Mother was not well enough to have the Ramsays at the house that evening, so I dined with them in the car. Mrs. Ramsay was the same simple, silent, ill-at-ease person I had first met at the Ann Arbor commencement,—probably the same that she had been ever since her husband's wealth and her children's infection with newfangled ideas had forced her from the plain ways of her youth. I liked her, but I was not so well pleased with her daughter. Carlotta was then twenty-two, had abundant, noticeably nice brown hair, an indifferent skin, pettish lips, and restless eyes, a little too close together,—a spoiled wilful young woman, taking to herself the deference that had been paid chiefly to her wealth. She treated me as if I were a candidate for her favor whom she was testing so that she might decide whether she would be graciously pleased to tolerate him.
Usually, superciliousness has not disturbed me. It is a cheap and harmless pleasure of cheap and harmless people. But just at that time my nerves were out of order, and Miss Ramsay's airs of patronage "got" on me. I proceeded politely to convey to her the impression that she did not attract me, that I did not think her worth while—this, not through artful design of interesting by piquing, but simply in the hope of rasping upon her as she was rasping upon me. When I saw that I had gained my point, I ignored her. I tried to talk with Ed, then with his mother, but neither would interfere between me and Carlotta. I had to talk to her until she voluntarily lapsed into offended silence. Then Ed, to save the evening from disaster, began discussing with me the fate of our class-mates. I saw that Carlotta was studying me curiously,—even resentfully, I thought; and she was coldly polite when I said good night.
She and her mother called on my mother the next morning. "And what a nice girl Miss Ramsay is,—so sensible, so intelligent, and so friendly!" said my mother, relating the incidents of the visit in minute detail when I went home at noon.
"I didn't find her especially friendly," said I. Whereat I saw, or fancied I saw, a smile deep down in her eyes,—and it set me to thinking.
In the afternoon Ed looked in at my office in the court-house to say good-by. "But first, old man, I want to tell you I got that place for you. I thought I had better use the wire. Old Roebuck is delighted,—telegraphed me to close the arrangement at once,—congratulated me on being able to get you. I knew it'd be so. He has his eyes skinned for bright young men,—all those big men have. Whenever a fellow, especially a bright young lawyer, shows signs of ability, they scoop him in."
"I can't believe it," said I, dazed. "I've been fighting him for four years—hard."
"That's it!" said he. "And don't you fret about its being a case of trying to heap coals of fire on your head. Roebuck don't use the fire-shovel for that sort of thing. He's snapping you up because you've shown him what you can do. That's the way to get on nowadays, they tell me. Whenever the fellows on top find the chap, especially one in public office, who makes it hot for them, they hire him. Good business all around."
Thus, so suddenly that it giddied me, I was translated from failure to success, from poverty to affluence, from the most harassing anxiety to ease and security. Two months before I should have rejected the Power Trust's offer with scorn, and should have gloried in my act as proof of superior virtue. But in those crucial two months I had been apprentice to the master whom all men that ever come to anything in this world must first serve. I had reformed my line of battle, had adjusted it to the lines laid down in the tactics of Life-as-it-is.
Before I was able to convince myself that my fortunes had really changed, Ed Ramsay telegraphed me to call on him in Fredonia on business of his own. It proved to be such a trifle that I began to puzzle at his real reason for sending for me. When he spun that trifle out over ten days, on each of which I was alone with Carlotta at least half my waking hours, I thought I had the clue to the mystery. I saw how I could increase the energy of his new enthusiasm for me, and, also, how I could cool it, if I wished to be rash and foolish and to tempt fate again.
"Oh, the business didn't amount to much," was my answer to one of my mother's first questions, on my return. She smiled peculiarly. In spite of my efforts, the red came—at least I felt red.