Herbert Quick

“ Out upon the platform we went in the biting wind, which still came fiercely on, sweeping over the waste of waters which covered the fields like a great lake. There was no sign of slowing down: right on, as if the road were rock-ballasted, and thrice secure, the engine drove toward the trestle.
“She’s there, anyhow, I b’lieve,” said Corcoran, swinging out and looking ahead; “but I wouldn’t bet on how solid she is!”
“Can’t you stop him?” said Jim.
“Stop nothing!” said Corcoran. “Look over there!” ”

“ Cecil reconciled himself to his position as the local exemplification of the traditional Englishman whose trains of ideas run on the freight schedule—and was one of the most popular fellows in Lattimore. He gloried in his slavery to Antonia, and seemed to glean hope from the most sterile circumstances.
It was easy to hope, in Lattimore, then. It was not many days after our talk in the park before I noticed a change for the better in Giddings, even. Just before Jim’s house-warming, he came to me with something like optimism in his appearance. I started to cheer him up, and went wrong. ”

“ I felt that if Alice had had in her memory my vision of the supper at Auriccio’s, she would have been confirmed in her fears; but to me, in spite of the memory, they seemed absurd. My only apprehension was that she might be right as to the final outcome, to the wreck of Jim’s hopes. I did not take the matter at all seriously, in fact. I think we men must usually have such an affair worked out to some conclusion, for weal or woe, before we regard it otherwise than lightly. That was the reason that Giddings’s distraught condition was only a matter of laughter to all of us. ”

“ Josie spoke that night of fortunes which people had not earned; but surely they were created somehow; and as the universe, when the divine fiat had formed the world, was richer, rather than poorer, so, we felt, must these values so magically growing into our fortunes be good, rather than evil, and honestly ours, so far as we might be able to secure them to ourselves. I said as much to Jim one day, at which he smiled, and remarked that if we got to monkeying with the ethics of the trade, piracy would soon be a ruined business. ”

“ I was sitting with Antonia. Miss Allen and Captain Tolliver were with us, our faces turned toward one another. General Lattimore, with Josie and her father, was on the opposite side of the car. Most of the company were sitting or standing near, and the conversation was quite general.
“Oh, it’s like a romance!” half whispered Antonia to us. “I envy you men who build roads and make towns. Look at Mr. Elkins, Sadie, as he stands there! He is master of everything; to me he seems as great as Napoleon!”
She neither blushed nor sought to conceal from us her adoration for Jim. ”

“ On the windward windows and the roof rattled fierce flights of sleet and showers of cinders from the engine. Occasionally we felt the car sway in the howling gusts of wind, as we passed some opening in the hills and neared the more level prairie. Stories of cars blown from the rails flitted through my mind; and in contemplating such an accident my thoughts busied themselves with the details of plans for getting free from the wrecked car, and pushing on with the engine, the derailing of which somehow never occurred to me.
“We’re slowing down!” cried Jim, after a half-hour’s run. ”

“ We were now running over the divide between the valley we had just left and that of Elk Fork. Up here on the highlands the wind more than ever roared and clutched at the corners of the car, and sometimes, as with the palm of a great hand, pressed us over, as if a giant were striving to overturn us. We could hear the engine struggling with the savage norther, like a runner breathing hard, as he nears exhaustion.312 Presently I noticed fine particles of snow, driven into the car at the crevices, falling on my hands and face, and striking the hot stove with little hissing explosions of steam. ”

“ I saw his intent fully, and knew why he walked so resolutely up to the engine, now backed down to take us on again. Schwartz leaned out of his cab, a man of snow and ice. Ole stood with his shovel in his hand white and icy like his brother worker. Both had been drenched, as we had; but they had had no red-hot stove by which to sit; and buffeted by the blizzard and powdered by the snow, they had endured the benumbing cold of the hurricane-swept cab.
“Get down here, boys,” said Jim. “I want to talk with you.” ”

“ At an available point in its bed Jim had thrown a dam across the stream, and a beautiful little lake rippled in the breeze, bearing on its bosom a bright-colored boat, which in our ignorance of things Venetian we mistakenly dubbed a gondola. At the upper end of this water the canvas of a large pavilion gleamed whitely through the greenery, displaying from its top the British and American flags, their color reflected in a particolored streak on the wimpling face of the lake. ”

“ New pine houses dotted prairies, unbroken save for the mile-long score of the delimiting plow. Long trains of emigrant-cars moved continually westward. The world seemed drunk with hope and enthusiasm. The fulfillment of Jim’s careless prophecy had burst suddenly upon us.
Such things as these were fresh in our memories when we reached Lattimore. I had wired Elkins of our coming, and he met us at the station with a carriage. It was one sunny September afternoon when he drove us through the streets of our future home to the principal hotel. ”

“ Only the Lattimore house kept faith with the past, and stood as of old, in its five acres of trees and grass, untouched of the fever for platting and subdivision, its very skirts drawn up from the asphalt by austere retaining-walls. And here went on the preparation for the time when Laura and Clifford were to stand up and declare their purposes and intentions with reference to each other. The first wedding this was to be, in all our close-knit circle.
“I am glad,” said I, “that they are all so sensible as not to permit rivalries to breed discord among us. ”

“ I believed that ruin fronted us all; that our great system of enterprises was going down; that, East and West, where we had been so much courted and admired, we should become a by-word and a hissing. The elements were struggling against us. That vengeful flood had snatched at us, and barely missed; the ruthless hurricane was holding us back; and somehow fate would yet find means to lay us low. ”

“ I can see them in embryo now.”
“If it’s Jim and Miss Trescott you mean, I wish the affair well,” said I. “I’m quite charmed with her.”
“Well,” said Alice, “from the standpoint of most men, Miss Hinckley isn’t to be left out of the reckoning in such matters. What a face and figure she has! Miss Addison is too prudish and churchified; but I like Miss Hinckley.”
“Yes,” said I; “but Miss Trescott seems, somehow, to have been known to one, in some tender and touching relation. There’s that about her which appeals to one, like some embodiment of the abstract idea of woman. ”

“ Out past the old Trescott farm, now covered with factories, cottages, and railway tracks, leaving Lynhurst Park off to our left, curving with the turnings of Brushy Creek Valley, through which our engineers had found such easy grades, dropping the straggling suburbs of the city behind us, we flew along the rails in the waning twilight of this grewsome day. ”

“ One needs only to shut one’s eyes and listen, to imagine that the town is already a real city. Mr. Elkins seems to be the center of this new civic self-esteem. The air is full of it, and I admit that I am affected by it. ”

“ In the absence of any more engaging topic, we discussed Lattimore as our possible future home.
“I have always felt,” said Mr. Hinckley, who was one of the guests, “that this is the natural site of a great city. These valleys, centering here like the spokes of a wheel, are ready-made railway-routes. In the East there is a city of from fifty thousand to three times that, every hundred miles or so. Why shouldn’t it be so here?”
“Suh,” said Captain Tolliver, “the thing is inevitable. Somewhah in this region will grow up a metropolis. Shall it be hyah, o’ at Fairchild, o’ Angus Falls? ”

“ Elkins, “that this desire may be focalized locally, and grow to anything short of a disease. I assure you, Lattimore will congratulate herself.”
Mr. Barr-Smith’s fingers sought his glass, as if the impulse were on him to propose a toast; but the liquid facilities being absent, he relapsed into a conversation with Mrs. Hinckley.
“I’d say those things, too, if I were in his place,” came the words of Giddings, overshooting their mark, the ear of Miss Addison; “but it’s all rot. He’s disgusted with the whole barbarous outfit of us.” ”

“ Cecil Barr-Smith walked out and stood on the platform.
General Lattimore was apparently thinking of the features of the situation which had struck Antonia as romantic.
“You young men,” said he, “are among the last of the city-builders and road-makers. My generation did these things differently. We went out with arms in our hands, and hewed out spaces in savagery for homes. You don’t seem to see it; but you are straining every nerve merely to shift people from many places to one, and there to exploit them. ”

“ As a handsome girl, a splendid blonde, drove past us, my wife spoke of the excellent quality of the horseflesh we saw. Jim answered that Lattimore was a center of equine culture, and its citizens wise in breeders’ lore. The appearance of things impressed us favorably. There was an air of quiet prosperity about the place, which is unusual in Western towns, where quietude and progress are apt to be thought incompatible. Jim pointed out the town’s natural advantages as we drove along.
“What do you think of that, now?” said he, waving his whip toward the winding gorge of Brushy Creek. ”

“ There isn’t treason enough in all the storehouses of hell to balk or defeat us. It’s a question of courage and resolution and confidence, and imparting all those feelings to every one else. There isn’t malice enough, even if it were a whole pack, instead of one lone hyena, to put out the fires in those furnaces over there, or stop the wheels in that flume, or make our streets grow grass. The things we’ve built are going to stay built, and the word of Lattimore will stand! ”

“ I hold in my hand a letter from Jim, received yesterday, and eloquent of the changes which have taken place.
“I am sorry,” says he, “to be unable to come to your business men’s banquet. The building of a great auditorium in Lattimore is proof that we weren’t so insane, after all. I suppose that the ebb and flow of the tide of progress, which yearly gains upon the shore, is inevitable, as things are hooked up; but, after the ebb, it’s comforting to see your old predictions as to gain coming true, even if you do find yourself in the discard. ”

“ Court parties and court factions are always known to the populace, even down to the groom and scullions. So the defection of Cornish soon became a matter of gossip at bars, in stables, and especially about the desks of real-estate offices. Had it been a matter of armed internecine strife, the Elkins faction would have mustered an overwhelming majority; for Jim’s bluff democratic ways, and his apparent identity of fibre with the mass of the people, would have made him a popular idol, had he been a thousand times a railroad president. ”

“ Why, boys, with that traffic agreement we can get the money anywhere—on the prairie, out at sea—anywhere under the shining sun! They can’t beat us. What do you say, Cornish? Will, your friend Wade jar loose, or shall we have to seek further?”
“He’ll snap at your bonds now,” said Cornish,150 rather glumly, I thought, considering the circumstances; “but don’t call him a friend of mine! Why, damn him, not a week ago he turned me out of his office, saying that he didn’t want to look into any more Western railway schemes! ”

“ So one day, at a syndicate conference, I sought to ease my mind by asking where this thing was to stop, and when we could hope for a time when the town would not have to be held up by main strength.
“Why, that’s a very remarkable question!” said Mr. Hinckley. “We surely haven’t reached the point where we can think of stopping. Why, with the history before us of the cities of America which, without half our natural advantages, have grown to so many times the size of this, I’m surprised that such a thing should be thought of! Just think of what Chicago was in ’54 when I came through. ”

“ I have asked your advice—yours and Albert’s—frequently, having really no one else to trust; and therefore I am willing to hear your reproof, if you have it for me. What is it?”
“Oh, Josie,” said I, seeking cover. “You are too sensitive. There isn’t anything, is there, Alice?”
Here I scowled violently, and shook my head at my wife; but all to no effect.
“Yes, there is,” said Alice. “We have a dear friend, the best in the world, and he has an enemy. The whole town is divided in allegiance between them, about nine on one side to one on the other—”
“Which proves nothing,” said Josie. ”

“ Hinckley,” said Jim, as Cornish sat down again, “it is as bad as that! This thing amounts to a crisis. For one, I don’t propose to adopt the ‘stand-from-under’ tactics. They make an unnecessary disaster as certain as death; but if we all stand under and lift, we can win more than we’ve ever thought. In the legislature they hold142 the cards and can beat us. It’s no use fooling with that unless we seek martyrs’ deaths in the bankruptcy courts. But there is a way to meet these men, and that is by bringing to our aid their greatest rival.” ”

“ Pray for me, Barslow, pray for me!”
This despairing condition of Giddings’s was a sort of continuing sensation with us at that time. We discussed it quite freely in all its aspects, humorous and tragic. It was so unexpected a development in the young man’s character, and, with all due respect to the discretion and resisting powers of Miss Addison, so entirely gratuitous and factitious.
“He has ability as a writer,” said the Captain; “but in such a mattah anybody but a fool ought to see that the thing to do is to chahge the intrenchments. ”

“ And I sank to sleep and to dreams, in which Jimmie Elkins, the Empress, Sir John, Alice, and myself acted in a spectacular drama, like that at McVicker’s. And yet there are those who say there is nothing in dreams! ”

“ But if we can keep things as they are until we can do some large things we have in view, we are not afraid of anything serious happening. So we form this new corporation, and have it advance the funds on the notes, so as not to weaken the trust company—and because we can’t afford to do it otherwise—and we know you would not permit it anyhow; and we ask you to give to the new corporation all the property which the creditors could reach, which will be held, and sold as opportunity offers, so as to make the loss as small as possible. But we must keep off this panic to save ourselves. ”