PADDOCK DELIVERS AN INVITATION
It was remarked by the clerical staff in the Craighill offices that
in the weeks following Walsh’s removal to the jobbing house, Wayne
was unusually attentive to his office duties. Clerks in the habit of
leaving reports on his desk found themselves questioned in regard
to them before the young man gave his visé, which had been scrawled
carelessly heretofore upon anything thrust before him. It should not
too lightly be assumed that Wayne had experienced any sudden conversion
or that his unwonted diligence was due to the prickings of conscience;
but it had occurred to him, at the passing of Walsh, that he really
knew little of his father’s affairs.
Roger Craighill’s reputation for business ability was solidly
established. Until it became the fashion for trust companies to
perform such services, he had often been chosen to administer estates;
but in keeping with his wish to give more time to public service he
had gradually freed himself of such duties. His marriage, changing
necessarily the ultimate distribution of his estate, had piqued Wayne’s
curiosity as to his father’s wealth. His long-gathering resentment
against his father needed facts with which to fortify and strengthen
itself. He was skeptical as to all of his father’s virtues and the
marriage had demolished his confidence in his father’s conservatism
and caution. He now began to test the outward gilt of the resplendent
statue of Roger Craighill already imaginably set up by admiring
fellow-citizens in the market place. He had only the vaguest idea
of the nature of contracts; but he examined a great number of these
documents, affecting the ownership and control of properties whose
titles were only names to him. He even began summarizing and tabulating
these, the better to study them. His father, as of old, referred to
him, day by day, matters whose triviality now struck him with greater
force than before in view of his growing grasp of affairs.
Wayne had really believed, like everyone else, that his father was
a man whose fortune entitled him to be classed with comfortable
millionaires--not, indeed, among the Pittsburg collossi, but among
the eminently solid and unspectacular rich. As he pondered his
computations and scanned the precis derived from them he reached the
startling conclusion that his father’s fortune was in reality a huge
and unsupported shell. He had begun studying his father’s affairs in
the hope of finding some weapon which, at the fitting moment, he might
use to humiliate this proud and self-sufficient parent, who had been
so intolerant of his sins and weaknesses. Any trifling error or some
badly judged investment would have served; but for the fact that his
curiosity had been awakened in the beginning as to the amount of his
father’s possessions he would have abandoned his researches long before.
It was now perfectly clear that Roger Craighill had ceased to be a
factor in the coal and iron industries; that he had been gradually
relinquishing his holdings in the substantial enterprises with which
he had earlier been identified and that he had re-invested his money
in securities of little or no standing in the market. These reflected,
Wayne realized, his father’s large, imaginative way of viewing “world
questions”--as Colonel Craighill called them. For example, his faith
in American colonial development was represented in large holdings in
Philippine and Porto Rican ventures that struck Wayne as being properly
a pendant to an address his father had delivered Somewhere before
Something on “America’s Duty to Her Colonies.”
Wayne had, during the summer of nineteen hundred and seven, given
little heed to the whispered rumours of approaching panic. The Great
Prosperity had become an old story, and pessimists had predicted
its termination for several years without shaking faith in it. On
Saturday, the twenty-sixth of October, business closed confidently;
before Monday morning a mysterious stifling fog had stolen over the
country. It did not seem possible that any human agency could have
so thoroughly diffused the word--whatever it was--that paralyzed the
financial energy of the remotest village, for it was paralysis, not
panic. The newspapers ignored the situation and suppressed the truth;
a few men around mahogany director’s tables alone dealt in facts; the
rest of the country groped among rumours. Money went into hiding; banks
drew the curtains over paying-tellers’ windows and calmly declared
that there was no cause for alarm. Finance whistled in a graveyard and
everyone pretended that nothing was the matter. Colonel Craighill,
astute student of affairs, fed the journals with optimistic statements
affirming the perfect security of the national glory as proved by
credible statistics. Everybody was rich, yet nobody had any money;
credits were never sounder, but nobody could borrow a cent. The Great
Prosperity had been followed by the Great Scare and yet there was no
panic in the strict sense of the term. Colonel Craighill was encouraged
by his business friends to talk in the newspapers; no one else was
so plausible, no one else could so deftly enwreathe the smiling brow
of Mammon. His pronouncements soothed the fretful and put to shame
those dull persons who had been disposed to question the edicts of the
Mahogany Tables. If Colonel Craighill said that Finance is a science
not intended to be understanded of the people, it must be so, and mere
ignorant mortals did well not to bother their poor heads about it.
Colonel Craighill, believing firmly that merit and length of tenure
should be favoured in promotions, had installed as Walsh’s successor an
accountant who had been chief book-keeper in the office for many years.
Walsh had mildly suggested Wayne, but Colonel Craighill rejected the
recommendation.
“The suggestion does credit to your kindness of heart, Walsh, but--you
must know it is impossible.”
Paddock called on Wayne at the office one afternoon to find him bending
studiously over a mass of papers. Wayne greeted his old friend amiably.
“Don’t be afraid! I’ll not bite you this time.”
He cleared a chair of papers and bade the clergyman make himself at
home.
“I won’t conceal it from you, old man, that I was in bad shape that
night you came in on me here. I saw everything red--not pink, but a
bright burning scarlet. You won’t mind my saying it, but your call was
deucedly inopportune. I had come up here with my tongue hanging out to
drink that quart, and to be caught with the goods on by a gentleman of
the cloth annoyed me. I’ll not spare your feelings in the matter! And
then you looked so fresh and fit and good that that riled me too. I was
ashamed of it afterward--the way I received your life confession. And
the bottle----”
“Did you eat it?” laughed Paddock, delighted to find his old friend in
this gay humour.
“I told you I was going to the bad that night, and you went out with
a hurt look as though I had kicked your dog or done some low thing of
that sort. Your tact is wholly admirable. If you had said one word to
me when I told you I had started for hell I should have screamed and
made a terrible fuss. Strong men could not have held me. You went away
and left me, by which token I know you possess the wisdom of serpents.
And I proceeded at once to get beautifully drunk.”
Paddock said nothing, but smiled sadly.
“But I have cut it out now. I shall look no more upon the rum bottle
when it’s red, not because I don’t like it, but because I’ve thought of
much more dreadful and heinous sins.”
“Then,” said Paddock, not understanding, “I have merely stimulated your
ambition as a sinner.”
“That’s exactly it. There’s something rather contemptible about
drunkenness. A man of education ought to do worse or be very, very
good. Well, how goes the work?”
“First rate. That’s what I came in to see you about. I want you, as a
leading citizen, to come and look at my plant.”
“Certainly, I’ll do that with pleasure, sometime, provided your real
design isn’t to show me off as an awful example. Mind you, I don’t
stand for that. At any rate, I was brought up in the strict letter of
the Presbyterian faith, and if I have any value as an example of what
shouldn’t be, the Presbyterians have first call. It would be low down
in me to pose for you Episcopalians, who are a rival body.”
“I don’t want you to pose as anything; just sit on the back seat and
watch the events of an evening. The hat isn’t passed--no sermon--maybe
a song or two, but you don’t have to sing. Your chauffeur will know how
to take you out; he quite eclipses me. His batting averages make him a
marked man; his record of strike-outs his last season on the diamond
lifted him quite out of the back-lot class.”
“Am I to understand that Joe Denny has fallen under your spell and
frequents the parish house? Well, I thought he was sneaking the machine
out at night pretty often, but I didn’t give him credit for anything so
noble. I thought it was somebody’s housemaid.”
“He says he can pitch with his left hand just as well as with his
right, but he’s passed up the cheering diamond out of devotion to you.
He talks about you with tears in his eyes.”
“He takes quite the paternal attitude toward me--looks after me as
though I were four years old. The paternal attitude,”--Wayne repeated
musingly--“odd phrase that, Paddock. When is it you want me to come to
your joss-house?”
“Why not to-night? The various sections are going to get together for
the first time, and it will be interesting to see how they mix. Jim
Balinski of Altoona will do a sparring stunt with Mike the motorman;
songs and recitations will be provided and the girls’ cooking class
will attend to the refreshments. I dare you to do better.”
“I’m embarrassed,” laughed Wayne, lacing his fingers behind his head
and sprawling out in his chair. “I’m due to sit in a poker game
to-night with a few hardened veterans; but your programme appeals to me
as more wholesome. I’ll come as long as it’s you, but with the distinct
understanding that you don’t try to convert me. I’ll do it once for
an old friend; our friendship will suffer if it ever happens again.
But,” and he drew down his hands and squared himself in his chair,
“but how about all these people you are working for down there? You
are going to feed them on cakes and ale and make them dissatisfied, so
that they will march into the East End some pleasant evening and tear
the citizens from their homes and decorate the trolley poles with them.
Your mission in life is pretty, but after all, Jimmy Paddock, can you
stick a lever under the lower stratum of society and lift it?”
He struck a match and lighted a cigarette.
“Let me see,” replied Paddock soberly, “whether I can explain just
what my idea really is. I don’t propose to lift the whole mass with my
little lever. It seems to me that the books on these subjects are just
a lot of phrases. I don’t know anything about the deep philosophy of
our social organization--I can’t understand those things. I haven’t
the brains to debate social questions with people who don’t see them
my way. I can’t talk to people who say my kind of work is futile; I
can’t discuss it with them or defend my idea, for two reasons: one
is that I don’t even understand their phraseology; and the other is
that they make me so hot that I want to beat their brains out with a
featherduster. There, you see, old man, the wild Indian in me isn’t
all dead yet; I’m far from being a saint. I don’t believe that even
the most ignorant and depraved are going to be spoiled, as you say,
by being treated like human beings. I don’t think the taste of cakes
and ale will send them up into the East End to kill and loot. I may
be mistaken, but I believe that those singed and scorched fellows in
the steel mills are just as good as I am. I don’t recognize class
distinctions. I positively decline to allow any sociologist to classify
me and pin me on a card like a new kind of flea. But every man is a
social class by himself as I look at it. I’m not big enough or strong
enough morally or intellectually to try to pull up one of the social
strata and transplant it; but I can go out and find some poor devil who
is down on his luck or who has got into the gutter, and I can put my
poor individual lever under him and pull for all I’m worth and maybe,
by the grace of God, I can lift him up a little, just a little bit.
Now, you think I’m crazy, don’t you?”
“No,” said Wayne, “not in the least. You’re worse; you’re a blooming
sentimentalist. But you’re a good fellow anyhow, and I don’t think you
ought to be discouraged. I’d like to contribute----” and he glanced
toward a check-book that lay on his desk.
“No you don’t!” cried Paddock. “I don’t want your money. I suppose you
could give me a good-sized sum and never miss it; but I don’t want
that kind of money. I accept contributions not as a favour to me but
as a favour to the giver; you see, there’s a large difference. The
richest churchwarden in Pittsburg came out with a party of ladies the
other Sunday. He sent me a check for a thousand dollars the next day
and advised me to ventilate my chapel; he didn’t like the smell of my
congregation. I sent him back his check. A girl who works in a laundry
for six dollars a week offered me one of those dollars to help pay for
the refreshments to-night and I took it!”
“By George, you have it bad! I suppose the laundry girl’s money carried
with it the idea of purification. I do wish they would keep chemicals
out of my shirts. Perhaps if you would reason with them, Jimmy, you
could stop the havoc.”
“You illustrate the individual in his most selfish aspect,” laughed
the minister. “You see only your own torn shirt. Your remedy lies not
with the girl but with her employer. You tell him you want better work
and that unless he raises the wages of his employees you’ll carry your
shirts elsewhere.”
“That would be far too much trouble; it’s a lot easier to buy new
linen.”
“That’s the secret of the whole situation we’re talking about; it’s
easier to buy a new shirt than to take care of the one you’ve got.
By the same token it’s easier to wear out a coal miner and throw him
away when you can’t use him any longer than to preserve the men who
are digging our coal to-day. They all go on the rubbish heap--they’re
just old scrap. I’ve been up in the anthracite districts where children
under the age limit are employed in the breakers; and in the churches
of the towns up there men devoutly thank God every Sunday for so
kindly putting all this mineral wealth in the hills of the State of
Pennsylvania so they may give their own children comforts and luxuries
won by the blackened hands of other men’s children.”
“We have laws that cover such cases; enforce the laws. I’m for that,”
said Wayne.
“But we don’t want to do it that way! We must do it not by law but by
love,” and the minister smiled his sad smile.
Wayne laughed and threw away his cigarette.
“You’re a mighty good fellow, Jimmy Paddock, but you’re a
sentimentalist, that’s all. There may be some of that in me down
underneath somewhere, but I doubt it. Anyhow, I’ll take a peep at your
little party to-night; I dare say it won’t do me any harm.”