Читать книгу The Forbidden Trail - Honoré Morrow - Страница 7

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Although John Moore never became reconciled to the failure of his factory, still he was not really unhappy on the farm. There is something too normal, something too entirely natural about a return to the soil after middle age, to permit a man broken and worn, as was Roger's father, really to be discontented when working in his own fields.

The farm never paid very well. After the first year or so they were obliged to mortgage it, and sometimes the interest was hard to meet. But after the stormy factory years, these anxieties seemed innocuous enough and Roger and his mother, anyway, were deeply happy.

Roger made an old corn crib over into a laboratory. During his High School period, with his faithful henchman, Ernest, he spent all his free moments on various and mysterious experiments in the patched-up little shack. Many were the vile smells and the outrageous noises that floated out over the farm, but nobody complained, except Roger's mother, and she only mildly. No startling results were forthcoming from these experiments, but John Moore encouraged the boys in their attempts.

"Chemistry was my weak point," he would say. "Get all you can of it, Rog. Perhaps you'll succeed where I failed."

"All the chemistry in the world couldn't have run Ole Oleson for you," Roger would reply.

"No, but it would have made a real engineer of me," his father would say thoughtfully.

When Roger was a freshman and sophomore in college, he suffered a complete relapse from his interest in experimental work, and his father was very much depressed, but both his mother and Dean Erskine laughed at Mr. Moore's fuming.

"Let the poor child have his play time," said Alice Moore. "Between the farm work and that nasty laboratory the boy hasn't known anything but work since we came out here. If you'd had more chance to play, John dear, your nerves would be in better shape now. I'm glad he's learned to dance, bless him."

"Give him his fling, Moore," said the Dean. "He was getting one sided, and he's way ahead of his class now, as a result of all his corn crib grinding. Football and girls won't hurt him at all for a year or so. I'll see to it that he doesn't neglect his work. If I'm any judge of men at all, that boy of yours is going far. You've no cause to worry."

So Roger was not nagged at home. Somehow his father raised the money to pay a hired man so that except in the long summer vacations Roger was relieved from farm work. Until well into his junior year, he merely carried the required work in college and devoted all his excess energy to football and girls. He was notably successful in both fields. He was six feet tall, lean and muscular and a splendid half back. He was eager and chivalrous and had a charming smile and was a famous schemer of things to do, and places to go. The University was co-educational and Roger had no rival with the girls except perhaps Ernest. Ernest was whimsical and sweet and very musical, and he took the girls seriously, which Roger refused to do.

But all the playing came to an end in Roger's junior winter. A venomous epidemic of La Grippe swept over the world that year and Roger's mother succumbed to it. A month after her death, John Moore gave in to pneumonia and early in February Roger found himself alone in the world.

Roger escaped with only a mild attack of the disease, but the shock of his loss left him for a time, it seemed, spiritually and physically bankrupt. There was nothing left. The worn out farm was eaten up by mortgages. The stock and implements would only just pay food bills, the doctor, the funeral expenses.

One cold gray afternoon Roger closed the gate for the last time and, suitcase in hand, started down the road to town. He had not covered half the distance when he met Ernest.

"Hey, Rog, old man, I was just coming up. Where are you going?"

"To Mrs. Winkler's. Got my room there for taking care of the furnace, walks, and any old thing."

"Forget it!" exclaimed Ernest. "You're coming home with me until you get braced up. Mother and Dad said so."

"That'll make it harder when I do get back. Besides, old lady Winkler might not hold the place for me." Roger spoke firmly. Nevertheless he allowed Ernest to help him with the suitcase and made no objection when his chum turned off Main Street toward the Wolf home.

Mrs. Wolf kissed him and put him to bed, while Elsa brought a hot water bottle and a cup of hot milk. He hung about the house for several days, dreading the return to college and Mrs. Winkler. But Mrs. Wolf knew Roger almost as well as his own mother had known him. She left him alone until one snowy afternoon, after a prolonged absence in his room, he came into the kitchen with traces of tears about the eyes. Mother Wolf was paring apples for mince meat. Papa Wolf would eat no food not prepared by hers or Elsa's hands.

"Help me with these nut meats, Roger, there's a good boy," she said.

Roger sat down by the table with a long sigh and began to pick at the hickory nuts.

"Elsa's gone to Choral Union practice," volunteered Mother Wolf. "Ernie is doing some laboratory work he said he was behind in. You must be getting somewhat behind, too, Roger."

"I guess so," agreed Roger, indifferently.

"Papa met Dean Erskine in the Post Office yesterday. The Dean said you were the most promising man in your class."

"What good does that do," asked Roger, "when they're gone and can't know?"

"How do you know they can't know?" asked the little woman sharply. "Older and wiser people than you believe otherwise. One thing is sure, that the only real thing you can do for your parents now is to carry on what they began. Life is short and there's no time to waste, Roger dear, no time to waste."

"Are you getting tired of me here?" asked Roger quickly.

Mother Wolf's pretty blue eyes filled with tears. "Do you have to be unkind, Roger?" she asked.

"Forgive me!" he exclaimed. "I know you'd let me live here if you thought it would be good for me."

There was silence. The coal range glowed and the snow without sifted endlessly past the window. Suddenly Roger rose and putting on his overcoat and cap went out into the storm.

Dean Erskine was in the little office off the junior laboratory. Roger had not seen him since the day of his father's funeral, but he kept his voice and manner casual.

"Good afternoon, Dean Erskine. How many hours am I behind in lab work?"

The Dean too was off hand. "I've lost count, Roger."

"It's sort of sniveling baby work, anyhow," said Roger. "I did it all once; up in the corn crib."

"I know that," said Erskine. "That's why I've let you neglect it so outrageously. I had hopes too that you'd wake up and ask to do other things. But it seemed that you preferred experimenting with Welsh rarebits at Hepburn Hall and marshmallow sundaes at Allen's."

Roger had the grace to blush. He grinned sheepishly, then said soberly: "I'm through with all that now."

"Oh, it has its place in a normal man's life! Only you seem to have crowded several years of it into two. If you're not in training I don't mind if you smoke. Only close that door into the classroom."

The Dean pulled out an outrageous old pipe. Roger closed the door, then lighted a cigarette. The two smoked in the silence of old friendship for a while, then Roger said,

"Dean, what do you know about solar heat?"

The Dean looked at him suspiciously. "The usual things. Why?"

"I'm not trying to trip you," exclaimed Roger. "I've read all I can find on it, and that's darned little. You know those arrangements of mirrors in an umbrella-like frame, focussing the sun's rays on a point at the center, where the steam boiler is located?"

"Yes," said the Dean.

"Well, I don't believe the fellows that are working along that idea are right. The mechanism is hopelessly complicated, unwieldy and expensive."

Erskine nodded, his gaze on Roger's dreaming eyes.

"Ever since I was a kid," said the boy, slowly, "in fact ever since the factory went to pieces, I've had a pipe dream. It's sort of nutty, you know, and I suppose you'll think it's childish, but—"

"Let's have it. I accept your apologies," said the Dean, smiling.

And so Roger was launched for the first time on the telling of his dream. He was a little halting and incoherent at times, but his old friend listened attentively. When Roger had finished, he said,

"It's a good dream, Roger, and sound in its general premises. Have you ever got down to brass tacks with it and tried to design a solar engine?"

"No, I've only a lot of notes and sketches. It always seemed to cost so much that I never had courage to go any farther."

Erskine refilled his pipe. "I have a dream too. Only mine is in pretty good working shape. My dream has been to turn out of this school men who were practical engineers but who also had ideas. Men who were never satisfied with a bridge, a motor, a gas engine after they had finished it, but would be forever trying to improve it. Such men, of course, are rare, but in the fifteen years I've been here, I've sent out five or six lads who have given American engineering a real lift. I haven't come across a fellow before though who had any concrete vision of the world's labor problems in relation to the inventing game."

He fell to brooding and Roger waited patiently. Erskine finally looked up. "It's a big dream, boy. Too big for you or any other man to put over in a single generation. But we'll do what we can toward giving it a start. You cut out junior laboratory and get to work on your designs. When you finally get one that seems workable, we'll have the shops make a model." He paused, then rose and Roger rose too while the Dean put a hand on his broad young shoulder. "You've launched on the finest, most thankless, most compelling, most discouraging, most heart thrilling game in the world, Roger. You'll probably be poverty stricken all your life, but Lord! Lord! what riches of the mind will be yours!"

Roger flushed and lifted his head in a gesture that was infinitely young.

"I'm used to poverty, sir."

"I know you are and so am I. Good night, Roger!"

"Good night, Dean! Thank you!" and Roger, in spite of his grief, returned to the Wolfs' with his face set triumphantly toward the future.

The next morning he deposited his suitcase in old lady Winkler's most meager and coldest bedroom and after he had stoked the furnace and shoveled the walks he bolted for the college drafting room.

It was not until the fall of his senior year that Roger completed a design of a solar engine which Dean Erskine was willing to turn over to the University shops, that a model might be made. Roger had taken Ernest into his confidence and that faithful friend undertook to make all drawings for him. Ernest had no originality of mind, but he was an excellent workman and a first class mathematician and laboratory man. Early in January, the model was completed, and on a cold Saturday afternoon, the test was made. Roger and Ernest came home to the Wolfs' for supper deeply discouraged.

"But why wouldn't it work?" asked Elsa, as the boys wiped the supper dishes for her.

"If I knew that, I wouldn't be blue, would I?" grunted Roger.

"I wish I understood the stuff you talk," Elsa went on. "I don't see how on a cold day like this you'd expect to run an engine with heat from the sun."

"We didn't try to," said Ernest.

"Didn't try to!" echoed Elsa. Then she banged the tea kettle angrily back on the stove. "I do think you boys are disgusting! Here I'm so interested in your work and you treat me as if I were a baby! And I'd like to know who does more for you two great hulks than I do. You simply disgust—"

"Hold on, Elsa," roared Roger. "For the love of Mike! I'll confide the inmost secrets of my being to you if you'll stop jawing. Now listen! You can see that we can't get as high temperatures out of the sun's rays as we can out of burning coal or gasolene?"

Elsa, much mollified, leaned against the sink and fastened her violet eyes on Roger's face.

"I understand that," she said.

"Wonderful!" murmured Ernest.

Elsa made a face at her brother and Roger went on with a grin. "So I'm trying first of all to develop a practical, efficient engine that will run with the temperatures I'm able to get from Sun Heat."

"And won't the model work at all? Not a bit?" asked Elsa.

"She just sits and looks at me without moving a muscle," replied Roger.

"Can't the Dean tell you what's the matter?" Elsa ventured.

"The Dean!" snorted Ernest. "Isn't that just like a girl? Why, Roger knows more about low pressure engines in a minute than the Dean'll know in his whole life. Come on, Rog, if you've finished your kindergarten. Let's go up to see Florence King and her bunch at the Beta house. It will rest our brains."

"Not for me," replied Roger. "I've done enough girling to last me a spell. I'll stay here and educate Elsa till she goes to choir practice, then I'm going home and bone on that design."

"Sorry for you," sniffed Ernest, and was off.

Roger deposited Elsa at the church door, then returned to Mrs. Winkler's. The light burned in his cold little room nearly all night. But when he went to bed, sketches for the complete redesigning of the engine lay on his table. And it was this changed design which he kept through all the vicissitudes of struggling to market his dream.

During his senior year, Roger, with Ernest and other promising men of the graduating class, had several jobs offered him by different manufacturing and engineering concerns. In the earlier days of the University, a young graduate of the School of Engineering had been looked on with contempt by the business men of the state. He was a "book" engineer to them, just as a graduate of the School of Agriculture was a "book" farmer to the farmers of the state.

But, as the years had gone on, it was observed that the minor jobs, obtained with difficulty by the men whom Dean Erskine had trained and recommended, nearly always became jobs of fundamental importance. The observation bore fruit. Little by little "Dean Erskine men" were scattered across the continent until even as early as Roger's graduating year, it was the custom of engineering concerns and manufacturers to watch the Dean's laboratories closely and to bespeak the services long before commencement of every promising lad in the class.

By the Dean's advice, however, Roger did not accept any of these positions. He decided to take an instructorship in the University and keep on with his experiments in solar engineering. Both he and Erskine felt that in a couple of years, at most, Roger would have something practical to offer the world. Ernest also took an instructorship, working toward his doctor's degree. His father was delighted. He was immensely proud of Ernest's work in college, and a full professorship for Ernest would have meant as much to Papa Wolf as the national presidency for his boy.

The two years flew rapidly. The summer that he was twenty-five, Roger, armed with letters of introduction from the Dean, and a roll of drawings, went to Chicago. He was about to market his dream and he proposed to give the two summer months to the job. After that—well, the possibilities staggered even Roger's imagination, which was an active one.

Haskell and Company, makers of Gas-Engines! The sign was as inconspicuous as the firm was famous in the middle West. Roger, after two days of waiting, was staring at the faded gilt letters until the moment of his interview with Mr. Haskell arrived. He was a little uncertain about the knees, but very sanguine for all that. Mr. Haskell, a small man with a grizzled beard, sat behind a desk in a room that was small and dingy. The desk seemed to Roger an unnecessarily long way from the door, as he advanced under Mr. Haskell's eyes.

"Well, Sir, so you're one of Erskine's men. Ought to be good. Solar engine, though, doesn't sound cheerful. What's the idea?"

Roger unrolled his drawings and began his explanations. Haskell listened with keen interest, asking questions now and again. When Roger, flushed of cheek, had finished, Haskell lighted his cigar, which had gone out.

"Very clever! Very clever! A nice little experiment. What do you want to do with it?"

"I want you to manufacture and sell these solar heat plants," replied Roger boldly.

"I see. But are you sure such a plant is practicable?"

"Absolutely!"

"Where have you had one working?"

"At the University."

"You mean in the laboratory."

Roger nodded. Haskell cleared his throat and looked over Roger's black head for a minute, then he said:

"My dear fellow, I am a business man, not a philanthropist. When you can come to me and say, 'I've got a plant in Texas and one in Mississippi and one in Egypt and they've worked for, say two years, and the folks want more,' why, then you'll interest me. But I don't see putting a hundred thousand dollars into a laboratory experiment, however clever."

Roger's clear blue eyes, still unsophisticated despite his twenty-five years, did not flinch. There was a perceptible pause, however, before he said:

"But, Mr. Haskell, how am I going to get a dozen plants into use unless some one manufactures and installs them for me?"

"Some one will have to do just that. But you'll have to pay for it."

"But I thought great concerns like yours," persisted Roger, "were constantly looking for new developments."

"We are. But frankly, Mr. Moore, your whole idea is too visionary. Some day, undoubtedly, we shall have solar engineering. But that day is several generations away. We have coal and all its by-products and water power is just beginning to come into its own."

"Coal would have to retail at a dollar a ton to compete with my solar device in a hot climate," interrupted Roger.

"Very interesting if true! But you've erected no plant in a hot climate. I'll tell you what I will do though, Mr. Moore. I could very well use your unusual knowledge of heat transmission in my concern. I'll give you three thousand a year to begin with."

Roger got slowly to his feet, rolling up his drawings. "Thank you, Mr. Haskell. But I think I'll stick to my solar engine."

Haskell rose too. "An inventor's life is hell, my boy. Better come in out of the rain."

"But why should it be hell?" asked Roger. "The inventor is the very backbone of the industrial life of the world."

"I know it. But for every good invention offered there are a thousand poor ones. We who pay the piper have to be careful."

"I'm much obliged to you for giving me so much time," said Roger, picking up his hat.

"Not at all. And remember that my offer to you is a permanent one."

Roger grinned, and left the office.

Outside the building he drew a long breath, stared abstractedly at the passing crowd, then drew out his second letter of introduction. James Howe and Sons Company, Marine Engines. Roger decided to walk to his second meeting. It would give him time to collect his thoughts. The walk was a long one and by the time he had covered the distance his hopes had soared again.

James Howe and Sons Company did not seem overjoyed by the letter of introduction and for some time it seemed as if Roger could not pass the young woman who guarded the main office door. He was finally admitted, however, to the office of Mr. Hearn, the general manager. Hearn was a man of forty, full faced and ruddy.

"I get the idea! I get the idea!" he said impatiently when Roger was about half way through his explanations.

Roger flushed. "You can't possibly, Mr. Hearn. I haven't reached the main idea yet."

"I've got enough to convince me that you're hopelessly impractical. Give it up, young man! Give it up and get into something that'll pay the bill at the corner grocery. Solar power is about as practical as wave power. Fit merely for the dreams of poets. Sorry not to be able to give you more time. Good day! Miss Morris, call in the foundry boss."

Roger found himself in the street before he had finished rolling up his drawings. "Well, I'll be hanged!" he muttered. Then he suddenly smiled. "I think I came down here with an idea that we'd be turning out machines in a couple of months! Gee, if I'm landed by Christmas, I'll be lucky." He pulled out the third letter of introduction, and his head lifted defiantly, started off to present it.

The Dean had been generous with his letters, but by the end of the first week in Chicago, Roger had presented them all. Curiously enough, in all this week of meeting with manufacturers Roger told but one of them his ultimate dream. John McGinnis, maker of kerosene engines, was elderly and Irish and immensely interested in Roger and his idea.

He slapped Roger on the back. "It's a grand idea, me boy! If I wasn't just about to retire, hanged if I wouldn't help you to build one plant. How come you ever to take up solar heat though, with the world all howling for a real kerosene engine?"

They were sitting in McGinnis' pleasant office, the windows of which overlooked Lake Michigan. The old man had cocked his feet up on his mahogany desk and had about him an air of leisurely interest. He gave Roger the mate to the long brown cigar he himself was smoking and after a few minutes Roger said, hesitatingly:

"When I was a kid of fourteen, labor difficulties ruined my father. He owned a little plow factory, employing a couple of hundred men. I got a good deal of the men's side for I worked as a forge boy that summer, but after the crash, for a long time, I was all for father's side of the matter. Gradually though, I began to think differently.

"I began to be sorry for the men as well as for my father. They were hardworking, ambitious chaps who wanted to get ahead, just as my father did. They took the only way they saw for getting ahead. They didn't believe that just because father was the brain of the concern, he should be well-to-do and they poor.

"I couldn't find any system of government that I was convinced would remove the economic inequalities that were the root of the trouble. So I began to think about sources of wealth. You can see how my mind fastened first on machinery, then on power, then on quantity and accessibility of power; then solar heat."

McGinnis nodded, then smiled. "You're a damn queer inventor. What do you expect to get out of it?"

"All any man can get on the physical side out of anything is a living," replied Roger. "What I am getting and expect to have more of, is some great adventures."

McGinnis smoked for a while and said, "If I were twenty-five instead of seventy, I'd look at it as you do. Being seventy I have to say to you, me boy, that though some day you may work out a practical plant for hot countries, you'll never solve the labor problem. As long as human nature exists we'll have social inequalities. But, after all, as long as you contribute something real to the world in the way of a power idea, devil a bit does it matter what motive put you at the job."

Roger smoked in silence.

"Had any encouragement in Chicago?" asked the older man.

"Not a bit," replied Roger, cheerfully. "But the trip has done me good. I've learned that I can't sell an idea. I've got to sell a working plant."

"Right you are! And with the patent situation fully covered. Those drawings of yours are full of interesting suggestions for makers of any kind of engines. Philanthropic of you to show them about Chicago."

"By Jove!" exclaimed Roger, with a startled air. "I guess I'd better beat it back to Eagle's Wing until I get out of swaddling clothes. I supposed the firm that would take this up would take care of the patents. I don't know anything about patents myself."

"Better learn," said McGinnis. "Many of your ideas are clever and need protection."

Roger laughed ruefully. "I thought," he confessed, "that I'd have the thing marketed in a couple of months."

"Listen," said the old man. "On the average the man who has an invention that is of fundamental significance gives his life to perfecting and marketing it, then dies hungry. Do you get me?"

"But there are exceptions, aren't there?" insisted Roger.

"Yes, but no such pipe dream as you have there," pointing to the drawings, "could be an exception."

"Would you advise me to give it up?" Roger asked curiously.

"I would not. That's your job. Civilization owes its existence to chaps like you."

Roger, face flushed, black hair rumpled, blue eyes glowing, rose to go.

"I can't exactly thank you," he mumbled. "Only," his voice strengthening, "if I hadn't met you, I'd have gone back home discouraged and almost as ignorant as I left. As it is, I feel in bully fighting trim."

Old John McGinnis got to his feet. "God bless you, my lad. When I'm twanging a harp, up above, I'll be having an interested eye on you."

Roger started back to Eagle's Wing that evening. Ernest and Dean Erskine were both deeply interested in Roger's report, which he gave in the Dean's library the night he reached home.

"Pshaw! I should have told you a lot of things that would have helped you," exclaimed the Dean when Roger had finished. "But one forgets up here in the classroom how the war rages out in the industrial world."

"Will patents cost a lot?" inquired Ernest. "You know I don't use all my salary. Draw at will, old man."

"Thanks, old top," replied Roger. "Since I cut out girls and golf, I've been saving a bit myself."

"The patents won't cost a great deal, if you do the work yourself, Roger," said the Dean. "But it's going to take time to learn the patent game."

"Well," said Roger, with a sigh, "if I've got to become a patent attorney in order to patent my ideas, I suppose I can. But gee, I am glad I don't want to get married. You were wise in not letting me give up that instructorship, Dean, as I wanted to."

Dean Erskine smiled ruefully. "Seems to have been about the only sane advice I've given you."

"Don't you think it, sir!" exclaimed Roger. "If I ever do get away with this, yours will be the credit."

"And Ernest's," added the Dean.

"You bet, Ernest! And now, I'm going out to the University library and read up on patents," said Roger, with the familiar squaring of the shoulders.

He had need to square his shoulders: a greater need than either he or his two devoted friends could dream. For as the months slipped into years, it seemed more and more obvious that either Roger's ideas were utterly impractical or else that he was actually several generations ahead of his time. In his brilliant, yet thoroughgoing way, Roger studied patent law and registered two years after his trip to Chicago as a patent attorney in Washington. He worked constantly on the development of his plant, improving here, discarding there, until he had reached the point, he felt, where he could do no more until he had funds for a practical plant, in a hot climate.

He and the Dean and Ernest estimated that not less than fifty thousand dollars would be essential for such an initial plant. The sum might have been fifty million for all its accessibility to Roger. Most of the wealthy men whom Roger was able to reach admitted the cleverness and the interest of his ideas. None of them could be persuaded that the idea would be a good investment. Once in desperation Roger went to Chicago to a firm whose letter heads read "Bankers, Stocks and Bonds, Promoters, Investments." Roger was turned over to a young man who wore a garnet ring and who was at the head of the Engineering Investments Department. The two had several long sessions. Then the man of the garnet ring proposed that a company be organized for half a million dollars and that his company undertake to sell the stock. Roger was much encouraged.

"That's fine," he said. "How long would it take to raise fifty thousand dollars?"

"Not long," replied the young promoter, whose name was Eaton. "Of course, you understand that the first money will have to go for office expenses and salaries."

"Whose salaries?" asked Roger. "I don't want any and I need only a few day laborers."

"You don't get me." Eaton was patient. "I'm speaking of the Solar Company's Chicago office."

"Shucks! We don't want an office in Chicago. What we want is a plant in Arizona."

"If you think we can sell stock in a nutty scheme like this without plenty of mahogany furniture and high sounding titles on glass doors, you're even greener than I thought you were," said Eaton.

Roger looked at him thoughtfully. "Oh, I see!" he said after a moment. "When would you want to begin on this work?"

"As soon as you can raise a little preliminary expense money for us, say $1500."

"Oh," said Roger again. "Of course, you realize that the only thing that will give that stock any value is building plants with the money we get from selling it."

"Why, certainly! But we must make a right start. An office in your bedroom may go in Eagle's Wing but not in Chicago."

"Oh!" said Roger for a third and last time. And the conference adjourned sine die.

Something about this interview depressed Roger profoundly.

He went home, locked up his drawings and threw an old canvas over the model of the solar engine that had stood for so many years in a corner of the graduate laboratory. It was six months before he could induce himself to touch his work again. And it dawned on him that his twenties were slipping by and that he was becoming unsociable and grave. But there seemed no remedy for the matter. His dream had become the most vital part of his life, and would not let him lead a normal existence. Such is the price that a dreamer pays for his vision.