A LODGMENT MADE.
All the same a lodgment had been made. The idea had been suggested to
Max, and the little seed Bertha had planted did not die. Poor fellow!
his name was on the lists of all the railway companies, and so were the
names of five thousand other fellows out of work. His name was also on
the postmaster's list of applicants for the next vacancy among clerks
or carriers. The postmaster was amazingly civil; asked Max to write the
name himself, so that there need be no mistake. So Max observed that
his name came at the bottom of the seventh long column of K's, there
being so many men whose name began with K who needed employment. He
calculated roughly, from the size of the book, that about seven
thousand men had applied before him. Then he went to the mayor to see
if he could not be a policeman, or a messenger at the City Hall. He had
first-rate introductions. The mayor's clerk was very civil, but he said
that they had about eight thousand people waiting there. So Max's
chances of serving the public seemed but poor.
And thus it was that he haunted the paint-shop more and more. At first
he had no thought, of course, of anything so absurd as Bertha's plan;
still, all the same, it would do no harm to think it over, and the
thinking part he did, and he did it carefully and well. He went through
all the experiences of driver and of conductor in his imagination. He
made it his duty to ride on the front platform always as he went to
town or returned, that he might catch the trick of the brakes, and be
sure of the grades. Nay, he learned the price of cars, and found from
what factories the Cosmopolitan was supplied.
When a man thus plans out a course of life, though he thinks he does it
only for fun, it becomes all the more easy to step into it. If he has
learned the part, he is much more likely to play it than he would be if
he had it still to learn. And as times grew harder and harder, when at
last Max had to make a second hole in his bank deposit, and a pretty
large one too, tired with enforced idleness, as he had never been by
cheerful work, Max took one of those steps which cannot be retraced. He
wrote, what he used to call afterward "the fatal letter," on which all
this story hangs.
But this was not till he had had a careful and loving talk with Bertha.
He loved her more than ever, and he valued her more than ever, after
this year and a half of married life. And Bertha could have said the
like of Max. There was nothing she would not do for him, and she knew
that there was nothing he would not do for her.
Max told her at last that he felt discouraged. Everybody said, "Go
West": but what could he do at the West? He did not know how to plough,
and she did not know how to make cheese. No. He said he had laughed at
her plan of the street-car at first, but he believed there was "money
in it." They would have to spend most of their little capital in the
outfit. A span of horses and a car could not be had for nothing. But
once bought, they were property. He did not think they had better try
to run all day. That would tire Bertha, and the horses could not stand
it. But if she were serious, he would try. He would write to Newcastle,
to a firm of builders whom the Cosmopolitan had sometimes employed. He
would look out for a span of horses and proper harness. If she would
have her dress ready, they could at least try when the car arrived. If
she did not like it, he would make some appeal to the builders to take
the car off his hands. But, in short, he said, if she did not really,
in her heart, favor the plan, he would never speak of it nor think of
it again.
He was serious enough now. There was no laughing nor treating poor
Bertha's plan as a joke. And she replied as seriously. They had always
wished, she said, that his work was what she could help in. Here seemed
to be a way to earn money, and, for that matter, to serve mankind too,
where they could work together. True, the custom had been to carry on
this business by large companies. But she saw no reason why a man and
his wife should not carry it on as well as forty thousand shareholders.
If it took her away from the baby, it would be different. But if they
only went out evenings, after the little girl had gone to sleep, why,
she always slept soundly till her father and mother came to bed, and
Bertha would feel quite brave about leaving her.
So, as I said, the lodgment was made. After this serious talk, Max
wrote the fatal letter to the car-builders.
It was in these words:--
"351 MADISON AVENUE, April 1, 1875.
"DEAR SIR,--Can you furnish one more car, same pattern and style as the
last furnished for the Cosmopolitan Company? The sooner the better. You
will be expected to deliver on the Delaware Bay Line of steamers for
this port, and forward invoice to this address.
"Respectfully yours,
"MAX KEESLER."
To which came an answer that fortunately they had on hand such a car as
he described, and that as soon as the last coat of paint and lettering
could be put on, it should be shipped. Max wrote by return mail to
order the words "Madison Avenue Line" painted on each side, to direct
that the color should be the same as that of the Madison Avenue Line,
and he inclosed a banker's draft for the amount. Never had the
Newcastle builders been better pleased with the promptness of the pay.
And everything happened, as Max told me afterward, to favor his plans.
The _Richard Penn_ steamer chose to arrive just before seven o'clock in
the afternoon. Max was waiting at the pier with his span of horses. The
car could be seen prominent in the deck cargo. The clerks and agents
were only too glad to be rid of her at once. Quarter of an hour did not
pass before some sturdy Irishmen had run her upon the branch-rails
which went down the pier. The horses behaved better than he dared
expect. When he brought his new treasure in triumph into the
paint-shop, and found Bertha, eager with excitement, waiting for him
there, he told her that he had rejected, he believed, a hundred
passengers by screaming, "Next car--next car!" as he had driven up
through the city into the more sequestered avenue.
It was too late to go back, had they doubted.
But they did not doubt.