Sonnie-Boy's People Part 5

"How much more?"

"A heap more. Listen. Your father on twenty-five hundred a year, say, could put his children through college, couldn't he? On twenty-five hundred a year to-day a man with a family has to battle to keep out of the tenement districts. A dozen years from now, if you're getting no more money than you're getting now, you'll be wondering if you won't have to take that boy out of school and put him to work. Isn't that so?"

Welkie made no answer.

"All right. But before I go any farther, let me say that I want you, Mr.

Welkie, for our new job."

"What's wrong with the man you've got?"

"He won't do. You're the one man we want, and if there's money enough in our strong box, we're going to get you. And now that I've got that off, let me show you where it is for your higher--I say your higher, not alone your moneyed--interests to come with us, Mr. Welkie. There's that boy of yours--you'd surely like to see him a great man?"

"I surely wouldn't dislike it."

"Good. Then give him a chance. Get rid first of the notion that a poor boy has as good a chance as another. He hasn't. I know that all our old school-books told us different--along with some other queer things. No wonder. Nine times out of ten they were got up by men born poor and intended for children born poor. It is a fine old myth in this country that only the poor boy ever gets anywhere. As a matter of fact, the poor boys outnumber the comfortably born boys ten to one, yet run behind in actual success. Even history'll tell you that. Alexander--son of a king.

Caesar? Frederick the Great? Oh, loads of 'em! You don't seem to think much of that?"

"Not a great deal," smiled Welkie. "If you're going to call the long roll of history, it looks to me like it's a mistake to name only three, or twenty-three, or thirty-three men. You cast your eye along that little book-shelf there and----"

"Oh, I've been looking them over--Dante and Michael Angelo and Homer and Shakespeare and that knight-errant Spaniard and the rest of 'em. But I'm not talking of poets and philosophers and the like. I'm talking of the men who bossed the job when they were alive."

"But how about those who bossed it after they were dead?"

"But, d.a.m.n it, Welkie, I'm talking of men of action."

"Men of action or--ditch-diggers?"

"What!"

"That's what I call most of 'em, Necker--ditch-diggers. If your man of action hasn't himself thought out what he's doing, that's what he looks like to me--a ditch-digger, or at best a foreman of ditch-diggers. And a ditch-digger, a good ditch-digger, ought to be respected--until he thinks he's the whole works. Those kings of yours may have bossed the world, Necker, but, so long's we're arguing it, who bossed them?"

"You mean that the man who bosses the world for thirty or forty years isn't quite a man?"

"Surely he's quite a man; but the man who bosses men's minds a thousand years after he's dead--he's the real one. And that kind of a man, so far's I know things, Necker, never lived too comfortably on earth. He can't. I tell you, Necker, you can't be born into a fat life without being born into a fat soul, too."

"You're not stinting yourself in the expectation of running things after you're dead, Welkie?"

Welkie noted the half-ironical smile, but he answered simply, evenly: "It's not in me; but I'd live even a sparer life than I do, if I thought anybody after me had a chance."

"You're a hard man to argue with, Welkie, and I'm not going to argue with you--not on things dead and gone. You're too well posted for me.

But suppose it was that way once, is it that way to-day? I'll bring it right home to you. Here's the overpowering figure in public life, Roosevelt, a man you think a lot of probably--was he born in poverty?"

"No, but I notice he cut away from his comfortable quarters about as soon as his upbringing'd let him."

"Wait. In finance who? Morgan? All right. Son of a millionaire financier, wasn't he?"

"But if you're going to bring in money----"

"I know. What of the Carnegies and the Rockefellers? you're going to say. There's where you think you've got me, but you haven't; for I've always said that being born in poverty fits a man to make money above all things, because he's brought up to value it out of all proportion to everything else. But where are they after they get it? America's full of millionaires who came up out of nothing, but who had to work so hard getting started that they'd nothing left in 'em or didn't know anything but money when they got to where they could stop to look around. If they had any genius to start with, it was dried out of 'em trying to get going. Hitch any two-mile trotter to an ice-wagon and where will he finish? You overweight your boy going off and he will be handicapped out of the race, too. But can I have another one of those cigars?"

"Help yourself."

"Thanks. I wish I had your pull with old Cabada. Now, Welkie, I'm only trying to show you where you ought to cast aside certain outworn traditions and face actual present-day truths. Now listen. You probably don't believe I'm a villain, Welkie, and you know I represent a powerful corporation--reputable even if powerful. Yes. Well, this work of ours is good, useful work--don't you think we can fairly claim that?"

"Beautiful work--beautiful."

"Good. Then wouldn't you like to see that work growing under your hand--ten thousand men driving night and day, and that concrete structure reaching out, as you've planned it, in long white stretches to the sea?"

"It's certainly a fine prospect."

"Then why not do it? What's the use, Welkie? You're the best man in the country for us and we're the best concern for you. We offer you the biggest job in sight. What d'y' say? You've been turning us down, but think it over now."

Welkie shook his head.

"Why not?"

"Because--but they are coming back."

Necker could see the hands of Balfe and Miss Welkie unclasping in the half-darkness as they entered. He touched Welkie on the arm. "Why not tell Miss Welkie and Mr. Balfe what it is I'm after?"

"But I'm doing work here that I've got to finish, and they know that."

"I know you are, but consider this. What does the government pay you here, Welkie? I probably know, but no matter."

"Two hundred a month and this house."

"And I'm offering you two thousand! And--listen to this, please, Miss Welkie. In place of a mosquito-infested shoe-box of a shack in a G.o.d-forsaken hole, we'll give you and your brother a fine concrete house on a breezy hill in G.o.d's own country--a real home, Miss Welkie, with great halls and wide verandas and sun-lighted rooms through which the sea breezes will blow at night so you can sleep in peace. A mansion, Miss Welkie, with reception and music rooms, where you can receive your friends in the style a lady should, or a man of your brother's ability should. A place to be proud of, Miss Welkie--palm-studded, clean-clipped lawn rolling down to the sea. And a sea--I'll bet you know it, Mr.

Balfe--a blue-and-green sea rolling down over to coral reefs as white as dogs' teeth, a sh.o.r.e-front that needs only building up to be as pretty as anything in your swell Mediterranean places. What d'y' say, Welkie?

And here's the contract now, all ready for you, and pay begins to-day."

"It's alluring, it surely is. But I must finish here."

"But you'll soon be done here. A few weeks more, they told me in Washington. What are you going to do then?"

"I hadn't thought."

"Well, why not think of it now? Consider your boy, what it will mean to him some day. Why not ask Miss Welkie?"

Welkie turned gravely to his sister. "What do you say to that fine house with the grand dining-room, and the music-room, and a jasmine-twined pergola to sit out under of a night--and watch the moon roll up from the shining sea? I know the house--it's all that Mr. Necker says it is."

"And mahogany, and all kinds of beautiful linen for the table, Miss Welkie. Imagine that, with cut gla.s.s and silver and the electric candles gleaming over it of a night."

"I would dearly love to preside at the head of that table, Mr. Necker, but Mr. Balfe was speaking of something that perhaps my brother should hear about first."

"What's that, Andie?"

"Let it wait, Greg."

"Better now. What is it?"