"You, a farmer!" laughed Isabelle. "And what about Congress, and the real anarchists?"
"Oh, you cannot understand! You do not belong to the fields as I do." He pointed ironically to her handsome riding skirt. "You are of the cities, of people. You will flit from this Indiana landscape one day, from provincial Torso, and spread your gay wings among the houses of men. While I—" He made a gesture of despair—half comic, half serious—and his dark face became gloomy.
Isabelle was amused at what she called his "heroics," but she felt interested to know what he was; and it flattered her that he should see her "spreading gay wings among the houses of men." These days she liked to think of herself that way.
"You will be in Washington, while we are still in Torso!" she answered.
"Maybe," he mused. "Well, we play the game—play the game—until it is played out!"
'He is not happy with his wife,' Isabelle concluded sagely; 'she doesn't understand him, and that's why she has that half-scared look.'
"I believe you really want to play the game as much as anybody," she ventured with a little thrill of surprise to find herself talking so personally with a man other than her husband.
"You think so?" he demanded, and his face grew wistful. "There is nothing in the game compared with the peace that one might have—"
Lane was calling to her, but she lingered to say:—
"How?"
"Far away—with love and the fields!"
They walked back to where John was holding the horses. She was oddly fluttered. For the first time since she had become engaged a man had somehow given her that special sensation, which women know, of confidence between them. She wished that John had not been so anxious to be off, and she did not repeat to him Darnell's talk, as she usually did every small item. All that she said was, after a time of reflection, "He is not a happy man."
"Who?"
"Mr. Darnell."
"From what I hear he is in a bad way. It is his own fault. He has plenty of ability—a splendid chance."
She felt that this was an entirely inadequate judgment. What interested the man was the net result; what interested the woman was the human being in whom that result was being worked out. They talked a little longer about the fermenting tragedy of the household that they had just left, as the world talks, from a distance. But Isabelle made the silent reservation—'she doesn't understand him—with another woman, it would be different.' …
Their road home lay through a district devastated by the mammoth sheds of some collieries. A smudged sign bore the legend:—
PLEASANT VALLEY COAL COMPANY
Lane pulled up his horse and looked carefully about the place. Then he suggested turning west to examine another coal property.
"I suppose that Freke man is awfully rich," Isabelle remarked, associating the name of the coal company with its president; "but he's so common—I can't see how you can stand him, John!"
Lane turned in his saddle and looked at the elegant figure that his wife made on horseback.
"He isn't half as interesting as Tom Darnell or Rob," she added.
"I stand him," he explained, smiling, "for the reason men stand each other most often—we make money together."
"Why, how do you mean? He isn't in the railroad."
"I mean in coal mines," he replied vaguely, and Isabelle realized that she was trespassing on that territory of man's business which she had been brought up to keep away from. Nevertheless, as they rode homeward in the westering golden light, she thought of several things:—John was in other business than the railroad, and that puffy-faced German-American was in some way connected with it; business covered many mysteries; a man did business with people he would not ordinarily associate with. It even crossed her mind that what with sleep and business a very large part of her husband's life lay quite beyond her touch. Perhaps that was what the Kentuckian meant by his ideal—to live life with some loved one far away in companionship altogether intimate.
But before long she was thinking of the set of her riding-skirt, and that led to the subject of summer gowns which she meant to get when she went East with her mother, and that led on to the question of the summer itself. It had been decided that Isabelle should not spend another summer in the Torso heat, but whether she should go to the Connecticut place or accept Margaret Lawton's invitation to the mountains, she was uncertain. Thus pleasantly her thoughts drifted on into her future.
CHAPTER X
If Isabelle had been curious about her husband's interest in the Pleasant Valley Coal Company, she might have developed a highly interesting chapter of commercial history, in which Mr. Freke and John Lane were enacting typical parts.
The Atlantic and Pacific railroad corporation is, as may easily be inferred, a vast organism, with a history, a life of its own, lying like a thick ganglia of nerves and blood-vessels a third of the way across our broad continent, sucking its nourishment from thousands of miles of rich and populous territory. To write its history humanly, not statistically, would be to reveal an important chapter in the national drama for the past forty years—a drama buried in dusty archives, in auditors' reports, vouchers, mortgage deeds, general orders, etc. Some day there will come the great master of irony, the man of insight, who will make this mass of routine paper glow with meaning visible to all!
Meanwhile this Atlantic and Pacific, which to-day is a mighty system, was once only a handful of atoms. There was the period of Birth; there was the period of Conquest; and finally there has come the period of Domination. Now, with its hold on the industry, the life of eight states, complete, like the great Serpent it can grumble, "I lie here possessing!"
Farrington Beals came to be President of the Atlantic and Pacific at the close of the period of Conquest. The condottieri leaders, those splendid railroad brigands of the seventies and eighties, had retired with "the fruits of their industry." To Farrington Beals and his associate was left the care of the orchard. It was their task to solidify a conglomerate mass of interest-bearing burden, to operate the property with the greatest efficiency possible, in order that it might support the burdens laid upon it and yet other burdens to come as the land waxed rich—all burdens being ultimately passed to the broad back of the Public, where burdens seem naturally to belong. To this end, Beals men, as they were called, gradually replaced throughout the length and breadth of the system the old operatives, whose methods belonged to the coarse days of brigandage! These Beals men were youngsters—capable, active, full of "jump," with the word "traffic, traffic" singing always in their ears. Beals was a splendid "operator," and he rapidly brought the Atlantic and Pacific into the first rank of the world's railroads. That shrewd and conservative statesman, Senator Alonzo Thomas (who had skilfully marshalled the legal and political forces during the period of Conquest) was now chairman of the Board, and he and the President successfully readjusted the heterogeneous mass of bonds and stocks, notes and prior liens, taking advantage of a period of optimistic feeling in the market to float a tremendous general mortgage. When this "Readjustment" had been successfully put through, the burden was some forty or fifty millions larger than before—where those millions went is one of the mysteries to reward that future Carlyle!—but the public load was adjusted more trimly. So it was spoken of as a "masterly stroke of finance," and the ex-statesman gained much credit in the highest circles.
The Senator and the President are excellent men, as any financier will tell you. They are charitable and genial, social beings, members of clubs, hard working and intelligent, public spirited, too—oh, the very best that the Republic breeds! To see Farrington Beals, gray-haired, thoughtful, almost the student,