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THE REAL MAN
BY FRANCIS LYNDE
_ILLUSTRATED BY_ ARTHUR E. BECHER
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK :::::::::: 1915
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published August, 1915
TO THOSE FRIENDS OF UNACQUAINTANCE AMONG HIS READERS WHO FROM TIME TO TIME EXPRESS, THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF KINDLY AND HEART-WARMING LETTERS, THEIR APPRECIATIVE SYMPATHY AND APPROVAL, THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED, WITH GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS FROM THE AUTHOR
There was time only for a mighty heave and shove.]
CONTENTS
I. HOST AND GUEST
II. METASTASIS
III. THE HOBO
IV. THE HIGH HILLS
V. THE SPECIALIST
VI. THE TWIG
VII. A NOTICE TO QUIT
VIII. TIMANYONI DITCH
IX. RELAPSINGS
X. THE SICK PROJECT
XI. WHEN GREEK MEETS GREEK
XII. THE ROCKET AND THE STICK
XIII. THE NARROW WORLD
XIV. A REPRIEVE
XV. "SWEET FORTUNE'S MINION"
XVI. BROKEN THREADS
XVII. A NIGHT OF FIASCOS
XVIII. A CHANCE TO HEDGE
XIX. TWO WOMEN
XX. TUCKER JIBBEY
XXI. AT ANY COST
XXII. THE MEGALOMANIAC
XXIII. THE ARROW TO THE MARK
XXIV. A LITTLE LEAVEN
XXV. THE PACE-SETTER
XXVI. THE COLONEL'S "DEFI"
XXVII. TWO WITNESSES
XXVIII. THE STRADDLER
XXIX. THE FLESH-POTS OF EGYPT
XXX. A STRONG MAN ARMED
XXXI. A RACE TO THE SWIFT
XXXII. FREEDOM
XXXIII. IN SUNRISE GULCH
ILLUSTRATIONS
There was time only for a mighty heave and shove
In a flash Smith knew what he had done
"Your friends have money, Montague--plenty of it"
"Catch him! catch him!" he shrilled. "It's Boogerfield, and he's goingto dy-dynamite the dam!"
Sketch map of the Timanyoni
Sketch map of the Timanyoni]
THE REAL MAN
I
Host and Guest
It is conceivable that, in Noah's time--say, on the day before theheavens opened and the floods descended--a complacent citizenry ofAntediluvia might have sat out on its front porches, enjoying the sunsetover Mount Ararat and speculating upon the probable results of the nextpatriarchal election, all unsuspicious of chaotic cataclysms. Undersimilar conditions--fair skies, a good groundwork of creature comforts,and a total lack of threatening portents--there was no reason why thetwo men, smoking their after-dinner cigars on the terrace of theLawrenceville Country Club, should suspect that the end of the worldmight be lying in wait for either of them just beyond the hour'srelaxation.
They had been dining together--Debritt, a salesman for the AldenguildEngraving Company of New York and the elder of the two, as the guest,and Smith, cashier of the Lawrenceville Bank and Trust, as the host.After banking hours, Smith had taken the engraving company's salesman inhis runabout for a drive through the residence district and up the riverroad; and business, the business of printing a new issue ofstock-certificates for the local bank, had been laid aside. The returndrive had paused at the Country Club for dinner; and since Debritt'strain would not leave until eight o'clock, there was ample leisure forthe tobacco burning and for the jocund salesman's appreciativeenthusiasm.
"Monty, my son, for solid satisfaction and pure unadulterated enjoymentof the safe-and-sane variety, you fellows in the little cities have usmetropolitans backed off the map," he said, after the cigars were fairlyalight. "In New York, believe me, you might be the cashier of a bank thesize of the Lawrenceville B. and T.--only you wouldn't be at yourage--for a thousand years and never get a glimpse out over the top ofthings; never know the people who lived next door to you. Here you knoweverybody worth knowing, drive your own motor, have more dinnerinvitations than you can accept, and by and by--when you getdeliberately good and ready--you can marry the prettiest girl in town.Am I right?"
The carefully groomed, athletically muscled younger man in the bigwicker lounging-chair laughed easily.
"You are not so far wrong, Boswell," he conceded. "I guess we get allthat is coming to us, and I get my share. Since we have only onemultimillionaire we can't afford to be very exclusive, and my bank jobanswers the social purpose well enough."
"I'll bet it does!" the jocose one went on. "I've been piping you offever since we left the hotel. It's ''lo, Monty-boy,' everywhere you go,and I know exactly what that means in a town of this size; a stand-inwith all the good people, a plate at anybody's table, the pick ofpartners at all the social dew-dabs. Tell me if I'm wrong."
Again the younger man laughed.
"You might be reading it out of a book," he confessed. "That is the lifehere in Lawrenceville, and I live it, like thousands of my kind all overthe land. You may scoff at it if you like, but it is pleasant andharmless and exceedingly comfortable. I shouldn't know how to live anyother kind."
"I don't know why you should want to live any other kind," was theprompt rejoinder. "To be a rising young business man in a rich littleinland city, beloved of the gods and goddesses--especially of thegoddesses.... Say, by Jove! here comes one of them, right now. Heavens!isn't she a pomegranate!"
A handsome limousine had rolled silently up to the club carriageentrance, and the young woman in question was descending from it. Only amiser of adjectives--or a Debritt--would have tried to set forth hertriumphant charm in a single word. She was magnificent: a brown-eyedblonde of the Olympian type, exuberantly feminine in the many dazzlingluxuriances of ripe-lipped, full-figured maidenhood. The salesman sawhis companion make a move to rise, but the beauty passed on into theclub-house without looking their way.
"You know her, I suppose; you know everybody in town," Debritt said,after the cashier had again settled himself in the lounging-chair.
Smith's nod was expressive of something more than a fellow townsman'sdegree of intimacy.
"I ought to," he admitted. "She is Miss Verda Richlander, the daughterof our one and only multimillionaire. Also, I may add that she is myvery good friend."
Debritt's chuckling laugh proved that his prefigurings had alreadyoutrun the mere statement of fact.
"Better and more of it," he commented. "I'm going to congratulate youbefore you can escape--or is it a bit premature?"
"Some of the Lawrenceville gossips would tell you that it isn't; but itis, just the same. Mr. Josiah Richlander has but one measure for thestature of a man, and the name of it is money. The fellow who asks himfor Miss Verda is going to have a chance to show up his bank-account andthe contents of his safety-deposit box in short order."
"In that case, I should imagine you'd be lying awake nights trying tostudy up some get-rich-quick scheme," joked the guest.
"Perhaps I am," was the even-toned rejoinder. "Who knows?"
The round-bodied salesman broke an appreciative cough in the middle andgrew suddenly thoughtful.
"Don't do that, Monty," he urged soberly; "try to take any of the shortcuts, I mean. It's the curse of the age; and, if you'll take it from me,your chances are too good--and too dangerous."
The good-looking, athletic young cash-keeper planted in the oppositec
hair met the salesman's earnest gaze level-eyed.
"Having said that much, you can hardly refuse to say more," hesuggested.
"I will say more; a little more, anyway. I've been wanting to say it allthe afternoon. My job takes me into nearly every bank in the MiddleWest, as you know, and I can't very well help hearing a good bit ofgossip, Montague. I'm not going to insult your intelligence by assumingthat you don't thoroughly know the man you are working under."
The cashier withheld his reply until the Olympian young woman, who wascoming out, had stepped into her limousine to be driven away townward.Then he said:
"Mr. Dunham--our president? Oh, yes; I know him very well, indeed."
"I'm afraid you don't."
"I ought to know him," was the guarded assumption. "I've been with himsix years, and during that time I have served a turn at every job in thebank up to, and now and then including, Mr. Dunham's own desk."
"Then you can hardly help knowing what people say of him."
"I know: they say he is a chance-taker, and some of them add that he isnot too scrupulous. That is entirely true; true, not only of Mr. Dunham,but of nine out of every ten business men of to-day who make a success.The chance-taking is in the air, the Lawrenceville air, at any rate,Debritt. We are prosperous. The town is growing by leaps and bounds, andwe've got the money."
The ash had grown half an inch longer on the salesman's cigar before hespoke again.
"They say worse things of Mr. Watrous Dunham than that he is achance-taker, Montague. There are men, good, solid business men, in theneighboring cities and towns who tell some pretty savage stories aboutthe way in which he has sometimes dropped his friends into a hole tosave himself."
"And you are a good enough friend of mine to want to give me a tip,Boswell? I appreciate that, but I don't need it. It may be as you say.Possibly Mr. Dunham does carry a knife up his sleeve for emergencies.But I wasn't born yesterday, and I have a few friends of my own here inLawrenceville. My only present worry is that I'm not making money fastenough."
The salesman waved the subject aside with the half-burned cigar. "Forgetit," he said shortly; "the Dunham end of it, I mean. And I don't blameyou for wanting to assemble money enough to call Mr. Richlander's hand."Then, with the jocose smile wrinkling again at the corners of hiswell-buried eyes: "You've got all the rest of it, you know; even to thegood half of a distinguished name. 'Mrs. J. Montague Smith.' That fitsher down to the ground. If it were just plain 'John,' now, it might bedifferent. Does she, too, call you 'Monty-boy'?"
The young man whose name pointed the jest grinned good-naturedly.
"The 'J' does stand for 'John,'" he admitted. "I was named for mymaternal grandfather, John Montague, and had both halves of the good oldgentleman's signature wished upon me. I stood for it until I grew oldenough to realize that 'John Smith' is practically nothing but an_alias_, and then I dropped the 'John' part of it, or rather, let itshrink to an initial. I suppose you can count all the Debritts there arein the country on your fingers; but there are millions ofindistinguishable Smiths."
The fat salesman was chuckling again when he threw the cigar end awayand glanced at his watch.
"I don't blame you for parting your name in the middle," he said; "I'dhave done it myself, maybe. But if you should ever happen to need an_alias_ you've got one ready-made. Just drop the 'Montague' and callyourself 'John' and the trick's turned. You might bear that in mind.It'll come in handy if the big ego ever happens to get hold of you."
"The big what?"
"The big ego; the German philosophers' 'Absolute Ego,' you know."
Smith laughed. "I haven't the pleasure of the gentleman's acquaintance.I'm long on commercial arithmetic and the money market; long, again,Lawrenceville will tell you, on the new dancing steps and things of thatsort. But I've never dabbled much in the highbrow stuff."
"It's a change," said the salesman, willing to defend himself. "I read alittle now and then, just to get away from the commercial grind. The egotheory is interesting. It is based on the idea that no man is altogetherthe man he thinks he is, or that others think he is; that association,environment, training, taste, inclination, and all those things havedeveloped a personality which might have been altogether different ifthe constraining conditions had been different. Do you get that?"
"Perfectly. If I'd been brought up some other way I might have beencutting meat in a butcher's shop instead of taking bank chances on moreor less doubtful notes of hand. What's the next step?"
"The German hair-splitters go a little farther and ring in what theycall the 'Absolute Ego,' by which they mean the ego itself, unshackledby any of these conditions which unite in forming the ordinarypersonality. They say that if these conditions could be suddenly sweptaway or changed completely, a new man would emerge, a man no lessunrecognizable, perhaps, to his friends than he would be to himself."
"That's rather far-fetched, don't you think?" queried thepractical-minded listener. "I can see how a man may be what he ischiefly because his inherited tastes and his surroundings and hisopportunities have made him so. But after the metal has once been pouredin the mould it's fixed, isn't it?"
Debritt shook his head.
"I'm only a wader in the edges of the pool, myself," he admitted. "Idabble a little for my own amusement. But, as I understand it, thetheory presupposes a violent smashing of the mould and a remelting ofthe metal. Let me ask you something: when you were a boy did you meanto grow up and be a bank cashier?"
Smith laughed. "I fully intended to be a pirate or a stage-robber, as Iremember it."
"There you are," drawled the travelling man. "The theory goes on to saythat in childhood the veil is thin and the absolute ego shows through.I'm not swallowing the thing whole, you understand. But in my ownexperience I've seen a good man go hopelessly into the discard, and abad one turn over a new leaf and pull up, all on account of some suddenearthquake in the conditions. Call it all moonshine, if you like, andlet's come down to earth again. How about getting back to town? I'd beglad to stay here forever, but I'm afraid the house might object. Whendid you say Mr. Dunham would be home?"
"We are looking for him to-morrow, though he may be a day or two late.But you needn't worry about your order, if that is what is troublingyou. I happen to know that he intends giving the engraving of the newstock-certificates to your people."
The New York salesman's smile had in it the experience-taught wisdom ofall the ages.
"Montague, my son, let me pay for my dinner with a saying that is as oldas the hills, and as full of meat as the nuts that ripen on 'em: inthis little old round world you have what you have when you have it.This evening we've enjoyed a nice little five-course dinner, well cookedand well served, in a pretty nifty little club, and in a few minuteswe'll be chasing along to town in your private buzz-wagon, giving ourdust to anybody who wants to take it. Do you get that?"
"I do. But what's the answer?"
"The answer is the other half of it. This time to-morrow we may both beasking for a hand-out, and inquiring, a bit hoarsely, perhaps, if thewalking is good. That is just how thin the partitions are. You don'tbelieve it, of course; couldn't even assume it as a working hypothesis.What could possibly happen to you or to me in the next twenty-fourhours? Nothing, nothing on top of God's green earth that could pitcheither or both of us over the edge, you'd say--or to Mr. Dunham to makehim change his mind about the engraving job. Just the same, I'll dropalong in the latter part of the week and get his name signed to theorder for those stock-certificates. Let's go and crank up the littleroad-wagon. I mustn't miss that train."