0040
“I see; if a railway were built along that red line, your road would have access to New York independent of me. Well, young man, don’t let that red line worry you. I could not allow you to get a charter.”
“You’re quick to see the possibilities, sir.”
“Yes, but here are no probabilities.”
“I’m not so sure of that, sir. Like the other fellow’s fifteen dollars, I’ve got the charter in my inside pocket.”
“Do you mind showing it to me?” asked Rockervelt, unconsciously finishing the line of the song referred to. John handed him the documents, and the great man scrutinised them with the quick care of an expert; then he folded them up again, but did not offer to return them. He gazed out upon the flying landscape for a few moments while Steele stood expectant.
“How did you overcome Blair’s opposition?” he inquired at last.
“There was no opposition.”
The president frowned, and a glint of anger appeared in the cold, calculating eyes.
“I expect Blair to watch the Legislature as well as the railway.”
“He watches neither, sir.”
Rockervelt glanced sharply at the confident young man who thus dared to asperse one of the minor gods of the Rockervelt System.
“Then who looks after the Midland?”
“Philip Manson, and does it quietly and well.”
“Where did you get the money to put this through? A syndicate?”
“No; I didn’t need any money. All I needed was that one of your general managers, should be sound asleep, and time to make personal friends of the members of the House.”
“I see you are prejudiced against Mr. Blair.”
“I am, sir.”
Rockervelt pulled himself together as one who has had enough of badinage and now prepares for business. His impassive face hardened, and the onlooker saw before him the man who had ruthlessly crushed opposition, regardless of consequences.
“Now, young man,” he began, in a voice that cut like a knife, “do you know the value of these documents?”
0047
“Yes, sir; they’re not worth a damn!”
“What!” cried Rockervelt, suddenly sitting bolt upright. “I thought you had kidnapped me to hold me up, as is the genial Western fashion. Don’t you want to sell this charter?”
“No, sir. I offered the charter to the Hon. Duffield Rogers, president of the Burdock, as was my duty, but he said you could beat any combination that might be formed in the long run.”
“Yes, or in the short run. Sensible man, Rogers. Well, sir, you do not expect an exorbitant price for a worthless charter?”
“I want no price at all. The charter is yours. But I’d like to offer you a hint as well as the charter, and the advice is to make Philip Manson manager of the Midland.”
“I see; and what for yourself?”
“Only bear me in mind when you have a vacancy for a well-paid official down east.”
The young man had been standing during this long colloquy, but now Mr. Rockervelt asked him to be seated, and there being a suggestion of command as well as of request in his tone, John Steele, drew up a chair to the table that divided them.
“You have quite definitely made up your mind, I take it, that T. Acton Blair is unfit for the position of general manager of the Manateau Midland,” said the chief with quiet irony.
“Yes, I have,” replied Steele, defiantly, “and so has everybody else who knows him.”
“And yet you admit the Midland is a well-managed road?”
“Certainly, but that is because of Philip Manson.”
“Quite so. ‘The page slew the boar; the peer had the gloire,’ as the old poet said, and the peer, too, has the bigger salary, as a modern writer might remark. You never heard any reason given, I suppose, why Blair holds a better position than Manson?”
“Oh, yes, I did,” cried the impetuous young man, “it is said that Mr. Blair is a relative of your own.”
The expression of displeasure that clouded the face of the railway prince gave instant intimation to Steele that his reply had been tactless.
“I imagine you have a great deal to learn, Mr. Steele, and I predict before you are as old as Mr. Blair you will receive some sharp lessons in diplomacy. You have shown yourself competent to smooth out the roughnesses that formerly characterised the Burdock route, but those same capabilities may not be equal to removing obstacles in your own path of life. The Midland is a well-managed road, and you say the credit belongs to Manson. Very good. I put Manson in his place, and so my purposes are fulfilled. If I made him general manager, as you suggest, he might or might not be a success, yet we are both agreed that he is a success in his present position. Now you, I see by this card, are general manager of the Burdock route. Does the Burdock, therefore, take a high place in the railway system of America?”
“It does not,” candidly admitted John Steele. “Why?”
“Because there is no money behind it.”
“Exactly. My excellent friend, the Honorable Duffield Rogers, has plenty of money, but he knows enough to take care of it. He doesn’t waste any of his wealth in trying to make the Burdock route all that his capable general manager may wish it to be. So you see, Mr. Steele, finance has to be considered as well as good road mending. In that department T. Acton Blair occupies a high position among the railway men of the West. If you ever accumulate a little money, and doubt my statement, venture your cash in a contest where Blair is your opponent, and, I venture to say, you’ll regret it. On the other hand, if you should happen to become a friend of Mr. Blair, and he cared to give you a tip or two in higher finance, you may grow rich in following his lead. In this very matter of the charter there is a possibility that you have entirely underestimated the general manager of the Midland. It is on the cards that he agrees with you and me regarding the worthlessness of the charter.”
“I’ll swear he knew nothing about it,” persisted Steele, knowing as soon as the sentence was uttered that again he had let his tongue run away with his judgment.
“Perhaps he did, and perhaps he didn’t. I strongly suspect he knew all about it, and hoped you would entangle old Rogers into a railway war, in which case I venture to assert, Blair would have crushed both you and your chief. Of course you tried to get Rogers to take up the struggle?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And he very politely, but quite definitely, refused?”
“That also is true.”
“Well, you see, Mr. Steele,” said Rockervelt, with something almost approaching a laugh, “there is more wisdom in grey hairs than most young persons are willing to admit. Would you be surprised if I told you that I have determined to ignore your advice, and so will not remove Mr. Blair from his position?”
“I am not in the least surprised, now that I know your opinion of him.”
“Maybe then I can astonish you by admitting that I intend to remove your friend, Mr. Manson, from the situation he so worthily fills.”
“To place him in a better position, I hope?”
“Oh, yes. I have been in need of him for some time in our New York office. I should have taken him long ago, if I’d had the right man to put in his place. The other day I received Philip Manson’s resignation, and without either accepting or declining it, I telegraphed him to let me know whom he suggested as his substitute. Yesterday I received his reply, and although I have been unable to follow the advice you have tendered me so far, I may accept it regarding the new candidate.”
With this Mr. Rockervelt pressed an electric button, and an alert young man answered his call.
“Meldrum, bring me that last letter of Manson’s about the division superintendency of the Midland.”
The secretary returned a moment later with the document, which he handed to Rockervelt, who tossed it across the table towards Steele. The letter read:
Dear Sir:
In my opinion the best man to appoint as division superintendent of the Manateau Midland is John Steele, at present general manager of the Burdock route. He was formerly employed on the Midland in various capacities, and was promoted entirely through efficiency. Although the position he occupies on the Burdock is nominally higher than that left vacant by my resignation, yet I think Mr. Steele would be content with less honour and more money.
Yours faithfully,
Philip Manson.
As Steele looked up from the reading of this letter Rockervelt said sharply:
“Ithink you are the man referred to by Manson?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It is rather strange that you should have taken all the trouble to attach my car to your train when I had left word with Manson to get into communication with you, and arrange an interview between you and me at Portandit.”
“I was merely anticipating your wishes, Mr. Rockervelt. It is lucky I rang off Philip Manson last night so abruptly at the telephone, for I imagine this is what he was about to tell me.”
“How much are they giving you on the Burdock route?” asked Rockervelt abruptly.
“Fifteen dollars a week.”
Instead of expressing his surprise at the smallness of the amount, Rockervelt merely said:
“Do you get your money?”
“Oh, I see to that,” replied Steele with a laugh; “I am general manager, you know.”
“What salary do you want to take Philip Manson’s place?”
John Steele cast down his eyes, and meditated in silence for a few moments.
“Would fifty dollars a week be too much?” he asked in a tremor.
“It’s rather a jump,” said Rockervelt calmly, “but I think the organisation can stand it, if it is satisfactory to you.”
“It is more than satisfactory to me,” replied Steele, earnestly. He was to learn later that modesty was its own reward. He could as easily have had double the money, and perhaps more. Multi-millionaire as he was, however, Rockervelt was not the man to throw away needless cash.
“We will take that as settled,” he said, and this ended the interview.
THE greatest blessing that Providence can bestow upon a young man is self-knowledge. Success comes to those who know their own powers while it is yet day. To learn for the first time at eighty that you have immense capabilities in any given direction is futile. To possess that knowledge at twenty is better than to own a gold mine. It is the old adage exemplified: “If age but could; if youth but knew.”
Steele’s two years’ management of the Burdock route should have given him confidence, but his bargain with Rockervelt showed it had not done so. If he had been shrewd enough to allow Rockervelt himself to name the compensation that should have gone with his new position, he would have made a much better financial deal than that which he accomplished. If he had then added a little shrewd bargaining, he might have bettered himself still further, but John Steele had endured an early life of poverty, and the salary he now received seemed to him munificent.
The same qualities of under-estimation which caused Rockervelt to chuckle with satisfaction at a sharp bargain driven interfered with the young man’s success as new division superintendent of the Midland. When he was duly installed, his immediate chief, T. Acton Blair, quaked. Blair was well acquainted with the ruthlessness of Rockervelt, and he trembled for his own position. He wondered how much Rockervelt knew. Was he aware of Blair’s years of tyranny over the capable Philip Manson? Did he know how nearly the premier train of the road had come to being wrecked through the incompetence of a relative of his own, whom he had forced into the train despatched office in spite of the protests of Philip Manson? Now Manson was gone to New York, promoted to a position of greater power and influence than any he had hitherto held, and instead of Blair’s being allowed to place some favourite in the vacant office, Rockervelt himself had intervened to appoint the very man who had saved the Pacific Express: a man whom Blair had practically dismissed two years before. If Blair possessed, as Rockervelt alleged, an acute brain in other directions than that of practical railway management, this brain was deeply perturbed when its owner, with over-done warmth, welcomed the new division superintendent of the Midland on his return to the great company. Innocent John Steele accepted this cordiality at its face value, and his own kind heart prompted him to let bygones be bygones, and to make the new condition of things as pleasant as possible for his nominal chief. At first this bewildered Blair; then he came to the conclusion it was merely deep craft on the part of the young man, and finally he reached the fact that Steele was quite honestly endeavouring to do his duty, and trying to please his superiors, a fact which a more alert mind would have assimilated months before. When, after weeks of doubt and fear, Blair at last realised that John Steele had in reality buried the tomahawk; that he had no knife concealed up his sleeve; that he was honest, straightforward and capable as his predecessor had been, the general manager felt like a man who had been taken advantage of. Instead of being thankful that his former fear was groundless, his resentment burned all the brighter, and he brought his genius for intrigue into play, determining to trip up the young man on the first favourable opportunity. But while he waited for that opportunity, he resumed the old tactics which had been so successful in pushing Philip Manson to a resignation, and proceeded to make John Steele’s place as uncomfortable for him as possible. There is no tyranny like the tyranny of a coward, and before John Steele had been six months in his new position, he learned what it was to live under the heel of a despot.
Nor did he enjoy the consolation which must have sustained Philip Manson, who possessed the enthusiastic loyalty of his subordinates. Manson was a born master, who had risen step by step into the position of division superintendent. Added to this, he was quiet, taciturn and unemotional. John Steele, on the other hand, was the embodiment of good-fellowship; talkative, humourous, genial; who believed every one around him as honest and whole-hearted as himself. But there were those beneath him who had regarded themselves quite properly in the line of promotion, and whose ambitions had been stirred when it became known that Philip Manson was about to retire. Then, to their chagrin and dismay, an outsider had been chosen for the place who, two years before, was little better than an office boy among them, and their friendliness for him at that time had been merely a tribute to his unfailing good nature; his willingness to help. This universal liking, however, was perhaps unconsciously tinged with contempt. Their feeling was rather admiration for a joyous soul than respect for a young fellow of talent. No one had an inkling of Steele’s real merit except Philip Manson, and this silent man never volunteered information. When Blair wished Manson summarily to dismiss Steele, he got information he had not expected about the latter. When Rockervelt telegraphed regarding Manson’s successor, he also received information, but Manson made no confidant of any of his subordinates, and perhaps if one of them had been shrewd enough to guess how good a man Steele was, that person might have been thought worthy of the recommendation which the former division superintendent had bestowed upon Steele.
When an insider is promoted, he not only steps into the vacant place, but the one beneath him advances to the position he formerly held, and so it goes down along the line, until the lowest grade is reached. Each man gets his little move upward, and universal joy is the result. But when an outsider is brought in, he stops the move as effectually as a jammed log arrests the progress of all the timber further up the stream. Although the genial John met smiling faces among his subordinates, there was nevertheless envy and hatred behind the smiles. Things began to go wrong; he could not give his orders explicitly enough to be sure that they would be understood. He met no open opposition, but the most annoying things happened in spite of all his precautions. A little harshness and injustice here would have acted as a tonic upon the whole clan. If he had flung out of the office the first man who misapprehended an order, whether that man were guilty or not, his path would have been smoother from that time forward; but here his own proneness to blame himself rather than to censure others was his worst enemy, and the office became honeycombed with negligence, apathy, incompetence and sullen insubordination. There was no sympathy to be expected from T. Acton Blair; in fact, the stout man saw with secret satisfaction that the division superintendent was not getting on. He would condole with Rockervelt on this regrettable failure next time he met him, instilling the poison very subtly, and assuming a tone of deep regret and disappointment. Meanwhile, his whole attitude towards the young man had changed. He was querulous and fault-finding; he magnified the failures, and slighted the successes. John Steele found himself between the upper and nether millstones that were grinding his nerves to rags. Day and night he worked like a Trojan to bring the necessary order out of the chaos that had somehow come to enshroud him, and underneath was the gnawing distrust of his own endowment properly to fill the place to which he had been appointed. He was working to the very limit of his powers, and preparing for himself an inevitable breakdown. He supplemented every one, instead of making every one supplement him. It never occurred to him that the chaos against which he contended was deliberate, for a railway business differs from any other on earth, in that carelessness or neglect is juggling with men’s lives. A mistake comparatively innocent in any other branch of commercial activity may mean the massacre of a score of men and women on a railway. Many a night he sat disconsolate in his office when every one else had gone, and yearned for half an hour’s talk with Philip Manson. The whole difficulty was not one which he could commit to writing, and even if he attempted that, he might fail in making Manson understand the situation; a situation so completely the reverse of that which had obtained during Manson’s own reign. At last he determined to take a few days off, visit New York, and consult with his former chief. This brought about his first open conflict with T. Acton Blair, and then he weakly succumbed.
“Mr. Blair,” he said one day, after the formal morning’s interview was at an end, “I’m going to take a run down to New York.”
“Oh, are you?” replied Blair. “For what purpose, may I ask?”
“I wish to talk with Philip Manson.”
“About what?”
“Well, about a great many things; about the general situation here, for instance.”
“Offhand, I should say I am the proper person to consult on such a subject,” said Blair, with some acidity.
“Of course,” replied Steele, mildly, “but you see, Man-son was my predecessor. He has probably been through what I am going through now, and I should like a few hints from him.”
“Who is to fill your place while you are away?”
“Johnson could do that.”
“Do you think he is competent?”
“Oh, quite competent.”
“Then can you explain why Mr. Rockervelt put you in the place of Manson, if Johnson was capable of filling it?”
“You had better ask that question of Mr. Rockervelt,” suggested Steele, his temper rising.
“I shall certainly do so if you leave your post. You are either necessary here or you are not. If you begin to suspect that you are not the man for the position, then you should resign.”
“I am the man for the position, Mr. Blair; still, even the best of men, which I do not pretend to be, needs a little advice now and then, and I intend to seek it from Philip Manson.”
“A man who knows his business neither seeks nor acts on advice. If you go to New York you go in spite of my prohibition, and I shall take your departure as an act of resignation, and proceed accordingly. I am either general manager of this road or I am not.”
Now this latter phrase was one which Blair was exceedingly fond of using, and it had done duty several times during Philip Manson’srégime, who had invariably shown Mr. Blair in exceedingly few words that, when it came to the point, he was not the autocrat he pretended to be. Manson would have made an excellent poker-player. He could have been beaten by better cards, but never by a bluff, and Blair’s pet phrase was pure bluff.
“Oh, very well,” said John Steele, rising and leaving the table, while his opponent raked in the chips. Steele did not know he had reached the climax where a determined answer would have given him the game, nor did he realise how disastrous was his defeat. A poltroon is a bad man to run away from.
John Steele retreated to his own room, and a sweet smile overspread the chubby face of the corpulent man he had left victorious. A week later came the second encounter, which although it carried a second apparent defeat for John Steele, proved, nevertheless, to be the most important turning point of his life.
The division superintendent entered the general manager’s room with a telegram in his hand. Blair, looking up, noticed the agitation of his manner, and the paleness of his face.
“Mr. Blair, I have just received a telegram which says that my uncle is dying. I wish to go to him, and intend to leave by to-night’s train. He lives in the north of Michigan. I have therefore come to let you know that I shall be absent for a few days, perhaps.”
Blair continued to gaze at him with a winning smile on his cherubic face.
“Would it not be a simpler matter, Mr. Steele, if you were to write to Philip Manson, and ask him to take a trip to his old home? You are a member of his club, I understand, and could quite readily hold your conference there if either of you did not care to discuss the state of affairs in this office.”
“I don’t understand what you mean, Mr. Blair.”
“Oh, yes, you do. The dying uncle device, or the funeral of a relative device, have all been tried upon me before. I am proof against such schemes, and really, Mr. Steele, I paid you the compliment of believing you to be more original.”
“Do you think I am lying to you?” asked John indignantly, taking a step nearer the general manager’s table.
“We don’t call it lying, Mr. Steele; we may term it diplomacy, or what you like. A week ago you requested leave of absence to consult Philip Manson. I refused my permission. Now you come to me with the story of a dying relative. I am bound to believe you, although I made a friendly suggestion a moment since which apparently you do not intend to accept, so we will get back to the original situation. Your uncle is very ill, and I am very sorry. There are doubtless at this moment many excellent persons in extremity, yet nevertheless the trains of the Midland must run, and even if Mr. Rock-ervelt or myself were removed to a better land, not a wheel would cease turning on our account. Therefore, hoping you will accept the expression of my deep sympathy, which I hereby tender to you, I must nevertheless refuse to allow the office of division superintendent to remain vacant for one hour.”
“But this is the only relative I have in the world,” protested John, earnestly. “Here is the telegram I have received. Read it for yourself.”
Mr. Blair, still smiling, waved his stout hand gently to and fro, but refused even to glance at the paper laid before him.
“I do not doubt in the least that the despatch comes from Michigan. I can even guess that it is worded in the most urgent terms, and that the signature is perfectly genuine. Nevertheless, Mr. Steele, it is better we should understand each other. As I told you a week ago, if you leave your position without my permission you will find that position permanently filled on your return. This is a free country, and you are entitled to go or stay as you please. If you hand me in your resignation, as your predecessor did, I shall say to you as I said to him, ‘Go, and prosperity be with you,’ but while you are a member of my staff, you are under my orders. Do I make myself sufficiently plain?”
“Yes, you do,” replied John Steele, picking up his telegram and leaving the room.
Once more at his own desk he sat there for a long time with his head in his hands. At first it was his determination to resign forthwith. The situation was growing as intolerable for him as it had been for his predecessor, but the longer he thought over what had happened the more he realised the impossibility of surrender. If he resigned now, he left the Rockervelt system a failure. He would be compelled to begin at the foot of the ladder again, handicapped by practical dismissal; to strive as an unsuccessful man, his years of experience counting for nothing. But even if that consideration did not harden his resolution to remain where he was, the thought of his uncle would alone have been sufficient to turn the balance. Bitterly he accused himself of his neglect of the old man who, as he had just said, was his only relative on earth. While he was escaping from the hopeless poverty in which they had both lived, the struggle for existence had become so interesting that it had obliterated the fact that Dugald Steele was still where he had left him, and not a penny of money had the young man ever forwarded to him. Up to the time his salary was made fifty dollars a week he had not only saved no money but had run into debt. These obligations were now liquidated, and he had a few hundreds in the bank; the nucleus, he hoped, of more to follow. The old man had brought him up, after a fashion, allowing him to go to school during the winter months, but every waking hour the uncle forced the nephew to work almost beyond the limit of his youthful powers, and at last had driven him forth with blows and cursings during one of those periodical fits of temper which had made Dugald Steele a terror to the neighbourhood. One letter, indeed, John had written to his old home, when he got his situation at Hitchen’s Siding, but that had remained unanswered, and he had taken it for granted that his uncle’s anger was permanent. Nevertheless, the telegram showed that the uncle had kept the letter, or remembered the address, for the despatch had been sent to Hitchen’s Siding, and from there forwarded to John Steele’s office in Warmington.
However, there was little profit in bemoaning a state of things he could not remedy. It was certain that Blair would carry out his threat, if Steele left his place without permission, so there was nothing for it but to sit tight.
With a deep sigh the young man pulled himself together, drew toward him a sheet of paper and wrote a letter that proved to be more important than its wording would have led a casual reader to suspect.
DUGALD STEELE cordially hated his neighbours, and evinced little hesitation in telling them so, whenever opportunity offered. He lived apparently in the depths of extreme poverty, occupying a dilapidated wooden, unpainted house at the northern outskirts of the village of Stumpville, Michigan. He kept no servant, but cooked his own meals, and if any trespassers dared to set foot on his property, he threatened them with a shotgun. He was a cantankerous, crabbed old Scotsman, snarling like an unowned dog, and going about in shabbier clothes than the most ragged tramp that had ever honoured Stumpville with his fleeting presence.
Dugald and his younger brother Neil, the latter then newly married, came out of the highlands of Scotland to the lowlands of Michigan. It was not that the life in the American backwoods was harder than life in the northern part of Scotland, but the hardships were different, and they affected the health of the young wife; she died because of a falling tree—a tree she had never seen, and whose final crash she had not heard. Her husband was felling oaks in the forest, and one of them lodged in the branches of another, resting there at an angle of forty-five degrees. Neil, unaccustomed to forestry in its gigantic American form, not knowing the danger he ran, set himself to chop down the impediment, when the half-fallen tree suddenly completed its descent and crushed him, face downward and lifeless, into the forest mould. To the elder brother fell the grim task of chopping through the fallen timber and rolling the log from off the dead man. The wife died from the shock, and their little boy was left to the care of his taciturn uncle.
No one is alive who knew Dugald Steele in his youth, and so none can tell what early experiences may have warped his character. Perhaps the stinging poverty of those days gave him an exaggerated idea of the necessity of hoarding money; perhaps the tragic death of his brother, whose rude coffin he made with his own hands from slabs of the tree that killed him, crushed out his natural affections instead of ripening them; but, be that as it may, he was, during the latter part of his life, a hard man, whom no tale of pathos could move into the expenditure of a penny; a gnarled, cross-grained, twisted specimen of humanity from whom all emotion, except that of hatred, seemed to have departed.
When he died a will was found leaving all his property to a neighbouring town simply, as he said in the document, written by his own hand to save a lawyer’s fee, that he might wreak posthumous revenge upon his neighbours, who would understand, now that it was too late, what they had missed by not being decent to him. But this will was invalidated by a later one, which shows how a man with a kind heart may sometimes do well for himself when he little understands what he is about.
Nemesis comes to all of us, and it is strange that it should have rested on old Dugald, as the result of the hard, honest work in his young days. Seeing no smoke from his chimney, a kindly woman neighbour, with fear and trembling, penetrated to his dwelling, and found him knotted on the floor with rheumatism, snarling and waspish as ever, but helpless. The woman ran for assistance, and he was lifted into his bed, where he lay when the doctor came, while the old man protested that he had no money to pay him, and would not pay him if he had. The doctor, however, did the best he could for him, and told the neighbours that the old man was stricken with his last illness, which indeed proved to be the case. The doctor said to his patient that if he had any relatives he wished to see he had better send for them, offering to write if the old man gave him an address. All his life Dugald Steele had distrusted medical advice, but it is likely that on this occasion something within him corroborated the verdict which had been passed upon him. He lay there for a long time in silence, the doctor waiting, and at last said, in a hoarse whisper, that he would like his nephew to know he was ill, giving the address as John Steele, Hitchen’s Siding; but, he added, with a return of his cantankerousness, that the doctor was to tell his nephew he need not come unless he wanted to. The doctor at his own cost sent a telegram, and late that night received a long answering despatch from John Steele which deplored the impossibility of the sender’s going to Stumpville at that time, begged that no expense should be spared in getting the old man what comforts he needed, and concluded by saying that a check for a hundred dollars had been posted to the physician for the purpose indicated.
The young man knew his uncle well enough to be aware that if he sent the money direct to him, that miserly person would hoard it, rather than spend a penny on whatever necessities he required. He also knew the delight his uncle experienced in handling money, so when he sent the letter he enclosed two crisp new ten-dollar bills.
My Dear Uncle,—he wrote,—I am deeply grieved to hear from the doctor of your illness and sincerely hope it is not serious. I would come to you at once if I could, but, alas, there is over me a severe taskmaster who refuses me even a day’s leave, yet my position here is so good that I dare not jeopardise it by absenting myself without permission, for if I lose my job I lose also the chance of assisting you. Please accept the twenty dollars which I send you, and get for yourself whatever you may need. Procure the best physician in the place, and a nurse. I will send you more money right along, and if it is not enough, refer creditors to my employers, and they will, I think, guarantee that I can pay any debt you may incur. Please do not stint yourself, but order what you want, or whatever the physician thinks you should have, and do not imagine that the spending of money will leave me short, for I have several hundred dollars in a bank, and will send it to you as you require it. So, dear uncle, keep up a good heart and take every care of yourself.—Your loving Nephew.
The woman sitting at the bed-head read this letter to the old man, wondering if he was paying attention, for his eyes were closed. Presently she saw a tear trickle down his withered cheek and she thought his heart was softening, but the first remark he made did not seem to verify that conclusion.
“Give me the money,” he demanded in a harsh whisper.
The bills were handed to him, and his long, yellow fingers, like talons, closed avariciously upon them; lingeringly dwelling on their smooth texture, thumb and finger rubbed them up and down. His next remark was more encouraging.
“Read the letter again,” he said, and the woman did so, although anger was in her heart that affection should be wasted upon one so unworthy. There was a long silence after she had finished the second reading, and at last she asked him:
“Shall I send for another doctor?”
“No,” growled the old man, “doctors can do me no good. Go and tell Lawyer Strathmore I want to see him. Tell him I have just received twenty dollars, else he won’t come.”
The lawyer came on the strength of the woman’s assurance that the money had arrived, and on his return to his office his partner said: “Well, what struck the old Highlander? Wanted to make his will, I suppose. I hope he hasn’t left his ancient suit of clothes to me.”
“Oh, he’s gone clean crazy,” replied Strathmore, “but I secured ten dollars all right enough, so it doesn’t matter. He seems to think he owns Michigan. Two hundred thousand dollars Michigan Central Railway stock are deposited in the vaults of the Wayne County Savings Bank. Seventy-nine thousand dollars Northern Pacific stock deposited somewhere else. Cash in the bank over thirty thousand dollars—amounting all in all to something like three hundred thousand dollars, which is left to a nephew of his, a railway man on the Manateau Midland.”
“By Jove, Strathmore,” cried the partner, who had been a newspaper man in his youth and saw a sensation in this, “I wouldn’t take my oath that it isn’t all right. He’s just the sort of a dilapidated old miser who would turn out to be a rich man.”
“Impossible,” said Strathmore.
“Improbable, perhaps, but a telegram to Detroit would soon let us know.”
And it did let them know. The inhabitants of Stumpville learned next morning that an old man had died in one of their most ruinous shanties who could have bought and sold each of them, and all of them combined.
When the telegram came announcing his uncle’s death John Steele rose from his desk, locked the door, and paced up and down the room with bent head. He had not expected this outcome, for although his uncle was old, he had weathered so many gales, it had not occurred to the young man that there must come one storm which would lay the gnarled old oak level with the ground. Unavailingly did he regret that a consideration for his own position had kept him from the bedside. With a sigh he stopped his walk, pulled himself together, sat down at his desk, and wrote a brief note to Blair, saying he had just received a telegram informing him of the death of his uncle; that he intended to start by the next train for Michigan, and would put Johnson temporarily in his place. He might be gone as long as three days, but anything addressed to Stumpville would find him. Pinning the telegram to this, and folding up the documents, he sealed them into an envelope addressed to T. Acton Blair, and sent the letter by a messenger to the general manager’s room. He knew that official was in his office, but until the time John took his train there came no response to his note. He called in Johnson, and briefly placed him in transient command. The young man received his appointment with a smug satisfaction that he found it impossible quite to conceal, and although his departing chief noticed this, he made no comment upon it.
During his journey to Stumpville John Steele meditated upon his plan of campaign. The sense of injustice he had felt ever since Blair refused him permission to visit his uncle was now crystallised into a determination to use the iron gauntlet rather than the velvet glove in future. Naturally he was of a conciliatory disposition, but the exercise of forbearance had resulted in failure and disorganisation. The next move lay with the general manager. If Blair persisted in dismissing him, he would appeal to Cæsar, for Cæsar himself had placed him in the position he held.
Arriving at Stumpville, he went direct to the telegraph office, and found awaiting him a despatch which, he was well aware without opening it, came from the general manager; no one else knew his address. The fact that he telegraphed instead of sending a messenger to his room in the same building, which he had had ample time to do, seemed to Steele the first sign of weakness. Blair wished to settle this matter at long range. Tearing open the envelope he read: “I am amazed that you should have left your post without at least personal consultation with me. I have made your appointment of Johnson permanent, but will hold his former office open for you unless you decline to accept it.”
Steele smiled grimly as he read these words. They showed that Blair had not the courage definitely to dismiss him. The general manager was afraid to burn his bridges behind him, hoping possibly that Steele would telegraph his resignation or his indignant refusal of the subordinate position.
Before leaving the city, John Steele had withdrawn from the bank several hundred dollars in order that he might pay any debts his uncle had contracted, and in order also that his funeral should be as imposing as if the old man had been the leading citizen of the place. Then to his amazement he learned that Dugald Steele had made him comparatively a rich man, but this independence made no difference in Steele’s projects for the future. He liked work for its own sake, and he was particularly attached to the duty which chance and good fortune had assigned to him. He was not going to allow that task to be interfered with by a pompous wind-bag like T. Acton Blair, and much less so by a gang of undisciplined subordinates who needed to hear the crack of the whip over their heads.
On the journey back to the city, however, a germ of thought formed in his mind, for the present to lie dormant, but in the future to develop into marvellous things, watered by circumstance, fertilised by disaster. Pondering on the strange, almost repulsive character of the old miser who was gone, it occurred to John Steele that mere hoarding could never have produced the sum of money he had accumulated. In his uncle’s mental equipment there must have been a shrewd understanding of the world’s affairs, of which he secretly took advantage to his own enrichment. Quite unsuspected by his neighbours this recluse had played a game of finance that proved marvellously successful. This could not have been done in Stumpville. Dugald Steele had evidently worked through a broker in some large city, and John Steele began to wonder if he, too, had inherited this seventh sense of money-making which has produced those bulky unearned fortunes for which America is celebrated or notorious.
John resolved to watch the markets in future and learn some of the rules of the game; then he would venture in a small way, so that it did not matter whether he won or lost, and thus put his suspected hereditary abilities to the test. He was very sure from what he remembered of his uncle that the cautious old man had never plunged blindly into speculation. Unless he was very much mistaken, there had been nothing of the gambler about Dugald Steele. He surely amassed his wealth because of a well-informed belief in the continued progress of his adopted country, placing his money here and there where he believed it would secure the advantage of a rise in values. Thus the glow lamp of sweet reasonableness shed its mild rays upon the entrance of a path new to John Steele; a path which offered alluring vistas, but led into a wild and dangerous country—the path of speculation.
When Steele opened the door of the division superintendent’s room, Johnson, seated in the division superintendent’s chair, whirled round abruptly with the frown of high authority on his brow, apparently annoyed that any one should have taken the liberty of entering without knocking.
“Ah, Steele, it’s you, is it?” cried Johnson airily, neglecting to prefix the word “Mr.” which he would have used a week before. “How-d’e-do, how-d’e-do? When did you get back?”
“My train arrived just three minutes ago,” replied John Steele calmly. He closed the door behind him, and stood there, while Johnson remained seated, palpably uneasy, evidently determined to carry off the situation with an air of bonhomie. Mentally he had no doubt rehearsed it several times during the past few days, but the man now confronting him was not the anxious, worried individual who had left the chair he continued to sit in, or the genial, good-humoured youth of former years. For the first time in their intercourse Johnson saw before him the stern demeanour of one in authority, and inwardly he quaked, though outwardly he endeavoured to maintain the guise of airy indifference which appeared fitting for the encounter.
“You received Mr. Blair’s telegram, I suppose?” said Johnson at last, becoming more and more embarrassed by the frigid silence. Somehow the crisis was not evolving exactly as he had pictured it. He wasde factodivision superintendent, yet somehow this new, quiet man before him did not appear to recognise his elevation.
“Everything has gone right since I left, I take it; otherwise I should have heard from you,” remarked Steele, ignoring the question just put to him.
“Oh, yes,” said Johnson, “everything has gone smoothly. Look here, Steele,” cried Johnson in a burst of candour, “why didn’t you reply to the old man’s telegram? You know how touchy he is on questions of discipline. He very generously offered you the position I held, and you didn’t even take the trouble to acknowledge his kindness. I can assure you, John, it has been all I could do to keep the old man from promoting Car-ruthers into my place, but I succeeded in persuading Mr. Blair to take no further steps until you returned. I said I was sure you would have some satisfactory explanation to offer.”
“You were quite right; I have. And now, Mr. Johnson, you will reap the reward of your own kindness. The place you have so generously kept open for me I take pleasure in bestowing upon you; but in return for the counsel you have been good enough to give me, I warn you that unless I get a little better service than has been rendered for some months past you will not hold the position.”
Johnson threw back his head and laughed loudly.
“Steele, my dear boy, that’s a good bluff, but it won’t work. I have been made division superintendent by the general manager of this road. Mr. Blair and myself have both been very patient over your unauthorised desertion of your post, but I tell you frankly that my patience is at an end. I offer you the position which I formerly held. If you do not at once accept it, I shall call Car-ruthers in and give him the vacant place.”
“Do,” said John Steele.
Johnson’s hand hovered over the electric button, but he forbore to press it, looking anxiously toward the impassive man who had made such a curt reply to his threat.
“I dislike exceedingly to call Carruthers. I want to give you every chance, Steele.”
“That is very good of you, but don’t hesitate on my account. I may say, however, that if you touch that button, or issue any further orders in this room, you will automatically have dismissed yourself from the service of the Midland Road.”
“Oh, that’s it, is it? You’re going to show fight, are you? I’ll very quickly convince you that you haven’t the slightest chance of winning. I have behind me the general manager of this road, and he has the owners of the system behindhim. If you bring on an unnecessary contest, in which you have no possibility of victory, I shall then not allow you to be employed on this line, even in the meanest capacity.”
“I quite understand, Mr. Johnson, that either you or I must leave. Now, press the button, and make your promotion without further talk.”
All this time Johnson’s hand had been hesitating over the ivory knob. It trembled slightly, but at last it took the plunge, and made the signal. Presently there came a knock at the door, and James Carruthers entered, glancing uncertainly from Steele to Johnson, apparently undecided whom he should first address. Johnson’s voice was extremely urbane, and it brought joy to the heart of his former colleague.
“Carruthers,” he said, “you will now take my place in the other room, and with your new position I am happy to say there will be an addition to your salary.”
“Thank you, Mr. Johnson,” replied Carruthers, very humbly, meanwhile glancing timidly at the silent man standing there. Perhaps James Carruthers would have been more certain of his promotion had John Steele made the announcement. The latter’s kind heart was not proof against this mute appeal, and a smile came to his lips as he said: “Have no fear, Carruthers. It gives me great pleasure to sanction your appointment. Now, just step around to Mr. Blair’s room, and ask him to come here for a moment.”
“You will do nothing of the sort, Carruthers,” cried Johnson truculently, springing to his feet with clenched fist. It was neck or nothing now, and he knew it. “I am division superintendent, and in this room you take orders from no one but me.”
Poor Carruthers stood with his hand on the door knob, wishing himself safely back in his own room, while Johnson took a determined step toward him, seeing the youth’s hesitation, and resolved to overcome it in his own favour. Then a quite unimportant incident happened which caused him to face the other way, and to feel that somehow he had lost a point in the game. Without any hurry John Steele had seated himself in the division superintendent’s chair. Steele, momentarily ignoring both commander and commanded, rang a bell at the private telephone which communicated with the general manager’s room, and placed the receiver at his ear.
“Is that you, Mr. Blair? This is John Steele. I have just returned, and I want you to step round to my room, as I wish to make a rather important communication.”
There was a momentary pause, and so intensely still did the room become that the two men standing there looking at John Steele could hear the indefinite murmur of the voice coming over the telephone.
“No,” said Steele firmly, “the conference must take place in this room, and it must take place now. Otherwise the complaint I have to make against you will go by telegraph direct to Mr. Rockervelt, and I shall leave by to-night’s train for New York.”
Again there was a pause, and a ghostly suggestion of a whisper. Then Steele said: “Oh, I am not on the war-path at all. In fact, such is my deep respect for yourself that it rests entirely with you to say whether there willbea war-path or not. Personally I see no necessity for it. Just step round, and we’ll talk it over in the most amicable way. Yes, Johnson’s here.” With that Steele hung up his receiver, swung round on the swivel chair, the usual winning smile on his lips as he met the gaze of two very anxious young men. His voice, however, was sharp enough when he spoke.
“Carruthers, clear out,” whereupon Carruthers opened the door and disappeared as if by magic.
“Johnson, sit down. You are just about to learn a lesson on the value of all this backing of which you have been boasting.”
Before Johnson could either accede to the request or disobey it the door opened and the stout gentleman entered. There was a severe frown on his brow intended to denote resolute strength, but an expression of uncertainty in his lower face which hinted at weakness.
Steele waved his hand amiably toward a deep leather-covered easy chair, and into its luxurious folds the fat man sank, drawing forth a handkerchief, which he passed across his brow, and somehow the action appeared to obliterate the frown.
“You said in your telegram, Mr. Blair, that I was in fault because I left without personally consulting with you, but I think you will forgive my error when you remember that having applied for permission to leave when my uncle was dying, and being refused, it would have been futile for me to appear before you with proof of his death and a further request for leave of absence. You would have been bound in consistency to refuse, while I was equally determined to attend my uncle’s funeral. If you disbelieved my words when I told you he was dying, you could not have so stultified yourself as to credit the news of his death.”
“I did not disbelieve your word,” protested Blair, timorously.
“I understood you to do so. If you did not, then your action was at once cruel and tyrannical. However, that is past and done with, so we will say no more about it, unless you choose that it should come up later on. Now, I may inform you that my late uncle has left me a legacy that approximates three hundred thousand dollars. As the interest on this, even at one per cent, is more than I receive as division superintendent of the Midland, you will easily understand that I do not retain my position merely from mercenary motives. I am to-day in a position of independence which makes the outcome of any struggle we may engage in a matter of perfect indifference to me.”
“I am happy,” said Blair, again mopping his brow, “to be the first of your old colleagues to congratulate you on your improved prospects. John Jacob Astor once said that a poor man with a hundred thousand dollars might make a fortune in this country. Although times have changed since then, still, a poor man with three times that amount has numerous opportunities denied to more poverty-stricken individuals. As for the struggle you speak of, I really see nothing on earth that either of us would gain by engaging in it.”
“Iam quite at one with you there, sir, and indeed you will find me the least belligerent of individuals if I but get my own way, which I intend to insist on hereafter, so far as my immediate department is concerned. While I have no fear of the struggle I suggested, neither have I any desire to engage in it. You see, Mr. Blair, you would be too severely handicapped from the start to give you a chance. Your task would be to show that Mr. Rockervelt is a fool, while all I should need to do would be to prove that he is the wisest of men. You are too shrewd a judge of human nature to doubt the outcome of such a contest. Mr. Rockervelt prides himself on two things. First, the unerringness of his judgment regarding men; second, the excellence of his various roads, and he reaches the second by means of the first. Now, he placed me in this chair. If he had wished you to choose the occupant, he would have delegated that duty to you. If he had desired the estimable Mr. Johnson here, he would not have had the slightest hesitation in enlisting Mr. Johnson’s co-operation. Now, if you stood to gain anything by forcing a hopeless issue I could comprehend your attitude, but anything you wish you can have through good will, so where is the use of coercion or of a fight?”
“I assure you, my dear Mr. Steele, that I have no desire whatever to bring on a fight. I have said so all along.”
“Very well, Mr. Blair, there’s no more to be said, and I predict you will find me the most deferential, accommodating subordinate that ever worked in your office.”
“But where do I come in?” ejaculated the panic-stricken Johnson, whose face had become paler and paler as this colloquy went on.
“My dear sir, youdon’tcome in,” said John Steele urbanely. “I told you that at the beginning, when I counselled you not to enter a contest where you were bound to be the loser. I commend to you in future the sensible attitude assumed by Mr. Blair.”
“Mr. Blair,” persisted Johnson, “you appointed me division superintendent, and assured me you would stand by that appointment.”
“Oh, well,” explained Blair, “you see how it is yourself. I did so under an entire misapprehension. I thought that Mr. Steele had openly defied my authority, which I now understand was not the case. Am I right in that, Mr. Steele?”
“Perfectly right, sir. I had no desire to impugn your authority, and I apologise for my abrupt action, which certainly bore that complexion.”
“There, Johnson,” said Blair, almost pleadingly, “you must see that puts a different face on the matter entirely.”
It certainly put a different face on Johnson, who stood there with dropped jaw, gazing pitifully at his backboneless chief.
“I am very sorry there has been any misunderstanding,” said Blair soothingly. “Such, of course, occurs in all offices, but luckily discipline is so perfect here that a few words will adjust things in their right proportion to each other. You have done very well, Mr. Johnson, during your short occupancy of this room, and when you resume your old place you may be certain that both Mr. Steele and myself will remember you when a chance for promotion occurs.”
“I regret to say,” remarked Steele casually, before Johnson had an opportunity of speaking, “that Mr. Johnson’s last act during his temporary occupancy of this chair was to promote Carruthers into his vacant place, and this promotion I myself confirmed. I recommend Mr. Johnson to take a vacation for a month, and if during that period he secures another situation, I shall be happy to recommend him, and probably you, Mr. Blair, would not object to do the same.”
“Certainly not, certainly not,” muttered Blair hastily. “If, at the end of a month,” continued John Steele, “you have not suited yourself, Mr. Johnson, you may return to me, and I’ll see what I can do for you. I am going to rearrange my staff, and give most of its members a step upward. Some of them, however, will take a step downward, and some will be promoted over the heads of their seniors. All this will require a little thought and manipulation, but, as Mr. Blair truly says, discipline is everything, and I am determined to carry out his wishes in that respect.”
“Well, Mr. Steele,” said the general manager, rising with a deep sigh of satisfaction, as if everything had gone exactly as he planned it, “anything I can do to help on the good work will not be stinted. Call upon me when in any difficulty, Mr. Steele, and be assured of my most whole-hearted support,” and with that the great man held out his hand, which Steele, springing to his feet, clasped cordially. Without a glance at the crest-fallen Johnson, T. Acton Blair strode majestically from the room.
John Steele turned to his desk.
“May I have a word with you, Mr. Steele?” asked Johnson.
“Yes, this day month,” said John Steele without looking up.