“I’m glad you hadn’t started when I met you,” returned Allison, steering around a sharp stone with the firm accuracy which Gail had so often admired. “I never had so stinging a reproof as that little why. It did me more good than any sermon I ever heard.”
“That’s positively startling,” replied Gail lightly. “I usually hear from my impertinences, long after, as a source of discomfort.”
“‘Why?’” repeated Allison. “I took that why home with me. If you had said, ‘Why should you rest a while?’ or ‘Why should you stop when you’ve just made a start?’ or something of that nature, it might not have impressed me so much; but just the one unexplained word was like a barbed hook in my mind. It wouldn’t come out. I asked myself that why until daylight, and I found no answer. Why, when I was young and strong, and had only tasted of victory, should I sit by the fireside and call myself old? If I had ability to conquer this situation with so much ease, why should I call it a great accomplishment; for great accomplishments are measured by the power employed.”
Gail looked at him in questioning perplexity. She could not gather what he meant, but she had a sense of something big, and once more she was impressed with the tremendous reserve force in the man. His clear grey eyes were fixed on the road ahead, and the very symbol of him seemed to be this driving; top speed, a long road, a steady hand, a cool determination, a sublime disregard of hills and valleys which made them all a level road.
“Why? That word set me out on a new principle that never, while I had strength in me, would I consider my work finished, no matter how great an achievement I had made. I am still at work.”
Something within her leaped up in answer to the thrill of exultation in his voice. To have been the inspiration of great deeds, even by so simple an agency as the accidental use of a word, was in itself an exalting thing, though an humbling one, too. And there were great deeds. She was sure of that as she looked at him. He was too calm about it, and too secure to have been speaking of trifles.
“When I was a boy I lived on ancient history,” he went on, with a smile for the bygone dreamer he had been. “I wanted to be a soldier, a great general, a warrior, in the sturdy old sense, and my one hero was Alexander the Great, because he conquered the world! That’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to go out and fight and kill, and bring kingdom after kingdom under my sway, and finally set myself on a mighty throne, which should have for its boundaries the north and the south pole! When I grew older, and found how small was the world which Alexander had conquered, not much bigger than the original thirteen states, I grew rather disillusioned, particularly as I was working at about that time for a dollar and a quarter a day. I spent a few busy years, and had forgotten the dream; then you said ‘why’ and it all came back.”
“Hurry!” commanded Gail. “Curiosity is bad for me.”
Allison laughed heartily at her impatience. He had meant to arouse her interest, and he had done so. She would not have confessed it, but she was fascinated by the thing he had held in reserve. It was like the cruelty of telling a child of a toy in a trunk which is still at the station.
“I conquered it,” he told her, with an assumption of nonchalance which did not deceive her. There was too much of under-vibration in his tone, and the eyes which he turned upon her were glowing in spite of his smile. “In my hand I hold control of the transportation of the world! If a pound of freight is started westward or eastward from New York, addressed to me at its starting point, it will circle the globe, and on every mile of its passage it will pay tribute to me. If a man starts to travel north or south or east or west, anywhere on the five continents or the seven seas, he must pay tribute to me. With that shipment of every necessity and luxury under my control, I control the necessities and luxuries themselves; so there is no human being in the world who can escape contributing tithes to the monster company I have consolidated.”