CHAPTER XX
COMING HOME
She gazed on the old things of Egypt and India,Sighed o’er the ruins of Athens and Rome;Painted in Paris, fiddled in Leipsic,Summered at Homburg; and then, came home.
She gazed on the old things of Egypt and India,Sighed o’er the ruins of Athens and Rome;Painted in Paris, fiddled in Leipsic,Summered at Homburg; and then, came home.
She gazed on the old things of Egypt and India,Sighed o’er the ruins of Athens and Rome;Painted in Paris, fiddled in Leipsic,Summered at Homburg; and then, came home.
She gazed on the old things of Egypt and India,
Sighed o’er the ruins of Athens and Rome;
Painted in Paris, fiddled in Leipsic,
Summered at Homburg; and then, came home.
MissLandon was eighteen when the snow-plough picked her up in the thorough-cut on the Pacific Slope and pitched her into the arms of Conductor McGuire. A year later, when her father retired, he was a rich man. At the suggestion of a widowed sister, the ex-merchant, his daughter, and the widow went abroad. At twenty-two she had been “finished” by travel, and heart-whole, was headed for home. She had seen a great deal of people and things. She had been wooed by an Italian count and had had a brush with a baron at Berlin, but she had never been thrilled as she had been with the touch of the hand and the sound of the voice of McGuire. She was probably the only American heiress who had given any attention to the poorly paid conductors of the European railways;the shabby guards, who run along the platform in soiled uniforms, cry the name of the station, flourish a flag, and open and shut the doors. Her conductor was as well dressed, as handsome, as intelligent, and almost as well paid as the captain of an Atlantic liner. These poor beggars were dirtier than the average second cabin deck-steward.
She was forever making comparisons, and wondering why she did it. A thousand times she had recalled his ardent glance when, as he told her in unmistakable language the story of his love, he had kindled the first fire in her girlish heart, and it had not gone out.
Of course, he could never be anything to her, and yet, try as she would, she could not forget. Without knowing why, she had conceived a deep interest in railways. She watched the men at work, marked the coming and going of trains in various countries, the inferior train service and accommodation on the continental railways of Europe.
Lately she had been studying the financial reports of the various railways on both sides of the Atlantic, and reading the stock quotations.
This was probably because her father had invested a vast amount of money in a new road in the West. She remembered that she had been eager to have him do this, and now felt a certain amount of responsibility, and so was quietly educating herself.
She often wondered whether the handsome conductor had heard of the new road in which she had half her fortune.
At times she went so far as to fancy herself, when left alone in this unfeeling world, seeking advice from the man who had carried her out of the snow-bank. And then she would ask herself how he could help her, this obscure conductor of a narrow-gauge railroad that wound among the hills and ravines of the Rocky Mountains.
Mr. Landon had left his business in the hands of his solicitors, in whom he had perfect faith, and had given himself over to rest for the past four years. Upon his arrival in London he learned that the new road, in which he had invested, had been roughly handled; not by stock-jobbers, who are the dread of small investors, but by competing lines. They had made the mistake which is so often made, of sending out,as manager, a well-educated, perfectly respectable, handsomely attired, but utterly incompetent son of a bondholder, who didn’t know a stop signal from a three-throw switch. The road had lost money from the start, but a rich and indulgent father had insisted upon keeping the young man as manager, and it was not until a well-known railway king had secured a controlling interest that the young man was permitted to return to his tandem and pink-tea.
Things were going better, lately, he learned, since the road had been in the hands of a “native manager,” and so the capitalist and his charming daughter spent another year in London.
“Papa,” said Miss Landon, from her storm-blanket, one day in mid-ocean, “do you know a great deal of the success of this company is due to the employees?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s the same on a railway.”
“Ah, Kate,” laughed her father, “you’re always railroading.”
“Well, I was just thinking (she paused for just a breath) that if that young Mr. McGuireis still conductor (another impediment) you ought to try and get him on our road.”
“Now, whatever made you think of that handsome young Irishman?”
“Well—”
“Well?—”
At that moment the band having assembled on deck, not twenty feet away, struck up a lively quickstep, and the sound of the E flat thrilled Miss Landon, as she had not been thrilled since she came out of her teens. She knew that tune, though she had heard it but once, and as the leading cornet walked up through the air, the words came to her:—
“Arrah, Patsy! git up f’om th’ fire,An’ guv th’ mon a sate;Can’t ye see that it’s Misther McGuire,Come a courtin’ yer sisther Kate?”
“Arrah, Patsy! git up f’om th’ fire,An’ guv th’ mon a sate;Can’t ye see that it’s Misther McGuire,Come a courtin’ yer sisther Kate?”
“Arrah, Patsy! git up f’om th’ fire,An’ guv th’ mon a sate;Can’t ye see that it’s Misther McGuire,Come a courtin’ yer sisther Kate?”
“Arrah, Patsy! git up f’om th’ fire,
An’ guv th’ mon a sate;
Can’t ye see that it’s Misther McGuire,
Come a courtin’ yer sisther Kate?”
No man can make money or acquire fame without accumulating enemies; that’s the price of success. To be sure they may not be all big men, sometimes not more than two by four, but they can make trouble. A Boston attorney, who looked after the interest and voted the stock of the absent shareholder in the Inter-MountainAir Line, had become the enemy of General Manager McGuire. This attorney had had the misfortune to pass through college with young Van Swell, who had made such a mess of managing the new road, and who had been forced to resign to make room for a real railroad man, so, to use a very expressive railroad expression, “he had it in for” the new General Manager. He was a man of influence, and, when not otherwise engaged, he worked among the directors, many of whom he knew intimately, and his work was always against McGuire. The railway king, who had been the means of making McGuire General Manager, had been able to do so by influencing certain shareholders, and when the Boston attorney had won two or three of these to his side, the old faction could control the next election. They would not ask or expect the resignation of the brilliant young manager. So long as he was content with that position they could not, in their own interests, ask him to resign. But he was ambitious. Some of his friends had been putting his name forward as the next president, and that was wormwood and gall to the Van Swell contingent.These rumors, rife in clubs and hotel lobbies, soon reached the newspapers, and so the public. As the date for the meeting of the stockholders drew near, the matter became the leading topic in the daily press. The stock of the Inter-Mountain Air Line became sensitive to the newspaper comments. Every man who had a dollar in the enterprise was uneasy. Men who lived like undertakers, off the misfortunes of others, who made money only when some one else lost, knew not whether to buy or sell. If the election could take place now, they could give a good guess that young Van Swell would be the next president. If a certain man who had been abroad for three or four years returned, took the advice of his friends and voted his stock instead of allowing his lawyer to vote it, things might be different. A bushel or more letters had been following this important, though somewhat indifferent, shareholder all over Europe. They had arrived in London only the day after the important individual had sailed for New York. Being a modest man, who considered his comings and goings of little importance to the general public, he had nottaken the trouble to notify his friends of his intentions, but when a list of “distinguished” passengers had been cabled over, there was a little flurry in Wall Street. The friends of McGuire were enthusiastic. McGuire was indifferent. His friends wired him to come East and make a fight for the great prize that seemed almost within his grasp. He refused to budge. The bright young men who “did the railroads” on the daily papers had fun with Van Swell. They wondered whether he would take his valet and his yacht to the mountains with him. For a week and a day the excitement was at fever heat, but out in the Rockies, where the first frost was touching the oak and the aspen with silver and gold, the General Manager of the Air Line kept perfectly cool. The loyal employees, who had inklings of the doings of the pink-tea contingent at the East, spoke gently, almost reverently, to the General Manager. It would be a pity to lose him, people said, and many of the leading shippers said openly that they would give the Air Line no business if the town lost this genial official. The switchmen “offered” to strike. Of all the people interested,directly or indirectly, McGuire showed the least anxiety. Finally, the knowing ones guessed the cause of his indifference, which was now beginning to alarm his enemies. He had things “cut and dried,” said the knowing ones, and it began to look that way. But it was not so. There was a shadow upon the heart of the General Manager. Few men in America had made greater success or reached a higher place in the railway world in a lifetime than this man had gained in thirty-five years, and yet he was not happy.
Now, as the time for the election of a new president drew near, the pressure became so great and the cry for McGuire at the seat of war grew so loud, that the General Manager yielded, reluctantly, and made ready for the journey. He might have carried his private car, for there was not a line between the Atlantic and the Pacific that would hesitate to handle it; but he contented himself with the section to which his Pullman pass entitled him, and his annual transportation. So quietly did he depart that none of the papers knew of it until he was far out on the plains. He had never beenin Boston. She might be living there and now. As the train bore him out toward the Atlantic he began to wonder whether he might see her driving in the park with her dignified old father or (he dreaded the thought) with her husband.