Mason Stevens, Sr., was a horse doctor in Rogersville, Peoria County,
Illinois. He wore a gray mustache and imperial beard in tribute to
that famous Chicago veterinarian who has made more race horses stand on
four legs than any other man in the Mississippi Valley.
Besides horses, Mr. Stevens knew cattle, hogs, sheep, tumbler and
carrier pigeons, bred-to-type poultry, and whiskey. If he hadn't
carried a bottle about with him in his buggy he might be alive now.
Mason Stevens, Jr., wanted to be a real doctor, so he came up to
Chicago to the Rush Medical College. After his first year, whiskey
took his father, the funeral took the rest, and the young man after a
brief fight gave up the vision of some day substituting "M.D." in place
of "Jr." after his name.
He had been a respected boy at school, green but positive. To help him
out, some of his friends persuaded their fathers, uncles or other
sources of supply to give "Old Mase" a chance to write their fire
insurance. He took the opening. Presently his acquaintance was wide
enough for him to branch out into life as well as fire. After ten
years in the city he was able to go to the general agent of his company
and ask for a regular salary, in addition to his commissions, on the
ground that there wasn't another solicitor in the state he had to take
his hat off to.
He was a highly concentrated product, like most successful countrymen
in the city. He hadn't been scattered in culture. He knew no foreign
languages, no art save that on calendars, no music he could not hum, no
drama save very occasionally a burlesque show when he felt that he
needs must see women.
He knew, if he hadn't forgotten, how to find a kingfisher's nest up a
small tunnel in the river bank, or a red-winged blackbird's pendant
above the swamp waters, or a butcher-bird's in a thornbush with
beheaded field mice hanging from its spears. Even now, with farmer's
instinct, he looked up quickly through the skyscrapers at a sudden
shift in wind.
He lived in a rooming house and ate where he happened to be. His
bureau was bare of everything save the towel across the top, his derby
hat, when he was in bed, and a handful of matches. His upper drawer,
usually half-pulled out, was filled not with collars and ties, but with
papers relating to his business; actuaries' figures; reports from all
companies, his own and his rivals'; records of "prospects" that he had
brought home for evening study; rough drafts of solicitation
"literature" he was getting up for the company. He usually worked at
night in his shirt sleeves, his hat cocked on the back of his head, his
chair tilted back against the wall under a single gas jet with a ground
glass globe that diverted most of the light upward toward the ceiling.
Even after he reached the point where he could afford more expensive
living, he did not change. He wore better clothes because a "front"
was mere business intelligence, but otherwise his habits were within a
hundred and fifty dollars of his first year.
Pleasure he regarded as the enemy, not so much because of its
money-cost, as because it was diverting. He didn't wish to be
diverted; he wished to sell life insurance and more and more. That was
as far as he went with his plans. He didn't want to get rich so as to
gratify dreams, to have a beautiful wife and buy her a big house and
motors. He simply wanted to get rich.
He had had no romance since he left the Rogersville High School. That
one had been sweet enough for awhile, but nothing came of it. And he
remembered that on account of it he had neglected his studies senior
year and not graduated at the top of the class. Indeed, the object of
his affection, with fitting irony, had herself achieved that
distinction, which cooled his fever for her.
Mason was a great believer in the value of "bumps." When he made a
failure in any enterprise, he was wont to analyze why, in order to
double-guard himself against a repetition of it. None but a fool
repeats a mistake. He drummed that into himself. Thus in the long run
he was ready to turn every "bump" into an asset instead of a liability.
It is a system of philosophy widespread in this nation, especially
among country-bred people of Puritan tradition, strong, rugged people
who believe in the supreme power of the individual will, who minimize
luck and take no stock in fatalism. These are usually termed "the
backbone of the American people," and though of course they know that
God is everywhere and omnipotent, they likewise believe that He has
appointed them His deputies, with a pretty free hand to act, in the
conduct of the earth.
Mason Stevens came of this stock. And though his father was a
backslider, his mother was not, and she brought him up on the saying,
"Maybe this will teach you a lesson, my son, next time you think of
doing so-and-so."
This shows why Mason Stevens did not fall in love with any woman, after
the high school girl, until he fell most desperately in love with
Georgia Connor.
He resisted love from conviction. One female ten years before had
defeated his brains and his purpose by her charm. He wanted no more of
that.
But he had to fight. Often enough as he walked through the long office
through the double row of shirt-waisted figures bending over
typewriters and desks, it seemed imperative for him to know them
better, to wait for one of them after office hours and ride home with
her on the car.
Everything else was wiped out of him for the moment but just the
question of riding home with a twelve-dollar-a-week girl. Then he
would walk quickly on past the girl who absorbed his imagination, his
mouth set and his brows scowling. And she would confide in her
neighbor that he was crazy about himself.
Sometimes when he was at home under the gas jet with his business
papers on his knee, the vision of fair women would float before him,
all the most beautiful in his imaginings as he had seen them in
pictures or on the stage. He might dream for an hour before
remembering that he was in the world to sell life insurance and that
women would hamper his single-mindedness as surely as whiskey.
Who was the man he was surest of making sign an application blank when
he set out after him? The man who had a woman in his head, every time;
the man with the wife, and children, which are the consequences of a
wife; or one who was gibbering in a fool's heaven because a young girl
had graciously promised to allow him to support her for the rest of her
days.
So he kept away from bad women as much as he could, and from good women
always.
Especially from those in the office. Their constant propinquity was a
constant menace and he had known a lot of fellows to get tangled up
that way, and he wouldn't--if he could help it.
But he couldn't help it after he knew Georgia. She was so useful
mentally and physically, and that was what he first noticed about her.
He hated slackness of any sort, especially in women, because he had
trained himself to dwell on women's faults rather than on men's.
Her manners, he thought, were precisely perfect. She seemed to hit a
happy medium between gushing and shyness, and to hit it in the dead
center. Her teeth were white and good, and she smiled often, but not
too often. She never overdid anything, and her voice was low and full.
She knew what you were driving at before you half started telling her;
also she could make a fresh clerk feel foolish in one minute by the
clock.
She had the charm of perfect health. About her dark irises the whites
of her eyes were very white, touched with the faintest bluish tinge
from the arterial blood beneath. There was a natural lustre in her
hair, uncommon among indoor people. Her steps took her straight to
where she wanted to go. She made no false motions. When she looked
for something in her desk, she opened the drawer where it was, not the
one above or below. Her muscles, nerves and proportions were so
balanced that it was difficult for her to fall into an ungraceful
posture.
Considering these manifold excellent qualities, the most remarkable
thing about her, he thought, was that she had not long before been
invited to embellish the mansion and the motors of a millionaire. He
wrote enthusiastically to his mother suggesting that it would be nice
to invite her to Rogersville for a portion at least of her coming
summer vacation, which brought a most unhappy smile to his mother's
lips. But since he did not repeat his request, the invitation was not
extended.
The first time that he knew he regarded her as a woman rather than as a
workwoman was one afternoon when the declining sun threw its light
higher and higher into the big office. A ray shone on and from her
patent leather belt and into his eyes. He looked up annoyed from his
work. She was sitting a few desks ahead by the window, her back toward
him. Before very long the thing had fascinated him and he found
himself immensely concerned with the climb of the sun up her shirt
waist.
It reached her collar in a manner entirely marvelous and then precisely
at the moment when he was finally to know its effect upon her hair, she
lowered the shade. What luck!
The next day was cloudy. The next was Saturday and she quit at twelve,
before the sun got around to her window. Monday she lowered the shade
before the light got even to her shoulder. Little did she know of the
repressed anguish she was so bringing to the gloomy young hustler
behind her. But on Tuesday the sunlight reached her hair momentarily
as she leaned back in her chair and gleamed and glittered there, a
coruscation of glory for fully thirty seconds--long enough to overturn
in catastrophe his thirty years and their slowly built purposes.
He resolved hereafter to deal primarily not in life insurance, but in
life, which meant Georgia.