CHAPTER II
WHEREIN MR. TURNER PLUNGES INTO THE BUSINESS OF RESTING
At Meadow Brook Sam Turner found W. W. Westlake, of the WestlakeElectric Company, a big, placid man with a mild gray eye and anappearance of well-fed and kindly laziness; a man also who had therecord of having ruthlessly smashed more business competitors than anytwo other pirates in his line. Westlake, unclasping his fat hands fromhis comfortable rotundity, was glad to see young Turner, also glad tointroduce the new eligible to his daughter, a girl of twenty-two,working might and main to reduce a threatened inheritance ofembonpoint. Mr. Turner was charmed to meet Miss Westlake, and evenmore pleased to meet the gentleman who was with her, young Princeman, abrisk paper manufacturer variously quoted at from one to two million.He knew all about young Princeman; in fact, had him upon his mentallist as a man presently to meet and cultivate for a specific purpose,and already Mr. Turner's busy mind offset the expenses of this tripwith an equal credit, much in the form of "By introduction to H. L.Princeman, Jr. (Princeman and Son Paper Mills, AA 1), whatever itcosts." He liked young Princeman at sight, too, and, proceedingdirectly to the matter uppermost in his thoughts, immediately asked himhow the new tariff had affected his business.
"It's inconvenient," said Princeman with a shake of his head. "Ofcourse, in the end the consumers must pay, but they protest so muchabout it that they disarrange the steady course of our operations."
"It's queer that the ultimate consumer never will be quite reconciledto his fate," laughed Mr. Turner; "but in this particular case, I thinkI hold the solution. You'll be interested, I know. You see--"
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Turner," interrupted Miss Westlake gaily; "Iknow you'll want to meet all the young folks, and you'll particularlywant to meet my very dearest friend. Miss Hastings, Mr. Turner."
Mr. Turner had turned to find an extraordinarily thin young woman, withextraordinarily piercing black eyes, at Miss Westlake's side.
"Indeed, I do want to meet all the young people," he cordiallyasserted, taking Miss Hastings' claw-like hand in his own and wonderingwhat to do with it. He could not clasp it and he could not shake it.She relieved him of his dilemma, after a moment, by twining that armabout the plump waist of her dearest friend.
"Is this your first stay at Meadow Brook?" she asked by way of startingconversation. She was very carefully vivacious, was Miss Hastings, andhad a bird-like habit, meant to be very fetching, of cocking her headto one side as she spoke, and peering up to men--oh, away up--with thebeady expression of a pet canary.
"My very first visit," confessed Mr. Turner, not yet realizing thedisgrace it was to be "new people" at Meadow Brook, where there wasalways an aristocracy of the grandchildren of original Meadow Brookers."However, I hope it won't be the last time," he continued.
"We shall all hope that, I am certain," Miss Westlake assured him,smiling engagingly into the depths of his eyes. "It will be our faultif you don't like it here;" and he might take such tentative promise ashe would from that and her smile.
"Thank you," he said promptly enough. "I can see right now that I'mgoing to make Meadow Brook my future summer home. It's such a restfulplace, for one thing. I'm beginning to rest right now, and to putbusiness so far into the background that--" he suddenly stopped andlistened to a phrase which his trained ear had caught.
"And that is the trouble with the whole paper business," Mr. Princemanwas saying to Mr. Westlake. "It is not the tariff, but the futurescarcity of wood-pulp material."
"That's just what I was starting to explain to you," said Mr. Turner,wheeling eagerly to Mr. Princeman, entirely unaware, in his intensityof interest, of his utter rudeness to both groups. "My kid brother andmyself are working on a scheme which, if we are on the right track,ought to bring about a revolution in the paper business. I can notgive you the exact details of it now, because we're waiting for letterspatent on it, but the fundamental point is this: that the wood-pulpmanufacturers within a few years will have to grow their raw material,since wood is becoming so scarce and so high priced. Well, there isany quantity of swamp land available, and we have experimented like madwith reeds and rushes. We've found one particular variety which growsvery rapidly, has a strong, woody fiber, and makes the finest pulp inthe world. I turned the kid loose with the company's bank roll thisspring, and he secured options on two thousand acres of swamp land,near to transportation and particularly adapted to this culture, anddirt cheap because it is useless for any other purpose. As soon as thepatents are granted on our process we're going to organize a milliondollar stock company to take up more land and handle the business."
"Come over here and sit down," invited Princeman, somewhat more thancourteously.
"Wait a minute until I send for McComas. Here, boy, hunt Mr. McComasand ask him to come out on the porch."
The new guest was reaching for pencil and paper as they gathered theirchairs together. The two girls had already started hesitantly toefface themselves. Half-way across the lawn they looked sadly towardthe porch again. That handsome young Mr. Turner, his back toward them,was deep in formulated but thrilling facts, while three other heads,one gray and one black and one auburn, were bent interestedly over theenvelope upon which he was figuring.
Later on, as he was dressing for dinner, Mr. Turner decided that heliked Meadow Brook very much. It was set upon the edge of a pleasant,rolling valley, faced and backed by some rather high hills, upon thesloping side of one of which the hotel was built, with broad verandaslooking out upon exquisitely kept flowers and shrubbery and upon theshallow little brook which gave the place its name. A little morewater would have suited Sam better, but the management had made themost of its opportunities, especially in the matter of arranging dozensof pretty little lovers' lanes leading in all directions among thetrees and along the sides of the shimmering stream, and the wholeprospect was very good to look at, indeed. Taken in conjunction withthe fact that one had no business whatever on hand, it gave one a senseof delightful freedom to look out on the green lawn and the gaygardens, on the brook and the tennis and croquet courts, and on thepurple-hazed, wooded hills beyond; it was good to fill one's lungs withcountry air and to realize for a little while what a delightful worldthis is; to see young people wandering about out there by twos and bythrees, and to meet with so many other people of affairs enjoyingleisure similar to one's own.
Of course, this wasn't a really fashionable place, being supportedentirely by men who had made their own money; but there was Princeman,for instance, a fine chap and very keen; a well-set-up fellow,black-haired and black-eyed, and of a quick, nervous disposition; oneof precisely the kind of energy which Turner liked to see. McComas,too, with his deep red hair and his tendency to freckles, and his franksmile with all the white teeth behind it, was a corking good fellow;and alive. McComas was in the furniture line, a maker of cheap stuffwhich was shipped in solid trains of carload lots from a factory thatcovered several acres. The other men he noticed around the placeseemed to be of about the same stamp. He had never been anywhere thatthe men averaged so well.
As he went down-stairs, McComas introduced his wife, already gowned forthe evening. She was a handsome woman, of the sort who would wear adifferent stunning gown every night for two weeks and then go on to thenext place. Well, she had a right to this extravagance. Besides it isgood for a man's business to have his wife dressed prosperously. A manwho is getting on in the world ought to have a handsome wife. If sheis the right kind, of Miss Stevens' type, say, she is a distinct asset.
After dinner, Miss Westlake and Miss Hastings waylaid him on the porch.
They waylaid him on the porch]
"I suppose, of course, you are going to take part in the bowlingtournament to-night," suggested Miss Westlake with the engagingdirectness allowable to family friendship.
"I suppose so, although I didn't know there was one. Where is it to beheld?"
"Oh, just down the other side of the brook, beyond the croquet grounds.We have a tourname
nt every week, and a prize cup for the best score inthe season. It's lots of fun. Do you bowl?"
"Not very much," Mr. Turner confessed; "but if you'll just keep meposted on all these various forms of recreation, you may count on mytaking a prominent share in them."
"All right," agreed Miss Hastings, very vivaciously taking theconversation away from Miss Westlake. "We'll constitute ourselves acommittee of two to lay out a program for you."
"Fine," he responded, bending on the fragile Miss Hastings a smile sopleasant that it made her instantly determine to find out somethingabout his family and commercial standing. "What time do we start onour mad bowling career?"
"They'll be drifting over in about a half-hour," Miss Westlake toldhim, with a speculative sidelong glance at her dearest girl friend."Everybody starts out for a stroll in some other direction, as ifbowling was the least of their thoughts, but they all wind up at thealleys. I'll show you." A slight young man of the white-trouseredfaction, as distinguished from the dinner-coat crowd, passed them justthen. "Oh, Billy," called Miss Westlake, and introduced the slightyoung man, who proved to be her brother, to Mr. Turner, at the sametime wreathing her arm about the waist of her dear companion. "Comeon, Vivian; let's go get our wraps," and the girls, leaving "Billy" andMr. Turner together, scurried away.
The two young men looked at each other dubiously, though each had anearnest desire to please. They groped for human understanding, andsuddenly that clammy, discouraged feeling spread its muffling wallbetween them. Billy was the first to recover in part.
"Charming weather, isn't it?" he observed with a polite smile.
Mr. Turner opined that it was, the while delving into Mr. Westlake'smental workshop and finding it completely devoid of tools, patterns orlumber.
"The girls are just going to take me over to bowl," Mr. Turner ventureddesperately after a while. "Do you bowl very much?"
"Oh, I usually fill in," stated Mr. Westlake; "but really, I'm a verypoor hand at it. I seem to be a poor hand at most everything," and helaughed with engaging candor, as if somehow this were creditable.
The conversation thereupon lagged for a moment or two, while Mr. Turnerblankly asked himself: "What in thunder _does_ a man talk about when hehas nothing to say and nobody to say it to?" Presently he solved theproblem.
"It must be beautiful out here in the autumn," he observed.
"Yes, it is indeed," returned Mr. Westlake with alacrity. "The leavesturn all sorts of colors."
Once more conversation lagged, while Billy feebly wondered how anyperson could possibly be so dull as this chap. He made another attempt.
"Beastly place, though, when it rains," he observed.
"Yes, I should imagine so," agreed Mr. Turner. Great Scott! The voiceof McComas saved him from utter imbecility.
"You'll excuse Mr. Turner a moment, won't you, Billy?" begged McComaspleasantly. "I want to introduce him to a couple of friends of mine."
Billy Westlake bowed his forgiveness of Mr. McComas with fully as muchrelief as Sam Turner had felt. Over in the same corner of the porchwhere he had sat in the afternoon with McComas and Princeman and theelder Westlake, Sam found awaiting them Mr. Cuthbert, of the AmericanPapier-Mache Company, an almost viciously ugly man with a twisted noseand a crooked mouth, who controlled practically all the worth-whilepapier-mache business of the United States, and Mr. Blackrock, anelderly man with a young toupee and particularly gaunt cheek-bones, whowas a corporation lawyer of considerable note. Both gentlemen greetedMr. Turner as one toward whom they were already highly predisposed, andMr. Princeman and Mr. Westlake also shook hands most cordially, as ifSam had been gone for a day or two. Mr. McComas placed a chair for him.
"We just happened to mention your marsh pulp idea, and Mr. Cuthbert andMr. Blackrock were at once very highly interested," observed McComas asthey sat dawn. "Mr. Blackrock suggests that he don't see why you needwait for the issuance of the letters patent, at least to discuss thepreliminary steps in the forming of your company."
"Why, no, Mr. Turner," said Mr. Blackrock, suavely and smoothly; "it isnot a company anyhow, as I take it, which will depend so much uponletters patent as upon extensive exploitation."
"Yes, that's true enough," agreed Sam with a smile. "The letterspatent, however, should give my kid brother and myself, without muchcapital, controlling interest in the stock."
Upon this frank but natural statement the others laughed quitepleasantly.
"That seems a plausible enough reason," admitted Mr. Westlake, foldinghis fat hands across his equator and leaning back in his chair with aplacidity which seemed far removed from any thought of gain. "How didyou propose to organize your company?"
"Well," said Sam, crossing one leg comfortably over the other, "Iexpect to issue a half million participating preferred stock, at fiveper cent., and a half-million common, one share of common as bonus witheach two shares of preferred; the voting power, of course, vested inthe common."
A silence followed that, and then Mr. Cuthbert, with a diagonal yawingof his mouth which seemed to give his words a special dryness, observed:
"And I presume you intend to take up the balance of the common stock?"
"Just about," returned Mr. Turner cheerfully, addressing Cuthbertdirectly. The papier-mache king was another man whom he had inscribed,some time since, upon his mental list. "My kid brother and myself willtake two hundred and fifty thousand of the common stock for our patentsand processes, and for our services as promoters and organizers, andwill purchase enough of the preferred to give us voting power; say fivethousand dollars worth."
Mr. Cuthbert shook his head.
"Very stringent terms," he observed. "I doubt if you will interestyour capital on that basis."
"All right," said Sam, clasping his knee in his hands and rockinggently. "If we can't organize on that basis we won't organize at all.We're in no hurry. My kid brother's handling it just now, anyhow. I'mon a vacation, the first I ever had, and not keen upon business, by anymeans. In the meantime, let me show you some figures."
Five minutes later, Billy Westlake and his sister and Miss Hastingsdrew up to the edge of the group. Young Westlake stood diffidently fortwo or three minutes beside Mr. Turner's chair, and then he put hishand on that summer idler's shoulder.
"Oh, good evening, Mr.--Mr.--Mr.--" Sam stammered while he tried tofind the name.
"Westlake," interposed Billy's father; and then, a trifle impatiently,"What do you want, Billy?"
"Mr. Turner was to go over with us to the bowling shed, dad."
"That's so," admitted Mr. Turner, glancing over to the porch rail wherethe girls stood expectantly in their fluffy white dresses, and noddingpleasantly at them, but not yet rising. He was in the midst of animportant statement.
"Just you run on with the girls, Billy," ordered Mr. Westlake. "Mr.Turner will be over in a few minutes."
The others of the circle bent their eyes gravely upon Billy and thegirls as they turned away, and waited for Mr. Turner to resume.
At a quarter past ten, as Mr. Turner and Mr. Princeman walked slowlyalong the porch to turn into the parlors for a few minutes of music, ofwhich Sam was very fond, a crowd of young people came trooping up thesteps. Among them were Billy Westlake and his sister, another younggentleman and Miss Hastings.
"By George, that bowling tournament!" exclaimed Mr. Turner. "I forgotall about it."
He was about to make his apologies, but Miss Westlake and Miss Hastingspassed right on, with stern, set countenances and their heads in air.Apparently they did not see Mr. Turner at all. He gazed after them inconsternation; suddenly there popped into his mind the vision of aslender girl in green, with mischievous brown eyes--and he feltstrangely comforted. Before retiring he wired his brother to send somesamples of the marsh pulp, and the paper made from it.
The Early Bird: A Business Man's Love Story Page 2