Come a courtin’ yer sisther Kate?”
No man can make money or acquire fame without accumulating enemies; that’s the price of success. To be sure they may not be all big men, sometimes not more than two by four, but they can make trouble. A Boston attorney, who looked after the interest and voted the stock of the absent shareholder in the Inter-Mountain Air Line, had become the enemy of General Manager McGuire. This attorney had had the misfortune to pass through college with young Van Swell, who had made such a mess of managing the new road, and who had been forced to resign to make room for a real railroad man, so, to use a very expressive railroad expression, “he had it in for” the new General Manager. He was a man of influence, and, when not otherwise engaged, he worked among the directors, many of whom he knew intimately, and his work was always against McGuire. The railway king, who had been the means of making McGuire General Manager, had been able to do so by influencing certain shareholders, and when the Boston attorney had won two or three of these to his side, the old faction could control the next election. They would not ask or expect the resignation of the brilliant young manager. So long as he was content with that position they could not, in their own interests, ask him to resign. But he was ambitious. Some of his friends had been putting his name forward as the next president, and that was wormwood and gall to the Van Swell contingent. These rumors, rife in clubs and hotel lobbies, soon reached the newspapers, and so the public. As the date for the meeting of the stockholders drew near, the matter became the leading topic in the daily press. The stock of the Inter-Mountain Air Line became sensitive to the newspaper comments. Every man who had a dollar in the enterprise was uneasy. Men who lived like undertakers, off the misfortunes of others, who made money only when some one else lost, knew not whether to buy or sell. If the election could take place now, they could give a good guess that young Van Swell would be the next president. If a certain man who had been abroad for three or four years returned, took the advice of his friends and voted his stock instead of allowing his lawyer to vote it, things might be different. A bushel or more letters had been following this important, though somewhat indifferent, shareholder all over Europe. They had arrived in London only the day after the important individual had sailed for New York. Being a modest man, who considered his comings and goings of little importance to the general public, he had not taken the trouble to notify his friends of his intentions, but when a list of “distinguished” passengers had been cabled over, there was a little flurry in Wall Street. The friends of McGuire were enthusiastic. McGuire was indifferent. His friends wired him to come East and make a fight for the great prize that seemed almost within his grasp. He refused to budge. The bright young men who “did the railroads” on the daily papers had fun with Van Swell. They wondered whether he would take his valet and his yacht to the mountains with him. For a week and a day the excitement was at fever heat, but out in the Rockies, where the first frost was touching the oak and the aspen with silver and gold, the General Manager of the Air Line kept perfectly cool. The loyal employees, who had inklings of the doings of the pink-tea contingent at the East, spoke gently, almost reverently, to the General Manager. It would be a pity to lose him, people said, and many of the leading shippers said openly that they would give the Air Line no business if the town lost this genial official. The switchmen “offered” to strike. Of all the people interested, directly or indirectly, McGuire showed the least anxiety. Finally, the knowing ones guessed the cause of his indifference, which was now beginning to alarm his enemies. He had things “cut and dried,” said the knowing ones, and it began to look that way. But it was not so. There was a shadow upon the heart of the General Manager. Few men in America had made greater success or reached a higher place in the railway world in a lifetime than this man had gained in thirty-five years, and yet he was not happy.
Now, as the time for the election of a new president drew near, the pressure became so great and the cry for McGuire at the seat of war grew so loud, that the General Manager yielded, reluctantly, and made ready for the journey. He might have carried his private car, for there was not a line between the Atlantic and the Pacific that would hesitate to handle it; but he contented himself with the section to which his Pullman pass entitled him, and his annual transportation. So quietly did he depart that none of the papers knew of it until he was far out on the plains. He had never been in Boston. She might be living there and now. As the train bore him out toward the Atlantic he began to wonder whether he might see her driving in the park with her dignified old father or (he dreaded the thought) with her husband.
CHAPTER XXI
ON A ROLLING SEA
When the band ceased playing, Miss Landon’s father had closed his eyes and had doubtless forgotten that his daughter had mentioned the conductor of the snow-bound train in which they had once travelled. But she had not forgotten, and now sat musing on the past and dreaming of the future. The sea was dead calm, and but for the vibration of the ship, caused by the machinery, and the slight lifting and lowering of the huge vessel as she ploughed through the ocean, one might have fancied that she was riding at anchor. The sun shone dimly through an autumn haze. Here and there the curving spine of a leaping porpoise split the surface of the silver sea, that lay like a great drop of molten lead. Far out toward the banks a whale was spouting like a hose at a fire. Now the big liner turns from her path to nose about an old scow that is drifting, bottom side up, with the current of the sea. A half-dozen gulls with steady wing stand above the stern of the ship. Some of the passengers are walking, some are dozing, others are reading, and all are apparently perfectly contented. As the sun went down the sea came up, and the big ship began to roll. When it was dark, save for the stars that stood above the ship, she began to pitch. One by one the women left their places and went below. When the bugle sounded for dinner not all the men and a very few women sat down in the great dining-hall. The neglected tables groaned under the good things that were left untouched. The band played cheerily in the little bower above, while the white-gloved stewards hurried out with the empties, and came back with the nuts and pudding and electric ice-cream. Before the meal was over the ship was rolling so that they had to lash on the sideboards. Only one woman remained at the captain’s table. She was a good sailor. Presently the big ship lifted her nose until all the people held on to the tables, and then she gave a twist and came down on one corner. She went so low that the sea came up and wet all the windows. It reached up to the promenade deck, leaped to the bridge, over the ladies’ saloon, and tore away six yards of the canvas fence, behind which the captain stands. It came along the deck, a solid stream, two feet and a half deep. It gathered up all the steamer chairs and drove them in a drift against the fence that marks the line between the first and second class. The people, men and women, who had stayed upon deck, were washed along, and piled up among the chairs. Mr. Landon, who was a poor sailor, slid out of his chair that was lashed to a railing that ran along the wall, and went, half bent, head first, for the heavy fence that runs round the ship. He ran so fast, when the ship sat on edge, that he could not straighten up, and before any one could reach him his head hit the railing. He went down like a man under a sandbag, and then the flood came and heaped the company’s property and a lot of people on top of him. When the sea went down from the deck, and they gathered the old man up he was dead,—but he came to again.
A thoughtful and sympathetic woman rushed down to the dining-saloon and broke the news of the accident to the handsome young woman who was smiling over a glass of champagne at the captain.
“Oh! Miss Landon! yo’ father’s dead.”
Miss Landon put down the glass and got to her feet. She swayed a bit, and the captain steadied her. “Is that true?” she asked, gazing at the woman.
“Well, he was; he’s better now; he—”