The Wayfarers Part 4

With his arm around her, supporting, guiding, almost carrying her, she essayed to walk. Shaking at each step pitifully at first, then growing stronger, with one hand locked in his, she found herself ascending the rocky path of the hillside with dark moving shapes beside her. The lights ahead disappeared in the mouth of a long tunnel into which the light was walled solidly. He was leading her along the railroad-ties. As she stumbled from time to time, she became formlessly conscious that he winced and caught his breath involuntarily while trying to keep her from falling with that strong grip. The confused impression of his suffering grew finally so intense upon her, and seemed in her weak condition such a terrible load to bear, that she wept helplessly.

He felt her shaking, and stopped short, looking back at her anxiously.

"What's the matter?"

"I'm hurting you."

"Not more than I can stand. Don't stop to talk about it; we mustn't fall behind. Hold my hand fast."

The railroad-ties stretched beyond the tunnel. The rain met the wayfarers full in the face. The dark, tramping, struggling forms were all ahead with the drowning lanterns. The walk had become an incessant, endless thing, dreadful as a journey through the inferno, but for the protecting, enfolding clasp of that guiding hand-a strong, clean touch, that subtly conveyed warmth to the blood and courage to the heart. With her palm pressed to that of this unseen friend, Dosia felt clearly that she could have walked blindfolded to the end of the world, sure that he knew the path and that it led to some unknown good. They seemed to grow as one in the unspoken comforting of trust.

Their feet were on a road now. There was a sudden clatter of horses'

hoofs through the rush of wind and rain. A wagon stopped beside them.

Dosia found herself lifted in and laid on a pile of straw. There were others lifted in also; then the horses jogged on with their load, carrying her away from the friend whose face she had not seen, and with whom she had exchanged no word of farewell.

She heard nothing of him in that long day at the farmhouse, where she lay waiting in a half stupor for the cousin who had been sent for. But through her life long that hand-clasp stood to Theodosia Linden for all the high, protecting care, the strength and gentleness, the fine, unselfish thought that a woman looks for in a man, and the finding of which is her greatest good on earth.

CHAPTER FOUR

It was a bright, fresh morning in November, the day after Dosia had begun her journey, that Justin Alexander started out to take possession of the office and factory. The departure from his old place was a thing of the past, the preparations for entering into the new business were at an end. Every evening during the last month had been taken up in consultations with Leverich and Martin, and every other spare minute had been given to looking over the furnis.h.i.+ngs and mechanism of the factory and visiting or writing letters to people connected with the project. It was sheer joy to him to exercise a grasp of intellect hitherto perforce in abeyance, and he did not see the frequent glance of satisfaction which his two backers often gave each other across the table as he propounded his views. The people in the old place had been good to him; his leaving had been celebrated with a dinner and honest expressions of regret from his former companions. The only one he had been really sorry to leave was Callender; it would seem odd not to have him at his elbow any more.

But all the preliminaries were finished, and he was master now. For a man who has barely lived each month upon his earnings, to have fifty thousand dollars in the bank subject to his order is a fairly pleasurable sensation. Justin had always inveighed against the idea that character, like other products, is controlled by wealth, but he insensibly put on a bolder front as he b.u.t.toned himself into his overcoat and walked from the ferry to his office. The morning had certainly developed a larger manner in him. The ease of affluence is first a.s.similated in thought, which acts upon the muscles. Justin did not know that the buoyancy of a golden self-confidence had communicated itself to the very way in which he nodded to a friend or shouldered his closed umbrella, or that his step upon the sidewalk had a new ring in it. It is the trans.m.u.tation of metal into the blood-the revivifying power which the seekers after the philosopher's stone recognized so thoroughly.

He had come to town on an earlier train than he was accustomed to take, and the people whom he pa.s.sed were not familiar to him. There was a newness to the bright day, even in that, that marked the novel undertaking; the air was cold, but the light was golden. Men went by with yellow chrysanthemums pinned to their coats and a fresh and eager look upon their faces. The clang of the cable-cars had an enlivening condensation of sound in distinction to the hard rumble and jar of the wagons, but all the noises were inspiriting as part of a great and concentrated movement in which the day awoke to an enormous energy-an energy so pervading that even inanimate objects seemed to reflect it, as a mirror reflects the expression of those who look upon it.

His way lay farther up-town than he had been wont to go, above the Wall Street line of work and into that great city of wholesale industries which stretches northward. The streets at this hour were new to him and filled with new sights and sounds: the apple-stands at the corners, being put in order for the day, the sidewalk venders with their small wares, were fewer and of a different order from those he had been used to seeing. The pa.s.sers-by were different. There were a great many girls in bright hats and shabby jackets, who talked incessantly as they walked, and disappeared down side streets which looked dark and cold and damp in contrast to the bright glitter of Broadway. He turned into one of these streets himself, and walked eastward toward the river.

As it appeared to him to-day, so had it never appeared to him before, and never would again. He might have been in a foreign city, so keenly did he notice every detail. The street was filled at first with drays, loading up with huge boxes from the big warehouses on each side, at the entrances of which men in s.h.i.+rt-sleeves pulled and hauled at the ropes of freight-elevators; then he came to grimy buildings in which was heard the whir of machinery, and he caught a glimpse of men, half stripped, moving backward and forward with strange motions. From across the street came the busy rush of sewing-machines as some one threw up a window and looked out, and a row of girls pa.s.sed into view with heads bent forward and bodies swaying shoulder to shoulder; beyond were men bending over, pressing, and the steam from the hot irons on the wet cloth poured out around them; and all these toilers seemed no beaten-down wage-earners, but the glad chorus in his own drama of work. Between the factories there began to show neglected narrow brick dwelling-houses, with iron railings and mean, compressed doorways, fronted by garbage-barrels; bas.e.m.e.nt saloons; tiny groceries with bread in the windows and wilted vegetables on the sidewalk, where women with shawled heads were grouped; attenuated furnis.h.i.+ng-stores for men, with an ingratiating proprietor in the doorway. In the midst of this district, taking up a salient corner, was the large and ornate building of a patent-medicine concern, towering high into the air, and seeming to preach with lofty benevolence to those below that to be truly respectable and happy you must be rich.

Beyond this the scene repeated itself with slight differences-the houses were not so many, and the factories gave place to warehouses again. The influence of those tall masts at the foot of the street began to be felt, although the signs as yet did not speak of oak.u.m or s.h.i.+ps'

stores. Among the warehouses, however, was one brick dwelling that attracted Justin's particular attention, wedged in as it was between the taller buildings on either side. It varied from the others he had seen by the depths of its squalor. The stone steps were defaced and broken; the windows as well as the arched fan-light over the entrance-a relic of bygone days-had only a few jagged pieces of gla.s.s left; and a black hallway was revealed to view through the open door. The windows were so near the street that it was easy to see into the front room-an interior so sordid and forbidding that Justin involuntarily paused to view it.

The room was empty. The walls had been covered once with a brown-flowered paper which now hung from them in great patches, showing the green mold beneath. Under the black marble mantelpiece, thickly covered with white dust, was a grate piled high with ashes; ash-heaps stood also out on the floor, flanked with empty black bottles and broken remnants of furniture. In the background was a hideous black haircloth sofa. Heaven only knows with what past it had been a.s.sociated to give that creeping feeling in the veins of the sober and practical man who gazed at it; it seemed the outward and visible sign of ruin. The unseen and abnormal still keeps its irrelevant and unexplained hold on the human intelligence, with no respect of persons. It gave Justin a momentary chill to think of pa.s.sing this each day. Then he looked up, half turning as he felt that some one was observing him, and met the eye of a man who was walking on the other side of the street; he remembered suddenly that they had been almost keeping pace together since he had turned into this street from Broadway.

The smile of this unknown foot-farer spoke of a conscious comrades.h.i.+p which surprised Justin, who held himself a little more stiffly and hurried forward at a quicker pace to reach his destination, which was now in sight. His eye approved the new paint and the air of decent reserve which appertained to the building; the new sign at the side of the hallway bore the legend of the typometer, with his name conspicuously above. As Justin entered he turned again involuntarily, and the man on the other side of the street, who was himself on the point of entering a hallway, turned also. This time Justin smiled in response. The opposite building, as he knew, bore a sign much resembling his own, with the name of Angevin L. Cater upon it; the air of proprietors.h.i.+p bespoke Mr. Cater himself. The meeting gave a welcome pleasure to rivalry, and brought back the dew of the morning.

The offices were in the second story, his own especial one railed off near the front windows and covered with a new green rug. To one side were the compartments of his subordinates and the open desk-room of the lower clerks; beyond these was the packing department of the factory; from above was heard the ceaseless whirring and clicking of machinery.

The larger parts of the instrument-the copper tubing and the steel bars-were bought in the rough, so to speak, and shaped to their proper functions here, where, also, the more intricate portions were manufactured.

The undertaking, briefly told, rested on the merits of a timing-machine invented and patented some years before in Connecticut, and sold to a manufacturer there, who had taken it as a side issue and failed properly to exploit it. The right to it had changed hands several times, during which it was pushed with varying energy, being finally domiciled in New York. In the meantime other machines, differing slightly in construction, had also been patented and put on the market in various cities, none of them with any great success until the present moment.

Then the public began to wake up suddenly to the value of timing-machines, and Leverich and Martin, organizers of corporations, seized the opportunity of buying all the rights to the Warford Standard Typometer-so called because, in addition to measuring stated periods of elapsed time, it mechanically produced a type-written statement of it.

The Warford, as the first invention, had some merits never quite attained by the later ones, in the eyes of its present purchasers. They said all it needed now was push.

Thousands of little books ent.i.tled "Sixty Seconds with the Typometer"

had been sent abroad in the last month, setting forth with attractive brevity, and in large black print that could be read without gla.s.ses, Why you wanted a typometer, Which was the best one to buy, and Where you could buy it. Long articles advertising it appeared in the daily papers, in which the sales of the machine reached an effective aggregate.

The business, in fact, showed signs of seriously forging ahead under the renewed efforts of Leverich and Martin, and their portrayal of its future was within the bounds of possibility. The foreman of the factory was one of the original workmen, and some of the men had also been a.s.sociated with the machine for several years, so that the running-gear ran with fair smoothness; the head bookkeeper and manager, an elderly man, had also remained a fixture through all the fluctuations, and had been the great dependence of the new purchasers; if he had possessed the requisite mental capacity, it is doubtful whether Justin's services would have been needed at all.

As Justin went up to the factory floor on this morning, the foreman stepped out from among the machinery to offer his greeting; he was a slight man with deep-set, swiftly observant eyes and a mouth that drooped at the corners; his sleeves were rolled up over his thin, muscular arms.

To Justin's pleasant good morning he responded, with a quick gleam of pleasure in his eyes:

"Good morning, sir. I'm glad to see you here so early. You've perhaps heard of the big order that came in last night from Cincinnati."

"No," said Justin; "I came up here first. That's good news, Bullen."

"Yes, sir. I've made a list of the stock we'll need as soon as we can get it in, I sent it down to your desk, sir, a moment ago. I'll want to see you later, Mr. Alexander, about taking on more men."

"Very well," said Justin. His step was jubilant as he descended to the office, to be greeted with the same congratulatory news from Harker, the a.s.sistant manager.

"And I think these letters mean more orders, Mr. Alexander," he said.

They did. The next mail brought more. As Justin opened them, one by one, it was impossible not to feel the sharp thrill of mastery, of gratified ambition. It was his efforts in the new line which were bringing in this first harvest; all the time he had been outwardly listening to Martin and Leverich, his mind had run steadily on its own gearing, he had weighed their propositions and conclusions in a secret balance. He meant, within due limits, to conduct this business as he thought best.

If orders came in every day like this-and why should they not? if not now, at least in the near future--

The atmosphere of the office was festal that day, imbued with the smell of fresh varnish and new rugs. The complications that arise later on as one gets down into the solid experience of an undertaking, hampered by the work of yesterday and the future work of to-morrow, were beautifully absent. Everything was clear and possible; everyone was busy, and the master busiest of all. To write out checks for money which has been furnished by some one else is a keen pleasure at the first blush; the store and the coffers seem illimitable to him who has not earned it.

Afterwards--

"By the way, Harker," he asked once, in an interval of waiting, "what is the concern across the street?"

"It's much the same as ours, Mr. Alexander."

Justin looked up, surprised. "I never knew that."

"Oh, Mr. Cater calls his machine by a different name; it's the Timoscript. But it amounts to the same thing, after a fas.h.i.+on-not as good as ours, by a long shot; it clogs horribly after you've worked it for a while. They've got one in the billiard-room around the corner."

"And this Mr. Cater-has he been in the business long?"

"He was here when we came, two years ago."

Justin said no more. He went out later to search for a decent place for luncheon in this unfamiliar city, and was hardly surprised, when he seated himself by a little white table in a small, rather dark room, to look up and recognize opposite him the smiling face of Mr. Angevin L.

Cater.

"I was wondering how soon you'd find this place out," said the latter.

He spoke with a Southern drawl. "You don't get a very large repertoire here, but what they do give you is sort of catchy. They fry well, and that's an art. And it's clean."

"Yes," said Justin shortly. It was his untoward fate to be usually spoken to by strangers, and he had a much more social feeling toward those who let him alone, but even the shadows of this golden day were translucent.

"I reckon you know who I am-Angevin L. Cater. Angevin's a queer name, isn't it? French-several generations back."

To this Justin made no reply, conceiving that none was required. After a moment Mr. Cater began again:

"Perhaps you think it's strange-my speaking to you in this way. Of course I've seen you coming to Number 270, and knew that you were taking charge there, but that's not the whole of it. I'm from Georgia-got a wife and two children and a mother-in-law in Balderville now." He paused to give this impressive fact full weight. "You've some relatives there, haven't you, by the name of Linden?"

"My wife has," said Justin, with new attention.