He laughed and petted her, and went on as before, unreformed. Clerks, glancing out of the great plate-glass windows of a trust company, would giggle as they saw him hurrying by on his way from one office to another, rehearsing to himself as he went and disfiguring his memorandum book with hasty new mathematics. “There it goes again!” they would say, perhaps. “Big Chief Ten-Years-From-Now, rushin’ the season in year-before-last’s straw hat and a Seymour coat! Look at him talkin’ to his old notebook, though! Guess that’s about all he’s got left he can talk to without gettin’ laughed to death!”
Dan found one listener, however, who did not laugh, but listened to him without interruption, until the oration was concluded, although it was unduly protracted under the encouragement of such benevolent circumstance. This was Mr. Joseph Kohn, the father of Dan’s former partner in the ornamental bracket business. Kohn & Sons was an establishment formerly mentioned by National Avenue as a “cheap Jew dry-goods store”; and prosperous housewives usually laughed apologetically about anything they happened to have bought there. But, as the years went by, the façade of Kohn & Sons widened; small shops on each side were annexed, and the “cheap dry-goods store” was spoken of as a “cheap department store,” until in time it became customary to omit the word “cheap.” Old Joe Kohn was one of the directors of the First National Bank; he enjoyed the friendship of the president of that institution, and was mentioned in a tone of respect by even the acrid Shelby.
In the presence of this power in the land, then, Dan was profuse of his utmost possible eloquence. Unchecked, he became even grandiose, while the quiet figure at the desk smoked a cigar thoughtfully; and young Sam Kohn, not yet admitted to partnership with his father and older brother, but a floor-walker in the salesrooms below, sat with his elbows on his knees and his chin on his fists, listening with admiration.
“My gracious, Dan,” he said, when the conclusion at last appeared to have been reached;— “you are certainly a natural-born goods seller! I wish we had you on the road for us.”
“Yes, Sam,” his father agreed pleasantly. “He talks pretty good. I don’t know as I seldom heard no better.”
“But what do you think of it?” the eager Dan urged. “What I want to know: Don’t you think I’ve made my case? Don’t you believe that Ornaby Addition — —”
“Let’s wait a minute,” Mr. Kohn interrupted quietly. “Let’s listen here a minute. First, there’s the distance. You say yourself Shelby says he ain’t goin’ to put no car line out there; and it’s true he ain’t.”
“But I told you I haven’t given that up, Mr. Kohn. I expect to have another talk with Mr. Shelby next week.”
“He don’t,” Mr. Kohn remarked. “He spoke to me yesterday a good deal about it at bank directors’ meeting. No, Mr. Oliphant; don’t you expect it. You ain’t goin’ to git no car line until you got people out there, and how can you git people out there till you git a car line? Now wait!” With a placative gesture he checked Dan, who had instantly begun to explain that with enough capital the Addition could build its own tracks. “Wait a minute,” Mr. Kohn went on. “If you can’t git enough capital for your Addition how could you git it for a car line, too? No, Mr. Oliphant; but I want to tell you I got some idea maybe you’re right about how this city’s goin’ to grow. I’ve watched it for thirty years, and also I know something myself how the people been comin’ from Europe, and how they’re still comin’. It ain’t only them; — people come to the cities from the country like they didn’t used to. The more they git a little bit education, the more they want to live in a city; that’s where you’re goin’ to git a big puportion the people you claim’s goin’ to crowd in here.
“But listen a minute, Mr. Oliphant; that there Ornaby’s farm is awful far out in the country. Now wait! I’m tellin’ you now, Mr. Oliphant, please. Times are changin’ because all the time we git so much new invented machinery. Workin’ people are willin’ to live some ways from where they work, even if they ain’t on a car line. Why is that? It’s because they can’t afford a horse and buggy, but now they got bicycles. But you can’t git ’em to live as far out as that there Ornaby’s farm, even with bicycles, because except in summer the roads ain’t nothing but mud or frozen ruts and snow, and you can’t git no asphalt street put out there. The city council wouldn’t ever — —”
“Not to-day,” Dan admitted. “I don’t expect to do this all in a week or so, Mr. Kohn. But ten years from now — —”
“Yes; that’s it!” Mr. Kohn interrupted. “You come around and talk to me ten years from now about it, and I might put some money into it then. To-day I can’t see it. All at the same time if I was you I wouldn’t be discouraged. I won’t put a cent in it, Mr. Oliphant, because the way it stands now, it don’t look to me like no good proposition. But you already got your own money in; you should go ahead and not git discouraged because who can swear you won’t git it out again? Many’s the time I seen a man git his money out and clean up nice when everybody believed against him, the way they all believe against this here Ornaby’s farm right to-day.” He rose from his chair and offered his hand. “I got a business date, Mr. Oliphant, so I must excuse. I’m glad to talk with you because you’re old friends with Sam here, and he always speaks so much about you at our family meals at the home. Good-bye, Mr. Oliphant; — I only got to say I’m wishin’ you good luck, and hope you keep on at it till you win. You got as good a chance as many a man, so don’t give it up.”
Dan repeated the last four words a little ruefully as he went down in the elevator with Sam, who was his escort. “‘Don’t give it up.’ Well, not very likely!” He laughed at the idea of giving it up; then sighed reflectively. “Well, anyhow, he’s the first one I’ve talked to that said it. Most of the others just had a grand time laughin’ at me and told me to give it up! I appreciate your father’s friendliness, Sam.”
Sam shook his head. “It ain’t that exactly,” he said, with a cautious glance at the young man who operated the elevator. “Wait a minute and I’ll tell you.” And when they had emerged upon the ground floor, he followed his friend through the busy aisles and out to the sidewalk. “It’s this way, Dan,” he said. “You ain’t got any bigger ideas of how we’re goin’ to have a great city here than what papa has; he don’t talk so much in public, as it were, the way you been doin’, but home I wonder how many thousand times we got to listen to him! That’s why you had him so interested he sat still like that. But he ain’t goin’ to put money in it now. I know papa awful well; it ain’t his way. I wouldn’t say it to anybody but you, Dan, but I expect right now he’ll own a good many shares stock in that Ornaby farm some day.”
“What?” Dan cried, surprised. “Why, you just said — —”
“I said he won’t put money in now,” Sam explained, with a look of some compassion. “Papa won’t ever take a gamble, Dan; he ain’t the kind. He’ll wait till you go broke on this Ornaby farm; then, if it looks good by that time, he’ll get a couple his business friends in with him, maybe, and they’ll send some feller after dark to buy it for thirty-five cents. He wouldn’t never mean you no ill will by it, though, Dan.”
“Oh, I know that,” Dan said, and laughed. “But you’re mistaken about one thing, Sam, and so’s he, if he counts on it.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m not goin’ broke on it. Why, Sam, ten years from now — —”
“You told papa all about that,” Sam interrupted hurriedly. “You talked fine about it, and I wish I could run off an argument half as good. It’s a shame when a man’s got a line o’ talk like that he ain’t got a good proposition behind it.”
“But it is good. Why, even two years from now — —”
“Yes; by then it might be,” Sam said. “But now you got an awful hard gang to get any backin’ out of in the business men of our city, Dan. They didn’t make their money so easy they’re willin’ to take a chance once in a while, you see.”
“I expect so,” Dan sighed; and then, consult
ing his memorandum book, shook hands with this sympathetic friend and hurried away to see if he could obtain another interview with John W. Johns, the president of the Chamber of Commerce. He was successful to just that extent; he was readily granted the hearing, but failed to arouse a more serious interest in Ornaby Addition than had hitherto been shown by this too-humorous official.
Mr. Johns was cordial, told Dan that he did “just actually love to listen about Ornaby Addition”; that he was always delighted to listen when he had the time, and went on to mention that he had said openly to the whole Chamber at the Chamber’s Friday lunch, “Why, to hear young Dan Oliphant take on about Ornaby Addition, it’s as good as a variety show any day!” Mr. Johns was by no means unfriendly; on the contrary, he ended by becoming complimentary on the subject of Dan’s good nature. “Of course, you aren’t goin’ to get any business man to sink a dollar in that old farm, my boy; but I do like the way you stand up to the roastin’ you get about it. ’Tisn’t every young fellow your age could take everybody’s whoopin’ and hollerin’ about him without gettin’ pretty hot under the collar.”
“Oh, no,” Dan said. “If I can get some of you to put in a little money, I don’t care how you laugh.”
“But you can’t,” Mr. Johns pointed out. “That’s why I kind o’ like the way you take it. We don’t put in a cent, and we get hunderds of dollars’ worth o’ fun out of it!”
“I guess that’s so,” Dan admitted, and he went away somewhat crestfallen in spite of Mr. Johns’s compliment.
As Sam Kohn said, these men of business had not made their money easily; they had made it by persistent caution and shrewdness, by patient saving, and by self-denial in the days of their youth; they were not the men to “take a chance once in a while.” Orations delighted them but would never convince them; and as the weeks and months went by, Dan began to understand that if Ornaby Addition was to be saved, he alone would have to save it.
He worked himself thin at the task; for he was far from losing heart and never admitted even to himself that he was attempting an impossibility. His letters to Lena were filled with Ornaby Addition, of which her own ideas appeared to be so indefinite that sometimes he wondered if she didn’t “skip” in her perusal of his missives. She wrote him:
It seems to me you must spend a great deal of time over that Ornaby thing. Is it really so beautifully interesting as you say it is? Of course I do understand you’re immensely keen on it though, and I’m glad it will be such a great success and all that. I certainly hope it will because as I warned you I’m an extravagant little wretch and always in a row with papa about it. But I do hope you don’t feel you’ll have to spend lots of time out there after we’re married. Of course we must be as practical — disgusting word! — as we can, but I do hope you’ll arrange so that you won’t need to do more out West than just oversee this Ornaby affair for a week or so every year, because I adore you and I’ll want you to be with me all the time.
Cousin Oliver has some works — I don’t know what it is they make but I think it’s metal things for plumbers or something equally heinous! — and his works are out in the West somewhere, too. He only has to go there once or twice a year and gets home again the next night. I do hope you’ll be sure to make arrangements like that about yours. At any rate, be sure not to have to go out there next year, not unless you just hate your poor Me! I couldn’t bear for anything to interfere with our having a full year abroad. I won’t let you leave me in Nice or Mentone and run back to your old Ornaby thing for weeks and weeks! If you dare to try anything like that, sir, I’ll flirt my little head off with some dashing maître d’hôtel! Write instantly and tell me nothing shall spoil our full year abroad together. Instantly! Or I’ll think you hate me!
This letter gave Dan a bad hour as he sat in his room at home trying to construct a reply to it. The full year abroad now considered so definite by Lena had been rather sketchily mentioned between them in New York; he had agreed, with a faint and concealed uneasiness, that a wedding journey to southern France, if he could “manage” it, would be lovely; but afterwards he had forgotten all about it; and, being in his twenties, he was yet to learn how often the casual implications of men in their tender moments are construed by women to be attested bonds, sworn to, signed and sealed. So now, as he answered Lena, he found himself on the defensive, as if the impossibility of the full year abroad were a wrong to her, an unintended one, but nevertheless a wrong for him to explain and for her to forgive. He added to his opening explanations:
We might go to Europe two or three years from now. Of course I don’t expect to make the Addition my life work. I hope to be going into other things as soon as I’ve put this on its own feet. You show you’ve got a wonderful business head in your letter, dear, because a man’s business ought to be just the way you say — it ought to be so he only needs to oversee it. The broad principles of business aren’t often understood by a woman, and it makes me proud that you are one of the few who can. You do understand them so well I see it must be my own fault I haven’t given you the right idea about Ornaby Addition. For one thing, you see, an addition isn’t a works exactly, though not as unlike as it might seem, because both need a great deal of attention and energy to get them started. What I am trying to do is to lay out an Addition to the city, making streets and building lots that afterwhile will become part of the city, and my land won’t be really an addition until that is accomplished. It is a wonderful piece of land, with superb trees and good clean air, though I have to cut down many of the trees, which I hate to do, in order to lay out the building lots.
What troubles me so much since reading your last letter is that I don’t see any way to leave here at all, except for a few days for our wedding and a stop at Niagara Falls if you would like that — it is a sight you ought to see, dear, and well worth the time — on our way here. I’m afraid I didn’t think enough about the trip abroad when we spoke of it and didn’t fully understand it was a settled thing, as you do. That is all my fault and I’m going to be mighty sorry if this is a big disappointment to you. I would sooner cut off my right hand than let anything be a disappointment to you, Lena, and I don’t know just how it happened that I didn’t know before how much you were counting on spending the year in Europe.
Another thing that hurts me and I hardly know how to speak of it is this: I ought to have consulted you before I plunged into this work — I see that now — but I got so enthusiastic over it I just went ahead, and now it’s impossible for me not to keep on going ahead with it, and that means we have to live here, Lena. I did hope to persuade you to be willing for us to live here, but I only hoped to persuade you to it, and now I’m afraid this may look to you as if I forced it on you. That would just break my heart, to have you believe it, and I never thought of such an aspect when I bought the Ornaby farm. I just thought it would be a big thing and make us a fortune and help build up my city. But now it’s done and all my money’s tied up in it, we’ll have to settle down till the job’s put through — don’t ever doubt it’s going to be a big thing; but I see how you might look at it. If you do look at it as forcing you, please just try to forgive me and believe I did mean for the best for both of us, Lena, dear.
My mother and father want us to live with them, and I think it would be the best and most sensible thing for us to do. There’s a great deal of room and if we rented a house we couldn’t get a very comfortable or good-looking one, I’m afraid, because all we can possibly spare of what I have left will just have to go into the Addition.
I’m so afraid this letter will worry you. I don’t know what to do or what else to say except please write as soon as you can to tell me how it strikes you, and if you can say so please say you don’t think I meant to force our living here, and you still care something about me.
The trouble is you don’t know what a great place to live this is, because you haven’t ever been anywhere except a few places East and Europe. You would soon get used to the difference between living here and
New York and after that you’d never want to live anywhere else. Of course it’s mighty pleasant to go to New York or Europe for a visit now and then, and most of the people you’d meet here do that, just as you and I would hope to when we could afford it, but for a place to settle down and live in, I know you’d get to feeling we’ve got the most satisfactory one on the face of the globe right here. Won’t you write me right away as soon as you read this and tell me you don’t think I’ve tried to force anything, and anyhow no matter what you think you forgive me and haven’t changed toward me, dear?
Chapter VIII
BUT LENA DID not respond right away. Instead, she allowed a fortnight to elapse, during which her state of mind was one of indecision and her continuous emotion a sharp irritation; both of these symptoms being manifest in an interview she had with her brother George, one day, when she finally decided to consult him. “It’s so indecently unfair!” she complained. “It is forcing me; and his letter was a perfectly abject confession of it. He admits himself he’s compelling me to go out to that awful place and live with him.”
“How do you know it’s awful?” George inquired mildly. “He’s the most likable chap I ever knew, and he comes from there. Doesn’t that look as if — —”
“No, it doesn’t. Just think of being compelled to listen to everybody speaking with that awful Western accent! I can stand it in him because I like his voice, and he’s only one; but imagine hearing nothing else!” Lena shivered, flinging out her beautiful little hands in a despairing gesture, illuminated by tiny stars of fire from her rings. “Just imagine having hundreds of ’em talking about ‘waturr’ and ‘butturr’ all day long!”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 338
