CHAPTER IV—A CONSPIRACY
THE greatest blessing that Providence can bestow upon a young man is self-knowledge. Success comes to those who know their own powers while it is yet day. To learn for the first time at eighty that you have immense capabilities in any given direction is futile. To possess that knowledge at twenty is better than to own a gold mine. It is the old adage exemplified: “If age but could; if youth but knew.”
Steele’s two years’ management of the Burdock route should have given him confidence, but his bargain with Rockervelt showed it had not done so. If he had been shrewd enough to allow Rockervelt himself to name the compensation that should have gone with his new position, he would have made a much better financial deal than that which he accomplished. If he had then added a little shrewd bargaining, he might have bettered himself still further, but John Steele had endured an early life of poverty, and the salary he now received seemed to him munificent.
The same qualities of under-estimation which caused Rockervelt to chuckle with satisfaction at a sharp bargain driven interfered with the young man’s success as new division superintendent of the Midland. When he was duly installed, his immediate chief, T. Acton Blair, quaked. Blair was well acquainted with the ruthlessness of Rockervelt, and he trembled for his own position. He wondered how much Rockervelt knew. Was he aware of Blair’s years of tyranny over the capable Philip Manson? Did he know how nearly the premier train of the road had come to being wrecked through the incompetence of a relative of his own, whom he had forced into the train despatched office in spite of the protests of Philip Manson? Now Manson was gone to New York, promoted to a position of greater power and influence than any he had hitherto held, and instead of Blair’s being allowed to place some favourite in the vacant office, Rockervelt himself had intervened to appoint the very man who had saved the Pacific Express: a man whom Blair had practically dismissed two years before. If Blair possessed, as Rockervelt alleged, an acute brain in other directions than that of practical railway management, this brain was deeply perturbed when its owner, with over-done warmth, welcomed the new division superintendent of the Midland on his return to the great company. Innocent John Steele accepted this cordiality at its face value, and his own kind heart prompted him to let bygones be bygones, and to make the new condition of things as pleasant as possible for his nominal chief. At first this bewildered Blair; then he came to the conclusion it was merely deep craft on the part of the young man, and finally he reached the fact that Steele was quite honestly endeavouring to do his duty, and trying to please his superiors, a fact which a more alert mind would have assimilated months before. When, after weeks of doubt and fear, Blair at last realised that John Steele had in reality buried the tomahawk; that he had no knife concealed up his sleeve; that he was honest, straightforward and capable as his predecessor had been, the general manager felt like a man who had been taken advantage of. Instead of being thankful that his former fear was groundless, his resentment burned all the brighter, and he brought his genius for intrigue into play, determining to trip up the young man on the first favourable opportunity. But while he waited for that opportunity, he resumed the old tactics which had been so successful in pushing Philip Manson to a resignation, and proceeded to make John Steele’s place as uncomfortable for him as possible. There is no tyranny like the tyranny of a coward, and before John Steele had been six months in his new position, he learned what it was to live under the heel of a despot.
Nor did he enjoy the consolation which must have sustained Philip Manson, who possessed the enthusiastic loyalty of his subordinates. Manson was a born master, who had risen step by step into the position of division superintendent. Added to this, he was quiet, taciturn and unemotional. John Steele, on the other hand, was the embodiment of good-fellowship; talkative, humourous, genial; who believed every one around him as honest and whole-hearted as himself. But there were those beneath him who had regarded themselves quite properly in the line of promotion, and whose ambitions had been stirred when it became known that Philip Manson was about to retire. Then, to their chagrin and dismay, an outsider had been chosen for the place who, two years before, was little better than an office boy among them, and their friendliness for him at that time had been merely a tribute to his unfailing good nature; his willingness to help. This universal liking, however, was perhaps unconsciously tinged with contempt. Their feeling was rather admiration for a joyous soul than respect for a young fellow of talent. No one had an inkling of Steele’s real merit except Philip Manson, and this silent man never volunteered information. When Blair wished Manson summarily to dismiss Steele, he got information he had not expected about the latter. When Rockervelt telegraphed regarding Manson’s successor, he also received information, but Manson made no confidant of any of his subordinates, and perhaps if one of them had been shrewd enough to guess how good a man Steele was, that person might have been thought worthy of the recommendation which the former division superintendent had bestowed upon Steele.
When an insider is promoted, he not only steps into the vacant place, but the one beneath him advances to the position he formerly held, and so it goes down along the line, until the lowest grade is reached. Each man gets his little move upward, and universal joy is the result. But when an outsider is brought in, he stops the move as effectually as a jammed log arrests the progress of all the timber further up the stream. Although the genial John met smiling faces among his subordinates, there was nevertheless envy and hatred behind the smiles. Things began to go wrong; he could not give his orders explicitly enough to be sure that they would be understood. He met no open opposition, but the most annoying things happened in spite of all his precautions. A little harshness and injustice here would have acted as a tonic upon the whole clan. If he had flung out of the office the first man who misapprehended an order, whether that man were guilty or not, his path would have been smoother from that time forward; but here his own proneness to blame himself rather than to censure others was his worst enemy, and the office became honeycombed with negligence, apathy, incompetence and sullen insubordination. There was no sympathy to be expected from T. Acton Blair; in fact, the stout man saw with secret satisfaction that the division superintendent was not getting on. He would condole with Rockervelt on this regrettable failure next time he met him, instilling the poison very subtly, and assuming a tone of deep regret and disappointment. Meanwhile, his whole attitude towards the young man had changed. He was querulous and fault-finding; he magnified the failures, and slighted the successes. John Steele found himself between the upper and nether millstones that were grinding his nerves to rags. Day and night he worked like a Trojan to bring the necessary order out of the chaos that had somehow come to enshroud him, and underneath was the gnawing distrust of his own endowment properly to fill the place to which he had been appointed. He was working to the very limit of his powers, and preparing for himself an inevitable breakdown. He supplemented every one, instead of making every one supplement him. It never occurred to him that the chaos against which he contended was deliberate, for a railway business differs from any other on earth, in that carelessness or neglect is juggling with men’s lives. A mistake comparatively innocent in any other branch of commercial activity may mean the massacre of a score of men and women on a railway. Many a night he sat disconsolate in his office when every one else had gone, and yearned for half an hour’s talk with Philip Manson. The whole difficulty was not one which he could commit to writing, and even if he attempted that, he might fail in making Manson understand the situation; a situation so completely the reverse of that which had obtained during Manson’s own reign. At last he determined to take a few days off, visit New York, and consult with his former chief. This brought about his first open conflict with T. Acton Blair, and then he weakly succumbed.
“Mr. Blair,” he said one day, after the formal morning’s interview was at an end, “I’m going to take a run down to New York.”
“Oh, are you?” replied Blair. “For what purpose, may I ask?”