WHEN Tommy arrived in Dayton he found his secret waiting for him in the station, because his first thought on alighting from the Pullman was to place the blame for his uncertain adventure. It was the need engendered by the secret and nothing else that compelled him to face the unknown, so that in the glad sunshine of this June day he was about to walk gropingly.
And because of the secret he must walk alone. There was no one on whom he might call for aid or guidance. Without anticipating concrete hostility, he feared vaguely. It forced him to an attitude of defense, which in turn roused his fighting blood.
He approached a uniformed porter and asked, a trifle sharply, “Can you tell me where the Tecumseh Motor Company's works are?”
“Sure!” cordially answered the man, and very explicitly told him. Tommy listened intently. But the busy porter, not content with his own dark, detailed directions, said at the end: “Come with me; I'll show you exactly!” and led Tommy to the street, pointed and counted the blocks, and gave him the turns, twice:
Tommy thanked him, left his valise in the parcel-room, and started to walk.
The baggage-man's friendliness did not give to Tommy a sense of co-operation. But as he walked the feeling of solitude within him became exhilarating. He was still alone in a strange country, and he had burned his ships. But the fight was on!
He dramatized the battle—Thomas Francis Leigh against the entire world!
When a man confronts that crisis in his life which consists of the utter realization that he cannot call upon anybody for help, one of two things happens: He thinks of life and surrenders; or he thinks of death and fights. To die fighting takes on the aspect of the most precious of all privileges. To earn it he begins by fighting.
He walked on until he saw the sign, “Tecumseh Motor Company,” over the largest of a half-dozen brick buildings. He wondered if it would ever come to mean to him as a man what the college buildings had meant to him as a boy. He would love to love that weather-beaten sign. But just as he now saw that his life at college had been a four years' fight against many things, so, too, there must be fighting here—much fighting during an unknowable number of years. He was filled with a pugnacious expectancy. The desire to strike, to strike hard and strike first, became so intolerable that in the absence of something or somebody to strike at he forced himself to consider the vital necessity of strategy. He had forgotten the secret. It was just as well. The secret had done its work.
He saw the sign “Office,” walked toward it, and opened the door. There was a railing. Behind it were desks. At the desks were men and women. Nobody looked up; nobody paid any attention to him. People moved about, came in, went out, neither friends nor foes. A peopled solitude—the world!