| CHAPTER XIV. OF BUSINESS MATTERS
During the few months of winter which followed what appeared to be the final breach between Jim and Jane, Jim's mood changed from day to day by the coming forward or the receding of one or other of the many ingredients of which it was made up. He had indulged in too many illusions to accept the new situation without great and profound struggles arising within him the scope and outcome of which he was far from being able to foresee.
Thus he had dreamed, while in the east, of reviving the social activities of his house; yes, of expanding them to a point where he lost track of details, embracing that which he dreamt of in the one vague term "social splendour". To do so now seemed impossible, of course. Nothing of the kind could be achieved without the cooperation of Jane which he had lost.
Like many other men who have made their own way in the world he was intensely dependent on the judgment of that very world. He valued, yes he overestimated the value of, the prestige of his name among his fellow citizens. Years ago, he had said he was one day going to die a millionaire. Wealth would give him what he craved in this respect; people bow down before wealth. And yet, now it seemed subtly unsatisfying. It was within his power, for the moment, to make almost as much money as he cared to do. The trouble was that money did not and could not buy peace of soul. It seemed irrelevant.
Remained business . He could drown himself in that. Get rid of thought, of
remorse, of regret by devoting himself exclusively to the furtherance of material
interests. He knew that, in doing so, he was stepping down in the scale of his
recent dreams and ambitions. But he could not help it.
The truth of the matter was that he felt at bottom useless. There was nothing that he seemed to be able to do which had a higher value: higher in degree and in kind than what the common herd of his fellow citizens did. What disquieted him most about this was that he remained
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fully aware of the fact that twelve years ago, at the time of his marriage, those dreams and ambitions which seemed so futile now had been his highest dreams and ambitions. It was only natural that they should have widened in scope; but they had not merely widened in scope, they had changed in kind. And the change had been progressively rapid during the years that had gone by.
He never acknowledged it to himself in so many words; but he knew nevertheless that the cause of this change had been Jane. If any one had suggested to him twelve years ago that of the two personalities that were to clash in this marriage Jane's was the stronger, he would have smiled. He smiled no longer; he saw it as an undeniable fact, now that he had lost her.
He held on to one thing. He felt profoundly humiliated and resented it. Not that his resentment was directed against her; it was directed against life, against the world, against the institutions of man and the laws of God. Hence he did not yet feel guilty; he felt a victim of circumstance.
Among other things he felt aged; he was dissatisfied with his very physique.
He knew he had, during the last few years, "gone at a tremendous pace", using
up his energies faster than he could replace them. He was tired; bodily and
mentally. He knew that he should take exercise; it seemed he had no time to
do so. All the while he was putting on weight; and he watched the process. Early
in the spring of this year, the year 1911, he tipped the scales at two hundred
and forty pounds. The greater, therefore, the need for exercise became, the
less he felt inclined and able to take it. Since, a year ago, he had abandoned
his small car on a slough-road in southern Saskatchewan, he had been without
a conveyance of his own; but instead, for instance, of walking down to his office
in the morning, he had telephoned to the garage which he conducted on Dukes
Avenue to send the service car up and to fetch him. Now, money being no object,
he bought a huge car, much too large for him, but symbolising
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his dream of wealth and power. He did create a sensation in the town.
But this sensation did not change the fact that at bottom he was unhappy. His wish to conciliate Jane, to live "on a decent footing" with her, to humanise their mutual relation, had been sincere. Life had been too strong for him; it had led him into traps; he had been taken. He caught himself indulging in such wishes as that he might be a child again whom his mother tucked away in bed at night. When he had been such a child, thirty years ago, he had been free of all responsibilities. If between Jane and himself all things were well, he would even now have an equivalent for that lost childhood of his: he could go home and recuperate his lost vitality by such a contact as the one he had had one day last summer at the lake. As it was, he felt desperately lonely. That feeling of essential loneliness he had for the first time experienced during that drive through the chaotic night last spring; it had changed his outlook on life. Whenever, now, he thought of it, he felt as if then he had been truly happy; there had been the hope of adjusting reality to his changed view: in fact, he had largely succeeded in doing so. All that was past. It was irrevocably past.
There was something else which he avoided to think of. In what Jane had said, there had been an indictment and a judgment; she had condemned, not only what he had done, but what he had been. The question was perhaps this: did he still remain what he had been? If so, there was nothing that he could do. If not, the last word had perhaps not yet been said; it might be merely a question of showing her that he was changed.
But, so far, he lost himself in a maze, everlastingly, the moment he even remotely glanced at the inextricable complication of the issues which he must resolve if he was to live. So, his thought forever turned back to business. Business, for the moment, was the staff of life to him; it did not allow him time to hang after thoughts
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which seemed barren in their very nature.
His great idea of artificially stimulating the growth of the city had borne fruit. The actual land deal in which the firm had involved itself, was very simple and comparatively small. They had bought ten square miles of land immediately west of Stockton, at an aggregate price of a hundred and twenty thousand dollars. These they had subdivided into building lots, about thirty thousand of them to the square mile, allowing ample space for streets, public squares, etc. The cost of a lot to the firm, therefore, apart from expenses, was forty cents. The lowest price at which any of them had been sold was one hundred dollars which, allowing twenty dollars for commissions, left eighty dollars to the firm. But the moment the campaign had been launched, that price had begun to be exceeded. All things seemed to favour the campaign. The western territories, recently organised into provinces, were rapidly being settled. Everywhere people saw land values spring out of nothing. In a certain small centre a certain homesteader who, one day, could not have bought a bag of flour on credit had, a week later, a bank balance of seventy-five thousand dollars because an engineer selected his place as the site of the western repair shops for one of the great railroad lines. Such stories - and there were hundreds and thousands of them, some true, some exaggerated, and some invented, created a fever of confidence in the enormous and immediate expansion of the west. The consequence had been that, the moment the firm Carter, Forrest, and McKay had thrown a few large blocks of their subdivisions on the market, the trade in these lots had become independent of the issuing firm. A certain barber of Stockton bought one day five lots at a hundred dollars each and sold them within a week en bloc for five thousand dollars.
Stockton seemed to be excellently situated; it was surrounded by a hinterland of the best wheat soil; it was, for the railroads, situated at a strategic point. The dusky mountains sweeping through the province made it a divisional point for two of the three great western
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roads; it lay at the confluence of three rivers, themselves of no importance for navigation, but pointing the way for land transportation by indicating the lines of the easiest grades. Nobody gave any thought to the fact that, at the present stage of development, this city would have to absorb, not only the whole rural population of the province but the population of the western metropolis as well in order to fill the territory covered by the "subdivisions" of the firm which operated "the boom". Besides, the firm kept the extent of its operations carefully screened from the public in any definite selling field. On the other hand, nobody bought a single lot originally with the intention of building on it; everybody bought exclusively for the purpose of reselling; that is, for the purpose of speculation. Thus, every buyer became a "booster", helping the movement along till it assumed the proportions of an avalanche. Money flowed into the coffers of the firm in a steady and, so far, increasing stream. Soon they ceased selling at a fixed price; they began to sell "at the market"; and that led, not to a cooling of the fever, but to a frantic demand for more and more lots. The supply which had seemed inexhaustible - three hundred thousand lots - was beginning to look small. Jim spoke of the necessity of securing an additional six or eight sections. Incomprehensibly, he ran up against a stubborn resistance to such a plan - a resistance which originated in that large and mysterious consortium of eastern capitalists and, within his own camp, in Leslie Carter. Occasionally he thought of separating his connection with the firm and launching on his own account; for he was no longer the impecunious executive of their designs; he had a balance of his own amounting to a quarter of a million dollars.
Thus, his life became one of feverish activity, shot through with moments of retardation in which he glanced back at his own disintegrating life as a personal entity. To illustrate this, it will serve best to follow him through part of a day in the early summer.
He had built a garage behind his house; there, his new, huge car
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found shelter for the night. He had paid over ten thousand dollars for it; it was said to be capable of travelling at the rate of a mile a minute; it would hold seven passengers; it weighed over four thousand pounds; according to the taste of the time, it glittered with brass and nickel. At night, he ran it into the shed himself; and he took it out himself in the morning.
On this particular day, he had as usual risen about half past seven; he had dressed and descended into the lower part of the house which seemed deserted. But in the kitchen, the servants of the establishment had been busy preparing his elaborate breakfast: coffee, toast, a course of baked fish, and a course consisting of rashers of bacon or of broiled ham. Then, without seeing a member of his household except the girl who waited on him, he had descended the front steps of his house, always keeping up the appearance as it if were the most natural thing in the world that his wife and his children should remain upstairs till he was gone.
The moment he inserted himself, in that concrete garage of his, behind the wheel of his car, he was, as always, conscious of a thrill. Not even the Carters, reputed to be the two wealthiest men of the city, kept a machine like that. The moment he started the engine, so that the whole body quivered and trembled under its murmuring hum, the car seemed to be a thing alive, gifted with an almost spiritual existence of its own, anxious to do as he bade it do. And he was its master. He had been able to command the labour of many days of many skilled workmen that had gone into the building of this monster; and the brain-work of many of the most highly trained and most highly gifted among the inventive spirits of the age.
When he had backed it out of the shed and turned into the road, he slowly crept down Albert Avenue to its intersection with 5th Street, where, the huge stone pile of the Anglican cathedral stood; from the corner of his eye he noticed that he was attracting the attention of the few pedestrians abroad at this hour in this residential district of the town. Instead of going on straight ahead
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to the corner of 10th Street - the shortest way to his office, and the one where there was least traffic to encounter - he turned into 5th and ran down to Fairview Avenue, the main business street of the city. 5th Street was still residential - a wide, shaded street set with beautiful trees; it formed part of the oldest district of the town. He throttled the car down to its slowest speed, so that it descended the sloping street in an almost fretting crawl. Two or three horse-drawn vehicles - delivery wagons of dairy and bake-shops - bolted at his approach. He did not turn his head; but he watched them nevertheless. The effect his car produced made him feel like a conqueror invading a city which had surrendered; and this feeling of triumph was all the more poignant as it was set off against that feeling of humiliation with which he played the morning comedy before the servants at home; in fact, which was associated with every thought of that house of his in which, as he knew, an infant, a boy, was going to be raised as if the birth of children were parthenogenetic.
As he approached, at the bottom of the hill, the intersection of 5th Street with Fairview Avenue, he noticed with satisfaction that a steady stream of pedestrians was hurrying downtown; it was the hour at which all over the downtown district employees reported for work in offices and stores. He blew his horn sharply and then nosed into the stream of traffic. Although he looked straight ahead, without turning even his eyes, he watched, from their corners, the amazed looks on the features of those who had to stop in order to let him pass; and also of those who, having passed in front of him, turned back the moment they had reached the safety of the opposite sidewalk.
This end of Fairview Avenue contained a few office buildings, mostly occupied by wholesale houses, a few groceries - cash-and-carry - and a ten-and-fifteen-cent store. Farther on, at the corner of 8th Street, the fashionable retail district began. It was there that he would have his real triumph. Above the smaller stores which specialised in a single line of merchandise, loomed enormously high office
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structures; the large department stores occupied whole blocks by themselves. On both sidewalks a dense multitude was hurrying along.
Two or three times, between 5th and 8th Streets, he opened and closed his throttle, allowing the huge machine which carried him to shoot forward at a bound wherever a clear space opened and bridling it down again to a crawl no faster than that of a walking horse when he caught up with the traffic ahead. Horses were, at the time, only just beginning to get used to sharing the streets with these mechanical monsters of steel and brass. He smiled at the thought that under the hood in front of him there was the power of seventy-two horses; seventy-two horses were pulling him, Jim Forrest, over the road!
As he approached the corner of 8th Street, he noticed with an almost conscious satisfaction that a street-car was rounding the corner, coming up from the industrial quarter of the city, near the river, and turning into Fairview, the wheels screeching in the curve of the rails. He had to stop in order to let it pass. The cause of this satisfaction of his he had never made clear to himself; in fact, he did not give it any thought; but the cause was that he was glad of every opportunity of handling his levers; he did so with a quiet, almost ostentatious expertness; he knew himself watched, admiringly, enviously watched. He was not vain, at bottom; but he took refuge in the consolations of vanity.
Then, as the rear end of the street-car passed him, its guards sweeping close to his wheels, he blew his horn which emitted a strident, offensive scream. All eyes turned; most of the people coming up 8th Street stopped as, with a leisurely motion of his right, he reached for a lever and engaged the clutch. Without a jar, without even a sound, the monster began to glide forward. Then, the last moment, a young lady, seductively painted and powdered, sweeping up her long skirt with a graceful motion of her left hand, tried to pass in front of him from the opposite sidewalk; she was evidently in a great hurry; but she had underestimated the speed of the car and shrank back just
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as she was straight in front of it. Easily, with a superior smile on his heavy lips, Jim applied the brake and waved a chivalrous hand at the young lady, implying a summons to proceed; she flashed a glance of gratitude at him and, with exaggerated hurry and trepidation, went on.
There was a clear space ahead; for the street-car and the lady had held him back; and nobody had passed him. He started and, quickly changing from one gear to the other, he took the interval at a bound; then he throttled his engine down again; and by the time he passed 9th Street he was in the very centre of the city. The peristyles of various banks rose to both sides. Here was his domain. This, he reflected, he had helped to create. There had been only one great bank when he had come, thirteen years ago; there were half a dozen now. He was known to everybody here; most of those who were walking alongside of him greeted; to them he was a great man.
Once more he had to stop. A jeweller in front of whose show-window he happened to find himself sauntered down from his open shop-door.
"Hello, Mr. Forrest," he said with a deferential note in his voice. "New car, I've been noticing. What did you do with the old one?"
"Ran it into the ditch," Jim replied with fine unconcern without turning his head. He was enjoying life once more.
The other man laughed; Jim, nodding, went on.
At the next corner he turned to the left; a few minutes later he parked his car in front of his firm's offices. He was conscious of the fact that a number of employees peered out over the heavy, dark-green velvet curtains which screened the interior from view. He lifted himself out of his seat, heavily, leisurely, basking in the civic respect which his acknowledged business ability commanded.
Then he entered the offices, nodding to the dozen typists and filing clerks whom they employed. Here, everybody knew that he was the soul of this concern; that he had planned the great enterprise; that it was he who really conducted the advertising campaigns most of which were indirect campaigns; that it was he who held that enormous
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sales-force - always an unruly body, subject to rapid enthusiasms and easy discouragements - to their tasks with an astonishing grasp of large issues and an equally astonishing sense and memory for details. In the greeting of the employees there was a flattering, quick respect which felt soothing to a bruised vanity. As, at a little gate through the railing which separated the customers' entrance from the general office properly speaking, he met Mr. McKay with his mysterious, feminine smile, he merely raised a hand in greeting, as if at once dismissing him again from his consciousness. McKay "ran" the office; he was the man for figures, for the minutiae of routine; he was a sublimated chief clerk.
Jim, still in a leisurely way, entered his private office and divested himself of his light top-coat.
Somebody knocked at the door. Without turning from where, through the pockets of his coat, he hunted for his handkerchief, he called, "Come in." And, hardly allowing time for the entrance of whoever it was who had knocked, he added, "Anything special?"
"One letter marked private, Mr. Forrest," a remarkably pretty and well-dressed girl replied deferentially.
Jim did not turn to face her. "Mail opened?"
"Yes; it is all on your desk."
"All right. I'll ring when I'm ready."
The young lady, his private stenographer, withdrew as she stepped into the centre of the room. He, shaking out his handkerchief, looked after her.
A pretty minx! He thought bitterly. For the consciousness of Jane's scathing contempt never left him for even a single minute: hatred and contempt; but it was the contempt that smarted. No, there was nothing left but business.
A letter marked private? He stepped up to his huge mahogany desk and glanced at the pile of opened letters which lay in a wire-tray in front of his chair. An unopened envelope lay on top; its address
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was type-written; in the upper left-hand corner there was a printed business head. "Travers, Newbolt, and Anderson, Attorneys-at-Law." He picked it up and turned it, looking at the post-office stamp.
Then he sat down in his chair and meticulously inserted a sterling silver stiletto under the flap. He was conscious of the fact that he had, of late, become pains-taking with mechanical trifles. He unfolded the type-written sheet and read.
"Dear Sir, - Mrs. Jane Forrest, your wife, had entrusted me with a delicate mission. It is a personal mission which does not regard the firm of which I am a member. I am to act as her representative in the negotiations with you concerning the establishment which she tells me you are desirous of settling on her. I should appreciate it if you would arrange for a private interview. Yours sincerely, A.C. Anderson."
Jim mused. She was considerate enough to let it appear as if the first step in this matter had come from him; then, why should she have chosen this pup of a young beginner? He resented having to deal with him; he resented dealing with her through a third person. A sudden glimpse came to him as he had recently seen her, himself unseen, giving a bath to that little youngster, half a year old, whom she had apparently made up her mind to treat as exclusively her own child: it had not even been shown to him; after its arrival, the trim, heavy-faced nurse had merely announced to him, "Mrs. Forrest sends to say that it is a boy." As that vision of her in the bath-room, through a door which was slightly ajar, flashed up before his mind, he felt glad that he did not have to face her while what she had called her "other conditions" was being discussed. Yet...Well, this thing spoiled the morning for him. Better have done with it. He pressed a button.
"Miss Inkster," he said - she was a sister of Dr. Inkster, the new assistant at the mental hospital - "please connect me with the office of Travers, Newbolt, and Anderson. Attend to it personally, will you?"
"In a moment, sir." And she disappeared.
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Jim reached for the receiver of the telephone which stood at his elbow and applied it to his ear, waiting.
A moment later he heard a call. "Yes. I want Mr. Anderson, personally...Eh, yes? This is Forrest. When'll it suit you?...All right. At eleven sharp." He spoke with intentional nonchalance.
Then he began to look over the mail. As far as it was addressed to the firm, this mail was, at eight o'clock in the morning, opened by the mail clerk who retained all letters that referred to mere routine matters; the remainder was then sorted over by Mr. McKay who dealt, on his own responsibility, with things which concerned banking, payments due or outstanding, and enquiries. Only such letters as had to do with the actual selling campaign went on to Jim. As he read, he made brief, pencilled notes in the margins of the sheets; mere hints from which Miss Edith Inkster who had been a "find" for him could construct his answers. Only one or two letters were put aside so that he could actually dictate his replies to them - a thing he detested to do.
Meanwhile, his mood, more or less conscious to his mind, was compounded of three principal ingredients: a remnant of his satisfaction with the morning's progress through the streets; a certain disquietude at the forthcoming interview with the young lawyer; an indefinable and ever-present reaction to the existence of Jane.
This reaction to Jane was a most disturbing factor, destined to be present with him for the rest of his life. If anyone had charged him with being in love with a woman who despised him, he would probably have been amazed; so far, at any rate, his feeling for her hardly resembled anything so definite as love. Yet the fact was that he did almost everything with a reference to her. He had bought his new car with a dim view towards impressing her. When he basked in the respect which his business success wrested from his fellow citizens, he did so in order to counterbalance her contempt. When he saw a pretty girl like Edith Inkster and looked after her, he was aware of a feeling
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of righteousness because he did not make love to her. Personally, he led an irreproachable life because, since that chaotic night in Saskatchewan, Jane had become an enormous fact in his existence. Again and again he went through the same circle of reasoning: yes, he had done things in the past which he condemned; but for which he could no longer hold himself responsible; he could not change them; the past was a callous, immovable thing against which he rebelled; he had never given it much thought before; now, he often thought of it with bitterness: why? because it had raised its head between him and Jane! Sometimes he felt that he was becoming what the world called a good man, consciously moral and almost religious though he had nothing to say for the formalism of the churches. But she would not see it; she would not give him credit for it! Then, suddenly, with a sort of shiver, something of her way of looking at things penetrated through the defences of his mind: he seemed suddenly to realise that a spiritual being not only bears the traces of its past with it; that it is that past; that it is a mere concrescence of all the states of consciousness through which it has gone at successive stages; and that, therefore, it cannot cleanse itself of anything that has polluted it in times gone-by. With a new humility, he pronounced her right and accepted her verdict on him. And again he rebelled; and he realised that there was only one defence against her encroachments upon his entity: hatred. Yet, the more she despised him - showing it by the perfect indifference, showing it even by the formal courtesy of her address when they met - the less he felt capable of defence through hatred. He sometimes even felt longing and regret for the time when, in the past, he had been quite callous; when he had acted instinctively, considerating only himself, without weighing his actions. To act thus seemed to him, then, an attribute of youth. Yet, that very youth had brought him to the present pass.
All this he did not, of course, go through day after day; but he had gone through it at frequent intervals; and the content of his
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detailed thought, with all its conclusions, remained present with him no matter what he did or where he went.
When, at eleven o'clock, he entered the chambers of the firm of lawyers and young Mr. Anderson ushered him into his private room, he was met by the same deference with which he was met in his own office. But, in the person of this young lawyer it was mixed with a subtle something, a wondering curiosity, which caused him to oppose to his probing look a sphinx-like, immovable mask. The young man opened the matter of business with an air of apology; it seemed so amazing to him. Jim - with that unconscious reference to Jane and her interests, as if desirous to shield her against any suspicion that might fall on the perfect regularity of their mutual relationship - treated the lawyer's proposals as if they were perfectly natural; as if they were the usual thing between married couples. He agreed to every one of them with a mere nod. Yes, he had already attended to that matter of four thousand dollars; yes, he would transfer title to the house to Mrs. Forrest in trust for the children. Yes, he agreed to deposit quarterly the sum of fifteen hundred dollars to her name at that-and-that bank, for the expense of running the house; yes, he would also deposit fifteen hundred dollars a year, at the same bank, in trust for Lionel F. at Vancouver. No, he would not let Mrs. Forrest assume the mortgage on the Albert Avenue property; he had long been thinking of removing that encumbrance and would do so at once. Was that all? Very well. Where were the papers? He signed.
When he left the office - which was situated in the most sumptuous business block of the city, on Fairview Avenue - he entered his car which was waiting at the curb and quickly manoeuvred it out on the west road, passing his house. There, with the open country before him, he speeded up till he was going at a rate of between fifty and sixty miles an hour. That seemed an anodyne for his nerves. Then he turned and went back to the office; his lunch he took downtown, spending a considerable part of the afternoon at his club. It was only at
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night that he went home to face Jane at the dinner table.
Such was a specimen of his day for the next few years. Nothing in his essential life changed though, of course, there were outward changes aplenty. Thus Jane restricted her expenditure in the house - when he would have liked to see her expand it - by dismissing one maid and the housekeeper and reassuming the duties of management herself; and, of course, the boy grew, and Norah began to resemble a young lady. Neither of the children ever came to him for anything; they greeted him, whenever they saw him, as "father", but in an almost formal, unsmiling way. It also goes without saying that his inner life was not really stagnant though it seemed to be so. There is no standing still in life. Periods of retardation are simply periods of preparation; but what is being prepared does not announce itself till later when, perhaps, it will break to the surface with the effect of volcanic or explosive action.
Time went by; Jim seemed absorbed in his business; and his business ran a dramatic course enough. It was characteristic for the change that was preparing itself within him that nevertheless life made on him the impression of a huge and harassing monotony.
It will be necessary at the present point to outline briefly that dramatic course. Only by doing so can we hope to make the next stage in which we see Jim intelligible to the looker-on.
The boom, as booms will do, was exhausting itself. Jim, as has been said, had foreseen that and cast an anchor to windward by slowly developing the new enterprise of his automobile show-rooms on Duke's Avenue which were conducted under the firm name of Forrest's Limited. This enterprise had been steadily expanding as the motor-driven vehicle not only replaced the horse-drawn conveyance but created the new need of rapid and comfortable transportation; it yielded an ever increasing income; Jim felt himself to be in an unassailable position. He had a business into which he could step any time he cared
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or had to leave his old firm.
As sales of lots in the great "subdivision" began to fall off, Jim felt his own work vanishing before him. Gradually the sales-force which he had assembled was being disbanded; and only in certain "strategic" places, a dozen or so in all, the firm retained representatives who were salaried men and whose work became more and more that of ordinary brokers dealing in real-estate. Jim's mind, however, finding itself deprived of its former activities, and still dimly apprehensive of the fate which awaited him, namely that of being discarded by his partners as a tool which had done its work, began to grope along a new line, planning a great coup which would not only avenge him on Leslie Carter who had always maintained an attitude of superiority, but which would also place him in a position to dictate terms to his partners when it came to the final reckoning.
So far, there had been a tacit agreement among the partners that none of them should privately compete with the firm as such by individual speculation in lots. Now, that it became clear that the firm would shortly cease to exist, at least as a large-scale operator, he would utilise his position at the heart of things in order to realise his old ambition of becoming a millionaire.
He had, from time to time, invested his considerable balances in stocks and bonds of which, in 1913, he held about four hundred thousand dollars' worth. Now that a "sales resistance" had begun to develop and to gain strength, the price of the lots "unloaded" upon the public showed a tendency to fluctuate in open trading; these fluctuations, sometimes great, sometimes small, gave him his idea.
The idea was this. He would, on his own account, buy lots in every "bear" movement; he would then, by a utilisation of his position at the heart of things, create a "bull" market and sell. Once this idea was clearly grasped, he spent a great deal of time in elaborating the details. In fact, he became so absorbed in the game that he did little
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else.
Quietly, without letting any one, not even Mr. Moffat, his banker, know, he realised on his bonds, selling them in Montreal, Toronto, Halifax, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver, and leaving the proceeds on deposit in various banks in these several cities. Then, fixing a maximum price, he gave orders to buy Stockton lots for him, carefully distributing these orders among several brokers in each of the cities in which he began to operate. In the course of a year or so he collected in his own hand the titles to about five thousand lots. Occasionally he tried to manipulate the price at which he bought by offering, simultaneously, such large blocks for sale that it was unlikely they would find buyers. Once or twice he found himself curiously thwarted in this purpose; for the whole block offered was instantly bought up; and so the transaction resulted in the opposite of what it was meant to bring about. Occasionally the fluctuations of the market were completely baffling. Yet he felt confident that in the long-run he would have things his own way; he began to operate on too large a scale for any outsider to oppose him.
Thus the year 1914 came around. Jim was preparing to sell; for, of late, there had once more been a steady upward climb in the price, rarely broken by one of those erratic "bear" movements which were as puzzling to him as similarly erratic "bull" movements had been in the past. But one day in spring he had a sudden revelation. The moment he offered a small block, a broker not in his employ offered another block twice the size; the price broke; neither block was actually sold. As it happened, he received a detailed report on the proceedings; and he instantly saw that some other operator was watching him and consciously frustrating his designs.
He went to Winnipeg and talked the matter over with the manager of a private detective agency. They sent a man to Calgary to investigate; two weeks later he received the report that the principal of the opposing brokers was Mr. Leslie Carter, his partner.
That, of course, explained everything. Jim had thought that he
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was operating on a sufficiently large scale to be able to manipulate the market; but Carter could operate on a vastly larger scale. Strange to say, Jim summarised the effect this news had on him by saying, "Just like Leslie to double-cross his own partners." He did not see at once that Carter was doing only what he himself had been doing for some time. Perhaps, what made it seem reprehensible in Carter while in himself it seemed merely shrewd, was the fact that Carter owned a half interest in the firm which without his money would never have been started, while Jim owned thirty percent and McKay the remainder of twenty.
Jim came to the conclusion that there was only one thing to do, namely to hold on and to sell very gradually, perhaps lot by lot.
Then the world exploded in the European war.
Carter promptly called a meeting of the partners in his firm and coolly proposed that they dissolve. McKay assented at once. Jim, seeing that he was outvoted, had to choose one of two alternatives: to agree or to buy his partners out. He saw the futility of the latter course. He agreed without a word.
So he would have to fall back on the automobile business, meanwhile holding on to his lots till the war - which no doubt would be of short duration - was over. From the liquidation of the firm he received - as if in mockery - in fee-simple, thirty percent of the small block of lots which remained unsold.
He held on for a year, for two years, watching things "going to pieces"; watching also, from a distance, a new activity at his house where Jane organised meetings of a new kind - Red Cross meetings, sewing and knitting circles, and similar things.
The war went on; less and less people bought cars.
One day, he found himself faced with the necessity of either defaulting on the promised quarterly payments to his wife - eighteen hundred and seventy-five dollars - or selling out his lots. For the first time in many years his thought went back to that other woman,
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Mrs. J.A.F. at Vancouver. He had had no dealings with her: Jane had handled the money. He could, therefore, not tell whether default on that payment involved any danger or not. But the mere thought of such danger made him lose his head.
He issued orders to all his brokers to sell "at the market". Already there was, as a consequence of the gathering momentum of the war, hardly any market left. The sudden release of his enormous block made the price tumble to next to nothing. He realised a trifle over two thousand dollars, less than one half percent of what he had put into it. When he saw exactly where he stood, financially, he, as a business man, went himself "to pieces". A single piece of good luck came to him. He had acquired a huge repair shop down in the river district of the city; this shop had lain almost idle since the beginning of the war; he was able to sell it at a good figure for a munitions factory which was to be erected with government help.
Before the next quarterly payment became due, he made up his mind to speak
to Jane.
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