Man's Country/Chapter 22
BEFORE the president of Judson-Morris had time to think over what Simon Mumford had said to him, he heard Fay calling excitedly from the lower hall. He met her on the staircase, all dancing eagerness.
"What do you think, George?" she clamored with childish enthusiasm. "Sir Brian has invited the Hicksons, the Traceys, and us to go with him on his Big Horn hunt in the Canadian Rockies."
But George, though he had come quickly in response to his wife's call, had left his mind back there with Simon Mumford, and it was slow in overtaking him.
"Eh? Oh! What?" he stammered and, gazing past into the hall below, saw that the Hicksons' dinner party was breaking up.
Part of the guests had gone, others were departing. Near the foot of the stairs Sir Brian and the Traceys stood chatting animatedly.
"Oh, wouldn't it be wonderful, just to get off from the world like that?" Fay seized both her husband's hands where he halted on the step above her. "Just think: We haven't been away on a real trip since our honeymoon."
Slowly George's mind came round to the contemplation of the idea—this absurd and utterly impossible idea that he at this time could absent himself from the city of Detroit for a matter of three weeks or more.
"Could we leave Junior?" he fended, grasping at any straw and noticing, as he sought to raise this feeble obstacle, that Sir Brian lifted an interested eye toward the two of them.
Fay dismissed Junior with a pursing of her lips to express absurdity and an explosive little: "Why, of course!" after which she was immediately off on the main track again with: "I've always wanted to shoot big game. Sir Brian says we women would enjoy the trip immensely even though we never got a shot, while you men would be certain to kill. Then just think, too, what good fellows the Hicksons and the Traceys are when it comes to potlucking—anything like that! It would be such a lark!"
She was all stampeding eagerness and into each sentence got a plea that was almost pathetic in its earnestness. But George had by this time sensed that, besides Sir Brian, the Traceys and the Hicksons were frankly and interestedly listening, and it irritated him to have these people infer that his wife must plead, for anything she wanted from her husband, as if he had been a heartless ogre.
"We take the railroad to a station in the Canadian Rockies that Sir Brian knows about," Fay bubbled on; "and from there we start on horseback not far, but up—up—up into the wildest possible country, surrounded on every side by the most awful mountains, till at last we come to some broken tablelands, right on the roof of the world, that are famous pasturing places for the sheep. There we make camp beside a stream fed from melting snow, and—and we go after 'em! Won't it be jolly? Oh, won't it?"
And she let go George's hands to clasp her own in a rapture of pleasurable anticipation.
"But—my dear!" George began in a tone slightly expostulating, while he groped for temporizing phrases which would postpone consideration to a moment when he could soften the inevitable disappointment of his decision.
But with that first word—the first look, indeed—his wife thought she saw refusal coming, and in her manner there was an instant change which revealed that all the while it was fear that lay at the bottom of her breathlessly enthusiastic importunings. With a woman's quick instinct to save her pride, she swung her shoulders quickly to bar random glances from below, so no one but he could hear as she whispered half vehemently, half-imploringly:
"George! George! for my sake—don't—don't refuse me before—don't be too abrupt before—before them."
Such concern was touching, but also it was irritating. In those quick, tremulous, unvocalized words he saw pictured to him a husband presupposed to be too selfishly absorbed in his own concerns to be likely to show any adequate consideration for his wife's feelings, and he did not like the picture—he did not like the presuppositions; he thought both were unjust. At the same time his eyes signaled Fay the desired assurance that she would not be rebuffed.
Clever as an actress, she turned and waved her hand vivaciously to those below. "George is considering," she reported. "He doesn't know whether he can get away or not, but he's going to try awfully hard. Oh, I'm sure we can go!"
Tugging her husband by one hand, she dragged him down the stairs into the group of which the Hicksons were now permanent members, all their other guests having got themselves off.
"I'll do my very darndest, dear folks and Sir Brian," said George after a moment's hesitation. "Perfectly fine of you to ask us! Let you know in twenty-four hours whether we can go or not, so there's time to get somebody else and not spoil the party."
Fay, who, under all her simulations of hope and enthusiasm, had been wildly angry at her husband when she suspected him of intent to refuse her bluntly and openly, was instantly mollified and radiantly happy. "Oh, I am sure George will be able to make it!" she declared proudly. "He always does everything he really sets out to do, you know."
"George, you are the dearest thing!" she exclaimed impulsively, as soon as they were settled in the limousine, and to prove it she hugged him almost violently.
"You little muggins!" responded George Judson in his fond tone, and held her closely to him, her velvet cheek on his. "You want to go on that Big Horn hunt something fierce, don't you?"
"Yes, I do!" she answered with an impulsive movement born of yielding once more to the fascination of that brilliant idea. "Besides, it's a matter of pride. George, I am so proud of you—and I want Sir Brian to realize how devoted such a great big business machine as you are can be to his wife, once he is able to think of himself purely as a husband. I want to show him!"
"By Jingo, I'd like to show him, too, sweetheart!" affirmed George, and his tones were earnest, but not altogether hopeful. "You see it's just a matter of those new bonds. I've got to float them or I can't leave, and the market seems tight."
"George!" she exclaimed impulsively. "Why don't you let me take those bonds? You know I've been wanting to put my money in the works." Instantly she felt her husband's body stiffen.
"Fay," he reminded her in tones of near reproach, "I couldn't do that, you know. Bless your dear, generous heart, I simply couldn't." There seemed to be unalterable decision in his tones.
"But what are you going to do then, George—about—about arranging to get away?"
"This," her husband answered with sudden resolution. "This: I had an offer today for the bonds. If I don't get a better proposition by tomorrow noon, I'll go to those fellows and close up. Then I can go with you on the trip. There!"
"You darling!" she cried, and flung her arms around him afresh. "Oh, George!" she sighed in tenderest love rapture. "I can forgive you anything when you're—like this."
And George in this moment knew how heartily he too could forgive her every exaction and whim and waywardness and innocently stubborn refusal to understand. But he couldn't think of anything in particular that his wife had to forgive, and speculated, rather amusedly, on what it might be.
While Fay was still at breakfast next morning, George reached his desk and began his moral struggle. Temptation loomed large. The din of the factory had never been such sweet music in his ears; the walls had never looked to him such a noble monument to human endeavor; he had never wanted to retain control of Judson-Morris Motor Works as he wanted to retain it now, and he was about to lose that control. It was in this state of mind that bland, kindly Simon Mumford, in keeping his promise made the night before in the Hicksons' library, found George.
"How about it, George?" he asked in his blandest, his most coaxing tone, his fat, pink face shining like a beneficent new moon.
"Nothing doing!" said George bluntly.
But Simon still regarded him hopefully, appealingly, and with sympathy. "I am sure I could persuade Mrs. Gilman," he began to suggest.
"No wife's money in mine, Mr. Mumford, not a dollar." He lifted his hands and shook them, he shook his head, he shrugged a negative even with his shoulders.
"Well, I do be doggoned!" ejaculated Mumford in his thin, crackling voice. "Hum!" and he was silent, thinking. "George," he said after an interval, hitching nearer, "I do hate to see those fellows get the screws on you—those particular three."
"And yet," argued George gloomily, "they're the three that got control for me in the first place. If anybody's going to trim me, they're entitled to."
"But not if they started out to trim you from the first," rebutted Simon Mumford quickly. "They had to see you get something from others before they could take it away from you. Supposing they were the ones who so industriously knocked you in financial circles over the Nemo failure just so they could get this chance to skim you like a pan of milk."
"Suppose they did!" exclaimed George flaring up. "Dod gast 'em, I'd like to beat them more than ever if it's possible they did that."
"It's not only possible, it's probable," declared Simon. "Look here now, George! I'm not so sure but I could find somebody else to underwrite those bonds, although of course none of these financial underwriters are in it for their health. Any of them might demand a taste of sugar—they might even demand as much as Blodgett, Tompkins, and Haley, but—"
"I'd rather pay it to them than to those three buzzards," asserted George, his mind having proved very suggestible on the possibility of Blodgett, Tompkins, and Haley having "ribbed him for a take-off" as he dubbed the process in his mind.
"Then call up Blodgett and ask him to give you till two o'clock to reach a decision," urged Mumford eagerly. "I believe before two o'clock I can interest somebody else."
"You're on," said George tersely; "and I'm certainly much obliged to you, Mr. Mumford."
It never occurred to him to doubt old Simon. It seemed perfectly reasonable to hope that Simon could find some one to take his bonds when George could not, because he was so obviously an interested party, while Simon's approval alone was almost the underwriting of a bond. He merely turned to the 'phone, called up Blodgett, secured the necessary respite, and fidgeted in his chair, pretending to work but accomplishing nothing, until half past one when the voice of Simon was heard upon the wire vibrating with excitement.
"You're saved, George," he gurgled exultantly. "You're saved, at least, from those three blood-suckers. Templeton & Co. will underwrite the bonds—although they demand the same slice as the other fellows, 15,000 shares of common."
George, greatly relieved for a moment, felt his spirits suddenly sag. He had been hoping against this—hoping that Simon would drive a better bargain. Still it saved him from Tompkins, Blodgett, and Haley; and besides, when he later came to meet William H. Templeton face to face, he found him so much easier to deal with that the whole transaction was almost reassuring. To be sure, he had to endorse certificates covering fifteen thousand shares of common stock over to Templeton & Co., but the latter agreed not to present them to the Secretary of Judson-Morris for transfer upon the books for a period of three years, which meant that he could vote this stock as his for that length of time and that for the same period his control was secure. Give him three years of uninterrupted control, and he guaranteed to take care of himself against any kind of catastrophe.
With a sigh of relief he signed his name. He had involved George Judson and impaired his holdings, but he had saved the day for the Judson-Morris Motor Works.
Later he remembered that he had also saved the day for Fay and the Big Horn hunt. As soon as he thought of this, he telephoned Fay.
She was wildly happy. "Oh, you wonderful husband!" she cried in a triumphant rapture. "You wizard! You miracle-worker!"
It had been some months since any one had called George a wizard or a miracle-worker, and he rather liked it. It made him feel that he was really back.
"And remember, no Blakeley this time!" his wife warned playfully yet meaningly. "No telegrams. No letters. No messengers from the factory!"