I Walked in Arden Part 2

"Now, my boy, you're going to a town where people don't understand all this fancy foreign stuff. You've got to dress the part and get down to being a plain American where you started from. You've got to cut out the booze. I don't know about women, but your clothes give the wrong idea there too."

At last the total of his suspicions penetrated, and unfortunately I suddenly shouted with laughter. I rocked back and forth in my chair in uncontrollable delight. When I at last looked up, he was smoking his cigar at a most uncompromising angle, with a hurt look upon his face.

"My dear Knowlton," I gasped at last, "I have no idea what impression I have given you, but really your last insinuation was too much for me.

Like most young men of my age I'm probably engaged or soon will be--and as for the rest, you needn't worry."

"What do you mean by 'probably engaged or soon will be'?" He asked, still suspiciously, but obviously somewhat relieved at this announcement.

"I'm twenty-three--one usually finds the thing imminent at that age."

"h.e.l.l!" he replied. "This is business, not a joke. Booze and women don't mix with business."

"I've never mixed them much--even for pleasure," I retorted. "I hate headaches, and uneducated people bore me so that, be they as beautiful as Cleopatra, I can make nothing of them. I a.s.sure you I shall be perfectly safe in Deep Harbor, or anywhere else that the most ancient profession flourishes."

"I get you," he said, "and I guess it's straight all right, from all I've heard. Takes you a lot of words to say it, just as it takes you too much time to do things. But you'll get over that. Point is, Deep Harbor won't see _you_ at all. Not in those clothes."

"They are simple country tweeds," I protested once more, for the thought that I might have to wear his kind horrified me. "My tailor is supposed to know his business."

"They don't fit, and they're loud enough to scare all the trotting horses on State Street. Don't you ever get 'em pressed? If you go sitting around in cafes drinking English ale, you'll make a bad impression. We've got to build up a new business and we've got to get people's confidence in us to do it. You can't float around town in the Middle West like you was attending a house party and get away with it.

People won't think you are serious--when they don't think you are worse."

"I see," I replied. "Business, as I understand it, is so serious a thing out here that its pursuit means banishing from one's life, as a start, all sense of humour and all the little comforts and conveniences. One can have electric light, a porcelain bath, steam heat, and a bank account, but one mustn't have comfortable clothes, easy-going habits, or a genial feeling for the absurdities of solemn living."

"There you go exaggerating everything I say. No wonder you know a lot about chemical experiments--your ideas tumble all over themselves.

That's all right when you've got test tubes to pour 'em into, but you got to be careful how you spill 'em around Deep Harbor. What church do you attend?"

The suddeness with which this query came at me left me floundering once more.

"Church?" I queried, as if I had never heard of the inst.i.tution.

"h.e.l.l, yes--church," Knowlton replied. "Nothing like being seen regularly at church when you hit a new town. You make friends that way, and it's good for business--makes people think you steady and dependable."

"Really, I had never before considered the church in the light of a business a.s.sociate," I answered, "but I can see there is considerable point to what you say. I wonder Polonius didn't think of it."

"One of those cla.s.sical guys you learn about in college, isn't he?"

"Yes--you would admire immensely his advice to his son. I'll buy you a calendar with it on when we get there. It's a lot like what you've been telling me."

"Well, I guess he was a wise guy, all right, and learned the way I did--from being up against it. That's worth all the book learning there is."

"But you learned your profession from books."

"Sure I did--scientific books. You can't put them in the same cla.s.s with the stuff they fill you full of at college."

"There's a science of living--and some of that is in books too."

"Well, how about church? You've got the d.a.m.nedest habit of steering the conversation off the subject I've ever seen. There's only one science of living--get the stuff, then you can live as you d.a.m.n please."

"Surely you don't expect me to go to church just to help business."

"You mean to say you don't go to church at all?"

"About that. Once in a while to a cathedral--when I want to think or dream, and there happens to be a cathedral handy, or else to some little quiet parish church that I'm certain beforehand has an eleventh century smell."

"I'm a Presbyterian," he announced stoutly, as if I would dispute him, and bit off the end of another impossible cigar. "Everybody ought to be something." He had ignored my cathedral reply.

"True," I said, "but why Presbyterian when one might choose so many other things to be? Aren't they the people who believe something dreadful about babies?"

"My father was a Presbyterian--he was an old Scotch engineer and went to sea for forty years. I've always kept up what he thought, for no one ever got ahead of the old man--not much."

So this man was an idealist down underneath all that hard, surface veneer of remorseless business! It was quite obvious that the old Scotch engineer had not laid up treasures for his posterity, and yet he had left a clear impression that "no one ever got ahead of him"--an ideal of success, recognized as success, not built on the attainment of wealth. I felt a lot better about Knowlton--we were going to get on, I was certain. But I didn't dare tell him all this, for I knew he wouldn't understand. I was even sorry I had been flippant about Presbyterians.

After all, it was a silly pose to patronize a man who had made his way from the bottom to the position of a first cla.s.s engineer, whereas I had done nothing but read a few books and drift about the world.

"Knowlton," I asked, in all seriousness this time, "will you have another drink?"

"Thanks, I wouldn't mind one more of those lemonades."

Once more the porter came, and I ventured a second bottle of Ba.s.s.

"I'll be discreet in Deep Harbor," I apologized, "although I won't promise to give up Ba.s.s entirely. It's a link with home--almost a ceremony, you know."

"Oh, that's all right, Ted. I guess I've got you sized up all right. Go ahead and be your own boss. As long as you deliver the goods, that's all I ask. Do it in your own way."

The drinks arrived. "Bring a box of chocolate peppermints," he commanded the porter. "Good heavens--he's going to add that to his lemonade and cigars!" I thought. "What _is_ that man's interior made of?"

"So you have already sized me up?" I asked as he munched a chocolate between alternate sips and puffs.

"Sure! I got you pretty straight down in the office in New York the day we signed the papers. I did think you might jump the track once in a while, though. And when you blew on to the train in that third act make-up, I thought perhaps you'd been out for a final fling at Broadway.

But you're all right. Have some chocolate?"

"No, thanks. I am curious, though, to have my fortune told. Will I make good, do you think?"

"Ted, I'm going to be straight with you. I don't know. You may get folks sore at you, the way you always seem to be laughing inside you at the people who don't talk or think the way you do. You don't know it all yet, and you've got no patience with folks who don't belong to your gang. You haven't knocked around enough in real life to learn that there's several ways of getting there besides your way. You've lived abroad and picked up a lot of things I don't know anything about and never will, and you're a little stuck on your cargo. But I'm not so sure it's worth as much as you think in the open market--not in the manufacturing business in Deep Harbor. Still, a couple of years on the treadmill may work wonders."

"A couple of years!" I gasped.

"Well, you don't expect to take a new concern and make a fortune in twelve months the way they tell you in those story books, do you? Not if you was John D. Rockefeller, which you aren't."

"Two years in Deep Harbor," I murmured almost to myself.

"Oh, Deep Harbor's a pretty decent sort of a town. It's up-to-date.

They've got a Chamber of Commerce full of live wires and the place is just beginning to hit its stride. Give the plants there now ten years, and the town will be full of millionaires. Of course, I can see your point--I'm a New Yorker myself, and the Bush League doesn't appeal any too strong to me. But the stuff lies buried out there in that burg, and you and I, Ted, are going there to dig some of it up. There's nothing like growing up with a town."

And with this final epigram, Knowlton got up, stretched, and guessed he would go to bed.

I bade him good-night and lit another pipe. I confess frankly that I found Knowlton's accurate powers of a.n.a.lysis disturbing. I who had flattered myself that I knew all about him with the first words he spoke, now made the humiliating discovery that he already knew more about me than I was ever likely to know about him. Furthermore, his estimate of me, if not too unfavourable, was still not very flattering.

When at last I left the smoker for the sleeper, it was in as gloomy a frame of mind as when I first boarded the train.