Ducharme, Mr. Ashe.”
Miss Ducharme nodded coldly.
“Cream ’n’ sugar?” asked the widow.
“Some cream, a good deal of sugar, and a little coffee,” said Jim,
stealing a look at the young woman. She was stirring her coffee, a
process which appeared to require concentration. Jim didn’t blame her
for stirring it or for doing anything else which would bring to public
attention a hand as graceful and shapely as hers. Her face, beneath a
stack of blackest hair, was expressionless.
“Mr. Ashe hain’t goin’ to bite you, Marie,” said the widow, with a note
of exasperation in her voice. Jim was glad he had not taken a swallow of
coffee, for he could not have been responsible for consequences.
Miss Ducharme raised her eyes slowly, looked for an instant into Jim’s
eyes. “Nobody’s going to bite me if I can help it,” she said.
“Mrs. Stickney is right,” said Jim, “I’m not vicious. I almost never
bite strangers. Still, I might wear a muzzle if it would help matters.”
Miss Ducharme made no reply save a faint movement of her
shoulders—inherited from an ancestor who had served Frontenac. She
finished her coffee and toast and egg slowly, arose silently, and left
the room. The widow looked after her a moment with compressed lips.
“Sometimes,” she said, “she’s that cantankerous my hand fairly itches to
come against her ear. Seems she might ’a’ acted a leetle prettier,
bein’s you’re a stranger and this is your first meal.”
“Don’t let it worry you, Mrs. Stickney.”
“Worry me! Huh! ’Tain’t worry that ails me, it’s bein’ that provoked
with her. She’s lived with me since her folks died. She was fifteen
then. I couldn’t make her out as a child and a Philadelphy lawyer
couldn’t make her out as a woman. She’s been gittin’ worse. Marie’s a
good girl, Mr. Ashe—better ’n a lot of these mealy-mouthed,
bowin’-and-scrapin’ ones—and Lord knows she’s smarter. Too dum smart, I
call her, for her own good. But she’s queer. Kind of knurly. She don’t
appear to like folks, somehow.”
“Possibly, Mrs. Stickney, the trouble is that she doesn’t like herself.”
“She gits on my mind. Sometimes I’m afeard she’s goin’ to mess up what
chances of happiness she’s got. She sets and thinks too much, and some
of the things she says would fair shock you out of your shoes. If I
thought she meant ’em, old as she is I’d take her acrost my knee and see
if a slipper wouldn’t change her point of view some.”
“Anyhow, I’ll promise not to quarrel with her, Mrs. Stickney,” said Jim,
rising. He felt it was not altogether ethical to discuss Miss Ducharme
thus freely. The widow seemed to have no such scruples. Indeed, she was
willing at all times and seasons to discuss anybody, absent or present,
and to put into frank and expressive terms her thoughts concerning them.
The widow was no gossip, no backbiter, but a woman of opinions and a
nimble tongue undeterred by fear or favor.
“A husband’s what she needs,” said she. “One with enough disposition to
go so far’s to lay his hand on her if she went past his patience. I mind
my first husband shakin’ me once. I was young, then, with notions.
Dun’no’s anythin’ ever done me so much good. ’Tain’t considered proper
no more—but if there was more shakin’s there’d be fewer divorcin’s.”
“Perhaps our men are deteriorating under the influences of modern life,”
Jim suggested, with a twinkle in his eye. “The headship of the family is
passing to the other sex.”
“Then men ought to be up and doin’ somethin’ about it,” said the widow.
“I wouldn’t give shucks for a man that let a woman run him. All this
here talk about emancipatin’ wimmin makes me sick to my stummick. Wimmin
don’t need emancipatin’. What they need is bossin’. I’ve been a woman
consid’able of a spell and I calc’late I ought to know.”
“I think my grandmother would agree with you if she were living.”
“Of course. I’m grandmother to six. My idee is that wimmin don’t git
settled and sensible till they turn sixty.”
“I’m in favor of giving the vote to all grandmothers.”
“It would fetch consid’able sense into elections,” said the widow.
“Don’t hurry off. I like to talk—maybe you’ve noticed it.”
“And enjoyed it,” said Jim, passing through the door.
Miss Ducharme was putting on her hat in the hall. Jim’s first thought
was to pass on without pause; his second and better thought was to
parley.
“I’m waving a flag of truce, Miss Ducharme,” he said. “Can’t we declare
an armistice for ten minutes to bury our dead?”
“I have no war with you,” she replied, with no interest. “I simply don’t
like you. Why should we talk about it?”
“There’ll be no trouble on that score,” said Jim, smiling. He rather
enjoyed her acerbity. “You see, I’m not exactly fond of you. But we’re
living under the same roof and eating at the same table. If we could
agree on a truce or a pretense that we are not distasteful to each
other—merely while we’re in the house—it might make Mrs. Stickney’s
life a bit more joyous. I assure you that if I had known you lived here
I shouldn’t have intruded.”
“Mrs. Stickney has a right to take whatever boarders she chooses.”
“I’m not asking you to be friends—” Jim stopped. He was conscious of
that feeling of sudden determination, of that urge to quick action which
had come upon him several times since his arrival in Diversity, of that
spirit which had earned for him among his workmen the name of Sudden
Jim. So he cut off his sentence and started another.
“I’m going to be your friend, whether you like it or not. Possibly I
shall even like you. You seem to need friends, if what you said to me
the other day is an indication of what is really going on inside you.
The matter is out of your hands. You said absurd things; things
dangerous for any young woman to say, even if she knows in her heart
they’re ridiculous.”
“They were not absurd. I meant them. You had no business to be there to
hear—to know. You let me talk when I was unstrung. You spied—it
amounted to that.”
“Let it stand that way. I do know and I’m going to meddle. You hate
Diversity because it isn’t New York City. You talk recklessly to a
stranger. The sum of the matter is that you are steering for a big
unpleasantness. If you don’t like things as they are, what is the sense
of putting in your time making them worse? Pretty soon you’ll talk and
think and gloom yourself into doing something that’ll smash the china.
So I’m going to meddle. Of course I don’t know you, and I haven’t any
personal interest in you. But I’m interested in you as a sociological
specimen. As such I’m going to be polite to you, and as entertaining as
possible while we’re at Mrs. Stickney’s table. I shall expect you to be
humanly polite to me. Do you understand?”
She looked at him queerly, almost apprehensively. When she replied her
voice was low, not cold, not friendly. Jim’s will had encountered her
will and been the stronger.
“Yes,” she said.
“You’ll be reasonably decent—so Mrs. Stickney won’t lose her appetite?”
“Yes. In the house. But nowhere else. And I shall hate you—hate you.”
“That’s enough for a beginning.”
“And don’t you dare to watch me. Don’t dare to pry into my affairs.
Don’t dare to interfere with me in any way.”
“Miss Ducharme, if you fell into the river it would be only human for me
to fish you out. Drowning isn’t the worst thing there is. Folks who
would jump into the water after you would stand by and let trouble come
to you which would make you wish you could drown. A man has the right to
interfere. Humanity gives it to him. It’s silly to think I have the
right to save your life from a physical danger, but haven’t the right to
save you from the other kind. You say it’s none of my business. It is my
business. What threatens any human being is the business of every other
human being, if he weren’t too lazy or too hidebound or too conventional
to admit it. You have brains—or you wouldn’t be in the state of mind
you are. You know logic when you meet it face to face—and that was
logic. The trouble with you is ambition that has fermented in the can.”
“You are a bumptious young man,” she said, hotly. “You’re full of
school-book theories. What do you know about a woman? About her
problems? What do you know about anything? You haven’t lived yet. I’m a
dozen years older than you—in knowing what the world is. You talked
idealistic nonsense the other day about the good there is in the world;
you’re talking idealistic nonsense to-day. You’re a cub altruist. What
you think is humanitarianism is merely impertinence. Altruism is just a
word in the dictionary.”
“I knew you had brains,” said Jim, “and I’ll bet you disagree with Mrs.
Stickney about woman’s sphere. She says every woman ought to be bossed
by a man—and shouldn’t be allowed the vote till she’s a grandmother.”
“I don’t agree. A woman is an individual, complete—she needs no man for
a complement. Her abilities are as great, her potentialities as strong,
She has the right to own herself, to guard herself, to reach out for the
life she wants as a man does. Because her risk in life is greater she
has the right to more than equality; she has the right to special
privilege and special protection. She has the right to demand that she
be put in a condition where she can protect her treasures, material,
physical, spiritual. And how can she do it as things are? Less than half
the world—in trousers—holds the majority in captivity, exercising the
rights of conquerors. You make laws to bind us. Men make laws respecting
the peculiar problems of women—when men know less of women and their
problems than they do of the mound-builders. We don’t ask to make your
laws—only men can make laws for men; but we do demand to make our own
laws. We demand that weapons be placed in our hands for our own defense.
With some of the theories I do not agree, but I do insist that women
should not be left—in the condition they are now—as the women of a
sacked city, at the mercy of the conquerors.”
“You have thought, haven’t you? Perhaps not altogether healthily, but
keenly. Dinner-table conversations won’t be trite.”
“Thought! What has there been to do in Diversity but think? And the more
I think, the more I comprehend, the worse the handcuffs cut into my
wrists. Some day it will become unendurable.”
“And then,” Jim said, “I shall jump into the water after you. We’ll take
altruism out of the dictionary for that one time, anyhow.”
She said nothing, moved toward the door.
“Our agreement is sealed?” he asked. “We are to act toward each other
like ordinarily polite human beings while we are in the house?”
“Yes,” she said over her shoulder.
“Are we to shake hands on it?”
“No,” she said, sharply, and went out, carrying herself lightly, with
splendid poise, eye-delighting grace.
Jim felt a tinge of regret that her face was not lovely. With the
intellect that was hers, he thought gravely, with her beauty of line and
motion, beauty of face would have made her a miracle. But she was no
miracle. She was a small, over-burdened, vainly protesting girl who had
fought her way alone to such ideals as she possessed. With her will she
thought she had molded her own soul. She did not know that souls are
never subject to finite processes; she did not know that each soul is a
single drop from the great ocean of Divinity, coming to us in such
purity as the great ocean possesses, to be made more pure or to be
defiled by our acts—but never to be altered by our wills. One day would
come when she would call up her soul before her and know it as she did
not know it now.
Jim’s final thought on the matter was that Marie was not a modern woman,
not an advanced woman, but a primitive woman, an atavism, fighting as
her remotest mother must have fought for the very right to be.
CHAPTER VIII
The mills started as well as any new mills could be expected to start.
They did not run perfectly; minor defects developed, machines ran
stiffly, hot-boxes developed, belts required tightening; but Jim Ashe
was willing to praise his millwrights for good work done. As he walked
through the big plant between rows of machines which chugged or punched
or sawed rhythmically; as he watched hardwood logs crawl up the slide at
the rear of the mill, and pass through a multitude of processes to
emerge into the warehouse finished clothespins or dishes or bowls, he
felt a sense of pride in the thing he was doing. He was drawing straight
from Nature to minister to the necessities of man. It was no ignoble
task.
If profits came to him, they would be honestly earned profits, the
results of labor. He was not wasting as timber had been wasted before
his day. Every scrap of wood that came into his mill was utilized.
Modern machinery made possible a saving in timber that thirty years ago
would have run into hundreds of millions of feet of pine, had the
pioneer wasters availed themselves of it. Thin band-saws turned a
minimum of each log into ashes; with them Jim got seven boards where
old-time circular saws had been able to give but six. Resaws redeemed
the slabs, took from them the finest gold of the timber which lay just
under the bark. In other days slab-piles had been known to burn
constantly for years, a savage waste. Sawdust, remnants of slabs,
edgings furnished the fuel which gave him his power. Here was nothing of
which to be ashamed; much to justify pride. Here was an enterprise a man
might defend before the court of posterity.
But if the mills ran to Jim’s satisfaction at first they did not improve
as he demanded. In ten days from the beginning there swept over the
plant a pestilence of mishaps, each mishap causing the shutdown of a
department, sometimes of the whole mill. It did not abate, but continued
maddeningly. The shrill toot of the little whistle which commanded the
engineer to stop motion became a throb in a sore tooth to Jim. Each
accident was small; the total of them reached dangerous magnitude.
Jim called in Nelson, head millwright, and his superintendent, John
Beam. They came wearing the faces of harried men.
“In three days,” Jim said, shortly, “we’ve lost five hours in
shut-downs. Why?”
“Every night,” said Nelson, “we inspect every belt, every pulley, every
gear, every machine. We make sure nothing is wrong—and next day a dozen
things go wrong.
“The last shut-down was for a split pulley on the main shaft. I went
over that shaft last night myself. That pulley was as tight and sound as
any pulley could be. And it twisted off this morning. We had to shut
down yesterday to fix the main driving-belt. Four rivets had come loose
and she’d have pulled clean apart. There wasn’t a sign of a loose rivet
night before last—I’d take my oath on it.” He looked gloomily out of
the window. The thing was twanging on his nerves as well as on Jim’s.
“John and I aren’t trying to make excuses for ourselves. We’d be tickled
to death to take the blame if we could only fix it on to ourselves. What
makes me want to roll over and howl is that we can’t fix it any place.
In spite of all we can do these things happen. It’s just as he says
about what he’s seen. Things I know were sound and in perfect runnin’
condition at night goes wrong in the mornin’. And how in blazes are we
goin’ to explain the nails?”
“What nails?” Jim asked.
“In the logs. Every sawyer expects to find some nails when he’s sawin’
maple. Especially in a sugar country. They was drove in to hold sap
buckets. But a man don’t expect to find ’em in beech and birch—and he
don’t expect to find brand-new ten-penny nails, neither. The saw-filer’s
tearin’ his hair. If it keeps on we won’t have a saw to cut with in the
big mill. You know what a nail’ll do to a saw, Mr. Ashe.”
“Why doesn’t the sawyer keep his eyes open for them?” Jim snapped.
“Keep his eyes open! Mr. Ashe, before he puts a log on the carriage now
he goes over it from end to end. You can’t see a nail that’s countersunk
so the head’s half an inch in.”
“The way you say that sounds as if you meant something. Out with it.”
“I mean,” said Nelson, doggedly, “that it looks to me as if somebody was
plantin’ them nails so’s we’d saw into ’em. I mean it looks to me like
somebody sneaked in here and tampered with things after we get through
inspectin’. I mean that the things that’s happened in this mill couldn’t
’a’ happened without bein’ helped to happen.” John Beam nodded his head
in agreement.
“That’s nonsense,” Jim said, emphatically.
“Maybe it is. Maybe a crazy man’s doin’ it. But, Mr. Ashe, it’s bein’
done. I know it as well as if I’d seen the feller doin’ it.”
“How about the watchmen?”
“All of ’em worked for us in the old mills. ’Tain’t none of them. I’d
take my Bible oath on that.”
Jim sat silent a moment, scowling at the floor.
“You men know what shut-downs mean,” he said. “Here’s five hours in
three days—half a day’s time gone. That means a loss in wages alone of
a hundred dollars, which is a small part of it. It’s got to stop. I
don’t care whether these accidents are accidents or whether somebody is
arranging them-they’ve got to quit, and quit sudden. Suppose we lose a
hundred dollars every three days. That’s two hundred a week and ten
thousand a year. Have you talked about this to anybody?”
“No,” said Nelson.
Beam shook his head,
“Is there any talk in the mill?”
“Haven’t heard any.”
“Well, keep quiet about it. If you fellows are right, we don’t want to
advertise it. Now clear out of here and do the best you can. Keep your
eyes open. Don’t get suspicious of anybody till you have mighty good
reason. I’d hate to think it was any of the crew.”
“It’s somebody that knows the run of things.”
“Yes.”
“What possible reason could anybody have, Mr. Ashe—”
“That’ll be my job—to find out. This suspicion of yours is upsetting. I
want to think about it. Then I’ll do something.”
Nelson’s eyes twinkled as he glanced sideways at Beam. As they went out
Jim heard him say in a low tone:
“You bet he’ll do somethin’—and it’ll come sudden and astonishin’.
Sudden Jim!” There was a note of affection in Nelson’s voice as he
pronounced the name.
Jim settled down to think about it. That some one was planning
deliberately to cripple the plant by injuring its machinery was
illogical. It affronted Jim’s reason. Yet it was a theory impossible to
dismiss. It must be considered. In that case, who had an adequate
motive? Nobody, so far as Jim could see at first glance.
He set up the possibilities, only to knock them down one by one. It
might be the work of a man with a mania for malicious destruction.
Highly improbable, thought Jim. It might be workmen or a workman with a
grievance practising sabotage. But so far as Jim knew there was no
discontent; the crew were satisfied; there had been no complaints, no
unrest. That possibility must be dismissed. It might be some individual
in Diversity with a grudge to work off against the company. But Jim had
never heard of conflict between the company and a citizen, nor had
unfriendliness developed since his arrival. This, too, was dismissed.
Who had an interest in the failure of the concern? A thought which lay
deep in his mind, which he had hoped to conceal even from himself,
obtruded: the Clothespin Club. As an organization of men who had fought
upward through adverse conditions, against obstacles, side by side with
his father, Jim did not believe them guilty. But organizations of
honorable business men often employ underlings, concerning whose methods
their masters neglect to make close inquiry. Might this not be the case?
It was the sole possibility to stand erect before Jim’s reason.
The Club brought up speculations on Morton J. Welliver—which led to
Michael Moran and Zaanan Frame. They led to the Diversity Hardwood
Company, of which Moran was now the head. Should the Ashe Clothespin
Company fail, who was most likely to succeed it? Who would be in the
best position to take over the wreck and operate it? To that question
there was but one answer—the Diversity Hardwood Company. Now Jim became
obsessed by a real suspicion—and he would act upon it until evidence
showed him he was at fault. He would move on the theory that Welliver,
Moran, and Frame were not clean of hand. Frame! What had he to base a
suspicion of Zaanan Frame upon? Nothing but an evident acquaintance with
Welliver, a patent closeness of relations to Moran. No, the old
justice’s name must stand among the suspected.
“Where’s Mr. Ashe?” roared an angry voice in the outer office.
Jim heard Grierson’s parchment voice give the direction, and heavy feet
pounded down the hall to his door. Watson, foreman of the veneer room,
burst in, a huge veneer knife in his arms—no mean weight. “Look at
that,” he said, belligerently, dropping the knife on Jim’s desk with a
bang. “Look at that! Two knives this mornin’.”
There was plain to view a generous nick on the cutting edge.
“What did it?” Jim asked.
“Nail. Twice this mornin’. Now I’ve got to shut down one lathe till the
other knife’s ground down. What land of timber is this, anyhow, with
nails hid all over it?”
“Nothing the matter with your eyesight, is there?”
Watson glared at Jim, shook a grimy finger at him.
“I kin see nails as far as anybody, but I can’t look through an inch of
timber to ’em. We always look out for nails, but it’s easy to see ’em.
Bolts come to us from the vats with the bark peeled, and mostly the
peelers get the nails with their spuds. But nobody kin see a nail that’s
sunk an inch and the hole plugged. Yes, sir, that’s what I mean. The
hole was plugged!”
“How do you know?”
“Strip of veneer showed it. Slice of plug was still stickin’ in. And we
went over a dozen more bolts with a fine-tooth comb. We found one with a
spot in it that looked suspicious. Dug it out and it was a plug! And we
notched in and hit the nail. Now what does that mean?”
“It means you’re to keep your mouth shut about it, and tell some kind of
a story to your gang to keep their mouths shut.”
“Somebody’s goin’ to get hurt,” Watson said, darkly.
“Yes,” said Jim, slowly, “somebody is going to get hurt—bad.”
“I s’pose I’ll have to look over every bolt with opery-glasses,” growled
Watson.
“I’ll give you a man who is to do nothing else. Tell Beam I said so.”
Jim put on his coat and hat and went to dinner. His physical machine was
such that it required nourishment, no matter what was happening to the
mental department. Some men lose their appetites when things go wrong.
Not so Jim Ashe. Some men drown their troubles in drink. Jim had his
drowned three times daily in hunger.
When he had eaten his dinner—for the Widow Stickney had only vaguely
heard of a strange custom of moving that meal along till six o’clock and
having a thing at noon called luncheon; to her, luncheon was something
you put up in a basket and took to a picnic—he leaned back in his chair
for his usual midday chat with the old lady.
“You’ve lived here long, Mrs. Stickney?”
“Born in the county.”
“You ought to be pretty well acquainted with folks hereabout.”
“Don’t have to live here long to be that. Everybody you meet is boilin’
over with anxiety to give you the true life history of everybody else.
You kin git to know Diversity consid’able well in a week, if you’re
willin’ to listen.”
“Justice Frame’s lived here a long time, too, hasn’t he?”
“Him and me was children together.”
“Mrs. Stickney, I’m not asking this wholly out of curiosity. I’m new to
you all. I’ve got my hands pretty full, and there are people in the
world who would be glad to see me spill part of my load. It’s a fine
thing to know whom you can depend on and whom you want to shy at. So I’m
asking you to tell me something about Zaanan Frame.”
“He’s a stiff-spined old grampus,” said the widow, promptly. “Him and me
squabbles so’s the neighbors ’most come a-runnin’ in to part us. He’s
powerful set on havin’ his own way—and mostly he gits it. He’s sharper
’n a new sickle. He’s been justice of the peace here since before Mary
Whittaker was born, and Mary’s got a boy of ten herself. Hain’t never
been nothin’ more ’n just justice of the peace, but he runs the whole
blessed county out of his office. He’s one of them things the papers
call a political boss; but if I do say it, Zaanan Frame does a good job
of it. But he runs it so folks git the wuth of their taxes, and so that
them that wants justice gits it.
“About dependin’ on him,” she went on, after drawing a breath, “you
won’t never find him dodgin’ about underhand. If he likes you, he hain’t
apt to show it by runnin’ up and kissin’ you in public; and if he don’t
like you, he don’t cuss you and try to hit you with a pebble whenever
you meet—but you soon git to know. I’ve knowed him to give a man he
didn’t like all the best of a deal—so nobody’d accuse him of workin’ a
personal spite. I’ve knowed him to refuse things to a friend he’d ’a’
done for a stranger. They say he stretches the powers of his office and
does things a justice hain’t got no right to do—and I calc’late he
does. But it’s in time of need for somebody. He meddles into folkses’
fam’ly affairs, and plans to marry off this girl to that feller—which
plans mostly works out to his notion.
“He’s got a sort of notion he was put here by God Almighty to be father
and mother to every man, woman, and child in the county. But there
hain’t no complaints of him as a parent, though he’s a
mean-dispositioned, meddlin’, sharp-tongued, stubborn-minded old coot.
“Diversity hain’t given much to sayin’ anythin’ but meannesses about
folks; we don’t speak none about Zaanan, but I calc’late there’s growed
men that’ll walk behind him to the cemetery with tears a-runnin’ down
their cheeks, and wimmin that’ll be sobbin’ and leetle children that’ll
know what it means to lose their pa. If there’s any argument when Zaanan
gits to stand before the great white throne, he’s got a right to say:
‘Wait a minnit, Lord, till we kin git in a number of souls that’s here
but was bound for the other place till I got my hands on the reins.’ If
you’re worryin’ as to where Zaanan Frame stands, I kin tell you—he
stands where it’s honestest and lightest for him to stand. My goodness!
but hain’t I been goin’ on about him! Thinkin’ as high of him as I do,
it’s a wonder I don’t up and make him my third.”
Jim sat gnawing his finger silently for many minutes after the widow was
done speaking. She spoke as one who knew. Jim knew she would have
testified in a court of law just as she had spoken to him. Nor would she
have spoken so except from certainty. He was compelled, therefore, to
revise his judgments and suspicions.
“If you were in a hard place, Mrs. Stickney, and needed advice, would
you go to Zaanan Frame?”
“I’d hitch up and go at a gallop,” she said.
“That,” said Jim, “is about what I think I’ll do.”
CHAPTER IX
Jim rapped on the door of Zaanan Frame’s office. At the last minute he
had been of two minds whether he should go in or pass on about his
business. The sound of his own knuckles on the panel decided him.
“Come in,” called Zaanan’s voice.
Jim entered and saw the old justice sitting behind his desk, a
sheep-bound volume propped up before him. Over the top of this a pair of
sharp blue eyes shaded by bushy eyebrows, each of which would have
gladdened the heart of an ambitious young roan could he have had it for
a mustache, peered at Jim.
“Huh!” snorted Zaanan.
“You’ve made it pretty evident,” Jim said, stiffly, “that you don’t like
me. I can’t say I have felt any uncontrollable affection for you—”
“Whoa there!” said Zaanan, closing his book, Tiffany’s _Justices’
Guide_, which he maintained to be the greatest contribution to human
knowledge, especially of the law, since Moses received the tablets of
stone. “Young feller, if you hain’t too young to learn, lemme tell you
it’s possible to ketch more flies with maple sugar than you kin with
stummick bitters. Jest smooth down the hair along your back and don’t go
walkin’ round me stiff-legged like a dog lookin’ for a fight.” Zaanan’s
eyes twinkled. “Now, then, set and onbosom yourself.”
“I’ve come to see you, Judge, because I have been assured that friend or
enemy can trust you—”
“The Widder Stickney’s been flappin’ her wings and cacklin’,” observed
Zaanan. “Um! I figgered you’d be to see me—or else you wouldn’t.
Gittin’ ready to kick out, but you need a wall to lean against, eh?”
“Kick out? What makes you think I’m getting ready to kick out? And at
whom?”
“‘Whom,’” quoted Zaanan. “I’ve heard of that there word. It’s grammar,
hain’t it, but I dun’no’s I ever expected to hear it spoke in Diversity.
How’s the meals to the widder’s?”
“Very good, indeed,” said Jim, nonplussed.
“You hain’t the only boarder, I hear tell.”
“No; Miss Ducharme is there, too.”
“I want to know,” said Zaanan, his eyes twinkling again. “Makes it
pleasanter, I calc’late—you two young folks together.”
“I think Miss Ducharme could bear up under the blow if I were to board
some place else.”
“Um!” said Zaanan. “Mill hain’t runnin’ very good, I hear.”
“That’s what I came to see you about—that and other things.”
“Good mill, hain’t it? New machines? Ought to run, hadn’t it?”
“It ought to and it’s going to. But, Judge, it looks a lot as if
somebody didn’t want it to.”
“Um! That might mean consid’able and it might mean nothin’. Accordin’ to
my notion one of the easiest ways of givin’ information is to think up
words that mean what you want to tell and then to say ’em. Beatin’ round
the bush may scare up a rabbit, but you hain’t huntin’ rabbits. Eh?”
“Well, then, somebody has been tampering with our machinery to make it
break down. Somebody has been driving nails into our logs to dull our
saws. Whoever it is has made us shut down five hours in the last three
days.”
“You figger somebody’s doin’ it deliberate?”
“Yes.”
“Got any proof?”
Jim laid before the old man such evidence as he had, but it was
sufficient. Zaanan wagged his head.
“Calc’late there hain’t no doubt of it. Suspect anybody special?”
“I haven’t any suspicion who is working the mischief, but I have an idea
he isn’t doing it for himself.”
“Somebody’s hirin’ him to do it, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Who might it be?”
“There are only two interests who would have any motive in breaking me.
One is the organization of clothespin manufacturers. I’m in a fight with
them now because they wanted to run my business. The other is the
Diversity Hardwood Company.”
“Hum! I figgered from what Welliver said a spell back that he wasn’t
tickled to death with you and your doin’s. You hain’t a bit afraid who
you’re suspicious of, be you?”
“I’ve got to be suspicious of everybody—and I’m going to be till I know
who can be trusted.”
“Kind of suspected me a mite, eh? Figgered I was tarred with the
Welliver and Moran stick?”
“I got to thinking pretty hard when I saw you with them the morning
after my row with Welliver. You seemed to be pretty good friends.”
“Calc’late we be. Knowed ’em a long time.”
“Judge, you don’t need any more to show you I’ve a bad situation to deal
with. I came to you—I don’t just know why I came to you. On impulse, I
expect.”
“Sudden Jim,” said Zaanan, with a chuckle.
“You’ve heard that, eh?”
“Yes. You was sayin’ you come to me on impulse. Must ’a’ figgered I’d be
some use to you. Nobody’d climb a greased pole if ’twa’n’t for the
five-dollar bill tacked on top of it. Was you wantin’ advice or money or
the loan of my shot-gun?”
“I think,” said Jim, slowly, “that what brought me here was a vague sort
of hope of finding a friend. When a fellow’s up against a fight he feels
lonesome. He likes to know there’s somebody besides himself to depend
on. I had no reason to expect it—quite the contrary, perhaps. Anyhow, I
believe you could help me with this particular problem if you wanted
to.”
“Young feller, a justice of the peace has a heap of duties, some set
down in the statutes and some that just come nat’ral. I’ve been justice
more ’n thirty year, and I calc’late them duties that no legislature
ever thought up is the most important. F’r instance, I married Kitty Fox
and Pliny Hearter. That was consid’able of a transaction; but it was
consid’able more of one to git ’em back to lovin’ and trustin’ after
they’d started runnin’ round for a lawyer to git ’em a divorce. The law
don’t give me the right to do quite a stretch of the meddlin’ I do; but
it sort of appertains to this here office, and I do it. You don’t want
nothin’ of me that’s printed in law-books. So far’s bein’ your
friend—why, I hain’t makin’ no sich agreements. Friends hain’t made by
writin’ out contracts to that effect. I hain’t seen enough of you to git
to yearnin’ over you. But I’ll ease your mind some on one p’int—I
hain’t actively concerned to do you no harm. Also, I hain’t got no
prejudices ag’in you.”
Jim shrugged his shoulders. “It was a ridiculous sort of notion for me
to come like this, without any idea what I wanted. I need help, but what
kind of help I don’t know. Anyhow, I’m glad you’re not with the enemy,
whoever they are.”
“You mentioned names—on suspicion. One of the onhealthiest habits a man
ever got into. I’ve knowed folks to die of it. You’ve figgered out for
yourself who’s after your pelt, and why. But you hain’t got no more
proof than ol’ man Simpkins had when he wanted me to git leetle Georgie
Reed up before me for stealin’ melons. The ol’ man missed a big
melon—next day Georgie was bein’ doctored for stummick-ache. ’Twa’n’t
out of reason. It was evidence I was willin’ to weigh and pass on in
private. I calc’late Georgie et that melon. But as a court of law I
couldn’t do nothin’ but declare Simpkins ’u’d have to show plainer
proofs. That’s your fix. But, young feller, if I was you I calc’late I’d
kinder keep my specs wiped clean and I wouldn’t let my hair grow down
over my ears to speak of. G’-by.”
Jim was astonished. Never had he been thus bruskly dismissed. He strode
out of the office; but a sense of humor came to his rescue. He turned
and bade the old justice good afternoon. Zaanan did not appear to hear.
Zaanan turned the pages of Tiffany’s _Justices’ Guide_ for fifteen
minutes after Jim’s departure. Then he raised his voice in a call for
Dolf Springer. Dolf, it happened, was whittling on Zaanan’s doorstep. It
was his custom to do so during Zaanan’s office hours, for Dolf desired
greatly to be useful to the dictator of Diversity County’s politics.
Dolf’s ambition carried him so high as to make him covet the office of
pathmaster. Therefore he lay in wait for opportunities to serve Zaanan.
“Perty busy, Dolf?” Zaanan asked. “Time all took up to-day?”
“Got a while to spare, Judge.”
“Think of takin’ a drive, Dolf? Eh? Was that what you was plannin’ on?”
“I was goin’ out for a spell.”
“Um! What direction, Dolf? Didn’t happen to be goin’ out the River Road,
did you?”
“That’s exactly where I was goin’. Had a errant out that way.”
“Take you far, Dolf? So far you couldn’t git back to-night?”
“It might, Judge.”
“Wa’n’t goin’ far’s Gilder’s, was you—up back of the Company’s Camp
Three?”
“Goin’ a leetle past there, Judge.”
“Um! Know Gilders?”
“Calc’late to.”
“If you was to see him, Dolf, d’ you figger on stoppin’ for a chat? And
if you do, what be you goin’ to talk about?”
“I’d mention I hadn’t seen him for a long spell.”
“To be sure.”
“And I’d mention I seen you to-day.”
“Uh-huh. S’pose it would occur to you to say somethin’ to the effect
that it looked like business was pickin’ up and stirrin’ times was
comin’? Eh? And that fellers with an ax to grind had better git out the
grindstone? Eh?”
“Come to think of it, I guess I’d make some sich observation.”
“And would you kind of speak about the new clothespin-mill? And allude
to how the whistle’s always tootin’ for it to shut down on account of
somethin’ bustin’?”
“It ’u’d be int’restin’ news to Gilders.”
“’Twouldn’t be any more ’n nat’ral for you to wonder what was the cause
of it? Eh? Might suggest that somebody up his way could explain it.
’Twouldn’t be s’rprisin’, would it?”
“Likely to be so,” said Dolf.
“G’-by, Dolf,” said Zaanan.
“G’-by, Judge,” said Dolf.
In ten minutes Dolf was driving a livery rig out the River Road. A
twelve-mile ride lay before him, and he did not lag. Some hours later he
stopped, tied his horse to a tree by the roadside and plunged into the
woods—jack-pine, scrub-oak, underbrush. Fifteen minutes’ scrambling
brought him to an insignificant clearing with a log shanty in the middle
of it. He stopped cautiously and looked about. Then he called: “Steve!
Hey, Steve Gilders!”
A man, perhaps forty-five years old, stood by the shanty door. A moment
before the space had been empty. He did not seem to come to that spot
from anywhere, but simply to be there all at once. He was what our
grandmothers would have called a “fine figger” of a man. Upward of six
feet two inches he was, and handsome of feature. The handsomeness was
marred by a somberness, a sternness of demeanor.
The admiration he excited was chilled by the rifle he carried under his
arm—and the manner in which he carried it. It explained why Dolf had
taken the precaution to call before he ventured near.
“What’s wanted?” inquired Gilders.
“Zaanan Frame sent me.”
The man’s face relaxed. “Then you’re welcome. Come in.”
Dolf followed him. “Zaanan sent a message, but I can’t make head or tail
to it,” he said.
“Probably ’twa’n’t intended you should,” said Gilders.
“Anyhow,” Dolf said, “Zaanan he told me to come a-drivin’ out here and
say to you that fellers with a ax to grind had better git their
grindstone out; and that business was pickin’ up and stirrin’ times was
ahead; and that the new clothespin-mill was havin’ trouble with its
machinery and somebody up this here way might be able to explain what
was the matter. Don’t seem like much of a message to drive twelve miles
to deliver.”
“Huh! Goin’ right back?”
“Zaanan acted like he wanted me to stay till mornin’.”
“Git your hoss then. You kin sleep here.”
Dolf went obediently after his animal. Steve Gilders shut his eyes and
smiled. It was a peculiar thing to see. Somehow it was not reassuring,
but exceedingly sinister. He had read Zaanan’s message correctly. He
knew what to do.
When Dolf came back Gilders was gone, nor did Dolf see his host again
that night. But that worried Dolf very little. Indeed, it must be said
he slept more comfortably for Gilders’s absence.
At sunrise Gilders appeared out of the woods, strode lithely into the
shanty, laboriously wrote a letter to Zaanan—which he sealed
carefully—and delivered it to Dolf.
“I calc’late you’d better make tracks for town,” he said.
Dolf did not argue the matter.
CHAPTER X
When Jim Ashe returned to the mill after his conversation with Zaanan
Frame he found the machinery idle, employees pouring out of the
entrances. He walked past them and into the building in a frame of mind
that would have rendered him undesirable as a dinner companion. Another
breakdown!
He found Nelson and Beam standing below a couple of mechanics who were
working over a pair of big gears. They only nodded curtly at his
approach, for apparently their patience, like Jim’s, was close to the
fusing-point.
“Now what?” Jim asked.
“Core gear. Stripped the wooden teeth out of it.”
“How?”
Nelson shrugged his shoulders, but Beam replied. “Just got started after
dinner,” he said. “I was standin’ not ten feet from here when I seen
that solid gear lift up into the air, it looked like two foot, and come
down smash onto the wooden teeth. Twouldn’t be so bad if we had a spare
set of teeth, but we hain’t.”
“Got to cut ’em out,” supplemented Nelson.
“How long does that mean?”
“If we work all night we ought to get to runnin’ by noon to-morrow—with
luck.”
“Who’s to blame?” Jim demanded
“Who drove the nails in the logs?” John Beam replied, a trifle sullenly.
“Nelson went over those gears last night. I seen him. He says there
wa’n’t anythin’ wrong then.”
Jim set his teeth; the urge to action came over him that had earned him
the name of Sudden Jim. He recognized it, expected himself to do
something decisive—and was surprised that he did not. Instead he found
himself reflecting coolly, choosing the better from the worse course of
action.
“It can’t be helped now, boys,” he said. “Speed up and get her going
again—and keep quiet about it.”
He turned on his heel and went up to the office, where he found the noon
mail on his desk. The first letter he opened was the resignation of his
salesman for New York and New England, a man of exceptional ability,
whose sales mounted to many car-loads a year, and whose customers were
his customers, not those of the Ashe Clothespin Company. Winkleman could
take them with him to whatever firm he had sold his services. Jim knew
well Winkleman had not abandoned the woodenware trade—he had gone over
to Welliver or some other of the enemy. Here, Jim recognized, was the
shrewdest blow of the war.
Jim went on opening his mail. Another letter was from Silvers, his
Chicago representative. This man handled the product of Jim’s mills as a
part of his brokerage business. He was able; no week passed that did not
see at least one car-load consigned to him or to his customers.
What’s up? (the letter said). Welliver wants me to drop you and
come over to him. Says your goose is cooked and offers me an
extra two and a half per cent. commission. Says you started this
clothespin rumpus. Had a contract ready for me to sign, and
wanted me to drop you unsight and unseen, I wouldn’t do it, but
his offer is tempting.
There was more to the communication, but here we have the heart of it.
One blow followed another. The attack had commenced in earnest and Jim
was on the defensive. He had declared war, but had not struck a blow.
Now he must act swiftly, intelligently, efficiently. First he wired
Silvers:
Won’t meet Welliver’s offer. We’re sound. If you can’t stick by
us in fight don’t want you anyhow. Want men can depend on. Wire
answer.
Next he called in Grierson.
“What percentage of our business is in New York and New England?” he
asked.
“A quarter, maybe.”
“Who sells heaviest there?”
“Plum and Mannikin.”
“One of them has hired away Winkleman.”
Grierson made a crisp, crackling sound with his lips. It indicated
dismay. Jim smiled grimly.
“We’re going to increase our Eastern business,” he said. “We haven’t
pushed it as we might, just as those Eastern factories haven’t pushed
for orders in the West. But we’re going to. We’re going after all we can
get anywhere we can get it. It’s three o’clock. I want you to catch the
six-o’clock train for Buffalo. Then New York and Boston. Go and pack. By
the time you’re back here I’ll have your instructions ready for you.”
“But, Mr. Ashe—”
“Hustle,” said Jim. It was Sudden Jim speaking now.
In an hour Grierson was back, dubious, flustered.
“Grierson,” said Jim, “you know the personnel of the woodenware business
better than I. Here’s what I want you to do: Land the best woodenware
broker in Buffalo to handle our line for the city and western New York.
Get him! Give him seven and a half commission, if necessary. Have him
sign a contract like Levine’s in Cleveland. Then hit for New York.
There’ll be soreness somewhere over this Winkleman business. It must
have cut into somebody’s territory. You know who to go to. We want the
biggest—somebody with a sales organization. Offer them all New York and
all New England outside of Boston. If they hang out for Boston, give it
to them, too. If they don’t insist on it go to Boston and repeat the
dose. I want somebody who will sell our goods—and keep us hustling to
fill orders. We’ll put a dent in Plum and Mannikin. Now you’ll want to
bury your young man in directions for his guidance while you’re gone.
Get at it. And don’t come back here unless you’ve got what I want.”
Grierson was blinking. “Your father was a swift mover when he was
r’iled,” said he; “but for suddenness, and for landing a hard punch, I
guess you are a little ahead of him. I’ll do my best, Mr. Ashe.”
Jim’s next move was a wire to Philadelphia. Pennsylvania was the home
ground of the Jenkins mills, and Jim was determined to hit as many heads
as he could. Any woodenware man worthy of the name was familiar with the
house of Sands & Stein, of the Quaker City. Jim’s wire said:
If interested handing our whole line Pennsylvania exclusive
territory wire.
These things accomplished, Jim entered upon the routine of his work,
which occupied him until six o’clock was near. Just as he was leaving
the office a telegram arrived from Silvers.
“I’m no quitter,” it said, tersely, and Jim knew that he had found at
least one dependable man.
As Jim approached he saw a man seated on the Widow Stickney’s porch. He
wondered if the widow was entering on a campaign to conquer her “third,”
and had invited him to supper as an opening gun. Jim was not familiar
enough with Diversity’s citizens yet to identify an individual by his
legs, and this one’s face was concealed by the climbing vine. If Jim had
been a native of the village he would have experienced no such
difficulty, for Diversity’s male inhabitants were as easy to distinguish
by their pants as by their faces. We recognize a man by his face because
that is the face he has always worn. The same rule held true of
Diversity’s trousers. Old Clem Beagle still went to church in the
garments that covered him when he was married sixty years before.
When Jim climbed the porch he was convinced that the widow had nothing
whatever to do with the visitor. It was Michael Moran, and Jim wondered
just who in that house was responsible for his presence.
“How do you do, Mr. Ashe?” said Moran, rising and extending his hand. “I
just learned you were boarding here. Glad to hear it. Makes it more
interesting for Miss Ducharme, I imagine, and she needs cheering up
considerable.”
Jim responded to the greeting, experiencing at the same time a dubiety
as to Moran’s sincerity. Indeed, without any adequate reason for his
belief he was of the opinion that Moran was not pleased with his
presence.
“Sort of protegee of mine—Miss Ducharme. Father was walking boss for
me. I always take supper with her when I’m in town, if I can manage it,”
Moran explained.
Jim nodded. He was remembering that it was on the morning following a
visit of Michael Moran’s to Diversity he had first encountered Marie, on
the top of a knoll from which a view might be had of far countries. Her
reckless mood, reckless words, were fresh in his mind, and he would have
been glad to know if Moran had anything to do with the matter.
“Everything starting off well at the mill?”
“Very well, indeed,” said Jim.
“I see you’ve started shipments. Hope you’ve been getting cars as you
wanted them. If you ever have any difficulty, just let me know.”
“Thank you,” said Jim. His mind was only casually on what Moran was
saying; it was striving to penetrate to what he was thinking. From the
morning of his first sight of the man Jim had been repelled by him.
That, of course, was to be laid to the fact that Moran was first seen in
company with Welliver. But since then Jim had been led to suspect him as
an active enemy. Stories—gossip, perhaps—that came to his ears led him
to set Moran down as a shifty individual, a man who looked to the right
and unexpectedly threw his brick to the left. Also he had heard from Tim
Bennett and others hints regarding Moran’s attitude toward women. But
there was proof of nothing. Jim was fair enough to admit this. All was
hint, rumor, or deduction from flimsy bases.
“You know, of course, that I’ve taken over the control of the Diversity
Hardwood Company?”
“I had heard it.”
“That and my railroad will bring us in touch considerable. Before long
we ought to hit on some sort of basis so we can work together for the
benefit of both of us. We’re in a position to help each other in a dozen
ways.”
“By driving nails in each other’s logs,” Jim thought, but he smiled and
agreed that co-operation seemed advisable.
“Conditions in the county aren’t what they ought to be,” said Moran
after puffing briefly on his cigar. “You and I—with the influence we
can exert—ought to be able to do a lot to remedy matters.”
“As how?” Jim asked, really curious to know what Moran was approaching.
“You and I represent practically the whole of the county’s business
interests. We ought to have more of a say in running things than we
have. As it is now—well, we haven’t much of anything to say. Zaanan
Frame says it all, and he’s a stiff-backed, hard-headed old scoundrel if
there ever was one. Talk about your city political bosses! Zaanan could
show them things they won’t be finding out for another twenty years.”
“Pretty strong politically, is he?”
“Just this strong, Mr. Ashe, that he appoints the officers in this
county. Appoints ’em. Of course there are elections, but if Zaanan told
these farmers and what-not to vote for his horse Tiffany for President
of the United States, that horse would come close to carrying the county
unanimously. That’s how strong he is. The circuit judge is his; the
sheriff is his; the prosecutor is his. What chance has money in such a
nest? The worst of it is, the old man’s pretty well off and you can’t
reach him.”
“Never can tell till you try,” said Jim.
“I’m in a position to tell, all right. It’s no go. The only thing is to
get rid of him. If he could be beaten out of his own job I guess he’d be
done for. And I think I can manage it with your help.”
“I’m not aching to meddle with politics any.”
“You will be when he hands you a dose of his medicine. Look at us.
Probably a dozen little suits in the justice court every week come
before him. What protection have we?” Moran spread his hands in a
gesture of helplessness. “Any Tom, Dick, and Harry that wants to goes
ahead and sues—and Zaanan sees to it we get the worst of it. Anywhere
else we could appeal, but here the circuit court belongs to Zaanan, and
it spends as much of its time playing to the gallery and coddling the
poor, downtrodden working-man at my expense as Zaanan does.”
“Pretty tough,” said Jim. He told himself that here was first-class
evidence to support the Widow Stickney’s praise of Zaanan Frame. It was
being admitted he was honest, that influence did not subvert justice. He
was a boss, perhaps, but his virtues seemed to stamp themselves on the
men his power put in office. Theoretically a boss is bad, Jim thought,
but this case seemed to demonstrate there might be exceptions. Suppose
Zaanan were absolute monarch of Diversity, what had made him so and what
kept him in his place? Apparently it was the fairness, the rugged
squareness, of the old man. Apparently he possessed the love and
confidence of his people to the point that they were willing to delegate
their powers to him in the belief that he would work better for them
than they could for themselves.
“You bet,” said Moran. “If we could get in a justice of the peace we
could stop all these petty suits right there. Let a couple of dozen of
these fellows find out they were going to get beaten, and the whole mess
of them would quit. I hate to think how much money Frame costs me a
year.”
“Or how much he benefits the man who couldn’t help himself without
Zaanan’s court,” Jim thought. “It means much to the poor man to know
that his court—the justice’s court—is honest; that he can carry his
wrong to it and see it righted! What’s your idea?” he asked aloud.
“We’ll have to get him in the caucus,” said Moran. “Couldn’t beat him at
the election. I don’t suppose there are a dozen votes cast against him
in the whole county. But that’s quite a while off. I just wanted to
mention the matter to you and find out how you looked at it. I’m glad
you agree with me.”
“We can do more together than we could separately,” Jim said,
jesuitically.
The widow appeared in the doorway and announced supper. Jim waved Moran
to precede him, and he walked to the table feeling more sure of his
ground than he had been an hour before. His suspicions of Moran rested
on a surer foundation—the man was not honest. He was the sort of
business man who has brought stigma on his kind by bribery, by conniving
at injustice, by seducing officers of justice. He was ruthless. The
rights of others only represented something to be overridden. To Jim it
seemed that the day when Michael Moran replaced Zaanan Frame as dictator
of Diversity would be a black day indeed for the county.
Further, he made up his mind to win that friendship which Zaanan Frame
had denied him. In his difficulty he felt a flood of gratitude to good
fortune that such a man as Zaanan Frame was at hand and in power. When
he took his seat at the table he was more cheerful than he had been for
many a day; his face was lighter, his eyes brighter. The widow noticed
his changed expression and was deeply curious to account for it. The
widow was a motherly soul. Of late she had taken to coddling and
worrying over Jim. Hers was a heart that could not be inactive—if man’s
persistent mortality discouraged her from taking another husband, she
could, at least, secretly adopt a son.
CHAPTER XI
“Our school opens Monday, doesn’t it, Marie?” asked Moran.
She turned her black eyes on him and allowed them to rest a moment
before replying. Jim Ashe was aware of the somber glow of them.
“Yes,” she said, shortly.
Moran chuckled. “You’re tickled to death over it, aren’t you?”
The glow of her eyes became a flame—such a flame as might eat its way
through plates of steel. Jim Ashe would have drawn back from such a fire
disconcerted; Moran was unable to meet it with his eyes, but he was not
disconcerted. Instead, it seemed to give him satisfaction. He chuckled
again.
“Well,” he said, jovially, “you know you can leave it when you want to.”
Jim was startled; looked quickly at Marie. The flame lay dead in her
eyes; she seemed merely tired, very tired. Moran spoke again, this time
to Ashe and the widow.
“I’ve offered her a place in my office back in town,” he said. “I guess
she don’t hate Diversity as bad as she says she does, or she’d take it.
But the offer holds good, Marie. Any time. Any time.”
The widow ruffled her feathers.
“Marie’s goin’ to stay right where she is. Maybe Diversity hain’t a
suburb of heaven; maybe teachin’ school’s a long ways from strummin’ a
harp in Paradise; but Marie’s got too much sense to go flutterin’ off
like a blind owl in the sunshine, not knowin’ what she’s like to bump
her head against.”
Marie turned slowly on the widow.
“When the time comes to choose I’ll choose,” she said, speaking, it
seemed, not to the widow, but to herself.
The widow looked puzzled; even Moran seemed not to understand; but Jim
understood. In the light of his first meeting with Marie on the knoll he
comprehended the significance of her words, the rashness, the worldly
wisdom of them. Hers would be no blindfold journey. If she spread her
wings for flight it would be with eyes wide and seeing; it would be on a
calculated course, and the cost would be itemized. He saw that she read
Moran better than he had done, and in the light of her knowledge the
page of Moran’s soul became more legible to him. Before Moran had been
an adversary--no chivalric adversary; now he felt a cold hatred for the
man, a personal, throbbing hatred coupled with a stinging, physical
aversion. From that moment Moran became a snake to be scotched.
“There’s a lot less choosin’ in this world than folks think there is,”
said the widow. “Folks spends a heap of time separatin’ in their minds
what they’re goin’ to do from what they hain’t—gen’ally choosin’ the
pleasant and throwin’ out the disagreeable. But when they git along
toward the end of things and look back at the figgerin’ they done, they
mostly find that the good they chose wasn’t the good they got, and the
bad they chose not to have was the very thing that pestered them. Most
folks meets up with about so much good and bad, about so much joy and so
much trouble; but the joys hain’t the ones they looked forward to and
the troubles hain’t the ones they feared.”
Moran smiled and shook his head.
“I can’t agree with you, Mrs. Stickney. We get what we plan for. Set
your mind on a thing and then plan and wait and work toward it every
chance you get. Don’t give it up. Keep your mind on it. Don’t let a
chance slip to move nearer to it. What I want—if I want it bad
enough—that thing I get.”
Suddenly Marie spoke—to Jim.
“What’s your opinion, Mr. Ashe?” she said.
“I? As old Sir Roger de Coverley said, ‘There’s much to be said on both
sides.’” Jim had no desire to be drawn into argument with Moran.
Her lip curled. “We used to have a Congressman here who was called
Mid-channel Charlie because his attitude toward every question was like
yours now. He was never Congressman but once.”
“Well, then,” said Jim, perceiving that for some reason she really
desired his opinion, “I believe that if you don’t choose and work to get
the thing you have chosen, you miss one of life’s finest games. I do
agree with Mrs. Stickney that if you drift along and take what comes the
chances are that good and ill will run a fairly even race. I agree with
Mr. Moran that the man who visualizes his desire and sets it up before
him as a lighthouse—and then rows his boat to it with all the strength
of his oars—stands at least a moderate chance of getting there. But for
me, I do not believe a man should be too set on a desire, that he should
steer a course for his lighthouse regardless of everything else. If I
have a plan of life it is to row for my lighthouse, but not to miss the
scenery along the way. My boat may carry me past something better than
my lighthouse. If I should suddenly find myself floating over an
oyster-bed I should stop to hunt pearls. I believe that as a man pushes
forward to his desire he should stand ready to pounce on the treasure
that chance or circumstance floats in his way; he should be ready to
repel the evil he fears, but he should keep his ammunition dry and his
weapons loaded for trouble he doesn’t in the least foresee—which is not
likely to happen, but which sometimes does happen. I believe that a plan
to arrive at one’s choice should be modified by the happening of every
moment, and that one should be ready to abandon his boat, abandon his
lighthouse, to dive over the side after the chance-sent mass of floating
ambergris.”
“Yes. Yes, that’s it. The moment determines. The mood of the moment
determines,” said Marie.
“And,” said Jim, carried onward by the flow of his thought, “meetings
with other voyagers determine. One’s course is sure to cross the courses
of others. At some point those moving at right angles to each other may
meet bow to bow, when there will result collision, or else one or both
the travelers must modify their courses for a time. It may even be that
the adventure of one traveler will cause the other to abandon his quest
and follow. If you’re going to look ahead, Miss Ducharme, and plan and
choose, you must not forget to estimate the chances of contact with
other planners and choosers, nor the modifications contact may cause.”
Moran shrugged his shoulders, his jaw set.
“If another man’s path crosses mine, or his boat gets in the way of
mine, I let him look out for himself or be run down,” he said, crisply.
“In such collisions,” said the widow, “I’ve knowed both boats to be
sunk.”
Jim felt Marie’s black eyes upon him, but he did not look at her. She
was studying him, appraising him. He was conscious of it, yet endeavored
to appear unconscious. He felt she was more inclined toward friendliness
with him than ever before, and because he perceived that she needed
friendship—not because of any leaning toward her—he feared to show
even by a glance that he was aware of a better understanding between
them. It would be so easy to frighten her away.
Moran pushed back his chair.
“I must catch my train, Mrs. Stickney. I always enjoy my suppers with
you. They remind me of suppers I used to eat at grandmother’s farm.”
“It’s a good thing for men to git reminded of their grandmothers once in
a while,” she answered, cryptically.
“You’re coming to see me to the door, Marie?” Moran said. It seemed to
Jim more a command than a question. Marie obeyed, and the man and girl
left the room.
Jim emptied his coffee-cup, which was not a thing to do quickly when the
widow had made the coffee. Indeed not! One sipped and tasted and stopped
betweenwhiles to think on the aroma of it. Presently Jim set down his
empty cup.
“More?” asked the widow.
“Thank you, no.”
Jim moved back his chair. He was frowning at the tablecloth
abstractedly.
“Hum!” said the widow. It was a very significant, expressive hum, an
eloquent hum, but, withal, a hum that needed further elucidation before
it became wholly and perfectly clear.
“The difference between girls,” she said, “is that most of them is just
ordinarily foolish.”
“And the difference between men,” said Jim, “is that some of them are
like Michael Moran.”
“I calc’late from that,” she said, “that your heart don’t flow out to
him in love and admiration.”
“It’s men like him that make murder a virtue.”
“Hum!” said the widow. “I’ll say this for you, you don’t leave folks
fumblin’ round to understand your meanin’.”
“I said exactly what I meant. Mrs. Stickney, Miss Ducharme is in a
dangerous humor. I can’t make her out. Probably it is because I’m too
young. But you ought to understand her—whether she means some of the
reckless things she says. I believe she does. She has intelligence and a
will, which makes the condition more dangerous. She talks about choosing
her course when Diversity becomes unbearable. Michael Moran is planning
to be present when that time comes. Possibly his plans include making
Diversity unbearable. At any rate, he plans and plans, and because he is
what he is, because she knows he is what he is, he offers her an
opportunity of escape. He offers her what she thinks is an opportunity
to choose. But it won’t be any such thing. When she chooses—if ever she
does choose—to go to him, it will be because he has planned it and
forced the choice.”
“Hum!” said the widow again, eying him with eyes that age had not robbed
of their brightness. “Hum!”
This was no startling contribution to the conversation. But the
exclamation “Hum!” uttered by an old woman who has buried two husbands
and kept boarders is not to be despised. There is more wisdom in such a
monosyllable than in all the pages of the valedictory of a girl emerging
from college—which is generally credited with being an erudite message.
Two husbands and a succession of boarders may teach things that even
professors of sociology have not had called to their attention.
“She’s so infernally alone,” said Jim.
Marie stepped into the dining-room again—one might almost say pounced.
Her eyes glittered, her hands were clenched.
“I am infernally alone. Oh, I heard! I heard what you said before that,
I listened. What business have you to discuss me and my affairs? I
suppose it’s your meddlesome notion to help me. I don’t want help; I
don’t need help; and what help could you give? What do you know about
me—or about life? What do you know about a woman? I will not be
discussed by either of you. I have the right to order my own life—to
make it good or bad as I want to—and it’s nobody’s business. Do you
think I don’t know Michael Moran? I tell you I see into the farthest
corner of his soul. I’m not demanding happiness. I doubt if happiness is
the best thing life has to give. But I do demand to live. Nobody can
compel me to rot. What if I do suffer? What if there is pain and
suffering and remorse? That is part of life. It is living. And you would
meddle! I tell you again that I see what I am doing; that I am not
deceived; that I have weighed consequences. If the time comes when
Michael Moran is the stepping-stone I need, I shall use him. Nobody can
prevent it—”
“I calc’late there’s somebody might prevent it, Marie,” said the widow,
quietly, “and I calc’late there’s somethin’ would fill you up with a
kind of regret you ain’t anticipatin’ if it was to happen afterward.”
“Who?” demanded Marie, passionately. “And what?”
“The man you loved might stop you—and comin’ to love a man afterward
might bring that kind of remorse that would make dyin’ better ’n
livin’.”
Marie stared at the widow, then after one might slowly have counted a
dozen she sank into a chair and gazed fixedly downward. Nobody spoke,
Jim felt extremely uncomfortable.
Presently Marie lifted her eyes, first to Jim, then to the widow.
“Yes,” she said, “that is possible. I could love, but it would be better
that I shouldn’t. Better for him. If I loved it would be no pretty
bill-and-coo. It would be love. I should give much, but demand much. I
do not think it would be comfortable to be loved by me. If I loved it
would be the one great concern of my life. I should have room for
nothing else. I have studied myself. And if he did not love me as I
loved him I should make him unhappy, for I do not believe men like to be
bothered by too much love. I should make him hate me. I should be no
sweet domestic animal to greet him with a kiss, and fetch him his
slippers, and sit by placidly while he read his paper. Men like comfort
and coddling. There would be no comfort with me. I should be
jealous—jealous even of the food that gave him pleasure. What man wants
such a love! What happiness can come from it? Would you want to be loved
that way?” She turned abruptly to Jim.
“I do not believe one can love too much. I don’t believe you know what
love is, Miss Ducharme. If love is what I believe, it is not fierce, not
a fire that burns beyond control. I think it is gentle; I think love
forgives; I think real love manifests itself not by clawing and
scratching its object, but by spending itself to procure his
happiness—or her happiness. I believe the true love of a man for his
wife, or of a woman for her husband, has much in it of the love of
father or mother for their child. I do not think love threatens; it
shelters. No, Miss Ducharme, the thing you have been talking about is
not love at all. I don’t know what it is, but love it is not.”
She looked at him wide-eyed, startled, curious.
“When you love,” he said, “you will see that I am right.”
“I should like to believe you, Mr. Ashe,” she said. “It would be
sweet—sweet. But you are wrong. How could you know? Have you loved?”
“No.”
Mrs. Stickney spoke, her old eyes twinkling.
“It don’t seem scarcely possible,” she said, “but I’ve been in love. It
was some number of years ago, but I hain’t forgot all about it yet.
Shouldn’t be s’prised if there was times when I remembered it right
well. So I’m speakin’ from experience. When I was in love ’twa’n’t
exactly like either one of them things you’ve been describin’. I’ll go
so far’s to say that both of you’ll know consid’able more about it after
you’ve ketched it.”
Jim felt a sense of relief. There had been a strain; the moments that
had passed were tense moments. Possibly Marie, too, was relieved. At any
rate, she stood up, and as she walked toward the door she spoke icily:
“Bear in mind, please, Mr. Ashe, that I and my affairs are not to be
discussed, nor have you a right to interfere in whatever happens.”
“Miss Ducharme, I have that right. If I see a man ill-treat a dog, I
have the right to protect that dog—more than that, it is my duty. How
much more is it a man’s right and duty to interfere in behalf of a woman
who is in danger!”
“Duty!” exclaimed Miss Ducharme.
CHAPTER XII
Jim found Zaanan Frame at his desk, Tiffany’s _Justices’ Guide_ open
before him as it always was in his moments of leisure. Zaanan nodded.
“Set,” he said.
“Judge,” said Jim, “I’ve been invited to help beat you at the next
election.”
“Um!”
“They tell me a corporation hasn’t a chance with you.”
“Some hain’t,” said Zaanan, briefly.
“And that a laboring-man gets all the best of it.”
“An even chance is the best of it for a poor feller,” said Zaanan.
“Calc’late you was fetchin’ me news?” The old man’s eyes twinkled.
“Moran’s a convincin’ talker,” he observed, after a brief pause.
Jim made no reply.
“Thinkin’ of throwin’ in with him?” Zaanan asked.
Jim started to speak, but stopped, startled. It seemed to him for an
instant that Marie Ducharme sat before him. He could see her move with
the wonderful grace that was hers; he could see the sure, graceful lines
of her figure; he could see her face, mobile, intelligent, with
possibilities that would have made it interesting, even compelling, but
for the expression of sullen discontent that masked it. So real, so
material did she seem, that it seemed to Jim he could stretch out his
hand and touch her. Then she was gone.
Jim’s teeth clicked together, and his good, square-cornered jaw set.
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” he said, with that sudden
resolution which seemed to have become a part of him. “I’m going to
chase Michael Moran out of Diversity County.”
“Um! Hain’t you perty busy savin’ your own goods from the fire?”
“I’ll keep mine and add something of his,” Jim said, grimly.
“Wa-al, sich things has been done. Ever hear tell of Watt Peters and his
bear? Watt he was campin’ with a crowd back in the timber, huntin’ bear.
One day he was cruisin’ round and come on to a old he-bear consid’rable
more sudden than he calc’lated on. Watt he never got famous for
boldness, so this time he clean forgot he was huntin’ bear and turned
and run for all was in him. Seems like he irritated that bear somehow,
for he turned to and chased Watt ’most to camp. Watt he tripped over a
root and like to busted his neck. Old bear he kept a-comin’. Wasn’t
anything for it but to shoot, so Watt he up and shot. Dummed if he
didn’t kill that there bear deader ’n a door-nail. Fellers in camp came
a-runnin’ out.
“‘’Most catched you, didn’t he?’ says a feller.
“‘Catched me!’ says Watt. ‘What you mean, catched me?’
“‘He was a-chasin’ you, wasn’t he?’
“Watt he looked scornful-like and answered right up:
“‘Think I want to lug a bear two mile into camp?’ says he. ‘No, sir, I
lured this here bear in so’s I could kill him handy to where I wanted
him. I jest figgered to make him carry himself into camp,’ says he.
Wa-al, young feller, things does happen that way sometimes, but it looks
to me right now like the bear was chasin’ you.”
“I know Moran is in with Welliver and his bunch. I know Moran is at the
bottom of the trouble we’re having at the mill. He’s having our logs
spiked, and a man of his is tampering with our machinery. I know it, but
I can’t prove it even to myself. The first thing I do is to make
certain.”
“If I was goin’ to take a drive,” said Zaanan. “I’d take the River Road.
Calc’late I’d drive till I come to where a beech and a maple’s growin’
so clost it looks like they come up from one root, and I’d up and hitch
there. Then I’d walk off to the right, takin’ care to make plenty of
noise so’s not to seem like I was sneakin’. About that election, Jim, I
calc’late I’m obleeged to you. G’-by, Jim.”
“Good-by, Judge,” said Jim.
He went to the livery for a rig and presently was driving out the River
Road according to Zaanan’s directions. It seemed like a long time before
he discovered Zaanan’s landmark, but it appeared at last, and Jim was
interested to see that another horse had been tied there not long ago.
The marks of its pawing hoofs were visible in the soft soil; the work of
its teeth showed on the bark of the tree. It was here that Dolf Springer
had tied not many hours before.
Jim looked about him for some indication of man’s presence that would
show him how to proceed, but there was none. Away from him on all sides
stretched a growth of scrub-oak and jack-pine, with here and there the
grayed and splintered shaft of an ancient pine that had been riven by
lightning or broken off by wind or age. There was no path, no sign of
human usage.
Forgetting Zaanan’s caution to proceed noisily, Jim walked slowly,
almost stealthily, through the underbrush. He did so unconsciously; it
was the natural impulse of one walking into the unknown. At times he
stopped to look about him, dubious if he had not alighted at the wrong
landmark.
Presently he fancied he heard voices and stopped to listen with
straining ears. Unquestionably there were voices. Jim drew nearer
softly, and in a few moments reached a point where words and tones and
inflections could be distinguished. There was a man’s voice and a
child’s voice. Jim stopped again and listened. The conversation he
overheard was not a conversation; it was a ritual. As the words came to
Jim he knew it was but one repetition of what had been conned and
repeated many times before. Yet there was fire in it, fire and fierce
determination.
“Where is your mother?” asked the man’s voice.
“Dead,” answered the child’s.
“Who killed her?” asked the man.
“She killed herself,” said the child.
“Why?”
“On account of me.”
“Did she do right?”
“Yes.”
“Who do you hate?”
“Michael Moran,” said the child.
“What have you got to do?”
“Pay Michael Moran.”
“You won’t ever forget?”
“I won’t ever forget,” said the child.
“See to it that you don’t,” the man said, fiercely.
It was evident the ritual was at an end; that this last was an
admonition, not a part of it. Jim shivered but he knew he had not gone
astray, that here was the man Zaanan had sent him to see. He retired
softly a hundred feet, then called aloud and floundered toward the spot
where the ritual had been spoken.
Jim had not traversed half the distance before a man stepped from behind
a mound. It was the same big, handsome, somber man whom Dolf Springer
had called upon; it was Steve Gilders. Under his arm was the rifle that
had sent a shiver up Dolf’s spine.
“Lookin’ for somebody?” he demanded.
“Yes. Judge Frame sent me.”
“What’s your name?”
“Ashe.”
“Own the new mills down to Diversity?”
“Yes. Are you the man I came to see?”
“Calc’late so. Names is handy in talkin’ to folks. Mine’s Steve.”
Jim thought it best not to ask additional names.
“What was you wantin’?” Steve asked.
“Somebody’s playing hob with my machinery and driving spikes into my
logs for me to rip off sawteeth on. I think Michael Moran is at the
bottom of it, but I want to prove it to myself.”
“If you kin prove it—what?”
“I’ll have a better conscience to go after the man.”
“Not after him personal. You won’t lay hands on him? You hain’t
figgerin’ on doin’ anythin’ to his body, be you? ’Cause I can’t have
that. That hain’t your concern. It’s a job for somebody else.”
“No. But I’m going to drive him out of Diversity.”
Steve smiled. “If you was to take his money away from him and his power
away from him, why I’d be glad. It ’u’d hurt him mighty bad. But I
calc’late he hain’t goin’ to be drove out of Diversity. I figger he’s
goin’ to stay here permanent—permanent as them in Diversity’s
graveyard.”
Jim wondered if the man were not off the mental perpendicular; but a
glance at his fine if stern face, his clear eyes, his bearing, argued
strongly in favor of his sanity. Perhaps the man was possessed of some
Old Testament spirit of vengeance; perhaps here was a Northern relative
of the blood feud of the Kentucky mountains. In spite of himself he felt
apprehensive for Moran’s sake.
“You want proofs, eh? Be you enured to walkin’?”
“I’ll do my best,” said Jim.
“Seven miles to the loggin’-road,” said Steve.
“I’d better care for my horse then.”
“I’ll see to him. You set right where you be.” It was a command. Jim
recognized it as such and obeyed.
It was not long before Steve returned. He did not take Jim to his shanty
as he had taken Dolf Springer, but led him straight through the woods
toward the southeast. Steve tramped silently. The things his eyes saw,
the things his ears heard, and the thoughts moving in his mind were
company enough for him. As for Jim, he had difficulty enough maintaining
the pace without wasting breath in unnecessary words.
After an hour’s steady going Steve stopped suddenly.
“Set,” he said. “You hain’t used to this.”
Jim sank down without a word. Steve leaned against a maple trunk, for
they were now getting into the edge of the hardwood, and took out his
pipe. Neither spoke for fifteen minutes. Then Steve straightened up and
nodded. Jim got to his feet and followed.
In another hour Steve spoke again: “Road’s right over there. First
landin’s half a mile up.”
They turned to the left and shortly were in last season’s slashings.
Narrow lanes among the trees, uneven, impassable to teams at this season
of the year, marked the tote roads, which in winter would be cared for
more skilfully than many a city boulevard, iced, kept clear of refuse,
so that heavily ladened sleds might pass smoothly, carrying logs from
cutting to landings.
Jim heard the toot of a locomotive whistle and looked at his watch.
“Must be the empty trucks up from the mill,” he said.
Steve nodded.
The engine with its trail of trucks passed them at their right, whistled
again, and at last came to a stop. Jim knew the stop was at the landing
from which came his logs.
“Where’s the camp?” he asked.
“T’other side of the track.”
In a moment they were at the edge of the clearing and Jim could see the
landing, its skidways piled high with hardwood logs, beech, birch,
maple, with here and there a soft maple, an ash or an oak. The train
crew had already disappeared in the direction of the camp; only one man
was visible, standing in the doorway of the sealer’s shanty. He looked
after the trainmen, then emerged and mounted a skid way. With a big blue
crayon he marked log after log. These, Jim knew, were being selected to
go to his mill in the morning. Then the man returned to his shanty.
Presently he appeared with a blacksmith’s hammer. He mounted the skidway
again, knelt upon a marked log, and drove a spike into it near the
middle. This he proceeded to sink with a punch.
Steve did not so much as turn his head toward Jim. He merely watched the
man with a curious intentness. The man repeated the operation five times
on different logs, then returned his tools to the shanty and sauntered
away toward the camp.
Jim felt a hot flame of rage. With characteristic impulse he started to
his feet and would have demanded a reckoning of the man there and then,
but Steve caught him by the arm and drew him down.
“Hungry?” he asked, in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Maybe I am,” snapped Jim, “but I’m too mad to notice it.”
“Spring back here. I put a snack in my pocket.”
“What’s that man’s name, Steve?” Jim demanded.
“Kowterski—one of Moran’s Polacks,” said Steve, with bitterness in his
voice. “Them cattle is drivin’ good woodsmen out of the State. Moran’s
fetchin’ ’em in ’cause he kin drive ’em and abuse ’em and rob ’em. There
was a day when a lumberjack come out of the woods after the drive with
his pockets burnin’ with money. These fellers is lucky if they come out
even. I knowed one that come out last spring with fifteen dollars to
show for his winter’s work. Sometimes Moran gives ’em half a dollar on
Sundays—for church!” He stopped suddenly.
“Kowterski’s brother’s night-watchin’ for you,” he said, shortly.
“Thank you,” said Jim. “Now let’s go back.”
“Better eat a bite,” Steve said, and, taking Jim’s assent for granted,
led the way to the spring.
It was an hour before he consented to begin the backward tramp. It was
completed as silently as had been the coming. Steve led Jim past his
shanty, but not in sight of it, and to the road where the buggy stood.
“Wait,” he said, and shortly reappeared, leading the horse, which he
helped Jim to hitch.
Jim climbed to the seat and extended his hand. Steve made no movement to
take it.
“I’m more obliged to you than I can say,” Jim said.
“G’-by,” Steve said, briefly, and, turning his back, strode out of sight
among the scrub-oak and jack-pine.
The horse Jim drove was not intended by nature to travel rapidly from
place to place. He possessed two paces, one a studious walk, the other a
self-satisfied trot that was a negligible acceleration of movement. So
it was dusk when Jim reached Diversity. Slow as the progress was, it did
not give Jim time to cool down from the boiling-point he had reached;
instead, it irritated him, brought him where explosion was inevitable.
He returned his horse to the barn and started down the street toward the
mill, forgetful that he had eaten nothing but Steve’s snack since
breakfast. As he passed the hotel he saw Moran on the piazza—Moran, who
had taken a train yesterday to the city.
Jim stopped, gripped his temper with both hands, as it were, to hold it
in check, and spoke.
“You’re back soon,” he said.
“Didn’t get to the city at all. Wire met me halfway and called me back.”
“That’s good,” said Jim, with another of his sudden resolutions. “I’m
glad you’re here. Can you walk down to the mill with me? I want to show
you something.”
“Glad to,” said Moran, rising.
The older man attempted casual talk as they went along, but Jim’s
answers were monosyllabic, even brusk. Moran studied the young man’s
face out of the corner of his eye, wondering what was in the wind. He
was puzzled, uneasy, and he ceased his conversation and speculated on
possibilities.
Jim led him round to the rear of the mill. At the fire-room door he
paused and called, “Kowterski!”
Presently a bulky figure emerged from the gloom that was beyond the
doorway. The man was big, with a clumsy bigness, not so tall as Jim, but
heavier by fifty pounds. He came forward slowly.
“Here,” said Jim. “Come here.”
Kowterski recognized Jim and ducked his head.
“Evenin’, boss,” he said, then looked into Jim’s face. Something he saw
was disquieting, for he halted, took a step backward, started to raise
his hands.
Putting the weight of his body into the blow, Jim struck him. Kowterski
stumbled, went down. He lay still an instant where he had fallen, then
wallowed to his knees and remained in that position, mumblingly ridding
his mouth of blood and teeth.
“Git!” said Jim.
Kowterski rose, wavering, turned, and ran stumblingly away into the
darkness.
Jim turned to Moran. “Good night,” he said, shortly.
“You had something to show me,” said Moran, thrown from his habitual
poise.
“That was it,” Jim said, and disappeared into the fire-room.
CHAPTER XIII
That night Jim patrolled the mill in the place of the watchman whose
resignation he had accepted in front of the fire-room door. Through the
long, dark hours he had time and quiet for reflection. His mind was
stimulated by the occurrences of the day; he was aware of a clarity of
vision, a straightness of thought, a satisfying concentration. His
problem, in all its intricate difficulties, lay plain before him. He
fancied he had read astutely his enemies’ plans; his own plans began to
take form.
Against Welliver and the Clothespin Club he would have to defend himself
by business makeshifts and financial strategy. Them he did not
underestimate nor did he exaggerate their menace. To defend himself
against Moran his best course was to attack. It would now become his
business to seek for a point of weakness, and there to deliver his first
blow.
It was common talk that Moran was reaching out ambitiously. His former
holdings had been considerable; now the affairs which he seemed to
control were of magnitude. He had traveled from the one to the other in
a short space, a space so short that Jim felt sure it had not been
sufficient to multiply his fortune. It forced itself upon Jim that Moran
must have spread himself out thinly to cover so much ground. In that
case there must be a point where he had spread himself with dangerous
thinness. That area, Jim thought, he must find. There, he said to
himself, he must strike.
It was daylight when he left the mill and trudged wearily toward his bed
at the widow’s. On his way he met John Beam, who regarded him with
amazement.
“Up kind of early, ain’t you?” asked Beam.
“No, just a bit late to bed,” Jim said, with a grin of boyishness. “By
the way, you’ll have to get a new watchman to take Kowterski’s place. I
took it last night.”
“What’s the matter with him?”
“When he left,” said Jim, a trifle grimly, “I thought of advising him to
go to the dentist’s.”
He looked down at his bruised, abrased knuckles. Beam’s eyes followed
his employer’s and the man grinned with sudden comprehension.
“It was him, eh?” he asked.
Jim nodded. “I won’t be down till afternoon.”
Beam walked on his way, chuckling. Presently he encountered Nels Nelson
and recounted what he had learned, with certain amendments and surmises
of his own, ending with a special word regarding Jim.
“Some boss,” he said, delightedly. “I’ve had a few bosses, but Sudden
Jim he’s the boy for my money.” Which would have pleased Jim exceedingly
had he overheard it.
Jim devoured the breakfast the widow had ready for him, and went off to
bed. He went to sleep with the satisfying consciousness that it was now
open warfare between him and Moran. What he had done last night was both
a declaration of war and an eloquent expression of his opinion of the
man. He knew Moran would be able to translate it correctly.
It was after one o’clock when Jim awoke, but he found the widow had kept
his dinner warm for him.
“’S my experience,” she said, severely, “that folks gits more for their
money sleepin’ nights than daytimes.”
“I was behaving myself, Mrs. Stickney. Honestly I was. At regular rates
I earned two dollars watching in the mill.”
“I was kind of disap’inted in you when you didn’t come home at all. But,
‘Boys will be boys,’ says I, ‘which won’t prevent my speakin’ my mind to
him if he hain’t ready with a good excuse, which mostly young men is
ready with and ain’t usually believed; but what kin a body do about
it?’”
“I hope you’ll do nothing rash,” Jim said, with specious soberness. “You
won’t put me out in the street, will you?”
“If it had been any of my husbands I’ll bet I’d ’a’ knowed the reason
why,” she said, and disappeared into the kitchen, with an aggrieved air.
Jim went out smiling; somehow the widow’s threatened scolding put him in
a better humor with the world. It was good to know that somebody in
Diversity had a real, friendly, motherly interest in him.
His way led past Zaanan Frame’s office. Zaanan was standing on the step.
“Afternoon,” said the old justice. “Hain’t much battered up as I kin
see.”
“I’m practically intact,” Jim said, gaily.
“Folks round town has it there was consid’able trouble to the mill last
night. You was reported laid up in bed with grievous injuries.
Calc’lated I’d come round to see you.”
“Nothing much. I just took Moran down to point out a circumstance to
him.”
“Moran? What’s he got to do with it?”
“Why,” said Jim, “I met him when I got back to town and invited him down
to the mill with me. I—er—rid myself of Mr. Kowterski in his presence
and left him to think it over. Haven’t seen him since.”
“He hain’t got any misgivin’s as to how you stand then, eh? You kind of
rubbed his face in it, didn’t you? Leetle bit abrupt, wasn’t you?”
“If there’s going to be a fight,” said Jim, “I want it to be a fight. No
sneaking under cover.”
“Call to mind that British general—what’s his name?
Bradley—Bradish—some sich thing. Didn’t pay no heed to a young feller
named Washington when he was goin’ to fight the Injuns. He come right
out bold to fight like you’re aimin’ to do. But did the Injuns? Wa-al,
accounts says not. They done consid’able sneaking and prowlin’ under
cover, and this general got all chawed up.”
“I didn’t want the man to think I was a fool.”
“Um! Shows you’re young, Jim. Hain’t no better way of gittin’ a strangle
holt on to a feller than by lettin’ him think you’re a fool. The s’prise
of findin’ out sudden that you hain’t comes nigh to chokin’ him.”
“Anyhow, it’s done,” said Jim.
“No argyin’ that p’int. I notice Moran didn’t leave town this mornin’
like he calc’lated to. What you figgerin’ on next? Looks like you run on
to some facts up the River Road.”
“I’m going to look for some more facts.”
“What kind of facts, son?”
“Moran’s got a thin spot. I want to find it.”
“Um! Thin spot. Calc’late I understand you. Figger he’s been spreadin’
his butter so thin that the bread won’t be covered enough somewheres,
eh? Maybe so. Maybe so. Ever see a map of the Diversity Hardwood
Company’s holdin’s?”
“No.”
“I got one. Had the Register of Deeds fix it up for me, thinkin’ it
might come in handy.”
Zaanan went to a cupboard and brought out a rolled map which he spread
on the table. It was marked off in sections. Those owned by the company
were blocked in with red ink.
“Nigh forty-five thousand acres,” said Zaanan.
Jim bent over the map. The Diversity Company’s property ran in two
irregular, serrated strips. Between the two portions was a sort of
strait nowhere marked with red.
“They’re cut in two,” said Jim. “Who owns the stuff between? Timbered,
is it?”
“As good hardwood as ever growed. B’longs to old Louis Le Bar. Run
between twenty and twenty-five thousand to the acre. And that’s
consid’able hardwood, son.”
“Logically the company ought to own it.”
“Logically it wants to, but old Louis won’t sell. Anyhow, he wouldn’t.”
Zaanan emphasized the last word significantly. Jim looked across the
table into the old man’s twinkling eyes, shrewd, kindly eyes belonging
to a man who had learned humankind by scores of years of meeting with
them in their adversities. Zaanan said no more, but rolled up his map.
“I take it,” said Jim, “that you’ve shown me a fact. One of the kind I
was looking for.”
“Folks says Opportunity knocks on a feller’s door,” said Zaanan. “Maybe
so, but more times it goes sneakin’ past his house quiet in the dark.
And sometimes it’s hard to catch as a greased pig.”
“Much obliged,” Jim said. “Where will I find Le Bar?”
“Stiddy, now. Stiddy. Before you pick up that animile be sure it’s a cat
and not a skunk. You’re one of them pouncin’ kind of young men. This
here’s a time to study first and jump afterward.”
Then an unusual thing happened. Dolf Springer burst in without knocking.
He was excited, greatly excited, or he never would have ventured, for
Zaanan’s office was sacred.
“Judge,” he panted, “what d’you think? They’ve up and done it. Didn’t
b’lieve they’d dast, but they did dast. They’ve up and announced Peleg
Goodwin to run ag’in you for justice of the peace.”
Zaanan eyed his henchman. “Git a breath, Dolf. Git a breath. Like’s not
you’ll suffocate. Hum! Peleg, eh?” He turned to Jim. “Seem like old
times,” he said; “hain’t had no opposition for the nomination in more ’n
twenty year. Peleg Goodwin, deacon by perfession.”
“I told you,” said Jim.
Zaanan peered at him briefly and grunted.
“I hain’t so young as I was wunst,” he said. “Maybe my powers is
flaggin’. Maybe this here is a spontaneous uprisin’ of the folks,
thinkin’ maybe it’s time I was put on the shelf. But, son, I don’t
hanker to go on no shelf—anyhow, not to make room for Peleg. But it was
bound to come some day. Folks likes change, and I’ve been mighty
permanent.”
The old man leaned back in his chair and looked beyond Jim and Dolf;
forgot them as his thoughts carried him back over the years. When he
spoke it was not to them, it was to the people, to his people, whom he
had served and ruled for more than a quarter of a century.
“Yes, folks,” says he, “what some of you is sayin’ is correct. I
calc’late I’m a boss. But if you was to look at my bank account or
search out my property you’d see I wasn’t that kind of a boss. I’ve run
things in this county ’cause I was more fitted to run ’em than you. I’d
have liked it if you’d ’a’ had the spunk and gumption to run things
yourselves. I’ve let you try it sometimes, and then had to clean up the
mess.
“Don’t think, folks, that all these years has been pleasure for me, nor
what I’d ’a’ picked out to do. No, siree! When I was younger there was
things I had ambitions about. I wanted to git somewheres and be
somethin’. But I hain’t had no time. I hain’t had no time to spare to
look after Zaanan Frame, owin’ to matters of yourn that was always
pressin’. Diversity wa’n’t no heaven when I took holt of it, but now
it’s a good place for man to live. I’ve made the laws respected and
obeyed; since I’ve been justice one man’s had as much chance in this
county as another.
“The days and nights I might ’a’ spent buildin’ up Zaanan Frame I’ve
spent buildin’ up you. But I guess you’re tired of it. If it was a good
man and a true man and a man worthy of trust I calc’late I could step
out of the way. There’s times when I git mighty tired. But not for
Peleg. Dolf,” he said, sharply, “I guess we’ll have to show Peleg and
the feller that’s puttin’ him up to this some real politics.”
“You bet!” said Dolf.
“It’s Moran,” Jim said; but the statement was half a question.
“He’s the citizen,” said Zaanan.
“They’ll try to get you in the caucus.”
Zaanan nodded. “Dolf,” said he, “if you was goin’ out to talk about
this, what would you be sayin’?”
“That we was goin’ to roll up our sleeves and lick the pants off’n ’em,”
said Dolf, belligerently.
“Don’t calc’late you’d say I was perty hard hit? Eh? Sort of insinuate
the blow bore down on my threescore and ten year? Nor that there didn’t
seem to be scarcely any fight left in me?”
“Dummed if I—” began Dolf. Then he stopped and looked at Zaanan. “Guess
maybe that’s about what I’d say,” he responded, presently.
“G’-by, Dolf,” said Zaanan.
“G’-by, Judge,” said Dolf.
“Tain’t only me,” said Zaanan, after a time, “it’s the sheriff and the
prosecutor and the circuit judge—the whole kit and b’ilin’ of us. There
won’t be a decent official left in the county. Law and justice’ll be
bought and sold and traded in like so much farm produce.”
“I want to help if I can,” said Jim.
“Calc’late I’ll need what help I kin git. Moran don’t usually start a
job he can’t see his way to finish. I’ll call on you when you’re needed.
Louis Le Bar lives four mile to the west. How’s things at the widder’s?
Do consid’able cacklin’ over you, does she?” He stopped and scratched
his head and appeared to ponder. “Say, young feller,” he said, in a few
moments, “what’s your special grudge ag’in Moran? Tain’t jest his
business dealin’s with you. It’s him you want to git at, ree-gardless.
What’s he done to you?”
“There’s a girl up at Mrs. Stickney’s—” Jim began, slowly.
“Um!” grunted Zaanan, and his eyes twinkled. “Moran hain’t in no
position to cut you out with a girl. He’s got more wife ’n he knows what
to do with now.”
Jim felt himself flushing. He had not connected Marie Ducharme with
himself in the way Zaanan connected her. He had not considered his
hatred of Moran as prompted by jealousy, nor had he looked on Moran as a
rival. It was a new idea to him. He considered it. What interest had he
in Marie? Did he even like her? He had fancied he disliked her for her
sullenness, her rashness, for the bitterness of her temper toward the
world. She was all somber shadows or lurid flame; there was no rosiness
of dawn, no brightness of noontime, no peaceful, pure light as of the
stars.
When Jim had thought of the woman who was to share his life he had
pictured her as bright with star-brightness. He would stand something in
awe of her, yet her brightness would not be cold, aloof—not cold moon
rays. It would be tender, glowing, throbbing, but, above all, pure,
inspiringly pure. Marie knew evil. Her discontent had seen its beckoning
finger; she had felt the persuasive touch of its hand on her arm—and
had not fled in horror. She eyed it cynically, plumbing its
possibilities. Jim’s girl would have felt herself indelibly smirched by
thoughts that Marie gave willing housing to. Withal, what did he think
of her? What was his interest in her? He could not answer. He dared not
answer himself, for he found himself contemplating her with fascination.
There was an appeal to her. Her possibilities were magnificent. He found
himself wishing for her presence, for the sight of her movements of
grace, the sound of her voice, the vivid life desire that lay in her
eyes.
“Moran takes her to the top of a high mountain and shows her the
kingdoms of the world,” he said, in a hard voice. “He offers them to
her.”
“And you’re afraid she’ll accept?”
“She hates Diversity; life discontents her. She is bored. Moran plans
deliberately, adds lure to lure. If he catches her in the mood—”
“Interestin’ girl, eh? Talk intelligent? Good company?”
“She can be if she chooses.”
“Ever try to git her to choose?”
“She doesn’t like me.”
“Huh! Hain’t much in the way of excitement in Diversity, but pleasure’s
where you look for it hard enough. I call to mind enjoyin’ buggy rides.
Ever try to make things pleasant for Marie?”
“No.” Jim said it with a guilty feeling.
“My experience,” said Zaanan, “is that the run of girls prefers a
decent, entertainin’ young man to a bad old one. In gen’ral my notion is
folks’d rather be good than bad, rather pick out right than wrong. Buggy
hire don’t come expensive.” The old fellow eyed Jim with a twinkle.
Jim returned Zaanan’s look; comprehension came to him.
“Judge Frame,” he demanded, “did you send me to Mrs. Stickney’s because
Marie Ducharme was there?” The twinkle in his eye answered Zaanan’s.
“Was I just a checker you were moving in your game?”
“It’s my policy,” said Zaanan, “to git as many young checkers as I could
moved safe into the king row of marriage.”
“But she dislikes me.”
“Hain’t heard you say you was prejudiced ag’in her. Ever ask her if she
disliked you? Um! Better try a few buggy rides first. Kin you drive with
one hand?”
“I believe,” said Jim, “you’d try to regulate the sex of Diversity’s
babies.”
“If I calc’lated it’d benefit the town I dun’no’ but I’d kind of look
into the matter. G’-by, Jim!”
CHAPTER XIV
As the days went by Jim Ashe acquired a marked aversion to the upper
right-hand drawer of his desk. For it contained the unpaid bills of the
Ashe Clothespin Company. When Jim came the drawer had been empty; now it
looked as if he would have to add an annex to care for the overflow.
There were supply bills, machinery bills, stock bills. And Jim did not
dare to pay them, for his account at the bank was running perilously
low. Bills may be put off, but the pay-roll must be met on the minute.
From nothing the unsecured indebtedness climbed to five thousand, to ten
thousand dollars. Much as it grieved Jim to see discount days pass with
discounts not taken, it grieved Grierson more. He had served the company
for many years. Never before in his experience had it failed to discount
its bills—and to a bookkeeper of Grierson’s type discounts are sacred.
Grierson’s type of mind would borrow money at six per cent. to take a
two-per-cent. discount.
Finally statements began to arrive, some accompanied by letters setting
forth in the polite verbiage of the business world that the creditor
would be glad to have the company’s check “for this small amount at its
convenience.” Dunning letters! Grierson was shocked. He blushed as he
bent over his ledgers. The Ashe Clothespin Company had to be dunned as
if it were a dubious individual with an overlarge bill at the corner
grocery.
Jim was not yet the complete business man, but he did discover that
certain larger creditors were willing to accept notes for the time,
notes bearing interest at six per cent. Somehow it relieved his anxiety
to issue this paper. At any rate, it postponed the day of reckoning in
each case for three or four months. But Grierson was bitterly ashamed.
He regarded it as such a makeshift as an unstable enterprise would avail
itself of to ward off insolvency. Jim caught the old bookkeeper looking
at him accusingly. Such things had never come to pass in his father’s
day.
Yet these were the very things Clothespin Jimmy had predicted. He had
told Jim there would be sleepless nights and anxious days; he had
confessed to milking the business. Now Jim appreciated what his father
meant. With the fifty thousand dollars which Clothespin Jimmy had
subtracted from the assets the company would be as sound as the Bank of
England.
What worried Jim more than the accumulation of bills was the failure to
make shipments as rapidly as the necessities required. Where he should
have shipped a car-load a day he had been able to bill out an average of
less than four cars a week. Customers clamored to have their orders
filled; cancellations were threatened; yet the mill failed to produce as
it should produce. Somewhere something was wrong. Clothespin-machines
that ought to have made their eighty five-gross boxes a day did not
climb above sixty. Total shipments that should have amounted to thirty
thousand dollars a month faltered and failed at fifteen or sixteen
thousand. In short, he was spending every week a great deal more money
than he was earning.
Much of this, he knew, was due to breakdowns caused by Kowterski; some
of it to poor timber; some to timber spiked by Kowterski’s brother. But
aside from that, changes had to be made in machines; the mill did not
run smoothly. Where construction should have ceased to lay its expense
on the company it continued to demand its thousands of dollars every
month.
But Kowterski was gone. Jim did not believe Moran would venture to send
down more spiked timber. The mill was slowly but surely rising to a
point of efficiency. Jim was confident in it; he placed full dependence
on Nels Nelson, his millwright, on Beam, his superintendent. He knew
they were doing their intelligent best and that their worries stood
shoulder to shoulder with his own. Given time, he would be firm on his
feet; given capital to carry him through this dubious period, and the
company would pay bigger dividends, reach a more stable credit than it
had ever before enjoyed. But the time and the capital!
In his heart he knew that if one creditor lost faith and brought
pressure to bear, the whole edifice would come down in ruin.
Construction, rebuilding, repairs, had devoured the money that should
have paid bills. Bills had multiplied by reason of supplies necessary
for construction. One thing was essential—construction must cease. Men
employed in construction must be laid off.
“Grierson,” he said, “make me a statement of our condition—a full
statement; one that will show everything and show it truly. I’m going to
see if there isn’t somebody in the world who will appreciate being told
the whole uncolored truth.”
With this statement in his pocket Jim went to the city to its largest
bank.
“I’m Ashe, of the Ashe Clothespin Company up at Diversity,” he told the
president, “and I’m in a hole. I’ve got to have some money.”
“We’ve got lots of it,” the president said, genially, “if you can show
us. Let’s look into the hole you’re in and see.”
Jim gave him the statement; it was fully, minutely itemized. Every debit
was shown in full; no credit was inflated. The banker studied it half an
hour, nodding now and then.
“Would you attach your name to that statement?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Jim.
“You believe you can make money?”
“I know it.”
“Show me,” said the banker, and Jim showed him for an hour. He gave
production figures, costs, prices, profits.
“It’s a good statement, a sound statement,” the banker said. “You have
no quick assets—that’s bad. That demand-paper I don’t like; but
otherwise—otherwise it is a very creditable statement.”
Jim was astonished.
“How much do you want?” the banker asked.
“Twenty-five thousand dollars,” Jim said, hesitatingly.
“I guess we can fix that up. The board meets at noon. Can you come in
and tell them your story?”
“Certainly.”
“You believe twenty-five thousand dollars will bring your mill to
efficiency and carry you to a point where your own sales will take care
of expenses?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“Come in at twelve, then, and we’ll see.”
Jim returned at twelve and repeated his facts to the assembled board.
Before they broke up Jim had given them the company’s note for
twenty-five thousand dollars, had that amount on deposit in the bank,
and a book of blank checks under his arm.
“We’ve passed this loan,” said a white-haired old gentleman, “because we
like the moral risk. Your statement was fair; what you have said to us
was spoken as an honest man speaks. You seem to have gotten a dollar of
value for every dollar you have put into this mill, and we hope you’ll
win out. We believe you will or we wouldn’t be lending you our money.
You haven’t evaded a question; you haven’t held anything back. You’ve
confessed to us that you thought you were in a bad hole, which is a poor
argument for a borrower to bring forward. Maybe we’d have lent you on
the security of the mills; maybe not. What we’ve done is to lend it on
the security of you. I say this to you because it must give you pleasure
to hear it and because it gives me pleasure to be able to say it. I
cannot say such things as often as I wish. Now go to it, young man, and
lick the stuffing out of that other crowd.”
Jim went out, his head in a pink cloud, his feet treading something
lighter than mundane pavement. Why, they had not thought he was in a
hole at all! The things Grierson and he had looked on as scarcely
creditable makeshifts were approved as sound business, and they had
given him money. How easy money was to get! It astonished him. Thirty
thousand dollars he had borrowed from the Diversity Bank, with no
difficulty; twenty-five thousand more poured into his purse from the
City Bank, with compliments attached. His policy had won. He had found
some one who appreciated being told the whole uncolored truth. After
all, the world had not trampled its ideals into the mire of
money-chasing. Even to-day the sound things of life commanded a market
value. Business men, in high places of trust, business men of tested
capacity, placed the moral before the material risk.
The president of the bank had said, “I would rather lend a known
honorable man money on doubtful security than to venture a loan to a
dubious man on Government bonds.”
So Jim brought back from the city more than money. He brought back a
renewed, an increased faith in the virtue of mankind. It was an asset
not to be despised. The mighty hand of business reached out to
encourage, to help with concrete aid, the honest man. It withheld its
support, even though ample security were offered, from the man whose
honor was dubious. Therefore, this modern god of business was a virtuous
god. If evil were committed in its name the god itself was not smirched
save in the eyes of the ignorant; if false sacrifices were offered to it
by charlatans and liars and cheats, by jack priests of commerce, the god
was not more dishonored than is the God of Israel by horrors that have
been committed in His name.
As Jim rode home on the train his first feeling of elation dwindled.
Doubt returned. He weighed the sides of his ledger against each other
and determined all was not yet secure. How could it be secure when he
had but added to his liability the not inconsiderable sum of twenty-five
thousand dollars? Part of his debts he could pay. The balance must wait,
for he could not divest himself of ready money, nor would the reserve he
could set aside last forever.
The demand-note of thirty thousand dollars reared itself as a threat,
assumed the guise of a poised bird of prey biding its moment. No, he was
not free from the chains of his difficulties. His competitors—he
thought of them as enemies—were as yet strong, untouched, unready for
peace. They were capable of striking, would strike if a telling blow
could be launched. There was Michael Moran.
The task of defending his own was just begun; the feat of bringing his
enemies to overtures of peace was distant from accomplishment; and again
there was Michael Moran. It was Jim’s first contact with that black
spirit called hatred. He hated Michael Moran because it was inevitable
he should do so, because Michael Moran was the exponent of all things at
the remotest pole from Jim’s ideals.
With something like consternation he admitted to himself that he hated
Michael Moran because the man’s life orbit had touched with pitch the
life of a woman who had assumed preponderating importance in Jim’s
universe.
As he alighted from the train at Diversity he saw Marie Ducharme as he
had first seen her weeks ago. She stood motionless, a statue with lines
of loveliness surmounted by a face of hopeless discontent. In her eyes
was the look of hunger, like that of the starving woman in the
bread-line. She gazed after the departing train as one might gaze after
a hope dispelled.
Jim walked toward her. She saw him and nodded coolly.
“School’s out early,” he said.
“It’s Saturday,” she replied, shortly.
She turned away from the depot, no cordiality in her manner, but Jim was
not to be rebuffed. He kept at her side.
“Since I have been here,” he said, “I have never driven out along the
lake shore. They tell me it is a beautiful drive.”
“Yes,” she replied, without interest.
“The train was warm, the dust got into my throat. Seems as if I were
filled with it. All the way I kept thinking of expanses of clean water
and of breezes off the lake. Won’t you extend our truce to a drive out
there with me this evening?”
She turned to him with a queer, abrupt, birdlike, startled movement.
There was no pretense about it, she was surprised, jolted so that one
peeped for an instant through her mask of sullenness to the loneliness,
the yearning within. The crack closed instantly.
“Why do you ask me?” she demanded. “You don’t like me.”
“I asked you because I want very much to have you go. And I do not
dislike you.”
“Everybody does.”
“I can’t speak for everybody, but I doubt it. You—you have a way of
shouldering folks off, of retiring behind the barbed wire. Folks would
be willing enough to like you if you’d let them.”
She pondered this and shook her head slightly.
“Part of what you say is true. There aren’t many people here I want to
like me. Haven’t you lived here long enough to see that the people who
stay here are the culls, the weak ones? Is there a young man or a young
woman here with gumption? Just as soon as a boy amounts to a row of
pins, gets an education or has ambition, he goes away. It is the same
with the girls. The desirable go, the other sort stay. This is a
backwater of life with nothing in it but human driftwood.”
Jim appreciated the insight of her words. She spoke with some
exaggeration, but with more sound truth. Her words might be a true
arraignment of the average small town, secluded, with insufficient
outlet or inlet. They might apply to a thousand villages in Michigan, in
Vermont, in New York, in Tennessee. He understood her better than ever
before—indeed, here was his first step in comprehension.
“You’re lonesome,” he said, more to himself than to her.
“Yes,” she said, simply. “Lonesome—and bored, horribly bored.”
“I am lonesome, too. Lonesome, but not bored. I have too much on my mind
to be bored, which is better for me, probably. So won’t you mend my
lonesomeness for one evening by driving with me?”
“If you will say on your honor that you want me to,” she said.
Jim listened for a note of wistfulness in her voice; fancied he
distinguished it; was not certain he did.
“On my honor,” he said, half-laughingly, “I do want you.” Then, “Might
we not ask Mrs. Stickney to put up a lunch for us and start right away?”
Again she looked at him, for there had been a note of boyish eagerness
in his voice, and she smiled a very little. The smile was a revelation;
while it lasted her face was not the face of a discontented woman,
versed in the unpleasant things of the world, but of a girl, an eager,
wistful girl.
“I should like it,” she said.
How was Jim to know this was an event in Marie Ducharme’s life? How was
he to know it was her first social invitation from a man whom she cared
to have as a companion, who was fitted by intelligence, by ideals, to be
her companion? How was he to know that she had never driven with a young
man as other country girls drive with neighboring boys? She was excited.
Something welled up inside her that made breathing difficult, but that
was delightful.
Jim, too, was young. His experience had not taught him how hard is the
problem of the girl in the village—how marriage looms before her as the
sole end to be desired, and how difficult is a suitable marriage to
attain. He did not know how many girls with brains, with ideals, with
ambitions, have, to escape spinsterhood and its dreariness, allowed
themselves to be married to bumpkins, whose sole recommendation was
their ability to provide support. Nor did he know how many such girls
wore out their souls and their hearts in bitterness through lengthening
years. Such a fate Marie Ducharme was determined to escape.
CHAPTER XV
Jim and Marie Ducharme took the north road out of Diversity. There were
eyes that saw them and tongues that wagged when they were gone. Many
supper-tables were supplied with a topic of conversation that had been
barren without.
“Some day,” said Jim, “I’m going to have a farm, and raise red pigs and
black cows and white chickens.”
“Horrors!” exclaimed Marie; but there was just a note of playfulness in
her voice, the first Jim ever had heard there. “Some day I’m going to
have an apartment in a hotel, where there’s a Hungarian orchestra at
dinner, and servants to answer pushbuttons, and taxicabs in front that
take you to theaters. And I’m going to raise—well, not pigs and cows
and chickens.”
“I shall come in off my farm twice a year to eat with you while the
orchestra plays and the pushbuttons buzz and the taxicabs click off
exorbitant miles on their meters as we go to those theaters. Pigs and
cows and chickens wear, they’re durable company; the other thing is too
heady for me. Like champagne once in a while. But one prefers water as a
steady diet.”
“I’ve only read about champagne,” she said, the sullen mask dropping
across her face for an instant.
“I’m going to have my farm near the lake,” he said, “so I can lie with
my back against a tree and watch it. It is a hundred different lakes
every day, and I’d like to get acquainted with all of them.”
“And I’d like to be aboard the most palatial steamer that floats, and
ride past you, on my way to great cities.”
“I’d be happiest,” he said.
“I’d be—most excited,” she replied.
“The most pitifully bored faces in the world are to be seen in Broadway
cafes after midnight.”
“But don’t you like to be where things are flashing? Where life is
moving so fast you can hardly follow it? Doesn’t it spell happiness for
you to be where a new thrill is always at hand for the asking?”
“That sort of thing is bully for dessert, but I want it after a long,
satisfying meal of quiet contentment.”
“Such as you have in Diversity?”
“Such as can be had in Diversity,” he replied.
“What makes contentment? I should like to have it.”
“Contentment,” he said, slowly, selecting his words cautiously, “means
to me the quiet feeling of decency and satisfaction and restfulness that
comes to a man who is busy with a worth-while job. To have it fully
there must be a home, a real home with a wife in it, and lads, and a dog
and cat. All of them must be glad to see you come home at night, and
sorry to see you leave in the morning. To have it your wife must believe
in you more than you deserve, and you must trust her, and confide in
her, and advise with her on all your concerns, sure of her interest.
Yes, I think that is the indispensable element—marriage. The right sort
of marriage—the sort the majority of folks are blessed with.”
“It all sounds rather tame,” she said. “Marriage. Must I marry to be
contented?”
“To be so perfectly.”
She laughed shortly. “I shall depend on a steady routine of excitement
to make me forget I’m not contented,” she said. “Marriage!” She spoke
almost savagely. “Of course marriage is the solution of everything.
Women are taught to look forward to it from the cradle as—as their
means of support. We’re trained to please men; we’re dressed to attract
men; our whole lives are aimed at men. We catch one at twenty or at
twenty-five, and our career is over. We’ve succeeded in life. Then we
live on till sixty.”
“You’ve read only the introduction to the story,” he said, soberly. “The
book doesn’t begin to get interesting until you pass that.”
“Very well, then. I must marry to be contented. But whom? Diversity
isn’t swarming with husbands of any sort. Among the few available male
inhabitants, how many would you pick out as welcome husbands for a girl
with ambitions above turnips and the number of eggs a day? If you were a
girl, with reasonable intelligence, reasonable capabilities to
appreciate what we consider it cultured to appreciate, what man here
would you pick out from Diversity’s young men who wouldn’t be a constant
horror to you?”
“You’re not limited to Diversity.”
“But that is exactly what I am.”
There was no obvious answer to this, and Jim drove on in silence. He
sensed something of the girl’s position; appreciated, as he had not
before appreciated, the feeling almost of despair that came over her as
she looked into the future and found it gray, without gleaming lights or
frightening shadows. She was a bird imprisoned among frogs.
Presently they came to a little bridge over a stream which added its
little flow to the volume of the lake. It was one of those reed-bordered
streams which travel with a soothing lilt, winding along leisurely,
contentedly.
It was not such a boisterous stream as the speckled trout loves; it was
the sort where tiny turtles sun themselves on root or log, to slide off
with a startled splash as you approach. Cows would have loved to wade in
it of a hot day.
“Wouldn’t you rather be a stream like that,” Jim asked, “than to go
plunging and leaping and bruising yourself down the rocks of a
mountainside?”
She smiled, but did not answer. The picture had soothed her; it lay
gently on her spirit, softening her mood.
“There’s a cat-boat,” Jim exclaimed. “Wonder if we can’t borrow it.
It’ll be just a cat-boat to me, but you can turn it into your palatial
steamer, if you want
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