CHAPTER III.
A LODGMENT MADE.
All the same a lodgment had been made. The idea had been suggested to Max, and the little seed Bertha had planted did not die. Poor fellow! his name was on the lists of all the railway companies, and so were the names of five thousand other fellows out of work. His name was also on the postmaster's list of applicants for the next vacancy among clerks or carriers. The postmaster was amazingly civil; asked Max to write the name himself, so that there need be no mistake. So Max observed that his name came at the bottom of the seventh long column of K's, there being so many men whose name began with K who needed employment. He calculated roughly, from the size of the book, that about seven thousand men had applied before him. Then he went to the mayor to see if he could not be a policeman, or a messenger at the City Hall. He had first-rate introductions. The mayor's clerk was very civil, but he said that they had about eight thousand people waiting there. So Max's chances of serving the public seemed but poor.
And thus it was that he haunted the paint-shop more and more. At first he had no thought, of course, of anything so absurd as Bertha's plan; still, all the same, it would do no harm to think it over, and the thinking part he did, and he did it carefully and well. He went through all the experiences of driver and of conductor in his imagination. He made it his duty to ride on the front platform always as he went to town or returned, that he might catch the trick of the brakes, and be sure of the grades. Nay, he learned the price of cars, and found from what factories the Cosmopolitan was supplied.
When a man thus plans out a course of life, though he thinks he does it only for fun, it becomes all the more easy to step into it. If he has learned the part, he is much more likely to play it than he would be if he had it still to learn. And as times grew harder and harder, when at last Max had to make a second hole in his bank deposit, and a pretty large one too, tired with enforced idleness, as he had never been by cheerful work, Max took one of those steps which cannot be retraced. He wrote, what he used to call afterward "the fatal letter," on which all this story hangs.
But this was not till he had had a careful and loving talk with Bertha. He loved her more than ever, and he valued her more than ever, after this year and a half of married life. And Bertha could have said the like of Max. There was nothing she would not do for him, and she knew that there was nothing he would not do for her.
Max told her at last that he felt discouraged. Everybody said, "Go West": but what could he do at the West? He did not know how to plough, and she did not know how to make cheese. No. He said he had laughed at her plan of the street-car at first, but he believed there was "money in it." They would have to spend most of their little capital in the outfit. A span of horses and a car could not be had for nothing. But once bought, they were property. He did not think they had better try to run all day. That would tire Bertha, and the horses could not stand it. But if she were serious, he would try. He would write to Newcastle, to a firm of builders whom the Cosmopolitan had sometimes employed. He would look out for a span of horses and proper harness. If she would have her dress ready, they could at least try when the car arrived. If she did not like it, he would make some appeal to the builders to take the car off his hands. But, in short, he said, if she did not really, in her heart, favor the plan, he would never speak of it nor think of it again.
He was serious enough now. There was no laughing nor treating poor Bertha's plan as a joke. And she replied as seriously. They had always wished, she said, that his work was what she could help in. Here seemed to be a way to earn money, and, for that matter, to serve mankind too, where they could work together. True, the custom had been to carry on this business by large companies. But she saw no reason why a man and his wife should not carry it on as well as forty thousand shareholders. If it took her away from the baby, it would be different. But if they only went out evenings, after the little girl had gone to sleep, why, she always slept soundly till her father and mother came to bed, and Bertha would feel quite brave about leaving her.
So, as I said, the lodgment was made. After this serious talk, Max wrote the fatal letter to the car-builders.
It was in these words:—
"351 MADISON AVENUE, April 1, 1875.
"DEAR SIR,—Can you furnish one more car, same pattern and style as the last furnished for the Cosmopolitan Company? The sooner the better. You will be expected to deliver on the Delaware Bay Line of steamers for this port, and forward invoice to this address.
"Respectfully yours,
"MAX KEESLER."
To which came an answer that fortunately they had on hand such a car as he described, and that as soon as the last coat of paint and lettering could be put on, it should be shipped. Max wrote by return mail to order the words "Madison Avenue Line" painted on each side, to direct that the color should be the same as that of the Madison Avenue Line, and he inclosed a banker's draft for the amount. Never had the Newcastle builders been better pleased with the promptness of the pay.
And everything happened, as Max told me afterward, to favor his plans. The Richard Penn steamer chose to arrive just before seven o'clock in the afternoon. Max was waiting at the pier with his span of horses. The car could be seen prominent in the deck cargo. The clerks and agents were only too glad to be rid of her at once. Quarter of an hour did not pass before some sturdy Irishmen had run her upon the branch-rails which went down the pier. The horses behaved better than he dared expect. When he brought his new treasure in triumph into the paint-shop, and found Bertha, eager with excitement, waiting for him there, he told her that he had rejected, he believed, a hundred passengers by screaming, "Next car—next car!" as he had driven up through the city into the more sequestered avenue.
It was too late to go back, had they doubted.
But they did not doubt.