NO FIGURE was more familiar to the downtown streets of those days than
that of the young promoter of Ornaby Addition. Always in a hurry and
usually with eyes fixed on what appeared to be something important in
the distance, he had the air of a man hastening to complete a profitable
transaction before traintime. Now and then, as he strode along, his coat
blowing out behind him in the spring breeze, his gaze would be not upon
the distance, but eagerly engaged in computations, with the aid of a
shabby memorandum book and an obviously dangerous fountain pen.
Moreover, the shabbiness of the memorandum book was not out of keeping
with the rest of him; for here again Harlan’s sketch of his brother
failed to exaggerate. Dan’s metropolitan gloss had disappeared almost in
a day, and though it might make a brief reappearance upon Sundays, when
he walked to church with his mother and swung the gold-topped cane as he
talked earnestly to her of Ornaby Addition, yet for the rest of the week
he did seem to be almost unconscious, as Harlan said, of what he wore;
so much so that his mother gently scolded him about it.
“What will people think of me,” she asked, “if you insist on going about
with two buttons off your vest, and looking as if you haven’t had
anything pressed since the flood? Whenever I do get one of your suits to
look respectable, you wear it out to the farm and forget to put your
overalls on, and then you climb trees, I suppose, or something else as
destructive; and after that you rush off downtown where everybody sees
you looking like the Old Scratch—that’s what your father said, and it
troubles him, too, dear. You were so particular all through college,
always just the very pink of fashion, and now, all of a sudden, you’ve
changed the way some young men do when they’ve married and get careworn
over having two or three babies at home. Won’t you try to reform, dear?”
He laughed and petted her, and went on as before, unreformed. Clerks,
glancing out of the great plate-glass windows of a trust company, would
giggle as they saw him hurrying by on his way from one office to
another, rehearsing to himself as he went and disfiguring his memorandum
book with hasty new mathematics. “There it goes again!” they would say,
perhaps. “Big Chief Ten-Years-From-Now, rushin’ the season in
year-before-last’s straw hat and a Seymour coat! Look at him talkin’ to
his old notebook, though! Guess that’s about all he’s got left he _can_
talk to without gettin’ laughed to death!”
Dan found one listener, however, who did not laugh, but listened to him
without interruption, until the oration was concluded, although it was
unduly protracted under the encouragement of such benevolent
circumstance. This was Mr. Joseph Kohn, the father of Dan’s former
partner in the ornamental bracket business. Kohn & Sons was an
establishment formerly mentioned by National Avenue as a “cheap Jew
dry-goods store”; and prosperous housewives usually laughed
apologetically about anything they happened to have bought there. But,
as the years went by, the façade of Kohn & Sons widened; small shops on
each side were annexed, and the “cheap dry-goods store” was spoken of as
a “cheap department store,” until in time it became customary to omit
the word “cheap.” Old Joe Kohn was one of the directors of the First
National Bank; he enjoyed the friendship of the president of that
institution, and was mentioned in a tone of respect by even the acrid
Shelby.
In the presence of this power in the land, then, Dan was profuse of his
utmost possible eloquence. Unchecked, he became even grandiose, while
the quiet figure at the desk smoked a cigar thoughtfully; and young Sam
Kohn, not yet admitted to partnership with his father and older brother,
but a floor-walker in the salesrooms below, sat with his elbows on his
knees and his chin on his fists, listening with admiration.
“My gracious, Dan,” he said, when the conclusion at last appeared to
have been reached;—“you are certainly a natural-born goods seller! I
wish we had you on the road for us.”
“Yes, Sam,” his father agreed pleasantly. “He talks pretty good. I don’t
know as I seldom heard no better.”
“But what do you think of it?” the eager Dan urged. “What I want to
know: Don’t you think I’ve made my case? Don’t you believe that Ornaby
Addition——”
“Let’s wait a minute,” Mr. Kohn interrupted quietly. “Let’s listen here
a minute. First, there’s the distance. You say yourself Shelby says he
ain’t goin’ to put no car line out there; and it’s true he ain’t.”
“But I told you I haven’t given that up, Mr. Kohn. I expect to have
another talk with Mr. Shelby next week.”
“_He_ don’t,” Mr. Kohn remarked. “He spoke to me yesterday a good deal
about it at bank directors’ meeting. No, Mr. Oliphant; don’t you expect
it. You ain’t goin’ to git no car line until you got people out there,
and how can you git people out there till you git a car line? Now wait!”
With a placative gesture he checked Dan, who had instantly begun to
explain that with enough capital the Addition could build its own
tracks. “Wait a minute,” Mr. Kohn went on. “If you can’t git enough
capital for your Addition how could you git it for a car line, too? No,
Mr. Oliphant; but I want to tell you I got some idea maybe you’re right
about how this city’s goin’ to grow. I’ve watched it for thirty years,
and also I know something myself how the people been comin’ from Europe,
and how they’re still comin’. It ain’t only them;—people come to the
cities from the country like they didn’t used to. The more they git a
little bit education, the more they want to live in a city; that’s where
you’re goin’ to git a big puportion the people you claim’s goin’ to
crowd in here.
“But listen a minute, Mr. Oliphant; that there Ornaby’s farm is awful
far out in the country. Now wait! I’m tellin’ _you_ now, Mr. Oliphant,
please. Times are changin’ because all the time we git so much new
invented machinery. Workin’ people are willin’ to live some ways from
where they work, even if they ain’t on a car line. Why is that? It’s
because they can’t afford a horse and buggy, but now they got bicycles.
But you can’t git ’em to live as far out as that there Ornaby’s farm,
even with bicycles, because except in summer the roads ain’t nothing but
mud or frozen ruts and snow, and you can’t git no asphalt street put out
there. The city council wouldn’t ever——”
“Not to-day,” Dan admitted. “I don’t expect to do this all in a week or
so, Mr. Kohn. But ten years from now——”
“Yes; that’s it!” Mr. Kohn interrupted. “You come around and talk to me
ten years from now about it, and I might put some money into it then.
To-day I can’t see it. All at the same time if I was you I wouldn’t be
discouraged. I won’t put a cent in it, Mr. Oliphant, because the way it
stands now, it don’t look to me like no good proposition. But you
already got your own money in; you should go ahead and not git
discouraged because who can swear you won’t git it out again? Many’s the
time I seen a man git his money out and clean up nice when everybody
believed against him, the way they all believe against this here
Ornaby’s farm right to-day.” He rose from his chair and offered his
hand. “I got a business date, Mr. Oliphant, so I must excuse. I’m glad
to talk with you because you’re old friends with Sam here, and he always
speaks so much about you at our family meals at the home. Good-bye, Mr.
Oliphant;—I only got to say I’m wishin’ you good luck, and hope you
keep on at it till you win. You got as good a chance as many a man, so
don’t give it up.”
Dan repeated the last four words a little ruefully as he went down in
the elevator with Sam, who was his escort. “‘Don’t give it up.’ Well,
not very likely!” He laughed at the idea of giving it up; then sighed
reflectively. “Well, anyhow, he’s the first one I’ve talked to that said
it. Most of the others just had a grand time laughin’ at me and told me
_to_ give it up! I appreciate your father’s friendliness, Sam.”
Sam shook his head. “It ain’t that exactly,” he said, with a cautious
glance at the young man who operated the elevator. “Wait a minute and
I’ll tell you.” And when they had emerged upon the ground floor, he
followed his friend through the busy aisles and out to the sidewalk.
“It’s this way, Dan,” he said. “You ain’t got any bigger ideas of how
we’re goin’ to have a great city here than what papa has; he don’t talk
so much in public, as it were, the way you been doin’, but home I wonder
how many thousand times we got to listen to him! That’s why you had him
so interested he sat still like that. But he ain’t goin’ to put money in
it now. I know papa awful well; it ain’t his way. I wouldn’t say it to
anybody but you, Dan, but I expect right now he’ll own a good many
shares stock in that Ornaby farm some day.”
“What?” Dan cried, surprised. “Why, you just said——”
“I said he won’t put money in now,” Sam explained, with a look of some
compassion. “Papa won’t ever take a gamble, Dan; he ain’t the kind.
He’ll wait till you go broke on this Ornaby farm; then, if it looks good
by that time, he’ll get a couple his business friends in with him,
maybe, and they’ll send some feller after dark to buy it for thirty-five
cents. He wouldn’t never mean you no ill will by it, though, Dan.”
“Oh, I know that,” Dan said, and laughed. “But you’re mistaken about one
thing, Sam, and so’s he, if he counts on it.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m not goin’ broke on it. Why, Sam, ten years from now——”
“You told papa all about that,” Sam interrupted hurriedly. “You talked
fine about it, and I wish I could run off an argument half as good. It’s
a shame when a man’s got a line o’ talk like that he ain’t got a good
proposition behind it.”
“But it _is_ good. Why, even _two_ years from now——”
“Yes; by then it might be,” Sam said. “But now you got an awful hard
gang to get any backin’ out of in the business men of our city, Dan.
They didn’t make their money so easy they’re willin’ to take a chance
once in a while, you see.”
“I expect so,” Dan sighed; and then, consulting his memorandum book,
shook hands with this sympathetic friend and hurried away to see if he
could obtain another interview with John W. Johns, the president of the
Chamber of Commerce. He was successful to just that extent; he was
readily granted the hearing, but failed to arouse a more serious
interest in Ornaby Addition than had hitherto been shown by this
too-humorous official.
Mr. Johns was cordial, told Dan that he did “just actually love to
listen about Ornaby Addition”; that he was always delighted to listen
when he had the time, and went on to mention that he had said openly to
the whole Chamber at the Chamber’s Friday lunch, “Why, to hear young Dan
Oliphant take on about Ornaby Addition, it’s as good as a variety show
any day!” Mr. Johns was by no means unfriendly; on the contrary, he
ended by becoming complimentary on the subject of Dan’s good nature. “Of
course, you aren’t goin’ to get any business man to sink a dollar in
that old farm, my boy; but I do like the way you stand up to the
roastin’ you get about it. ’Tisn’t every young fellow your age could
take everybody’s whoopin’ and hollerin’ about him without gettin’ pretty
hot under the collar.”
“Oh, no,” Dan said. “If I can get some of you to put in a little money,
I don’t care how you laugh.”
“But you can’t,” Mr. Johns pointed out. “That’s why I kind o’ like the
way you take it. We don’t put in a cent, and we get hunderds of dollars’
worth o’ fun out of it!”
“I guess that’s so,” Dan admitted, and he went away somewhat crestfallen
in spite of Mr. Johns’s compliment.
As Sam Kohn said, these men of business had not made their money easily;
they had made it by persistent caution and shrewdness, by patient
saving, and by self-denial in the days of their youth; they were not the
men to “take a chance once in a while.” Orations delighted them but
would never convince them; and as the weeks and months went by, Dan
began to understand that if Ornaby Addition was to be saved, he alone
would have to save it.
He worked himself thin at the task; for he was far from losing heart and
never admitted even to himself that he was attempting an impossibility.
His letters to Lena were filled with Ornaby Addition, of which her own
ideas appeared to be so indefinite that sometimes he wondered if she
didn’t “skip” in her perusal of his missives. She wrote him:
It seems to me you must spend a great deal of time over that
Ornaby thing. Is it really so beautifully interesting as you say
it is? Of course I do understand you’re immensely keen on it
though, and I’m glad it will be such a great success and all
that. I certainly hope it will because as I warned you I’m an
extravagant little wretch and always in a row with papa about
it. But I do hope you don’t feel you’ll have to spend lots of
time out there after we’re married. Of course we must be as
practical—disgusting word!—as we can, but I do hope you’ll
arrange so that you won’t need to do more out West than just
oversee this Ornaby affair for a week or so every year, because
I adore you and I’ll want you to be with me all the time.
Cousin Oliver has some works—I don’t know what it is they make
but I think it’s metal things for plumbers or something equally
heinous!—and _his_ works are out in the West somewhere, too. He
only has to go there once or twice a year and gets home again
the next night. I do hope you’ll be sure to make arrangements
like that about yours. At any rate, be sure not to have to go
out there _next_ year, not unless you just hate your poor Me! I
couldn’t bear for anything to interfere with our having a full
year abroad. I won’t let you leave me in Nice or Mentone and run
back to your old Ornaby thing for weeks and weeks! If you dare
to try anything like that, sir, I’ll flirt my little head off
with some dashing maître d’hôtel! Write instantly and tell me
nothing shall spoil our full year abroad together. Instantly! Or
I’ll think you hate me!
This letter gave Dan a bad hour as he sat in his room at home trying to
construct a reply to it. The full year abroad now considered so definite
by Lena had been rather sketchily mentioned between them in New York; he
had agreed, with a faint and concealed uneasiness, that a wedding
journey to southern France, if he could “manage” it, would be lovely;
but afterwards he had forgotten all about it; and, being in his
twenties, he was yet to learn how often the casual implications of men
in their tender moments are construed by women to be attested bonds,
sworn to, signed and sealed. So now, as he answered Lena, he found
himself on the defensive, as if the impossibility of the full year
abroad were a wrong to her, an unintended one, but nevertheless a wrong
for him to explain and for her to forgive. He added to his opening
explanations:
We _might_ go to Europe two or three years from now. Of course I
don’t expect to make the Addition my life work. I hope to be
going into other things as soon as I’ve put this on its own
feet. You show you’ve got a wonderful business head in your
letter, dear, because a man’s business _ought_ to be just the
way you say—it ought to be so he only needs to oversee it. The
broad principles of business aren’t often understood by a woman,
and it makes me proud that you are one of the few who can. You
do understand them so well I see it must be my own fault I
haven’t given you the right idea about Ornaby Addition. For one
thing, you see, an addition isn’t a works exactly, though not as
unlike as it might seem, because both need a great deal of
attention and energy to get them started. What I am trying to do
is to lay out an Addition to the city, making streets and
building lots that afterwhile will become part of the city, and
my land won’t be really an addition until that is accomplished.
It is a wonderful piece of land, with superb trees and good
clean air, though I have to cut down many of the trees, which I
hate to do, in order to lay out the building lots.
What troubles me so much since reading your last letter is that
I don’t see any way to leave here at all, except for a few days
for our wedding and a stop at Niagara Falls if you would like
that—it is a sight you ought to see, dear, and well worth the
time—on our way here. I’m afraid I didn’t think enough about
the trip abroad when we spoke of it and didn’t fully understand
it was a settled thing, as you do. That is all my fault and I’m
going to be mighty sorry if this is a big disappointment to you.
I would sooner cut off my right hand than let anything be a
disappointment to you, Lena, and I don’t know just how it
happened that I didn’t know before how much you were counting on
spending the year in Europe.
Another thing that hurts me and I hardly know how to speak of it
is this: I ought to have consulted you before I plunged into
this work—I see that now—but I got so enthusiastic over it I
just went ahead, and now it’s impossible for me not to keep _on_
going ahead with it, and that means we _have_ to live _here_,
Lena. I did hope to persuade you to be willing for us to live
here, but I only hoped to persuade you to it, and now I’m afraid
this may look to you as if I forced it on you. That would just
break my heart, to have you believe it, and I never thought of
such an aspect when I bought the Ornaby farm. I just thought it
would be a big thing and make us a fortune and help build up my
city. But now it’s done and all my money’s tied up in it, we’ll
have to settle down till the job’s put through—don’t ever doubt
it’s going to be a big thing; but I see how you _might_ look at
it. If you do look at it as forcing you, please just try to
forgive me and believe I did mean for the best for both of us,
Lena, dear.
My mother and father want us to live with them, and I think it
would be the best and most sensible thing for us to do. There’s
a great deal of room and if we rented a house we couldn’t get a
very comfortable or good-looking one, I’m afraid, because all we
can possibly spare of what I have left will just _have_ to go
into the Addition.
I’m so afraid this letter will worry you. I don’t know what to
do or what else to say except please write as soon as you can to
tell me how it strikes you, and if you can say so please say you
don’t think I meant to force our living here, and you still care
something about me.
The trouble is you don’t know what a great place to live this
is, because you haven’t ever been anywhere except a few places
East and Europe. You would soon get used to the difference
between living here and New York and after that you’d never want
to live anywhere else. Of course it’s mighty pleasant to go to
New York or Europe for a visit now and then, and most of the
people you’d meet here do that, just as you and I would hope to
when we could afford it, but for a place to settle down and
_live_ in, I know you’d get to feeling we’ve got the most
satisfactory one on the face of the globe right here. Won’t you
write me right away as soon as you read this and tell me you
don’t think I’ve tried to force anything, and anyhow no matter
what you think you forgive me and haven’t changed toward me,
dear?