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.

"And we are the crowd that's got the combination to the safe."