The Driver

by Garet Garrett

  Mrs. Galt appeared. Then Galt’s mother, introduced simply and sweetly by her nursery name, Gram’ma Galt There was an embarrassing pause.

  “Where is Vera?” Galt asked.

  Vera, I supposed, was the ferryboat girl.

  Nobody answered his question. Mrs. Galt by an effort of strong intention moved us silently toward the dining room. The house seemed bare,—no pictures to look at, a few pieces of fine old furniture mixed with modern things, good rugs worn shabby and no artistry of design or effect whatever except in the middle room between parlor and dining room which contained a grand piano, some art objects and a thought of color. Nothing in the house was positively ugly or in bad taste, nor in the total impression was there any uncomfortable suggestion of genteel poverty. What the environment seemed to express, all save that one middle room, was indifference.

  “You will want to talk,” said Mrs. Galt, placing me at the left of Galt, so that I faced Natalie, who sat at his right This was the foot of the table. Mrs. Galt sat at the head of it, with Gram’ma Galt at her right and a vacant place at her left.

  “Where is Vera?” Galt asked again, beginning to develop symptoms.

  “She isn’t coming down,” said Mrs. Galt in a horizontal voice.

  “Why not?” asked Galt, beating the table. “Why not?”

  “T-e-e o-o-o doubleyou,” said Natalie, significantly, trying to catch his eye. But he either didn’t hear or purposely ignored her, and went on:

  “She does this to spite me. She does it every time I bring anybody home. I won’t have it. She’s a monkey, she’s a snob. I’ll call her till she comes. Hey, Ver-a-a-al”

  Natalie had been shaking him by the arm, desperately trying to make him look at a figure formed with the fingers of her right hand. Evidently there was a code between them. She had already tried the cipher, T O W, whatever that meant, and now this was the sign. If he would only look! But of course he wouldn’t. Suddenly the girl threw herself around him, and though he resisted she smothered him powerfully and whispered in his ear. Instantly the scene dissolved. She returned to her place slightly flushed with the exertion, he sat up to the table, and dinner began to be served as if nothing unusual had taken place.

  Mrs. Galt addressed polite inquiries at me, spoke to the butler, conversed with Natalie, not feverishly or in haste, but placidly, in a calm level voice. She was a magnificent brunette woman, turning gray at a time of life and in a manner to make her look even younger and more striking than before. Her expression was trained, impersonal and weary, as that of one who knows the part too well to be surprised or taken unawares and had forgotten what it was like to be interested without effort. There were lines suitable to every occasion. She knew them all and spoke them well, omitting nothing, slurring nothing, adding nothing. Her conversation, like her expression, was a guise. Back of that there dwelt a woman.

  No one spoke to the old mother. I tried to talk to her. She became instantly rigid and remained so until I turned away embarrassed. As I did so Natalie was looking at me.

  “Don’t mind Gram’ma,” she said across the table. “When she wants to talk she will let you know.”

  I happened to catch the angry look that the grandmother darted at the girl for this polite impertinence. It betrayed an amazing energy of spirit. That old stone house with its breaking lines, dissolving gray textures, and no way in, was still the habitat of an ageless, sultry sibyl. Trespass at your peril! But youth possessing itself is truly impervious. The girl did not mind. She returned the look with a smile, just a little too winsome, as everything about her seemed a little too high in key or color, too extraordinary, too unexpected, or, like the girl in the perfumer’s advertisement, a little too much to be true, not in any sense of being unreal, but as an entity altogether and unfortunately improbable. She had learned how to get what she wanted, and her way of getting it, one could imagine, was all that made life bearable in that household.

  Its sky was low and ominous, charged with a sense of psychic stress. I felt two conditions of conflict, one chronic and one acute. The feeling of there being something acute was suddenly deepened when the old mother spoke for the first and only time. Her voice was clear, precise and commanded undivided attention. The question she asked gave me a queer start.

  “What is the price of Great Midwestern to-day?”

  “Eight,” said Galt, amid profound silence.

  That was all. Yet it was as if a spark had passed through inflammable gas. The same feeling was deepened further by another incident.

  “Coxey,” said Galt, addressing me rhetorically, “what one thing has impressed you most in Wall Street?”

  “The unbelief of people in themselves, in each other and in what they are doing,” I replied.

  “What’s that? Say it again.”

  I said it again, whereat he burst forth with shrill, discordant, exulting sounds, beating the china with a spoon and making for one person an incredible uproar. At the same time he looked about him with a high air, especially at his wife, whose expression was perfectly blank. Natalie smiled grimly. The old mother was oblivious.

  “I don’t see anything in that,” I said, when the racket subsided.

  “There is, though,” he said. “You didn’t mean to do it but you hit ‘em in the eye that time,—square in the eye. Wow 1” He was very agreeably excited and got up from the table.

  “Come on,” he said, “we’ll talk in my room.”

  “I’ll send your coffee up,” Mrs. Galt called after us, as he bore me off.

  “This is where I live and play,” he said, applying a latch-key to a door at the top of the stairway. He went in first to get the light on, saying: “I don’t let anybody in here but Natalie. She can dust it up without touching anything.”

  The room was a workshop in that state of involved disorder, tools all scattered about, which is sign and measure of the craftsman’s engrossment. There was an enormous table piled high at both ends with papers, briefs, maps, charts, blue prints, files, pamphlets and stuffed envelopes. Books were everywhere,—on the table, on the chairs, on the floor, many of them open, faces up and faces down, straddled one upon another leap-frog fashion, arranged in series with weights to hold them flat, books sprawling, leaning, prone. Poor’s Manual of Railway Statistics, the Financial Chronicle, Statistical Abstract of the United States, Economics of Railroad Construction, History of the Erie Railroad, the Yardmaster’s Assistant,—such were the titles. Against the right wall to a height of six feet were book shelves filled with all the contemporary financial and commercial periodicals in bound volumes, almanacs, endless books of statistical reference and the annual reports of various railway corporations, running back for many years. On top of the shelves was the only decorative thing in the room,—a beautiful working model of a locomotive, perfect in every intricate part, mounted in brass and set upon a nickel plated section of railway.

  One could have guessed without seeing him that the occupant of this room was restless, never at physical ease, and worked all over the place, sitting here and there, lying down and walking about. On the left side of the room was a couch and close beside it at one end a morris chair, a reading light between them. Both the couch and chair showed nervous wear and tear. And beyond the table in the clear space the rug had been paced threadbare.

  Most of the available wall area was covered with maps and colored charts. I walked about looking at them. Galt removed his shoes, put on slippers, got into a ragged lounging jacket and threw himself on the couch, where he lay for some time watching me with the air of one who waits only to pop open at the slightest touch in the right place.

  “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 mone
y, 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?”