THE WAYS OF WAYNE CRAIGHILL
Four days passed. Wayne Craighill ceased twirling and knotting the
curtain cord and held his right hand against the strong light of the
office window to test his nerves. The fingers twitched and trembled,
and he turned away impatiently and flung himself into a chair by his
desk, hiding his hands and their tell-tale testimony deep in his
pockets. Half a dozen times he shook himself petulantly and attacked
his work with frenzied eagerness, as though to be rid of it in a
single spurt; but after an hour thus futilely spent he threw himself
back and glared at a large etching, depicting a storm-driven galleon
riding wildly under a frightened moon, that hung against the dark-olive
cartridge paper on the wall above his desk. Shadows appeared now and
then on the ground-glass outer door, and lingered several times,
testifying to their physical embodiment by violently seizing and
rattling the knob. Craighill scowled at every assault, and presently
when some importunate visitor had both shaken and kicked the door, he
yawned and sought the window again, looking moodily down, as from a
hill-top, upon the city of his birth, where practically all his life
had been spent, the City of the Iron Heart, lying like a wedge at the
confluence of the two broad rivers.
Wayne had used himself hard, as the lines in his smooth-shaven face
testified; but the vigour of the Scotch-Irish stock survived in him,
and even to-day he carried his tall frame erectly. His head covered
with brown hair in which there was a reddish glint, was really fine and
his blue eyes, not just now at their clearest, had in them the least
hint of the dreamer. His suit of brown--a solid colour--became him: he
was dressed with an added scrupulousness as though in conformity to
an inner contrition and rehabilitation. He was in his thirtieth year
but appeared older to-day as his gaze lay upon the drifting, shifting
smoke-cloud that hung above the Greater City.
The son of Colonel Roger Craighill was inevitably a conspicuous
person in his native city and his dissipated habits had long been the
subject of despairing comment by his fellow-citizens, and the text of
occasional lightly veiled sermons in press and pulpit. Dick Wingfield
had once remarked that is was too bad that there were only ten
commandments, as this small number painfully limited Wayne Craighill’s
possible infractions. It was Wingfield who named Wayne Craighill the
Blotter, in appreciation of Wayne’s amazing capacity for drink; and
it was he who said that Wayne’s sins were merely an expression of the
law of compensation and were thrown into the scale to offset Colonel
Craighill’s nobility and virtue. Whatever truth may lie in this, it is
indisputable that the elder Craighill’s rectitude tended to heighten
the colour of his son’s iniquities.
The Blotter had been drunk again. This is what would be said all over
the Greater City. At the clubs it would be remarked that he had also
had a fight with two policemen, and that he had been put in pickle at
the Country Club and then smuggled to his office to await the arrival
of Colonel Craighill, who had been to Cleveland to address something
or other. The nobler his father’s errands abroad, the wickeder were
the Blotter’s diversions in his absences. The last time that Roger
Craighill had attended the General Assembly of the Presbyterian
Church Wayne had amused himself by violating all the city ordinances
that interposed the slightest barriers to the enjoyment of life as
he understood it. But the Blotter, it is only just to say, was still
capable of shame. His physical and moral reaction to-day were acute;
and he shrank from facing the world again. More than all, the thought
of meeting his father face to face sent the hot blood surging to his
head, intensifying its dull ache. His sister Fanny would be likely to
show her sympathy and confidence by promptly giving a tea or a dinner
to which he would be specially bidden, to demonstrate to the world
that in spite of his derelictions his family still stood by him. The
remembrance of past offenses, and of the definite routine that his
restorations followed, only increased his misery. The usual interview
with his father, with whose mild, martyr-like forbearance he had long
been familiar, rose before him intolerably.
A light tap at the inner door of Wayne’s room caused him to leap to his
feet and stand staring for a moment at a shadow on the ground glass.
The door led into Roger Craighill’s room, and as he had been thinking
of his father, the knock struck upon his senses ominously. He hesitated
an instant, curbing an impulse to fly; then the door opened cautiously,
and Joe Denny slipped in, seated himself carelessly on a table in the
centre of the room, and nursed his knee.
Consider Joe a moment; he is not the humblest figure in this chronicle:
a tall, lithe young fellow, unmistakably Irish-American, with a bang
of black hair across his forehead, and a humorous light in his dark
eyes. His grin is captivating but we are conscious also of shrewdness
in his face. (It took sharp sprinting to steal second when Joe had the
ball in his hand!) He is trimly dressed in ready-made exaggeration of
last year’s style. His red cravat is fastened with a gold pin in the
similitude of crossed bats supporting a tiny ball, symbol of our later
Olympian nine. You may, if you like, look up Joe Denny’s batting record
for the time he pitched in the Pennsylvania State League, and you
will thereby gauge the extent of New York’s loss in having bought his
“release” only a week before he broke his wizard’s arm.
Joe, at ease on the table, viewed Mr. Wayne Craighill critically, but
with respect. In his more tranquil moments Joe spoke a fairly reputable
English derived from the public schools of his native hills, but his
narrative style frequently took colour of the idiom of the diamond,
and under stress of emotion he departed widely from the instruction
imparted by the State of Pennsylvania on the upper waters of the
Susquehanna.
“Say, the Colonel’s due on the 4:30.”
Wayne straightened himself unconsciously and his glance fell upon the
desk on which lay an accumulation of papers awaiting his inspection and
signature.
“Who said so? I thought he wasn’t due till to-morrow.”
“I was up at the house when Walsh telephoned for the machine to go to
the station. I guess the Colonel wired Walsh.”
“I’d like to know why Walsh couldn’t have done me the honour to tell
me,” said Wayne sourly.
“I guess Walsh don’t know you’re back. They asked me in the front
office a while ago and I told ’em I guessed you were up at the Club;
and then I came in here through the Colonel’s room to see if you had
stayed put.”
Craighill was silent for a moment, then he asked:
“How long was I gone this time, Joe?”
He addressed young Denny without condescension, in a tone of kindness
that minimized the obvious differences between them.
“It was Wednesday night you broke loose, and this is Saturday all
right.”
“I must have bumped some of the high places--my head feels like it. How
about the newspapers?”
“Nothing doing! Walsh fixed that up all right. You see it was like
this: you made a row on the steps of the Allequippa Club when I was
trying to steer you home. I’d been waiting on the curb with a machine
till about 1 A. M., and some of the gents followed you out of the Club
and wanted you to come back and go to bed; and when a couple of cops
came along, properly not seeing anything, and not letting on, you must
up and jump on one of ’em and pound his head. Then the other cop broke
into the fuss, and there was a good deal doing and I got you into the
machine and slid for the Country Club and got a chauffeur’s bed in the
garage and sat on you till you went to sleep.”
Wayne shrugged his shoulders.
“Was that all I did? It sounds pretty tame; I must be getting
better--or worse.”
He drew a cigarette from his case and struck a match before he
remembered a rule that forbade smoking in office hours; then he found a
cigar and chewed it unlighted. Joe eyed the littered desk reflectively.
“Say, you’d better brush that off before the Colonel comes.”
“Put that stuff out of sight,” commanded Wayne and tossed him his keys.
“See here, Joe, I started Wednesday night and Thursday night I made a
row on the Club steps, and you took me out to Rosedale in the machine
and kept me there till you smuggled me in here this afternoon. That’s
all right enough, but there was another chap in the row at the Club--I
thought I was fighting the whole force, and you say there were two
policemen there. There was another fellow besides the policemen.”
“Forget it! Forget it!” grinned Denny, waving his hand airily. “The
bases were full for a few minutes and a young gent came along and took
our side against the cops, see? The two cops had us going some and this
little chap blowing in out of a minor league rapped a two-bagger on the
biggest cop’s chin. ‘You Mr. Craighill’s chauffeur?’ he says to me,
sweet and gentle-like; and between us we picked you up and threw you
into the machine and I cut for the tall, green hills. As the coal-oil
lit up and she got in motion, I looked back, and our little friend that
hit the cop was a handin’ the cop his card.”
Craighill frowned fiercely with the effort of memory.
“Who was this man that took my part? He must have followed me out of
the Club.”
“Nit; he was new talent; and listen--he was a Bible-barker.”
“A minister?”
“Sure. He wore his collar buttoned behind and a three-story vest. He
wasn’t as tall as you or me but he was good and husky and he lined out
three on the cop’s mug, snappy and zippy, like a triple-play in a tied
game.”
“A priest? It wasn’t Father Ryan?”
“It wasn’t the father; it was new talent, I tell you. The gent who came
up here to see you the night you broke loose. He was out looking for
you Thursday night; guess he heard you were going some. And after he
spiked the cop and we got off in the machine there he stood bowing and
tipping his dice to the cops and handing ’em his card.”
Light suddenly dawned upon Wayne.
“Paddock; O Lord!” he ejaculated.
A clock tinkled five on the mantel and Wayne’s manner changed. He
pointed to the outer door.
“You’d better clear out. Stop in the front office and tell Mr. Walsh
I’m here, do you understand?”
“Say, Mrs. Blair’s been lookin’ for you; she’s had the ’phone goin’ for
two days. She flew in her machine to Rosedale to look for you but they
were on and didn’t give it away. You better call her up.”
“Yes, I’ll attend to it; clear out.”
Already Colonel Craighill had quietly entered the adjoining room
followed by an office boy bearing a travelling bag. On his desk lay a
dozen sheets of paper, hardly larger than a playing card, and these he
examined with the swift ease of habit. They were reports, condensed to
the smallest compass, and expressed in bald dollars and tons all the
Craighill enterprises. It was thus that Roger Craighill, like a great
commander, viewed the broad field of his operations through the eyes
of others. Bank balances; totals of bills payable and receivable; so
much coal mined at one point; so many tons of coke ready for shipment
at another; the visible tonnage in the general market; the day’s
prices--these bare data were communicated to the chief daily at the
close of business, and in his frequent absences were sent to him by
wire. He summoned a boy.
“Please say to Mr. Walsh that I’m ready to see him.”
Walsh appeared instantly: he had, indeed, been awaiting the summons,
and was prepared for it. A definite routine attended every return of
the chief to his headquarters. He invariably called Walsh, his chief
of staff; and thereafter was ready to see his son. In every business
office the high powers are merely tolerated by the subordinates, to
whom the senior partner or the president is usually “the boss” or “the
old man.” Roger Craighill was not to be so apostrophized even behind
his back: he was “the Colonel” to everyone. To a few contemporaries
only was Craighill “Roger” and these were citizens bound together by
memories of the old city, who as young men had cheered Kossuth through
the streets in 1851, and who a decade later had met in the Committee of
Safety or marched South with musket or sword in hand.
“Ah, Walsh, how is everything going? I see that the pumps at No. 18 are
out of order again. I think I’d better go after the Watkins people
personally about that; we’ve been patient enough with them.”
Walsh nodded. He was short and thick and quite bald. He had formerly
been the “credit man” of one of the Craighill enterprises, which, it
happened, was a wholesale grocery; but he had grown into the confidence
of Roger Craighill and when Craighill organized the grocery business
into a corporation and began directing it from the fourteenth story of
the Craighill building, Walsh became Craighill’s confidential man of
affairs, with broad administrative powers.
Walsh thrust his hands into the pockets of his office coat and began
talking at once of several matters of importance connected with the
Craighill interests. Craighill nodded oftener than he spoke as Walsh
made his succinct statements. There was no sentiment in Walsh; his
voice was as dry and hard as his facts. He had studied credits so long
that his life’s chief concern was solvency. He could tell you any day
in the week the amount of bituminous coal in the bins at Cincinnati or
Louisville; or whether the corner grocers of Johnstown or Youngstown
had paid for their last purchases from the Wayne-Craighill Company.
Craighill’s inquiries were largely perfunctory, a fact not lost upon
Walsh, who fidgeted in his chair.
“Everything seems all right,” said Craighill, turning round and facing
Walsh. “By the way, did the home papers report my address before
the Western Reserve Society? Here’s a very fair account of it from
the Cleveland papers. I’d be glad if you’d look it over. I’m often
troubled, Walsh, by the amount of time these public and semi-public
matters take, but in one way and another I am well repaid. They inject
a certain variety into my life, and the acquaintances and friendships I
have made among statesmen, educators, financiers and men of affairs are
really of great value to me.”
“Um.”
Walsh twirled the clipping in his fingers. The discussion of anything
outside the range of business embarrassed him. It was perfectly proper
for Roger Craighill to spend his time with other gentlemen of wealth
and influence in making after-dinner speeches and in seeking ways and
means of ameliorating the condition of the poor whites or the poor
blacks of the South, or in stimulating interest in the merit system, or
in reforming the currency. Walsh thought favourably of these things,
though he did not think of them deeply or often.
“Ah, Wayne!”
The moment had arrived for the son to show himself and Wayne Craighill
entered from his own room and walked quickly to his father’s desk.
Walsh rose and examined the young man critically with his small, shrewd
eyes, then left with an abrupt good night. Father and son greeted each
other cordially; the father held the young man’s hand a moment as they
stood by the desk.
“Wayne, my boy!” said the elder warmly, “sit down. How’s Fanny? She
came home from York Harbour rather early this year.”
“Oh, she’s all right,” replied Wayne, though he had not seen his
sister during his father’s absence. He assumed that the fact of his
latest escapade was known to his father. Everyone always seemed to
know, though for several years Roger Craighill had suspended the
rebukes, threats and expostulations with which he had met Wayne’s
earlier lapses. His father’s cordiality put Wayne on guard at once: he
suspected that he was to be taken to task for his sins with a severity
that had drawn interest during his immunity.
“I am sorry to see that you have overdrawn your account somewhat,”
remarked Colonel Craighill, holding up one of the papers and examining
it through his eye-glasses. His manner was now that of a teacher who
has summoned an erring student for reproof. The mildness of his manner
irritated Wayne, who was, moreover, honestly surprised by his father’s
statement.
“I didn’t know that; in fact I don’t believe that can be right, sir.
What’s the amount?”
“Four thousand dollars.”
Wayne’s surprise increased.
“It’s an error. I have overdrawn no such amount; I’m sure of that.” But
his head still ached and he sought vainly for an explanation of the
item on the sheet his father passed over to him.
“Wayne,” began Colonel Craighill, “I simply cannot have you do this
sort of thing. It’s bad for you, for you can have no need of any such
sum of money in addition to your regular income and your salary; and
it’s bad for the office discipline. I have prided myself that some of
the foremost men of the country have placed their sons in my care.
Think of the effect on these young men out there,”--he waved his hand
toward the outer offices--“of your extravagant, wasteful ways.”
Wayne was familiar enough with the black depths of his infamy and he
knew his value as an example; but he groped blindly for an explanation
of the overdraft. Suddenly the knowledge flashed upon him that it
represented the price of some shares in a coal-mining company in
which his father was interested. They had been offered for sale in
the settlement of an estate and as he supposed that the Craighill
interests already controlled the property he had purchased them on
his own account a few days before, with a view to turning them over
to his father on his return if he wished them. The amount was small
as such transactions go, and as he had not the required sum in bank
he overdrew his account in the office. His own income from various
sources--real estate, bonds and shares representing his half of the
considerable fortune left by Mrs. Craighill--was collected through
the office, where he kept an open account. His father’s readiness to
pillory him increased the irritability left by his latest dissipation.
A four-year-old child will not brook injustice; there is nothing a
man resents more. He could very quickly turn his father’s criticism
by an explanation; but just now in his bitterness he shrank from
commendation. The gravamen of his offense was trifling; he had been
misjudged; his pride had been touched; he refused to justify himself.
He returned to his own room where a little later Walsh found him.
Walsh, having tapped on the outer door, was admitted in sulky silence
and squeezed his fat bulk into a chair by Wayne’s desk. He gazed at the
son of his chief with what, for Walsh, approximated benevolence.
“I’ve been drunk,” remarked Wayne, with an air of suggesting an
inevitable topic of conversation.
“Um,” growled Walsh. “I had heard something of it.”
“I suppose everybody has heard it. My sprees seem to lack a decent
cloistral quiet some way. Joe told me you had shut up the newspapers.
When my head stops aching I’ll try to thank you in proper language.”
“I’ll tell you how you can avoid getting drunk in the future if you are
interested,” remarked Walsh.
“If you mean burning down the distilleries I’d like you to know that
I’m not in a mood for joking.”
“Um. I was not going to advise you to commit arson. I have never
offered you any advice before; I’m going to give you some now. You’ve
got about all there is out of drink and you’d better get interested in
something else. The only way to stop is to quit, and you can do it.
I’ve a notion that you and I are going to be better acquainted in the
future. Such being the idea I’d like to be sure that you are going to
keep straight. You make me tired.”
Wayne was not sure that he understood. No one, least of all his
father’s grim, silent lieutenant, had ever spoken to him in just this
tone, and he was surprised to find that Walsh’s method of attack
interested him. He was humble before the old fellow in the linen coat.
“What’s the use, Tom? I’m well headed for the bottom; better let me go
on down.”
“The top is less crowded and more comfortable than the bottom. Just as
a matter of my own dignity I’d stay up as high as I could if I were
you. I had a good chance to go down myself once, but I took a dip or
two and it didn’t look good down below--too many bones. Um. That’s all
of that.”
He chewed an unlighted cigar ruminantly until Wayne spoke.
“The Colonel’s going to get married.”
“Um,” Walsh nodded. His emotions were always under control and Wayne
did not know whether he had imparted fresh information or not. He
imagined he had, for it was not likely that his father would make a
confidant of Walsh in any social matter.
“The Colonel knows his own business.”
“As a matter of fact, does he?”
“Um.”
Walsh’s cigar pointed to a remote corner of the ceiling, but his eyes
were fixed on Wayne. He had apparently no intention of discussing
Colonel Craighill’s marriage and he abruptly changed the subject.
“You bought fifty shares of Sand Creek stock the other day from the
Moore estate.”
Wayne scowled; these were the shares he had overdrawn his office
account to buy, with the intention of turning them over to his father,
and his father’s criticism of the overdraft rankled afresh.
“Yes; I bought fifty shares. How did you find it out?”
“Tried to buy ’em myself and found you had beat me to ’em.”
“I overdrew my office account to buy them. I thought father would want
them; but now he can’t have them.”
“Why?”
“Because in a fit of righteousness he jumped me for my overdraft. It
was the first time I was ever over; you know that, and it would have
squared itself in a few days anyhow. But if you want those shares----”
“I don’t want ’em. The Colonel wants ’em. He told me to get ’em but I
didn’t know there was any great rush about it. The Colonel’s friends in
New York, that he got into the Sand Creek Company, asked him to pick up
those shares; their control is by a narrow margin, and they wanted to
fortify themselves. They’d looked to the Colonel to take care of this
little bunch. Does he know you’ve got ’em?”
“Oh, no; not on your life! After jumping me for buying them? My dear
Tom Walsh, there _are_ moments when the worm will turn!”
This was the first occasion on which Wayne had ever spoken of his
father to Walsh except in terms of respect, and Walsh was perfectly
aware of it.
“If I were you I’d turn those shares over to the Colonel.”
“If it’s anything to you--if you’re going to be criticized for failing
to get them, I’ll give them to him--or I’ll sell them to you.”
“No, you don’t have to worry about me, my boy; I can take care of
myself, but I don’t want you to feel that way toward your father. It
ain’t healthy; it ain’t right.”
“Please don’t do that, Tom. My head aches, and you’re too good a fellow
to preach. I didn’t know those shares were so valuable; it was just a
piece of fool luck that I got them. I suppose they thought letting me
have them was the same as passing them over to father.”
“That’s the way it ought to be.”
“But, dear old Tom,” and he laid his hand on Walsh’s thick knee, “dear
old Tom, it isn’t, it isn’t, it ain’t!”