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.
[Illustration: _I pointed out the great currents of world trade._]
"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.