“Nonsense! You’re Katharine Lauderdale. I’m speaking of Jack’s mother. I suppose you’ll admit that she’s not able to support her son’s wife out of what she has. It would mean a great change in her way of living. At present she doesn’t need more. She’s often told me so. If she wanted money for herself, just to spend on herself, mind you—I’d give her—well, I won’t say how much. But she doesn’t. It’s for Jack that she wants it. She’s perfectly honest. She’s just like a man in her way of talking, anyhow. And I don’t want Jack to be throwing my money into the streets. I can do more good with it in other ways, and she gives him more than is good for him, as it is. People seem to think that if a man has more than a certain amount of money, he’s under a sort of moral obligation to society to throw it out of the window. That’s a point of view I never could understand, though it comes quite naturally to Jack, I daresay. But I go back. I want to insist on that circumstance, and I want you to see the facts just as they are. If I were to settle another hundred thousand dollars on Jack’s mother, it would be precisely the same thing, at present, as though I’d settled it on him, or on you. Now you say he wouldn’t take any money if I offered it to him.”
“No. He wouldn’t, and I wouldn’t let him if he wanted to.”
“You needn’t be afraid, my dear. I’ve no intention of doing anything so good-natured and foolish. If anything could complete Jack’s ruin for all practical purposes, that would. No, no! I won’t do it. I’ve given Kate Ralston a good many valuable jewels at one time and another since she married the Admiral—she’s fond of good stones, you know. If Jack chooses to go to her and tell her the truth, and if she chooses to sell them and give him the money, it will keep you very comfortably for a long time—”
“How can you suggest such a thing!” cried Katharine, indignantly. “As though he would ever stoop to think of it!”
“Well—I hope he wouldn’t. It wouldn’t be pretty, if he did. But I’m a practical man, my dear, and I’m an old fellow and I’ve seen the world on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean for over seventy years. So I look at the case from all possible points of view, fair and unfair, as most people would. But I don’t mean to be unfair to Jack.”
“I think you are, uncle Robert. If you’ve proved anything, you’ve proved that he isn’t fit for a ranch—and so you say there’s nothing left but the law or business. It seems to me that there are ever so many things—”
“If you’ll name them, you’ll help me,” said old Lauderdale, seriously.
“I mean active things—to do with railroads, and all that—” Katharine stopped, feeling that her knowledge was rather vague.
“Oh! You mean to talk about railroading. I don’t own any railroads myself, as I daresay you know, but I’ve picked up some information about them. Apart from the financing of them—and that’s banking, which Jack objects to—there’s the law part, which he doesn’t like either, and the building of them, which he’s too old to learn, and the mechanical part of them, such as locomotives and rolling stock, which he can’t learn either—and then there are two places which men covet and for which there’s an enormous competition amongst the best men for such matters in the country—I mean the freight agent’s place and the passenger agent’s. They are two big men, and they understand their business practically, because they’ve learned it practically. To understand freight, a man must begin by putting on rough clothes and going down to the shed and handling freight himself, with the common freight men. There are gentlemen who have done that sort of thing—just as fine gentlemen as Jack Ralston, but made of quite different stuff. And it takes a very long time to reach a high position in that way, though it’s worth having when you get it. Do you understand?”
“Yes—I suppose I do. But one always hears of men going off and succeeding in some out-of-the-way place—”