Chapter Two
I SET OUT ALONG A NEW TRAIL
Sunset over the Hudson after a July thunderstorm; the observation platform of a Pullman, rushing toward a new and unknown world in the Middle West—such was the first stage of the trail leading to the heart of romance. Of course I did not know this then. In fact, the beauty of the sunset was considerably marred by the thought that the day before I had seen my father off for "home," for England, while I had been condemned to indefinite exile in a lake town famous for its manufacturing; and I felt much like the hero at the end of a certain type of Greek tragedy. No one could say when I should see England again, or once more browse along the bookstalls of Charing Cross Road, or drink a glass of stout at Scott's in Leicester Square. Not high ideals to long for, perhaps—but Charing Cross Road, the Empire on Leicester Square, or the noon-hour walks in Lincoln's Inn Fields, pausing perhaps for a quarter of an hour at the Soame Museum, or venturing as far as Chancery Lane, seemed to epitomize the things for which I was desperately homesick.
It had strained my loyalty to my father to the breaking point to accept the test he had put upon me. No word, however, of my resentment, of my sullen hatred for the task, had I allowed him to guess. He had gone aboard the steamer in one of his moods of extreme optimism—business would flourish as it never had before now I was to be at the helm. I had looked ruefully at the cancelled steamer ticket in my hand and had resolved to try, but in very truth I was sick at heart. As the boat left the dock, I turned away with some boyish tears in my eyes—and they were bitter tears. I hated and loathed, at that moment, the fate that had condemned me to the new venture. The roar and clang of the streets about the docks seemed symbols of all that was unlovely, of all that stood between me and what I wanted to do—symbols of the things I was to be mixed up with, no one knew for how long. Until I made the new business a success! It was easy to say—easy even for my father to pat me on the back and speak diffidently, as he looked the other way, of his confidence in me. He had so much more in me than I had in myself! I knew my own dangerous lack of ambition—my fondness for remaining a spectator, for doffing the world aside and bidding it pass; and here I was, entrusted with his future and that of my mother and sister.
What a plague had I to do with a factory and a manufacturing town on the Great Lakes? I knew nothing of either. All I asked was the moon—London, books, theatres, and the gorgeous solitude of rummaging in an enchanted cockney world. But that world could not be had, even in its simplest form, without money, and money I had to win in order to earn my right to the moon. There was nothing I had ever felt so incapable of winning. I knew I was full of a kind of inertia that terrified me. It would not matter to fail alone in such a task, but my failure would ruin my father—and others. And the inertia, the indifference, the hatred of it all frightened me. I knew it was no mood for success; yet I did not know how to fight against it.
"Now, Ted," said a crisp voice beside me, "we reach Deep Harbor at five-thirty A. M. That will give us time for breakfast, and get out to the factory by seven—when the whistle blows."
"Good heavens!" I thought with a start, coming back to the Pullman and reality with a horrible jerk. "Seven—" but words failed me.
"You'll have a chance to glance around the machine shop and pick out a location for the testing laboratory before the office force get down. Then we can have a look at the orders on the books and start making plans."
No time to get one's breath, no chance to edge into the cold water inch by inch—the thing was to be done at once. I was to jump from that Pullman platform into the deepest, coldest part of the stream.
"As soon as we've passed Storm King we'll go into the smoker and make a rough sketch of the laboratory lay-out, so we'll be ready for them in the morning."