THE SHADOW
Thompson went to Vancouver to spy out the land. He made no confidants.
He went about the Terminal City with his mouth shut and his ears and
eyes open. What he saw and heard soon convinced him that like the
Israelites of old he stood upon the border of a land which--for his
business purpose--flowed with milk and honey. It was easy to weave air
castles. He could visualize a future for himself in Vancouver that
loomed big--if he could but make the proper arrangements at the other
end; that is to say, with Mr. John P. Henderson, President of the Summit
Motors Corporation. Thompson had faith enough in himself to believe he
could make such an arrangement, daring as it seemed when he got down to
actual figures.
It gave him a curious sense of relief to find Tommy Ashe flirting with
the Petit Six people, apparently forgetful of the Summit specifications.
Thompson hadn't quite taken as his gospel the sound business ethic that
you must look out for number one first, last and always. If Tommy had
broached the subject personally, if he had shown anxiety to acquire
selling rights in the Summit, Thompson would have felt impelled by sheer
loyalty of friendship to help Tommy secure the agency. That would have
been quixotic, of course. Nevertheless, he would have done it, because
not to do it would have seemed like taking a mean advantage. As it was--
For the rest he warmed to the sheer beauty of the spot. Vancouver
spreads largely over rolling hills and little peninsular juttings into
the sea. From its eminences there sweep unequalled views over the Gulf
of Georgia and northwestward along towering mountain ranges upon whose
lower slopes the firs and cedars marshal themselves in green battalions.
From his hotel window he would gaze in contented abstraction over the
tidal surges through the First Narrows and the tall masts of shipping in
a spacious harbor, landlocked and secure, stretching away like a great
blue lagoon with motor craft and ferries and squat tugs for waterfowl.
Thompson loved the forest as a man loves pleasant, familiar things, and
next to the woods his affection turned to the sea. Here, at his hand,
were both in all their primal grandeur. He was very sure he would like
Vancouver.
Whether the fact that he encountered the Carrs before he was three days
in town, had dinner at their home, and took Sophie once to luncheon at
the Granada Grill, had anything to do with this conclusion deponent
sayeth not. To be sure he learned with the first frank gleam in Sophie's
gray eyes that she still held for him that mysterious pulse-quickening
lure, that for him her presence was sufficient to stir a glow no other
woman had ever succeeded in kindling ever so briefly. But he had
acquired poise, confidence, a self-mastery not to be disputed. He said
to himself that he could stand the gaff now. He could face facts. And
he said to himself further, a little wistfully, that Sophie Carr was
worth all the pangs she had ever given him--more.
He could detect no change in her. That was one of the queer, personal
characteristics she possessed--that she could pass beyond his ken for
months, for years he almost believed, and when he met her again she
would be the same, voice, manner, little tricks of speech and gesture
unchanged. Meeting Sophie after that year was like meeting her after a
week. Barring the clothes and the surroundings that spoke of ample means
tastefully expended, the general background of her home and associates,
she seemed to him unchanged. Yet when he reflected, he was not so sure
of this. Sophie was gracious, friendly, frankly interested when he
talked of himself. When their talk ran upon impersonal things the old
nimbleness of mind functioned. But under these superficialities he could
only guess, after all, what the essential woman of her was now. He could
not say if she were still the queer, self-disciplined mixture of cold
logic and primitive passion the Sophie Carr of Lone Moose had revealed
to him. He was not sure if he desired to explore in that direction. The
old scars remained. He shrank from acquiring new ones, yet perforce let
his thought dwell upon her with reviving concentration. After all, he
said to himself, it was on the knees of the gods.
At any rate he was not to be deterred from his project. He had served
his apprenticeship in the game. He was eager to try his own wings in a
flight of his own choosing.
Since he had evolved a definite plan of going about that, he entered
decisively upon the first step. Upon reaching San Francisco he bearded
John P. Henderson in his mahogany den and outlined a scheme which made
that worthy gentleman's eyes widen. He heard Thompson to an end,
however, with a growing twinkle in those same, shrewd, worldly-wise
orbs, and at the finish thumped a plump fist on his desk with a force
that made the pen-rack jingle.
"Damned if I don't go you," he exclaimed. "I said in the beginning you'd
make a salesman, and you've made good. You'll make good in this. If you
don't it isn't for lack of vision--and nerve."
"Nerve," he chuckled over the word. "You know it isn't good business for
me. I'll be losing a valuable man off my staff, and I'll be taking
longer chances than it has ever been my policy to take. Your only real
asset is--yourself. That isn't a negotiable security."
"Not exactly," Thompson returned. "Still in your business you are
compelled--every big business is compelled--to place implicit trust in
certain men. From a commercial point of view this move of mine should
prove even more profitable to you than if I remain on your staff as a
salesman--provided your estimate of me, and my own estimate of myself,
is approximately correct. You must have an outlet for your product. I
will still be making money for you. In addition I shall be developing a
market that will, perhaps before so very long, absorb a tremendous
number of cars."
"Oh, there's no argument. I'm committed to the enterprise," Henderson
declared. "I believe in _you_, Thompson. Otherwise I couldn't see your
proposition with a microscope. Well, I'll embody the various points in a
contract. Come in this afternoon and sign up."
As easily as that. Thompson went down the half-flight of stairs still a
trifle incredible over the ease with which he had accomplished a stroke
that meant--oh, well, to his sanguine vision there was no limit.
He felt pretty much as he had felt when he sold his first Groya to an
apparently hopeless prospect, elated, a little astonished at his
success, brimful of confidence to cope with the next problem.
The ego in him clamored to be about this bigger business. But that was
not possible. He came back to earth presently with the recollection that
the Summits would not be ready for distribution before late October--and
for the next five months the more Groyas he sold the better position he
would be in when he went on his own.
So when he finally had in his hands a dealer's contract covering the
Province of British Columbia he put the matter out of his mind--except
for occasional day-dreamings upon it in idle moments--and gave himself
whole-heartedly to serving the house of Henderson.
Time passed uneventfully enough. June went its way with its brides and
flowers. July drove folk upon vacations to the seaside resorts.
And in August there burst upon an incredulous world the jagged
lightnings and cannon-thunder of war.
It would be waste words to describe here the varying fortunes of the
grappling armies during the next few months. The newspapers and current
periodicals and countless self-appointed historians have attended to
that. It is all recorded, so that one must run to read it all. It is as
terribly vivid to us now as it was distant and shadowy then--a madness
of slaughter and destruction that raged on the other side of the earth,
a terror from which we stood comfortably aloof.
There was something in the war unseen by Thompson and the Hendersons and
a countless host of intelligent, well-dressed, comfortable people who
bought extras wet from the press to read of that merciless thrust
through Belgium, the shock and recoil and counter-shock of armies, of
death dealt wholesale with scientific precision, of 42-centimeter guns
and poison gas and all the rest of that bloody nightmare--they did not
see the dread shadow that hung over Europe lengthening and spreading
until its murky pall should span the Atlantic.
Thompson was a Canadian. He knew by the papers that Canada was at war, a
voluntary participant. But it did not strike him that he was at war. He
felt no call to arms. In San Francisco there was no common ferment in
the public mind, no marching troops, no military bands making a man's
feet tingle to follow as they passed by. Men discussed the war in much
the same tone as they discussed the stock market. If there was any
definite feeling in the matter it was that the European outbreak was
strictly a European affair. When the German spearhead blunted its point
against the Franco-British legions and the gray hosts recoiled upon the
Marne, the Amateur Board of Strategy said it would be over in six
months.
In any case, American tradition explicitly postulated that what
occurred in Europe was not, could not, be vital to Americans. But in the
last test blood proves thicker than water. Sentimentally, the men
Thompson knew were pro-Ally. Only, in practice there was no apparent
reason why they should do otherwise than as they had been doing. And in
effect San Francisco only emulated her sister cities when she proceeded
about "business as usual"--just as in those early days, before the war
had bitten deep into their flesh and blood, British merchants flung that
slogan in the face of the enemy.
So that to Wes Thompson, concentrated upon his personal affairs, the war
never became more than something akin to a bad dream recalled at midday,
an unreal sort of thing. Something that indubitably existed without
making half the impression upon him that seeing a pedestrian mangled
under a street car made upon him during that summer. The war aroused his
interest, but left his emotions unstirred. There was nothing martial
about him. He dreamed no dreams of glory on the battlefield. He had
never thought of the British Empire as something to die for. The issue
was not clear to him, just as it failed to clarify itself to a great
many people in those days. The maiden aunts and all his early
environment had shut off the bigger vision that was sending a steady
stream of Canadian battalions overseas.
When the Battle of the Marne was past history and the opposing armies
had dug themselves in and the ghastly business of the trenches had
begun, Thompson was more than ever immersed in pursuit of the main
chance, for he was then engaged in organizing Summit Motors in
Vancouver. There had been a period when his optimism about his prospects
had suffered a relapse. He had half-expected that Canada's participation
in that devil's dance across the sea would spoil things commercially.
There had been a sort of temporary demoralization on both sides of the
line, at first. But that was presently adjusted. Through Tommy Ashe and
other sources he learned that business in Vancouver was actually looking
up because of the war.
He was a little surprised that Tommy was not off to the war. Tommy loved
his England. He was forever singing England's praises. England was
"home" to Tommy Ashe always. It was only a name to Thompson. And he
thought, when he thought about it at all, that if England's need was not
great enough to call her native-born, that the Allies must have the
situation well in hand; as the papers had a way of stating.
He had other fish to fry, himself, without rushing off to the front. As
a matter of fact he never consciously considered the question of going
to the front. That never occurred to him. When he did think of the war
he thought of it impersonally, as a busy man invariably does think of
matters which do not directly concern him.
What did concern him most vitally was the project he had in hand. And
next to those ambitions, material considerations, his fancy touched
shyly now and then upon Sophie Carr.