"So so," replied I; "not too well, just at the present. I was beaten,
you know, and have to go back to my practice in January."
"Wish you lived in my part of the state," said he. "But the Ramsay
Company hasn't anything down here." He reflected a moment, then beamed.
"I can get you the legal business of the Power Trust if you want it," he
said. "Their lawyer down here goes on the bench, you know--he was on the
ticket that won. Roebuck wanted a good, safe, first-class man on the
bench in this circuit."
But he added nothing more about the Power Trust vacancy at Pulaski.
True, my first impulse was that I couldn't and wouldn't accept; also, I
told myself it was absurd to imagine they would consider me. Still, I
wished to hear, and his failure to return to the subject settled once
more the clouds his coming had lifted somewhat.
Mother was not well enough to have the Ramsays at the house that
evening, so I dined with them in the car. Mrs. Ramsay was the same
simple, silent, ill-at-ease person I had first met at the Ann Arbor
commencement,--probably the same that she had been ever since her
husband's wealth and her children's infection with newfangled ideas had
forced her from the plain ways of her youth. I liked her, but I was not
so well pleased with her daughter. Carlotta was then twenty-two, had
abundant, noticeably nice brown hair, an indifferent skin, pettish lips,
and restless eyes, a little too close together,--a spoiled wilful young
woman, taking to herself the deference that had been paid chiefly to her
wealth. She treated me as if I were a candidate for her favor whom she
was testing so that she might decide whether she would be graciously
pleased to tolerate him.
Usually, superciliousness has not disturbed me. It is a cheap and
harmless pleasure of cheap and harmless people. But just at that time my
nerves were out of order, and Miss Ramsay's airs of patronage "got" on
me. I proceeded politely to convey to her the impression that she did
not attract me, that I did not think her worth while--this, not through
artful design of interesting by piquing, but simply in the hope of
rasping upon her as she was rasping upon me. When I saw that I had
gained my point, I ignored her. I tried to talk with Ed, then with his
mother, but neither would interfere between me and Carlotta. I had to
talk to her until she voluntarily lapsed into offended silence. Then Ed,
to save the evening from disaster, began discussing with me the fate of
our class-mates. I saw that Carlotta was studying me curiously,--even
resentfully, I thought; and she was coldly polite when I said good
night.
She and her mother called on my mother the next morning. "And what a
nice girl Miss Ramsay is,--so sensible, so intelligent, and so
friendly!" said my mother, relating the incidents of the visit in minute
detail when I went home at noon.
"I didn't find her especially friendly," said I. Whereat I saw, or
fancied I saw, a smile deep down in her eyes,--and it set me to
thinking.
In the afternoon Ed looked in at my office in the court-house to say
good-by. "But first, old man, I want to tell you I got that place for
you. I thought I had better use the wire. Old Roebuck is
delighted,--telegraphed me to close the arrangement at
once,--congratulated me on being able to get you. I knew it'd be so. He
has his eyes skinned for bright young men,--all those big men have.
Whenever a fellow, especially a bright young lawyer, shows signs of
ability, they scoop him in."
"I can't believe it," said I, dazed. "I've been fighting him for four
years--hard."
"That's it!" said he. "And don't you fret about its being a case of
trying to heap coals of fire on your head. Roebuck don't use the
fire-shovel for that sort of thing. He's snapping you up because you've
shown him what you can do. That's the way to get on nowadays, they tell
me. Whenever the fellows on top find the chap, especially one in public
office, who makes it hot for them, they hire him. Good business all
around."
Thus, so suddenly that it giddied me, I was translated from failure to
success, from poverty to affluence, from the most harassing anxiety to
ease and security. Two months before I should have rejected the Power
Trust's offer with scorn, and should have gloried in my act as proof of
superior virtue. But in those crucial two months I had been apprentice
to the master whom all men that ever come to anything in this world must
first serve. I had reformed my line of battle, had adjusted it to the
lines laid down in the tactics of Life-as-it-is.
Before I was able to convince myself that my fortunes had really
changed, Ed Ramsay telegraphed me to call on him in Fredonia on business
of his own. It proved to be such a trifle that I began to puzzle at his
real reason for sending for me. When he spun that trifle out over ten
days, on each of which I was alone with Carlotta at least half my waking
hours, I thought I had the clue to the mystery. I saw how I could
increase the energy of his new enthusiasm for me, and, also, how I could
cool it, if I wished to be rash and foolish and to tempt fate again.
"Oh, the business didn't amount to much," was my answer to one of my
mother's first questions, on my return. She smiled peculiarly. In spite
of my efforts, the red came--at least I felt red.
"How did you like his sister?" she went on, again with that fluttering
smile in the eyes only.
"A very nice girl," said I, in anything but a natural manner. My
mother's expression teased me into adding: "Don't be silly. Nothing of
_that_ sort. You are always imagining that every one shares your opinion
of me. She isn't likely to fall in love with me. Certainly I shan't with
her."
Mother's silence somehow seemed argumentative.
"I couldn't marry a girl for her money," I retorted to it.
"Of course not," rejoined mother. "But there are other things to marry
for besides money, or love,--other things more sensible than either. For
instance, there are the principal things,--home and children."