Dangerous Business/Chapter 11
Ellen had clipped with his, from the newspaper, the companion picture of Lida which the Mettens had admired and she bought all the New York papers, as well as the Chicago ones, to study every mention of Jay and Lida, but she could make no more than before of their marriage.
Where would he go with his wife, what would he do when his thousand dollars were spent? Ellen debated over and over. Beside her in the office, his father was waiting for the same event, she felt—the end of his thousand dollars. It was as if his father held him on a tether, shortening each day as Jay's money melted. When all was spent, his father would have him completely in hand.
Such was the sensation of working beside Mr. Rountree during this winter week wherein the newspaper correspondence from southern resorts twice mentioned the runaway bride and groom at Tryston, but Jay gave no account whatever of himself.
Wednesday upturned everything. The day began with a letter from Lew Alban upon his new stationery as president of the Alban Appliance Company, addressing Mr. Rountree and instructing him—there was no other tone to it—to complete delivery upon unfilled orders by January thirtieth. The more ominous feature of the letter was the omission of reference to February requirements. Ellen gave the letter to Mr. Rountree as soon as he appeared and, watching him read it, she thought of Di's warning: Look out for a slump in the business influence of the First Baptist Church of Stanley.
Mr. Rountree sent immediately for Mr. Lowry, who brought no reassurance in regard to the Alban business. On the contrary, he had learned yesterday that Lew Alban was figuring seriously with the Slengels, who appeared to be confident of winning the business, for they were leasing additional space in a plant next to their own. By February, Mr. Lowry thought, the Slengels would be prepared to supply the Alban company.
By February, then, the Rountree plant, losing the Alban business, would be half idle and the other half operating at a loss. Nobody mentioned this but it was in the minds of both men and of Ellen.
"You'd better go down to Stanley, sir," advised Mr. Lowry; and in spite of herself, Di's image of Mr. Rountree and old Stanley Alban singing hymns together flashed into Ellen's mind. Would they together dispatch another missionary to China, with the immediate result that Mr. Rountree would return to Chicago with the usual Alban order?
"I'm leaving on the noon train," replied Mr. Rountree, and told Ellen to phone Beedy to bring down his bag.
"Now for something more cheerful," announced Mr. Lowry. "What do you hear from Jay? Is he still at Tryston?"
Mr. Rountree nodded, obviously wondering what cheer the salesmanager felt from that fact.
"Something has saved, temporarily, at least, the Metten account. Last week I wouldn't have given a nickel for our chances. Slengels had sold Sam Metten; they had him sewed up. We couldn't even reach him. But Sam didn't deliver the order. Brother Phil blocked it."
"Did he?" said Mr. Rountree. "That's good; but I'm not much surprised, Lowry. He was very friendly with me, when you had him here."
Ellen saw Mr. Lowry smother a smile. "Are you writing Jay this morning or, by any chance, phoning him at Tryston?"
"Justin?" asked Mr. Rountree. "What has Justin to do with the Metten account?"
Mr. Lowry ventured, in the emergency, upon unusual frankness.
"Phil Metten's friendliness toward you, which you've remembered, was only a sort of hangover from his enthusiasm over Jay, to whom he was talking in the waiting room. Phil certainly fell for that boy. I could hardly get him to come in to see you. He wanted to fan golf with Jay. Phil is one of those golfers who took it up in time to shoot a steady hundred and twenty on a public course and would sell his shoes to be in an exclusive club, and get his wife and daughters in. He was asking Jay about a good place for his family. Jay told him about Tryston.
"Now on Christmas morning, the papers say that Jay and his wife are at Tryston; on Christmas night, Phil Metten and family leave town, for Tryston. At the same time, Sam Metten is stopped from delivering a halfmillion-dollar twelve-month order to the Slengels. I can't see that simply as a coincidence."
"Do you imagine," inquired Mr. Rountree, coldly, "that my son had anything to do with it?"
"I know it," returned Mr. Lowry. "Phil left word at his office that nothing is to be done about that order until he gets back; but this morning, his secretary calls me. First she has to tell me that Mr. Metten has been in golf games with Jay; and they have all met Mrs. Rountree, who is very wonderful. Phil seems to have written a full account to his secretary with instructions to broadcast it. Then the woman tells me that we are to go on supplying Metten Brothers, at the same price, temporarily—a two-week stop order. Mr. Phil Metten will definitely decide on the twelve-month order when he gets back. If you don't want to, I'd like to talk to Jay at Tryston."
Ellen, in her own excitement, was watching Mr. Rountree, whose moods and mannerisms she knew so well that it was like looking into his mind as he opposed and struggled with his contradictions. He would not accept his son as valuable to him; he would not have Jay, by no effort greater than a game of golf, accomplish for him a matter so laborious when undertaken by himself and so important to him at this moment as the retention, even temporarily, of the Metten account. Yet on Monday the Metten business had been lost; to-day it was regained through Phil Metten, whose office boasted that he was the com—panion of Jay Rountree at Tryston.
How much more agreeable for John Rountree to journey upon his first call upon Lew Alban having in hand the Metten business, and let Lew know it; how much more dignified his personal position and how much stronger his business situation. Yet he would not admit that this advantage accrued to him from the efforts of his son.
"I am not phoning Justin," he replied at last. "If you want to, Lowry, that is your affair."
Consequently, at Tryston, a caddie summoned Jay from the fairway because of a long distance call from Chicago. His father was on the wire, he supposed, as he went to the telephone, and he was rather glad of it. He hated the idea of telegraphing for money; abominated it. Better make a clean breast of the whole business by phone and put it off no longer, for Lida and he must be leaving. The Mettens were about Lida every minute they could manage it, and Lida was tiring of her game with them. Not merely a game she played; something else, too, but she had had enough of that. Better be off to-night.
"Hello, Jay; this is Bob Lowry," hailed the salesmanager's cheery voice, and congratulated him upon his marriage. "And great work with Phil Metten! In fact, wonderful! Keep him happy. . . . Anything I can do for you?"
Thus Jay obtained, without any embarrassment whatever, the difference between the amount he possessed and the sum he required to pay his hotel bill and his railroad fare home; and Lida's.
Home, he discovered, took an amazingly different aspect to a married man. The house on Astor Street, whatever had been its deficiencies, at least had been an establishment in which one could sleep, eat, have linen laundered and clothes pressed without any one presenting a bill. It was a place where you went when you had no money. Likely enough, its advantages and accommodations would be extended gratuitously, for a time at least, to Lida and him; but Jay never considered taking his wife home.
He engaged two rooms in a hotel on the Lake Shore Drive, upon the jut of land which commands the long, northward sweep of the shore and the reach of the water unbroken, endless to the northern and eastern horizons. They arrived at night and Lida had her first look at the lake after lights were out and the window lifted.
The moon was shining. She could not see its sphere; the moon was overhead and behind the hotel, meridian high in the clear, cold midwinter sky. Stars gleamed before her. There stood the Dipper, half spilled, with its pointers, whatever their position, stubbornly pistoling the steady, still Pole Star. Alderamin was there, Kochab and Cassiopeia's Chair—all Lida's stale northern stars.
The rim of them ran down to the sea—no sea of sandy coral and palm groves. Floes and ice choked the sea; the floe churned and spewed. A wind, an arctic, frigid wind was blowing, displayed in the brightness of the moon as spray flew sparkling from the splash of the churning ice.
"You didn't tell me this was here," whispered Lida, clinging to Jay.
"You knew Chicago was on the lake."
"I didn't know it was on the Polar Sea. I thought ships crossed it."
"They do," said Jay. "A few, all winter; but the big ships are laid up. They can't get out of the lake through the Straits and into Superior for iron ore. Navigation's closed. Navigation's closed," he repeated, not thinking of what he was telling his wife but cast by it into his sensation when last he had looked thus at the lake and talked navigation.
In his father's office, it had been, with Ellen Powell.
Morning, which banished the magic of the moon, spread a gray, cold shore, overdrift with city haze, below Lida's window. Lida slept, lacking an alarm of need to awaken her; so her husband left her undisturbed, breakfasted alone and went to the office.
He had learned from Beedy, last night, that his father was in Stanley; now Ellen Powell told him that his father would remain a few days with Mr. Alban.
"You've been home?" he asked Ellen. "How's your father?"
She shook her head, watching him, trying to make out, was he happy? Where was his wife? Ellen directly asked nothing about his wife. She inquired, generally, "When did you get in?" So he told her and mentioned also, where "we" were staying.
How could they stay there? Ellen knew that his thousand dollars was gone and Mr. Lowry had sent him more money because of his meeting the Mettens. Mr. Lowry, she remembered, wanted to know as soon as Jay arrived. Ellen wanted to keep him with her; but what had he now to say to her or she to him? She called Mr. Lowry.
Mr. Lowry had no reservations about inquiring of Jay's wife and discussing her. Where was she? Mr. Lowry immediately wanted to know. Had the Mettens returned on the same train with them? When were the Mettens following to Chicago?
"Next week," said Jay.
"They won't wait till next week," prophesied Mr. Lowry. "Tryston's gone tame for them. I bet they're packing this minute. You and that wife of yours, Jay, gave them the thrill of their lives. I was in Phil's office yesterday. Apparently he bought out this week's edition of the local Tryston paper. His secretary had a hundred copies, at least, which she was mailing out to friends; the one with the picture of you all lunching in the solarium together, with names of everybody below it. You were good, boy, but your wife was wonderful! You'll find your friends again, I figure, not later than day after to-morrow."
"Not here," protested Jay.
"Why not? Are you leaving?"
"No; I've come home for a job."
"Your job, in the next few days, is to be nice to the Metten family—you and your wife."
"But good Lord," said Jay, "we won't be with the Mettens here. That's over. That was just at Tryston, because he came down there. He sent up his card to me. That's over."
Lowry laughed. "Over, boy? You've just begun; you're just tuning up. You don't imagine you've satisfied Phil Metten by sitting with him for his picture at Tryston with your wife and his family? You've just whetted his appetite." Lowry looked about the room, seeing that the door was closed and nobody else but Ellen Powell present. "Do you know what the Metten business amounts to?"
Jay smiled, in spite of himself. "If I don't, repetition makes no impression on my ears. Four hundred and forty-five thousand last year; it'll be more than half a million, this."
"And we've just exactly absolutely got to have it. Do you know where your father is and why he's down there? Lew Alban has taken over the works at Stanley and his first presidential gesture was to give us the gate."
Jay flushed and drew up, as Lowry meant to make him.
"Lew never liked your father and you," the salesmanager added.
"It is completely mutual with me," said Jay.
"Lew knows it; that's what gives him such particular pleasure in having you in his hands."
"He hasn't us in his hands!" denied Jay, flaring up.
"Hasn't he? If you lose the Metten account? Who'll we have left? Nucast, who we damn near lost"
"Yes," said Jay, suddenly white, while Ellen watched him. "Yes," he repeated, deeply breathing.
"And half a dozen little ones who altogether won't keep our doors open. We have to have volume to keep our costs down to a level to sell in competition with the other fellow who has volume; and Slengels are getting the volume; they're after both Metten and Alban. If we lose Alban, we're groggy; if we lose Metten, too, we're down and out.
"Now Metten's a growing account, thank God. They're talking half a million next year because it sounds so big to them they can hardly believe it; but I bet their business goes to three-quarters of a million—almost enough to take the place of Alban with us when we lose Lew.
"We have a little time before Lew leaves us, for your father's down there and his father's living. (Singing hymns and shipping off missionaries, Ellen could not help thinking.) But his health is just rotten. It can't be long: before Lew shuts us down."
"He will not shut us down," Jay defied.
"He won't only if he can't. If we hold Metten and Metten grows—and Providence has put the matter of Metten pretty much into your and your wife's hands. Phil Metten and mamma have more money in their checking accounts than they ever thought was in the world and they're depositing more. Money has ceased to be the big thing ahead of them; they've got it, so now they're hot on the trail of the next thing—social recognition. You gave them a taste of it down at Tryston and they sure liked it; so here they come with their tongues out for more."
"Lida," said Jay, very tense and tight, "I mean Mrs. Rountree, played around with the Mettens at Tryston because they asked for it and they interested her; or amused her. She didn't know they were buyers until they told her. I played golf with Phil Metten because he asked me; then I found I was playing him for business. That's all right between him and me. I've come home to work for the firm; but the Metten family cannot buy, with their half million dollar order for goods, the right to run around with my wife. I'm not trading personal friendship with my wife for business."
"Too late," retorted Lowry warmly. "They're already your friends—and your wife's. They've told it to the world. They've mailed the Tryston papers around to all their friends to prove it. Your wife's in this and she's got to stay in. The women come to count more than the men in any affair like this. You let your wife cool toward the Mettens and the Angel Gabriel couldn't hold to Rountree the Metten business, which is like lifeblood to this firm just now."