Over the Pass

by Frederick Palmer

  XXVIII

  JACK GETS A RAISE

  The next morning Jack went down town with his father in the limousine.About an hour later, after he had been introduced to the head of thedelivery division, he was on his way up town beside a driver of one ofthe wagons on the Harlem route. He was in the uniform of the Wingfieldlight cavalry, having obtained a cap with embroidered initials on thefront. The driver was like to burst from inward mirth, and Jack wasregarding the prospect with veritable juvenile zest.

  At dinner that evening John Wingfield, Jr. narrated his experiences ofthe day to John Wingfield, Sr. with the simplicity and verisimilitudethat always make for both realism and true comedy.

  "But, Jack, you took me too literally! It is hardly in keeping with yourposition! You--"

  "Why, I thought that the only way to know the whole business was toplay every part. Didn't you ever deliver packages in person in yourearly days?"

  "I can't say that I did!" the father admitted wryly.

  "Then it seems to me that you missed one of the most entertaining andinstructive features," Jack continued. "You cannot imagine the majesticfeminine disdain with which you may be informed that a five-cent bar ofsoap should be delivered at the back door instead of the front door. Themost indignant example was a red-haired woman who was doing her own workin a flat. She fairly blazed. She wanted to know if I didn't know whatdumb-waiters were for."

  "And what did you say?" the father asked wearily; for the ninth JohnWingfield had a limited sense of humor.

  "Oh, I try, however irritating the circumstances, to be most courtly, forthe honor of the store," said Jack. "I told her that I was very sorry andI would speak to you in person about the mistake."

  "You mean that you admitted who you were?"

  "Oh, no! The red-haired woman laughed and took the package in at thefront door," Jack responded. Anybody in Little Rivers would haveunderstood just how he looked and smiled and why it was that thered-haired woman laughed.

  "Jack--now, really, Jack, this is not quite dignified!" expostulated thefather. "What do you think your ancestor would say to it?"

  "I suspect that he would have made an even more ingratiating bow to thelady than I could," said Jack, thoughtfully. "They had the grand mannerbetter developed in his day than in ours."

  In the ensuing weeks John Wingfield, Sr. dwelt in a kind of infernalwonder about his son. He was cheered when some friend of his world whohad met Jack in the garb of his caste, as fitted by Burleigh, would say:"Fine, strapping son you have there, Wingfield!" He was abashed anddumfounded when Jack announced that he had taken Mamie Devore, who soldculinary utensils in the basement, out to luncheon with her "steadycompany," Joe Mathewson, driver of one of the warehouse trucks.

  "They were a little awed at first," Jack explained, "but they soonbecame natural. I don't know anything pleasanter than making people feelperfectly natural, do you? You see, Joe and Mamie are very real, father,and most businesslike; an ambitious, upstanding pair. They're going tohave two thousand dollars saved before they marry.

  "'I don't believe that a woman ought to work out after she's married,'was the way Joe put it. And Mamie, with her eyes fairly devouring him,snapped back: 'No, she'd have enough to do looking after you, you bigold bluff!'

  "Mamie is a wiry little thing and Joe is a heavyweight, with a handalmost as big as a baseball mit. That's partly why their practicalromance is so fascinating. Why, it's wonderful the stories that areplaying themselves out in that big store, father! Well, you see Joe is ona stint--two thousand before he gets Mamie. He had been making money onthe side nights in boxing bouts. But Mamie stopped the fighting. She saidshe was not going to have a husband with the tip of his nose driven upbetween his eyes like a bull-dog's. And what do you imagine they aregoing to do with the two thousand? Buy a farm! Isn't that corking!"

  John Wingfield, Sr. shrugged his shoulders, but did not express hisfeelings with any remark. It seemed to him that Jack must have been bornwithout a sense of proportion.

  With the breaking of spring, when gardens were beginning to sprout, Jackbroadened his study to the trails of Westchester, Long Island, and NewJersey, coursed by the big automobile vans of the suburban delivery. Tothe people of the store, whose streets he traversed at will inunremitting wonder over its varied activities, he had brought somethingof the same sensation that he had to an Arizona town. He came to know theemployees by name, even as he had his neighbors in Little Rivers. Henodded to the clerks as he passed down an aisle. They watched for hiscoming and brightened with his approach and met his smile with theirsmiles. In their idle moments he would stop and talk of the desert.

  Although he was learning to like the store as a community of human beingsits business was as the works of a watch, when all he knew was how totell the time by the face. But he tried hard to learn; tried until hishead was dizzy with a whirl of dissociated facts, which he knew ought tobe associated, and under the call of his utter restlessness woulddisappear altogether for two or three days.

  "Relieving the pressure! It's a safety-valve so I shan't blow up," heexplained to his father, sadly.

  "Take your time," said John Wingfield, Sr., having in mind a recent talkwith Dr. Bennington.

  Jack listened faithfully to his father's clear-cut lessons. He askedquestions which only made his father sigh; for they had little to do withthe economy of working costs. All his suggestions were extravagant; theywould contribute to the joy of the employees, but not to profit. Andother questions made his father frown in devising answers which were inthe nature of explanations. Born of his rambling and humanly observantrelations with every department, they led into the very heart of thingsin that mighty organization. There were times when it was hard for himto control his indignation. There were trails leading to the room withthe glass-paneled door marked "Private" which he half feared to pursue.

  Thus, between father and son remained that indefinable chasm of thoughtand habit which filial duty or politeness could not bridge. No stories ofthe desert were ever told at home, though it was so easy to tell them toBurleigh or Mathewson, those contrasts in a pale fitter of clothes and aherculean rustler of dry-goods boxes. But echoes of the tales came to thefather through his assistants. He had the feeling of some stranger spiritin his own likeness moving there in the streets of his city under thetalisman of a consanguinity that was nominal. One day he put an inquiryto the general manager concretely, though in a way to avoid theappearance of asking another's opinion about his own son.

  "He has your gift of winning men to him. There is no denying hispopularity with the force," said the general manager, who was a diplomat.

  The same question was put to Peter Mortimer.

  "We all love him. I think a lot of people in the store would march out tothe desert after him," said Mortimer, with real rejoicing in his candorand courage. Indeed, of late he had been developing cheer as well ascourage, imbibing both, perhaps, from the roses in the vase on hisemployer's desk. Jack had ordered a fresh bunch put there every day; andwhen employees were sick packages of grapes and bunches of flowers cameto them, in Little Rivers fashion, with J.W. on the card, as if they hadcome from the head of the firm himself.

  "Maybe Jack will soften the old man a little," ran a whisper frombasement to roof. For the battalions called him "Jack," rather than "Mr.Wingfield," just as Little Rivers had.

  "The boy's good nature isn't making him too familiar with the employees?"was a second question which the father had asked both the general managerand Mortimer.

  "No. That is the surprising thing--the gift of being friendly withoutbeing familiar," answered the manager.

  "He's got a kind of self-respect that induces respect in others,"said Peter.

  John Wingfield, Sr. was the proprietor of the store, but the human worldof the store began to feel a kind of proprietorship in Jack, while itsguardian interest in helping him in his mistakes was common enough to bea conspiracy.

  And the callouses were gone from his hands. There was no longer adividing line
between tan and white on his forehead. No outward symbol ofthe desert clung to his person except the moments of the far vision ofdistances in his eyes. Superficially, on the Avenue he would have beentaken for one of his caste.

  But tossing a cowpuncher hat out of a window into Broadway was easierthan tossing a thing out of mind. He sat up nights to write to Mary.Letter after letter he poured out as a diary of his experiences in hisnew world, letters breathing a pupil's hope of learning and all thatpupil's sorry vagaries. No answer ever came, not even to the mostappealing ones about his most adventurous conflicts with the dinosaur.He felt the chagrin of the army of unpublished novelists who lay theirhearts bare on the stone slab of the dissectors in a publisher'soffice. He might as well have thrown all he wrote into thewaste-basket so far as any result was concerned; yet he kept onwriting as if it were his glorious duty to report to her as hissuperior. But he found a more responsive correspondent in Jim Galway;and this was the letter he received:

  "DEAR JACK:

  "The whole valley is not yet sprouting with dates as you said it wouldfrom your thinking of us. Maybe we didn't use the right seed. Your ranchis still called Jack's ranch, and Firio is doing his best and about thebest I ever knew in an Indian. But as you always said, Indians are mostlyhuman, like the rest of us, barring a sort of born twist in theirintellect for which they aren't responsible. You see, Jack, a lot of yoursayings still live with us, though you are gone.

  "Well, Firio keeps your P.D. exercised and won't let anybody but himselfride him. He says you will need him. For you can't budge the stubbornlittle cuss. He declares you're coming back. When we tell him you'reworth twenty millions and he's plumb full of primitive foolishness andgeneral ignorance of the outside world, he says, '_Si_, he will comeback!' like some heathen oracle that's strong on repetition and weak onvocabulary.

  "Of course you know about the new addition to our citizenship, JohnPrather, that double of yours that you didn't happen to meet. And Imight mention that by this time, after we've seen so much of him, weagree with the Doge that he doesn't look a bit like you. Well, he'smaking a fine ranch across the road from you, but hiring all his workdone, which ain't exactly according to Little Rivers custom, as youwill remember. The Doge sets a lot by him, though I can't see howthere's much in common between them. This fellow's not full of all thatkind of scholastic persiflage that you are, Jack. He's so all-firedpractical his joints would crack if he wasn't so oily; and he's up toold man Lefferts' pretty often.

  "He goes to Phoenix a good deal. When I was there the other day I heardhe was circulating around among the politicians in his quiet way, and Isaw him and Pete Leddy hobnobbing together. I didn't like that. But whenI told the Doge of it he said he guessed there wasn't much realhobnobbing. The Doge is certainly strong for Prather. Another thing Iheard was that, after all, old man Lefferts' two partners aren't dead,and Prather's been hunting them up.

  "Come to think of it, I didn't tell you that Pete Leddy and some of thegang have been back in town. Of course we have every confidence in theDoge, he's been so fair to this community. Still, some of us can't helphaving our private suspicions, considering what a lot we have at stake.And four or five of us was talking the other night, when suddenly we allagreed how you'd shine in any trouble, and if there was going to beany--not that there is--we wished you were here.

  "Well, Jack, the pass hasn't changed and the sunsets are just as grand asever and the air just as free. The pass won't have changed and thesunsets will be doing business at the old stand when the antiquaries aredigging up the remote civilization of Little Rivers and putting it in ahigh scale because they ran across a pot of Mrs. Galway's jam in theruins--the same hifalutin compliment being your own when you werenursing your wound, as you will remember.

  "Here's wishing you luck from the whole town, way out here in nowhere.

  "As ever yours,

  "James R. Galway.

  "P.S. Belvy Smith wants to know if you won't write just one story. I toldher you were too busy for such nonsense now. But she refuses to believeit. She says being busy doesn't matter to you. She says the stories justpop out. So I transmit her request. J.R.G."

  "P.D. waiting!" breathed Jack. "No changing Firio! He is like the pass. Iwonder how Wrath of God and Jag Ear are!"

  He wrote a story for Belvy. He wrote to Firio in resolute assertion thathe would never require the services of P.D. again, when he knew thatFirio, despite the protests, would still keep P.D. fit for the trail. Hewrote to Jim Galway how immersed he was in his new career, but that hemight come for a while--for a little while, with emphasis--if ever Jimwired that he was needed.

  "That was a good holiday--a regular week-end debauch away from the shop!"he thought, when the letters were finished.

  Soon after this came an event which, for the first time, gave JohnWingfield, Sr. a revelation of the side of his son that had won LittleRivers and the interest of the rank and file of the store. Among Jack'smany suggestions, in his aim to carry out his father's talk about thecreative business sense the first night they were together, had been onefor a suburban clubbing delivery system. It had been dismissed asfantastic, but Jack had asked that it be given a trial and his father hadconsented. Its basis was a certain confidence in human nature. Jack andhis father had dined together the evening after the master of thepush-buttons had gone through the final reports of the experiment.

  "Well, Jack, I am going to raise your salary to a hundred a week," thefather announced.

  "On the ground that if you pay me more I might make myself worth more?"Jack asked respectfully.

  "No, as a matter of business. Whenever any man makes two dollars for thestore, he gets one dollar and I keep the other. That is the basis of mysuccess--others earning money for me. Your club scheme is a go. As theaccountant works it out, it has brought a profit of two hundred a week."

  "Then I have done something worth while, really?" Jack asked, eagerly,but half sceptical of such good fortune.

  "Yes. You have created a value. You have used your powers of observationand your brain. That's the thing that makes a few men employers while themultitude remains employees."

  "Father! Then I am not quite hopeless?"

  "Hopeless! My son hopeless! No, no! I didn't expect you to learn thebusiness in a week, or a month, or even a year. Time! time!"

  Nor did John Wingfield, Sr. wish his son to develop too rapidly. Nowthat he was so sure of beating threescore and ten, while retaining thefull possession of his faculties, if he followed the rules of longevity,he would not have welcomed a son who could spring into the saddle atonce. He wanted to ride alone. He who had never shared his power withanyone! He who had never admitted anyone into even a few shares ofcompany partnership in his concern! Time! time! The boy would never fallheir to undivided responsibility before he was forty. John Wingfield,Sr. was pleased with himself; pleased over a good sign; and he could notdeny that he was pleased at the sudden change in Jack. For he saw Jack'seyes sparkling into his own; sparkling with comradeship and spontaneousgratification. Was the boy to be his in thought and purpose, after all?Yes, of course; yes, inevitably, with the approach of maturity. Graduallythe flightiness of his upbringing would wear off down to the steel, thehard-tempered, paternal steel.

  "You can scarcely realize what a fight it has been for me until you knowthe life I led out in Arizona, getting strong for you and the store,"Jack began.

  "Strong for me! For the store! Yes, Jack!" There was an emphasis on thesubjective personal pronoun--for _him_; for the store!

  The father's face beamed a serene delight. This Jack accepted as theexpression of sympathy and understanding which he had craved. It was tohim an inspiration of fellowship that set the well of his inner being inoverflow and the force of his personality, which the father had feltuncannily before the mother's picture, became something persuasive in itsradiance rather than something held in leash as a threatening andvolcanic element. Now he could talk as freely and happily of the desertto his father as to Burleigh and Mathewson. He told
of the long rides;of Firio and Wrath of God. He made the tinkle of Jag Ear's bells heard inthe silence of the dining-room as it was heard in the silences of thetrail. He mentioned how he was afraid to come back after he was strong.

  "Afraid?" queried his father.

  "Yes. But I was coming--coming when, at the top of the pass, I saw LittleRivers for the first time."

  He sketched his meeting with Mary Ewold; the story of the town and thestory of Jasper Ewold as he knew it, now glancing at his father, nowseeming to see nothing except visualization of the pictures of his story.The father, looking at the table-cloth, at times playing with hiscoffee-spoon, made no comment.

  "And that first night I saw that Jasper Ewold had met me somewherebefore. But--" he went on after going back to the incident of the villain his childhood--"that hardly explained. How could he remember the faceof a grown man from the face of a boy? Jasper Ewold! Do you recall everhaving met him? He must have known my mother. Perhaps he knew you, thoughwhy he should not have told me I don't know."

  "Yes, yes--Jasper Ewold," said the father. "I knew him in his youngerdays. His was an old family up in Burbridge, the New England town where Icame from. Too much college, too much travel, as I remember,characterized Jasper Ewold. No settled point of view; and I judge fromwhat you say that he must have run through his patrimony. One of the upsand downs of the world, Jack. And he never mentioned that he had met me?"

  "No."

  "Probably a part of that desert notion of freemasonry in keeping pasts asecret. But why did you stay on after you had recovered from your wound?"he asked penetratingly, though he was looking again at the bottom of hiscoffee-cup.

  "For a reason that comes to a man but once in his life!" Jack answered.

  Had the father looked up--it was a habit of his in listening to anyreport to lower his eyes, his face a mask--he might have seen Jack'sface in the supremacy of emotion, as it was when he had called up toMary from the canyon and when he had pleaded with her on the pass. ButJohn Wingfield, Sr. could not mistake the message of a voice vibratingwith all the force of a being let free living over the scene. With theshadows settling over his eyes, Jack came to her answer and to thefinality of her cry:

  "It's not in the blood!"

  The only sound was a slight tinkle of a spoon against the coffee-cup.Looking at his father he saw a nervous flutter in his cheeks, his lipshard set, his brow drawn down; and the rigidity of the profile was suchthat Jack was struck by the shiver of a thought that it must have beenlike his own as others said it was when he had gripped Pedro Nogales'sarm. But this passed quickly, leaving, however, in its trail anexpression of shock and displeasure.

  "So it was the girl, that kept you--you were in love!" John Wingfield,Sr. exclaimed, tensely.

  "Yes, I was--I am! You have it, father, the unchangeable all of it! Iface a wall of mystery. 'It's not in the blood!' she said, as if it weresome bar sinister. What could she have meant?"

  In the fever of baffled intensity crying for light and help, he wassharing the secret that had beset him relentlessly and giving his fatherthe supreme confidence of his heart. Leaning across the table he graspedhis father's hand, which lay still and unresponsive and singularly coldfor a second. Then John Wingfield, Sr. raised his other hand and pattedthe back of Jack's hesitantly, as if uncertain how to deal with thislatest situation that had developed out of his son's old life. Finally helooked up good-temperedly, deprecatingly.

  "Well, well, Jack, I almost forgot that you are young. It's quite a badcase!" he said.

  "But what did she mean? Can you guess? I have thought of it so much thatit has meant a thousand wild things!" Jack persisted desperately.

  "Come! come!" the father rallied him. "Time, time!"

  He gripped the hand that was gripping his and swung it free of the tablewith a kindly shake. All the effective charm of his personality which henever wasted, the charm that could develop out of the mask to gain an endwhen the period of listening was over, was in play.

  "She excited the opposition of the strength in you," he said. "You askwhat did she mean? It is hard to tell what a woman means, but I judgethat she meant that it was not in her blood to marry a fellow who wentabout fighting duels and breaking arms. She would like a more peacefulsort; and, yes, anything that came into her mind leaped out and you weremystified by her strange exclamation!"

  "Perhaps. I suppose that may be it. It was just myself, just my devil!"Jack assented limply.

  "Time! time! All this will pass."

  Jack could not answer that commonplace with one of his own, that it wouldnot pass; he could only return the pressure when his father, rising andcoming around the table, slipped his arm about the son in a demonstrationof affection which was like opening the gate to a new epoch in theirrelations.

  "And you would have killed Leddy! You could have broken that Mexican intwo! I should like to have seen that! So would the ancestor!" said thefather, giving Jack a hug.

  "Yes, but, father, that was the horror of it!"

  "Not the power to do it--no! I mean, Jack, that in this world it is wellto be strong."

  "And you think that I am no longer a weakling?" Jack asked strangely;"that I carried out your instructions when you sent me away?"

  "Oh, Jack, you remember my farewell remark? It was made in irritation andsuffering. That hurt me. It hurt my pride and all that my work standsfor. It hurt me as much as it hurt you. But if it was a whip, why, then,it served a purpose, as I wanted it to."

  "Yes, it was a whip!" said Jack, mechanically.

  "Then all ends well--all quits! And, Jack," he swung Jack, who wasunresisting but unresponsive, around facing him, "if you ever have anydoubts or any questions to ask bring them to me, won't you?"

  "Yes."

  "And, Jack, a hundred a week to-morrow! You're all right, Jack!" And hegave Jack a slap on the back as they left the dining-room.