257: Tom climbs down ...
Herb ’n’ Lorna, Chapter 3 continues
Tom climbs down again and helps Tudor to his feet. “What’s your name, fellow?” Tudor asks.
“Huh?” Tom replies, surprised.
“That can’t be it,” says Tudor. “Think, man! What does your mother say when she wants you to come to dinner?” He wears a look that suggests he thinks he’s dealing with an idiot.
“Come and get it!”
“Well, if it’s good enough for your mother, it’s good enough for me,” says Tudor, throwing his arm across Tom’s shoulders. “Cumangetit, tell me about ice.”
“Well, itsa real cold — ” begins Tom.
Tudor rides along with Tom Piper, pumping him for information about the ice business. Suddenly, Tom seems suspicious. “Just a minute,” he asks, “why you aska me this?”
“Cumangetit,” says Tudor, chewing on his cigar, “I’m going to start an ice company of my own.”
Tom begins laughing. “You?” he says. Suddenly he stops laughing. “You got a vice president?” he asks. Tudor shakes his head. “How much does it pay?” Tudor shrugs. “Okay, I take it,” says Tom. They shake hands.
Tom brings Tudor to his home. There we meet Tom’s wife, Lavinia, and her beautiful sister, Katherine, who is visiting from Savannah. Tom warns Tudor that there isn’t much room for another ice company in these parts. Tudor, who is lying with his head in Katherine’s lap, batting his lashes at her, asks coyly, “Do y’all have many ice companies in Savannah?”
Giggling, blushing, Katherine replies that there are none.
“Well then!” declares Tudor. “We’ll sell our ice in Savannah. We’ll sell our ice where it’s most wanted, in the sultry climes! We’ll sell it in Savannah, and we’ll sell it in Havana, and we’ll sell it in Bombay!”
“ ’At’s an ice idea, boss,” says Tom.
They all toast the start of their enterprise.
A mad scramble begins. Tudor must raise money, obtain ice-cutting monopolies on lakes and ponds, find ships, hire workers, build icehouses, and so on. At one point, Tom and Tudor recruit the help of Nathaniel Wyeth (Harpo), who has invented a more efficient way of cutting ice. They pay him in stock.
Tom Piper is always at Tudor’s side, and Katherine, who stays on in Boston to help, grows daily more smitten with the stubborn genius. Tudor grows so obsessed with what he now thinks of as his mission in life that he begins to sound like a madman, not the sort of person in whose venture one would be likely to invest. Tom Piper, however, is able to lay the whole scheme out before a potential investor in a stream of compelling words, to make it sound like a sure thing, as sure as sure can be, and he is the one who brings the investors in.
Against all odds, the enterprise is in place and operating when winter arrives. In a curiously balletic scene, we watch a swarm of workers cutting ice in a light snow: small, dark figures moving against a seamless white background under the direction of Wyeth, who scoots around, directing their work by waving, whistling, clapping his hands, and honking a small horn. It’s a strange interlude, one that European audiences in particular seem to find oddly moving.
[to be continued on Thursday, May 12, 2022]
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