The Quickening Part 24

"No; there's a heap o' things I don't know, son, but I'm willin' to learn. One o' these days, if we ever get out o' this business tangle alive, we'll sit down quiet together and you'll do for me what this Dutchman has done for you. For, in spite of what you say, I've been sittin' on the fence all these years, and I reckon you're the one to help me down."

Tom smiled first at the thought of it and then grew suddenly sober. It is one thing to be serenely critical for oneself, and quite another to set the pace for a disciple. And when that disciple chances to be one's father?

"I don't know about that, pappy," he said, rather dubiously. "I'd like to have you meet some of the people on my side of the road first. Maybe you wouldn't like the company."

But Caleb would not have it so. "If they're good enough for you, son, they're good enough for me," he said. "Not but what there's some mighty good folks trampin' along on the other side, too."

"Yes, and some mighty bad ones," said Tom, thinking of the promoter vestryman of St. Michael's and his Bible-cla.s.s-teaching son. "We are going right now to investigate the financiering methods of a pair of them. Is Dyckman still on duty? Or are the offices closed?"

"Dyckman's there," was the answer; and they left the breakfast-room together to go around the block and have themselves lifted to the fifth floor of the Coosa Building, where half a dozen gilt-lettered gla.s.s doors advertised the administrative headquarters of Chiawa.s.see Consolidated.

If Caleb Gordon had been mildly bewildered by the outward and instantly visible changes in his college-bred son, he was quite lost in wondering admiration when the young man had climbed fairly into the business saddle and gathered his grip on the reins. Notwithstanding the fact of his stock-holding, Caleb the iron-master had always stood a little in awe of the general office grandeurs; of chief priest Dyckman in particular. But Tom seemed to recognize no distinctions of cla.s.s, age, or previous condition of overlordship. Dyckman was found busily lounging in the absent president's easy-chair, smoking a good cigar and reading the morning papers. At the outset he was inclined to be genially supercilious, thus:

"Ah, good morning, Mr. Gordon! h.e.l.lo, Tom! Back from college, are you?

The books and papers? They are over in the vaults of the Iron City National--by Mr. Farley's orders. I suppose he thought they'd be safer there in case of fire. Won't you sit down and have a fresh cigar?"

What Tom said, or the precise wording of it, Caleb could never remember.

But the staccato sentence or two had the effect of instantly electrifying Mr. Dyckman. Certainly; whatever Mr. Thomas desired should be done. He--Dyckman--had had no notice of the change in the plans of the company, and Mr. Farley's instructions--

Tom cut the oath of fealty short and stated his desires succinctly. The bookkeeper was to rea.s.semble his office force immediately, taking particular care to reinstate Norman, the correspondence man. That done, he was to prepare full and complete exhibits of the company's condition: a.s.sets, liabilities, contracts, in short, the results in statement form of a thorough and searching house-cleaning in the accounting and administrative departments.

"I am going to put you on your good behavior, Dyckman," said the new tyrant in conclusion, driving the words home with a shrewd sword-thrust of the gray eyes. "At first I thought I'd bring an expert accountant down here from New York and put him on your books; but I'm going to spare you that--on one condition. Those exhibits must be made absolutely without fear or favor; they must contain the exact truth and all of it.

If you tinker them, you'll not be able to run fast enough nor far enough to get away from me. Do I make it plain?"

"Very plain, indeed, Mr. Tom; the office boy would catch your meaning, I think."

"All right, then; gather up your force and pitch in. I haven't time to watch you, and I don't mean to take it. But I shall know it when you begin to flicker."

When the two early morning disturbers of Mr. Dyckman's peace were once more in the street and on the way to the station to take the train for Gordonia and the seat of war, Caleb found speech.

"Son," he said gravely, "do you know that you've made a mighty bitter enemy in the last fifteen minutes? Dyckman is Farley's confidential man, and when he gets his knife ground good and sharp he's goin' to cut you with it, once for himself and once for his boss."

Tom's laugh was an easing of strains.

"It does me a heap of good to know that I can crack the whip where you'd be putting on the brakes, pappy; it does, for a fact. But you needn't worry about Dyckman. He won't quarrel with his bread and b.u.t.ter. I don't care anything about his personal loyalty so long as he does his work."

Again Caleb had to withdraw a little and look his stalwart young captain over and say: "It is Tom; it's just Buddy, grown up and come to be a man." But it was hard to realize.

"I reckon you've got it all figured out--what-all we're goin' to do, Tom," he said, when they were seated in the car of the accommodation train.

"Yes, I think I have; at least, I have the beginning struck out. We are going to call a stock-holders' meeting, vote you into the presidency, take the bull squarely by the horns and blow in the Chiawa.s.see furnace again--dig coal, roast c.o.ke and make iron."

"But, son! at the present price of iron, we can't make any money; couldn't clear a dollar a car if the buyers would push their cars right into our yard. And there ain't any buyers."

Tom was looking out of the window at the procession of smokeless factory chimneys. The blight had already fallen on the South Tredegar industries.

"It's going to be a battle to the strong, to the fellow who can wait, and work while he waits," he said, half to himself. Then, more particularly to his father's protest: "I know, we are in pretty bad shape. When we get those exhibits we shall find that the Farleys have picked the bones, leaving them for us to bury decently out of sight.

Then, when the funeral is over, they'll come back and charge it all to the Gordon mismanagement. It's a cinch, isn't it?"

The old iron-master was silent for the train-speed's measuring of a long mile. Then he said slowly:

"I don't aim to go back on you, Buddy; not a foot 'r an inch. But it does seem to me like you put your finger in the fire when you hilt up Duxbury Farley for that proxy paper in New York. If we go under--and the good Lord only knows how we can he'p it--they'll come out of it with clean clothes, and we'll have to take all the mud-slingin', just as you say."

Tom's smile would have stamped him as the son of the grim old ex-artilleryman in any court of inquiry.

"Did your old general ever go into battle with the idea that he was bound to be licked, pappy?" he asked.

"Who? Stonewall Jackson? Well, I reckon not, son."

"Neither shall we," said Tom laconically. "We are going in to win. We are in bad shape, I admit, but we are better off than a lot of these furnaces that are shutting down. We have our own ore beds, and our own c.o.king plant. Our coal costs us seventy-five cents less than Pocahontas, our water is free, and we can hold the property as long as we can stand the sheriff off. My notion is to make iron and hold it; stack it in the yards, mortgage it for what we can get, and make more iron. Some day the country will get iron hungry; then we'll have it to sell when the other fellows will have to make it first and sell it afterward. Have I got it straight?"

Caleb nodded.

"Yes; I don't know but what you have. What's puzzlin' me right now, son, is _where_ you got it."

Tom's laugh was a tonic for sore nerves.

"I'd like to know what you've been spending your good money on me for if it wasn't to give me a chance to get it. Do you think I've been playing foot-ball all the time?"

"No; but--well, Tom, the last I knew of you, you was just a little shaver, spattin' around barefooted in the dust o' the Paradise pike, and I can't seem to climb up to where you're at now."

Tom laughed again.

"You'll come to it, after while. I reckon I haven't much more sense, in some ways, than the little shaver had; but I've been trying my level best to learn my trade. There is only one thing about this tangle that is worrying me: that's the labor end of it."

"We can get all the labor we want," said Caleb.

"Yes; but didn't you write me that the men were on strike?"

"I said the white miners were likely to make trouble if they got hungry enough."

"Was there any pay in arrears when you shut down?"

"No. Farley wanted to scale the men, but I fought him out o' that."

"Good! Then what are they kicking about?"

"Oh, because they're out of a job. There are always a lot of keen noses in a crowd the size of ours, and they've smelled out some o' the Farley doin's. Of course, they don't believe in the cry of hard times; laborin'

men are always the last to believe that."

The train was tracking thunderously around the nose of Lebanon, and Tom was looking out of the window again, this time for the first glimpse of the Gordonia chimney-stacks and the bounding hills of the home valley.

"That is where you will have to put your shoulder into the collar with me, pappy," he said. "Most of the older men know me as a boy who has grown up among them. When I spring my proposition, they'll howl, if only for that reason."

But now Caleb was shaking his gray head more dubiously than ever.

"You won't get any help from the men, Buddy, more 'n what you pay for.

You know the whites--Welshmen, Cornishmen, and a good sprinklin' o'