Over the Pass Part 47

"Yes, Peter. I know other fertile valleys besides that of Little Rivers, though none that is its equal. I shall have a garden in one of them and you shall have a garden next to mine."

"Then I feel fixed comfortable for life!" said Peter, with a perfectly wonderful smile enlivening the wrinkles of his old face, which made Jack think once more that life was worth living.

Later in the morning, after he had bought tickets for Little Rivers, Jack returned to the house. When he stood devoutly before the portrait, whose "I give! I give!" he now understood in new depths, he thought:

"I know that you would not want to remain here another hour. You would want to go with me."

And before the portrait on the other side of the mantel he thought, challengingly and affectionately:

"And you? You were an old devil, no doubt, but you would not lie! No, you would not lie to the Admiralty or to Elizabeth even to save your head! Yes, you would want to go with me, too!"

Tenderly he a.s.sisted the butler to pack the portraits, which were put in a cab. When Jack departed in their company, this note lay on the desk in the library, awaiting John Wingfield, Sr.'s return that evening:

"Father:

"The wire to Jim Galway which I enclose tells its own story. It was written after our talk. When I was going out to send it I saw John Prather and you in the hall. You said that you knew nothing of him. I overheard what pa.s.sed between you and him. So I am going back to Little Rivers. The only hope for me now is out there.

"I am taking the portrait of my mother, because it is mine. I am taking the portrait of the ancestor, because I cannot help it any more than he could help taking a Spanish galleon. That is all I ask or ever could accept in the way of an inheritance.

"Jack."

x.x.xIV

"JOHN WINGFIELD, YOU--"

John Wingfield, Sr. had often made the boast that he never worried; that he never took his business to bed with him. When his head touched the pillow there was oblivion until he awoke refreshed to greet the problems left over from yesterday. Such a mind must be a reliably co-ordinated piece of machinery, with a pendulum in place of a heart. It is overawing to average mortals who have not the temerity to say "Nonsense!" to great egos. Yet the best adjusted clocks may have a lapse in a powerful magnetic storm, and in an earthquake they might even be tipped off the shelf, with their metal parts rendered quite as helpless by the fall as those of a human organism subject to the const.i.tutional weaknesses of the flesh.

It was also John Wingfield, Sr.'s boast to himself that he had never been beaten, which average mortals with the temerity to say "Nonsense!"--that most equilibratory of words--might have diagnosed as a bad case of self-esteem finding a way to forget the resented incidental reverses of success. Yet, even average mortals noted when John Wingfield, Sr.

arrived late at the store the morning after Jack's departure for the West that he had not slept well. His haggardness suggested that for once the pushb.u.t.ton to the switch of oblivion had failed him. The smile of satisfied power was lacking. In the words of the elevator boy, impersonal observer and swinger of doors, "I never seen the old man like that before!"

But the upward flight through the streets of his city, if it did not bring back the smile, brought back the old pride of ownership and domination. He still had a kingdom; he was still king. Resentment rose against the cause of the miserable twelve hours which had thrown the machinery of his being out of order. He pa.s.sed the word to himself that he should sleep to-night and that from this moment, henceforth things would be the same as they had been before Jack came home. Yes, there was just one reality for him. It was enthroned in his office. This morning was to be like any other business morning; like thousands of mornings to come in the many years of activity that stretched ahead of him.

"A little late," he said, explaining his tardiness to his secretary; a superfluity of words in which he would not ordinarily have indulged. "I had some things to attend to on the outside."

With customary quiet attentiveness, Mortimer went through the mail with his employer, who was frequently rea.s.suring himself that his mind was as clear, his answers as sure, and his interest as concentrated as usual.

This task finished, Mortimer, with his bundle of letters and notes in hand, instead of going out of the room when he had pa.s.sed around the desk, turned and faced the man whom he had served for thirty years.

"Mr. Wingfield--"

"Well, Peter?"

John Wingfield, Sr. looked up sharply, struck by Mortimer's tone, which seemed to come from another man. In Mortimer's eye was a placid, confident light and his stoop was less marked.

"Mr. Wingfield, I am getting on in years, now," he said, "and I have concluded to retire as soon as you have someone for my place; the sooner, sir, the more agreeable to me."

"What! What put this idea into your head?" John Wingfield, Sr. snapped.

Often of late he had thought that it was time he got a younger man in Peter's place. But he did not like the initiative to come from Peter; not on this particular morning.

"Why, just the notion that I should like to rest. Yes, rest and play a little, and grow roses and salads," said the old secretary, respectfully.

"Roses and salads! What in--where are you going to grow them?"

There was something so serene about Peter that his highly imperious, poised employer found it impertinent, not to say maddening. Peter had a look of the freedom of desert distances in his eyes already. A lieutenant was actually radiating happiness in that neutral-toned sanctum of power, particularly this morning.

"I am going out to Little Rivers, or to some place that Jack finds for me, where I am to have a garden and work--or maybe I better call it potter around--out of doors in January and February, just like it was June."

Peter spoke very genially, as if he were trying to win a disciple on his own account.

"With Jack! Oh!" gasped John Wingfield, Sr. He struck his closed fist into the palm of his hand in his favorite gesture of anger, the ant.i.thesis of the crisp rubbing of the palms, which he so rarely used of late years. Rage was contrary to the rules of longevity, exciting the heart and exerting pressure on the artery walls.

"Yes, sir," answered Peter, pleasantly.

"Well--yes--well, Jack has decided to go back!" Then there rose strongly in John Wingfield, Sr.'s mind a suspicion that had been faintly signaled to his keen observation of everything that went on in the store. "Are any other employees going?" he demanded.

"Yes, sir, I think there are; not immediately, but as soon as he finds a place for them."

"How many?"

"I don't think it is any secret. About fifty, sir."

"Name some of them!"

"Joe Mathewson, that big fellow who drives a warehouse truck, and Burleigh;" and Peter went on with those of the test proof list whom he knew.

Every one of them had high standing. Every one represented a value. While at first John Wingfield, Sr. had decided savagely that Mortimer should remain at his pleasure, now his sense of outraged egoism took an opposite turn. He could get on without Mortimer; he could get on if every employee in the store walked out. There were more where they came from in a city of five millions population; and no one in the world knew so well as he how to train them.

"Very good, Peter!" he said rigidly, as if he were making a declaration of war. "Fix up your papers and leave as soon as you please. I will have one of the clerks take your place."

"Thank you. That is very kind, Mr. Wingfield!" Mortimer returned, so politely, even exultantly, that his aspect seemed treasonable.

John Wingfield, Sr. tried to concentrate his attention on some long and important letters that had been left on his desk for further consideration; but his mind refused to stick to the lines of typewriting.

"This one is a little complicated," he thought, "I will lay it aside."

He tried the second and the third letters, with no better results. A tanned face and a pair of broad shoulders kept appearing between him and the paper. Again he was thinking of Jack, as he had all night, to the exclusion of everything else. Unquestionably, this son had a lot of magnetic force in him; he had command of men. Why, he had won fifty of the best employees out of sheer sentiment to follow him out to the desert, when they had no idea what they were in for!

His gaze fell and rested for some time on the bunch of roses on his desk.

Every morning there had been a fresh bunch, in keeping with the custom that Jack had established. The father had become so used to their presence that he was unconscious of it. For all the pleasure he got out of them, they might as well have been in the cornucopia vase in the limousine. His hand went out spasmodically toward the roses, as if he would crush them; crush this symbol of the thing drawn from the mother that had invaded the calm autocracy of his existence. The velvety richness of the petals leaning toward him above the drooping grace of their stems made him pause in realization of the absurdity of his anger.

A feeling to which he had been a stranger swept over him. It was like a breaking instinct of dependableness; and then he called up Dr.

Bennington.

"Well, he has gone!" he told the doctor, desperately.

"You did not tell him the truth!" came the answer; and he noted that the doctor's voice was without its usual suavity. It was as matter-of-fact to the man of millions as if it had been advising an operation in a dispensary case.