Very early Tuesday morning she drove to the Limited lease and got
MacAdams. He looked formidable in his good clothes, and now that he had
shaved the scrubby gray beard his chin had an even more obstinate line.
She talked to him in an easy and friendly manner, without mentioning
land. She must not waste her strength. There was a struggle before her
and a menace behind. She had opened a livery-stable account against
Clark & Hayward, who had never heard of her. The hotel, she knew, had
let her go only because she took no baggage and had told the clerk
casually that she would return to-morrow. The ticket to Ripley left
five dollars of the twenty that belonged to MacAdams. And every moment
that the sale was delayed might make it impossible to save Bert.
She sat smiling, listening to a tale of MacAdams' youth, when he was a
sea-faring man.
The train reached Fresno, and MacAdams's gaze rested with joy on leafy
orchards and vineyards and the cool green of alfalfa fields. She
perceived the effect upon him of that refreshing contrast with the
arid desert. Before they reached Ripley his mind would be adjusted to
a green land and ditches filled with running water. She had lost one
point.
Her attention concentrated upon the thoughts slowly forming in
his mind. Each word he spoke was an indication which she seized,
considered, turned this way and that, searching for the roots of it,
the implications growing from it.
The train was now running across a level plain covered with dry grass.
Desolation was written upon it, and small unpainted houses stood here
and there like periods at the end of sentences expressing the futility
of human hope. She smiled above a sinking heart. They alighted at
Ripley.
She had never seen the town before, and she saw now, with MacAdams's
eyes, a yellow station, several big warehouses, a wide dusty road into
which a street of two-story buildings ran at right angles. It was not
much larger than Coalinga. She looked anxiously for the agent from
Ripley Farmland Acres. That morning she had telegraphed him to meet her.
He came toward them and shook MacAdams' hand heartily. His name was
Nichols. He had a consciously frank eye, and a smooth manner. He
hustled them toward a dusty automobile whose sides were covered with
canvas advertisements of the tract, and put MacAdams into the front
seat beside him.
The machine, stirring a cloud of dust behind it, rattled down the
road between fields of dry stubble. She was ignored in the back seat.
Nichols had taken the situation out of her hands, and she did not
trust him. However, she could not trust herself, in the midst of her
uncertainties and ignorance.
Nichols talked too much and too enthusiastically. She was astounded by
his blindness. To her it seemed obvious that his words were of little
importance. It was what MacAdams said that mattered. He gave MacAdams
no silences in which to speak, and he appeared oblivious to the fact
that MacAdams, gazing contemplatively at the sky-line, said nothing.
They drove beneath an elaborate plaster gateway into the tract. Seventy
thousand acres of scorched dry grass lay before them, stretching
unbroken to a misty level horizon. Over it was the great arch of a hot
sky.
The machine carried them out into the waves of dry grass like the
smallest of boats putting out into an ocean of aridity. When it stopped
the sun poured its heat upon them and dust settled on perspiring hands
and faces. Nichols unrolled a map and talked with galvanic enthusiasm.
He talked incessantly and his phrases seemed worn threadbare by
previous repetition. MacAdams said nothing, and Helen tried to devise a
way to ask Nichols to stop talking.
His manner had dropped her outside of consideration, save as a woman
for whom automobile-doors must be opened. She saw that he felt her
presence as a handicap in this affair between men; he apologized for
saying "damn," and his apology conveyed resentment. He was losing her
the sale, and she could not interfere. Her only hope of saving Bert
rested on this sale. She controlled a rising desperation, and smiled at
him.
They got out of the machine and waded through dusty grass, searching
for surveyor's posts. Nichols pointed out the luxuriant growth of wild
hay, asked MacAdams what he thought of that, continued without a pause
to pour facts and figures upon him, heedless that he received no reply.
They got into the car again and Nichols, pulling a pad of blanks from
his pocket, tried to make MacAdams buy a certain piece of land then
and there. He attacked obliquely, as if expecting to trap MacAdams
into signing his name, and MacAdams answered as warily. "Well, I have
seen worse. And I have seen better." He lighted his pipe and listened
equably. He did not sign his name.
They drove further down the road and got out again. Helen caught
Nichols' sleeve, and though he shook his arm impatiently she held him
until MacAdams had walked some distance away and picked up a lump of
soil.
"Leave him to me, please," she said.
"What do you know about the tract?"
"Just the same, I wish you'd give me a chance, please."
"Do you want to sell him or don't you? I know how to handle prospects."
They spoke quickly. Already MacAdams was turning his head.
"He's my prospect. And, by God! I'm going to sell him or lose him
myself!" Her words shocked her like a thunderclap, but the shock
steadied her. And Nichols' overthrow was complete. He said hardly a
word when they reached MacAdams.
Almost in silence they examined that piece of land. MacAdams walked
to each of its corners; he looked at the map for some time; he asked
questions that Nichols answered briefly. He pulled up clumps of grass
and looked at the earth on their roots. At last he walked back to the
machine and leaned against it, lighting his pipe leisurely and looking
out across the tract. The silence was palpitant. When she saw that he
did not mean to break it, Helen asked, "Shall we look at another piece?"
"No. I've seen enough."
They got into the machine, and this time Nichols was alone on the front
seat. They drove back toward the tract office. The sun was sinking, and
a gray light lay over the empty fields. Helen felt herself part of it.
She had lost, and nothing mattered any more. She had no more to lose.
She kept up the hopeless effort, but the approaching end was like the
thought of rest to a struggling man who is drowning.
"What do you think of it, Mr. MacAdams?"
"Well--I have seen worse."
"Were you satisfied with the soil?"
"I wouldn't say anything against it."
"Would you like us to show you anything more of the water system?" What
did she care about water systems!
"No."
The machine stopped before the tract office. They got out.
"Your man's no good. He's a looker, not a buyer," Nichols said to her
in an aside.
"He has money and he wants land," she answered wearily.
"We'll have another go at him. But it's no use."
They went into the office. A smoky lamp stood on a desk littered with
papers. MacAdams asked when the train left Ripley. Nichols told him
that they had half an hour. They sat down, and Nichols, drawing his
chair briskly to the desk, began.
"Now, Mr. MacAdams, in buying land you have to consider four things;
land, water, climate, and markets. Our land--"
She could not go back to Coalinga with him. Probably there would be a
warrant out for her arrest. Oh, Bert! She had done her best, her very
best. There were five dollars left, MacAdams's money. The whole thing
was unreal. She was dreaming it.
Nichols was leading him up to the decision. MacAdams evaded it. Nichols
began again. The blank form was out now and the fountain-pen ready.
"You like the piece, don't you? You're satisfied with it. You've found
everything exactly as we represented it. It's the best buy on the
tract. Well, now we'll just close it up."
MacAdams put his hands in his pockets and gazed at the map on the wall.
"I'm not saying it isn't a good proposition."
Nichols began again. Was forty acres more than MacAdams wanted to
carry? MacAdams would not exactly say that. Would a change in the terms
be more convenient for him? MacAdams had no fault to find with the
terms. Did the question of getting the land into crop trouble him? No.
Well, then they'd get down to the point. The payments on this piece
would be--"I'll not be missing my train, Mr. Nichols?"
Patiently Nichols went back to the beginning. Land, water,
transportation, and cli--Helen could endure it no longer. One straight
question would end it, would leave her facing certainty. She leaned
forward and heard her own voice.
"Mr. MacAdams, you came to look at this land. You've looked at it. Do
you want it?"
There was one startled, arrested gesture from Nichols. Then they
remained motionless. The clock ticked loudly. Slowly MacAdams leaned
back in his chair, straightened one leg, put his hand into his trouser
pocket. He pulled out a grimy canvas bag.
"Yes. How much is the first payment?"
Deliberately he poured out on the desk a heap of golden coins. His
stubby fingers extracted from the sack a wad of banknotes. Nichols was
figuring madly. "Twelve hundred and seventy-three dollars and ninety
cents," he announced in a shaking voice. MacAdams counted it out with
exactness. He signed the contract. Nichols recounted the money and
sealed it in an envelope. They rose.
Helen found herself stumbling against the side of the automobile, and
felt Nichols squeezing her arm exultantly while he helped her into it.
They had reached Ripley before she was able to think. Then she said
that she would not return to Coalinga with MacAdams. They put him on
the train.
She told Nichols that she wanted the money and the contract. She was
going to take the next train to San Francisco. He objected. She argued
through a haze, and her greatest difficulty was keeping her voice
clear. But she held tenaciously to her purpose. Later she was on the
train with the contract and Nichols' check drawn to Clark & Hayward.
She slept then and she slept in the taxi-cab on the way to a San
Francisco hotel. She felt that she was asleep while she wrote her name
on a register She shut a door somehow behind a bell-boy, and at last
could sleep undisturbed.
At nine o'clock the next morning she sat facing Mr. Clark across a big
flat-topped desk. The contract and Nichols' check lay upon it.
* * * * *
Mr. Clark was a lean, shrewd-looking man about forty-five years old.
He gave the impression of having kept his nerves at high tension for
so many years that now he must strain them still tighter or relax
altogether. This catastrophe he would have described as "losing his
grip," and Helen felt that he lived in dread of it as the ultimate
calamity. They had been talking for some time. Mr. Clark did not know
where Bert was.
"My dear young lady, if we had known--" he said, and he stopped because
it would be useless cruelty to complete the sentence. She thought that
he would not be cruel unless there were some purpose to be achieved by
it. There was even a kindly expression in his eyes at times.
He had explained clearly the situation in which her husband stood. Bert
had persuaded the firm to give him an unlimited letter of credit. "That
young man has a truly remarkable personality as a salesman. He had us
completely up in the air." He had proposed a gigantic selling campaign
in the oil fields, and had so filled Clark & Hayward with his own
enthusiasm that they had given him free rein.
The campaign had begun with every promise of astounding success. He
had brought huge crowds to hear speakers sent down from the city; had
gathered the names of thousands of "leads"; had imported fifty salesmen
to canvass these names and bring in prospective buyers. Scores of these
had been taken to the land and hundreds more were promised. Clark &
Hayward contemplated hiring special trains for them.
But expenses were running into disquieting amounts for the actual
results produced. Bert's checks poured in, and there began to be
annoying rumors. The firm had begun a quiet investigation and had
decided that he was spending too much of their money for personal
expenses. Mr. Clark need not go into details. They had withdrawn the
letter of credit and advised creditors in Bakersfield that the firm
would no longer pay Mr. Kennedy's bills.
Mr. Kennedy had been informed of this. He had taken one of the firm's
automobiles and disappeared. Later his check had come in. Clark &
Hayward could not make that good, in addition to their other losses.
The matter was now entirely out of their hands. Mr. Clark's gesture
placed it in the hands of inscrutable fate. He was more interested in
the MacAdams sale and the unexpected appearance of Helen.
However, under her insistence he admitted that if the check were made
good, Clark & Hayward could persuade the bank not to press the charge.
Of course the warrant was out, but there were ways. He undertook to
employ them for her, thoughtfully fingering Nichols' check. As to
finding Bert--well, if the police had failed--
Helen asked how much Bert owed the firm. Mr. Clark told her that the
sum was roughly five thousand dollars.
"In thirty days! Why--but--how is it possible?"
The amount included the cost of the automobile. The balance was Mr.
Kennedy's personal expenses, not included in his arrangement with
the firm. "Wine--ah--" Mr. Clark did not complete the triology. "Mr.
Kennedy's--recreations were expensive?" He would have the account
itemized?
"Oh, no. It isn't necessary," said Helen. She would like to know only
the exact sum. Mr. Clark pressed a button and asked the girl who
answered it to look up the amount. "And, by the way, have this sale
entered on the books, and a check made out to--?"
"H. D. Kennedy," said Helen.
"To H. D. Kennedy for the commissions. Seven and a half per cent."
"You were paying the other salesmen fifteen per cent.," said Helen.
That was by special arrangement. The ordinary salesmen in the field
were paid seven and a half percent. Helen accepted the statement, being
unable to refute it. She proposed that she should continue working for
the firm on twelve and a half per cent., five per cent. to apply on
the amount Bert owed them. Mr. Clark countered by offering her ten per
cent. with the same arrangement. She was stubborn, and he yielded.
Helen came out of the office with three hundred dollars in her
purse. She saw that the sun was shining, and as she walked through
the crowded, familiar streets, passing flower-stands gay with color,
feeling the cool breeze on her face, and seeing white clouds sailing
over Twin Peaks, she felt that the bright day was mocking her. She
understood why most suicides occur on days of sunshine.
Her life was beginning again, in a new way, among strange surroundings.
She thought that it would be pleasant to be dead. One would be then as
she was, numb, with no emotion, no interest, no concern for anything,
and one would not have to move or think. "Cheer up! What's the use of
wishing you were dead? You will be some day!" she said to herself,
with an effort to be humorous about it.
She thought that she would go out to the old apartment, pack the things
she had left there, and take them with her. There was a hard bitterness
in the thought that seemed almost sweet to her. To stand unmoved in
that place where she had loved and suffered, to handle with uncaring
hands those objects saturated with memories, would be a desecration of
the past that would prove how utterly dead it was.
But she did not do it. She telephoned from the station, giving up the
apartment and abandoning the personal belongings in it, leaving her
address for the forwarding of mail. Then she shut her mind against
memories and went back to the oil fields.