COMING HOME
She gazed on the old things of Egypt and India,
Sighed o’er the ruins of Athens and Rome;
Painted in Paris, fiddled in Leipsic,
Summered at Homburg; and then, came home.
MISS Landon was eighteen when the snow-plough picked her up in the
thorough-cut on the Pacific Slope and pitched her into the arms of
Conductor McGuire. A year later, when her father retired, he was a
rich man. At the suggestion of a widowed sister, the ex-merchant,
his daughter, and the widow went abroad. At twenty-two she had been
“finished” by travel, and heart-whole, was headed for home. She had
seen a great deal of people and things. She had been wooed by an
Italian count and had had a brush with a baron at Berlin, but she had
never been thrilled as she had been with the touch of the hand and
the sound of the voice of McGuire. She was probably the only American
heiress who had given any attention to the poorly paid conductors of
the European railways; the shabby guards, who run along the platform
in soiled uniforms, cry the name of the station, flourish a flag,
and open and shut the doors. Her conductor was as well dressed, as
handsome, as intelligent, and almost as well paid as the captain of an
Atlantic liner. These poor beggars were dirtier than the average second
cabin deck-steward.
She was forever making comparisons, and wondering why she did it. A
thousand times she had recalled his ardent glance when, as he told her
in unmistakable language the story of his love, he had kindled the
first fire in her girlish heart, and it had not gone out.
Of course, he could never be anything to her, and yet, try as she
would, she could not forget. Without knowing why, she had conceived
a deep interest in railways. She watched the men at work, marked the
coming and going of trains in various countries, the inferior train
service and accommodation on the continental railways of Europe.
Lately she had been studying the financial reports of the various
railways on both sides of the Atlantic, and reading the stock
quotations.
This was probably because her father had invested a vast amount of
money in a new road in the West. She remembered that she had been eager
to have him do this, and now felt a certain amount of responsibility,
and so was quietly educating herself.
She often wondered whether the handsome conductor had heard of the new
road in which she had half her fortune.
At times she went so far as to fancy herself, when left alone in this
unfeeling world, seeking advice from the man who had carried her out of
the snow-bank. And then she would ask herself how he could help her,
this obscure conductor of a narrow-gauge railroad that wound among the
hills and ravines of the Rocky Mountains.
Mr. Landon had left his business in the hands of his solicitors, in
whom he had perfect faith, and had given himself over to rest for
the past four years. Upon his arrival in London he learned that the
new road, in which he had invested, had been roughly handled; not by
stock-jobbers, who are the dread of small investors, but by competing
lines. They had made the mistake which is so often made, of sending
out, as manager, a well-educated, perfectly respectable, handsomely
attired, but utterly incompetent son of a bondholder, who didn’t know a
stop signal from a three-throw switch. The road had lost money from the
start, but a rich and indulgent father had insisted upon keeping the
young man as manager, and it was not until a well-known railway king
had secured a controlling interest that the young man was permitted to
return to his tandem and pink-tea.
Things were going better, lately, he learned, since the road had been
in the hands of a “native manager,” and so the capitalist and his
charming daughter spent another year in London.
“Papa,” said Miss Landon, from her storm-blanket, one day in mid-ocean,
“do you know a great deal of the success of this company is due to the
employees?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s the same on a railway.”
“Ah, Kate,” laughed her father, “you’re always railroading.”
“Well, I was just thinking (she paused for just a breath) that if that
young Mr. McGuire is still conductor (another impediment) you ought to
try and get him on our road.”
“Now, whatever made you think of that handsome young Irishman?”
“Well--”
“Well?--”
At that moment the band having assembled on deck, not twenty feet away,
struck up a lively quickstep, and the sound of the E flat thrilled
Miss Landon, as she had not been thrilled since she came out of her
teens. She knew that tune, though she had heard it but once, and as the
leading cornet walked up through the air, the words came to her:--
“Arrah, Patsy! git up f’om th’ fire,
An’ guv th’ mon a sate;
Can’t ye see that it’s Misther McGuire,
Come a courtin’ yer sisther Kate?”
No man can make money or acquire fame without accumulating enemies;
that’s the price of success. To be sure they may not be all big men,
sometimes not more than two by four, but they can make trouble. A
Boston attorney, who looked after the interest and voted the stock of
the absent shareholder in the Inter-Mountain Air Line, had become the
enemy of General Manager McGuire. This attorney had had the misfortune
to pass through college with young Van Swell, who had made such a mess
of managing the new road, and who had been forced to resign to make
room for a real railroad man, so, to use a very expressive railroad
expression, “he had it in for” the new General Manager. He was a man
of influence, and, when not otherwise engaged, he worked among the
directors, many of whom he knew intimately, and his work was always
against McGuire. The railway king, who had been the means of making
McGuire General Manager, had been able to do so by influencing certain
shareholders, and when the Boston attorney had won two or three of
these to his side, the old faction could control the next election.
They would not ask or expect the resignation of the brilliant young
manager. So long as he was content with that position they could not,
in their own interests, ask him to resign. But he was ambitious. Some
of his friends had been putting his name forward as the next president,
and that was wormwood and gall to the Van Swell contingent. These
rumors, rife in clubs and hotel lobbies, soon reached the newspapers,
and so the public. As the date for the meeting of the stockholders
drew near, the matter became the leading topic in the daily press. The
stock of the Inter-Mountain Air Line became sensitive to the newspaper
comments. Every man who had a dollar in the enterprise was uneasy. Men
who lived like undertakers, off the misfortunes of others, who made
money only when some one else lost, knew not whether to buy or sell. If
the election could take place now, they could give a good guess that
young Van Swell would be the next president. If a certain man who had
been abroad for three or four years returned, took the advice of his
friends and voted his stock instead of allowing his lawyer to vote it,
things might be different. A bushel or more letters had been following
this important, though somewhat indifferent, shareholder all over
Europe. They had arrived in London only the day after the important
individual had sailed for New York. Being a modest man, who considered
his comings and goings of little importance to the general public, he
had not taken the trouble to notify his friends of his intentions,
but when a list of “distinguished” passengers had been cabled over,
there was a little flurry in Wall Street. The friends of McGuire were
enthusiastic. McGuire was indifferent. His friends wired him to come
East and make a fight for the great prize that seemed almost within
his grasp. He refused to budge. The bright young men who “did the
railroads” on the daily papers had fun with Van Swell. They wondered
whether he would take his valet and his yacht to the mountains with
him. For a week and a day the excitement was at fever heat, but out
in the Rockies, where the first frost was touching the oak and the
aspen with silver and gold, the General Manager of the Air Line kept
perfectly cool. The loyal employees, who had inklings of the doings of
the pink-tea contingent at the East, spoke gently, almost reverently,
to the General Manager. It would be a pity to lose him, people said,
and many of the leading shippers said openly that they would give
the Air Line no business if the town lost this genial official. The
switchmen “offered” to strike. Of all the people interested, directly
or indirectly, McGuire showed the least anxiety. Finally, the knowing
ones guessed the cause of his indifference, which was now beginning
to alarm his enemies. He had things “cut and dried,” said the knowing
ones, and it began to look that way. But it was not so. There was a
shadow upon the heart of the General Manager. Few men in America had
made greater success or reached a higher place in the railway world in
a lifetime than this man had gained in thirty-five years, and yet he
was not happy.
Now, as the time for the election of a new president drew near, the
pressure became so great and the cry for McGuire at the seat of war
grew so loud, that the General Manager yielded, reluctantly, and made
ready for the journey. He might have carried his private car, for there
was not a line between the Atlantic and the Pacific that would hesitate
to handle it; but he contented himself with the section to which his
Pullman pass entitled him, and his annual transportation. So quietly
did he depart that none of the papers knew of it until he was far out
on the plains. He had never been in Boston. She might be living there
and now. As the train bore him out toward the Atlantic he began to
wonder whether he might see her driving in the park with her dignified
old father or (he dreaded the thought) with her husband.