CHAPTER XI.The Empress and Sir John Meet Again.
CHAPTER XI.
The Empress and Sir John Meet Again.
The company emerged from the tent into the enchanted outdoors of the star-dotted valley. The moon rode high, and flooded the glades with silvery effulgency. The heat of the day had bred a summer storm-cloud, which, all quivery with lightning, seemed sweeping around from the northwest to the north, giving us the delicious experience of enjoying calm, in view of storm.
The music of the orchestra soon told that the pavilion had been cleared for dancing. I heard Giddings urging upon Miss Addison that it would be much better for them to walk in the moonlight than to encourage by their presence such a worldly amusement, and one in which he had never been able to do anything better than fail, anyhow. Sighing her pain at the frivolity of the world, she took his arm and strolled away. I noticed that she clung closely to him, frightened, I suppose, at the mysterious rustlings in the trees, or something.
They made up the dances in such a way as to leave me out. I rather wanted to dance with Antonia; but Mr. Cecil was just leaving her in disappointment,in the possession of Mr. Elkins, when I went for her. I decided that a cigar and solitude were rather to be chosen than anything else which presented itself, and accordingly I took possession of one of the hammocks, in which I lay and smoked, and watched the towering thunder-head, as it stood like a mighty and marvelous mountain in the northern sky, its rounded and convoluted summits serenely white in the moonlight, its mysterious caves palpitant with incessant lightning. The soothing of the cigar; the new-made lake reflecting the gleam of hundreds of lanterns; the illuminated pavilion, its whirling company of dancers seen under the uprolled walls; the night, with its strange contrast of a calm southern sky on the one hand pouring down its flood of moonlight, and in the north the great mother-of-pearl dome with its core of vibrant fire; the dance-music throbbing through the lindens; and all this growing out of the unwonted and curious life of the past few months, bore to me again that feeling of being yoked with some thaumaturge of wondrous power for the working of enchantments. Again I seemed in a partnership with Aladdin; and fairy pavilions, sylvan paradises, bevies of dancing girls, and princes bearing gifts of gold and jewels, had all obeyed our conjuration. I could have walked down to the naphtha pleasure-boat and bidden the engineer put me down at Khorassan, or some dreamful port of far Cathay, with no sense of incongruity.
Two figures came from the tent and walked toward me. As I looked at them, myself in darkness, they in the light, I had again that feeling of having seenthem in some similar way before. That same old sensation, thought I, that the analytic novelist made trite ages ago. Then I saw that it was Mr. Cornish and Miss Trescott. I could hear them talking; but lay still, because I was loth to have my reveries disturbed. And besides, to speak would seem an unwarranted assumption of confidential relations on their part. They stopped near me.
“Your memory is not so good as mine,” said he. “I knew you at once. Knew you! Why—”
“I’m not very good at keeping names and faces in mind,” she replied, “unless they belong to people I have known very well.”
“Indeed!” his voice dropped to the ‘cello-like undertone now; “isn’t that a little unkind? I fancied thatweknew each other very well! My conceit is not to be pandered to, I perceive.”
“Ye-e-s—does it seem that way?” said she, ignoring the last remark. “Well, you know it was only for a few days, and you kept calling yourself by some ridiculous alias, and scarcely used your surname at all, and I believe they called you Johnny—and you can’t think what a disguise such a beard is! But I remember you now perfectly. It quite brings back those short months, when I was so young—and was finding things out! I can see the vine-covered porch, and Madame Lamoreaux’s boarding-house on the South Side—”
“And the old art gallery?”
“Why, there was one, wasn’t there?” said she, “somewhere along the lake front, wasn’t it?... Such a pleasant meeting, and so odd!”
I sat up in the hammock, and stared at them as they went on their promenade. The old art gallery, the vine-covered porch, the young man with the smooth-shaven dark face and the thrilling, vibrant voice, and the young, young girl with the ruddy hair, and the little, round form! She seemed taller now, and there was more of maturity in the figure; but it was the same lissome waist and petite gracefulness which had so fully explained to me the avid eyes of her lover on that day when I had fled from the report of the Committee on Permanent Organization. It was the Empress Josephine, I had known that—and her Sir John!
Then I thought of her flying from him into the street, and the little bowed head on the street-car; and the old pity for her, the old bitterness toward him, returned upon me. I wondered how he could speak to her in this nonchalant way; what they were saying to each other; whether they would ever refer to that night at Auriccio’s; what Alice would think of him if she ever found it out; whether he was a villain, or only erred passionately; what was actually said in that palm alcove that night so long ago; whether this man, with the eyes and voice so fascinating to women, would renew his suit in this new life of ours; what Jim would think about it; and, more than all, how Josie herself would regard him.
“She ought never to have spoken to him again!” I hear some one say.
Ah, Madam, very true. But do you remember any authentic case of a woman who failed to forgivethe man whose error or offense had for its excuse the irresistible attraction of her own charms?
They were coming back now, still talking.
“You dropped out of sight, like a partridge into a thicket,” said he. “Some of them said you had gone back to—to—”
“To the farm,” she prompted.
“Well, yes,” he conceded; “and others said you had left Chicago for New York; and some, even Paris.”
“I fail to see the warrant,” said Josie, as they approached the limit of earshot, “for any of the people at Madame Lamoreux’s giving themselves the trouble to investigate.”
“So far as that is concerned,” said he, “I should think that I—” and his voice quite lost intelligibility.
My cigar had gone out, and the cessation of the music ought to have apprised me of the breaking up of the dance, and still I lay looking at the sky and filled with my thoughts.
“Here he is,” said Alice, “asleep in the hammock! For shame, Albert! This would not have occurred, once!”
“I am free to admit that,” said I, “but why am I now disturbed?”
“We’re going on a cruise in the gondola,” said Antonia, “and Mr. Elkins says you are lieutenant, and we can’t sail without you. Come, it’s perfectly beautiful out there.”
“We’re going to the head of navigation and back,” said Jim, “and then our revels will be ended. —Hang it!” tome, “they left the skull and crossbones off all the flags!”
Mr. Barr-Smith at once engaged the engineer in conversation, and seemed worming from him all his knowledge of the construction of the boat. The rest of us lounged on cushions and seats. We threaded our way up the new pond, winding between clumps of trees, now in broad moonlight, now in deepest shade. The shower had swept over to the northeast, just one dark flounce of its skirt reaching to the zenith. A cool breeze suddenly sprang up from the west, stirred by the suction of the receding storm, and a roar came from the trees on the hilltops.
“Better run for port,” said Jim; “I’d hate to have Mr. Barr-Smith suffer shipwreck where the charts don’t show any water!”
As we ran down the open way, the remark seemed less and less of a joke. The gale poured over the hills, and struck the boat like the buffet of a great hand. She heeled over alarmingly, bumped upon a submerged stump, righted, heeled again, this time shipping a little sea, and then the sharp end of a hidden oak-limb thrust up through the bottom, and ripped its way out again, leaving us afloat in the deepest part of the lake, with a spouting fountain in the middle of the vessel, and the chopping waves breaking over the gunwale. All at once, I noticed Cecil Barr-Smith, with his coat off, standing near Antonia, who sat as cool as if she had been out on some quiet road driving her pacers. The boat sank lower in the water, and I had no doubt that she was sinking. Antonia rose, and stretched her handstowards Jim. I do not see how he could avoid seeing this; but he did, and, as if abandoning her to her fate, he leaped to Josie’s side. Cornish had seizedherby the arm, and seemed about to devote himself to her safety, when Jim, without a word, lifted her in his arms, and leaped lightly upon the forward deck, the highest and driest place on the sinking craft. Then, as everything pointed to a speedy baptism in the lake for all of us, we saw that the very speed of the wind had saved us, and felt the gondola bump broadside upon the dam. Jim sprang to the abutment with Josie, and Cecil Barr-Smith half carried and half led Antonia to the shore. Alice and I sat calmly on the windward rail; and Barr-Smith, laughing with delight, helped us across, one at a time, to the masonry.
“I’m glad it turned out no worse,” said Jim. “I hope you will all excuse me if I leave you now. I must see Miss Trescott to a safe and dry place. Here’s the carriage, Josie!”
“Are you quite uninjured?” said Cecil to Antonia, as Mr. Elkins and Josie drove away.
“Oh, quite so!” said Antonia, unwittingly adopting Barr-Smith’s phrase. “But for a moment I was awfully frightened!”
“It looked a little damp, at one time, for farce-comedy,” said Cornish. “I wonder how deep it was out there!”
“Miss Trescott was quite drenched,” said Mr. Barr-Smith, as we got into the carriages. “Too bad, by Jove!”
“You may write home,” said Antonia, “an account of being shipwrecked in the top of a tree!”
“Good, good!” said Cecil, and we all joined in the laugh, until we were suddenly sobered by the fact that Antonia had bowed her head on Alice’s lap, and was sobbing as if her heart was broken.
CHAPTER XII.In which the Burdens of Wealth Begin to Fall upon Us.
CHAPTER XII.
In which the Burdens of Wealth Begin to Fall upon Us.
If the town be considered as a quiescent body pursuing its unluminous way in space, Mr. Elkins may stand for the impinging planet which shocked it into vibrant life. I suggested this nebular-hypothesis simile to Mr. Giddings, one day, as the germ of an editorial.
“It’s rather seductive,” said he, “but it won’t do. Carry your interplanetary collision business to its logical end, and what do you come to? Gaseousness. And that’s just what the Angus FallsTimes, the Fairchild Star, and the other loathsome sheets printed in prairie-dog towns around here accuse us of, now. No; much obliged; but as a field for comparisons the tried old solar system is good enough for theHerald.”
I couldn’t help thinking, however, that the thing had some illustrative merit. There was Jim’s first impact, felt locally, and jarring things loose. Then came the atomic vivification, the heat and motion, which appeared in the developments which we have seen taking form. After the visit of the Barr-Smiths, and the immigration of Cornish, the newstar Lattimore began to blaze in the commercial firmament, the focus of innumerable monetary telescopes, pointed from the observatories of counting-rooms, banks, and offices, far and wide.
There was a shifting of the investment and speculative equilibrium, and things began coming to us spontaneously. The Angus Falls railway extension was won only by strenuous endeavor. Captain Tolliver’s interviews with General Lattimore, in which he was so ruthlessly “turned down,” he always regarded as a sort of creative agony, marking the origin of the roundhouse and machine-shops, and our connection with the great Halliday railway system of which it made us a part. The street-car project went more easily; and, during the autumn, the geological and manufacturing experts sent out to report on the cement-works enterprise, pronounced favorably, and gangs of men, during the winter, were to be seen at work on the foundations of the great buildings by the scarped chalk-hill.
The tension of my mind just after the Lynhurst Park affair was such as to attune it to no impulses but the financial vibrations which pulsated through our atmosphere. True, I sometimes felt the wonder return upon me at the finding of the lovers of the art-gallery together once more, in Josie and Cornish; and at other times Antonia’s agitation after our escape from shipwreck recurred to me in contrast with her smiling self-possession while the boat was drifting and filling; but mostly I thought of nothing, dreamed of nothing, but trust companies, additions, bonds and mortgages.
Mr. Barr-Smith returned to London soon, giving a parting luncheon in his rooms, where wine flowed freely, and toasts of many colors were pushed into the atmosphere. There was one to the President and the Queen, proposed by the host and drunk in bumpers, and others to Mr. Barr-Smith, his brother, and the members of the “Syndicate.” The enthusiasm grew steadily in intensity as the affair progressed. Finally Mr. Cecil solemnly proposed “The American Woman.” In offering this toast, he said, he was taking long odds, as it was a sport for which he hadn’t had the least training; but he couldn’t forego the pleasure of paying a tribute where tribute was due. The ladies of America needed no encomiums from him, and yet he was sure that he should give no offense by saying that they were of a type unknown in history. They were up to anything, you know, in the way of intellectuality, and he was sure that in a certain queenly, blonde way they were—
“Hear, hear!” said his brother, and burst into a laugh in which we all joined, while Cecil went on talking, in an uproar which drowned his words, though one could see that he was trying to explain something, and growing very hot in the process.
Pearson announced that their train would soon arrive, and we all went down to see them off. Barr-Smith assured us at parting that the tram-road transaction might be considered settled. He believed, too, that his clients might come into the cement project. We were all the more hopeful of this, for the knowledge that he carried somewherein his luggage a bond for a deed to a considerable interest in the cement lands. Things were coming on beautifully; and it seemed as if Elkins and Cornish, working together, were invincible.
We still lived at the hotel, but our architect, “little Ed. Smith, who lived over on the Hayes place” when we were boys, and who was once at Garden City with Jim, was busy with plans for a mansion which we were to build in the new Lynhurst Park Addition the next spring. Mr. Elkins was preparing to erect a splendid house in the same neighborhood.
“Can I afford it?” said I, in discussing estimates.
“Afford it!” he replied, turning on me in astonishment. “My dear boy, don’t you see we are up against a situation that calls on us to bluff to the limit, or lay down? In such a case, luxury becomes a duty, and lavishness the truest economy. Not to spend is to go broke. Lay your Poor Richard on the shelf, and put a weight on him. Stimulate the outgo, and the income’ll take care of itself. A thousand spent is five figures to the good. No, while we’ve as many boom-irons in the fire as we’re heating now, to be modest is to be lost.”
“Perhaps,” said I, “you may be right, and no doubt are. We’ll talk it over again some time. And your remark about irons in the fire brings up another matter which bothers me. It’s something unusual when we don’t open up a set of books for some new corporation, during the working day. Aren’t we getting too many?”
“Do you remember Mule Jones, who lived downnear Hickory Grove?” said he, after a long pause. “Well, you know, in our old neighborhood, the mule was regarded with a mixture of contempt, suspicion, and fear, the folks not understanding him very well, and being especially uninformed as to his merits. Therefore, Mule Jones, who dealt in mules, bought, sold, and broke ’em, was a man of mark, and identified in name with his trade, as most people used to be before our time. I was down there one Sunday, and asked him how he managed to break the brutes. ‘It’s easy,’ said he, ‘when you know how. I never hook up less’n six of ’em at a time. Then they sort o’ neutralize one another. Some on ’em’ll be r’arin’ an’ pitchin’, an’ some tryin’ to run; but they’ll be enough of ’em down an’ a-draggin’ all the time, to keep the enthusiastic ones kind o’ suppressed, and give me the castin’ vote. It’s the only right way to git the bulge on mules.’ Whenever you get to worrying about our various companies, think of the Mule Jones system and be calm.”
“I’m a little shy of being ruled by one case, even though so exactly in point,” said I.
“Well, it’s all right,” he continued, “and about these houses. Why, we’d have to build them, even if we preferred to live in tents. Put the cost in the advertising account of Lynhurst Park Addition, if it worries you. Let me ask you, now, as a reasonable man, how can we expect the rest of the world to come out here and spring themselves for humble dwellings with stationary washtubs, conservatories, andporte cochères, if we ourselves haven’t any moreconfidence in the deal than to put up Jim Crow wickiups costing not more than ten or fifteen thousand dollars apiece? That addition has got to be the Nob Hill of Lattimore. Nothing in the ‘poor but honest’ line will do for Lynhurst; and we’ve got to set the pace. When you see my modest bachelor quarters going up, you’ll cease to think of yours in the light of an extravagance. By next fall you’ll be infested with money, anyhow, and that house will be the least of your troubles.”
Alice and I made up our minds that Jim was right, and went on with our plans on a scale which sometimes brought back the Aladdin idea to my mind, accustomed as I was to rural simplicity. But Alice, notwithstanding that she was the daughter of a country physician of not very lucrative practice, rose to the occasion, and spent money with a spontaneous largeness of execution which revealed a genius hitherto unsuspected by either of us. Jim was thoroughly delighted with it.
“The Republic,” he argued, “cannot be in any real danger when the modest middle classes produce characters of such strength in meeting great emergencies!”
Jim was at his best this summer. He revelled in the work of filling the morning paper with scare-heads detailing our operations. He enjoyed being It, he said. Cornish, after the first few days, during which, in spite of inside information as to his history, I felt that he would make good the predictions of theHerald, ceased to be, in my mind, anything more than I was—a trusted aide of Jim, the general.Both men went rather frequently out to the Trescott farm—Jim with the bluff freedom of a brother, Cornish with his rather ceremonious deference. I distrusted the dark Sir John where women were concerned, noting how they seemed charmed by him; but I could not see that he had made any headway in regaining Josie’s regard, though I had a lurking feeling that he meant to do so. I saw at times in his eyes the old look which I remembered so well.
Josie, more than ever this season, was earning her father’s commendation as his “right-hand man.” She insisted on driving the four horses which drew the binder in the harvest. In the haying she operated the horse-rake, and helped man the hay-fork in filling the barns. She grew as tanned as if she had spent the time at the seashore or on the links; and with every month she added to her charm. The scarlet of her lips, the ruddy luxuriance of her hair, the arrowy straightness of her carriage, the pulsing health which beamed from her eye, and dyed cheek and neck, made their appeal to the women, even.
“How sweet she is!” said Alice, as she came to greet us one day when we drove to the farm, and waited for her to come to us. “How sweet she is, Albert!”
Her father came up, and explained to us that he didn’t ask any of his women folks to do any work except what there was in the house. He was able to hire the outdoors work done, but Josie he couldn’t keep out of the fields.
“Why, pa,” said she, “don’t you see you would spoil my chances of marrying a fairy prince? They absolutely never come into the house; and my straw hat is the only really becoming thing I’ve got to wear!”
“Don’t give a dum if yeh never marry,” said Bill. “Hain’t seen the man yit that was good enough fer yeh, from my standpoint.”
Bill’s reputation was pretty well known to me by this time. He had been for years a successful breeder and shipper of live-stock, in which vocation he had become well-to-do. On his farm he was forceful and efficient, treading his fields like an admiral his quarter-deck. About town he was given to talking horses and cattle with the groups which frequented the stables and blacksmith-shops, and sometimes grew a little noisy and boisterous with them. Whenever her father went with a shipment of cattle to Chicago or other market, Josie went too, taking a regular passenger train in time to be waiting when Bill’s stock train arrived; and after the beeves were disposed of, Bill became her escort to opera and art-gallery; on such a visit I had seen her at the Stock Yards. She was fond of her father; but this alone did not explain her constant attendance upon him. I soon came to understand that his prompt return from the city, in good condition, was apt to be dependent upon her influence. It was one of those cases of weakness, associated with strength, the real mystery of which does not often occur to us because they are so common.
He came into our office one day with a tremorin his hand and a hunted look in his eye. He took a chair at my invitation, but rose at once, went to the door, and looked up and down the street, as if for pursuers. I saw Captain Tolliver across the street, and Bill’s air of excitement was explained. I was relieved, for at first I had thought him intoxicated.
“What’s the matter, Bill?” said I, after he had looked at me earnestly, almost pantingly, for a few moments. “You look nervous.”
“They’re after me,” he answered in repressed tones, “to sell; and I’ll be blasted if I know what to do! Wha’ d’ye’ ’spose they’re offerin’ me for my land?”
“The fact is, Bill,” said I, “that I know all about it. I’m interested in the deal, somewhat.”
“Then you know they’ve bid right around a thousand dollars an acre?”
“Yes,” said I, “or at least that they intended to offer that.”
“An’ you’re one o’ the company,” he queried, “that’s doin’ it?”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“Wal,” said he, “I’m kinder sorry you’re in it, becuz I’ve about concluded to sell; an’ it seems to me that any concern that buys at that figger is a-goin’ to bust, sure. W’y, I bought that land fer two dollars and a haff an acre. But, see here, now; I ’xpect you know your business, an’ see some way of gittin’ out in the deal, ’r you wouldn’t pay that. But if I sell, I’ve got to have help with my folks.”
“Ah,” said I, scenting the usual obstacle in suchcases, “Mrs. Trescott a little unwilling to sign the deeds?”
“No,” answered he, “strange as it may seem, ma’s kinder stuck on comin’ to town to live. How she’ll feel after she’s tried it fer a month ’r so, with no chickens ’r turkeys ’r milk to look after, I’m dubious; but jest now she seems to be all right.”
“Well, what’s the matter then?” said I.
“Wal, it’s Josie, to tell the truth,” said he. “She’s sort o’ hangin’ back. An’ it’s for her sake that I want to make the deal! I’ve told her an’ told her that there’s no dum sense in raisin’ corn on thousand-dollar land; but it’s no use, so fur; an’ here’s the only chanst I’ll ever hev, mebbe, a-slippin’ by. She ortn’t to live her life out on a farm, educated as she is. W’y, did you ever hear how she’s been educated?”
I told him that in a general way I knew, but not in detail.
“W’l, I want yeh to know all about it, so’s yeh c’n see this movin’ business as it is,” said he. “You know I was allus a rough cuss. Herded cattle over there by yer father’s south place, an’ never went to school. Ma, Josie’s ma, y’ know, kep’ the Greenwood school, an’ crossed the prairie there where I was a-herdin’, an’ I used to look at her mighty longin’ as she went by, when the cattle happened to be clost along the track, which they right often done. You know how them things go. An’ fin’ly one morning a blue racer chased her, as the little whelps will, an’ got his dummed little teeth fastened in her dress, an’ she a-hyperin’ around haff crazy, and a-screamin’every jump, so’s’t I hed to just grab her, an’ hold her till I could get the blasted snake off,—harmless, y’ know, but got hooked teeth, an’ not a lick o’ sense,—an’ he kinder quirled around my arm, an’ I nacherally tore him to ribbins a-gittin’ of him off. An’ then she sort o’ dropped off, an’ when she come to, I was a-rubbin’ her hands an’ temples. Wa’n’t that a funny interduction?”
“It’s very interesting,” said I; “go on.”
“W’l you remember ol’ Doc Maxfield?” said Bill, well started on a reminiscence. “Wal, he come along, an’ said it was the worst case of collapse, whatever that means, that he ever see—her lips an’ hands an’ chin all a-tremblin’, an’ flighty as a loon. Wal, after that I used to take her around some, an’ her folks objected becuz I was ignorant, an’ she learnt me some things, an’ bein’ strong an’ a good dancer an’ purty good-lookin’ she kind o’ forgot about my failin’s, an’ we was married. Her folks said she’d throwed herself away; but I could buy an’ sell the hull set of ’em now!”
This seemed conclusive as to the merits of the case, and I told him as much.
“W’l Josie was born an’ growed up,” continued Bill, “an’ it’s her I started to tell about, wa’n’t it? She was allus a cute little thing, an’ early she got this art business in her head. She’d read about fellers that had got to be great by paintin’ an’ carvin’, an’ it made her wild to do the same thing. Wa’n’t there a feller that pulled hair outer the cat to paint Injuns with? Yes, I thought they was; I allus thought they could paint theirselves good enough;but that story an’ some others she read an’ read when she was a little gal, an’ she was allus a-paintin’ an’ makin’ things with clay. She took a prize at the county fair when she was fourteen, with a picter of Washin’ton crossin’ the Delaware—three dollars, by gum! An’ then we hed to give her lessons; an’ they wasn’t any one thet knew anything around here, she said, an’ she went to Chicago. An’ I went in to visit her when she hedn’t ben there more’n six weeks, on an excursion one convention time, an’ I found her all tore up, a good deal as her ma was with the blue racer,—I don’t think she’s ever ben the same light-hearted little gal sence,—an’ from there I took her to New York; an’ there she fell in with a nice woman that was awful good to her, an’ they went to Europe, an’ it cost a heap. An’ you may’ve noticed thet Josie knows a pile more’n the other women here?”
I admitted that this had occurred to me.
“W’l, she was allus apt to take her head with her,” said Bill, “but this travelin’ has fixed her like a hoss thet’s ben druv in Chicago: nothin’ feazes her, street-cars, brass bands, circuses, overhead trains—it’s all the same to her, she’s seen ’em all. Sometimes I git the notion that she’d enjoy things more if she hadn’t seen so dum many of ’em an’ so much better ones, y’ know! Wal, after she’d ben over there a long time, she wrote she was a-comin’ home; an’ we was tickled to death. Only I was surprised by her writin’ that she wanted us to take all them old picters of hern, and put ’em out of sight! An’ if you’ll b’lieve it, she won’t talk picters nor make anysence she got back—only, jest after she got back, she said she didn’t see any use o’ her goin’ on dobbin’ good canvas up with good paint, an’ makin’ nothin’ but poor picters; an’ she cried some.... I thought it was sing’lar that this art business that she thought was the only thing thet’d ever make her happy was the only thing I ever see her cry about.”
“It’s the way,” said I, “with a great many of our cherished hopes.”
“W’l, anyhow, you can see thet it’s the wrong thing to put as much time an’ money into fixin’ a child up f’r a different kind o’ life as we hev, an’ then keep her on a farm out here. An’ thet’s why I want you to help this sale through, an’ bring influence to bear on her. I give up; I’m all in.”
To me Bill seemed entirely in the right. The new era made it absurd for the Trescotts to use their land longer as a farm. Lattimore was changing daily. The streets were gashed with trenches for gas- and water-mains; piled-up materials for curbing, paving, office buildings, new hotels, and all sorts of erections made locomotion a peril; but we were happy.
The water company was organized in our office, the gas and electric-light company in Cornish’s; but every spout led into the same bin.
Mr. Hinckley had induced some country dealers who owned a line of local grain-houses to remove to Lattimore and put up a huge terminal elevator for the handling of their trade. Captain Tolliver had been for a long time working upon a project for developing a great water-power, by tunnelingacross a bend in the river, and utilizing the fall. The building of the elevator attracted the attention of a company of Rochester millers, and almost before we knew it their forces had been added to ours, and the tunnel was begun, with the certainty that a two-thousand-barrel mill would be ready to grind the wheat from the elevator as soon as the flume began carrying water. This tunnel cut through an isthmus between the Brushy Creek valley and the river, and brought to bear on our turbines the head from a ten-mile loop of shoals and riffles. It opened into the gorge near the southern edge of Lynhurst Park, and crossed the Trescott farm. So it was that Bill awoke one day to the fact that his farm was coveted by divers people, who saw in his fields and feed-yards desirable sites for railway tracks, mills, factories, and the cottages of a manufacturing suburb. This it was that had put the Captain, like a blood-hound, on his trial, to the end that he was run to earth in my office, and made his appeal for help in managing Josie.
“There she comes now,” said he. “Labor with her, won’t yeh?”
“Bring her with us to the hotel,” said I, “to take dinner. If my wife and Elkins can’t fix the thing, no one can.”
So we five dined together, and after dinner discussed the Trescott crisis. Bill put the case, with all a veteran dealer’s logic, in its financial aspects.
“But we don’t want to be rich,” said Josie.
“What’ve we ben actin’ all these years like we have for, then?” inquired Bill. “Seem’s if I’dbeen lab’rin’ under a mistake f’r some time past. When your ma an’ me was a-roughin’ it out there in the old log-house, an’ she a-lookin’ out at the Feb’uary stars through the holes in the roof, a-holdin’ you, a little baby in bed, we reckoned we was a-doin’ of it to sort o’ better ourselves in a property way. Wouldn’t you ’a’thought so, Jim?”
“Well,” said Mr. Elkins, with an air of judicial perpension, “if you had asked me about it, I should have said that, if you wanted to stay poor, you could have held your own better by staying in Pleasant Valley Township as a renter. This was no place to come to if you wanted to conserve your poverty.”
“But, pa, we’re not adapted to town life and towns,” urged Josie. “I’m not, and you are not, and as for mamma, she’ll never be contented. Oh, Mr. Elkins, why did you come out here, making us all fortunes which we haven’t earned, and upsetting everything?”
“Now, don’t blame me, Josie,” Jim protested. “You ought to consider the fallacy of thepost hoc, propter hocargument. But to return to the point under discussion. If you could stay there, a rural Amaryllis, sporting in Arcadian shades, having seen you doing it once or twice, I couldn’t argue against it, it’s so charmingly becoming.”
“If that were all the argument—” began Josie.
“It’s the most important one—to my mind,” said Jim, resuming the discussion, “and you fail on that point; for you can’t live in that way long. If you don’t sell, the Development Company will condemn grounds for railway tracks and switch-yards;you’ll find your fields and meadows all shot to pieces; and your house will be surrounded by warehouses, elevators, and factories. Your larks and bobolinks will be scared off by engines and smokestacks, and your flowers spoiled with soot. Don’t parley with fate, but cash in and put your winnings in some safe investment.”
“Once I thought I couldn’t stay on the old farm a day longer; but I feel otherwise now! What business has this ‘progress’ of yours to interfere?”
“It pushes you out of the nest,” answered Jim. “It gives you the chance of your lives. You can come out into Lynhurst Park Addition, and build your house near the Barslow and Elkins dwellings. We’ve got about everything there—city water, gas, electric light, sewers, steam heat from the traction plant, beautiful view, lots on an established grade—”
“Don’t, don’t!” said Josie. “It sounds like the advertisements in theHerald.”
“Well, I was just leading up to a statement of what we lack,” continued Jim. “It’s the artistic atmosphere. We need a dash of the culture of Paris and Dresden and the place where they have the dinky little windmills which look so nice on cream-pitchers, but wouldn’t do for one of our farmers a minute. Come out and supply our lack. You owe it to the great cause of the amelioration of local savagery; and in view of my declaration of discipleship, and the effective way in which I have always upheld the standard of our barbarism, I claim that you owe it to me.”
“I’ve abandoned the brush.”
“Take it up again.”
“I have made a vow.”
“Break it!”
She refused to yield, but was clearly yielding. Alice and I showed Trescott, on a plat, the place for his new home. He was quite taken with the idea, and said that ma would certainly be tickled with it.
Josie sat apart with Mr. Elkins, in earnest converse, for a long time. She looked frequently at her father, Jim constantly at her. Mr. Cornish dropped in for a little while, and joined us in presenting the case for removal. While he was there the girl seemed constrained, and not quite so fully at her ease; and I could detect, I thought, the old tendency to scrutinize his face furtively. When he went away, she turned to Jim more intimately than before, and almost promised that she would become his neighbor in Lynhurst. After the Trescotts’ carriage had come and taken them away, Jim told us that it was for her father, and the temptations of idleness in the town, that Miss Trescott feared.
“This fairy-godmother business,” said he, “ain’t what the prospectus might lead one to expect. It has its drawbacks. Bill is going to cash in all right, and I think it’s for the best; but, Al, we’ve got to take care of the old man, and see that he doesn’t go up in the air.”
CHAPTER XIII.A Sitting or Two in the Game with the World and Destiny.
CHAPTER XIII.
A Sitting or Two in the Game with the World and Destiny.
Our game at Lattimore was one of those absorbing ones in which the sunlight of next morning sifts through the blinds before the players are aware that midnight is past. Day by day, deal by deal, it went on, card followed card in fateful fall upon the table, and we who sat in, and played the World and Destiny with so pitifully small a pile of chips at the outset, saw the World and Destiny losing to us, until our hands could scarcely hold, our eyes hardly estimate, the high-piled stacks of counters which were ours.
We saw the yellowing groves and brown fields of our first autumn; we heard the long-drawn, wavering, mounting, falling, persistent howl of the thresher among the settings of hive-shaped stacks; we saw the loads of red and yellow corn at the corn-cribs,—as men at the board of the green cloth hear the striking of the hours. And we heeded them as little. The cries of southing wild-fowl heralded the snow; winter came for an hour or so, and melted into spring; and some of us looked up from our hands for a moment, to note the fact that it was the anniversaryof that aguish day when three of us had first taken our seats at the table: and before we knew it, the dust and heat and summer clouds, like that which lightened over the fete in the park, admonished us that we were far into our second year. And still shuffle, cut, deal, trick, and hand followed each other, and with draw and bluff and showdown we played the World and Destiny, and playing won, and saw our stacks of chips grow higher and higher, as our great and absorbing game went on.
Moreover, while we won and won, nobody seemed to lose. Josie spoke that night of fortunes which people had not earned; but surely they were created somehow; and as the universe, when the divine fiat had formed the world, was richer, rather than poorer, so, we felt, must these values so magically growing into our fortunes be good, rather than evil, and honestly ours, so far as we might be able to secure them to ourselves. I said as much to Jim one day, at which he smiled, and remarked that if we got to monkeying with the ethics of the trade, piracy would soon be a ruined business.
“Better, far better keep the lookout sweeping the horizon for sails,” said he, “and when one appears, serve out the rum and gunpowder to the crew, and stand by to lower away the boats for a boarding-party!”
I am afraid I have given the impression that our life at this time was solely given over to cupidity and sordidness; and that idea I may not be able to remove. Yet I must try to do so. We were in the game to win; but our winnings, present andprospective, were not in wealth only. To surmount obstacles; to drive difficulties before us like scattering sparrows; to see a town marching before us into cityhood; to feel ourselves the forces working through human masses so mightily that, for hundreds of miles about us, social and industrial factors were compelled to readjust themselves with reference to us; to be masters; to create—all these things went into our beings in thrilling and dizzying pulsations of a pleasure which was not ignoble.
For instance, let us take the building of the Lattimore & Great Western Railway. Before Mr. Elkins went to Lattimore this line had been surveyed by the coöperation of Mr. Hinckley, Mr. Ballard, the president of the opposition bank, and some others. It was felt that there was little real competition among the railways centering there, and the L. & G.W. was designed as a hint to them of a Lattimore-built connection with the Halliday system, then a free-lance in the transportation field, and ready to make rates in an independent and competitive way. The Angus Falls extension brought this system in, but too late to do the good expected; for Mr. Halliday, in his dealings with us, convinced us of the truth of the rumors that he had brought the other roads to terms, and was a free-lance no longer. Month by month the need of real competition in our carrying trade grew upon us. Rates accorded to other cities on our commercial fighting line we could not get, in spite of the most persistent efforts. In the offices of presidents and general managers, in St. Louis, Chicago, St. Paul and Minneapolis, KansasCity, Omaha and New York we were received by suave princes of the highways, who each blandly assured us that his road looked with especial favor upon our town, and that our representations should receive the most solicitous attention. But the word of promise was ever broken to the hope.
After one of these embassies the syndicate held a meeting in Cornish’s elegant offices on the ground-floor of the new “Hotel Elkins” building. We sent Giddings away to prepare an optimistic news-story for to-morrow’sHerald, and an editorial leader based upon it, both of which had been formulated among us before going into executive session on the state of the nation. Hinckley, who had an admirable power of seeing the crux of a situation, was making a rather grave prognosis for us.
“If we can’t get rates which will let us into a broader territory, we may as well prepare for reverses,” said he. “Foreign cement comes almost to our doors, in competition with ours. Wheat and live-stock go from within twenty miles to points five hundred miles away. Who is furnishing the brick and stone for the new Fairchild court-house and the big normal-school buildings at Angus Falls? Not our quarries and kilns, but others five times as far away. If you want to figure out the reason of this, you will find it in nothing else in the world but the freight rates.”
“It’s a confounded outrage,” said Cornish. “Can’t we get help from the legislature?”
“I understand that some action is expected next winter,” said I; “Senator Conley had in herethe other day a bill he has drawn; and it seems to me we should send a strong lobby down at the proper time in support of it.”
“Ye-e-s,” drawled Jim, “but I believe in still stronger measures; and rather than bother with the legislature, owned as it is by the roads, I’d favor writing cuss-words on the water-tanks, or going up the track a piece and makin’ faces at one of their confounded whistling-posts or cattle-guards—or something real drastic like that!”
Cornish, galled, as was I, by this irony, flushed crimson, and rose.
“The situation,” said he, “instead of being a serious one, as I have believed, seems merely funny. This conference may as well end. Having taken on things here under the impression that this was to be a city; it seems that we are to stay a village. It occurs to me that it’s time to stand from under! Good-evening!”
“Wait!” said Hinckley. “Don’t go, Cornish; it isn’t as bad as that!”
As he spoke he laid his hand on Cornish’s arm, and I saw that he was pale. He felt more keenly than did I the danger of division and strife among us.
“Yes, Mr. Hinckley,” said Jim, as Cornish sat down again, “itisas bad as that! This thing amounts to a crisis. For one, I don’t propose to adopt the ‘stand-from-under’ tactics. They make an unnecessary disaster as certain as death; but if we all stand under and lift, we can win more than we’ve ever thought. In the legislature they holdthe cards and can beat us. It’s no use fooling with that unless we seek martyrs’ deaths in the bankruptcy courts. But there is a way to meet these men, and that is by bringing to our aid their greatest rival.”
“Do you mean—” said Hinckley.
“I mean Avery Pendleton and the Pendleton system,” replied Elkins. “I mean that we’ve got to meet them on their own ground. Pendleton won’t declare war on the Halliday combination by building in here, but there is no reason why we can’t build to him, and that’s what I propose to do. We’ll take the L. & G. W., swing it over to the east from the Elk Fork up, make a junction with Pendleton’s Pacific Division, and, in one week after we get trains running, we’ll have the freight combine here shot so full of holes that it won’t hold corn-stalks! That’s what we’ll do: we’ll do a little rate-making ourselves; and we’ll make this danger the best thing that ever happened to us. Do you see?”
Cornish saw, sooner than any one else. As he spoke, Jim had unrolled a map, and pointed out the places as he referred to them, like a general, as he was, outlining the plan of a battle. He began this speech in that quiet, convincing way of his, only a little elevated above the sarcasm of a moment before. As he went on, his voice deepened, his eye gleamed, and in spite of his colloquialisms, which we could not notice, his words began to thrill us like potent oratory. We felt all that ecstasy of buoyant and auspicious rebellion which animated Hotspur the night he could have plucked bright honor from thepale-faced moon. At Jim’s final question, Cornish, forgetting his pique, sprang to the map, swept his finger along the line Elkins had described, followed the main ribs of Pendleton’s great gridiron, on which the fat of half a dozen states lay frying, on to terminals on lakes and rivers; and as he turned his black eyes upon us, we knew from the fire in them that he saw.
“By heavens!” he cried, “you’ve hit it, Elkins! And it can be done! From to-night, no more paper railroads for us; it must be grading-gangs and ties, and steel rails!”
So, also, there was good fighting when Cornish wired from New York for Elkins and me to come to his aid in placing our Lattimore & Great Western bonds. Of course, we never expected to build this railway with our own funds. For two reasons, at least: it is bad form to do eccentric things, and we lacked a million or two of having the money. The line with buildings and rolling stock would cost, say, twelve thousand dollars per mile. Before it could be built we must find some one who would agree to take its bonds for at least that sum. As no one would pay quite par for bonds of a new and independent road, we must add, say, three thousand dollars per mile for discount. Moreover, while the building of the line was undertaken from motives of self-preservation, there seemed to be no good reason why we should not organize a construction company to do the actual work of building, and that at a profit. That this profit might be assured, something like three thousand dollars per mile moremust go in. Of course, whoever placed the bonds would be asked to guarantee the interest for two or three years; hence, with two thousand more for that and good measure, we made up our proposed issue of twenty thousand dollars per mile of first-mortgage bonds, to dispose of which “the former member of the firm of Lusch, Carskaddan & Mayer” was revisiting the glimpses of Wall Street, and testing the strength of that mighty influence which theHeraldhad attributed to him.
“You’ve justgotto win,” said Giddings, who was admitted to the secret of Cornish’s embassy, “not only because Lattimore and all the citizens thereof will be squashed in the event of your slipping up; but, what is of much more importance, theHeraldwill be laid in a lie about your Wall Street pull. Remember that when foes surround thee!”
When we joined him, Cornish admitted that he was fairly well “surrounded.” He had failed to secure the aid of Barr-Smith’s friends, who said that, with the street-car system and the cement works, they had quite eggs enough in the Lattimore basket for their present purposes. In fact, he had felt out to blind ends nearly all the promising burrows supposedly leading to the strong boxes of the investing public, of which he had told us. He accounted for this lack of success on the very natural theory that the Halliday combination had found out about his mission, and was fighting him through its influence with the banks and trust companies. So he had done at last what Jim had advised him to do at first—secured an appointment with the mighty Mr.Pendleton; and, somewhat humbled by unsuccess, had telegraphed for us to come on and help in presenting the thing to that magnate.
Whom, being fenced off by all sorts of guards, messengers, clerks, and secretaries, we saw after a pilgrimage through a maze of offices. He had not the usual features which make up an imposing appearance; but command flowed from him, and authority covered him as with a mantle. We knew that he possessed and exerted the power to send prosperity in this channel, or inject adversity into that, as a gardener directs water through his trenches, and this knowledge impressed us. He was rather thin; but not so much so as his sharp, high nose, his deep-set eyes, and his bony chin at first sight seemed to indicate. Whenever he spoke, his nostrils dilated, and his gray eyes said more than his lips uttered. He was courteous, with a sort of condensed courtesy—the shorthand of ceremoniousness. He turned full upon us from his desk as we entered, rose and met us as his clerk introduced us.
“Mr. Barslow, I’m happy to meet you; and you also, Mr. Cornish. Mr. Wilson ’phoned about your enterprise just now. Mr. Elkins,” as he took Jim’s hand, “I have heard of you also. Be seated, gentlemen. I have given you a time appropriation of thirty minutes. I hope you will excuse me for mentioning that at the end of that period my time will be no longer my own. Kindly explain what it is you desire of me, and why you think that I can have any interest in your project.”
And, with a judgment trained in the valuing of men, he turned to Jim as our leader.
“If our enterprise doesn’t commend itself to your judgment in twenty minutes,” said Jim, with a little smile, and in much the same tone that he would have used in discussing a cigar, “there’ll be no need of wasting the other ten; for it’s perfectly plain. I’ll expedite matters by skipping what we desire, for the most part, and telling you why we think the Pendleton system ought to desire the same thing. Our plan, in a word, is to build a hundred and fifty miles of line, and from it deliver two full train-loads of through east-bound freight per day to your road, and take from you a like amount of west-bound tonnage, not one pound of which can be routed over your lines at present.”
Mr. Pendleton smiled.
“A very interesting proposition, Mr. Elkins,” said he; “my business is railroading, and I am always glad to perfect myself in the knowledge of it. Make it plain just how this can be done, and I shall consider my half-hour well expended.”
Then began the fateful conversation out of which grew the building of the Lattimore & Great Western Railway. Jim walked to the map which covered one wall of the room, and dropped statement after statement into the mind of Pendleton like round, compact bullets of fact. It was the best piece of expository art imaginable. Every foot of the road was described as to gradients, curves, cuts, fills, trestles, bridges, and local traffic. Then he began with Lattimore; and we who breathed in nothingbut knowledge of that city and its resources were given new light as to its shipments and possibilities of growth. He showed how the products of our factories, the grain from our elevators, the live-stock from our yards, and the meats from our packing-houses could be sent streaming over the new road and the lines of Pendleton.
Then he turned to our Commercial Club, and showed that the merchants, both wholesale and retail, of Lattimore were welded together in its membership, in such wise that their merchandise might be routed from the great cities over the proposed track. He piled argument on argument. He hammered down objection after objection before they could be suggested. He met Mr. Pendleton in the domain of railroad construction and management, and showed himself familiar with the relative values of Pendleton’s own lines.
“Your Pacific Division,” said he, “must have disappointed some of the expectations with which it was built. Its earnings cannot, in view of the distance they fall below those of your other lines, be quite satisfactory to you. Give us the traffic agreement we ask; and your next report after we have finished our line will show the Pacific Division doing more than its share in the great showing of revenue per mile which the Pendleton system always makes. I see that my twenty minutes is about up. I hope I have made good our promises as to showing cause for coming to you with our project.”
Mr. Pendleton, after a moment’s thought, said: “Have you made an engagement for lunch?”
We had not. He turned to the telephone, and called for a number.
“Is this Mr. Wade’s office?... Yes, if you please.... Is this Mr. Wade?... This is Pendleton talking to you.... Yes, Pendleton.... There are some gentlemen in my office, Mr. Wade, whom I want you to meet, and I should be glad if you could join us at lunch at the club.... Well, can’t you call that off, now?... Say, at one-thirty.... Yes.... Very kind of you.... Thanks! Good-by.”
Having made his arrangements with Mr. Wade, he hung up the telephone, and pushed an electric button. A young man from an outer office responded.
“Tell Mr. Moore,” said Pendleton to him, “that he will have to see the gentlemen who will call at twelve—on that lake terminal matter—he will understand. And see that I am not disturbed until after lunch.... And, say, Frank! See if Mr. Adams can come in here—at once, please.”
Mr. Adams, who turned out to be some sort of a freight expert, came in, and the rest of the interview was a bombardment of questions, in which we all took turns as targets. When we went to lunch we felt that Mr. Pendleton had possessed himself of all we knew about our enterprise, and filed the information away in some vast pigeon-hole case with his own great stock of knowledge.
We met Mr. Wade over an elaborate lunch. He said, as he shook hands with Cornish, that he believed they had met somewhere, to which Cornish bowed a frigid assent. Mr. Wade was the head of The Allen G. Wade Trust Company, and seemed ina semi-comatose condition, save when cakes, wine, or securities were under discussion. He addressed me as “Mr. Corning,” and called Cornish “Atkins,” and once in a while opened his mouth to address Jim by name, but halted, with a distressful look, at the realization of the fact that he could not remember names enough to go around. He made an appointment with me for the party for the next morning.
“If you will come to my office before you call on Mr. Wade,” said Mr. Pendleton, “I will have a memorandum prepared of what we will do with you in the way of a traffic agreement: it may be of some use in determining the desirability of your bonds. I’m very glad to have met you, gentlemen. When Lattimore gets into my world—by which I mean our system and connections—I hope to visit the little city which has so strong a business community as to be able to send out such a committee as yourselves; good-afternoon!”
“Well,” said I, as we went toward our hotel, “this looks like progress, doesn’t it?”
“I sha’n’t feel dead sure,” said Jim, “until the money is in bank, subject to the check of the construction company. But doesn’t it look juicy, right now! Why, boys, with that traffic agreement we can get the money anywhere—on the prairie, out at sea—anywhere under the shining sun! They can’t beat us. What do you say, Cornish? Will, your friend Wade jar loose, or shall we have to seek further?”
“He’ll snap at your bonds now,” said Cornish,rather glumly, I thought, considering the circumstances; “but don’t call him a friend of mine! Why, damn him, not a week ago he turned me out of his office, saying that he didn’t want to look into any more Western railway schemes! And now he says he believes we’ve met before!”
This seemed to strike Mr. Elkins as the best practical joke he had ever heard of; and Cornish suggested that for a man to stop in Homeric laughter on Broadway might be pleasant for him, but was embarrassing to his companions. By this time Cornish himself was better-natured. Jim took charge of our movements, and commanded us to a dinner with him, in the nature of a celebration, with a theater-party afterward.
“Let us,” said he, “hear the chimes at midnight, or even after, if we get buncoed doing it. Who cares if we wind up in the police court! We’ve done the deed; we’ve made our bluff good with Halliday and his gang of highwaymen; and I feel like taking the limit off, if it lifts the roof! Al, hold your hand over my mouth or I shall yell!”
“Come into my parlor, and yell for me,” said Cornish, “and you may do my turn in police court, too. Come in, and behave yourself!”
I began writing a telegram to my wife, apprising her of our good luck. The women in our circle knew our hopes, ambitions, and troubles, as the court ladies know the politics of the realm, and there were anxious hearts in Lattimore.
“I’m going down to the telegraph-office with this,” said I; “can I take yours, too?”
When I handed the messages in, the man who received them insisted on my reading them over with him to make sure of correct transmission. There was one to Mr. Hinckley, one to Mr. Ballard, and two to Miss Josephine Trescott. One ran thus, “Success seems assured. Rejoice with me. J. B. C.” The other was as follows: “In game between Railway Giants and Country Jakes here to-day, visiting team wins. Score, 9 to 0. Barslow, catcher, disabled. Crick in neck looking at high buildings. Have Mrs. B. prepare porous plaster for Saturday next. Sell Halliday stock short, and buy L. & G. W. And in name all things good and holy don’t tell Giddings! J. R. E.”