Sunset over the Hudson after a July thunderstorm; the observation
platform of a Pullman, rushing toward a new and unknown world in the
Middle West--such was the first stage of the trail leading to the heart
of romance. Of course I did not know this then. In fact, the beauty of
the sunset was considerably marred by the thought that the day before I
had seen my father off for "home," for England, while I had been
condemned to indefinite exile in a lake town famous for its
manufacturing; and I felt much like the hero at the end of a certain
type of Greek tragedy. No one could say when I should see England again,
or once more browse along the bookstalls of Charing Cross Road, or drink
a glass of stout at Scott's in Leicester Square. Not high ideals to long
for, perhaps--but Charing Cross Road, the Empire on Leicester Square, or
the noon-hour walks in Lincoln's Inn Fields, pausing perhaps for a
quarter of an hour at the Soame Museum, or venturing as far as Chancery
Lane, seemed to epitomize the things for which I was desperately
homesick.
It had strained my loyalty to my father to the breaking point to accept
the test he had put upon me. No word, however, of my resentment, of my
sullen hatred for the task, had I allowed him to guess. He had gone
aboard the steamer in one of his moods of extreme optimism--business
would flourish as it never had before now I was to be at the helm. I had
looked ruefully at the cancelled steamer ticket in my hand and had
resolved to try, but in very truth I was sick at heart. As the boat left
the dock, I turned away with some boyish tears in my eyes--and they were
bitter tears. I hated and loathed, at that moment, the fate that had
condemned me to the new venture. The roar and clang of the streets about
the docks seemed symbols of all that was unlovely, of all that stood
between me and what I wanted to do--symbols of the things I was to be
mixed up with, no one knew for how long. Until I made the new business a
success! It was easy to say--easy even for my father to pat me on the
back and speak diffidently, as he looked the other way, of his
confidence in me. He had so much more in me than I had in myself! I knew
my own dangerous lack of ambition--my fondness for remaining a
spectator, for doffing the world aside and bidding it pass; and here I
was, entrusted with his future and that of my mother and sister.
What a plague had I to do with a factory and a manufacturing town on the
Great Lakes? I knew nothing of either. All I asked was the moon--London,
books, theatres, and the gorgeous solitude of rummaging in an enchanted
cockney world. But that world could not be had, even in its simplest
form, without money, and money I had to win in order to earn my right to
the moon. There was nothing I had ever felt so incapable of winning. I
knew I was full of a kind of inertia that terrified me. It would not
matter to fail alone in such a task, but my failure would ruin my
father--and others. And the inertia, the indifference, the hatred of it
all frightened me. I knew it was no mood for success; yet I did not know
how to fight against it.
"Now, Ted," said a crisp voice beside me, "we reach Deep Harbor at
five-thirty A. M. That will give us time for breakfast, and get out to
the factory by seven--when the whistle blows."
"Good heavens!" I thought with a start, coming back to the Pullman and
reality with a horrible jerk. "Seven--" but words failed me.
"You'll have a chance to glance around the machine shop and pick out a
location for the testing laboratory before the office force get down.
Then we can have a look at the orders on the books and start making
plans."
No time to get one's breath, no chance to edge into the cold water inch
by inch--the thing was to be done at once. I was to jump from that
Pullman platform into the deepest, coldest part of the stream.
"As soon as we've passed Storm King we'll go into the smoker and make a
rough sketch of the laboratory lay-out, so we'll be ready for them in
the morning."
I thought again of the ocean liner plunging in the opposite direction,
and what my father was thinking at that moment. How had he dared trust
me?
"Pshaw," said my companion, reading my thoughts with startling accuracy.
"The Middle West isn't a bad place. You'll soon get used to it. Of
course, it isn't Broadway," he added, with a sidelong look at me, "but
you'll shake down all right. What do you think of the Hudson River?
Nothing like this in England, I'll bet."
"Have you ever been there?" I parried.
"No. Little Old New York's good enough for me. I like live ones--not
dead ones. There's Storm King over there--can you beat it? Look at the
light over it--gosh, it's enough to make a fellow feel queer."
I looked; and the latter part of his remark was undoubtedly true. The
thunder clouds still hung about in broken, irregular masses, through
which radiated a startling copper glow, tapering off at the upper edges
into green. The mountain itself was a dark shape sharply cut against the
light side, while, beneath, the river was oily brass. All that was
unknown, even sinister, was bound up in fearful beauty. I could not
endure it, for it really frightened me. I got up hastily. "Let's go into
the smoker--the laboratory sketch," I faltered.
"Sure!--good work! Let's get down to business and cut out the scenery."
His words had a most ominous connotation--like the symbolism which
critics allege they find in Ibsen's plays, I thought. The result was to
drive away for a moment my gloom, and I smiled at my own mental comment.
As we went forward toward the smoker, I looked more closely at my new
business associate, beginning with his back, which was all that was
visible now. He was severely dressed with a sort of fussy neatness
peculiar to the work of American business men's tailors. His shoes shone
resplendent, his trousers were creased with painful accuracy, his back
was erect and smooth as a duck's. Even his hair had been severely
disciplined by his barber, and on it my friend had placed, with due
care, a little checked golfing cap that might have been the product of a
maker of Swiss watches, so exactly did the little grey and black squares
match at the seams. "Engineering efficiency applied to personal attire,"
I thought to myself. "His clothes remind me of those planned by the
mathematicians in Laputa, except that these American mathematicians use
formulae of scientific accuracy."
As we took our seats in two large wicker chairs in the smoker I couldn't
resist shaking on to the left sleeve of his coat, as if by accident, a
cold ash from my empty pipe. Instantly he produced a handkerchief as
fine and dainty as a lady's and violently flicked at his sleeve. I
murmured an apology and smiled to myself. Then he carefully drew up his
trousers so as not to spoil the crease, replaced his handkerchief,
adjusted his invisible eye-glasses, and produced a pencil and paper.
"Now to business!" he said.
"One moment," I interrupted and touched the bell. The coloured porter
appeared. I saw my friend frown ever so slightly. My sense of humour was
returning fast, as I noted how easy it was going to be to tease this
deadly earnest, efficient person. "Will you have a whiskey and soda or a
bottle of Bass?" I asked in an innocent, friendly voice.
"Neither, thank you. When I have business to discuss I never touch
liquor," he replied, with a most meaning emphasis upon the latter half
of his statement, albeit politely enough. I inwardly resented hearing
Bass's ale, or whiskey and soda for that matter, described as "liquor."
"Bring a bottle of Bass and a lemonade," I said to the porter, without
consulting my companion further. "You must drink something," I added by
way of apology. Actually I was under the impression that sweet lemonade
would nauseate a grown man, if taken so soon after dinner. I wanted
revenge for that word "liquor."
"Thanks--a lemonade is just a thing," he responded enthusiastically.
"It's a very refreshing drink on a warm evening. You are very kind--have
one of my cigars?" and he produced a black, oily looking object named
after some Spanish infanta and having about the same figure as one of
those estimable princesses. Now I felt toward a black cigar on a hot,
stuffy train, when business was to be talked, about as he did toward
"liquor"--and the similarity made me smile again. After all, our
prejudices were the same, but involved different details. The lemonade
arrived, he bit his aromatic monster, puffed it luxuriously, waved his
glass ceremoniously at me, and took a deep draft of the sweet liquid,
copiously mixed with Havana smoke. My glass of Bass, on the way to my
lips, paused, and I shuddered. I began to wish, like Hamlet, that I had
tried some other plan of revenge for that foul epithet "liquor."
"Now we are all set," he announced cheerily, which was more than I was
sure my dinner was, but I said nothing. "Have you thought about the
dimensions?" he continued.
"Of what?" I asked, my mind still on the problem of a compound of cigar
and lemonade.
"The testing-laboratory, of course!" There was just a trace of
irritation in his tone. I made a guilty effort to pull myself together.
"No, I haven't. But I've a list in my trunk of the machinery we need and
the floor space it occupies. It's easy enough to figure it out from
that."
"In your trunk!" he said in an awful voice. "Then what's the use of
talking about it tonight?"
"That's what I wondered," I remarked amiably, "but I thought perhaps you
had some ideas on the subject."
I could see from his expression that I had made a bad start. His face
was sharp, keen, shrewd, but not at all intellectual. His eyes were
bright and beady, and I knew, as I looked at him, that, for all his
alert keenness and shrewdness, he knew nothing about anything except the
business he had been taught. The latter he knew with an almost ferocious
accuracy. On a specific engineering problem in his own field it would be
hard to match him, but on constructive ideas which involved applying
what he knew to broader questions--I had my doubts. There was no
imagination, no background on which to build. I began to see my father's
method in picking such an associate for me. On details this man couldn't
go wrong--he would keep my part of the work practical, whereas I knew I
was relied upon to see in what new paths this manufacturing company
could be made to expand and develop. But first I had to learn the
business. Therefore, as the present arrangement stood, I was my
companion's subordinate.
"I'm sorry," I said; "I didn't think we could talk business until we had
seen the factory, so I put all my data in my trunk."
"Well," he laughed, "I guess we'll gradually have to get you used to
hustling. Here's a whole evening we might have used, and you've thrown
it away. But I can give you some good advice about your new job,
anyway."
"Please do," I remarked, anxious to atone for my error.
"Ted," he went on, "I'm a New Yorker, and I've made pretty good as an
engineer. I've had to make my own way, and I don't know much about fancy
living, but I know a hell of a lot about making and not making money."
"What do you mean by 'fancy living'?" I asked with genuine interest.
"Well, for one thing, going around in musical comedy clothes and
drinking liquor when you ought to be on the job. Do you get me?"
It suddenly dawned on me, not all at once, but little by little, that he
meant me! "Musical comedy clothes" rankled most, for I did not at first
catch the full force of his suspicions.
"I got these clothes in Bond Street," I protested mildly.
"I don't know where you got them, but they look it," he said.
"Now, my boy, you're going to a town where people don't understand all
this fancy foreign stuff. You've got to dress the part and get down to
being a plain American where you started from. You've got to cut out the
booze. I don't know about women, but your clothes give the wrong idea
there too."
At last the total of his suspicions penetrated, and unfortunately I
suddenly shouted with laughter. I rocked back and forth in my chair in
uncontrollable delight. When I at last looked up, he was smoking his
cigar at a most uncompromising angle, with a hurt look upon his face.
"My dear Knowlton," I gasped at last, "I have no idea what impression I
have given you, but really your last insinuation was too much for me.
Like most young men of my age I'm probably engaged or soon will be--and
as for the rest, you needn't worry."
"What do you mean by 'probably engaged or soon will be'?" He asked,
still suspiciously, but obviously somewhat relieved at this
announcement.
"I'm twenty-three--one usually finds the thing imminent at that age."
"Hell!" he replied. "This is business, not a joke. Booze and women don't
mix with business."
"I've never mixed them much--even for pleasure," I retorted. "I hate
headaches, and uneducated people bore me so that, be they as beautiful
as Cleopatra, I can make nothing of them. I assure you I shall be
perfectly safe in Deep Harbor, or anywhere else that the most ancient
profession flourishes."
"I get you," he said, "and I guess it's straight all right, from all
I've heard. Takes you a lot of words to say it, just as it takes you too
much time to do things. But you'll get over that. Point is, Deep Harbor
won't see _you_ at all. Not in those clothes."
"They are simple country tweeds," I protested once more, for the thought
that I might have to wear his kind horrified me. "My tailor is supposed
to know his business."
"They don't fit, and they're loud enough to scare all the trotting
horses on State Street. Don't you ever get 'em pressed? If you go
sitting around in cafes drinking English ale, you'll make a bad
impression. We've got to build up a new business and we've got to get
people's confidence in us to do it. You can't float around town in the
Middle West like you was attending a house party and get away with it.
People won't think you are serious--when they don't think you are
worse."
"I see," I replied. "Business, as I understand it, is so serious a thing
out here that its pursuit means banishing from one's life, as a start,
all sense of humour and all the little comforts and conveniences. One
can have electric light, a porcelain bath, steam heat, and a bank
account, but one mustn't have comfortable clothes, easy-going habits, or
a genial feeling for the absurdities of solemn living."
"There you go exaggerating everything I say. No wonder you know a lot
about chemical experiments--your ideas tumble all over themselves.
That's all right when you've got test tubes to pour 'em into, but you
got to be careful how you spill 'em around Deep Harbor. What church do
you attend?"
The suddeness with which this query came at me left me floundering once
more.
"Church?" I queried, as if I had never heard of the institution.
"Hell, yes--church," Knowlton replied. "Nothing like being seen
regularly at church when you hit a new town. You make friends that way,
and it's good for business--makes people think you steady and
dependable."
"Really, I had never before considered the church in the light of a
business associate," I answered, "but I can see there is considerable
point to what you say. I wonder Polonius didn't think of it."
"One of those classical guys you learn about in college, isn't he?"
"Yes--you would admire immensely his advice to his son. I'll buy you a
calendar with it on when we get there. It's a lot like what you've been
telling me."
"Well, I guess he was a wise guy, all right, and learned the way I
did--from being up against it. That's worth all the book learning there
is."
"But you learned your profession from books."
"Sure I did--scientific books. You can't put them in the same class with
the stuff they fill you full of at college."
"There's a science of living--and some of that is in books too."
"Well, how about church? You've got the damnedest habit of steering the
conversation off the subject I've ever seen. There's only one science of
living--get the stuff, then you can live as you damn please."
"Surely you don't expect me to go to church just to help business."
"You mean to say you don't go to church at all?"
"About that. Once in a while to a cathedral--when I want to think or
dream, and there happens to be a cathedral handy, or else to some little
quiet parish church that I'm certain beforehand has an eleventh century
smell."
"I'm a Presbyterian," he announced stoutly, as if I would dispute him,
and bit off the end of another impossible cigar. "Everybody ought to be
something." He had ignored my cathedral reply.
"True," I said, "but why Presbyterian when one might choose so many
other things to be? Aren't they the people who believe something
dreadful about babies?"
"My father was a Presbyterian--he was an old Scotch engineer and went to
sea for forty years. I've always kept up what he thought, for no one
ever got ahead of the old man--not much."
So this man was an idealist down underneath all that hard, surface
veneer of remorseless business! It was quite obvious that the old Scotch
engineer had not laid up treasures for his posterity, and yet he had
left a clear impression that "no one ever got ahead of him"--an ideal of
success, recognized as success, not built on the attainment of wealth. I
felt a lot better about Knowlton--we were going to get on, I was
certain. But I didn't dare tell him all this, for I knew he wouldn't
understand. I was even sorry I had been flippant about Presbyterians.
After all, it was a silly pose to patronize a man who had made his way
from the bottom to the position of a first class engineer, whereas I had
done nothing but read a few books and drift about the world.
"Knowlton," I asked, in all seriousness this time, "will you have
another drink?"
"Thanks, I wouldn't mind one more of those lemonades."
Once more the porter came, and I ventured a second bottle of Bass.
"I'll be discreet in Deep Harbor," I apologized, "although I won't
promise to give up Bass entirely. It's a link with home--almost a
ceremony, you know."
"Oh, that's all right, Ted. I guess I've got you sized up all right. Go
ahead and be your own boss. As long as you deliver the goods, that's all
I ask. Do it in your own way."
The drinks arrived. "Bring a box of chocolate peppermints," he commanded
the porter. "Good heavens--he's going to add that to his lemonade and
cigars!" I thought. "What _is_ that man's interior made of?"
"So you have already sized me up?" I asked as he munched a chocolate
between alternate sips and puffs.
"Sure! I got you pretty straight down in the office in New York the day
we signed the papers. I did think you might jump the track once in a
while, though. And when you blew on to the train in that third act
make-up, I thought perhaps you'd been out for a final fling at Broadway.
But you're all right. Have some chocolate?"
"No, thanks. I am curious, though, to have my fortune told. Will I make
good, do you think?"
"Ted, I'm going to be straight with you. I don't know. You may get folks
sore at you, the way you always seem to be laughing inside you at the
people who don't talk or think the way you do. You don't know it all
yet, and you've got no patience with folks who don't belong to your
gang. You haven't knocked around enough in real life to learn that
there's several ways of getting there besides your way. You've lived
abroad and picked up a lot of things I don't know anything about and
never will, and you're a little stuck on your cargo. But I'm not so sure
it's worth as much as you think in the open market--not in the
manufacturing business in Deep Harbor. Still, a couple of years on the
treadmill may work wonders."
"A couple of years!" I gasped.
"Well, you don't expect to take a new concern and make a fortune in
twelve months the way they tell you in those story books, do you? Not if
you was John D. Rockefeller, which you aren't."
"Two years in Deep Harbor," I murmured almost to myself.
"Oh, Deep Harbor's a pretty decent sort of a town. It's up-to-date.
They've got a Chamber of Commerce full of live wires and the place is
just beginning to hit its stride. Give the plants there now ten years,
and the town will be full of millionaires. Of course, I can see your
point--I'm a New Yorker myself, and the Bush League doesn't appeal any
too strong to me. But the stuff lies buried out there in that burg, and
you and I, Ted, are going there to dig some of it up. There's nothing
like growing up with a town."
And with this final epigram, Knowlton got up, stretched, and guessed he
would go to bed.
I bade him good-night and lit another pipe. I confess frankly that I
found Knowlton's accurate powers of analysis disturbing. I who had
flattered myself that I knew all about him with the first words he
spoke, now made the humiliating discovery that he already knew more
about me than I was ever likely to know about him. Furthermore, his
estimate of me, if not too unfavourable, was still not very flattering.
When at last I left the smoker for the sleeper, it was in as gloomy a
frame of mind as when I first boarded the train.