Now that the full awareness of his reprieve came to Joseph Baynes, tears gathered in the corners of his eyes.
“Steve, Steve! Do you know what I was thinking before you came? I had decided to kill myself. There was nothing else to do.”
“That would be very helpful for Elsa and your children,” replied Stephen calmly.
“It would. She would have gone home to her brothers and sisters in Philadelphia. I quarreled with them all, years ago.”
Stephen thought this over, then he said, “It’s been my observation that no widow is welcome among brothers and sisters, especially if they have money, as I know Elsa’s relatives have.” Stephen was concerned, for the flush of joy had gone from Joseph Baynes’s face; it was pale and exhausted again. His right hand, on the table, kept jumping as if pulled by strings.
“I suppose I’m a failure, Steve. I thought I had founded something completely sound and profitable. After all, as they say, we’re expanding, and there’s no limit to the expansion. And I do serve communities where your company, and the Capital’s, don’t go; I have my franchise, and no one can take it away from me unless I go bankrupt. And then I discover that I’m a miserable businessman. I’m not going to plead hard luck; that’s the coward’s way. Well, maybe I am a coward just the same.
“My lines aren’t paying, Steve. And I don’t know how to make them pay. I can’t charge higher fares; the farmers, and the people in poor circumstances in the villages and in country employment—”
“You certainly can charge higher prices! Don’t be a fool, Joe. The farmers? The people in the villages? Why, Joe, they’ve been coining money during the war! They always do. It’s the so-called little people who make the cash during wars in fistfuls. They know how; a dollar here, a dollar there, new money coming in all the time. Perhaps the towns and the cities didn’t do so well, except for the larger manufacturers who made things for the army. But the little fellows, in the out-of-the-way places—their expenses don’t increase, they have nothing on which to spend money, and what comes to them they keep in iron fingers. They live on a patch of land or a farm, and they eat as usual, buy nothing, and hide it all away in local banks or in mattresses and teapots. And, of course, they whine if anyone raises necessary prices on them! Aren’t they the unimportant folk, hidden away, living their ‘modest’ little lives? Who are the big men who would want to make them pay adequately for what is offered them? It’s a sin; it’s a crime! It’s the same old human story, Joe, my friend.”
Joseph listened with some surprise. “Steve, I never heard you talk this way before.”
“I’m learning. I’m learning!” said Stephen grimly. “I learn every day. So, my friend, you are going to raise your fares immediately. You are going to balance your books properly. You are going to make a decent profit. I’m not suggesting you gouge, but you have as much a right to make a living as any farmer or villager on your lines. More so, in fact. You’ve supplied the brains and the equipment and the hardest work. They won’t boycott you! How could they? They haven’t any alternative means of transportation. Go over your books all the rest of today, Joe, and all tonight. Consider what would be just and fair profit to you. And then arrange your fares accordingly.”
He waited. Joseph was frowning, and his eyes were glittering with excitement.
“As we expand, Joe, your lines will become more and more traveled, and important. There’ll be traveling all the time. People move in an air of prosperity, even if they just move in the accustomed places. It’s a kind of ferment.”
Joseph picked up one of the piles of bills. “I’ll pay you back, Steve. It may take some time, but I’ll pay you back. And I'll get those bonds. Why, damn it, you’ve put fire into me! I’m a new man, Steve. God bless you.”
Steve, disconcerted as always when thanked for anything, looked at his watch. “It’s half-past two. I must get back to the office. Joe, give my love to Elsa and the children.”
“You still haven’t told me what you said to Senator Peale.”
Stephen bent his head. “Well, among other things, I told him that I did not believe he should be returned to Washington. As you know, you and I have discussed this innumerable times. …”
“You told him that?” cried Joseph incredulously.
“I did.”
Joseph, staring at Stephen as at a madman, scratched his head. “And he promised to intervene for me with his brother, at your request?”
“He did. By telegraph.”
Joseph’s face became very thoughtful. “There’s something you haven’t told me, Steve. You’re a secretive rascal. You never tell anyone anything, if you can help it. But it doesn’t matter. There isn’t a man in Portersville who has done as much good as you have, anonymously. The packets of money to war widows and orphans, the foodstuffs you bought for the sick and indigent in the towns and villages—which I moved on my own railroads, the nameless contributions to the soldiers’ hospitals, the orphan asylum, the poorhouse, the churches. Don’t look so startled. You didn’t even tell me about them, but I have ways of knowing. Gossip gets around, and sometimes, in spite of your unobtrusiveness, people remember. And”—Joseph’s voice dropped—“you’re the best friend a man ever had.”
“Ridiculous,” said Stephen. “You would do the same for me, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course.” Joseph could not look away from him, and his eyes were strange.
“Well, then?”
“I haven’t asked you about Alice,” said Joseph in a preoccupied voice.
“She’s splendid. It will be any day now.”
“If it is not tomorrow, will you come to our house for dinner? Elsa is much attached to you, Steve. And the children always enjoy your visits.”
It was true about Elsa Baynes, thought Stephen. Such a pretty, gay little woman, with rumpled brown hair and vivid eyes. But the children did not like him, and this was odd, for he loved children, especially those who were very young. He frequently brought them gifts and tried to talk to them, for he was unique in his respect for youthful minds, but they would merely take his gifts, grin at him slyly, and let their eyes slide away to their corners. Well, well, thought Stephen, regretfully, it’s not the children’s fault if they do not like me. He said, “I never leave Alice alone at night, Joe. And after today, I’m not going to leave her alone for more than three hours in the morning, until the child is born.”
He left his friend and went out into the cold storm. The rain had stopped, but the wind roared through the streets like a cataract. Bending his head, huddling himself together, Stephen began to walk back to his offices.
Joseph Baynes looked at the closed door for several minutes after Stephen left, then he slowly walked back to the table. He counted the money. Five thousand dollars. More than enough for the present interest. He dropped one heap upon another, and his expression became very odd, dark and sick and full of self-hatred.
7
That leaves me very little in my personal account now, thought Stephen, but without regret, as he approached the bank building somewhat out of breath. He had hoped to be able to start digging in the coal fields near Scranton this spring. He had hoped to be able to buy Alice a sable coat next winter. He thought of the “Fielding money” which had been invested in the State Railroad Company, and which had enabled the company to extend its lines and to contemplate extending them again. Alice did not have much of her dower left at the present time; her husband had hoped to restore it. But there were so many desperate calls on his charity, which he answered anonymously. Rufus, he knew, was much more “sensible” than he. In fact, Rufus, who contributed meagerly to any request for aid, received enormous praise for what he did give, for he bestowed it with an air, an attitude of immense generosity and an implication of remorse that he could not do much more at the present time.
Stephen knew all this, but it meant nothing to him. Rufus’s dazzling glory did not arouse his envy. It was enough for him that through his charity there was somewhat less suffering in Porter
sville. He had explained it all to young Alice, and she had agreed with him eagerly, not questioning him, but believing that whatever Stephen did was the wisest thing possible. Stephen, trudging into the bank building, thought: At any rate, we didn’t take the money Alice will have when she is thirty-five. There is always that for her.
He started up the stairway, remembering Joseph Baynes’s joy, and smiling in the remembrance. He was already building up a wall against the depression he felt when thinking of Senator Peale, and how, for the sake of his friend, he had betrayed his deepest principles. He reached his offices and was met by a circle of white-faced clerks and the bookkeeper.
“Mr. Stephen!” one exclaimed. “We’ve been trying to find you! Everybody has been trying to find you! Mr. Rufus said to go home immediately after you returned here! He is with Mrs. Stephen, and the whole family, he said.”
Stephen stood and looked at them. “What?” he muttered. “What? What?”
“It’s Mrs. Stephen,” said the bookkeeper with a tragic look, and with obvious relish in the dramatic news he was imparting.
So, it had happened while he was away. There had been no way by which he could have been reached. He had not expected it, God forgive him, not this morning when he had left Alice smiling and serene in her bed, with her tray beside her. Would Alice forgive him for not being available in her extreme hour of suffering? He would tell her. … He stood there, his grayish face twitching—idiotically, in the opinion of his employees. “I think you’d better go home, sir,” said the bookkeeper. It had been too much to expect that this absurd and stupid employer of theirs should show any emotion or alarm. “Shall I call you a hack at once?”
“Yes,” said Stephen in a dull voice. He was suddenly very faint. He sat down on the bookkeeper’s stool, and his hat toppled from his head. He looked at it emptily; wisps of his thin brown hair stood up all over his skull; his cravat was pulled to one side; his legs, like stilts, hardly seemed part of him but more like lathes of lumber. He had to clutch the side of the bookkeeper’s high desk to keep from falling.
I’ve got to be calm and intelligent about this, he thought. I couldn’t help being away. Alice isn’t alone; the family is with her. Her sister, and Rufus, and probably my mother. Besides, babies aren’t born that fast. I’ll get to her in time. He said to the clerks, “How long ago was I called?”
“At ten o’clock, sir. It was very urgent. Your housekeeper sent the boy for Dr. Worth at once, and then he came here for you, in your carriage.”
Ten o’clock. He was talking with Senator Peale at that very time. It was now half-past three. Stephen, with a strangled cry, got to his feet. “Has there been any more news?” he asked. Rufus had gone! Rufus had gone in his place! Why? Why? The child of Stephen and Alice would not seem important to Rufus, whose daughter had already been named “heiress” by her grandfather. Rufus would have waited until the evening, and then would have paid a casual brotherly visit. But Rufus had gone, Rufus who never cared for anyone.
Small pits of darker gray appeared in Stephen’s gaunt face. Not bothering about his hat, and dropping his brief case where he had been sitting, he stumbled from the room. He flew down the stairway, passing acquaintances who looked after him with amazement. There was no end to the stairs; they went down eternally into nightmare. His heart was one hollow of agony and fear. Five and a half hours ago, Rufus had gone, precipitously, leaving everything! Rufus had gone—gone—gone—It was a clanging in Stephen’s head, an uproar which rose to a tumultuous thunder as he burst into the street.
The bookkeeper was hastening toward him. “I can’t find a hack, sir!” he cried desperately. “It’s the weather. They’re all being used. But wait—”
But Stephen, with a wild face and mad eyes, had charged past him, and was running like a tall scarecrow down the street. He flew across intersections, his coat sailing out behind him, his bare head streaming with water, for it had begun to rain again. He charged up hilly streets, his breath tearing in his throat. He collided with hurrying pedestrians and with umbrellas, rebounded from them, staggered, and then resumed his frantic speed.
Shadows of affronted faces flashed up before him. As in a nightmare, he heard offended exclamations, saw angry glares. He slipped on muddy cobblestones, leaped across rushing gutters, was conscious of the clamoring river in the distance. His legs flailed and lifted his bounding body. His arms jerked back and forth, the elbows lifted high. The walls of buildings tilted toward him, tilted back; the sky flew up, flew down. Children coming home from school saw him and ran out of his way, or pursued him for a few feet, jeering and screaming. Once or twice he fell against passing carriages and hacks and even horses, and raucous shouts followed him, cursing. No one recognized him in that dimness and in that rain; he blew along like the wind. There was nothing in him but the dreadful necessity to get to Alice, and nothing but his terror. He was caught up in a spinning eternity, and though he did not utter a word he thought he could hear himself shrieking his wife’s name.
Now he was on the steep rise of the road which led to his home. A trundling wagon with a farmer huddled on the seat was ahead of him. His strength was failing; his knees were swinging from side to side; the agony in his chest had become a boiling pool of blood which was strangling him. He yelled, and the sound seemed to come from the whole of his sweating body. The wagon rumbled to a halt, and the stout farmer turned as Stephen came alongside.
“Well, it warn’t my fault,” the farmer grumbled later to spellbound friends. “How’d I know it was Mr. Stephen? There it was, raining like the flood, and it was dark as seven o’clock, and the wind was somethin’ to feel! And then this fellow lopes up, without a hat, and streamin’ with water, and a face like I wouldn’t want any of you to see. I tell you, it was a sight! His face a-pullin’ like mad, like he had the fits or somethin’, and the most God-awful noises you ever heerd comin’ out of his mouth. What would a man think? That he’d got a loony on his hands, and there on the road without no house in sight, and everything mud, and the horses jumping up and down at the sight of him. And him holdin’ onto the side of the wagon, makin’ them sounds, and not even talkin’ sensible, but just lookin’ at me walleyed, and lookin’ as if he’d been fished out of the river. What was I to do? Did he say, ‘Look, my man, I’m Mr. Stephen deWitt. I must get home.’? Well, then, wouldn’t a fellow do anything for the deWitts, seein’ they’re so important? But what does he say?” The farmer rubbed his beard, in defiant bafflement. “He don’t say nothin’ for a moment, just jabbering and growling-like in his throat, and I got scared, I tell you. I lifted my whip and hit him across the shoulders, and then when that didn’t do no good, I took the butt and hit it sharp across his hands. Brought him to his senses a little. He squeaked, ‘My wife. I’ll give you five dollars, now, but take me home. I can’t run any longer.’ And then, bejabbers, if he don’t start to sob, just like a woman, and groan.
“Well, five dollars is five dollars, even for a loony, and then he fished out the gold-back, and I snapped it away from him, and he clambered up beside me and kept on makin’ those damn sounds. I don’t wonder now, but I did then, and am I to blame? I hit up the horses, wantin’ to get rid of him fast; no telling what loonies will do in lonesome places. And there he sat, a-clutchin’ his knees, and there was blood on his knuckles where I’d hit him, and it ran down with the rain, and he kept heavin’ and lookin’ ahead and a-moanin’, ‘Can’t you go faster, faster?’ ‘Look, mister,’ I says, ‘my horses are doin’ the best they can, and it’s better than walkin’, though you can try it again if you want to.’ And he don’t answer, but looks at the backs of the horses, and horses are nervous critters and they felt him lookin’, and they begin to tear along like crazy, and I kept holdin’ back on the reins. Frightened? I thought the devil had got in the wagon with me!
“Five dollars. That was a lot of money for a ride of less than two miles, and I got my suspicions it was stolen money, or maybe that Confederate money, and the fellow’d murder me up the
road. And so I sneaked a look at it, and it was all right, and then I said, ‘Shut up makin’ those damned noises. What’s the matter with you? Are you crazy, or somethin’? Somebody after you? It ain’t my business, but—’
“And then he only says, and now he got a voice like a thread, like a baby’s, kind of weak and broke off, ‘I’m Stephen deWitt, and I’m afraid my wife is dying.’
“Well, now,” the farmer related, “you could’ve pushed me off the seat with one finger! I took a hard look at him in that damned funny light, and sure enough it was Mr. Stephen deWitt! Seen him hundreds of times on the street, but never rightly remembered him. Always skulkin’ along, near the sides of buildings, and never noticin’ anybody, and sidlin’ away like a gun-shy dog. You had to see him a hundred times before you’d remember him, and me, my eyes ain’t what they was. But it was Stephen deWitt all right, and I got to shiverin’, and reached behind me for a blanket to cover him, him all wet the way he was. But he just kept on sayin’, ‘Hurry, hurry.’ And I said, ‘Mr. deWitt, sir, I didn’t know you at all, and I’m sorry, damned sorry! and tried to give him back the gold note, but he pushed it away with his elbow, and said, like he was prayin’, ‘Faster, faster.’
“‘It was the damn storm, and the dark, sir,’ I said, rememberin’ that the bank holds my notes, and old Aaron deWitt’s alius buyin’ up notes and foreclosin’ on the side—buying future right of way, he says. And my farm’s right on his damn railway. So I whipped those damn horses to a gallop, and by and by we come to his house, all dark except for a couple of windows, and two carriages outside, and Mr. Stephen jumped from my wagon and was gone before you could draw your breath! Never saw legs go so fast—like a grasshopper’s. Didn’t seem to touch ground.”
“Well, it sure was bad,” said one of his listeners.
The farmer looked at him belligerently, even though he was ashamed. “ ’Twaren’t my fault, I keep tellin’ you. And he’s got lots of money. They made lots during the war, on their railway.” He added surlily: “Anyways, though I’m sorry, he don’t have no use for the little folks around here. Don’t even notice ’em. It’s Mr. Rufus that’s our friend, not him.”
Never Victorious, Never Defeated Page 9