THE train rushed eastward, but Tommy's thoughts reached New York first. He did it by considering the task that Thompson had given him to do. He read the typewritten statement very carefully, studied the statistics of growth and profits and values, and fervently blessed Thompson, who had taken pains clearly to indicate the significance of each item so that nobody could fail to understand.
From that Tommy passed on to an elaborate dramatization of his own stock-selling campaign. He rehearsed his speeches to the fathers of the friends who ought to become stockholders of the Tecumseh Motor Company. He heard his own arguments very distinctly indeed, but when he came to listen to theirs he was not so successful. To be on the safe side, he assumed that he had to overcome indifference, distrust, and the exasperating conservatism of old people. It did not occur to him that greed must also be overcome, for he concerned himself with his own inexperience. He felt certain that his own training under Thompson would not be regarded with admiration by Eastern capitalists. And yet in Dayton Thompson was believed to be shrewd and far-seeing, and had built up a successful business, and was about to do much more. And Tommy was one of Thompson's business Experiments.
“I'll show them!” he said aloud. And in his determination there was quite as much loyalty to Thompson as resolve to demonstrate the worth of Thomas F. Leigh.
Having definitely made up his mind to succeed, he began once more at the beginning. He must get RIvington and his other friends to arrange for Meetings with their fathers. The speeches would say themselves when the time came. It all depended upon what manner of men the fathers were. And then he began to think of his own father.
The human mind works curiously. In order to think about his father Tommy found himself compelled to think about himself. The secret had driven him to Dayton. It had taken away his happiness, and in exchange had given to him Thompson, Byrnes, Grosvenor, Nevin, La Grange, and the men in the shop—more real friends than he had in New York. It had given to him not only something to do, but something to do gladly.
The friends and the work had increased his own power to fight. He must always fight everybody, everything that antagonized his friends and his work. After all, what was the secret but the wonderful story of an old man's unreasoning love for his only son, of a loyalty to his wife so steadfast that death had but made it stronger?
Well, as soon as the money was paid back the first thing Tommy would do would be to tell Thompson all about it. Then Tommy could be proud of his father's deed before all men, who would understand. A man who would do such a thing for a son was a big man. To make such a sacrifice for a son who was not worthy of it—that would be the tragedy!
“I'll show them!” again muttered Tommy, through his teeth. And that was exactly how Tommy came back to his starting-point. He would place the two thousand shares of stock! He would be all business. And yet he regretted that all he had said in his telegram to his father was, “Will arrive in New York to-morrow on business.” But he was glad he had signed it as a loving son would sign it, “Tommy”!
When he arrived he felt that he had been absent from New York so long that he really was no longer a part of the life of the town. He had a sense almost of provincialism. He did not quite belong.
He did not thrill, as he had expected, at the familiar sights and the typical noises and the characteristic odors. The New-Yorkers he saw were unmistakably New-Yorkers, but they were utter strangers to him.
It was an old Daytonian who rang the bell of his house. But Maggie, who opened the door, also opened her mouth at the sight of him and kept it open. And it was not a Daytonian who shouted, delightedly:
“Hello, Margarita! How be you?”
He was so glad to see her in the house where he was bom, so full of the joy of home-coming, that Dayton utterly vanished from the map of his soul.
“Where is he?” he asked her.
“Up-stairs in the lib'ry,” answered Maggie, quite proudly. Then, as by an afterthought, she said, very calmly, “Ye're lookin' well.”
“So are you!” he said, and gave her a hug. “How's your steady?”
It was the old, old joke. But she whispered unsmilingly in reply, “He's waitin' fer ye in th' lib'ry.”
Tommy ran up the stairs three steps at a time. He was going to empty himself of his love and the oceans of his youth upon his father. Mr. Leigh was standing beside the table on which were the family Bible, the ivory paper-cutter, and the silver-framed photograph of Tommy's mother. The photograph was not in the center, as usual, but near the edge of the table; and it was not facing the old man, but the door through which Tommy must enter.
“Hello, dad!” cried Tommy.
Mr. Leigh held his left hand behind his back, where Tommy could not see that it was clenched so tightly that the knuckles showed cream-white, like bare bones. The right hand he extended toward Tommy.
“How do you do, Thomas?” said Mr. Leigh, quietly. His face was impassive, but his eyes were very bright. A little older, he seemed to Tommy. Not grayer or more wrinkled or feebler, Simply older, as though it came from something within, Tommy shook his father's hand vehemently. He held it tightly while he answered: “If I felt any better I'd make my will, knowing it couldn't last. And you are pretty well yourself?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Leigh, simply. Then: “I am very glad to see you, my son. Do you wish to spruce up before dinner? I'll wait.”
“I sha'n't keep you a minute,” said Tommy, and left the room feeling not so much disappointed as dazed by his own inability to empty himself of all the love he had firmly intended to pour upon his father's head. And then, possibly because of the instinctive craving for a reason, he recalled that his father seemed more aged.
“Worry!” thought Tommy. He felt a pang of pity that changed sharply into fear. “Poor dad!” he thought, and then the fear spurred him into the fighting mood. He would stand by his father. He would assure him of his loyalty. They would fight together.
He found Mr. Leigh leaning back in his armchair before the table on which stood the silver-framed photograph of Tommy's mother. There was a suggestion of weariness in the old man's attitude, but on Tommy's entrance he rose quickly to his feet and, without looking at Tommy, said:
“Dinner is ready, Thomas.”
They left the library together, but at the head of the stairs Mr. Leigh stepped aside to let Tommy go first. Tommy obeyed instinctively. The old man followed.
“It feels good to be back, dad,” said Tommy. “It seems to me that I really have not been away from this house more than a day or two.” He turned his head to look at his father's face, and stumbled so that he almost fell.
Mr. Leigh, his face terror-stricken, reached out his hand to catch his son. “Tom—” he gasped.
Then as Tommy recovered himself his father remarked, quietly, “You should not try to do two things at once, Thomas.”
Tommy could see that Maggie had strongly impressed upon the cook the fact that Master Thomas had favorite dishes; but neither she nor his father made any allusions to them. It made Tommy almost smile. The reason he didn't was that part of him did not at all feel like smiling. They must have cost money that his father wished to save. So, instead, he talked of Dayton and his friends, and his desire to have his father know them, at which his father nodded gravely. But when Tommy said:
“Now, Mr. Thompson wanted me to come to New York to—”
Mr. Leigh interrupted. “After dinner, Thomas, you will tell me all about it while you smoke.”
“I don't smoke,” said Tommy, with the proud humility of a martyr. But his father said nothing, and Tommy wondered whether the old man, not being himself a smoker, understood.
After dinner, in order that his father might understand the situation as it was, Tommy spoke in detail about Thompson—an elaborate character sketch to which his father listened gravely, nodding appreciatively from time to time. Occasionally Mr. Leigh frowned, and Tommy, seeing this, explained how those were the new business ideals of the great West, where Americanism was more robust than in the East—as though Tommy himself had been born and brought up west of the Rockies.
“And so I am going to try to place the two thousand shares of Tecumseh stock among personal friends. I'm going to see Rivington Willetts to-morrow morning—”
“Wait. Before you seek to interest investors you ought to be thoroughly familiar with the finances of the company, and I scarcely think your work or your training has given you the necessary knowledge.”
“I shall try to interest friends only, or their fathers. And I know as much as there is to know, since I have the figures in black and white—”
“The vender's figures, Thomas,” interjected Mr. Leigh in a warning voice.
“Thompson's figures,” corrected Tommy, in the voice of a supreme-court justice citing authorities. He took from his pocket the statement which the president of the Tecumseh Motor Company had given to him..
“Here, father, read this.”
While Mr. Leigh read the statement Tommy in turn tried to read his father's face. But he could not see conviction setting itself on Mr. Leigh's features. When Mr. Leigh finished reading he simply said:
“Now the figures.”
Tommy silently handed him the sheets with the vital statistics.
Mr. Leigh looked them over, and Tommy was amazed at the change in the old man's face. It took on an alertness, a look of shrewd comprehension which Tommy never before had seen on it. Then he remembered that his father was an accountant, doubtless an expert at figures. And then he remembered also what his father had been able to do through being an expert at figures.
The reaction made Tommy feel faint and cold.
Mr. Leigh leisurely folded the sheets together and silently returned them to his son.
“Well?” said Tommy, not knowing that he spoke sharply because the secret had come to life again in this room. “What do you think of it now?”
“Did Mr. Thompson himself prepare these figures?”
“Yes—at least I think so. Why?”
“It is a remarkable statement, prepared by an expert for the sole benefit of laymen who don't know anything about accounts, which is something that expert accountants are not usually able to do, since they do not work for the ignorant. A highly intelligent exhibit, because it is easily intelligible and withal free from technical subterfuges. I can vouch for its honesty. But I do not think you can interest capital with this literature, Thomas.”
“But you haven't grasped the point, father. I am not looking for capital, but for friends—”
“With capital. It is the same, as far as concerns the owners of the capital.”
Tommy had feared the same thing, and also had feared to believe it.
“I must do it somehow,” said Tommy, very earnestly.
“I naturally wish you to succeed, Thomas,” said Mr. Leigh, very quietly. After a pause he added, almost diffidently: “Possibly, I—I might be able to help you, my son—”
“I must do it myself,” interjected Tommy, quickly. “I—I must.”
Mr. Leigh seemed on the point of saying something that Tommy might not like to hear, but checked himself and finally said: “I hope you may succeed. It will be difficult work and—But you must be tired from your traveling?”
He looked at Tommy doubtfully, and Tommy, who wished to be alone with his thoughts and his new heartache, said:
“I am, rather; but I thought I'd take a look at the evening papers. I'll go out and get them.”
“You will find them in the library—all of them.”
“All of them?”
“Yes, I—I had forgotten which was your favorite.” The old man would not look at his son. Presently he finished: “I'll read thePost. Come, my son.”
They went up-stairs. Tommy tried to read. He looked at all the papers, but not even the football gossip held his attention. From time to time he looked up, to see his father absorbed in the editorial page of thePost. This was evidently a part of his daily routine. Tommy saw him sitting all alone in the gloomy little room called the library, because it had been so christened by his mother long years before. Day in and day out the old man had sat in this room, alone with his thoughts, with the consciousness of loving vows kept at such a cost!
“Father!” irrepressibly cried Tommy.
“Yes?” said Mr. Leigh, emotionlessly. Even in the way in which he laid down his paper on his lap there was that curious leisureliness of senility that somehow savored less of age-feebleness than of years and years of unchanging habit.
“I am going to bed. I want to feel particularly fit to-morrow.” Tommy stood there waiting for something, he knew not what exactly—something that might give him the emotional relief he was not fully conscious he needed.
“Good night, Thomas,” said Mr. Leigh, and resumed his newspaper.
TOMMY was up and dressed at working-man's hours the next morning. He had fought until midnight, and finally pushed his fears into a corner and kept them there. After the friends who always had been friends and, therefore, would continue always to be friends, were stockholders, he would allow himself to think of other things.
He breakfasted with his father, but made no allusions to his work. It was only when he was about to leave the house for the bank that Mr. Leigh, after a moment's hesitation, said to Tommy:
“You must not feel unduly disappointed, Thomas, if you do not succeed at the first attempt. It is not easy to raise capital at any time, and just now the business outlook is not so clear as I wish it might be for your sake. And so, Thomas, if you do not accomplish as much as you wish as quickly as you think you ought to, I think you should realize that I am somewhat familiar with transactions of this character and—and you must remember, Thomas, that I am as much concerned with your success as you yourself.”
Mr. Leigh looked at his watch, started nervously, and walked quickly out of the room, as though he were late and feared a scolding. The apprehensive manner chilled Tommy to the marrow of his bones. At the door Mr. Leigh turned and said in a subdued voice, “I wish you luck, my son.” A moment later Tommy heard the street door close.
“Poor dad!” muttered Tommy, thinking of his father's unbearable burden, and full of pity for the helplessness that insisted upon helping the son for whom he had done so much. It was Tommy Leigh who must help Tommy Leigh—in order that Tommy Leigh might help his father.
He wondered if Rivington was up. He looked at his watch. It was eight-forty-four. Rivington was not up yet. Tommy went to the corner drug-store, and from there telephoned to the Willetts' house. He told the servant who answered the call to tell Mr. Rivington that Mr. Thomas Leigh would be there at ten sharp—very important!
Rivington was very glad to see Tommy, and showed it in ways that Tommy good-naturedly thought boyish but sincere, and, therefore, pardonable. But Rivington's face showed a quite mature respect when Tommy bluntly told him he wished to see Colonel Willetts on business.
“Does it involve him parting from some of his wad?” asked Rivington.
Tommy perceived that Rivington was still an undergraduate. Therefore he answered in the same language.
“It do, my boy. That is a necessary part of the operation by which I hope to do you the greatest favor one true man can do another.”
“The old gentleman is hell on real estate,” warned Rivington.
“We own the most valuable portions of the Lord's green footstool in fee simple,” said Tommy, reassuringly.
“I tell you again, terra firma is his obsession. And even at that he is from Missouri.”
“That's the kind I like. For what else was my larynx made?”
“I always understood,” said Rivington, gravely, “that there was money in éditions de luxe, and that nice old widow ladies always fell for the young Demosthenes.”
“Lad, it isn't eloquence that I spurt, but a bald narrative of the facts,” said Tommy, glad to convince Rivington that he was strictly business.
But Rivington rose to his feet and said, solemnly:
“Thomas, I hereby invite you to dine with my family to-night at seven-thirty. I do so officially; and kindly take notice that the invitation has been received by you before you have talked sordid business to my revered parent. Do you accept?”
“I do,” said Tommy.
“Very well; I shall spread it on the official minutes of this meeting. I shall tell Marion when she comes in from her ride. That child is a—what would you call her—a centauress or a lady equestrienne?”
“I call her a Christian martyr every time I think of her brother,” said Tommy.
“Yes?” said Rivington, very politely. “Well, my father will avenge me. I'll let him know that we'll be down at his office with an ambulance at three-ten. The stock-market closes at three. He ought to be fit to talk to ten minutes later. And now you come with me. I want to show you my new Parker six.”
“Riv, why don't you drive a car?” inquired Tommy, solicitously.
“Haw! Haw! A Tecumseh, hey? Oh, my appendix! Don't make me laugh when I'm driving, Tommily.”
“Got a license, son?”
“Better than that. The cops all know me. Come on, I'll learn you something.”
They rode out into Westchester County, had luncheon at their college dub, and shortly after three were at Colonel Willetts's office.
“How do you do, Tommy?” said Colonel Willetts, so pleasantly and unbusinesslike that Tommy felt sorry. “How's the job?” He was a tall, handsome man with a ruddy complexion that went very well with his snow-white military mustache. A casual glance made one think of a martinet; but on closer study one might gather that the colonel was not a disciplinarian at home, but merely liked the pose. There is a vast difference between a capitalist and a captain of industry.
“I'm still on it, Colonel,” replied Tommy, thinking of an opening.
“H'm! Can't you find something for a needy friend to do in Dayton? Rivington”—he used the elaborate sarcasm of the fond father who can't control his children because his own program changes daily—“is very anxious to go into business.”
“Tommy's business is automobiles and so is mine,” cut in Rivington, pleasantly. “I am learning the fine points of the car before I go on the road.”
“As far as I can make out, your studies seem to be confined to road laws and all the known varieties of fines.”
“Talking about the law, Tommy is here to talk business with you. He didn't wish to come, but I broke the law of hospitality and compelled him to do as I said. If he gave me the chance he is going to give you I'd take it on the jump.” He turned away and walked toward a window, that his friend and his father might talk business without embarrassment. On the way he whispered to Tommy: “Split commissions—fifty-fifty.” Colonel Willetts looked inquiringly at Tommy. Tommy decided it was no time for boy talk, so he said very earnestly:
“Colonel, I am more concerned with interesting you in our work than with the investment of money in our business. We can save time if you will be good enough to read this statement.” And Tommy laid before the colonel Mr. Thompson's program. He took it for granted that his best friend's father not only would read the statement intelligently and sympathetically, but would be glad of the opportunity to do so. Colonel Willetts was looking at him almost with the intentness with which we watch a juggler on the stage. Whereupon Tommy smiled pleasantly to show that he shared the colonel's pleasure in the prospective perusal of the document.
The colonel got down to business. “Is this the prospectus?” he asked, suspiciously.
“No, sir, there is no prospectus. The company is not trying to raise money in the open market. It doesn't have to. The paper shows what our plans are. My visit here is merely to give an opportunity for a few of my personal friends to buy stock that I can't buy myself.”
“Why can't you?”
Tommy smiled good-naturedly. Evidently the rich don't understand that everybody isn't rich. He answered:
“Because I unfortunately haven't any money.”
“H'm!” grunted Colonel Willetts, looking like the chief of the general staff. “H'm! Pure friendship! Fine business reason!”
Tommy felt himself on the verge of becoming annoyed, but he subdued his feelings and answered with what you might call a smile of earnestness.
“Yes, sir—pure friendship. I can't think of a better reason in this world for a man who is not a hog or a dog in the manger.”
“H'm! Nothing personal in your remarks, I take it.” And the colonel fixed his fiercely frowning eyes on Tommy. He had inherited the bulk of his great fortune, but loved to play at doing business with a martial air.
“Sure, it's personal. Rivington, who is my best friend, happens to be your son. That's my reason. I consider it a very good reason. Even if I wanted to sell stock to a stranger, I wouldn't be allowed to do so.”
“Sell stock, hey?”
Tommy did not like the colonel's voice nor his look nor the suggestion of a sneer. So he said: “Won't you please read that statement, Colonel? Just a moment, please. I'd like to say something before you begin.”
The colonel looked at him over his eye-glasses and Tommy, his voice ringing with his own sense of the sacredness of his mission, said:
“Whether you take some of the stock or not, I want you to understand very clearly, sir, that every word of that paper is true. I vouch for it personally from my own knowledge. And though it won't hurt the company in the slightest if you should decide not to make Rivington one of our stockholders, it will be a great disappointment to me not to have my friends with me in the work that I propose to devote my life to. Now won't you please read on?”
The colonel without another word began to read the statement that Thompson had prepared for Tommy's benefit. When he finished he pursed up his lips and frowned. He tapped the papers meditatively with his finger-tips for fully a minute before he spoke.
“Tommy, I never mix altruism with business. When I give money I give it. When I invest money I expect all the profit that I am legitimately entitled to.”
“All that any man is legitimately entitled to from the labor of others is a fair profit. This is not a gamble—”
“All business is a gamble,” interrupted the colonel, shortly.
“Perhaps it wouldn't be if altruism were mixed with it oftener than it is,” said Tommy, trying not to speak heatedly. He was Door Opener to the men in the shop—his men. And they were entitled to more than the wages that he thought Colonel Willetts would like to fix for them.
“Are you a socialist?” frowned Colonel Willetts.
“I'm not a regular socialist, but I can see that business in the future must be conducted in a different way. Mr. Thompson is looking ahead farther than most men.”
“He thinks he is.”
“He really is. You see, Colonel, I know him and you don't,” smiled Tommy. Then he said, very impressively, “I consider him the greatest man in this country to-day.”
“I have no doubt that you do,” observed the colonel, dryly. “But granting he is all that you are so sure he is, he proposes innovations the success of which he cannot possibly guarantee. In special cases for special reasons they might work.”
“Well, sir, his record guarantees that. He began in a small way and he has built up a large and very profitable business. The company would have paid much bigger dividends if he hadn't insisted upon putting most of the profits back into the business in order to build permanently. That was good business, wasn't it? And now he is going to carry into effect plans on which he has been working for years. Here is the company's dollar-history, Colonel.” And Tommy gave the sheets of figures to the colonel.
The colonel looked at Tommy as if he never before had seen his son's chum. Then he studied the figures. When he finished he turned to Tommy, who instantly anticipated the skeptical questions he thought Colonel Willetts would ask.
“Our books are open for examination by any accountant you may send. I'll agree to pay his expenses if he finds anything that does not confirm what's in that paper.” Tommy instantly felt he had spoken hastily. The expert's fee might be utterly beyond his ability to pay. But Thompson had said the experts could be sent. Tommy was betting on Thompson. It was a safe bet, he thought, and he felt easy once more, not knowing that in trusting to his judgment of men he had done the most business-like thing in his business career.
“According to these—er—documents your company expects to make a great deal more than the stockholders will get. You are asking me—I mean the stockholders—to authorize the directors to divide the money which our money makes in any way they see fit.”
“Exactly—after a fair profit is paid to the stockholders, because we believe that by sharing profits with the men who produce and the men who buy the product we are dividing the profits among the people that make the profits possible. If labor, capital, and the public are satisfied, where's the fight going to come from?” Tommy had never before thought of profit-sharing as concretely as this, but he was convinced that his position was not only right, but unanswerable.
“Where did you say your factory is—Utopia?” asked the colonel, with elaborate politeness.
“Dayton, Ohio. I'd like to have you visit us.”
“Thanks, Tommy. To whom else have you talked about this?”
“My father. He thought it was not a very good time to raise money. But you see, sir, I am not here to raise money to carry on our business, but to ask my friends to buy stock that I'd take in a minute if I had the money.”
The more Tommy thought about it, the more he wished Rivington might be a large stockholder in the new company that was going to be the world's model corporation.
“Well, Tommy,” said Colonel Willetts, after a pause, “I'll tell you frankly, your proposition does not appeal to me.”
Tommy's disappointment showed itself in his face, which thereupon became impassive, but unfortunately impassive with a quite obvious effort.
Rivington, who had heard his father's decision, broke in cheerfully: “Market must have gone against you to-day, father. Tommy will come again when you have gathered in the unearned increment.”
“Hang it,” said the colonel, irascibly, to his only son, “will you ever be serious—”
“No use getting angry, dad. I'll bring Tommy round to-morrow and the day after, and so on. There is more labor involved in our daily trips than in signing one check. In the mean time he is dining with us to-night at home. We expect you to be there. And in case you change your mind—Ah, be a sport, dad! Consider what you owe me!”
“What?”
“When I think of what I might have cost you I am astonished at my moderation.”
Rivington and his father, as a matter of fact, were as chummy as a fond father and a lighthearted boy full of irresponsibility are bound to be. Colonel Willetts more than once had blessed Rivington's moderation when he thought of Rivington's temptations, but he had never thought very seriously of teaching his son to resist temptation. He turned to Tommy and said:
“If you take him away and make a man of him, I'll take the stock at your own price, Tommy. But look here, my boy, you must learn the first lesson of a business man, and that is not to be disappointed when things don't come your way. It's friends you want, isn't it, among your stockholders?”
“Yes, sir.” And Tommy smiled bravely.
“Well, I'll take one hundred shares each for Rivington and Marion. I guess you can count on their proxies forever. It isn't a bad start. If your other friends will do as much you are fixed. I wish you luck.”
“Come on, Thomas, we'll call again under more propitious circumstances. Good day, sir.” And Rivington saluted his father militarily and escorted Tommy from the office.
Outside, Tommy insisted upon looking up some of his other friends, but Rivington was against it.
“I tell you you'll have to see the old gentleman again. He always says no at first. I guess I ought to know.”
“Yes, but even so, I can't expect him to take the whole two thousand shares. That's two hundred thousand dollars, and I don't blame him—”
“Isn't it a good business?”
“Sure, fine.”
“Then why shouldn't he take it all? He is always saying it's getting harder every year to find good things to invest in. I tell you, you hold your horses. Even if he didn't take it all he could place the lot among our friends a blamed sight more easily than you. Old people have no use for the beardless Napoleon of Finance. Your trouble, Thomas, is that you are a boy. Listen to me.”
“You seem to think I've got all the time in the world—”
“Haste makes waste. Now I cherish a delusion that I can beat you—”
“No billiards,” interrupted Tommy.
“Coward! Well, escort me as far as the portals of the sacred edifice.”
Tommy left Rivington early and went home to dress for dinner. He found his father in the library reading the exasperatingEvening Post.
Mr. Leigh looked up quickly. “Well, Thomas, did you have any luck to-day?”
“Colonel Willetts promised to take two hundred shares for Rivington and Marion. He was not what you'd call enthusiastic.”
“I understand he never is,” said Mr. Leigh, so peevishly that Tommy looked at him in surprise. “Did you tell him what the company had been making?”
“Oh yes! What he didn't like was that, no matter how well the company may do, under Mr. Thompson's new plans the stockholders won't get all the profits in dividends.”
“Did you tell him that the present stockholders are willing to subscribe for all the new stock?”
“I told him the capital was provided for, but I had this chance to interest personal friends.” Mr. Leigh frowned angrily. Tommy, who had never before seen such a look on his father's face, said, soothingly:
“He took me at my word. Rivington and Marion are my best friends.”
“Did you tell him that your company would be a dividend-payer when other concerns less far-seeing would be passing their dividends? Did you point out to him the trend of political thought in this country? Did you tell him that his own real-estate holdings in New York City, by reason of municipal extravagance, political maladministration, general inefficiency, and lack of co-operation among landlords, were not the safest investments? Did you tell him that Thompson realizes clearly the changed attitude of the entire world toward property rights and capital and toward the rights of the producing classes? Did you tell him that a man who is wise enough to be content with eight per cent, on his money now when he might get twenty per cent, is more likely to be getting the same eight per cent. when to-day's twenty-per cent. payers will be writing off the loss of principal to-morrow? Did you?”
Mr. Leigh's vehemence and the accusing ring of his voice astonished Tommy.
“No, I didn't,” he answered.
Mr. Leigh calmed down as suddenly as he had flared up.
“And you did not point out to him the absurdly low overhead charge and the remarkable relation of your gross sales to your capital, and the complete adequacy of the financial and mechanical machinery of the new company to meet all emergencies, good and bad alike?”
“Well, I thought the figures spoke for themselves.”
“Thomas,” said Mr. Leigh, sternly, “figures don't speak to the average man, and often not even to the expert. The man behind the figures—that's what counts.”
An icy hand squeezed Tommy's heart. An expert at figures had paid for his education. The only figures that now came into his throbbing mind were: seventeen thousand dollars! And the man behind those figures was his own father!
“You must see Willetts again,” said Mr. Leigh, quietly. “Perhaps I'd better explain the figures to him myself, Thomas.”
“No!” cried Tommy, so peremptorily that he instantly felt compelled to soften the refusal. “I'd rather not, father. I'll see him again if he'll let me.”
“He'll have to let you,” said Mr. Leigh. He nodded to himself fully a dozen times, in the same curious way that to Tommy always seemed so unpleasantly senile. “Yes! Yes!”
“Rivington thinks”—and Tommy was conscious of a desire to soothe his father—“that the colonel will even help me to place the entire two thousand shares among friends.”
“It is I who should help you, Thomas. Your mother would have insisted upon it.” Mr. Leigh's lips were pressed together grimly, an expression that Tommy not only remembered, but associated poignantly with his own life's great tragedy. But he said, bravely:
“Father, I must work out my problems myself.” Mr. Leigh shook his head decidedly. “You are not qualified to carry this to success unaided, Thomas. I am not wiser than you, my son, but older.”
“Mr. Thompson foresaw my failure. He has provided for it. He said—”
“No, no!” interrupted Mr. Leigh, so excitedly that his voice rose shrilly. “You must not fail! You must not fail!”
“Mr. Thompson told me it would not hurt my prospects—”
“You must not fail!” repeated Mr. Leigh, doggedly. “It is my duty to help you. I am the best judge of your needs. I am your father.”
Tommy was on the verge of denial. All that his father had come to mean to him, all that had gone before, all that the future meant to him, his doubts and his fears and his hopes—all had something to say to Tommy. And the confusion made him temporize.
“I appreciate how you feel, dad; but please don't do anything until I've tried some of my other friends, will you?”
“The sooner it is settled, the better,” said Mr. Leigh, obstinately. “Thomas, bear in mind that you are not a business man. You don't understand that money is never to be had merely for the asking. Your problem is to get the money as quickly as possible.”
Mr. Leigh was frowning, full of a feverish impatience that alarmed Tommy. To him his father had always been a slave of routine and method, almost an automaton. Evidently the old man's nerves were overwrought, and there was no telling the reason. But his desire to help his son was prompted by love and loyalty to the living and the dead. Tommy approached his father and threw an arm about the old shoulders.
“Dad,” he spoke coaxingly, “you don't know what it means to me to do this thing alone. I want to try hard before I call for help. If I succeed alone, don't you see how I'll feel?”
The old man did not reply. Presently Tommy felt him draw in his breath; then Mr. Leigh nodded slowly.
“Very well, Thomas,” he said, in his old voice, steady, emotionless, the voice a ledger would use if it could speak.
“Thanks, dad. I'll go and dress now. I'm dining at the Willetts'.” And Tommy left his father.
Marion was as unfeignedly glad to see him as he was to see her, with this difference—that he did not know how he made her feel, but he knew she somehow made him feel like the Prodigal Son, only, of course, he was not down and out—quite the contrary. Through the dinner it was made plain to Tommy that he was one of the Willetts family. At the end, as he did not smoke, he followed Marion into the library.
She assured herself that he had a comfortable chair by insisting upon his taking her own favorite, found another for herself, and then she said to him, eagerly:
“Tell me all about it!”
Tommy, who had spoken of nothing else at the table but his Dayton experiences, said, simply: “I am sorry I didn't send you the long letter I wrote you when I thought I was fired.”
“No; you didn't keep your promise. I expected to hear all about it. I knew you'd much rather write to Rivington than to me; but I also thought”—she paused, and then looked him frankly in the eyes—“I thought you would be so lonely and homesick that you'd like to write to all your friends, to remind yourself that you had them. I suppose you were too busy?” She looked as if she expected him to agree with her. There was but one excuse, and she herself had given it to him and he accepted it.
“Of course, I had to hustle,” he said; and then he blushed to think of the easy time he had in Dayton. Everybody expected him to be a slave, a sweat-shop worker, and pitied him accordingly. The reaction made him say, “I'll tell you the whole story, if you don't think it will bore you.”
“You men are always fishing for excuses to do what you ought to be dying to do anyhow. Go on, and don't skip anything.”
And Tommy gladly began the epic narrative of his Dayton life, barring only the secret. He told it not only honestly, but in detail. That she was as interested as he was plain, until he began to fear that he was making himself into a hero. But it was too late to alter the portrait, so to preserve his self-respect he began to tell her all about Thompson and Thompson's dreams and Thompson's plans.
“Tommy,” she exclaimed, excitedly, “he is a wonderful man. I had no idea business was like that. And you are the luckiest boy in the world to work in such a place.”
“Yes, and it was by a fluke that I landed the job.”
“I don't care. It was the luckiest thing that ever happened, even if it took you away from home.”
“I suppose it was, but let me tell you it was mighty tough at first.” And he told her how he had fought homesickness, so that he actually believed it. And naturally she also believed him.
“You might have written,” she reproached him.
“If you had read the letters I wanted to write but didn't, you would have had to put in eight hours a day. It was considerate of me not to, don't you think?”
“But you promised you would.”
“But I wasn't going to take an unfair advantage of your youth,” he said, and looked at her with a benevolent smile. And then he wondered why he had not written every day. He could not understand it now.
“Of course,” he assured her, “now that you are going to be one of our stockholders I'll have to send you reports of the work quite often.” He saw himself doing it. She would know everything.
“What do you mean, Tommy?” she asked, excitedly.
He told her how her father had promised to take one hundred shares for her and one hundred for Rivington. And then he told her he still had eighteen hundred shares to sell. Why shouldn't he tell her everything?
“To whom are you going to sell the rest?”
“I'm going to try to sell them to friends who will be interested in Mr. Thompson's experiments with men as well as in the money-making end. It will be very hard. You see, Marion, our company is going to do business in a new way. Of course, here in the East, people don't realize what corporations will have to do hereafter if they expect to stay in business.”
This sounded very wise and business-like to both of them. Marion paid him the additional compliment of regarding him as a Westerner. He could tell by the way she looked when she said:
“And what will your work be?”
So he told her what he so far had kept a secret from her—what Thompson expected to make of the Tecumseh men through the aid of Thomas Francis Leigh. He really told it very well, because he kept nothing from her, and in so doing made his hopes realities.
“Tommy, that is perfectly wonderful! I am so glad for your sake! And you can do it, too! I can see how you feel about it, and you are bound to win. And won't you feel glad—”
Colonel Willetts and Rivington walked in. Rivington winked at Tommy—old signal 18—to show he had been pleading his friend's cause at court. Marion said to her father:
“Tommy was just telling me about Dayton and his company. You must help him to sell that stock, papa.”
Colonel Willetts worshiped her. He turned to Tommy: “Unfair weapons to use on a man in the man's own house, young man. Is that the Western way?”
“The Western way is the best,” said Marion, positively. She rose and confronted her father. “Are you going to help Tommy? Yes or no.” Tommy felt uncomfortable.
“Look here, sir—” he began, apologetically. “Of course I'll help Tommy,” said Colonel Willetts. “He's coming to the office.” And he turned the subject.
Marion looked proudly at Tommy.