THE greatest blessing that Providence can bestow upon a young man is
self-knowledge. Success comes to those who know their own powers while
it is yet day. To learn for the first time at eighty that you have
immense capabilities in any given direction is futile. To possess that
knowledge at twenty is better than to own a gold mine. It is the old
adage exemplified: “If age but could; if youth but knew.”
Steele’s two years’ management of the Burdock route should have given
him confidence, but his bargain with Rockervelt showed it had not done
so. If he had been shrewd enough to allow Rockervelt himself to name the
compensation that should have gone with his new position, he would have
made a much better financial deal than that which he accomplished. If
he had then added a little shrewd bargaining, he might have bettered
himself still further, but John Steele had endured an early life of
poverty, and the salary he now received seemed to him munificent.
The same qualities of under-estimation which caused Rockervelt to
chuckle with satisfaction at a sharp bargain driven interfered with the
young man’s success as new division superintendent of the Midland. When
he was duly installed, his immediate chief, T. Acton Blair, quaked.
Blair was well acquainted with the ruthlessness of Rockervelt, and he
trembled for his own position. He wondered how much Rockervelt knew. Was
he aware of Blair’s years of tyranny over the capable Philip Manson?
Did he know how nearly the premier train of the road had come to being
wrecked through the incompetence of a relative of his own, whom he had
forced into the train despatched office in spite of the protests of
Philip Manson? Now Manson was gone to New York, promoted to a position
of greater power and influence than any he had hitherto held, and
instead of Blair’s being allowed to place some favourite in the vacant
office, Rockervelt himself had intervened to appoint the very man
who had saved the Pacific Express: a man whom Blair had practically
dismissed two years before. If Blair possessed, as Rockervelt alleged,
an acute brain in other directions than that of practical railway
management, this brain was deeply perturbed when its owner, with
over-done warmth, welcomed the new division superintendent of the
Midland on his return to the great company. Innocent John Steele
accepted this cordiality at its face value, and his own kind heart
prompted him to let bygones be bygones, and to make the new condition
of things as pleasant as possible for his nominal chief. At first this
bewildered Blair; then he came to the conclusion it was merely deep
craft on the part of the young man, and finally he reached the fact that
Steele was quite honestly endeavouring to do his duty, and trying
to please his superiors, a fact which a more alert mind would have
assimilated months before. When, after weeks of doubt and fear, Blair at
last realised that John Steele had in reality buried the tomahawk;
that he had no knife concealed up his sleeve; that he was honest,
straightforward and capable as his predecessor had been, the general
manager felt like a man who had been taken advantage of. Instead of
being thankful that his former fear was groundless, his resentment
burned all the brighter, and he brought his genius for intrigue into
play, determining to trip up the young man on the first favourable
opportunity. But while he waited for that opportunity, he resumed the
old tactics which had been so successful in pushing Philip Manson to a
resignation, and proceeded to make John Steele’s place as uncomfortable
for him as possible. There is no tyranny like the tyranny of a coward,
and before John Steele had been six months in his new position, he
learned what it was to live under the heel of a despot.
Nor did he enjoy the consolation which must have sustained Philip
Manson, who possessed the enthusiastic loyalty of his subordinates.
Manson was a born master, who had risen step by step into the position
of division superintendent. Added to this, he was quiet, taciturn and
unemotional. John Steele, on the other hand, was the embodiment of
good-fellowship; talkative, humourous, genial; who believed every one
around him as honest and whole-hearted as himself. But there were those
beneath him who had regarded themselves quite properly in the line of
promotion, and whose ambitions had been stirred when it became known
that Philip Manson was about to retire. Then, to their chagrin and
dismay, an outsider had been chosen for the place who, two years before,
was little better than an office boy among them, and their friendliness
for him at that time had been merely a tribute to his unfailing good
nature; his willingness to help. This universal liking, however, was
perhaps unconsciously tinged with contempt. Their feeling was rather
admiration for a joyous soul than respect for a young fellow of talent.
No one had an inkling of Steele’s real merit except Philip Manson, and
this silent man never volunteered information. When Blair wished Manson
summarily to dismiss Steele, he got information he had not expected
about the latter. When Rockervelt telegraphed regarding Manson’s
successor, he also received information, but Manson made no confidant
of any of his subordinates, and perhaps if one of them had been shrewd
enough to guess how good a man Steele was, that person might have
been thought worthy of the recommendation which the former division
superintendent had bestowed upon Steele.
When an insider is promoted, he not only steps into the vacant place,
but the one beneath him advances to the position he formerly held, and
so it goes down along the line, until the lowest grade is reached. Each
man gets his little move upward, and universal joy is the result. But
when an outsider is brought in, he stops the move as effectually as a
jammed log arrests the progress of all the timber further up the stream.
Although the genial John met smiling faces among his subordinates, there
was nevertheless envy and hatred behind the smiles. Things began to go
wrong; he could not give his orders explicitly enough to be sure that
they would be understood. He met no open opposition, but the most
annoying things happened in spite of all his precautions. A little
harshness and injustice here would have acted as a tonic upon the whole
clan. If he had flung out of the office the first man who misapprehended
an order, whether that man were guilty or not, his path would have been
smoother from that time forward; but here his own proneness to blame
himself rather than to censure others was his worst enemy, and the
office became honeycombed with negligence, apathy, incompetence and
sullen insubordination. There was no sympathy to be expected from T.
Acton Blair; in fact, the stout man saw with secret satisfaction that
the division superintendent was not getting on. He would condole with
Rockervelt on this regrettable failure next time he met him, instilling
the poison very subtly, and assuming a tone of deep regret and
disappointment. Meanwhile, his whole attitude towards the young man had
changed. He was querulous and fault-finding; he magnified the failures,
and slighted the successes. John Steele found himself between the upper
and nether millstones that were grinding his nerves to rags. Day and
night he worked like a Trojan to bring the necessary order out of the
chaos that had somehow come to enshroud him, and underneath was the
gnawing distrust of his own endowment properly to fill the place to
which he had been appointed. He was working to the very limit of
his powers, and preparing for himself an inevitable breakdown. He
supplemented every one, instead of making every one supplement him.
It never occurred to him that the chaos against which he contended was
deliberate, for a railway business differs from any other on earth, in
that carelessness or neglect is juggling with men’s lives. A mistake
comparatively innocent in any other branch of commercial activity may
mean the massacre of a score of men and women on a railway. Many a night
he sat disconsolate in his office when every one else had gone, and
yearned for half an hour’s talk with Philip Manson. The whole difficulty
was not one which he could commit to writing, and even if he attempted
that, he might fail in making Manson understand the situation; a
situation so completely the reverse of that which had obtained during
Manson’s own reign. At last he determined to take a few days off, visit
New York, and consult with his former chief. This brought about his
first open conflict with T. Acton Blair, and then he weakly succumbed.
“Mr. Blair,” he said one day, after the formal morning’s interview was
at an end, “I’m going to take a run down to New York.”
“Oh, are you?” replied Blair. “For what purpose, may I ask?”
“I wish to talk with Philip Manson.”
“About what?”
“Well, about a great many things; about the general situation here, for
instance.”
“Offhand, I should say I am the proper person to consult on such a
subject,” said Blair, with some acidity.
“Of course,” replied Steele, mildly, “but you see, Man-son was my
predecessor. He has probably been through what I am going through now,
and I should like a few hints from him.”
“Who is to fill your place while you are away?”
“Johnson could do that.”
“Do you think he is competent?”
“Oh, quite competent.”
“Then can you explain why Mr. Rockervelt put you in the place of Manson,
if Johnson was capable of filling it?”
“You had better ask that question of Mr. Rockervelt,” suggested Steele,
his temper rising.
“I shall certainly do so if you leave your post. You are either
necessary here or you are not. If you begin to suspect that you are not
the man for the position, then you should resign.”
“I am the man for the position, Mr. Blair; still, even the best of men,
which I do not pretend to be, needs a little advice now and then, and I
intend to seek it from Philip Manson.”
“A man who knows his business neither seeks nor acts on advice. If you
go to New York you go in spite of my prohibition, and I shall take your
departure as an act of resignation, and proceed accordingly. I am either
general manager of this road or I am not.”
Now this latter phrase was one which Blair was exceedingly fond of
using, and it had done duty several times during Philip Manson’s
_régime_, who had invariably shown Mr. Blair in exceedingly few words
that, when it came to the point, he was not the autocrat he pretended to
be. Manson would have made an excellent poker-player. He could have been
beaten by better cards, but never by a bluff, and Blair’s pet phrase was
pure bluff.
“Oh, very well,” said John Steele, rising and leaving the table, while
his opponent raked in the chips. Steele did not know he had reached the
climax where a determined answer would have given him the game, nor did
he realise how disastrous was his defeat. A poltroon is a bad man to run
away from.
John Steele retreated to his own room, and a sweet smile overspread the
chubby face of the corpulent man he had left victorious. A week later
came the second encounter, which although it carried a second apparent
defeat for John Steele, proved, nevertheless, to be the most important
turning point of his life.
The division superintendent entered the general manager’s room with a
telegram in his hand. Blair, looking up, noticed the agitation of his
manner, and the paleness of his face.
“Mr. Blair, I have just received a telegram which says that my uncle is
dying. I wish to go to him, and intend to leave by to-night’s train. He
lives in the north of Michigan. I have therefore come to let you know
that I shall be absent for a few days, perhaps.”
Blair continued to gaze at him with a winning smile on his cherubic
face.
“Would it not be a simpler matter, Mr. Steele, if you were to write to
Philip Manson, and ask him to take a trip to his old home? You are a
member of his club, I understand, and could quite readily hold your
conference there if either of you did not care to discuss the state of
affairs in this office.”
“I don’t understand what you mean, Mr. Blair.”
“Oh, yes, you do. The dying uncle device, or the funeral of a relative
device, have all been tried upon me before. I am proof against such
schemes, and really, Mr. Steele, I paid you the compliment of believing
you to be more original.”
“Do you think I am lying to you?” asked John indignantly, taking a step
nearer the general manager’s table.
“We don’t call it lying, Mr. Steele; we may term it diplomacy, or what
you like. A week ago you requested leave of absence to consult Philip
Manson. I refused my permission. Now you come to me with the story of
a dying relative. I am bound to believe you, although I made a friendly
suggestion a moment since which apparently you do not intend to accept,
so we will get back to the original situation. Your uncle is very ill,
and I am very sorry. There are doubtless at this moment many excellent
persons in extremity, yet nevertheless the trains of the Midland must
run, and even if Mr. Rock-ervelt or myself were removed to a better
land, not a wheel would cease turning on our account. Therefore, hoping
you will accept the expression of my deep sympathy, which I hereby
tender to you, I must nevertheless refuse to allow the office of
division superintendent to remain vacant for one hour.”
“But this is the only relative I have in the world,” protested John,
earnestly. “Here is the telegram I have received. Read it for yourself.”
Mr. Blair, still smiling, waved his stout hand gently to and fro, but
refused even to glance at the paper laid before him.
“I do not doubt in the least that the despatch comes from Michigan. I
can even guess that it is worded in the most urgent terms, and that the
signature is perfectly genuine. Nevertheless, Mr. Steele, it is better
we should understand each other. As I told you a week ago, if you
leave your position without my permission you will find that position
permanently filled on your return. This is a free country, and you
are entitled to go or stay as you please. If you hand me in your
resignation, as your predecessor did, I shall say to you as I said to
him, ‘Go, and prosperity be with you,’ but while you are a member of my
staff, you are under my orders. Do I make myself sufficiently plain?”
“Yes, you do,” replied John Steele, picking up his telegram and leaving
the room.
Once more at his own desk he sat there for a long time with his head in
his hands. At first it was his determination to resign forthwith. The
situation was growing as intolerable for him as it had been for his
predecessor, but the longer he thought over what had happened the more
he realised the impossibility of surrender. If he resigned now, he left
the Rockervelt system a failure. He would be compelled to begin at the
foot of the ladder again, handicapped by practical dismissal; to strive
as an unsuccessful man, his years of experience counting for nothing.
But even if that consideration did not harden his resolution to remain
where he was, the thought of his uncle would alone have been sufficient
to turn the balance. Bitterly he accused himself of his neglect of the
old man who, as he had just said, was his only relative on earth. While
he was escaping from the hopeless poverty in which they had both
lived, the struggle for existence had become so interesting that it had
obliterated the fact that Dugald Steele was still where he had left him,
and not a penny of money had the young man ever forwarded to him. Up to
the time his salary was made fifty dollars a week he had not only saved
no money but had run into debt. These obligations were now liquidated,
and he had a few hundreds in the bank; the nucleus, he hoped, of more to
follow. The old man had brought him up, after a fashion, allowing him to
go to school during the winter months, but every waking hour the uncle
forced the nephew to work almost beyond the limit of his youthful
powers, and at last had driven him forth with blows and cursings during
one of those periodical fits of temper which had made Dugald Steele a
terror to the neighbourhood. One letter, indeed, John had written to his
old home, when he got his situation at Hitchen’s Siding, but that had
remained unanswered, and he had taken it for granted that his uncle’s
anger was permanent. Nevertheless, the telegram showed that the uncle
had kept the letter, or remembered the address, for the despatch had
been sent to Hitchen’s Siding, and from there forwarded to John Steele’s
office in Warmington.
However, there was little profit in bemoaning a state of things he could
not remedy. It was certain that Blair would carry out his threat, if
Steele left his place without permission, so there was nothing for it
but to sit tight.
With a deep sigh the young man pulled himself together, drew toward him
a sheet of paper and wrote a letter that proved to be more important
than its wording would have led a casual reader to suspect.