Episodes Before Thirty/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
At length the bitter, sparkling winter was over, the sleigh-bells silent, the covered skating-rinks all closed. The last remnants of the piled-up snow had melted, and the sweet spring winds were blowing freshly down the cedar-paved streets. On the lake shores the boat-houses were being opened; canoes, skiffs and cat-boats being repainted. Tents and camping kit were being overhauled. The talk everywhere was of picnics, expeditions, trips into the backwoods, and plans for summer holidays. Crystal sunlight flooded the world. The Canadian spring intoxicated the brain and sent the blood dancing to wild, happy measures.
The Hub was now in the hands of a Receiver; Adams and Burns, the wholesale house, controlled it. Kay and I had to pay cash for everything—the Hub Wine Company was "bust."
Yielding to my father's impatient surprise that after all these months I was still a partner, I had assigned my interest a short time before to Kay, and had sent home the printed announcement in the newspapers. It was a nominal assignment only, for I had nothing to assign. My last penny of capital was lost. Kay, for his part, had lost everything too. Vultures, in the form of bailiffs with blue writs in their claws, haunted our last week; by good luck rather than good management I owed nothing, but Kay had small outstanding accounts all over the town.
It was a hectic last week. Our friends came in crowds to sympathize, to offer advice, to suggest new plans, and all considered a liquid farewell necessary. This etiquette was strict. A private word with the Receiver brought back our tea bottle. The Upper House did a fair business again, while Louis B——— bursting with new schemes, new enterprises, that should restore our fortunes, was for ever at the piano in the upstairs room. We played together while our little Rome was burning--Tchaikowsky, Chopin, Wagner, and the latest songs with choruses. Kay donned his Irving wig from time to time and roared his "Bells" and "Suicide." Our last days rattled by.
The pain of the failure was mitigated for me personally by the intense relief I felt to be free of the nightmare at last. Whatever might be in store, nothing could be worse than that six months' horror. Besides, failure in Canada was never final. It held the seeds of success to follow. From its ashes new life rose with wings and singing. The electric air of spring encouraged brave hopes of a thousand possibilities, and while I felt the disaster overwhelmingly, our brains at the same time already hummed with every imaginable fresh scheme. What these schemes were it is difficult now to recall, beyond that they included all possibilities of enterprise that a vast young country could suggest to penniless adventurous youth.
What memory still holds sharply, however, is the face of a young lawyer of our acquaintance, as he looked at me across the fiddle and said casually: "You can live on my island in Lake Rosseau if you like!" Without a moment's hesitation we accepted the lawyer's offer of his ten-acre island in the northern lakes. The idea of immediate new enterprise faded. Kay was easily persuaded into a plan that promised a few weeks' pleasant leisure to think things over, living meanwhile for next to nothing. "I shall go to New York later," he announced, "and get on the stage. I'll take Shakespeare up to the island and study it." He packed his Irving wig. It was the camping-out which caught me with irresistible attraction: the big woods, an open air life, sun, wind and water.... "I'll come up and join you later," promised the sanguine Louis B----. "I'll come with some new plan we can talk over round your camp-fire." He agreed to pack up our few belongings and keep them for us till we went later to New York. "We'll all go to the States," he urged. "Canada is a one-horse place. There are far more chances across the line."
We kept secret our date of leaving, only Louis knowing it. On the morning of May 24th, the Queen's birthday, he came to fetch us and our luggage, the latter reduced to a minimum. There were no good-byes. But this excitable little Frenchman, who loved a touch of the picturesque, did not come quite as we expected. He arrived two hours before his time, with a wagonette and two prancing horses, his fat figure on the box, flicking his long whip and shouting up at our windows. His idea, he explained as we climbed in, was to avoid the main station, where we should be bound to see a dozen people we knew. He proposed, instead, to drive us twenty miles to a small station, where the train stopped on its way north. There was no time to argue. I sat beside him on the box with the precious fiddle, Kay got behind with our two bags, and Louis drove us and his spanking pair along King Street and then up Yonge Street. Scores recognized us, wondering what it meant, for these were the principal streets of the town, but Louis flourished his whip, gave the horses their head, and raced along the interminable Yonge Street till at length the houses disappeared, and the empty reaches of the hinterland took their place. He saw us into the train with our luggage and our few dollars, waving his whip in farewell as the engine started. We did not see him again till he arrived, thin, worried, anxious and gabbling, in the East 19th Street boarding-house the following autumn.
My Toronto episodes were over. I had been eighteen months in the country and was close upon twenty-two; my capital I had lost, but I had gained at least a little experience in exchange. I no longer trusted every one at sight. The green paint had worn thin in patches, if not all over. The collapse of the Dairy made me feel old, the Hub disaster made me a Methuselah. My home life seemed more and more remote, I had broken with it finally, I could never return to the old country, nor show my face in the family circle again. Thus I felt, at least. The pain and unhappiness in me seemed incurably deep, and my shame was very real. In my heart was a secret wish to live in the backwoods for evermore, a broken man, feeding on lost illusions and vanished dreams. The light-*hearted plans that Louis B---- and Kay so airily discussed I could not understand. My heart sank each time I recognized my father's handwriting on an envelope. I felt a kind of final misery that only my belief in Karma mitigated.
This mood of exaggerated intensity soon passed, of course, but for a time life was very bitter. It was hard at first to "accept" these fruits of former lives, this harvest of misfortune whose seeds I assuredly had sown myself long, long ago. The "detachment" I was trying to learn, with its attitude of somehow being "indifferent to the fruits of action," was not acquired in a day.
Yet it interests me now to look back down the vista of thirty years, and to realize that this first test of my line of thought--whether it was a pretty fancy merely, or whether a real conviction--did not find me wanting. It was, I found, a genuine belief; neither then, nor in the severer tests that followed, did it ever fail me for a single moment. I understood, similarly, how my father's faith, equally sincere though in such different guise to mine, could give him strength and comfort, no matter what life might bring....
As our train went northwards through the hinterland towards Gravenhurst and the enchanted island where we were to spend five months of a fairyland existence, I grasped that a chapter of my life was closed, and a new one opening. The mind looked back, of course. Toronto, whose Indian name means Place of Meeting, I saw only once or twice again. I never stayed there. At the end of our happy island-life, we rushed through it on our way to fresh adventures in New York, Kay hiding his face in an overcoat lest some creditor catch a glimpse of him and serve a blue writ before the train's few minutes' pause in the station ended. The following winter, indeed, this happened, though in a theatre and not in a railway carriage. The travelling company, of which he formed a member, was giving its Toronto week, and a creditor in the audience recognized him on the stage, though not this time in his Irving wig. The blue writ was served, the bailiff standing in the wings until the amount was paid.
In the mood of reflection a train journey engenders, a sense of perspective slipped behind the eighteen months just over. Shot forth from my evangelical hot-house into colonial life, it now seemed to me rather wonderful that my utter ignorance had not landed me in yet worse muddles ... even in gaol.... One incident, oddly enough, stood out more clearly than the rest. But for my ridiculous inexperience of the common conditions of living, my complete want of savoir faire, my unacquaintance even with the ways of normal social behaviour, I might have now been in very different circumstances. A quite different career might easily have opened for me, a career in a railway, in the Canadian Pacific Railway, in fact, on one of whose trains we were then travelling.
But for my stupid ignorance, an opening in the C.P.R. would certainly have been found for me, whether it led to a future or not. The incident, slight and trivial though it was, throws a characteristic light on the results of my upbringing. It happened in this way:
Among my father's acquaintance were the bigwigs of the Canadian Pacific Railway, who had shown him much courtesy on our earlier visit. The relationship this time was not of a religious kind; he was Financial Secretary to the Post Office; the C.P.R. carried the mails. Sir George Stephen and Sir Donald Stewart had not at that time received their peerages as My Lords Mount-Stephen and Strathcona; Sir William van Horne was still alive. To all of these I bore letters, though I delivered--by post to Montreal--only the one to Sir George, as President of the line. It met with the kindest possible response, and for several weeks I had been awaiting the return of T., an important official in Toronto, to whom my case had been explained, but who was away at the time, touring the west in his special car. The moment I returned, I felt reasonably sure that he would find me a place of some sort or other where I could at least make a start. He had, in fact, been asked to do so. With influence, too, in high quarters behind me, I had every reason to hope. The return of Mr. T. I awaited eagerly. He was a young man, I learned, of undoubted ability, but was at the same time a petty fellow, very pushing, very conceited, and a social snob of the most flagrant type. I was rather frightened, indeed, by what I heard, for a colonial social snob can be a very terrible creature, as I had already discovered.
Mr. T.'s return chanced to coincide with a big race meeting, to be followed by a ball at Government House. Sir Alexander Campbell was Governor of Ontario at the time. It was the event of the season, and of course Mr. T. came back in time to attend it and be in evidence. With a party of friends I drove to my first race meeting (oh, how the clothes, the talk, the rushing horses, all looking exactly alike, bored me!) with an invitation to the grand stand box of the Governor General, Lord Aberdeen, also a friend of my father's, and was thus introduced to the railway official under the best possible auspices. My heart beat high when I saw how he took trouble to be nice to me and begged me to call upon him next day at his office, saying that "something could no doubt be arranged for me at once." I was so delighted that I felt inclined to cable home at once "Got work"; but I resisted this temptation and simply let my imagination play round the nature of the position I should soon be holding in a very big company, with excellent chances of promotion and salary. I was too young to be bothered by the man's patronizing manner and did not care a straw about his condescension and self-importance, because I thought only of getting work and a start.
The ball filled me with intense shyness and alarm, however, for I had never learned to dance, or been inside a ballroom, and it was merely by chance I found out that white gloves and a white tie (not a black one as I had always worn at home for dinner) were the proper things. In a colony, too, an Englishman, who pretends to any standing, cannot be too careful about social details; for everything, and more besides, is expected of him.
The ball was even worse than I had anticipated. I was nervous and uncomfortable. Ignorant of the little observances that would have been known to any man brought up differently, I found nothing to say to the numerous pretty Canadian girls, unconventional and natural, who were introduced to me, and I had not the slightest idea that the correct and polite thing to do was to ask each young lady for the "pleasure of a dance."
What people must have thought of my manners I cannot imagine, but the climax was undoubtedly reached when the railway official swaggered up to me in the middle of the room and said he wished to introduce me to his sister. This was duly accomplished, but--I could think of nothing to say. We stood side by side, with the official beaming upon us, I fingering my empty programme and the girl waiting to be asked for a dance. But the request was not forthcoming, and after a few minutes of terrible awkwardness and half silence, the purple-faced official marched his sister off again, highly insulted, to introduce her to men who would appreciate their luck better than I had done.
To him, of course, my manners must have seemed hopelessly rude. He felt angry that I had not thought his sister worth even the ordinary politeness of a dance; and to a Canadian, who learns dancing with his bottle, and dances indoors and out on every possible occasion, the omission must have seemed incredibly ill-mannered, and the snub an unforgivable one. I cannot blame him. I remained in complete ignorance however of my crime, and, beyond feeling nervously foolish, out of place, and generally not much of a success, I had no idea I had given cause for offence until, long afterwards, I heard stories about myself and my behaviour which made me realize that I had done unpardonable things and left undone all that was best and correct.
At the time, however, I had no realization that I had offended at all; and in the morning I went down accord ing to appointment to call upon the railway official in his fine offices and hear the joyful news of my appointment to a lucrative and honourable position in the Company.
It seemed a little strange to me that I was kept waiting exactly an hour in the outer office, but I was so sure of a pleasant interview with a practical result that when at last the clerk summoned me to the official's sanctum, I went in with a smiling face and goodwill and happiness in my heart.
The general manager, as I will call him, though this title disguises his actual position, greeted me, however, without a word. He was talking to a man who stood beside his desk, and though he must have heard my name announced, he did not so much as turn his head. I stood looking at the framed photographs on the wall for several moments before the man went out, and then, when the door was closed, I advanced with outstretched hand and cordial manner across the room to greet my future employer.
He glanced at me frigidly, and, without even rising from his chair, gave me a stiff bow and said in a voice of the utmost formality:
"Well, sir, and what can I do for you?"
The words fell into my brain like so many particles of ice, and froze my tongue. Such a reception I had never dreamed of receiving. What had I done wrong? How in the world had I offended? Not even a word of apology for keeping me waiting an hour; and not even a seat offered me. I stood there foolishly for a moment, completely puzzled. Surely there must be a mistake. The man had forgotten me, or took me for somebody else.
"I had an appointment with you at eleven o'clock, Mr. T.," I said nervously, but trying to smile pleasantly. "You remember you were kind enough to say yesterday you thought you might find work for me to do in--in the railway offices."
The man's eyes flashed, just as though he were angry, his face turned red, and I could not help suddenly noticing what a bad, weak chin he had and how common and coarse the lines of his face were. The flush seemed to emphasize all its bad points.
"Oh, you want work?" he said with a distinct sneer, looking me up and down as if I were an animal to be judged. "You want work, do you?"
My nervousness began to melt away before his offensive manner, and I felt the blood mounting, but trying to keep my temper and to believe still there must be some mistake, I again reminded him of our previous interview at the races and in the ballroom.
"Oh, to be sure, yes, now I remember," he said casually, and turned to take up pencil and paper on his desk. I looked about for a chair, but there was none near, so I remained standing, feeling something like a suspected man about to be examined by a magistrate.
"What can you do?" he asked abruptly.
"Well," I stammered, utterly surprised at his rudeness and manner, "I've not had much experience yet, of course, but I'm willing to begin at the bottom and work up. I'll do anything for a beginning."
"That's what everyone says. 'Doing anything' is no good to me. I want to know what you can do. All my clerks here write shorthand----"
"I can write shorthand accurately and fast," I hastened to interrupt, evidently to his surprise, as though he had not expected to find me thus equipped.
"But at present," he hastened to add, "there are no vacancies on my staff, and I fear I can offer you nothing unless----" he hesitated a moment and then looked me full in the face. This time there could be no mistake. I saw blood in his eye and I realized he was savagely angry with me for some reason, and was determined to make the interview as unpleasant for me as possible.
"----unless you care to sling baggage on a side station up the line," he finished sneeringly.
The blood rushed to my face, and I understood in a flash that the interview was a farce and his only object to humiliate me. I had so far swallowed my temper on the chance of getting a position, but I knew that a post under such a man, who evidently hated me, would be worse than nothing. So I gave him one look from head to foot and turned to leave the room. I could have struck him in the jaw with the greatest pleasure in the world.
"Then I understand you have no vacancies," I said quietly as soon as I got to the door. "I will write and thank Sir George Stephen and tell him about your kindness to me."
I said this because it was the only thing that occurred to me to say, and not with the object of making him uncomfortable. I had no intention of putting my words into effect, I had no idea my stray shot would hit the mark.
Yet it did. The official, purple, and dismayed, got up hastily, and called me to stay a moment and he would see if something was not possible. Hurried sentences followed me to the passage, but I merely bowed and went out, knowing perfectly well that nothing could come of further conversation.