_ CHAPTER XII. In which the Burdens of wealth begin to fall upon Us
If the town be considered as a quiescent body pursuing its unluminous way in space, Mr. Elkins may stand for the impinging planet which shocked it into vibrant life. I suggested this nebular-hypothesis simile to Mr. Giddings, one day, as the germ of an editorial.
"It's rather seductive," said he, "but it won't do. Carry your interplanetary collision business to its logical end, and what do you come to? Gaseousness. And that's just what the Angus Falls
Times, the Fairchild Star, and the other loathsome sheets printed in prairie-dog towns around here accuse us of, now. No; much obliged; but as a field for comparisons the tried old solar system is good enough for the
Herald."
I couldn't help thinking, however, that the thing had some illustrative merit. There was Jim's first impact, felt locally, and jarring things loose. Then came the atomic vivification, the heat and motion, which appeared in the developments which we have seen taking form. After the visit of the Barr-Smiths, and the immigration of Cornish, the new star Lattimore began to blaze in the commercial firmament, the focus of innumerable monetary telescopes, pointed from the observatories of counting-rooms, banks, and offices, far and wide.
There was a shifting of the investment and speculative equilibrium, and things began coming to us spontaneously. The Angus Falls railway extension was won only by strenuous endeavor. Captain Tolliver's interviews with General Lattimore, in which he was so ruthlessly "turned down," he always regarded as a sort of creative agony, marking the origin of the roundhouse and machine-shops, and our connection with the great Halliday railway system of which it made us a part. The street-car project went more easily; and, during the autumn, the geological and manufacturing experts sent out to report on the cement-works enterprise, pronounced favorably, and gangs of men, during the winter, were to be seen at work on the foundations of the great buildings by the scarped chalk-hill.
The tension of my mind just after the Lynhurst Park affair was such as to attune it to no impulses but the financial vibrations which pulsated through our atmosphere. True, I sometimes felt the wonder return upon me at the finding of the lovers of the art-gallery together once more, in Josie and Cornish; and at other times Antonia's agitation after our escape from shipwreck recurred to me in contrast with her smiling self-possession while the boat was drifting and filling; but mostly I thought of nothing, dreamed of nothing, but trust companies, additions, bonds and mortgages.
Mr. Barr-Smith returned to London soon, giving a parting luncheon in his rooms, where wine flowed freely, and toasts of many colors were pushed into the atmosphere. There was one to the President and the Queen, proposed by the host and drunk in bumpers, and others to Mr. Barr-Smith, his brother, and the members of the "Syndicate." The enthusiasm grew steadily in intensity as the affair progressed. Finally Mr. Cecil solemnly proposed "The American Woman." In offering this toast, he said, he was taking long odds, as it was a sport for which he hadn't had the least training; but he couldn't forego the pleasure of paying a tribute where tribute was due. The ladies of America needed no encomiums from him, and yet he was sure that he should give no offense by saying that they were of a type unknown in history. They were up to anything, you know, in the way of intellectuality, and he was sure that in a certain queenly, blonde way they were--
"Hear, hear!" said his brother, and burst into a laugh in which we all joined, while Cecil went on talking, in an uproar which drowned his words, though one could see that he was trying to explain something, and growing very hot in the process.
Pearson announced that their train would soon arrive, and we all went down to see them off. Barr-Smith assured us at parting that the tram-road transaction might be considered settled. He believed, too, that his clients might come into the cement project. We were all the more hopeful of this, for the knowledge that he carried somewhere in his luggage a bond for a deed to a considerable interest in the cement lands. Things were coming on beautifully; and it seemed as if Elkins and Cornish, working together, were invincible.
We still lived at the hotel, but our architect, "little Ed. Smith, who lived over on the Hayes place" when we were boys, and who was once at Garden City with Jim, was busy with plans for a mansion which we were to build in the new Lynhurst Park Addition the next spring. Mr. Elkins was preparing to erect a splendid house in the same neighborhood.
"Can I afford it?" said I, in discussing estimates.
"Afford it!" he replied, turning on me in astonishment. "My dear boy, don't you see we are up against a situation that calls on us to bluff to the limit, or lay down? In such a case, luxury becomes a duty, and lavishness the truest economy. Not to spend is to go broke. Lay your Poor Richard on the shelf, and put a weight on him. Stimulate the outgo, and the income'll take care of itself. A thousand spent is five figures to the good. No, while we've as many boom-irons in the fire as we're heating now, to be modest is to be lost."
"Perhaps," said I, "you may be right, and no doubt are. We'll talk it over again some time. And your remark about irons in the fire brings up another matter which bothers me. It's something unusual when we don't open up a set of books for some new corporation, during the working day. Aren't we getting too many?"
"Do you remember Mule Jones, who lived down near Hickory Grove?" said he, after a long pause. "Well, you know, in our old neighborhood, the mule was regarded with a mixture of contempt, suspicion, and fear, the folks not understanding him very well, and being especially uninformed as to his merits. Therefore, Mule Jones, who dealt in mules, bought, sold, and broke 'em, was a man of mark, and identified in name with his trade, as most people used to be before our time. I was down there one Sunday, and asked him how he managed to break the brutes. 'It's easy,' said he, 'when you know how. I never hook up less'n six of 'em at a time. Then they sort o' neutralize one another. Some on 'em'll be r'arin' an' pitchin', an' some tryin' to run; but they'll be enough of 'em down an' a-draggin' all the time, to keep the enthusiastic ones kind o' suppressed, and give me the castin' vote. It's the only right way to git the bulge on mules.' Whenever you get to worrying about our various companies, think of the Mule Jones system and be calm."
"I'm a little shy of being ruled by one case, even though so exactly in point," said I.
"Well, it's all right," he continued, "and about these houses. Why, we'd have to build them, even if we preferred to live in tents. Put the cost in the advertising account of Lynhurst Park Addition, if it worries you. Let me ask you, now, as a reasonable man, how can we expect the rest of the world to come out here and spring themselves for humble dwellings with stationary washtubs, conservatories, and
porte cocheres, if we ourselves haven't any more confidence in the deal than to put up Jim Crow wickiups costing not more than ten or fifteen thousand dollars apiece? That addition has got to be the Nob Hill of Lattimore. Nothing in the 'poor but honest' line will do for Lynhurst; and we've got to set the pace. When you see my modest bachelor quarters going up, you'll cease to think of yours in the light of an extravagance. By next fall you'll be infested with money, anyhow, and that house will be the least of your troubles."
Alice and I made up our minds that Jim was right, and went on with our plans on a scale which sometimes brought back the Aladdin idea to my mind, accustomed as I was to rural simplicity. But Alice, notwithstanding that she was the daughter of a country physician of not very lucrative practice, rose to the occasion, and spent money with a spontaneous largeness of execution which revealed a genius hitherto unsuspected by either of us. Jim was thoroughly delighted with it.
"The Republic," he argued, "cannot be in any real danger when the modest middle classes produce characters of such strength in meeting great emergencies!"
Jim was at his best this summer. He revelled in the work of filling the morning paper with scare-heads detailing our operations. He enjoyed being It, he said. Cornish, after the first few days, during which, in spite of inside information as to his history, I felt that he would make good the predictions of the
Herald, ceased to be, in my mind, anything more than I was--a trusted aide of Jim, the general. Both men went rather frequently out to the Trescott farm--Jim with the bluff freedom of a brother, Cornish with his rather ceremonious deference. I distrusted the dark Sir John where women were concerned, noting how they seemed charmed by him; but I could not see that he had made any headway in regaining Josie's regard, though I had a lurking feeling that he meant to do so. I saw at times in his eyes the old look which I remembered so well.
Josie, more than ever this season, was earning her father's commendation as his "right-hand man." She insisted on driving the four horses which drew the binder in the harvest. In the haying she operated the horse-rake, and helped man the hay-fork in filling the barns. She grew as tanned as if she had spent the time at the seashore or on the links; and with every month she added to her charm. The scarlet of her lips, the ruddy luxuriance of her hair, the arrowy straightness of her carriage, the pulsing health which beamed from her eye, and dyed cheek and neck, made their appeal to the women, even.
"How sweet she is!" said Alice, as she came to greet us one day when we drove to the farm, and waited for her to come to us. "How sweet she is, Albert!"
Her father came up, and explained to us that he didn't ask any of his women folks to do any work except what there was in the house. He was able to hire the outdoors work done, but Josie he couldn't keep out of the fields.
"Why, pa," said she, "don't you see you would spoil my chances of marrying a fairy prince? They absolutely never come into the house; and my straw hat is the only really becoming thing I've got to wear!"
"Don't give a dum if yeh never marry," said Bill. "Hain't seen the man yit that was good enough fer yeh, from my standpoint."
Bill's reputation was pretty well known to me by this time. He had been for years a successful breeder and shipper of live-stock, in which vocation he had become well-to-do. On his farm he was forceful and efficient, treading his fields like an admiral his quarter-deck. About town he was given to talking horses and cattle with the groups which frequented the stables and blacksmith-shops, and sometimes grew a little noisy and boisterous with them. Whenever her father went with a shipment of cattle to Chicago or other market, Josie went too, taking a regular passenger train in time to be waiting when Bill's stock train arrived; and after the beeves were disposed of, Bill became her escort to opera and art-gallery; on such a visit I had seen her at the Stock Yards. She was fond of her father; but this alone did not explain her constant attendance upon him. I soon came to understand that his prompt return from the city, in good condition, was apt to be dependent upon her influence. It was one of those cases of weakness, associated with strength, the real mystery of which does not often occur to us because they are so common.
He came into our office one day with a tremor in his hand and a hunted look in his eye. He took a chair at my invitation, but rose at once, went to the door, and looked up and down the street, as if for pursuers. I saw Captain Tolliver across the street, and Bill's air of excitement was explained. I was relieved, for at first I had thought him intoxicated.
"What's the matter, Bill?" said I, after he had looked at me earnestly, almost pantingly, for a few moments. "You look nervous."
"They're after me," he answered in repressed tones, "to sell; and I'll be blasted if I know what to do! Wha' d'ye' 'spose they're offerin' me for my land?"
"The fact is, Bill," said I, "that I know all about it. I'm interested in the deal, somewhat."
"Then you know they've bid right around a thousand dollars an acre?"
"Yes," said I, "or at least that they intended to offer that."
"An' you're one o' the company," he queried, "that's doin' it?"
"Yes," I admitted.
"Wal," said he, "I'm kinder sorry you're in it, becuz I've about concluded to sell; an' it seems to me that any concern that buys at that figger is a-goin' to bust, sure. W'y, I bought that land fer two dollars and a haff an acre. But, see here, now; I 'xpect you know your business, an' see some way of gittin' out in the deal, 'r you wouldn't pay that. But if I sell, I've got to have help with my folks."
"Ah," said I, scenting the usual obstacle in such cases, "Mrs. Trescott a little unwilling to sign the deeds?"
"No," answered he, "strange as it may seem, ma's kinder stuck on comin' to town to live. How she'll feel after she's tried it fer a month 'r so, with no chickens 'r turkeys 'r milk to look after, I'm dubious; but jest now she seems to be all right."
"Well, what's the matter then?" said I.
"Wal, it's Josie, to tell the truth," said he. "She's sort o' hangin' back. An' it's for her sake that I want to make the deal! I've told her an' told her that there's no dum sense in raisin' corn on thousand-dollar land; but it's no use, so fur; an' here's the only chanst I'll ever hev, mebbe, a-slippin' by. She ortn't to live her life out on a farm, educated as she is. W'y, did you ever hear how she's been educated?"
I told him that in a general way I knew, but not in detail.
"W'l, I want yeh to know all about it, so's yeh c'n see this movin' business as it is," said he. "You know I was allus a rough cuss. Herded cattle over there by yer father's south place, an' never went to school. Ma, Josie's ma, y' know, kep' the Greenwood school, an' crossed the prairie there where I was a-herdin', an' I used to look at her mighty longin' as she went by, when the cattle happened to be clost along the track, which they right often done. You know how them things go. An' fin'ly one morning a blue racer chased her, as the little whelps will, an' got his dummed little teeth fastened in her dress, an' she a-hyperin' around haff crazy, and a-screamin' every jump, so's't I hed to just grab her, an' hold her till I could get the blasted snake off,--harmless, y' know, but got hooked teeth, an' not a lick o' sense,--an' he kinder quirled around my arm, an' I nacherally tore him to ribbins a-gittin' of him off. An' then she sort o' dropped off, an' when she come to, I was a-rubbin' her hands an' temples. Wa'n't that a funny interduction?"
"It's very interesting," said I; "go on."
"W'l you remember ol' Doc Maxfield?" said Bill, well started on a reminiscence. "Wal, he come along, an' said it was the worst case of collapse, whatever that means, that he ever see--her lips an' hands an' chin all a-tremblin', an' flighty as a loon. Wal, after that I used to take her around some, an' her folks objected becuz I was ignorant, an' she learnt me some things, an' bein' strong an' a good dancer an' purty good-lookin' she kind o' forgot about my failin's, an' we was married. Her folks said she'd throwed herself away; but I could buy an' sell the hull set of 'em now!"
This seemed conclusive as to the merits of the case, and I told him as much.
"W'l Josie was born an' growed up," continued Bill, "an' it's her I started to tell about, wa'n't it? She was allus a cute little thing, an' early she got this art business in her head. She'd read about fellers that had got to be great by paintin' an' carvin', an' it made her wild to do the same thing. Wa'n't there a feller that pulled hair outer the cat to paint Injuns with? Yes, I thought they was; I allus thought they could paint theirselves good enough; but that story an' some others she read an' read when she was a little gal, an' she was allus a-paintin' an' makin' things with clay. She took a prize at the county fair when she was fourteen, with a picter of Washin'ton crossin' the Delaware--three dollars, by gum! An' then we hed to give her lessons; an' they wasn't any one thet knew anything around here, she said, an' she went to Chicago. An' I went in to visit her when she hedn't ben there more'n six weeks, on an excursion one convention time, an' I found her all tore up, a good deal as her ma was with the blue racer,--I don't think she's ever ben the same light-hearted little gal sence,--an' from there I took her to New York; an' there she fell in with a nice woman that was awful good to her, an' they went to Europe, an' it cost a heap. An' you may've noticed thet Josie knows a pile more'n the other women here?"
I admitted that this had occurred to me.
"W'l, she was allus apt to take her head with her," said Bill, "but this travelin' has fixed her like a hoss thet's ben druv in Chicago: nothin' feazes her, street-cars, brass bands, circuses, overhead trains--it's all the same to her, she's seen 'em all. Sometimes I git the notion that she'd enjoy things more if she hadn't seen so dum many of 'em an' so much better ones, y' know! Wal, after she'd ben over there a long time, she wrote she was a-comin' home; an' we was tickled to death. Only I was surprised by her writin' that she wanted us to take all them old picters of hern, and put 'em out of sight! An' if you'll b'lieve it, she won't talk picters nor make any sence she got back--only, jest after she got back, she said she didn't see any use o' her goin' on dobbin' good canvas up with good paint, an' makin' nothin' but poor picters; an' she cried some.... I thought it was sing'lar that this art business that she thought was the only thing thet'd ever make her happy was the only thing I ever see her cry about."
"It's the way," said I, "with a great many of our cherished hopes."
"W'l, anyhow, you can see thet it's the wrong thing to put as much time an' money into fixin' a child up f'r a different kind o' life as we hev, an' then keep her on a farm out here. An' thet's why I want you to help this sale through, an' bring influence to bear on her. I give up; I'm all in."
To me Bill seemed entirely in the right. The new era made it absurd for the Trescotts to use their land longer as a farm. Lattimore was changing daily. The streets were gashed with trenches for gas- and water-mains; piled-up materials for curbing, paving, office buildings, new hotels, and all sorts of erections made locomotion a peril; but we were happy.
The water company was organized in our office, the gas and electric-light company in Cornish's; but every spout led into the same bin.
Mr. Hinckley had induced some country dealers who owned a line of local grain-houses to remove to Lattimore and put up a huge terminal elevator for the handling of their trade. Captain Tolliver had been for a long time working upon a project for developing a great water-power, by tunneling across a bend in the river, and utilizing the fall. The building of the elevator attracted the attention of a company of Rochester millers, and almost before we knew it their forces had been added to ours, and the tunnel was begun, with the certainty that a two-thousand-barrel mill would be ready to grind the wheat from the elevator as soon as the flume began carrying water. This tunnel cut through an isthmus between the Brushy Creek valley and the river, and brought to bear on our turbines the head from a ten-mile loop of shoals and riffles. It opened into the gorge near the southern edge of Lynhurst Park, and crossed the Trescott farm. So it was that Bill awoke one day to the fact that his farm was coveted by divers people, who saw in his fields and feed-yards desirable sites for railway tracks, mills, factories, and the cottages of a manufacturing suburb. This it was that had put the Captain, like a blood-hound, on his trial, to the end that he was run to earth in my office, and made his appeal for help in managing Josie.
"There she comes now," said he. "Labor with her, won't yeh?"
"Bring her with us to the hotel," said I, "to take dinner. If my wife and Elkins can't fix the thing, no one can."
So we five dined together, and after dinner discussed the Trescott crisis. Bill put the case, with all a veteran dealer's logic, in its financial aspects.
"But we don't want to be rich," said Josie.
"What've we ben actin' all these years like we have for, then?" inquired Bill. "Seem's if I'd been lab'rin' under a mistake f'r some time past. When your ma an' me was a-roughin' it out there in the old log-house, an' she a-lookin' out at the Feb'uary stars through the holes in the roof, a-holdin' you, a little baby in bed, we reckoned we was a-doin' of it to sort o' better ourselves in a property way. Wouldn't you 'a'thought so, Jim?"
"Well," said Mr. Elkins, with an air of judicial perpension, "if you had asked me about it, I should have said that, if you wanted to stay poor, you could have held your own better by staying in Pleasant Valley Township as a renter. This was no place to come to if you wanted to conserve your poverty."
"But, pa, we're not adapted to town life and towns," urged Josie. "I'm not, and you are not, and as for mamma, she'll never be contented. Oh, Mr. Elkins, why did you come out here, making us all fortunes which we haven't earned, and upsetting everything?"
"Now, don't blame me, Josie," Jim protested. "You ought to consider the fallacy of the
post hoc, propter hoc argument. But to return to the point under discussion. If you could stay there, a rural Amaryllis, sporting in Arcadian shades, having seen you doing it once or twice, I couldn't argue against it, it's so charmingly becoming."
"If that were all the argument--" began Josie.
"It's the most important one--to my mind," said Jim, resuming the discussion, "and you fail on that point; for you can't live in that way long. If you don't sell, the Development Company will condemn grounds for railway tracks and switch-yards; you'll find your fields and meadows all shot to pieces; and your house will be surrounded by warehouses, elevators, and factories. Your larks and bobolinks will be scared off by engines and smokestacks, and your flowers spoiled with soot. Don't parley with fate, but cash in and put your winnings in some safe investment."
"Once I thought I couldn't stay on the old farm a day longer; but I feel otherwise now! What business has this 'progress' of yours to interfere?"
"It pushes you out of the nest," answered Jim. "It gives you the chance of your lives. You can come out into Lynhurst Park Addition, and build your house near the Barslow and Elkins dwellings. We've got about everything there--city water, gas, electric light, sewers, steam heat from the traction plant, beautiful view, lots on an established grade--"
"Don't, don't!" said Josie. "It sounds like the advertisements in the
Herald."
"Well, I was just leading up to a statement of what we lack," continued Jim. "It's the artistic atmosphere. We need a dash of the culture of Paris and Dresden and the place where they have the dinky little windmills which look so nice on cream-pitchers, but wouldn't do for one of our farmers a minute. Come out and supply our lack. You owe it to the great cause of the amelioration of local savagery; and in view of my declaration of discipleship, and the effective way in which I have always upheld the standard of our barbarism, I claim that you owe it to me."
"I've abandoned the brush."
"Take it up again."
"I have made a vow."
"Break it!"
She refused to yield, but was clearly yielding. Alice and I showed Trescott, on a plat, the place for his new home. He was quite taken with the idea, and said that ma would certainly be tickled with it.
Josie sat apart with Mr. Elkins, in earnest converse, for a long time. She looked frequently at her father, Jim constantly at her. Mr. Cornish dropped in for a little while, and joined us in presenting the case for removal. While he was there the girl seemed constrained, and not quite so fully at her ease; and I could detect, I thought, the old tendency to scrutinize his face furtively. When he went away, she turned to Jim more intimately than before, and almost promised that she would become his neighbor in Lynhurst. After the Trescotts' carriage had come and taken them away, Jim told us that it was for her father, and the temptations of idleness in the town, that Miss Trescott feared.
"This fairy-godmother business," said he, "ain't what the prospectus might lead one to expect. It has its drawbacks. Bill is going to cash in all right, and I think it's for the best; but, Al, we've got to take care of the old man, and see that he doesn't go up in the air." _