All this time we were plugging away down at the plant, early and late, with every ounce of steam we had. There's one good thing about business in this Bedlam—when you break in you keep right on going. By the time Commencement rolled around we were getting checks with two figures on them, and had a better job treed and ready to drop. Ask for a vacation? Why, we wouldn't have asked for four days off to go home and help bury our worst enemy. That's what business does to the dear old college days when it gets a good bite at them. There we were, one year out of Siwash, breaking forty-five reunion dates, and never even sitting around with our heads in our hands over it. This business bug is a bad, bad biter all right. Just let it get its tooth into you, and what do you care if some other fellow is smoking your two-quart pipe back in the old chapter house? And for that matter, what do you care about anything else until you get up far enough to take breath and look around? Sometimes, after a couple of weeks of extra hard work, I've taken my mind off invoices long enough to wag it around a bit and I've felt like a swimmer coming up after a long dive.
We landed those promotions in July and went right after another pair. I got mine in August—Allie in September. And along in December they called us both up in the office, where the big crash was. He said nice things to us about getting a chance to fire our own chauffeurs if we kept on tending to business, and first thing we knew we had offices of our own in the back of the building, with our names painted on the doors, and call-bells that brought stenographers and the same old brand of office boys that used to blow us out of the other offices along with their cigarette smoke. And we realized then that if we worked like thunder for thirty years more and saved our money and made it earn one hundred per cent, perhaps some of the real business kings would notice us on the street some day. That's about the way the college swelling goes down.
All this time we hadn't seen much of Jarvis. He'd stopped coming to the café and we'd really been so busy that we almost forgot about him. It's simply wonderful the things business will drive out of your mind. It wasn't until late in the winter that we realized that we'd probably lost track of Jarvis for good—that is, until we climbed up into his set and discovered him at some dinner that was a page out of the social register. We mixed around a lot more now. We went to the million-candle-power restaurants every now and then, and ate a good deal more than sixty-five cents' worth apiece without batting an eye; and we went to see a play occasionally and didn't climb up into the rarefied atmosphere to find our seats, either. And whenever we broke in with the limousine crowd we kept a bright lookout for Jarvis. We wanted to see him and show him that we were coming along. We wanted him to be proud of us. I'd have given all my small bank balance to hear him say: "Fine work, old man; keep it up." I'll tell you when a big chap like that takes an interest in you, it's just as bracing as a hypodermic of ginger. Baccalaureates and inspirational editorials can't touch it.
I was holding down the proud position of shipping clerk and Allie was my assistant the next spring, and it seemed as if we had to empty that warehouse every twenty-four hours and find the men to load the stuff with search-warrants. Help was scandalously scarce. We couldn't have worked harder if we had been standing off grizzly bears with brickbats. I'd just fired the fourth loafer in one day for trying to roll barrels by mental suggestion, when the boss came into my office.
"Can you use an extra man?" he asked me.
"Use him?" says I, swabbing off my forehead—I'd been hustling a few barrels myself. "Use him? Say, I'll give him a whole car to load all by himself, and if he can get the job finished by yesterday he can have another to load for to-day."
"Now, see here," said the boss, sitting down; "this is a peculiar case. This chap's been at me for a job for months. There's nothing in the office. He's a fine fellow and well educated, but he's on his uppers. He can't seem to land anywhere. I'm sorry for him. He looks as if he was headed for the bread line. He's too good to roll barrels, but it won't hurt him. If you'll take him in and use him I'll give him a place as soon as I get it; let me know how he pans out."
"Just ask him to run all the way here," I said, and put my nose down in a bill of lading. After a while the door opened and some one said, "Is this the shipping clerk?" It was the ghost of a voice I used to know and I turned around in a hurry. It was Jarvis.
I don't suppose it is strictly business to cry while you are shaking hands with a husky you're just putting into harness at one-fifty per. I didn't intend to do it, but somehow when your whole conception of fame and glory comes clattering down about your ears, and you find you've got to order your star and idol to get a hustle on him and load the car at door four damquick, you are likely to do something foolish. I just stood and sniveled and let my mouth hang open. Neither of us said a word, but presently I put my arm around his shoulders and led him out into the shipping room. "There's the foreman," I said, in a voice like a wet sponge. "And you report here at six o'clock sharp." Then I went and hunted up Allie and for once we let business go hang in business hours. We couldn't work. We kept clawing for the solid ground and trying to readjust society and the universe and the beacon lights of progress all afternoon.
When quitting time came we waited for Jarvis. We didn't say anything, but we loaded him into a cab and took him up to the old café. Then he told us his story, while we learned a lot of things about glory we hadn't even vaguely suspected before. He was one of the greatest football players who ever carried a ball, Jarvis was. Of that there was no doubt. He admitted it himself then. I might say he confessed it. He'd come to his university without any real preparation—you know even in the best regulated institutions of learning they sometimes get your marks on tackling mixed with your grades on entrance algebra. He'd spent two hours a day on football and the rest of his time being a college hero. He'd had to work at it like a dog, he said. How he got by the exams, he never knew. It seemed to him as if he must have studied in his sleep. By the time he graduated he'd had about every honor that has been invented for campus consumption. He belonged to the exclusive societies. All kinds of big people had shaken hands with him—asked for the privilege. He had a scrapbook of newspaper stories about his career that weighed four pounds. He knew the differences between eight kinds of wine by the taste and he had a perfect education in forkology, waltzology, necktiematics, and all the other branches of social science.