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.
[Illustration: "_And we are the crowd that's got the combination to the
safe._"]
Well, I loved my country in my own way; and I had all the money I knew
what to do with. Why not take a seat in "the millionnaires' club," as
the newspapers called that honorable body, the United States Senate?
* * * * *
Before I left for the West the family sailed for Europe. Little May and
sister Sarah, as we called the girls, had persuaded their mother to take
them over to Paris for a lark. May, who was thirteen, was running the
party. She was a tall, lively girl, with black hair and eyes, and was
thought to resemble me. The other was quieter in her ways, more like
Sarah. We had lost one little boy the summer before, which was a great
sorrow to us all. The older boy, who was at school preparing for
college, took after his mother, too. He was a pleasant-mannered chap,
with a liking for good clothes and other playthings. I did not reckon
that he ever would be much of a business man.
The morning that the steamer sailed Sarah was nervous over starting, but
May settled her in a corner of the deck and got her a wrap. Then the
girls went to say good-by to some friends.
"Van," Sarah said to me when we were alone. She hesitated a moment, then
went on timidly, "If anything should happen to us, Van, there's one
thing--"
"Nothing is going to happen! Not unless you lose your letter of credit,
or the girls run off with you," I joked.
"There's one thing I want to speak about seriously, Van. It's May and
Will!" She paused timidly.
"Well?"
"Can't you do something to make them feel differently?"
"I guess not. I've tried my best!"
"I know they are poor, and Will's in bad health, too,--quite sick."
"How did you know that?"
"Oh, I saw May once before I left. They are in Chicago again."
After a time I said:--
"You know I would give half of my money not to have it so, but it's no
use talking. They wouldn't take a cent from me."
Sarah sighed. "But couldn't you get Will a place somewhere without his
knowing about how it came?"
"I'll try my best," I said sadly.
Then it was time to leave the steamer; the girls came and kissed me
good-by, hanging about my neck and making me promise to write and to
come over for them later. Sarah raised her veil as I leaned down to kiss
her.
"Good-by, Van," she said without much spirit. "Be careful of yourself
and come over if you can get away."
Of late years, especially since the boy's death, Sarah seemed to have
lost her interest in things pretty much.
The trip might do her good.