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?"

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."

"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!