Man's Country/Chapter 7
NEXT day when, carrying his sheaf of orders with drafts attached for one hundred and two M. M. automobiles, George Judson began to visit the bankers, he found that Mr. Morris's pessimism was well-founded. Yet these bankers knew all about Olds' second year. They had heard that he was selling four thousand cars and would show a cash surplus of $600,000 for the twelve months. But that was Olds. New men and new machines—that was different; that was not an investment, it was a gamble, and bankers were not gamblers—so they told him.
After three days of industrious assault upon the bulwarks of finance the only real encouragement lay in the fact that while none of these bankers could believe in young Mr. Judson's scheme which he talked so enthusiastically, every one of them came within a few minutes to believe in young Mr. Judson himself. There was, for instance, Stephen Gilman. He was the distinguished president of the great St. Clair Trust Company and quite imposing to look upon. He was tall, with a high, narrow forehead over brows that were aggressively and contrastingly black, for his thin and slightly wavy hair was snow-white and parted in the middle as if to heighten that suggestion of balanced probity which was subtly conveyed by every detail of the banker's appearance.
"Who are you, young man?" he asked with an amused smile. "You're the best talker that has sat down in that chair in a long time, I'll say that for you. Your proposition is sound enough, too. I'll tell you that if—"
"You're the first banker that has had the discernment to see that," broke in George gratefully.
"Hold on a minute," warned Mr. Gilman. "I said 'if.' If you could convince me that there's any such wide-spread hunger for horseless carriages as you say. I've never even ridden in one of the treacherous things myself."
"Mr. Gilman," proposed George in quiet seriousness, "I will pay all your expenses and supply you with the best accommodations obtainable if you will go out with me to, say, Lincoln or Sioux City, or if they are too far away, Kankakee; and if in either one of those places I do not take ten orders for our cars in seven days, why then I'll admit that I am mistaken about the future of the horseless carriage. If I do sell them, will you not revise your opinion, give serious consideration to my proposal, and induce other financial powers in the city to do the same?"
George was serious enough—no doubt of it; yet Mr. Gilman only smiled at the naïve proposal.
"How old are you?" he asked curiously.
"Twenty-two," admitted George, weak enough to be proud of his youth when computed solely in years.
"Hm!" said Mr. Gilman, in surprise. "You talk older."
"Perhaps that's because I've had responsibility and a lot of experience of what you might call small salesmanship."
"What responsibility?" inquired the banker, shrewdly feeling after the answer to those broad yet deeply penetrative questions he had asked a while ago.
George told him—as briefly as possible, yet as fully as necessary to be polite—told him the story of his business experience, the paper routes, the news-stands, the slowly worked-out high school course and his devoted interest in the automobile; also the sound reason why he had selected the Milton Morris vehicle in particular for his most serious business venture. Under the spell of a further cordial interest, he even told about the house he was now building for his father and mother with whom he still lived, and about the twelve or thirteen thousand dollars now on deposit in Mr. Gilman's own bank.
"Humph!" said Mr. Gilman again, when he had heard him through to this important piece of information. "You pay me a subtle compliment."
"My gas wagon's just out in front. Won't you let me run you out the avenue and back?" pleaded George earnestly. "It'll do you good to get a little fresh air. It will be in the way of business, too, for I think I can make you understand something of the fascination there is in a spin in an automobile."
"And on the basis of that fascination, you want me to loan you two hundred thousand dollars?" speculated Mr. Gilman, an amused light in his shrewd eye.
"Not on your fascination. On the general fascination, of the reality of which you may judge when you have experienced it yourself."
"Help! Help!" laughed Mr. Gilman. "But I'll go with you."
As the two men appeared in the rather exposed position reserved for the passengers on the single-seated, two-cylindered runabout of that day, the pair provided a striking contrast. Yet George, as he guided the car out Griswold Street toward Jefferson Avenue, had no sense of contrasts. He felt very much on even terms.
"Goes easy, doesn't it?" observed Mr. Gilman, analyzing his sensations.
"Gasoline does the pulling," smiled George.
"Why, I don't notice the smell of gasoline at all," recalled the banker.
This was the day when the standard joke was about the automobile and the standard joke about the automobile was the joke about the smell.
"Pooh! There isn't any smell," asserted George, opening the throttle a bit wider. "If there is, the other fellow gets it."
They were spinning out the avenue eastward now, with the gleam of the river every now and then before their eyes and with the fresh, tangy ozone of early autumn sharp in their nostrils.
"How fast are we going?" inquired Mr. Gilman.
"Faster than your carriage horses would be going if they were running away," declared George.
"Trying to sell me one of these things, aren't you?"
"Trying to sell you my faith in our ability to sell eleven hundred of these cars this year and five thousand next," amended George with a contrasting soberness that was instantly effective.
"Well," retorted the banker, "I admit the fascination anyway, and I guess we had better turn around now and make for the office."
"Very well, sir," George responded, perfectly agreeable, yet with just the proper suggestion of reluctance, and prepared to bring the vehicle about.
But a street car, wheel flanges already setting up their hideous shriek, was just rounding the corner, and this complicated matters. This, however, would give George an opportunity to demonstrate both his skill and the easy control of the car. Puffed with self-confidence, he began to swing the wheels, but . . . there was a milk wagon speeding along behind that street car, piled high with full cans, drawn by two wild horses, with reins held by a fat Swiss who was practically asleep upon the seat. The horses, knowing from long habit whither they were bound, took it upon themselves to dodge around the street car and cut the wrong way to the turn. When George saw them, it was too late.
"Hold on tight," he shouted to Mr. Gilman, and himself braced for a shock. There followed an awful eternity of suspense that lasted perhaps as long as a split second, after which horses, automobile, street car, slumbering Swiss, and bursting cans of foamy milk spontaneously combined in a moving picture of disaster! . . .
Taking account of casualties: the street car was uninjured, while the milk wagon seemed a total loss. The sturdy little automobile, substantial as the character of Milton Morris himself, had plowed straight through it and over it, halting, careened against a trolley pole, with the two wheels on one side spinning idly a few inches from the ground. The horses, kicking themselves free of the wreckage with frightened snorts, dashed madly off. The Swiss driver woke up, took one look at the chaos round him, and plunged wildly away. George was still clinging stoutly to his wheel, but Mr. Gilman had disappeared.
"My Lord! Oh, my Lord!" groaned the young man, out of the chaos, but just then there began a mysterious agitation among the milk cans. George, who by this time had crawled down from his seat, began frantically to toss the cans aside. He found his late passenger underneath, drenched by the white fluid.
"Mr. Gilman!" he cried in anguished concern, "are you hurt?"
"I think not," replied the banker in tones of thick disgust that issued through a film of milk. "No, not hurt!" but as he said it, his verdict was contradicted by a widening circle of crimson which appeared about a contused wound over his right eye.
"Oh, but you are!" discovered George in deepening distress. "You are. My Lord! This is awful!" And with an arm under the banker's aristocratic shoulders he helped him to his feet.
"Better take me home, I guess," gasped Mr. Gilman, and he mentioned a location on the Lake Shore Drive in Grosse Pointe.
"Have you there in twenty minutes, sir," assured George, relieved by the opportunity to do something quick, and gave the leaning automobile a vigorous push.
With a lurch the little car righted—not an axle bent, not a wheel sprung, standing as four square to the world as she had stood the morning out of the factory. Yet George was naturally apprehensive as he gave the crank a twist, but the engine started with a sound like the whir of a flock of grouse.
However, Mr. Gilman was viewing with alarm. "Not going to ask me to get in that thing again, are you?" he inquired with a slight show of irritation.
"It's the best transportation available, sir," George said; "it'll have you home in twenty minutes. I hope you don't blame the little car," he added dismally.
"No, no," said Mr. Gilman snappily, "and I don't blame you either, young man. I blame myself. They are treacherous things, these devil-wagons!"
Something boiled in George's breast, but he held it in. Tact, delicacy, consideration—all warned that this was no time to start an argument. Besides his passenger began to display an alarming weakness. He wobbled in his seat, and the young man slipped an arm unobtrusively round him where assistance could be prompt if he should faint, and steered skillfully with one hand, making toward Grosse Pointe with all speed possible over the rather poor dirt road.
"My Lord! I wonder if he's dying!" the young man groaned in anxiety, whereat old Stephen roused enough to gasp grimly.
"Not yet—small thanks to you."
However again came contradiction of his stout words. His head dropped and he was off again until the car had come to a stop under the porte cochère.
But the approach of the little car had been noted by some eye in the great stone house; the banker's inert form had been recognized, and instant alarm been taken. A butler came running down the granite steps, leaving the door wide open behind him, and between the two men Mr. Gilman suffered himself to be lowered and half-borne upward to his hall.
"A glass of Scotch, Bolton, quick!" the banker gasped and indicated his desire to be eased into a chair, where he sat waiting for the stimulant with his head in his hand.
"Where is Mrs. Gilman or Fay?" he asked disappointedly, when a startled exclamation issued from somewhere above, and George's eyes turned to where an impressive staircase lifted itself to the floor above.
In the angle of the balustrade a girl had halted for swift appraisal of the scene, her face a vision of immature loveliness on which bewilderment and alarm were pictured. She wore a dainty frock of some half-clinging blue stuff. Her brown, wavy hair was done precociously high, her figure was a combination of girlish slants and womanly curves; but the oval face was white with fright, and blue, startled eyes swept the faces below.
"Papa!" she cried, and with winged feet came fluttering down. "You are hurt!"
Her manner was all tenderness and impulsive affection, all concern and anxiety. Her arms were about her father's neck in an instant. She was kissing the uncrimsoned area upon his brow, then turning appealing eyes upon the servants with impatient gestures and reproachful pleadings:
"Do something—can't you, some of you—quickly," she urged. "Jean, telephone for mama!"
This appeared the only specific thing she could suggest, and her eyes turned once more eagerly upon her father with, "What was it, father? How did it happen?"
The half-closed eyes of Stephen Gilman, leaning back weakly, waiting for his Scotch, regarded his daughter with a slight but reassuring smile. "Not exactly hurt, Fay, dear; just bumped is all," he succeeded in saying, when the Scotch arrived, and he gulped it gratefully.
All this time George Judson, fallen completely in the background, had been staring at the girl. She reminded him of a Persian kitten, soft, furry, loving, and she started some strange memory in him that was like a waking of the long, long past. He was staring at her—staring with all his eyes.
The reviving Scotch brought Mr. Gilman around considerably.
"Bolton, you and Morely help me upstairs," he directed, and, his arms upon the shoulders of his butler and his valet, had begun to mount with his daughter anxiously ahead, when, despite pain and anxiety, there occurred to him his duty to the author of his misfortune, the duty to be courteous and even magnanimous.
"Fay," he said and shifted slowly till his eye could contemplate that distressed person by the door, "this is a young friend of mine, Mr. Judson. He was good enough to bring me home—er—uh—after the accident. Thank him, won't you?"
The girl darted her first appraising glance at the young man her father's nod had indicated. She saw him—symmetrical, well-favored, concerned, and wistful—and decided that he was a person to be instantly approved and highly appreciated. With a little cry of dismay as though she had been indifferent to one to whom she was under obligations of gratitude, she came impulsively down to him.
"I am so grateful to you—so grateful!" she cried, and took his hand and for a moment held it warmly.
It was the unstudied, artless expression of a distressed and simple heart, utterly devoid of self-consciousness, and as such beautiful and appealing. But the effect produced was beyond the cause. George Judson stood swaying—for he had recognized her. This was the Goat Girl—this was his velvet queen. She had grown into this half-wild, half-tamed, exquisite, frightened, wonderful thing that he wanted upon the instant to take into his arms and soothe and love.
He could have dropped upon the floor and offered up a prayer of thanksgiving. His hand burned where she had touched it. The electric thrill of that personal contact was shooting through him. Some delicate perfume that came close to him with her enveloped him and made him giddy.
"Just what happened, Mr. Judson?" the girl asked.
"He was driving with me. A milk wagon ran us down. He got a fall and something struck him. I am sure the first thing for me now is to bring a doctor. I have my car here, you know."
George Judson was saying these things quite glibly, but hardly knowing that he uttered them. Her golden hair had darkened, her soft, child prettiness had become girlishly mobile and variant, and her milk-white complexion had deepened to a creamy yet delicate orchid tint, but the radiant blue of her eyes was still the same.
"That's the thing—bring a doctor," emphasized the girl with an impatient movement of her body. "Get Doctor Rigdon from the Sheldon Building. I'll telephone him you are on the way."
George had to pull himself together to remember that this was in answer to his own proposal.
But while ecstasies and sickening fears alternately possessed George Judson's mind, the little car was bumping frantically over the old dirt road. The life of Stephen Gilman had become all at once doubly precious to George Judson. He found Doctor Rigdon waiting for him on the curb and delivered him under the Gilman marquise after a breathless, hair-raising ride.
"Gracious me!" panted the Doctor, as if he had been running. From the doorway he turned. "Gracious me!" he said again and gazed at the still vibrating car.
George this time encountered a new personality in the Gilman hall, a tall, self-contained woman with traces of considerable beauty and a dignified manner.
"I am Mrs. Gilman," she said, bowing but not offering her hand. "Will you wait in the library please?"
Her voice was pleasant, but a degree north of cordial, and her manner was, well—reserved, or exclusive—something like that.
The library immediately joined in this conspiracy by awing him. There were amazing great pictures with amazing, massive, gilt frames; there were spider-legged tables of differing designs and set at varying angles; there were odd little cabinets and intriguing chests of tiny drawers, evidently old, probably far-gathered, all looking only slightly serviceable, but extremely ornamental.
But perversely this very harmony of beauty contributed an additional feeling of discomfort. It made him feel so ridiculously out of his element. Characters in the huge paintings stared him out of countenance; tiny statues ogled him or jiggled derisive fingers at him; a bronze mountain lion snarled at him, showing wicked teeth and a vicious curl of his tail.
But at length he became more accustomed to his surroundings and reflected upon their significance, upon the things they told him about the people into whose home he had been abruptly pitchforked. His imagination began to work once more. These things, he perceived, were the creation not alone of wealth, but of culture, of the art of knowing what is right, of the genius-like capacity for making all things material blend themselves into a beauty that serves at the same time that it delights.
George for the moment leaned back in a Louis Quinze chair—only he did not know it was a Louis Quinze—and drew a full, exhilarating breath. But the portraits still mocked; the statues gibbered again. He—an ex-newsboy; he, an automobile salesman; he, a mere struggler for the promotion of a great business conception—he could aspire to much, and did unblinkingly; but could he aspire to—her? Now that he had seen her face to face and knew what her perfections were like to be?
For the first time in his cocksure adult life a misgiving that was more than temporary entered the mind of George Judson.