CHAPTER VII
If every young man could be put in a position where he could do nothing but think for a matter of a couple of months just at that time when he is ready to take up the major business of his life, one may well believe the history of the world would be other and better than it is. Potter Waite was injured early in May. Three months passed before he was able to take the air even in a slowly driven, pillowed limousine. If ever a chance were given a human being to check up on his accounts, take a trial balance, and arrive at definite conclusions with respect to himself, Potter had that chance. Not only had he the opportunity, but a vital consideration had intervened, urging him to wider, deeper, bolder considerations. He thought much about Potter Waite, but the time in which he lived, the world turmoil which surrounded him, the pressure of great events on his own life, compelled him to think about himself with respect to grave, impending affairs and to the requirements of his country, which he had come, in some measure, to know.
This state of affairs developed in him a rare singleness of purpose. From the beginning of time men with rare singleness of purpose have been regarded as monomaniacs, cranks. They have been derided. The world has whispered about them behind its hands and snickered. This was an attitude which Potter was to encounter, first from his father, later from those who had formerly been his cronies.
Fabius Waite became more and more irritated by his son’s absorption in aeronautics, for he was a practical business man, and when he could not see how a profit could be entered in the ledger from a given transaction, he deleted the transaction.
“I’m glad, of course,” he said to Potter, “to see you taking an interest in something—outside the Pontchartrain bar and the chorus of a comic opera—but you’re going over the line with this thing. You’re getting as bad as Old Man Jeffords. I sit in directors’ meeting at the bank with him once a week, and he’ll butt into any sort of a discussion with idiocy about some new postage stamp he’s found in somebody’s attic. I suppose people must have fads and amusements.” He said it as if he did not in the least see why they should have such absurd things. “But they can be carried too far. You’re riding this hobby day and night. Aeroplanes! There’s no money in aeroplanes.”
“I’m not thinking of making money out of them,” said Potter.
“Then why are you monkeying with them? Too much aeroplane, or too much golf, or too much bridge, or too much anything that interferes with a man’s business, is about as bad as too much whisky.”
“But aeroplanes are my business.”
“Fiddlesticks, son! You’ve been sick a long time, and you’ve gotten this notion. Automobiles is your business.”
“I guess we don’t get the same point of view, Dad. You’re interested in one thing and I’m interested in another. Somehow they don’t match up.”