Man's Country/Chapter 17
ON the morning after that query of his wife's about the overstayed markets, President Judson sat alone in his office, to brood, to ponder, to read disquieting telegrams, and to digest irritating typewritten pages.
John Williams came in. "Chief," said he, putting a good deal of affection into one of his favorite forms of address for his president. "Chief! Hadn't we better turn back? Now, honestly, hadn't we?"
"Turn back?" snorted George contemptuously. "There's nothing in it in this world for the turn-backs. Suppose Columbus had turned back. Think a minute, John," and George laid a hand cordially upon the shoulder of his general sales manager. "Study the history of every successful enterprise in the world, and you'l! find there came a time when everybody wanted to turn back—everybody saw failure ahead but the leader. Turn back? Not on your life. We're going on, John. We're going on to victory!"
George lifted his hand high as he lifted his voice high, and then he stnote John Williams resoundingly with that uplifted palm, and thereafter waved him out of the room.
In the midst of this crisis, the shadow of pain fell upon his darling wife. Gallant little Fay, triumphing over agony, looked forward exultantly almost, but George, clinging to her soft hand, felt the warmth of it grow less, felt it plucked at mysteriously as by the tuggings of an unseen current, and was chilled to the heart with fear that she was gone from him forever—chilled and rebellious until at last, as in quiet after storm, he saw her drift back to him across an eddy of unconsciousness, paler but more divine, resting exhausted amid her pillows.
"Our son," she murmured, with an ecstatic, crooning note in her voice, "Our son, George Junior!"
But at this time George Judson knew himself in his heart for an unnatural father. He clung softly to the hand of Fay and kissed it, but had a grudge against this tiny, breathing bundle, for he felt that it had very nearly deprived his life of the dearest thing in it. With passing hours, however, this feeling began to wear off. It went away entirely on that day when four small, lace-work fingers fastened with a clinging grip about the exploring forefinger of George Senior, and refused stubbornly to let go—held him as if thereby he adopted him.
"By jingo!" crowed George. "He knows me. He knows who he's got hold of, and he just isn't going to let go."
This was an enormous moment for George Judson. He never did forget its sensation.
For weeks thereafter he was liable to break off his task at any moment and go rushing out home to see little George and insist on having him hold his father's finger. "Great, isn't it? Great!" he would grin at his wife, at the nurse, the doctor, the pictures on the wall, at anybody who happened to be round, and especially at George Junior.
And yet for all his happiness through the child, motherhood had not quite resolved itself in Fay as he had expected. Within three weeks of Junior's birth Fay had disillusioned her husband by a sort of return to girlhood at a time when he had expected her to take on more matronly ways.
"You old dear!" she laughed at George's first hint of mild dismay. "Mothering comes first, of course, but it isn't all of life. I'm going to go and go and go, George, after four or five months in prison. It seems as if I could never catch up with bridge, and teas, and dinners, and the whole social whirl. Just as soon as the doctor will let me, I am going back to riding and golf."
George, though disappointed, found himself too generous, too fondly indulgent, to protest at anything which gave pleasure to his pretty wife, who to him was charming even in her wilfulness. It only hurt when she made importunate demands upon his time which he could not by any means grant, but even then he reproached himself—never her; it was only when, with a saucy pout and an impish toss of her pretty head, she intimated that she always found at the club plenty of men perfectly willing to act as her escort, companion, or partner, in case her husband did not find time to do this, that George lost his temper.
"Confound those loafers," he complained. "A job is what they need, I tell you. Fay, every man ought to be compelled to do a certain amount of productive work every day of his life—ought to have some job that claims him. These fellows wear good clothes, and they have good manners, and they're darned fine fellows, but I tell you they're nothing more than hoboes."
Fay, admiring George always when he was flaming—and not directly at her—was greatly amused by this outburst. With a savage growl and then a quick, penitent kiss he turned from his wife and her after-breakfast chatter, and, as he set out for the works, all thought of her drifted from his mind, for just now the mad project of the Nemo model in its second year hung like a millstone about his neck.
That it was mad, an array of figures compiled by Percy Mock succeeded this very day in convincing him. And yet George took it so calmly, when the supreme moment to confess defeat arrived, that he did not seem to confess it at all.
"Ah-hum!" he said, as if clearing his throat of something—swallowing a lump, perhaps—and passed the sheet back to Percy, and got up and went out alone into the works.
But while "Ah-hum," an inarticulate grunt, was all that he said, yet Percy, having known George Judson well for now nearing eight years, was sure that he interpreted the grunt aright. He rushed in and told John. John Williams let out a cry and came hurrying—to see the empty desk. He went back to tell somebody else, and Percy Mock was already telling other somebodies else. Within ten minutes at the outside, every chief of a department, every responsible employee in the business offices, knew that George Judson had admitted his colossal blunder.
George meanwhile was emphasizing his situation to himself by a swift tour through the works. He was saturating his mind with the conditions he had to meet, and asking himself bruskly, "What'll I do first?" His warehouses were filled to bursting by completed cars. His shipping sheds were congested with them. Even his assembling floors were so overcrowded that the men could hardly work. And every day the switch engines pushed long trains of material into his plant. Axles, axles, forever axles! Transmissions, transmissions, forever transmissions; those accursed transmissions which, because of a fatal difference between the old planetary form and the new device of the sliding gears, were declared to be hopelessly out of date. Milton Morris would have had that sliding gear in his model of 1910, but Milton Morris was dead.
The president of Judson-Morris walked back into his office with a quick, alert step. Grim, but without a quaver in his voice, he issued terse orders, knowing well that the edifice of hope must fall and fall quickly to avert a worse disaster. Atone slash of the pen $200 was cut from the price of the Nemo model. Within five minutes the telegraph was ticking this message out to every agency, and before the agent in San Diego had received his, the advertising copy announcing the cut was being flashed out, also by telegraph, to a selected list of newspapers at strategic points throughout the country.
George Judson sat, with sweat upon his brow, in the midst of all this vibrant energy which had suddenly been turned loose in an effort to save what might be saved from the wreck of his plans. He knew that by the stroke of that pen he had cut the profits from his twelve thousand unsold Nemos and that only events could decide whether this cut would be sufficient to move the goods and forestall catastrophe. If it failed, not merely the writing off of prospective profits, but the writing in of a loss, was inevitable.
It was only when all that could be done that day had been done, and he turned away from his office homeward bound, that the great, crushing sensation of defeat seemed to come down upon him with full force. He felt a yearning for his beautiful wife that was different from any he had ever felt before, a yearning for her because he was weak and she was strong.
So George felt that he wanted to weaken into the arms of Fay tonight. His pride was willing to forego itself; to permit her to see him sapped and humbled; if only he might know the luxury of her outpouring sympathy and listen to a thousand crooning terms of endearment sprinkled into his mind as she sprinkled kisses upon his face. He told himself that he would never know how noble his wife might be until he flung some of his burdens upon her. This night he was resolved to jettison his pride and tell her all. He urged his chauffeur to faster and faster speed, but when he got to the house and rushed within doors, they told him his wife was not yet back from a tea at the country club.
A tea at a country club!
George shut his teeth together hard—indeed, he hardened all over into something as stiff as a post. Disconsolate, he went upstairs to Junior, yet it was not a baby to hold his finger—it was a woman to hold his heart—that George Judson was wanting. He touched the soft cheek tenderly and turned restlessly into his wife's room. It was redolent of her; it breathed, it cried out of her; it was a sacred place to him. For a moment he stood and did it reverence.
But his devotion was brought to an end by the whir of a motor below, and he went down the stairs three steps at a time and out on the front porch. Fay was just being helped out of a strange car by a strange young man wearing a cap and an air of indolent grace—a foreign looking person, George decided instantly from his knowledge of local types. The stranger's manner was particularly attentive to the lady, which seemed natural enough, for Mrs. Judson in white, plaited skirt and striped blazer jacket, with a white, soft hat having a piquant dash to the brim, looked particularly vivid and fascinating.
"Oh, George," she cried as her husband appeared. "Come here and meet Sir Brian Hook."
"Sir Brian!—Oh—ah!" stammered George, who had come running down the steps to find himself confronting a pair of gray-blue eyes, a close-cropped mustache, and an agreeable if tentative smile, all on a good-looking face of apparently about thirty years of life's experience.
"Awfully kind of you to bring my wife home!" the husband said.
"Pleasure, I assure you," murmured Sir Brian, surveying Mr. Judson with unhurried self-possession.
"Won't you come in?" proposed George, cordially.
"Thank you!" said Sir Brian, but he moved toward his car as indicating that his time was limited. From the side of it he turned his blue eyes upon Fay with a smile of entire approval.
"My word, but you're a jolly good partner!" he said. "I should like nothing better than a rubber with you tomorrow if you are going to be at the club."
"Which is just what I am," beamed Fay with hearty assurance. "My husband failed me today, but he'll be out tomorrow, and we'll make it an international sweepstakes."
"Can't make it, sweetheart," confessed George ruefully.
For a moment Fay's face expressed a sweet petulance, then with the air of swift reconciliation to such disappointments she declared: "That's too bad, Sir Brian, for my husband has a wonderful mind for bridge—such concentration as you never saw; but," and her face brightened, "I'm certain to be there. Substitutes for husbands are plentiful these days!"
She laughed, and Sir Brian laughed. George also laughed, after which Sir Brian stepped on his gas and went roaring away from a standing start with the eyes of Fay Judson following him out of sight.
"I do believe Sir Brian likes you, George!" enthused Fay, pulling her husband down to give him a kiss in plain view of any passer-by. "Come onl" she added. "I'm crazy to see Junior; always am when I've been out."
George bounded after her.
"How did everything go at the office today?" Fay asked, when after a time she gave the baby back to its nurse and another sort of consciousness came over her—a sort of husband and sweetheart consciousness. It was her stock query always to his home-coming.
"Well, a rather—" he began, feeling his words, when suddenly there came before his mind that picture of the man from whom his wife had just parted—the agreeable young Englishman, with his air of indolent grace and his manner of such impregnable self-assurance. Should he, George Judson, invite unfavorable comparison with that? Should his wife turn from the glamour of a titled and socially accomplished expert to be disillusioned for the first time concerning her husband—to look upon a harried, sagging, ignoble figure of a man in need of understanding and seeking consolation? She should not—decidedly, she should not! In an instant pride had roused every drooping feather of the spirit of the motor magnate.
"Oh, at the office?" he broke in upon himself, with an affected frown of annoyance, as if it was with difficulty that he brought his mind back to plain thoughts of business. "Oh, you know how it is—a big organization like ours, with a big enterprise on hand like the Nemo—trouble of some kind is always sticking up its head somewhere along the line."
It was skillful acting. His tone rather than his words had permitted his wife to discern that this had been a day of fairly heavy responsibilities, a day of business battle with surprise attacks and hard-pressed drives, but that he had casually and powerfully resisted all and remained calmly in possession of the field.
"Come," she invited, leading the way to her own room. "You sit in the alcove there and look out the window and talk to yourself while I take a splash and slip into something cool. I want you near me."
That was in itself a fine and soothing compliment, the effect of which was not entirely dulled even when it appeared that she wanted him near especially so that she could prattle about Sir Brian Hook.
George was by this time willing to concede that Sir Brian must be quite a fellow, but silence came on abruptly without his opinion being solicited. Nor was it as though the stream of information about the Englishman had gone dry. It was merely that Fay's bath was ready; she had gone, and George was left alone to stare musingly out the window while a maid was in the room laying out garments, with sounds of splashing water and then the patter of a shower issuing from around the corner. The husband's mind was at once inevitably back upon his business. He was reviewing the situation, analyzing his recent response to his wife's inquiry, and reasoning that he really must break the news of real conditions to her—in justice to her he must, and now was the time.
But it was with a start of fear that he realized her presence in the room once more. She was darting to and fro between the laid-out garments on her dressing table and the cheval glass, uttering the while those little bursts and trills of song that marked her more ecstatic moods. Once or twice she burst out whistling. How he did like to hear her whistle!
"Pretty mean kind of runt, a man is," he decided, "if he's got to come home and spoil his wife's happiness by babbling about his business troubles. You bet I won't tell her."
Yet he hurried to the office the next morning with a consciousness of having missed something—a boon which his wife might have supplied to him and had not. Unreasonably, unknown to himself almost, a feeling of resentment against Fay for that failure was taking substance in his breast. She was still sleeping calmly as he left his home feeling neglected, forlorn, and slightly touched with self-pity.
News! News of the campaign was what he thirsted for. There should already be a stack of telegrams on his desk from the eastern agencies—from them first because of an hour of difference in time. But the office had an empty look. Round him one sweeping glance through the glass partitions revealed only unoccupied desks. In irritation and amazement, the president of Judson-Morris looked at his watch; and then he understood. The time was but half-past seven. His anxiety had got him here ahead of all the staff. Naturally, therefore, there were no telegrams awaiting him.
But very soon he became aware that the offices were coming to life around him; doors opened and closed; stenographers, clerks, accountants, principals, began to arrive; roll tops shot up, drawers were opened, and filing cases. This showed to the lonely watcher that like himself others were anxious and eager and slipping in ahead of time; he was grateful for their solicitude. Blakeley appeared, looking abashed to find his employer down before him, and a few minutes later telegrams, unenveloped, just as they came from the factory wire, began settling one after another, like large, yellow snow-flakes down upon the president's desk.
The chief executive of Judson-Morris scanned these, first with eagerness and then with satisfaction. They carried orders for Nemos at the new price—a dozen here, twenty there, a hundred yonder, and George was eagerly penciling the totals, as men total election returns.
Big orders began to come in—great, ringing, hopeful messages from the Atlantic seaboard. One thousand Nemos at the new price were accepted by Philadelphia, eight hundred by Boston, four hundred by Baltimore, two thousand by New York.
But from the Middle West, that great absorber of medium and low-priced automobiles, and from the wide Pacific coast, there was only silence—except in isolated instances. Telephone calls and flash messages of inquiry plunged impatiently into this silent territory brought only Pessimistic response with pleas for more time to let the trade express itself and plain intimation that the cut had come too late.
But the waiting, the watching, and the hoping continued all day in the office of President Judson and on into the night. It was resumed upon the second and the third day, but upon the fourth even George Judson himself had to confess that the first-day voice out of the Middle West was right. The cut had come too late; the season was too far advanced; the finished cars might all move, but the unfinished cars—the ones for which parts had been contracted—engines, wheels, axles, and bodies—the carloads of which were pushed daily into the factory yard and checks for which went gayly out from the cashier's desk in a constantly fluttering and dreadfully draining stream—these built but unassembled cars could not be sold.
It was not merely an operation without profits which George Judson faced now. It was a loss—and the only question was, How great a loss? Pale, perspiring, feeling a little touch of dizziness for a moment, George acknowledged to himself the truth. He had been beaten. Actually beaten!
But again he was quick and resolute to act. He had now to confess defeat in the least disguisable way for a manufacturer. He shut down the shop!
This was done so suddenly it was dramatic. He did not shut down next Saturday night. He did not shut down tonight at six o'clock. He shut down now, at 3.40 o'clock in the afternoon. He did not want another piece of material wasted—not another ounce of steel or rubber or aluminum or brass turned into a thing on four wheels that could not be sold at a profit. So he ordered the fires drawn and the power turned off.
Seven thousand men were out of work.
Out of work! George Judson, staring moodily out the window of his private office in a corner of the administration ell, had a chance to read something of what that meant in the faces of the procession filing out with lunch-boxes or dinner-buckets on their arms. He had often taken pride in watching these well-fed, well-paid workmen of his pass under that window; taken pleasure in their contented looks and admired the air of businesslike independence with which they bought their evening paper and then fought for places on street cars or cranked up their own automobiles and drove away.
Now he might have spared himself, yet some morbid fascination urged him to watch this gloomy picture.
Once in a while a face was lifted to stare at the windows of the administration wing, and perhaps some of these saw George gazing down at them so glumly and knew who he was. Whether they saw him or not, he fancied a look of accusation upon these occasional upturned faces. It was as if they complained because they had had no voice in that control which had brought calamity upon them. Workingmen were concerned in the results; they ought to be consulted in the planning: that was what George read in these upturned faces; or perhaps it was in the air and he caught it like a radio message; or possibly it was merely on the outside of his own mind.
"God! What a mess I've made of things, haven't I now? Haven't I?" So the president of Judson-Morris accused himself bitterly.
But he had made other messes elsewhere. In the same minutes when he had been shutting down the shop he had been also flashing out messages to every concern that was manufacturing parts for his old model Nemos, ordering instant cessation and canceling his buying orders with the present deliveries. These telegrams would mean within a day or two at most other lines of men like this marching out of other factories, and George had that picture before his mind also as, an hour or so later, he passed disconsolately out of the factory door.
As he turned his car toward the Indian Village, sickening sensations of awful failure bore down within him, and that yearning to indulge himself for once in delicious depression of spirit before the woman he loved came upon him as it had a few nights before. He took a melancholy pleasure in the planning of an evening in which, he fondly dreamed, a sympathetic and beautiful woman would rise to heights of consolation that should make his hurts seem priceless treasures.