it was turning dusk in the office, though it was scarcely three o’clock and outside the sun was still shining, beyond the busy streets. the two men sitting on opposite sides of the small room bent closer to their desks. the younger glanced up and got up to turn on the electric light. the little scowl that had begun to form itself on the face of the older man changed to a look of relief. his pen moved faster over the paper.
the older man was simeon tetlow, president of the “r. and q.” railroad. it might almost be said that he was the road. its minute ramifications and its great divisions were hardly more than the nerves and arteries that threaded simeon tetlow’s thin frame. and the orders that went out from the tiny office, high up in the big block, were the play of his flitting finger-tips upon the keyboard of the whole clanking system. the tiny, shriveled figure gave no hint of the power that ticked carloads of live stock and human beings to their destination and laid its hand upon roads half dead, or dying, or alive and kicking, sweeping them gently into the system, with hardly a gulp.
simeon tetlow was an iron man, wiry and keen—an intellect without heart or soul or conscience, his co-workers would have told you. each new road absorbed, each influx of power, seemed only to tighten a spring somewhere inside that shot the bolt. he conld work day and night without tiring; and that was the reason, in part, why at forty-two he was president of the “r. and q.” road; and the reason why at forty-two his hand, when it reached out for its abstemious glass of water, trembled so that it was quickly withdrawn. no one knew the man. no one guessed the nervous horror that often racked the small frame driven relentlessly by its big brain.
he reached out for a slip of paper that lay at hand and ran his eye over it, jotting down a few figures. then he pushed it to one side and went on writing. the younger man came across the office and laid another slip of paper on the desk. he took the one that had been pushed aside, made a memorandum on it, and filed it in a pigeon-hole at the right. he was a short, young man, with broad shoulders and a round face. the face as it bent above the slip of paper had a dull look. there was a kind of patience in it not usual in so young a man, and when he turned his eyes to his employer they glowed with a clear light, as if something were shining behind them.
“what is it, john?” the man reached out a nervous, groping hand. his gaze had not left the page before him.
“this one next, sir.” the young man touched the outstretched hand with the slip of paper.
“yes, yes.” it was almost testy.
the other returned to his desk and the scratching pens raced with the minutes.
a call-boy entered with a handful of letters. the young man took them and ran them through his fingers. he arranged them in piles, reserving a part for himself. these he read, making notes and filing them rapidly. one letter, the one at the bottom of the pack, was not addressed to the great corporation, but—in a fine, small hand—to “john bennett.” he read this one last, looking thoughtfully at the lines and folding it with slow fingers. the patient look was still in his face, but the light of the eyes was gone. it seemed to have sunk back, leaving the flesh dull and heavy.
his employer glanced up suddenly. his quick eye sought the electric bulb, with a flash of impatience, and returned to its work.
the young man rose and turned on more lights. he moved about the room, putting things away for the night.
simeon tetlow finished his letters and pushed them from him. the young man came across and began to gather them up. his dull face came in range of his employer’s eye.
“give those i ’ve marked to hanscom. have the rest ready in the morning. i shall dictate.”
“yes, sir.” the young man finished gathering them up.
the man glanced again, half-impatiently, at the heavy face. the room seemed suddenly gloomy, in spite of the red-hot wires looping the light about them.
the young man brought a hat and coat and laid them beside his employer. “may i speak to you a minute, sir?” he asked as he put them down.
the other glanced again, sharply, at his face. “go ahead.” his hand was reaching for the hat.
“i shall have to hand in my resignation, sir.” the young man said it slowly, as if repeating something he had learned by heart.
the hand on the hat drew back. “what ’s that?” he laughed curtly and shot a look of suspicion at the impassive face. “more money?”
the face flushed. “no, sir.” he hesitated a little. “my mother is sick.”
“umph!” the man’s face cleared. “you don’t need to resign for that.” he did not ask what was the matter with the mother. he had not known that john had a mother. she seemed to be springing into existence very inconveniently. “get a nurse,” he said.
“she has had a nurse. but she needs me, i think.” he did not offer more details.
the older man shrugged his shoulders a little—a quick shrug. he pushed forward a chair with his foot. “sit down. your father dead?” quickly.
“no, sir. but—father is—father.” he said it with a little smile. “she’s never had anybody but me,” he went on quickly. “she’s been sick ever since i was a little thing, and i’ve taken care of her. it frets her to have a woman around. she does n’t wash the dishes clean, and her cooking is n’t really very good.” he was smiling a little as he said it.
the man shot a quick look at him. “you ’re going home to wash dishes?”
“yes, sir.”
“um-m.” the fingers played a little tune on the desk. “i ’ll raise you twenty-five a month. get a better nurse.”
the boy shook his head. “i ’m afraid it would n’t do.” he was hesitating. “i think she misses me.”
“umph! very likely!” the man glanced at him over quick spectacles. “what ’s the matter with her? sit down.” he touched the chair again with his foot.
the young man sat down. “we don’t know what it is. she cannot walk—cannot stand—a good deal of the time—and sometimes she suffers. but it is a kind of nervousness that is hardest to bear. she cannot lie quiet. something seems to drive her.”
the man nodded. his fingers opened and closed. “what else?” he said brusquely.
“that ’s all—except that it quiets her to have me around. i can get work in bridgewater and do the housework nights and mornings.”
the man was scowling at him intently.
“it ’s what i ’ve always done, till i came here,” he said quickly.
“washed dishes and cooked and made beds?”
“yes, sir.”
“it’s no work for a man.”
“i know.” the dull face smiled a little. “the boys always called me ’sissie johnny.’”
“umph! i ’m glad they did!... ’sissie johnny’!” he smiled grimly and took a card from the desk before him, holding it a minute in his fingers, snapping it back and forth. “has she ever seen a specialist?”
the young man shook his head. “no, sir.” the man wrote a few words on the card and blotted it quickly. “take her to see dr. blake. he is the best nerve specialist in five hundred miles. if she is n’t well enough to go to him, have him come to her. i ’ll pay the bill.” he thrust himself into his hat and coat and got himself out of the room, shrugging nervously.
the young man stood with the card in his hand, looking at it, a little smile on his lips. then he went about, turning out all the bulbs but one and putting away papers and arranging the room for the night.
it was a small, rough room—hardly more than a corner cut off from the top floor by board partitions. the rest of the floor, outside, was used only for storage. simeon tetlow had achieved here what he wanted—complete solitude. there was, on the first floor, a magnificent apartment with lordly mahogany chairs, a baize-covered table and oil paintings, where twice a year he met his directors; and on the floor above it was a spacious room bearing on its panel the bronze token, “president’s office.” it was occupied at present by three young lady typewriters who clacked their machines and arranged their hair and adjusted the shades on the plate-glass windows to suit their convenience, while in the little room at the top of the building the president of the corporation hunched himself over a four-dollar desk and scowled at the dim light that came through the half-sized windows. for three days after it was finished, simeon tetlow occupied the spacious room below designed for the president of the corporation. then he gathered together his few belongings and fled to the top. his gigantic brain could only work when free from distraction. the mere sense that some one might rap, even on the outer door of the stately office, paralyzed him, and his nervous frame, once set a-jangle, trembled, and palpitated for hours. the mere forbidding of intrusion was not sufficient. some well-meaning idiot, laden with news of importance, would break over the command, and hours of careful thought would be whirled aloft in the smoke of simeon’s wrath. he fled to the loft, dropping, as it were, a trapdoor behind him. no one was to follow—unless summoned. no literary man was ever more jealous of solitude. but no mere literary man could think a railroad into existence or quench a wheat crop with a nod. if simeon tetlow’s body had matched his brain, there would have been no limit to his power. as it was, he remained a mighty general without an army, a head without hands and feet. the details of life frustrated him at every point. he could meet his directors, serene in the knowledge that the road was prospering beyond all bounds. he could carry to them the facts and figures and proofs of prosperity—in his head. but the papers that recorded these facts, the proofs in black and white, were never forthcoming at the right moment. they took to themselves wings—of paper; they flitted and skulked and hid; they lay on the top of the pile before him and grinned at him, their very faces changed to a diabolic scorn that he should not know them.
this was the simeon tetlow of three years ago. then there entered, one morning, in response to his summons for a call-boy, a short, square youth with a dull face. simeon did not note him as he came in. he forgot that he had called for a boy. his mind was busy with projects of import. when it came back, with a start, he recognized that some one had been with him, for ten minutes or more, who had not worried and irritated him by merely being alive. he shot a keen glance at the dull face. the light of the eyes was turned to him, waiting to serve him.
after that simeon summoned the boy again and again, on one pretext or another. he made excuses to see him. he advanced him from post to post.
at last, about a year ago, he nodded at a desk that had been installed, overnight, across the room: “you are to work there and your pay will be raised a hundred.”
the boy took possession of the desk with as little stir as if he had received some casual order. he did not ask what his work was to be, and simeon tetlow did not tell him. the big brain had found hands and feet—almost, it might seem, lungs and a few other useful, vital organs—and it used them, as it had used the nervous, shaking body before—relentlessly. for the first time in his life simeon found his papers ready to his hand. he attended his first directors’ meeting, sitting at the head of the green baize table, like a man in a dream. the right paper slipped to his finger-tips and lingered there; the figures formed themselves in seemly ranks and marched up and down the green baize parade in orderly file. the effect upon the directors was, at first, a little startling. they had become wonted to simeon hurried, gasping, and impatient—and to dividends. they were almost afraid of these cold facts and figures. they looked at them cautiously, through gold-rimmed glasses, received their dividends—and took heart.
each day some new comfort found its way to simeon’s desk. the morning that the box of elastic bands appeared there was a holocaust of joy among the papers. he used nearly the whole box the first day. he had never owned an elastic band before. he was president of the great corporation, but it had not occurred to him that he had a right to elastic bands. he slid them up and down his nervous fingers in sheer energy of delight. but he did not mention them to john, nor john to him. it was john who provided the new letter-file that cut the work in half, and had the grimy windows washed till they shone like plate, and arranged the desk ’phone so that simeon could dictate to the stenographer three floors below, without knowing, or caring, who sat at the other end taking his crisp words with harried, compliant fingers. hitherto, dictating had burdened simeon’s life. he had written dozens of letters himself rather than endure the presence of a stenographer for even half an hour; and the sound of a girl clacking drove him wild.
the letters that were not dictated into the telephone were written in john’s round, conscientious-looking hand. if there were anything that one human being could do for another that was not done in the office, simeon did not know what it was—nor did john. a clothes-brush that brushed them twice a day hung by simeon’s hat and coat; and if simeon’s neckties were still shabby and his collars a little frayed, it was because john had not yet discovered the remedy. some days a luncheon appeared on simeon’s desk, and some days he went out to luncheon; and he could not have told which, except that it was always the thing that he would have done had he devoted hours of thought to it all.
he did not give thanks to john, and john did not expect them. the lamps in his eyes had not been lighted for that—nor for money....
he went about the room now in his slow, considerate way, attending to each detail of locking up, as carefully as if he were not to be first on the ground in the morning.... he would return to start the day. later—perhaps at noon—he would slip away. that would make least trouble.... to come in the morning and find him gone!—john felt, through all his short, square figure, the shock to the nervous, quivering one. he did not need to reason it out. he did not even know that he thought it. it was an instinct—born the first day he came into simeon tetlow’s office and saw the thin figure seated before its chaotic desk wrestling its way through mighty things.... he had thought of his mother as he stood there waiting for orders. she had fairly driven him away. “go and be a man!” she had said; “i shall ruin you.” and she had smiled at him courageously.... and he had come away, and had taken the first thing at hand—a call-boy, kicking his heels against a bench with a dozen others. and this was his employer.... so he had stood waiting when simeon tetlow had looked up and seen the lamps aglow.
that was three years ago. and tonight simeon, plodding home through the foggy gloom, was swearing a little under his breath.
“it ’s the weak spot in the boy,” he said testily; “i believe he’s soft at the core.”
he inserted his latchkey, grumbling still. “wash dishes—will he? damn him!—umph!—damn him!” and yet it was as if he had said: “bless him!” the great door swung noiselessly open, and he went in.
