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Page 34
But always his eyes were fixed on Broadway. Only one other intermediate
move did he make, which was to as near as he could get to the Ashland
Park Tract, where every purchaser of land was legally pledged to put up
no home that should cost less than four thousand dollars. After that
came Broadway. A strange swirl had come in the tide of the crowd. The
drift was to Washington Street, where real estate promptly soared while
on Broadway it was as if the bottom had fallen out. One big store after
another, as the leases expired, moved to Washington.
The crowd will come back, Josiah Childs said, but he said it to himself.
He knew the crowd. Oakland was growing, and he knew why it was growing.
Washington Street was too narrow to carry the increasing traffic. Along
Broadway, in the physical nature of things, the electric cars, ever in
greater numbers, would have to run. The realty dealers said that the
crowd would never come back, while the leading merchants followed the
crowd. And then it was, at a ridiculously low figure, that Josiah Childs
got a long lease on a modern, Class A building on Broadway, with a
buying option at a fixed price. It was the beginning of the end for
Broadway, said the realty dealers, when a grocery was established in its
erstwhile sacred midst. Later, when the crowd did come back, they said
Josiah Childs was lucky. Also, they whispered among themselves that he
had cleared at least fifty thousand on the transaction.
It was an entirely different store from his previous ones. There were no
more bargains. Everything was of the superlative best, and superlative
best prices were charged. He catered to the most expensive trade in
town. Only those who could carelessly afford to pay ten per cent. more
than anywhere else, patronised him, and so excellent was his service
that they could not afford to go elsewhere. His horses and delivery
wagons were more expensive and finer than any one else's in town. He
paid his drivers, and clerks, and bookkeepers higher wages than any
other store could dream of paying. As a result, he got more efficient
men, and they rendered him and his patrons a more satisfying service. In
short, to deal at Childs' Cash Store became almost the infallible index
of social status.
To cap everything, came the great San Francisco earthquake and fire,
which caused one hundred thousand people abruptly to come across the Bay
and live in Oakland. Not least to profit from so extraordinary a boom,
was Josiah Childs. And now, after twelve years' absence, he was
departing on a visit to East Falls, Connecticut. In the twelve years he
had not received a letter from Agatha, nor had he seen even a photograph
of his and Agatha's boy.
Agatha and he had never got along together. Agatha was masterful. Agatha
had a tongue. She was strong on old-fashioned morality. She was
unlovely in her rectitude. Josiah never could quite make out how he had
happened to marry her. She was two years his senior, and had long ranked
as an old maid She had taught school, and was known by the young
generation as the sternest disciplinarian in its experience. She had
become set in her ways, and when she married it was merely an exchange
of a number of pupils for one. Josiah had to stand the hectoring and
nagging that thitherto had been distributed among many. As to how the
marriage came about, his Uncle Isaac nearly hit it off one day when he
said in confidence: "Josiah, when Agatha married you it was a case of
marrying a struggling young man. I reckon you was overpowered. Or maybe
you broke your leg and couldn't get away."
"Uncle Isaac," Josiah answered, "I didn't break my leg. I ran my
dangdest, but she just plum run me down and out of breath."
"Strong in the wind, eh?" Uncle Isaac chuckled.
"We've ben married five years now," Josiah agreed, "and I've never known
her to lose it."
"And never will," Uncle Isaac added.
This conversation had taken place in the last days, and so dismal an
outlook proved too much for Josiah Childs. Meek he was, under Agatha's
firm tuition, but he was very healthy, and his promise of life was too
long for his patience. He was only thirty-three, and he came of a
long-lived stock. Thirty-three more years with Agatha and Agatha's
nagging was too hideous to contemplate. So, between a sunset and a
rising, Josiah Childs disappeared from East Falls. And from that day,
for twelve years, he had received no letter from her. Not that it was
her fault. He had carefully avoided letting her have his address. His
first postal money orders were sent to her from Oakland, but in the
years that followed he had arranged his remittances so that they bore
the scattered postmarks of most of the states west of the Rockies.
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