The Memoirs of an American Citizen Part 23

It was a broad hint for me to take myself off, and my wild schemes with me. For a moment I felt disgusted with myself for believing that anything could be accomplished with this failing reed. Mrs. Dround came softly up to her husband's chair and leaned over him.

"You are too tired for more business to-day, dear. Come--let me get your medicine."

She took his arm and with all the gentleness in the world led him from the room, motioning to me with one hand to keep my seat. When they had gone I removed the cloth from the portrait on the easel and took a good look at it. It was the picture of a gentleman, surely. While I was looking at it, and wondering about the man, Mrs. Dround came back into the room and stood at my side.

"It is good, isn't it?"

"Yes," I admitted reluctantly, thinking it was only too good. As I replaced the cloth over the picture, I noticed that her lips were drawn tight as if she suffered. I had read a part of their story in that pathetic little way in which she had led her husband from the room.

"So you have started," she said soon, turning away from the picture.

"How are you getting on? Tell me everything!"

When she had the situation before her, she remarked:--

"Now is the time to take the next step, and for that you need Mr.

Dround's help."

"Exactly. These separate plants must be taken over, a holding company incorporated, and the whole financed. It can be done if--"

"If Mr. Dround will consent," she finished my sentence, "and give his aid in raising the money?"

Her shrewdness, immediate comprehension, roused my admiration. But what was her interest in the scheme? As Sarah had told me, it was generally believed that Jane Dround had a large fortune in her own right. Why should she bother with the packing business? She might spend her time more agreeably picking up Italian marbles. Her next words partly answered my wonder:--

"Of course, he will see this, and will consent; or prepare to lose everything."

I nodded.

"I don't like to pull out of things," she said slowly.

"Mr. Dround is in such poor health," I objected.

"This is not his fight: it is yours. All that he can do is to give you your first support. Leave that to me. Tell me what you will do with this corporation--what next?"

She was seated in a little chair, resting her dark head upon her hands.

Her eyes read my face as I spoke. Again, as the other time when we had spoken in the garden, I felt as though lifted suddenly on the wings of a strong will. At a bound my mind swept up to meet her mind. On the shelf near by there was a large atlas. I took it down, and placing it on the rug at our feet, turned the leaves until I came to the plate of the United States.

"Come here. Look there!" I said, indicating the entire eastern third of the map with a sweep of my hand. "There is nothing for us that way to be had. We could never get to the seaboard. The others own that territory."

The map was streaked with lines of railroad running like the currents of a great river from the broad prairies of the Dakotas, across the upper Mississippi Valley, around the curve of the Great Lakes, eastward to the Atlantic seaboard.

"Those are the old highroads," I went on, following the lines of trade with my finger. "And those are the old markets. We must find a new territory, make it, create the roads. And it must be a territory that is waiting, fertile, unexplored! Here it is!"

My hand ran down the map southwestward, crossing Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Indian Territory, resting on the broad tract marked Texas.

"For us that will be what the Northwest has been for our fathers. There lies the future--our future!"

"Our future," she repeated slowly, with pleasure in the words. "You plan to feed this land?"

"Settlers are pouring in there, now, like vermin. The railroads are following, and already there are the only strong markets we have to-day--those I have been building up for five years."

We sat there on the floor before the atlas, and the bigness of the idea got hold of both of us. I pointed out the great currents of world trade, and plotted a new current, to rise from that same wheat land of the Dakotas, flowing southward to the ports of the Gulf. Already, as I knew, the wheat and corn and meat of this Western land had begun to turn southward, avoiding the gate of Chicago with its heavy tolls, to flow by the path of least resistance out through the ports of the Gulf to Europe and Asia.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _I pointed out the great currents of world trade._]

"This is but the beginning, then--this packing company?" she questioned slowly, putting her finger on the inner truth, as was her wont.

"Perhaps!" I laughed back in the recklessness of large plans. "The meat business is nothing to what's coming. We shall have a charter that will let us build elevators, railroads, own ports, run steamship lines--everything that has to do with the handling of food stuffs. Some day that ca.n.a.l will be dug, and then, then"....

I can't say how long we were there on our knees before that atlas. It may all seem childish, but the most astonishing thing is that most of what we imagined then has come true in one way or another. And faster even than my expectation.

At last we looked up, at the same moment, and our eyes rested on the portrait above us. The cloth had slipped from the canvas, and there was the speaking face, old and saddened--the face without hope, without desire. It seemed the face of despair, chiding us for our thoughts of youth and hope. Mrs. Dround arose from the floor and hung the cloth in its place, touching the portrait softly here and there. Then she stood, resting her hands on the frame, absorbed in thought. A kind of gloom had come over her features.

"This--this scheme you have plotted, is life! It is imagination!" She drew a long breath as though to shake off the lethargy of years. "That art," she pointed to the picture of a pale, ghostly woman's face, hanging near by us on the wall--"that is a mere plaything beside yours."

"I don't know much about art: that is the work of a man's own two hands.

But mine is the work of thousands and thousands, hands and brains. And it can be ruined by a trick of fate."

"No, never! You shall have your chance--I promise it--I know! Sit down here and let us go back to the first steps and work it out again carefully."

So there in the fading twilight of the afternoon was formed the American Meat Products Company. Again and again we went over the companies to be included, the sources of credit, the men to interest, the bankers from whom money might be had.

"It is here we must have Mr. Dround's help," I pointed out significantly.

She nodded.

"When this step is taken, I think he ought to go abroad--he needs the rest. He could leave all else to you, I think."

I understood; the corporation once formed, he would drop out.

"There might be matters to which he would object--"

She translated my vague words.

"No one asks, if you _succeed_," she answered tranquilly.

And with that observation were settled those troublesome questions of morality which worried Mr. Dround so deeply.

As I left I said in homage:--

"If this thing is pulled off, it will be _yours_!"

"Oh, no! Mr. Dround doesn't like women to meddle with business. It is all yours, all yours--and I am glad to have it so."

Her eyes came back to mine, and she smiled in dismissal.