The Memoirs of an American Citizen Part 45

"Sarah sent it to me along with a lot of baby things when my Jack came.

Perhaps she might like to have them back now."

"She and the girls come home next week. Won't you come and see her?

She'd care more for that than for anything."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_Do you remember how I used to wash while you wiped, when we wanted to get out buggy-riding, May?_"]

"You were always awfully persistent in getting your own way, Van!"

"But I didn't always get it, I remember."

"It might have been just as well if you hadn't had it so much of the time since."

"Well, maybe--"

"There are a few other people in the world besides Van Harrington, and they have their rights, too."

"That's true enough, if they can get 'em."

"Maybe their consciences are a little stronger to hold them back from getting things. You never held off long when you wanted a thing, Van.

You took the peaches, you remember?"

Her lips curled in the way that used to set me mad for her.

"I didn't eat a peach," I protested. "I gave them to your brothers, and Budd Haines."

"Yes, _you_ gave them!"

"I don't believe you think me half as bad as you make me out!" I said, stopping the wringer and looking into her eyes.

"You don't know how bad I make you out," she challenged my look.

It was not hard to see why I had been crazy to marry her in the old days. There was a fire in her which no other woman I ever saw possessed.

Jane was large-minded, keen as an eagle, and like steel. But there was a kind of will in this worn woman, a hanging to herself, which gave her a character all her own. Nevertheless, we two couldn't have travelled far hitched together. She would have tried her best to run me, and life would have been h.e.l.l for us both.

"Well," I protested in my own defence, "there's no man and no woman living has the right to say he's the worse off on my account. I have treated the world fairly where it has treated me fairly."

"So that's your boast, Van Harrington! It's pretty hard when a man has to say a thing like that to defend his life. You don't know how many men you have ruined like that poor Hostetter. But that isn't the worst. The very sight of men like you is the worst evil in our country. You are successful, prosperous, and you have ridden over the laws that hindered you. You have hired your lawyers to find a way for you to do what you please. You think you are above the law--just the common laws for ordinary folks! You buy men as you buy wheat. And because you don't happen to have robbed your next-door neighbor or ruined his daughter, you make a boast of it to me. It's pretty mean, Van, don't you think so?"

We had sat down facing each other across the tub of clothes. As she spoke her hot words, I thought of others who had accused me in one way or another,--Parson, Will, Sloc.u.m,--most of all, Sloc.u.m. But I dismissed this sentimental reflection.

"Those are pretty serious charges you are making, May," I replied after a time. "And what do you know? What the newspapers say. There are thousands of newspaper men all over this country who get a dollar or two a column for that sort of mud. Then these same fellows come around to us and hold out their hands for tips or bribes. You take their lies for proved facts. I have never taken the trouble to answer their charges, and never shall. I will answer for what I have done."

"To whom?" May asked ironically. "To G.o.d? I should like to see Van Harrington's G.o.d! He must be different from the One I have prayed to all these years."

"Maybe he has more charity, May!"

"Are you asking for charity--my charity as well as G.o.d's?" she blazed.

"Well, let that go! I shall answer to the people now."

"Yes! And G.o.d help this country, now that men like you have taken to buying seats there at Was.h.i.+ngton!"

We said nothing for a while after this, and then I rose to go.

"We don't get anywhere this way, May. I came here wanting to be friends with you and Will--wanting to help my brother. You needn't take my money if you think it's tainted. But can't you feel friendly? You are throwing me off a second time when I come to you asking for your love."

She flushed at the meaning under my words, and replied in a lower voice:--

"It would do no good, Van. You are feeling humble just now, and remorseful, and full of old memories. But you don't want my love now, in real truth, more than you did before." Her face crimsoned slowly. "If you had wanted it then, you would have stayed and earned it."

"And I could have had it?"

Instead of answering she came up to me and took my arms in her two hands and pulled my head to her.

"Good-by, Van!" she said, kissing me.

As I stepped out of the door I turned for the last time:--

"Can't you let me do something for my brother, who is a sick man?"

Tears came to her eyes, but she shook her head.

"I know he's sick, and likely to fail in what he's doing. But it can't be helped!"

Outside little Van was sitting on the ground playing with a broken toy engine. I put my hand on his little tumbled head, and turned to his mother:--

"I suppose you wouldn't let him touch my money, either?"

She smiled back her defiance through her tears.

"You had rather he'd grow up in the alley here than let me give him an education and start him in life!"

I waited several moments for her answer.

"Yes!" she murmured at last, very faintly.

The little fellow looked from his mother to me curiously, trying to make out what we were saying.

So I went back to the city, having failed in my purpose. I couldn't get that woman to yield an inch. She had weighed me in her scales and found me badly wanting. I was Senator of these United States, from the great state of Illinois; but there was Hostetter, and the old banker Farson, and my best friend Sloc.u.m, and my brother Will, and May, and their little children, who stood to one side and turned away.

The smoke of the city I had known for so long drifted westward above my head. The tall chimneys of the factories in this district poured forth their stream to swell the canopy that covered the heavens. The whir of machinery from the doors and windows of the grimy buildings filled the air with a busy hum; the trucks ground along in the car tracks. Traffic, business, industry,--the work of the world was going forward. A huge lumber boat blocked the river at the bridge, and while the tugs pushed it slowly through the draw, I stood and gazed at the busy tracks in the railroad yards below me, at the line of high warehouses along the river.

I, too, was a part of this. The thought of my brain, the labor of my body, the will within me, had gone to the making of this world. There were my plants, my car line, my railroads, my elevators, my lands--all good tools in the infinite work of the world. Conceived for good or for ill, brought into being by fraud or daring--what man could judge _their_ worth? There they were, a part of G.o.d's great world. They were done; and mine was the hand. Let another, more perfect, turn them to a larger use; nevertheless, on my labor, on me, he must build.

Involuntarily my eyes rose from the ground and looked straight before me, to the vista of time. Surely there was another scale, a grander one, and by this I should not be found wholly wanting!