The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Six Other Stories Read online

  'Why, yes.'

  'I've been afraid you're getting a bit stale.'

  'Stale?' Samuel was puzzled.

  'You've done no work outside the office for nearly ten years.'

  'But I've had vacations, in the Adiron--'

  Carhart waved this aside.

  'I mean outside work. Seeing the things move that we've always pulled the strings of here.'

  'No,' admitted Samuel; 'I haven't.'

  'So,' he said abruptly, 'I'm going to give you an outside job that'll take about a month.'

  Samuel didn't argue. He rather liked the idea and he made up his mind that, whatever it was, he would put it through just as Carhart wanted it. That was his employer's greatest hobby, and the men around him were as dumb under direct orders as infantry subalterns.

  'You'll go to San Antonio and see Hamil,' continued Carhart. 'He's got a job on hand and he wants a man to take charge.'

  Hamil was in charge of the Carhart interests in the Southwest, a man who had grown up in the shadow of his employer, and with whom, though they had never met, Samuel had had much official correspondence.

  'When do I leave?'

  'You'd better go to-morrow,' answered Carhart, glancing at the calendar. 'That's the 1st of May. I'll expect your report here on the 1st of June.'

  Next morning Samuel left for Chicago, and two days later he was facing Hamil across a table in the office of the Merchants' Trust in San Antonio. It didn't take long to get the gist of the thing. It was a big deal in oil which concerned the buying up of seventeen huge adjoining ranches. This buying up had to be done in one week, and it was a pure squeeze. Forces had been set in motion that put the seventeen owners between the devil and the deep sea, and Samuel's part was simply to 'handle' the matter from a little village near Pueblo. With tact and efficiency the right man could bring it off without any friction, for it was merely a question of sitting at the wheel and keeping a firm hold. Hamil, with an astuteness many times valuable to his chief, had arranged a situation that would give a much greater clear gain than any dealing in the open market. Samuel shook hands with Hamil, arranged to return in two weeks, and left for San Felipe, New Mexico.

  It occurred to him, of course, that Carhart was trying him out. Hamil's report on his handling of this might be a factor in something big for him, but even without that he would have done his best to put the thing through. Ten years in New York hadn't made him sentimental, and he was quite accustomed to finish everything he began - and a little bit more.

  All went well at first. There was no enthusiasm, but each one of the seventeen ranchers concerned knew Samuel's business, knew what he had behind him, and that they had as little chance of holding out as flies on a window-pane. Some of them were resigned - some of them cared like the devil, but they'd talked it over, argued it with lawyers and couldn't see any possible loophole. Five of the ranches had oil, the other twelve were part of the chance, but quite as necessary to Hamil's purpose, in any event.

  Samuel soon saw that the real leader was an early settler named McIntyre, a man of perhaps fifty, gray-haired, clean-shaven, bronzed by forty New Mexico summers, and with those clear, steady eyes that Texas and New Mexico weather are apt to give. His ranch had not as yet shown oil, but it was in the pool, and if any man hated to lose his land McIntyre did. Every one had rather looked to him at first to avert the big calamity, and he had hunted all over the territory for the legal means with which to do it, but he had failed, and he knew it. He avoided Samuel assiduously, but Samuel was sure that when the day came for the signatures he would appear.

  It came - a baking May day, with hot waves rising off the parched land as far as eyes could see - and as Samuel sat stewing in his little improvised office - a few chairs, a bench, and a wooden table - he was glad the thing was almost over. He wanted to get back East the worst way, and join his wife and children for a week at the seashore.

  The meeting was set for four o'clock, and he was rather surprised at three-thirty when the door opened and McIntyre came in. Samuel could not help respecting the man's attitude, and feeling a bit sorry for him. McIntyre seemed closely related to the prairies, and Samuel had the little flicker of envy that city people feel toward men who live in the open.

  'Afternoon,' said McIntyre, standing in the open doorway, with his feet apart and his hands on his hips.

  'Hello, Mr McIntyre.' Samuel rose, but omitted the formality of offering his hand. He imagined the rancher cordially loathed him, and he hardly blamed him. McIntyre came in and sat down leisurely.

  'You got us,' he said suddenly.

  This didn't seem to require any answer.

  'When I heard Carhart was back of this,' he continued, 'I gave up.'

  'Mr Carhart is--' began Samuel, but McIntyre waved him silent.

  'Don't talk about the dirty sneak-thief!'

  'Mr McIntyre,' said Samuel briskly, 'if this half-hour is to be devoted to that sort of talk--'

  'Oh, dry up, young man,' McIntyre interrupted, 'you can't abuse a man who'd do a thing like this.'

  Samuel made no answer.

  'It's simply a dirty filch. There just are skunks like him too big to handle.'

  'You're being paid liberally,' offered Samuel.

  'Shut up!' roared McIntyre suddenly. 'I want the privilege of talking.' He walked to the door and looked out across the land, the sunny, steaming pasturage that began almost at his feet and ended with the gray-green of the distant mountains. When he turned around his mouth was trembling.

  'Do you fellows love Wall Street?' he said hoarsely, 'or wherever you do your dirty scheming--' He paused. 'I suppose you do. No critter gets so low that he doesn't sort of love the place he's worked, where he's sweated out the best he's had in him.'

  Samuel watched him awkwardly. McIntyre wiped his forehead with a huge blue handkerchief, and continued:

  'I reckon this rotten old devil had to have another million. I reckon we're just a few of the poor beggars he's blotted out to buy a couple more carriages or something.' He waved his hand toward the door. 'I built a house out there when I was seventeen, with these two hands. I took a wife there at twenty-one, added two wings, and with four mangy steers I started out. Forty summers I've saw the sun come up over those mountains and drop down red as blood in the evening, before the heat drifted off and the stars came out. I been happy in that house. My boy was born there and he died there, late one spring, in the hottest part of an afternoon like this. Then the wife and I lived there alone like we'd lived before, and sort of tried to have a home, after all, not a real home but nigh it - cause the boy always seemed around close, somehow, and we expected a lot of nights to see him runnin' up the path to supper.' His voice was shaking so he could hardly speak and he turned again to the door, his gray eyes contracted.

  'That's my land out there,' he said, stretching out his arm, 'my land, by God-- It's all I got in the world - and ever wanted.' He dashed his sleeve across his face, and his tone changed as he turned slowly and faced Samuel. 'But I suppose it's got to go when they want it - it's got to go.'

  Samuel had to talk. He felt that in a minute more he would lose his head. So he began, as level-voiced as he could - in the sort of tone he saved for disagreeable duties.

  'It's business, Mr McIntyre,' he said; 'it's inside the law. Perhaps we couldn't have bought out two or three of you at any price, but most of you did have a price. Progress demands some things--'

  Never had he felt so inadequate, and it was with the greatest relief that he heard hoof-beats a few hundred yards away.

  But at his words the grief in Mclntyre's eyes had changed to fury.

  'You and your dirty gang of crooks!' he cried. 'Not one of you has got an honest love for anything on God's earth! You're a herd of money-swine!'

  Samuel rose and McIntyre took a step toward him.

  'You long-winded dude. You got our land - take that for Peter Carhart!'

  He swung from the shoulder quick as lightning and down went Samuel in a heap. Dimly he h
eard steps in the doorway and knew that some one was holding McIntyre, but there was no need. The rancher had sunk down in his chair, and dropped his head in his hands.

  Samuel's brain was whirring. He realized that the fourth fist had hit him, and a great flood of emotion cried out that the law that had inexorably ruled his life was in motion again. In a half-daze he got up and strode from the room.

  The next ten minutes were perhaps the hardest of his life. People talk of the courage of convictions, but in actual life a man's duty to his family may make a rigid course seem a selfish indulgence of his own righteousness. Samuel thought mostly of his family, yet he never really wavered. That jolt had brought him to.

  When he came back in the room there were a lot of worried faces waiting for him, but he didn't waste any time explaining.

  'Gentlemen,' he said, 'Mr McIntyre has been kind enough to convince me that in this matter you are absolutely right, and the Peter Carhart interests absolutely wrong. As far as I am concerned you can keep your ranches to the rest of your days.'

  He pushed his way through an astounded gathering, and within a half-hour he had sent two telegrams that staggered the operator into complete unfitness for business; one was to Hamil in San Antonio; one was to Peter Carhart in New York.

  Samuel didn't sleep much that night. He knew that for the first time in his business career he had made a dismal, miserable failure. But some instinct in him, stronger than will, deeper than training, had forced him to do what would probably end his ambitions and his happiness. But it was done and it never occurred to him that he could have acted otherwise.

  Next morning two telegrams were waiting for him. The first was from Hamil. It contained three words:

  'You blamed idiot!'

  The second was from New York:

  'Deal off come to New York immediately Carhart.'

  Within a week things had happened. Hamil quarrelled furiously and violently defended his scheme. He was summoned to New York, and spent a bad half-hour on the carpet in Peter Carhart's office. He broke with the Carhart interests in July, and in August Samuel Meredith, at thirty-five years old, was, to all intents, made Carhart's partner. The fourth fist had done its work.

  I suppose that there's a caddish streak in every man that runs crosswise across his character and disposition and general outlook. With some men it's secret and we never know it's there until they strike us in the dark one night. But Samuel's showed when it was in action, and the sight of it made people see red. He was rather lucky in that, because every time his little devil came up it met a reception that sent it scurrying down below in a sickly, feeble condition. It was the same devil, the same streak that made him order Gilly's friends off the bed, that made him go inside Marjorie's house.

  If you could run your hand along Samuel Meredith's jaw you'd feel a lump. He admits he's never been sure which fist left it there, but he wouldn't lose it for anything. He says there's no cad like an old cad, and that sometimes just before making a decision, it's a great help to stroke his chin. The reporters call it a nervous characteristic, but it's not that. It's so he can feel again the gorgeous clarity, the lightning sanity of those four fists.

  May Day

  There had been a war fought and won and the great city of the conquering people was crossed with triumphal arches and vivid with thrown flowers of white, red, and rose. All through the long spring days the returning soldiers marched up the chief highway behind the strump of drums and the joyous, resonant wind of the brasses, while merchants and clerks left their bickerings and figurings and, crowding to the windows, turned their white-bunched faces gravely upon the passing battalions.

  Never had there been such splendor in the great city, for the victorious war had brought plenty in its train, and the merchants had flocked thither from the South and West with their households to taste of all the luscious feasts and witness the lavish entertainments prepared - and to buy for their women furs against the next winter and bags of golden mesh and varicolored slippers of silk and silver and rose satin and cloth of gold.

  So gaily and noisily were the peace and prosperity impending hymned by the scribes and poets of the conquering people that more and more spenders had gathered from the provinces to drink the wine of excitement, and faster and faster did the merchants dispose of their trinkets and slippers until they sent up a mighty cry for more trinkets and more slippers in order that they might give in barter what was demanded of them. Some even of them flung up their hands helplessly, shouting: 'Alas! I have no more slippers! and alas! I have no no more trinkets! May Heaven help me, for I know not what I shall do!'

  But no one listened to their great outcry, for the throngs were far too busy - day by day, the foot soldiers trod jauntily the highway, and all exulted because the young men returning were pure and brave, sound of tooth and pink of cheek, and the young women of the land were virgins and comely both of face and of figure.

  So during all this time there were many adventures that happened in the great city, and, of these, several - or perhaps one - are here set down.

  I

  At nine o'clock on the morning of the first of May, 1919, a young man spoke to the room clerk at the Biltmore Hotel, asking if Mr Philip Dean were registered there, and if so, could he be connected with Mr Dean's rooms. The inquirer was dressed in a well-cut, shabby suit. He was small, slender, and darkly handsome; his eyes were framed above with unusually long eyelashes and below with the blue semicircle of ill health, this latter effect heightened by an unnatural glow which coloured his face like a low, incessant fever.

  Mr Dean was staying there. The young man was directed to a telephone at the side.

  After a second his connection was made; a sleepy voice hallo'd from somewhere above.

  'Mr Dean?' - this very eagerly - 'it's Gordon, Phil. It's Gordon Sterrett. I'm downstairs. I heard you were in New York and I had a hunch you'd be here.'

  The sleepy voice became gradually enthusiastic. Well, how was Gordy, old boy! Well, he certainly was surprised and tickled! Would Gordy come right up, for Pete's sake!

  A few minutes later Philip Dean, dressed in blue silk pyjamas, opened his door and the two young men greeted each other with a half-embarrassed exuberance. They were both about twenty-four, Yale graduates of the year before the war; but there the resemblance stopped abruptly. Dean was blond, ruddy, and rugged under his thin pyjamas. Everything about him radiated fitness and bodily comfort. He smiled frequently, showing large and prominent teeth.

  'I was going to look you up,' he cried enthusiastically. 'I'm taking a couple of weeks off. If you'll sit down a sec. I'll be right with you. Going to take a shower.'

  As he vanished into the bathroom his visitor's dark eyes roved nervously around the room, resting for a moment on a great English travelling bag in the corner and on a family of thick silk shirts littered on the chairs amid impressive neckties and soft woollen socks.

  Gordon rose and, picking up one of the shirts, gave it a minute examination. It was of very heavy silk, yellow, with a pale blue stripe - and there were nearly a dozen of them. He stared involuntarily at his own shirt-cuffs - they were ragged and linty at the edges and soiled to a faint gray. Dropping the silk shirt, he held his coat-sleeves down and worked the frayed shirt-cuffs up till they were out of sight. Then he went to the mirror and looked at himself with listless, unhappy interest. His tie, of former glory, was faded and thumb-creased - it served no longer to hide the jagged buttonholes of his collar. He thought, quite without amusement, that only three years before he had received a scattering vote in the senior elections at college for being the best-dressed man in his class.

  Dean emerged from the bathroom polishing his body.

  'Saw an old friend of yours last night,' he remarked. 'Passed her in the lobby and couldn't think of her name to save my neck. That girl you brought up to New Haven senior year.'

  Gordon started.

  'Edith Bradin? That whom you mean?'

  ''At's the one. Damn good looking. She's
still sort of a pretty doll - you know what I mean: as if you touched her she'd smear.'

  He surveyed his shining self complacently in the mirror, smiled faintly, exposing a section of teeth.

  'She must be twenty-three anyway,' he continued.

  'Twenty-two last month,' said Gordon absently.

  'What? Oh, last month. Well, I imagine she's down for the Gamma Psi dance. Did you know we're having a Yale Gamma Psi dance tonight at Delmonico's? You better come up, Gordy. Half of New Haven'll probably be there. I can get you an invitation.'

  Draping himself reluctantly in fresh underwear, Dean lit a cigarette and sat down by the open window, inspecting his calves and knees under the morning sunshine which poured into the room.

  'Sit down, Gordy,' he suggested, 'and tell me all about what you've been doing and what you're doing now and everything.'

  Gordon collapsed unexpectedly upon the bed; lay there inert and spiritless. His mouth, which habitually dropped a little open when his face was in repose, became suddenly helpless and pathetic.

  'What's the matter?' asked Dean quickly.

  'Oh, God!'

  'What's the matter?'

  'Every God damn thing in the world,' he said miserably. 'I've absolutely gone to pieces, Phil. I'm all in.'

  'Huh?'

  'I'm all in.' His voice was shaking.

  Dean scrutinized him more closely with appraising blue eyes.

  'You certainly look all shot.'

  'I am. I've made a hell of a mess of everything.' He paused. 'I'd better start at the beginning - or will it bore you?'

  'Not at all; go on.' There was, however, a hesitant note in Dean's voice. This trip East had been planned for a holiday - to find Gordon Sterrett in trouble exasperated him a little.

  'Go on,' he repeated, and then added half under his breath, 'Get it over with.'

  'Well,' began Gordon unsteadily, 'I got back from France in February, went home to Harrisburg for a month, and then came down to New York to get a job. I got one - with an export company. They fired me yesterday.'

  'Fired you?'

  'I'm coming to that, Phil. I want to tell you frankly. You're about the only man I can turn to in a matter like this. You won't mind if I just tell you frankly, will you, Phil?'