Читать книгу Below the Salt - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 6

Nothing was said for a moment after the Westerner had left. Then Mr. Ross smiled at his young visitor and asked, “Consumed with curiosity?”

“Well—yes, sir, I am. It’s been most unusual.”

“I wish I could enlighten you. But I’m in the dark myself. Lynch dropped in out of the blue and asked me to make the appointment with you. He didn’t volunteer much about his purpose and I didn’t feel I could question him. He did tell me he was acting for Senator O’Rawn and that gave me a pretty broad ground for assumptions. Want to know what my guess is?”

“Yes, sir, I do. I haven’t been able to make any guess myself.”

“Well, young man, I’ll have to go back a bit into the past. Lucy Congdon, your grandmother, was an unusually pretty and sweet girl, in addition to being an heiress. She had droves of suitors. I was one. Did you know that?”

John shook his head. “No, sir, I didn’t.”

“I was never one of the front runners. Lucy liked me but I think she never regarded me as anything more than a faithful friend. But with Dick O’Rawn it was different. He met her at a dance in Boston and he started right in to sweep her off her feet. They were engaged in no time at all and I could see that Lucy was very happy. All the local swains were a pretty sad lot when it was announced. Irv Beal was one of the hardest hit because he had been sure he was first in line. I was a junior partner here at the time—quite junior, in fact—and it happened I had to go up to see Mr. Congdon with some papers for him to sign the morning that the announcement came out in the newspaper. The old man looked at me and said: ‘You make me sick, the whole caboodle of you. Letting this outsider step in and cut you all out. I have nothing against young Mr. O’Rawn except that he’ll take my Lucy away to the West. It would have suited me if she had picked one of you because then she would have lived here. I didn’t want any young Lochinvar carrying her off to the other side of the world. For a time, Chris, I was pinning my hopes on you.’ I was feeling so unhappy about it that I suppose I showed how I felt. ‘I never had a chance, sir,’ I said. ‘Lucy couldn’t see me with a telescope.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I have one consolation. She didn’t take that Beal squirt.’ ”

Miss Candee brought in the tea with a plate of spongecakes thickly covered with white icing. The first swallow seemed to have a reviving effect on the old lawyer. He sighed deeply and resumed his narrative.

“Well, the wedding day was set. About a month before the date, Dick O’Rawn blew in from the West. It had taken him four days by train to reach Crosswich and those who saw him at the station said he looked pale and unhappy. They thought this was the result of the trip. But it wasn’t the trip. He saw Lucy and took the first train back. The news gradually seeped out that the engagement had been broken. I didn’t see Lucy myself but I heard she was holding her head high and saying nothing about what had happened. Her father was reported to have said at the Crosswich Club that if he had not been out of town the day Dick O’Rawn arrived that young Irishman would have gone to the hospital instead of to the station to catch his train back.”

The old lawyer finished his cup of tea and his spongecake. He drew an even deeper sigh.

“Inside of a year Lucy married Irv Beal. I was thunderstruck when I heard she had picked him.” He swung around in his chair so he could face his visitor squarely. “Now, young John Foraday, I don’t want to hurt your feelings. I don’t want to destroy any illusions you may be holding about the man who became your grandfather. Were you fond of him?”

It was clear that John was reluctant to answer. He studied the willow pattern in the cup with a frown. “I don’t want to say anything,” he began, “that Grandmother wouldn’t have wanted me to say. But I think I should be honest about it. I—I didn’t like him much. He lived a short time only after I came to live with them. It wasn’t long enough for me to get to know him very well. But I never liked the way he acted to Grandmother. He was supposed to have suffered a great blow—about the failure of the business—and his feelings had to be considered all the time. We had to be careful about everything we said. Grandmother cautioned me never to speak of business in his hearing and never to use the word ‘hat’ under any circumstances. I was just a boy at the time but I was very sure that the blow had fallen hardest on Grandmother and that it was her feelings we ought to be considering.”

The lawyer nodded his head with great satisfaction. “Then I can say what I meant to. The trouble started with a stag dinner Irv Beal gave a month or so after Lucy’s father died. She had gone to visit an aunt, one of her father’s sisters, because she was feeling his death so deeply. It seemed odd to all of us that Beal was giving a party so soon and still odder when he served champagne. When we had our first glass, he looked around the table and said: ‘This is a celebration, gentlemen. I’m going to take over control of the Congdon interests. I was elected president before Lucy went away.’ None of us spoke, we were so astonished. ‘I rather think, gentlemen,’ he went on, ‘that I’m going to show the business world something.’ His eye lighted on me and he smirked. ‘Well, Chris Ross,’ he said sharply, ‘what about our bet?’ ‘Bet?’ I said. ‘What bet?’ ‘Don’t tell me you’re going to pretend you’ve forgotten. You bet me I would never get control. Didn’t you now, didn’t you?’ Well, I remembered then that we had made some kind of a wager in the heat of an argument. I owned up to it but I said my mind was a blank as to the terms. ‘We’ll attend to that,’ he said, grinning. He produced a dunce’s hat, made out of a newspaper, and I had to stick it on my head while I made a little speech of amends. What’s more, it turned out I was expected to pay for the champagne. I didn’t believe I had been fool enough to make such a bet as that but I paid up without a word.” He paused and put his teacup down on the saucer with such vigor that both might have been damaged. He opened his mouth several times as though prepared to give vent to his opinion of Irvin Byron Beal without restraint, then he shook his head and contented himself with what obviously was an understatement. “I didn’t like him, boy, I didn’t like him at all.”

John had finished off a cup of scalding-hot tea without realizing what he was doing, so deep was the interest he was taking in what the elderly lawyer was saying. He accepted another cup blindly and in a purely mechanical way took a bite from the cake on his plate.

“If you please, Mr. Ross,” he said when it became evident that the stream of reminiscence had come to an end, “I don’t know much about why the company failed. I’ve heard some talk, of course, but it has always seemed guesses. My grandmother never spoke of it. I suppose she found it too painful.”

“I can tell you what happened in a general way. Irv Beal brought in some fellow to look the business over with a view to bringing it up to date. I don’t know what they are called these days but then they were known as efficiency engineers. This particular one decided that Congdon Hat was old-fashioned in its methods and he suggested a policy which suited the new president perfectly. They must reduce costs by cheapening the output while they continued to maintain the high prices for the hat. Then he convinced Beal that the managers of the stores should be changed. They were veterans who knew the hat trade from top to bottom and who had a personal acquaintance with all the regular customers. The men put in their places were young. Go-getters was the word for them, I believe.”

The old man gestured with a heat which the passage of so many years had done nothing to abate. “The whole town watched what was going on with fear and amazement. Our prosperity then depended to a great extent on the success of the Congdon enterprises. Will you believe it that one of the retail stores lost so much business that it had to be closed in less than two years? Very soon after they had all been closed and the Congdon hat, the old-time leader and established patrician among hats, was being sold only through regular trade channels. The volume fell off every year, because the new article wasn’t worth what they were asking for it. In eight years the business went bankrupt. All of the employees were out of jobs. I tell you, it was a sad time for Crosswich. It took us years to recover from the blow.”

John sat in complete silence for some time. “It wouldn’t be an easy matter to get things started again, would it?”

The lawyer shook his head. “I’m afraid the public has forgotten the Congdon hat. The name has very little value left, except for the few old customers who still remember how good it was. It would be almost a case of starting over again. Of course there are some patented machines which are good, and there are still a few old employees who understood the process of manufacture. That’s all you would have to start with, that and the old plant.

“But let’s go back to Senator O’Rawn,” he went on, after another pause. “I said I could make a guess as to his purpose in having you looked up in this way. I never saw him afterward but you may be sure I followed his career with the closest interest. Now here’s what I think: he has just learned of your grandmother’s death and the full extent of the financial calamity visited on her. I think he has learned more about it than her thick-skulled friends right here at home. And he has sent Jake Lynch east to make inquiries. Jake, I know, talked to quite a few people in town. You may never hear anything more of this, my boy, so don’t go letting your hopes grow. On the other hand, it seems to me possible that the senator has some definite plan in his head. Perhaps his conscience is bothering him and he may want to make amends in some way. That’s a kind of wild guess, men don’t do generous things these days. Or so it seems to an old man who has seen the whole world change—and not for the better.”

John responded with more emphasis and feeling than he had yet shown. “After the way he treated her, I have no intention of letting him do anything for me. What was his explanation for the way he acted? I suppose he had fallen in love with someone else.”

“No, no. It wasn’t that. He never married. There was some good reason but no one knows what it was. Now, young man, don’t go hardening your mind. Don’t jump to conclusions. Wait until you hear from him again. If you do hear from him, he’ll have something in mind that you must consider fairly. For your own sake. I’m sure, I’m quite positive, that your grandmother would want it that way.”