The Cinder Buggy

by Garet Garrett

  Thus he sold first the idea of iron rails. Next he proceeded to sell the rails.

  Railway building at that time was the enchanted field of creative speculation. Railways were made in hope, rejoicing and sheer abandon of wilful energy. Once they were made they served economic ends, as a navigable waterway will, no matter where or how it goes, but for one that was intelligently planned for the greatest good of the greatest need four or five others derived their existence fantastically from motives of emulation, spite, greed, combat and civic vaingloriousness. When in the course of events all these separate translations of the ungoverned imagination were linked up the result was that incomprehensible crazy quilt which the great American railway system was and is in the geographical sense. It was more exciting and more profitable to build railways than wagon roads. That is how we came to have the finest railways and the worst highways of any country in the civilized world.

  Into this field of sunshine and quicksand marched the young man from New Damascus. He could scent a new railway project from afar, up or down wind, and then he stalked it day and night. He sold it the rails. Without fail he furnished the rails. He sold them for cash when he could, and when he couldn’t get cash he took promissory notes, I O U’s, post-dated checks, bonds and stocks. He took all he could get of what he could find, but whatever it was he sold the rails.

  Enoch Gib, greatly startled at first, was willing to see how merchandising by this principle would work out. But as he was unused to excursions in finance and as the notes and stocks and bonds of railways in the gristle piled up in his safe he called in his banker for consultation. John was present.

  “It’s not so much of a gamble if you go far enough,” said John. “There’s a principle of insurance in it. It would be risky to sell insurance on one ship. Nobody does that. It is perfectly safe to sell insurance on a thousand ships. This is the same thing. Some of these railways will bust of course. But if we sell rails to all of them we can afford to lose on the few that go down. The whole question is: do you believe in railways?”

  The two old men looked at their youthful instructor with anxious wonder.

  “Is that your own idea?” the banker asked.

  “It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” John answered.

  “When you mention it, yes,” said the banker. “I should never have thought of it that way.”

  Later the banker spoke privately with Gib.

  “That’s a very dangerous young man.”

  “Very,” said Gib.

  Yet it worked out rather well, owing partly to the principle and partly to John’s uncanny instinct for making a safe leap. He could smell bankruptcy before it happened. Moving about as he did continually in the surge of the railway excitement he had access to much private information. He knew pretty well how it fared with the companies that owed the mill for rails. If one were verging toward trouble he knew how and where to get rid of its paper at a discount. There were losses; but the losses were balanced by profits in those cases where a company that had been charged a very high price for rails because it was short of cash and nobody else would take its notes was able at length to redeem its paper in full.

  In John’s mind was no thought of either loyalty to iron or disloyalty to steel. It was a question of American rails against foreign rails. Steel rails were entirely of foreign origin. The steel age had not crossed the ocean. His work justified itself. It was immediately creative and greatly assisted railway building. It was speculative also, and this is to be remembered. A collateral and very important result was that it hastened the advent of the American steel rail, since the punitive tariff against foreign rails gave the American steel people the incentive of greater profit. That presently changed the problem.

  Meanwhile, never had the New Damascus mill been so active. Never had its profits been greater. Yet Enoch Gib was uneasy. He had offered the young man a partnership. John had flatly declined it.

  What did that mean?

  XIV

  FOR twenty years the social life of New Damascus had been as an untended orchard,—shapeless, perfunctory and reminiscent. Its estate was a memory running back to the old Woolwine Mansion and the days of Aaron. It had no rallying point. There was youth as a biological fact without gaiety, sparkle or sweet daring. Quality Street lived on its income. Young men succeeded their fathers in business. The girls, after music and finishing at Philadelphia, returned to New Damascus and married them.

  The Gib Mansion might as well have been a mausoleum. Life was never entertained there. It did not expect to be. Jonet was nobody until Gib married her. After that she was the community’s commiseration. She died when Agnes, their only child, was ten. The obsequies were private. At the grave, besides the sexton and the minister, and Gib holding Agnes by the hand, there was one other person. That was Gearhard, the father of Jonet, who stood with his feet crossed and his left forearm resting on the sexton’s shoulder as on the bellows-sweep, in a contemplative attitude. People spoke of it literally. There, they said, was another thing Enoch had broken and cast away. No wonder he wished to bury it privately. Agnes was sent off to school. She had lately returned and was now living at the Gib Mansion alone with her father. Nobody knew her. There was some mystery about her. A story of unknown origin, and unverified, was that she had been found out at school in an unchaperoned escapade, which so enraged old Enoch that he brought her home and deprived her of liberty. It would be like him to do that. Moreover, in the iron age such discipline was feasible. Youth had not yet delivered itself from parental tyranny. That was reserved to be one of the marvels of the steel age.;! In 1870 any girl of seventeen was dependent, and one in the situation of Agnes Gib was helpless.

  John’s advent on this iron grey scene produced a magical change. He was rightful heir to all the social tradition there was in New Damascus. This would have meant nothing in itself. But he liked it. He was not then nor did he ever become the kind of man who must renounce life to reach success. That is a matter partly of temperament and partly of capacity. Knowledge necessary to his ends he acquired easily, seemingly without effort, even technical knowledge. His imagination worked with the ease of fancy and knew no fatigue. Business was a game at which he played. Therefore it could not devour him. Without a moment’s notice he could turn from one kind of play to another and back again. He would dance all night and come with a crystal mind to the day’s work. Frivolity seemed to stimulate or recharge his mind.

  The youth of New Damascus adored him. A group spontaneously formed around him. He kept large rooms at the inn, where he entertained. More than half his time was spent away from New Damascus, but the new social order adjusted itself to his movements. When he was at home there were parties, dances, suppers, excursions, flirtings and episodes. All this took place on the plane of Quality Street. But his liking for people neither began nor ended there. It knew no petty distinctions. There were two kinds of people in the world,—his kind and others. And his kind were all the same to him no matter where he found them. He had friends among the mill workers—big, roystering fellows with whom he often went revelling to fill out a night. One of these was Alexander Thane, the splendid puddler who had spoken to him that first night in the mill. They became fast friends.

  He scandalized people without offending them. Whatever he did, that was John. He did anything he liked and it was forgiven beforehand. His errancies were extravagant and alarming, such as had been almost certain to involve a superficial nature in disaster. They were never wicked or immoral, never hurtful to others and seemed but to innocently enhance the romantic aspect of his personality. This may be true only of one whose character is superior to his follies. As his character came more and more to be realized people began to say, “Well, that’s one young man Enoch Gib won’t break.”

  Enoch regarded him with wonder and misgiving. John’s impact on the business had been phenomenal.

  Perhaps no one else could have done it; certainly no one else wasting so much of himself in ways for which Gib felt the u
tmost contempt could at the same time have attended to business at all. Yet his way with it grew steadily stronger and more remarkable, no matter what else he did.

  Gradually there grew up in Gib a vague baffled sense of recurrence. As New Damascus had idolized Aaron in the old time so now it idolized John. Was that because he was Aaron’s son? For a while it had that aspect. Then it could no longer be so explained. Something that had been was taking place again. What was it? The old man came to this question again and again. It tormented him for a year of nights. Then suddenly he had the answer.

  New Damascus idolized this person not because he was Aaron’s son but because he was Aaron!

  Once this wild thought had occurred to Enoch it expanded rapidly, filling his whole mind, and became an obsession. Aaron lived again! He had returned with youth and strength restored.

  The physical resemblance was in fact very striking. Enoch began to study it surreptitiously. The sight tortured and fascinated him. He could not let it alone. He decided he had been mistaken about that look of Esther which at first he had seemed to see in the young man’s eyes. It was not there. Thank God for that. This youth was Aaron himself.

  From the moment of perceiving this thing with hallucinated clarity Enoch hated John and arranged his thoughts to dwell against him dangerously. How should he deal with the situation? It had no tangibility. If he spoke of it people would think he was crazy. Yet there was the fact. Aaron by foul strategy had entered the business again. The circumstances of his entering it in the guise of a son were extraordinary. As the old man reviewed the incident it assumed a flagrant, preposterous aspect. Aaron had outwitted him.

  Yes. Aaron had always been able to do that. But this was an outrageous act! Nothing like it had ever happened before in the world. And now it behooved him to act cautiously, think cunningly, and above all to conceal the fact that he knew. Merely again to put Aaron out of the business, as he could easily do, would be neither quittance nor justice.

  XV

  THERE was much curiosity about Enoch’s invisible daughter. Was she really imprisoned in that gloomy mansion on the west hill? Or was she. queer, like her mother? How did she live? What was she like? The mill workers, passing the house at all hours, were said to have seen her walking in the landscape at twilight. There was also a legend that she was beautiful.

  The young Quality Street set with whom John played and danced talked itself into a state of romantic feeling about her. There was competition in fanciful suggestions. One was that twenty of them should become a committee and move in a body on the mansion. What could the ogre do then? Only of course nothing so overt could really be done. Besides, that would be too serious, not mad enough, and the prisoner might turn out badly. Nobody knew what kind of person she was. Whatever they did should be something to which she assented beforehand.

  The suggestion that did at length unite all silly young heads was this. They would give her a party. That was a natural thing to do. She was a New Damascus girl, wasn’t she? There was no reason in the world why they shouldn’t give her a party. It was perfectly feasible in social principle. The difficulties, as an engineer would say, were merely technical. They were awkward nevertheless. How should they ask her? And if she were unable to bring herself, as would certainly be the case, how should they get her? They appealed to John. He was responsive. It appealed to his spirit of reckless frivolity. He undertook offhand to bring Agnes Gib to a party. It might take some time. He would tell them when and where.

  First he made a reconnaissance of the enemy’s position. It had its vulnerable points, one of which was an Irish gardener with a grouch on the place. Beginning with him and working in, John proceeded to corrupt the Gib menage. He learned that Agnes was confined to that part of the mansion in which her mother had been immured. She was not permitted to go out, except to walk in the grounds with a woman who was Gib’s servant, not hers, and performed the office of a gaoler.

  In time he succeeded in getting a note to the prisoner. In it he said simply that she was desired to come to a party. There was no answer.

  He sent a second note. The party he had mentioned before was one proposed to be held in her honor. There would be introductions, then supper and dancing, informal but all very correct and duly chaperoned. Still no answer.

  He sent a third note in which for the first time he recognized deterrent circumstances. However, all difficulties should be overcome. She had only to consent.

  Then a way would be found. The young set of New Damascus was very anxious to get acquainted with her, hence this friendly gesture. To this was returned a note, unsigned, as follows:

  “Miss Gib thanks Mrs. Breakspeare and his friends and regrets to say she cannot come.”

  That was more or less what John by this time was expecting. He was not discouraged, but he needed light on the young person’s character and it occurred to him in this need to explore Gearhard the blacksmith, her grandfather. He melted the hoary smith’s ferocity of manner, which was but a rickety defence of the heart, by taking him headlong into the plot with an air of unlimited confidence. Gearhard at first worked his bellows furiously and stirred the fire in his forge, pretending to be angrily absent. But the strokes of the sweep-pole gradually diminished, the fire fell, the bellows collapsed with a rheumatic commotion, and he stood in his characteristic attitude of contemplation, listening. When he spoke his voice was remote and gentle.

  “She won’t,” he said. “That’s all there’s into it. She’s as proud as that bar of steel.”

  Youth understands its own. It knows the chemistries of impulse and how to challenge them. Curiosity overcomes pride, shyness and fear; and if it be touched through the arc of vanity all else is forgiven, for the desire of youth to be liked for itself alone, in the sign of its personableness, is a glowing passion.

  What followed was absurd. Youth delights in high absurdities. It has a way with them that wisdom pretends to have forgotten. Away wisdom! You spoil the cosmic sorceries.

  John sent another note.

  It was to this effect. At the south boundary where the boxwood grew he would be waiting Thursday evening. She would have only to come straight on fifty paces more instead of turning in her walk at that point as her habit was, and the frolic would begin.

  There was no answer. He expected none. But on Thursday evening he was there. From where he stood behind the boxwood he could see all that part of the grounds in which she walked. She appeared at the usual time, attended by a powerful looking woman who disliked exercise and made heavy work of it. Their relations were apparently hostile. They never spoke. The girl was supercilious; the woman grim. After a while the woman sat on an iron bench. The girl walked to and fro. Twice she came within a stone’s throw of the boxwood and turned back. Once she stood for several minutes, looking slowly up and down the boundary line of hedge and stone, and at the sky, and all around, with a wilful blind spot in her eye. She did not for an instant look seeingly at the spot her mind was focussed on. Yet John, who watched her, knew she sensed his presence there. That was all that happened. She presently went in without notice to the woman, who saw her going toward the house and followed.

  John sent another note. A second time he waited. This time she changed her walk in oblique relation to the boxwood and finished it without the slightest glance or impulse in that direction.

  There was a third time. And that was different. On the first turn she came closer to the boxwood than ever before, closer still on the second turn, and then, when the gaoler woman had become inert on the bench, she came within speaking distance and sat on the grass.

  “We are here,” said John.

  “Who are we?” she asked.

  This was parley.

  “I am their deputy,” he said. “Constructively they are here. Naturally, all of us couldn’t come at one time and—” He stopped. She wasn’t the kind of girl he was expecting. She embarrassed his style.

  “And hide in the hedge,” she said, finishing his sentence. “Why not? It
wouldn’t be any less rude if twenty did it.”

  “That isn’t fair,” he said. “We don’t mean to be rude. We only want to get you out.”

  “You think I couldn’t get out by myself if I wanted to?”

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s what we thought. It’s so, isn’t it?”

  She framed a reply, but withheld it, or, rather, she bit it in two and threw it away, symbolically. It was a clover stem. She sat on her feet, bent over, plucking at the grass, with an occasional glance at the woman on the bench.

  “Do you think it’s nice to spy on a girl as you have been doing?” she asked.

  “Very nice,” he said, to tease her.

  “And is this the way you get girls for your parties?”

  “May we drive up to your door and ask for you there?”

  “You may.”

  “Then will you come?”

  “No, I won’t be home.”

  “Why not?”

  “I won’t. That’s why not.”

  “Do you dislike parties?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you hate people?”

  “I hate people who feel sorry for me.”

  “Do you wish me to go away?”

  “Not if you like what you are doing.”

  “I’m not doing this because I like doing it,” he answered. “I’m doing it because I was asked.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “They felt—I mean, they had this friendly impulse to give you a party. They didn’t know how to get you and asked me to manage it. Now what shall I say to them? Shall I say you hate parties and wish them to mind their own business?”