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.

"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.