The Isle of Retribution/Chapter 2

kept well within the speed laws on his way back to his father's beautiful home on Queen Anne Hill. He was none too well pleased with himself, and his thoughts were busy. There would be some sort of a scene with Godfrey Cornet, the gray man whose self-amassed wealth would ultimately settle for the damages to the “jitney” and the affront to the municipality,—perhaps only a frown, a moment's coldness about the lips, but a scene nevertheless. He looked forward to it with great displeasure.

It was a curious thing that lately he had begun to feel vague embarrassment and discomfiture in his father's presence. He had been finding it a comfort to avoid him, to go to his club on the evenings his father spent at home, and especially to shun intimate conversation with him. Ned didn't know just why this was true; perhaps he had never paused to think about it before. He simply felt more at ease away from his father, more free to go his own way. Some way, the very look on the gray face was a reproach.

No one could look at Godfrey Cornet and doubt that he was the veteran of many wars. The battles he had fought had been those of economic stress, but they had scarred him none the less. His face was written over, like an ancient scroll, with deep, dark lines, and every one marked him as the fighter he was.

Every one of his fine features told the same story. His mouth was hard and grim, but it could smile with the kindest, most boyish pleasure on occasion. His nose was like an eagle's beak, his face was lean with never a sagging muscle, his eyes, coal black, had each bright points as of blades of steel. People always wondered at his trim, erect form, giving little sign of his advanced years. He still looked hard as an athlete; and so he was. He had never permitted “vile luxury's contagion” to corrupt his tissues. For all the luxury with which he had surrounded his wife and son, he himself had always lived frugally: simple food, sufficient exercise, the most personal and detailed contact with his great business. He had fought upward from utter poverty to the presidency and ownership of one of the greatest fur houses of his country, partly through the exercise of the principle of absolute business integrity, mostly through the sheer dynamic force of the man. His competitors knew him as a fair but remorseless fighter; but his fame carried far beyond the confines of his resident city. Bearded trappers, running their lines through the desolate wastes of the North, were used to seeing him come venturing up their gray rivers in the spring, fur-clad and wind-tanned,—finding his relaxation and keeping fit by personally attending to the buying of some of his furs. Thus it was hard for a soft man to feel easy in his presence.

Ned Cornet wished that he didn't have to face him to-night. The interview, probably short, certainly courteous, would leave him a vague discomfort and discontent that could only be alleviated by further drinks, many of them and strong. But there was nothing to do but face it. Dependence was a hard lot; unlike such men as Rodney Coburn and Rex Nard, Ned had no great income-yielding capital in his own name. He was somewhat downcast and sullen as he entered the cheerfully lighted hallway of his father's house.

In the soft light it was immediately evident that he was his father's son, yet there were certain marked differences between them. Warrior blood had some way failed to come down to Ned. For all his stalwart body, he gave no particular image of strength. There was noticeable extra weight at his abdomen and in the flesh of his neck, and there was also an undeniable flabbiness of his facial muscles.

Godfrey Cornet's hands and face were peculiarly trim and hard and brown, but in the bright light and under careful scrutiny, his son's showed somewhat sallow. To a casual observer he showed unmistakable signs of an easy life and luxurious surroundings; but the mark of prolonged dissipation was not immediately evident. Perhaps the little triangles on either side of his irises were not the hard, bluish-white they should be; possibly there was the faintest beginning of a network of fine, red lines just below the swollen flesh sacks beneath his eyes. The eyes themselves were black and vivid, not unlike his father's; he had a straight, good nose, a rather crooked, friendly mouth, and the curly brown hair of a child. As yet there was no real viciousness in his face. There was amiable weakness, truly, but plenty of friendly boyishness and good will.

He took his place at the stately table so gravely and quietly that his parent's interest was at once wakened. His father smiled quietly at him across the board.

“Well, Ned,” he asked at last. “What is it to-day?”

“Nothing very much. A very close call, though, to real tragedy. I might as well tell you about it, as likely enough it'll be in the papers to-morrow. I went into a bad skid at Fourth and Madison, hit a jitney, and before we got quite stopped managed to knock a girl over on the pavement. Didn't hurt her a particle. But there's a hundred dollars' damage to the jit—and a pretty severe scare for your young son.”

As he talked, his eyes met those of his father, almost as if he were afraid to look away. The older man made little comment. He went on with his dessert, and soon the talk veered to other matters.

There hadn't been any kind of a scene, after all. It was true that his father looked rather drawn and tired,—more so than usual. Perhaps difficult problems had come up to-day at the store. His voice had a peculiar, subdued, quiet note that wasn't quite familiar. Ned felt a somber heaviness in the air.

He did not excuse himself and hurry away as he had hoped to do. He seemed to feel that to make such an offer would precipitate some impending issue that he had no desire to meet. His father's thoughts were busy; both his wife and his son missed the usual absorbingly interesting discourse that was a tradition at the Cornet table. The older man finished his coffee, slowly lighted a long, sleek cigar, and for a moment rested with elbows on the table.

“Well, Ned, I suppose I might as well get this off my chest,” he began at last. “Now is as auspicious a time as any. You say you got a good scare to-day. I'm hoping that it put you in a mood so that at least you can give me a good hearing.”

The man spoke rather humbly. The air was electric when he paused. Ned leaned forward.

“It wasn't anything—that accident to-day,” he answered in a tone of annoyance. “It could have happened to any one on slippery pavements. But that's ridiculous—about a good hearing. I hope I always have heard everything you wanted to tell me, sir.”

“You've been a very attentive son.” Godfrey Cornet paused again. “The trouble, I'm afraid, is that I haven't been a very attentive father. I've attended to my business—and little else—and now I'm paying the piper.

“Please bear with me. It was only a little accident, as you say. The trouble of it is that it points the way that things are going. It could very easily have been a terrible accident—a dead girl under your speeding wheels, a charge of manslaughter instead of the good joke of being arrested for speeding, a term in the penitentiary instead of a fine. Ned, if you had killed the girl it would have been fully right and just for you to spend a good many of the best years of your life behind prison walls. I ask myself whether or not I would bring my influence to bear, in that case, to keep you from going there. I'm ashamed to say that I would.

“You may wonder about that. I would know, in my heart, that you should go there. I am not sure but that you should go there now, as it is. But I would also know that I have been criminal too—criminally neglectful, slothful, avoiding my obligations—just as much as you have been neglectful and slothful and avoiding your obligations toward the other residents of this city when, half-intoxicated, you drove your car at a breakneck pace through the city streets. I can't accuse you without also accusing myself. Therefore I would try to keep you out of prison. In doing that, I would see in myself further proof of my old weakness—a weak desire to spare you when the prison might make a man of you.”

Ned recoiled at the words, but his father threw him a quick smile. “That cuts a little, doesn't it? I can't help it. Ned, your mother and I have always loved you too well. I suppose it is one of the curses of this age—that ease and softness have made us a hysterical, sentimental people, and we love our children not wisely, but too well. I've sheltered you, instead of exposing you to the world. The war did not stiffen you—doubtless because you were one of the millions that never reached the front.”

Ned leaned forward. “That wasn't my fault,” he said with fire. “You know that wasn't my fault.”

“I know it wasn't. The fact remains that you lost out. Let me go on. I've made it easy for you, always, instead of bitter hard as I should have done. I've surrounded you with luxury instead of hardship. You've never done an honest day's toil on earth. You don't know what it is to sweat, to be so tired you can't stand, to wonder where the next meal is coming from, to know what a hard and bitter thing life is!

“A girl, thrown on the pavement. A working girl, you said—probably homely, certainly not your idea of a girl. Perhaps, in your heart, you think it wouldn't have much mattered if you had killed her, except for the awkwardness to you. She was just one of thousands. You, my son, are Ned Cornet—one of our city's most exalted social set, one of our fashionable young clubmen.”

His tone had changed to one of unspeakable bitterness. Ned leaned forward in appeal. “That isn't true,” he said sharply. “I'm not a damned snob!”

“Perhaps not. I'm not sure that I know what a snob is. I've never met one—only men who have pretended to be snobs to hide their fear of me. Let me say, though, Ned—whatever her lot, no matter how menial her toil, your life could be spared much easier than hers. It would be better that you should be snuffed out than that she should lose one of her working hands. Likely you felt superior to her as you drove her home; in reality you were in finitely inferior. She has gone much farther than you have. She knows more of life; she is harder and better and truer and worth more to this dark world in which we live. The world could ill afford to lose her, a fighter, a worker. It would be better off to lose you—a shirker, a slacker!

“I'm not accusing you. God knows the blame is on my own head. For my part I sprang from the world of toil—never do I go out into that society in which you move but that I thank God for the bitter toil I knew in youth. The reason is that it has put me infinitely above them. Such soft friends as you have wither before my eyes, knowing well that they can not meet me on even grounds; or else they take refuge in an air of conceit, a pretense of caste, that deceives themselves no more than it deceives me. They talk behind my back of my humble origin—fearfully clothing their own nakedness with the garments of worthy, fighting men who have preceded them—and yet their most exalted gates open before my knock. They dare not shut their doors to me. They treat me with the respect that is born of fear.

“That toil, that hard schooling, has made me what I am and given me the highest degree possible of human happiness. I find a satisfaction in living; I am able to hold my head up among men. I have health, the adoring love of a wonderful woman; I give service to the world. I can see old age coming upon me without regret, without vain tears for what might have been, without fear for whatever fate lies beyond. I am schooled for that fate, Ned. I've got strength to meet it. My spirit will not be buffeted willy-nilly in those winds that blow between the worlds. I am a man, I've done man's work, and I can hold my place with other men in the great trials to come.

“What those tests are, I do not know. Personally I lean toward an older theology, one mostly outworn now, one cast away by weak men because they are afraid to believe in it. It is not for me to say that Dante foresaw falsely. The only thing I can not believe is the legend over the door—'Abandon Hope, ye who enter here.' There is no gateway here or hereafter that can shut out Hope. I believe that no matter how terrible the punishment that lies within those gates, however hard the school, there is a way through and out at last.

“Hell is not the dream of a religious fanatic, Ned. I believe in it just as surely as I believe in a heaven. There must be some school, some bitter, dreadful training camp for those who leave this world unfitted to go on to a higher, better world. Lately souls have been going there in ever-increasing numbers. Let softness and self-indulgence and luxury continue to degenerate this nation, and all travel will be in that direction. My hope is yet, the urge behind all that I'm saying to you to-night, is that you may take some other way.”

His black eyes gleamed over the board. For the moment, he might have been some prophet of old, preaching the Word to the hosts of Israel. The long dining room was deathly still as he paused. Realizing that the intensity of his feeling was wakening the somber poetry within him, revealing his inmost, secret nature, he steadied himself, watching the upcurling smoke of his cigar. When he spoke again his voice and words were wholly commonplace.

“There is no force in heaven or earth so strong as moral force,” he said. “In the end, nothing can stand against it. If it dies in this land, Lord help us—because we will be unable to help ourselves. We can then no longer drive the heathen from our walls. With it, we are great—without it we are a race of weaklings. And with luxury and ease upon us, it seems to me I see it manifested ever less and less.

“Ned, there's one thing to bring it back—and that is hardship. I mean by hardship all that is opposite to ease: self-restraint instead of license; service instead of self-love; devotion to a cause of right rather than to pleasure; most of all, hard work instead of ease. I've heard it said, as a thing to be deplored, that shirt sleeves go to shirt sleeves every three generations. Thank God it is so. There is nothing like shirt sleeves, Ned, to make a man—and hard-working, bunching muscles under them. And through my own weakness I've let those fine muscles of yours grow flabby and soft.

“Your mother and I have a lot to answer for. Both of us were busy, I with my business, she with her household cares and social duties, and it was easier to give you what you wanted than to refuse you things for your own good. It was easier to let you go soft than to provide hardship for you. It was pleasanter to give in than to hold out—and we loved you too much to put you through what we should have put you through. We excused you your early excesses. All young men did it, we told each other—you were merely sowing your wild oats. Then I found, too late, that I could not interest you in work—in business. You had always played, and you didn't want to stop playing. And your games weren't entirely harmless.

“This thing we've talked over before. I've never been firm. I've let you grow to man's years—twenty-nine, I believe—and still be a child in experience. The work you do around my business could be done by a seventeen-year-old boy. You don't know what it means to keep a business day. You come when you like and go when you like. In your folly you are no longer careful of the rights of other, better people—or you wouldn't have driven as you did to-day. You can no longer be bright and attractive at dinner except under the stimulation of cocktails—nothing really vicious yet, but pointing to the way things are going. Ned, I want to make a man of you.”

He paused again, and their eyes met over the table. All too plainly the elder Cornet saw that his appeal had failed to go home. His son was smiling grimly, his eyes sardonic, unmistakable contempt in the curl of his lips. Whether he was angry or not the gray man opposite could not tell. He hoped so in his heart—that Ned had not sunk so low that he could no longer know the stirring urge of manly anger. A great depression drew nigh and enfolded him.

“This isn't a theater,” was the calloused reply at last. “You are not delivering a lecture to America's school children! Strangely, I feel quite able to take care of myself.”

“I only wish that I could feel so too.”

“You must think I'm a child—to try to scare me with threats of hell fire. Father, I didn't realize that you had this streak of puritanism in you.”

His father made no reply at first. Ned's bitter smile had seemingly passed to his own lips. “I suppose there's no use of going on,” he said.

“By all means go on, since you are so warmed up to your subject,” Ned answered coldly. “I wouldn't like to deprive you of the pleasure. You had something on your mind: what is it?”

“It was a real opportunity for you—a chance to show the stuff you're made of. It wasn't much, truly—perhaps I have taken the whole thing too seriously. Ned, I wonder if you like excitement.”

“Do I? You know how I love polo”

“You love to watch! The point is, do you like excitement well enough to take a slight risk of your life for it? Do you care enough about success, on your own hook, to go through snow and ice to win it? A chance came to-day to make from fifty to a hundred thousand dollars for this firm; all it takes is a little nerve, a little endurance of hardship, a little love of adventure. I hoped to interest you in it—by so doing to get you started along the way that leads to manhood and self-respect. You carry this off successfully, and it's bound to give you ambition to tackle even harder deals. It means contact with men, a whole world of valuable experience, and a world of fun to boot. It wouldn't appeal to some of your cheap friends—but heaven knows, if you don't take it up, I'm going to do it myself.”

“Go ahead, shoot!” Ned urged. He smiled wanly, almost superciliously at the enthusiasm that had overswept his father's face. The old man's eyes were gleaming like black diamonds.

It was a curious thing, this love of adventure and trial and achievement! The old man was half-mad, immersed in the Sunday-school sentiments of a dead and moth-eaten generation, yet it was marvelous the joy that he got out of living! He was one of an older generation, or he would never anticipate pleasure in projects that incurred hardship, work, responsibility, the silences of the waste places such as he knew on his annual fur-buying expeditions. His sense of pleasure was weird; yet he was consistent, to say the least. Now he was wildly elated from merely thinking about his great scheme,—doubtless some stupid plan to add further prestige to the great fur house of Godfrey Cornet. Ned himself could not find such happiness in twice the number of drinks that were his usual wont.

“It's simply this,” his father went on, barely able to curb his enthusiasm. “To-day I met Leo Schaffner at lunch, and in our talk he gave me what I consider a real business inspiration. He tells me, in his various jobbing houses, he has several thousand silk and velvet gowns and coats and wraps left on his hands in the financial depression that immediately followed the war. He was cussing his luck because he didn't know what to do with them. Of course they were part of the surplus that helped glut the markets when hard times made people stop buying—stock that was manufactured during the booming days of the war. He told me that this finery was made of the most beautiful silks and velvets, but all of it was a good three seasons out of style. He offered me the lot of two thousand for—I'm ashamed to tell you how much.”

“Almost nothing!” his son prompted him.

“Yes. Almost nothing. And I took him up.”

His son leaned back, keenly interested for the first time. “Good Lord, why? You can't go into business selling out-of-date women's clothes!”

“Can't, eh? Son, while he was talking to me, it occurred to me all at once that the least of those gowns, the poorest one in the lot, was worth at least a marten skin! Think of it! A marten skin, from Northern Canada and Alaska, returned the trapper around sixty dollars in 1920. Now let me get down to brass tacks.

“It's true I don't intend to sell any of those hairy old white trappers any women's silk gowns. But this was what I was going to have you do: first you were to hire a good auxiliary schooner—a strong, sturdy, seaworthy two-masted craft such as is used in northern trading. You'd fit that craft out with a few weeks' supplies and fill the hold with a couple of thousand of those gowns. You'd need two or three men to run the launch—I believe the usual crew is a pilot, a first and second engineer, and a cook—and you'd have to have a seamstress to do fitting and make minor alterations. Then you'd start up for Bering Sea.

“You may not know it, but along the coast of Alaska, and throughout the islands of Bering Sea there are hundreds of little, scattered tribes of Indians, all of them trappers of the finest, high-priced furs. Nor do their women dress in furs and skins altogether, either, as popular legend would have you believe. Through their hot, long summer days they wear dresses like American women, and the gayer and prettier the dresses, the better they like 'em. To my knowledge, no one has ever fed them silk—simply because silk was too high—but being women, red or white, they'd simply go crazy over it.

“The other factor in the combination is that the Intrepid, due to the unsettled fur market, failed to do any extensive buying on her last annual trading trip through the islands, and as a result practically all the Indians have their full catch on hand. The Intrepid is the only trader through the particular chain of islands I have in mind—the Skopin group, north and east of the Aleutian chain—and she's not counting on going up again till spring. Then she'll reap a rich harvest—unless you get there first.

“The Skopin Islands are charted—any that are inhabited at all—easy to find, easy to get to with a seaworthy launch. Every one of those Indians you'll find there will buy a dress for his squaw or his daughter to show off in, during the summer, and pay for it with a fine piece of fur. For some of the brighter, richer gowns I haven't any doubt but that you could get blue and silver fox. As I say, the worst of 'em is worth at least a single marten. Considering your lack of space, I'd limit you to marten, blue and silver fox, fisher and mink, and perhaps such other freak furs as would bring a high price—no white fox or muskrat or beaver, perhaps not even ermine and land otter. Ply along from island to island, starting north and working south and west clear out among the Aleuts, to keep out of the way of the winter, showing your dresses at the Indian villages and trading them for furs!

“This is August. I'm already arranging for a license. You'd have to get going in a week. Hit as far north as you want—the farther you go the better you will do—and then work south. Making a big chain that cuts off the currents and the tides, the Skopin group is surrounded by an unbroken ice sheet in midwinter, so you have to count on rounding the Aleutian Peninsula into Pacific waters some time in November. If you wait much longer you're apt not to get out before spring.

“That's the whole story. The cargo of furs you should bring out should be worth close to a hundred thousand. Expenses won't be fifteen thousand in all. It would mean work; dealing with a bunch of crafty redskins isn't play for boys! Maybe there'd be cold and rough weather, for Bering Sea deserves no man's trust. But it would be the finest sport in the world, an opportunity to take Alaskan bear and tundra caribou—plenty of adventure and excitement and tremendous profits to boot. It would be a man's job, Ned—but you'd get a kick out of it you never got out of a booze party in your life. And we split the profits seventy-five—twenty-five—the lion's share to you.”

He waited, to watch Ned's face. The young man seemed to be musing. “I could use fifty thousand, pretty neat,” he observed at last.

“Yes—and don't forget the fun you'd have.”

“But good Lord, think of it. Three months away from Second Avenue.”

“The finest three months of your life—worth all the rest of your stupid, silly past time put together.”

Almost trembling in his eagerness, the old man waited for his son's reply. The latter took out a cigarette, lighted it, and gazed meditatively through the smoke. “Fifty thousand!” he whispered greedily. “And I suppose I could stand the hardship.”

Then he looked up, faintly smiling. “I'll go, if Lenore will let me,” he pronounced at last.