Dreams and Compound Interest
I
THE Square was all but deserted. Even the time-worn court-house, centred among weeds and scrawny catalpas, seemed dozing, and the little county seat’s one stone-fronted building, the First State Bank, with blinds drawn, appeared to have shut its eyes wearily after one more fussy day in heavy harness.
Inside, Bob, the youthful teller, was clacking away at the Burroughs, jerking his skinny, stringy neck each time he yanked the handle. The cashier mumbled solemnly as he stacked the twenties in five-hundred-dollar piles. James Osborne, the president, — bageyed, with a stern, inexorable face, a rock-ribbed jaw, and heavy figure,—sat writing letters. And at her desk near his, Janet Graham, the girlish vicepresident, was going over belligerentlooking mortgages.
Her mind was far from southeastern Kansas. Mechanically, she would note the dates on the interest coupons, and then, after jotting down a memorandum, she would stop and think a moment of her husband, Robert. His letter, which had come from New York on the noon train, was on her mind and in her heart. She slipped it out of its envelope and read it again. It told her that the managers could not even consider his play. It was too high-brow. That sort of thing would not go. ‘And probably they are right,’ he added.
‘You know, dear,’ he wrote candidly, ‘it takes only a few days’ peddling to transform a philosophical comedy into a tragedy. They were nice to me. I did n’t expect so much attention. I should not have been surprised at complete indifference, if not rebuffs. Instead, I was taken out to dine by three potentates, and on each occasion told how utterly absurd I was to put my energy into this style of work. And I guess it’s the truth, sweetheart.’
Intuition as well as judgment whispered to Janet that in Robert’s very absurdities lay his power. Any number of clever men could manufacture the popular current play and straightforward, interesting story. But to write sparkling moonshine that left the bemused reader uncomfortably conscious that, while apparently talking in the absurdest fashion, the author had somehow given a penetrating criticism of life — this was left for the few who, when their genius had ripened, wrote for all time.
That The Miracle Men had a touch of this quality, Janet was as positive as Robert was doubtful. He had brought it to her, saying in his gentle naïve way, ‘Of course, Janet, no civilized human being should write a play with such persons as these in it. I ’m afraid the very characters are enough to queer its chances.’
In a modern setting, this droll comedy presented a group of rare spirits in commonplace, sordid environments. Voltaire had become a fishmonger; Chesterton, a plumber; Shaw, a ‘gimme-the-rent’ Irish landlord; Shakespeare, a successful movie-owner; Poe, an undertaker; Dante, an Italian icecream vender; Beethoven, a pianist in a Fourteenth Street theatre orchestra; Juliet, a worker in a box-factory, and Hamlet, — alas, not Romeo, — her dopy husband.
There were others, all similarly situated. Their immediate lives were materialistic, but the artist in them strove for their pasts. In Hamlet’s one-room domicile, this extraordinary company gathered to plot an escape from the actual, and regain their former glories; but, each innately hostile to the others, their plans collapsed in utter disappointment. Their effort to organize genius was as futile as an attempt to persuade an eagle, an angel, a demon, and a fish to pull together for one purpose. The play presupposed a degree of culture. Otherwise the delicate nuances of irony were lost. If it was talky in places, it was scintillating talk. It was actable in the right atmosphere. But Janet, always just, had to admit that she could not wholly blame the commercial managers.
‘ I gave them up,’ wrote Robert, ‘and went down to Washington Square, where I met several young men and women who are interested in a little theatre. I found them receptive, even cordial. They probably thought the play just freakish enough to command attention. There won’t be a chance this spring, but they will try it out early next fall if — notice the if — if I put up twenty-five hundred dollars to guarantee them against loss. If it is less, they agree to rebate the difference, though between ourselves I rather question the value of their promises. It seems to be quite taken for granted there will be some loss. They summer at Provincetown, and I can go up with them to work on the scenery and costumes. The play will be presented at least six times, which is fair. I have also been to see the publisher of whom I spoke in my last letter. He will publish the play if it is produced on the stage, if — another if — if we guarantee five hundred in case the first edition of a thousand falls flat. I know how you feel, darling, but I am strongly convinced that I should go home and forget about it. I have had lots of fun writing this thing. Why go further? Think it over carefully, Janet.’
Practical judgment told her to call it off; but Robert’s dreams were hers. She wanted him to have a fair chance. Three thousand dollars was a lot of money; but who would have known Thomas Hardy if he had n’t financed his first novel? Suppose many of the initial thousand of the published play should be left? Weren’t the remainders of others’ early editions cherished now by the discriminating world? It was n’t as if it were a question whether or not Robert could write. The utilitarian side to his gift was as clear and as lucrative as her own banking methods. Years spent with newspapers and magazines had taught him how to turn out articles that were always in demand at a good figure. But this spark that was ‘different,’ that experimented — Janet did not want it smothered; she wanted, passionately, to help kindle it into flame.
II
When they were married, three years before, many papers carried items about them. She was, they said, precisely the sort of young woman that alarmists of not so very long ago were lifting their voice against in warning. She had not been long out of college when the death of the head of her family called her to take that place and make its third generation of country bankers. She had accepted cheerfully what seemed to her a clear duty to ‘carry on,’ and had settled down in her little native town. It had never occured to her, once Robert had found he could continue his work from there, that she should not combine a business and domestic life; and systematizing her day, she took as much pride in her cozy home as in the dividends the bank declared.
Blessed with a happy, enthusiastic temperament, she gave an impression of buoyant youth that made her seem much less than her thirty years; her compact little figure radiated charm and vitality, and sunny chestnut hair curled about a merry, piquant face, lighted by warm, friendly, brown eyes that registered infinite shades of feeling. Often care-free as a child’s, sometimes they were luminous with wisdom.
As she returned to the Harvey mortgage, which she had deserted for Robert’s letter, she frowned her dissatisfaction. Here was a man who should not be in arrears, a farmer who could make money. Where others less able than he were meeting their obligations promptly, Harvey was lagging behind, letting interest grow into the dread monster of compound interest. The conviction grew in Janet’s mind, that if Robert were to have the means to bring his play before the public, Harvey would be one of the men who would have to pay up.
‘Jim,’ she called suddenly to Osborne, ‘this second coupon of the Harveys fell due several weeks ago. That makes them two years back in their interest. It totals around seven hundred dollars. Don’t you think we should have Joe and his wife secure it by a chat - tel mortgage on their growing crop?’
James Osborne was of the old school. He had been cashier under Janet’s father, and had taught her practically all she knew of the business. He seemed uncompromisingly stern, but she had found that under a gruff exterior beat one of the kindest of hearts. Both Osborne and Janet, like many country bankers, applied themselves to farmers’ problems. They knew when to be easy and when to tighten the reins.
And as the Grahams and Osborne owned two thirds of the stock, what they decided was law. Where Osborne was sometimes too conservative, a trifle old fogy, perhaps, Janet might have been too venturesome. Together they struck a balance, one that encouraged healthy dividends twice a year.
‘Yes,’ agreed Osborne, grimly, ‘we’ll have to do something all right. Joe is on one of his buying tears right now. Just look at this.’ And he handed Janet a check.
‘On us for four hundred dollars!’ she exclaimed; and seeing some penciling in the lower left-hand corner, read: ‘Part payment on Buckeye McKinley Segis.’
‘Can you beat it? He is overdrawn now.’
Janet’s lips set closely. Robert’s dreams would never become tangible realities if a few more Harveys were to nest under the shelter of the First State Bank.
‘It came through Kansas City this morning,’ observed Osborne.
‘I see it is a sight draft dated from Illinois. He is probably at some stock show. Jim, what do you think of that man ? ’
‘Well, it’s hard telling,’ replied Osborne. ‘He’s a sort of genius, he is. But his dreams are too big for his pocketbook, so he lets them lop over into other people’s. He used to do first-rate until he got this high-grade-stock craze and took the notion that he was appointed by the gods to develop the dualpurpose breed of cattle. We’ve lent him money off and on for the last fifteen years. There was a time when all he had to do was to ask for it; but somehow he seems to be going down hill lately. You know how things stand as well as I do. We’ve got to put our foot, down and put it down hard.’
‘He always seems so superior to his wife,’ mused Janet. ‘But I suppose,’ she added shrewdly, ‘that is because he gets out so much and mingles with stimulating people, while she is so tied at home. She and the two older boys about run the dairy. I notice one of the daughters helps deliver the milk.'
A vigorous rattling at the door interrupted them. As the teller opened it, Janet saw a large, stolid woman, in a straight, rusty coat that concealed any possible grace. Held tightly was a huge armful of baby, and clinging to her skirts was a bewitching-faced little butterfly of a girl.
‘How-do-you-do, Mrs. Harvey?’ said the young man, easily.
‘Just fine. Bob,’ returned the woman in a deep, pleasant voice. ‘ Is Mrs. Graham in?’
‘Come back here, Fanny,’ invited Janet, rising and going to open the door to a semi-private office. ‘Do sit down and unwrap the baby. How old is he now?’ she asked, watching Mrs. Harvey divest the infant of the heavy outer blanket.
‘Four months. But it ain’t a boy. It’s a girl.’
‘ Oh, so she is,’ returned Janet placidly. Long ago she had learned when in doubt to take it for granted that every child was a future president. ‘What a darling! And you call her— ?’
‘Pearl.’
‘Of course,’ thought Janet. ‘Pearl or Pansy. The more prosaic the mother, the more poetic the name.’
‘This here one’s Marie,’ continued Mrs. Harvey. ‘She’ll be two in May.’
‘My baby will be one in May!’ exclaimed Janet. ‘So this is what she will be like a year from now. It does n’t seem possible they can grow so rapidly.’ With tender curiosity she looked at the little girl, whose appealing violet eyes, chiseled features, and exquisite body made Janet wonder how Fanny Harvey could have produced such a lovely creature. ‘She is adorable,’ she said sincerely, and went briskly to get some paper and a pencil for Marie to play with while she and Mrs. Harvey talked.
‘Give me Pearl,’ she said, ‘while you take off your coat and Marie’s. It’s so warm in here I’m afraid you may catch cold when you go out. These spring days are very deceptive. I’m going to take off the rest of this wee lamb’s wraps.’ And she was soon cooing down mother-fashion into the little face. ‘Marie two years, and this one four months! Seven children already, and Fanny not more than three years older than I!’ she thought. ‘Well, for women like her, motherhood is as incidental as for their stock.’
‘I’ve never seen your baby,’ ventured Mrs. Harvey.
‘Here is a picture of her taken at eleven weeks,’ said Janet proudly. And with Pearl still in her arms she went to get it.
‘My, ain’t she sweet!’
‘ She is quite different now,’ answered her mother softly. ‘I know someone who is most awfully hungry,’ she laughed ; for little Pearl had begun to rummage in the folds of Janet’s smart frock. ‘It’s impossible even to try to think until one’s baby is contented. I know from experience. Come into the directors’ room; it’s more secluded.’ And as they sat down at the long table, she added, ‘When Alice was younger she used to have her dinner here every afternoon.’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Harvey with eager interest. ‘ I told Joe they must take the baby over here to you.’
It struck Janet as odd that Joe and Fanny Harvey had speculated upon where she nursed her baby. ‘Yes,’ she smiled, ‘ but now I feed her when I put her to sleep before I come in the afternoon, and then the first thing when I get home. She does splendidly. I think I shan’t wean her until the hot summer is over.'
Mrs. Harvey nodded her approval. ‘It’s best not to,’ she said with authority. Then, with a gesture dramatic in its simplicity, she opened her waist a trifle farther. A jagged, ugly scar crossed the breast against which little Pearl lay.
Janet’s eyes misted with quick tears. ‘Oh, my dear, did you have to go through that ? ’
‘The sixth,’ said Mrs. Harvey, with a significant glance at Marie. ‘And she had to go on one. But this,’ with a touch of her roughened fingers on Pearl’s hair, ‘this has two. You have no trouble?’
‘None at all,’Janet answered gratefully.
Mrs. Harvey sighed. It was a sigh that told as much as her words. ‘ I have a hard time with all my children,’ she confided. ‘Before they come, too. Seems like I can’t, hardly get through my work. Joe used to tell me how you was always here in the bank every day. I’ve heard folks wonder how you get any time to give to Alice.’ Janet noticed the easy use of her baby’s name, as if it had been often on Mrs. Harvey’s tongue. ’But I tell ’em, “Land! I wish I could give as much time to mine.” It worries me how I have to let them go; but when there’s only one pair of bands —’
‘They are beautiful children,’ said Janet warmly, drawing Marie close. ‘ I wonder if Alice will be quite as enchanting. Wonderful little souls! There is nothing like them.’
The faces of the two women filled with expression. A genuine sweetness, a certain sound experience shone from both. They talked of their children. Alice was eleven months and walking everywhere. Marie had walked at the end of ten. And her little legs were straight? But one could see! Pearl had the colic badly. Had Fanny used one of the bands that go over the shoulders under the shirt? They did n’t slip, and kept the little stomachs so warm. Johnny was just starting to school and found the two-mile walk pretty far. Joe hoped soon to be able to buy a pony for the children to drive. They had been promised one for a year, but Gladys had been put off from her music for more than that. She seemed so pale this spring. Did she have enough vegetables with iron in them, spinach and carrots and such? A warm intimacy, as real as the fundamental facts upon which it rested, drew the two together. Gentleness and motherhood possessed the room. On the soft, ample bosom little Pearl slept.
The clock sounded the half hour, and a ripple of uneasiness flowed between them. Janet became acutely conscious that time was passing. Now, with little Pearl asleep, was the time to talk. She was aware, too, from the tension in Mrs. Harvey’s silence that she, also, was gathering her forces for some difficult utterance. They must get down to business. Yet, somehow, it was harder than usual. Heretofore, she had always dealt with Joe, and thus had not been made poignantly cognisant of the Harveys’ struggle. Women had the capacity to give the most ordinary transaction emotional coloring, while men usually impersonalized most deals. They knew how to keep their feelings in one compartment and cold facts in another. Janet’s generous heart longed to give instead of to demand, but the latter had to be done, if not by her, then by Jim. There was no point in shifting responsibility: And besides, there was Robert’s letter from New York. She was quiet a moment longer, then a little abruptly, —
‘I’m awfully glad you came in this afternoon, because I was just going to write you. We must do something about this back interest. It can’t be allowed to pile up as it is doing now. In the first place, it is n’t good business on our part, nor fair to our stockholders; and then, it just makes it that much harder for you, Fanny, if you let your interest compound. You must clear some of it up. Mr. Osborne and I think we shall have to ask for a chattel on your growing wheat and corn as security.’
Mrs. Harvey’s face clouded. ‘You know, vve would’ve paid if we could. If we get any kind of a crop, we’ll turn over as much as we can spare and live. I don’t think you ought to ask for a mortgage on the only thing we’ve got we can call our own.’
‘Fanny,’ said Janet gently but with unmistakable firmness, ‘I am sure Joe is perfectly straight , but when he owes as much as he does here and then goes to Illinois and writes a check on us for four hundred dollars that reads “part payment on Buckeye McKinley Segis,” we are certainly going to see to it that we are protected, and that when you harvest your wheat this summer, some of it is coming to us and not going into more stock. If it is what you were planning to do anyway, — and I take your word for it when you say it is, — you surely can’t consistently object.’
‘ Joe knows what he is doing when he buys the best,’ said Mrs. Harvey, with spirit. ‘It is n’t for you to criticize his methods.’
‘Not his methods,’ agreed Janet evenly, ‘but the results of those methods. Why did n’t you have a better wheatcrop last year? ’
‘The Hessian flies got into it, and besides, it jointed before winter set in.’
‘ The chances are neither would have happened if you had turned your stock on to it.’
‘How do you know we did n’t?’
‘My dear,’ replied Janet, ‘it’s our business to know. It was because your fences were n’t stock proof. Is n’t that true? And was n’t that because Joe was here and there and everywhere? ’
‘He makes more buying and selling stock than raising it. He knows the best way to advertise his stuff is at the shows. And he sure hopes to breed the dual-purpose cow, a Holstein and Shorthorn in one. He’s got more brains than any other farmer around here.’
‘I know he has brains, Fanny,’ admitted Janet willingly. ‘And he understands stock. I realize, too, that your farm is worth more than enough to clear the mortgage, the interest and all expenses, and then leave a wide margin. We are not worried about the loan. But you don’t think we want ever to foreclose, do you? That’s not our way. You tell Joe to stay at home and stick either to milk or to beef. He dreams too much about this dual-purpose cow,’ Janet continued sharply. ‘He wants beef and milk from the same breed — we have n’t got it yet. We may get it, at some distant time. Many stockmen believe it. Personally, I have my doubts. A cow eats forty pounds of feed a day, let us say — if she’s a Holstein it goes to milk, if she’s a Shorthorn it goes to beef. That food can’t do both. You can’t get something for nothing. Joe means well, but why does n’t he work along established lines and leave this problem to moneyed faddists and experiment stations? He ought to think of you and these children.’
‘You’re not thinking of them much, Janet Graham,’ retorted Mrs. Harvey bitterly, ‘ or you ’d knock off that compound interest. I don’t see what cause you have to kick about our being slow, when every day we put off paying you, you ’re getting ten per cent on the back interest, besides the regular six and a half on the mortgage.’
Both women were hardening. But Janet, accustomed to dealing with all sorts of people, explained patiently: ‘You rented money from us which, invested, has brought you milk and calves. Rented to someone else, it would have brought us in rent promptly. And you can’t tell how much or how little not having that income may have cost us. Money produces just as surely as a cow produces. Frankly, I, for one, need our share of this particular rent very much.'
‘If our wheat had done better, we could’ve paid it all. Even then, if our alfalfa had n’t been winter froze and — ’
‘ Fanny,’ broke in Janet quickly, ’I’m going to talk plain English to you. It’s just people like your husband who justify compound interest. He is honest in intention, but if we were too easy, he would let his debts run and run and accumulate. There must be some penalty that makes it too expensive not to meet his obligations. You have splendid land and good stock, and you can pay every dollar you owe, if you ’ll stick to the dairy business with good grade, and some registered, animals. You know, I’m not against fine blood. On the contrary. But I think Joe has no business to go into it to the point where this present situation is the result.’
‘He’ll never be contented until he breeds the animal he’s working for. To him all the money in the world will never be worth that.’
Slow tears gat hered in Mrs. Harvey’s tired eyes and trickled down her flushed cheeks. ‘Maybe you think I haven’t talked to him, Janet. A man who knows farming like him, and me working like I do, and the three older children helping so willing. I wish to God he could get this breed. It is n’t only the money it would bring us, though you know how such stuff sells. But it would be the peace. He’s found the right kind of a bull up in Illinois. Here’s his telegram.’
As she fumbled for it, there arose before Janet the picture of Joe Harvey — a man of middle age, above medium height, dressed always with a certain careless style, shoes polished, great, capable hands, heavy dark hair, with touches of gray growing thick on a massive head, positive jaw, and eyes that, gleamed like new steel when he was making one of his ‘trades’; genial, square in all his dealings, but quick to see and take every legitimate advantage. A practical stockman who could be successful, forever pursuing a will-o’the-wisp; dreaming among cows—a dream that was an ominous crescendo of disappointment.
Simultaneously there flashed into her mind Robert with his whimsical smile, his dear eyes shadowed with visions, and his play of Machiavelli and Voltaire and Chesterton. Another idealist, but her own, whom she would stand by with every bit of intelligence and every ounce of determination, yes, just as Fanny Harvey was standing by bers.
‘Here’s his night-letter,’ said Mrs. Harvey. ‘It come this morning.'
Janet read: ‘Have found exactly animal looking for Holstein will cross with Nell Beachwood arrange loan for one thousand put it through for me girl I depend on you.'
The stillness deepened until little Pearl’s breathing and the friction of Marie’s pencil on the paper vied with the tick of the clock in distinctness. In the eyes of each of the women glowed the reflected light of her husband’s radiant dream. Harvey’s called for a thousand, Robert’s for three.
To Janet, imaginative, sensitive soul that she was, the moment seemed woven of the very tissue of tragedy. She must play her part in frustrating one man’s creative triumph, that another’s might be quickened; in condemning Joe Harvey to the common level, that Robert might advance toward brilliant achievement. It was cruel! Then the good sense that usually guided Janet through the mists of her sympathies reasserted itself. Clearly it was not for her to finance the Harveys’ castles. She and Robert had their own castles.
‘Can’t be done,’ she said decidedly, and there was finality in her voice. ‘We hold a chattel on stock now that we took because Joe almost convinced Mr. Osborne and myself that it was his one chance to win out. That was when he bought the Shorthorn, Nell Beachwood. She was all that was necessary to attain the perfect result. Now he has her and it is still the same story — it is another animal he needs.’
‘Nell Beachwood did drop some fine calves. He is getting them better and better.’
‘I’m awfully sorry, but it can’t be done,’ repeated Janet. ‘Even if he did produce what he’s after, I question if he could exploit the new breed successfully. It’s the turning-point for you, Fanny.’
‘We can give a chattel on our growing crop as security for this loan,’pleaded Mrs. Harvey desperately.
‘We expect that, as I showed you before, to protect the back seven hundred,’ Janet reminded her. ‘We can’t loan another dollar until you begin to clean up what you owe and get things in shape. I wish we did n’t have to, honestly, but we must protest Joe’s sight draft. I warned him myself the next time he drew on us in that way we could not honor his check.’
‘That’d be a raw trick!’ blazed Mrs. Harvey.
‘I’ve explained,’ said Janet patiently, torn by the bitter disappointment she was causing.
She rose quietly. Marie, caught by the note of pain and anger in her mother’s tones, crowded against her. Waking, Pearl began to fret. The two women might have been trying to converse from different stars.
Janet knew that in Mrs. Harvey’s present mood discussion was useless. She held out her arms to take the baby while the mother put on her wraps. Then, quite unconscious of their faultless teamwork, the two pairs of practised hands rolled little Pearl in the heavy blanket. As the rose-petal cheek, so like her own little Alice’s, rested on Janet’s shoulder, she touched it tenderly with her lips. The movement, the look in the eyes, no mother could misunderstand. Mrs. Harvey melted a trifle.
‘It isn’t everyone she takes to like you. Here, Marie, give Mrs. Graham her pencil.’
Marie clung to it.
‘Oh, do let her keep it.’
‘No,’ insisted Mrs. Harvey, ‘she’s got to learn to give up the things she wants. She may as well begin now.’ And as Janet opened the door for her, she added stiffly, ‘Good-bye.’
When it had closed behind them, Osborne asked, ‘Have a good talk?’
‘Yes,’ replied Janet wearily. ‘She came in about that check. Wanted to borrow a thousand.’
‘ A thousand! ’ Osborne fairly snorted.
‘Oh, I made her understand she could n’t have it,’ Janet assured him. ‘They’ll come to time. The compound interest will act as a spur. Jim, my heart aches for that woman.’ And to herself she added, ‘Fanny Harvey, whom I thought like her stock, for whom there were so few problems —’
Janet went back to her desk, where, pushing aside the mortgages, she wrote hastily to Robert, pouring forth her faith in his dreams and urging that between them they could afford the three thousand.