VI The Awakening of Charles Edward
Ford went directly to his hotel from the meeting in the Broad Street board room, paid his bill, and had himself shot up to the fifth floor to prepare for a swift retreat from the scene of his humiliating defeat. It was hardly in keeping with his boast of persistence that he should suffer himself to be thus routed by a single reverse, however crushing. But in a world where every problem contains its human factor, red wrath accounts for much that is otherwise unaccountable.
Ford was thoroughly and unreasoningly angry and disgusted when he began to fling his belongings into the small steamer trunk, and it was only natural that he should turn with a little brow-wrinkling of resentment when, a little later, Mr. Charles Edward Adair, following his card up to the fifth floor front, lounged good-naturedly into the room.
“Beg pardon, I’m sure,” said the intruder easily. “Didn’t know you were busy. I thought maybe you’d like to know the effect of your little double-headed bombshell, and I couldn’t be sure Uncle Sidney would take the trouble to tell you.”
Ford made no effort to conceal his contempt for the financial gods.
“I don’t imagine it will take you very long to tell it,” he retorted. “Nothing short of a combined earthquake and volcanic eruption would have any effect upon that crowd.”
“Oh, but you’re wrong!” protested Adair. “That shot of yours with the semiannual summary for a projectile stirred ’em up good. It seems that Uncle Sidney and Hertford and Morelock—they’re the executive committee, you know—have had the auditor’s figures for some days, but they hadn’t thought it necessary to harrow the feelings of the other members of the board with the cataclysmic details. So there was a jolly row. Magnus wanted to know, top-loftily, why a small official from the farther end of the system should be the first to bring the news; and Mackie was so wrathy that he inadvertently put the hot end of his cigar in his mouth. Even Connolly woke up enough to say that it was blanked bad politics.”
“But nothing came of it?” said Ford, hope rising in spite of the negative query.
“No; nothing but a general hand-out of pretty sharp talk. What was needed right then was a unifier—somebody who could take command and coax or bully the scrapping factions into line. Magnus tried it, but he’s too smooth. Brewster was the man, but he has too many other and bigger irons in the fire to care much about P. S-W. Connolly could have done it if the scrap had been a political split, but he was out of his element.”
“Humph!” growled Ford. “It didn’t occur to me that there were any differences of opinion to be reconciled. The entire board sat on my proposition—as a unit.”
Adair laughed with imperturbable good-humor.
“The factions were there, just the same. You see, it’s like this: Brewster and Magnus and two or three more are pretty well-to-do, and their holdings in P. S-W. don’t cut much of a figure with them, one way or another. The others have more stock in the company, and fewer millions. When the jangle came, Brewster and the heavy men said, ‘Oh, let it go; it isn’t worth bothering with.’ Naturally, the little fellows, with more to lose and less money-nerve, said, ‘No.’”
“It spells the same word for me, in any event,” Ford commented, and went on pitching things into his steamer trunk.
Adair got upon his feet and strolled away to the window.
When he turned again to face the beaten one he said:
“If I wasn’t so infernally lazy, Mr. Ford, I more than half believe that I could pull this thing off for you, myself. But that is the curse of being born with too much money. I can take a plunge into business now and then—I’ve done it. But my best friend couldn’t bet on me two days in succession.”
Ford looked up quickly.
“Then don’t put your hand to this plow, Mr. Adair. I’ll be frank with you. I can fit the mechanical parts of this scheme of mine together, so that they will run true and do business. But I, or any man in my place, would have to have solid backing here in New York; a board that would be as aggressive as a handful of rebels fighting for life, and every man of it determined to win out or smash something. Mr. Magnus spoke of the opposition we should encounter from our competitors. He might have said more. What the Transcontinental, for example, wouldn’t do to obliterate us needn’t be catalogued. How do you suppose the present P. S-W. board would fare in such a fight?”
The youngest member of the flouted board laughed again.
“You mustn’t say in your wrath that all men are liars—or cowards. There is plenty of fight in our crowd; and plenty of money, too, if you could only get it sufficiently scared.”
“I’ve done my best,” said Ford, slamming the lid of the trunk and buckling the straps vigorously. “The next time I’ll find my market first and build my scheme afterward.”
“Well, if I can say it without offense, I’m honestly sorry for you, Mr. Ford; you’ve been butchered to make a Broad Street holiday,” said Adair, lounging toward the door. “You are going back to the West, I suppose?”
“Yes.”
“What line?”
“Pennsylvania; five-ten this afternoon.”
“That is a long time between drinks. Suppose you come up to the club and have luncheon with me?”
Ford hesitated, watch in hand.
“I was about to lie to you, Mr. Adair, and plead business; but I shan’t. I’ll tell you the plain truth. I’m too sore just now to be any good fellow’s good company.”
“Which is precisely the reason why I asked you,” laughed the golden youth. “Come on; let’s go now. You can take it out on me as much as you like, you know. I shan’t mind.”
But the club luncheon ignored the business affair completely, as Adair intended it should. Ford came out of the shell of disappointment with the salad course, and by way of reparation for his former attitude talked rather more freely of himself than he was wont to do on such short acquaintance with any one. The young millionaire met him quite half-way on this road to a better understanding, contrasting with mild envy Ford’s well-filled, busy life with his own erratic efforts at time-killing.
“You make me half sorry for myself,” he said, when they went to the smoking-room to light their cigars. “It’s no less than a piteous misfortune when a fellow’s father has beaten all the covers of accomplishment for him.”
Ford could laugh now without being bitter.
“The game isn’t all corralled, even for you, Mr. Adair. There was excellent good shooting for you in that directors’ meeting this morning, but you wouldn’t take the trouble.”
“That’s the fact,” was the easy-going rejoinder. “That is just what my sister is always telling me—that I won’t take the trouble. And yet I do take the trouble to begin a lot of things; only they never seem worth while after a few days’ dip into them.”
“Pick out bigger ones,” suggested Ford. “My trouble is just the other way about; I am always tackling things that are worlds too big for me—just as I have this time.”
“It isn’t too big for you, Mr. Ford. It was too big for Colbrith, Magnus, et al. And, besides, you’re not going to give it up. You’ll drop off in Chicago, hunt up some meat-packer or other Croesus, and land your new railroad independently of the P. S-W.”
It was a measure of the sincerity of Ford’s liking for his host when he said: “That little shot of mine at your colleagues was merely a long bluff. If my scheme can’t be worked with the P. S-W., it can’t well be worked without it. We are lacking the two end-links in the chain—which I could forge. But my two end-links without the middle one wouldn’t attract anybody.”
It was quite late in the afternoon when they left the club, and Ford had no more than time to check his luggage and get to his train. He wondered a little when Adair went with him to the ferry, and was not ungrateful for the hospitality which seemed to be directed toward a lightening of the burden of failure. But Adair’s word of leave-taking, flung across the barrier when the chains of the landing-stage were rattling to their rise, was singularly irrelevant.
“By the way, Mr. Ford; what time did you say your train would reach Chicago?”
“At eight forty-five to-morrow evening,” replied the beaten one; and then the boat swung out of its slip and the retreat without honor was begun.