If every young man could be put in a position where he could do nothing
but think for a matter of a couple of months just at that time when he is
ready to take up the major business of his life, one may well believe the
history of the world would be other and better than it is. Potter Waite
was injured early in May. Three months passed before he was able to take
the air even in a slowly driven, pillowed limousine. If ever a chance were
given a human being to check up on his accounts, take a trial balance, and
arrive at definite conclusions with respect to himself, Potter had that
chance. Not only had he the opportunity, but a vital consideration had
intervened, urging him to wider, deeper, bolder considerations. He thought
much about Potter Waite, but the time in which he lived, the world turmoil
which surrounded him, the pressure of great events on his own life,
compelled him to think about himself with respect to grave, impending
affairs and to the requirements of his country, which he had come, in some
measure, to know.
This state of affairs developed in him a rare singleness of purpose. From
the beginning of time men with rare singleness of purpose have been
regarded as monomaniacs, cranks. They have been derided. The world has
whispered about them behind its hands and snickered. This was an attitude
which Potter was to encounter, first from his father, later from those who
had formerly been his cronies.
Fabius Waite became more and more irritated by his son's absorption in
aeronautics, for he was a practical business man, and when he could not
see how a profit could be entered in the ledger from a given transaction,
he deleted the transaction.
"I'm glad, of course," he said to Potter, "to see you taking an interest
in something--outside the Pontchartrain bar and the chorus of a comic
opera--but you're going over the line with this thing. You're getting as
bad as Old Man Jeffords. I sit in directors' meeting at the bank with him
once a week, and he'll butt into any sort of a discussion with idiocy
about some new postage stamp he's found in somebody's attic. I suppose
people must have fads and amusements." He said it as if he did not in the
least see why they should have such absurd things. "But they can be
carried too far. You're riding this hobby day and night. Aeroplanes!
There's no money in aeroplanes."
"I'm not thinking of making money out of them," said Potter.
"Then why are you monkeying with them? Too much aeroplane, or too much
golf, or too much bridge, or too much anything that interferes with a
man's business, is about as bad as too much whisky."
"But aeroplanes are my business."
"Fiddlesticks, son! You've been sick a long time, and you've gotten this
notion. Automobiles is your business."
"I guess we don't get the same point of view, Dad. You're interested in
one thing and I'm interested in another. Somehow they don't match up."
"I should say they didn't.... I think you and I are better friends than we
used to be, son."
"Yes," said Potter.
"On the whole, your accident was a good thing for both of us.... I've
gotten acquainted with you, son, and it's done me good. You had me going
for a while. I thought you were a worthless young cub who would never do
anything but squander what I made--and, by Jove! I was going to fix things
so you couldn't! But you're not. You've got the stuff in you to take my
place and carry on the business. A few years' training and you'll be up to
the job. Don't let any foolishness like this aeronautic stuff side-track
you. Why, you've got to be a regular darn fanatic about it!"
"I suppose I have, Dad. I guess it needs a fanatic."
Fabius shook his head with disgust. "I don't want folks saying my son's a
crank," he said. "I suppose boys at your age are bound to have
enthusiasms, but there's just one kind of enthusiasm that's worth a
tinker's dam, and that's enthusiasm about your business."
"I'm sorry, Dad, if I disappoint you so much. I expect to come into the
business after a while--when the world quiets down. I'll work there as
hard as you want me to, but first I've got to do this thing. It's _got_ to
be done. Nobody knows what will happen. You believe in fire insurance,
don't you?"
"Naturally."
"But you go ahead planning as if there wouldn't be a fire. You don't
expect a fire.... But you admit the possibility of it?"
"Certainly."
"Well, try to look at this thing in that way. We don't know what a year or
two years may bring. Germany may be licked or the Allies may be licked,
... or we may be dragged into it. That's a fire we've got to insure
against. And I'm going into one line of the insurance business--the
aeroplane line. If the fire comes we've got to have aeroplanes to put it
out. If it doesn't come, no harm will be done by insuring.... The
difference is that I believe it's coming--and we won't be ready."
"All balderdash."
Potter got up and walked slowly across the room. It was not easy, and his
father was making it harder than it ought to be. He thought he understood
his position and his reason for assuming it so clearly--that they were so
clear no one could fail to agree with him, yet his father utterly failed
to comprehend. Potter despaired of making him understand.
"Dad," he said, "let's make a bargain. Give me two years. Call it a
vacation or call it a course in mechanics or call it whatever you want to.
We ought to know where we're at by that time. At the end of two years I'll
come into the business and do whatever you want me to--but for two years
let me go ahead with this thing and don't interfere with me.... I'll need
some money, too. I've got to experiment. The experimenting won't do any
harm. It'll be with gas-engines. Maybe I'll turn out something that will
be worth money in our business.... just two years--and I'm pretty average
young yet."
His father shrugged his shoulders. "I'll go you," he said, with the air of
a man compelled against his will. "Two years it is, and then you quit this
foolishness and come down to earth.... But it's dog-gone nonsense."
One man did not share this common opinion. He was the bearded, ponderous,
blinking man of monstrous girth who had brought Potter into the world and
fed him pills and potions for his juvenile ailments--Old Doctor Ormond.
"Potter," said the old gentleman, "you've been down for three months.
You've taken into your system only the things you should have taken into
it. You have eaten as God and your stomach intended a man should eat, and
drunk as they intended you should drink. You're going to be well--as well
as ever. There won't be a limp, probably. I can guarantee that there isn't
a drop of alcohol about you. You're going to start clean. If you'll take
my advice, which probably you won't, you'll keep that way. Presbyterians
used to say hell was paved with unbaptized infants. _I_ say it's paved
with cocktail-shakers...."
Potter chuckled. "I've been thinking about the cocktails," he said. "I'm
afraid I sha'n't have time for them. And I used to know bartenders by
their first names."
"Do you ever feel a hankering?"
Potter shook his head. "I never did when I had anything else to do."
"Um!... Have you anything else to do now?"
Potter held up the book on his lap. It was a treatise on carburetion.
"Aeroplanes," he said, shortly.
"Your father said something about that," said the doctor. "What's it all
about?"
"While I've been down and out," Potter said, slowly, "I've discovered that
I've been a man without a country. I've found my country. I've thought
_hard_ and I believe my country is going to need me.... It can have me. If
we get into this war, Doctor, we're going to need twenty thousand
aeroplanes--quick. I've a knack that way. By the time this country needs
the 'planes I'm going to know more about building them than anybody else
this side the water--I'm going to be on the spot--ready.... That's all
there is to it. Dad thinks it's a fad like stamp-collecting, and that I'm
a crank."
"If it is," said the fat old practitioner, blinking his eyes, "I wish a
hundred millions of us could get bumped on the head and have a similar fad
jarred into us. You go to it, son. Stay by it. Don't let them whisper and
ridicule you out of it. Do you know that the greatest automobile
manufacturer in the world was once called Crazy Henry by his friends? You
don't hear anybody calling him Crazy Henry now, do you?... And remember
this: There'll always be some to believe in you, and their belief will be
worth more to you than the ridicule of all the rest. There'll be a
girl.... And there'll be a fat old man. Shake, son." They shook hands
gravely. "Now get well--and show 'em."
The last thought the doctor left with Potter remained. "There'll always be
some to believe in you.... There'll be a girl." He wondered if there would
be a girl, and if she would believe in him. Naturally there would be a
girl sometime; there never had been girls who ranked higher than episodes.
He had never seen a girl he wanted as a man should want the girl who is to
be his wife. Marriage had been a dim event in the distant future. It was
so now. But, he thought, to have such a girl, to give her such a love as
he could imagine--_and to have her believe in him_! That would be
something. He pondered it.
Somehow he found himself thinking about Hildegarde von Essen. It was a
pleasant exercise. He recalled her as he had seen her that morning when
she alighted from her machine at the door of his hangar, radiant, vibrant,
boyish--a flame of a girl. That picture had persisted.
They had visited the borderland of death together. That event connected
them, would always connect them, by an invisible thread. He would not
think of her as he thought of other women, nor she of him. Always the one
would be to the other something peculiarly distinct. There was an
overpowering intimacy about knocking hand in hand at the door of death.
He wondered how she was, wished he might see her. He had not seen her
since that moment when he had crawled to her as she lay so still and
graceful, like a lovely boy asleep. That wakened other puzzling memories.
The scene was so distinct--the little island, the reaches of the great
marsh.... And yet the island and marsh had not existed. They had fallen on
the mainland miles from any such island! The 'plane had been found against
a tree miles away from it. There had been a man.... Potter was certain he
remembered a man, and that the man's face had been familiar to him, but he
could not recall the man's identity. The whole thing gave him a queer,
gasping sensation. It was like thinking on eternity or on limitless
space--something inconceivable. He compelled himself to take his mind away
from it.
Hildegarde von Essen was away, had been sent away by her enraged father as
soon as she was able to travel. First she had gone to an aunt in the
Adirondacks, was now with friends on the Maine coast. Potter's mother had
told him this and had told him, too, of the raging call Herman von Essen
had made on Fabius Waite, of the arrogant, brutal manner of the man toward
the father of a boy whose death was declared inevitable. Fabius Waite had
shown von Essen the door almost with violence.
Yes, Potter wanted to see her....
That afternoon a servant brought him a letter. It was from her, the first
of her handwriting he had ever seen.
"DEAR POTTER," she began, addressing him by his given name, and he did not
regard it as forward or provocative. It was merely due to the intimacy of
their adventure with death, and natural to him. "I just found out you were
able to read letters," she went on. "You can't imagine the pains people
are at to keep news of you from me. It's as if I'd tried to elope with you
and been caught. You knew father shipped me away. You don't know how glad
I was to know that you are going to be all right again. Somehow I felt to
blame." How abruptly, jerkily she wrote, changing from one subject to
another without warning. It was like her, he thought. "I don't know when I
shall be home, but I'm making myself as disagreeable as possible. I don't
think they'll be able to stand me much longer. Then I'll come to see you.
It was great fun while it lasted. I don't think I ever enjoyed a morning
as much. There are things about it I don't understand--where we were
found, for instance. _I_ thought we fell on an island. Didn't you? I'll
write again when I can steal time. It's the least I can do, and we're
pals. Aren't we? Get well as quickly as you can and we'll fly again. Is
the 'plane fixed?" That was all. It stopped abruptly like that.
She wanted to fly with him again. He chuckled. A little thing like falling
out of the sky would not damp her enthusiasm, and fear seemed to have no
place in her vocabulary. She was the most utterly daring girl he had ever
met, and the most reckless of consequences. He perceived her similarity to
himself.
"Mr. La Mothe and Mr. Cantor to see you," announced a servant.
"Send them up," Potter directed, fumbling in his memory for the name
Cantor, recollecting it was the chap he had met at the Country Club who
had letters of introduction to him.
La Mothe and Cantor entered. Potter looked first at Cantor. There was
something about the man, something that made his memory itch. He had seen
Cantor somewhere, but where? What was there about the man? He noticed that
Cantor scrutinized him tensely. It was as if the man were searching for
something, something that he was afraid to find.
"Greetings, Potter," said La Mothe. "You're looking bang-up for a fellow
that was all fitted to a coffin. We were taking up a subscription to send
you a floral pillow.... You remember Cantor?"
"Yes," said Potter, extending his hand. "You're making quite a stay in
Detroit."
"He's joined the lodge," La Mothe remarked. "Shouldn't be surprised if he
squatted. Eh, Cantor?"
"I find Detroit very attractive, especially to a business man," said
Cantor. "I've even thought of making it my home."
"That's about the best compliment you could pay the city," said Potter,
but in his mind he was saying over and over: "What is it? What is there
about him? Where does he fit in?"
"I've never had an opportunity to present some letters I have from friends
of yours, Mr. Waite. But here they are."
"From Tom Herkimer and George Striker, eh?" said Potter, glancing over the
notes. "They seem to be rather strong for you. I'm not very useful as an
acquaintance just now, but as soon as I'm on my feet--"
"As soon as you're on your feet," said La Mothe, "he'll have you
chaperoning him through your plant. He's a regular factory hound. Never
saw a man so keen on factories."
"I'm interested in mill-work and manufacturing efficiency," said Cantor.
"It's an important part of my business."
"I'd say it was _all_ of your business," said La Mothe, with a laugh.
"I'll bet he could draw from memory the plans of half the plants in
Detroit."
Cantor smiled.
"Speaking of plants," said La Mothe, "things are getting a little thick. I
was just talking to Weston, of the Structural Steel. He said they'd put
armed guards all around the plant. Found explosives in the coal, and now
they're sorting over every chunk of coal that comes in. They're making
shrapnel-cases, you know.... Kraemer's friend, the Kaiser, is doing it, I
suppose."
"Dirty business," Cantor said, easily. "Trouble developed last week in the
Delmont Machine Company's shops. They found somebody had put emery in the
bearings."
"Any war news?" asked Potter.
"Nothing big since Warsaw fell. Looks as if Russia was about done," La
Mothe said.
"The war's going into its second year," said Cantor. "Who thought it could
last a year?"
"Looks as if we might have a little war of our own one of these days.
Mexico's in need of a cleaning up," La Mothe said.
"It's been Germany's year," Potter said. "Only for the Marne--"
"It looks as if she couldn't be beaten," said Cantor.
"She's got to be beaten," Potter replied. "The sort of thing Germany
stands for to-day has got to be wiped out--wiped clean off the slate."
"Hang the war!" La Mothe said, impatiently. "Can't we talk about anything
else? When does the sawbones tell you you can come out and play with the
boys, Potter?"
"In a week or two now."
"We'll have to pull a party for you. Welcome you back and all that. The
crowd'll be glad to see you around."
"I'm going to work," Potter said.
"Whoop!" exclaimed La Mothe. "At what and wherefore?"
"Fred," Potter said, "I want to talk things over with you and some of the
boys. I'm going to need your help--all the fellows who are in the
automobile game. I've laid around for three months with nothing to do but
think, and I'm here to say that the old stuff doesn't go. We've got to
take off our coats and get to work."
"At what?" said La Mothe.
"Aeroplanes," said Potter.
"I thought you had about all the aeroplane that was coming to you. Why
aeroplanes?"
"The country's going to need them, and Detroit's got to make the engines.
You seemed to be surprised that the war had lasted a year, Mr. Cantor. My
idea is that it's just begun. It'll spread, and it will spread to us.
We'll be in it."
"Rats!" said La Mothe; but Potter was aware of Cantor's close scrutiny,
and of an expression on the older man's face which baffled solution.
"Germany has run wild with the notion of grabbing the world," Potter said.
"If she gets away with Europe we'll come next."
"Fat chance. Germany doesn't want any of our action. Look how she backed
down on the submarine stuff."
"You've got the old notion, Fred, that nobody can get at us and that we
can lick all creation. If Germany's hands were free she could land an army
on our coast, and before we could start to get ready to fight we'd be
licked. We're like cake in an unlocked cupboard, and Germany's a hungry
boy. We'd be gobbled."
"Oh, say, Potter--"
"Think it over. The day'll come when this country will need thousands upon
thousands of aeroplanes--all of a sudden. When it comes it'll be sudden,
and we'll be caught. We won't have an army, we won't have equipment--and
we won't have aeroplanes, which will be harder to get than anything else.
That's going to be my business. Getting ready for the aeroplane end of it.
And I want you fellows to help."
"You've been laying around too much, Potter. You've been sick, that's
what's the matter with you."
Potter shrugged his shoulders. "Think about it, anyhow, will you, Fred?
Great heavens! you've got brains."
"Much 'bliged," said Fred. "Cantor, let's be wiggling on. We're exciting
the invalid. See you again soon, old man," La Mothe said.
Cantor stood up and extended his hand. "When you're around again," he
said, "I'm going to bother you. You interest me--about the aeroplanes....
And I want to see your plant. Making munitions, aren't you?"
"Yes," said Potter, "glad to show you around." He paused, and his eyes
darkened. He fixed them on Cantor and said, suddenly, "You weren't fishing
up at the Flats about the time I was hurt, were you--back in the marsh?"
"Flats? No. What are the Flats, Mr. Waite?" Little points of white
appeared at the comers of his jaw. Potter noticed them.
"It's nothing. I guess you got mixed up in a dream of mine."
"Dreams are queer," said Cantor, flatly.
"Damn vivid dream, though," said Potter. "Come again, fellows. My regards
to the crowd."