Grant’s first visit to the home of his private stenographer was not his last, and the news leaked out, as it is sure to do in such cases. The social set confessed to being on the point of being shocked. Two schools of criticism developed over the five o’clock tea tables; one held that Grant was a gay dog who would settle down and marry in his class when he had had his fling, and the other that Phyllis Bruce was an artful hussy who was quite ready to sell herself for the Grant millions. And there were so many eligible young women on the market, although none of them were described as artful hussies!
Grant’s behavior, however, placed him under no cloud in so far as social opportunities were concerned; on the contrary, he found himself being showered with invitations, most of which he managed to decline on the grounds of pressure of business. When such an excuse would have been too transparent he accepted and made the best of it, and he found no lack of encouragement in the one or two incipient amorous flurries which resulted. From such positions he always succeeded in extricating himself, with a quiet smile at the vagaries of life. He had to admit that some of the young women whom he had met had charms of more than passing moment; he might easily enough find himself chasing the rainbow....
Mrs. LeCord carried the warfare into his own office. The late Mr. LeCord had left her to face the world with a comfortable fortune and three daughters, of whom the youngest was now married and the oldest was a forlorn hope. To place the second was now her purpose, and the best bargain on the market was young Grant. Caroline, she was sure, would make a very acceptable wife, and the young lady herself confessed a belief that she could love even a bold Westerner whose bank balance was expressed in seven figures.
The fact that Grant avoided social functions only added zest to the determination with which Mrs. LeCord carried the war into his own office. She chose to consult him for advice on financial matters and she came accompanied by Caroline, a young woman rather prepossessing in her own right. The two were readily admitted into Grant’s private office, where they had opportunity not only to meet the young man in person, but to satisfy their curiosity concerning the Bruce girl.
“I am Mrs. LeCord, Mr. Grant,” the lady introduced herself. “This is my daughter Caroline. We wish to consult you on certain financial matters, privately, if you please.”
Grant received them cordially. “I shall be glad to advise you, if I can,” he said.
Mrs. LeCord cast a significant glance at Phyllis Bruce.
“Miss Bruce is my private stenographer. You may speak with perfect freedom.”
Mrs. LeCord took up her subject after a moment’s silence. “Mr. LeCord left me not entirely unprovided for,” she explained. “Almost a million dollars in bonds and real estate made a comfortable protection for me and my three daughters against the buffetings of a world which, as you may have found, Mr. Grant, is not over-considerate.”
“The buffetings of the world are an excellent training for the world’s affairs.”
“Maybe so, maybe so,” his visitor conceded. “However, there are other trainings—trainings of finer quality, Mr. Grant—than those which have to do with subsistence. I have been able to give my daughters the best education that money could command, and, if I do say it, I permit myself some gratification over the result. Gretta is comfortably and happily married,—a young man of some distinction in the financial world—a Mr. Powers, Mr. Newton Powers—you may happen to know him; Madge, I think, is always going to be her mother’s girl; Caroline is still heart-free, although one can never tell—”
“Oh, mother!” the girl protested, blushing daintily.
“I said you could never tell, Mr. Grant,—while handsome young men like yourself are at large.” Mrs. LeCord laughed heartily, as much as to say that her remark must be regarded only as a little pleasantry. “But you will think I am a gossipy old body,” she continued briskly. “I really came to discuss certain financial matters. Since Mr. LeCord’s death I have taken charge of all the family business affairs with, if I may confess it, some success. We have lived, and my girls have been educated, and our little reserve against a rainy day has been almost doubled, in addition to giving Gretta a hundred thousand in her own right on the occasion of her marriage. Caroline is to have the same, and when I am done with it there will be a third of the estate for each. In the meantime I am directing my investments as wisely as I can. I want my daughters to be provided for, quite apart from any income marriage may bring them. I should be greatly humiliated to think that any daughter of mine would be dependent upon her husband for support. On the contrary, I mean that they shall bring to their husbands a sum which will be an appreciable contribution toward the family fortune.”
“If I can help you in any way in your financial matters—” Grant suggested.
“Oh, yes, we must get back to that. How I wander! I’m afraid, Mr. Grant, I must be growing old.”
Grant protested gallantly against such conclusion, and Mrs. LeCord, after asking his opinion on certain issues shortly to be floated, arose to leave.
“You must find life in this city somewhat lonely, Mr. Grant,” she murmured as she drew on her gloves. “If ever you find a longing for a quiet hour away from business stress—a little domesticity, if I may say it—our house—”
“You are very kind. Business allows me very few intermissions. Still—”
She extended her hand with her sweetest smile. Caroline shook hands, too, and Grant bowed them out.
On other occasions Mrs. LeCord and her daughter were fortunate enough to find Grant alone, and at such times the mother’s conversation became even more pointed than in their first interview. Grant hesitated to offend her, mainly on account of Caroline, for whom he admitted to himself it would not be at all difficult to muster up an attachment. There were, however, three barriers to such a development. One was the obvious purpose of Mrs. LeCord to arrange a match; a purpose which, as a mere matter of the game, he could not allow her to accomplish. One was Zen Transley. There was no doubt about it. Zen Transley stood between him and marriage to any girl. Not that he ever expected to take her into his life, or be admitted into hers, but in some way she hedged him about. He felt that everything was not yet settled; he found himself entertaining a foolish sense that everything was not quite irrevocable.... And then there was—perhaps—Phyllis Bruce.
When at length, for some reason, Mrs. LeCord visited him alone he decided to be frank with her.
“You have thought me clever enough to advise you on financial matters?” he queried, when his visitor had discussed at some length the new loan in which she was investing.
“Why, yes,” she returned, detecting the personal note in his voice. “I sometimes think, Mr. Grant, you hardly do yourself justice. Even the hardest old heads on the Exchange are taking notice of you. I have heard your name mentioned—”
“Then it may be presumed,” he interrupted, “that I am clever enough to know the real purpose of your visits to this office?”
She turned a little in her chair, facing him squarely. “I hardly understand you, Mr. Grant.”
“Then I possess an advantage, because I quite clearly understand you. I have hesitated, out of consideration for your daughter, to show any resentment of your behavior. But I must now tell you that when I marry, if ever I do, I shall choose my wife without the assistance of her mother, and without regard to her dowry or the size of the family bank account.”
“Oh, I protest!” exclaimed Mrs. LeCord, who had grown very red. “I protest against any such conclusion. I have seen fit to intrust my financial affairs to your firm; I have visited you on business—accompanied at times by my daughter, it is true—but only on business; recognizing in you a social equal I have invited you to my house, a courtesy which, so far, you have not found yourself able to accept; but in all this I have shown toward you surely nothing but friendliness and a respect amounting, if I may say it, to esteem. But now that you are frank, Mr. Grant, I too will be frank. You cannot be unaware of the rumors which have been associated with your name?”
“You mean about Miss Bruce?”
“Ah, then you know of them. You are a young man, and we older people are disposed to make allowance for the—for that. But you must realize the great mistake you would be making should you allow this matter to become more than—a rumor.”
“I do not admit your right to question me on such a subject, Mrs. LeCord, but I shall not avoid a discussion of it. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that I were to contemplate marriage with Miss Bruce; if she and her relatives were agreeable, what right would anyone have to object?”
“It would be a great mistake,” Mrs. LeCord insisted, avoiding his question. “She is not in your class—”
“What do you mean by ‘class’?”
“Why, I mean socially, of course. She lives in a different world. She has no standing, in a social way. She works in an office for a living—”
“So do I,” he interrupted, “and your daughters do not. It would therefore appear that I am more in Miss Bruce’s ‘class’ than in theirs.”
“Ah, but you are an employer. You direct things. You work because you want to, not because you have to. That makes a difference.”
“Apparently it does. Well, if I had my way, everybody would work, whether he wanted to or not. I would not allow any healthy man to spend money which he had not earned by the sweat of his own brow. I am convinced that that is the only economic system which is sound at the bottom, but it would destroy ‘class,’ as at present organized, so ‘class’ must fight it.”
“I am afraid you are rather radical, Mr. Grant. You may be sure that a system which has served so long and so well is a good system.”
“That introduces the clash between East and West. The East says because things are so, and have always been so, they must be right. The West says because things are so, and have always been so, they are in all probability wrong. I guess I am a Westerner.”
“You should not allow your theories of economics to stand in the way of your success,” Mrs. LeCord pursued. “Suppose I admit that Caroline would not be altogether deaf to your advances. Suppose I admit that much. Allowing for a mother’s prejudice, will you not agree with me that Caroline has her attractions? She is well bred, well educated, and not without appearance. She belongs to the smartest set in town. Her circle would bring you not only social distinction, but valuable business connections. She would introduce that touch of refinement—”
But Grant, now thoroughly angry, had risen from his chair. “You speak of refinement,” he exclaimed, in the quick, sharp tones which alone revealed the fighting Grant;—“you, who have been guilty of—I could use a very ugly word which I will give you the credit of not understanding. When I decide to buy myself a wife I will send to you for a catalogue of your daughter’s charms.”
Grant dismissed Mrs. LeCord from his office with the confident expectation that he soon would have occasion to know something of the meaning of the proverb about hell’s furies and a woman scorned. She would strike at him, of course, through Phyllis Bruce. Well—
But his attention was at once to be turned to very different matters. A stock market, erratic for some days, went suddenly into a paroxysm. Grant escaped with as little loss as possible for himself and his clients, and after three sleepless nights called his staff together. They crowded into the board-room, curious, apprehensive, almost frightened, and he looked over them with an emotion that was quite new to his experience. Even in the aloofness which their standards had made it necessary for him to adopt there had grown up in his heart, quite unnoticed, a tender, sweet foliage of love for these men and women who were a part of his machine. Now, as he looked in their faces he realized how, like little children, they leaned on him—how, like little children, they feared his power and his displeasure—how, perhaps, like little children, they had learned to love him, too. He realized, as he had never done before, that they WERE children; that here and there in the mass of humanity is one who was born to lead, but the great mass itself must be children always, doing as they are bid.
“My friends,” he managed to say, “we suddenly find ourselves in tremendous times. Some of you know my attitude toward this business in which we are engaged. I did not seek it; I did not approve of it; I tried to avoid it; yet, when the responsibility was forced upon me I accepted that responsibility. I gave up the life I enjoyed, the environment in which I found delight, the friends I loved. Well—our nation is now in a somewhat similar position. It has to go into a business which it did not seek, of which it does not approve, but which fate has thrust upon it. It has to break off the current of its life and turn it into undreamed-of channels, and we, as individuals who make up the nation, must do the same. I have already enlisted, and expect that within a few hours I shall be in uniform. Some of you are single men of military age; you will, I am sure, take similar steps. For the rest—the business will be wound up as soon as possible, so that you may be released for some form of national service. You will all receive three months’ salary in lieu of notice. Mr. Murdoch will look after the details. When that has been done my wealth, or such part of it as remains, will be placed at the disposal of the Government. If we win it will be well invested in a good cause; if we lose, it would have been lost anyway.”
“We are not going to lose!” It was one of the younger clerks who interrupted; he stood up and for a moment looked straight at his chief. In that instant’s play of vision there was surely something more than can be told in words, for the next moment he rushed forward and seized one of Grant’s hands in both his own. There was a moment’s handclasp, and the boy had become a man.
“I’m going, Grant,” he said. “I’m going—NOW!”
He turned and made his way out of the room, leaving his chief breathless in a rapture of joy and pride. Others crowded up. They too were going—NOW. Even old Murdoch tried to protest that he was as good a man as ever. It seemed to Grant that the drab everyday costumings of his staff had fallen away, and now they were heroes, they were gods!
No one knew just how the meeting broke up, but Grant had a confused remembrance of many handclasps and some tears. He was not sure that he had not, perhaps, added one or two to the flow, but they were all tears of friendship and of an emotion born of high resolve.... The most wonderful thing was that the youngster had called him Grant!
As he stood in his own office again, trying to get the events of these last few days into some sort of perspective, Phyllis Bruce entered. He motioned dumbly to a chair, but she came and stood by his desk. Her face was very white and her lips trembled with the words she tried to utter.
“I can’t go,” she managed to say at length.
“Can’t go? I don’t understand?”
“Hubert has joined,” she said.
“Hubert, the boy! Why, he is only in school—”
“He is sixteen, and large for his age. He came home confessing, and saying it was his first lie, and the first important thing he ever did without consulting mother. He said he knew he wouldn’t be able to stand it if he told her first.”
“Foolish, but heroic,” Grant commented. “Be proud of him. It takes more than wisdom to be heroic.”
“And Grace is going to England. She was taking nursing, you know, and so gets a preference. We can’t ALL leave mother.”
He found it difficult to speak. “You wanted to go to the Front?” he managed.
“Of course; where else?”
Her hand was on the desk; his own slipped over until it closed on it.
“You are a little heroine,” he murmured.
“No, I’m not. I’m a little fool to tell you this, but how can I stay—why should I stay—when you are gone?”
She was looking down, but after her confession she raised her eyes to his, and he wondered that he had never known how beautiful she was. He could have taken her in his arms, but something, with the power of invisible chains, held him back. In that supreme moment a vision swam before him; a vision of a mountain stream backed by tawny foothills, and a girl as beautiful as even this Phyllis who had wrapped him in her arms... and said, “We must go and forget.” And he had not forgotten....
When he did not respond she drew herself slowly away. “You will hate me,” she said.
“That is impossible,” he corrected, quickly. “I am very sorry if I have let you think more than I intended. I care for you very, very much indeed. I care for you so much that I will not let you think I care for you more. Can you understand that?”
“Yes. You like me, but you love someone else.”
He was disconcerted by her intuition and the terse frankness with which she stated the case.
“I will take you into my confidence, Phyllis, if I may,” he said at length. “I DO like you; I DID love someone else. And that old attachment is still so strong that it would be hardly fair—it would be hardly fair—”
“Why didn’t you marry her?” she demanded.
“Because some one else did.”
“Oh!”
Her hands found his this time. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Sorry I brought this up—sorry I raised these memories. But now you—who have known—will know—”
“I know—I know,” he murmured, raising her fingers to his lips....
“Time, they say, is a healer of all wounds. Perhaps—”
“No. It is better that you should forget. Only, I shall see you off; I shall wave my handkerchief to YOU; I shall smile on YOU in the crowd. Then—you will forget.”...
Four years of war add only four years to the life of a man according to the record in the family Bible, if he happen to spring from stock in which that sacred document is preserved. But four years of war add twenty years to the grey matter behind the eyes—eyes which learn to dream and ponder strangely, and sometimes to shine with a hardness that has no part with youth. When Captain Grant and Sergeant Linder stepped off the train at Grant’s old city there was, however, little to suggest the ageing process that commonly went on among the soldiers in the Great War. Grant had twice stopped an enemy bullet, but his fine figure and sunburned health now gave no evidence of those experiences. Linder counted himself lucky to carry only an empty sleeve.
They had fallen in with each other in France, and the friendship planted in the foothills of the range country had grown, through the strange prunings and graftings of war, into a tree of very solid timber. Linder might have told you of the time his captain found him with his arm crushed under a wrecked piece of artillery, and Grant could have recounted a story of being dragged unconscious out of No Man’s Land, but for either to dwell upon these matters only aroused the resentment of the other, and frequently led to exchanges between captain and sergeant totally incompatible with military discipline. They were content to pay tribute to each other, but each to leave his own honors unheralded.
“First thing is a place to eat,” Grant remarked, when they had been dismissed. Words to similar effect had, indeed, been his first remark upon every suitable opportunity for three months. An appetite which has been four years in the making is not to be satisfied overnight, and Grant, being better fortified financially against the stress of a good meal, sought to be always first to suggest it. Linder accepted the situation with the complacence of a man who has been four years on army pay.
When they had eaten they took a walk through the old town—Grant’s old town. It looked as though he had stepped out of it yesterday; it was hard to realize that ages lay between. There are experiences which soak in slowly, like water into a log. The new element surrounds the body, but it may be months before it penetrates to the heart. Grant had some sense of that fact as he walked the old familiar streets, apparently unchanged by all these cataclysmic days.... In time he would come to understand. There was the name plate of Barrett, Jones, Barrett, Deacon & Barrett. There had not even been an addition to the firm. Here was the old Grant office, now used for some administration purpose. That, at least, was a move in the right direction.
They wandered along aimlessly while the sunset of an early summer evening marshalled its glories overhead. On a side street children played in the roadway; on a vacant spot a game of ball was in progress. Women sat on their verandas and shot casual glances after them as they passed. Handsome pleasure cars glided about; there was a smell of new flowers in all the air.
“What do you make of it, mate?” said Grant at last.
Linder pulled slowly on his cigarette. Even his training as a sergeant had not made him ready of speech, but when he spoke it was, as ever, to the point.
“It’s all so unnecessary,” he commented at length.
“That’s the way it gets me, too. So unnecessary. You see, when you get down to fundamentals there are only two things necessary—food and shelter. Everything else may be described as trimmings. We’ve been dealing with fundamentals so long—-mighty bare fundamentals at that—that all these trimmings seem just a little irritating, don’t you think?”
“I follow you. I simply can’t imagine myself worrying over a stray calf.”
“And I can’t imagine myself sitting in an office and dealing with such unessential things as stocks and bonds.... And I’m not going to.”
“Got any notion what you will do?” said Linder, when he had reached the middle of another cigarette.
“Not the slightest. I don’t even know whether I’m rich or broke. I suppose if Jones and Murdoch are still alive they will be looking after those details. Doing their best, doubtless, to embarrass me with additional wealth. What are YOU going to do?”
“Don’t know. Maybe go back and work for Transley.”
The mention of Transley threw Grant’s mind back into old channels. He had almost forgotten Transley. He told himself he had quite forgotten Zen Transley, but once he knew he lied. That was when they potted him in No Man’s Land. As he lay there, waiting.... he knew he had not forgotten. And he had thought many times of Phyllis Bruce. At first he had written to her, but she had not answered his letters. Evidently she meant him to forget. Nor had she come to the station to welcome him home. Perhaps she did not know. Perhaps—Many things can happen in four years.
Suddenly it occurred to Grant that it might be a good idea to call on Phyllis. He would take Linder along. That would make it less personal. He knew his man well enough to keep his own counsel, and eventually they reached the gate of the Bruce cottage, as though by accident.
“Let’s turn in here. I used to know these people. Mother and daughter; very fine folk.”
Linder looked for an avenue of retreat, but Grant barred his way, and together they went up the path. A strange woman, with a baby on her arm, met them at the door. Grant inquired for Mrs. Bruce and her daughter.
“Oh, you haven’t heard?” said the woman. “I suppose you are just back. Well, it was a sad thing, but these have been sad times. It was when Hubert was killed I came here first. Poor dear, she took that to heart awful, and couldn’t be left alone, and Phyllis was working in an office, so I came here part time to help out. Then she was just beginning to brace up again when we got the word about Grace. Grace, you know, was lost on a hospital ship. That was too much for her.”
Grant received this information with a strange catching about the heart. There had been changes, after all.
“What became of Phyllis?” He tried to ask the question in an even voice.
“I moved into the house after Mrs. Bruce died,” the woman continued, “as my man came back discharged about that time. Phyllis tried to get on as a nurse, but couldn’t manage it. Then her office was moved to another part of the city and she took rooms somewhere. At first she came to see us often, but not lately. I suppose she’s trying to forget.”
“Trying to forget,” Grant muttered to himself. “How much of life is made up of trying to forget!”
Further questions brought no further information. The woman didn’t know the firm for which Phyllis worked; she thought it had to do with munitions. Suddenly Grant found himself impelled by a tremendous desire to locate this girl. He would set about it at once; possibly Jones or Murdoch could give him information. Strangely enough, he now felt that he would prefer to be rid of Linder’s company. This was a matter for himself alone. He took Linder to an hotel, where they arranged for lodgings, and then started on his search.
He located Murdoch without difficulty. It was now late, and the old clerk came down the stairs with inoffensive imprecations upon the head of his untimely caller, but his mutterings soon gave way to a cry of delight.
“My dear boy!” he exclaimed, embracing him. “My dear boy—excuse me, sir, I’m a blithering old man, but oh! sir—my boy, you’re home again!” There was no doubting the depth of old Murdoch’s welcome. He ran before Grant into the living-room and switched on the lights. In a moment he was back with his arm about the young man’s shoulder; he was with difficulty restraining caresses.
“Sit you down, Mr. Grant; here—this chair—it’s easier. I must get the women up. This is no night for sleeping. Why didn’t you send us word?”
“There is a tradition that official word is sent in advance,” Grant tried to explain.
“Aye, a tradition. There’s a tradition that a Scotsman is a dour body without any sentiment. Well—I must call the women.”
He hurried up the stairs and Grant settled back into his chair. So this was the home of Murdoch, the man who really had earned a considerable part of the Grant fortune. He had never visited Murdoch before; he had never thought of him in a domestic sense; Murdoch had always been to him a man of figures, of competent office routine, of almost too respectful deference. The light over the centre table fell subdued through a pinkish shade; the corners of the room lay in restful shadows; the comfortable furniture showed the marks of years. The walls suggested the need of new paper; the well-worn carpet had been shifted more than once for economy’s sake. Grant made a hasty appraisal of these conditions; possibly his old clerk was feeling the pinch of circumstances—
Murdoch, returning, led in his wife, a motherly woman who almost kissed the young soldier. In the welcome of her greeting it was a moment before Grant became aware of the presence of a fourth person in the room.
“I am very glad to see you safely back,” said Phyllis Bruce. “We have all been thinking about you a great deal.”
“Why, Miss—Phyllis! It was you I was looking for!” The frank confession came before he had time to suppress it, and, having said so much, it seemed better to finish the job.
“Yes, Phyllis is making her home with us now,” Mrs. Murdoch explained. “It is more convenient to her work.”
Grant wondered how much of this arrangement was due to Mrs. Murdoch’s sympathy for the bereaved girl, and how much to the addition which it made to the family income. No doubt both considerations had contributed to it.
“I called at your old home,” he continued. “I needn’t say how distressed I was to hear—The woman could tell me nothing of you, so I came to Murdoch, hoping—”
“Yes,” she said, simply, as though there were nothing more to explain. Grant noticed that her eyes were larger and her cheeks paler than they had been, but the delight of her presence leapt about him. Her hurried costume seemed to accentuate her beauty despite of all that war had done to destroy it. There was a silence which lengthened out. They were all groping for a footing.
Mrs. Murdoch met the situation by insisting that she would put on the kettle, and Mr. Murdoch, in a burst of almost divine inspiration, insisted that his wife was quite incompetent to light the gas alone at that hour of the night. When the old folks had shuffled into the kitchen Grant found himself standing close to Phyllis Bruce.
“Why didn’t you answer my letters?” he demanded, plunging to the issue with the directness of his nature.
“Because I had promised to let you forget,” she replied. There was a softness in her voice which he had not noted in those bygone days; she seemed more resigned and yet more poised; the strange wizardry of suffering had worked new wonders in her soul. Suddenly, as he looked upon her, he became aware of a new quality in Phyllis Bruce—the quality of gentleness. She had added this to her unique self-confidence, and it had toned down the angularities of her character. To Grant, straight from his long exile from fine womanly domesticity, she suddenly seemed altogether captivating.
“But I didn’t want to forget!” he insisted. “I wanted not to forget—YOU.”
She could not misunderstand the emphasis he placed on that last word, but she continued as though he had not interrupted.
“I knew you would write once or twice out of courtesy. I knew you would do that. I made up my mind that if you wrote three times, then I would know you really wanted to remember me.... I did not get any third letter.”
“But how could I know that you had placed such a test—such an arbitrary measurement—upon my friendship?”
“It wasn’t necessary for you to know. If you had cared—enough—you would have kept on writing.”
He had to admit to himself that there was just enough truth in what she said to make her logic unanswerable. His delight in her presence now did not alter the fact that he had found it quite possible to live for four years without her, and it was true that upon one or two great vital moments his mind had leapt, not to Phyllis Bruce, but to Zen Transley! He blushed at the recollection; it was an impossible situation, but it was true!
He was framing some plausible argument about honorable men not persisting in a correspondence when Murdoch bustled in again.
“Mother is going to set the dining-room table,” he announced, “and the coffee will be ready presently. Well, sir, you do look well in uniform. You will be wondering how the business has gone?”
“Not half as much as I am wondering some other things,” he said, with a significance intended for the ear of Phyllis. “You see—I was just talking it over with a pal to-day, a very good comrade whom I used to know in the West, and who pulled me out of No Man’s Land where I would have been lying yet if he hadn’t thought more of me than he did of himself—I was talking it over with him to-day, and we agreed that business isn’t worth the effort. Fancy sitting behind a desk, wondering about the stock market, when you’ve been accustomed to leaning up against a parapet wondering where the next shell is going to burst! If that is not from the sublime to the ridiculous, it is at least from the vital to the inconsequential. You can’t expect men to take a jump like that.”
“No, not as a jump,” Murdoch agreed. “They’ll have to move down gradually. But they must remember that life depends quite as much on wheat-fields as it does on trenches, and that all the machinery of commerce and industry is as vital in its way as is the machinery of war. They must remember that, or instead of being at the end of our troubles we will find ourselves at the beginning.”
“I suppose,” Grant conceded, “but it all seems so unnecessary. No doubt you have been piling up more money to be a problem to my conscience.”
“Your peculiar conscience, I might almost correct, sir. Your responsibilities do seem to insist upon increasing. Following your instructions I put the liquid assets into Government bonds. Interest, even on Government bonds, has a way of working while you sleep. Then, you may remember, we were carrying a large load of certain steel stocks. These I did not dispose of at once, with the result that they, in themselves, have made you a comfortable fortune.”
“I suppose I should thank you for your foresight, Murdoch. I was rather hoping you would lose my money and so relieve me of an embarrassing situation. What am I to do with it?”
“I don’t know, sir, but I feel sure you will use it for some good purpose. I was glad to get as much of it together for you as I did, because otherwise it might have fallen to people who would have wasted it.”
“Upon my word, Murdoch, that smacks of my own philosophy. Is it possible even you are becoming converted?”
“Come, Mr. Grant; come, everybody!” a cheerful voice called from behind the sliding doors which shut off the dining-room. The fragrant smell of coffee was already in the air, and as Grant took his seat Mrs. Murdoch declared that for once she had decided to defy all the laws of digestion.
At the table their talk dribbled out into thin channels. It was as though there were at hand a great reservoir of thought, of experience, of deep gropings into the very well-springs of life, which none of them dared to tap lest it should rush out and overwhelm them. They seemed in some strange awe of its presence, and spoke, when they spoke at all, of trivial things. Grant proved uncommunicative, and perhaps, in a sense, disappointing. He preferred to forget both the glories and the horrors of war; when he drew on his experience at all it was to relate some humorous incident. That, it seemed, was all he cared to remember. He was conscious of a restraint which hedged him about and hampered every mental deployment.
Phyllis, too, must have been conscious of that restraint, for before they parted she said something about human minds being like pianos, which get out of tune for lack of the master-touch....
When Grant found himself in the street air again he was almost swallowed up in the rush of things which he might have said. His mental machinery, which seemed to have been out of mesh,—came back into adjustment with a jerk. He suddenly discovered that he could think; he could drive his mind from his own batteries. In soldiering the mind is driven from the batteries of the rank higher up. The business of discipline is to make man an automatic machine rather than a thinking individual. It seemed to Grant that in that moment the machine part of him gave way and the individual was restored. In his case the change came in a moment; he had been re-tuned; he was able to think logically in terms of civil life. He pieced together Murdoch’s conversation. “Not as a jump,” Murdoch had said, when he had argued that a man cannot emerge in a moment from the psychology of the trenches to that of the counting-house. Undoubtedly that would be true of the mass; they would experience no instantaneous readjustment....
There are moments when the mind, highly vitalized, reaches out into the universe of thought and grasps ideas far beyond its conscious intention. All great thoughts come from uncharted sources of inspiration, and it may be that the function of the mind is not to create thought, but only to record it. To do so it must be tuned to the proper key of receptivity. Grant had a consciousness, as he walked along the deserted streets toward his hotel, that he was in that key; the quietness, the domesticity of Murdoch’s home, the loveliness of Phyllis Bruce, had, for the moment at least, shut out a background of horror and lifted his thought into an exalted plane. He paused at a bridge to lean against the railing and watch the trembling reflection of city lights in the river.
“I have it!” he suddenly exclaimed to the steel railing. “I have it!”
He paused for a moment to turn over his thought, as though to make sure it should not escape. Then, at a pace which aroused the wondering glance of one or two placid policemen, he hurried to the hotel.
Linder and Grant had been assigned to the same room, and the sergeant’s dreams, if he dreamt at all, were of the sweet hay meadows of the West. Grant turned on the light and looked down into the face of his friend. A smile, born of fields afar from war’s alarms, was playing about his lips. Even in his excitement Grant could not help reflecting what a wonderful thing it is to sleep in peace. Then—
“I have it!” he shouted. “Linder, I have it!”
The sergeant sat up with a start, blinking.
“I have it!” Grant repeated.
“THEM, you mean,” said Linder, suddenly awake. “Why, man, what’s wrong with you? You’re more excited than if we were just going over the top.”
“I’ve got my great idea. I know what I’m going to do with my money.”
“Well, don’t do it to-night,” Linder protested. “Someone has to settle for this dug-out in the morning.”
“We’re leaving for the West to-morrow, Linder, old scout. Everybody will say we’re crazy, but that’s a good sign. They’ve said that of every reformer since—”
But Linder was again sleeping the sleep of a man four years in France.
The window was grey with the light of dawn before Grant’s mind had calmed down enough for sleep. When Linder awoke him it was noon.
“You sleep well on your Big Idea,” was his comment.
“No better than you did last night,” retorted Grant, springing out of bed. “Let me see.... yes, I still have it clearly. I’ll tell you about it sometime, if you can stay awake. When do we eat?”
“Now, or as soon as you are presentable. I’ve a notion to give you three days’ C.B. for appearing on parade in your pyjamas.”
“Make it a cash fine, Sergeant, old dear, and pay it out of what you owe me. Now that that is settled order up a decent meal. I’ll be shaved and dressed long before it arrives. You know this is a first-class hotel, where prompt service would not be tolerated.”
As they ate together Grant showed no disposition to discuss what Linder called his Big Idea, nor yet to give any satisfaction in response to his companion’s somewhat pointed references as to his doings of the night before.
“There are times, Linder,” he said, “when my soul craves solitude. You, being a sergeant, and therefore having no soul, will not be able to understand that longing for contemplation—”
“It’s all right,” said Linder. “I don’t want her.”
“Furthermore,” Grant continued, “to-night I mean to resume my soliloquies, and your absence will be much in demand.”
“The supply will be equal to the demand.”
“Good! Here are some morsels of money. If you will buy our railway tickets and settle with the chief extortionist downstairs I will join you at the night train going west.”
Linder sprang to attention, gave a salute in which mock deference could not entirely obscure the respect beneath, and set about on his commissions, while Grant devoted the afternoon to a session with Murdoch and Jones, to neither of whom would he reveal his plans further than to say he was going west “to engage in some development work.” During the afternoon it was noted that Grant’s interest centred more in a certain telephone call than in the very gratifying financial statement which Murdoch was able to place before him. And it was probably as a result of that telephone call that a taxi drew up in front of Murdoch’s home at exactly six-thirty that evening and bore Miss Phyllis Bruce and an officer wearing a captain’s uniform in the direction of the best hotel in the city.
The dining-room was sweet with the perfume of flowers, and soft strains of music stole vagrantly about its high arching pillars, mingling with the chatter of lovely women and of men to whom expense was no consideration. Grant was conscious of a delicious sense of intimacy as he helped Phyllis remove her wraps and seated himself by her at a secluded corner table.
“By Jove!” he exclaimed. “I don’t make compliments for exercise, but you do look stunning to-night!”
A warmth of color lit up her cheek—he had noticed at Murdoch’s how pale she was—and her eyes laughed back at him with some of their old-time vivacity.
“I am so glad,” she said. “It seems almost like old times—”
They gave their orders, and sat in silence through an overture. Grant was delighting himself simply in her presence, and guessed that for her part she could not retract the confession her love had wrung from her so long ago.
“There are some things which don’t change, Phyllis,” he said, when the orchestra had ceased.
She looked back at him with eyes moist and dreamy. “I know,” she murmured.
There seemed no reason why Grant should not there and then have laid himself, figuratively, at her feet. And there was not any reason—only one. He wanted first to go west. He almost hoped that out there some light of disillusionment would fall about him; that some sudden experience such as he had known the night before would readjust his personality in accordance with the inevitable...
“I asked you to dine with me to-night,” he heard himself saying, “for two reasons: first, for the delight of your exquisite companionship; and second, because I want to place before you certain business plans which, to me at least, are of the greatest importance.
“You know the position which I have taken with regard to the spending of money, that one should not spend on himself or his friends anything but his own honest earnings for which he has given honest service to society. I have seen no reason to change my position. On the contrary the war has strengthened me in my convictions. It has brought home to me and to the world the fact that heroism is a flower which grows in no peculiar soil, and that it blossoms as richly among the unwashed and the underfed as among the children of fortune. This fact only aggravates the extremes of wealth and poverty, and makes them seem more unjust than ever.
“For myself I have accepted this view, but our financial system is founded upon very different ethics. I wonder if you have ever thought of the fact that when the barons at Runnymede laid the foundations of democratic government for the world they overlooked the almost equally important matter of creating a democratic system of finance. Well—let’s not delve into that now. The point is that under our present system we do acquire wealth which we do not earn, and the only thing to be done for the time being is to treat that wealth as a trust to be managed for the benefit of humanity. That is what I call the new morality as applied to money, although it is not so new either. It can be traced back at least nineteen hundred years, and all our philanthropists, great and little, have surely caught some glimpse of that truth, unless, perhaps, they gave their alms that they might have honor of men. But giving one’s money away does not solve the problem; it pauperizes the recipient and delays the evolution of new conditions in which present injustices would be corrected. I hope you are able to follow me?”
“Perfectly. It is easy for me, who have nothing to lose, to follow your logic. You will have more trouble convincing those whose pockets it would affect.”
“I am not so sure of that. Humanity is pretty sound at heart, but we can’t abandon the boat we’re on until we have another that is proven seaworthy. However, it seems to me that I have found a solution which I can apply in my individual case. Have you thought what are the three greatest needs, commercially speaking, of the present day?”
“Production, I suppose, is the first.”
“Yes—most particularly production of food. And the others are corollary to it. They are instruction and opportunity. I am thinking especially of returned men.”
“Production—instruction—opportunity,” she repeated. “How are you going to bring them about?”
“That is my Big Idea, as Linder calls it, although I have not yet confided in him what it is. Well—the world is crying for food, and in our western provinces are millions of acres which have never felt the plow—”
“In the East, too, for that matter.”
“I know, but I naturally think of the West. I propose to form a company and buy a large block of land, cut it up into farms, build houses and community centres, and put returned men and their families on these farms, under the direction of specialists in agriculture. I shall break up the rectangular survey of the West for something with humanizing possibilities; I mean to supplant it with a system of survey which will permit of settlement in groups—villages, if you like—where I shall instal all the modern conveniences of the city, including movie shows. Our statesmen are never done lamenting that population continues to flow from the country to the city, but the only way to stop that flow is to make the country the more attractive of the two.”
“But your company—who are to be the shareholders?”
“That is the keystone of the Big Idea. There never before was a company like this will be. In the first place, I shall put up all the money myself. Then, when I have prepared a farm ready to receive a man and his family, I will sell him shares equivalent to the value of his farm, and give him a perpetual lease, subject to certain restrictions. Let me illustrate. Suppose you are the prospective shareholder. I say, Miss Bruce, I can place you on a farm worth, with buildings and equipment, ten thousand dollars. I do not ask any cash from you; not a cent, but I want you to subscribe for ten thousand dollars stock in my company. That will make you a shareholder. When the farm begins to produce you are to have all you and your family—this is an illustration, you know—can consume for your own use. The balance is to be sold, and one-third of the proceeds is to be paid into the treasury of the company and credited on your purchase of shares. When you have paid for all your shares in this way you will have no further payments to make, except such levy as may be made by the company for running expenses. You, as a shareholder of the company, will have a voice with the other shareholders in determining what that levy shall be. You and your descendents will be allowed possession of that farm forever, subject only to your obeying the rules of the company. You—”
“But why the company? It simply amounts to buying the land on payments to be made out of each year’s crop, except that you want me to pay for shares in the company instead of for the land itself.”
“That, as I told you, is the keystone of my Big Idea. If I sold you the land you would be master of it; you could do as you liked with it. You could let it lie idle; you could allow your buildings and machinery to get out of repair; you could keep scrub stock; all your methods of husbandry might be slovenly or antiquated; you could even rent or sell the land to someone who might be morally or socially undesirable in the community. On the other hand you might be peculiarly successful, when you would proceed to buy out your less successful neighbors, or make loans on their land, and thus create yourself a land monopolist. But as a shareholder in the company you will be subject to the rules laid down by the company. If it says that houses must be painted every four years you will paint your house every fourth year. If it rules that hayracks are not to be left on the front lawn you will have to deposit yours somewhere else. If it orders that crops must be rotated to preserve the fertility of the soil you will obey those instructions. If you do not like the regulations you can use your influence with the board of directors to have them changed. If you fail there you can sell your shares to someone else—provided you can find a purchaser acceptable to the board—and get out. The Big Idea is that the community—the company in this case—shall control the individual, and the individual shall exert his proper measure of control over the community. The two are interlocked and interdependent, each exerting exactly the proper amount of power and accepting proportionate responsibility.”
“But have you provided against the possibility of one man or a group of men buying up a majority of the stock and so controlling the company? They could then freeze out the smaller owners.”
“Yes,” said Grant, toying with his coffee, “I have made a provision for that which I think is rather ingenious. Don’t imagine that this all came to me in a moment. The central thought struck me last night on my way home, and I knew then I had the embryo of the plan, but I lay awake until daylight working out details. I am going to allot votes on a very unique principle. It seems to me that a man’s stake in a country should be measured, not by the amount of money he has, but by the number of mouths he has to feed. I will adopt that rule in my company, and the voting will be according to the number of children in the family. That should curb the ambitious.”
They laughed over this proviso, and Phyllis agreed that it was all a very wonderful plan. “And when they have paid for all their shares you get your money back,” she commented.
“Oh, no. I don’t want my money back. I didn’t explain that to you. I will advance the money on the bonds of the company, without interest. Suppose I am able to finance a hundred farms that way, then as the payments come in, still more farms. The thing will spread like a ripple in a pool, until it covers the whole country. When you turn a sum of money loose, WITH NO INTEREST CHARGE ATTACHED TO IT, there is no limit to what it can accomplish.”
“But what will you do with your bonds, eventually? They will be perfectly secured. I don’t see that you are getting rid of your money at all, except the interest, which you are giving away.”
“That, Phyllis, is where autocracy and democracy meet. All progress is like the swinging of a pendulum, with autocracy at one end of the arc and democracy at the other, and progress is the mean of their opposing forces. But there are times when the most democratic countries have to use autocratic methods, as, for example, Great Britain and the United States in the late war. We must learn to make autocracy the servant of democracy, not its enemy. Well—I’m going to be the autocrat in this case. I am going to sit behind the scenes and as long as my company functions all right I will leave it alone, but if it shows signs of wrecking itself I will assume the role of the benevolent despot and set it to rights again. Oh, Phyllis, don’t you see? It’s not just MY company I’m thinking about. This is an experiment, in which my company will represent the State. If it succeeds I shall turn the whole machinery over to the State as my contribution to the betterment of humanity. If it fails—well, then I shall have demonstrated that the idea is unsound. Even that is worth something.
“I like to think of the great inventors, experimenting with the mysterious forces of nature. Their business is to find the natural laws that govern material things. And I am quite sure that there are also natural laws designed to govern man in his social and economic relationships, and when those laws have been discovered the impossibilities of to-day will become the common practice of to-morrow, just as steam and electricity have made the impossibilities of yesterday the common practice of to-day. The first need is to find the law, and to what more worthy purpose could a man devote himself? When I landed here yesterday—when I walked again through these old streets—I was a being without purpose; I was like a battery that had dried up. All these petty affairs of life seemed so useless, so humdrum, so commonplace, I knew I could never settle down to them again. Then last night from some unknown source came a new idea—an inspiration—and presto! the battery is re-charged, life again has its purposes, and I am eager to be at work.
“I said ‘some unknown source,’ but it was not altogether unknown. It had something to do with honest old Murdoch, and his good wife pouring coffee for the midnight supper in their cozy dining-room, and Phyllis Bruce across the table! We never know, Phyllis, how much we owe to our friends; to that charmed circle, be it ever so small, in which every note strikes in harmony. I know my Big Idea is only playing on the surface; only skimming about the edges. What the world needs is just friends.”
Grant had talked himself out, but he continued to sit at the little table, reveling in the happiness of a man who feels that he has been called to some purpose worth while. His companion hesitated to interrupt his thoughts; her somewhat drab business experience made her pessimistic toward all idealism, and yet she felt that here, surely, was a man who could carry almost any project through to success. The unique quality in him, which distinguished him from any other man she had ever known, was his complete unselfishness. In all his undertakings he coveted no reward for himself; he was seeking only the common good.
“If all men were like you there would be no problems,” she murmured, and while he could not accept the words quite at par they rang very pleasantly in his ears.
A movement among the diners reminded him of the flight of time, and with a glance at his watch he sprang up in surprise. “I had no idea the evening had gone!” he exclaimed. “I have just time to see you home and get back to catch my train.”
He called a taxi and accompanied her into it. They seated themselves together, and the fragrance of her presence was very sweet about him. It would have been so easy to forget—all that he had been trying to forget—in the intoxication of such environment. Surely it was not necessary that he should go west—that he should see HER again—in order to be sure.
“Phyllis,” he breathed, “do you imagine I could undertake these things if I cared only for myself—if it were not that I longed for someone’s approval—for someone to be proud of me? The strongest man is weak enough for that, and the strongest man is stronger when he knows that the woman he loves—”
He would have taken her in his arms, but she resisted, gently, firmly.
“You have made me think too much of you, Dennison,” she whispered.