The Plum Tree Part 4

"Carlotta is very ambitious," said I.

"Ambitious for her husband," replied my mother, "as a sensible woman should be. She appreciates that a woman's best chance for big dividends in marriage is by being the silent partner in her husband's career.

She'll be very domestic when she has children. I saw it the instant I looked at her. She has the true maternal instinct. What a man who's going to amount to something needs isn't a woman to be taken care of, but a woman to take care of him."

She said no more,--she had made her point; and, when she had done that, she always stopped.

Within a month Ed Ramsay sent for me again, but this time it was business alone. I found him in a panic, like a man facing an avalanche and armed only with a shovel. Dunkirk, the senior United States senator for our state, lived at Fredonia. He had seen that, by tunneling the Mesaba Range, a profitable railroad between Fredonia and Chicago could be built that would shorten the time at least three hours. But it would take away about half the carrying business of the Ramsay Company, besides seriously depreciating the Ramsay interest in the existing road. "And," continued Ed, "the old scoundrel has got the capital practically subscribed in New York. The people here are hot for the new road. It'll be sure to carry at the special election, next month. He has the governor and legislature in his vest pocket, so they'll put through the charter next winter."

"I don't see that anything can be done," said Ed's lawyer, old Judge Barclay, who was at the consultation. "It means a big rake-off for Dunkirk. Politics is on a money basis nowadays. That's natural enough, since there is money to be made out of it. I don't see how those in politics that don't graft, as they call it, are any better than those that do. Would they get office if they didn't help on the jobs of the grafters? I suppose we might buy Dunkirk off."

"What do you think, Harvey?" asked Ed, looking anxiously at me. "We've got to fight the devil with fire, you know."

I shook my head. "Buying him off isn't fighting,--it's surrender. We must fight him,--with fire."

I let them talk themselves out, and then said, "Well, I'll take it to bed with me. Perhaps something will occur to me that can be worked up into a scheme."

In fact, I had already thought of a scheme, but before suggesting it I wished to be sure it was as good as it seemed. Also, there was a fundamental moral obstacle,--the road would be a public benefit; it ought to be built. That moral problem caused most of my wakefulness that night, simple though the solution was when it finally came. The first thing Ed said to me, as we faced each other alone at breakfast, showed me how well spent those hours were.

"About this business of the new road," said he. "If I were the only party at interest, I'd let Dunkirk go ahead, for it's undoubtedly a good thing from the public standpoint. But I've got to consider the interests of all those I'm trustee for,--the other share-holders in the Ramsay Company and in our other concerns here."

"Yes," replied I, "but why do you say Dunkirk intends to build the road?

Why do you take that for granted?"

"He's all ready to do it, and it'd be a money-maker from the start."

"But," I went on, "you must a.s.sume that he has no intention of building, that he is only making an elaborate bluff. How do you know but that he wants to get this right of way and charter so that he can blackmail you and your concerns, not merely once, but year after year? You'd gladly pay him several hundred thousand a year not to use his charter and right of way, wouldn't you?"

"I never thought of that!" exclaimed Ed. "I believe you're right, Harvey, and you've taken a weight off my conscience. There's nothing like a good lawyer to make a man see straight. What an infernal hound old Dunkirk is!"

"And," I went on, "if he should build the road, what would he do with it? Why, the easiest and biggest source of profit would be to run big excursions every Sat.u.r.day and Sunday, especially Sunday, into Fredonia.

He'd fill the place every Sunday, from May till November, with roistering roughs from the slums of Chicago. How'd the people like that?"

"He wouldn't dare," objected Ramsay, stupidly insisting on leaning backward in his determination to stand straight. "He's a religious hypocrite. He'd be afraid."

"As Deacon Dunkirk he wouldn't dare," I replied. "But as the Chicago and Fredonia Short Line he'd dare anything, and n.o.body would blame him personally. You know how that is."

Ed was looking at me in dazed admiration. "Then," I went on, "there are the retail merchants of Fredonia. Has it ever occurred to them, in their excitement in favor of this road, that it'll ruin them? Where will the shopping be done if the women can get to Chicago in two hours and a half?"

"You're right, you're right!" exclaimed Ed, rising to pace the floor in his agitation. "Bully for you, Harvey! We'll show the people that the road'll ruin the town morally and financially."

"But you must come out in favor of it," said I. "We mustn't give Dunkirk the argument that you're fighting it because you'd be injured by it. No, you must be hot for the road. Perhaps you might give out that you were considering selling your property on the lake front to a company that was going to change it into a brewery and huge pleasure park. As the lake's only a few hundred yards wide, with the town along one bank and your place along the other, why, I think that'd rouse the people to their peril."

"That's the kind of fire to fight the devil with," said he, laughing. "I don't think Mister Senator Dunkirk will get the consent of Fredonia."

"But there's the legislature," said I.

His face fell. "I'm afraid he'll do us in the end, old man."

I thought not, but I only said, "Well, we've got until next winter,--if we can beat him here."

Ed insisted that I must stay on and help him at the delicate task of reversing the current of Fredonia sentiment. My share of the work was important enough, but, as it was confined entirely to making suggestions, it took little of my time. I had no leisure, however, for there was Carlotta to look after.

When it was all over and she had told Ed and he had shaken hands with her and had kissed me and had otherwise shown the chaotic condition of his mind, and she and I were alone again, she said, "How did it happen?

I don't remember that you really proposed to me. Yet we certainly are engaged."

"We certainly are," said I, "and that's the essential point, isn't it?"

"Yes," she admitted, "but,--" and she looked mystified.

"We drifted," I suggested.

She glanced at me with a smile that was an enigma. "Yes--we just drifted. Why do you look at me so queerly?"

"I was just going to ask you that same question," said I by way of evasion.

Then we both fell to thinking, and after a long time she roused herself to say, "But we shall be very happy. I am so fond of you. And you are going to be a great man and you do so look it, even if you aren't tall and fair, as I always thought the man I married would be. Don't look at me like that. Your eyes are strange enough when you are smiling; but when you--I often wonder what you're so sad about."

"Have you ever seen a grown person's face that wasn't sad in repose?" I asked, eager to s.h.i.+ft from the particular to the general.

"A few idiots or near idiots," she replied with a laugh. Thereafter we talked of the future and let the past sleep in its uncovered coffin.

V

A GOOD MAN AND HIS WOES

After Ed and I had carried the Fredonia election against Dunkirk's road, we went fis.h.i.+ng with Roebuck in the northern Wisconsin woods. I had two weeks, two uninterrupted weeks, in which to impress myself upon him; besides, there was Ed, who related in tedious but effective detail, on the slightest provocation, the achievements that had made him my devoted admirer. So, when I went to visit Roebuck, in June, at his house near Chicago, he was ready to listen to me in the proper spirit.

I soon drew him on to tell of his troubles with Dunkirk--how the Senator was gouging him and every big corporation doing business in the state.

"I've been loyal to the party for forty years," said he bitterly, "yet, if I had been on the other side it couldn't cost me more to do business.

I have to pay enough here, heaven knows. But it costs me more in your state,--with your man Dunkirk." His white face grew pink with anger.

"It's monstrous! Yet you should have heard him address my Sunday-school scholars at the last annual outing I gave them. What an evidence of the power of religion it is that such wretches as he pay the tribute of hypocrisy to it!"

His business and his religion were Roebuck's two absorbing pa.s.sions,--religion rapidly predominating as he drew further away from sixty.

"Why do you endure this blackmailing, Mr. Roebuck?" I asked. "He is growing steadily worse."

"He is certainly more rapacious than he was ten years ago," Roebuck admitted. "Our virtues or our vices, whichever we give the stronger hold on us, become more marked as we approach Judgment. When we finally go, we are prepared for the place that has been prepared for us."

"But why do you put up with his impudence?"

"What can we do? He has political power and is our only protection against the people. They have been inflamed with absurd notions about their rights. They are filled with envy and suspicion of the rich. They have pa.s.sed laws to hamper us in developing the country, and want to pa.s.s more and worse laws. So we must either go out of business and let the talents G.o.d has given us lie idle in a napkin, or pay the Dunkirks to prevent the people from having their ignorant wicked way, and destroying us and themselves. For how would they get work if we didn't provide it for them?"

"A miserable makes.h.i.+ft system," said I, harking back to Dunkirk and his blackmailing, for I was not just then in the mood to amuse myself with the contortions of Roebuck's flexible and fantastic "moral sense."