The summer was not far gone when Dave, through an introduction furnished by Mr. Duncan, got a new job. It was in the warehouse of a wholesale grocery, trundling cases and sacks of merchandise. It was cleaner than handling coal, and the surroundings were more congenial, and the wages were better—fifty dollars a month, to begin.
"The first thing is to get out of the dead-line," said Mr. Duncan. "I am not hoping that you will have found destiny in a wholesale warehouse, but you must get out of the dead-line. As long as you shovel coal, you will shovel coal. And you are not capable of anything better until you think you are."
"But I've liked it pretty well," said Dave. "As long as I was just working for my wages it was dull going, but it was different after I got to see that even shovelling coal was worth while. I suppose it is the same with groceries, or whatever one does. As soon as you begin to study what you handle the work loses its drudgery. It isn't a man's job that makes him sick of his job; it's what he thinks of his job."
A light of satisfaction was in his teacher's eyes as Dave made this answer. Mr. Duncan had realized that he was starting late with this pupil, and if there were any short-cuts to education he must find them. So he had set out deliberately to instil the idea that education is not a matter of schools and colleges, or courses of reading, or formulae of any kind, but a matter of the five senses applied to every experience of life. And he knew that nothing was coarse or common that passed through Dave's hands. Coal had ceased to be a smutty mineral, and had taken on talismanic qualities unguessed by the mere animal workman; and sugar, and coffee, and beans, and rice, and spices, each would open its own wonderful world before this young and fertile mind. As an heritage from his boyhood on the ranges Dave had astonishingly alert senses; his sight, his hearing, his sense of smell and of touch were vastly more acute than those of the average university graduate… And if that were true might it not fairly be said that Dave was already the better educated of the two, even if he, as yet, knew nothing of the classics?
As Dave parted from the Metford gang he felt that he knew what Mr. Duncan had meant by the dead-line. These were men who would always shovel coal, because they aspired to nothing better. There was no atom of snobbery in Dave's nature; he knew perfectly well that shovelling coal was quite as honourable and respectable a means of livelihood as managing a bank, but the man who was content to shovel coal was on the dead-line… And, by the same logic, the man who was content to manage a bank was on the dead-line. That was a new and somewhat startling aspect of life. He must discuss it with Mr. Duncan.
Dave's energy and enthusiasm in the warehouse soon brought him promotion from truck hand to shipping clerk, with an advance in wages to sixty-five dollars a month. He was prepared to remain in this position for some time, as he knew that promotion depends on many things besides ability. Mr. Duncan had warned him against the delusion that man is entirely master of his destiny. "Life, my boy," he had said, "is fifty per cent. environment and forty per cent. heredity. The other ten per cent. is yours. But that ten per cent. is like the steering gear in an automobile; it's only a small part of the mechanism, but it directs the course of the whole machine. Get a good grip on the part of your life you can control, and don't worry over the rest."
To economize both time and money Dave took his lunch with him and ate it in the warehouse. He had also become possessed of a pocket encyclopaedia and it was his habit to employ the minutes saved by eating lunch in the warehouse in reading from his encyclopaedia. It chanced one day that as he was reading in the noon hour Mr. Trapper, the head of the firm, came through the warehouse. Dave knew him but little; he thought of him as a stern, unapproachable man, and avoided him as much as possible. But this time Mr. Trapper was upon him before he was seen.
"What are you reading?" he demanded. "Yellow backed nonsense?"
"No, sir," said Dave, rising and extending his arm with the book.
"Why, what's this?" queried Mr. Trapper, in some surprise. "Tea—tea—oh, I see, it's an encyclopaedia. What is the idea, young man?"
"I always like to read up about the stuff we are handling," said Dave. "It's interesting to know all about it; where it comes from, how it is grown, what it is used for; the different qualities, and so forth."
"H'm," said Mr. Trapper, returning the book. "No doubt." And he walked on without further comment. But that afternoon he had something to say to his manager.
"That young fellow on the shipping desk—Elden, I think his name is. How do you find him?"
"Very satisfactory, sir. Punctual, dependable, and accurate."
"Watch him," said Mr. Trapper.
The manager swung around in his chair. "Why, what do you mean? You haven't occasion to suspect—?"
Mr. Trapper's customary sternness slowly relaxed, until there was the suggestion of a smile about the corners of his mouth, and rather more than a suggestion in the twinkle in his eye.
"Do you know what I caught that young fellow doing during noon hour?" he asked. "Reading up the encyclopaedia on tea. Tea, mind you. Said he made a practice of reading up on the stuff we are handling.We, mind you. Found it very interesting to know where it came from, and all about it. I've been in the grocery business for pretty close to forty years, and I've seen many an employee spend his noon hour in the pool rooms, or in some other little back room, or just smoking, but this is the first one I ever caught reading up the business in an encyclopaedia. Never read it that way myself. Well—you watch him. I'd risk a ten-spot that he knows more about tea this minute than half of our travellers."
But Dave was not to continue in the grocery trade, despite his reading of the encyclopaedia, A few evenings later he was engaged in reading in the public library; not an encyclopaedia, but Shakespeare. The encyclopaedia was for such time as he could save from business hours, but for his evening reading Mr. Duncan had directed him into the realm of fiction and poetry, and he was now feeling his way through Hamlet. From the loneliness of his boyhood he had developed the habit of talking aloud to himself, and in abstracted moments he read in an audible whisper which impressed the substance more deeply on his mind, but made him unpopular in the public reading rooms. It was well known among the patrons of the rooms that he read Hamlet. This fact, however, may not have been altogether to Dave's disadvantage. On the evening in question an elderly man engaged him in conversation.
"You are a Shakespearean student, I see?"
"Not exactly. I read a little in the evenings. But I haven't gone far enough to call myself a student."
"I have seen you here different times. Are you well acquainted with the town?"
"Pretty well," said Dave, scenting that there might be a purpose in the questioning.
"Working now?"
Dave told him where he was employed.
"I am the editor ofThe Call," said the elderly man. "We need another man on the street; a reporter, you know. We pay twenty-five dollars a week for such a position. If you are interested you might call at the office tomorrow."
Dave hurried with his problem to Mr. Duncan. "I think I'd like the work," he said, "but I am not sure whether I can do it. My writing is rather—wonderful."
Mr. Duncan turned the matter over in his mind. "Yes," he said at length, "but I notice you are beginning to use the typewriter. When you learn that God gave you ten fingers, not two, you may make a typist. And there is nothing more worth while than being able to express yourself in English. They'll teach you that on a newspaper. I think I'd take it.
"Not on account of the money," he continued, after a little. "You would probably soon be earning more in the wholesale business. Newspaper men are about the worst paid of all professions. But it's the best training in the world, not for itself, but as a step to something else. I have often wondered why editors, who are forever setting every other phase of the world's work to rights, are content to train up so many thousands of bright young men—and then pass them along into other businesses where they are better paid. But the training is worth while, and it's the training you want. Take it."
Dave explained his disadvantages to the editor ofThe Call. "I didn't want you to think," he said with great frankness, "that because I was reading Shakespeare I was a master of English. And I guess if I were to write up stuff in Hamlet's language I'd get canned for it."
"We'd probably have a deputation from the Moral Reform League," said the editor, with a dry smile. "Just the same, if you know Shakespeare you know English, and we'll soon break you into the newspaper style."
So, almost before he knew it, Dave was on the staff ofThe Call. His beat comprised the police court, fire department, hotels, and general pick-ups. And the very first day, as though to afford fuel for his genius, a small fire occurred in a clothing store.
"'S good for two sticks—about four inches," said the editor, when Dave had given him the main facts. "Write your story to fit."
Dave suddenly realized that, although he had been a persistent reader of newspapers during the recent months, he had scarcely the remotest idea of how many words went to a column, or to an inch. It was a piece of information needed at once, so he set about to count the words in a column. Then he wrote his story to fit. He had already learned that everything in a newspaper office, from a wedding to a ball game, is "a story." When he turned his in it looked like this:
The fire bell was heard ringing this morning about ten o'clock, and soon after crowds were seen wending their way to the Great West Clothing Store. There was a heavy black smoke coming from the back end of the store. The firemen were late in getting there, and before they arrived a man had got badly choked by trying to go into the store. Presently the engine came up and before long water was being applied in great quantities, and soon the fire was under control. Part of the roof fell in, and the building is pretty badly ruined. Some of the contents may be fit for sale. It seems too bad that the fire engine should have been so long in coming, as without doubt if it had got there promptly the fire could have been put out before much damage occurred. However, it might have been worse, as it was a frame building, in a row of other frame buildings, and if the fire had once got beyond control much damage might have been done. Nobody seems to know how the fire started.
It was with much quiet excitement that he awaited the appearance of the evening edition. He had a strange eagerness to see his contribution in print; a manifestation, no doubt, of that peculiar trait in human nature which fills the editorial waste basket with unaccepted contributions. At last he found it, but it read like this:
Fire this morning gutted the Great West Clothing Store with a loss of $8,000.00 of which $4,000.00 is covered by insurance in the Occidental. Frank Beecher, proprietor of the store, was overcome by smoke, and is in the city hospital.
Smoke was first seen issuing from the back of the store by Fred Grant, a delivery man for the Imperial Laundry, who turned in an alarm at 10.08. Owing to the fire team colliding with a dray owned by Sheppard & Co. some minutes of delay occurred. During this period the building, which was of frame, burned fiercely. It was almost completely destroyed, although some of the stock may be salable.
Beecher rushed into the back room for certain papers, where he was found by Fireman Carey in an unconscious condition. He is recovering, and is already planning to rebuild.
Dave read the account with a sinking heart. By the time he reached the end it seemed his heart could sink no further. He found that the editor had not left the office, so he approached him with as much spirit as he could command.
"I guess you won't need me any more," he said. "I'm sorry I made a mess of that fire story."
There was a kind twinkle in the chief's eye as he answered, "Nonsense. Of course we need you. You have merely made the mistake every one else makes, in supposing you could write for a newspaper without training. We will give you the training—and pay you while you learn. The only man we can't use is the man who won't learn. Now let me give you a few pointers," and the editor got up from his desk and held the paper with the fire story before him. "In the first place, don't start a story with 'the,' at least, not more than once or twice a week. In the second place, get the meat into the first paragraph. Seventy-five per cent. of the readers never go further than the first paragraph; give them the raw facts there; if they want the trimmings they will go down for them. That is where a magazine story is exactly opposite to a newspaper story; a newspaper story shows its hand in the first paragraph, a magazine story in the last.
"Then, get the facts. Nobody cares whether the fire bell rang or not, but they do care about the man who was suffocated; who he was, what he was doing there, what became of him. Revel in names. Get the names of everybody, and get them right. The closest tight-wad in the town will buy a paper if it has his name in it. Every story, no matter how short, is good for a number of names. In your copy as you turned it in"—the editor picked it up from his desk; he had evidently saved it for such an occasion as this—"the only name you had was that of the clothing store. I had one of the other boys get to work on the telephone, and you see he got the name of the proprietor; of the insurance company, with the amount of the insurance; of the man who turned in the alarm; of the owner of the dray team that obstructed the engine, and of the firemen who carried Beecher to safety. Every one of these people, with their families, their cousins, and their aunts, become especially interested in the story the moment their names are introduced.
"Next, remember that it is not the business of a reporter to pass editorial comment. It may have been too bad that the fire engine was delayed, but that is a matter for the editor to decide. The business of the reporter is to find out why it was delayed, and state the facts, without regrets or opinions. You must learn to hold the mirror up to nature without making faces in it. You know what I mean—keep your own reflection out of the picture. If you think the incident calls for an expression of opinion by the paper, write an editorial and submit it to me. But remember that the editorial and news columns of a paper should be as distinct as the two sides of a fence."
"Thank you very much," said Dave, slowly, when it was plain the editor had finished. "I think I begin to see. But there's one thing I don't understand. Why did you not mention the origin of the fire?"
A flicker of amusement—or was it confession?—ran across the chief's face as he answered, "Because we don't know what started it—and Beecher is one of our best advertisers. To say the origin of the fire is unknown always leaves a smack of suspicion. It is like the almost imperceptible shrug of the shoulder at the mention of a woman's name. You can't get away from it. And it is the advertiser who keeps the paper alive… I know it's not idealism, but idealism doesn't pay wages and paper bills, and as long as readers demand papers for less than it costs to print them they will have to take second place to the advertiser."
"Then all reports are to be coloured to suit the advertiser?" demanded Dave.
"No. Where a principle is involved—and we have principles, even in these degenerate days—we stand by the principle, even if we lose the patronage. Our notions of what is for the public good have cost us a lot of money at times. You see, the exploiter is always ready to pay his servants, which is more than can be said of the public. But where no real principle is involved we try to be friendly to our friends."
With these fresh viewpoints on his profession Dave entered upon his work the following day chastened but determined. Almost immediately he found the need of acquaintanceships. The isolation of his boyhood had bred in him qualities of aloofness which had now to be overcome. He was not naturally a good "mixer;" he preferred his own company, but his own company would not bring him much news. So he set about deliberately to cultivate acquaintance with the members of the police force and the fire brigade, and the clerks in the hotels. And he had in his character a quality of sincerity which gave him almost instant admission into their friendships. He had not suspected the charm of his own personality, and its discovery, feeding upon his new-born enthusiasm for friendships, still further enriched the charm.
As his acquaintance with the work of the police force increased Dave found his attitude toward moral principles in need of frequent re-adjustment. By no means a Puritan, he had, nevertheless, two sterling qualities which so far had saved him from any very serious misstep. He practised absolute honesty in all his relationships. His father, drunken although he was in his later years, had never quite lost his sense of commercial uprightness, and Dave had inherited the quality in full degree. And Reenie Hardy had come into his life just when he needed a girl like Reenie Hardy to come into his life … He often thought of Reenie Hardy, and of her compact with him, and wondered what the end would be. And meanwhile he found the need of frequent readjustments. He became aware of the fact that in every community there are two communities; one on the surface, respectable, discreet, conventional; and one beneath the surface, to which these terms would not apply. He found that the province of the police was not to enforce morality, but to prevent immorality becoming obnoxious. Anything, almost, might go on so long as its effects were confined to the voluntary participants. Underneath the sham of good behaviour was a world, known to the police and the newspaper men and a few others, which refused to accept standard conventions and lived according to its own impulse. And this world included so-called best citizens, of both sexes. And theyweregood citizens. It seemed the community had two natures; a sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on a community basis. Splendid qualities; large heartedness, generosity, were mingled and streaked through degrees of selfishness and lust running down into positive crime… And the wonder was not what the papers printed, but what they left untold… And he was glad he had met Reenie Hardy. She was an anchor about his soul… And Edith Duncan.
One morning, as he sat with Carson ofThe Timesat the reporters' table in the police court, listening absently to the clerk calling a list of names, his companion, with a grimace, intimated that there was something beneath the surface. "Pure fiction," he whispered, as the list was completed. "It would do you good to know who they are. Shining lights, every one of them. And when they are lit up they can't be kept under a bushel. The police just had to do something. They won't be here—not one of them. Their lawyer will plead guilty, and pay the fines, and every one will be sorry—they were caught. Even his nibs on the bench isn't twice as happy. It was by good luck he wasn't with the bunch himself."
It turned out as Carson predicted. One of the leading lawyers of the city addressed the Court, expressing the regret of his clients that their behaviour had necessitated interference by the police. He was full of suave assurances that no disrespect to the law, nor annoyance to any member of the community, was intended, and he pleaded feelingly for as great leniency as the court might consider consistent with the offence. The minimum fine was imposed, and the lawyer withdrew, bearing with him the double happiness of having earned a good fee and having saved a number of his personal friends from a public exposure which would have been, at least, embarrassing. As the lawyer passed the reporters' table Dave felt something pressed into his hand, and heard the whispered words, "Split it."
In his hand was a ten dollar bill. "What's the idea?" said Dave to Carson, when the session was over.
"The idea is that I get five," said Carson, "and both of us forget it. Cheap skate, he might have made it twenty. Of course the names were bogus, but they couldn't risk mention, even with that precaution. Easy picking, isn't it?"
"It doesn't look quite right," Dave faltered. "I'm here to get the news—"
"Oh, can that. You know we don't publish all the news. Why, man, we'd wreck society, or the ship of state, or whatever it is we are all floating on, if we did that. We'd have every lawyer in this burg busy in a week, and they're making too much money already. What the world doesn't know the world doesn't grieve over. And the joke of it is, everybody thinks he's putting it over somebody else, and while he's busy thinking that somebody else is putting it over him. So they're about even in the finish. Besides, if you talk about principle, doesn't the Bible say to do unto others as you would that they should do unto you? How would you feel in their position?
"I tell you," said Carson, warming up to his subject, "this is an intricate game, this life business. Pretty seedy in spots, but, after all, most people are merely victims of circumstances. And if circumstances place a five-spot in your hand to-day, accept what the gods bring you. To-morrow they will take it away.
"See this suit," he continued, indicating his attire, which greatly out-classed Dave's. "A friend gave me that. I get all my suits that way. When a scrap occurs in a bar-room; a booze riot, or knifing, or something goes wrong upstairs, I just mention that it took place in 'a down town hotel.' Then I order myself a suit, or something of that kind, and have the tailor send his bill to the proprietor of the joint. He pays. If he doesn't, next time I name his tavern right in the story."
"Don't you call that graft?" asked Dave.
"Graft? Nonsense! Merely an exchange of courtesies… There are others, too. You'll get wise to them in time."
But Dave was by no means satisfied with Carson's philosophy. He went to his editor with the five dollar bill and the police court incident. "What shall I do about it?" he demanded.
He fancied there was a note of impatience in the editor's reply. "Give the money to the Salvation Army," he said, "and forget about the rest. Isn't it Kipling who says 'There comes a night when the best gets tight,' and so on? We could tell the story, but what good would it do? And let me tell you, Elden, there are mighty few, men or women, who have gone half way through life without something they'd like to forget. Why not let them forget it? You're young yet, and perhaps you don't see it that way, but you'll be older. There's a verse by somebody runs like this:
"Don't take the defensive by saying"I told only just what was true,"For there's more at that game might be playingIf the truth were all told about you."
"That may be bad poetry, but it's good journalistic ethics."
But after Dave had gone the editor called his business manager. "I guess we'll have to raise Elden to thirty dollars a week," said he. "He's so honest he embarrasses me, and I guess I need that kind of embarrassment, or I wouldn't be embarrassed."
While the gradually deepening current of Dave's life flowed through the channels of coal heaver, freight hustler, shipping clerk, and reporter, its waters were sweetened by the intimate relationship which developed between him and the members of the Duncan household. He continued his studies under Mr. Duncan's directions; two, three, or even four nights in the week found him at work in the comfortable den, or, during the warm weather, on the screened porch that overlooked the family garden. His duties as reporter frequently called for attendance at public meetings devoted to all conceivable purposes, and he was at first disposed to feel unkindly toward these interruptions in his regular studies. He raised the point with Mr. Duncan.
"One thing I have been trying to drill into you," said his tutor, "is that education is not a thing of books or studies or formulae of any kind. It is the whole world; particularly the world of thought, feeling, and expression. It is not a flower in the garden of life; it is the garden itself, with its flowers, and its perfumes, and its sunshine and rain. Yes, and its weeds, and droughts, and insects and worms. There is a phase of education in the public meeting, whether its purpose be to discuss the municipal tax rate or the flora of the Rockies. You can't afford to miss any subject; but still less can you afford to miss the audiences that are interested in any subject. They are deeper than any book. There are all kinds of audiences. There is the violent audience, and the mysterious audience, and the sentimental audience, and the destructive audience, and the whimsical audience, and the hysterical audience,—and every other kind. And the funny thing is that they are all made up of much the same people. Take a sentimental audience, for instance; a few passes, and you have an hysterical audience. It is a difference of moods. We don't think enough about moods. We are all subject to moods, and yet we judge a new acquaintance by the mood he happens to be in—and the mood we happen to be in—at the time of making the acquaintanceship. Another day, in other moods, he would make a quite different impression—if the impression already made could be effaced. I have a theory that the world's sorrow is largely a matter of moods. I don't deny the sorrow, nor the need for sorrow, nor the reality of it, but I do believe there is a mood of happiness which even the deepest sorrows cannot suppress. And the more you study people the more you will understand moods, and, perhaps, be master of your own. And the man who can, by force of his own will, determine the mood in which he will live, is master of the world."
So Dave came to realize that every incident in the reportorial round was to be assimilated for its educational value, and this lent a zest to his work which it could not otherwise have had. But the attraction of the Duncan household grew upon him, and many an hour he spent under its hospitable roof. Mrs. Duncan, motherly, and yet not too motherly—she might almost have been an older sister—appealed to the young man as an ideal of womanhood. Her soft, well modulated voice seemed to him to express the perfect harmony of the perfect home, and underneath its even tones he caught glimpses of a reserve of power and judgment not easily unbalanced. She was a woman to whom men might carry their ambitions, and women their hopes, and little children their wonderings, and all be assured of sympathetic audience and wise counsel. And as Dave's eyes would follow her healthy, handsome figure as it moved noiselessly about in her domestic duties, or as he caught the flush of beauty that still bloomed in her thoughtful face, or as at rarer intervals he plunged into the honest depths of her frank grey eyes, the tragedy of his own orphaned life bore down upon him and he rebelled that he had been denied the start which such a mother could have given him.
"I am twenty years behind myself," he would reflect, with a grim smile. "Never mind. I will do three men's work for the next ten, and then we will be even."
And there was Edith,—Edith, who had held him rapture-bound on that first Sunday in church—Edith, who had burst so unexpectedly upon his life that first evening in her father's home. He had not allowed himself any foolishness about Edith. It was evident that Edith was pre-empted, just as he was pre-empted, and the part of honour in his friend's house was to recognize thestatus quo… Still, Mr. Allan Forsyth was unnecessarily self-assured. He might have made it less evident that he was within the enchanted circle, while Dave remained outside. His complacence irritated Dave almost into rivalry. But the boon camaraderie of Edith herself checked any adventure of that kind. She checked it in two ways; by her own frank acceptance of him much as she would have accepted a brother in the household, and by her uncanny and unconscious knack of reminding him in almost every word and gesture of Reenie Hardy. She was of about the same figure as Reenie Hardy; a little slighter, perhaps; and about the same age; and she had the same quick, frank eyes. And she sang wonderfully. He had never heard Reenie sing, but in some strange way he had formed a deep conviction that she would sing much as Edith sang. He was not yet psychologist enough to know that his admiration for Edith was the reflex action to his love for the girl who had so wonderfully invaded his foothill life and so wonderfully changed the current of his destinies. In love, as in religion, man is forever setting up idols to represent his ideals… And forever finding feet of clay.
Dave was not long in discovering that his engagement as coachman was a device, born of Mr. Duncan's kindness, to enable him to accept instruction without feeling under obligation for it. When he made this discovery, he smiled quietly to himself, and pretended not to have made it. Two things were apparent after their first drive; that nothing was further from the minds of Mr. Duncan's bays than anything which called for so much exertion as a runaway, and that, even had they been so disposed, Edith was entirely competent to manage them. The girl had not lived in the foothill town since childhood without becoming something of a horse-woman. But Dave pretended not to know that he was a supernumerary. To have acted otherwise would have seemed ungrateful to Mr. Duncan. And presently the drives began to have a strange attraction of themselves.
When they drove in the two-seated buggy on Sunday afternoons the party usually comprised Mrs. Duncan and Edith, young Forsyth and Dave. Mr. Duncan was interested in certain Sunday afternoon meetings. It was Mrs. Duncan's custom to sit in the rear seat, for its better riding qualities, and it had a knack of falling about that Edith would ride in the front seat with the driver. She caused Forsyth to ride with her mother, ostensibly as a courtesy to that young gentleman,—a courtesy which, it may be conjectured, was not fully appreciated. At first he accepted it with the good nature of one who feels his position secure, but gradually that good nature gave way to a certain testiness of spirit which he could not entirely conceal. It became evident that he would have preferred other ways of spending the Sunday afternoons. The parks, for instance, or quiet walks through the cottonwoods by the river…
The crisis was precipitated one fine Sunday in September, in the first year of Dave's newspaper experience. Dave called early, and found Edith in a riding habit.
"Mother is 'indisposed,' as they say in the society page," she explained. "In other words, she doesn't wish to be bothered. So I thought we would ride to-day."
"But there are only two horses," said Dave.
"Well?" queried the girl, and there was a note in her voice that sounded strange to him. Then, after a pause in which the colour slowly rose to her cheeks, "There are only two of us."
"But Mr. Forsyth?"
"He is not here. He may not come. Will you saddle the horses and let us get away?"
It was evident to Dave that, for some reason, Edith wished to evade Forsyth this afternoon. A lover's quarrel, no doubt. That she had a preference for him, and was revealing it with the utmost frankness, never occurred to his sturdy, honest mind. One of the delights of his companionship with Edith had been that it was a real companionship. None of the limitations occasioned by any sex consciousness had narrowed the sphere of the frank friendship he felt for her. She was to him almost as another man, yet in no sense masculine. It seemed rather that her femininity was of such purity that, like the atmosphere he breathed, it surrounded him, flooded him without exciting consciousness of its existence. Save for a certain tender delicacy which her womanhood inspired, he came and went with her as he might have done with a man chum of his own age. And when she preferred to ridewithoutForsyth it did not occur to Elden that she preferred to ridewithhim.
They were soon in the country, and Edith, leading, swung from the road to a bridle trail that followed the winding of the river. As her graceful figure drifted on ahead it seemed more than ever reminiscent of Reenie Hardy. What rides they had had on those foothill trails! What dippings into the great canyons! What adventures into the spruce forests! And how long ago it all seemed. That was before he started on the paper; before he had been in the grocery business, or in the coal business; back in the long, long past on the ranch in the days before his father died. Life—how it goes! And had it brought to her as many changes as to him? And had it, perhaps, brought to her one change it had not brought to him—a change in the anchor about which her heart's affection clung? This girl, riding ahead, suggestive in every curve and pose of Reenie Hardy… His eyes were burning with loneliness.
He knew he was dull that day, and Edith was particularly charming and vivacious. She coaxed him into conversation a dozen times, but he answered absent-mindedly. At length she leapt from her horse and seated herself, facing the river, on a fallen log. Without looking back she indicated with her hand the space beside her, and Dave followed and sat down. For a time they watched the swift water in silence; blue-green where the current ran deeply; tinged with brown glow in the shallows from the gravel underneath.
"You aren't talking to-day," she said at length. "You don't quite do yourself justice. What's wrong?"
"You aren't talking to-day … what's wrong?"[Illustration: "You aren't talking to-day … what's wrong?"]
"You aren't talking to-day … what's wrong?"[Illustration: "You aren't talking to-day … what's wrong?"]
"Oh, nothing," he answered with a laugh, pulling himself together. "This September weather always gets me. I guess I have a streak of Indian; it comes of being brought up on the ranges. And in September, after the first frosts have touched the foliage—" He paused, as though it was not necessary to say more.
"Yes, I know," she said quietly. Then, with a queer little note of confidence, "Don't apologize for it, Dave."
"Apologize?" and his form straightened. "Certainly not… One doesn't apologize for nature, does he? … But it comes back in September." He smiled, and she thought the subconscious in him was calling up the smell of fire in dry grass, or perhaps even the rumble of buffalo over the hills. And he knew he smiled because he had so completely misled her.
Presently she took out a pocket volume. "Will you read?" she said. Strangely enough he opened it at the lines:
"Oh, you will never hide your soul from me;I've seen the jewels flash, and know 'tis thereMuffle it as you will."
…It was dusk when they started homeward.
Forsyth was waiting for her. Dave scented stormy weather and excused himself early.
"What does this mean?" demanded Forsyth, angrily, as soon as Dave had gone. "Do you think I'll take second place to that—that coal heaver?"
She straightened, and her bright eyes were charged with a blaze which would have astonished Dave, who had known her only in her milder moods. But she tried to speak without passion.
"That is not to his discredit," she said.
"Straight from the corrals into good society," Forsyth sneered.
Then she made no pretense of composure. "If you have nothing more to urge against Mr. Elden, perhaps you will go."
Forsyth took his hat. At the door he paused and turned, but she was already ostensibly interested in a magazine. He went out into the night.
The week was a busy one with Dave, and he had no opportunity to visit the Duncans. Friday Edith called him on the telephone. She asked an inconsequential question about something which had appeared in the paper, and from that the talk drifted on until it turned on the point of their expedition of the previous Sunday. Dave never could account quite clearly how it happened, but when he hung up the receiver he knew he had asked her to ride with him again on Sunday, and she had accepted. He had ridden with her before, of course, but he had neveraskedher before. He had been a sort of honoured employee, whose business it was to comply with her wishes. But this time she would ride at his request. He felt that a subtle change had come over their relationship.
He was at the Duncan house earlier than usual Sunday afternoon, but not too early for Edith. She was dressed for the occasion; she seemed more fetching than he had ever seen her. There was the blush of health—or was it altogether the blush of health?—on her cheeks, and a light in her eyes such as he had seen more than once on those last rides with Reenie Hardy. And across her saddle she threw a brown sweater.
She led the way over the path followed the Sunday before until again they sat by the rushing water. Dave had again been filled with a sense of Reenie Hardy, and his conversation was disjointed and uninteresting. She tried unsuccessfully to draw him out with questions about himself; then took the more astute tack of speaking of her own past life. It had begun in an eastern city, ever so many years ago.
Chivalry could not allow that to pass. "Oh, not so very many," said Dave.
"How many?" she teased. "Guess."
He looked judicially on her bright face; it was a good face to look upon. Perhaps his eyes said as much.
"Nineteen," he hazarded.
"Oh, more than that."
"Twenty-one?"
"Oh, less than that." And their first confidence was established.
"Twenty," thought Dave to himself. "Reenie must be about twenty now."
"And I was five when—when Jack died," she went on. "Jack was my brother, you know. He was seven, and a great boy for his daddy. Most boys run to their mother with their hurts, but Jack was different. When father was at the office Jack would save up his little hurts until evening… Well, we were playing, and I stood on the car tracks, signalling the motorman, to make him ring his bell. On came the car, with the bell clanging, and the man in blue looking very cross. Jack must have thought I was waiting too long, for he suddenly rushed on the track to pull me off." She stopped, and sat looking at the rushing water.
"I heard him cry, 'Oh Daddy, Daddy,' above the screech of the brakes," she continued, in a dry voice.
"Sorrow is a strange thing," she went on, after a pause. "I don't pretend to understand, but it seems to have its place in life. I fancy this would soon be a pretty degenerate world if there were no sorrow in it. I have been told that sometimes fruit trees refuse to bear until they have met with adversity. Then the gardener bores a hole in them, or something like that, and, behold, next season they bear. Sounds silly, but they say it's a fact. I guess it's natural law. Well—" She paused again, and when she spoke it was in a lower, more confidential note.
"I shouldn't tell you this, Dave. I shouldn't know it myself. But before that things hadn't been, well, just as good as they might in our home… They've been different since."
The shock of her words brought him upright. To him it seemed that Mr. and Mrs. Duncan were the ideal father and mother. It was impossible to associate them with a home where things "hadn't been just as good as they might." But her half confession left no room for remark.
"Mother told me," she went on, after a long silence, and without looking at him. "A few years ago, 'If some one had only told me, when I was your age,' she said."
"Why do you tell me this?" he suddenly demanded.
"Did you ever feel that you just had to tellsomeone?"
It was his turn to pause. "Yes," he confessed, at length.
"Then tell me."
So he led her down through the tragedy of his youth and the lonely rudderless course of his boyhood. She followed sympathetically to the day when Dr. Hardy and his daughter Irene became guests at the Elden ranch. And then her interest manifested something deeper than sympathy. But he had become engrossed in his narrative… The September day had drawn to a close, and the dusk was thick about them, ere he reached the end. But before the end he stopped. Should he tell her all? Why not? She had opened her life to him. So he told her of that last evening with Irene, and the compact under the trees and the moon. Her hand had fallen into his as they talked, but here he felt it slowly withdrawn. But he was fired with the flame of love which had sprung up in the breath of his reminiscence… And Edith was his friend and his chum.
"And you have been true?" she said, but her voice was distant and strained.
"Yes."
"And you are waiting for her?"
"Yes, I am waiting… It must be so." …
"It is cold," she said. "Let us go home."
Whatever the effect of this conversation had been upon Edith she concealed it carefully, and Dave counted it one of the fortunate events of his life. It had sealed to him a new friendship, a confidence to support him in days of stress. He had been working under the spur of his passion for Irene, but now this was to be supplemented by the friendship of Edith. That it was more than friendship on her part did not occur to him at all, but he knew she was interested in him, and he was doubly determined that he would justify her interest and confidence. He threw himself into the columns ofThe Callwith greater vigour than ever.
But just at this time another incident occurred which was to turn the flood of his life into strange channels. Dave had been promoted to the distinction of a private office—a little six-by-six "box stall," as the sports editor described it—but none the less a distinction shared only with the managing editor and Bert Morrison, compiler of the woman's page. Her name was Roberta, but she was masculine to the tips, and everybody called her Bert. The remainder of the staff occupied a big, dingy room, with walls pasted with specimen headings, comic cartoons, and racy pictures, and floor carpeted deeply with exchanges. Dave, however, had established some sort of order in his den, and had installed at his own cost a spring lock to prevent depredations upon his paste pot or sudden raids upon his select file of time copy.
Into this sanctuary one afternoon in October came Conward. It was such an afternoon as to set every office-worker at war with the gods; the glories of the foothill October are known only in the foothill country, and Dave, married though he was to his work, felt the call of the sunshine and the open spaces. This was a time for fallen leaves and brown grass and splashes of colour everywhere—nature's autumn colours, bright, glorious, unsubdued. Only Dave knew how his blood leaped to that suggestion. But the world must go on.
Conward's habitual cigarette hung from its accustomed short tooth, and his round, florid face seemed puffier than usual. His aversion to any exercise more vigorous than offered by a billiard cue was beginning to reflect itself in a premature rotundity of figure. But his soft, sedulous voice had not lost the note of friendly confidence which had attracted Dave, perhaps against his better judgment, on the night of their first meeting.
"'Lo, Dave," he said. "Alone?"
"Almost," said Dave, without looking up from his typewriter. Then, turning, he kicked the door shut with his heel and said, "Shoot."
"This strenuous life is spoiling your good manners, Dave, my boy," said Conward, lazily exhaling a thin cloud of smoke. "If work made a man rich you'd die a millionaire. But it isn't work that makes men rich. Ever think of that?"
"If a man does not become rich by work he has no right to become rich at all," Dave retorted.
"What do you mean by that word 'right,' Dave? Define it."
"Haven't time. We go to press at four."
"That's the trouble with fellows like you," Conward continued. "You haven't time. You stick too close to your jobs. You never see the better chances lying all around. Now suppose you let them go to press without you to-day, and you listen to me for a while."
Dave was about to throw him out when a gust of yearning for the open spaces swept over him again. It was true enough. He was giving his whole life to his paper. Promotion was slow, and there was no prospect of a really big position at any time. He remembered Mr. Duncan's remarks about newspaper training being the best preparation for something else. With a sudden decision he closed his desk. "Shoot," he said again, but this time with less impatience.
"That's better," said Conward. "Have you ever thought of the future of this town?"
"Well, I can't say that I have. I've been busy with its present."
"That's what I supposed. You've been too busy with the details of your little job to give attention to bigger things. Now, let me pass you a few pieces of information—things you must know, but you have never put them together before. What are the natural elements which make a country or city a desirable place to live? I'll tell you. Climate, transportation, good water, variety of landscape, opportunity of independence. Given these conditions, everything else can be added. Now, our climate—of course it is misunderstood in the South and East, but misunderstanding doesn't ruffle it. You and I know what it is. This is a white man's climate. Follow our latitude into Europe if you want to find the seats of power and success. London and Berlin are north of us; Paris very little south."
"Where did you get this stuff?" Dave interjected. "Sounds like the prelude of an address before a boomsters' club."
"I've been thinking, while you've been too busy to think," Conward retorted. "Then there's transportation. This is one of the few centres in America which has a north and south trade equal to its east and west trade. We're on the cross-roads. Every settler who goes into the North—and it is a mighty North—means more north and south trade. The development of the Pacific Coast, the industrialization of Asia, the opening of the Panama Canal—these mean east and west trade. Every railway that taps this country must come to this city, because we have the start, and are too big to be ignored."
"'City' is good," said Dave.
"All right. Scoff as much as you like. Have your joke before it turns on you. There'll be a quarter of a million people here before you're dead, if you play fair with the life insurance people."
"Go on."
"Then there's the soil—the richest soil in the world. Just dry enough to keep it from leaching. Natural possibilities for irrigation wherever necessary—"
"I'm not sure about it as a grain country," interrupted Dave, with a touch of antagonism.
"That is because you were brought up on a ranch, and are a rancher at heart," Conward shot back. "No rancher is ever sure of any country being a grain country. All he is sure of is that if the farmer comes it is good-bye to the open range. Just as the fur-trader blackguarded the climate to keep the stockman out, so is the stockman blackguarding the climate to keep the farmer out. But they're coming. They can't be stopped. It's only a case of education—of advertising.
"I tell you, Dave, the movement is on now, and before long it'll hit us like a tidal wave. I've been a bit of a gambler all my life, but this is the biggest jack-pot ever was, and I'm going to sit in. How about you?"
"I'd like to think it over. Promotion doesn't come very fast on this job, that's sure."
"Yes, and while you are thinking it over chances are slipping by. Don't think it over—put it over. I tell you, Dave, there are big things in the air. They are beginning to move already. Have you noticed the strangers in town of late? That's the advance guard—"
"Advance guard of a real estate boom?"
"Hish! That's a bad word. Get away from it. Say 'Industrial development.'"
"All right,—industrial development. And do we have to have an advance guard of strangers to bring about 'industrial development?'"
"Sure. That's the only way. You never heard of the old-timers in a town booming it—the term goes between us—did you? Never. The old resident is always deader than the town, no matter how dead the town may be. And this business is a science. The right gang can spring it anywhere, and almost any time.
"Let me elaborate. We'll say Alkali Lake is a railway station where lots go begging at a hundred dollars each. In drops a well dressed stranger—buys ten lots at a hundred and fifty each—and the old-timers are chuckling over sticking him. But in drops another stranger and buys a block of lots at two hundred each. Then the old timers begin to wonder if they didn't sell too soon. By the time the fourth or fifth stranger has dropped in they are dead sure of it, and they are trying to buy their lots back. All sorts of rumours get started, nobody knows how. New railways are coming, big factories are to be started, minerals have been located, there's a secret war on between great monied interests. The town council meets and changes the name to Silver City—having regard, no doubt, to the alkali in the sleugh water. The old-timers, and all that great, innocent public which is forever hoping to get something for nothing, are now glad to buy the lots at five hundred to ten thousand dollars each, and by the time they've bought it up the gang moves on. It's the smoothest game in the world, and every community will fall for it at least twice… Well, they're here.
"Of course, it's a little different in this case, because there really is something in the way of natural advantages to support it. It's not all hot air. That'll make the event just so much bigger.
"Now, Dave, I've been dipping in a little already, and it struck me we might work together on this deal. Your paper has considerable weight, and if that weight falls the right way you won't find me stingy. For instance, an item that this property"—he produced a slip with some legal descriptions—"has been sold for ten thousand dollars to eastern investors—very conservative investors from the East, don't forget that—might help to turn another deal that's just hanging. Sorry to keep you so long, but perhaps you can catch the press yet." And, with one of his friendly mannerisms, Conward departed.
Dave sat for some minutes in a quandary. He was discouraged with his salary, or, rather, with the lack of prospect of any increase in his salary. Conward's words had been very unsettling. They pulled in opposite directions. They fired him with a new enthusiasm for his city, and they intimated that a gang of professional land-gamblers was soon to perpetrate an enormous theft, leaving the public holding the sack. Still there must be a middle course somewhere.
He walked to his little window and looked across the warm prairie. No buildings cut his view from the brown hillsides where the lazy mists of autumn beckoned to be out and free. It was a sleepy cow-town still, and yet, as he now recalled, a new pulse had been throbbing its arteries of late. The proportion of strangers—men in white collars and street shoes—at the hotels was steadily growing. Rents were going up. It was the first low wave—and Conward's ear had caught it…
At any rate, he could use Conward's story about the land sale. That was news—legitimate news. Of course, it might be a faked sale—faked for its news value—but reporters are not paid for being detectives. The rule was to publish the news while it was hot. Nothing is so perishable as news. It must be used at once or discarded altogether… TheEvening Callcarried a statement of Conward's sale, and on that statement was hung a column story on the growing prosperity of the city, and its assured future owing to its exceptional climate and natural resources, combined with its commanding position on transportation routes, both east and west and north and south. With the industrialization of Asia and the settlement of the great North—and how great is that North—etc., etc.
During the following days Dave had a keener eye than usual for evidences of 'industrial development.' He found them on every hand. Old properties, long considered unsalable, were changing owners. Handsomely furnished offices had been opened on principal corners for the sale of city and country property. Hotels were crowded, bar-rooms were jammed. The preponderance of the male population had never been so pronounced, and every incoming train added to it. Money moved easily; wages were stiffening; tradesmen were in demand. There was material for many good stories in his investigations. He began writing features on the city's prosperity and prospects. The rival paper did the same, and there was soon started between them a competition of optimism. The great word became "boost." It stood, apparently, for any action or attitude that would increase prices. The virus was now in the veins of the community; pulsing through every street and by-way of the little city. Dave marvelled, and wondered how he had failed to read these signs until Conward had laid their portent bare before him. But as yet it was only his news sense that responded; his delight in the strange and the sensational. He was not yet inoculated with the poison of easy wealth.
His nights were busy with his investigations, but on Sundays, as usual, he went out to Duncans'. He had developed the habit of attending morning service; he loved the music, and it was customary for Edith to sing a morning solo. Her voice, which had enraptured him when they first met, had developed wonderfully. It filled the morning air like the clear tolling of silver bells. For its sake he gladly endured the sermons, and even in the sermon he sometimes found common ground with the preacher. They could meet on any faith that postulated the brotherhood of man. But the reverend speaker touched such a subject warily. It seemed to Dave he would gladly have gone further, but was held in restraint by a sense of the orthodoxy of his congregation. Too literal an interpretation of the brotherhood of man might carry the taint of Socialism, and the congregation represented the wealth of the city. It was safer to preach learnedly on abstractions of belief.
This morning Edith had not been in her place, and the service was flat. In the afternoon she was not at her home. Mrs. Duncan explained that Edith had gone to visit a girl friend in the country; would be away for some time. Dave felt a foolish annoyance that she should have left town. She might at least have called him up. Why should she call him up? Of course not. Still, the town was very empty. He drove with Mrs. Duncan in the afternoon, and at night took a long walk by the river. He had a vague but oppressive sense of loneliness. He had not realized what part of his life these Sunday afternoons with Edith had come to be. He had no man friends; his nature held him apart from his own sex. And yet he had a strange capacity for making friends quickly, if he tried. But he didn't try. He didn't feel the need. But he felt lost without Edith.
A few days later Conward strolled in, with the inevitable cigarette. He smoked in silence until Dave completed a story.
"Good stuff you're giving us," he commented, when the article was finished. "Mighty good stuff."
"Your tip put me on to a good lead all right," Dave acknowledged. "And nowThe Timesis chasing me hard. They had a story this morning that the —— railway is buying a right-of-way up the river."
"Remember what I told you the other day? Stories start from nowhere. It's just like putting a match to tinder. Now we're off."
Conward smoked a few minutes in silence, but Dave could not fail to see the excitement under his calm exterior. He had, as he said, decided to "sit in" in the biggest game ever played. The intoxication of sudden wealth had already fired his blood.
He slipped a bill to Dave. "For your services in that little transaction," he explained.
Elden held the bill in his fingers, gingerly, as though it might carry infection, as in very truth it did. He realized that he stood at a turning point—that everything the future held for him might rest on his present decision. There remained in him not a little of the fine, stern honour of the ranchmen of the open range; an honour curious, sometimes terrible, in its interpretation of right and wrong, but a fine, stern honour none the less. And he instinctively felt that to accept this money would compromise him forever more. And yet—others did it. He had no doubt of that. Conward would laugh at such scruples. And Conward had more friends than he had. Everybody liked Conward. It seemed to Dave that he, only, distrusted him. But that, also, as Dave said to himself, lay in the point of view. He granted that he had no more right to impose his standard of morals upon Conward than the preacher had to impose an arbitrary belief upon him. And as he turned the bill in his fingers he noticed that it was for one hundred dollars. He had thought it was ten.
"I can't take that much," he exclaimed. "It isn't fair."
"Fair enough," said Conward, well pleased that Dave should be impressed by his generosity. "Fair enough," he repeated. "It's just ten per cent. of my profit."
"You mean you made a thousand dollars on that deal?"
"Exactly that. And that will look like a peanut to what we are going to make later on."
"We?"
"Yes. You and me. We're going into partnership."
"But I've nothing to invest. I've only a very little saved up."
"Invest that hundred."
Dave looked at Conward sharply. Was he trifling? No; his eyes were frank and serious.
"You mean it?"
"Of course. Now, I'll put you on to something, and it's the biggest thing that has been pulled off yet. There's a section of land lying right against the city limits that is owned by a fellow over in England; remittance man who fell heir to an estate and had to go home to spend it. Well, he has been paying taxes ever since, and is tired of the 'bally rawnch'; besides, he is busy keeping his property in England reasonably well spent. I am arranging through a London office to offer him ten dollars an acre, and I'll bet he jumps at it. I've arranged for the necessary credits, but there will be some expenses for cables, etc., and you can put your hundred into that. If we pull it off—and we will pull it off—we start up in business as Conward & Elden, or Elden & Conward, which ever sounds better. Boy, there's a fortune in it."
"What do you figure it's worth?" said Dave, trying to speak easily. "Twenty-five dollars an acre?"
"Twenty-five dollars an acre!" Conward shouted. "Dave, newspaper routine has killed your imagination, little as one would expect such a result, from some of the things the papers print. Twenty-five dollars an acre! Listen!
"The city boundaries are to be extended—probably will be by the time this deal goes through. Then it is city property. A street railway system is to be built, and we'll see that it runs through our land. We may have to 'grease' somebody, but it's a poor engineer that saves on grease. Then we'll survey that section into twenty-five foot lots—and we'll sell them at two hundred dollars each for those nearest the city down to one hundred for those farthest out—average one hundred and fifty, total nine hundred and sixty thousand dollars. Allow say sixty thousand for 'grease' and there is still nine hundred thousand, and that doesn't count re-sale commissions. Dave, it's good for a cool million. And that is just the beginning. It will give us a standing that will make anything possible."
Dave was doing rapid thinking. Suddenly he faced Conward, and their eyes met. "Conward," he said, "why do you put this up to me?"
"What d'ye mean?"
"You don't need my little hundred to put this over. Why do you let me in on it?"
Conward smiled and breathed easily. There had been a moment of tension.
"Oh, that's simple," he answered. "I figure this business is going to be too big for me, and you are the partner I need. I figure we'll travel well in double harness. I'm a good mixer—I know people—and I've got ideas. And you're sound and honourable and people trust you."
"Thanks," said Dave, dryly.
"That's right," Conward continued. "We'll be a combination hard to beat. You know the story about the brothers in the coal business?"
"No."
"Jim and Fred were coal dealers, when a revival broke out in their town, and Jim got religion. Then he tried to convert Fred; tried awful hard to get Fred to at least go to the meetings. But Fred wouldn't budge. Said it wasn't practicable. Jim argued and coaxed and prayed, but without result. At last he put it up to Fred.
"'Fred,' he said, 'why won't you come to our meetings?'"
"'Well,' the brother answered, 'it was all right for you to get religion. Sort o' lends respectability to the firm. But if I get it too, who's going to weigh the coal?'"
The two men laughed over the story, and yet it left an unpleasant impression upon Dave. He had never felt sure of Conward, and now he felt less sure than ever. But the lust of easy money was beginning to stir within him. The bill in his hands represented more than three weeks' wages. Conward was making money—making money fast, and surely here was an opportunity such as comes once in a lifetime. A boy shoved in his head and yelled for copy. Dave swore at him, impatiently. He had never before realized how irksome the drudgery of his steady grind had become.
"I'll go you," he said to Conward at last. "I'll risk this hundred, and a little more if necessary."
"Good," said Conward, springing to his feet and taking Dave's hand in a warm grasp. "Now we're away. But you better play safe. Stick to your pay cheque here until we pull the deal through. There won't be much to do until then, anyway, and you can help more by guiding the paper along right lines."
"It sounds like a fairy tale," Dave demurred, as though unwilling to credit the possibilities Conward had outlined. "You're sure it can be done?"
"Done? Why, son, it has been done in all the big centres in the States, and at many a place that'll never be a centre at all. And it will be done here. Dave, bigger things than you dare to dream of are looming up right ahead."
Then Dave had a qualm. "If that section of land is worth close to a million dollars," he said, "is it quite fair to take advantage of the owner's absence and ignorance to buy it for a few thousand?"
"Dave," said Conward, with an arm on his shoulder, "the respectability of the firm is safe in your hands. But—pleaselet me weigh the coal."