The Driver (8 page)

“What is this?” I asked, staring at a large map which showed the Great Midwestern in heavy red lines, as I fairly well knew it, but with such ramified extensions in blue lines as to make it look like a gigantic double-ended animal with its body lying across the continent and its tentacles flung wide in the east and west.

“That’s crystal gazing,” he said.

“It’s what?”

“What may be,” he said, coming off the couch with a spring. As he passed the table he snatched up a ruler to point with.

See! There was the Great Midwestern alone,—all there was of it, from there to there. It was like a desert bridge from east to west, or, better still, like a strait connecting two vast oceans of freight. It was not so placed as to be able to originate traffic for itself, not profitably, yet that is what it had always been trying to do instead of attending exclusively to its own unique function. Its opportunity was to become the Dardanelles of trans-continental traffic. To realize its destiny it must control traffic at both ends. How? Why, by controlling railroads east and west that developed and originated freight, as a river gathers water, by a system of branches reaching up to the springs. And those blue lines, see!—they were those other roads which the Great Midwestern should control in its own interest.

He turned to a chart ten feet long by four feet deep hung level with the eyes on the opposite wall, The heavy black line erratically rising and falling against a background of graduated horizontal lines was an accurate profile of the Great Midwestern for the whole of its length,—that is, a cross section of the earth showing the configuration of its surface under the G. M. railroad’s ties and rails. It was unique, he said. Never had such a thing been done on this scale before. The purpose was to exhibit the grades in a graphic manner. There were many bad grades, each one like a hole in the pocket. His knowledge was minute. “Now from here to here,” he said, indicating 100 miles of profile with low grades, “it costs half a cent to move a ton of freight one mile, and that pays. But from here to here,” indicating a sudden rise in the next fifty miles, “it costs three cents per ton per mile and all the profit made in the preceding 100 miles is lost on that one grade.”

“What can be done about it?” I asked.

“Cut that grade down from 150 to 50 feet in the mile,” he said, slicing the peak of it through with his ruler, “and freight can be moved at a profit.”

“It would take a lot of labor and money, wouldn’t it?”

“Well, what of all this unemployment belly-ache you and old Bubbly Jock are writing pieces about?” he retorted. “You say there is more labor than work. I’ll show you more work to be done on the railroads than you can find labor in a generation for. All right, you say, but then it’s the money. The Great Midwestern hasn’t got the money to spend on that grade. True. Like all other roads with bad grades it’s hard up. But it could borrow the money and earn big dividends on it. Track levelling pays better than gold mining.”

“You and Coxey ought to confer,” I said. “You are not so far apart. He wants the government to create work by the simple expedient of borrowing money to build good roads. And here you say the railroads, if they would borrow money to reduce their grades, might employ all the idle labor there is.”

He gave me a queer look, as if undecided whether to answer in earnest. “Coxey is technically crazy,” he said, “and I’m technically sane. That may be the principal difference. Besides, it isn’t the government’s business.”

This diversion gave his thoughts a more general character. For three hours he walked about talking railroads,—how they had got built so badly in the first place, why so many were bankrupt, errors of policy, capital cost, upkeep, the relative merits of different kinds of equipment, new lines of development, problems of operation. For this was the stuff of his dreams. He devoured it. The idea of a railroad as a means to power filled the whole of his imagination. It was man’s most dynamic tool. No one had yet imagined its possibilities. He became romantic. His feeling for a locomotive was such as some men have for horses. The locomotive, he said, suddenly breaking off another thought to let that one through,—the locomotive was more wonderful than any automotive thing God had placed on earth. According to the book of Job God boasted of the horse. Well, look at it alongside of a locomotive I

He never went back to finish what he was saying when the image of a locomotive interrupted his thought Instead he became absent and began to look slowly about the room as if he had lost something. I understood what had happened. He was seized with the premonition of an idea. He felt it before he could see it; it had to be helped out of the fog. I made gestures of going, which he accepted. As we shook hands he became fully present for long enough to say: “I never talk like this to anyone. Just keep that in mind.... Good night.”

ii

He did not come down with me. He did not come even to the door of his own room. As I closed it I saw his back. He was leaning over the table in a humped posture, his head sideways in his left hand, writing or ciphering rapidly on a sheet of yellow paper. Good for the rest of the night, I thought, as I went down the dimly lighted stairs,. got my things and let myself into the vestibule.

The inner door came to behind me with a bang because the outer door was partly open and a strong draught swept through. At the same instant I became aware of a woman’s figure in the darkness of the vestibule. She was dry; therefore she could not be just coming in, for a cold rain was falling. And if she had just come out, why hadn’t I seen her in the hallway? But why was I obliged to account for her at all? It was unimportant. Probably she had been hesitating to take the plunge into the nasty night. I felt rather silly. First I had been startled and then I had hesitated, and now it was impossible to speak in a natural manner. My impulse was to bolt it in silence. Then to my surprise she moved ahead of me, stood outside, and handed me her umbrella. I raised it and held it over her; we descended the steps together.

“I’m going toward Fifth Avenue,” I said.

She turned with me in that direction, saying: “I was waiting for you.”

“You are Vera?”

“Yes.”

“The ferryboat girl,” I added.

“The what?”

“Nothing, Go on. Why were you waiting for me?”

She did not answer immediately. We walked in silence to the next light where she turned and gave me a frankly inquisitive look.

“Oh,” she said.

“Oh, what?” said I. “You don’t remember me.”

“Nothing,” she answered, giving me a second look, glancewise. “Two nothings make it even,” she added.

There was an awkward pause. “May I ask you something? You are with the Great Midwestern, in Mr. Valentine’s office?”

“Yes.”

“I have no one else to ask,” she said. “You will be surprised. It is this: do you think Great Midwestern stock a good investment?”

I was angry and uncomfortable. Why was she asking me? But she wasn’t really; she was coming at something else.

“I haven’t any opinion,” I said, “and that isn’t what you mean.”

We were now in Fifth Avenue and had stopped in the doorway of a lighted shop to be out of the rain. She blushed at my answer and at the same time gave me a look of scrutiny. I had to admire the way she held to her purpose.

“I am very anxious to know what Mr. Valentine’s opinion is,” she said.

“That’s better,” I replied. “But why should you want even his opinion? Your father knows more about Great Midwestern than its president, more than any other one person. Why not get his opinion?”

Until that moment she had perfectly disguised a state of anxiety verging upon hysteria. Suddenly her powers of self-repression failed. My reference to her father caused the strings to snap. Her expression changed as if a mask had fallen. The grief muscles all at once relaxed and the pretty frown they had been holding in the forehead disappeared. Her eyes flamed. Her upper lip retracted on one side, showing the canine tooth. Her giving way to strong emotion in this manner was a kind of pagan revelation. It did not in the least distort her beauty, but made it terrible. This, as I learned in time, was the only one of her effects of which she was altogether unconscious.

“We know his opinion,” she said. “We take it with our food. He is putting everything we have into Great Midwestern stock,—his own money, the family’s money, mother’s, Natalie’s, gram’ma’s and now mine.”

“Without your consent? I don’t understand it,” I said.

“The money in our family is divided. Each of us has a little. Most of it is from mother’s side of the house. My father and gram’ma are trustees of a sum that will come to me from my uncle’s estate when I am twenty-one. It is enough to make me independent for life. They are putting that into this stock! Is it a proper investment for trust funds, I ask you?”

I felt I ought not to be listening. Still, I had not encouraged these intimate disclosures, she was old enough to know what she was doing, and, most of all, the information was dramatically interesting. I was obliged to say that by all the rules Great Midwestern stock would not be considered a proper investment for trust funds.

“I’ve protested,” she said. “I’ve threatened to take steps. Pooh! What can I do? They pay no more attention to me than
that!
Neither father nor gram’ma. Mother is neutral. Father says it will make me rich. I don’t want to be rich. Besides he has said that before.”

“It may turn out well,” I said.

“It isn’t as if this were the first time,” she continued. “Twice he. has had us on the rocks. Twice he has lost all our money, all that he could get his hands on, in the same way, putting it into a railroad that he hoped to get control of or something, and going smash at the end. Once when I was a little girl and again three years ago. To-day on the train I heard two men talking about a receivership for the Great Midwestern as if it were inevitable. What would that mean?”

“It would be very disagreeable,” I said.

“That’s almost the same as bankruptcy, isn’t it?”

“It is bankruptcy,” I said; but I added that rumors just then were very wild in Wall Street and so false in general that the worse they were the less they were heeded, people reacting to them in a disbelieving, contrary manner.

She shook her head doubtfully.

“Are you going to tell me what Mr. Valentine’s opinion is?”

“He would not recommend anyone to buy the stock just now,” I said. “He makes no secret of seeing darkly.”

“The rocks again,” she said. “And no more legacies to save us. Nearly all of our rich relatives are already dead.”

The realism of youth!

I could not resist the opportunity to ask one question.

“I can understand your case,” I said, “but the others,—your mother and grandmother,—they are not helpless. Why do they hand over their money for these adventures in high finance? Or perhaps they believe in your father’s star.”

“No more than I believe in it,” she replied. “No. It isn’t that. They can’t help it.” She looked at me from afar, through a haze of recollections, and repeated the thought to herself, wondering: “They cannot help it. We cannot say no. Even I cannot say it. What he wants he gets.”

She shivered.

“Will you walk back with me, please.”

It was still raining. We walked all the way back in silence. At the step she reached for her umbrella, said thank you and stepped inside. The door closed with a slam. That could have been the draught again, provided the inner door stood open, which seemed very improbable.

What left me furious, gave me once more that hot, humiliated feeling which resulted from our first encounter on the ferryboat, was the same thing again. She had spoken my name, she had solicited a favor, she had employed blandishments, she had exposed the family’s closet of horrors, and all the time I might have been a person in a play, a non-existent giraffe or one of Cleopatra’s eunuchs.

i

Y
OU may define a mass delusion; you cannot explain it really. It is a malady of the imagination, incurable by reason, that apparently must run its course. If it does not lead people to self-destruction in a wild dilemma between two symbols of faith it will yield at last to the facts of experience.

Once the peace of the world was shattered by this absurd question: Was the male or the female faculty the first cause of the universe? There was no answer, for man himself had invented the riddle; nevertheless what one believed about it was more important than life, happiness or civilization. Proponents of the male principle adopted the color white. Worshippers of the female principle took for their sign and symbol the color red, inclining to yellow. Under these two banners there took place a religious warfare which involved all mankind, dispersed, submerged and destroyed whole races of people and covered Asia, Africa and Europe with tragic ruins. Then someone accidentally thought of a third principle which reconciled those two and human sanity was restored on earth. All this is now forgotten.

Since then people have been mad together about a number of things,—God, tulips, witches, definitions, alchemy and vanities of precept. In 1894 they were mad about money,—not about the use, possession and distribution of it, but as to the color of it, whether it should be silver,—that is to say, white like the symbol of those old worshippers of the masculine faculty, or gold,—that is, red inclining to yellow, as was the symbol of those who in the dimness of human history adored the feminine faculty.

And as people divided on this question of silver or gold they became utterly delirious. Either side was willing to see the government’s credit ruined, as it very nearly was, for the vindication of a fetich. They did not know it. They had not the remotest notion why or how they were mad because they were unable to realize that they were mad at all.

I have recently turned over the pages of the newspapers and periodicals of that time to verify the recollection that events as they occurred were treated with no awareness of their significance. And it was so. Intelligence was in suspense. The faculty of judgment slept as in a dream; the imagination ran loose, inventing fears and phantasies. That the government stood on the verge of bankruptcy or that the United States Treasury was about to shut up under a run of panic-stricken gold hoarders was regarded not as a national emergency in which all were concerned alike, but as proof that one theory was right and another wrong, so that one side viewed the imminent disaster gloatingly and was disappointed at its temporary postponement, while the other resorted to sophistries and denied self-evident things.