It was a bright, fresh morning in November, the day after Dosia had
begun her journey, that Justin Alexander started out to take possession
of the office and factory. The departure from his old place was a thing
of the past, the preparations for entering into the new business were at
an end. Every evening during the last month had been taken up in
consultations with Leverich and Martin, and every other spare minute had
been given to looking over the furnishings and mechanism of the factory
and visiting or writing letters to people connected with the project. It
was sheer joy to him to exercise a grasp of intellect hitherto perforce
in abeyance, and he did not see the frequent glance of satisfaction
which his two backers often gave each other across the table as he
propounded his views. The people in the old place had been good to him;
his leaving had been celebrated with a dinner and honest expressions of
regret from his former companions. The only one he had been really sorry
to leave was Callender; it would seem odd not to have him at his elbow
any more.
But all the preliminaries were finished, and he was master now. For a
man who has barely lived each month upon his earnings, to have fifty
thousand dollars in the bank subject to his order is a fairly
pleasurable sensation. Justin had always inveighed against the idea that
character, like other products, is controlled by wealth, but he
insensibly put on a bolder front as he buttoned himself into his
overcoat and walked from the ferry to his office. The morning had
certainly developed a larger manner in him. The ease of affluence is
first assimilated in thought, which acts upon the muscles. Justin did
not know that the buoyancy of a golden self-confidence had communicated
itself to the very way in which he nodded to a friend or shouldered his
closed umbrella, or that his step upon the sidewalk had a new ring in
it. It is the transmutation of metal into the bloodthe revivifying
power which the seekers after the philosophers stone recognized so
thoroughly.
He had come to town on an earlier train than he was accustomed to take,
and the people whom he passed were not familiar to him. There was a
newness to the bright day, even in that, that marked the novel
undertaking; the air was cold, but the light was golden. Men went by
with yellow chrysanthemums pinned to their coats and a fresh and eager
look upon their faces. The clang of the cable-cars had an enlivening
condensation of sound in distinction to the hard rumble and jar of the
wagons, but all the noises were inspiriting as part of a great and
concentrated movement in which the day awoke to an enormous energyan
energy so pervading that even inanimate objects seemed to reflect it, as
a mirror reflects the expression of those who look upon it.
His way lay farther up-town than he had been wont to go, above the Wall
Street line of work and into that great city of wholesale industries
which stretches northward. The streets at this hour were new to him and
filled with new sights and sounds: the apple-stands at the corners,
being put in order for the day, the sidewalk venders with their small
wares, were fewer and of a different order from those he had been used
to seeing. The passers-by were different. There were a great many girls
in bright hats and shabby jackets, who talked incessantly as they
walked, and disappeared down side streets which looked dark and cold and
damp in contrast to the bright glitter of Broadway. He turned into one
of these streets himself, and walked eastward toward the river.
As it appeared to him to-day, so had it never appeared to him before,
and never would again. He might have been in a foreign city, so keenly
did he notice every detail. The street was filled at first with drays,
loading up with huge boxes from the big warehouses on each side, at the
entrances of which men in shirt-sleeves pulled and hauled at the ropes
of freight-elevators; then he came to grimy buildings in which was heard
the whir of machinery, and he caught a glimpse of men, half stripped,
moving backward and forward with strange motions. From across the street
came the busy rush of sewing-machines as some one threw up a window and
looked out, and a row of girls passed into view with heads bent forward
and bodies swaying shoulder to shoulder; beyond were men bending over,
pressing, and the steam from the hot irons on the wet cloth poured out
around them; and all these toilers seemed no beaten-down wage-earners,
but the glad chorus in his own drama of work. Between the factories
there began to show neglected narrow brick dwelling-houses, with iron
railings and mean, compressed doorways, fronted by garbage-barrels;
basement saloons; tiny groceries with bread in the windows and wilted
vegetables on the sidewalk, where women with shawled heads were grouped;
attenuated furnishing-stores for men, with an ingratiating proprietor in
the doorway. In the midst of this district, taking up a salient corner,
was the large and ornate building of a patent-medicine concern, towering
high into the air, and seeming to preach with lofty benevolence to those
below that to be truly respectable and happy you must be rich.
Beyond this the scene repeated itself with slight differencesthe
houses were not so many, and the factories gave place to warehouses
again. The influence of those tall masts at the foot of the street began
to be felt, although the signs as yet did not speak of oakum or ships
stores. Among the warehouses, however, was one brick dwelling that
attracted Justins particular attention, wedged in as it was between the
taller buildings on either side. It varied from the others he had seen
by the depths of its squalor. The stone steps were defaced and broken;
the windows as well as the arched fan-light over the entrancea relic
of bygone dayshad only a few jagged pieces of glass left; and a black
hallway was revealed to view through the open door. The windows were so
near the street that it was easy to see into the front rooman interior
so sordid and forbidding that Justin involuntarily paused to view it.
The room was empty. The walls had been covered once with a
brown-flowered paper which now hung from them in great patches, showing
the green mold beneath. Under the black marble mantelpiece, thickly
covered with white dust, was a grate piled high with ashes; ash-heaps
stood also out on the floor, flanked with empty black bottles and broken
remnants of furniture. In the background was a hideous black haircloth
sofa. Heaven only knows with what past it had been associated to give
that creeping feeling in the veins of the sober and practical man who
gazed at it; it seemed the outward and visible sign of ruin. The unseen
and abnormal still keeps its irrelevant and unexplained hold on the
human intelligence, with no respect of persons. It gave Justin a
momentary chill to think of passing this each day. Then he looked up,
half turning as he felt that some one was observing him, and met the eye
of a man who was walking on the other side of the street; he remembered
suddenly that they had been almost keeping pace together since he had
turned into this street from Broadway.
The smile of this unknown foot-farer spoke of a conscious comradeship
which surprised Justin, who held himself a little more stiffly and
hurried forward at a quicker pace to reach his destination, which was
now in sight. His eye approved the new paint and the air of decent
reserve which appertained to the building; the new sign at the side of
the hallway bore the legend of the typometer, with his name
conspicuously above. As Justin entered he turned again involuntarily,
and the man on the other side of the street, who was himself on the
point of entering a hallway, turned also. This time Justin smiled in
response. The opposite building, as he knew, bore a sign much resembling
his own, with the name of Angevin L. Cater upon it; the air of
proprietorship bespoke Mr. Cater himself. The meeting gave a welcome
pleasure to rivalry, and brought back the dew of the morning.
The offices were in the second story, his own especial one railed off
near the front windows and covered with a new green rug. To one side
were the compartments of his subordinates and the open desk-room of the
lower clerks; beyond these was the packing department of the factory;
from above was heard the ceaseless whirring and clicking of machinery.
The larger parts of the instrumentthe copper tubing and the steel
barswere bought in the rough, so to speak, and shaped to their proper
functions here, where, also, the more intricate portions were
manufactured.
The undertaking, briefly told, rested on the merits of a timing-machine
invented and patented some years before in Connecticut, and sold to a
manufacturer there, who had taken it as a side issue and failed properly
to exploit it. The right to it had changed hands several times, during
which it was pushed with varying energy, being finally domiciled in New
York. In the meantime other machines, differing slightly in
construction, had also been patented and put on the market in various
cities, none of them with any great success until the present moment.
Then the public began to wake up suddenly to the value of
timing-machines, and Leverich and Martin, organizers of corporations,
seized the opportunity of buying all the rights to the Warford Standard
Typometerso called because, in addition to measuring stated periods of
elapsed time, it mechanically produced a type-written statement of it.
The Warford, as the first invention, had some merits never quite
attained by the later ones, in the eyes of its present purchasers. They
said all it needed now was push.
Thousands of little books entitled Sixty Seconds with the Typometer
had been sent abroad in the last month, setting forth with attractive
brevity, and in large black print that could be read without glasses,
Why you wanted a typometer, Which was the best one to buy, and Where you
could buy it. Long articles advertising it appeared in the daily papers,
in which the sales of the machine reached an effective aggregate.
The business, in fact, showed signs of seriously forging ahead under the
renewed efforts of Leverich and Martin, and their portrayal of its
future was within the bounds of possibility. The foreman of the factory
was one of the original workmen, and some of the men had also been
associated with the machine for several years, so that the running-gear
ran with fair smoothness; the head bookkeeper and manager, an elderly
man, had also remained a fixture through all the fluctuations, and had
been the great dependence of the new purchasers; if he had possessed the
requisite mental capacity, it is doubtful whether Justins services
would have been needed at all.
As Justin went up to the factory floor on this morning, the foreman
stepped out from among the machinery to offer his greeting; he was a
slight man with deep-set, swiftly observant eyes and a mouth that
drooped at the corners; his sleeves were rolled up over his thin,
muscular arms.
To Justins pleasant good morning he responded, with a quick gleam of
pleasure in his eyes:
Good morning, sir. Im glad to see you here so early. Youve perhaps
heard of the big order that came in last night from Cincinnati.
No, said Justin; I came up here first. Thats good news, Bullen.
Yes, sir. Ive made a list of the stock well need as soon as we can
get it in, I sent it down to your desk, sir, a moment ago. Ill want to
see you later, Mr. Alexander, about taking on more men.
Very well, said Justin. His step was jubilant as he descended to the
office, to be greeted with the same congratulatory news from Harker, the
assistant manager.
And I think these letters mean more orders, Mr. Alexander, he said.
They did. The next mail brought more. As Justin opened them, one by one,
it was impossible not to feel the sharp thrill of mastery, of gratified
ambition. It was his efforts in the new line which were bringing in this
first harvest; all the time he had been outwardly listening to Martin
and Leverich, his mind had run steadily on its own gearing, he had
weighed their propositions and conclusions in a secret balance. He
meant, within due limits, to conduct this business as he thought best.
If orders came in every day like thisand why should they not? if not
now, at least in the near future
The atmosphere of the office was festal that day, imbued with the smell
of fresh varnish and new rugs. The complications that arise later on as
one gets down into the solid experience of an undertaking, hampered by
the work of yesterday and the future work of to-morrow, were beautifully
absent. Everything was clear and possible; everyone was busy, and the
master busiest of all. To write out checks for money which has been
furnished by some one else is a keen pleasure at the first blush; the
store and the coffers seem illimitable to him who has not earned it.
Afterwards
By the way, Harker, he asked once, in an interval of waiting, what is
the concern across the street?
Its much the same as ours, Mr. Alexander.