As the days went by Jim Ashe acquired a marked aversion to the upper right-hand drawer of his desk. For it contained the unpaid bills of the Ashe Clothespin Company. When Jim came the drawer had been empty; now it looked as if he would have to add an annex to care for the overflow. There were supply bills, machinery bills, stock bills. And Jim did not dare to pay them, for his account at the bank was running perilously low. Bills may be put off, but the pay-roll must be met on the minute.
From nothing the unsecured indebtedness climbed to five thousand, to ten thousand dollars. Much as it grieved Jim to see discount days pass with discounts not taken, it grieved Grierson more. He had served the company for many years. Never before in his experience had it failed to discount its bills—and to a bookkeeper of Grierson’s type discounts are sacred. Grierson’s type of mind would borrow money at six per cent. to take a two-per-cent. discount.
Finally statements began to arrive, some accompanied by letters setting forth in the polite verbiage of the business world that the creditor would be glad to have the company’s check “for this small amount at its convenience.” Dunning letters! Grierson was shocked. He blushed as he bent over his ledgers. The Ashe Clothespin Company had to be dunned as if it were a dubious individual with an overlarge bill at the corner grocery.
Jim was not yet the complete business man, but he did discover that certain larger creditors were willing to accept notes for the time, notes bearing interest at six per cent. Somehow it relieved his anxiety to issue this paper. At any rate, it postponed the day of reckoning in each case for three or four months. But Grierson was bitterly ashamed. He regarded it as such a makeshift as an unstable enterprise would avail itself of to ward off insolvency. Jim caught the old bookkeeper looking at him accusingly. Such things had never come to pass in his father’s day.
Yet these were the very things Clothespin Jimmy had predicted. He had told Jim there would be sleepless nights and anxious days; he had confessed to milking the business. Now Jim appreciated what his father meant. With the fifty thousand dollars which Clothespin Jimmy had subtracted from the assets the company would be as sound as the Bank of England.
What worried Jim more than the accumulation of bills was the failure to make shipments as rapidly as the necessities required. Where he should have shipped a car-load a day he had been able to bill out an average of less than four cars a week. Customers clamored to have their orders filled; cancellations were threatened; yet the mill failed to produce as it should produce. Somewhere something was wrong. Clothespin-machines that ought to have made their eighty five-gross boxes a day did not climb above sixty. Total shipments that should have amounted to thirty thousand dollars a month faltered and failed at fifteen or sixteen thousand. In short, he was spending every week a great deal more money than he was earning.
Much of this, he knew, was due to breakdowns caused by Kowterski; some of it to poor timber; some to timber spiked by Kowterski’s brother. But aside from that, changes had to be made in machines; the mill did not run smoothly. Where construction should have ceased to lay its expense on the company it continued to demand its thousands of dollars every month.
But Kowterski was gone. Jim did not believe Moran would venture to send down more spiked timber. The mill was slowly but surely rising to a point of efficiency. Jim was confident in it; he placed full dependence on Nels Nelson, his millwright, on Beam, his superintendent. He knew they were doing their intelligent best and that their worries stood shoulder to shoulder with his own. Given time, he would be firm on his feet; given capital to carry him through this dubious period, and the company would pay bigger dividends, reach a more stable credit than it had ever before enjoyed. But the time and the capital!
In his heart he knew that if one creditor lost faith and brought pressure to bear, the whole edifice would come down in ruin. Construction, rebuilding, repairs, had devoured the money that should have paid bills. Bills had multiplied by reason of supplies necessary for construction. One thing was essential—construction must cease. Men employed in construction must be laid off.
“Grierson,” he said, “make me a statement of our condition—a full statement; one that will show everything and show it truly. I’m going to see if there isn’t somebody in the world who will appreciate being told the whole uncolored truth.”
With this statement in his pocket Jim went to the city to its largest bank.
“I’m Ashe, of the Ashe Clothespin Company up at Diversity,” he told the president, “and I’m in a hole. I’ve got to have some money.”
“We’ve got lots of it,” the president said, genially, “if you can show us. Let’s look into the hole you’re in and see.”
Jim gave him the statement; it was fully, minutely itemized. Every debit was shown in full; no credit was inflated. The banker studied it half an hour, nodding now and then.
“Would you attach your name to that statement?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Jim.
“You believe you can make money?”
“I know it.”
“Show me,” said the banker, and Jim showed him for an hour. He gave production figures, costs, prices, profits.
“It’s a good statement, a sound statement,” the banker said. “You have no quick assets—that’s bad. That demand-paper I don’t like; but otherwise—otherwise it is a very creditable statement.”
Jim was astonished.
“How much do you want?” the banker asked.
“Twenty-five thousand dollars,” Jim said, hesitatingly.
“I guess we can fix that up. The board meets at noon. Can you come in and tell them your story?”
“Certainly.”
“You believe twenty-five thousand dollars will bring your mill to efficiency and carry you to a point where your own sales will take care of expenses?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“Come in at twelve, then, and we’ll see.”
Jim returned at twelve and repeated his facts to the assembled board. Before they broke up Jim had given them the company’s note for twenty-five thousand dollars, had that amount on deposit in the bank, and a book of blank checks under his arm.
“We’ve passed this loan,” said a white-haired old gentleman, “because we like the moral risk. Your statement was fair; what you have said to us was spoken as an honest man speaks. You seem to have gotten a dollar of value for every dollar you have put into this mill, and we hope you’ll win out. We believe you will or we wouldn’t be lending you our money. You haven’t evaded a question; you haven’t held anything back. You’ve confessed to us that you thought you were in a bad hole, which is a poor argument for a borrower to bring forward. Maybe we’d have lent you on the security of the mills; maybe not. What we’ve done is to lend it on the security of you. I say this to you because it must give you pleasure to hear it and because it gives me pleasure to be able to say it. I cannot say such things as often as I wish. Now go to it, young man, and lick the stuffing out of that other crowd.”
Jim went out, his head in a pink cloud, his feet treading something lighter than mundane pavement. Why, they had not thought he was in a hole at all! The things Grierson and he had looked on as scarcely creditable makeshifts were approved as sound business, and they had given him money. How easy money was to get! It astonished him. Thirty thousand dollars he had borrowed from the Diversity Bank, with no difficulty; twenty-five thousand more poured into his purse from the City Bank, with compliments attached. His policy had won. He had found some one who appreciated being told the whole uncolored truth. After all, the world had not trampled its ideals into the mire of money-chasing. Even to-day the sound things of life commanded a market value. Business men, in high places of trust, business men of tested capacity, placed the moral before the material risk.
The president of the bank had said, “I would rather lend a known honorable man money on doubtful security than to venture a loan to a dubious man on Government bonds.”
So Jim brought back from the city more than money. He brought back a renewed, an increased faith in the virtue of mankind. It was an asset not to be despised. The mighty hand of business reached out to encourage, to help with concrete aid, the honest man. It withheld its support, even though ample security were offered, from the man whose honor was dubious. Therefore, this modern god of business was a virtuous god. If evil were committed in its name the god itself was not smirched save in the eyes of the ignorant; if false sacrifices were offered to it by charlatans and liars and cheats, by jack priests of commerce, the god was not more dishonored than is the God of Israel by horrors that have been committed in His name.
As Jim rode home on the train his first feeling of elation dwindled. Doubt returned. He weighed the sides of his ledger against each other and determined all was not yet secure. How could it be secure when he had but added to his liability the not inconsiderable sum of twenty-five thousand dollars? Part of his debts he could pay. The balance must wait, for he could not divest himself of ready money, nor would the reserve he could set aside last forever.
The demand-note of thirty thousand dollars reared itself as a threat, assumed the guise of a poised bird of prey biding its moment. No, he was not free from the chains of his difficulties. His competitors—he thought of them as enemies—were as yet strong, untouched, unready for peace. They were capable of striking, would strike if a telling blow could be launched. There was Michael Moran.
The task of defending his own was just begun; the feat of bringing his enemies to overtures of peace was distant from accomplishment; and again there was Michael Moran. It was Jim’s first contact with that black spirit called hatred. He hated Michael Moran because it was inevitable he should do so, because Michael Moran was the exponent of all things at the remotest pole from Jim’s ideals.
With something like consternation he admitted to himself that he hated Michael Moran because the man’s life orbit had touched with pitch the life of a woman who had assumed preponderating importance in Jim’s universe.
As he alighted from the train at Diversity he saw Marie Ducharme as he had first seen her weeks ago. She stood motionless, a statue with lines of loveliness surmounted by a face of hopeless discontent. In her eyes was the look of hunger, like that of the starving woman in the bread-line. She gazed after the departing train as one might gaze after a hope dispelled.
Jim walked toward her. She saw him and nodded coolly.
“School’s out early,” he said.
“It’s Saturday,” she replied, shortly.
She turned away from the depot, no cordiality in her manner, but Jim was not to be rebuffed. He kept at her side.
“Since I have been here,” he said, “I have never driven out along the lake shore. They tell me it is a beautiful drive.”
“Yes,” she replied, without interest.
“The train was warm, the dust got into my throat. Seems as if I were filled with it. All the way I kept thinking of expanses of clean water and of breezes off the lake. Won’t you extend our truce to a drive out there with me this evening?”
She turned to him with a queer, abrupt, birdlike, startled movement. There was no pretense about it, she was surprised, jolted so that one peeped for an instant through her mask of sullenness to the loneliness, the yearning within. The crack closed instantly.
“Why do you ask me?” she demanded. “You don’t like me.”
“I asked you because I want very much to have you go. And I do not dislike you.”
“Everybody does.”
“I can’t speak for everybody, but I doubt it. You—you have a way of shouldering folks off, of retiring behind the barbed wire. Folks would be willing enough to like you if you’d let them.”
She pondered this and shook her head slightly.
“Part of what you say is true. There aren’t many people here I want to like me. Haven’t you lived here long enough to see that the people who stay here are the culls, the weak ones? Is there a young man or a young woman here with gumption? Just as soon as a boy amounts to a row of pins, gets an education or has ambition, he goes away. It is the same with the girls. The desirable go, the other sort stay. This is a backwater of life with nothing in it but human driftwood.”
Jim appreciated the insight of her words. She spoke with some exaggeration, but with more sound truth. Her words might be a true arraignment of the average small town, secluded, with insufficient outlet or inlet. They might apply to a thousand villages in Michigan, in Vermont, in New York, in Tennessee. He understood her better than ever before—indeed, here was his first step in comprehension.
“You’re lonesome,” he said, more to himself than to her.
“Yes,” she said, simply. “Lonesome—and bored, horribly bored.”
“I am lonesome, too. Lonesome, but not bored. I have too much on my mind to be bored, which is better for me, probably. So won’t you mend my lonesomeness for one evening by driving with me?”
“If you will say on your honor that you want me to,” she said.
Jim listened for a note of wistfulness in her voice; fancied he distinguished it; was not certain he did.
“On my honor,” he said, half-laughingly, “I do want you.” Then, “Might we not ask Mrs. Stickney to put up a lunch for us and start right away?”
Again she looked at him, for there had been a note of boyish eagerness in his voice, and she smiled a very little. The smile was a revelation; while it lasted her face was not the face of a discontented woman, versed in the unpleasant things of the world, but of a girl, an eager, wistful girl.
“I should like it,” she said.
How was Jim to know this was an event in Marie Ducharme’s life? How was he to know it was her first social invitation from a man whom she cared to have as a companion, who was fitted by intelligence, by ideals, to be her companion? How was he to know that she had never driven with a young man as other country girls drive with neighboring boys? She was excited. Something welled up inside her that made breathing difficult, but that was delightful.
Jim, too, was young. His experience had not taught him how hard is the problem of the girl in the village—how marriage looms before her as the sole end to be desired, and how difficult is a suitable marriage to attain. He did not know how many girls with brains, with ideals, with ambitions, have, to escape spinsterhood and its dreariness, allowed themselves to be married to bumpkins, whose sole recommendation was their ability to provide support. Nor did he know how many such girls wore out their souls and their hearts in bitterness through lengthening years. Such a fate Marie Ducharme was determined to escape.
Jim and Marie Ducharme took the north road out of Diversity. There were eyes that saw them and tongues that wagged when they were gone. Many supper-tables were supplied with a topic of conversation that had been barren without.
“Some day,” said Jim, “I’m going to have a farm, and raise red pigs and black cows and white chickens.”
“Horrors!” exclaimed Marie; but there was just a note of playfulness in her voice, the first Jim ever had heard there. “Some day I’m going to have an apartment in a hotel, where there’s a Hungarian orchestra at dinner, and servants to answer pushbuttons, and taxicabs in front that take you to theaters. And I’m going to raise—well, not pigs and cows and chickens.”
“I shall come in off my farm twice a year to eat with you while the orchestra plays and the pushbuttons buzz and the taxicabs click off exorbitant miles on their meters as we go to those theaters. Pigs and cows and chickens wear, they’re durable company; the other thing is too heady for me. Like champagne once in a while. But one prefers water as a steady diet.”
“I’ve only read about champagne,” she said, the sullen mask dropping across her face for an instant.
“I’m going to have my farm near the lake,” he said, “so I can lie with my back against a tree and watch it. It is a hundred different lakes every day, and I’d like to get acquainted with all of them.”
“And I’d like to be aboard the most palatial steamer that floats, and ride past you, on my way to great cities.”
“I’d be happiest,” he said.
“I’d be—most excited,” she replied.
“The most pitifully bored faces in the world are to be seen in Broadway cafes after midnight.”
“But don’t you like to be where things are flashing? Where life is moving so fast you can hardly follow it? Doesn’t it spell happiness for you to be where a new thrill is always at hand for the asking?”
“That sort of thing is bully for dessert, but I want it after a long, satisfying meal of quiet contentment.”
“Such as you have in Diversity?”
“Such as can be had in Diversity,” he replied.
“What makes contentment? I should like to have it.”
“Contentment,” he said, slowly, selecting his words cautiously, “means to me the quiet feeling of decency and satisfaction and restfulness that comes to a man who is busy with a worth-while job. To have it fully there must be a home, a real home with a wife in it, and lads, and a dog and cat. All of them must be glad to see you come home at night, and sorry to see you leave in the morning. To have it your wife must believe in you more than you deserve, and you must trust her, and confide in her, and advise with her on all your concerns, sure of her interest. Yes, I think that is the indispensable element—marriage. The right sort of marriage—the sort the majority of folks are blessed with.”
“It all sounds rather tame,” she said. “Marriage. Must I marry to be contented?”
“To be so perfectly.”
She laughed shortly. “I shall depend on a steady routine of excitement to make me forget I’m not contented,” she said. “Marriage!” She spoke almost savagely. “Of course marriage is the solution of everything. Women are taught to look forward to it from the cradle as—as their means of support. We’re trained to please men; we’re dressed to attract men; our whole lives are aimed at men. We catch one at twenty or at twenty-five, and our career is over. We’ve succeeded in life. Then we live on till sixty.”
“You’ve read only the introduction to the story,” he said, soberly. “The book doesn’t begin to get interesting until you pass that.”
“Very well, then. I must marry to be contented. But whom? Diversity isn’t swarming with husbands of any sort. Among the few available male inhabitants, how many would you pick out as welcome husbands for a girl with ambitions above turnips and the number of eggs a day? If you were a girl, with reasonable intelligence, reasonable capabilities to appreciate what we consider it cultured to appreciate, what man here would you pick out from Diversity’s young men who wouldn’t be a constant horror to you?”
“You’re not limited to Diversity.”
“But that is exactly what I am.”
There was no obvious answer to this, and Jim drove on in silence. He sensed something of the girl’s position; appreciated, as he had not before appreciated, the feeling almost of despair that came over her as she looked into the future and found it gray, without gleaming lights or frightening shadows. She was a bird imprisoned among frogs.
Presently they came to a little bridge over a stream which added its little flow to the volume of the lake. It was one of those reed-bordered streams which travel with a soothing lilt, winding along leisurely, contentedly.
It was not such a boisterous stream as the speckled trout loves; it was the sort where tiny turtles sun themselves on root or log, to slide off with a startled splash as you approach. Cows would have loved to wade in it of a hot day.
“Wouldn’t you rather be a stream like that,” Jim asked, “than to go plunging and leaping and bruising yourself down the rocks of a mountainside?”
She smiled, but did not answer. The picture had soothed her; it lay gently on her spirit, softening her mood.
“There’s a cat-boat,” Jim exclaimed. “Wonder if we can’t borrow it. It’ll be just a cat-boat to me, but you can turn it into your palatial steamer, if you want to. Shall we try?”
“I’d love it,” she said. “I have never sailed.”
Never sailed! Yet she had spent her whole life in sight of Lake Michigan.
“Then,” said Jim, “you’ll sail now if I have to turn pirate and steal us a craft.”
But the transaction went smoothly. The little boat was rented, the horse unharnessed and stabled; they embarked their provisions, and with a brisk sailing breeze headed out for distant, invisible Wisconsin.
Jim handled sheet and tiller; Marie half reclined at his side. And because she was happy, for the hour she seemed beautiful to him—she was beautiful. Jim felt the force of her, not exerted in futile rebellion, wasted, but to be reclaimed by a wise hand and directed to the great work which falls to the lot of all good women. He saw her superior in mind to the women he knew; quickened by ambition. He saw her as she might be, indeed as she was at the moment. Her appeal was powerful. He compared her with women he had known; she made them seem faded, colorless. He glanced at her; his glance became a scrutiny of which she was unconscious. She seemed very desirable to him. It came over him suddenly that he must have her; that she was the necessary woman. It was as if he had known it always.
It was Sudden Jim who spoke.
“Marie,” he said, and at the sound of his voice, the tremor in it, she turned, startled. “Marie,” he repeated. No other word came for a moment, but his face, his eyes, were eloquent. The color left her face, left her lips first. “Marie, won’t you be a part of that contentment? Won’t you help me to it—and let me help you to it? I want you. I—love you, Marie. I want the right to love you always—and to take care of you and make you happy. I want you to love me.”
She sat stiffly erect, unbelief in her eyes. Her hands gripped each other in her lap. She was amazed; not frightened, but something akin to it.
“I want you to let me try to make you smile, always, as you have smiled once to-day. I want to make the world sing for you, so that you will love the world, too. I want to take that look, that hunger look, out of your eyes forever, and put something else in its place. I want every act of mine, as long as I shall live, to add something to your happiness. You! You! Just you!” He held the sheet and tiller with one hand, stretched the other to touch her fingers gently.
“Marie, can’t you—won’t you—take me into your life? Will you marry me—very soon?”
“Marry you!” she said, in a whisper.
She looked about her as if searching for a way of escape. Then she stood up abruptly and ran forward to the very peak of the little craft, and crouched there on her knees, her chin in her hands, her eyes closed, or opening to peer off across the reaches of the lake. Jim could see her shiver now and again as though a chill wind blew over her. She did not speak.
After a time he called to her.
“Marie, I did not mean to frighten you. I—I was abrupt—”
“You did not frighten me,” she said.
He plucked up heart. “I can’t come to you,” he said, yearningly. “I can’t talk to you so far away. Won’t you come back to me?”
She shook her head. “Not now,” she said. “I—Oh, let me think. Let me be quiet.”
He was patient. That much wisdom was given him in this hour. It grew dusk. Jim could only see the dark huddle of her body beyond the mast. It stirred. She was at his side again.
“You don’t love me. You can’t love me. I am not lovable, I know.”
“Your word shall be my law—except for this one time. I do love you.”
“No! No! It is pity, sympathy, something. I told you once what love would be if it came to me. It would be no gentle thing. It would make you hate me. You do not want my love.”
“It is the one thing I want.”
“I mustn’t,” she whispered to herself. “I mustn’t.” Then to Jim: “I don’t love you. You would repent it if you had made me love you. While I was up there”—she pointed to the bow—“I thought of marrying you—to escape from Diversity. Yes, I thought of that—without love. But it would be no escape. You are tied to Diversity. It would be the same as before. I hate Diversity. It smothers me. If I loved you I wouldn’t marry you. Diversity would stand between us.”
Jim sat quietly. He had no hope on which to base expectation of any other answer. How could she love him? He had not tried to win her love; had pounced suddenly with talk of love.
“How could you love me?” he said, repeating his thought. “But won’t you let me work for your love? I should try to earn it. If love came you would forget that Diversity was hateful to you. It would be a garden to you as it is to me—for my love had blossomed there.”
“No,” she said, sharply. “If I worshiped you, and you asked me to live in that miserable town, with its miserable people, I should refuse. It would torture me, but I could not live there.”
“Think,” he urged. “Take time to think. This has come to you unexpectedly. Wait before you set your will against my love. Give me my chance.”
“No. You must not speak of it again. I am only an incident in your life. Set me aside. Forget this afternoon. You must forget it.”
“You won’t consider? You won’t wait for another day’s judgment?”
“No.”
Jim turned away his face, turned it away from her lest the embers of the sunset should show how gray, how tired, how discouraged it was.
“I—I’m sorry,” she said, softly.
He turned and smiled. “I am glad,” he said. “Glad I love you, no matter what comes between now and the end. I shall not worry you again with it, but I want you to know, to be sure in your heart, day by day, every hour, that I do love you and am longing for you. I have spoiled your evening.”
“No,” she said. “It has been—sweet. So sweet!”
He was startled to see her burst into tears, and sob with great, wrenching sobs that shook her small body.
Presently she became calm, dried her eyes, smiled, and her smile was the ghost of a spirit of wistfulness.
“If only,” she said, tremulously, “I were like other girls. But I’m not. I’m me. I’m selfish. I despise myself.”
“No, no,” he said; “don’t remember this with a thought of pain. And do not withdraw from me altogether. Let us cancel to-night to start to-morrow on a new basis—as friends. You are lonely; I am lonely. I’ll not worry you with love. But I’ll try to be a dependable friend to you. Can we do that?”
“It sounds impossible,” she said, “but we can try.”
Love finds encouragement in trifles. The weight of Jim’s heaviness became less. He hoped. If Pandora had not loosed hope into the world the lovers’ portion would be miserable indeed.
It was late when they reached the Widow Stickney’s, but she was waiting for them in her parlor. Her old eyes with their years of seeing were not to be deceived. She saw what she saw.
Marie went quickly to her room. They said good night at the foot of the stairs. Jim extended his hand, held her little one in his grasp.
“Good night, friend,” he said, and smiled into her face.
She sat beside her window without undressing, motionless, even her eyes seeming without motion. She was wrestling, even as Jacob had wrestled, with an angel. But her angel had no divine touch of the finger to conquer her as the patriarch had been conquered.
The angel met defeat.
Marie lay face downward on the bed, tearless, passing through the agony she had brought on herself.
“I love him,” she whispered. “I love him. But I can’t. I can’t.”
Between the fall of darkness Sunday night and the breaking of dawn on Monday industrious persons had beautified Diversity by nailing to tree, fence, and barn half-tone productions of a photograph of Peleg Goodwin, wherein Peleg was shown wearing a collar of the Daniel Webster type and an expression like a slightly soured Signer of the Declaration. Peleg’s beard was neatly trimmed; there was a part in his bushy hair. Somehow it did not impress one as authentic, but as a bit of trick photography. It excited some argument. People were disinclined to believe it really was Peleg, but some more glorious being who chanced to resemble Peleg somewhat.
“That there Peleg!” snorted Dolf Springer. “You couldn’t pound Peleg’s face into no such noble expression with a sledge. That there’s Peleg’s twin brother that died and went to heaven ’fore Peleg got him into bad habits.”
“If that’s Peleg,” said old man Ruggles in a voice like a wheezy tin whistle, “then these here blue jeans is broadcloth weddin’-pants.”
“I don’t see but what it resembles him close,” said a supporter of Goodwin’s.
“That,” said Dolf, “is prob’ly ’cause somebody’s give you a dollar to think that way.”
“My vote hain’t for sale,” shouted the virtuous citizen.
“Neither does a mortgage draw int’rest,” said Dolf.
Jim drove on, chuckling. One thing was apparent—somebody was spending money to defeat Zaanan Frame. It was not all going for printing, either, Jim felt certain. How would Zaanan meet this attack? Had he money to spend in a campaign? A worry lest the old fellow had passed his fighting-day oppressed Jim. He stopped at Zaanan’s office.
“I see the campaign has opened,” he said.
“Peleg’s a handsome critter, hain’t he?” Zaanan said.
“Moran’s going to dump a lot of money and a lot of dirty politics in here,” Jim said. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Me? Not much, I calc’late. I hain’t what you’d call a political campaigner. Don’t go in for no hip-hurrah just ’round election-time. Keep reasonable busy the whole twelve months.”
“Aren’t you going to do anything to offset Moran’s money?”
“Dun’no’s I be,” said Zaanan, placidly.
“They’ll beat you in the caucus as sure as you’re a foot high,” Jim said, anxiously. “They’ve got to do it there. I don’t believe they could worry you in an election.”
“Caucuses is uncertain,” said Zaanan. “Delegates and sheep is close related. Can’t never tell when or where they’ll run.”
“Do you need money?” Jim asked, a shade diffidently. “I thought if you did—”
“Young feller, if I had a million dollars I wouldn’t spend a cent. If folks elect me to office it’ll be ’cause they want me, and not ’cause they’re paid to vote for me. But I calc’late I’m obleeged to you. It was a right friendly offer.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Yes,” said Zaanan, with a chuckle; “go ’long and tend to your own business. Git your own neck out of the noose ’fore you reach out to help me over a fence. G’-by, Jim.”
When Jim got to the mill he found Grierson ready with his weekly report. The old bookkeeper had put in a happy Sunday preparing it. From morning till night he had scratched and crackled in figures and computations—a regular debauch.
“She’s coming. She’s coming now,” Grierson said, his face wrinkling dryly as if the skin were ledger paper. “Shows sixty-five boxes to the machine.”
“But shipments are less than ever,” Jim said as he glanced over the sheet.
“Cars,” said Grierson, shortly. “Goods are in the warehouse, but the railroad won’t set in cars to ship them out.”
Moran’s railroad would not set in cars. This was not altogether unexpected. The railroad could hamper him, delay him—and escape under the plea of a car shortage. Crops were moving. The excuse would hold good. Jim knew he was powerless against this new aggression.
Then came a telegram from New York, driving temporarily from Jim’s mind the matter of freight-cars. It was a long telegram:
German steamerDessausunk 50,000 boxes pins aboard, bound Bremen to Argentine. Agents Argentine firms offer 70 cents on dock here. Have order 15,000 boxes if can ship ten days. Money on dock. Welliver fill order you cannot.
German steamerDessausunk 50,000 boxes pins aboard, bound Bremen to Argentine. Agents Argentine firms offer 70 cents on dock here. Have order 15,000 boxes if can ship ten days. Money on dock. Welliver fill order you cannot.
Seventy cents for pins with the New York market at forty-four cents or thereabouts! A clean killing of nearly fifty-five hundred dollars!
Jim snatched up Grierson’s report. It showed seven thousand boxes packed in the warehouse, and estimated twelve thousand boxes unpacked in the bins. He did not wait to weigh consequences or to offset difficulties.
Accept order. Will ship 15,000 boxes pins ten days this date seventy cents New York.
Accept order. Will ship 15,000 boxes pins ten days this date seventy cents New York.
This message despatched, Jim rushed out into the mill in search of Beam; told him the fact.
“How will we get them packed out?” he asked.
“If you was to ask me serious,” said Beam, with a frown, “I’d say you couldn’t.”
“We’ve got to. How many are we packing out a day?”
“Close to a thousand boxes. These packers are the limit. They can’t get up speed.”
“We’ve got to make some regular shipments. That means about fifteen thousand boxes to pack out in ten days. Put on a double force of packers.”
“Where’ll I git ’em? We’re short now, and no place to go for more.”
“Get boys, then,” said Jim. “And tell the men—any of them that are willing to work evenings—to come in and pack. We’ll run that packing-room twenty-four hours a day if we have to.”
“You’re the boss,” said Beam, dubiously.
Jim went in person to the freight department of the railroad. He made requisition for eight extra cars to be set in within ten days.
“Can’t be done,” said the freight-agent. “We haven’t and won’t have the cars.”
“You mean you have orders not to set in cars for us, don’t you? Well, Mister Freight-Agent, I’m going to have those cars. You see to it they’re set in or things’ll happen round here.”
“You can’t bulldoze me,” said the man. “I know what I’m doin’. You’ll get what cars I set in, and no more. And if you talk too much maybe you won’t get any.”
Jim glared at the man, half of a mind to haul him over the desk and argue with him physically, but thought better of it and slammed out of the office. He had to have those cars. It was equally clear the road would not give them to him. What then?
To reach the office again Jim had to pass through the yard where dry lumber for turned stock was piled. There was, he noticed, a reasonable supply, but no heavy stock. More would have to be bought within the month, for his own sawmill had not yet been able to cut out for drying sufficient quantities to carry on operations. Drying, air-drying, requires time. Until his own boards could dry, lumber must be purchased. Thence came the idea.
He hurried to the office and sent wires to Muskegon, to Traverse City, to Reed City, to the big lumber-mills of the section.
How much two-inch stock can you ship at once. Must come box-cars. Price.
How much two-inch stock can you ship at once. Must come box-cars. Price.
In two hours he had replies, irritated, humorous, bewildered.
“Box-cars? Are you crazy?” one said. Jim grinned. He knew it must sound like lunacy to be ordering lumber of the class he wanted in box-cars. He replied to all, reiterating his demands.
“Fifty cents extra per thousand for loading,” came back replies.
“How many cars?” Jim countered. “When?”
Muskegon could ship two cars next day and one the day after. Traverse could ship three cars within three days. Reed City could ship four, on four successive days.
“O. K.,” wired Jim. “Let them come hustling.”
He had solved his car problem. Moran’s road could not stop cars shipped through. They would be set in on Jim’s siding and unloaded, and because Jim had requisitions in for cars as yet unsupplied, he could reload them and ship them out again filled with his product.
He called in Grierson.
“I’ve accepted an order for fifteen thousand pins for Argentine Republic. Price seventy cents New York. To be shipped in ten days.”
Grierson threw up his hands. “We haven’t the pins. We can’t get the cars to ship them.”
“We’ve got the pins, and the cars are on their way to us. Send your young man out after Beam.”
The superintendent came in presently.
“I’ve got ten box-cars of two-inch maple and birch coming in within the next three or four days. Have a gang ready to take care of it. Put on enough extra men in the shipping department to load as fast as the cars empty,” he said.
Beam gaped at Jim. Then his eyes brightened, he grinned, he threw back his head and roared.
“Mr. Ashe,” he said, when he could speak, “you’re a regular feller, and sudden!”
The cars arrived. On the eighth day fifteen thousand boxes of pins were on their way to New York in eight box-cars, and the freight-agent of Moran’s railroad looked at Jim with the light of admiration in his eyes. Jim had met a sudden emergency suddenly and efficiently. He was tempted to sit down and describe the feat to his father, who would have delighted in it. But he did not. He remembered Clothespin Jimmy’s admonition not to bother him with his business.
But Clothespin Jimmy learned of the matter, which Jim did not know. He learned of it promptly, as he learned most of the details of what went on in the mill, from a source Jim was far from suspecting.
The day after the last car was on its way Zaanan Frame stopped Jim on the street.
“Hain’t forgot that strip of timber of old Le Bar’s?” he asked.
“No,” said Jim.
“Nice afternoon for a drive,” said Zaanan, “out toward Le Bar’s.”
“Very,” said Jim, smiling at the old man’s manner of handling a situation. “Would you like to go with me?”
“No,” said Zaanan, gruffly, “but if I was drivin’ that way and come to Bullet’s Corners and there wa’n’t nobody there, I calc’late I’d slack down and wait till somebody come. G’-by, Jim.”
After dinner Jim drove out toward Le Bar’s. At Bullet’s Corners, waiting in the shade of a big hickory, were Zaanan Frame and his horse Tiffany.
“Howdy,” said Zaanan. “Goin’ somewheres?”
“Thought I’d call on old man Le Bar,” said Jim, playing the game according to Zaanan’s rules.
“Goin’ that way myself,” said Zaanan, with surprise that seemed real. “Calc’late I’ll git there ’bout a quarter of an hour first, seem’s I’ve got the best horse.”
“You have a fine animal,” said Jim, without a quiver.
Zaanan looked over at him suspiciously; gazed at Tiffany’s ancient and knobby frame; opened his mouth as though to make an observation, but decided on silence.
“G’-by, Jim,” he said, in a moment.
“G’-by, Judge,” said Jim.
In an honest fifteen minutes Jim drove on until he saw two old men sitting on the door-step of a house at the roadside. It was a little, weather-beaten house, not such as one would expect to find the owner of a fortune in timber housed in. But one of the men was Zaanan Frame, so Jim stopped and alighted.
“Jim,” said Zaanan, “meet Mr. Le Bar. This here’s Mr. Ashe, Louis.”
“She’s yo’ng man,” said Louis, with a twinkle.
“Mr. Le Bar figgers he’s gittin’ on in life,” said Zaanan. “He sort of wants to git his affairs settled up on account of maybe bein’ called away sudden—”
“When le bon Dieu say,” Louis interjected, softly.
“He owns quite a piece of timber,” said Zaanan, “and figgered you might have some use for it. Hardwood.”
“Yes,” said Jim, not knowing what was expected of him. “How many acres?”
“Twenty t’ousand-odd acre,” said Louis.
“It’ll run twenty to twenty-five thousand beech, birch, and maple to the acre,” said Zaanan.
“Diversity Hardwood Company dey hoffer me twelf dollar an acre,” said Louis. “But me, I not sell to heem for twenty. I sell not at all till comes dat time w’en I’m ready. Now dat time she’s come.”
“How much are you asking?”
“First price—twelf dollar and a half; last price—twelf dollar and a half. No dicker.”
Jim looked at Zaanan, who nodded.
“I’ll take a sixty-day option at that price, if you’re agreeable.”
“How much for dat option?”
“A thousand dollars,” said Jim.
“Ver’ good. We make trade, eh? Now Zaanan she write for us a paper.”
Zaanan completed the legal details; they smoked and ate of Louis’s honey and doughnuts, and started on the return to Diversity.
“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” Jim said to Zaanan as their buggies came abreast on a broad stretch of road. “It’s a lot of money.”
“Um! I’ve knowed fellers to do a lot with an option down to Grand Rapids.”
“What ought I to get for this land?”
“Some folks might go as high as thirteen dollars. But if they was apt to lose it I shouldn’t be s’prised if this Diversity Hardwood Company was to go fifteen. It’s wuth it to them—or anybody else. But I calc’late I’d git a bonyfidy offer from some other feller ’fore I went to Moran’s crowd.”
“I calculate so, too,” said Jim. Then after a pause: “Why didn’t you go into this yourself. Judge? You could have handled it.”
“Young feller, I’m past seventy. I got enough so’s nobody kin starve me. I hain’t chick nor child nor relative on earth. What d’you calc’late I’d do with more ’n I’ve got? It’s come too late for me, Jim. I’ve sort of give up my aims and ambitions for Diversity, and hain’t got none left. Diversity’s used me up, sich as I be, and it’s welcome to what it got. And me, I guess I got my pay all right. I’ve seen marryin’s and christenin’s. I’ve seen young folks happy and old folks comforted. I’ve stuck my finger into folkses’ pies, and seen ’em with tears in their eyes that was better ’n thanks. No, son, I’ve had my investment and my profits. You’re welcome to yourn.”