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Title: The Memoirs of an American Citizen
Author: Herrick, Robert, 1591-1674
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Memoirs of an American Citizen" ***
THE MEMOIRS
OF
AN AMERICAN CITIZEN
[Illustration]
THE MEMOIRS
OF
AN AMERICAN CITIZEN
BY
ROBERT HERRICK
AUTHOR OF "THE WEB OF LIFE," "THE REAL WORLD,"
"THE COMMON LOT," ETC.
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1905
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1905,
BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY.
COPYRIGHT, 1905,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1905.
Norwood Press
J.S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
TO
WILL PAYNE
"O Commander of the Faithful," said the other, "shall I tell thee
what I have seen with my eyes or what I have only heard tell?"
"If thou hast seen aught worth telling," replied the Khalif, "let us
hear it: for report is not like eye-witness."
"O Commander of the Faithful," said the other, "lend me thine ear
and thine heart."
"O Ibn Mensour," answered the Khalif, "behold I am listening to thee
with mine ears, and looking at thee with mine eyes, and attending to
thee with mine heart."
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE LAKE FRONT IN CHICAGO 1
II. THE HARRISON STREET POLICE COURT 12
III. JASONVILLE, INDIANA 19
IV. THE PIERSONS 37
V. A MAN'S BUSINESS 53
VI. FIRST BLOOD 61
VII. THE BOMB 74
VIII. THE TRIAL OF THE ANARCHISTS 82
IX. ANOTHER BOOST 98
X. LOVE 104
XI. MARRIAGE 124
XII. AN HONORABLE MERCHANT 134
XIII. THE WILL OF A WOMAN 149
XIV. THE FIRST MOVE 167
XV. THE ATLAS ON THE FLOOR 175
XVI. THE STRUGGLE 185
XVII. NO GOSPEL GAME 196
XVIII. THE STRIKE 204
XIX. DENOUNCED 211
XX. TREACHERY 219
XXI. A SQUEEZE 230
XXII. JUDGMENTS 237
XXIII. HAPPINESS 252
XXIV. WAR 265
XXV. THE LAST DITCH 276
XXVI. VICTORY 288
XXVII. DOUBTS 293
XXVIII. A NEW AMBITION 304
XXIX. THE SENATORSHIP 315
XXX. THE COST 327
XXXI. FURTHER COST 336
XXXII. THE END 347
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
"Feeling that I had come to the end of things in Chicago
mighty quick" 12
"I believe she would have let me kiss her had I wanted to
then" 24
"Earning mighty little but my keep" 25
"'I guess she don't want much to see you'" 30
"'I want you to take this'" 34
"'Ma Pierson's'" 38
"The Enterprise Market" 44
"'That's Strauss!'" 49
"'Do you hear?' the Irishman roared" 58
"My part was to drive a wagon for Dround at fifteen a
week" 59
"'What do you know about sausage?' he asked" 65
"'All right,' he called out, 'we'll take his deal'" 71
"His long arms twitched with horror" 78
"From another man it might have been just slobber, but
Henry I. Dround meant it, every word" 88
"'My! I tell you I'll be glad to get home to-night'" 94
"Big John was one of the first to welcome me back" 96
"The door of the inner office was pulled back and Strauss
himself walked into the room" 102
"'Why, of course, you are the Mr. Harrington who--But
you have changed!'" 106
"She was reading me like a book of large print" 116
"'I have been offering your young man some advice, Sarah'" 119
"I could see that they would come together very soon" 126
"'You aren't much troubled with scruples, Van!'" 137
"'I paid the right people ninety-five hundred dollars. Now
what are you going to do about it?'" 142
"'Young feller, do you reckon you can buck up against me
and the Strauss crowd with that one-horse rig?'" 153
"'I think you could put up the right kind of a fight,' she
remarked quietly" 160
"That comedy took place on the court-house steps according
to law" 172
"I pointed out the great currents of world trade" 181
"The black rocks starting right out of the water" 189
"'When the time comes that you want help, when you cannot
go on alone--'" 194
"He undertook to give me a lesson then and there on the
rights of the anarchist" 208
"'You have done something the taste of which will never
get out of your mouth'" 223
"'When a man comes out of the alley and puts a pistol in
your face, and asks for all the money you have on you,
you don't wait to see where you hit him, do you?'" 228
"'Only this,' I said slowly, 'I don't sell out to you'" 234
"'Couldn't you find any one else to do your dirty work but
your own brother?'" 242
"Somehow years had gone by in that evening" 249
"'No, child, you are wrong! There is no truth in your cruel
words'" 259
"To-day I should like to slip back once more to the bum that
landed in Chicago--unattached, unburdened, unbound" 271
"It was a messenger boy with a delayed telegram" 275
"'For this is the last ditch, sure enough!'" 278
"'If you grasp them in a strong hand, they will become
diamonds'" 284
"'There isn't enough money coined to bring me to him'" 292
"'And we are the crowd that's got the combination to the
safe'" 312
"Men paused to read the bulletin, and I stopped, too" 321
"'He's the man who sold scraps and offal to the Government
for canned beef--'" 322
"'So you see there is nothing, Van, that you can give me
that I should want to take'" 333
"'Do you remember how I used to wash while you wiped,
when we wanted to get out buggy-riding, May?'" 341
"'It was good sausage, Slo! At least it was when _we_
made it'" 350
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I
THE LAKE FRONT IN CHICAGO
_I sleep out--A companion--Hunting a job--Free lunch and a bad
friend--Steele's store and what happened there--A positive young
woman--Number twelve_
It was a raw, blustering September night when I rounded up for the first
time at the lake front in Chicago. There was just a strip of waste land,
in those days, between the great avenue and the railroad tracks that
skirted the lake. In 1876 there were no large hotels or skyscrapers
fronting a tidy park; nothing but some wooden or brick houses, and,
across the tracks, the waves lapped away at the railroad embankment. I
was something more than twenty, old enough, at any rate, to have earned
a better bed than a few feet of sand and sooty grass in a vacant lot. It
was the first night I had ever slept out,--at least, because there was
no place I had a right to go to. All that day I had been on the tramp
from Indiana, and reached the city with only a few cents in my pockets.
I was not the only homeless wanderer by any means. Early in the evening
a lot of bums began to drop in, slinking down the avenue or coming over
from the city through the cross streets. It was early in the season;
but to-night the east wind raked the park and shook gusts of rain from
the low clouds, making it comfortable to keep moving. So we wandered up
and down that sandy strip, footing it like dogs on the hunt for a hole,
and eying each other gloomily when we passed.
Early in the evening a big wooden building at the north end was lighted
up, and some of us gathered around the windows and hung there under the
eaves watching the carriages drive up to the door to leave their
freight. There was a concert in the hall, and after it began I crawled
up into the arch of a window where I was out of the rain and could hear
the music. Before the concert was over a watchman caught sight of me and
snaked me to the ground. He was making a round of the building, stirring
up the bums who had found any hole out of the reach of the wind. So we
began once more that dreary, purposeless tramp to keep from freezing.
"Kind of chilly!" a young fellow called out to me.
"Chillier before morning, all right," I growled back, glad enough to
hear a voice speaking to me as if it expected an answer.
"First night?" he inquired, coming up close to me in a friendly way.
"'Tain't so bad--when it's warm and the wind don't blow."
We walked on together slowly, as though we were looking for something.
When we came under the light of the lamps in the avenue we eyed each
other. My tramp companion was a stout, honest-looking young fellow
about my age. His loose-fitting black clothes and collarless shirt made
me think that he too had come from the country recently.
"Been farming?" I ventured.
"Pine Lake, across there in Michigan--that's where I come from.
Hostetter, Ed Hostetter, that's my name."
We faced about and headed toward the lake without any purpose. He told
me his story while we dragged ourselves back and forth along the high
board fence that guarded the railroad property. He had got tired of
working on his father's farm for nothing and had struck out for the big
city. Hostetter had a married aunt, so he told me, living somewhere in
Chicago, and he had thought to stay with her until he could get a start
on fortune's road. But she had moved from her old address, and his money
had given out before he knew it. For the last week he had been wandering
about the streets, hunting a job, and looking sharp for that aunt.
"We can't keep this up all night!" I observed when his story had run
out.
"Last night I found an empty over there in the yards, but some of the
railroad fellers got hold of me toward morning and made me jump high."
A couple of tramps were crouching low beside the fence just ahead of us.
"Watch 'em!" my companion whispered.
Suddenly they burrowed down into the sand and disappeared. We could hear
their steps on the other side of the fence; then a gruff voice. In a few
moments back they came, burrowing up from under the fence.
"That's what you get!" Ed grunted.
Well, in the end we had to make the best of it, and we camped right
there, hugging the fence for protection against the east wind. We
burrowed into the loose sand, piling it up on the open side until we
were well covered. Now and then a train rushing past shook us awake with
its heavy tread. Toward morning there were fewer trains, and though it
began to mist pretty hard, and the water trickled into our hole, I
managed to get some sleep.
At daylight we got up and shook ourselves, and then wandered miserably
into the silent streets of the downtown district. Between us we had
fifteen cents, and with that we got some coffee and a piece of bread at
a little shanty stuck on the side of the river. A fat man with a greasy,
pock-marked face served us, and I can see him now as he looked us over
and winked to the policeman who was loafing in the joint.
After our coffee we began the hunt for an odd job, and Ed talked of his
hopes of finding that aunt--Mrs. Pierson. We kept together because we
were so lonesome, I suppose, and Ed was good company--jolly and
happy-hearted. That night we slept on the back porch of an empty house
'way south, where the streets were broad, and there were little strips
of green all about the houses. The owners of the large house we picked
out must have been away for the summer. Toward morning we heard some one
stirring around inside, opening and shutting doors, and we made up our
minds there were thieves at work in the house.
Ed stayed to watch, while I ran out to the avenue to get some help. It
was a long time before I could find a policeman, and when we got back to
the house there was Hostetter sitting on the curbstone hugging his
belly. One of the thieves had come out of the house the back way, and
when Ed tried to hold him had given him such a kick that Ed was glad to
let him go. The officer I had brought evidently thought we were playing
some game on him or weren't quite straight ourselves, and he tried to
take us to the station. We gave him a lively chase for a couple of
blocks; the last we saw of him he was shaking his fist at us and cussing
loud enough to wake the dead.
That day was much like the one before, only worse. The weather was mean
and drizzly. I earned a quarter lugging a valise across the city, and we
ate that up at breakfast. At noon we turned into one of the flashy
saloons on State Street. We hoped to be overlooked in the crowd before
the bar while we helped ourselves to the crackers and salt fish. We were
making out pretty well when a man who was standing near the bar and
drinking nothing spied us and came over to the lunch table.
"Wet day," he observed sociably.
"That's about it," I replied cautiously, looking the man over.
He wore a long black coat, a dirty light-colored waistcoat, and a silk
hat, underneath which little brown curls sprouted out. He fed himself
delicately out of the common bowl, as if the free lunch didn't tempt his
appetite.
"Seeing the town?" he asked next, looking pointedly at Ed's dirty
shoes.
"Some part of it, I reckon," Ed laughed.
"Looking for a job?"
"You bet we're looking!" Ed growled back. "Know where we can find it?"
Before long we were on easy terms with the stranger. He insisted on
paying for beer all around, and on the strength of that Ed and I made
another raid on a platter of beans. Dinner that night didn't look very
promising.
"It seems to me I know of the very thing for you young fellers," our
friend finally remarked, and we pricked up our ears.
He said he had a friend in one of the large stores on State Street, who
had found fine places for some young men he had recommended. They were
making big money now. Ed's eyes began to glisten. But suddenly another
idea struck our good friend. He lowered his voice and drew us to one
side. Would one of us like a fat job, where there wasn't much work
except special times--a gay kind of place, where we could see something
of life? Ed was pretty eager, but I rather suspected what he was after.
"I guess the other place is more what we want," I said.
"Ain't up to snuff just yet?" he giggled. "Wait a week or two, and you
will be as quick as the next one."
As we made no reply, and I was moving toward the door, he remarked:--
"Sure, it's stopped raining! Let's be moving up the street, and see what
my friend can do for you."
So we started up State Street with the man in the silk hat. At the door
of a big dry-goods store, where we had tried unsuccessfully that morning
to obtain work, he remarked:--
"We'll just look in here. I know a man in the gents' underwear
department, and p'r'aps he can help you."
I didn't think it very likely, for I hadn't much faith in our smooth
acquaintance. But there was nothing better to do. So we all passed in
through the heavy doors of Steele & Co.'s establishment. Even on that
rainy afternoon the place was pretty well filled; mostly with women, who
were bunched together at certain counters. We had some trouble in
following our guide, who squirmed into the thick of every jam. I began
to think that, having talked big to two green young fellows, he now
wanted to give us the slip. But I determined, just to tease him, he
shouldn't get out of our sight as easily as he thought to.
The "gents' underwear" department, as I happened to have observed in the
morning, was on the State Street side, near the door which we had just
entered. Nevertheless, our friend was leading us away from that part and
seemed to prefer the most crowded aisles, where "ladies' goods" were
displayed. At the glove counter there was a press of women who were
trying to get near a heap of ninety-eight-cent gloves. Our guide was
just ahead of us at this point, and near his elbow I noticed an old
gentleman and a young lady. The latter, who was trying on a pair of
gloves, kept asking the old gentleman a string of questions. He was
smiling at her without taking the trouble to reply. The girl was pretty
and nicely dressed, and I suppose I must have looked at her hard, for
she suddenly glanced up at me and then turned her back and faced the
counter. As she turned I noticed something white drop from her hand, and
I pressed closer to her to pick it up. It was a little handkerchief. As
I reached down I saw a thin hand stretch out around the young lady's
waist and then give a little jerk. I had just straightened myself with
the handkerchief in my fingers when I heard the young lady exclaim:--
"Father! My purse has gone!"
"Why, why!" the old man stammered. "Your purse has gone? Where could it
have gone to?"
Just then some one grabbed my arm, and a voice said in my ear:--
"Not so slick as that, young feller!"
A man who looked like an official of the store had hold of me.
"Don't make any fuss, and hand over that lady's purse," he added in a
low voice.
"I haven't got her purse. I was just going to give her this
handkerchief, which I saw her drop," I protested, holding up the silly
thing I had picked from the floor.
"That's all right," the man said with a grin. "And now hand over the
purse, too."
He began to feel my pockets, and, of course, I resented his familiarity,
and, like a country jake, kicked up a muss then and there. A crowd began
to collect. The floor-manager rushed up at this point, and between them
I was hustled across the store and into one of the private offices. The
first thing I heard when I got there was the old gentleman just behind
me, stuttering, too much excited to talk plain.
"Yes, yes, my daughter's purse! She just lost it!"
"That's all right," I said. "And I saw the fellow who took it...."
"I saw this man take it," I heard the girl say to the manager.
"Yes, yes, my daughter saw the thief take her purse," the old man put in
excitedly.
"I was watching him all the time," said the man who had laid hold of me
first. "He came in at the State Street entrance a few minutes ago with a
green one and an old sneak. I didn't think he had the time to pass the
stuff over."
I was cool now, and laughed as the manager and the detective went
through my pockets carefully.
"The old one's got the stuff fast enough," the detective remarked
disgustedly. "Shall we have this one locked up, Mr. Marble?"
"You'll do it at your risk!" I put in loudly.
"Where's the young woman?" the manager demanded.
"It happened just while my daughter was buying a pair of gloves," the
old man began to chatter. "You were asking me, my love...."
The young woman looked a little confused, I thought, and not so sure of
herself. But she answered the manager's questions by saying promptly:--
"He must have taken it!"
"You saw him?" the detective questioned.
"Yes--I must have seen him--I saw him, of course!"
"I don't believe you could have seen me, ma'am," I said with a grin,
"for you had just turned your back on me."
"How did you know that?" she asked triumphantly.
"I know it because when I first began to look at you, you didn't like
it, and so you turned your back on me to show it."
"You know too much, young man," the manager remarked. "You'll prosecute
him?" he added, turning to the old man.
"Prosecute? Why, yes, of course," he stammered; "though, if he hasn't
the purse--"
"Come on, m'boy," the detective said to me. "You and I'll take a stroll
down the street and find a good night's lodging for you."
* * * * *
That was before the day of patrol wagons. So the detective locked his
right arm securely in my left, and in this intimate fashion we walked
through the streets to the police station.
When we reached that foul-smelling pen we were kept waiting by a large
"order" that had just been rounded up from a gambling-house in the
neighborhood. There were about twenty men and women in this flock. They
were filing, one by one, before the desk-sergeant. I had never heard
such a family gathering of names. They were all Smiths, Browns, and
Joneses, and they all lived a good way from town, out in the
fifty-hundreds, where there are many vacant lots. At the end of the file
there was a little unshaven Jew, who seemed very mad about it all. He
was the only one who had any money; he gave up a fat roll of bills that
took the officer some time to count.
"I know who did this!" the Jew sputtered at the man behind the desk.
"And I can make it hot for some of youse, all right."
"That's good," the sergeant replied pleasantly. "Another time you'll
have the sense to know when you are well off."
I thought this was fatherly advice addressed to the Jew for his moral
health. I congratulated myself that I had fallen into clean hands. So
when my turn came, I said to the desk-sergeant confidentially:--
"I am quite innocent!"
"Is that so, m'son?" he remarked pleasantly.
"They haven't any right to arrest me. I was--"
"Of course, of course! Keep all that for his Honor to-morrow morning.
What's your name, m'son?"
"E.V. Harrington," I replied quite innocently.
"And where do you hail from?"
"Jasonville, Indiana."
It did not occur to me then that, guilty or innocent, it made no
difference after I had given my real name and home. Thanks to the
enterprise of metropolitan journalism, the folks in Jasonville, Indiana,
would be reading at their breakfast to-morrow morning all about how Van
Harrington had been taken up as a thief.
"Here!" the fat sergeant called out to one of the officers, after I had
handed over to his care the few odds and ends that I still had about me;
"show the gent from Indiany to number twelve."
CHAPTER II
THE HARRISON STREET POLICE COURT
_A night in jail--A rapid-fire judge--The young lady is not so
positive--The psychology of justice--What's the matter with
Jasonville?--I tell my story to his Honor_
[Illustration: _Feeling that I had come to the end of things in Chicago
mighty quick._]
There was a greasy bench at one end of number twelve, where I sat myself
down, feeling that I had come to the end of things in Chicago mighty
quick. A measly gas-jet above the door showed what a stinking hole I had
got myself into. I could hear the gambling party across the way,
laughing and talking, taking their lot rather easily. Pretty soon a man
was put into the cell next mine. He kept groaning about his head. "My
head!" he would say, "oh, my head! My head! oh, my head!" until I
thought my own head was going wrong.
I wondered what had become of Hostetter. Apparently he had cleared out
when he saw his chance friend getting into trouble. Perhaps he thought I
had been working with our smooth acquaintance all along. Then I thought
what a fool I had been to give my real name and home to the
desk-sergeant. To-morrow the wise ones down in Jasonville would be
calling Van Harrington bad names all over again, and thinking how clever
they had been.
Some bad-smelling mess was shoved at me for supper, but I had no stomach
for food, good or bad. The jail quieted down after a time, but I
couldn't sleep. My mind was full of the past, of everything that had
happened to me from the beginning. Only forty-eight hours before I had
been tramping my way into the city, as keen as a hungry steer for all
the glory I saw there ahead of me under the bank of smoke that was
Chicago. Boylike, I had looked up at the big packing-houses, the
factories, the tall elevators that I passed, and thought how one day I
should be building my fortune out of them as others had built theirs
before me. And the end of that boyish dream was this bed in a jail!
* * * * *
The next morning they hustled us all into court. I was crowded into the
pen along with some of the numerous Smiths and Joneses who hadn't been
able to secure bail the night before. These were disposed of first in
the way of routine business, together with a few drunks and
disorderlies. There were also in the pen some sickly-looking fellows
who had been taken up for smoking opium in a Chinese cellar, a woman in
whose house there had been a robbery, and a well-dressed man with a
bandage over one eye. He must have been my neighbor of the bad head.
The court room was pretty well jammed with these prisoners, the police
officers, and a few loafers. The air smelled like a sewer, and the
windows were foul with dirt. The judge was a good-looking, youngish man,
with a curling black mustache, and he wore a diamond-studded circlet
around his necktie. Behind the judge on the platform sat the young woman
whose purse I was accused of stealing, and her father. She saw me when I
was brought into the pen, but tried not to let me know it, looking away
all the time.
When I arrived on the scene the judge was administering an oath to a
seedy-looking man, who kissed eagerly the filthy Bible and began to
mumble something in a hurry to the judge.
"Yes, I know that pipe dream," his Honor interrupted pleasantly. "Now,
tell me the straight story of what you have been doing since you were
here last week."
"You insult me, Judge," the prisoner replied haughtily. "I'm an educated
man, a graduate of a great institution of learning. You know your
Horace, Judge?"
"Not so well as the revised statutes of the state of Illinois," his
Honor snapped back with what I thought was a lack of respect for
learning. "Two months. Next!"
"Why, Judge--"
There was a titter in the court room as the graduate of a great
university was led from the pen. His Honor, wearing the same easy smile,
was already listening to the next case. He flecked off a stray particle
of soot that had lodged on the big pink in his buttonhole as he remarked
casually:--
"Is that so? Twenty-five dollars. It will be fifty the next time."
The judge nodded blandly to the prisoner and turned to my neighbor of
the night, the man who had had so much trouble with his head. I was
getting very uneasy. That smiling gentleman up there on the bench seemed
to have his mind made up about most folks beforehand, and it didn't seem
to be favorably inclined this morning. I was beginning to wonder how
many months he had me down for already. It didn't add to my peace of
mind to see him chatting genially with the old gentleman and his
daughter as he listened to the poor criminals at the bar.
His Honor went on disposing of the last cases at a rapid rate, with a
smile, a nod, a joke--and my time was coming nearer. The sweat rolled
down my cheeks. I couldn't keep my eyes off the young lady's face;
somehow I felt that she was my only hope of safety. Finally the judge
leaned back in his chair and smelled at his pink, as if he had 'most
finished his morning's work.
The clerk called, "Edward V. Harrington." I jumped.
"Well, Edward?" the judge inquired pleasantly as I stood before him.
"The first time we have had the pleasure, I believe?"
I mumbled something, and the store detective began to tell his story.
"Is that it, Doctor?" the judge asked the old man.
"Why, I suppose so--I don't know. He was caught in the act, wasn't he?"
Then, as the old man sat down, he added peevishly: "At least, that's
what my daughter says, and she ought to know. It was her purse, and she
got me down here this morning."
"How about it, miss?" the judge asked quickly, wheeling his chair the
other way and smiling at the young lady. "Did you see the prisoner here
take your purse?"
"Why, of course--" She was just going to say "yes" when her eyes caught
mine for a moment, and she hesitated. "No, I didn't exactly see him,
but--" her look swept haughtily over my head. "But he was very close to
me and was stooping down just as I felt a jerk at my belt. And then the
purse was gone. He must have taken it!"
"Stooping to beauty, possibly?" the judge suggested.
"Stooping to pick up the lady's handkerchief, which I saw her drop," I
ventured to put in, feeling that in another moment I should find myself
blown into prison with a joke.
"Oh! So you were picking up the lady's handkerchief? Very polite, I am
sure!" His Honor glared at me for an instant for the first time. "And
you thought you might as well take the purse, too? For a keepsake, eh?"
He had wheeled around to face me. A sentence was on his lips. I could
feel it coming, and hadn't an idea how to keep it back. I looked
helplessly at the young woman. Just as his Honor opened his mouth to
speak, she exclaimed:--
"Wait a moment! I am not sure--he doesn't look bad. I thought, Judge,
you could tell whether he had really taken my purse," she ended
reproachfully.
"Do you consider me a mind reader, miss?" the judge retorted, suspending
that sentence in mid-air.
"Let him say something! Let him tell his story," the young lady urged.
"Perhaps he isn't guilty, after all. I am sure he doesn't look it."'
"Why, Sarah!" the old gentleman gasped in astonishment. "You said this
morning at breakfast that you were sure he had stolen it."
Here the detective put in his oar.
"I know him and the one that was with him--they're old sneaks, your
Honor."
"That's a lie!" I said, finding my tongue at last.
"Good!" the judge exclaimed appreciatively. "I am inclined to think so,
too, Edward," he went on, adjusting his diamond circlet with one finger.
"This young lady thinks you have a story of your own. Have you?"
"Yes, I have, and a straight one," I answered, plucking up my courage.
"Of course," he grunted sarcastically. "Well, let's have it, but make it
short."
It did sound rather lame when I came to tell what I had done with myself
since I had entered the city. When I got to that part about the house
where Ed and I had been disturbed by thieves, the old gentleman broke
in:--
"Bless my soul! That must be the Wordens' house. The officer said there
were two suspicious characters who ran away up the boulevard. This
fellow must be one of them. Of course he took the purse! You know the
Wordens, don't you, Judge?"
His Honor merely nodded to the old gentleman, smiled at the young lady,
and said to me:--
"Go on, young man! Tell us why you left home in the first place."
I got red all over again at this invitation, and was taken with a new
panic.
"Who are your folks? What's the name of the place?" the judge asked
encouragingly.
"Jasonville, Indiana."
"What's the matter with Jasonville, Edward?" he asked more sharply. "Why
do you blush for it?"
"I had rather not tell with all these folks around," I answered, looking
at the young lady.
* * * * *
His Honor must have found something in my case a little out of his
ordinary experience, for he took me back into his own room. He got me
started on my story, and one thing led to another. His manner changed
all of a sudden: he no longer tried to be smart, and he seemed to have
plenty of time. After that long night in the jail I wanted to talk. So I
told his Honor just how it had been with me from the beginning.
CHAPTER III
JASONVILLE, INDIANA
_The Harringtons--The village magnate--A young hoodlum--On the road to
school--The first woman--Disgrace, and a girl's will--An unfortunate
coincidence--In trouble again--May loses faith--The end of
Jasonville--Discharged--A loan--Charity--The positive young lady
hopes I shall start right--The lake front once more--I preach myself
a good sermon_
The Harringtons were pretty well known in Greene County, Indiana. Father
moved to Jasonville just after the war, when the place was not much more
than a cross-roads with a prospect of a railroad sometime. Ours was the
first brick house, built after the kind he and mother used to know back
in York State. And he set up the largest general store in that district
and made money. Then he lost most of it when the oil boom first came.
Mother and he set great store by education,--if father hadn't gone to
the war he wouldn't have been keeping a country store,--and they helped
start the first township high school in our part of the state. And he
sent Will, my older brother, and me to the Methodist school at Eureka,
which was the best he could do for us. There wasn't much learning to be
had in Eureka "College," however; the two or three old preachers and
women who composed the faculty were too busy trying to keep the boys
from playing cards and smoking or chewing to teach us much.
Perhaps I was a bit of a hoodlum as a boy, anyway. The trouble started
with the judge--Judge Sorrell. He was a local light, who held a mortgage
on 'most everything in town (including our store--after father went into
oil). We boys had always heard at home how hard and mean the judge was,
and dishonest, too; for in some of the oil deals he had tricked folks
out of their property. It wasn't so strange, then, that we youngsters
took liberties with the judge's belongings that the older folks did not
dare to. The judge's fine stock used to come in from the field done up,
raced to death, and the orchard by the creek just out of town (which had
belonged to us once) rarely brought a good crop to maturity. We made
ourselves believe that the judge didn't really own it, and treated him
as a trespasser. So one night, when the judge made a hasty visit to our
house after one of the "raids," my father found me in bed with a wet
suit of clothes on, which I had been forced to sacrifice in the creek.
The end of that lark was that father had to pay a good sum for my
private interpretation of the laws of property, and I spent the rest of
the summer on a farm doing a man's work.
Perhaps if it hadn't been for that ducking in the river and what
followed, I might have come out just a plain thief. While I was sweating
on that farm I saw the folly of running against common notions about
property. I came to the conclusion that if I wanted what my neighbor
considered to be his, I must get the law to do the business for me. For
the first time it dawned on me how wonderful is that system which shuts
up one man in jail for taking a few dollars' worth of truck that doesn't
belong to him, and honors the man who steals his millions--if he robs in
the legal way! Yes, the old judge knocked some good worldly sense into
me.
(Nevertheless, old Sorrell needn't have hounded me after I came back to
Jasonville, and carried his malice to the point of keeping me from
getting a job when I was hoping to make a fair start so that I could ask
May Rudge to marry me. But all that was some time later.)
May was one of that handful of young women who in those days stood being
sneered at for wanting to go to college with their brothers. We were in
the same classes at Eureka two years before I noticed her much. She was
little and pale and delicate--with serious, cold gray eyes, and a mouth
that was always laughing at you. I can see to-day the very spot where
she stood when I first spoke to her. Good weather I used to drive over
from father's to Eureka, and one spring morning I happened to drive by
the Rudge farm on my way to school instead of taking the pike, which was
shorter. There was a long level stretch of road straightaway between two
pieces of green meadow, and there, ahead of me, I saw the girl, walking
steadily, looking neither to the right nor to the left. I slowed up with
the idea that she might give me a nod or a word; but she kept her pace
as though she were thinking of things too far off to notice a horse and
buggy on the road. Somehow I wanted to make her speak. Pretty soon I
said:--
"Won't you ride to school with me, Miss May?"
Then she turned her head, not the least flustered like other girls, and
looked me square in the eye for a minute. I knew she was wondering what
made me speak to her then, for the boys at school never took notice of
the college girls. But she got into the buggy and sat prim and solemn by
my side. We jogged along between the meadows, which were bright with
flowers and the soft, green grass of spring. The big timber along the
roadside and between the pasture lands had just leaved out, and the long
branches hung daintily in the misty morning air. All of a sudden I felt
mighty happy to be there with her. I think her first words were,--"Do
you come this way often?"
"Perhaps I shall be coming this way oftener now," I made bold to answer.
Her lips trembled in a little ironical smile, and the least bit of red
sprang into her white face. I said, "It isn't as short as the pike, but
it is a prettier road."
The smile deepened, and I had it on my tongue to add, "I shall be coming
this way every morning if you will ride with me." But I was afraid of
that smiling mouth.
(Of course I didn't tell his Honor all this, but I add it now, together
with other matters that concern me and belong here. It will help to
explain what happened later.)
So that fine spring morning, when I was seventeen, I first took note of
what a woman is. The rest of that year I used to drive the prim little
girl back and forth between her father's farm and school. I was no
scholar like her, and she never went about with the other girls to
parties. She wasn't in the least free and easy with the boys. In those
days most girls didn't think much of a fellow who wouldn't take his
chances to kiss them when he could. Evenings, when we called, we used to
pull the parlor door to and sit holding hands with the young woman of
our admiration. And no harm ever came of it that I know: most of those
girls made good wives when the time came, for all they were easy and
tender and ready to make love in the days of their youth.
But once, when I tried to put my arm about May Rudge, as we were driving
along the lonely road, she turned and looked at me out of those cold
gray eyes. Her mouth rippled in that little ironical way, as if she were
laughing down in her mind. She never said a word or pulled away from me,
but I didn't care to go on.
May gave me ambition, and she made me want to be steady and good, though
she never said anything about it. But now and then I would break away
and get myself into some fool scrape. Such was the time when I came back
from a Terre Haute party pretty light-headed, and went with some others
to wake up the old Methodist president of the college. I don't remember
what happened then, but the next morning at chapel the old boy let loose
on "wine and wantoning," and called me by name. I knew that I had done
for myself at Eureka, and I was pretty mad to be singled out for
reprobation from all the offenders. I got up from my seat and walked
out while the school stared. As I was getting my horse from the place
where I kept it, May Rudge came into the yard.
"You aren't going this way?" she demanded quickly.
"I don't see as there's much use waiting for bouquets."
"You aren't going without apologizing!" she flashed out.
To tell the truth, that had never occurred to me. It seemed she cared
less for the disgrace than for the way I took it. So in the end, before
I left town, I drove up to the president's house, apologized, and got my
dismissal in due form, and was told I should go to hell unless I was
converted straightway. Then May drove down the street with me in face of
the whole school, who contrived to be there to see my departure.
[Illustration: _I believe she would have let me kiss her had I wanted to
then._]
"I guess this ends my education, and being a lawyer, and all that," I
said gloomily, as we drew near the Rudge farm. "Dad will never forgive
this. He thinks rum is the best road to hell, the same as the old
preacher. He won't sell a glass of cider in the store."
"There are other kinds of work," she answered. "You can show them just
the same you know what's right."
"But you'll never marry a man who isn't educated," I said boldly.
"I'll never marry a man who hasn't principles--and religion," she
replied without a blush.
"So I must be good and pious, as well as educated?"
"You must be a man"--and her lips curved ironically--"and now you are
just a boy."
But I held her hand when I helped her from the buggy, and I believe she
would have let me kiss her had I wanted to then.
[Illustration: _Earning mighty little but my keep._]
Father and mother took my expulsion from school very hard, as I
expected. Father especially--who had begun to brag somewhat at the store
about my being a lawyer and beating the judge out--was so bitter that I
told him if he would give me fifty dollars I would go off somewhere and
never trouble him again.
"You ask me to give you fifty dollars to go to hell with!" he shouted
out.
"Put me in the store, then, and let me earn it. Give me the same money
you give Will."
But father didn't want me around the store for folks to see. So I had to
go out to a farm once more, to a place that father was working on shares
with a Swede. I spent the better part of two years on that farm, living
with the old Swede, and earning mighty little but my keep. For father
gave me a dollar now and then, but no regular wages. I could get sight
of May only on a Sunday. She was teaching her first school in another
county. Father and mother Rudge had never liked me: they looked higher
for May than to marry a poor farm-hand, who had a bad name in the town.
My brother Will, who was a quiet, church-going fellow, had learned his
way to the Rudge place by this time, and the old people favored him.
After a while I heard of a chance in a surveyor's office at Terre Haute,
but old Sorrell, who had more business than any ten men in that part of
the country, met the surveyor on the train, and when I reached the
office there wasn't any job for me. That night, when I got back from
Terre Haute, I told my folks that I was going to Chicago. The next day I
asked my father again for some money. Mother answered for him:--
"Will don't ask us for money. It won't be fair to him."
"So he's to have the store and my girl too," I said bitterly.
"May Rudge isn't the girl to marry a young man who's wild."
"I'll find that out for myself!"
Always having had a pretty fair opinion of myself, I found it hard to be
patient and earn good-will by my own deserts. So I said rather foolishly
to father:--
"Will you give me a few dollars to start me with? I have earned it all
right, and I am asking you for the last time."
It was a kind of threat, and I am sorry enough for it now. I suspect he
hadn't the money, for things were going badly with him. He answered
pretty warmly that I should wait a long time before he gave me another
dollar to throw away. I turned on my heel without a word to him or
mother, and went out of the house with the resolve not to return.
But before I left Jasonville to make my plunge into the world I would
see May Rudge. I wanted to say to her: "Which will you have? Choose
now!" So I turned about and started for the Rudge farm, which was about
a mile from the town, beyond the old place on the creek that used to
belong to us. Judge Sorrell had put up a large new barn on the place,
where he kept some fine blooded stock that he had been at considerable
expense to import. I had never been inside the barn, and as I passed it
that afternoon, it came into my mind, for no particular reason, to turn
in at the judge's farm and go by the new building. Maybe I thought the
old judge would be around somewhere, and I should have the chance
before I left Jasonville to tell him what I thought of his dirty,
sneaking ways.
But there was no one in the big barn, apparently, or anywhere on the
place, and after looking about for a little I went on to May's. I came
up to the Rudge farm from the back, having taken a cut across the
fields.
As I drew near the house I saw Will and May sitting under an apple tree
talking. I walked on slowly, my anger somehow rising against them both.
There was nothing wrong in their being there--nothing at all; but I was
ready to fire at the first sign. By the looks of it, mother was right:
they were already sweethearts. Will seemed to have something very
earnest to say to May. He took hold of one of her hands, and she didn't
draw it away at once.... There wasn't anything more to keep me in
Jasonville.
I kept right on up the country road, without much notion of where I was
going to, too hot and angry to think about anything but those two under
the apple tree. I had not gone far before I heard behind me a great
rushing noise, like the sudden sweep of a tornado, and then a following
roar. I looked up across the fields, and there was the judge's fine new
barn one mass of red flame and black smoke. It was roaring so that I
could hear it plainly a quarter of a mile away. Naturally, I started to
run for the fire, and ran hard all the way across the fields. By the
time I got there some men from town had arrived and were rushing around
crazily. But they hadn't got out the live stock, and there was no chance
now to save a hen. The judge drove up presently, and we all stood
around and stared at the fire. After a time I began to think it was time
for me to move on if I was to get to any place that night. I slipped off
and started up the road once more. I hadn't gone far, however, before I
was overtaken by a buggy in which was one of the men who had been at the
fire.
"Where be yer goin', Van?" he asked peremptorily.
"I don't know as I am called on to tell you, Sam," I answered back.
"Yes, you be," he said more kindly. "I guess you'll have to jump right
in here, anyways, and ride back with me. The judge wants to ask you a
few questions about this here fire."
"I don't answer any of the judge's questions!" I replied sharply enough,
not yet seeing what the man was after. But he told me bluntly enough
that I was suspected of setting fire to the barn, and drove me back to
the town, where I stayed in the sheriff's custody until my uncle came
late that night and bailed me out. Will was with him. Father didn't want
me to come home, so Will let me understand. Neither he nor my uncle
thought I was innocent, but they hoped that there might not be enough
evidence to convict me. Some one on the creek road had seen me going
past the barn a little time before the fire was discovered, and that was
the only ground for suspecting me.
The next morning I got my uncle (who wouldn't trust me out of his sight)
to drive me over to the Rudge place. He sat in the team while I went up
to the house and knocked. I was feeling pretty desperate in my mind,
but if May would only believe my story, I shouldn't care about the
others. She would understand quick enough why I never appeared at the
farm the day before. Old man Rudge came to the door, and when he saw me,
he drew back and asked me what my business was.
[Illustration: "_I guess she don't want much to see you._"]
"I want to see May," I said.
"I guess she don't want much to see you."
"I must see her."
The sound of our voices brought Mrs. Rudge from the kitchen.
"Mother," old Rudge said, "Van wants to see May."
"Well, Cyrus, it won't do any harm, I guess."
When May came to the door she waited for me to speak.
"I want to tell you, May," I said slowly, "that I didn't have any hand
in burning the judge's barn."
"I don't want to believe you did," she said.
"But you do all the same!" I cried sharply.
"Every one says you did, Van," she answered doubtfully.
"So you think I could do a mean, sneaky thing like that?" I replied
hotly, and added bitterly: "And then not have sense enough to get out of
the way! Well, I know what this means: you and Will have put your heads
together. You're welcome to him!"
"You've no reason to say such things, Van!" she exclaimed.
"There ain't no use in you talking with my girl, Harrington," put in
Rudge, who had come back to the door. "And I don't want you coming here
any more."
"How about that, May?" I asked. "Do you tell me to go?"
Her lips trembled, and she looked at me more kindly. Perhaps in another
moment she would have answered and not failed me. But hot and heady as I
was by nature, and smarting from all that had happened, I wanted a ready
answer: I would not plead for myself.
"So you won't take my word for it?" I said, turning away.
"The word of a drunkard and a good-for-nothing!" the old man fired after
me.
"Oh, father! don't," I heard May say. Then perhaps she called my name.
But I was at the gate, and too proud to turn back.
I was discharged the next week. Although there was nothing against me
except the fact that I had been seen about the barn previous to the
fire, and the well-known enmity between me and the judge, it would have
gone hard with me had it not been for the fact that in the ruins of the
burned barn they found the remains of an old farm-hand, who had probably
wandered in there while drunk and set the place on fire with his pipe.
When I was released my uncle said the folks were ready to have me back
home; but without a word I started north on the county road in the
direction of the great city.
* * * * *
"So," said his Honor, when I had finished my story in the dingy chamber
of the police court, "you want me to believe that you really had no hand
in firing that barn any more than you took this lady's purse?"
But he smiled to himself, at his own penetration, I suppose, and when we
were back in the court room that dreaded sentence fell from his lips
like a shot,--"Officer, the prisoner is discharged."
"I knew he was innocent!" the young lady exclaimed the next instant.
"But, Judge, where is the purse and my friend Worden's fur coat?" the
old gentleman protested.
"You don't see them about him, do you, Doctor?" the judge inquired
blandly. Then he turned to me: "Edward, I think that you have told me an
honest story. I hope so."
He took a coin from his pocket.
"Here's a dollar, my boy. Buy a ticket for as far as this will take
you, and walk the rest of the way home."
"I guess I have come to Chicago to stay," I answered. "They aren't
breaking their hearts over losing me down home."
"Well, my son, as you think best. In this glorious Republic it is every
man's first privilege to take his own road to hell. But, at any rate,
get a good dinner to start on. We don't serve first-class meals here."
"I'll return this as soon as I can," I said, picking up the coin.
"The sooner the better; and the less we see of each other in the future,
the better, eh?"
I grinned, and started for the door through which I had been brought
into court, but an officer pointed to another door that led to the
street. As I made for it I passed near the young lady. She called to
me:--
"Mister, mister, what will you do now?"
"Get something to eat first, and then look for another purse, perhaps,"
I replied.
She blushed very prettily.
"I am sorry I accused you, but you were looking at me so hard just
then--I thought.... I want you to take this!"
She tried to give me a bill rolled up in a little wad.
"No, thanks," I said, moving off.
"But you may need it. Every one says it's so hard to find work."
"Well, I don't take money from a woman."
"Oh!" She blushed again.
Then she ran to the old gentleman, who was talking to the judge, and got
from him a little black memorandum-book.
[Illustration: "_I want you to take this._"]
"You see, my cards were all in the purse. But there!" she said, writing
down her name and address on the first page. "You will know now where to
come in case you need help or advice."
"Thank you," I replied, taking the book.
"I do so want to help you to start right and become a good man," she
said timidly. "Won't you try to show your friends that they were
mistaken in you?"
She turned her eyes up at me appealingly as if she were asking it as a
favor to her. I felt foolish and began to laugh, but stopped, for she
looked hurt.
"I guess, miss, it don't work quite that way. Of course, I mean to
start fresh--but I shan't do it even for your sake. All the same, when
you see me next it won't be in a police station."
"That's right!" she exclaimed, beaming at me with her round blue eyes.
"I should like to feel that I hadn't hurt you--made you worse."
"Oh, you needn't worry about that, miss. I guess I'm not much worse off
for a night in the police station."
She held out her hand and I took it.
"Sarah! Sarah!" the old gentleman called as we were shaking hands. He
seemed rather shocked, but the judge looked up at us and smiled
quizzically.
* * * * *
Outside it was a warm, pleasant day; the wind was blowing merrily
through the dirty street toward the blue lake. For the moment I did not
worry over what was to come next. The first thing I did was to get a
good meal.
After that refreshment I sauntered forth in the direction of the lake
front--the most homelike place I could think of. The roar of the city
ran through my head like the clatter of a mill. I seemed to be just a
feeble atom of waste in the great stream of life flowing around me.
When I reached the desolate strip of weeds and sand between the avenue
and the railroad, the first relay of bums was beginning to round up for
the night. The sight of their tough faces filled me with a new disgust;
I turned back to the busy avenue, where men and women were driving to
and fro with plenty to do and think, and then and there I turned on
myself and gave myself a good cussing. Here I was more than twenty, and
just a plain fool, and had been ever since I could remember. When I had
rid myself of several layers of conceit it began to dawn on me that this
was a world where one had to step lively if he wasn't to join the ranks
of the bums back there in the sand. That was the most valuable lot of
thinking I ever did in my life. It took the sorehead feeling of wronged
genius out of me for good and all. Pretty soon I straightened my back
and started for the city to find somewhere a bite of food and a roof to
cover my head.
And afterward there would be time to think of conquering the world!
CHAPTER IV
THE PIERSONS
_A familiar face--A hospitable roof--The Pierson family, and
others--The Enterprise Market, and ten dollars a week--Miss Hillary
Cox--Crape--From the sidewalk--The company of successful
adventurers--The great Strauss_
"Hello! Here you be! Ain't I glad I found yer this soon," and Ed's brown
eyes were looking into mine. His seemed to me just then about the best
face in the world. "Seems though I was bound to be chasin' some one in
this city!" he shouted, grabbing me by the arm. "But I've found all of
'em now."
He had missed me at the police station by a few minutes, and I had left
no address. After looking up and down a few streets near by, Ed had
thought of lying in wait for me on the lake front, feeling that unless
some extraordinary good luck had happened to me I should bring up at
that popular resort. He had not seen the little incident when the
detective grabbed me in the great store, for just at that moment his
attention had been attracted to a girl at one of the counters, who had
called him by name. The girl, who was selling perfumes and tooth-washes,
turned out to be his cousin Lou, his Aunt Pierson's younger daughter.
After the surprise of their meeting Ed had looked for me, and the
floor-walker told them of my misfortune. Then the cousin had made Ed go
home with her. Mrs. Pierson, it seems, took in boarders in her
three-story-and-basement house on West Van Buren Street. She and the two
girls had given Ed a warm welcome, and for the first time in many days
he had had the luxury of a bed, which had caused him to oversleep, and
miss me at the station.
[Illustration: "_Ma Pierson's._"]
All this I learned as we walked westward toward Ed's new home. At first
I was a little shy about putting another burden on the boy's relations.
But my friend would not hear of letting me go. When Ed tucked his arm
under mine and hauled me along with country heartiness, saying I could
share his bed and he had a job in view for us both, I felt as though the
sun had begun to shine all over again that day. Through all the
accidents of many years I have never forgotten that kindness, and my
heart warms afresh when I stop to think how Ed grabbed my arm and pulled
me along with him off those city streets....
So it happened at dinner-time that night I found myself in the basement
dining room and made my first bow to some people who were to be near me
for a number of years--one or two of them for life. I can remember just
how they all looked sitting about the table, which was covered with a
mussed red table-cloth, and lit by a big, smelly oil lamp. Pa Pierson
sat at the head of the table, an untidy, gray-haired old man, who gave
away his story in every line of his body. He had made some money in his
country store back in Michigan; but the ambition to try his luck in the
city had ruined him. He had gone broke on crockery. He was supposed to
be looking for work, but he spent most of his time in this basement
dining room, warming himself at the stove and reading the boarders'
papers.
The girls and the boy, Dick, paid him even less respect than they did
their mother. They were all the kind of children that don't tolerate
much incompetence in their parents. Dick was a putty-faced, black-haired
cub, who scrubbed blackboards and chewed gum in a Board of Trade man's
office. Neither he nor his two sisters, who were also working downtown,
contributed much to the house, and except that now and then Grace, the
older one, would help clean up the dishes in a shamefaced way, or bring
the food on the table when the meal was extra late or she wanted to get
out for the evening, not one of the three ever raised a finger to help
with the work. The whole place, from kitchen to garret, fell on poor old
Ma Pierson, and the boarders were kinder to her than her own children.
Lank and stooping, short-sighted, with a faded, tired smile, she came
and went between the kitchen and the dining room, cooking the food and
serving it, washing the dishes, scrubbing the floors, and making the
beds--I never saw her sit down to the table with us except one Christmas
Day, when she was too sick to cook. She took her fate like an Indian,
and died on the steps of her treadmill.
There were two other regular boarders besides myself and Ed--a man and a
woman. The latter, Miss Hillary Cox, was cashier in the New Enterprise
Market, not far from the house. She was rather short and stout, with
thick ropes of brown hair that she piled on her head in a solid mass to
make her look tall. She had bright little eyes, and her rosy face showed
that she had not been long in the city.
The man was a long, lean, thin-faced chap, somewhat older than I was.
His name was Jaffrey Slocum; he was studying law and doing stenographic
work in a law office in the city. When I first looked at him I thought
that he would push his way over most of the rocks in the road--and he
did. Slocum was a mighty silent man, but little passed before his eyes
without his knowing what it meant. I learned later that he came from a
good Maine family, and had been to college in the East. And he had it
much on his mind to do several things with his life--the first of which
was to buy back the old home in Portland, and put his folks there where
they belonged. Old Sloco, we called him! For all his slow, draggy ways
he had pounds of pressure on the gauge. He and I have fought through
some big fights since then, and there's no man I had as soon have beside
me in a scrap as that thin-faced, scrawny-necked old chip of Maine
granite.
* * * * *
When Ed introduced me at the table, Grace made a place beside her, and
her sister Lou hospitably shoved over a plate of stew. Then Lou smiled
at me and opened fire:--
"We read all about you in the papers this morning, Mr. Harrington!"
"Heh, heh!" Pa Pierson cackled.
"Say, Lou, I don't call that polite," Grace protested in an affected
tone.
"Don't mind me," I called out. "I guess I'm a public character, anyway."
"What did the lady say when she found she was wrong?" Lou went on. "I
should think she'd want to die, doing a mean thing like that."
"Did she give you any little souvenir of the occasion?" Dick inquired.
"If they are real nice folks, I should think they'd try to make it up
some way," Grace added.
"But what we want to know first," Slocum drawled gravely, "is, did you
take the purse, and, if so, where did you put it?"
"Why, Mr. Slocum!" Miss Cox sputtered, not catching the joke. "What a
thing to insinuate! I am sure Mr. Harrington doesn't look like that--any
one could see he wouldn't _steal_."
In this way they passed me back and forth, up and down the table, until
the last scrap of meat was gnawed from the bone. Then they sniffed at
Jasonville. Where was it? What did I do there? Why did I come to the
city? Miss Cox was the sharpest one at the questions. She wanted to know
all about my father's store. She had already got Ed a place as delivery
clerk in the Enterprise Market, and there might be an opening in the
same store for me. I could see that there would be a place all right if
I met the approval of the smart little cashier. It has never been one of
my faults to be backward with women,--all except May,--and as Miss
Hillary Cox was far from unprepossessing, I fixed my attention on her
for the rest of the evening.
The Pierson girls tired of me quickly enough, as they had already tired
of Ed. Lou soon ceased to smile at me and open her eyes in her silly
stare when I made a remark. After dinner she went out on the steps to
wait for a beau, who was to take her to a dance. Grace sat awhile to
chaff with the lawyer's clerk. He seemed to make fun of her, but I could
see that he liked her pretty well. (It must be a stupid sort of woman,
indeed, who can't get hold of a man when he has nothing to do after his
work except walk the streets or read a book!) There was nothing bad in
either of the girls: they were just soft, purring things, shut up all
day long, one in a big shop and the other in a dentist's office. Of
course, when they got home, they were frantic for amusement, dress, the
theatre--anything bright and happy; anything that would make a change.
They had a knack of stylish dressing, and on the street looked for all
the world like a rich man's daughters. Nothing bad in either one,
then--only that kind gets its eyes opened too late!...
The next morning I stepped around to the Enterprise Market, and Miss Cox
introduced me to the proprietors. They were two brothers, sharp-looking
young men, up-to-date in their ideas, the cashier had told me, and bound
to make the Enterprise the largest market on the West Side. Miss Cox had
evidently said a good word for me, and that afternoon I found myself
tying up parcels and taking orders at ten dollars a week.
Not a very brilliant start on fortune's road, but I was glad enough to
get it. The capable cashier kept a friendly eye on me, and saved me from
getting into trouble. Before long I had my pay raised, and then raised
again. Ed had taken hold well, too, and was given more pay. He was more
content with his job than I was. The work suited him--the driving about
the city streets, the rush at the market mornings, the big crates of
country stuff that came smelling fresh from the fields. The city was all
that he had hoped to find it. Not so to me--I looked beyond; but I
worked hard and took my cues from the pretty cashier, who grew more
friendly every day. We used to go to places in the evenings,--lectures
and concerts mostly,--for Miss Cox thought the theatre was wicked. She
was a regular church attendant, and made me go with her Sundays. She was
thrifty, too, and taught me to be stingy with my quarters and halves.
[Illustration: _The Enterprise Market._]
The first day I could take off I went to the police station and paid my
loan from the judge. I had to wait an hour before I could speak to him,
while he ground out a string of drunks and assaults, shooting out his
sentences like a rapid-fire battery. When I finally got his attention,
he turned one eye on me:--
"Well, Edward, so you haven't gone home yet!" And that was all he said
as he dropped the coin into his pocket. (I hope that my paying back that
money made him merciful to the next young tramp that was cast up there
before him!)
After I had paid the judge I strolled down to the South Side, into the
new residence district, with some idea of seeing where the young lady
lived who had first had me arrested and then wanted to reform me. When I
came to the number she had written in the memorandum-book, there was a
piece of crape on the door. It gave me a shock. I hung around for a
while, not caring to disturb the people inside, and yet hoping to find
out that it was not the young lady who had died. Finally I came away,
having made up my mind, somehow, that it was the young lady, and feeling
sorry that she was gone. That night I opened the memorandum-book she had
given me, and began a sort of diary in a cramped, abbreviated hand. The
first items read as follows:--
_September 30._ Giv. this book by young la. who tho't I stole her purse.
She hopes I may take the right road.
_October 1._--Got job in Ent--mark., 1417 W. VanB St. $10. Is this the
right road?
_October 23._--Went to address young lad. gav. me. Found crape on the
door. Hope it's the old man.
* * * * *
From time to time since then I have taken out the little black
memorandum-book, and made other entries of those happenings in my life
that seemed to me especially important--sometimes a mere list of figures
or names, writing them in very small. It lies here before me now, and
out of these bare notes, keywords as it were, there rise before me many
facts,--the deeds of twenty-five years.
* * * * *
When I got back to the Piersons' for dinner, Miss Cox was curious to
know what I had done with my first day off.
"I bet he's been to see that girl who had him arrested," Lou suggested
mischievously. "And from the way he looks I guess she told him she
hadn't much use for a butcher-boy."
Pa Pierson laughed; he was a great admirer of his daughter's wit.
"I don't think he's that much of a fool, to waste his time trapesing
about after _her_," Hillary Cox snapped back.
"Well, I did look up the house," I admitted, and added, "but the folks
weren't at home."
After supper we sat out on the steps, and Hillary asked me what kind of
a place the young woman lived in. I told her about the crape on the
door, and she looked at me disgustedly.
"Why didn't you ask?" she demanded.
"I didn't care to know if it was so, perhaps."
"I don't see as you have any particular reason to care, one way or the
other," she retorted. And she went off for that evening somewhere with
Ed. For the want of anything better to do I borrowed a book from the law
student, who was studying in his room, and thus, by way of an accident,
began a habit of reading and talking over books with Slocum.
So I was soon fitted into my hole in the city. In that neighborhood
there must have been many hundreds of places like Ma Pierson's
boarding-house. The checker-board of prairie streets cut up the houses
like marble cake--all the same, three-story-and-mansard-roof, yellow
brick, with long lines of dirty, soft stone steps stretching from the
wooden sidewalks to the second stories. And the group of us there in the
little basement dining room, noisy with the rattle of the street cars,
and dirty with the smoke of factory chimneys in the rear, was a good
deal like the others in the other houses--strugglers on the outside of
prosperity, trying hard to climb up somewhere in the bread-and-butter
order of life, and to hold on tight to what we had got. No one, I
suppose, ever came to Chicago, at least in those days, without a hope in
his pocket of landing at the head of the game sometime. Even old Ma
Pierson cherished a secret dream of a rich marriage for one or other of
her girls!
Hillary Cox smiled on me again the next day, and we were as good friends
as ever. As I have said, the energetic cashier of the Enterprise Market
had taken me in hand and was forming me to be a business man. She was a
smart little woman, and had lots of good principles besides. She
believed in religion on Sundays, as she believed in business on week
days. So on the Sabbath morning we would leave Ed and Lou and Dick
Pierson yawning over the breakfast table, while Slocum and I escorted
Grace and Hillary downtown to hear some celebrated preacher in one of
the prominent churches. Hillary Cox had no relish for the insignificant
and humble in religion, such as we might have found around the corner.
She wanted the best there was to be had, she said, and she wanted to see
the people who were so much talked about in the papers.
Perhaps the rich and prominent citizens made more of a point of going to
church in those days than they do now. It was a pretty inferior church
society that couldn't show up two or three of the city's solid
merchants, who came every Sunday with their women, all dressed in their
smartest and best. Hillary and Grace seemed to know most of these people
by sight. Women are naturally curious about one another, and I suppose
the girls saw their pictures and learned their names in the newspapers.
And in this way I, too, learned to know by sight some of the men whom
later it was my fortune to meet elsewhere.
There was Steele, the great dry-goods merchant, and Purington, whose
works for manufacturing farming tools were just behind Ma Pierson's
house; Lardner, a great hardware merchant; Maybricks, a wholesale
grocer; York, a rich lumberman--most of them thin-faced, shrewd Yankees,
who had seized that tide of fate which the poet tells us sweeps men to
fortune. And there were others, perhaps less honorably known as
citizens, but equally important financially: Vitzer, who became known
later as the famous duke of gas, and Maxim, who already had begun to
stretch out his fingers over the street-car lines. This man had made his
money buying up tax titles, that one building cars, and another laying
out railroads, and wrecking them, too. They were the people of the land!
[Illustration: "_That's Strauss!_"]
One fine winter morning, as the four of us idled on the sidewalk
opposite a prominent South Side church that was discharging its
prosperous congregation into the street, Slocum nudged me and pointed to
a group of well-dressed people--two or three women and a short, stout,
smooth-shaven man--who were standing on the steps of the church,
surveying the scene and bowing to their neighbors.
"That's Strauss!"
It was not necessary to say more. Even in those days the great Strauss
had made his name as well known as that of the father of our country. He
it was who knew each morning whether the rains had fallen on the plains
beneath the Andes; how many cattle on the hoof had entered the gates of
Omaha and Kansas City; how tight the pinch of starvation set upon
Russian bellies; and whether the Sultan's subjects had bought their
bread of Liverpool. Flesh and grain, meat and bread--Strauss held them
in his hand, and he dealt them forth in the markets of the world!
Is it any wonder that I looked hard at the portly, red-faced man,
standing there on the steps of his temple, where, with his women and
children, he had been worshipping his God?
"My!" said Grace, "Mrs. Strauss is plain enough, and just
common-looking."
(I have noticed that women find it hard to reconcile themselves to a
rich man's early taste in their sex.)
"She don't dress very stylish, that's true," Hillary observed
thoughtfully. "But it weren't so very long ago, I guess, that she was
saving his money."
Strauss, surrounded by his women folk, marched up the avenue in solemn
order. We followed along slowly on the other side of the street.
"He didn't make his pile at the Enterprise Market," Grace remarked. She
spoke the idea that was in all our minds: how did he and the others make
their money?
"I guess they began like other folks," Hillary contended, "saving their
earnings and not putting all their money in their stomachs and on their
backs."
This last was aimed at Grace, who was pretty smartly dressed.
"Well," said Slocum, dryly, "probably by this time Strauss has something
more than his savings in the bank."
Thus we followed them down the street, speculating on the great packer's
success, on the success of all the fortunate ones in the great game of
the market, wondering what magic power these men possessed to lift
themselves out of the mass of people like ourselves. Pretty simple of
us, perhaps you think, hanging around on the street a good winter
morning and gossiping about our rich neighbors! But natural enough, too:
we had no place to loaf in, except Ma Pierson's smelly dining room, and
nothing to do with our Sunday holiday but to walk around the streets and
stare up at the handsome new houses and our well-dressed and prosperous
neighbors. Every keen boy who looks out on life from the city sidewalk
has a pretty vigorous idea that if he isn't as good as the next man, at
least he will make as much money if he can only learn the secret. We
read about the rich and their doings in the newspapers; we see them in
the streets; their horses and carriages flash by us--do you wonder that
some poor clerks on a Sunday gape at the Steeles and the Strausses from
the sidewalk?
What was the golden road? These men had found it--hundreds, thousands of
them,--farming tools, railroads, groceries, gas, dry-goods. It made no
matter what: fortunes were building on every side; the flowers of
success were blooming before our eyes. To take my place with these
mighty ones--I thought a good deal about that these days! And I remember
Grace saying sentimentally to Slocum that Sunday:--
"You fellers keep thinkin' of nothin' but money and how you're goin' to
make it. Perhaps rich folks ain't the only happy ones in the world."
"Yes," Hillary chimed in, "there's such a thing as being too greedy to
eat."
"What else are we here for except to make money?" Slocum demanded more
bitterly than usual.
He raised his long arm in explanation and swept it to and fro over the
straggling prairie city, with its rough, patched look. I didn't see what
there was in the city to object to: it was just a place like any
other--to work, eat, and sleep in. Later, however, when I saw the little
towns back East, the pleasant hills, the old homes in the valleys, and
the red-brick house on the elm-shaded street in Portland, then I knew
what Slocum meant.
Whatever was there in Chicago in 1877 to live for but Success?
CHAPTER V
A MAN'S BUSINESS
_Signs of trouble at the Enterprise--A possible partnership--He
travels fastest who travels alone--John Carmichael--Feeding the
peoples of the earth--I drive for Dround_
"Do you see that big, fat fellow talking with Mr. Joyce?" the cashier
whispered to me one morning as I passed her cage. "He's Dround's
manager--his name is Carmichael. When he shows up, there is trouble
coming to some one."
Dround & Co. was the name of the packing firm that the Enterprise dealt
with. I tied up my bundles and made up my cash account, thinking a good
deal about the appearance of the burly manager of the packing-house.
Pretty soon Mr. Carmichael came out into the front store very red in the
face, followed by the elder Joyce, who had been drinking, and they had
some words. The cashier winked at me.
The Enterprise had been doing a good business. It was run on a new
principle for those days--strictly cash and all cut prices, a cent off
here and there, a great sale of some one thing each day, which the house
handled speculatively. The brothers Joyce kept branching out, but there
wasn't any money to speak of behind the firm. The Drounds and a
wholesale grocer had backed it from the start. Nevertheless, we should
have got on all right if the elder Joyce had given up drinking and the
younger one had not taken to driving fast horses. Latterly no matter how
big a business we did, the profits went the wrong way.
That evening, as Hillary Cox and I walked over to the Piersons', she
said to me abruptly, "There's going to be a new sign at the Enterprise
before long!"
The smart little cashier must have divined the situation as I had.
"Cox's Market?" I suggested jokingly.
"Why not Harrington & Cox?" she retorted with a nervous little laugh. We
were on the steps then, and Ed joined us, so that I did not have to
answer her invitation. But all through the meal I kept thinking of her
suggestion. It was nearly two years since she had introduced me to the
Enterprise, and I had saved up several hundred dollars in the meantime,
which I wanted to put into some business of my own. But it did not quite
suit my card to run a retail market. After supper the others left us in
the dining room, and when we were alone Hillary said:--
"Well, what do you think of the firm name? It wouldn't be so impossible.
I've got considerable money saved up, and I guess you have some in the
bank, too. It wouldn't be the first time in this town that a clerk's
name followed a busted owner's over the door."
She spoke in a light kind of way, but a tone in her voice made me look
up. It struck me suddenly that this thing might mean a partnership for
life, as well as a partnership for meat and groceries. Hillary Cox was
an attractive woman, and she would make a splendid wife for a poor man,
doing her part to save his money. Between us, no doubt, we could make a
good business out of the old Enterprise, and more, too!
"That firm name sounds pretty well," I answered slowly, somewhat
embarrassed.
"Yes--I thought it pretty good."
Suddenly she turned her face shyly away from my eyes. She was a woman,
and a lovable, warm-hearted one. Perhaps she was dreaming of a home and
a family--of just that plain, ordinary happiness which our unambitious
fathers and mothers took out of life. I liked her all the better for it;
but when I tried to say something tender, that would meet her wish, I
couldn't find a word from my heart: there was nothing but a hollow
feeling inside me. And the thought came over me, hard and selfish, that
a man like me, who was bound on a long road, travels best alone.
"I don't know as I want to sell coffee and potatoes all my life," I said
at last, and my voice sounded colder than I meant to make it.
"Oh!" she gave a little gasp, as if some one had struck her. "You're
very ambitious, Mr. Harrington," she said coldly. "I hope you'll get all
you think you deserve, I am sure."
"Well, that wouldn't be much--only I am going to try for more than I
deserve--see?" I laughed as easily as I could.
We talked a little longer, and then she made some kind of excuse--we
had planned to go out that evening--and left me, bidding me good night
as if I were a stranger. I felt small and mean, yet glad, too, to speak
the truth--that I hadn't made a false step just there and pretended to
more than I could carry through.
Some time later Slocum looked in at the door, and, seeing me alone, came
into the room. He had a grim kind of smile on his face, as if he
suspected what had been happening.
"Where's Grace?" I asked him.
"Just about where your Hillary is," he answered dryly; "gone off with
another fellow."
I laughed. We looked at each other for some time.
"Well?" I said.
"He travels fastest who travels alone," he drawled, using the very words
that had been in my mind. "But it is a shame--Miss Cox is a nice woman."
"So is the other."
"Yes, but it can't be--or anything like it."
And the difference between us was that I believe he really cared.
* * * * *
So the Enterprise Market crumbled rapidly to its end, while I kept my
eye open for a landing-place when I should have to jump. One day I was
sent over to Dround's to see why our usual order of meats hadn't been
delivered. I was referred to the manager. Carmichael, as I have said,
was a burly, red-faced Irishman--and hot-tempered. His black hair stood
up all over his head, and when he moved he seemed to wrench his whole
big carcass with the effort. As I made my errand known to him, he
growled something at me. I gathered that he didn't think favorably of
the Enterprise and all that belonged thereto.
"They can't have any more," he said. "I told your boss so the last time
I was over."
I hung on, not knowing exactly what to say or do.
"I guess they must have it this time," I ventured after a while.
"'Guess they must have it'! Who are you?"
He thrust his big head over the top of his desk and looked at me, laying
his cigar down deliberately, as if he meant to throw me out of the
office for my impudence.
"Oh!" I said as easily as I could, "I'm one of their help."
"Well, my son, maybe you know better than I what they do with their
money? They don't pay us."
I knew he was trying to pump me about the Enterprise. I smiled and told
him nothing, but I got that order delivered. Once or twice more, having
been successful with the manager, I was sent on the same errand.
Carmichael swore at me, bullied me, and jollied me, as his mood happened
to be. Finally he said in earnest:--
"Joyce's got to the end of his rope, kid. You needn't come in here
again. The firm will collect in the usual way."
I had seen all along that this was bound to come, and had made up my
mind what I should do in the event.
"Do you hear?" the Irishman roared. "What are you standing there for?
Get along and tell your boss I'll put a sheriff over there."
"I guess I have come to stay," I replied easily.
"Come to stay?" he said with a grin. "How much, kid?"
[Illustration: _"Do you hear?" the Irishman roared._]
"All you will give me."
"What are you getting?"
"Twenty."
"I'll give you fifteen to drive a wagon," he said offhand, "and I'll
fire you in a week if you haven't anything better with you than your
cheek."
"All right," I said coolly, not letting him see that I was ruffled by
his rough tongue.
In that way I made the second round of the ladder, and went whistling
out of Dround's packing-house into the murky daylight of the Stock
Yards.
[Illustration: _My part was to drive a wagon for Dround at fifteen a
week._]
I liked it all. Something told me that here was my field--this square
plot of prairie, where is carried on the largest commissariat business
of the world. In spite of its filth and its ugly look, it fired my blood
to be a part of it. There's something pretty close to the earth in all
of us, if we have the stomach to do the world's work: men of bone and
sinew and rich blood, the strong men who do the deeds at the head of the
ranks, feed close to the earth. The lowing cattle in the pens, the
squealing hogs in the cars, the smell of the fat carcasses in the heavy
wagons drawn by the sleek Percherons--it all made me think of the soft,
fertile fields from which we take the grain--the blood and flesh that
enter into our being.
The bigness of it all! The one sure fact before every son and daughter
of woman is the need of daily bread and meat. To feed the people of the
earth--that is a man's business. My part was to drive a wagon for Dround
at fifteen a week, but I walked out of the Yards with the swagger of a
packer!
CHAPTER VI
FIRST BLOOD
_Wholesale--The little envies of life--Learning how to read--What
there might be in sausage--Schemes--A rise in life--Big John's
favoring eye--Going short of pork--Uncertainty--Five thousand
dollars in the bank_
I told them all at the supper table that evening how I was going into
wholesale with Henry I. Dround & Co. Slocum nodded approvingly, but
before any one could say a word of congratulation, Hillary Cox snapped
this at me:--
"So you were looking out for yourself with that Carmichael man! I
thought the Enterprise wasn't big enough for your talents. A desk in the
inside office, I s'pose?"
"Not quite yet," I laughed; but I didn't say how little my job was to
be.
Miss Cox had given me up. I don't believe she meant to be disagreeable,
but somehow we had become strangers, all at once. There were no more
gossips on the front steps or Sunday parties. Ed went to church with her
in my place. They were getting very close, those two, and it didn't take
a shrewd eye to see what was going to happen sometime soon.
The others were more generous than the little cashier and inclined to
make too much of my good fortune. For the first time in my life I had
the pleasure of knowing that folks were looking up at me and envying me,
and I liked the feeling of consequence. I let them think I was to get
big wages.
"I suppose you'll be leaving this ranch before long?" Lou suggested.
"Oh, I shouldn't wonder if I might move over to the Palmer House."
A look of consternation spread over Ma Pierson's face at my joking
words. She saw a quarter of her regular income wiped off the slate.
After the others had gone I told her it was only a joke, and that I
should stay with her "until I got married." She cried a little, and said
things were bad with her and getting worse all the time. Lately Lou had
taken to going with such kind of men that she had no peace at all. I
tried to cheer her up, and it was a number of years after that before I
could bring myself to leave her place, although the food got worse and
worse, and the house more messy and slack.
Even when, later, I began to make a good deal of money, I did not care
to change my way of life. At Ma Pierson's were the only people I knew
well in the city, and though Grace, and Lou, and Ed, and Dick weren't
the most brilliant folks in the city, they were honest, warm-hearted
souls and good enough company. And the law clerk, Slocum, was much more.
He meant a good deal to me. He taught me how to read--I mean how to take
in ideas as they were thought out by those who put them in books. He
lent me his own books, all marked and pencilled with notes and
references, which showed me how a well-trained mind stows away its
information, how it compares and weighs and judges--in short, how it
thinks.
We had many a good talk, sitting on the dusty stone steps in our shirt
sleeves late summer nights, when it was too hot to sleep. He had read a
deal of history and politics and economics as well as his law, and when
it came to argument, he could shut me up with a mouthful of facts that
showed me how small my lookout on the world was. I remember how he put
me through his old Mill, making me chew hard at every point until I had
mastered the theory; then he fed me Darwin and Spencer, and Stubbs and
Lecky, and a lot more hard nuts. And I think that I owe no one in the
world quite so much as I do that keen, silent Yankee, who taught me how
to read books and know what is in them.
Meantime I was not doing anything wonderful over at the Yards. For
several months the big manager scarce looked my way when he came across
me, while I drove and made deliveries to the city trade. Dround & Co.'s
customers were mostly on the West Side, in the poorer wards along the
river, where Jews and foreigners live. I used to wonder why the firm
didn't try for a better trade; but later, when I learned something about
the private agreements among the packers, I saw why each kept to his own
field. I soon came to know our territory pretty well, and got acquainted
with the little markets. My experience at the Enterprise gave me an
idea that I thought to turn to some account with Dround's manager. One
day, as I was driving into the Yards, I met the Irishman, and he threw
me a greeting:--
"Hello, kid! What's the good word?" And he climbed affably into the seat
beside me to drive up to the office.
Here was my chance, and I took it.
"Why don't Dround's handle sausage?" I said to the manager.
"What do you know about sausage?" he asked.
I told him what I had in mind. When I worked for the Enterprise we used
to have trouble in selling our sausage. Women were afraid of it,
thinking it was made from any foul scraps in the store. So, to make the
customers take it, I hit on the plan when we had fresh sausage meat of
putting some of the sausages by in clean little pasteboard boxes, and
the next time a particular customer came in I would call her attention
to one of the boxes, "which I had put aside for her specially." And she
would take it every time. In this way the Enterprise built up a
considerable trade in sausages. The same condition existed in other
markets, as I knew; good customers were afraid to eat the ordinary
sausage. So, I thought, why shouldn't the packing-house put up a
superior kind of sausage in nice little boxes, with a fancy name? The
marketmen could retail them handily. Carmichael seemed to be impressed
with my idea: he asked questions and said he would think it over. That
encouraged me to spring another scheme on him. Dround's trade was in
the Jewish quarters, but of course we didn't sell to the real Jews.
[Illustration: _"What do you know about sausage?" he asked._]
"Why not get some old rabbi and make kosher meat--the real article?
Strauss and the other packers don't handle it. We might have the market
to ourselves, and it is a big one, too."
"Kid, you've got a head on you," big John said to me with warmth. And I
saw myself a member of the firm next week!
It didn't work as easily as that, however. The next time I saw the
manager I asked him about sausage and kosher meat, and he scowled. It
seems he had presented my ideas to Mr. Henry I. Dround, and that
gentleman had turned them down. He was a packer, so the head of the
house said, and no cat's-meat man, to retail sausages in paper packages
to the public. The same way with the kosher meat idea: his business was
the packing business, and the firm wasn't trying any ventures. It seemed
to me that Mr. Henry I. Dround lacked enterprise; I felt that his
manager would have given my ideas a trial.
It was not long after that, however, before Carmichael took me into the
office and made me a kind of helper to him, sending me up and down the
city to collect accounts, look after the little markets that traded with
Dround's, and try on the sly to steal some other fellow's business--that
is, to break secretly one of those trade agreements which the packers
were always making together, and always breaking here and there, and,
when caught, promising each other to be good, and never do it
again--until the next opportunity offered, of course! This was more or
less confidential and delicate business, and I was not let into the
inside all at once. But I said nothing, and kept my eyes open. I began
to know some things about the business, and I could guess a few more. I
learned pretty soon that Henry I. Dround & Co. was not one of the
strongest concerns in the city; that it was being squeezed in the ribs
by the great Strauss over the way--that, if it had not been for the
smart Irishman, Strauss might take the bread out of our mouths.
Next to Slocum, I owe big John Carmichael more than I could ever pay in
money. He was an ignorant, hot-tempered, foul-mouthed Irishman, who had
almost been born in the Yards, and had seen little else than the inside
of a packing-house all his life. He couldn't write a grammatical letter
or speak an unblasphemous sentence. But it didn't take me long to see
that Dround & Co. was Carmichael, the manager, and that I was in the
best kind of luck to be there under him, and, so to speak, part way in
his confidence....
Well, as I said, I got an inkling from time to time how there was a
private agreement between the large firms to carve up the market, retail
as well as wholesale, and that when one of the firms felt that they
could do it safely they would sneak around the agreement (which, of
course, was illegal) and try to steal their neighbors' trade. Carmichael
managed this business himself, and now and then, when he saw I knew how
to keep my mouth shut, he would trust some detail of it to me.
But I was getting only twenty dollars a week, and no rosy prospects. My
little schemes of making sausages on a large scale and kosher meat had
been turned down. I stowed them away in my mind for future use.
Meantime, after working at the Yards for nearly two years, I had managed
to lay by about a thousand dollars, what with my savings when I was at
the Enterprise. That thousand dollars was in a savings-bank downtown,
and it made me restless to think that it was drawing only three and a
half per cent, when chances to make big money were going by me all the
time just out of my grasp. I kept turning over and over in my mind how I
might use that thousand and make it breed money. There were lively times
then on the Board of Trade. Nothing much was done in the stock market in
Chicago in those early days, but when a man wanted to take his flyer he
went into pork or grain. I used to hear more or less about what was
being done on the Board of Trade from Dick Pierson, who had been
promoted from scrubbing blackboards to a little clerkship in the same
office, which operated on the Board.
Dick had grown to be a sallow-faced, black-mustached youth who had his
sisters' knack of smart dressing, and a good deal of mouth. He was
always talking of the deals the big fellows were carrying, and how this
man made fifty thousand dollars going short on lard and that man had his
all taken away from him in the wheat pit. He was full of tips that he
picked up in his office--always fingering the dice, so to speak, but
without the cash to make a throw. Dick knew that I had some money in the
bank, and he was ever at me to put it up on some deal on margin. Slocum
used to chaff him about his tips, and I didn't take his talk very
seriously. It was along in the early summer of my third year at Dround's
when Dick began to talk about the big deal Strauss was running in pork.
Pork was going to twenty dollars a barrel, sure. According to Dick, all
any one had to do to make a fortune was to get on the train now. This
time his talk made some impression on me; for the boys were saying the
same thing over in the office at the Yards. I thought of asking
Carmichael about it, but I suspected John might lie to me and laugh to
see the "kid" robbed. So I said nothing, but every time I had occasion
to go by the bank where I kept my money it seemed to call out to me to
do something. And I was hot to do something! I had about made up my mind
after turning it over for several weeks, to make my venture in Strauss's
corner. Pork was then selling about seventeen dollars a barrel, and
there was talk of its going as high as twenty-five dollars by the
October delivery.
It happened that the very day I made up my mind to go down to the city
and draw out my money I was in the manager's office talking to him about
one of our small customers. Carmichael was opening his mail and
listening to me. He would rip up an envelope and throw it down on his
desk, then let the letter slide out of his fat hand, and pick up
another. I saw him grab one letter in a hurry. On the envelope, which
was plain, was printed JOHN CARMICHAEL in large letters. As he tore open
the enclosure I could see that it was a broker's form, and printed in
fat capitals beneath the firm name was the word SOLD, and after it a
written item that looked like pork. As Carmichael shoved this slip of
paper back in the envelope I took another look and was sure it was pork.
I went out of the office thinking to myself: "Carmichael isn't buying
any pork this trip: he's selling. What does that mean?"
As I have said, the manager had charge of those private agreements with
which the trade was kept together. In this way he came in contact with
all our rivals, and among them the great Strauss. After thinking for a
time, it was clear to me that the Irishman had some safe inside
information about this deal which Dick did not have, nor any one else on
the street. That afternoon when I could get off I went down to the bank
and drew my money. At first I thought I would take five hundred dollars
and have something left in the bank in case I was wrong on my guess. But
the nearer I got to the bank the keener I was to make all I could. I
took the thousand and hurried over to the office on La Salle Street,
where Dick worked. I beckoned him out of the crowd in front of the board
and shoved my bunch of money into his hand.
"I want you to sell a thousand barrels of pork for me," I said.
"Gee!" Dick whistled, "you've got nerve. What makes you want to go short
of pork?"
"Never you mind," I said; "go on and tell your boss to sell, and there's
your margin."
"I'll have to speak to the old man himself about this," Dick replied
soberly. "This ain't any market to fool with."
"Well, if he don't want the business there are others," I observed
coolly.
[Illustration: _"All right," he called out, "we'll take his deal."_]
Dick disappeared into the back office, and I had to wait some time.
Presently a fat little smooth-shaven man shoved his head through the
door and looked me over for a moment with a grin on his face. I suppose
he thought me crazy, but he didn't object to taking my money all the
same.
"All right," he called out with another grin, "we'll take his deal." And
Dick came out from the door and told me in a big voice:--
"All right, old man! We sell a thousand for you."
When I got out into the street I wasn't as sure of what I had done as I
had been when I went into the broker's office; but I had too much nerve
to admit that I wished I had my money back in my fist. And I kept my
courage the next week, while pork hung just about where it was or maybe
went up a few cents. Then it began to slide back just a
little--$16.87-1/2, $16.85, $16.80, were the quotations--and so on until
it reached $16.50, where it hung for a week. Then it took up its retreat
again until it had slid to an even $16. Dick, who congratulated me on my
luck, advised me to sell and be content with doubling my money. Strauss
was just playing with the street, he said. This was only the end of
August: by the middle of September there would be a procession. But my
head was set. To be sure, when, after the first of September, pork began
to climb, I rather wished I had been content with doubling my money. But
I pinned my faith on Carmichael. I didn't believe he was selling yet.
For a fortnight at the close of September, pork hung about $16.37-1/2,
with little variation either way. Then the last three days of the month,
as the time for October deliveries drew near, it began to sag and
dropped to $16.10. I hung on.
It was well for me that I did. October first Strauss began delivering,
and he poured pork into the market by the thousand barrels. Pork
dropped, shot down, and touched $13. One morning I called at the
broker's office and gave the order to buy. I had cleared four thousand
dollars in my deal.
It was first blood!
There was about five thousand dollars in the bank that day when I went
back to the Yards, and I was as proud as a millionnaire. Somehow, I
seemed to forget how I had learned the right tip, and thought of myself
as a terribly smart young man. Perhaps I looked what I was thinking, for
when the manager stepped out of his office a little later and eyed me
there was a queer kind of smile on his lips.
"What's happened, kid?" he asked, quizzing me. "Been selling any more
pork this morning?"
Then I suspected that somehow he had learned about my little venture in
the market. I was doubtful just how he might take it.
"No," I said. "It's the time to buy now, isn't it?"
"Covering?" he chuckled. "Well, that's good. Say, some one telephoned
out from Cooper's office for you this morning--about a little deal in
pork. I answered the 'phone."
So that was the way he had learned! That fool Dick had got nervous, and
been telephoning to me.
"I hope you made it all right," Carmichael added.
"You bet," I answered cheerily. And that was all that was ever said
about the matter.
CHAPTER VII
THE BOMB
_I become a packer on my own account--What there is in sausage--The
Duchess--The Piersons' again--At the Haymarket--The path of the
bomb--Another kind of evil_
Not long after my little deal in pork Carmichael promoted me. Instead of
running around the city to look after the markets, I was sent out on the
road to the towns that were building up all along the railroad lines
throughout the neighboring states. My business was to secure as many of
these new markets as I could, and, wherever it was possible, to
dispossess any rival that had got hold before. It gave me a splendid
chance to know a great section of our country which was teeming with
life.
That five thousand dollars in the bank burned worse than the first
thousand. I took no more chances on pork, however, but I managed to turn
a dollar here and there, and after a time something rather big came my
way. There were a couple of German Jews, the brothers Schunemann, who
were trying to run a packing business at Aurora. They had started as
small butchers, and had done well; but they wanted to get into the
packing business, and they were having a hard time to compete with the
big fellows in Chicago. Their little plant was covered with a mortgage,
and Dround and Strauss had taken away most of their trade. The
Schunemann brothers were such small fish that they could make no
agreements with the large companies, and they weren't important enough
to be bought out.
That was what I told one of the brothers when he asked me to say a good
word for him with Carmichael. His concern was pretty near bankruptcy
then, and it was plainly out of the question for them to go on as they
had been without capital. If they had tried to build up a small business
in _delicatessen_ and such things, they might have succeeded better. I
had never given up the idea of the money that might be made in putting
up sausages and preparing kosher meat for the city market. Here, I
thought, was just the opportunity. If I could buy out the Schunemann
brothers or get a controlling interest, I might try my experiment. The
scheme grew in my mind, and I went to Aurora several times to see the
brothers. After a while I made the man an offer, and then we talked
terms for several months. Slocum advised me and drew up the agreement. I
was ready to put my stake into the venture, all that I had in the world.
It hurt them to sell me the control of their business for seven thousand
dollars, which was all that I could scrape together--and part of that
was Slocum's savings, which he lent me.
At last we made the arrangement, and the Schunemann brothers put up the
"Duchess" brand of sausage after my plan, and we began to handle kosher
meat in a small way. I managed the sausage trade with Dround's
business, working the two together very well; for the retailers who
dealt with Dround's took to my idea and pushed our Duchess brand, which
was packed in nice little boxes. It was a new idea in those days, and
nothing takes like something that hasn't been tried before. We began to
make money--not a fortune all at once; but the business promised to
grow. Thus I became a packer, after a fashion!
* * * * *
In the years that immediately preceded the troublous times of 1886, I
was a very busy man and often out of the city, too much engrossed with
the growing business on my hands to consider very seriously the
disturbances of that period. The fight with labor, which seems to be a
necessary feature of our progress, had come a kind of crisis in that
year. But the events in Chicago during that crisis are still so near to
many of us that even with the rapid forgetfulness of our days they have
not quite escaped the memory of thoughtful men.
I remember that now and then, around Ma Pierson's table, the talk turned
on the strike over at the harvesting works. We were all on the same
side, I guess--the side of capital; there was enough for all of the good
things of life, we thought, if men would only stop their kicking and
keep at work. Slocum, for all that he was a lawyer, was the only easy
one on the strikers: so long as they respected the laws he was with them
in their struggle to get all they could from their employers.
"Mr. Renshaw says they're too well off now," Lou observed.
"Who is Mr. Renshaw?" I asked, surprised that Lou should take an
interest in such matters.
Slocum looked across the table at me, and Grace quickly began on
something else....
Well, on the night of the fourth of May I was on my way to the Piersons'
from the Union Station. It was very late, for I had just returned from
Aurora, where I had been during the afternoon on my own business. As I
got on the street car the men on the platform were talking excitedly
about the shooting over at the harvester works. When I reached home, I
was surprised to find no one on the steps, the door wide open, and a
kind of emptiness in the whole place.
"What's up?" I asked old Pierson.
"That Cox girl's got her cheek blowed open with a bomb or suthin'. Times
like this folks can't go gallivantin' about the streets," the old man
snarled.
Slocum came in at the sound of my voice and told me what had happened.
His face was white, and his long arms still twitched with the horror of
what he had seen that night. It seems that Dick Pierson had come home to
supper full of the news about the row between the police and the
strikers. His talk had worked up the girls,--that is, Hillary Cox and
Grace,--for Lou hadn't come home,--until all of them had started off
after supper in the direction of the harvester works, where the trouble
was reported to be.
[Illustration: _His long arms twitched with horror._]
Then they had strolled down to the Haymarket, where, instead of the
great crowd they had expected to find, there were only some hundreds of
men and women listening quietly to several workingmen who were
speechifying from a cart. It didn't look very lively, and as a thunder
storm was coming up in the north Sloco was for going home. But Ed, who,
like a country galoot, was curious to hear what the orator in the cart
had to say, pressed up close to the truck, in the front of the crowd,
with Hillary Cox on his arm. Suddenly, so Slocum said, there was a shout
from somewhere behind them:--
"The police! Look out for the police!"
In the rush that followed, Slocum and Grace were jammed back by the
press and separated from the others. He remembered only a little of what
happened those next moments. And what he did remember didn't tally with
the stories that were told later at the trial. In the darkness of the
lowering storm, above the heads of the close-packed, swaying mass in the
square, there sounded a dull whir. Then came a terrific explosion. The
next thing Slocum knew he was crawling on his hands and knees, groping
in the darkness for Grace, while all around them crackled the pistol
shots of the police. Then he heard Ed's voice shrieking:--
"The bloody brutes have shot her!"...
"And Hillary?" I asked. "Is it bad?"
"A piece of iron ploughed across her cheek."
"Scar?"
Slocum nodded. (The truth is that if it hadn't been for the ignorant
doctor who got hold of the girl first her looks might have been saved.
But he took eleven stitches, and there was left a long, ugly, furrowed
scar across her pretty face!)
We went up to Slocum's room, and sat there far into the night,
discussing what had happened.
"Oh, I suppose you law pills will mouse around in it considerable," I
said. "The way to do is to string 'em up to the nearest lamp-post, as
they do out West."
As I was saying that, a cab drove up hurriedly in the quiet street and
stopped at our door. Slocum and I put our heads out of his window,
curious to know what was happening now at two o'clock in the morning. We
saw a man get out, then turn and lift a woman from the cab to the
street. The woman staggered as she started to walk across the sidewalk.
"It's Lou Pierson!" Slocum exclaimed. He drew in his head suddenly and
bolted from the room. I waited long enough to see the man who was with
Lou pull the doorbell, and then leave the poor girl half-fallen on the
steps, while he went back to the cab and spoke to the driver. Then I
followed Slocum downstairs, two steps at a time. Slocum had wrenched
open the house door and leaped down the long flight of steps, not
pausing at the girl, who was making feeble attempts to rise and calling:
"Fred! Fred!" But the man, having given his directions to the driver,
paid no attention and got into the cab.
I helped Lou to her feet; she was still calling in a drowsy voice:
"Fred! Fred!" I could see Slocum with his hand on the door of the cab.
He spoke to the man inside, but I could not hear what he said. Suddenly
his hand shot out; there was a tussle, half in and half out of the cab;
the driver whipped up his horses, and Slocum was thrown to his knees.
He picked himself up holding in his fist something that looked like a
necktie.
As Slocum helped me carry the girl up the steps, he said:--
"That's who Renshaw is. A bit of a bomb would be about the right thing
for him!"
Generalizations, I have learned, are silly things to play with. But
there are some experiences in a man's life that tempt him to make them.
It was only a mere accident that the man who was Lou Pierson's companion
in the cab that night had taken a prominent part against the striking
workmen. But when, later, I was called upon to sit in judgment on some
hot-headed fools because they, in their struggle to get an eight-hour
day, fomented strife, my thoughts would go back sourly to this example
of the men I was expected to side with.
CHAPTER VIII
THE TRIAL OF THE ANARCHISTS
_The terror of good citizens--Henry Iverson Dround--Righteous
indignation--Leaders of industry get together "to protect
society"--A disagreeable duty--Selecting the jury--The man from
Steele's--What is evidence?--What is justice?--In behalf of
society--Life is for the strong--All there is in it!--I take my
side_
The morning after the fourth of May the city was sizzling with
excitement. From what the papers said you might think there was an
anarchist or two skulking in every alley in Chicago with a basket of
bombs under his arm. The men on the street seemed to rub their eyes and
stare up at the buildings in surprise to find them standing. There was
every kind of rumor flying about: some had it that the police had
unearthed a general conspiracy to dynamite the city; others that the
bomb throwers had been found and were locked up. It was all a parcel of
lies, of course, but the people were crazy to be lied to, and the
police, having nothing better, fed them lies. At the Yards, men were
standing about in little groups discussing the rumors; they seemed
really afraid to go into the buildings.
In front of our office a brougham was drawn up--an unusual sight at any
time, and especially at this hour. It was standing close to the door,
and as I picked my way through the crowd I looked in at the open window.
My eyes met the eyes of a woman, who was leaning against the cushioned
back of the carriage. She was dressed in a white, ruffled gown that
appeared strange there in the yards, and her eyes were half closed, as
if she were napping or thinking thoughts far removed from the agitated
city. But when I came closer she gave me the sharpest look I ever saw in
a woman's eyes. It was a queer face, dark and pale and lifeless--except
for that power of the eyes to look into you. I stopped, and my lips
opened involuntarily to speak. As I went on upstairs, I wondered who she
could be.
My desk was just outside the manager's private office, and, the door
happening to be ajar, I could see Mr. Dround within, striding up and
down in great excitement. Carmichael was trying to quiet him down. I
could hear the chief's high, thin voice denouncing the anarchists:--
"It is a dastardly crime against God and man! It threatens the very
foundations of our free country--"
"Yes, that's all right," big John was growling in his heavy tone. "But
we don't want to make too much fuss; it won't do no good to poke around
in a nest of rattlers."
"Let them do their worst! Let them blow up this building! Let them
dynamite my house! I should call myself a craven, a poltroon, if I
wavered for one moment in my duty as a citizen."
Carmichael sighed and bit off the end of a fat cigar that he had been
rolling to and fro in his mouth. He seemed to give his boss up, as you
might a talkative schoolboy.
Henry Iverson Dround was a tall, dignified gentleman, with thick gray
hair, close-cut gray whiskers, and a grizzled mustache. He always
dressed much better than most business men of my acquaintance, with a
sober good taste. The chief thing about him was his manners, which, for
a packer, were polished. I knew that he had been to college: there was a
tradition in the office that he had gone into the business against his
will to please his father, who had begun life as a butcher in the good
old way and couldn't understand his son's prejudices. Perhaps that
explains why all the men in the house thought him haughty, and the other
big packers were inclined to make fun of him. However that might be, Mr.
Dround had a high reputation in the city at large for honorable dealing
and public spirit. There was little set afoot for the public good that
Henry I. Dround did not have a hand in.
I had met the chief once or twice, big John having called his attention
to me, but he never seemed to remember my existence. To-day Mr. Dround
blew out of the manager's office pretty soon and brushed against my
desk. Suddenly he stopped and addressed me in his thin, high voice:--
"What do you think, Mr. Harrington, of this infernal business?"
My answer was ready, pat, and sufficiently hot to please the boss. He
turned to Carmichael, who had followed him.
"That is what young America is thinking!"
Carmichael put his tongue into his cheek instead of spitting out an
oath; but after Mr. Dround had gone, he growled at me:--
"That's all right for young America, but I am no damn fool, either! My
father saw the riots back home in Dublin. It's no good sitting too close
on the top of a chimney--maybe you'll set the house on fire. The police?
The police are half thieves and all blackguards! They got this up for a
benefit party, most likely. Why, didn't they kill more'n twice as many
men over at McCormick's only the other day, just because the boys were
making a bit of a disturbance? And nobody said anything about it! What
are they kicking for, anyway?"
Mr. Dround's view, however, was the one generally held. That very
evening there was a meeting of the prominent men of the city to take
counsel together how anarchy might be suppressed with a strong hand. We
little people heard only rumors of what took place in that gathering,
but it leaked out that there had been two minds among those wealthy and
powerful men--the timid and the bold. The timid were overridden by the
bolder-hearted. Good citizens, like Strauss and Vitzer, so Carmichael
told me with a sneer, talked strong about encouraging the district
attorney to do his duty, and raised a fund to pay for having justice
done.
"It means that some of those rats the police have been ferreting out of
the West Side saloons will hang to make them feel right. The swells are
bringing pressure to bear, and some one must be punished. It's grand!"
He chuckled bitterly at his own wit. But the swells meant business, and
when Henry I. Dround was drawn for the grand jury, to indict those
anarchists that the police had already netted, big John swore:--
"He needn't have done that! There are plenty to do the fool things. It's
his sense of duty, I s'pose, damn him! It's some of his duty to come
over here and help us make enough money to keep his old business
afloat!"
The Irishman thought only of the business, but Henry I. Dround was not
the man to let any personal interest stand in the way of what he
considered his duty to society. Perhaps he was a little too proud of his
sacrifices and his civic virtues. Some years later he told me all about
that grand jury. All I need say here is that this famous trial of the
anarchists was engineered from the beginning by prominent men to go
straight.
The hatred and the rage of all kinds of men during those months while
the anarchists were on our hands, before they were finally hanged or
sent to prison, is hard to understand now at this distance from the
event. That bomb in its murderous course had stirred our people to the
depths of terror and hate: even easy-going hustlers like myself seemed
to look at that time in the face of an awful fate. The pity of it all
was--I say it now openly and advisedly--that our one motive was hate.
Stamp this thing out! that was the one cry. Few stopped to think of
justice, and no one of mercy. We were afraid, and we hated.
Finally it came time for the trial; the _venire_ for the jury was
issued. One night, to my consternation, I found a summons at the house.
When I showed it to a fellow-clerk at the office the next morning, he
whistled:--
"I thought I saw the bailiff in here yesterday, looking around for
likely men. They are after a safe jury this time, sure!"
I asked Carmichael to use his influence to get me excused, as I knew he
usually did for the boys when they were summoned for jury duty. But all
he said was:--
"You're a nervy youngster. You'd better do the thing, if you are
accepted."
"It means weeks, maybe months, off," I objected.
"We'll make that all right: you won't lose nothing by it. But you
mustn't mind finding a stick of dynamite under your bed when you go home
after the trial," he grinned.
"I guess there's no trouble with my nerve," I said stiffly, thinking he
was chaffing me. "But I don't want the job, all the same."
"Well, you'll have to see the old man this time. Maybe he can get you
off."
So I went into Mr. Dround's private office and made my request. The
chief asked me to take a chair and handed me a cigar. Then he began to
talk about the privileges and duties of citizenship. From another man it
might have been just slobber, but Henry I. Dround meant it, every word.
"Why don't you serve?" I asked him pretty bluntly.
He flushed.
"I haven't been drawn. Besides, it has been thought wiser not to give
the jury too capitalistic a character. This is a young man's duty. And I
understand from Mr. Carmichael that you are one of the most energetic
and right-minded of our young men, Mr. Harrington."
[Illustration: _From another man it might have been just slobber, but
Henry I. Dround meant it, every word._]
He stood facing the window and talked along for some time in a general
way. His talk was rather simple and condescending, but kind. He spoke of
the future before me, of my having the right influence in the community.
When I left him I knew perfectly well that the house expected me to
serve on that jury if I was chosen, and that Mr. Dround would take
personally the warmest interest in a young man who had the courage to do
his duty "in behalf of society," as he kept saying.
Still I hoped to escape. I was tolerably far down the list. So day after
day I listened to the wrangle among the lawyers over the selection of
the jurors. It was clear enough from the start that the State wanted
only one kind of man on that jury--an intelligent, well-to-do clerk or
small manufacturer. No laboring man need apply: his class was suspect.
As a clerk in Steele's store said to me while we waited our turn:--
"That bailiff came into our place and walked down past our department
with the manager. I heard him say to Mr. Bent: 'I'm running this case.
Let me tell you there won't be no hung jury.'"
"Do you want to serve?" I asked the man from Steele's.
"Well, I do and I don't." Then he leaned over and whispered into my ear:
"It looks to me that there might be a better place for me at Steele's if
everything goes off to suit and I am a part of it!" He nudged me and
pulled a straight face. "I guess they ought to be hanged, all right," he
added, as if to square himself with what he was ready to do.
After the defence had used up its challenges, which naturally was pretty
soon, the real business of getting the jury began. Much the same thing
happened in every case. First the man said he was prejudiced so that he
couldn't render a fair verdict on the evidence. Then his Honor took him
in hand and argued with him to convince him that his scruples were
needless. His Honor drove him up and down hill until the man was forced
to admit that he had some sense of fairness and could be square and
honest if he tried hard. And then he was counted in. In every case it
went pretty much as it did in the case of the man from Steele's.
"I feel," so the man from Steele's said, "like any other good citizen
does. I feel that some of these men are guilty; we don't know which
ones, of course. We have formed this opinion by general report from the
newspapers. Now, with that feeling it would take some very positive
evidence to make me think that these men were not guilty, if I should
acquit them.... But I should act entirely upon the testimony."
"But," said the defence, "you say that it would take positive evidence
of their innocence before you could consent to return them not guilty?"
"Yes, I should want some strong evidence."
"Well, if that strong evidence of their innocence was not introduced,
then you want to convict them?"
"Certainly!"
Then the judge took him in hand, and after a time his Honor got him to
say:--
"I believe I could try the case on the evidence alone, fairly."
And so they took him, and they took me in the same way, when it came my
turn.
* * * * *
This is scarcely the place to tell the story of that famous trial. It
has kept me too long as it is. The trial of the anarchists was an odd
accident in my life, however, which, coming, as it did, when I had my
foot placed on the ladder of fortune, had something to do with making me
what I am to-day. Up to this time I had never reflected much upon the
deeper things of life. The world seemed good to me--a stout, hearty
place to fight in. I had made money in the scheme of things as they are,
and I found it good. I wanted to make some more money, and I had little
patience with the kickers who tried to upset the machine. But I had not
reasoned it out. There in the court room, and later shut up in the jury
quarters, day after day, cut off from my usual habits, I thought over
some of the real questions of our life, and made for myself a kind of
philosophy.
To-day, after the lapse of eighteen years, I can see it all as I saw it
then: the small, dirty court room; the cold, precise face of the judge;
the faces of the eight men whom the police had ferreted out of their
holes for us to try. There wasn't much dignity in the performance: some
pretty, fashionably dressed girls sat up behind the judge, almost
touching elbows with his Honor. They came there as though to the play,
whispering and eating candy. There was the wrangling among the lawyers,
snarling back and forth to show their earnestness. But my eyes came back
oftenest to the faces of those eight men, for whose lives the game was
being played. Two were stupid; three were shifty; but the other three
had an honest glow, a kind of wild enthusiasm, that came with their
foreign blood, maybe. They were dreamers of wild dreams, but no thugs!
From the start it seemed plain that the State could not show who threw
that fatal bomb, nor who made it, nor anything about it: the best the
State could do would be to prove conspiracy. The only connection the
lawyers could establish between those eight men and the mischief of that
night was a lot of loose talk. His Honor made the law--afterward he
boasted of it--as he went along. He showed us what sedition was, and
that was all we needed to know. Then we could administer the lesson. Now
that eighteen years have passed, that looks to me like mighty dangerous
law. Then I was quick enough to accept it.
When we filed into the court room the last morning to listen to the
judge's charge, the first face I saw was that of Hillary Cox. A big red
scar, branching like a spider's web, disfigured her right cheek. It drew
my eyes right to her at once. All her color and the plump, pretty look
of health had gone for good. She looked old and sour and excited. And I
wished she hadn't come there: it seemed as though she was waiting for
her revenge for the loss of her youth and good looks. She was counting
on me to give it to her! Ed sat beside her, holding her hand in a
protecting way. He was an honest, right-feeling sort of fellow, and I
guessed that her loss of good looks would make no difference in his
marrying her.
Near the district attorney sat Mr. Dround. He listened to the judge's
charge very closely, nodding his head as his Honor made his points and
rammed conviction into us....
"In behalf of society"--his phrase ran in my head all through the trial.
That was the point of it all--a struggle between sensible folks who went
about their business and tried to get all there was in it--like
myself--and some scum from Europe, who didn't like the way things are
handed out in this world. We must hang these rebels for an example to
all men. To be sure, the police had killed a score or two of their
kind--"rioters," they were called: now we would hang these eight in a
proper, legal, and ordinary way. And then back to business! I suppose
that the world seemed to me so good a place to hustle in that I
couldn't rightly appreciate the complaint of these rebels against
society. And at any rate I was convinced that we sensible folks who had
the upper hand could not tolerate any bomb foolishness. "In behalf of
society"--yes, before we had left our seats in the court room my mind
was made up: guilty or not, these men must suffer for their foolish
opinions, which were dead against the majority.
Thus I performed my duty to society.
* * * * *
When our verdict was ready, and we came in to be discharged, I saw
Hillary Cox again. As the foreman rose to give our verdict, her scarred
face flushed with excitement, and an ugly scowl crept over her brow. I
turned away. Queer thoughts came into my mind--for the bad air and the
weeks of close confinement had made me nervous, I suppose.... Society! I
seemed to see old Strauss with his puffy, ashen face, and his broad
hands that hooked in the dollars, dirty or clean, and Vitzer, who kept
our honorable council on his pay-roll for convenience, and the man who
had been with Lou Pierson that night, and many others. Were they better
men before the eyes of God these eight misguided fools whom we were
about to punish? Who did the most harm to society, they or that
pale-faced Fielden, who might have been a saint instead of an
anarchist?...
The judge was still making remarks; the jury were listening restlessly;
the prisoners at the bar seemed little interested in the occasion. I
kept saying to myself: "Society! In behalf of society! I have done my
duty in behalf of society." But what was this almighty society, anyhow,
save a lot of fools and scamps with a sprinkling of strong souls, who
were fighting for life--all of them fighting for what only a few could
get? My eyes rested on Hostetter's face in the crowd. His jaw was
hanging open, and he was staring at the judge, trying to understand it
all. Poor Ed! _He_ wouldn't have much show in the scramble if society
didn't protect him. Suddenly a meaning to it all came to me like a great
light. The strong must rule: the world was for the strong. It was the
act of an idiot to deny that truth. Yes, life was for the strong, all
there was in it! I saw it so then, and I have lived it so all my
life....
[Illustration: "_My! I tell you I'll be glad to get home to-night._"]
The man from Steele's nudged my elbow:--
"My! I tell you I'll be glad to get home to-night. Won't the old woman's
food taste slick to-night? You bet."
"The jury is discharged."
The play was over. The spectators were moving from the crowded room. At
the door my friends were waiting for me. Hillary Cox stretched up a thin
hand.
"Thank you, Van," she said.
"You fellows did just right," Hostetter added.
Slocum said nothing, but there was a dubious smile on his lips.
"We're going to blow you off for a dinner at the Palmer House, the best
you ever ate," Dick Pierson called out loudly. Then he added for the
benefit of the onlookers, "To hell with the anarchists!"
"Quit that!" I said sharply, some of those queer doubts about the
justice of the act I had been concerned in returning to me. "It's over
now, and let's drop it."
It was good to be out on the streets once more, knocking elbows with
folks, and my heart soon began to feel right. In the lobby of the hotel
men I didn't know, who recognized me as one of the famous jury, came up
to me and shook hands and said pleasant things. Before the dinner was
far along I was quite myself again, and when Slocum set up the champagne
for the party, I had begun to feel rather proud of the part I had taken
in public affairs. After all, it was a fine thing to live and hustle
with your neighbors for the dollars. I had done my part to make the game
go on smoothly. At the Yards, the next morning, it was the same thing:
my desk was covered with flowers, and the boys kept me busy shaking
hands and taking in the cigars until I thought I was at a church
presentation party. Big John was one of the first to welcome me back.
"Say! do you want a vacation? The old man thinks a month or two would be
the right thing. Enjoy yourself, my boy, after your arduous duty!"
"Shoo!" I replied. "What would I do with a month's vacation, John? I've
just pined to be back here at work. What do I want to light out for
now?"
"Supposing some of 'em should try to fix _you_?" he grinned.
"I guess we've fixed _them_ for good and all."
"Well, your nerve is all right."
So I sat down to my desk, quite the cock of the walk, and felt so
pleased with myself that you would think I had saved the whole town from
being blown up. I was for society as it is, first, last, and all the
time, and I felt good to be in it.
[Illustration: _Big John was one of the first to welcome me back._]
Once, some months later, I saw those eight men again, when they were
brought into court to be sentenced. They all had a chance to speechify,
and I listened to them for a time. I didn't take much stock in Spies and
Parsons--long-winded, talky, wild fellows. But the others, who weren't
as glib as those two, had a kind of simple sincerity about them. They
had the courage to stand up there in the face of death and say what they
believed. No one plead for mercy. I was sorry for them.
But, nevertheless, it was comfortable to be of the strong. The world is
for the strong, I said to myself as I left the court, and I am one of
them!
CHAPTER IX
ANOTHER BOOST
_I become of importance in Dround's--Making money--The end of Ma
Pierson's--Rivals in sausage--I conclude to sell my
business--Bluffing old Strauss--Carmichael regards me with respect_
After the trial came another boost at Dround's. Thanks to the big
Irishman, I had done pretty well before; but now there was some one at
the top watching me. I was given a chance to see what I could do to make
markets in the new Southwest, which was developing rapidly and in my
opinion offered a weak house like ours a better opportunity than the
older fields.
And my little venture with the brothers Schunemann was booming all the
time. Ed and Sloco had looked out for my interests during the trial, and
had kept my partners from robbing me. Pretty soon I was able to buy out
their interest in the Aurora plant and get rid of them altogether,
putting Ed in as my manager. The Schunemanns took to peddling our kosher
meat in Chicago, and worked up a good trade. In my trips for Dround &
Co. I was able to make a large business for the Duchess brand of
sausage, which soon began to attract attention. One day Carmichael said
to me:--
"So you're a sausage maker, after all, Van?"
"Yes, and coining money, too," I replied. "Perhaps Mr. Dround would
think differently now about the cat's-meat business."
Carmichael grunted. I suspected that he might like to have me offer the
firm a chance to come into my business, but I had no such idea. I saw a
great future in sausage, and, after that, other things--down a long
vista of golden years.
* * * * *
About this time Lou Pierson disappeared from the house and never came
back. Slocum went East and did his best to find the girl. He may have
been too proud to marry her sister, but he felt badly enough over Lou's
going that way. Later, when I saw the girl in New York, I concluded her
return could do no good to any one, and said nothing. After Lou
disappeared the old man began to drink pretty hard, and finally had to
go to the hospital. The Van Buren Street house was a drearier place than
ever, and Slocum and I decided to move and start housekeeping together.
Ma Pierson needed us no longer. The Hostetters were keeping house for
the old lady; for Ed married Hillary shortly after the trial, and
together they tried running the Enterprise. But they could not make it
go, somehow; so later I made Ed my manager, as I have said. Some time
after this, when the old lady Pierson got sick, Slocum and I saw that
she had a little rest and comfort to the end of her days. For her son
Dick could never look after anybody but himself.
We had not been long in our comfortable flat on the South Side before
an unexpected chance came to me to make a lot of money. As I have said,
the Duchess brand of sausage, packed in dainty little boxes, was making
a name for itself and attracting the attention of the trade. I began to
have rivals, and my profits were cut somewhat; but they could never
drive out the Duchess, which had a good start. One day Carmichael asked
me if I would like to sell my sausage factory, as he called the Aurora
plant. I told him jokingly he hadn't the money to buy it. But in reality
I was ready to sell, for I saw that if the big packers went into the
business in earnest, I could not compete. And it was only a matter of
time before they would see, as I had seen, the immense profit in such
small things. So when, a few days later, Carmichael said that one of
Strauss's men had asked him to bring me over to their place, I went
quick enough.
Carmichael took me into Strauss's office and introduced me to one of the
men, a shrewd little fellow, who managed some of the old man's deals for
him. After a little while, the man, Gooch, began to talk of my sausage
business, praised the idea, and hinted that his boss might consider
buying me out "for a proper figure." So we began to deal, and pretty
soon Gooch named a figure, twenty-five thousand dollars or something of
the sort, expecting me to bite. I laughed, and Carmichael, who was
sitting by enjoying the fun, said: "He's no kid, Gooch, though he looks
it. Better go your whole figure straight off." Gooch then said
thirty-five thousand dollars--that was the limit. I began to talk about
the kosher meat business the Schunemann brothers were handling for me,
and I could see Gooch's eyes open. He got up and went back into an inner
office, and when he returned he made the figure fifty thousand dollars.
Carmichael expected me to take his offer, and if I had been asked that
morning I should have said it was a big price. But suddenly it came into
my mind that in that inner office was the great Strauss himself. He
thought I was too small fry to deal with: he left me to his lieutenant.
And I had a good mind to bring him out to buy my plant of me. So I
talked on, and Gooch asked me to name my figure.
"Seventy thousand," I answered pretty quick.
Gooch turned to his desk, as if to tell me to go home, and Carmichael
grunted, thinking how he would laugh at me about my cheek. I began to
think I had gone too far, when the door of that inner office was pulled
back and Strauss himself walked into the room. He nodded to Carmichael
and gave me a look from head to foot, but said nothing. Gooch waited for
the great man to speak.
"We'll take your figure, Mr. Harrington," Strauss said, after he had
looked me up and down, and walked out again.
It took my breath away: the next moment I was sorry I hadn't said a
hundred, it seemed so easy. But Strauss was back in his office and the
door was pulled to.
The next I knew I was on the street, and big John was laughing so that
men turned to look at him. "Pretty good for a kid," he kept saying
between his bursts of laughter. "You had the old fox on the run. He
wanted your cat's-meat place bad, though."
[Illustration: _The door of the inner office was pulled back and Strauss
himself walked into the room._]
We went into a saloon, and I set up a bottle of champagne.
"You're all right," Carmichael said to me when we had drunk to my good
luck. "You couldn't have run that place much longer. The big ones would
have eaten you up, hide and all."
"I knew that!" I said calmly.
Carmichael looked at me with considerable respect, and that was one of
the pleasantest moments of my life.
CHAPTER X
LOVE
_A poor stenographer--The positive young lady under altered
circumstances--Miss Gentles's story--A hard road for tender
feet--Social and sentimental--A misunderstanding--Which is made
right in the only way--My boss invites us to dinner--Another kind of
woman--A woman's shrewdness--The social gift--At the opera--Business
and pleasure--Sarah on Mrs. Dround_
It was a hot day in August three years after the trial; I was sitting in
Carmichael's office trying to get a breath of fresh air from his west
windows. I called old Peters and asked him to send me up a stenographer.
"Haven't a good one in the place, Mr. Harrington," he said. "All the
smart ones are off on their vacation. There's Miss Gentles, though--the
old man generally keeps her for himself, but he's gone home by this
time."
"Send up anything so long as it can write!"
"Well, she _ain't_ much good," Peters replied.
I had my head down behind my desk when the stenographer came in, and I
began to dictate without looking up. These stenographer ladies were all
of a piece to me,--pert, knowing misses,--all but Miss Harben: she was
fifty and sour, and took my letters like biting off thread. This one
evidently wasn't in her class, for pretty soon she sang out:--
"Please wait! I can't go so fast."
So I waited, and looked up to see what I had to do with. This young
woman was a good-looking, ladylike person, with a mass of lovely brown
hair and long brown eyelashes. She was different from the other girls in
the office, and yet it seemed to me I had seen her before. She was
dressed in black, a sort of half mourning, I judged. Pretty soon she got
stuck again and asked me to repeat. This time she looked at me
imploringly.
"I am not very good," she said with a smile.
"No, you are not," I replied.
She laughed at my blunt answer--laughed pleasantly, like a lady who
knows how to turn off a harsh truth, not flirtatiously, like most of her
profession.
"Been long at it?" I asked the next time she broke down.
"Not so very. I graduated from the school about six months ago, and I
have always worked for Mr. Dround since then. He doesn't talk as fast as
you do, not nearly."
She smiled again at me, frankly and naturally. Suddenly I remembered
where I had seen that face before, and when she looked up again I
said:--
"Did you ever find that purse, Miss Gentles?"
She looked puzzled at first; then a light spread over her face, and she
stammered:--
"Why, of course, you are _the_ Mr. Harrington who--But you have
changed!"
"Rather, I hope! And the light wasn't good in the police station that
morning."
Miss Gentles leaned back in her chair and laughed, a blush spreading
prettily over her face.
"It's all so funny!" she exclaimed.
"Funnier now than it was then," I admitted.
[Illustration: "_Why, of course, you are the Mr. Harrington who--But you
have changed!_"]
"I am very glad to meet you again. No, I never found that purse. The
judge still twits me, when he sees me, about changing my mind. He
thinks--" Then she stopped in embarrassment, and it was some time before
I found out what the judge did think.
"Have you been back to that place in Indiana?" she asked. And we had
quite a chat. She talked to me like a young lady who was receiving a
caller in her father's house. It took a long time to finish the few
letters I had started to write. When she went, I got up and opened the
door for her. I had to.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Harrington," she said, holding out her hand. "I am
so glad to have met you again."
Old Peters, who was in the outer office, looked at us in considerable
surprise. When Miss Gentles had gone he remarked in a gossiping way:--
"So you know the young woman?"
"I met her once years ago," I admitted. "How did she land here? She
doesn't seem to have had much experience as a stenographer."
"No, she hasn't. Her father died several years ago, and didn't leave a
cent. He was a very popular doctor, though--a Southerner. They lived
kind of high, I guess, while there was anything. The Drounds knew them
in their better days, and when the doctor died Mrs. Dround tried to help
the girl in one way and another. Then they fixed up this job for her. I
guess Mr. Dround don't work her very hard. Sorry you were troubled with
her. We'll see that you get a rattler the next time, Mr. Harrington," he
ended. (The men in the office were pretty nice to "Mr. Harrington" these
days!)
"Oh, she isn't so bad!" I said to Peters. For I rather looked forward to
seeing the pretty, pleasant-mannered girl again. "I'd just as soon have
Miss Gentles next week when Mr. Dround goes East, if no one else wants
her."
Old Peters had a twinkle in his eyes as he answered:--
"Just as you say, Mr. Harrington."
So I came to see a good deal of Miss Gentles that summer while Mr.
Dround was away on his vacation. I can't say that the young lady
developed much business ability. She forgot most things with a wonderful
ease, and she was never very accurate. But she tried hard, and it seemed
to worry her so when I pointed out her mistakes that I took to having in
another stenographer in the afternoon to finish what she hadn't done.
Miss Gentles boarded with an old aunt of her mother's near where Slocum
and I lived. I gathered that the aunt and her husband were not very kind
to her. They thought she ought to marry, having good looks and no money.
Miss Gentles let me call on her, and before the summer was over we were
pretty well acquainted. For a long time the thought of May had kept me
from looking at a woman; I always saw that little white face and those
searching eyes, and heard that mocking laugh. But Miss Gentles was so
different from May that she never made me think of the woman I had once
loved.
I took Slocum to call on my new acquaintance, but they didn't get on
well together. She thought his old Yankee ways were hard, and I suppose
he thought I was bound on the voyage of life with a pleasure-loving
mate. He used to growl to me about tying myself to a woman, but I always
said he needn't worry about me--I wasn't the marrying kind.
"Oh, you'll be wanting to get married the same as the rest of the
world," Sloco would answer, "and have a wife and children to spend your
money on and make you earn more!"
But I thought differently. A man of my sort, I replied to him, works
and fights just the same without wife or child, because of the fight in
him, because he can't help himself, any more than the man who wants to
drink can keep his lips from the glass. It's in his blood and bone....
Miss Gentles had seen a good deal of society,--the best there was in the
city in those early days. It was odd to hear her talking about people
who were just big names to me, as if she had known them all her life. I
must have struck her as pretty green. But she made me feel from the
first like some one she had always known. She was proud enough, but
simple, and not in the least reserved. She told me all about her people,
the easy times and the hard times. And never a word of complaint or
regret for all the parties and good things that were gone out of her
life. She was one to take her beer with a joke when she couldn't have
champagne. Of course, I told her, first and last, all my story. She made
me take her to see the Hostetters at the old place on Van Buren Street.
Then the four of us went up the lake on a picnic one Sunday. Hillary, I
remember, was sullen because Ed paid so much attention to Miss Gentles
on this trip.
So we became good friends. Yet I never felt really intimate with her, as
I had with Hillary, and when I tried to step past a certain line she had
her own way of keeping me off, not haughtily or pertly, but like a lady
who knew how people of the great world, where I had never been, behaved
to one another. One day, I remember, I was fool enough to send her a
little fancy purse with a gold eagle in it, and a line saying that it
was time for me to make restitution, or something of the sort. My gift
came back quick enough, with a clever little note tucked inside, saying
she couldn't let me admit that I had taken her purse. It was a good
lesson for me.
When Mr. Dround returned in the fall she reported to him for work, and I
was not altogether sorry. I had plenty of chances to see her outside of
the office now, and I was desperately busy. In a few days, however, when
I happened to be in Mr. Dround's office on some matter, he began to talk
about Miss Gentles. Peters had told him that I had had her as my
stenographer during his absence, and Mr. Dround would like to have me
continue, as she wasn't adapted to his needs. Then he spoke of her
people, and how he and Mrs. Dround had held them in the highest esteem,
and had tried to do something for this girl. But there had seemed to be
nothing that she was really fitted to do.
So we began again our work together, only it was worse; for her
fashionable friends were back in the city now, and they kept inviting
her out to parties and one thing and another, until she was too sleepy
to do her work in the morning and was rather irregular. Then she was
ill, off for a fortnight. I had Peters hire me another stenographer, a
man, and Miss Gentles still drew her pay. Peters winked at me when I
suggested that he needn't mention the fact of her absence in his report.
I suppose, if I had stopped to think of it, I should have considered it
more businesslike of her to quit her society and parties when she found
they were interfering with her work. It was human, though, that she
should want to get a little fun out of her life, and not lose sight
altogether of the gay world where they have time to amuse themselves.
And a pretty woman like her could hardly be expected to take stenography
in a stock-yards office seriously.
Well, I missed her more and more, especially as I couldn't see her now
that she was ill, and had to content myself with nice little notes of
thanks for the flowers and fruit I sent. She came back at last, looking
weak and droopy, for the first time rather hopeless, as if she saw that
she wasn't fitted for the job and couldn't keep up with her friends,
either. I felt very sorry for her. She wasn't made for work--any one
could see that--and it was a cruel shame to let her boggle on with it.
Just then I had to go to Texas on business; when I got back a week or so
later, Peters told me that Miss Gentles had left five days before. A
cold little note on my desk said good-by, and thanked me for my kindness
to her--never a word of explanation.
I was so upset that I didn't wait to open my letters, but called a cab
and started for the aunt's to find out what was the matter. It was just
as well I had been in a hurry, for in another ten minutes Miss Gentles
would have been on her way to Louisville, and it would have taken a week
to hunt out the small place in Kentucky where she was going. Her trunk
was packed, and she was sitting with her aunt in the large, ugly parlor,
waiting for the expressman to come. When I walked in, following the
servant, she didn't draw back her veil, but merely stood up and touched
fingers with me. I saw that something was so wrong that it had to be
made right at once, with no time to spare.
"You will kindly let me speak to Miss Gentles alone," I said to the
aunt, who was inclined to stick. She went out of the room ungraciously.
"Now," I said, taking the girl's hand and looking through her veil into
her eyes, "what is the matter? Tell me."
Her eyes were large and moist, and her lips quivered. But she shut her
teeth down hard and said stiffly: "Nothing whatever, Mr. Harrington. You
are very kind to come to see me before I leave."
"You aren't going to put me off with any such smooth answer as that," I
said, "or you will have my company all the way you're going, wherever it
may be. Tell me the straight truth, and all of it."
She began to laugh at my bluffing words, and ended with a nervous sob.
After a while I learned the whole story. It seems that the man I
employed talked out in the office about how he did all my work, and
while I was South one of the "lady" stenographers had said something to
Miss Gentles--a something she would not tell me. So she got up and took
her leave, and knowing that her old aunt wouldn't want her around if she
had no job, she had written some cousins in Kentucky and was going to
them.
The expressman came about this time, but he didn't take her trunk. And
when I left that chilly parlor we were engaged to be married. She said
at the last, putting her hands on my coat: "You know I always liked you,
even in the police station, Mr. Harrington--and--and I am so very, very
happy, now, Van! It was terrible to think of going away. I had to,
before you were due home. I was never so miserable before in my life!"
Something stirred from the bottom of my heart. I felt pitiful for all
her trouble, her weakness, her struggle with a world she wasn't made
for. Then she said trustingly, like a little child:--
"And you will always be good to me, as papa was with mamma, and patient,
and love me a great deal, won't you? Yes, I know you will!"
I kissed her, feeling then that nothing in life could ever be like the
privilege of loving and protecting this woman in her helplessness. I
suppose that words like those she and I spoke then are common enough
between men and women when they are in love. Yet those words have always
been to me like some kind of sacred oath--the woman asking, out of her
weakness, for love and protection from the one who holds all happiness
and life for her, and the man, with his hasty passions, promising of the
best there is in him.
Many a time in later years, when it hasn't always been easy to see
things simply as it was then in our first joy, those words of hers have
come back to me and given me that same soft tug at my heart. To hurt her
would be to strike a child, to wring the neck of a bird that nestled in
your hand. There are a good many kinds of love in this world, as there
are of hate; perhaps about the best of all is this desire to protect
and cherish a woman--the feeling that any man who is worth his salt has
for the one he wants to marry....
Sarah walked part way back to the office with me that morning, then
turned north, saying she must try to find Mrs. Dround and tell her. She
was so happy she couldn't go home and sit down quietly until I got back
from the office. Mrs. Dround, she knew, would be specially glad to hear
the news.
"For she thinks you are a very smart young man," Sarah added shyly.
"The lady must be a mind reader, then; for in the ten years I have been
with the firm I can't remember seeing her once."
"Oh, yes, she has seen you. She said so. Anyway, Jane knows all about
you, you may be sure. There isn't much that goes on around her that Jane
doesn't know about."
With that she gave me a happy little nod and was off to the great stone
house of my boss up north on the lake. It was a windy, dirty December
day, but I was very content with the world as it was and thought Chicago
was the finest city in the world. As I sat down to my desk my mind began
to dance in a whirl of thoughts--of old plans and new combinations. I
wondered what Sarah would say to some of my schemes to make our fortune.
Perhaps they would merely frighten her; for a woman is a natural
conservative. I hurried up my business to get back to her and tell her
that some day, not so very distant, she would be a tolerably rich woman.
For now it seemed only a step into the greater things I had seen all
these years afar off.
* * * * *
The Drounds gave us a dinner not long afterward. I reached the house
early, expecting to have a little time with Sarah before the others
came. Pretty soon I heard the rustle of skirts, but, instead of Sarah, a
tall, thin woman in a black lace evening-dress came into the room where
the servant had left me. Instantly I knew that this was the face I had
seen in the carriage the morning after the anarchist riot. She was a
beautiful woman, with a dark, almost foreign look. She smiled cordially
as she gave me her hand.
"Sarah is not quite ready. She wants to make herself very fine--the
child! And Mr. Dround is late, too. I am glad, because it will give us a
few minutes to ourselves. Come into the library."
She led the way into a long, stately room, with a beautiful ceiling in
wood and gold. At one end, in a little arched recess, a wood fire was
blazing. There were a number of large paintings on the walls, and queer
Eastern idols and curios in cabinets. Mr. Dround had the reputation of
being something of a traveller and collector. My first glance around
that room explained a good deal to me about the head of our firm.
Mrs. Dround seated herself near the fire, where the light from a great
candelabrum filled with candles flickered above her head. Her dark eyes
gleamed under the black hair; it was a puzzle of a face!
She began pretty soon to talk of Sarah in a natural but terribly shrewd
way.
"I wonder, Mr. Harrington, if you know your treasure," she said, half
laughing. "It takes most men years to know the woman they marry, if they
ever do."
[Illustration: _She was reading me like a book of large print._]
"Well, I know enough now to begin with!"
"Sarah is such a woman--tender, loyal, loving. It needs a woman to know
a woman, Mr. Harrington. But she hasn't a particle of practical sense:
she can't keep an account straight. She has no idea what economy
is--only want or plenty. She is Southern, so Southern! Those people
never think what will happen day after to-morrow."
It seemed queer that she should be telling me this kind of thing, which
I should be finding out fast enough for myself before long. Perhaps she
wanted to see what I would say; at any rate I replied clumsily
something about not expecting to make a housekeeper of my wife.
"Yet," she said slowly, studying me, "a woman can do so much to make or
mar her husband's career."
"I guess I shan't lay it up against my wife, if I don't pull out a
winner."
She laughed at that.
"So you think you are strong enough to win a fight without a woman's
help?"
"I've done it so far," I said, thinking a little of May.
"You have made a beginning, a good beginning," she remarked judiciously.
She was reading me like a book of large print, leaning back in her great
chair, her eyes half closed, her face in shade except when the firelight
flashed.
"I suppose the only way is to keep on as you begin--keep your eyes open
and take everything in sight," I continued lightly.
"It depends on how much you want, perhaps."
"I want pretty much all that I can get," I retorted quickly, my eyes
roving over the rich room, with an idea that I might like to put Sarah
in some such place as this.
Mrs. Dround laughed a long, low laugh, as though she were speculating
why I was what I was.
"Well, you are strong enough, my friend, I see. As for Sarah, love her
and don't look for what you can't find."
Just then we heard Sarah's laugh. She came into the room with Mr.
Dround, a smile kindling graciously all over her face. The two women, as
they kissed each other, made a picture--the dark head against the light
one. Then Mrs. Dround gave Sarah a cool, motherly pat on the cheek,
saying:--
"I have been offering your young man some advice, Sarah."
"He doesn't need it!" Sarah answered in a flash.
"Well, I don't know that he does," Mrs. Dround laughed back, kissing her
again. Every one loved Sarah in the same protecting way! Soon after this
Mr. Dround came up, smiling genially at the women's talk, and gave me
his hand.
I had not seen the chief out of business hours before. I had never
thought him much of a business man in the office, and here, in his own
house, with his pictures and books and curios, he was about the last
person any one would believe spent his days over in Packington.
It wasn't to be a simple dinner that evening. Sarah whispered that Jane
had insisted on inviting a lot of people, some important people, she
said, to meet her young man. And presently the guests arrived,--Lardner
and Steele and Jefferson with their wives, and a number of others. About
the only ones I knew were big John and his very fat wife. They seemed to
be as much out of the crowd as I felt I was, with all my coolness. But
Sarah was perfectly at her ease. I admired her all afresh when I saw how
easily and gayly she took the pretty things those men said to her.
I was more at my ease in the smoking room after dinner, where I had to
tell the story about the theft of the purse in Steele's store. The
shrewd old merchant laughed heartily.
[Illustration: "_I have been offering your young man some advice,
Sarah._"]
"I trust, Mr. Harrington," he drawled, "that now you are going to marry
you will lose _your_ purse there in place of taking one."
They paid me considerable attention all around, and it gave me a
pleasant feeling--all of which, I knew, was due to Sarah. I was nothing
but a newcomer among them, but she was the daughter of an old friend.
And she had a wonderful way of her own of coming close to people.
I remember that we went later to the opera, which was being given in
that big barn of an exposition building on the lake front where I had
had my first experience of Chicago hospitality. We were in a box, and
between the acts people came in to call. Sarah introduced me to some of
them, and she held a reception then and there while Mrs. Dround looked
on and smiled.
I forget the opera that was given,--some French thing,--but I remember
how gay the place was, and all the important people of the city whom
Sarah pointed out to me. Even as a matter of business, I saw it would be
a good thing to know these people. Of course, the social side of life
doesn't count directly in making money, but it may count a good deal in
getting close to the crowd that knows how to make money. Perhaps I began
to have even a little more pride in Sarah than I had before, seeing how
she knew people and counted for something with them. In the game that we
were going to play together this social business might come in handily,
perhaps.
In one of the intervals of the opera Mrs. Dround remarked as if her mind
had been on the same idea:--
"You see Sarah's sphere, Mr. Harrington?"
"Yes," I replied. "And the girl does it tip-top!"
She laughed.
"Of course! It's in the blood."
"Well, it isn't a bad thing, some of it," I went on with pride and
content. "Strauss isn't here, is he?" I asked.
"The Strausses never go anywhere, you know."
"He's the biggest of them all, too," I said partly to myself.
"You think so? Why?" she asked, her brows coming together.
"He's the biggest dog, and it's dog eat dog in our business, as all over
nowadays," I replied.
"Why now more than ever before?" she asked.
"It's in the air. There's a change coming over business, and you feel it
the same as you feel a shift in the wind. It's harder work fighting to
live now than ever before, and it can't go on like this forever. The big
dog will eat up the rest."
"And you think Strauss is our big dog?" she asked with a smile.
I saw then where she had led me, but it was too late to be less frank.
"Yes," I answered, looking her in the eyes.
"Then how should one keep out of his jaws?" she went on, playing with
her fan.
"Well, you can always get out of a scrap and stay out--or--" I
hesitated.
"Or?" she persisted.
"Put up such a fight that the big fellow will give you good terms to get
rid of you!"
"I see. You have given me something to think about, Mr. Harrington."
"The time is coming," I went on, careless whether she repeated to Mr.
Dround my views, "and mighty quick, too, when that man Strauss will have
the food-products business of this country in his fist, and the rest of
us will be his hired men, and take what he gives us!"
"What are you two talking about in this intimate way?" Sarah broke in.
"The future," Mrs. Dround said.
"Business," I added.
"Business!" Sarah sniffed, and I knew I had done something I ought not
to do. "And Nevada singing so divinely to-night! Come, Van, I want you
to meet Mr. Morehead." And I was led away from our hostess to keep me
out of mischief.
* * * * *
On our way home after the opera Sarah and I talked of Mrs. Dround. I had
never met any woman like her, and I was loud in her praise.
"Yes," Sarah admitted slowly, "she seemed to like you. But did you see
how she treated the Carmichaels? Just civil, and hardly that. Nobody can
understand Jane. She just does as she wants always."
"I believe she must have a great head for business. If she were in Henry
I.'s shoes--"
"I don't see why you say that! I am sure you never hear the least word
about business in their house."
I smiled at Sarah's little show of temper, as she continued:--
"Anyway, it would be strange if she didn't know something about
money-making. Her father was old Joe Sanson--they say he was a
half-breed and made his money trading with the Indians and getting
Government lands. Father used to tell stories about him. We heard that
he left her a great deal of money, but nobody knows much about her or
her affairs. She's so silent."
"I didn't find her so."
Sarah apparently did not altogether share my enthusiasm for Mrs. Dround.
"Tell me," she demanded, "just what she said to you, every word."
"I can't. She talks with her eyes, most."
"Oh, I hate to have men discuss business with women. It is such bad
taste!"
"Why, Sarah, business is the whole thing for me. There isn't anything
else I can talk about except you."
"Talk about me, then. I shall have to keep you out of Jane's way. I
don't want you to talk to her about things I don't understand."
"Why not?"
She shivered and drew me closer to her.
"Because, Jane--I am afraid of Jane. She is so strong, and I am so weak.
If she wanted you, or anybody, she would take you."
For all reply to this nonsense I kissed her good night.
CHAPTER XI
MARRIAGE
_Old scenes--How home looks after the city--My sister-in-law--In the
country a man grows old--The judge once more--I make Will a
suggestion--The joy of success--My wedding breakfast--Unexpected
talk--The hand of Jane_
Just before we were married, Sarah and I went down to my old home in
Jasonville. She was determined that I should make it up with my folks;
it hurt her gentle heart to think that I had lived all these years
without any news of my kin. It was a freezing January day when we drove
up to the red brick house next the store. As we rattled over the rutty
streets in the depot carriage, and passed the small frame houses all
closed in for the winter, I couldn't help feeling a most pharisaical
pleasure in knowing that I wasn't condemned to live in this bleak little
town.
When I knocked at the door, mother came to see who was there. She knew
me at once, but she looked at me slowly, in the questioning way I
remembered so well, before she said:--
"Well, Van! You've come back?"
"Yes, mother, and brought with me the best girl in the world."
"I am glad to see you both," she said quietly.
"And how's father?" I asked nervously.
"Your father died nearly three years ago. We didn't know where to send
word to you."
There was no reproach in her voice; it was as if she expected nothing of
me. We went into the house and sat down, and began to talk. It was
solemn and painful all around, and if it hadn't been for Sarah I should
have been taking an early train for Chicago. But she was sunny and
light-hearted, and seemed to take pleasure in being there. While we were
sitting in the front room talking to mother, a young woman came in with
two small children hiding in her skirts.
"Your brother Will's wife," mother explained quickly.
"Why, May!" I exclaimed, a little embarrassed, "I didn't exactly look
for this. Will didn't let me know--I--"
"We wanted to write you, but we didn't know where you were. I am very
glad to see you, Van," May said quietly, a little smile curving up from
her lips in a way that reminded me of the girl I once loved. She took
both Sarah's hands and looked straight into her eyes.
"And this is your wife, Van?"
"Not quite, yet."
Of course I had told Sarah all about May, and I thought she might be
cold to her, meeting her in this way of a sudden as Will's wife. She
always said May had been hard that time before--had been too keen about
her good principles to be a real woman. Yet, as they stood there looking
into each other's eyes, I could see that they would come together very
soon. Sarah smiled as if to say: "It's all right, my dear! You see, I
am glad you turned him away that time. We have no reason to quarrel,
have we?"
[Illustration: _I could see that they would come together very soon._]
May began to blush under that smile, as though she knew what was in
Sarah's mind. Then mother brought up May's two little boys, who went to
Sarah at once. Will was away somewhere and didn't come home until
supper. I thought he looked pretty old for his age. Perhaps business was
poor in Jasonville. The country ages a man fast when things go hard with
him. At first he was stiffish to me, taken aback by our unexpected
visit, but pretty soon he thawed to Sarah, who talked with him about his
boys.
After dinner Will and I went to the barn and had a long smoke. He told
me that the judge had pressed father pretty hard before he died, and
after his death there wasn't much saved but the store, and that was
mortgaged. And the business didn't amount to anything, according to
Will. The mail-order business had cut into the country trade pretty
badly by that time, and country people had begun more and more to go to
the city to buy their goods. Moreover, time had shown that Jasonville
lay to one side of the main lines of traffic. In short, Will had to
scrape the barrel to get a living out of the old store.
He asked how it had been with me, and it gave me considerable pride to
tell him what I had been doing. I told him about the packing business,
my sausage factory, the deal with Strauss. He opened his eyes as he
smoked my good cigar.
"So you struck it rich after all, Van!"
There was something on his mind, and after a time he managed to say:--
"I hope you won't have any more hard feeling for mother and me. We all
treated you pretty harsh that time; we never gave you credit for what
you had in you, Van."
"I guess it would have taken a prophet to see I had anything in me more
than foolishness," I laughed. "Anyhow, it was the best thing that ever
happened to me, Will, and I can't be too thankful that you folks in
Jasonville threw me out."
"Yes, Jasonville ain't just the place for an ambitious man," he sighed.
"And, Van,--about May,--it wasn't hardly fair. She cared most for you,
then, at any rate; she wouldn't marry me, not for five years."
"Don't say another word, Will. May will make the best sort of sister.
She's the right kind."
So that was the way we made it up as two brothers should. And the next
morning, after doing some thinking over night about how I could best
help my brother and May, I followed Will over to the store. On the way I
met the old judge, looking hardly a day older than when I saw him last.
He eyed me hard, as if he didn't know me from the last tramp, but I
stopped him and greeted him.
"So you're loose once more," he grinned. "I see they shut you up as soon
as you struck Chicago." He had a good time laughing at his little joke.
"Yes," I replied, "I am out once more, judge. And, from what I hear,
the Harringtons have been paying you pretty well for all the green
peaches I ever took off your place."
He mumbled something, but I turned on my heel, rather proud of myself if
the truth be told, being well dressed, with an air of city prosperity.
Will was in the bit of an office behind the store. The old place was as
mussy and dirty as ever, with fat files of dusty old letters and
accounts. The old desk where father used to make up his bills was
littered with last year's mail. It was Sunday, and the musty smell of
the closed store came in through the door. It all gave me the forlornest
feeling I had had in years.
"This will never pay, Will," I said to my brother, who was turning the
leaves of a worm-eaten day-book. "The time when the small business would
pay a man anything worth while is pretty nearly over for good."
"I suppose so," he replied despondently. "But somehow we must get a
living out of it."
"Let the judge have it, if he'll take it. I can find you something
better."
There was a place in Dround's that Will might work into; and before long
he could be of use to me in a scheme that was coming around the corner
of my mind into sight. As I talked, Will's eyes brightened. Before we
left the little office a new kind of look, the look of hope, had come
over his face. I thought he seemed already some years younger. It takes
the steps of a treadmill, downward faced, to crush the spirit in a man!
That was a happy morning. Surely, one of the joys of success is to give
it away to the right ones. I remember a good many times in my life that
I have had the pleasure of seeing that same look of hope, of a new
spirit, come into a man's face, when I gave him his chance where he was
least expecting it.
"But, Will, mind you, if you come to the city you'll no longer be your
own man," I cautioned him. "Dround'll own you, or I shall. No doing what
you want! To work with me is to work under me. Can you stand taking
orders from your junior?"
"I guess, Van," he answered without any pride, "you have shown yourself
to be the boss. I'll follow."
That night, when Will and May had left us at the junction where we were
to take the Chicago train, Sarah brushed my arm with her cheek in a
little intimate way she had and whispered:--
"May couldn't thank you. She feels it too much. You have made them so
happy--there's a future now for them all. And I think, maybe, I can make
you as good a wife as she could--perhaps better, some ways. May said so!
Though May is a very nice woman, and I shall always love her."
"I guess you are both right," I replied, too happy to say much more.
* * * * *
A few weeks later and we were married. The Drounds gave us a pretty
little wedding breakfast, to which came the few friends I had in the
world and a few of the many Sarah had. If Mrs. Dround was a careless
hostess sometimes, that was not the day. She was specially gracious to
Will and May, who were 'most strangers. It was all just as it should be,
and I felt proud of myself to be there and to have this handsome,
high-bred woman for my wife.
It was Sarah's idea that all the others should leave the house first,
and that then we should slip away quietly to the train by ourselves. So
at the last, while I was waiting for my bride to come downstairs, Mrs.
Dround and I happened to be alone. She looked pale and worn, as if the
people had tired her. She ordered the servants to take away the great
bunches of roses that filled every nook in the room.
"They are too sweet," she explained. "I like them--but in the next
room."
Her fastidiousness surprised me, and, as always, I began to wonder about
her. Suddenly she leaned forward and spoke swiftly, intently:--
"I hope you and Sarah will be happy together--really happy!"
It was an ordinary kind of thing to say, but beneath the plain words
there seemed to lie something personal.
"We shall be happy, of course!" I answered lightly. "There's nothing
against it in sight."
"Ah, my friend, you can't count that way! Happiness is hard to get in
this world, and you pass it by at odd corners and never know it." She
smiled a little sadly, and then added in a more ordinary tone: "Sarah
tells me that you are to be away only a few days. Does business tempt
you so much that you can't resist it even now?"
"Well, I expect to love Sarah just as much when I get back to work.
Business is a man's place, as the house is a woman's. Take either out of
their places for long, and something is likely to go wrong with them."
She laughed at my satisfied wisdom.
"Are you so needed over there in the office?"
"You must ask your husband that."
"He says that you are the cleverest man they have had for years. Does
that make you proud?"
"Thank you!"
"Will you let the big dog Strauss eat us?" she laughed on.
"I'll tell you a few years later, madam."
"Yes," she mused, "you are right. A man, a strong man--and that's the
only kind that is a man--must be at work. The sweetest love can't keep
him long."
Here Sarah's voice reached us:--
"You mustn't distract him to-day of all days, Jane!"
"He can't be distracted long, my child--by anybody!"
* * * * *
We had taken a pleasant house on one of the broad avenues to the south
beyond the smoke bank, with a bit of a garden and a few trees. When we
got back from New York we found supper waiting for us, roses on the
table, a bottle of wine ready to open, and on the sideboard a box of
cigars.
"The hand of Jane!" remarked my wife, as she rearranged the flowers and
put the roses on the mantelpiece.
"The hand of Jane?" I repeated dully. "You mean Mrs. Dround did it all?"
"Yes, of course; it reaches everywhere."
And Sarah did not look as much pleased as I expected.
CHAPTER XII
AN HONORABLE MERCHANT
_Mr. Dround's little weakness--An unpleasant occurrence--To the best
of one's knowledge--"Kissing goes by favor," and other
things--Switch-tracks and rebates--Carmichael talks--An item of
charity--Our manager goes over to the enemy--I am offered his
place--A little talk on the moral side--The dilemma of the
righteous--What is, is good enough for me_
"Mr. Dround seems to be doing a good deal of talking for the benefit of
his neighbors," Slocum observed one day when I was in his office.
"Oh, he likes the job of making the country over! It suits him to talk
more than to sell pork."
"Did you see what he said last night?" Slocum continued.
"No, what was it? Free trade or college education?" For Mr. Henry I.
Dround was long on both subjects. He had always fooled more or less with
politics, having come out as a mugwump and free-trader under Cleveland.
That kind of doctrine wasn't much in favor among the business men of
Chicago, but Dround liked being in the minority. He was an easy,
scholarly speaker, and was always ready to talk at dinners and public
meetings. "It seems to me I saw something in the papers of his speaking
at the Jefferson Club banquet," I went on; "but I didn't pay any
attention to it. The old man is rather long on wind."
"The papers missed most of the ginger. But I was there, and it was
lively. Jimmy Birdsell, Hart's man, was there, too. It was this new
Civil Service Bill that the silk stockings are trying to push through
the legislature. Of course, Hart and the machine are fighting it like
fire. Well, your boss made the chief speech, a good little talk, about
purity and business methods in government and the rest of it. Birdsell
sat just across the table from me, and I could see from the way he
knocked his glasses about that he was getting hot. Maybe he came there
for a fight. At last he boiled over.
"'Say, Mr. Dround,' he sang out in a pause between two periods, 'how
about your new switch-track over in Ada Street?'
"Dround looked toward him over his glasses for a moment, as though he
hadn't heard what was said, and then he went ahead with his talk. But
Birdsell was some drunk and too mad to care what he did. The men beside
him couldn't keep him quiet. 'I say, Dround,' he broke out again pretty
soon, 'we should like to hear what your firm does when it wants any
little favors from the city? That might be to the point just now!'
"This time Dround couldn't pass it over. He took a drink of water and
his hand shook. Then he said: 'I do not see that this is the proper time
to introduce a personal matter, but since the gentleman seems concerned
about my business honor, I am glad to set his mind at rest. To the best
of my knowledge, Henry I. Dround & Co. have never asked and never
accepted any favors from the city. Is that satisfactory?'
"'Come, now, Mr. Dround,' Birdsell sneered, 'that isn't generally
believed, you know.'
"'I said,' your boss ripped back, '_to the best of my knowledge_, your
insinuation is a lie!' He leaned forward and glared at Birdsell. Well,
there was a kind of awkward pause, everybody waiting to see what would
come next; and then Birdsell, who must have been pretty drunk, called
back: 'Ask your man John Carmichael what he does when he wants anything
from the city. Ask him about your rebates, too. Then the next time you
come here telling us how to be good, you'll know more.' There was a
cat-and-dog time after that, some yelling to put Birdsell out, and
others laughing and clapping."
Slocum paused, and then added:--
"It put Mr. Dround in a tight place."
"What of it, anyhow?" said I. "Birdsell is nothing but a yellow dog.
Hart keeps him to lick his platters. Every one knows that."
"Yes, that's so. But he said what most every one believes is true."
"That kissing goes by favor, and most other things in this world, too.
Well, what of it?"
Slocum leaned back in his chair and laughed. Then he said to me
seriously:--
"You aren't much troubled with scruples, Van!"
"Come, what's the use of talking good? You and I know well enough that
there isn't any other way of doing business, not in any city in the
country. You have got to pay for what you get, the same as elsewhere.
Dround ought to know it, too, by this time, and not go 'round preaching
loose--or else get out of business, which might be better!"
[Illustration: "_You aren't much troubled with scruples, Van!_"]
"I suppose so," Slocum replied solemnly. "But I always liked his
sermons. Perhaps you and Carmichael could tone him down a bit just
now."
"Oh, John don't mind his speeches, so long as he don't interfere with
the business!"
We went out to lunch, and talked of other matters, and for several days
I thought no more of the incident that Slocum had related. The
switch-track business did not seem to me important. If the reformers
wanted to get after us, or any other big firm, there were many more
vulnerable points than that. Special privileges from the city we
regarded as our rights. But there was the graft of railroad rates. Any
fool could tell that, at the published tariff rates, there would be
little business for the packers outside of Chicago. It was common
knowledge that the trade was honeycombed with private agreements and
rebate privileges, and that the fiercest part of the business was to get
the right rate from the roads. Then there were the secret agreements
between the packers, which were all illegal, but necessary to keep the
trade from cutting prices all the time.
Carmichael attended to this end of the business for Dround, as he did of
everything of real importance. He was a member of the firm now, and the
wonder to me was that this smart Irishman could put up with Dround. It
could hardly be a matter of sentiment with him. I had a warm feeling for
the illiterate junior member, with a temper about an inch long, but a
big, round heart open to any friend. He had bucked his way up in the
world by main force, and I admired him. Besides, he had taught me how to
eat, so to speak. In a word, I liked his way of doing things better than
Mr. Dround's college talk.
Well, it happened that the cur Birdsell set some of the civil service
reformers on the tracks of Brother Dround, and they got a smart
newspaper reporter to work over the whole matter. There was a lively
write-up in one of the papers, all about our switch-track over in Ada
Street, with photographs and figures, and a lot more about the way the
packers did business with the city. When I read the piece in the paper I
took the trouble to pass by our new warehouse on my way to the office.
The trackage was in, sure enough. Carmichael was just the man to have a
thing done and settled by the time the public got around to talk about
it!
Mr. Dround was in his office bright and early this morning, and sent for
me.
"Harrington," he began, "what do you know about this talk in the
papers?"
Mr. Dround seemed very nervous, not sure of himself.
"Why," I smiled, "I don't know much more than what the papers said. Mr.
Carmichael, you know--"
"Yes," Mr. Dround interrupted impatiently, "Mr. Carmichael is in New
York, gets back this morning; but I thought you might--" He hesitated,
not wishing to admit his own ignorance. "I will send for you later when
Mr. Carmichael comes in," he concluded.
So when John arrived he had us both in his office.
"You want to see me?" Carmichael asked gruffly, as if he hadn't much
time that morning to waste on the senior member.
"Yes, I wish to talk over certain matters that concern us all, even
though they may have no immediate bearing upon the business." Mr.
Dround always talked like that when he got the least nervous.
"Well, what is it?" Carmichael asked. He had just arrived, and I suppose
his letters interested him more than Mr. Dround's talk.
"You may not have seen the articles in the morning papers--about--about
certain privileges which it is alleged--"
"What are the boys yapping about now?" Carmichael demanded, taking up a
newspaper from the desk and thrusting his shoulders forward in an ugly
fashion.
"It concerns our permit to lay that new switch-track," Mr. Dround
explained.
Carmichael laid the paper down and looked at the senior member in a
curious way, as if he were trying to make out just what kind of a fool
he had to deal with. But as he said nothing, Mr. Dround continued:--
"Recently I had occasion to deny categorically that, so far as I knew,
our firm ever made any such kind of arrangement as is here described. My
word was challenged. It was a very painful situation, I need not say.
Since then I have been thinking--I have been wondering whether this
charge--"
He floundered pitifully, disliking to mouth the dreadful words. John
helped him out brutally:--
"You wonder whether we had to grease anybody's paw about that
switch-track over in Ada Street?"
Dround nodded. "The papers say so!"
"They have to print something, don't they? What harm does that do us? I
wouldn't trust the whole d----n bunch of papers with a ten-dollar bill.
They're a lot of blackmailers--that's what they are!"
John bit off the end of a cigar and spat it out in front of Mr. Dround.
"We are not concerned with the newspapers or their motives, Mr.
Carmichael," the senior member observed with considerable dignity. "What
I want is your assurance that this firm--that, so far as we are
concerned, this accusation is false."
We waited for the Irishman's reply. It would be an easy matter to tell a
fib and set Mr. Dround's mind at rest. But Carmichael seemed to be in a
specially bad temper this morning. When he went to New York he was
accustomed to enjoy himself, and it was not the right time to badger a
man just off the cars. Pretty soon John said fiercely:--
"It's my business to look after such matters?"
Mr. Dround nodded.
"Don't I do it satisfactorily?"
Mr. Dround waived this point.
"Well, I guess you'll have to be content with that."
"Mr. Carmichael," the senior member leaped to his feet, "you forget
yourself! You will be good enough to answer me yes or no, to my direct
question. Did you or did you not pay money for this privilege?"
Carmichael's voice shook as he replied:--
"See here, Dround! If you don't know your own business enough to know
the answer, I don't see why I should tell you." His temper was going
with every word he said. "But if you want to know, you shall! There
hasn't been such a thing as a private switch-track put down in this city
since you began doing business for less than seven thousand dollars. I
paid the right people ninety-five hundred dollars for ours. There,
you've got it! Now what are you going to do about it?"
[Illustration: "_I paid the right people ninety-five hundred dollars.
Now what are you going to do about it?_"]
The big Irishman plumped his two red fists on Mr. Dround's desk and
glared at him. At that moment I pitied the old gentleman heartily; he
was never born to do business, at least in our day. He seemed to shrivel
up under Carmichael's words.
"How, may I ask," he said at last in a low tone, "was this done without
my knowledge? How does it appear on the books?"
Carmichael laughed at the simple question.
"Charity! We are a very charitable concern!"
Mr. Dround's lips trembled, and he cried out rather than spoke:--
"No, never! Better to fail! Better to go bankrupt at once!"
He was talking to himself. Then he recollected us and said with
dignity:--
"That is all, Mr. Carmichael. After this I shall attend to all such
matters myself. Good morning, gentlemen."
He sat down at his desk, dismissing us. Carmichael was shaking with
anger.
"No!" he cried, "it isn't all! Turn me out of your office like a boy,
with my orders, when it's me that have stood between you and ruin any
day these ten years! What would your business be worth if it weren't for
John Carmichael? Ask Harrington here. Go out and ask your bank--"
"I don't believe we need to discuss this any further--" Mr. Dround
began.
"Yes, we will! Get somebody else to do your dirty business for you. For,
let me tell you right here, Henry I. Dround, that I don't go broke with
you, not for all your college talk and prin-ci-ples."
Mr. Dround pointed to the door. He was trembling again. I took the big
Irishman by the arm and led him from the office. Outside the door he
shook me off, and hurled himself into his own office.
That was the first wind of the storm, and the rest wasn't long in
coming. Somebody told me that Carmichael had been seen with one of
Strauss's lieutenants going into a law office that did some of the big
packer's work. It looked as though he were making a deal with the
Strauss crowd. It seemed natural enough to me that Carmichael should do
this, but I was sorry for what must come. Meantime, Mr. Dround was more
assiduous at business than I had ever known him to be. He came early,
and instead of driving over to his club for luncheon took a bite in his
office, and put in the afternoons going into all departments of the
business.
In the end, the trouble came to a head in this way: in company with
every large shipper at that period we made our bargain with the roads;
no large firm and no railroad pretended to live up to the law in the
matter of rates. The roads sold their transportation, as we sold ribs
and lard--for the highest figure they could get. Before any considerable
contract was entered into the thrifty shipper saw to his rate in
advance. And some time later there came along from the railroad that got
the business a check in the way of "adjustment." The senior member, in
his new energy, discovered one of these rebates. He sent it back to the
traffic manager of the road with a letter such as the roads were not in
the habit of getting from their favored shippers. The second
vice-president and general traffic manager of that line attended the
same church the Drounds went to, and the president of the road, also,
was one of Dround's friends. I wonder what they thought when their
attention was called to this little matter!
Carmichael told me what had happened with a wicked grin on his face.
"Righteous man, Henry I. Dround, all right! D----n good business man,
too," he commented. "What do you think is going to happen to this
concern? He's chucked away the profits of that contract!"
"You aren't planning to stay, John?" I remarked casually.
He looked at me and laughed.
"Do you want to come with me when I get out?"
I smiled, but said nothing. There was no open row between Mr. Dround and
the junior member of the firm this time. But a few weeks later Mr.
Dround told me what I already knew--that he and Carmichael were about to
part. I advised him bluntly to make it up with the Irishman if he
could,--not to part with him at any cost.
"For, Mr. Dround, you will find him fighting on the other side; Strauss
will have him."
He knew as well as I what that meant to his business, but he said with
new determination:--
"Mr. Carmichael and I can never do business together again."
Then he offered to take me into partnership on the same basis that
Carmichael had. I suppose he expected me to jump at my chance, but the
prospect was not altogether inviting.
"I ought to say, Mr. Dround," I replied hesitatingly, "that I think
Carmichael was right in this rebate business, and in the other matter,
too. If I had been in his place I should have done the same thing--any
man would. It's against human nature to sit still and be eaten alive!"
Mr. Dround's eyes lowered, and he turned his face away from me. His
spirit was somewhat daunted: perhaps he began to realize what it meant
to stand out alone against the commercial system of the age.
Nevertheless, he said some things, perfectly true, about the honor and
integrity of his firm. As it had been handed over to him by his father,
so he would keep it, please God.
"That's all right," I said a little impatiently. "That might do in times
gone by. But Carmichael and I have got to live in the present. That
means a fight. I would like to stay on and fight it out with you. But I
can't see the use on your basis. Look!"
I pointed out of his window to a new refrigerator building that Strauss
was putting up under our noses.
"That is only one: you know the others. He is growing every day. You
can't expect us to sit here twiddling our thumbs and thinking of our
virtue while he gets the business! Better to sell out to Strauss right
here and now, while there is something to sell."
"Never!" Mr. Dround cried with unaccustomed vehemence. "Never to him!"
"Well, then, we've got our work cut out for us, and let us waste no more
time talking rebates and the rest of it."
"Yet that horrid scandal about the switch-track," he resumed in his old
weak way. "Nothing has done so much to hurt my position in the city as
that!"
"But what are you going to do about it?" I asked in Carmichael's very
words. "Those thieves over there in the council hold you up. What good
does it do the public for you to refuse their price? It's like paying
for the right to put up a house on your own lot--it's tough, but you had
better pay and not worry."
"Mr. Harrington, I refuse to believe that in our country an honorable
business cannot be conducted successfully by honorable methods."
"That depends on what you choose to call honorable methods. At any
rate," I concluded in disgust, "you are likely to have a good chance to
try that proposition to the bitter end, unless you take my advice and
sell to your chief competitor."
He waived this aside impatiently.
"Well, then, look for the fight of your life just to survive, not to
make money. I tell you, Mr. Dround, Strauss is out there waiting to eat
us all up. And you have thrown him your general for a beginning."
"But I trust that I have another as good or better," he said with his
usual flourish of courtesy.
We had some more talk, he urging me to stay with him, although I let him
see plainly where I stood on the matter of rebates, private agreements,
and all the rest of the underground machinery of business.
"If I take your offer," I said at last, "I shall use the old
weapons--you must know that. There are no morals in business that I
recognize except those that are written on the statute book. It is dog
eat dog, Mr. Dround, and I don't propose to be the dog that's eaten."
Even then he did not stop urging me, salving his conscience by saying:
"It saddens me to hear as young a man as you take that cynical view. It
is a strange time we are coming to. I pray it may not be a worse time
for the country!"
To my mind there was something childish in the use of those words
"better" and "worse." Every age is a new one, and to live in any age you
have got to have the fingers and toes necessary for that age. The forces
which lie in us and make those triumph who do triumph in the struggle
have been in men from the beginning of time. There's little use in
trying to stop their sweep, or to sit and cry like Dround by the
roadside, because you don't like the game. For my part, I went with the
forces that are, willingly, gladly, believing in them no matter how ugly
they might look. So history reads: the men who lead accept the
conditions of their day. And the others follow along just the same;
while the world works and changes and makes itself over according to its
destiny.
CHAPTER XIII
THE WILL OF A WOMAN
_A family scene--Sarah's ideas--We dine--Carmichael comes in--Visions
of empire--Almost persuaded--Common people--The touch of mind and
mind--Mr. Dround becomes ill, and we miss Big John--The garden by
the lake--A bit of old marble and other
things--Inspiration--Outlining a campaign--The big gamble_
After all, it was the will of a woman, perhaps of two women, that
settled this business matter, for even in business--in the groping for
position and money--the woman's share is large. Wherever a man's will is
in play she brings her influence, soft and sure and hidden.
When I left Mr. Dround that afternoon I was not ready to put the little
fortune I had made, and, what was more, my life energy, into his forlorn
enterprise. Not to hurt his feelings, I asked for time to consider his
offer, and went home to tell my wife about the change in our affairs,
considerably puzzled what to do. We had just moved into a larger house
near the lake; the place had some pretty ground around it, and a large
stable. It was all that our means warranted, and a little more. But
Sarah had a passion for having people about, and there was a boy now to
be considered. The air was supposed to be better for him farther away
from the city smoke. Sarah had been delicate and nervous ever since the
child was born, and I was glad to have her mind busy with the big new
plaything.
A nurse in uniform was just coming into the gate when I arrived. It
seems that little Ned had a cold, and though he looked lively enough
when I went into his room, Sarah was hovering over him as if he had lung
trouble.
"The doctor thought I should have a trained nurse," Sarah explained. "Of
course he doesn't expect any serious results, but one should take every
precaution. And Mary is so careless, and we have those people coming to
dinner to-night, and are going to the theatre."
I had forgotten that we were to have guests this evening. While we were
dressing, I told Sarah about the trouble between Dround and his old
manager, and how they had finally parted.
"That's just what I should have expected from Mr. Dround!" my wife
exclaimed approvingly. "It must have been annoying for Mr. Dround to
have such a dishonest person connected with him."
"Well, that is one way of looking at it I hadn't thought of!" I laughed.
"That Carmichael man is just an Irish brute! I suppose you have to put
up with such people in the packing business, but I couldn't have them in
my house."
"The Carmichaels don't trouble us much," I replied, smiling to myself at
Sarah's ideas of things. "And John's all right--as honest as most men.
This isn't just a case of stealing somebody's wash from the back yard,
you know."
"But it's just as wrong! It's dishonest!" she cried with a proud tone in
her voice. She came across the room and took hold of me by the
shoulders. "Van, you don't believe in bribing people and such things?
Why, you're too big and strong and handsome"--she gave me a kiss--"to do
such common things!"
"Well, I don't know; it depends how you call it."
But she gave me another kiss, and before we could recover from this
argument there was a knock at the dressing-room door.
"My, Van! There's the first of them, and I haven't my dress hooked. You
run and send Mary to me!" That rather closed the topic for the present.
There were ten of us at dinner, and we tried to keep up a chatter about
the little things that Sarah had trained me to talk of when I was in
company--the theatres and the opera, Mrs. Doodle's new place in the
country, or old Steele's picture by the French painter. But to-night it
was hard work: my thoughts would wander back to the Yards. At last the
ladies left us to put on their wraps, and the men were lighting their
cigars, when a servant told me that a man was waiting in the hall to see
me. It was Carmichael.
"Why didn't you come right out, John?" I exclaimed. "Some of your
friends are out there."
"No, thanks, Van," he growled. "I ain't got my fancy clothes on this
trip, and maybe your wife wouldn't think me good enough for her friends"
(which was pretty close to the truth). "But I come to see you about
something important."
Sarah rustled into the hall just then.
"Van!" she said, bowing coldly to John, "we are all waiting for you."
"Better go, Harrington," Carmichael said sarcastically, reaching for his
hat; "business don't count when there's a party goin' on."
"Oh, it's business!" Sarah's voice could carry a deal of scorn.
"Leave a ticket for me and I'll follow later," I replied impatiently,
leading Carmichael into my library.
"Very well," Sarah answered, and swept out of the hall without a look
for the Irishman.
Carmichael took a cigar, poured out a long drink of whiskey, and thrust
his ungainly figure into a chair before the fire without saying a word.
After a time he ripped out:--
"You aren't thinking of staying with old Dround?"
"That depends--" I began.
"Dround'll go broke inside of two years," he interrupted savagely. "His
credit ain't much to boast of now, and when it gets around that I have
drawn out, it won't improve."
"That's true enough," I admitted.
"The London and Chicago Company is going into the hands of receivers
this week," he went on confidentially. "That was another of your tony
houses managed from England! Strauss'll most likely get their plants at
twenty cents on the dollar, and he'll get Dround when the time comes."
I made no remark, and after smoking for a time he leaned over toward me,
saying impressively:--
"Young feller, do you reckon you can buck up against me and the Strauss
crowd with that one-horse rig?"
[Illustration: "_Young feller, do you reckon you can buck up against me
and the Strauss crowd with that one-horse rig?_"]
It seemed to me highly improbable that any man could perform this feat,
but I held my tongue. Carmichael should make his bid in his own way.
Finally he whispered almost solemnly:--
"Want to make big money?"
And he began to bid, lowering his loud voice and beating the arm of his
chair to clinch his argument. He spoke of the great revolution
throughout the business world, coming consolidations, far-reaching plans
that the Strauss people had had in mind for a long time, the control of
railroads and steamship lines--all leading to one conclusion, one
end--the complete mastery of food products by Strauss and his allies.
We had in more whiskey and cigars for the Irishman, who had a head like
a rock. As he drank and talked, his brain was fired by a kind of rude
imagination for the vast reach of what he saw. He opened himself to me
without reserve, as if he already held me in his hand. The hours sped
by; a carriage drove up to the house, and I knew that Sarah had returned
from the theatre. But Carmichael talked on. Through his words I could
see those vast industrial forces that had been shaping themselves for
ages now fast rushing on toward their fulfilment. Ever since my head had
been above the horizon, so to speak, I had seen straws borne on this
wind. But now the mighty change was imminent; those who survived another
decade would look out upon a very different world from that we had grown
up with. That is what Carmichael and I saw that night, and when the door
finally closed on my visitor I felt that it was settled: I should fight
with the stronger army, side by side with Carmichael....
I was standing before the dead fire, thinking, when the door opened and
Sarah came in, her hair loosened over her white dressing-gown. She
looked strangely pale and troubled.
"Van!" she cried sharply. "What have you to do with that dishonest
Carmichael? What business has he with you? He makes me afraid; and you
never came to the theatre at all!"
"You're dreaming, Sal." I took her on my knee. "John just came to tell
me how to make your everlasting fortune."
"But you are not to leave Mr. Dround?"
"Just that."
"Leave Mr. Dround and go with that dishonest man! What are you thinking
of, Van Harrington?"
That instinct of women, which people talk about, sometimes acts like a
fog: it keeps them from seeing any one thing clearly. Sarah could only
see the Drounds and the piece in the paper about bribing. So we talked
it over, like husband and wife, arriving nowhere in particular, and
finally I said at random:--
"You would like to be rich, to have a lot of money, more than you ever
thought to have--millions, maybe?"
"Would it mean all that?" she asked slowly.
I laughed at the way she took my bait.
"Millions and millions, maybe."
"Would it be dishonest, Van?"
"We don't calculate on going to prison," I joked.
"Well," she reflected, "of course you know best. I don't believe a woman
should interfere in her husband's business. But the Carmichaels and the
Strausses are such common people, even if they are so awfully rich. They
haven't the position the Drounds have."
When it came to that I kissed her and put out the lights.
* * * * *
In this life few intimacies fill the full orb of a man's being. Most men
of affairs whom I have known, very wisely shut down their desks before
coming home, and shut therein a good slice of themselves. Perhaps they
do not care to trust any one, even a wife, with their secrets. Perhaps
they do not need to share those restless hours of anxiety that come to
all men who go into the market to make money. The wife should mean peace
and affection: that is right and proper. Nevertheless, there come times
when a man must talk out his whole soul to one who understands the
language of it. For he hungers to say to another what he scarcely dares
say to himself, what is shut up in the dark of his thoughts. It is not
advice that he needs, but sympathy--to reveal to another that web of
purpose which he has woven, which is himself. Many a man who has carried
burdens silently long years knows what I mean. The touch of hand to hand
is much: the touch of mind with mind is more.
Not that Sarah and I failed to be good married lovers. She was my dear
wife. But there are some last honesties that even a wife penetrates
not--moments when the building of years is shaking in the storm; moments
of loneliness, when mad thoughts arise in a sober head, and a man gropes
to find what there is not even in the heart of the woman he loves.
* * * * *
Dround was not at the office the next morning: they telephoned from his
house that he was ill. Worry, perhaps, had brought on one of his nervous
attacks. Meantime, it was easy to see the effect of Carmichael's loss
all over the place. Down to the girls in the mailing room, the force
knew that something was wrong with the concern. You can't keep real
news from spreading: people are good conductors of electricity; their
thoughts leak. In any business, the trouble at the head runs all along
the line to the office boys.
Later in the day there came a message from Mr. Dround asking to see me
at his house before I went home. It was plain enough what he wanted of
me, and I disliked the coming interview. For I should have to tell him
that I had decided to desert to his enemies. There was no other way, as
I saw it. And yet it seemed like ingratitude. That was what his wife
would think, and I saw her looking at me, a scornful smile on her lips.
However, this was no matter for sentiment. If her husband had been
another sort of man,--if he had any dare in him,--it might have been
worth while to try a fall with Carmichael and Strauss. But as it was, I
felt no desire to follow a funeral. Maybe she would understand....
As I turned into the avenue near Dround's house there was a fresh little
breeze from the lake, blowing the smoke away from the city and cooling
the air after the warm day. It was quiet and peaceful on the broad
avenue--a very different kind of place from the dirty Yards whence I had
come. It made me feel all the more that Dround didn't belong in
Packington.
I sat waiting some time for Mr. Dround, and was growing impatient when
his wife came into the room.
"Mr. Dround is engaged with his doctor," she said. "Won't you step into
the garden with me?"
Behind the house, hidden from a cross street by a brick wall, was a
little green lawn with one old willow tree. It was a pretty, restful
kind of place, hardly to be looked for so near the heart of the city. In
one corner there was a stone bench and some chairs, and a table with
books and tea things. Across the top of the wall one could see a line of
gray where the horizon met the lake.
"Pleasant place!" I exclaimed, looking across the little garden out to
the lake.
"Yes, it makes the city in summer tolerable."
Her eyes followed mine as they rested on a bit of marble, old and
sculptured with yellow figures, that had been set into the wall.
"I brought that from Siena," she explained. "It was in an old wall
there. It reminds me of Italy," she added, touching the marble lightly
with her fingers.
Suddenly she turned to me with a swift question:--
"So you're to be our new Mr. Carmichael?"
It was not woman's mere haphazard quizzing: she demanded the truth.
"No," I replied gravely, after a moment's hesitation. "Mrs. Dround, I
have come here to tell Mr. Dround that I must decline his offer. I have
other--"
"You are going over to them!" she cried quickly. There was no reproach
in her voice, but she gave me a keen look that read to the bottom of my
mind. "You will be a tool for the Jew and the Irishman!" There was a
smile on her lips and a touch of scorn in her voice. "Tell me, why?"
And I told her, as I might a man whom I trusted, just what the
situation was--how disastrous had been the row with Carmichael, and how
foolish the cause, as I thought. She listened without questions, and I
went on to cover the whole matter--to tell of the large plans that our
great rival undoubtedly had in view, plans which meant ultimately the
consolidation of the entire business in some great corporation under his
control. It was as clear to me as handwriting what he was aiming
for--the entire food-products business of the country; and it would take
a stronger man than Henry I. Dround to stand against him.
"So, Mrs. Dround," I concluded, "the best thing you and I can do for Mr.
Dround is to advise him to retire, to sell out--"
"He would never do that," she interrupted me quietly.
"You must make him see it," I urged.
"There are some things I cannot do. You will not understand; I cannot
tell you--it is not my right. Only he will go on to the bitter end."
I bowed. There was nothing further to be said, and we sat silently for a
few minutes.
"But are you sure," she began again, "that that would be the best way?
Is it best to run to your enemy, crying for quarter?"
"Not if you can put up a good fight!"
She drew her fingers caressingly over the outlines of the old marble.
"I think you could put up the right kind of a fight," she remarked
quietly. "Suppose that you saw your way clear to go in--to fight--what
would you do?"
"The first thing," I said, smiling, "would be to hit Strauss between the
eyes."
[Illustration: "I think you could put up the right kind of a fight," she
remarked quietly.]
"Just how?"
"Do what he is doing, if I could: get together all the independent
concerns that could be bought or persuaded into joining. Then you would
be in a position to make terms with the railroads and force agreements
from the big fellows. And I shouldn't let my scruples stand in the way,
either," I added hardily.
"Naturally not--if the others were the same kind!"
"And if your husband were made like you," I thought to myself, "the
chance would be worth the trying." "If," I continued aloud, "you could
get the Jevons Brothers, the E.H. Harris Company, Griscom, in Omaha, and
two or three others, there would be a beginning. And there is this
London and Chicago concern, which could be had cheap," I mused half to
myself, remembering Carmichael's words.
"I was sure you knew what must be done," she took me up in the same
cool, assured tone. "You aren't the man to follow in the traces. You are
the kind that leads, that builds. And this is building! What is the
first step?"
I looked at her, but this time I did not laugh. She had risen from the
stone bench and stood gazing out across the quiet sward to the blue lake
beyond. Her dark features were alight with enthusiasm. Then she looked
over at me inquiringly, expecting me to take her lead, to walk on boldly
with her.
And there of a sudden--for until that moment there was nothing in my
mind but to tell Mr. Dround that I was to leave him--there shot into my
head a plan of how this thing might be handled, the sketch of a great
campaign. All the seeds of thought, the full years' schemings, the
knowledge and experience of life I had been getting--everything that was
within me came surging up into one grand purpose. How it came to me of a
sudden, born of a few words this woman had spoken here in the garden by
the blue lake, is beyond my explanation. Suddenly I saw a way, clear and
broad ahead--the way for me to travel.
"You will have to take the first steps by yourself--manage this London
and Chicago Company affair on your own responsibility." Mrs. Dround's
voice was now matter-of-fact, as though the time for clear thinking had
come. "Then, when you have your plans ready--know just what must be
done--you will have the necessary help. I can promise that!"
I understood what she meant--that Mr. Dround was not to be approached
until the scheme was ripe. Then she would swing him to a decision. That
was the wise way.
"You are right," I agreed. "It would be useless to trouble him until the
land is mapped. When it comes to forming the company--"
"Yes, then," she interrupted, seeing my point. "Then I shall be of use."
"My,--but it's a big gamble!" I said low to myself.
"That is the only kind worth making!" she flashed.
It struck the right note in my heart. She held out her hand, and I took
it in mine.
"We're partners on this thing!" I smiled.
"Yes--to the end. Now, shall we go to Mr. Dround?"
Here was a woman who should have headed a regiment, or run a railroad,
or sat at a game with a large stake!
Mr. Dround opened the door on the veranda and came forward, walking
feebly.
"How do you do, Harrington?" He greeted me, giving me a thin, feverish
hand. "The doctor's been gone a good while, Jane," he added querulously.
"I have been waiting for you in the library."
Mrs. Dround moved away while we discussed some matters of urgency, and
then Mr. Dround said hesitantly: "I hope you see your way clear,
Harrington, to accepting my offer. It promises a great future for a man
as young as you, with your energy," he added a trifle pompously.
"It is pretty late to talk of that to-night," I replied, evasively.
Mrs. Dround was walking slowly toward us; she stopped by the marble
piece in the wall and seemed to be examining it. But I knew that she was
listening.
"There are some plans I want to talk over with you first. If they prove
satisfactory to you, we could make an arrangement, perhaps."
Mrs. Dround turned her head and looked at us inquiringly.
"Oh, very well; I expect to be at the office to-morrow. This Commission
for the Exposition takes a great deal of my time and energy just now."
(It was the year before the great Fair, and Mr. Dround was one of the
Commissioners for that enterprise.) "But we will take up your plans at
once," he concluded graciously, giving me his hand.
* * * * *
There was a family party at my house that evening. Will had arrived from
Texas, where he had been to look over the field for me, and May was
visiting us with her children. As I walked up the path to the house on
my return from Mr. Dround's, I could hear Sarah's low laugh. She and May
were rocking back and forth behind the vines of the piazza, watching the
children at their supper. May was looking almost plump and had a
pleasant flush on either cheek; for good times had made her blossom out.
But Sarah was the handsomer woman, with her wavy, rich brown hair and
soft profile. Instead of May's prim little mouth, her lips were always
half open, ready to smile. As I kissed her, she exclaimed:--
"Where have you been, Van?"
"Seeing some one."
"I know," she said with a pout. "You have been with that horrid
Irishman. Well, I hope you made him give you just loads of money."
"But suppose I haven't been to see John?" I asked laughingly, thinking
she would be delighted to find out I was to keep on with Dround.
"Suppose I took your advice?"
"What! Are you going to stay with Mr. Dround, after all? And all that
money you were telling me about--millions!" she drawled in her soft
voice like a disappointed child.
She seemed troubled to know that after all I had given up my chance to
make money with Strauss and Carmichael.
"I guess we shan't starve, Sarah," I laughed back.
"You must do what you think best," she said finally, and repeated her
favorite maxim, "I don't believe in a woman's interfering in a man's
business."
After supper, as we sat out in the warm night, Will talked of his trip
through the Southwest.
"It's a mighty big country down there, and not touched. You folks up
North here haven't begun to see what is coming to that country. It's the
new promised land!"
And he went raving on in the style I love to hear, with the sunshine of
great lands on his face and the wind from the prairies blowing low in
his voice. It was like music that set my thoughts in flow, and I began
to see my scheme unfold, stretch out, embrace this new fertile country,
reach on to foreign shores.... Then my thoughts went back to the garden
by the lake, with the piece of yellow marble in the wall.
"That's a pretty little place the Drounds have behind their house," I
remarked vaguely to Sarah in a pause of Will's enthusiasm.
"What were you doing in the Drounds' garden?" Sarah asked quickly.
"Oh, talking business!"
"It's a queer place to talk business."
"It's a pretty place, and there's a piece of marble in the wall they got
in Italy--Siena, or some such place."
"So you were talking business with Jane?" Sarah persisted.
"Well, you can call it that. Tell me more about that country, Will.
Maybe the future will take us there."
In the warm, peaceful evening, with a good cigar, anything seemed
possible. While the women talked of schools and the children's clothes,
I saw visions of the coming year--of the great gamble!
CHAPTER XIV
THE FIRST MOVE
_The Chicago and London Packing Company--Bidding for bonds--A man
named Lokes--A consideration for services performed--Bribery--A
sheriff's sale--We take the trick--The tail of a snake--Not a gospel
game_
Slocum had been after the bondholders' protective committee of the
London and Chicago Company. There were only a million and a half of
bonds out, which, before their smash, could be picked up for less than
twenty. Lately, on the rumor that one of the strong Chicago houses was
bidding for them, their price had risen somewhat. The hand of Carmichael
working through one of the smaller corporations controlled by Strauss
was plain enough to one who watched, and I resolved as the first step in
my campaign to outwit my old boss in this little deal. From the price of
the bonds it was evident that Carmichael was offering the bondholders
about twenty-five for the control. I told Slocum to give forty and then
arrange to bid the property in at the sheriff's sale.
The lawyer reported that two of the bondholders' committee were
favorable to our terms: they hated the Strauss crowd, and they were
afraid to wait for better terms, as money was hardening all the time.
But the third man, who had been the treasurer of the defunct
corporation, held out for a higher figure. Slocum thought that this man,
whose name was Lokes, might be dickering with Carmichael secretly to
secure some favors for himself in the deal. This Lokes was not unknown
to me, and I considered Slocum's suspicions well founded. He had left
behind him in Kansas City a bad name, and here in Chicago he ran with a
set of small politicians, serving as a middleman between them and the
financial powers who used them. In short, I knew of but one way to deal
with a gentleman like Mr. Lokes, and I had made up my mind to use that
way.
Slocum made an appointment with Lokes in his office, and I went there to
meet him and arrange to get the London and Chicago outfit with as little
delay as possible. Lokes was a small, smooth-shaven fellow, very well
dressed, with something the air of a horsy gentleman. First he gave us a
lot of talk about the value of the London and Chicago properties, and
the duty of his committee to the bondholders. He and his associates had
no mind to let the property go for a song. I made up my mind just what
inducement would reach him, while he and Slocum argued about the price
of the bonds. When Lokes began to throw out Carmichael at us, I broke
in:--
"Mr. Lokes, you know there isn't much in this deal for that crowd. But I
don't mind telling you frankly that it is of prime importance to the
interests we represent."
Slocum looked up at me, mystified, but I went on:--
"We propose to form a large packing company, into which we shall take a
number of concerns on which we have options. We want this property
first. When our company is formed we might make it very well worth your
while having been friendly to us in this transaction."
Lokes didn't move a muscle: this was the talk he had been waiting for,
but he wanted to hear the figures. I told him enough of our plans to let
him see that we had good backing and to whet his appetite.
"Now we have offered your committee forty cents on the dollar for your
bonds, which is fifteen more than the other crowd will give you. If you
will induce your associates to take bonds in our corporation, we will
give you fifty, instead of forty--and," I concluded slowly, "there will
be fifty thousand dollars of preferred stock for your services."
At the word "services" Slocum jumped up from the table where he had been
seated and walked over to the window, then came back to the table, and
tried to attract my attention. But I kept my eyes on Lokes.
"What will you do for the others?" Lokes asked significantly, meaning
his two associates on the committee.
"Nothing!" I said shortly. "You will look after them. They will do what
you say. That is what we pay for."
It was plain enough that I was offering him a good-sized bribe for his
services in turning over to us the assets of the London and Chicago
concern rather than to our rivals, and for bonds in the prospective
company instead of cash. That did not trouble him: he was aware that he
had not been asked to meet me to talk of the health of the bankrupt
company of which he had been the treasurer. Lokes thought awhile, asked
some more questions about our company, and finally hinted at his
preference for cash for his services.
"Either forty cash with no bonus for your services, or fifty in bonds
with the preferred stock for you," I answered shortly.
Pretty soon he took his hat and said he was going to see his associates
on the committee, and would be back in the course of the afternoon.
"He's gone over to Carmichael," I remarked to Slocum, when he had closed
the office door behind Mr. Lokes. "But John won't touch him--he won't
believe his story. He doesn't think I've got the cash or the nerve to
play this game. We'll see him back in an hour or two."
"Do you know, Van, what you are doing?" Slocum asked sombrely, instead
of replying to my remark. "You have bribed that man to betray his
trust."
"I guess that was what he came here for, Sloco. But we are offering them
a good price for their goods. This man Lokes happens to be a rascal. If
he had been straight, we could have saved that preferred stock. That's
all there is to it."
But Slocum still shook his head.
"It's a bad business."
"Well, it costs money. But I mean to put this thing through, and you
know at the best I may lose every cent I have made in twelve years.
It's no time to be squeamish, Slocum."
"I wish--" he began, and paused.
"You wish, if there is any more of this kind of thing, I would get some
one else to do my business? But I can't! I must have a man I can rely
upon."
It meant a good reward for him, too, if we carried through my great
plan. But Slocum was not the one to be reached in that way. He needed
the money, and wanted it badly, but money alone wouldn't make him stick
by me. I knew that.
"We'll hope this is the last," I said, after a time. "And, besides, I
take the risk. I want you, and you won't go back on me. I need you,
Slo!"
He made no reply.
Sure enough, late that afternoon Slocum telephoned me that Lokes had
come back and signified his consent and that of his associates to our
terms. The bondholders would take notes, to be converted later into
bonds of the new company at fifty cents on the dollar. Lokes asked for
some kind of agreement about the stock he was to get for his "services,"
which I refused to give him, on Slocum's advice. He had to content
himself with Slocum's statement that he was dealing with gentlemen.
[Illustration: _That comedy took place on the court-house steps
according to law._]
The next step in the proceedings was the sheriff's sale of the defunct
corporation's effects, which was ordered by the court for the following
Monday. That comedy took place on the court-house steps according to
law. The sheriff read the decree of court to an audience of hoboes,
who were roosting on the steps, and some passers-by halted to see the
proceedings. When the sheriff asked for bids, a little Jew lawyer in a
shiny silk hat stepped forward out of the crowd and made his bid. This
was Marx, the junior member of a firm employed by Strauss. Just as the
sheriff was about to nod to the Jew, Slocum stepped forward with a
certified check in his hand and bid in the property for seven hundred
and fifty thousand dollars.
There was nothing for Marx to do; Carmichael had given him no
instructions for this contingency. He had his orders, and he stood there
with his jaw hanging, while Slocum handed in the certified check and
completed the formality of the sale.
"It is fraud!" Marx shouted, shaking his fist in my face as we left.
Perhaps he was right; but whatever fraud there was in the transaction
did not concern Marx or the men he represented. They had been euchred at
their own game. And they knew it: we never heard anything more from the
Strauss crowd about the London and Chicago bonds.
"Well, you've got it," Slocum said, as we came away from the sale. "I
hope we won't have trouble with Lokes."
"That's all right," I replied. "We've got him where he can't make
trouble."
"There's usually a tail to this kind of thing--you never can tell when
you have reached the end."
But I was too jubilant to take gloomy views. The skirmish was over, and
we were a step nearer my goal.
A few days after that I ran across John Carmichael as I was picking my
way in the muck out of the Yards. He was driving in a little red-wheeled
road wagon such as the local agents use for running about the city. He
called out:--
"Hey, Van Harrington! Come over here!"
"Can't Strauss do any better by you than that? Or maybe you have gone
back to collecting again?" I asked.
The Irishman grunted his acknowledgment of my joke, and we talked about
one thing and another, both knowing perfectly well what there was
between us. Finally he said it:--
"So you thought you could do better by sticking with the old man?"
I nodded.
"How long do you think he'll keep goin'?"
"About as long as I stay with him, John."
"And you put him up to buying that junk at the auction the other day?"
he added.
"I bought it for myself," I replied promptly.
"The h--l you did! Say, kid, this ain't any gospel game you are in. You
needn't look for favors from our crowd."
"We aren't asking any just now. When we want them, I guess we'll get all
that we need."
"You will, will you?" Big John raised his whip and hit his horse as if
he meant to lay the same lash on me one of these days. The red-wheeled
cart disappeared down the road, the figure of the burly Irishman leaning
forward and flecking the horse with his lash.
CHAPTER XV
THE ATLAS ON THE FLOOR
_A tell-tale portrait--When the fire of life has gone--The guiding
hand--A woman who understands--The highroads of commerce--The great
Southwest--Dreams--The art of life--"No one asks, if you succeed"_
Mr. Dround's illness kept him away from business for a mouth or more. He
had always been in delicate health, and this worry over the loss of
Carmichael and the bad outlook in his affairs was too much for him. His
absence gave me the opportunity to form my plans undisturbed by his
timidity and doubts. After he recovered, his time was much absorbed by
the preparations for the Fair, in which he was much interested. In all
this I could see a deft hand guiding and restraining--giving me my rein.
At last, when I was ready to lay my plans before Mr. Dround, I made an
appointment with him at his house.
He was sitting alone in his great library, looking at a picture which
one of the artists attracted to the city by the Fair was painting of
him. When he heard my step he got up sheepishly and hung a bit of cloth
over the portrait, but not before I had seen the cruel truth the painter
had been telling his patron. For the face on the canvas was old and
gray; the daring and spirit to fight, whatever the man had been born
with, had gone out of it. I pitied him as he stood there by his picture,
his thin lips trembling with nervousness. He seemed to shrink from me as
though afraid of something. We sat down, and after the first words of
politeness neither of us spoke. Finally he asked:--
"Well, Harrington, how do you find matters now that you have had time to
look into the situation?"
"Very much as I expected to find them," I replied bluntly. "And that is
as bad as could be. Something must be done at once, and I have come to
you to-day to settle what that shall be."
He flushed a little proudly at my words, but I plunged in and sketched
the situation to him as it had become familiar to me. At first he was
inclined to interrupt and question my statements, but he saw that I had
my facts. As I went on, showing him how his big rivals had taken his
markets--how his business had fallen so that he could no longer get
those special rates he had been too virtuous to accept--he seemed to
slink into his chair. It was like an operation; but there was no use in
wasting time in pity. His mind must be opened. Toward the end he closed
his eyes and looked so weak that once I stopped. But he motioned to me
to go on.
"And what do you advise?" he asked weakly at the end.
"I have already begun to act," I replied with a smile, and outlined what
had been done.
He shook his head.
"That has been tried before. All such combinations have failed.
Strauss, or one of the others, will split it up."
I did not believe that the combination which I had to propose would be
so easily disturbed. In the midst of our argument some one came into the
room behind us and paused, listening. I stopped.
"What is it, my dear?" Mr. Dround said, looking up. "We are talking
business."
"Yes," she said slowly. She was in street clothes, with hat, and she
began to draw off her gloves slowly. "Shall I disturb you?"
"Why, no," he answered indifferently, and I resumed my argument. Mrs.
Dround sat down behind the table and opened some letters, busying
herself there. But I felt her eyes on my words. Unconsciously I
addressed the rest of my argument to her. When I had finished, Mr.
Dround leaned back wearily in his seat and sighed:--
"Yours is a very bold plan, Mr. Harrington. It might succeed if we could
get the necessary financial support. But, as you know well enough, this
is hardly the time to provide money for any venture. The banks would not
look favorably upon such a speculative suggestion. We shall have to wait
until better times."
"We can't wait," I said brusquely. "Bad times or not, we must act."
"Well, well, I will think it over. It is time for my medicine, isn't it,
Jane?" he said, looking fretfully at his wife.
It was a broad hint for me to take myself off, and my wild schemes with
me. For a moment I felt disgusted with myself for believing that
anything could be accomplished with this failing reed. Mrs. Dround came
softly up to her husband's chair and leaned over him.
"You are too tired for more business to-day, dear. Come--let me get your
medicine."
She took his arm and with all the gentleness in the world led him from
the room, motioning to me with one hand to keep my seat. When they had
gone I removed the cloth from the portrait on the easel and took a good
look at it. It was the picture of a gentleman, surely. While I was
looking at it, and wondering about the man, Mrs. Dround came back into
the room and stood at my side.
"It is good, isn't it?"
"Yes," I admitted reluctantly, thinking it was only too good. As I
replaced the cloth over the picture, I noticed that her lips were drawn
tight as if she suffered. I had read a part of their story in that
pathetic little way in which she had led her husband from the room.
"So you have started," she said soon, turning away from the picture.
"How are you getting on? Tell me everything!"
When she had the situation before her, she remarked:--
"Now is the time to take the next step, and for that you need Mr.
Dround's help."
"Exactly. These separate plants must be taken over, a holding company
incorporated, and the whole financed. It can be done if--"
"If Mr. Dround will consent," she finished my sentence, "and give his
aid in raising the money?"
Her shrewdness, immediate comprehension, roused my admiration. But what
was her interest in the scheme? As Sarah had told me, it was generally
believed that Jane Dround had a large fortune in her own right. Why
should she bother with the packing business? She might spend her time
more agreeably picking up Italian marbles. Her next words partly
answered my wonder:--
"Of course, he will see this, and will consent; or prepare to lose
everything."
I nodded.
"I don't like to pull out of things," she said slowly.
"Mr. Dround is in such poor health," I objected.
"This is not his fight: it is yours. All that he can do is to give you
your first support. Leave that to me. Tell me what you will do with this
corporation--what next?"
She was seated in a little chair, resting her dark head upon her hands.
Her eyes read my face as I spoke. Again, as the other time when we had
spoken in the garden, I felt as though lifted suddenly on the wings of a
strong will. At a bound my mind swept up to meet her mind. On the shelf
near by there was a large atlas. I took it down, and placing it on the
rug at our feet, turned the leaves until I came to the plate of the
United States.
"Come here. Look there!" I said, indicating the entire eastern third of
the map with a sweep of my hand. "There is nothing for us that way to be
had. We could never get to the seaboard. The others own that
territory."
The map was streaked with lines of railroad running like the currents of
a great river from the broad prairies of the Dakotas, across the upper
Mississippi Valley, around the curve of the Great Lakes, eastward to the
Atlantic seaboard.
"Those are the old highroads," I went on, following the lines of trade
with my finger. "And those are the old markets. We must find a new
territory, make it, create the roads. And it must be a territory that is
waiting, fertile, unexplored! Here it is!"
My hand ran down the map southwestward, crossing Kansas, Nebraska,
Oklahoma, Indian Territory, resting on the broad tract marked Texas.
"For us that will be what the Northwest has been for our fathers. There
lies the future--our future!"
"Our future," she repeated slowly, with pleasure in the words. "You plan
to feed this land?"
"Settlers are pouring in there, now, like vermin. The railroads are
following, and already there are the only strong markets we have
to-day--those I have been building up for five years."
We sat there on the floor before the atlas, and the bigness of the idea
got hold of both of us. I pointed out the great currents of world trade,
and plotted a new current, to rise from that same wheat land of the
Dakotas, flowing southward to the ports of the Gulf. Already, as I knew,
the wheat and corn and meat of this Western land had begun to turn
southward, avoiding the gate of Chicago with its heavy tolls, to flow by
the path of least resistance out through the ports of the Gulf to
Europe and Asia.
[Illustration: _I pointed out the great currents of world trade._]
"This is but the beginning, then--this packing company?" she questioned
slowly, putting her finger on the inner truth, as was her wont.
"Perhaps!" I laughed back in the recklessness of large plans. "The meat
business is nothing to what's coming. We shall have a charter that will
let us build elevators, railroads, own ports, run steamship
lines--everything that has to do with the handling of food stuffs. Some
day that canal will be dug, and then, then"....
I can't say how long we were there on our knees before that atlas. It
may all seem childish, but the most astonishing thing is that most of
what we imagined then has come true in one way or another. And faster
even than my expectation.
At last we looked up, at the same moment, and our eyes rested on the
portrait above us. The cloth had slipped from the canvas, and there was
the speaking face, old and saddened--the face without hope, without
desire. It seemed the face of despair, chiding us for our thoughts of
youth and hope. Mrs. Dround arose from the floor and hung the cloth in
its place, touching the portrait softly here and there. Then she stood,
resting her hands on the frame, absorbed in thought. A kind of gloom had
come over her features.
"This--this scheme you have plotted, is life! It is imagination!" She
drew a long breath as though to shake off the lethargy of years. "That
art," she pointed to the picture of a pale, ghostly woman's face,
hanging near by us on the wall--"that is a mere plaything beside yours."
"I don't know much about art: that is the work of a man's own two hands.
But mine is the work of thousands and thousands, hands and brains. And
it can be ruined by a trick of fate."
"No, never! You shall have your chance--I promise it--I know! Sit down
here and let us go back to the first steps and work it out again
carefully."
* * * * *
So there in the fading twilight of the afternoon was formed the American
Meat Products Company. Again and again we went over the companies to be
included, the sources of credit, the men to interest, the bankers from
whom money might be had.
"It is here we must have Mr. Dround's help," I pointed out
significantly.
She nodded.
"When this step is taken, I think he ought to go abroad--he needs the
rest. He could leave all else to you, I think."
I understood; the corporation once formed, he would drop out.
"There might be matters to which he would object--"
She translated my vague words.
"No one asks, if you _succeed_," she answered tranquilly.
And with that observation were settled those troublesome questions of
morality which worried Mr. Dround so deeply.
As I left I said in homage:--
"If this thing is pulled off, it will be _yours_!"
"Oh, no! Mr. Dround doesn't like women to meddle with business. It is
all yours, all yours--and I am glad to have it so."
Her eyes came back to mine, and she smiled in dismissal.
CHAPTER XVI
THE STRUGGLE
_Hard times--How to make something out of nothing--The problem of
finance--Getting help--Cousin Farson--A trip down the
coast--Paternal admonition--The beautiful city beside the lake--The
last ditch--A strong woman's nonsense--The Drounds sail for
Europe--I am in command_
It is not my purpose to recall all the details of the crowded years that
followed. From the autumn of '92, when the events that I have just
related occurred, through the period of deepening depression in all
business and the succeeding era of prosperity, I can do little more than
touch here and there upon more vital events. Suffice it to say that we
were met at the start with hard times, a period of tight money, which
prevented the quick realization of my plan to incorporate the properties
that had been gathered together. One way and another the companies were
carried along, by issuing notes and securing what financial help could
be got, waiting for the favorable time to launch our enterprise. Here
Mr. Dround was a strong help: once committed to the undertaking, he
persuaded others and used his credit generously. Sometimes he looked
back, seeking to retreat from the positions to which he was being
forced; but he saw only ruin behind him, and perforce went ahead.
Strange to say, we met at first little or no opposition from our strong
rivals. Whether it was that Strauss and his crowd were willing to let
the mice foregather into one trap before showing their claws, or that
they despised us as weaklings, no one could say. We were able, even, to
join the great packers in one of those private agreements that made it
possible for us to secure our share of the home trade. Mr. Dround was
aware of this fact, but averted his eyes. Necessity knows little
squeamishness. It must have filled John Carmichael with unholy joy to
know that Dround had come to this compromise with his virtue.
So, in spite of the hard times, we pushed on, branching out here and
there as the chance offered, building a plant in Texas, where Will was
sent to take charge, and making a deal with a car line that had been
started by some Boston men. But the time came when we had to have more
money, and have it at once. There was none to be raised in Chicago,
where the frost of the panic had settled first and hardest. Slocum, who
was my right hand all these months, suggested that the money might be
had from the Boston men who owned the car line. So in July, '93, we made
a hurried trip to the East. They were frightened in Boston, and we met
with little but disappointment. Men were waiting for Congress to repeal
the silver law, or do something else to make it pleasant, and wouldn't
listen to putting out another dollar in a Chicago enterprise. Then it
occurred to Slocum that we might interest a man he knew named Farson,
the rich man of his old home, Portland.
Farson, we found, was down the coast somewhere on his vacation, and we
followed after him. It was the first time I had ever been in that part
of the country, and the look of it was queer to me--a lot of scrawny,
rocky fields and wooden-built towns. When we failed to find Farson in
Portland, it did not seem to me worth while to go on--I doubted if there
was as much money in the whole town as we had to have; but Sloco was
strongly of the opinion that these Maine people had fortunes tucked away
in their old stockings. So we kept on down the coast, and found our man
at his summer cottage, on a little rocky island.
This Mr. Farson was a short, wiry, little man, almost sixty years old,
with a close-cropped gray mustache, and looked for all the world like a
retired school-teacher. He received us on his front piazza, and it took
him and Slocum half an hour to establish just the degree of cousinship
they were to each other. I wanted to laugh and to put in: "We've come to
make your fortune, cousin. It don't make any difference whether you are
third once removed or second twice removed." But I thought it likely
that Slocum knew his business best with these people and kept quiet.
When Slocum got around to saying that we were interested in various
Western enterprises, the weather seemed to grow cool all of a sudden.
But Cousin Farson listened politely and asked some good questions at the
end. Then he let us go all the way across the harbor to the hotel where
we had put up, to get our dinner. I thought we had lost him, but Slocum
thought not. For Cousin Farson had asked us to go fishing with him in
the afternoon.
"He might have given us a sandwich," I growled to Slocum. "That place of
his looks as if he could afford it."
Slocum smiled at my irritation.
"He did not ask you down here. He doesn't feel responsible for your
coming. Probably Cousin Susan would need a warning before inviting two
strangers to dinner."
Well, the little old schoolmaster came over in the afternoon with a very
pretty steam launch. The fishing was not all a pretence. He liked to
fish; but I never saw a man who listened as keenly as that man did. And
I did the talking. I let him see that we were engaged on a big work;
that in putting his dollars into our packing-houses he wasn't just
taking a flyer, way off at the end of the earth. I had had some
experience in dealing with men by this time; it was no raw young schemer
who came to this party. And I had observed that what men want when they
are thinking of putting their money into a new enterprise is to have
confidence in the men who will spend their dollars. My experience has
shown me that the cheapest thing to get in this world is money. If you
have the ideas, the money will flow like water downhill. At any rate,
that was the way it worked with good Mr. Farson.
We stayed there in Deer Isle three days, and had one simple meal in the
banker's house after Cousin Susan had been duly warned. At the end of
the time Farson thought he would give us a couple of hundred thousand
dollars and take some of our bonds, and he thought maybe his
brother-in-law would take a few more, and also his brother-in-law's
brother. In short, Mr. Farson was the first one in a long row of bricks.
He went up with us on the Boston boat, when we started back, to secure
the others. It was a glorious night early in August, and, after Slocum
had gone to bed, the old banker and I sat up there on the deck watching
the coast fade away in the moonlight. I had never seen anything like it
before in my life--the black rocks starting right out of the water, the
stiff little fir trees, the steep hills rolling back from the sea.
[Illustration: _The black rocks starting right out of the water._]
"This is the prettiest thing I have ever seen!" I exclaimed. "My wife
must come down here next summer."
"Yes," the old gentleman replied, with evident pleasure in my praise of
his native rocks. "I can tell you that there is very little in the world
to compare with the charm of this coast."
Then he began to talk of other lands, and I found that he had been all
over the earth. He talked of Italy, and India, and Japan, and parts of
Russia. After a time he began to ask me questions about myself, and
being an easy talker, and happy over the success we had had, I told him
a good deal of my story, and how I had come to enter the present
undertaking. It was easy to tell him things--he had quick sympathy and
was as keen as a boy. He seemed to approve of my general plan, but
advised patience.
"This silver trouble will lead to a period of bad times," he remarked.
"The very time to prepare," I retorted.
"True," he laughed, "when you have the faith and energy. But I am an old
man. I wish to live in peace the rest of my life. Young man, I have been
through two panics and the war. I lost a son while I was in the
Wilderness. He would have been about your age," he added, in a far-away
tone.
That switched the talk from business, and we sat there on deck until
nearly dawn, discussing religion all the time. As he bade me good-by at
the Boston station the next evening, I remember his saying to me with
one of the pleasantest smiles I ever saw on a man's face:--
"Now, Mr. Harrington, I can see that yours will be a busy life. Success
will come not merely in these matters, but in many others." He wagged
his head confidently. "I don't make many mistakes in men. But if you
ever want to have such pleasant talks as we had last night, when you get
to be an old man like me, you must see to it that your hands are kept
clean. Remember that, my boy!" And he patted my shoulder like a father.
It was a queer thing for one man to say to another at the end of a
business day. I had occasion to think of it later, although at the time
I put it down to the old gentleman's eccentricity. We parted very
cordially. I felt that a valuable ally had been secured--one who had it
in his power to bring others with him to our aid,--and I liked the old
boy himself.
Among other things, Mr. Farson had asked me casually about a little line
of Missouri railroad--the St. Louis Great Southern, it was called. He
and his friends were pretty well loaded with the securities of this
bankrupt little road, and the banker wanted me to look into it and
advise him what to do with the property. Thus it happened that the St.
Louis Great Southern became another link in my plan of conquest.
Altogether it was a most important connection, that between us and
Farson's crowd, and it was fortunate that Slocum thought of Cousin
Farson in our hour of need.
* * * * *
All this time there had been building the beautiful city of white
palaces on the lake, and it was now open for the world to see what
Chicago had dreamed and created. Although it had made me impatient to
have Mr. Dround spend on it his energy that was needed in his own
business, now that it was accomplished, in all its beauty and grandeur,
it filled me with admiration.
There were few hours that I could spend in its enjoyment, but I remember
one evening after my return from the East when we had a family party at
the Fair. May and Will were spending his vacation with us during the hot
weather, and the four of us, having had our dinner, took an electric
launch and glided through the lagoons beneath the lofty peristyle out
to the lake, which was as quiet as a pond. The long lines of white
buildings were ablaze with countless lights; the music from the bands
scattered over the grounds floated softly out upon the water; all else
was silent and dark. In that lovely hour, soft and gentle as was ever a
summer night, the toil and trouble of men, the fear that was gripping
men's hearts in the market, fell away from me, and in its place came
Faith. The people who could dream this vision and make it real, those
people from all parts of the land who thronged here day after day--their
sturdy wills and strong hearts would rise above failure, would press on
to greater victories than this triumph of beauty--victories greater than
the world had yet witnessed!
Nevertheless, in spite of hopeful thoughts like these, none knew better
than I the skeleton that lay at the feast, the dread of want and failure
that was stealing over all business. But for that night we were happy
and without fear....
As our launch drew up at the landing beside the great fountain, another
launch glided by our side, holding a number of the Commissioners and
some guests of distinction. Among them were the Drounds, who had
entertained liberally all this season. The two boat parties came to
shore together, and stood looking at the display of fireworks. The Court
of Honor was thronged with thousands and thousands; the great fountain
rippled in a blaze of light; the dark peristyle glowed for a moment in
the fantastic flame from the fireworks. I turned and caught the light of
the illumination in the dark face of Jane Dround. She bowed and smiled.
"In your honor!" she murmured half mockingly, as a rocket burst into a
shower of fiery spray in the heavens above. "I hear that you return from
Boston victor. You should hear Henry! He has no doubts now." She laughed
in high spirits, and we stood there awhile gazing.
"To-night I have no doubts; but to-morrow--who knows?"
Her brows contracted seriously.
"You need, my friend, one great quality, and you must get it
somehow--patience!"
"That is true, but--"
"Patience!" she repeated slowly; "the patience that covers years.
Perhaps you think that is a woman's virtue, but men, too, must have it
if they are to endure. Remember--patience! Now, before any one comes,
let me tell you: we are to leave for Europe as soon as the Fair closes.
Do you think that it will be all right by that time? Say yes or no," she
added, as we were approached by May and Sarah.
"Yes," I answered with a strange feeling of sadness.
Once more, before we left the grounds, I caught a moment of talk with
Mrs. Dround.
"To you the game--the great game!" she exclaimed softly. "And to me the
waiting. But remember, one useless woman is watching across the water
every move you make, and when the time comes that you want help, when
you cannot go on alone--"
[Illustration: "_When the time comes that you want help, when you cannot
go on alone_--"]
It sounded like woman's sentiment, and I interrupted jokingly:--
"When I am in the last ditch, cable you?"
"Don't laugh at me! I am more earnest than you know. If that time
comes--if you don't know which way to turn for help, if you have done
_all_, and still--"
We were standing beside a bandstand, and at that moment the music
crashed out, flooding us with deafening sound.
She pressed my hand, smiled, and turned away. I thought no more of her
words then. But some weeks later, before the Drounds sailed for Europe,
there came in my mail an envelope addressed in a woman's hand. Inside
there was only another envelope, marked:--
"For the last ditch!"
I tossed it into a drawer, rather annoyed by the silliness of it all. It
was the first evidence of weakness I had ever detected in this
intelligent woman.
CHAPTER XVII
NO GOSPEL GAME
_Elementary lessons in finance--What is a panic?--The snake begins to
show signs of life--An injunction of the court--Inquiries--Ed
Hostetter knows our man--How to deal with a political judge--Slocum
objects--My will prevails--The injunction is dissolved_
Sarah and I were sitting over our coffee one morning, six months after
the Fair had closed its gates for the last time. Our second child, a
little girl, was but a few weeks old, and this was the first morning
that Sarah had breakfasted with me for some weeks. She had been glancing
at the morning paper, and suddenly she looked up from it with wonder on
her face.
"The Tenth National Bank has failed. Isn't that Mr. Cross's bank?"
I nodded.
"Will the Crosses lose all their money?"
"It's likely enough--what's left of it--all his and her folks', too."
"Yesterday some one told me the Kentons were trying to sell their place
at the lake. What does it mean? Why are people growing poor?"
"It's the panic," I answered briefly. "Business has been getting worse
and worse ever since the Fair. Some think it started with the Fair, but
the trouble goes back of that."
She put aside the paper and looked at me seriously.
"Van, what is a panic?"
It seemed strange that she should ask such a question in a simple,
childish way. But she had been shut away from people and things of late,
and it was not her nature to explore what was not right in her path.
"A panic," I replied, finishing my coffee, "is hell! Now I must run and
see what has happened to us."
She looked at me in round-mouthed astonishment, and when I bent over to
kiss her good-by, she said reprovingly:
"You don't mean it could touch us, Van?"
"It might," I smiled, thinking of the troubled waters where I was
swimming.
"We must trust Providence--"
"And me."
"Van!" she kissed me with a bit of reproof. "I wish you would be more
religious."
My wife had been growing very serious of late. Under May's example she
had taken to church work and attended religious classes. She and May had
discovered lately a new preacher, who seemed a very earnest young man.
The Bible class he had formed sometimes met at our house, and Sarah
preferred to go to his church, which was a long way from our house, to
the church near by where we had a pew. It made little difference where I
was taken to church, and I was glad to have Sarah pleased with her young
preacher. So I kissed my wife good-by and hurried off, half an hour late
as it was.
There was trouble brewing. It had shown a hand some months back, darkly
and mysteriously. One day, while I was East, a man had walked into
Slocum's office, introduced himself as a Henry A. Frost, and said that
he represented some minority bondholders of the defunct London and
Chicago Company. We knew that there were a few scattered bonds
outstanding, not more than forty thousand dollars all told, but we had
never looked for trouble from them. Mr. Frost represented to Slocum that
his "syndicate" did not wish to make us trouble, but that before the
property of the London and Chicago concern was finally turned over to
our corporation he wished to effect a settlement. Slocum asked him his
figure for the bonds held by his "syndicate," believing at the worst
that Frost would demand little more than the cash price of fifty. To his
astonishment the man wanted par and interest, and when Slocum laughed at
his proposal, he threw out hints of trouble that might come if his
"syndicate" were not satisfied.
Slocum referred the matter to me, and advised me to seek some compromise
with Frost. "For," he said, "our record is not altogether clear in that
transaction," referring to the sum we had paid for services to the
treasurer of the bankrupt corporation. This move on the part of Frost
and his associates was blackmail, of course, but the lawyer advised
compromise. It would have been the wise thing to do; but having
succeeded so far, I felt my oats too much to be held up in this fashion.
I refused peremptorily to deal with the man, and Slocum intimated to
him, when he called for a reply, that we would not consider giving him
more than the other bondholders had received; namely, fifty per cent of
the par value of the bonds he held in new bonds. Frost went off, and we
had heard nothing more from him.
Meanwhile we had gone our way, making ready to turn over our properties,
rounding up this matter and that, guarding against the tight money
market, and quietly getting things in order for putting out our
securities. Then one day had come, like a thunderbolt from an open sky,
an injunction, restraining the American Meat Products Company from
taking over the properties of the London and Chicago Company, the
petitioners alleging that they held bonds of the latter concern, and
that the sale of its properties to the representatives of the American
Meat Products Company had been tainted with fraud. A Judge Garretson, of
the Circuit Court, had granted the temporary injunction one night at his
house, and the argument for the permanent decree was set for April 10, a
fortnight later. The names of the petitioners, all but Frost's, were
unknown to us.
"There is the trail of the snake!" Slocum muttered when he had read the
injunction. "We had better find Lokes. This will be in the papers
to-night, and in the Eastern papers to-morrow morning--you will hear
from it all over."
Sure enough, the next noon I had a telegram from Farson in Boston:--
"Papers print injunction A.M.P. Co.; charge fraud. Wire explanation."
"Cousin John didn't let the grass grow under him," Slocum grimly
remarked when I handed him this telegram at luncheon. "You had better
let me answer him. Now for Lokes: he denies all knowledge, and it's
plain enough that he isn't interested in having this matter aired. But
some one must have found out pretty accurately what has happened.
Perhaps Lokes when he was drunk let out what he had got from us. Anyhow,
it's blackmail, and the question is what are we going to do about it. It
will cost us a pretty penny to settle now!"
The situation was alarming. Unless we could get that injunction
dissolved, and speedily, our project faced serious danger. The banker
Farson's telegram was only the first. The banks and our backers East and
West would soon call us to account.
"It _is_ blackmail," I said to Slocum, "and if there is a way out we
will not pay those rats. Find out what you can about them."
In a day or two he came over to me with the information he had obtained.
The "syndicate" consisted of three or four cheap fellows, hangers-on of
a broker's office. One of them happened to be a relative of Judge
Garretson, who had issued the midnight injunction.
"I got that last from Ed Hostetter," Slocum explained. "I met him on the
street as I was coming over here. Having heard that this Lucas Smith
lived out Ed's way, in May Park, I asked him if he knew anything about
the man. He said at once: 'You mean the jedge's brother-in-law? He's a
political feller.' Of course this Smith is a bum like the rest."
So we had in Ed, who had come back to work for me, having failed in a
market where I had started him after the sausage plant was sold.
"Ed," I said to him, "we want you to find out all you can about this
brother-in-law of Judge Garretson's. See if you can learn how many of
those London and Chicago bonds he holds."
The next morning Ed brought us the information that Lucas Smith was
willing enough to talk, boasting that he and his friends were going "to
tune up those packers in good style." Ed thought they had got their tip
from one of Lokes's pals. It seems that Smith owned, nominally, only two
of the bonds. And there we were! Slocum rubbed his chin, trying to see
light in a dark place.
"What sort of a man is this Judge Garretson?" I asked the lawyer.
"Good enough for a political judge, I guess. He's up for reëlection this
fall. There was some talk about his attitude in traction cases, but
nothing positive against him."
"See here, Ed!"--I turned to Hostetter abruptly--"I want you to go
straight out to this Lucas Smith's place and find him. Tell him you know
where he can get twenty-five thousand dollars for those two bonds of his
the day Judge Garretson dissolves that injunction."
"Hold on, Van!" Slocum interposed. "That is too strong! I stuck by you
last time, but I won't stand for this!"
"Go on, Ed!" I called out to Hostetter peremptorily. "Tell him just
that--the day the injunction is dissolved he gets twenty-five thousand
dollars for his bonds, and the other rats don't get a cent!"
Slocum rose without a word and put on his hat. I put my hand on his
shoulder and pushed him back into his chair.
"You aren't going to quit like that, Sloco, after all these years! Think
it over. What else is there for us to do? Can we have this business
aired in court? What will Farson say to that story of Lokes's? Do you
think we could buy the bonds from those _rats_ for any likely
figure?--for any figure, if Carmichael is waiting around the corner to
pick up our cake when we are forced to drop it?"
He sank into the chair rather limp, and we looked at each other for a
minute or two.
"Well," he said slowly, "it might as well come out now as later."
"You have got to sit in the boat with me, Sloco! I need you." I leaned
across the table and looked into his eyes. Slowly, after a time, he
nodded, and gave himself up to me to do my will. In the heat of my
trouble, I scarce realized what that acquiescence cost him: he never
gave another sign. But it cost him, one way and another, more than I
ever could repay,--and now I know it.
We walked out together, and as I turned in the direction of home I said
cheerfully:--
"Once out of this mess, old man, we shall be on easy street, and you can
buy a block of those old brick shanties back in Portland!"
The lawyer smiled at my speech, but turned away without another word.
* * * * *
Judge Garretson dissolved the injunction in due course. What is more, he
roasted the petitioning parties who had entered his court "with flimsy
and fraudulent pretexts." There was a righteous flavor to his eloquence
that would have been worthy of a better cause. Nevertheless, that same
evening Lucas Smith collected his price from Ed and delivered his bonds.
I turned to Slocum, who was with me in court when the decision was
handed down, and said jubilantly:--
"That worked. They can't touch us now! I guess we've seen the end of
this business."
Slocum demurred still.
"Maybe, but I doubt it. You don't think that Frost and his pals are
going to sit quiet after such a roast? They will nose around to find out
who sold them out."
But I did not pay much heed to the lawyer's fears.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE STRIKE
_The labor question from the inside--A talk with strikers--Tit for tat
all round--A ticklish place for an argument--My anarchist--Bluff--It
works--We call it square_
Meantime, for a little entertainment, we had a strike in one of our
Indiana plants. At first it didn't make much difference: all the packers
had been shutting down here and there during the cold months, and we
were ready to close that particular plant.
But as the severe winter of '94 passed, and the men saw that we were in
no hurry to start work until better times, they began to get ugly, to
set fire to the buildings, and do other injuries. There was no police
protection to amount to anything in any of these country places, and it
would cost too much to keep a sufficient force of hired detectives to
guard the property.
It got on toward spring and we wanted to open the place for a short run,
but I was determined not to give in to the union, especially since they
had taken to hurting the property. There had been a number of strikes
that year, notably the great one at Pullman, followed by the railroad
trouble. It was a most senseless time for any man with a job to quit
work, and the employers were feeling pretty set about not giving in.
I remember that about this time some of the preachers in the city, and
among them the Reverend Mr. Hardman, Sarah's young man, got loose on the
strike question and preached sermons that were printed in the
newspapers. Hardman's ideas were called "Christian Socialism," and it
all sounded pretty, but wouldn't work twenty-four hours in Chicago. I
wanted Sarah to try a new minister, who had sense enough to stick to his
Bible, but she was loyal to Hardman, and even thought there might be
something in his ideas.
Well, it got along into July, and I concluded to run down to our Indiana
plant and see what could be done with the situation. There was a
committee of the union waiting for me in the superintendent's office. We
talked back and forth a considerable time, and finally I said:--
"See here, boys, I want you to come over the plant with me and let me
show you what some of you strikers have done, and what it will cost us
before we can open up."
So I tramped over the place with the men, and I pointed out damages to
the property that would cost the company over ten thousand dollars to
repair.
"Now, go home and ask your union if they will stand for that bill?"
They thought it was my little joke. They could not understand that a
union, if it is to have the power to force a rise in wages, must be
responsible also for the damage done by its members. Nor could they see
that if the company wasn't making money, they could not make more money
out of the company.
At last, after talking with the lot of obstinate Poles for three hours,
I turned them all away, with the suggestion that they might see a
trainload of men coming in from the South in about a week if they didn't
come back--for we were going to open on the first of the month. They
trotted off to a saloon to talk it over. The superintendent shook his
head and talked about a riot if we should try getting in new men. Then
he and I went over the place together to see about improvements, and
spent another hour looking into every corner of the building.
He left me up in the loft of the main building, while he went back for
some plans that were in the office. I poked about here and there in the
dusty, cobwebbed place. There was only rough scantling for a floor, and
below my feet I could see the gaping mouths of the great vats, still
filled with dirty, slimy water. Pretty soon I heard the tread of feet
coming up the stairs. It didn't sound like the superintendent. He was a
light man, and this was a heavy person. I called out to the man to take
care, as the light was none too good, and a tumble to the floor below
into one of those vats would be no joke. He did not reply, and I was
bending over looking down between the boards and trying to make out who
it was, when suddenly I felt myself grasped by the neck. I straightened
up, and both of us came near tumbling over backward through the loose
boarding.
"Quit your fooling!" I cried, wondering what had got into the fellow.
Then I threw him off a bit and could see that I had to do with one of
those men who had been talking with me down below in the office.
"So you get some other help, you do, you do?" he began to spit at me. "I
know you! I know you!"
There was very little light in that loft, for the day was pretty well
over. All that could be seen by me was a stocky, short man, with a face
covered by a heavy beard. I remembered that I had seen him in the office
with the other men, though he had not done any talking.
"Well," I said, "what are _you_ after, John?"
Considering my position, I thought it was as well to speak
good-naturedly. It wasn't just the place for a wrestling match.
"I know you!" He came forward again and shook his fist in my face. "You
are one of the men who murdered my friends. Yes, you did murder them!"
"You're drunk, John," I said as coolly as I could.
"Yes, you do know. Seven, eight year ago. At the trial!"
"So you are an anarchist! Those were your friends, were they?"
"And this time yust look out for yourself!"
He made a grab for me, and I jumped out of his reach. In doing so, I
slipped on one of the boards, and went through part way. In the distance
below me I could see those tough-looking vats.
It was only a question now of how soon the superintendent would come. I
could not hear the sound of his steps below. Perhaps my anarchist had
settled him first. In that case there was little help for me. If I
should struggle, he could kick me over the edge as easily as you could
brush off a fly from the side of a bowl. So, to gain time, I thought I
would try to make the man talk. Then, at the last, I could grab him by
the legs and fight it out in that way, or pull him down with me.
[Illustration: _He undertook to give me a lesson then and there on the
rights of the anarchist._]
"So you think you'll get even by killing me! What is the good of that?
You'll be caught the first thing, and you and your mates won't get one
cent more for your day's work than you've had before. I don't count for
so much. Some one else will take my place in this business, and you will
have the same trick to play over again. He will boss you, and you will
work for him."
My theory of life seemed to amuse my earnest friend, for he undertook to
give me a lesson then and there on the rights of the anarchist.
"Maybe all the others like you will get killed some day," he concluded.
"Perhaps, John," I answered. "But you'll never kill us all. That's one
sure thing. And if by any luck you should do away with all my kind,
your own men would take to robbing you on a big scale as they do now on
a small one. Here, give me your hand and help me out."
Very likely his answer to my bluff would be my end. But I was tired out,
holding my two hundred pounds there in the air with my elbows. Strangely
enough, while I watched him, waiting for him to act, and expecting the
last blow, I did not seem to care half as much as I should have expected
to. I thought of Sarah and the children; I hated to leave the job I had
set myself half-done, with a lot of loose ends for other folks to bungle
over; and it didn't look inviting down there below. But the fall alone
would probably do for me at once, and, personally, my life didn't seem
to be of much consequence.
But my anarchist friend made no move. It seemed to trouble him, the way
I took his attack. So I gave a great heave, raised myself half up to the
girder where he stood, and held out my hand.
He took it! A moment more I found myself standing upright beside my
anarchist. The next thing was to induce him to continue the discussion a
few floors lower down, where there would be less likelihood of losing
our balance in the course of a heated argument. But I sat down,
friendly-like, on one of the cross-beams, and began to talk.
"So you are an anarchist? Yes, I helped to hang your friends. I had some
doubts about the matter then. But just here, now, after my experience
with you, I haven't any at all."
I gave him a good sermon--the gospel of man against man, as I knew it,
as I had learned it in my struggles for fortune. I showed him how I was
more bound than he,--bound hand and foot, for he could run away, and I
couldn't. At bottom he wasn't a bad sort of fellow, only easily excited
and loose-minded. In conclusion I said:--
"Now we'll just step down. I am going home to get some supper."
I started, and he followed on meekly after me. It was a rather creepy
feeling I had, going over those stairs! They were perfectly dark by this
time, and steep.
"You'll try to fix me for this?" the fellow said, when we reached the
first floor, and I had started toward the office.
"I guess we'll call this square," I replied, "and forget it. Good
night."
He made a line for the gate, and that was the last I ever saw of him. I
found the superintendent locked in the office. He had been spending his
time telephoning to the nearest town for help.
Then I took the train for Chicago. That experience was the greatest
bracer I had ever had in my life. Hanging there with the expectation
every minute of dropping into the vats below had steadied my nerves for
a good long haul. And I needed it, too.
CHAPTER XIX
DENOUNCED
_The snake lifts its head--My picture gets into the newspaper--The
Reverend Mr. Hardman in his church--The opinions of ministers--Mr.
Hardman points his finger at me--I reply--A scene--The real
blow--May has her say--Women, religion, and this earth_
It was the Saturday after my little adventure in Indiana. As I was
riding downtown in a street car, my eye was caught by a coarse cut in
the newspaper that the man opposite me was reading. The picture seemed
in a general way familiar. Underneath it ran these flaring head-lines:--
BRIBERY OF A JUDGE!
OFFICIAL IN PACKING CONCERN IMPLICATED!
EXCLUSIVE STORY IN THE _NATIONALIST_!
I bought a copy of the paper, and when I reached my office I read the
article. It was sprung, plainly enough, to hit Garretson, who was up for
reelection, and, in the main, they had a straight story,--Lokes, Frost,
the judge's brother-in-law, and all. And the right figures, too! The
reference to Slocum and me was vague, and Ed was left out altogether. My
picture was put in alongside of the judge's and labelled "Vice-President
and General Manager of the American Meat Products Company." The
inference was plain, and the paper wouldn't have dared to go so far, I
judged, if they hadn't their facts where they could produce them. There
was no word of the story in the other morning papers. I folded up the
article and put it away in my desk, then telegraphed Slocum, who had
gone to St. Louis on some railroad business for Farson and me.
Luckily, the _Nationalist_ was not a sheet that ever found its way into
my house, but that evening I looked apprehensively at Sarah. She was
pale and quiet,--she had been downtown all day shopping,--but she said
nothing to indicate that she was specially disturbed. The next day was
Sunday, and though Mr. Hardman's preaching was not much to my liking, I
drove over with Sarah to the little church on the North Side where he
held forth. There was a pretty large congregation that morning, mostly
women and poor people of the neighborhood, with a few North Side men
whom I knew in a business way.
The Reverend Mr. Hardman never preached a good sermon that he had
written out beforehand. He was one of those Episcopal preachers who come
out in front of the chancel rail, cross their hands, look down on the
floor, and meditate a few minutes to get their ideas in flow. Then they
raise their eyes in a truly soulful manner and begin. But to-day, for
some reason, Mr. Hardman didn't go through his trick. He marched out as
if he had something on his mind to get rid of quick, and shot out his
text:--
"_What shall it profit a man if he gain all and lose his own soul?_"
Then he began talking very distinctly, pausing every now and then after
he had delivered a sentence. He said that we had fallen on evil days;
that corruption was abroad in the land, polluting the springs of our
national life. And the law breakers came and went boldly in our midst,
the rich and powerful, the most envied and socially respected. Every one
knows the style of his remarks from that introduction. Most preachers
nowadays feel that they must say this sort of thing once or twice a
year, or their people won't believe they read the papers. So long as he
kept out in the open I had no objection to his volleys. I had heard it
all before, and in the main I agreed with him--only he saw but a little
way into the truth.
Suddenly his right arm, which had been hanging limp by his side, shot
out, and as we were sitting pretty well up front on the main aisle it
_seemed_ to point at us. Sarah gave a little start, and her cheeks
flushed red.
"And I say," the minister thundered, "that when such men come into our
churches, when they have the effrontery to mingle with God-fearing
people, and, unrepentant of their crimes, desecrate this sanctuary, yea,
partake of the Holy Body, I say it is worse for them than if they were
mere common thieves and robbers! I tell you, my people, that here in our
very midst one of them comes--a man who has defied the laws of man and
God, the most sacred; who has corrupted the source of justice; who has
bought that which the law denied him! This man has used...."
I had been getting angry, and was looking the minister in the eye pretty
fiercely. At that moment Sarah gave a little groan. She was very white.
"Come!" I whispered to her, getting up. "Come. It's time you got out of
this."
At first she shook her head, but as I refused to sit down she rose to
follow me. I had stepped to the aisle and turned to give Sarah my arm
when she fainted--just sank down with a groan in my arms.
"So this is the gospel you preach!" I called out to the minister, who
had paused and now stepped forward to help me raise Sarah. "Let her
alone! You have hit her hard enough already. Another time when you
undertake this kind of business, you had better know what you are
talking about."
He stepped back to his desk and kept silent, while I and one of the
ushers who had come forward to help me lifted Sarah and carried her to
the door. When we got to the end of the aisle Sarah opened her eyes and
stood up.
"I have had enough of _your_ gospel, my friend!" I called back. "I am
going where I shall hear religion and not newspaper scandal."
Sarah groaned and pulled gently at my arm. Once in the carriage, she
turned her face to the window and looked out as if she were still
shocked and sick. I tried to say something to comfort, but I could only
think of curses for that meddlesome Pharisee, who thought it was his
duty to judge his flock.
"Don't talk about it!" Sarah exclaimed, as if my words gave her pain.
So we rode home in silence all the way. At the end she turned to me:--
"Just say it isn't true, Van!"
I began to say a few words of explanation.
"No, just say it isn't true!" she interrupted. "I can't understand all
that you are saying. Just say that you haven't done anything wrong.
That's all I want."
"Some people would think it was wrong, Sarah," I had to say after a
while.
She gave a little groan and shut her lips tight. When we entered the
house May was there, with her children.
"Why, my land!" she exclaimed on seeing us. "What brings you people back
so soon? Sarah looks sick!"
Sarah was ready to faint again. May helped her up to her room, and I
went into my study. Pretty soon May came down to me.
"What's the matter with Sarah, Van?" she asked sharply. "She seems all
queer and out of her head."
Then I told her what had happened.
"Did you see the piece in the paper?" I asked at the end.
May shook her head. "But I shouldn't wonder if Sarah had seen it."
"Why do you think so?" I asked.
"Why, she seemed troubled about something yesterday when she came into
the house after she had been downtown shopping. She asked me whether I
generally believed the things I saw in the papers. I asked her what
kind of things, and she said,--'Scandals about people in business.' I
thought it was queer at the time."
"She won't talk to me about it," I said.
May didn't make any reply to this, and we sat there some time without
talking. Then May asked in a queer little voice:--
"Tell me, Van, is there anything in that story? Is it true in the least
way?"
"I'll tell you just how it was," I answered.
May was not the kind of person that could be put off with a general
answer, and I was glad to give her the inside story. So I told her the
circumstances of the case. "It was blackmail and robbery--the judge was
waiting to be bought. These rats stood between us and what we had a
perfect right to do. There's hardly a business man in this city who,
under the circumstances, would not have done what we did!"
"I don't believe that!" May exclaimed in her sharp, decisive little way.
She sat looking at me rather sternly with the same look on her face that
I had remembered for twenty years. And the next thing that she said was
pretty much what I thought she was going to say:--
"Van, you are always a great hand to think what you want to believe is
the only thing to believe! You know that!"
She smiled unconsciously, with the little ironical ripple which I knew
so well, and I smiled, too. I couldn't help myself. We both seemed to
have gone back to the old boy and girl days. But I was angry, as well,
and began to defend myself.
"No," she interrupted. "It isn't a mite of use for you to bluster and
get angry, Van. I don't trust you! I haven't for some time. I have been
worried for Will. Don't you let him mix himself up in your ways of doing
things, Van Harrington!"
"If he is so terribly precious," I said hotly, "I guess you had better
take him back to Jasonville."
"Maybe I shall," she answered quietly. "I'd take him to the meanest
little place in creation rather than know he had done any such thing as
you say you have done!"
We were both pretty angry by this time, and yet we both smiled. She was
such a snappy, strong little woman--I admired her all the time she was
making me angry! Somehow it brought back all that time long ago when I
had thought the world began and ended with her. We had never been so
near each other since. And I think she felt somewhat in the same way.
"Well," I said at last, "I am not going to fight this thing out with
you, May, or with any other woman. I have too much else on hand. I am
answerable for all I do or have done. If you and Will don't like my
company, why, we have got to do without you."
I wished I hadn't been so small as to make that fling. She flashed a
look at me out of her eyes that brought me to my senses in a moment. I
took her by the shoulders. "See here, May, we mustn't quarrel. Let's
all hang together in this, as in other things. You women don't know what
business means."
She smiled back into my eyes and retorted, "It seems to be just as well
we don't!" In a moment more she added: "But you mustn't think that I can
make up like this. You and I don't look at things in the same way."
"Never did!" I said dryly. "At any rate, you had better go up now and
look after Sarah. She can't keep on this way. She's got to look at this
more sensibly. She isn't like you, May!"
"No," May retorted, "she isn't! But this hurts her, too. Perhaps she
cares more what folks _say_ than I do. And she believes in her religion,
Van."
"That's all right. Her religion tells her to forgive, and not to judge,
and a few other sensible truths, which that minister seemed to forget
to-day."
"I never expected to see you, Van Harrington, asking for quarter in that
way!" she flashed.
Then she went back to Sarah. What my sister-in-law said set me to
thinking queer thoughts. I admired the way she took the matter, though
it made me pretty angry at the time. It seemed straight and courageous,
like her. If we had married, down there at home in the years past, there
would have been some pretty lively times between us. I could never have
got her to look at things my way, and I don't see how I could have come
to see things her way. For in spite of all the preacher and May had to
say, my feeling was unchanged: women and clergy, they were both alike,
made for some other kind of earth than this. I was made for just this
earth, good and bad as it is,--and I must go my way to my end.
CHAPTER XX
TREACHERY
_Who was the traitor?--Slocum's logic--We send for our accomplice--One
look is enough--The poison of envy--I see the last of an old
friend--Slocum points the moral--What people know--Public
opinion--Cousin Farson again--We lunch at a depot restaurant--I
touch granite_
The Monday morning after Mr. Hardman's outbreak, Slocum was waiting for
me at my office. In reply to my telegram he had come back from St.
Louis, where he had been attending to some business in connection with
Farson's railroad.
"They got it pretty straight this time," was all he said as a greeting,
with a care-worn sort of smile.
"They can't prove it! We'll bring suit for libel. I must put myself
straight--for family reasons."
But the lawyer shook his head doubtfully.
"That wouldn't be safe, Van! It's too close a guess. I rather think
they've got all the proof they want."
"Where did they get it, then? Not out of Lokes. He hasn't any reason to
squeal. Nor the judge, nor his brother-in-law!"
"Of course not; but how about Frost? This is the way I figure it out:
when those rats were euchred in their hold-up game by Garretson's
dismissing his injunction, they were mad enough and determined to find
out who sold them. It didn't take them long to see that the judge had
been fixed in some way. They nosed around, and spotted the judge's
brother-in-law as the one who made the trade. Then they started out to
get proof."
"Well?"
Slocum looked at me shrewdly.
"I have been thinking about that all the way back from St. Louis. There
is only one man left in the combination."
We stared at each other for a minute.
"You don't mean _him_!" I gasped.
"Who else?"
"Not Hostetter--not Ed!"
"Send for him, and we'll find out," he answered shortly.
I telephoned out to our office in the Yards to send Hostetter to the
city, and while we waited we discussed the story in all its bearings.
"We've got the trick," Slocum commented in reply to my desire for
action. "And Marx, who managed this business for Carmichael, is shrewd
enough to see it. _They_ won't bother us."
There was some comfort in that reflection: no matter what the scandal
might be, we had the London and Chicago properties in our possession,
and nothing short of a long fight in court could wrest them from our
control.
"The only thing to do," the lawyer continued, "is to keep quiet. The
papers will bark while the election is on, and it looks mighty bad for
Garretson. But out here most people forget easily."
It was queer to hear old Slocum talking in that cynical tone, as if,
having accepted the side that was not to his taste, he took pleasure in
pointing out its safety.
"Well," I grumbled, thinking of May and Sarah, "it's mighty
uncomfortable to be held up by rats like Lokes, Frost, and company, and
then be branded as a briber!"
"What do you care?" Slocum asked harshly. "It won't hurt _you_ much.
You'll make money just the same, and there aren't many who would lay
this up against you. Of course, there are always a few who are shrewd
enough to guess just about what has happened, and remember,--yes,
remember a story for years! But you don't care for their opinion!"
I knew that he was thinking of the honest men in his own profession, the
honorable men at the head of the bar, who would mark him henceforth as
my hired man.
Hostetter arrived soon, a shifty look in his eyes. He had changed a good
deal since that time he had slept out on the lake front. He was a heavy
man, now, with a fleshy face, and his dress showed a queer love for loud
finery. He wore a heavy seal ring, and a paste diamond in his tie, which
was none too clean. His sandy mustache dropped tight over his mouth. Yet
in spite of his dress and his jewellery, he was plainly enough the
countryman still.
"Ed," I said at once, "have you been talking to any one about that
matter of the bonds--the deal with Lucas Smith?"
He glanced at Slocum and then at me. One look at his face was enough:
the story was there.
"You low dog!" I broke out.
Slocum tried to hush me. Hostetter muttered something about not knowing
what we were talking about.
"You're lying, Ed! Tell me the whole truth. Did you sell what you knew
to the _Nationalist_, or to Frost and his crowd?"
He became stubborn all at once, and refused to answer. I turned to the
lawyer:--
"See that man! I picked him out of the bankruptcy court two years ago,
after giving him his third start in business. Last winter I sent his
wife South and kept her there six months so that she could get well."
I turned to Ed.
"Whose bread are you eating now, to-day?"
He picked up his hat and started for the door. But I called him back. It
came over me all at once what we had been through together, and I
couldn't let him leave that way, sneak out of my sight for good and all.
"Tell me, Ed," I asked, more miserable than he, "are you going over to
Carmichael to get some more pay for this?"
"Maybe, if I did," he replied sullenly, "it'd be some better than it is
working for you."
"I don't think so--not long. Folks like you aren't worth much. Come, Ed!
Did I ever do a mean thing to you? Didn't I give fifteen cents when we
hadn't but twenty between us? What were you thinking when you did this
dirty piece of business? Just tell me you were drunk when you did it. I
would have given you ten times as much as you ever got from them to know
you couldn't do it!"
[Illustration: "_You have done something the taste of which will never
get out of your mouth._"]
Then he began to go to pieces and cry, and he told me all I wanted to
know. It was a plain case of the poison of envy. I was rich and on top,
and he was working for thirty dollars a week for me. His wife, who had
always kept a grudge against me for not making up to her in the old
days, had taunted him for taking his wages from me. She kept telling him
that I did nothing for him, and when she found out about his dealing
with Lucas Smith for me, she saw her chance. Somehow Frost got on his
track, and evidently they thought his information was worth paying
something for. That was the whole story.
While we were talking, Slocum slipped out of the room. It was a pitiful
scene.
"Ed," I said finally, "you must go back to the country. That is the only
place for you. You'll grow worse in the city the longer you stay. Your
belly's got bigger than your brain, and your heart is tainted at the
core. I will start you on a ranch I've got in Texas. Think it over and
get out of this place as soon as you can. I'm sorry for you, Ed. For you
have done something the taste of which will never get out of your
mouth."
He left my office without a word, and that was the last I ever saw of
him. When he had gone Slocum came back and sat down.
"It was a pretty tough thing for Ed to do," he remarked calmly, looking
out into the muddy street, where men were hurrying along the pavements.
I made no remark, and he added in the same far-off tone of voice:
"That's the worst of any piece of crooked business: it breaks up the man
you work with. Ed is a rascal now--and he was never that before!"
"That's true enough," I assented gloomily.
Slocum advised me to leave the city for a while, because should the
_Nationalist_ charges be investigated by the Grand Jury, it might be
awkward for me. But I refused to leave the city: no matter what
happened, I was not the man to run and hide. The Democratic papers made
all they could out of the affair, and then after the election it died
away. Garretson was reëlected, and that was a kind of vindication for
him.
But the insiders in the city knew that something had been wrong, and, as
Slocum said, the scandal connected with quashing that injunction
followed us for many years. It was of less importance to me than to
Slocum; for the men with whom I dealt were used to stories like mine.
They believed what they had a mind to, and did business. But for Slocum
it was more serious.
The worst of it for me was at home. Sarah brooded over the newspaper
talk until she was morbid, refusing to go almost anywhere she would be
likely to meet people she knew. The Bible classes had been given up,
and, naturally enough, we never went back to Mr. Hardman's church, nor
returned to our old church. Sarah and I talked about it once or twice,
but we got nowhere.
"I should think you would care for the children!" she would cry,
persisting in considering me as a criminal.
"You'll see that it won't make the smallest difference to any one a year
hence, if you'll only hold up your head!"
"Well, I don't understand business, but May thinks it pretty bad, I
know, because she doesn't come to the house any more when you are at
home."
"She has no reason to act that way. And I don't mean to have you or May
or any other woman holding me up with your notions of what's right and
wrong, just because the newspapers make a lot of talk."
That ended the matter between us; but for a long time Sarah avoided our
old friends, and the house was unusually quiet.
What troubled me more than the racket in Chicago was the way that Dround
and Farson and a few other of our backers might take the story. The
Drounds were in Egypt, but they would hear the news quickly enough. Mr.
Dround was the president of our corporation, and the most influential
single stockholder. With his ideas, he might become a nuisance, or draw
out altogether, which would be awkward in the present condition of the
company.
As for Farson, I always counted a good deal on that crusty bit of rock,
and he had never failed me yet. One thing after another had come up in
the last four years, and he and his friends had backed me solidly. We
were pretty deep in other enterprises than this packing
business--railroads and land in that Southwest where I had set my eyes.
While the scandal was the worst we never heard a word from Farson, and I
was congratulating myself that he had overlooked the matter, when one
morning I received a despatch: "Meet me Union Station twelve to-morrow.
FARSON." That was all.
When he got out of the sleeper that noon I missed his usual warm smile.
He refused my invitation to lunch at the City Club, and led the way into
the fly-specked, smelly restaurant at the station. We ate our miserable
meal, and he said little while I talked to him about our affairs. It was
like talking to a blank wall: he listened but said nothing. After a
while he interrupted me in a kind of thin whisper, as if his mind had
been absent all the time:--
"What about this Judge Garretson? It isn't true?"
"You mean what the papers say?"
The old gentleman didn't like newspapers. But he waived that aside with
a frown.
"The facts!" he whispered across the table. "I should not have mentioned
it had it not been for a conversation which I had the other day in New
York with Judge Sloan, of the Chicago bar. He tells me that it is
generally believed to be true that this Garretson was bribed, and that
my old friend Jeff Slocum was mixed up in it. He says that Slocum has
lost his reputation among the best men of the profession on account of
his connection with this scandal. What are the facts?"
"This is hardly the place to go into all that," I replied somewhat
tartly.
"I don't know but that the place is good enough," the banker observed
dryly, "provided you have the right things to say." But he took the
frost out of his severe tone by one of his most genial smiles, and added
more gently:--
"Perhaps you young men don't realize how serious it is to have such
rumors get around about your reputation. Why, my boy, it puts you in
another class! You are no longer gentlemen, who can be trusted with
honest people's money and confidence."
Farson would be a hard man to bring to my point of view! I said by way
of allegory:--
"When a man comes out of the alley and puts a pistol in your face, and
asks for all the money you have on you, you don't wait to see where you
hit him, do you? We don't here in Chicago. The men who are making all
this talk were the hold-ups, and they did not get our money." I laughed.
[Illustration: "_When a man comes out of the alley and puts a pistol in
your face, and asks for all the money you have on you, you don't wait to
see where you hit him, do you?_"]
But he did not laugh with me--instead, he shut up like a clam all at
once. He finished his corned beef hash and tea, making a few remarks
about the train service on the road he had come over. I asked him some
questions about our railroad matters, but he merely mumbled "Um, um" to
all I had to say. Finally he said with his usual calm courtesy that he
had some letters to write, and as the train for the West he was to take
did not leave for some time he would not detain me, but would go
upstairs to the waiting-room and write his letters. So he seized his
worn old grip and marched off.
"Cursed old Maine Yankee," I said to myself, and I repeated the remark
over the telephone to Slocum, telling him the result of my luncheon with
the banker.
"Maybe so," the lawyer telephoned back. "But we can't afford to let him
get his back up."
"It's up already--he's been talking with Sloan, and I gather the judge
didn't speak highly of you or me."
"I suppose not," came the answer over the wire, and Slocum's voice
sounded dreary. "That kind of thing dies hard."
It _was_ dying hard, and no doubt about it!
CHAPTER XXI
A SQUEEZE
_The great fit of dumps--Keeping afloat--Interest on bonds--A sudden
financial frost--Strauss shows his hand--I beard the lion in his
den--He soars--I give him food for thought--The thermometer rises
once more--They treat me with consideration at the bank_
As every one knows, the recovery of business from that awful fit of
depression which followed '93 was slow. At times it would seem that the
country was ready to throw off its fit of sickness and begin to grow
again. Then there would come along some new set-back, and we were all in
the dumps once more.
It had been a great fight to keep the Meat Products Company afloat
during these hard times. It was all we could do to pay our fixed
charges, which were heavy, as most of the concerns that formed the
corporation had demanded bonds in payment for their properties before
they would consent to join us. There was also, of course, a big issue of
stock, preferred and common, which, by a mutual agreement, was not to be
marketed for three years. We had not yet come in sight of a dividend on
this stock; hence there were signs of dissatisfaction among the little
fellows, who had expected wonders of the company. And the time was fast
approaching when they would be at liberty to dump their stock on the
market for what they could get for it.
The Strauss crowd, since their secret attempt through the tool Frost and
his "syndicate" to thwart our plans, had kept their hands off us. They
knew well enough what was our financial condition, and were biding their
time to strike. But so far, clear down to the winter of '96, we had been
able to meet all interest charges promptly, and had thus kept the
corporation from foreclosure. That year as the time approached for the
March payment of interest on the bonds and sinking-fund requirement, it
became evident that our treasury would not be able to meet the sum
required, and that it would be necessary for us to borrow for the
immediate emergency. We already had a good deal of our paper out in
Chicago, and so Slocum and I went East to raise what we needed. That was
not so easy as it would have been in the days when we could rely on
Farson's aid. But after considerable efforts we got together in New York
what was needed for the emergency, and I left for home. That was the
fourteenth of February. I congratulated myself that the danger was past,
for I was sure that, with the opening of our new plant in Kansas City,
and the constant improvement in our business, we ought to be beyond
attack when the next payment was due in the fall. After that period we
should be on the road to dividends.
I had been at home a couple of days, my attention given to other matters
of importance, when one morning notice came from the Mercantile National
Bank, where we did most of our business, that some large notes were
called. We had over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in "call"
loans due that bank, and though, during these uncertain times, we could
not get any long paper, the management of the Mercantile had been
friendly to us from the start, and I had no reason to anticipate trouble
in that quarter. But when I went over to see the Mercantile people I met
with only a polite and cool reception. The loans were called; they must
be paid; money was hardening, and so on. It was a granite wall, with
just as much human consideration in it as stone and steel--and back I
went to my office to think.
There was more than the ordinary bankers' caution in this sudden
financial frost; and, whatever was the power working against us, it was
strong enough to close the doors of credit throughout the city. Wherever
I went those dreary two days, from bank to bank, I was met with the same
refusal: money was not to be had on any terms. The word had gone out
that we were a doomed ship, and not a bank would touch our paper. After
a second sleepless night I made up my mind to a desperate step, with the
feeling that if it failed the game was up.
As soon as I reached my office on the last day of grace I got old
Strauss himself on the telephone and asked for an appointment. He was
gracious enough when I reached his office; it was the cordiality of a
hungry eater before a good meal.
"What can I do for you, Mr. Harrington?" he purred.
I cut into the meat of the matter at once.
"What are your terms?"
"Do you mean that you wish to sell your property?" he asked
indifferently.
"Not a bit of it."
"Then how can I help you, Mr. Harrington?" he inquired blandly.
"You can take your hand off the banks, and let us get a living."
He shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly, as if I gave him credit for too
much power, and we had it out at some length. He had no interest in the
Meat Products Company. If the corporation went into the hands of a
receiver, he and his friends might consider buying it up, and he was
willing to discuss terms if we wished to deal in a friendly manner
before it reached the courts. I rose from my chair as if to go.
"Very well, Mr. Strauss," I said dryly. "You have made it impossible for
us to get any money in Chicago, but you don't own the earth. There is
money in New York--about four hundred thousand dollars lying there for
me at this moment."
"To pay the interest on your bonds!" he shot back, showing how closely
he had followed us.
"Yes," I admitted, "to meet our March interest and sinking fund. But I
am going across the street to the telegraph office to wire it out here
and take up our paper."
He looked at me inquiringly, waiting for the next move.
"And the March interest?" he suggested.
"We shall default."
The old dog raised his eyebrows, as if to say that was what he had been
waiting for all along.
"Of course," I went on, "that is what you have been working for, and
that is why the Mercantile people come down on us at this moment. You
think you have got us where you can squeeze the life out of us. Well,
you have."
"You are a smart young man, Harrington," the great packer replied
genially. "But you have got into a big game. You'd much better have
listened to Carmichael when he offered you a chance with us."
[Illustration: _"Only this," I said slowly, "I don't sell out to you."_]
"Thanks!" I said glumly.
"Now, why can't we avoid a fight and settle this matter between
ourselves? There might be something good in it for you."
"I know the way you settle such matters."
"According to your own talk, there isn't much left for you folks."
"Only this," I said slowly, and I walked back to his desk and leaned
over it: "I don't sell out to you. We default. The bonds will be
foreclosed, and maybe your crowd will hold the majority of 'em. But when
we get into the courts, Mr. Strauss, on a receivership, I go before the
judge and tell the story. I have the papers, too. And part of that story
will have to do with certain agreements which our company has made with
you and the other packers. And more than that, behind these arrangements
there are a lot more of the same kind in our safe that we got from
Dround and others. Now, if you want the whole story of the packing
business aired in court and in the papers throughout the country, you'll
have your wish."
"Pshaw!" he said coolly, "you don't suppose that bluff counts! They
can't do a thing to us."
"Maybe not," I replied. "Nothing more than a congressional
investigation, perhaps. And that might block your little game."
"Go on, young feller!" he exclaimed contemptuously.
"That's all. I want you to know that I am in this fight to the end, and
if it ruins me and my friends, I will see that it hurts you. Now, if you
want to fight, let the bank call this money."
We had some more talk on the same subject, and, though the great packer
maintained an air of indifference, I thought I had made some impression
on him. Then we parted, and the old fellow paid me the compliment of
seeing me as far as the door of his office.
From Strauss's place I went to the telegraph office, wired for the
money in New York, and in due time presented myself at the Mercantile
Bank ready to take up the notes, as I had told Strauss. The president of
the bank was waiting for me with a flurried look on his face.
"You have come in to renew your paper, Mr. Harrington?" he remarked, as
if there had been no trouble between us.
"No," I said; "I have come to pay what we owe. I don't do any more
business with you."
"We have reconsidered the matter, and we shall be very glad to renew
your paper."
Strauss had seen the point to my remarks, and concluded to retreat!
"Thank you, I don't care to get any more call money from you fellows," I
said placidly. "You make too much trouble."
Well, when I left the president's room I had arranged for a loan of four
hundred thousand dollars for six months. I had measured myself against
the great Strauss, and never again would the big fellow seem to me so
terrible. I judged that, for a time, the American Meat Products Company
would be left to do business undisturbed....
On my desk, when I returned from the bank that afternoon, was a telegram
from Mr. Dround from New York: "We arrived to-day--leaving for Chicago."
For once, Mr. Dround had made up his mind in a hurry.
CHAPTER XXII
JUDGMENTS
_Mrs. Dround once more--The point of view--Reflections--A family
discussion--May delivers her ultimatum--We part--The middle age of
life_
"In Rome you must do as the Romans, or be done!" I quoted jocularly.
Mrs. Dround smiled appreciatively.
"From all accounts you have been a tremendous Roman!"
"Well, at least I haven't been done--not yet."
Jane Dround smiled again and turned her face from the window of the
library, through which could be seen dots of ice and snow sailing out on
the blue lake. The years she had been gone in Europe had dealt lightly
with her. She had grown a trifle stouter, and looked splendidly
well--dark, and strong, and full of life.
"I did my best," she continued half humorously. "I tried to get lost in
darkest Africa beyond the reach of telegrams and newspapers. But a party
of Chicago people coming up the Nile crossed the path of our daha-biyeh,
recognized us, came abroad--and brought the story. Cables wouldn't hold
him then! We came as the crow flies; it was no use to plead sickness--he
was ready to leave me behind in Paris!"
She laughed again genially.
"It was nothing much to get excited about," I replied a little
impatiently; "and it has passed now, anyway, like a winter snow in the
city--slush, water, nothing!"
"But the principle! You forget the principle!" she remonstrated dryly.
"I know--and he's going to resign from the presidency--that ought to
satisfy his principle--but we must keep him on the board."
"It was a judge, too! A sworn officer of the law!" Mrs. Dround
interrupted, quoting demurely from Henry I's remarks about the
injunction scandal.
"Very well, he can make over his stock to you, then! It won't trouble
you, and you can draw the big dividends we are going to pay soon. I
don't want him to get out now, when the fruit is almost ripe to shake."
"Is that the only reason?" Mrs. Dround asked quickly.
"Of course, we don't want his stock coming on the market in a big block.
It would break us all up. And it might easily get into the wrong hands."
For Mr. Dround, in the brief interview that we had had on his return,
had intimated his desire not only to withdraw from the presidency of the
corporation, which had been merely a nominal office, but to dispose of
his stock as soon as the agreement expired in the fall, suggesting that
I had best find some friendly hands to take his big holding. In his
gentlemanly way he had told me that he had had enough of me and was
quite ready to snow me under, if it could be done in a polite and
friendly fashion.
"So you want him to wait?" Mrs. Dround suggested indifferently.
"Yes, until I am ready!"
She made no reply to this remark, and after a moment I said more
lightly:--
"But I came to welcome you home,--I want you still to be my friend, my
partner!"
"They say you are a dangerous partner," she retorted, looking closely at
me,--"deep in all sorts of speculative schemes, and likely to slip. They
say you are un--scrupulous"--she drawled the word mockingly--"and a lot
more bad things. Do you think that is the right kind of partner for a
simple woman?"
"If you've got the nerve!"
"Well, let me show you some of the new pictures we have bought." And she
turned me off with a lot of talk about pictures and stuffs and stones,
until I arose to leave.
* * * * *
Shortly afterwards my carriage took me back to the city, where I had to
meet some gentlemen who were interested in my schemes for the
development of the new Southwest. As I rode through the windy, dusty
streets, my thoughts went back over the years since that time when at
the suggestion of this woman I had just left, I had put my hand to
building something large out of Henry I. Dround's tottering estate.
In a busy life like mine, one event shades into another. Each path to
which a man sets his feet leads to some cross-roads, and from there any
one of the branches will lead on to its own cross-roads. While the
adventurer is on his way it is hard to tell why he takes one turning and
not another, why he lays his course here and not there. Years later he
may see it plotted plain, as I do to-day--plotted as on a map. Then the
wanderer may try to explain what made him move this way or that. Yet the
little determining causes that turned his mind at the moment of choice
are forever forgotten. The big, permanent motive remains: there is the
broad highroad--but why was it left, why this turn and double across the
main track?
So it was with me. The main highroad of my ambition was almost lost in
the thickets in which I found myself. Struggling day by day against the
forces that opposed me, I had lost sight of direction. The words with
Jane Dround, the flash of her dark eyes, pierced my obscurity, gave me
again a view of the destiny to which I had set myself. Some fire in her
fed me with courage, and made my spirit lighter than it had been for
months....
When I reached home in the evening, I found Sarah ill with a nervous
headache.
"Will is back!" she exclaimed on seeing me, and her tone scarcely
concealed a meaning beyond her words.
"What's that? He didn't send me word that he was coming."
"May telephoned--he's just got in."
Something unexpected must have brought him suddenly all the way from
Texas, where he was looking after our interests. The news was
disturbing.
"I saw Jane Dround this afternoon," I remarked idly. "She's looking
fine--never saw her better."
"Jane!" my wife said slowly. "So she's back once more." Then after a
pause she exclaimed:--
"I don't like her!"
Sarah, who rarely said a bitter word about any one, spoke this harshly,
and I looked at her in surprise.
"I don't trust that woman, Van! She is secret. And I believe she
influenced you--that time about the judge."
It was the first time for months that Sarah had referred to this matter.
"I'll go and ring up May," I said, not caring to refute this wild
accusation, "and ask them to come over to-night."
"I asked them for dinner, but she wouldn't come," Sarah remarked
gloomily. "No one wants to come here but people like the Webbs and
Coopers--people who think they can make something out of your schemes."
"Oh, I guess they aren't the only ones who are willing to come. And
what's the matter with the Webbs and the Coopers? If the rest of your
friends don't like us, we can get along without their society. I guess
New York will stand us, and that's where we shall be before many years,
if all goes well. This place is only a gossipy old village."
"I don't want to go to New York!" Sarah wailed.
* * * * *
When I had May at the telephone, she answered my invitation in a dry
little voice:--
"Yes, we are coming over to see you about a matter. Will has something
important to say to you."
By the tone of May's voice I judged that we should have a rather lively
family party, and I was not mistaken. Sarah was still lying on the
lounge in my study when Will and May came in after dinner. There was
battle in May's eyes and in her tight-shut lips. It had been a long time
since she had come to the house when I was at home. And to-night Will,
too, was looking very pale and troubled.
[Illustration: "_Couldn't you find any one else to do your dirty work
but your own brother?_"]
"May," I said, "you look as if you had a gun trained on me. Fire away,
only make it something new. I am tired of that old matter about the
judge. 'Most everybody has forgotten all about that except you and
Sarah."
"It's something new, fast enough, Van; but it isn't any better," she
retorted. "Couldn't you find any one else to do your dirty work but your
own brother?"
"What's the matter now?"
"Show him the article, Will."
Will unbuttoned his coat and reached for his inner pocket. From it he
hauled out a bulky newspaper, which he handed me. It was a copy of the
Sunday _Texas World_, and a front page article was heavily pencilled.
"That's too much, Van," he protested solemnly, handing me the paper.
"Read it."
"Yes, read it all!" May added. The three were silent while I ran through
the article. It was the usual exaggerated sort of newspaper stuff
purporting to describe the means used to secure a piece of railroad
legislation, in which I and some New York men were interested. The sting
lay in the last paragraph:--
* * * * *
"It is commonly understood that the lobby which has been working for the
past winter in the interest of this rotten bill is maintained by a group
of powerful capitalists, dominated by the head of a large Chicago
packing company. This gentleman, who suddenly shot into publicity the
past winter as the result of an unusually brazen attempt to corrupt a
Chicago judge, has opened his office not three blocks from the state
Capitol, and has put his brother in charge of the corruptionist
forces.... The deserving legislators of our state may soon expect to
reap a rich harvest!"
* * * * *
A few more generalities wound up the article. I folded the paper and
handed it back to Will. No one said a word for a few moments, and then
Will observed:--
"That isn't pleasant reading for an honorable man!"
"I don't see how it should trouble you, Will. You are down there to look
after our interests in a legitimate way enough. If you don't like the
job, though, I can get another man to take your place."
"Van," May interrupted, "don't try to squirm! You know that's
true--what's written there! You didn't ask Will to use the bribe money,
because you knew he wouldn't do anything dishonorable. But you let him
take the blame, and sent some one else with the money, no doubt. What
was that partner of Mr. Slocum's sent down there for?"
"Will,"--I turned to my brother,--"let us settle this by ourselves. It's
a man's business, and the women won't help us."
"No, Van," May replied. "I guess we women are as much concerned as
anybody. Where there's a question of my husband's honor, it's my
business, too. I stay."
"Well, then, stay! And try to understand. This bill the paper rips up is
all right. We must have it to put our road through to the Gulf, and if
it were not for the money the Pacific Western road, which owns the
state, is putting up against us we shouldn't have any trouble. They want
to keep us out, and Strauss and his crowd want to keep us out, too, so
that they can have all the pie to themselves. I have been working at
this thing for years in order that we can get an outlet to the seaboard,
untouched by our rivals. They think to block us just at the end, but I
guess they find out they are mistaken when the line comes next month.
That's all!"
"Do you think that explanation is satisfactory? Of course, Van, you want
the bill passed!" May said ironically.
"What does it mean--what has Van been doing?" Sarah asked for the first
time, sitting up and looking from one to another in a puzzled way.
None of us answered, and finally Will said:--
"I guess, Van, you and I don't see things quite the same way. I know you
wouldn't ask me to do what you thought was bad, but all the same there's
too much that's true in that piece in the paper, and I don't want to
have it said--there's things going on down there that aren't right--and
May feels--I feel myself, that it ain't right. We don't think the same
way, you and I. So we had better part now, before we have any bad
feeling."
"All right! Did you come over here to-night to tell me that?"
"No, Van," May put in hastily, her voice trembling with feeling. "That
wasn't all. Will and I came to ask you to give up the sort of business
you are doing down there. We want you to turn back into the right road
before it is too late. If you don't land in the penitentiary, Van
Harrington, your money will do you no good. It will taste bad all your
life!"
We were all pretty well stirred up by this time. I was weary of meeting
these charges of dishonesty on all sides. This last was too much--to
have my family accuse me of a crime, when I did not feel guilty, not for
a minute!
"I don't see why you should say that, May!" Sarah suddenly bridled.
"After all, it's only the newspapers, and no one believes them to-day."
This unexpected defence from Sarah aroused May afresh.
"Oh, he don't deny it! He can't. First it was a judge--he bought a judge
and paid for him, and he never came out and denied it! Now it's worse
even than that. It's the people of a whole state he's trying to buy
through their representatives."
"Who are there for sale," I laughed.
"Does that make it any better?" she turned on me. "Seems to me, Van, you
don't know any longer the difference between black and white!"
"We've got a perfect right to build that road, and build it we
will--that's all there is to that matter!"
And so we argued for hours, May and I doing most of the talking. For I
wanted her to understand just how the matter lay. No business in this
large, modern world could be done on her plan of life. That beautiful
scheme of things which the fathers of our country drew up in the
stage-coach days had proved itself inadequate in a short century. We had
to get along with it the best we could. But we men who did the work of
the world, who developed the country, who were the life and force of the
times, could not be held back by the swaddling-clothes of any political
or moral theory. Results we must have: good results; and we worked with
the tools we found at hand.
"It's no use your saying any more!" May exclaimed at last. "I understand
just what you mean, Van Harrington. It's the same way it was with the
judge's peaches. You wanted 'em, and you took 'em! What you want you
think is good for every one, especially for Van Harrington. And you are
so wise and strong you think you can breakthrough all laws because laws
are made for small people, like Will and me, and you and your kind are
Napoleons. You talk as if you were a part of God's destiny. And I
say"--here her voice broke for a moment--"I say, Van, you are the
devil's instrument! You and those like you--and there a good many of
them--are just plain big rascals, only the laws can't get hold of you."
Her lips trembled and at the end broke into that little ironical smile
which I knew so well, the smile she had when I used to get into some
boyish scrape, and she was looking through me for the truth. But for all
her hot words, I knew she had kindly feeling for me somewhere in her
heart. Nevertheless, Sarah, who had been following our talk as well as
she could, fired up at her accusations.
"I think, May," she remonstrated with all her dignity, "that you cannot
say any more such things in my husband's house."
"Yes," I added, "we have had too much talk all around. You can't change
my character any more than you can make wheat grow in Arizona or
sugar-cane in Dakota. And I don't want to change your views, either,
May."
For though she made me pretty angry, I admired the way she stood to her
guns. She was a fighter! And Will must act as she decided. Whoever
travelled with her would have to travel by her star.
"Yes," my brother replied, "it's gone too far now to change. Words don't
do any good. Come, wife, let us go."
"I am sorry for Sarah!" May said, taking Sarah's hands in hers. "She
suffers for you, Van, and she will suffer for this all her life. But I
am sorrier for you, Van, for you have gone too far to suffer!"
Thereupon she swept out of the room, her little figure swelling with
dignity; and Will followed her, as the needle swings to its magnet,
pausing only long enough to reach for my hand and press it. When the
front door shut upon them the house seemed suddenly cold and empty.
Sarah had slipped back to the lounge, and was staring up at the ceiling,
a tear trickling across her face.
"I suppose May won't ever come back again. And we were planning to take
that cottage this summer so that the children could be together."
That detail didn't seem to me very important, but it was the one that
showed to Sarah the gulf which had opened between us. Sarah's little
world, by that token, had suffered an earthquake.
"Oh," I said, trying to comfort her, "like as not this will blow over!
May has disapproved of me before this."
But in my heart I felt there wasn't much likelihood that this breach
would be healed. Knowing May as I did, I had no idea that she would let
Will continue with me, even in another position. No compromise for her!
To-morrow or next day Will would come into the office to take his
leave....
[Illustration: _Somehow years had gone by in that evening._]
"I guess, Van, I'll go to bed."
It was the first word Sarah had spoken for half an hour. The tears had
dried on her face. She gave me a light kiss, and left me....
The house seemed cold and desolate, as if the pleasant kindliness of
life had gone out of it when my brother and his wife had left. I made up
the fire, lighted a fresh cigar, and sat down to think. Somehow years
had gone by in that evening; I was heavy with the heaviness of middle
life.
To take the other road, her road--that was what May demanded of me. How
little she knew the situation! That would mean immediate ruin for me and
mine, and for those men who had trusted me with their money. The world
that I had been building all these years would crumble and vanish like
smoke into the void out of which I had made it! Not that May's talk had
meaning or sense to it, either. Nor do men made as I am alter at the
sound of words. We are as we are, and we grow with the power to do that
which we must do. May was merely an unreasonable and narrow woman, who
saw but one kind of good.
In all the forty years of my life there had been no evil as I know evil.
No man could say that he had harm from me--unless it might be poor Ed
Hostetter--and for thousands of such workers as live from day to day,
depending on men like me to give them their chance to earn bread for
their wives and children, I had made the world better rather than worse.
Unthinking thousands lived and had children and got what good there was
in life because of me and my will.
But to the others, the good ones, to Farson and Dround and May, I was
but a common thief, a criminal, who fattened on the evil of the world.
What had they done to make life? What was their virtue good for? They
took the dainty paths and kept their clothes from the soil of the road.
Yes, and what then? A renewed sense of irritation rose within me. Why
should I be pestered like this, why should I lose my brother and May,
why should Sarah be hurt, because they were too good to do as I had
done?
So my brother and May went their way. They left me lonely. For the first
time since the day, many years before, when I walked out of the police
station alone into the city, the loneliness of life came over me.
To-morrow, in the daylight, in the fierce fight of the day, that
weakness would go; but to-night there was no hand to reach, no voice to
speak, from the multitude of the world. One person only of all would
know, would place big and little side by side and reckon them
rightly--would understand the ways I had followed to get my ends. Jane
Dround would throw them all a smile of contempt, the little ones who
weigh and hesitate!
There was the soul of the fighter.
CHAPTER XXIII
HAPPINESS
_I learn of Mr. Dround's intentions--A plea for myself--Despots--A
woman's heart--The two in the world that are most near--Sarah's
cry--Jane defends herself--To go away forever--Vows renewed_
"Henry is simply furious--thinks his name has been involved--and he
means to sell every share of stock he holds as soon as the agreement
expires."
"I knew that he would do just that!"
Mrs. Dround threw back her coat and looked up with a mischievous smile
on her face. She was a very handsome woman these days, not a month older
than when I saw her first. She had reached that point where Nature,
having done her best for a woman, pauses before beginning the work of
destruction.
She had come this afternoon to call on Sarah, and, having failed to find
her at home, was writing a note at her desk, when I came in from the
day's business, a little earlier than was my wont.
"It isn't just that matter of the injunction. You know, my friend,
people here in the city--Henry's friends--say that you are engaged in
dangerous enterprises--that you are a desperate man yourself! Are you?"
"You know better than most!" I answered lightly. "But I am getting tired
of all this talk. I had a dose of it in the family the last time."
She nodded as I briefly related what had happened with Will and May.
"And, of course, Sarah feels pretty badly," I concluded.
"Poor child!" she murmured. "I wondered what was the matter with her
these days. She will feel differently later. But your brother, that is
another question."
"He and his wife will never feel differently."
She tossed aside the pen she held and rose to her feet.
"Never mind! I know you don't mind really--only it is too bad to have
this annoyance just now, when you have much on your shoulders. I wish I
could _do_ something! A woman's hands are always tied!"
She could say no more, and we sat for some time without further talk. I
was thinking what would happen when Mr. Dround's stock was dumped on the
market, to be snapped up by my enemies. Our company was very near the
point of paying dividends, and with a friendly line of railroad giving
us an outlet into the Southwest, the struggling venture would be in a
powerful position.
"If he would wait but six months more!" I broke out at last.
She shook her head.
"Where a question of principle is involved,--"
Her lips curved ironically.
"What would _you_ do, tell me, if a parcel of scamps were holding you up
for the benefit of your enemies? Suppose you had a perfect right to do
the business you had in hand. Would you put tail between legs and get
out and leave your bone to the other dog?"
"If I wanted to starve, yes! I should deserve to."
"You and I think surprisingly alike very often!"
"I always liked despots," she replied. "And, as a matter of fact,
despots--the strong ones--have always really done things. They do
to-day--only we make a fuss about it and get preachy. No, my friend,
don't hesitate! The scrupulous ones will bow to you in time."
"You would have made something of a man!"
She bowed her head mockingly.
"That is man's best compliment to poor, weak woman. But I am content,
when I touch the driving hand, now and then."
After a time she added:--
"You will find the way. It is not the last ditch, far from it. A man
like you cannot be killed with one blow!"
She had given the warning, done what she could, and now she trusted me
to do the rest. Her will, her sympathy, were strong behind me. So when
this moment was over, when she went her way and I mine, out into the
world of cares and struggle, I might carry with me this bit of her
courage, her sureness. I felt that, and I wanted to say it to her, to
let her see that it was more herself than her good will or her help that
I valued. But it was an awkward thing to say.
Her hands lay upon the desk between us. They were not beautiful hands,
merely strong, close-knit--hands to hold with a grip of death. I looked
at them, thinking that in her hands was the sign of her character. She
raised her eyes and gazed at me steadily for several moments.
"You know how I feel?"
I nodded.
"You don't need a woman's sympathy--but I want you to know how I
feel--for my own sake."
"Thank you for it. In this life a man must stand pretty much alone, win
or lose. I have always found it so--except when you and I have talked
things over. That hasn't been often. This is a tight place I find myself
in now. But there is a way out, or if there isn't--well, I have played
the game better than most."
"Even that thought doesn't give happiness," she mused. "I know, because,
my friend, I, too, have stood alone all my life."
She gave me this confidence simply, as a man might.
"I suppose a woman counts on happiness," I said awkwardly in response.
"But I have never counted much on that. There have always been many
things to do, and I have done them, well or ill I can't say. But I have
done them somehow."
It was a clumsy answer, but I could find no proper words for what I
felt. Such things are not to be said. There followed another of those
full silences which counted with this woman for so much more than words.
Again it was she who broke it:--
"For once, only once, I want to speak out plainly! You are younger than
I, my friend,--not so much in years as in other things. Enough, so that
I can look at you as--a friend. You understand?"
She spoke gently, with a little smile, as if, after all, all this must
be taken between us for a joke.
"From the beginning, when you and Sarah first came into our lives, I saw
the kind of man you were, and I admired you. I wanted to help you--yes,
to help you."
"And that you did!"
"Not really. Perhaps no one could really help you. No one helps or
hinders. You work out your fate from the inside, like all the powerful
ones. You do what is in you to do, and never question. But I longed for
the woman's satisfaction of being something to you,--of holding the
sponge, as the boys say. But a mere woman, poor, weak creature, is tied
with a short rope--do you know what that means? So the next best thing,
if one can't live one's self, is to live in another--some strong one.
When you are a woman and have reached my age, you know that you can't
live for yourself. That chance has gone."
"I don't believe it," I protested. "You are just ready to live."
She gave me a smile for my compliment, and shook her head.
"No, I don't deceive myself. Most women do. I know when I have reached
the end of my chapter.... So I have followed you, step by step--oh, you
don't know how closely! And I have sucked in all the joy of your
success, of your power, of you--a man! I have lived a man's life."
"But you went away?" I said accusingly.
"Yes, I went away--because that would help! It was the only thing I
could do--I could go away."
For the first time her voice shook with passion. I was answered.
"Now I have come back to find that my hands are tied more than ever. I
can help you no more. Believe me, that is the hardest thing yet. I can
help you no more! My husband--you understand? No, you need not
understand. A woman is bound back and across by a thousand threads,
which do not always show to the eye.... I may yet keep my husband from
throwing you over, but that is no matter--the truth is I count no longer
to you. If the world had been other than it is, my friend, I should have
been by your side, fighting it out daily for you, with you. As it is--"
She threw up her arms in a gesture of disgust and remained silent,
brooding. It was not necessary to complete the words. Nor could I speak.
Something very wonderful and precious was passing before my eyes for the
last time, something that had been near was floating off, would never
come back. And life was so made that it was vain, useless, to try to
hold it, to cry out, to do anything except to be still and feel the
loss. My hands fell beside hers upon the polished surface of the desk,
and we sat looking into one another's eyes, without fear. She was
feeling what I was feeling, but she was looking deeper into fate than I
could look. For she was wiser as a woman than I was as a man. We were
the two in the world most near, and between us there was a gulf that
could not be crossed. The years that are to come, my heart said to me
then, will be longer than those that have passed.
"Listen," she whispered, as though she were reading my thoughts. "We
shall never need more than this. Remember! Nothing more than this. For I
should be a hindrance, then, not a help. And that would be the end of
me, indeed. You have your will to work, which is more than any woman
could give you. And I have the thought of you. Now I must go away
again--we have to live that way. It makes no difference: you and I think
the same thoughts in the same way. What separation does a little
distance put between you and me? I shall follow after you step by step,
and when you have mounted to the broad level that comes after
accomplishment, you will be glad that it has been as I say, not
different. It is I that must long. For you need no woman to comfort and
love you!"
It was finished, and we sat in the deepening twilight beyond words. The
truth of what she had spoken filled my mind. There was nothing else for
us two but what we had had: we had come to the top of ourselves to know
this, to look it in the face, and to put it aside....
* * * * *
The twilight silence was broken sharp in two by a cry that rang across
the room. We started from our dream together and looked around. Sarah
was standing midway in the long room, steadying herself by a hand
reached out to a chair. I ran to hold her from falling. She grasped my
arm and walked on unsteadily toward Jane.
"I knew it! I knew it always!" she cried harshly.
"You tortuous woman--you are taking him from me! You did it from the
first day! How I hate you!"
[Illustration: "_No, child, you are wrong! There is no truth in your
cruel words._"]
She dropped into a chair and sobbed. Jane knelt down by her side and,
grasping her hands, spoke to her in low, pleading words:--
"No, child, you are wrong! You wrong _him_. He is not such a man. There
is no truth in your cruel words."
"Yes, you have made him do dishonorable things. He has acted so his own
family have left him. I know it is _you_!" she sobbed. "He has done what
you would have him do."
"Child, child!" Jane exclaimed impatiently, shaking gently the hands she
held. "What do you mean by saying such a thing?"
"Hasn't he done all those bad things? He never denied it, not when he
was accused in church before every one. And May said it was true."
She looked resentfully at Jane through her tears. The older woman still
smiled at her and stroked her hands.
"But even if it were true, _you_ mustn't take the part of his accusers!
That isn't for a woman who loves him to do. You must trust him to the
end."
Sarah looked at her and then at me. She pushed Jane from her quickly.
"Don't you defend him to me! You have stolen him! He loves you. I saw it
once before, and I see it on your face now. I know it!"
"Come!" I said, taking Sarah by the arm and leading her away. "You don't
know what you say."
"Yes, I do! You treat me like a child, Van! Why did you have to take
him?" she turned and flamed out to Jane. "You have always had
everything."
"Have I had everything?" the other woman questioned slowly, quietly, as
if musing to herself. "Everything? Do you know all, child? Let me tell
you one thing. Once I had a child--a son. One child! And he was born
blind. He lived four months. Those were the only months I think I have
ever lived. Do you think that I have had _all_ the joy?"
She was stirred, at last, passionate, ironic, and Sarah looked at her
with wondering surprise, with awe.
"You grudge me the three or four hours your husband has given me out of
the ten years you have lived with him! You hate me because he has talked
to me as he would talk to himself--as he would talk to you each day, if
you could read the first letter of his mind. And if I love him? If he
loves me? Would you deny yourself the little I have taken from you, his
wife, if it were yours to take and _mine_ to lose? But be content! Not
one word of what you call love has passed between us, or ever will. Is
that enough?"
They looked at each other with hate plainly written on their faces.
"You are a bad woman!" Sarah exclaimed brokenly.
"Am I? Think of this, then. I could take your husband--I could from this
hour! But for his sake, for _his_ sake, I will not. _I will not!_"
Sarah groaned, covering her eyes, while Jane walked rapidly out of the
room. In a moment the carriage door clicked outside, and we were alone.
"You love that woman, Van!" Sarah's voice broke the silence between us
with an accusing moan.
"Why say that--" I began, and stopped; for, after this hour, I knew what
it was for one person to be close to another. However, it seemed a
foolish thing to be talking about. There would be no gain in going
deeper into our hearts.
"There has never been a word between us that you should not hear," I
replied; "and now let us say no more."
But Sarah shook her head, unconvinced.
"It is two years or more since I have seen Jane," I added.
"That makes no difference. Jane was right! You love her!" she repeated
helplessly. "What shall we do?"
"Nothing!" I took her cold hands and sat down opposite her, drawing her
nearer me. "Don't fear, my wife. They are going away again, I
understand. She will go out of our life for always."
"I have my children," Sarah mused after a pause.
"We have _our_ children," I corrected. "And it's best to think of them
before ourselves."
"Oh, if we could take them and go away to some little place, to live
like my people down in Kentucky--you and me and the children!"
I smiled to myself at the thought. To run away was not just to pack a
trunk, as Sarah thought!
"It would be impossible. Everything would go to pieces. I should lose
pretty much all that we have--not only that, but a great many other
people who have trusted me with their money would lose. I must work at
least until there is no chance of loss for them."
"But aren't you a very rich man, Van?"
"Not so rich as I shall be some day! But I might make out to live in
Kentucky, all the same."
"You think I must have a great deal of money?"
"I always want you to have all that money can get."
"To make up for what I can't have!" She burst into sobs. "I am so
wretched, Van! Everything seems strange. I have tried to do what is
right. But God must be displeased with me: He has taken from me the one
thing I wanted."
That was a bitter thought to lie between husband and wife. I took her in
my arms and comforted her, and together we saw that a way lay clear
before us, doing our duty by one another and by our children, and in the
end all would come out well. As we sat there together, it seemed to me
as though there could be two loves in a man's life,--the love for the
woman and her children, who are his to protect; and the hunger love at
the bottom of the heart, which with most is never satisfied, and maybe
never can be satisfied in this life.
So she was comforted and after a little time went to her room, more calm
in spirit. Then I called my secretary, and we worked together until a
late hour. When my mind came back to the personal question of living,
the fire on the hearth had died into cold ashes and the house was still
with the stillness of early morning. For the moment it came over me that
the fight I was waging with fortune was as cold as these ashes and
doomed to failure. And the end, what was it?
Upstairs, Sarah lay half dressed on the lounge in my room, asleep. The
tears had dried where they had fallen on her cheeks and neck. Her hair
hung down loosely as though she had not the will to put it up for the
night. As she lay there asleep, in the disorder of her grief, I knew
that the real sorrow of life was hers, not mine. The memory of that day
of our engagement came back to me--when I had wished to protect and
cover her from the hard things of life. And again, as that time, I
longed to take her, the gentle heart so easily hurt, and save her from
this sorrow, the worst that can come to a loving woman. As I kissed the
stained face, she awoke and looked at me wonderingly, murmuring half
asleep:--
"What is it, Van? What has happened? It is time for you to go to bed. I
remember--something bad has happened. What is it, Van? Oh, I know now!"
She shuddered as I lifted her from the lounge.
"I remember now what it is. You love that woman, but I can't let you go.
I can't bear it. I can't live without you!"
"That will never come so long as there is life for us both," I promised.
She drew her arm tight about my neck.
"Yes! You must love me a little always."
CHAPTER XXIV
WAR
_Wall street and the people of the country--Collateral--I decide to go
home--Slocum finds that I am a patriot--I plan to enlist--Hardman
once more--Claims--A midnight problem--The telegram_
War! That was what was in the air those days. It had muttered on for
months, giving our politicians at Washington something to mouth about in
their less serious hours. Then came the sinking of the _Maine_ in Havana
Harbor, and even Wall Street could see that the country was drifting
fast into war. And in their jackal fashion, the men of Wall Street were
trying to make money out of this crisis of their country, starting
rumors from those high in authority to run the prices of their goods up
and down. To those men who had honest interests at stake it was a
terrible time for panic, for uncertainty. One could never guess what
might happen over night.
But throughout the land, among the common people, the question at issue
had been heard and judged. The farmer on his ranch, the laborer in his
factory, the hand on the railroad--the men of the land up and down the
States--had judged this question. When the time came their judgment got
itself recorded; for any big question is settled just that way by those
men, not at Washington or in Wall Street.
The sick spirit of our nation needed just this tonic of a generous war,
fought not for our own profit. It would do us good to give ourselves for
those poor Cuban dogs. The Jew spirit of Wall Street doesn't rule this
country, after all, and Wall Street doesn't understand that the millions
in the land long to hustle sometimes for something besides their own
bellies. So, although Wall Street groaned, I had a kind of faith that
war would be a good thing, cost what it might.
And it might cost me the work of my life. Latterly, with the revival of
trade, my enterprises had been prospering, and were emerging from that
doubtful state where they were blown upon by every wind of the market.
For the American Meat Products Company had kept its promise and was
earning dividends. It had paid, in the past year, six per cent on the
preferred stock, and, what with the big contracts we were getting from
the Government just now, it would earn something on the common. So far
very little of our stock had come upon the market, although the period
covered by the agreement among the stockholders not to sell their
holdings had passed. In spite of Mr. Dround's threats, there was no
evidence that he had disposed of his stock up to this time. It was
probable that when he saw what a good earner the company had proved to
be, he had reconsidered his scruples, as he had done years before in the
matter of private agreements and rebates.
And that rag of a railroad out of Kansas City, which Farson and his
friends found left on their hands in the panic times of '93, now reached
all the way to the Gulf and was spreading fast into a respectable
system. After Farson had withdrawn his help at the time of our
disagreement, we had interested a firm of bankers in New York, and, one
way and another, had built and equipped the road. A few years of good
times, and all this network of enterprises would be beyond attack.
Meanwhile, I was loaded down to the water's edge with the securities of
these new companies, and had borrowed heavily at home and in the East in
the effort to push through my plans.
This was my situation on that eventful day when the news of the sinking
of the _Maine_ was telegraphed over the country, and even gilt-edged
securities began to tumble, to slide downhill in a mad whirl. In such
times collateral shrank like snow before a south wind.
All the morning I had sat in my office with a telephone at my ear, and
it seemed to me that but one word came from it--Collateral! collateral!
Where was it to be had? Finally, I hung up the receiver of my telephone
and leaned back in my chair, dazed by the mad whirl along which I was
being carried. My secretary opened the door and asked if I would see
So-and-so and the next man. A broker was clamoring to get at me. They
all wanted one thing--money. Their demands came home to me faintly, like
the noise of rain on a window.
"Jim," I said to the man, "I am tired. I am going home."
"Going home?" he gasped, not believing his ears.
"Tell 'em all I am going home! Tell 'em anything you want to."
While the young man was still staring at me, Slocum burst past him into
the room. Even his impassive face was twisted into a scowl of fear.
"Harris is out there," he said hurriedly. "He says some one is selling
Meat Products common and preferred. Big chunks of it are coming on the
market, and the price has dropped fifteen points during the morning."
I said nothing. Anything was to be expected in this whirlwind.
"Do you suppose it's Dround's stock?" he asked.
"Perhaps," I nodded. "It don't make much difference to us whose it is."
"We can't let this go on."
"I guess it will have to go on," I replied listlessly.
Slocum looked at me wonderingly. He had seen me crawl out of a good many
small holes, and he was waiting for the word of action now.
"Well?" he asked at last.
"I am going home." I got up and took his arm. "Come along with me, old
man. I want to get out of this noise."
The elevator dropped us into the hurly-burly of the street. Men were
hurrying in and out of the brokers' offices, where the last reports for
the day were coming in.
"D--n this war!" Slocum swore, as I paused to buy a paper.
"Don't say that, Slo!" I protested. "This war is a great thing, and
every decent American ought to be proud of his country, by thunder! I
am."
The lawyer looked at me as if my head had suddenly gone back on me.
"I mean it. I tell you, Slo, nations are like men. They have their work
to do in this life. When it comes to an issue like this, they can't
shirk any more than a man can. If they do, it will be worse for them.
This war will do us good, will clean us and cure us for a good long time
of this cussed, little peevish distemper we have been through since '93.
That was just selfish introspection. This fight for Cuba will bring us
all together. We'll work for something better than our bellies. There's
nothing so good as a dose of real patriotism once in a while."
"Van, you ought to be in the Senate!" he jeered.
"Perhaps I shall be there one of these days, when I have finished this
other job."
The idea seemed to strike him humorously.
"You think it might be hard work for me to prove my patriotism to the
people? Don't you believe it. The people don't remember slander long.
And those things you and I have done which have set the newspapers
talking don't worry anybody. They are just the tricks of the game."
So we sauntered on through the streets that March afternoon, discussing,
like two schoolboys, patriotism and government; while back in the office
we had left white-faced men were clamoring for a word with me, seeking
to find out whether I was to go under at last.
"Well," Slocum finally asked, as he was leaving me, "what are you going
to do about this pinch?"
"There's nothing to be done to-night. I'm going to read the papers and
see what they say about the war. I am going home. Perhaps to-morrow it
will be all over. Lordy! We'll make a tolerable big smash when we go
down!"
"Get some sleep!" was Slocum's advice.
* * * * *
The papers were red-hot with the war spirit, and they did me good.
Somehow, I was filled with a strange gladness because of the war. Pride
in the people of my country, who could sacrifice themselves for another
people, swelled my heart. Where could you read of a finer thing in all
history than the way the people's wrath had compelled the corrupt,
self-seeking politicians in Washington to do their will--to strike an
honest blow, to redeem a suffering people! It comes not often in any
man's life to feel himself one of a great nation when it arises in a
righteous cause with all the passion of its seventy millions. Let the
panic wipe out my little pile of money. Let the war break up the dreams
of my best years--I would not for that selfish cause stay its course. It
made a man feel clean to think there was something greater in life than
himself and his schemes.
[Illustration: _To-day I should like to slip back once more to the bum
that landed in Chicago--unattached, unburdened, unbound._]
I walked on and on in the March twilight, leaving behind me the noisy
city, and the struggle of the market. Why not go myself--why not enlist?
I suddenly asked of myself. The very thought of it made me throw up my
head. Slocum could gather up the fragments as well as I, and there
would be enough left in any case for the children and Sarah. Better that
fight than this! When the President issued a call for volunteers, maybe
I could raise a regiment from our men.
The street was shadowed by the solid houses of the rich, the respectable
stone and brick palaces of the "captains of industry," each big enough
to house a dozen Jasonville families. I looked at them with the eyes of
a stranger, as I had the day when I roamed Chicago in search of a job.
Perhaps I had envied these men then; but small comfort had I ever had
from all the wealth I had got out of the city. Food and drink, a place
to sleep in, some clothes--comfort for my wife and children--what else?
To-day I should like to slip back once more to the bum that landed in
Chicago--unattached, unburdened, unbound....
I let myself into the silent house. Sarah and the children were at our
place in Vermilion County, where I had a house and two thousand acres of
good land, to which I escaped for a few days now and then. I had my
dinner and was smoking a cigar when a servant brought me word that a man
was waiting to see me below. When I went into the hall I saw a figure
standing by the door, holding his hat in his hands. In the dim light I
could not make out his face and asked him to step into the library,
where I turned on the light. It was the preacher Hardman.
"What do you want?" I asked in some surprise.
"I suppose I ought not to trouble you here at this hour, Mr.
Harrington," he said timidly. "But I am much worried. You remember that
investment you were kind enough to make for me a few years ago?"
His question recalled to my mind the fact that he had given me a little
inheritance which had come to his wife, asking me to invest it for him.
I had put it into some construction bonds.
"What about it?" I asked.
He stammered out his story. Some one had told him that I was in a bad
shape; he had also read a piece in the paper about the road, and he had
become scared. It had not occurred to him to sell his bonds before he
preached that little sermon at me; but, now that my sins were apparently
about to overtake me, he wished to save his little property from
destruction.
"Why don't you sell?" I asked.
"I have tried to," he admitted, "but the price offered me is very low."
I laughed at the fellow's simple egotism.
"So you thought I might take your bonds off your hands? Got them there?"
"My wife thought, as your--" he stammered. I waived his excuse aside.
He drew the bonds from his coat pocket. As I sat down to write a check I
said jokingly:--
"Better hustle round to the bank to-morrow and get your cash."
"I trust you are not seriously incommoded by this panic," he remarked
inquiringly.
"Gold's the thing these days!" I laughed.
(The cashier at the bank told me afterward that Hardman made such a fuss
when he went to cash his check that they actually had to hand him out
six thousand dollars in gold coin.)
The preacher man had no more than crawled out with profuse words of
thanks than I had another caller. This time it was a young doctor of my
acquaintance. He was trying to put on an indifferent air, as if he had
been used to financial crises all his life. He had his doubts in his
eyes, however, and I took him into my confidence.
"If you possibly can, stick to what you have got. It may take a long
time for prices to get back to the right place, but this tumble is only
temporary. Have faith--faith in your judgment, faith in your country!"
I knew something of his story, of the hard fight he had made to get his
education, of his marriage and his wife's sickness, with success always
put off into the future. He had brought me his scrapings and savings,
and I had made the most of them.
When at last the doctor had gone away somewhat reassured, I sat down to
think. There were a good many others like these two--little people or
well-to-do, who had put their faith in me and had trusted their money to
my enterprises. Not much, each one; but in every case a cruel sum to
lose. They had brought me their savings, their legacies, because they
knew me or had heard that I had made money rapidly. Could I leave them
now?
I might be willing to go off to Cuba and see my own fortune fade into
smoke. But how about their money? No--it was not a simple thing just to
go broke by one's self. To-morrow my office would be crowded by these
followers, and there would be letters and telegrams from those who
couldn't get there. So back to the old problem! I rested my head on my
hands and went over in my mind the situation, the amount of my loans,
the eternal question of credit--where to get a handhold to stay me while
the whirlwind passed, as I knew it must pass.
[Illustration: _It was a messenger boy with a delayed telegram._]
Hour after hour I wrestled with myself. Ordinarily I could close my eyes
on any danger and get the sleep that Nature owes every hard-working
sinner. But not to-night. I sat with my hands locked, thinking. Along
about midnight there sounded in the silent house a ring at the
door-bell: it was a messenger boy with a delayed telegram. I tore it
open and read:--
"Remember my letter." It was dated from Washington, and was not signed.
CHAPTER XXV
THE LAST DITCH
_Romantic folly--The impulse that comes from beyond our sight--I go to
seek Mr. Carboner--An unpromising location for a banker--I receive
advice and help--Dickie Pierson gets an order from me--What is
Strauss's game?_
The yellow paper lay in my hand, and, with a flash, my memory went back
to that mysterious note which Jane Dround had sent on the eve of her
departure for Europe. It lay undisturbed in a drawer of my office desk.
I smiled impatiently at the woman's folly--of the letter, the telegram.
And yet it warmed my heart that she should be thinking of me this day,
that she should divine my troubles. And I seemed to see her dark
eyebrows arched with scorn at my weakness, her thin lips curl
disdainfully, as if to say: "Was this to be your finish? Have I helped
you, believed in you, all these years, to have you fall now?" So she had
spoken.
But still I was unconvinced, and in this state of mind I went back to
bed, knowing that I should need on the morrow what sleep I could get.
But sleep did not come: instead, my mind busied itself with Jane
Dround's letter--with the woman herself. As the night grew toward
morning I arose, dressed myself, and left the house. The letter in my
office pulled me like a thread of fate; and I obeyed its call like a
child. In the lightening dawn I hurried through the streets to the lofty
building where the Products Company had its offices, and groped my way
up the long flights of stairs. As I sat down at my desk and unlocked the
drawers, the morning sun shot in from the lake over the smoky buildings
beneath me. After some hunting I found the letter. Mrs. Dround wrote a
peculiar hand--firm, clear, unchangeable, but with curious tiny
flourishes about the _r_'s and _s_'s.
As I glanced at it, the woman herself rose before my eyes, and she sat
across the desk from me, looking into my face. "Yes, I need you," I
found myself muttering; "not any letter, but _you_, with your will and
your courage, now, if ever. For this is the last ditch, sure enough!"
The letter shook in my hand and beat against the desk. It was a silly
thing to leave my bed and come chasing down here at five in the morning
to get hold of a romantic woman's letter! My nerves were wrong.
Something in me revolted from going any further with this weakness, and
I still hesitated to tear open the envelope. The other battles of my
life I had won unaided.
At the bottom of our hearts there is a feeling which we do not
understand, a respect for the unknown. Terror, fear,--call it what you
will,--sometime in life every one is made to feel it. All my life has
been given to practical facts, yet I know that at the end of all things
there are no facts. In the silence and gray light of that morning I felt
the strong presence of my friend, holding out to me a hand.... I tore
open the letter. Inside was another little envelope, which contained a
visiting-card. On it was written: "Mr. J. Carboner, 230 West Lake
Street," and beneath, in fine script, this one sentence: "_Mr. Carboner
is a good adviser--see him!_"
[Illustration: "_For this is the last ditch, sure enough!_"]
This was fit pay for my folly. Of all the sentimental nonsense, an
adviser! What was wanted was better than a million dollars of ready
cash--within three hours. It was now half-past six o'clock, and I had
left until half-past nine to find an ordinary, practical way out of my
present difficulties. Then the banks would be open; the great wheel of
business would begin to revolve, with its sure, merciless motion.
Nevertheless, in spite of my scepticism, my eyes wandered to a map of
the city that hung on the wall, and I made out the location of the
address given on the card. It was a bare half-mile across the roofs from
where I sat, in a quarter of the city lying along the river, given up to
brick warehouses, factories, and freight yards. Small likelihood that a
man with a million to spare in his pocket was to be found over there!
In this mood of depression and disgust I left my office, to get shaved.
"Street floor, sir," the elevator boy called out to wake me from my
preoccupation. As I stood on the curb in the same will-less daze, a cab
came prowling down the street, crossed to my side, and the
disreputable-looking driver touched his dirty hat with his whip:--
"Cab, sir?"
"Two-thirty West Lake," I said to him mechanically, and plunged into his
carriage.
The cab finally drew up beside a low, grimy brick building that looked
as if it might have survived the fire. There was a flight of dirty
stairs leading from the street to the office floor, and over the small,
old-fashioned windows a faded sign read "Jules Carboner." In response to
my knock an old man opened the locked door a crack and looked out at me.
When I asked to see Mr. Carboner, he admitted me suspiciously to a
little room, which was divided in two by a high iron screen. On the
inner side of the screen there was a battered desk, a few chairs, and a
row of leather-backed folios that might have been in use since the
founding of the city. A small coal fire was burning dully in the grate.
As I stood waiting for Mr. Carboner, a barge laden with lumber cast its
shadow through the dirty windows....
"And what may you want of me?"
The words were uttered like a cough. The one who spoke them had entered
the inner office so noiselessly that I had not heard him. He had a white
head of hair, and jet-black eyes. I handed him my card with Mrs.
Dround's note.
"I was expecting you," the old gentleman remarked, glancing
indifferently at my card. He unlocked the door of the iron grating and
held it open, pointing to a chair in front of the fire. Mr. Carboner was
short and round, with swarthy, full-blooded cheeks. Evidently he was
some sort of foreigner, but I could not place him among the types of men
I knew.
"What do you want of me?" he demanded briskly.
"Oh, just a lot of money, first and last!" I laughed.
This announcement didn't seem to trouble him; he waited for my
explanation. And remembering that I was to look to him for advice as
well as cash, I proceeded to explain briefly the situation that I found
myself in. He listened without comment.
"Finally," I said rather wearily, "just now, when I am in deep water
with this railroad and all the rest, and the banks calling my loans,
some fellows are selling their Meat Products stock. It will all go to my
enemies--to Strauss and his crowd, and I shall find myself presently
kicked out of the company. I suppose it's Mr. Dround's stock that's
coming on the market. It's like him to sell when prices are going down."
The little old fellow shook his head.
"It is not Mr. Dround's stock," he said. "Most of that is over there."
He nodded his head in the direction of a small safe which stood in one
corner of the room.
"How did you get it?" I exclaimed in my astonishment, jumping to my
feet.
"Never mind how--we have had it three months," he replied with a smile.
"You need not fear that it will come on the market just now."
My heart gave a great bound upward: with this block of stock locked up I
could do what I would with Meat Products. Strauss could never put his
hands on it. Jane Dround must have worked this stroke; but how she did
it was a mystery. I walked back and forth in my excitement, and when I
sat down once more Mr. Carboner began a neat little summary of my
situation:--
"You are engaged in many ventures. Some are strong." He named all the
good ones as if he were quoting from a carefully drawn report. "Some are
weak." He named the others. "Now, you are trying to hold the weak with
the strong. It is like carrying a basket of eggs on your head. All goes
well until some one runs against you. Then bum, biff!--you have the
beginning of an omelet."
His way of putting it made me laugh.
"And the omelet is about ready to cook in an hour or two!" I added.
"We shall see presently. You want to sell out this packing business,
some day, eh? To Strauss? You take big chances. You are a new man. They
suspect you. They call your loans. They think that you are thin in the
waist? You have to borrow a great deal of money and pay high for it?"
"You have sized me up, Mr. Carboner."
"And after you have sold to Strauss there will be railroads--ah, that is
more difficult! And then many other things--always ventures, risks,
schemes, plans, great plans! For you are very bold."
"Well, what will you do for me?" I asked bluntly.
"I think we can carry you over this river, Mr. Harrington," he replied,
looking at me with a very amiable air, as if he were my schoolmaster and
had decided to give me a holiday and some spending money. Who made up
the "we" in this firm of Rip Van Winkle bankers? Carboner seemed to
divine my doubts; for he smiled as he reached for a pad of paper and
began to write in a close, crabbed hand.
"Take that to Mr. Bates," he directed. "You know him, eh?"
Did I know Orlando Bates! If I had been to him once at the Tenth
National, of which he was president, I had been to him fifty times, with
varying results. I knew every wrinkle in his parchment-covered face.
"He will give you what you want," the old man added.
I still hesitated, holding Carboner's scrawl in my hand.
"You think it no good?" He motioned to the sheet of coarse paper. "Try
it!"
"Don't you want a receipt?" I stammered.
"What for? Do you think I am a pawnbroker?"
The mystery grew. Suppose I should take this old fellow's scrawl over to
Orlando Bates, and the president of the Tenth National should ask me
what it meant?
"It is good," Carboner said impressively.
"Whose is it?" The words escaped me unconsciously. "I want to know whose
money I am taking."
"I hope it will be no one's," he answered imperturbably, "except the
bank's. You come to me wanting money, credit. I give it to you. I ask no
questions. Why should you?"
Was it a woman's money I was taking to play out my game. I recalled the
story Sarah had told me years ago about Jane Dround's father and his
fortune. He was a rich old half-breed trader, and it was gossiped that
he had left behind him a pile of gold. Perhaps this Mr. Carboner was
some French-Canadian, friend or business partner of Jane's father, who
had charge of her affairs. As Sarah had said, Jane Dround was always
secret and uncommunicative about herself. My faith in the piece of paper
was growing, but I still waited.
"If you lay these matters down now," Carboner observed coldly, poking
the fire with an old pair of tongs, "they will be glass. If you grasp
them in a strong hand, they will become diamonds."
[Illustration: "_If you grasp them in a strong hand, they will become
diamonds._"]
But to take a woman's money! I thought for a moment--and then dismissed
the scruple as swiftly as it had come. This woman was a good gambler!
"All right!" I exclaimed, drawing on my overcoat, which I had laid
aside.
"Good! Don't worry about anything. Make your trees bear fruit. That is
what you can do, young man." Old Carboner patted me on the back in a
fatherly fashion. "Now we will have some coffee together. There is yet
time."
The man who had opened the door for me brought in two cups of strong
coffee, and I drank mine standing while Carboner sipped his and talked.
"This disturbance will be over soon," he said sagely. "Then we shall
have such times of wealth and speculation as the world has never seen.
Great things will be done in a few years, and you will do some of them.
There are those who have confidence in you, my son. And confidence is
worth many millions in gold."
He gave me his hand in dismissal.
"Come to see me again, and we will talk," he added sociably.
* * * * *
On the ground floor of my building there was a broker's office. It was a
new firm of young men, without much backing. My old friend, Dickie
Pierson, was one of them, and on his account I had given the firm some
business now and then. This morning, as I was hurrying back to my
office, I ran into Dick standing in the door of his place. He beckoned
me into the room where the New York quotations were beginning to go up
on the board. He pointed to the local list of the day before; Meat
Products stretched in a long string of quotations across the board,
mute evidence of yesterday's slaughter.
"What's wrong with your concern?" Dick asked anxiously. "Some one is
pounding it for all he is worth."
"Who were selling yesterday?"
"Stearns & Harris," he answered. (They were brokers that Strauss's crowd
were known to use.)
There was a mystery here somewhere. For there could not be any
considerable amount of the stock loose, now that Dround's block was
locked up in Jules Carboner's safe. Yet did the Strauss crowd dare to
sell it short in this brazen way? They must think it would be cheap
enough soon, or they knew where they could get some stock when they
wanted it.
"What's up?" Dick asked again, hovering at my elbow. I judged that he
had gone into Meat Products on his own account, and wanted to know which
way to jump.
"It looks bad for us," I said confidentially to Dickie. "You needn't
publish this on the street." (I reckoned that the tip would be on the
ticker before noon.) "But Dround has gone over to the other crowd. And
probably some of our people are squeezed just now so they can't hold
their Meat Products." I added some yarn about a lawsuit to make doubly
sure of Dickie, and ordered him to sell a few hundred shares on my own
account as a clincher.
When I reached my telephone I called up some brokers that I trusted and
told them to watch the market for Meat Products stock, and pick it up
quietly, leading on the gang that was pounding our issues all they
could. An hour later, on my way back from the Tenth National, where I
had had a most satisfactory interview with Mr. Orlando Bates, I dropped
in at Dickie Pierson's place. Meat Products shares were active, and in
full retreat across the broad board.
"I guess you had better sell some more for me," I said to Dickie. "Sell
a thousand to-morrow."
CHAPTER XXVI
VICTORY
_The shorts are caught--Big John comes to my office to get terms--An
exchange of opinions--An alliance proposed--I reject it--My enemies
are flattering--I have arrived_
They sent old John Carmichael around to treat with me. He had to come to
the office the same as any other man who had a favor to ask. Slocum and
I and two or three others who were close to us were there waiting for
him, and discussing the terms we should give.
"They must be short in the neighborhood of fifteen thousand shares
common and preferred the best we can make out," Slocum reported, after
conferring with our brokers. "How did you have the nerve, Van, to run
this corner when you knew Dround's stock was loose?"
"It isn't loose," I answered.
"Where is it, then? We know pretty well where every other share is, but
his block has dropped out of the market. It was transferred to some New
York parties last October."
I smiled tranquilly. There had been no leak in our barrel. Slocum and I
had been around to all the other large holders of Meat Products, and I
knew they would not go back on us. The Strauss crowd would find the
corner invulnerable.
When Carmichael came in he nodded to me familiarly, just as he used to
at Dround's when he had been away on a trip to New York or some place,
and called out gruffly:--
"Say! I told them you were a bad one to go up against. Say, Harrington,
do you remember how you scalped poor old McGee back in the days when you
were doing odd jobs at Dround's? Well, I came over here to see what you
want for your old sausage shop, anyway."
With that gibe at my start in the packing business he settled back in
his chair and pulled out a cigar.
"I don't know that we are anxious to sell, John," I replied.
"What? That talk don't go. I know you want to get out mighty bad. What's
your figure?"
"You fellows have given us a lot of trouble, first and last," I mused
tranquilly. "There was that injunction business over the London and
Chicago Company, and the squeeze by the banks. You have tried every
dirty little game you knew."
Carmichael grinned and smoked.
"I suppose you want our outfit to turn out some more rotten canned stuff
for the Government. What you sold them isn't fit for a Chinaman to eat,
John." Thereupon I reached into a drawer of my desk and brought out a
tin of army beef marked with the well-known brand of the great Strauss.
I proceeded to open it, and as soon as the cover was removed a foul odor
offended our nostrils. "Here's a choice specimen one of our boys got for
me."
Carmichael smoked on placidly.
"That is something we have never done, though we couldn't make anything
on our contract at the figures you people set. And little of the
business we got, anyway! Strauss ought to be put where he'd have to feed
off his own rations."
So we sat and scored one another comfortably for a time, and then came
to business. The terms that Slocum and I had figured out were that
Strauss and his crowd should pay us in round numbers two hundred dollars
per share preferred and common alike, allowing every shareholder the
same terms. Carmichael leaped to his feet when he heard the figures.
"You're crazy mad, Van," he swore volubly. Then he stated his plan,
which was, in brief, that we should make an alliance with the great
Strauss and sell him at "reasonable figures" an interest in our company.
"And let you and Strauss freeze out my friends? Not for one minute! Go
back and tell your boss to find that stock he's short of."
Carmichael threw us an amused glance.
"Do you think that's worrying us? If you want a fight, I guess we can
give you some trouble."
It seems that they had another club behind their backs, and that was a
suit, which they were instigating the Attorney-general to bring against
the Meat Products Company for infringing the Illinois anti-trust act.
The impudence and boldness of this suggestion angered me.
"All right," I said. "You have our figure, John."
He left us that day, but he came the next morning with new proposals
from his master. They were anxious to have a peaceable settlement. I
had known for some time that these men were preparing for an astonishing
move, which was nothing less than a gigantic combination of all the
large food-product industries of the country, and they could not leave
us as a thorn in their side. They must annex us, cost what it might.
So now they talked of my ability, of what I had done in making a great
business out of a lot of remnants, and they wanted to buy me as well as
our company, offering me some strong inducements to join them. But I
told Carmichael shortly:--
"I will never work with Strauss in this life. It's no use your talking,
John. There isn't enough money coined to bring me to him. You must buy
our stock outright--and be quick about it, too."
He could not understand my feeling, and it was not reasonable. But all
these years of desperate fight there had grown up in my heart a hatred
of my enemy beyond the usual cold passions of business. I hated him as a
machine, as a man,--as a cruel, treacherous, selfish, unpatriotic maker
of dollars.
So in the end they came to my terms, and the lawyers set to work on the
papers. The Strauss interests were to take over the Meat Products stock
at our figure, and also the Empress Line, our private-car enterprise,
and two or three smaller matters that had grown up in connection with
the packing business. When Slocum and I went on to New York to finish
the transaction, Sarah and the girls accompanied us, on their way to
Europe, where they were going for a pleasure trip.
[Illustration: "_There isn't enough money coined to bring me to him._"]
Thus in a few months my labors came to flower, and suddenly the map of
my life changed completely. The end was not yet, but no longer was I the
needy adventurer besieging men of means to join me in my enterprises,
dodging daily blows in a hand-to-hand scrimmage--a struggling packer! I
had brought Strauss to my own terms. And when the proud firm of Morris
Brothers, the great bankers, invited me to confer with them in regard to
our railroad properties in the Southwest, and to take part in one of
those deals which in a day transform the industrial map of the country,
I felt that I had come out upon the level plateau of power.
CHAPTER XXVII
DOUBTS
_The time of jubilation--At the bankers'--The last word from
Farson--Sarah and I go to see the parade--We meet the Drounds--A
fading life--Sad thoughts--Jane speaks out--What next?--Sarah is no
longer jealous_
It was that autumn of jubilation after the Spanish War. The morning when
I drove through the city to the bankers' office, workmen were putting up
a great arch across the avenue for the coming day of celebration. Our
people had shown the nations of the world the might and the glory in us.
Forgotten now was the miserable mismanagement of our brave men, the
shame of rotten rations, the fraud of politicians--all but the pride of
our strength! A new spirit had come over our country during these
months--a spirit of daring and adventure, of readiness for vast
enterprises. That business world of which I was a part was boiling with
activities. The great things that had been done in the past in the light
of the present seemed but the deeds of babes. And every man who had his
touch upon affairs felt the madness of the times.
Among the gentlemen gathered in the bankers' office that morning was my
old friend Farson. I had not seen him since our unpleasant luncheon at
the railroad station. He greeted me courteously enough, as if he had
once been acquainted with somebody by my name. It was apparent that he
had come there to represent what was left of the old New England
interests in the railroad properties; but he did not count in that
gathering. The men at Morris Brothers listened to me most of the time
that morning!
As we broke up for luncheon Farson congratulated me dryly on the success
I had met with in the negotiations.
"I hope, then, we shall have your support," I remarked, forgetting our
past dispute.
"I am here to see that my friends are taken care of," he replied grimly;
"all we hope is to get our money back from the properties. My people do
not understand you and your generation. We are better apart."
"I am sorry you think so," I said, understanding well enough what he
meant.
"I am sorry, too: sorry for you and for our country in the years to
come. For she it is who suffers most by such ideals as you stand for."
"I think that you are mistaken there," I answered peaceably. "We are the
ones who are making this country great. If it weren't for men like me,
you good people wouldn't be doing any business to speak of. There
wouldn't be much to be done!"
"Our fathers found enough to do," he retorted dryly, "and they did not
buy judges nor maintain lobbies in the legislature."
"There wasn't any money in it those days!" I laughed.
Talking thus we reached the place where I was to lunch with some others,
and I asked him to join the party. The uncompromising old duck refused;
he wouldn't even break bread with me at a hotel table.
"I am sorry you won't eat with me, Mr. Farson. I don't hope to convert
you to my way of thinking and feeling. But you were good to me and saved
my life when I was in a tight place, and I am glad to think that no loss
ever came to you or your friends through me. I have made money for you
all. And I wish you would stay with me and let me make a lot more for
you in this new deal we are putting through."
"Thank you," he said with a dry little smile, "but I and my friends will
be content with getting back the money we have spent. Mr. Harrington,
there is one thing that you Western gentlemen--no! it is unfair to cast
that slur on one section of the country, and I have met honorable
gentlemen West as well as East--but there is one thing that you
gentlemen of finance to-day fail to understand--there is always a
greater rascal than any one of you somewhere, and it is usually only a
question of time when you will meet him. When that time comes he will
pick the flesh from your bones, and no one will care very much what
happens to you then! And one thing more: to one who has lived life, and
knows what it is, there is mighty little happiness in a million dollars!
Good morning, sir."
He was a lovable old fool, though! All through luncheon and the business
talk that followed in the afternoon the old gentleman's remarks kept
coming back to me in a queer, persistent way. Feeling my oats as I did,
in the full flood of my success, there was yet something unsatisfied
about my heart. My brain was busy with the plans of the Morris Brothers,
but nothing more.
* * * * *
After the work of the day was over, Sarah and I drove up to the Park to
see the parade of fine horses and carriages and smart-looking folks who
were out taking their airing. It was a beautiful, warm October day, and
Sarah took considerable interest in the show. The faces of those in the
carriages were not much to look at, take them by and large. They were
the faces of men and women who ate and drank and enjoyed themselves too
much. They were the faces of the people who lived in the rich hotels,
who made and spent the money of our country. And as I looked at them,
Farson's last words came back to my thoughts:--
"There's mighty little happiness in a million dollars."
"Van," Sarah said after a time, "let us drive over the avenue. I want to
look at that house the Rainbows spoke to us about."
So we turned out of the Park toward the house on the avenue which we
thought of buying; for we had been talking somewhat of moving to New
York to live after this year.
As we got out of our carriage in front of the lofty gray stone house, a
man and a woman came toward us on the walk. The man seemed old and moved
heavily, and the woman's face was bent to one side to him. Sarah glanced
at them and stood still.
"Van," she whispered, "there are Mr. and Mrs. Dround!"
She hesitated a moment, and then, as the two came nearer, she stepped
forward to meet them, and Jane looked up at us. The two women glanced at
each other, then spoke. Mrs. Dround said something to her husband, and
he gave me a slow look of returning recognition, as if my face recalled
vague memories.
"Mr. Harrington?" he said questioningly, taking my hand in a hesitating
way, as though he were not quite sure about me yet. "Oh, yes! I am glad
to see you again. How is Mr. Carmichael? Well, I hope, and prospering?"
The man's mind was a blank!
"Yes, Mrs. Dround and I have been abroad this winter," he continued,
"but we have come back to live here. America is the proper place for
Americans, I have always believed. I have no patience with those people
who expatriate themselves. Yes, Mrs. Dround wanted me to take a place in
Kent, but I would not listen to it. I know where my duty lies,"--he
straightened himself with slow pompousness,--"How are the children? All
well, I hope?"
Jane was talking with Sarah, and the four of us after a while entered
the house, which was just being finished by the contractor. In the hall
Mr. Dround turned to Sarah and made some remark about the house, and the
agent, who happened to be there, led them upstairs. Jane and I followed.
"So you have come home to live?" I asked.
"Yes!" She sank down on a workman's bench, with a sigh of weariness. As
I looked at her more closely, it seemed to me that at last age had
touched her. There were white strands in her black hair, and there were
deep circles beneath the dark eyes--eyes that were dull from looking
without seeing anything in particular.
"It was best for Henry," she added quietly. "He is restless over there.
You see, he forgets everything so quickly now. It has been so for nearly
a year."
There was the story of her days--the watcher and keeper of this childish
man, whose mind was fading away before its time. With a sense of the
cruelty in it, I turned away from her hastily and looked out of the
window.
"I do not mind, most times," she said gently, as in answer to my action.
"It is easier to bear than some things of life."
"Shame!" I muttered.
"But there are days," she burst out more like her old self, "when I
simply cannot stand it! But let us not waste these precious minutes with
my troubles. Let us talk of _you_. You are still young in spite of--"
"The gray hair and the two hundred and forty pounds? I don't feel so
young as I might, Jane!"
She colored at the sound of her name.
"But you have got much for your gray hairs--you have lived more than
most men!"
"Tell me," I demanded suddenly,--"I know it was your hand that pulled me
from the last hole. It was your money that Carboner risked? I knew it.
Old Carboner wouldn't tell, but I knew it!"
"And you were on the point of refusing my help," she added with an
accusing smile. "I should have scorned you, if you had gone away without
it!"
"Oh, I didn't hesitate long! And I am glad now it was yours, in more
ways than one," I added quickly. "It was a profitable deal,--Carboner
wrote you the terms?"
"Yes, but it would have made no difference if it had come out badly--you
can't know what it meant to me to do that! To work with you with all my
strength! It was the first real joy I ever got from my money, and
perhaps the last, too. For you are beyond my help now."
"How did Carboner get hold of your husband's stock?" I persisted
curiously.
"That is my secret!" she smiled back with a look of her old self. "Why
should you want to know? That is so like a man! Always wanting to know
why. Believe in the fairies for once!"
"It was a mighty clever fairy this time. She had lots of power. Do you
see that, after all, in spite of all the talk about genius and destiny
and being self-made and all that, I did not win the game by myself? I
would have been broke now, a discredited gambler, if it hadn't been for
your helping hand. It was you! And I guess, Jane, we all have to have
some help."
"You don't begrudge me the little help I gave you--the small share I had
in your fortune?"
"No, I don't mind. I am glad of it."
That was sincere enough. I had come to see that no man can stand alone,
and I was not ashamed to have taken my help from the hand of a woman.
"But suppose I had gambled with your money and lost it? I might have
easily enough."
"Do you think I should have cared?"
"No, Jane, I guess not. But I should have!"
"It's been the joy of these terrible years, knowing that you were here
in the world accomplishing what you were born to do! And that I had a
little--oh, such a little!--share in helping you do it. Poor I, who have
never done anything worth while!"
"It seems queer that a woman should set so much store on what a man
does."
"It's beyond a man's power to know that! But try to think what you would
be if you were a helpless cripple, tied to your chair. Don't you suppose
that when some strong, handsome athlete came your way with all his
health, you would admire him, get interested in him, and like to watch
those muscles at work, just the muscles you couldn't use? I think so.
And if a good fate put it in your power to help him--you, the poor
cripple in your chair--help him to win his race, wouldn't you be
thankful? I can tell you that one cripple blesses you because you are
you--a man!"
The excitement of her feelings brought back the dark glow to her face,
and made her beautiful once more. Ideas seemed to burn away the faded
look and gave her the power that passion gives ordinary women.
"You and I think alike, I love to believe. Start us from the two Poles,
and we would meet midway. We are not little people, thank God, you and
I. We did not make a mess of our lives! My friend, it is good to know
that," she ended softly.
"Yes," I admitted, understanding what she meant. "We parted."
"We parted! We lived a thousand miles from one another. What matters it?
I said to myself each day: 'Out there, in the world, lives a man who
thinks and acts and feels as I would have a man think and act and feel.
He is not far away.'"
She laid a hand lightly on my arm and smiled. And we were silent until
the voices of the others in the hall above reminded us of the present.
Jane rose, and her face had faded once more into its usual calm.
"You are thinking of moving to New York? What for?"
I spoke of my new work--the checker-board that had been under discussion
all day at the bankers'.
"You are rich enough," she remarked. "That means so many millions more
to your account."
"No, not just that," I protested. "It's the solution to the little
puzzle you and I were working at over the atlas in your library that day
years ago. It is like a problem in human physics: there were obstacles
in the way, but the result was sure from the start."
"But you are near the end of it--and then what?"
"I suppose there will be others!" After a time I added, half to myself:
"But there's no happiness in it. There is no happiness."
"Do you look for happiness? That is for children!"
"Then what is the end of it?"
For of a sudden the spring of my energies was slackened within me, and
the work that I was doing seemed senseless. Somehow a man's happiness
had slipped past me on the road, and now I missed it. There was the joy
we might have had, she and I, and we had not taken it. Had we been fools
to put it aside? She answered my thoughts.
"We did not want it! Remember we did not want that! Don't let me think
that, after all, you regret! I could not stand that--no woman could bear
it."
Her voice was like a cry to my soul. On the stairs above Mr. Dround was
saying to Sarah:--
"No, I much prefer our Chicago style of building, with large lots, where
you can get sunshine on all four sides. It is more healthy, don't you
think, Mrs. Harrington?"
And Sarah answered:--
"Yes, I quite agree with you, Mr. Dround. I don't like this house at
all--it's too dark. We shall have to look farther, I guess."
Jane turned her face to mine. Her eyes were filled with tears, and her
mouth trembled. "Don't regret--anything," she whispered. "We have had so
much!"
"Van," Sarah called from the stairs, "you haven't seen the house! But it
isn't worth while. I am sure we shouldn't like it."
"You mustn't look for your Chicago garden on Fifth Avenue," Mrs. Dround
laughed.
As we left the house, Sarah turned to Jane and asked her to come back
with us to the hotel for dinner. But the Drounds had an engagement for
the evening, and so an appointment was made for the day following to
dine together. When we had said good-by and were in the carriage, Sarah
remarked reflectively:--
"Jane looks like an old woman--don't you think so, Van?"
CHAPTER XXVIII
A NEW AMBITION
_Jane Dround points the way again--The shoes of Parkinson and the
senatorial toga--Strauss is dead--Business or politics?--A dream of
wealth--The family sail for Europe_
"I am writing Sarah that after all we cannot dine with you. My husband
is restless and feels that we must leave for the West to-night. It was
very sweet of Sarah to want us, but after all perhaps it is just as
well. We shall see you both soon, I am sure....
"But there is something I want to say to you--something that has been on
my mind all the long hours since our meeting. Those brief moments
yesterday I felt that all was not well with you, my friend. Your eyes
had a restless demand that I never saw in them before. I suspect that
you are beginning to know that Success is nothing but a mirage, fading
before our eyes from stage to stage. You have accomplished all and more
than you planned that afternoon when we hung over the atlas together.
You are rich now, very rich. You are a Power in the world,--yes, you
are,--not yet a very great planet, but one that is rapidly swinging
higher into the zenith. You must be reckoned with! My good Jules keeps
me informed, you see. If you keep your hold in these new enterprises,
you will double your fortune many times, and before long you will be
one of the masters--one of the little group who really control our
times, our country. Yet--I wonder--yes, my doubt has grown so large
since I saw you that it moves me to write all this.... Will _that_ be
enough? Mere wealth, mere power of that kind, will it satisfy?... It is
hard enough to tell what _will satisfy_; but there are other
things--other worlds than your world of money power. But I take your
time with my woman's nonsense--forgive me!
"I hear from a good authority in Washington that our old Senator
Parkinson is really on his last legs. That illness of his this spring,
which they tried to keep quiet, was really a stroke, and it will be a
miracle if he lasts another winter. Did you know him? He was a queer old
farmer sort of politician. His successor, I fancy, will be some one
quite different. That type of statesman has had its day! _There_ is a
career, now, if a man wanted it!... Why not think of it?
"Good-by, my friend. I had almost forgotten, as I forgot yesterday, to
thank you for making me so rich! Mr. Carboner cabled me the terms of
your settlement with Strauss. They were wicked!
"JANE DROUND.
"It would not be the most difficult thing in the world to capture
Parkinson's seat--if one were willing to pay the price!"
* * * * *
The idea of slipping into old Parkinson's shoes made me laugh. It was a
bit of feminine extravagance. Nevertheless this letter gave me food for
thought. Jane was right enough in saying that my wonderful success had
not brought me all the satisfaction that it should. Now that the
problems I had labored over were working themselves out to the plain
solution of dollars and cents, the zest of the matter was oozing away.
To be sure, there was prospect of some excitement to be had in the
railroad enterprises of the Morris Brothers, although it was merest
flattery to say that my position counted for much as yet in that mighty
game. Did I want to make it count?
I sipped my morning coffee and listened to Sarah's talk. Beyond
business, what was there for me? There was our place down in Vermilion
County, Illinois. But stock-farming was an old man's recreation. I might
become a collector like Mr. Dround, roaming about Europe, buying old
stuff to put in a house or give to a museum. But I was too ignorant for
that kind of play. And philanthropy? Well, in time, perhaps when I knew
what was best to give folks, which isn't as simple as it might seem.
"I am sorry the Drounds couldn't come," Sarah was saying, glancing at
Jane's note to her. "I liked Jane better yesterday than ever before--she
looked so worn and kind of miserable. I don't believe she can be happy,
Van."
"Well, she didn't say so!" I replied....
Yes, I knew Senator Parkinson--a sly, tricky politician, for all his
simple farmer ways. He was not what is called a railroad Senator, but
the railroads never had much trouble with him....
Before we had finished our breakfast Carmichael sent up word that he
must see me, and I hurried down to the lobby of the hotel. He met me at
the elevator and drew me aside, saying abruptly:--
"The old man is dead! Just got a wire from Chicago--apoplexy. I must get
back there at once."
Strauss dead! The news did not come home to me all at once. His was not
just like any other death. From the day when the old packer had first
come within my sight he had loomed big and savage on my horizon, and
around him, somehow, my life had revolved for years. I hated him. I
hated his tricky, wolfish ways, his hog-it-all policy; I despised his
mean, unpatriotic character. Yet his going was like the breaking of some
great wheel at the centre of industry.
I had hated him, and for that reason I had refused all offers to settle
on anything but a cash basis for my interests in the companies he was
buying from us. Carmichael and some others had urged me again and again
to go in with them and help them build the great merger, but I had
steadily refused to work with Strauss. "I cannot make a good servant," I
had said to John, "and I don't want a knife in my side. The country is
big enough for Strauss and me. I'll give him his side of the pasture."
But now he was dead, and already, somehow, my hate was fading from my
heart. The great Strauss was but another man like myself, who had done
his work in his own way. Carmichael, who was a good deal worked up,
exclaimed:--
"This won't make any hitch in our negotiations, Harrington. Everything
will go right on just as before. The old man's plans were laid pretty
deep, and this deal with you is one of the first of them. His brother
Joe will take his place, maybe, and if he can't fill the shoes, why,
young Jenks, who seems to be a smart young man, or I will take the
reins."
(Old Strauss had been married three times, but his children had all
died. There was no one of his own to take the ball of money he had made
and roll it larger; no one of his own blood to grasp the reins of his
power and drive on in the old man's way!)
"Say, Van," the Irishman continued, "why don't you think it over once
more, and see your way to join us? You didn't care for the old man. But
you and I and Jenks could swing things all right. And we could keep Joe
Strauss in his place between us. God, kid, the four of us could make a
clean job of this thing--there's no limit to what we could do!" As he
uttered this last, he grasped me by the arms and shook me.
I knew what he meant--that with the return of prosperity, with vast
capital ready for investment, with the control of the packing and
food-products transportation business--which we packers had been
organizing into a compact machine--there was no limit to the reach of
our power in this land, in the world. (And I was of his way of thinking,
then, not believing that a power existed which could check our
operations. And I do not believe it now, I may add; nor do I know a man
conversant with the modern situation of capital who believes that with
our present system of government any effective check upon the
operations of capital can be devised.)
"Think it over," Carmichael urged, "and let me know when I return from
Chicago the first of the week. You don't want to make the mistake of
your life by dropping out just now."
But while he was talking to me, urging on me the greatness of the
future, my thoughts went back to that letter of Jane Dround's. She had
seen swiftly a truth that was coming to me slowly. There might be
twenty, forty, sixty millions in the packers' deal, but the joy of the
game had gone for me. All of those millions would not give me the joy I
had when I sold that sausage plant to Strauss! I shook my head.
"No, I don't want it, John. But Strauss's death makes a big difference.
I am willing to offer some kind of trade with you,--to let you have my
stock on better terms, if your people will do what I want."
Carmichael waited for my proposal. I said:--
"Old Parkinson is pretty near his end, I hear. It's likely there will be
a vacant seat in the Senate sometime soon."
The Irishman's eyes opened wide in astonishment.
"Strauss used to keep in touch with Springfield," I suggested. "He and
Vitzer" (who was the great traction wolf in Chicago) "used to work
pretty close together sometimes--"
"You want to go to the Senate, Van?"
Carmichael burst into a laugh that attracted the attention of the men
sitting around us.
"It might work out that way," I admitted.
"And how about that judge business?" he inquired, still laughing. "The
papers would make it some hot for you."
"No doubt. I don't expect I should be exactly a popular candidate, John.
But I calculate I'd make as good a Senator as Jim Parkinson, and a deal
more useful one."
Carmichael stopped laughing and began to think, seeing that there might
be a business end to this proposition. The time was coming when he and
his associates would need the services of an intelligent friend at
Washington. He reckoned up his political hirelings in the state.
"It might be managed," he said after a while, "only our crowd would want
to be sure we could count on you if we helped put you there. There's a
lot of bum, cranky notions loose in Congress, and it's up to the Senate
to see that the real interests of the country are protected."
"I ought to know by this time what the real interests are," I assured
him, and when he rose to leave for his train I added pointedly: "In case
we make this arrangement there's more stock than mine which you could
count on for your deal. We'd all stay in with you."
For there was the stock Carboner had locked up in his safe, and
Slocum's, and considerable more that would do as I said. If Carmichael
and young Jenks put through their merger and swallowed the packing
business whole, I knew that our money would be in good hands.
"Well, when Parkinson gets out we'll see what we can do," Carmichael
concluded.
And thus the deal for Parkinson's seat was made right there. All that
remained was for the old man to have his second stroke.
"You in the Senate--that's a good one!" John chuckled. "I suppose next
you will be wanting to be made Secretary of the Treasury, or President,
maybe!"
"I know my limit, John."
"D----d if I do! The old man would have enjoyed this. But, Van, take my
advice and stay out. There ain't much in that political business. Stay
with us and make some money. Right now is coming the biggest time this
country has ever seen. And we are the crowd that's got the combination
to the safe. These New York financiers think they are pretty near the
whole thing, but I reckon we are going to give even them a surprise."
With this final boast, he got into his cab and drove off.
The day was brilliantly sunny, and the street was alive with gay people.
What the Irishman said was true--I felt it in the sunny air: the
greatest period of prosperity this country had ever seen was just
starting. It was the time when two or three good gamblers could pick up
any kind of property, give it a fine name, print a lot of pretty stock
certificates, and sell their gold brick to the first comer. The people
were crazy to spend their money. It was a great time! Nevertheless, at
the bottom of all this craze was a sure feeling that all was well with
us--that ours was a mighty people. And that was about right.
[Illustration: "_And we are the crowd that's got the combination to the
safe._"]
Well, I loved my country in my own way; and I had all the money I knew
what to do with. Why not take a seat in "the millionnaires' club," as
the newspapers called that honorable body, the United States Senate?
* * * * *
Before I left for the West the family sailed for Europe. Little May and
sister Sarah, as we called the girls, had persuaded their mother to take
them over to Paris for a lark. May, who was thirteen, was running the
party. She was a tall, lively girl, with black hair and eyes, and was
thought to resemble me. The other was quieter in her ways, more like
Sarah. We had lost one little boy the summer before, which was a great
sorrow to us all. The older boy, who was at school preparing for
college, took after his mother, too. He was a pleasant-mannered chap,
with a liking for good clothes and other playthings. I did not reckon
that he ever would be much of a business man.
The morning that the steamer sailed Sarah was nervous over starting, but
May settled her in a corner of the deck and got her a wrap. Then the
girls went to say good-by to some friends.
"Van," Sarah said to me when we were alone. She hesitated a moment, then
went on timidly, "If anything should happen to us, Van, there's one
thing--"
"Nothing is going to happen! Not unless you lose your letter of credit,
or the girls run off with you," I joked.
"There's one thing I want to speak about seriously, Van. It's May and
Will!" She paused timidly.
"Well?"
"Can't you do something to make them feel differently?"
"I guess not. I've tried my best!"
"I know they are poor, and Will's in bad health, too,--quite sick."
"How did you know that?"
"Oh, I saw May once before I left. They are in Chicago again."
After a time I said:--
"You know I would give half of my money not to have it so, but it's no
use talking. They wouldn't take a cent from me."
Sarah sighed. "But couldn't you get Will a place somewhere without his
knowing about how it came?"
"I'll try my best," I said sadly.
Then it was time to leave the steamer; the girls came and kissed me
good-by, hanging about my neck and making me promise to write and to
come over for them later. Sarah raised her veil as I leaned down to kiss
her.
"Good-by, Van," she said without much spirit. "Be careful of yourself
and come over if you can get away."
Of late years, especially since the boy's death, Sarah seemed to have
lost her interest in things pretty much.
The trip might do her good.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE SENATORSHIP
_The people's choice--What the legislature of a great state
represents--The Strauss lobby--Public opinion, pro and con--An
unflattering description of myself--Carboner's confidences--On the
bill-boards--Popular oratory--I discover my brother in strange
company--I do some talking on my own account--An organ of kick and
criticism--Turned crank_
Jane Dround was right about old Senator Parkinson. He came home to die
early in the fall, and faded away in a couple of months afterward. The
political pot at the capital of the state then began to hum in a lively
fashion. It was suspected that the Governor himself wanted to succeed
the late Senator, and there were one or two Congressmen and a judge
whose friends thought they were of senatorial size. That was the talk on
the surface and in the papers. But the situation was very different
underneath.
The legislature might be said, in a general way, to represent the people
of the state of Illinois, but it represented also the railroad
interests, the traction and gas interests, and the packers, and when it
came to a matter of importance it pretty generally did what it was told
by its real bosses. This time it was told to put me in the Senate in
place of the late Senator, and it obeyed orders after a time.
Carmichael was honest with me, and stuck to his agreement to use the
Strauss lobby in the legislature in my behalf.
Of course the papers in Chicago howled, all those that hadn't their
mouths stopped with the right cake. The three largest papers couldn't be
reached by our friends in any way, but their scoring did little harm.
They had up again the story of Judge Garretson and the bonds of the
London and Chicago concern. But the story was getting a little hazy in
men's memories, and that kind of talk is passed around so often when a
man runs for office in our country that it hasn't much significance. We
did not even think it worth while to answer it. Besides, to tell the
truth, we had nothing much to say. Our policy was, of necessity, what
Slocum sarcastically described as "dignified silence." When my name
began to be heard at Springfield more and more insistently, the Chicago
_Thunderer_ came out with a terrific roast editorially:--
"Who is this fellow, E.V. Harrington, who has the presumption to
look lustfully on the chair of our late honorable Senator? Eighteen
years ago Harrington was driving a delivery wagon for a packing
firm, and there are to-day on the West Side retail marketmen who
remember his calls at their places. We believe that his first rise
in fortune came when, in some tricky way, he got hold of a
broken-down sausage plant, which he sold later to the redoubtable
Strauss. But it was not until the year '95, when the notorious
American Meat Products Company was launched, that Harrington
emerged from the obscurity of the Stock Yards. That corporation,
conceived in fraud, promoted by bribery, was the child of his
fertile brain. Not content with this enterprise, he became involved
in railroad promotion in the Southwest, and he and his man Friday,
Slocum, were celebrated as the most skilful manipulators of
legislative lobbies ever seen in the experienced state of Texas.
"What will Harrington represent in the Senate, assuming that he will
be able to buy his way there? Will he represent the great state of
Illinois,--the state of Lincoln, of Douglas, of Oglesby? He will
represent the corrupt Vitzer and the traction interests of Chicago,
the infamous Dosserand and the gas gang--above all, he will
represent the packers' combine,--Joe Strauss, Jenks, 'big John'
Carmichael. These citizens, who are secretly preparing to perpetrate
the greatest piece of robbery this country has ever witnessed,
propose to seat Harrington in the United States Senate as their
personal representative. Can the degradation of that once honorable
body be carried to a greater depth?"
It was not a flattering description of myself, but Tom Stevens, the
proprietor of the _Thunderer_, always hated Strauss and his crowd, and
the papers had to say something. To offset that dose, the _Vermilion
County Herald_ printed a pleasant eulogy describing me as a type of the
energy and ability of our country,--"the young man of farmer stock who
had entered the great city without a dollar and had fought his way up to
leadership in the financial world by his will and genius for commerce.
Such practical men, who have had training and experience in large
affairs, are the suitable representatives of a great commercial people.
The nation is to be congratulated on securing the services of men of Mr.
Harrington's ability, who could with so much more profit to themselves
continue in the career of high finance."
The only trouble with this puff was that it was composed in the office
of my lawyers and paid for at high rates. But, so far as affecting the
result, the _Thunderer_ and the _Vermilion County Herald_ were about on
a par. The order had gone out from headquarters that I was to be sent to
the Senate to take Parkinson's vacant seat, and, unless a cyclone swept
the country members off their feet, to the Senate I should go. All that
I had to do was to wait the final roll-call and pay the bills.
My old, tried counsellor, Jaffrey Slocum, was managing this campaign for
me. We could not use him at Springfield, however; for by this time he
was too well known as one of the shrewdest corporation lawyers in the
West. He represented the United Metals Trust, among other corporations,
and had done some lively lobbying for them of late. He was a rich man
now, and weighed several stone more than he did when he and I were
living at Ma Pierson's joint. He was married, and had a nice wife, an
ambitious woman, who knew what her husband was worth. She might push him
to New York or Washington before she was done. Meantime, it was settled
that he should take care of the packers' merger, when that came off, and
that business would mean another fortune for him.
One day, while the election was still pending, I went over to see Jules
Carboner. The old fellow was cheery as ever, and as pleased to see me as
if I had been a good boy just home from school. We had some of his
strong coffee and talked things over.
"By the way," he said, as I was leaving, "let me tell you now how we
happened to get hold of that block of Products' stock."
And he explained to me the mystery of that stock, which had saved my
life, so to speak, at a critical time. It seems that about three months
before the war scare, when there were bad rumors about Meat Products all
over the city, Dround had placed his stock in the hands of a New York
firm of bankers. I suppose he was ashamed to let me know that he was
going to break his last promise to me. For if he didn't tell those
bankers to offer Strauss his stock, he knew that was just what they
would do. So much for the scrupulous Henry I! The bankers felt around
and tried to strike a bargain with the great packer, and negotiations
were under way for some time about the stock. That gave our enemies the
confidence to sell us short. They thought that, in case the market went
wrong, they could put their hand on Dround's stock. Just at this point
Carboner received word where the stock was and orders to buy it. He went
to New York the next day and bought it outright, paying all it was
worth, naturally....
I came back from Carboner's place through Newspaper Row. On the boards
in front of the offices one could read in large red and blue letters:--
HARRINGTON SAID TO BE SLATED FOR THE
SENATE
FINAL BALLOT TO-DAY
Men passing on their way home from their work paused to read the
bulletin, and I stopped, too. A group of laboring men were gathered
about the door of a building near by, and from the numbers entering and
leaving the place I judged that some kind of meeting was in progress
within. As I stood there my attention was caught by a man who went in
with several others. Something about the man's back reminded me of my
brother Will, and I followed into the building and upstairs to a smoky
room, where the men were standing about in groups, talking together,
only now and then paying any attention to the speaker on the platform.
He was a fat, round little fellow, and he was shouting himself out of
breath:--
"Yes! I tell you right here, you and your children are sold like so many
hogs over at the Yards. Don't you believe it? What do you pay for meat?
What do you pay for every basket of coal you put in your stoves? The
millionnaires there at Washington make the laws of this free country,
and who do they make them for? Don't you know? Do they make 'em for you,
or for Joe Strauss? They are putting one of their kind in the Senate
from this state right now!"...
So he rambled on, and having sampled his goods, and not seeing the face
I was looking for, I was moving toward the door, when I was arrested by
the voice of a man who began to speak over in one corner.
[Illustration: _Men paused to read the bulletin, and I stopped, too._]
"That's so. I know him!" he shouted, and the attention of the room was
his. The men around him moved back, and I could see that the speaker was
Will. He was dressed in a long waterproof coat, and his hat was tipped
back on his head. An untrimmed black beard covered the lower half of his
face. "I can tell you all about him," he continued in a thin, high
voice. "He's the man who got a bill through Congress giving himself and
his partners a slice of land out of the Indian Territory. He's the man
who kept the Texas legislature in his hire the same as a servant."
[Illustration: "_He's the man who sold scraps and offal to the
Government for canned beef_--"]
Generally when I hear this kind of sawing-air I go about my business.
The discontented always growl at the other fellow's bone. Give them a
chance at the meat, and see how many bites they would make! It's
hopeless to try and winnow out the truth from the mass of lies they talk
about the trusts, capital, the tariff, corruption, and the rest of it.
But it hurt all the same to have Will say such things about me....
"He's the man who sold scraps and offal to the Government for canned
beef--"
"That's a lie!" I spoke out promptly.
"Don't I know what I am saying? Didn't I try to live on the rancid,
rotten stuff? My God, I've got some home now I could show you!"
Will turned to see who had contradicted him, and recognized me.
"You ought to know better than that," I replied, directly to him. "Some
of it was rotten, but not the Meat Products' goods. We lost on our
contract, too, what's more."
Will was a little startled, but he steadied himself soon and said
again:--
"That's the same thing. You were all the same crowd."
"No; that wasn't so," I remonstrated, "and you ought to know it."
The men in the room had stopped their talking and were craning their
heads to look at us. Will and I eyed each other for a time; then I
turned to the crowd and made the first and last real public speech of my
life.
"That's all a d----d lie about the beef _we_ sold the Government. I know
it because I inspected it myself. And I gave my own money, too, to
support men at the front, and that is more than any of you fellows ever
did. And the rest of the talk these gentlemen have been giving you is
just about as wrong, too. Let me tell you one thing: if you folks were
honest, if you didn't send rascals to Springfield and to Congress, if
you weren't ready to take a dollar and club a man if he didn't hand it
over, there wouldn't be this bribery business. I know it, because I've
got the club over and over again. And one thing more, it's no more use
for you and I to kick about the men who put their money into trusts than
it would be to try to swallow all the water in the lake. That's the way
business has got to be done nowadays, and if it weren't done you folks
would starve, and your wives and children would starve--"
"Who are you?" some began to shout, interrupting me.
"I am E.V. Harrington!" I called back.
Then they hooted: "Hello, Senator. Put him out!"
I turned toward Will, and called to him:--
"Come on! I want to have a word with you, Will."
He followed me downstairs into a saloon. Some of the loafers who had
heard our talk upstairs came in and crowded up to the bar, and I set up
the drinks all around several times. Will wouldn't take any whiskey.
Then the bartender let us into a little room at the end of the bar,
where we could be by ourselves.
"Will!" I exclaimed, "whatever has happened to you?"
It wrung my heart to see what a wreck he was. He had let his beard grow
to cover up his wasted face. His eyes were sunk and bloodshot. The old
waterproof covered a thin flannel coat.
"I'm all right," he replied gloomily. "What do you want of me?"
"I want you to come out and get some dinner with me, first," I said.
But he shook his head, saying he must go home to May.
"It ain't no use, Van," he added, in a high, querulous voice. "We don't
belong together. May and I are of the people--the people you fatten on."
"Quit that rot! I am one of the people, too."
"Oh, you're Senator, I expect, by this time," he sneered. "What did it
cost you, Van?"
"I don't want to talk politics."
"That's all I care to talk. I want to get a chance to show you fellows
up one of these days. I'm considering a proposition for part control of
a paper--a labor weekly."
So he talked for a while about his scheme of getting hold of a little
three-cent outfit and making it into an organ of kick and criticism. He
had seen life from the inside during the war, he explained, and he
wanted to give the public the benefit of his experience. He had a snarl
for every conceivable thing that was, and he was eager to express it.
When I showed him that such an attitude was dead against American
feeling, he accused me of trying to suppress his enterprise because it
was aimed at my friends, "the thieves and robbers." It was hopeless to
argue with him, and the more we talked the worse I felt. He was just
bitter and wild, and he kept saying: "You taught me what it meant! You
showed me what it was to be rich!" The war had ruined his health and
weakened his mind. The gentle, willing side in him had turned to fury.
He was a plain crank now!
"I'll buy this paper for you--or I'll start a new one for you to curse
me and my friends with--if you'll just take May and the children and go
down to my farm in the country. There are two thousand acres down there,
Will, and you can do as you please on the place. When you've got back
your health, then you can start in to baste me as good as you've a mind
to."
But he refused to compromise his "cause." So we parted at the door of
the saloon, he buttoning up his old raincoat and striding out for the
West Side without a look back to me. And as I hailed a cab to take me to
the club I heard in my ears that charge, "You taught me what it meant to
be rich, Van!" It made me mad, but it hurt just the same.
Though I knew perfectly well that I was not responsible for his
crankiness, yet I thought that if he could have kept on at business
under me he would have been all right, earning a good living for his
wife and children, and not taking up with thoughts he hadn't the mind to
think out. For Will was not one to step safely out of the close ranks of
men, but he was always a mighty faithful worker wherever he was put. And
now he was just a crank--good for nothing.
CHAPTER XXX
THE COST
_A dinner at the Metropolitan Club--Old friends and enemies--A
conservative Senator--Pleasant speeches--A favor for Henry I--I plan
a gift for a tried friend--I find that I have nothing to
give--Slocum's confession--Aims in life--The Supreme Bench--What
money can't buy--Slocum pays for both_
A number of men gave me a dinner that evening at the Metropolitan Club.
Steele, Lardner, Morrison (of the New York and Chicago Railway Company),
Joe Strauss, Jenks, Carmichael, and Bates were there, among others--all
leaders in the community in various enterprises. Not all these gentlemen
had looked with favor on my political aspirations; but, when they saw
that I could win this trick as I had others, they sidled up to me. After
all, no matter what they might think of me personally, or of my methods,
they felt that I belonged to their crowd and would be a safe enough man
to have in the Senate.
Just as we sat down, Slocum, who had been called to the telephone, came
up to me, a smile on his wrinkled face, and said, raising his right
hand:--
"Gentlemen, the legislature at Springfield has elected Mr. Harrington to
fill the unexpired term of the late Senator Parkinson. Gentlemen, three
cheers for Senator Harrington!"
As the men raised their champagne glasses to drink to me, Slocum shook
me warmly by the hand, a smile broadening over his face. Although, as I
told them, it had never been my part to talk, I said a few words,
thanking them for their good-will, and promising them that I should do
my best to serve the interests of the country we all believed was the
greatest nation that had ever been. My old friend Orlando Bates, the
president of the Tenth National, replied to my talk, expressing the
confidence my associates had in me. In the course of his graceful speech
he said, "Mr. Harrington is so closely identified with the conservative
interests of the country that we can feel assured he will stand as a
bulwark against the populistic clamor so rife in the nation at the
present time." And young Harvey Sturm, also a bank president, who
followed him with a glowing speech, made flattering references to the
work I had done "in upbuilding our glorious commonwealth." After
deprecating the growth of socialistic sentiments and condemning the
unrestricted criticism of the press in regard to capital, he closed with
a special tribute: "Such men as Edward Harrington are the brains and the
will of the nation. On their strong shoulders rests the progress of
America. Were it not for their God-given energy, their will, their
genius for organization, our broad prairies, our great forests, our vast
mines, would cease to give forth their wealth!"
There was more of the same sort of talk before we broke up. Afterward,
as the theatres and the opera closed, men dropped in to hear the news,
and many of them came up to congratulate me. Among others old Dround
wandered into the club in the course of the evening, and, some one
having told him that I had been elected Senator, he came up to the
corner where I was standing with a group of men, and hovered around for
a time, trying to get a word with me. After a while I stepped out and
shook hands with him.
"I am very glad to hear this, Mr. Harrington," he said slowly, pressing
my hand in his trembling fist. "I have always believed that our best men
should take an interest in the government of their country."
His eyes had a wandering expression, as if he were trying in vain to
remember something out of the past, and he continued to deliver his
little speech, drawing me to one side out of hearing of the men who were
standing there. "I thought once to enter public life myself," he said,
"but heavy business responsibilities demanded all my attention. I
wonder," he lowered his voice confidentially, "if you will not find it
possible to further the claims of my old friend Paxton's son. He desires
to secure a diplomatic post. I have urged his merits on the President,
and secured assurance of his good-will; but nothing has yet been done. I
cannot understand it."
Eri Paxton was a dissipated, no-account sort of fellow, but I assured
Henry I. Dround that I would do my best for him. That was the least that
the past demanded of me!
So it went on until past midnight, and the club began to empty, and I
was left with a few friends about me. When they went I took Slocum up
to my room for a last cigar before bed. We had some private matters to
settle in connection with the election.
"You pulled out all right, Van," he said when we were alone. "But there
wasn't much margin."
"I trusted Carmichael--I knew John wouldn't go back on me."
We sat and smoked awhile in silence. Now that I had picked the plum, the
feeling came over me that Slocum ought to have had it. With that idea I
burst out at last:--
"I've been thinking of one thing all along, Slo--and that is: What can I
do for you when I am Senator? Name what you want, man, and if it's in my
power to get it, it shall be yours. Without you I'd never have been
here, and that's sure."
"I never cared much for politics," he replied thoughtfully. "I guess
there isn't anything I want, which is more than most of your friends can
say!"
"Something in the diplomatic service?" I suggested. He shook his head.
"How about a Federal judgeship--you can afford to go out of practice."
"Yes, I can afford to go on the bench!" he replied dryly. "But it's no
use to talk of it."
"What do you mean?"
"You ought to know, Van, that that is one thing that can't be bought in
this country, not yet. I could no more get an appointment on the Federal
bench than you could!"
"You mean on account of that old story? That's outlawed years ago!"
"You think so? The public forgets, but lawyers remember, and so do
politicians. The President may make rotten appointments anywhere else,
but if he should nominate me for the Circuit bench there would be such a
howl go up all over that he would have to withdraw me. And he knows too
much to try any such proposition."
It was no use to argue the question, for the lawyer had evidently been
over the whole matter and knew the facts.
"It isn't that bribery matter, Van, alone; I have been hand and glove
with you fellows too long to be above suspicion. My record is against me
all through. It isn't worth talking about.... I have had my pay: I am a
rich man, richer than I ever expected to be when I put foot in Chicago.
I have no right to complain."
But I felt that, in spite of all he said, that wasn't enough--somehow
the money did not make it square for him. As the night passed, he warmed
up more than I had ever known him to in all the years we had worked
together, and he let me see some way inside him. I remember he said
something like this:--
"There were three things I promised myself I would do with my life. That
was back in my senior year at Bowdoin College. I was a poor boy--had
borrowed from a relative a few hundred dollars to go through college
with, and felt the burden of that debt pretty hard. Well, of those three
purposes, one was for myself. First, I promised myself I would pay back
my uncle's loan. That was a simple matter of decency. He was not a rich
man, and his children felt rather sore at his letting me have those six
hundred dollars to spend on a college education. I managed to do that
out of what I earned as a law clerk the first years we were together at
Ma Pierson's. The next thing I had promised myself was to buy back our
old brick house in the aristocratic part of Portland--the house my
father had been obliged to part with after the panic of '76. I meant to
put my mother and sisters in it. The only sister I have living is there
now with her children. My mother died in her old home, and that has
always been a comfort to me.... You may think it was my desire to do
this that made me stick by you when we had that difference about the
Chicago and London bonds, but you are mistaken. I went with you, Van,
because I wanted to--just that. I saw then what it meant, and I am not
kicking now.
"Well, the third aim I set myself when I was speculating, as college
boys do about such things, was the hardest of all. The others, with
reasonable success, I could hope to accomplish. And I did fulfil them
sooner than I had any reason to hope I should. The third was a more
difficult matter, and that was my ambition to sit some day on the
Supreme Bench. There were two members of our family who had been
distinguished judges, one of the Supreme Court of Maine, and another of
the Federal Supreme Court, back in the early forties. I had always heard
these two men referred to with the greatest respect in our family,
especially my great-uncle, Judge Lambert Cushing. Although by the time I
came to college our family had reached a pretty low ebb, it was natural
that I should secretly cherish the ambition to rise to the high-water
mark.
"And," he concluded, "after thirty years of contact with the world, I
haven't seen much that is more worthy of a man's ambition in our country
than a seat on our Supreme Bench. I have no reason to be ashamed of my
three aims in life. Two of them I made--the third I might never have
come near to, anyway; but I chucked away my chance a good many years
ago. However, I have done pretty well by myself as it is. So you see
there is nothing, Van, that you can give me that I should want to take."
[Illustration: "_So you see there is nothing, Van, that you can give me
that I should want to take._"]
He reached for another cigar, and stretched his long legs. It was the
first time he had ever spoken to me from the bottom of his heart, and
now that he had revealed the truth about himself, there was nothing to
be said. He was not just the ordinary corporation lawyer, who sells his
learning and his shrewdness for a fat fee. I had run up against that
kind often enough. They are an indispensable article to the modern man
of affairs; for the strategy of our warfare is largely directed by them.
But Jaffrey Slocum was much more than such a trained prostitute: he was
a man of learning and a lover of the law for its own sake. I suspect
that if he had ever sat on the bench he would have been a tough nut for
the corporations....
"There's no better proverb, my friend, than the old one about the way
you make your bed," Slocum summed up, rising to go. "It don't trouble
you, perhaps, because you are made different. You are made to fit the
world as it is to-day."
With that he bade me good night and went away. I sat on by myself for
some time afterward, thinking, thinking of it all! Very likely if Slocum
could have had his desire, and gone on the Supreme Bench, he would not
have found it all he had painted it as a boy. But whether it was foolish
or not for him to set such store by that prize, it was beyond his reach,
and the man who had done most to put him out of the race was I. I had
needed him, and I had taken him--that was all there was to that. He had
sold himself to me, not just for money, but for friendship and
admiration,--for what men of his kind sell themselves. For in all the
world there was not enough money to pay him for selling himself--he had
as much as said so to-night. Now, when I wanted to give him the gift
that he had earned by years of devotion, there was nothing in my hands
that was worth his taking!
Thinking of this, I forgot for the time being that I was Senator from
the state of Illinois.
CHAPTER XXXI
FURTHER COST
_I go to see May--A cottage on the West Side--May comes to the
door--Pleading--Stiff-necked virtue--A discussion of patriotism--We
wash dishes and dispute--Old times--One woman's
character--Possibilities--Hard words--Rejected gifts--Even to the
children--Who shall judge?--Another scale and a greater one_
The cab drew up before a one-story frame house that stood back in the
lot, squeezed between two high brick buildings. This was the number on
Ann Street, over on the West Side, that Will had given me when I had
pressed him for his address. The factories had pretty well surrounded
this section of the city, leaving here and there some such rickety
shanty as this one. There were several children playing in the strip of
front yard, and as I opened the gate one of them called out, "Hello,
Uncle Van!"
It was Will's second son, little Van. He said his mother was at home,
and, taking my hand, he showed me around the cottage to the back door.
The boy pounded on the door, and May came to see what was the matter.
"Is that you, Van?" she asked, as if she expected me. "Will said he saw
you the other day."
She did not invite me in, but the little boy held open the door and I
walked into the kitchen. The breakfast things were piled up in the sink,
unwashed. A boiler of clothes was on the fire, and May had her sleeves
rolled up, ready to begin the wash. Her arms were as thin as pipe-stems,
and behind her glasses I saw deep circles of blue flesh. She had grown
older and thinner in the three years since she and Will left my house
for good.
"Will's gone to the city," May remarked.
"He don't look strong, May. It made me feel bad to see him so--changed,
not a bit like himself."
She seemed to bridle a little at this.
"He hasn't been real well since he had the fever at Montauk. He was
reinfected at the hospital, and nearly died. When he got out he tried
farming down in Texas, but his strength didn't come back as we expected,
and the climate was too hot for him. So we came North to see if he could
get some easier work."
"How are the children?" I asked, seeing a strange baby face peep around
the corner of the clothes-basket.
"We lost the baby boy while Will was at Montauk. Another little girl has
come since then. We call her Sarah."
She waited a moment, and then asked hesitatingly:--
"How's your Sarah? She didn't look well when I saw her last."
"No--she's been delicate some time--since our boy died, last summer.
She's gone to Europe with the girls for a change."
Then we were silent; there was not much more we could say without
touching the quick. But at last I burst out:--
"May, why wouldn't you take that money I sent you while Will was away at
the war?"
"We could manage without it. It was kind of you, though. You have always
been kind, Van!"
"You might have known it would make us happy to have you take it. It was
only what I owed to the country, too, seeing that I was so placed I
couldn't go to Cuba. I wanted then to leave everything and enlist. But
it wouldn't have been fair to others. I sent some men in my place,
though."
Perhaps it sounded a little like apologizing. May listened with a smile
on her lips that heated me.
"You are just like that preacher!" I exclaimed. "You can see no good in
folks unless it's _your_ kind of good. Don't you believe I have got some
real patriotism in me?"
"It's hard to think of Van Harrington, the new Senator, as a patriot,"
she laughed back. "Those men you sent to the front must have come in
handy for the election!"
I turned red at her little fling about the Senatorship: my managers
_had_ worked that company I equipped for all it was worth.
"I guess there are a good many worse citizens than I am. I wanted to
fight for those fellows down in Cuba. And you wouldn't let me do the
little I could--help Will to take my place."
"After all that happened, Van, we couldn't take it."
"And I suppose you don't want to touch anything from me now! See here,
May, I came over this morning to do something for you and Will. Did he
tell you about my wanting him to go down to my place in the country
until he got well and strong?"
"He's much interested in this paper, and thinks he can't get away," she
said evasively.
"Darn his paper! You don't believe Will was cut out to be a thinker?
Anyhow, he ought to get his health back first, and give you an easier
time, too."
"I am all right. Will is very much in earnest about his ideas. You can't
get him to think about himself."
"Well, I don't mind his trying to reform the earth. If later on he wants
a paper to whack the rich with, I'll buy him one. Come, that's fair,
isn't it?"
May laughed at my offer, but made no reply.
"If you folks are so obstinate, if I can't get you to go down to my
place, I'll have to turn it into a school or something. A fellow I was
talking with on the train the other day gave me an idea of making it
into a sort of reform school for boys. What would you think of that?
Sarah is taken with the idea--she never liked the place and won't want
to go back, now that the baby died there."
"That's a good plan--turning philanthropist, Van? That's the right way
to get popular approval, Senator."
She mocked me, but her laugh rang out good-naturedly.
"Popular approval never worried me much. But, May, I want _your_
good-will, and I mean to get it, too."
For the more obstinate she was, the more she made me eager to win my
point, to bring her and Will back to me. She understood this, and a
flash of her old will and malice came into her thin face. She got up to
stir the clothes on the fire, and when the water began to run over I
stripped off my coat and put my hand to the job. Then I stepped over to
the sink.
"Do you remember how I used to wash while you wiped, when we wanted to
get out buggy-riding, May?"
"Yes, and you were an awful shiftless worker, Senator," May retorted,
fetching a dish-towel from the rack and beginning to wash, while I
wiped. "And you had the same smooth way with you, though in those days
you hadn't ten cents to your name. And now, how much is it?"
"Oh, say a quarter!"
"Then it must have cost you a sight of money to become Senator."
"It did some, but I kept back a little."
When we had finished the dishes we began on the clothes. A child's dress
caught on the wringer and tore. It was marked in a fine embroidery with
the initials, J.S. II., for Jaffrey Slocum Harrington--as we had thought
to call the little chap. May saw me look at the initials.
"Sarah sent it to me along with a lot of baby things when my Jack came.
Perhaps she might like to have them back now."
"She and the girls come home next week. Won't you come and see her?
She'd care more for that than for anything."
[Illustration: "_Do you remember how I used to wash while you wiped,
when we wanted to get out buggy-riding, May?_"]
"You were always awfully persistent in getting your own way, Van!"
"But I didn't always get it, I remember."
"It might have been just as well if you hadn't had it so much of the
time since."
"Well, maybe--"
"There are a few other people in the world besides Van Harrington, and
they have their rights, too."
"That's true enough, if they can get 'em."
"Maybe their consciences are a little stronger to hold them back from
getting things. You never held off long when you wanted a thing, Van.
You took the peaches, you remember?"
Her lips curled in the way that used to set me mad for her.
"I didn't eat a peach," I protested. "I gave them to your brothers, and
Budd Haines."
"Yes, _you_ gave them!"
"I don't believe you think me half as bad as you make me out!" I said,
stopping the wringer and looking into her eyes.
"You don't know how bad I make you out," she challenged my look.
It was not hard to see why I had been crazy to marry her in the old
days. There was a fire in her which no other woman I ever saw possessed.
Jane was large-minded, keen as an eagle, and like steel. But there was a
kind of will in this worn woman, a hanging to herself, which gave her a
character all her own. Nevertheless, we two couldn't have travelled far
hitched together. She would have tried her best to run me, and life
would have been hell for us both.
"Well," I protested in my own defence, "there's no man and no woman
living has the right to say he's the worse off on my account. I have
treated the world fairly where it has treated me fairly."
"So that's your boast, Van Harrington! It's pretty hard when a man has
to say a thing like that to defend his life. You don't know how many men
you have ruined like that poor Hostetter. But that isn't the worst. The
very sight of men like you is the worst evil in our country. You are
successful, prosperous, and you have ridden over the laws that hindered
you. You have hired your lawyers to find a way for you to do what you
please. You think you are above the law--just the common laws for
ordinary folks! You buy men as you buy wheat. And because you don't
happen to have robbed your next-door neighbor or ruined his daughter,
you make a boast of it to me. It's pretty mean, Van, don't you think
so?"
We had sat down facing each other across the tub of clothes. As she
spoke her hot words, I thought of others who had accused me in one way
or another,--Parson, Will, Slocum,--most of all, Slocum. But I dismissed
this sentimental reflection.
"Those are pretty serious charges you are making, May," I replied after
a time. "And what do you know? What the newspapers say. There are
thousands of newspaper men all over this country who get a dollar or two
a column for that sort of mud. Then these same fellows come around to
us and hold out their hands for tips or bribes. You take their lies for
proved facts. I have never taken the trouble to answer their charges,
and never shall. I will answer for what I have done."
"To whom?" May asked ironically. "To God? I should like to see Van
Harrington's God! He must be different from the One I have prayed to all
these years."
"Maybe he has more charity, May!"
"Are you asking for charity--my charity as well as God's?" she blazed.
"Well, let that go! I shall answer to the people now."
"Yes! And God help this country, now that men like you have taken to
buying seats there at Washington!"
We said nothing for a while after this, and then I rose to go.
"We don't get anywhere this way, May. I came here wanting to be friends
with you and Will--wanting to help my brother. You needn't take my money
if you think it's tainted. But can't you feel friendly? You are throwing
me off a second time when I come to you asking for your love."
She flushed at the meaning under my words, and replied in a lower
voice:--
"It would do no good, Van. You are feeling humble just now, and
remorseful, and full of old memories. But you don't want my love now, in
real truth, more than you did before." Her face crimsoned slowly. "If
you had wanted it then, you would have stayed and earned it."
"And I could have had it?"
Instead of answering she came up to me and took my arms in her two hands
and pulled my head to her.
"Good-by, Van!" she said, kissing me.
As I stepped out of the door I turned for the last time:--
"Can't you let me do something for my brother, who is a sick man?"
Tears came to her eyes, but she shook her head.
"I know he's sick, and likely to fail in what he's doing. But it can't
be helped!"
Outside little Van was sitting on the ground playing with a broken toy
engine. I put my hand on his little tumbled head, and turned to his
mother:--
"I suppose you wouldn't let him touch my money, either?"
She smiled back her defiance through her tears.
"You had rather he'd grow up in the alley here than let me give him an
education and start him in life!"
I waited several moments for her answer.
"Yes!" she murmured at last, very faintly.
The little fellow looked from his mother to me curiously, trying to make
out what we were saying.
* * * * *
So I went back to the city, having failed in my purpose. I couldn't get
that woman to yield an inch. She had weighed me in her scales and found
me badly wanting. I was Senator of these United States, from the great
state of Illinois; but there was Hostetter, and the old banker Farson,
and my best friend Slocum, and my brother Will, and May, and their
little children, who stood to one side and turned away.
The smoke of the city I had known for so long drifted westward above my
head. The tall chimneys of the factories in this district poured forth
their stream to swell the canopy that covered the heavens. The whir of
machinery from the doors and windows of the grimy buildings filled the
air with a busy hum; the trucks ground along in the car tracks. Traffic,
business, industry,--the work of the world was going forward. A huge
lumber boat blocked the river at the bridge, and while the tugs pushed
it slowly through the draw, I stood and gazed at the busy tracks in the
railroad yards below me, at the line of high warehouses along the river.
I, too, was a part of this. The thought of my brain, the labor of my
body, the will within me, had gone to the making of this world. There
were my plants, my car line, my railroads, my elevators, my lands--all
good tools in the infinite work of the world. Conceived for good or for
ill, brought into being by fraud or daring--what man could judge _their_
worth? There they were, a part of God's great world. They were done; and
mine was the hand. Let another, more perfect, turn them to a larger use;
nevertheless, on my labor, on me, he must build.
Involuntarily my eyes rose from the ground and looked straight before
me, to the vista of time. Surely there was another scale, a grander one,
and by this I should not be found wholly wanting!
CHAPTER XXXII
THE END
_The senatorial party--Mrs. Jenks's pearls--Gossip--One good deed--The
Duchess brand--I take my seat in the Senate--Red roses_
When it came time to go to Washington to take my seat, my friend Major
Frederickson, of the Atlantic and Great Western road, placed his private
car at my disposal and made up a special train for my party. Sarah and
the girls had come back from Paris in time to accompany me to
Washington. The girls were crazy over going; they saw ahead a lot of
parties and sights, and I suppose had their ideas about making foreign
matches some day. The boy was to meet us there, and he was rather
pleased, too, to be the son of a Senator.
Among those who made the trip with us there were Slocum and his wife, of
course, John Carmichael, young Jenks and his pretty little wife, and a
dozen or more other friends. We had a very pleasant and successful
journey. A good deal of merriment was occasioned by a string of pearls
that young Mrs. Jenks wore, which had lately been the talk of the city.
The stones were of unusual size and quality, and had been purchased
through a London dealer from some titled person. Jenks had given them
as a present to his wife because of the success of the beef merger,
which had more than doubled the fortune old Randolph Jenks left him when
he died. The pearls, being so perfect and well known in London, caused a
lot of newspaper talk. They were said to be the finest string in the
United States; there were articles even in the magazines about Mrs.
Jenks and her string of pearls. Finally, some reporter started the story
that there was a stone for every million dollars Jenks had "screwed out
of the public by the merger"--twenty-seven in all. (For these days there
was beginning to be heard all over the clamor about the price of food,
and how the new combination of packers was forcing up prices--mere
guesswork on the part of cheap socialistic agitators that was being
taken seriously by people who ought to know better.) One paper even had
it that pretty little Mrs. Jenks "flaunted around her neck the
blood-bought price of a million lives!"
So it had come to be a sort of joke among us, that string of pearls.
Whenever I saw it, I would pretend to count the stones and ask Mrs.
Jenks how many more million lives she was wearing around her neck
to-night. She would laugh back in her pretty little Southern drawl:--
"The papers do say such dreadful things! Pretty soon I shan't dare to
wear a single jewel in public. Ralph says it's dangerous to do it now,
there are so many cranks around. Don't you think it's horrid of them to
talk so?"
Sarah had her string of pearls, too, but it was much smaller than the
famous one of Mrs. Jenks. Sarah didn't altogether like Mrs. Jenks, and
used to say that she plastered herself with jewels to show who she was.
Well, the pearls went to Washington with us on this trip, and made quite
a splendid show, though we used to joke Ralph Jenks about sitting up
nights to watch his wife's necklace. The fame of the pearls had got to
Washington ahead of us, and the Washington _Eagle_ had a piece in about
the arrival at the Arlington of the new Senator from Illinois and the
"packers' contingent" with their pearls! People used to turn around in
the corridors and stare at us--not so much at the new Senator as at Mrs.
Jenks's pearls!
* * * * *
I had already taken a house in Washington for the winter, and Sarah soon
was busy in having it done over for us. We had shut up the Chicago
house, and after discussing the matter with Sarah I concluded to turn
over the Vermilion County property to a society, to be used for a reform
school. Sarah talked it over with the young fellow I met on the train,
who first put the idea into my head, and she seemed to take great
pleasure in the plan, wanting me to give an endowment for the
institution, which I promised as soon as my packing-company stock was
straightened out. Now that I had failed to put Will and his family down
there, as I had set my heart on doing, I had no more wish to go back to
the place than Sarah had. And as a home to take boys to who hadn't a
fair chance in life, it might do some good in the world.
[Illustration: "_It was good sausage, Slo! At least it was when we made
it._"]
It was a pleasant, warm day when my colleague, Senator Drummond, came to
escort me to the Senate. My secretary and Slocum accompanied us up the
broad steps toward the Senate chamber. As we turned in from the street
with the Capitol rising before us, my eye fell upon a broad advertising
board beside the walk, on a vacant piece of property. One of the
conspicuous advertisements caught my attention:--
THE DUCHESS BRAND
STRICTLY FARM-MADE SAUSAGE
BEST IN THE WORLD
It was one of Strauss's "ads." Slocum pointed to it with a wave of his
hand and glanced at me; and I thought I caught a smile on the lips of my
colleague, which might have been scornful. So I paused before we passed
beyond sight of the sign of the Duchess brand.
"It was good sausage, Slo! At least it was when we made it."
"And it did pretty well by you!" he laughed.
Senator Drummond had moved forward with my secretary. "Yes! The Duchess
was all right." Then we followed the others slowly up the great
steps....
In the Senate chamber, in one of the galleries, a group of women were
sitting about Sarah, waiting to see me take the oath. One of them waved
a handkerchief at me, and as I looked up I caught sight of Mrs. Jenks's
pearls when she leaned forward over the rail.
On my desk there was a bunch of American Beauty roses: I did not have to
look for the card to know that they had come from Jane.
THE COMMON LOT.
By ROBERT HERRICK,
_Author of "The Real World," "The Web of Life," etc._
Cloth. 12mo. $1.50.
Mr. Herrick has written a novel of searching insight and absorbing
interest; a first-rate story ... sincere to the very core in its matter
and in its art.--HAMILTON W. MABIE.
The book is a bit of the living America of to-day, a true picture of one
of its most significant phases ... living, throbbing with
reality.--_N.Y. Evening Mail._
Novels of its style and quality are few and far between; ... he tells a
story that is worth the telling; ... it is a study of life as he sees
it, and as thousands of his readers try to avoid seeing it.--_Boston
Transcript._
It grips the reader tremendously.... It is the drama of a human soul the
reader watches ... the finest study of human motive that has appeared
for many a day.--_The World To-day._
Such a story will hardly slip through the reader's hands until the last
page is reached, and then as he slowly puts it down, he will be apt to
do a lot of thinking.--_Advance._
It deserves the widest reading, not only as a piece of admirable
writing, but as a powerful presentation of the contemporary American
tragedy.--_The Outlook._
The book as a story is absorbingly interesting; as a moral study it is
not less than great.--_The Interior_, Chicago.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
THE GOSPEL OF FREEDOM.
By ROBERT HERRICK.
12mo. Cloth extra, gilt top and side. $1.50.
The motive of the story is that of personal independence in its appeal
especially to the restless, eager, egotistic woman of our new
civilization. The scenes are laid in Paris, Chicago, and Florence.
* * * * *
A clever, vivacious book.--_N.Y. Tribune._
"The Gospel of Freedom" is destined to place the author in the front
ranks of the writers to whom we must look for our best and most serious
fiction.--_N.Y. Commercial Advertiser._
Highly entertaining and interesting.--_N.Y. Times._
A novel that may truly be called the greatest study of social life in a
broad and very much up-to-date sense that has ever been contributed to
American fiction.--_Chicago Inter-Ocean._
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
THE WEB OF LIFE.
By ROBERT HERRICK,
_Author of "The Gospel of Freedom," etc._
Cloth. 12mo. $1.50.
Like his earlier book, "The Gospel of Freedom," which was hailed as "the
great American social novel," this deals with social conditions in the
young West.
* * * * *
One of the strongest stories of the summer.... It is strong in that it
faithfully depicts many phases of American life, and uses them to
strengthen a web of fiction, which is most artistically wrought
out.--_Buffalo Illustrated Express._
Of more than ordinary literary and artistic merit, and the lesson one
learns from it will no doubt be a wholesome one.
The greatest story of American social life ... ever contributed to
American fiction.--_Inter-Ocean_, Chicago.
As a story it is absorbing.--_The Bookman._
Most emphatically worth reading.--_Boston Budget._
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
THE REAL WORLD
By ROBERT HERRICK,
Author of "The Web of Life," "The Gospel of Freedom," etc.
Cloth 12 mo $1.50
"It is unfortunate for our latter-day fiction that there are not more
such strong, well-balanced books being brought out. Such work as
Professor Herrick's is creative."--_Denver Republican._
"The conception is thoughtful, the character-drawing masterly at times,
and always intelligent and careful, while toward the end the emotional
interests become absorbing. The most striking thing about Mr. Herrick is
perhaps the absolute unconventionality of his notions. His characters
are not types, they are people; and he is not so much studying a problem
as recording facts. The consequence is that the course of his stories is
usually as original as real life. Another strong characteristic of his
is a subtle, almost feminine knowledge of character."--_Washington
Times._
"The title of the book, 'The Real World,' has a subtle intention. It
indicates, and is true to the verities in doing so, the strange
dreamlike quality of life to the man who has not yet fought his own
battles, or come into conscious possession of his will,--only such
battles bite into the consciousness."--_Chicago Tribune._
"Intellectually 'The Real World' is an exceptionally powerful work ...
prominently among the season's best books."--_Boston Courier._
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
Obvious typographical and printer errors have been corrected without
comment.
In addition to obvious errors, the following changes have been made:
Page 8: "head" changed to "heard" in the phrase, "... I heard the
young lady exclaim...."
Page 41: "thing" changed to "think" in the phrase, "... I should
think...."
Page 219: "car-worn" changed to "care-worn" in the phrase, "... a
care-worn sort of smile...."
Page 310: "their" changed to "there" in the phrase, "... seeing that
there might be...."
Other than the above, no effort has been made to standardize internal
inconsistencies in spelling, capitalization, punctuation, grammar, etc.
The author's usage is preserved as found in the original publication.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Memoirs of an American Citizen" ***
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