Samuel Merwin

“ Babcock was not looking at the sky. His soul was tuned to lower things—to lumber, for instance, heaps of it, piles of it, rows of it, stretched for hundreds of yards along the river, and across the peninsula, and along the edge of the harbour. The mills were silent; the watchmen were not to be seen; the only sign of life was the smoke curling from the funnels of the Number One, where Robbie MacGregor was dozing on the engine-room bench and hourly growing fatter. Six million feet of lumber greeted the eye of the man from Chicago, as he looked—and looked. ”

“ Halloran; what future have you here? Even if you succeed Mr. Higginson? You can never be more than he is, if you stay here. But once put a man of your caliber in a place that's big enough for him and he'll expand—he'll fill it—he'll reach out and up. In ten years, perhaps, you'd be at the head of the business. But you ought to be at the head now—then, in ten years, you'd be in Chicago or New York, with your finger on the pulse of the financial world. ”

“ And while Halloran went over to the wharf to direct the work, Crosman was kept busy giving out time-checks and cant-hooks and sending man after man across the yards.
Then she was in the harbour, was slipping up to the wharf; the engine-room bell jingled, and the propeller churned the water; the lines were thrown out and caught by eager hands, and the Higginson No. 2 lay motionless at the wharf, her deck piled high with yellow hemlock and pine. The labourers swarmed over the rail and went at the work with the spirit of men who know what hunger means. ”

“ Before them, a little way, was the white circle thrown by the electric light over the bridge; behind were the great dim piles of lumber with the narrow alleys between, now black as the sky, and carpeted as they were with chips and shavings, as silent beneath the foot as velvet. The only noise came, in the intervals between words, from the two steamers that lay breathing softly alongside the wharf.
“What you doin' on watch, Du Bois? Changed your job?”
“No; Mr. Halloran asked me to go on to-night. He says it's time we had some good men down here.” ”

“ Something about those phrases that had been floating in Halloran's mind for weeks, “giving away lumber,” “selling at a loss,” “selling to our customers,” stuck in his thoughts now. He sat there, leaning back in his swivel-chair gazing at the rows of pigeon-holes—Crosman still leaning on the desk—while his mind sailed off to Pewaukoe; he saw again the great yards of the Bigelow Company crowded full of lumber—the mills droning ceaselessly, the scores of men swarming over the work, the steamer hurrying the cargo—and he thought again “all this is to be sold below cost to our customers.” ”

“ Number Six disappeared in the dark of the road, bound for bed; and Halloran pulled his sweater up around his neck and fell to pacing the veranda. The surf was booming on the beach below; the rain was cutting in toward the land. Out beyond the breakers were lights—a line of them along the horizon.
The time had come to look ahead. In another six months his college course would be completed; his playtime would be over; realities lay beyond—downright realities that surround a man, that show clear through him, that bear him down and under unless he be made of stronger stuff than they. ”

“ Thriving lumber cities on the lake would be facing ruin—their reason for being gone with the last timber—or casting about to attract manufacturers or to cultivate beets—anything to stop the drain on their vitality as the restless lumbermen should turn west or south for new lands where they could found new cities and begin the problem anew.
In ten days it was all in, the six million and odd feet of boards and timber. And as Halloran walked down to the bridge one night and leaned on the railing and looked over the broad piles he was nervous and depressed. ”

“ They went down the stairs two and two, Mrs. Craig and the Captain, Halloran and George, and walked toward the lake, through the vicious quiet of the side streets, through the merriment of North Clark Street, through the sober, comfortable region of stone houses and big churches—on to the imposing private hotel where dwelt the Le Ducs.
“I'm afraid, father,” whispered Mrs. Craig, “that I'm not exactly dressed for this.”
“Nonsense! My daughter needn't be ashamed to go anywhere. I wouldn't give that for a girl that wouldn't be glad to see her own mother, no matter if she came in a sunbonnet. ”

“ Babcock walked swiftly out toward the Wauchung bridge. It was a crisp, invigorating breeze, with the strength of the lake in it, and a faint odour of pine. Men grow rugged and hardy in this region, whether they follow blaze-marks or mariner's compass. No malaria oozes from the dry white sand; the children rather draw from it the sap that makes the pine tree tall and sound. ”

“ If a syndicate was to be floated, if a mysterious new combine was to be organized, what so important to its success as the name of G. Hyde Bigelow somewhere behind the venture—what so necessary in the somewhat difficult task of making it plain that paper is gold, that water is a solid, as the indorsement of G. Hyde Bigelow & Company? If Bigelow invested largely in Kentucky coal lands, what more reasonable than an immediate boom in Kentucky coal—and that men should speak sagely on the street of the immense value of the new mines? ”

“ There was one imposing building of granite and red bricks on the business street—a glance showed the name of Higginson over the entrance. Two large mills stood by the river, surrounded by piles of lumber on the land, fronted by rafts of logs in the water, sending out their droning hum all day long (and frequently all night long) ; inside, men were bustling and pushing in the effort to keep up with the drive of work outside, the long runways were active with men and with moving lumber—and on each of the mills was the name Higginson. ”

“ And what he had to offer was work, little else—hard work, work for head and hands, much thinking of the business, little thinking of self: the spirit that would live for the business, that would take its pride in the quality of the Higginson work, that would strive, as he had striven, to make the name of Higginson a synonym for honest work, work done on time, work done a little better than the contract demanded. Where could he find a man like this? ”

“ Coal-wagons rumbled through the yards to the wharves, bringing food for the furnaces. Men went about grinning and joking and slapping backs heartily, and swapping yams about the Old Gentleman in his palmy days, ten and twenty years before. Robbie MacGregor appeared, fatter than ever after his enforced idleness, growling at all the known works of the Creator, and refusing to speak civilly to any one until he had let himself into his greasy blue overalls and was free to finger his levers, and dress down the oilers, and swear gloriously at the new hands in the stoke-room. ”

“ They didn't know themselves when they left.”
A moment more and the door had closed and Halloran was down on the sidewalk. He turned aimlessly up the street. Gone East!—and no word for him! Perhaps his letters had not even reached her. Why had he not come straight back to Evanston that same week and claimed his answer? What an invertebrate creature he was, anyway! What a gloomy evening! How the shadows of the maples and elms closed down on his thoughts! The arc lamps at the corners, the long row of houses glowing with light, all smiled at him and drove him deeper into the gloom. Gone East! ”

“ I can imagine better, too, how you have suffered—how I have made you suffer—and now that there are times when my life seems clouded and unreal—some days and weeks even, when I look back I can hardly remember what I have said or done, or how I have lived—when I think of this, and think how my life seems to be slipping away from me, a little at a time, I feel that I just must come back to you. Of course, nothing can be undone, nothing can be lived over. ”

“ And at ten o'clock, while Le Duc was hearing sharp, straight-out words in the mahogany office, the heads of nearly a score of Michigan lumber firms were gathering in the city office of the Corrigans, not far away. Hard-headed old fellows they were, most of them—men with slouch hats and unkempt beards, men who wore high boots beneath their bagging trousers, and swore as they talked and breathed. And there they waited for Bigelow, to ask him where their money had gone and how he proposed to get it back. ”

“ Promptly at eight the doorbell rang and Halloran was called down to the parlour. Entering, he found Crosman, grinning feverishly; and over in the corner, with her back turned, looking at a picture, was Mamie. He looked from one to the other until Mamie turned around and disclosed a very red face. Still no one spoke. The two now gazed appealingly at each other, and finally it was Mamie who broke the silence with a preliminary giggle.
“I guess—I guess you can congratulate us, Mr. Halloran.” ”

“ Bigelow, carrying the weight of millions on his shoulders, dealing hourly with questions of importance, greater or less, to the whole commercial world, had no time now—kind as he may have been in the more leisurely past—to waste on trivial matters. He had given the woman a chance; was he to blame for her failure? Did “not potential success exist within every human being? Was any man to blame for the shipwreck of another? ”

“ Higginson was playing clock at the centre-table. She was a wiry little woman, capable of great exertion and showing remarkable endurance when set on some purpose, such as a shopping trip to Chicago; but suffering at other times from languor, and low spirits, and in constant need of medical attendance.
She had never been able to understand why “Mr. H.” should insist on burying himself in the lumber business, when he was plenty rich enough to sell out and take her and her daughter forth from the slumberous quiet of Wauchung into the stir of the world. ”

“ Strains of dance music floated out over board fences that were gaudy with posters, out over evergreen hedges that thrived in green tubs. All the world was gay to-night; all the world was in the mood to sit at white tables under the trees and dine on the best of German fare, to tip back and listen to German music from German orchestras, to toss the waiter half a dollar; life was gay, life was jolly ”

“ Before we think of the question of going forward or backward as a combination we must settle the question of our mutual confidence as individuals. A shadow has been cast upon this confidence; and you know, every man of you—” the graybeards, some startled, others condescending, looked at him; Bigelow looked at him, too—“You know that our whole structure must rest on complete confidence in the men we choose to direct our affairs. If this is removed, we can't do business a day.” ”

“ Babcock, a young business man who seemed to be going in heartily for charity work at this time. Le Duc was talking earnestly with Halloran. Apparently a momentous question had arisen in his life, and the young man beside him, who had had plenty of experience in earning his own living, who could steer a life-boat in a boiling sea, whose generalship alone, it was conceded by one party in college, had won the Chicago game that fall, was, he felt sure, the best counselor to be found in the difficult task of guiding a life straight toward its destiny. ”

“ Babcock paused to gather his forces, then settled back in his chair.
“I feel like telling you, Mr. Halloran, that you've done a mighty neat piece of work. To tell the truth, it's been a surprise to us to see how well you've carried this business. Your fame now”—he leaned forward and dropped his voice to a confidential pitch—“your fame now, however, rests even more on the way you've stuck to your employer's interests than on the cleverness of what you've done. There are clever men enough, but down in Chicago we don't see any too many honest ones.” ”

“ And so Halloran, who had promised to deliver the lumber by the morning of the fourteenth, and who would have, taken the steamer down himself rather than give Bigelow the pleasure of delaying him fifteen minutes, went on with the work of preparation.
At three o'clock that afternoon they were off, with one man in the wheel-house, a quartet of clumsy deckhands in the stoke-hole, a devoutly profane fat man in the engine-room, and one combined lookout and deckhand by the name of Halloran—every man of them facing a solid twelve hours on duty. ”

“ Through gloomy Kinzie Street walked Halloran, when he had reached the river district, and after him, half a block or more, came the thin legs. He got to the bridge by the Northwestern Station, crossed over, and looked around for a means of descent to the wharves. After a moment he saw in the shadow of a brick building—a building that was a South Water Street market in front, a factory in the upper half and a tug-office behind—what seemed to be a break in the railing. ”

“ The sight of a newspaper spread wide before the face of the only occupant of an orchestra seat could not disturb Apples this evening; the glimpse of two newsboys in the gallery, aiming with peanuts at the bald head behind the newspaper, could not so much as ruffle him; for golden-haired Mary, dee-doodle-dee-fairy, dee-iddle-dee-airy, ta raddle-my-own. Very blithe was Apples, strangely blithe for an underpaid chaser in the most despondent theatre on the North Side. ”

“ For a short space they were silent—this young woman who, with the buoyancy of youth, with sanguineness hardly justified by the facts of the black city that was pulsing around her, had plunged into its darkness the feeble light of her hopes—and this young man who knew so well the difficulty of climbing up from sloth and incompetency and vicious ignorance that he was willing to help. ”

“ Within the combination, prosperity in plenty, but always subject to the guiding judgment of G. Hyde Bigelow, hence a certain loss of identity and of control to self-respecting heads of companies; without the combination, a fight to a finish against the combined power and momentum of Bigelow & Company and the “Lumber Trust.” Just how great was this momentum no one exactly knew: but Bigelow was a magic name, no doubt of it.
“You have gone over it, have you, Mr. Halloran?” said Mr. Higginson. ”