III
Ted Thorne, in the library of his home at ten-thirty that night, beheld the face of his young salesman with anxiety.
“For heaven’s sake, Nat, what’s the matter? Sick?”
“No, just a bit upset, that’s all, Ted. You wired me to come home in a hurry and I forgot to telegraph my wife. I reached the house to find——”
“Yes?”
“That she loved that Plumb fellow—the steam-fitter that works for Holcomb.”
“You caught them?”
“Yes. I caught them!”
Nathan stretched his legs and drew a long sigh. His lips were very firm. His self-control was admirable.
“And what’s the answer?” demanded Thorne.
“She’s gone with Plumb. I told her to go.”
“You told her to go! My God! I’d have got a gun and plugged that steam-fitter so full of holes——”
“The man who’ll so lower himself as to run amuck and shoot anybody up for the sake of a woman who doesn’t love him enough to be true to him deserves exactly what the jury hands him in case they fail to disagree!”
“But there’s such a thing as the Unwritten Law and——”
“Unwritten fiddlesticks! Let’s get down to business. What’s this important mission you want to send me on?”
“Suppose we smoke,” suggested Ted weakly. He was too upset at the moment to discuss business. When the cigars had been lighted he sat with his chin deep in his chest for a time and then said frankly, “You’ve had a sort of a rotten experience with women, haven’t you, Nat? Oh, I know all about it! Most of the town does. Your mother—that Gardner girl—now your wife—say, Nat, the marvel to me is, that regardless of it all, there doesn’t seem to be the least shred of cynicism in your whole make-up. I’ve got to hand it to you, Nat. I don’t understand it.”
“It’s nothing but common sense, Ted. What’s the use of showing yourself a mean, small-bored, surly little runt, rooting about the earth or frothing cheap spleen, just because you haven’t had the chance to know the right people? It’s this way, Ted: When I was a kid, and even later in my ‘teens, I felt that I’d been handed a raw deal. I got an awful dose of it, or thought I did—such a dose of it that, frankly, I began to get curious about it. I couldn’t place any other construction on it finally, Ted, but that somewhere, somehow, there was a purpose behind it. Unconsciously these last few years, I’ve been searching to determine just what that purpose could be. I’ve searched the Bible. I’ve read a lot of what all the big thinkers in other ages have left behind. I’ve watched people—other folks in trouble. Why should some fellows be born with silver spoons in their mouths and a whole regiment of solicitous relatives standing around at birth and afterward, to help them stir with it, and other fellows have to scratch for themselves, buy their own spoon and do most of their own stirring? Ted, there must be a reason behind all this hodgepodge of life. Ever stop to think about it? Human vicissitudes, Ted, seem to be the only things in the universe that aren’t subject to pretty well-defined laws for pretty sharply defined purposes. The seasons come and go—seed time and growing time and harvest—for a purpose. Showers follow muggy weather—to water the thirsty earth. Even the very nitrogen from our lungs in devitalized exhalation becomes food for the fairest flowers. It’s a pretty intricate universe, Ted, with precious little happening by chance. All but the ups and downs of human life. Do you mean to tell me that human life, the highest organism in all nature, runs hit-or-miss? I can’t believe it, Ted. The very fact that there’s no apparent reason for all our ups and downs convinces me there is a reason. And it’s simple as dirt. There’s some of us deficient in some attribute or other that only raw dealing and struggle make strong. Others have follies and weaknesses. Sorrow and hard luck burn the dross away or show the whole stuffing of us is dross and not worth the Almighty monkeying with at all. The whole trouble happens to be that we poor mortals don’t know what the assay of ourselves was—before we came into the darned world and started living in it in the first place. So we can’t know what we need and what we don’t need. And we kick and we caterwaul and we revile and we squirm. Or we show we’re only cheap stuff and ‘turn cynical’ as you call it. But I’m beginning to believe, Ted, that people who let themselves sink into self-pity and get cynical and rail against the ups and downs of life are only cheating themselves. They’re probably deliberately knuckling under on precisely the load of trial and tribulation they need to make them strong—in this world—or for some other race—on some distant planet—further on! Got it? ‘Them’s my sentiments’ on the woman mess. The class is dismissed. Now let’s get down to business!”
“You’re a philosopher!” gasped Ted Thorne weakly.
“Until a man becomes a philosopher in some form or other, he’s going to have a mighty hard scratch in this world, Ted, to dig up reasons for all that happens to him.”
Ted Thorne looked at his salesman in frank admiration. He saw a prematurely old young fellow with fine flecks of gray beginning to show at his temples, even at twenty-seven. There were deep creases of still deeper strength about his mouth. His eyes were calmer and held a wounded look at times which melted into growing reassurance that life, after all, was mostly what we make it. Nose was prominent. Mouth and chin were stubborn, though lips came together evenly. His head was perfectly proportioned. His hands were the slender hands of the artist, the builder, the creator. He had the properties of piano wire, somehow—wire capable of producing the finest melodies in all nature when properly tightened and tuned—yet strong enough to bear a weight more out of proportion to its size and stress than any other substance in existence.
“Nathan,” he said gravely, “we’re going to have war; did you know it?”
“I hope not!”
“All the same, we’re going to have war. And if we have war, there’ll be a draft. Before that comes, I want to utilize your services in doing something for the company we can’t spare any other man to do. I believe it’ll be extremely agreeable to yourself, too—a change—an education—an opportunity to get out and see what the world is like. I want to send you abroad.”
“Abroad!” gasped Nathan.
“Your wife’s elimination comes at an especially happy time, old man. Besides, a change of scene may soften the sting of the experience. How long will it take to start the divorce business?”
“A week to start it, perhaps. The case can’t be heard until June, anyhow.”
“It’ll be purely mechanical, of course, seeing it probably won’t be contested.”
Nathan nodded.
“Where do you want me to go?” he asked quietly. “France?”
“Siberia!”
Thorne made the announcement as he might have named Rutland, Bennington or Troy, New York.
“What!”
“Here’s the story, Nat. About eight months ago we manufactured a lot of shirts for the Russian government. Ships were at a premium to transport goods across the Atlantic. Beside, they might be subject to seizure going up through the Baltic if the German fleet came out. So we routed those goods across America and shipped them over the Pacific. But you know what’s happening up in Russia. And here we are, with about forty thousand dollars’ worth of goods stuck somewhere in the Orient, and what’s going to become of them if we don’t send a representative to look out for them, the Lord only knows. Nat, the directors couldn’t give you that New York job because of the impediment your wife was—I’d just as soon say so now. But we can give you this trip and a bigger job when you get back, if the war turns out the way we hope. We want you to go to Vladivostok within the next thirty days and look after the placing of those goods in the hands of the proper parties.”
“Whew!” exclaimed Nathan. “A mere trifle! What else?”
“Nat, old man, we’ve got confidence that you can work it out, or we wouldn’t send you. We’ll get your passports and routing—to sail from San Francisco on or about the first of April. And you can have until that time to wind up your affairs. You may be gone a devil of a time and circle the world before you get back. But it’ll be a college education and I don’t want you to refuse.”
“I’ll go—of course,” assented the lad. But for a time his gaze was blank.
He was thinking of his father, last heard from in Japan—directly in his route.