THE FIRST SETBACK.
It was some minutes before Jimmy’s excitement had abated enough for
him to tell Anne his plan; or indeed to be able to formulate in his
own mind just what this wonderful new idea that had so suddenly come
to him would mean. He could understand now how James Watt must have
felt as he planned the first steam-engine—a sort of exaltation which
Jimmy could feel now in his own heart plainly.
The idea had come to him abruptly, almost full-born, as Jimmy had read
such big ideas often do come. He had seized upon it at once with the
feeling that it _was_ his big idea, believing in it blindly, without
stopping to reason it out.
Now with Anne sitting adoringly beside him, imploring him to explain
it to her, he felt suddenly self-conscious and embarrassed. The real
reason was that he had no knowledge of the subject, no technical
information upon which to base an opinion of whether the idea was
feasible or not.
But Jimmy did not know that. He only knew, now that he thought it
over, that what he had already said was almost all he could say—all
that was in his mind, in fact.
“Tell me about it, Jimmy,” Anne entreated. “How would it work?” Anne
looked up to Jimmy as to a vastly superior intellect. But she had
herself an acquisitive mind—untrained, immature, but naturally keenly
alert. Now that the first thrill of Jimmy’s announcement had passed,
she was interested in the subject not only because of Jimmy, but
because of the idea itself. And so, just a little with the air of one
who demanded to be convinced, Anne wanted to know how it would work.
“Why—why, you see, Anne, it’s like this,” Jimmy explained. “The way
they do it now is to mine the coal—and you know all the expense and
time and hell that is—then when it is mined it has to be shipped away
hundreds of miles to the factories to be used. Now, if you don’t do
any of that, but just burn it in the ground where it is, you save all
that. Don’t you see?”
“There ain’t any factories over coalmines,” said Anne.
“No, but there could be just as easy as not. It don’t make so much
difference where a factory is, so long as it’s got a railroad. That’s
the idea—I’m going to build a factory where the coal is instead of
taking the coal to where the factory is.”
“How you going to burn the coal in the ground?” Anne wanted to know.
Jimmy thought a moment.
“Why, just—just burn it,” he answered finally. “You see, Anne,” he
hastened to add, “the heat will come up in pipes to the factory
boilers at the top—just like the heat comes up.” Jimmy pointed to the
smoking crevice at their feet.
“Why won’t it just get to be a big fire like this?” Anne objected.
“This is burning underground—”
“It won’t.”
“Why won’t it?”
“Well, it won’t because, you see, Anne”—Jimmy was thinking fast
now—“because, don’t you see, a fire can’t burn without air. I won’t
give it only just so much air. This one got started and ran away with
itself before they could stop it. Mine will be ’way down very deep,
where there ain’t any air, only just what I pump down to it.
“If I give it lots of air, it will burn hard, and there’ll be lots of
heat come up. Then if I don’t want so much heat, I won’t give it so
much air. And if I shut the air all off, it’ll go out altogether.
Don’t you see?”
“Yes,” said Anne, convinced. “It’s wonderful, Jimmy.” She put her hand
with a sudden timidity on his shoulder.
“You’re—you’re wonderful, too, Jimmy.”
The boy kissed her abstractedly, his mind still busily groping with
the flood of ideas that were surging into it. “I can control it easy,
Anne, if I start it right, by the air I give it. Why, it’s just like
when we have a fire here in the mine. You remember the fire started in
C tunnel last fall—your father was working there. He found it when it
was only in that one room. All we did was wall up that room from the
main tunnel, and it went right out when it couldn’t get any air,
didn’t it?”
Anne nodded.
“Besides, over in Coatesville, didn’t a whole mine get away from them
a few years ago?” Jimmy continued earnestly. “The fire got to the
mine-bottom before they could shut it off, and the white-damp began
exploding, so they had to get out of the whole mine. All they did then
was seal up the shafts at the top to shut off all the air in the whole
mine. The fire went out of itself when all the air was used up.”
Again the girl nodded; his arguments seemed sound and quite
unanswerable.
“Well, that’s just the way I’m going to do it. It’ll work, Anne—I know
it will,” said Jimmy.
“Yes,” said Anne. “So do I, Jimmy.”
It would work. The more Jimmy thought about it, the more sure he was
that it would work. For a long time he sat silent, holding Anne’s hand
tightly clasped in his, planning in his mind the things he was going
to do. His ideas in detail were vague, absurd almost, from a practical
standpoint; but Jimmy did not realize that. They looked concise enough
to him.
He would go to New York to live for a time while he was putting the
idea over. All the big business men that he would have to see and
convince were there. Jimmy had saved several hundred dollars from his
earnings in the Fallon Brothers Mine during the last few years, so
that lack of money offered no obstacle. Then, too, he realized with
satisfaction, his mother and sister were not dependent on his wages.
The large insurance that his father had scrupulously kept up, and the
money that he had saved and carefully invested, had left Mrs. Rand,
while not rich, at least comfortably independent. That made Jimmy
think of his mother’s farm property; and the fact that it might be
made to play a part in his big idea came to him at once.
“Why, Anne,” he exclaimed suddenly, “it’s all as clear as daylight to
me now. You know mother’s old farm-land over near Coatesville? That’s
where I’m going to put the first factory. There’s coal under it—don’t
you remember they bored for it two or three years ago? Only it was so
deep and the seam was so shallow nobody would work it.”
This piece of land—some two hundred acres—had been left Mrs. Rand by
her father. It was poor farm-land, mostly sand, and of little value.
Some three years before, a company in search of new coal measures
around Coatesville had made borings; but the seam they located was not
considered profitable to work, and the project which for a time had
promised to make the Rand family rich had been abandoned.
But now, with his new idea, this coal could be used. There was a
railroad spur very near the property, Jimmy remembered. It would be an
ideal place for a factory. It was the only thing he needed to hook his
plan together. Now he could talk convincingly to any big man.
Jimmy, with the optimism of youth, had a world of confidence in
himself, and he saw no great obstacles in the way of what he wanted to
do. A few weeks or months at the most in New York, and he would be
back, with a big factory going up, and all the thousand details of a
great enterprise under way. And _he_ would have a part in it all—he
would have been its originator. Then, when he was rich and famous, he
and Anne would be married. He slipped his arm again about the girl’s
shoulders and looked down into her sympathetic, eager little face.
“I love you, Anne,” he said.
“I love you, too, Jimmy,” she answered simply.
He waited a moment. “Yes, but—but this is different, Anne. We’ve
always loved each other. But I’m a man now. And you’re a woman. Don’t
you see that’s different?”
The girl met his glance squarely, and a little wave of color mounted
to her cheeks; but she did not answer.
“I want to marry you, Anne. Some day—maybe soon—when I’ve put this
idea over—when I amount to something. I want you for my
wife—because—because I love you so much, and you love me. Will you,
Anne—will you?”
The girl’s arms went up about his neck; her upturned face was tender
with love; her eyes, glistening with tears of happiness, met his
without a trace of coquetry.
“Yes, Jimmy, I will,” she whispered.
* * * * *
The New York offices of the Wentworth Glass Company occupied an entire
floor of a large office-building on Broadway near Wall Street. At ten
o’clock on the Tuesday morning following his momentous walk with Anne
to the burning mines and the birth of his big idea, Jimmy entered the
Wentworth Company’s offices. He passed through a door marked
“Information,” and found himself in a little enclosure facing a low
wooden railing and a girl at a telephone switchboard.
Behind her he could see a hundred other girls at typewriters, and the
steady click of their machines filled the air with a low, confused
hum. It seemed to Jimmy that all the business in the world was being
transacted in that room at that moment. For an instant he stood
appalled. Then he walked up to the switchboard and addressed the girl.
“I want to see Mr. Wentworth—Mr. Robert G. Wentworth,” he said. “He’s
the president, isn’t he?”
The girl stared; then she smiled. Jimmy smiled, too—a frank, friendly
smile, so ingenuous that it probably surprised the girl even more than
his request.
“Have you got an appointment with Mr. Wentworth?”
Jimmy smiled again. “No,” he admitted. “But I’ve something to say to
him—something important, that he’ll be glad to hear.”
“Whom do you represent?” If he had only known it, Jimmy was passing
through a very critical moment in his business career.
“Why, I—why, just me.”
“What’s your name?”
“Jimmy—I mean, James Rand.”
The girl’s glance roved over his clothes appraisingly. “Where you
from?”
“Menchon, Pennsylvania,” said Jimmy.
His engaging smile and the extraordinary mixture of diffidence and
confidence in his manner won out. Besides, he was an extremely
good-looking young man.
The telephone girl could not understand what he wanted, but she was on
his side anyway.
“I’ll ask Mr. Cooper to see you. He’s the office manager,” she added
confidentially.
Jimmy shook his head. “It’s too important for that,” he said
positively. “I can’t tell it to anybody but Mr. Wentworth.”
The girl considered a moment. Then, with sudden decision, she made a
connection and spoke a few rapid words into the telephone.
“I’m sorry,” she said as she turned back to Jimmy. “I thought maybe
Mr. Wentworth’s secretary would see you.”
Jimmy looked blank. It had never occurred to him that any one he
selected to tell his big idea to would be reluctant to see him. He had
decided on the Wentworth Glass Company quite by accident—the name was
engraved on the glassware of the big Broadway restaurant at which he
had dined the evening before, and subsequent inquiries had convinced
him it was just the sort of organization he wanted—and so he had
planned to interview Robert G. Wentworth, its president, that morning.
Yet now it seemed impossible for him to see Mr. Wentworth—the
telephone girl seemed to think he was crazy to expect such a thing.
And even the president’s secretary was too busy to bother with him!
For an instant Jimmy felt his task hopeless.
“Can’t see you,” the telephone girl repeated.
“Wouldn’t Mr. Wentworth see me?”
“Certainly not,” said the girl, with some asperity. “You’d better see
Mr. Cooper, if you can’t tell it to me. Maybe he would see you.”
“No,” said Jimmy. “It’s too important.”
“Then maybe if you’d come back tomorrow Mr. Wentworth’s secretary will
see you. You might try, anyway—if it’s so important,” she added, at
Jimmy’s helpless look of appeal.
“I will,” said Jimmy. “Thank you very much.”
And with sinking heart he turned from the first business interview he
had ever had in his life, and went down into the busy city street
below.