| CHAPTER X. OF A MAN SHAKEN
It was in the following spring.
The "boom", carefully prepared by the firm Carter, Forrest, and McKay, was gathering momentum like a wave. A whole tract of land west of Stockton had been acquired and laid out in streets, squares, and building lots. An elaborately-planned advertising campaign, conducted through several years, had prepared the public all over the Canadian west, and even in the east, for the idea that Stockton was going to rival Winnipeg in size and outdo it in importance. The firm was subsidising a number of manufacturing enterprises recently settled at Stockton; it was paying part of the cost of constructing a direct railway line south, to the great western centres of the United States; it donated liberally towards the cost of installing local improvements - as an electric street car line undertaken by the city.
Jim was the soul of the unwearying energy with which the firm handled its manifold activities which all aimed at this one great thing, the "boom". Leslie Carter kept in the background; "Bob" McKay took care of the office where he presided with his mysterious smile, rubbing his plump, smooth hands, the hands of a woman, while he kept matters running like clock-work and dictated circular after circular which was then run through the multigraphs in thousands of copies and stored away against the day of need. Even now the postage account of the firm ran into thousands of dollars a year.
But Jim was in the field, organising a sales-force from the foothills of the Rocky Mountains to the Ottawa River. Already, in order to provide a current income for the salesmen, some selling of lots had begun in the open country. But as for the cities and towns, the firm was still holding back; there, the campaign was not to be launched till an army of workers counting by the thousand had been assembled and trained. Meanwhile Jim had worked indefatigably, subordinating everything to this one aim: by a single, great throw of the dice to win a fortune. Incidentally, he sold a car here and there, to be on
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the spot with an established business when the expected car-craze broke over the country.
For Jim was fully aware of the fact that an enterprise like that of his firm cannot be repeated. The possibilities of a city are limited. Stockton, during the decade preceding his arrival upon the scene, had grown from a village of a few hundred souls into a small city of ten thousand inhabitants. That had been the consequence of the fact that the main line of the great western railway, originally planned to run twenty miles north, had been resurveyed through the already existing corporation. Since that time, the small city had doubled its population, partly by sheer inertia, attracting the surplus from the rural districts surrounding it, partly as a result of artificial stimulation. But Jim knew that artificial stimulation cannot go on forever. In fact, it will inevitably lead to, and hasten, the reaction, the "breaking of the boom". But of that he took a cynical view. The real welfare of the city was nothing to him. He was a promoter, interested only in the personal profits to be derived from his promotions. If he was getting somewhat impatient himself, the reason was simply that the strain was beginning to tell on him. He was ten years older than he had been when he had first come to Stockton. And during all that time he had worked and worked at what others would have called a killing pace. Repeatedly he had tried to bring things to a head, to "open the battle", to induce his partners - the two active partners at Stockton, and the enigmatical, impersonal, silent partner, eastern capital - to "spring the mine" and to "cash in". He had run up against stubborn resistance. Carter and Rosebaum had insisted on "playing the thing for all it was worth", on "cleaning the situation up"; for that they were not yet ready; and it meant that Jim had to go on with the Herculean task of holding a vast sales-force together without giving the men a chance to make "big money". Nothing, according to his partners, was as dangerous as to precipitate things prematurely.
Jim, when thus opposed, had the uncomfortable feeling, in spite
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of the fact that it was he who had originated the whole scheme, that he was no more than a tool which was being utilised; and this feeling gave him often the additional premonition that, like a tool he was to be cast aside when no longer needed. When Jim tried to argue, Leslie Carter sat in his office, smiling and waving his hand in a negation of all arguments. McKay rubbed his hands, happy at the delay because he knew that he and his whole staff would be dispensable the moment "the trick was turned". Meanwhile they were drawing a comfortable income from their routine work; while the chief task of the interval devolved upon Jim. For the longer they delayed, the harder this task became. No wonder, he thought, that he felt often fagged and tired of it all; and yet he kept going.
He was thirty-seven years old. He had grown heavy. His shoulders had broadened prodigiously; his chest and abdomen were covered with a layer of fat. He was still handsome, in the imposing, massive way of beginning middle age.
Sometimes, when he was waiting for a train in some outlying town or driving, over prairie roads, the little car which he had acquired a few years ago, he would suddenly think of his house at Stockton where a strangely beautiful woman lived, a stranger to him. He would think of other women who had preceded her in his affections, especially one in the south, in California. He quickly averted his thought and consciously, on such occasions, focused it on Jane. He even tried to penetrate her life with his understanding. He came to the point where he wished that all might be well between them.
One day he became suddenly conscious of the fact that he had wronged more than one woman in his life; but none more than Jane. He tried to laugh it off. He told himself that what he had done in the past was past; that he could not be held responsible for it. At any given time he seemed to have acted under a compulsion which had not left his will free. It did not matter.
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Another time he was struck by the thought that by his life he was almost inviting his wife to deceive him. In fact, could it have been called deceit? Yet he realised with a sort of wonder at himself that the mere possibility of such a contingency made him suffer. Mentally he went through the list of men who had access to her house. There had been Dr. Henderson, of course. In former years he had cynically shrugged his shoulders; the cynicism was gone. Well, Dr. Henderson was dead and buried. Stephen Carter? He laughed. He summoned many others before his mental vision; the list seemed unconvincing; and, strangely, he felt relieved. More strangely still, he found himself acknowledging that, had the list not been unconvincing, he would still feel that, with her, he would be safe. For the first time in his life he felt a grudging admiration, not of her beauty, but of her character.
On still another occasion he thought of Arthur, his brother. Once, in the dim past, before he had even become engaged to Jane, he had heard that there "had been something between the two". But they had never given him the slightest cause for suspicion. He thought somewhat ruefully of that brother. At the time when he had dealt with him in the matter of the inheritance, he had frankly, cynically looked down upon him. He had seen himself as the conqueror in life who had the right, for the sake of his own success and that of his cause, to step over the corpses of others, to disregard them, to sweep them aside. Was it a sign of decay in him that he began to see their side? He was no longer quite so sure of himself. He had met with checks. The fact that others existed and at least thought that they had a right to exist had been forcibly driven home to him. He had had to learn to take human nature into account. Others had feelings and interests of their own; they had ambitions, desires, and passions. A man would refuse to buy lots because he wanted a piano or a new house worse than the chance of doubling his money. After all, Arthur was also a human being. Perhaps he was struggling along to hold on to
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his mortgaged farm. At the time, eleven years ago, he, Jim, had been in imperative need of that ten thousand dollars because that sum had been the price of his admission to the partnership; it had meant to him the chance of a lifetime. What were ten thousand dollars to him now? A mere trifle. He spent more than that in a year, what with the upkeep of his house and his own travelling expenses. He made up his mind to send Arthur a cheque for a thousand or so whenever he "cashed in".
Such was the state of his mind when, one day, in a small town of south-western Saskatchewan where he had met one of his men who needed careful handling in order not to "bolt" - a valuable man - he received a telegram signed by Dr. Halstrom at Stockton. It was late in the afternoon.
The wire read, "Mrs. Forrest suddenly taken ill with acute appendicitis. There are complications. Transferring to Winnipeg, Dr. Faraday's clinic. Serious."
This message did not upset him at once though he did not hesitate over its implications. Mere decency demanded that he go to her bedside at once. He scanned the yellow slip and saw that it had been despatched more than two days ago. It had followed him from place to place and thus had been delayed in reaching him.
He went to the station of the town to study a time-table. Trains ran only every other day. But he had his car. If he struck straight north, travelling at night, he might be able to make a connection over the main line of the great western railroad. He returned to the hotel, paid his bill, and spoke to the man he had come to see.
"I'm leaving at once," he said. "Wife's sick. Seriously sick, they say. The doctor wired me. You'll have to manage alone after all. I'm sorry." He spoke with a sort of grim determination; for he was beginning to feel excited. Nobody hearing him would have thought that all was not as it should be between Jim and his wife.
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He was told that the wheat-buyer at one of the elevators might give him some information about the road. He entered his car and went there at once.
"The nearest station is Lambert," the man said after giving him preliminary directions. "But the flyer doesn't stop there."
"I'll have if flagged," Jim said. "Expense is no object."
He started out. The weather looked threatening. He drove his little machine like a maniac. The country was bare, unrelieved, rolling prairie with steep grades which could not be taken except at great speed, a lonely country, sparsely settled: a tragic landscape in the rising dusk. Never before had Jim been susceptible to the emotional aspects of his surroundings. Never before had he thought of Jane as he suddenly did that night.
He did not think of her as his wife. He felt profoundly that he had wronged her. Might she never know how much! There was, in this emotional upheaval of a man hitherto unemotional, even a fleeting thought of the fact that death would straighten out at least one tangle of his life. But her death would leave him alone; he shuddered. His own death would do all the straightening out that might be needed with vastly greater effectiveness. She must not die. If he could do anything to prevent it, he would not hesitate. If his presence by her bedside could help her, he must be there. Yes, he would say that to her which would reconcile her if it did not make her wish to live. Somehow it seemed imperative that she should not die.
He drove over rough, rutted roads looping up and down over the green, rolling prairie. He was acutely conscious of the fact that with his steering-wheel he held his own life in his hands; and perhaps with his own life something which might be worth something to her, provided he could show her that he was changing, that he had changed towards her during the last four or five years. He had never been able to show her before; she kept him at a distance; he had not felt the need with sufficient imperiousness to break through her reserves.
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When his car, caught in ruts, skidded sideways and threatened to turn on him, he sat, with every muscle taut, carefully counteracting its swerving motion by a quick jerk of the wheel. It grew darker and darker; at last he could no longer see the road ahead. He stopped.
Cars, at the time, did not yet have electric lighting systems. He went to the front where he had to open the lamps and to apply a match to the burners which were fed with acytelene gas from a tank on his left-hand running-board. As he did so, he became aware that it had begun to rain: one of those fine, drizzling rains of spring which are country-wide. By the glare of a head-light he looked at his heavy gold watch. It was half past ten. He had three hours to make his connection and still eighty miles to go. As he was about to re-enter the car, he hesitated for a second, foot on running-board. Then he turned. It was best to put the chains on right now while the road was still solid.
Half an hour later he started once more, going slowly at first, but gradually increasing his speed to a break-neck pace, and handling his car with the cool, careful audacity of the expert driver, till he was precipitating that ton of steel, upholstery, and flesh through the murky night with the utmost indifference to the risks he ran, but at the same time with a wistful attention to the smallest irregularity in its behaviour. It was not long before his wheels began to fling mud. Within half an hour of that, the car began to slip; sometimes it narrowly missed going into the ditch or turning completely around. Several times it stood at right angles to the road before, having thrown the gears into neutral, he managed to arrest it. Every time he patiently manoeuvred it back into the road and went on with dogged perseverance. As he would have done in a game, he held his nerves under perfect control.
Then, at half past twelve, one of the rear tires gave out. But he was now only twenty miles from his goal. He stopped to put his spare tire on. Demountable rims being still unknown, it took him fully half an hour.
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He had less than an hour left to make twenty miles in; that meant sharp driving under any circumstances. But he was quite indifferent to himself. He wore a light top coat of dark-grey serge. When he had finished with the wheel, he was conscious of the fact that this coat was hanging about him like a rag. The knees of his trousers were soaking with mud; for, in order to work faster, he had knelt down. He stripped his top coat off, threw it into the empty rear seat, boarded the car, and went on. By this time the mud was so soft and deep that it interfered with his speed. But he kept going.
Then, on top of a hill, his lights went out. He rarely did any night-driving, and he had not had his gas-tank filled that spring. He stopped his car with an impotent feeling of being baffled, thwarted by fate. He calculated that he could not have more than ten miles to go. For a minute or so he sat, straining his eye-sight to see.
And as if to reward him, the landscape seemed to lift itself out of the chaos of the night, dim and desolate, but as if it were endowed with a faint luminosity. He waited another minute or so; and gradually the cause of the phenomenon became clear. To both sides of the road stretched sloughs, widening in the north, in front of him, to huge, shallow lakes bare of all vegetation. Both sloughs and lakes were framed by white margins - white with the incrustations of alkali which seemed to gather what light there was, like snow, and to reflect it into the atmosphere. Through these, on a low dam of whitish mud, ran the ribbon of what, in dry weather, would have been the road; he knew that sort of soil; no doubt it was now dissolved into the consistency of a thin paste; only after a summer drought did it ever harden into a frightfully rough trail strewn with rock-like clods
In his sudden endeavour to stop the car when the lights went out, and before his eyes had adjusted themselves to the chaotic dimness of the night, he had stepped too sharply on the brake; the engine had stopped. He alighted to crank it, As he did so, he stood for a moment in the drizzle and listened to the silence which surrounded him.
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Suddenly the weird, slow cry of an awakened water-fowl floated through the rain-laden atmosphere, touching him strangely. A lump rose in his throat. The cry had sounded almost human; it seemed to represent him with a symbol of the distress which is brought by all pain and suffering, driving home to him the tragic things of life as nothing else could have done. He felt shaken and softened as he had never felt before. He was almost conscious of the fact that this night was to be a turning point in his life.
Then, in a new sort of haste, he re-entered the throbbing car.
Again he went on; quickly and safely so long as he went downhill; for, since the sloping ground did not absorb the rain but shed it, there was less mud.
But the moment he hit the level of the dam that divided the lakes the car stopped dead; the wheels turned without propelling their load, throwing the mud high overhead. He tried the low gear; but the only effect was that the car dug itself in till the chassis squatted on the road. He stopped the engine.
Once more he alighted. For a few minutes he worked ineffectually, trying to push or to pull the mud-heavy conveyance. Then, with a curious realisation of how much all this meant to him, he gave it up and stood, intensely serious. What it meant was salvation. Nothing else mattered. If he had had any cynicism left, it would have been for his previous pursuits. It was all-important that Jane should forgive him; that, through her, he humanized his relationship to the world of men.
He struck a match and looked at his watch. It was past one o'clock. The train was due in less than half an hour; he was close to ten miles from the station.
For a moment the sense of his impotence made him feel enormous in the night; as if he were filling it; as if, by filling it, he could and would impose his will on Chaos. It was only now that he became conscious of the sloughy smell in the air. Disgust with that smell
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restored him to his individuality , him standing against the world; but it was contempt he felt for that world, an enormous contempt for his fellow-men who were peacefully sleeping all over this world while he stood baffled in a Promethean attempt to subjugate matter to his intense desire; yes, it was a contempt for the very country he stood on, for this earth, for what they call God, for everything, his own impotence included.
Thus he stood, staring with unseeing eyes into a tenebrous vacancy . But his mind's eye saw a picture. In a white-tiled hospital room, on a nickel-and-glass operating table which stood in its centre, lay Jane, white as death, with scarlet cuts in her skin and a triangle of flesh folded back.
And again he saw himself, hundreds of miles away, standing huge in the night, on a lonely road in a treeless wilderness of hills and sloughs, a country which God had forgotten when he divided the land from the water.
Then the smell of the air obtruded again on his consciousness, and with a sideways motion of his hand he gave vent to his feelings in an articulate thought. "The whole world stinks!" He was thwarted in what he knew to be the first generous impulse of his whole life.
He had thus stood for perhaps ten minutes when another thought became articulate. He must still try to push forward; he must abandon the car and get there or perish in the attempt.
He set out afoot, sinking into the mud to above his ankles, sometimes, when he slipped into a rut, up to his knees; occasionally it took a supreme effort to extricate his foot . When he realised the greatness of the effort, he despised himself: he had grown huge and fat: for many years now he had not walked any distance worth speaking of; his wind was bad, his muscles flabby. But, perhaps almost because of this self-contempt, the generous impulse persisted and grew. He kept on, fighting the mud for an hour or so. Then, stopping for a moment to recover his breath - he had had to stop many times - a new
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thought struck him. Surely, he would have heard the train passing if it had passed? That train must be long overdue! He had not given it any thought so far; but it was true, these overland trains were often many hours late.
That thought held hope. He struggled on with renewed vigour.
Then he came to a point where the vast shallow lake receded from the rising road on both sides. The going was less heavy here. He redoubled his efforts.
And suddenly, outlined, blacker on black, against the dark sky, he saw a shanty ahead, to the west . He left the road and and angled over the prairie. A few minutes later he was pounding the door of the shack with his fists.
A light was struck inside. An elderly man opened the door, looking out through a crack. Jim, pushing him back, entered.
"Hi, you, get out of here!" the man yelled at him, glaring out of cavernous eyes and pointing a grey goat's-beard at him as he set his toothless jaws.
"Keep your shirt on," Jim said tersely. "Got any horses?"
"What for?"
"I want to catch the train. I got stuck in the slough with a car."
"Train don't stop at Lambert."
"I'll stop it if you'll get me there."
"Besides, it's gone."
"Did you hear it go?"
"No," the man admitted. "But it was due two hours ago."
"Listen here," Jim said. "You get me to town before that train passes through, and I'll pay you a hundred dollars cash."
The man opened his eyes and looked Jim over suspiciously. "Lemme see the cash."
Jim drew his bill-fold and exhibited his money, looking down on this thin little man who was included in his contempt of everything.
"How much down?"
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Jim drew a ten-dollar bill. "The rest," he said, "if you get me there ahead of the train."
The man took the bill, put it in his pocket, said, "All right," and proceeded to dress with simian agility.
Ten minutes later they sat in a two-wheeled cart drawn by an ancient horse which stalked through the mud as if it were trying not to get its feet wet. Jim was holding a lantern outside the wheel on his side.
"Where'd you leave that car?" the man asked after awhile.
"In the slough back there."
"What you going to do with it?"
Jim felt exasperated at this man's intrusion upon his mood. "To hell with the car!" he snarled. "You get me to the station before that train's gone. That's all I ask you to do."
The man did; he received his ninety dollars.
At the station, while in the east the low-hung vault of cloud began to whiten, Jim hammered the door till the agent came down. Feeling that he was becoming a suspect, Jim put the telegram he had received on the table of the office as soon as he was admitted. Then, when the sleepy agent had read it, he added, "I want you to flag that train and to send a wire on to Stockton."
"What next?" the agent asked sarcastically.
"That's all."
The agent pondered. Jim had the air of a man who would not "stand for any nonsense". He asked, "Where's the text of the wire?"
Jim reached for a blank and wrote with his gold-mounted pencil, addressing to Mlle. Lefèvre at his house, "Have somebody meet train #4 at the station with suitcase of clean clothes for myself. Forrest."
An hour and a half later the train came flying through the dawn. Jim stood on one side of the track; the agent, on the other. Both were swinging lanterns with outstretched arms. The train came to a stop half a mile beyond the town.
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Before Jim, having dropped his lantern, reached it, he was met by the conductor and a brakeman.
"What in Sam Blazes..."
"Nothing," Jim said. "I'm going along with you. That's all. Come on and hurry up."
"Well, what in the world..."
Jim was running and did not answer.
When they reached the last car, he swung up on the step. On the rear platform he stopped, waiting for the conductor, telegram in hand.
"Just start her off," he said to the slim, grey-haired official. "You're late as it is."
The conductor stepped forward and reached for the signal-line. Then he returned, looking at Jim in a half puzzled, half angry way.
"I got that," Jim said, handing him the wire, "eighty miles south of here. I had a car; but it broke down in the mud. I made part of the rest of the way walking, part in a buckboard. That explains the state I'm in. Now rustle me a compartment or a drawing room if you have it. A sleeper if you have not. When we get to Stockton, ask the agent whether he knows me. I have no money left. I'll give you a cheque."
The conductor accepted his statement as true; he took a chance.
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