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The Stake And The Plumb-Line
by
“Your folks have disinherited you–you have almost nothing, and I will not change my mind. What do you see ahead of you?”
“Jim–only Jim–and God.”
Her eyes were shining, her hands were clasped together at her side in the tenseness of her feeling, her indomitable spirit spoke in her face.
Suddenly the old man brought his fist down on the table with a bang. “It’s a crime–oh, it’s a crime, to risk your life so! You ought to have been locked up. I’d have done it.”
“Listen to me,” she rejoined, quietly. “I know the risk. But do you think that I could have lived my life out, feeling that I might have saved Jim and didn’t try? You talk of beauty and power and ruling–you say what others have said to me. Which is the greater thing, to get what pleases one, or to work for something which is more to one than all else in the world? To save one life, one intellect, one great man–oh, he has the making of a great man in him!–to save a soul, would not life be well lost, would not love be well spent, in doing it?”
“Love’s labor lost,” said the old man, slowly, cynically, but not without emotion.
“I have ambition,” she continued. “No girl was ever more ambitious, but my ambition is to make the most and best of myself. Place?–Jim and I will hold it yet. Power?–it shall be as it must be; but Jim and I will work for it to fulfil ourselves. For me–ah, if I can save him–and I mean to do so!–do you think that I would not then have my heaven on earth? You want money–money–money, power, and to rule; and these are to you the best things in the world. I make my choice differently, though I would have these other things if I could; and I hope I shall. But Jim first–Jim first, your son, Jim–my husband, Jim!”
The old man got to his feet slowly. She had him at bay. “But you are great,” he said, “great! It is an awful stake–awful! Yet, if you win, you’ll have what money can’t buy. And listen to me. We’ll make the stake bigger. It will give it point, too, in another way. If you keep Jim sober for four years from the day of your marriage, on the last day of that four years I’ll put in your hands for you and him, or for your child–if you have one–five millions of dollars. I am a man of my word. While Jim drinks I won’t take him back; he’s disinherited. I’ll give him nothing now or hereafter. Save him for four years–if he can do that he will do all–and there’s five millions as sure as the sun’s in heaven. Amen and amen.”
He opened the door. There was a strange, soft light in her eyes as she came to go.
“Aren’t you going to kiss me?” she said, looking at him whimsically.
He was disconcerted. She did not wait, but reached up and kissed him on the cheek. “Good-bye,” she said, with a smile. “We’ll win the stake. Good-bye.”
An instant and she was gone. He shut the door, then turned and looked in a mirror on the wall. Abstractedly he touched the cheek she had kissed. Suddenly a change passed over his face. He dropped in a chair, and his fist struck the table as he said: “By God, she may do it, she may do it! But it’s life and death–it’s life and death.”
Society had its sensation, and then the veil dropped. For a long time none looked behind it except Jim’s father. He had too much at stake not to have his telescope upon them. A detective followed them to keep Jim’s record. But this they did not know.
II
From the day they left Washington Jim put his life and his fate in his wife’s hands. He meant to follow her judgment, and, self-willed and strong in intellect as he was, he said that she should have a fair chance of fulfilling her purpose. There had been many pour parlers as to what Jim should do. There was farming. She set that aside, because it meant capital, and it also meant monotony and loneliness; and capital was limited, and monotony and loneliness were bad for Jim, deadening an active brain which must not be deprived of stimulants–stimulants of a different sort, however, from those which had heretofore mastered it. There was the law. But Jim would have to become a citizen of Canada, change his flag, and where they meant to go–to the outskirts–there would be few opportunities for the law; and with not enough to do there would be danger. Railway construction? That seemed good in many ways, but Jim had not the professional knowledge necessary; his railway experience with his father had only been financial. Above all else he must have responsibility, discipline, and strict order in his life.