"The glamour of courtship and honeymoon passes," she went on. "Then
comes the sober business of living,--your career and your home. The
woman's part in both is better played if there isn't the sort of love
that is exacting, always interfering with the career, and making the
home-life a succession of ups and downs, mostly downs."
"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 assume 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 Saturday 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 nobody 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.