At precisely two minutes to nine-thirty on Monday morning, Huntly McQueen stepped out of his Cadillac town-car and entered the Bank Building in Saint James Street. He was dressed in a dark suit, a black coat, a black hat, a dark blue tie very large in a winged collar. In the tie he wore a pearl pin.
He passed through a pair of bronze doors, was saluted by the ex-sergeant of Coldstream Guards who stood there in livery, and entered a marble atrium as impersonal as a mausoleum. He joined a group of middle-aged and elderly men waiting for an elevator at the far end of the atrium. They were all dressed exactly like himself. Nods passed between them, they stepped into the elevator, shot each other a few more discreet glances as though to make certain that nothing important had happened in their lives over the weekend, then stared straight ahead as the cage moved upward.
On the second floor Sir Rupert Irons got out. He had a heavily hard body, was square in the head, face, jaws and shoulders; his hair was parted in the middle and squared off to either side of his perpendicular temples. His face was familiar to most Canadians, for it stared at them from small, plain portraits hanging on the walls of banks all the way from Halifax to Vancouver. Even in the pictures his neck was ridged with muscles acquired from a life-long habit of stiffening his jaw and pushing it forward during all business conversations.
On the fourth floor MacIntosh got out. He shuffled off toward his office, a round-shouldered, worrying man who carried in his head the essential statistics on three metal mines, two chemical factories, complicated relationships involving several international companies controlled in London and New York, and one corset factory.
On the seventh floor Masterman got out, to enter the offices of Minto Power. Although Minto harnessed the waters of one of the deepest and wildest rivers in the world, there was nothing about Masterman to suggest the elemental. He was a thin, punctilious man with a clipped moustache, a knife-edge press in his dark trousers, and a great reputation for culture among his associates in Saint James Street. He was one of the original members of the Committee of Art. He also belonged to a literary society which encouraged its members to read to each other their own compositions at meetings; he was considered its most brilliant member because he had published a book called Gentlemen, the King! The work was an historical record of all the royal tours conducted through Canada since Confederation.
One floor higher, Chislett got out: nickel, copper and coal, a reputation for dominating every board he sat on, and so great a talent for keeping his mouth shut that even McQueen envied it.
The elevator continued with McQueen to the top floor. The thought crossed his mind that if an accident had occurred between the first and second floors, half a million men would at that instant have lost their masters. It was an alarming thought. It was also ironic, for these individuals were so remote from the beings they governed, they operated with such cantilevered indirections, that they could all die at once without even ruffling the sleep of the remote employees on the distant end of the chain of cause and effect. The structure of interlocking directorates which governed the nation’s finances, subject always to an exceptionally discreet parliament, seemed to McQueen so delicate that a puff of breath could make the whole edifice quiver. But no, McQueen smiled at his own thoughts, the structure was quite strong enough. The men who had ridden together in the elevator this morning were so sound they seldom told even their wives what they thought or did or hoped to do. Indeed, Sir Rupert Irons was so careful he had no wife at all. They were Presbyterians to a man, they went to church regularly, and Irons was known to believe quite literally in predestination.
The elevator stopped to let McQueen out. His own preserves occupied half the top floor of the Bank Building. Beyond a sizable reception room there were half a dozen small offices in which carefully selected executives did their work. McQueen’s private office was in the far corner, reached through the room of his private secretary.
His round face smiled abstractedly at the switchboard girl and the typists as he went through the large room. It was his practice to enter his office by this route rather than through the private door from the outside hall to which he alone had a key, but he never lingered on his way. As he opened the door to his secretary’s room she looked up brightly. “Good morning, Mr. McQueen.”
“Good morning, Miss Drew.”
“It’s a fine day.”
“Yes,” he said. “It may well turn out a fine day.” He let a cool smile fall in her direction before he went into his own office, where he took off his hat and coat, hung them methodically in a cupboard, straightened his tie, pulled his coat down in the rear, and stood looking out the window as he did every morning before he settled down to work.
McQueen’s office overlooked one of the panoramas of the world. Its windows opened directly on the port of Montreal, and from them he could look across the plain to the distant mountains across the American border. The Saint Lawrence, a mile wide, swept in a splendid curve along the southern bend of the island on which the city stood. Everything below the window seemed to lead to the docks, but there were few ships in them now. Since the war most of the ocean-going craft sailed under convoy from Halifax. The few vessels that were visible were all painted North Atlantic grey, with guns under tarpaulins pointing astern.
McQueen’s satisfaction constantly renewed itself through his ability to overlook all this. He felt himself at the exact centre of the country’s heart, at the meeting place of ships, railroads and people, at the precise point where the interlocking directorates of Canada found their balance. Saint James Street was by no means as powerful as Wall Street or The City, but considering the small population of the country behind it, McQueen felt it ranked uniquely high. There was tenacity in Saint James Street. They knew how to keep their mouths shut and take the cash and let the credit go. They were bothered by no doubts. They had definite advantages over the British and Americans, for they could always play the other two off one against the other. Americans talked too much and the British made the mistake of underrating them. McQueen smiled. That gave the Canadians an advantage both ways. More than one powerful American of international reputation had lost his shirt to Sir Rupert Irons.
McQueen turned from the window, letting his glance rest casually on the furnishings of the room before he became immersed in work. By the window was an oversized globe on a heavy wooden stand. Behind his desk was a relief map of Canada, ceiling-high, dotted with coloured pins at various points to indicate where his enterprises and interests were located. An oriental rug covered the floor. Opposite his desk was an oil painting of his mother, with fresh flowers in a bowl beneath it.
Because of the manner of its furnishing, this office had acquired something of a romantic reputation in Saint James Street. Some men considered it eccentric. Few were permitted to enter it, and those who did exaggerated the luxury of its furnishings afterwards. It did nothing to lessen the respect in which McQueen was held as a man who kept his mouth shut about all important matters, talked freely of trivialities, and was uncannily successful.
A change of expression appeared on his face as he crossed to his mother’s portrait. Every morning Miss Drew put a dozen fresh flowers in the cut glass bowl on the small table beneath it. The flowers were never arranged quite to suit him, and now he spent some time moving the stem of each daffodil until the effect met his approval. He looked up at the picture. His mother’s was a small, sad face, lips tight, hair in a frizz over her forehead, neck enclosed by the sort of dog-collar made fashionable by Queen Alexandra. Her face as a whole distilled a Scottish kind of sternness, a Scottish melancholy that finds pleasure only in sad ideas. Except when he was alone in the room McQueen never even glanced at the portrait, but whenever he had a decision to make he shut everyone out and communed with the picture, and after he had looked at it long enough he was usually able to feel that his mother was silently advising him what to do. It was the most closely guarded of all his secrets.
Now he turned to his desk and his expression changed again. His eyes, widely set and intelligent in his moon-face, became opaque in their blueness. His lips compressed themselves. Deliberately he read through his mail and the letters crackled as he thumbed them through. When he reached the bottom of the pile he buzzed for his secretary.
Miss Drew opened the door soundlessly and stood waiting. She was fifty, she wore nothing but tweeds winter and summer, her hair was dull grey and she had been with him since the beginning of his career in Ontario twenty years before. He suspected that she knew the details of his enterprises as well as he did himself. But not the sense of balance, the delicate grip of the whole; not the logical feel for cause and effect that pulled the future out of mystery and sometimes caused McQueen to wonder if he were a genius.
Gaunt and angular, spectacles on her long nose and note-book in hand, she waited until McQueen indicated that he was ready to give her dictation. She pulled a chair to the side of his desk, opened her book and held her pencil poised. Nothing could have been less personal than Miss Drew at this hour of the morning.
“Any calls?” he said at last.
“Mr. Masterman’s secretary phoned to remind you of the meeting on Friday. Mr. Buchanan called. I put the memorandum with your letters. Mr. Tallard called. He wants to come in today before lunch.”
“Ah!” said McQueen.
“I told him to come at eleven-fifteen unless he heard to the contrary. He left a room number at his hotel.”
“Good. Don’t call him. Show him in at once when he comes.”
The letters took three-quarters of an hour in dictation. McQueen spoke in a rotund voice unleavened by any expression and he used every worn-out phrase known to business. He was so wordy that all his correspondence was half as long again as necessary. When the last letter was finished, Miss Drew picked up the papers he had handed her one by one and rose to leave.
“What time did the cable go to Lloyd’s?” he said, leaning back with his thumbs hooked in his waistcoat.
“Just after you left last night.”
He nodded. He knew that if any further news had arrived from London she would have told him, but the matter was on his mind and it relieved him a little to refer to it. In 1913, anticipating the war, he had purchased three tramp steamers at bargain rates from a foreign firm. A fortnight ago one of them had been torpedoed in the Irish Sea with eleven fatalities. McQueen had not been able to sleep the night the news arrived. The war had suddenly been removed from headlines and statistics where he could calculate and understand it, to a level sharply personal.
“Anything I’ve overlooked?” he asked.
“Well, perhaps I should remind you that this is the day Mrs. Methuen comes in for the check on her investments.”
“Yes, I know. When you bring me her list, bring the file on the Hamilton Works, too.”
Miss Drew went out as soundlessly as she had come and in a few moments she was back with the two files. Taking them from her, McQueen glanced briefly at the list of investments and thrust it to one side of his desk. “When does Mrs. Methuen come in?” he said.
“At ten forty-five.”
“Very good. That’s all. I don’t want to be disturbed.”
He concentrated on the papers in the file relating to his factory in Hamilton. Alone with the figures, at peace with them, seeing in his mind every detail in the factory they tried to define, the outlets, the sources of raw materials, he tried to weigh the profit and risk involved in maintaining the independence of the machine-tool industry he had built out of practically nothing. It was his oldest enterprise and he was proud of it. But now Irons had indicated a desire to have him merge in a combine with him, and Irons’ conception of a merger was about the same as a shark’s when it encounters a herring. McQueen tried to calculate how Irons could be made to lose interest.
He pushed the file away, still thinking. Facts and figures were no help to him in this problem. He had a distinct idea that Irons was not so much interested in acquiring the machine-tool factory as he was in guaranteeing that McQueen himself should come under his domination. This was Irons’ method. He seldom built up any enterprise himself, but he had a genius for absorbing control from others. He dealt with men, not facts. He was notoriously uneasy if he saw a rising man who seemed both formidable and capable of retaining his independence.
Stubbornly, McQueen continued to weigh the incalculables. A victory over Irons would not be unpleasant. He might go in with him, avail himself of the superior financial strength Irons would bring to the company, and then fight him for control. But no, that would be stupid. He was not strong enough for that yet. Nor could he risk an open out-witting of Irons. He might manage it, but the time would come when Irons would ruin him for his temerity. It must be his own special kind of victory, that for a time appeared a defeat.
After a time McQueen reached a decision. Irons was an impatient man, and he was arrogant. When he met a man across his desk and felt in a position to despise him, he was satisfied. The sensible course for McQueen was to do nothing. When he met Irons across his desk, and he had never dealt with him yet, he would see to it that Irons formed the right opinion of him. And the right opinion in this case must be that McQueen would be a nuisance to associate with; also that he was too small-minded ever to become a rival. McQueen chuckled. He would make himself appear fussy and indecisive. He could already see Irons staring at him with those biting little eyes of his, deciding that he was a second-rater, that he could be scorned and overlooked with safety.
McQueen permitted himself another smile, almost sheepish. After all, an appearance like his own was sometimes an advantage. He liked to compare himself to a cushion. He was always ready to yield to pressure, but it was in his nature to resume his natural shape, very slowly, once the pressure was removed.
He was still smiling to himself when Janet Methuen arrived at eleven o’clock. McQueen had not expected her to be on time. No Montreal woman ever was. He had spoken to her about the habit several times because it upset his sense of precision. Now as she came in, some of his annoyance showed on his face and this flustered Janet. In turn, her embarrassment produced an answering embarrassment in McQueen. However blank a face he managed to show to men, with women he felt the shyness of a boy at his first party. He covered it now with a clumsy brusqueness.
“Sit down, Janet,” he said. “Sit down.”
Janet Methuen glanced nervously from side to side, then crossed the oriental rug to his desk, looking more as if she were entering a strange drawing-room than a business office. She dropped into the chair he had pulled up for her.
“It’s too bad to have to bother you like this, Huntly. But you know what a fool I am about business. You know I have to…”
He sat down carefully, settled himself in his chair and raised a hand in a gesture designed to make her hold her tongue. It was a firmly plump hand and carefully manicured. There was a black signet on the little finger and a dust of dark hairs showed near the wrist. “That’s what I’m here for,” he said.
Janet laid her bag on the desk and flattened it with a gloved hand. She watched with habitual nervousness as McQueen adjusted his pince-nez and picked up the list of her securities. Because she had made a successful marriage into Montreal society, she was acutely conscious of those who belonged to that society and those who did not. McQueen did not. But the time was not far distant when he would. It was only a matter of patience and care to make no false moves on his part. Janet’s father-in-law, General Methuen, had indicated his liking for the man; he never seemed to be aware of the true cause of McQueen’s interest in him.
As she looked about the room Janet’s eyes were inclined to dart from one thing to another; they were large eyes, almost beautiful in her small neat face. Intense restlessness was her most marked characteristic, and as a result she was much too thin. She was barely thirty. There was no trace on her figure to indicate that she was the mother of two children. Except for her excessive leanness, she bore no resemblance to Yardley. Today she wore a black broadcloth suit, a black straw hat, and a white georgette blouse was visible under her jacket where it opened over her chest; and it was a chest, not a bosom. She had no idea that McQueen greatly admired this flat neatness, for no woman with a bosom could be quite a lady in his eyes.
A room that contained two people and no conversation got on Janet’s nerves. “I feel terribly grateful to you for all this trouble, Huntly,” she said. “Really I do. I was saying to General Methuen only last night…”
McQueen’s hand rose again to silence her. Without raising his eyes from the papers before him, he muttered, “A promise is a promise. When Harvey went overseas I said I would look after his affairs.” Then he closed his lips tightly.
Looking for something to do to quiet her uneasiness, Janet stretched out a gloved hand and picked up a copy of the Gazette from the corner of the desk. After a quick glance at McQueen, she began to read. Her eyes darted from column to column. They came to rest on the report of a speech against conscription made by a politician with a name she couldn’t pronounce.
“Isn’t it terrible about the French-Canadians, Huntly?” she said.
“Eh?”
She displayed the paper, holding it by the corner so that it hung down diagonally. “At least where Harvey is he doesn’t have to read this sort of thing. It makes me quite ill.”
“Please, Janet. Just a minute!”
“I’m terribly sorry.” Her voice trailed off and she picked up the paper again. She read a few lines and then looked up to see if he was angry. He appeared to have forgotten her presence entirely. After a few minutes he shuffled the papers, matched their edges, then pushed them from him and took off his glasses.
“I think some of those mining shares ought to be converted into war bonds. They’re sound enough as they are, but these days…”
“Whatever you say, Huntly. I told you I don’t know.”
He tried to be patient. “But Janet, you must attempt to understand what you’re doing. Harvey would want you to understand.”
Step by step he explained to her what happens to money when it is transferred from one security to another, and the results on her income from this particular transfer. “It’s a matter of judgment, in the final analysis. There will be a slight decrease in your income, but not an appreciable one. Not appreciable at all. On the other hand, after the war, if the mining shares…well, let’s look at it purely from the standpoint of patriotism. You understand–”
“Oh, yes. It’s clear now. Do it by all means,” she said hurriedly.
He nodded, drew a deep breath and swung his pince-nez gently on the end of a black cord. “Otherwise everything is in fine shape,” he said. “A fine, conservative list. It should last forever.” He allowed himself to smile at her. “Now tell me about yourself. About the children. Everything all right? I haven’t seen you in a month.”
“Oh, yes. They’re all right.” She lifted the newspaper again, her forefinger pointing to the conscription speech on the front page. “Huntly, why don’t they put these people in jail?”
“Now then, Janet, now then! Wouldn’t that be an unconsidered thing to do? After all, that’s how the French are.”
“But General Methuen says they’ve let us down. And he always used to stand up for them against Toronto people. Before the war, of course.” She laid the paper down on the desk and folded it firmly. “He’s terribly disappointed in them now.”
“You mustn’t get yourself worked up,” he said.
“I can’t help it. I am worked up.”
Yes, McQueen thought, there was no doubt about it, Janet was tired. She worked on every war committee in Montreal. She spent two hours a day in a canteen in one of the railway stations, and this was the worst job of all. She had told him last winter that some of the soldiers used horrifyingly vulgar language when they talked among themselves, and she had asked him if they were good troops.
Janet also rationed herself strictly in the matter of food. She studied the reports of the British Food Controller every week, and was careful to allot herself the same rations allowed people in Britain. To make herself feel worthy of the British she was prepared to go hungry.
“Tell me what you hear from Harvey,” McQueen said.
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“You mean you haven’t heard from him lately?”
“No. Not since I saw you last. I just don’t know.”
There was fear in her eyes. He saw it, and then he looked at the clean lines of her nose and cheekbones, so clean they would soon be gaunt. She was such a nice little woman. She was passing so bravely through a difficult time. Indeed, she had never found life easy. He felt soft with sentiment as he thought about her. As she began to talk about her two daughters and some of the trouble they were causing her, he thought about the night he had first met her four years before.
He and General Methuen both served as trustees in the Presbyterian Church, and the general had been greatly impressed by the dexterity with which McQueen had bargained off two contractors against each other. As a result, one of the contractors had agreed to build the minister a new manse at little better than cost. The general decided that McQueen might well be a man worth cultivating, and on an impulse invited him to dinner at his home on the slope of the mountain. It meant that McQueen at last had something more behind him than a bank account and a reputation on Saint James Street.
The Methuen family had been leaders in the Square Mile of Montreal society from the days of the old garrison, when Sir Rupert Irons’ grandfather was still in his shirt-sleeves. The general himself had served in the militia, been a lieutenant-colonel in the Boer War, and now was a brigadier with the home guard. His daughter-in-law was a stranger to Montreal society, but marriage had opened the door for her. The wife of a Methuen was acceptable without question.
That night at dinner McQueen first became acquainted with Janet and her husband, Harvey Methuen. Afterwards he had cultivated the acquaintance carefully. Harvey was the kind of young man McQueen had always envied. He was an athlete, he was physically powerful; but he was also charming, with British manners and mannerisms. He played golf and tennis, some polo on his own ponies, he rode well, was a member of a hunt club, and had been an officer of the militia since his days at the Royal Military College. His suits came from Saville Row, his shoes from Daks, his pipes from Dunhill, his values directly from his immediate background. He was big, curly-haired, and frank. It was McQueen’s private opinion that he had no real ability, but this was no handicap. A man like Harvey Methuen had no need of it.
“How long is it going to last, Huntly?”
Her question brought him back to the moment. There was warmth behind her words; warmth, dread, and the haunting fatigue produced by anxiety that had never left her since Harvey’s regiment first reached England in December, 1914.
“About three years,” he said.
She bent her head and for a moment covered her face with her hands. McQueen sat looking at her, annoyed with himself for such a blunder.
“Listen, Janet,” he said quickly. “That was a slip of the tongue. It won’t last much longer. By Christmas it will be over, probably.”
A pathetic hope appeared for a moment in her eyes, then faded into defiance. “You don’t have to be kind to me. I haven’t suffered. I haven’t really given anything to help win the war.”
His mind performed a rapid calculation. It was a miracle that Harvey was alive after all this time. He had beaten the law of averages by nearly two and a half years. But he had been wounded a year ago, recovered, and was back in France again.
“I haven’t heard from him for nearly five weeks,” she said. “That’s too long, you know.” Even in her anxiety her voice was a clipped imitation of the British. The Englishwomen who had run the finishing school to which her mother had sent her had done all they could to prevent her from talking or thinking like a Canadian, and they had done their work well.
“Don’t worry,” McQueen said. “The Canadians haven’t been in the line lately. I know that for a positive fact.”
“He’s not with the Canadians any more. He was transferred to the British last January.” Her voice was filled with pride. “He loved it.”
“I see.”
“Is it true they don’t know what happened to the Fifth Army?”
No, McQueen thought, they know only too well what happened to it. He rose and went around to her chair, leaned over and shyly laid a hand on her shoulder. He felt the bone hard under his fingers. She wriggled out from under his touch and he flushed slightly as he withdrew his hand. It was no use; women always despised him when he touched them. He went back to his chair and sat down heavily.
“Don’t worry,” he said again, calling on all his resources until his voice sounded almost resonant. He watched her respond to his unsuspected force as he had seen so many others respond. It was a quality he could tap at will, though it fatigued him to do it. A very valuable asset. “Let’s be logical,” he said. “If anything had happened to him you’d have heard by now. He probably wrote all right, and the letter was lost at sea.”
She dabbed at her eyes and her nose with a white handkerchief and then got quickly to her feet, standing very straight. “Thank you, Huntly. I’ve been extremely silly.”
“Not at all. Not at all. Just human, Janet.” He waved her back to her chair. “You were telling me about Daphne and Heather. How are they getting along?”
Some of the strain left Janet’s face, but she continued to stand, leaning on the back of the chair for support. McQueen rose and stood on his own side of the desk.
“They’re quite a responsibility,” she said. “If they were only more alike. Heather’s a positive hoyden. Exactly like my father.”
“But Captain Yardley is a fine man!” McQueen’s voice almost purred. “After all, for a man of his age to buy a farm and run it himself–and at a time when farmers are so necessary for the country!” Janet’s face continued to brighten. “And I understand he’s going to make an excellent thing of it, too.”
“But he simply won’t ever change,” she said. “He’s so stubborn. I didn’t realize he was doing this as a duty. I thought he was just being willful. Why didn’t he tell me? Out there with all those French-Canadians! General Methuen hardly knew what to make of it.”
“How’s Daphne?” he said.
“I’m afraid she may become a very vain girl.” Janet frowned. The smallest thought in her mind immediately exaggerated itself on her face. “Candidly, do you think Brock Hall is the right school for her?”
McQueen tried to look solemn. He was about to accept an appointment to the board of governors of Brock, a step which gave him great satisfaction. It was worth a lot socially to be on the board of a private school patronized by the Square Mile. “Brock has an excellent reputation,” he said. “And I don’t know about Daphne becoming vain. I think you probably overstate the case. She’ll certainly be very beautiful. A most natural development, considering her mother.”
“Oh, Huntly!” Janet seemed annoyed by the compliment and McQueen flushed. “But Heather has no discrimination at all. She’s just like Father–likes everybody and everything. Why, only yesterday…”
McQueen stroked his chin and smiled as he listened to a long story. Before it was ended the buzzer sounded on his desk and Janet became confused. She made apologies for keeping him so long, as he led her to the door that opened directly into the hall. She had no idea that the signal on the buzzer had been a pre-arranged convenience for putting an end to her call.
When he was alone again, McQueen looked at his watch. It was nearly eleven-thirty. Athanase Tallard was fifteen minutes late. So the French were unpunctual, too? Or was it just Tallard, probably from long association with the English? Anyway, it was a fact to remember.
He glanced up at his mother’s portrait, looked at it for a long time. They had gone through a lot together. Now he was reaping the fruits. He felt her pride in him like a mantle on his shoulders; she would be still more proud in twenty years’ time, and she would find a way to convey the sense of it to him if he never lost touch with her. Always it had been like that, before she died as well as since her death. Whatever he did, wherever he went, she was beside him.
His father, a Presbyterian minister in a small Ontario town, had died when Huntly was a child. After that his mother had taken him to Toronto, wishing to be near her brother, who owned a small tool factory there. The brother’s help was limited to inviting them to Christmas dinner every year. He believed that giving financial aid only weakened the recipients’ characters. So Mrs. McQueen had supported herself and her son by tutoring backward schoolchildren and composing Sunday School quarterlies for a religious publishing house. She was paid very badly, the publishers having persuaded her that their work was profitless, done only for the greater glory of God.
Huntly had grown up in a four-room flat, in an atmosphere saturated with education, prayers and golden texts. Some of his mother’s texts still overflowed into his business correspondence. At the public school he had been the fat boy, and bullied for it. The experience tended to make him believe that the Shorter Catechism’s view of humanity was optimistic. But he had done well in his school work, better at high school, and he had gone through the University of Toronto on scholarships.
The year he graduated from college his uncle died. The fact that he happened to die in this particular year, and left to his nephew his nearly bankrupt tool factory, seemed to McQueen a divine accident. It had saved him from becoming a professor. Within five years he had made enough money out of the factory to sell it at a decent profit. Proceeding logically, and already enormously learned in production techniques, he established the machine-tool industry in Hamilton. That was the year he acquired Miss Drew as a secretary.
When he transferred his offices to Saint James Street, a reputation had preceded him. For one thing, he had been one of the first men in the country to settle a strike by the simple expedient of offering the workers a joint labour-management committee. As he had foreseen, the strike-leaders were elected to the board by their men. After that he either divided them against each other, or used them as a colonel uses his N.C.O.’s. Before long they were more conservative than he was himself, and the suggestions they made for improved production paid many times over the small increase he had granted in the men’s wages.
After that his advance had been rapid. He seemed incapable of making a bad investment. When Max Aitken made a fortune from cement, he tagged along into a nice profit for himself. He did well with railways and better with ships, and he anticipated the war precisely. By 1917 it had made him a multi-millionaire. He was called a profiteer, but he stood it equably because he knew it was unjust. When peace came everyone would see that there was no sounder man in the country than he. All he had done was to draw logical conclusions and act accordingly. He was well read, devout, and he knew a good deal about history. Because he had made use of that knowledge, they called him names. Well, let them. In time they would change their minds.
It was only lately that he had become dissatisfied with the pattern of his career. He wanted to produce. He wanted to make himself an integral part of what he considered a world trend. He was no longer interested solely in profit. Organization was the new order of the day.
To organize Canada seemed a colossal task; impossible, most of his contemporaries would say. Economic lines ran north and south across the American border, not east and west through the country. But it could be done. If a man owned and controlled sufficient means of production, twenty years from now he might impose his will to an extent undreamed of as yet. McQueen wanted some metal mines, lumber mills, textile factories, a packing house, construction companies, engineering works…there was no limit to what he wanted to complete his picture. Further, he wanted his enterprises so well spaced over the country that his influence would touch every part of it. Sir Rupert, with his bank behind him, with his many companies, had such influence now. But Irons was interested in profit, not in organization.
In McQueen’s mind, this driving ambition was cloudy in its outlines, precise in some of its parts. Essentially he was cautious, and he would build his house brick by brick. If his plan turned out to be unworkable, and it well might, he would have enough sense to stop long before he had made a fool of himself. In his private files rested detailed schemes for projects all over the country. One of them was for a textile factory in Saint-Marc. So far, he owned nothing in Quebec. To work in French-Canada was a gamble, even though labour was cheap. The French were peculiar people and he did not know them well. There was also their Church to consider. What he needed was a liaison, and the man to fill the gap was Athanase Tallard.
When the buzzer sounded again on his desk he smiled. “Cast your bread upon the waters,” he murmured to himself, “and it will return after many days.”