The Making of Bobby Burnit

Moreover, why had Silas put a prohibitive valuation upon that north eight acres? Why did he want to keep it? It must be because Silas really expected that his tract would be drained free of charge, and that he would thus have the triumph of selling it for an approximate six thousand dollars an acre in the form of building lots. In the face of such a conclusion, the thought of the cement wall that he had ordered built was a great satisfaction.

It was a remarkably open winter that followed, and outdoor operations could thereby go on uninterrupted. In the office, the pompous Applerod, in his frock-coat and silk hat, ground Johnson’s soul to gall dust; for he had taken to saying “Mr. Johnson” most formally, and issuing directions with maddening politeness and consideration. An arrangement had been effected with Applerod, whereby that gentleman, for having suggested the golden opportunity, was to reap the entire benefit of the improvement on his own twenty acres, Bobby financing the whole deal and charging Applerod’s share of it against his account. Applerod stood thereby to gain about seventy-six thousand dollars over and above the price he had paid for his twenty acres; and, moreover, Bobby had decided to call the improved tract the Applerod Addition! When that name began to appear in print, coupled with flaming advertisements of Applerod’s devising, there was grave danger of the rosy-cheeked old gentleman’s losing every button from every fancy vest in his possession.

In the meantime, thoroughly in love with the vast enterprise which he had projected, Bobby spent his time outdoors, fascinated, unable to find any peace elsewhere than upon his Titanic labor. His evenings he spent in such social affairs as he could not avoid; with Agnes Elliston; with Biff Bates; in an occasional game of billiards at the Idlers’; but his days, from early morning until the evening whistle, he spent amid the clang of pick and shovel, the rattling of the trams, the creaking of the crane. It was an absorbing thing to see that enormous groove cut down through the big hill, and to watch the growth of the great mounds which grew up out of the marsh. The ditch that should drain off all this murky water was, of course, the first thing to be achieved, and, from the base of the hill through which it was to be cut, the engineer ran a tram bridge straight across the swamp to the new retaining wall; and from this, with the aid of a huge, long-armed crane which lifted cars bodily from the track, the soil was dumped on either side as it was removed from the cut. By the latter part of December the ditch had been completed and connected with the special sewer which, by permission of the city, had been built to carry the overflow to the river, and, the open weather still holding, the stagnant pool which had been a blot upon the landscape for untold ages began to flow sluggishly away, displaced by the earth from the disappearing hill.

The city papers were teeming now with the vast energy and public-spirited enterprise of young Robert Burnit and Oliver P. Applerod, and there were many indications that the enterprise was to be a most successful one. Even before they were ready to receive them, applications were daily made for reservations in the new district, and individual home-seekers began to take Sunday trips out to where the big undertaking was in progress.

“You sure have got ’em going, Bobby,” confessed the finally-convinced Biff Bates after a visit of inspection. “Here’s where you put the hornet on one Silas Tight-Wad Trimmer all right, all right. But the bones don’t roll right that the side bet don’t go for Johnson instead of Applegoat. He’s a shine, for me. I think he’s all to the canary color inside, but this man Johnson’s some man if he only had a shell to put it in. Me for him!”

The unexpressed friendship that had sprung up between the taciturn bookkeeper and the loquacious ex-pugilist was both a puzzle and a delight to Bobby, and it was one of his great joys to see them together, they not knowing why they liked such companionship, not having a single topic of conversation in common, but unconsciously enjoying that vague, sympathetic man-soul they found in each other.

CHAPTER X

AGNES AND BOBBY DISCERN DIAMOND-STUDDED SPURS FOR THE LATTER

About the first of February the filling and grading were finished and the construction of the streets began, and the middle of March saw the final disappearance of everything, except that dark, eight-acre spot of Silas Trimmer’s, which might remind one of the tract once known as the Westmarsh. In its place lay a broad, yellow checker-board, formed by intersecting streets of asphalt edged with cement pavements, and in the center, at the crossing of broad Burnit and Applerod Avenues, there arose, over a spot where once frogs had croaked and mosquitoes clustered in crowds, a pretty club-house, which was later to be donated to the suburb; and a great satisfaction fell upon the soul of Bobby Burnit like a benediction.

Also one Oliver P. Applerod added two full inches to his strut. He seldom came out to the scene of actual operations, for there was none there except workmen to see his frock-coat and silk hat; but occasionally, from a sense of duty inextricably mingled with self-assertiveness, he paid a visit of inspection, and upon one of these his eyes were confronted by a huge new board sign, visible for half a mile, that overlooked the Applerod Addition from the hills to the north. It bore but two words: “Trimmer’s Addition.” Applerod, holding his broadcloth tight about him to keep it from yellow contamination as a car rumbled by, looked and wiped his glasses and looked again, then, highly excited, he called Bobby to him.

“Why didn’t you tell me of this?” he demanded, pointing to the sign.

Bobby, happy in sweater and high boots and liberal decorations of clay, only laughed.

“The sign went up only yesterday,” he stated.

“But it is competition. Unfair competition! He is stealing our thunder,” protested Applerod.

“He has a perfect right to lay out a subdivision if he wants,” said Bobby. “But don’t worry, Applerod. I’ve been over there and the thing is a joke. The tract is one-fourth the size of ours, it is uphill and downhill, only a little grading is being done, streets are cut through but not paved, and a few cheap board sidewalks are being put down. He’s had to pay a lot more for his land than we have, and can not sell his lots any cheaper.”

“There’s no telling what Silas Trimmer will do,” said Applerod, shaking his head.

“Nonsense,” said Bobby; “there is no chance that people will pass by our lots and buy one of his.”

Applerod walked away unconvinced. Had it been any one else than Silas Trimmer who had set up this opposition he would not have minded so much, but Applerod had come to have a mighty fear of John Burnit’s ancient enemy, and presently he came back to Bobby more panic-stricken than ever.

“I’m going to sell my interest in the Applerod Addition the minute I find a buyer,” he declared, “and I’d advise you to do the same.”

“Don’t be foolish,” counseled Bobby, frowning. “You can’t lose.”

“But man!” quavered Applerod. “I have four thousand dollars of my own cash, all I’ve been able to scrape together in a lifetime, tied up in this thing, and I mustn’t lose!”

Bobby regarded his father’s old confidential clerk more in sorrow than in anger. He was not used to dealing with men of any age so utterly lacking in gameness.

“Four thousand,” he repeated, then he looked across his big checker-board. “I’ll give you ten thousand for it right now.”

“What!” objected Applerod, aghast. “Why, Burnit, the work is nearly done and I have already in sight seventy-six thousand dollars of clear profit over my investment.”

Bobby did not remind Applerod that his four thousand dollars represented only a trifling part of the investment required to yield this seventy-six thousand dollars’ profit. Yet, after all, there was no flaw in Applerod’s commercial reasoning.

“I didn’t expect you to accept it,” replied Bobby. “If you were determined to get out, however, you’ve had an offer of six thousand profit, with no risk.”

“I’d be crazy,” declared Applerod. “I can get a better price than that.”

Bobby was thoughtful for an hour after Applerod had left him; then he hurried into the club-house and telephoned to Chalmers. This was in the forenoon. In the afternoon Applerod was served with an injunction based upon an indivisibility of interest, restraining him from disposing of his share; and in his anger he let it slip out that he had already been trying to open negotiations with Trimmer!

“Honestly, it hurts!” said Bobby wearily, telling of the incident to Agnes that night. “I didn’t know there were so many unsportsmanlike people.”

“I think that is precisely what your father wanted you to find out,” she observed.

“I don’t want to know it,” protested Bobby. “I’d stay much happier to believe that everybody in the world was of the right sort.”

She shook her head.

“No, Bobby,” she said gently; “you have to know that there is the other kind, in order properly to appreciate truth and honor and loyalty.”

“I could almost believe I was in a Sunday-school class,” grinned Bobby. “No wonder it’s snowing.”

Agnes looked out of the window with a cry of delight. Those floating flakes were the very first snow of the season; but they were by no means the last. The winter, delayed, but apparently all the more violent for that very reason, burst suddenly upon the city, stopping the finishing touches on both suburban additions. Came rain and sleet and snow, and rain and sleet and snow again, then biting cold that sank deep into the ground and sealed it as if with a crust of iron. March, that had come in like a lamb, went out like a lion, and the lion raged through April and into May. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the belated winter passed away and the warm sun beat down upon the snow-clad hills and swept them clean. It penetrated into the valleys and turned them into rivulets, thousands of which poured into the river and swelled its banks brimming full. The streets of the Applerod Addition were quickly washed with their own white covering and dried, and immediately with this break-up began the great advertising campaign. The papers flamed with full-page and half-page announcements of the wonderful home-making opportunity; circulars were mailed to possible home-buyers by the hundred thousand; every street-car told of the bargain on striking cards; immense electric signs blazoned the project by night; sixteen-sheet posters were spread upon all the bill-boards, and every device known to expert advertising was requisitioned. Not one soul within the city or within a radius of fifty miles but had kept constantly before him the duty he owed to himself to purchase a lot in the marvelous Applerod Addition; and now indeed Oliver P. Applerod, reassured once more, began to reap the fruit of his life’s ambitions as prospective buyers thronged to look at his frock-coat and silk hat.

June the first was set for the date of the “grand opening,” and though it was not to be a month of roses, still the earth looked bright and gay as the time approached, and Bobby Burnit took Agnes out to view his coming triumph. This was upon a bright day toward the end of May, when those yellow squares were tempered to a golden green by the tender young grass that had been sown at the completion of the grading. She had made frequent visits with him through the winter, and now she gloried with him.

“It looks fine, Bobby,” she confessed with glowing eyes. “Fine! It really seems as if you had won your spurs.”

“Diamond-studded ones!” he exulted. “Why, Agnes, the office is besieged with requests for allotments. In spite of the fact that we have over eleven hundred lots for sale at an average price of six hundred dollars, we’re not going to have enough to go around. The receipts will be fully seven hundred thousand dollars, and our complete disbursements, by the time we have sold out, will not amount to over two hundred and twenty-five thousand. Of course, I don’t know – I haven’t asked, and you wouldn’t tell me if I did – just by what promises you are bound, but when I close up this deal you’re going to marry me! That’s flat!”

“You mustn’t be too sure of anything in this world, Bobby,” she warned him, but she turned upon him a smile that made her words but idle breath.

CHAPTER XI

BOBBY DISCOVERS AN ENEMY GREATER THAN SILAS TRIMMER

One circumstance only had occurred to give Bobby any anxiety. With the beginning of the thaw the water in Silas Trimmer’s eight acres had begun slowly to rise, and he saw with some dismay that by far the larger part of the great natural basin from which the surface water had been supplied to this swamp sloped from the northern end. Not having that expanse of one hundred and twenty acres to spread over, it might overflow, and in considerable trepidation he sought Jimmy Platt. That happy young gentleman only smiled.

“I calculated upon that,” he informed Bobby, “and built your retaining wall two feet higher than the normal spring level for that very reason. It will carry all the water than can shed down from those hills.”

Relieved, Bobby went ahead with the preparations for turning the Applerod Addition into money, and though he saw the water creeping up steadily against the other side of his wall, he displayed no anxiety until it had reached within three or four inches of the top. Then he took Platt out with him to have a look at it.

“Don’t you think you ought to get busy?” he inquired. “Hadn’t we better add another foot to this wall?”

“Not necessary,” said Jimmy, shaking his head positively. “This has been an unusual spring, but the wet weather is all over now, and you can see by the water-mark where the level has gone down a half inch since morning. All the moisture that has been trickling down here during the past week has been from the thawing out of the frozen hillsides, but those slopes are almost dust dry now.”

“Suppose it should rain again?” insisted Bobby, still worried.

“It couldn’t rain hard enough to fill up these four inches,” declared Platt with decision. “Look here, Mr. Burnit, I’d worry myself if there was any cause whatever. Do you suppose I’d want anything to happen to my biggest and best job so close to my wedding-day?”

“So you’ve set the time,” said Bobby, with eager pleasure. He had met Platt’s “best girl” and her mother out at the Addition, and liked her, as he did earnest young Platt.

“June the first,” replied Jimmy exultantly. “The date of your opening – in the evening.”

“Don’t forget to send me an invitation.”

“Will you come?” said Platt. He had wanted to ask Bobby before, but had not been quite sure that he ought.

“Come!” replied Bobby. “Indeed I shall – unless I happen to have a wedding of my own on that date.”

Bobby went away satisfied once more, and quite willing to give up the additional foot of wall. The work would entail considerable cost, and expense now was much more of an item than it had been a few months previously. Already he had spent upon this project over two hundred and ten thousand dollars; ten thousand he had given to Biff Bates; ten thousand he had used personally, so there was but an insignificant portion left of his two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Their “grand opening” would eat up another tidy little sum, for it was to be an expensive affair. The liberal advertising that had already appeared was augmented as the great day approached, a brass band had been engaged, a magnificent lunch, sufficient to feed an army, had been arranged for, and every available ‘bus and carry-all and picnic wagon in the city had been secured to transport all comers, free of charge, from the end of the car line to the new Addition. The price of vehicles was high, however, for Silas Trimmer had already engaged quite a number of them to run between the Applerod Addition and his own. During the week preceding June first, there had appeared, in the local papers, advertisements of about one-fourth the size that Bobby was using, calling attention to the opening of the Trimmer Addition, which was to be upon the same date.

On the evening of May twenty-ninth, Bobby found Silas pacing the top of the retaining wall which held in his swamp, and waited for the spider-like figure to come across and join him.

“Too bad you didn’t come in with me, or sell me your property at a reasonable figure,” said Bobby affably, willing, in spite of his recent bitter experience, to meet his competitor upon the same friendly grounds that he would a crack polo antagonist on the eve of contest. “It’s a shame that this could not all have been improved at one time.”

“I’d just as lief have my part of it the way it is,” said Silas. “It’s no good now, but it’s as good as yours,” and he climbed into his buggy and drove away laughing, leaving Bobby strangely dissatisfied and doubtful over that strange remark.

While he was still trying to unravel it, he noted that the water in Silas’ pond, which but a day or so previously had been down to fully nine inches from the top, was now climbing rapidly upward again; and there had been no rain for more than two weeks! The thing was inexplicable. He was still puzzling over this as he drove down the road and turned in at broad Burnit Avenue toward the club-house. The asphalt and the pavements were bone dry and as clean as a ball-room floor, and it seemed to him that the young grass was growing greener and higher here than anywhere.

Suddenly he ordered his chauffeur to stop the machine. He had just passed a lot where, amid the tufts of green, his eye had caught the glint of water. Running back to it he saw that the center of that lot was covered by a small pool scarcely half an inch deep, through which the grass was growing dankly. This, too, was queer, for the hot sun and strong breeze of the past few days should have dried up every vestige of moisture. He walked along the sidewalk, studying each of the lots in turn. Here and there he discovered other small pools, and every lot bore the appearance of having just been freshly and too liberally watered. He stepped from the pavement upon the earth, and to his surprise his foot sank into it to the depth of an inch or more. For a while he was deeply worried, but presently it flashed upon him that all this soil had been dumped into the marsh, displacing the water, and that in this process it had naturally become soaked through and through. Of course it would take a long time to dry out and it would be all the better for its moisture. The rate at which grass was growing was proof enough of that.

On the next day, kept busy by the preparations for the big opening, Bobby did not get out to the Applerod Addition until evening again. As he neared it he met Silas Trimmer coming back in his buck-board, that false circle around his mouth very much in evidence.

“You ought to have had your opening yesterday. I’d have been tempted to buy a lot myself then,” shouted Silas as he passed, and Bobby was sure that the tone was a mocking one.

Consumed with anxiety, he hurried on to see how Silas’ swamp stood. Aghast, he found the level of the water a full inch higher than any point that it had ever before reached. Connecting this condition vaguely with that other phenomenon that he had noted, he whirled his runabout and ran back into Burnit Avenue. In twenty-four hours a remarkable change had been wrought. There were pools everywhere. The lot where he had first noticed it was now entirely covered with water, with barely the tips of the grass showing through. Frightened, he drove over the entire Addition, up one street and down another. In many places the lots were flooded. One entire block had become no more nor less than a pond. At other points the water, carrying with it the yellow soil, was flowing over his beautiful clean sidewalks and spreading its stain upon his immaculate streets. The darkness alone drove him from that inspection, and then it occurred to him to send once more for Jimmy Platt. At the first suburban telephone station he tried for nearly an hour to locate his man, but in vain. Later he tried it from his club, but could not reach him. That night was a sleepless one, and the next morning’s daybreak found him speeding out the roadway to the Applerod Addition.

Early as he was, however, he found young Platt there ahead of him and in despair. He had good cause. The whole north end of the Applerod Addition had turned black, and over the top of Bobby’s now grimy cement wall poured a broad, dark sheet of the murky swamp-water which had stained it. The pond of Silas Trimmer had overflowed in spite of all Platt’s confident figuring that it could not, and in spite of the fact that dry weather had prevailed for two solid weeks. That was the inexplicable part. Clear weather, and still the entire suburb was becoming practically submerged! With solid, dry soil surrounding it, wherever the eye could reach it had become but a morass of mud! Mud was smeared upon every path and every roadway, and Bobby’s automobile slipped and slid in the oily, yellow liquid that lay sluggishly in every gutter and blotched every rod of his clean asphalt.

Young Platt’s face blanched as he saw Bobby.

“I’ve made a miserable botch of it,” he confessed, torn with an agony of regret at his failure; “and I can’t see yet what I overlooked. I’d no right to tackle a man’s job like this!”

“You!” replied Bobby vehemently. “It was Trimmer who did this; somehow, someway he did it, and he flaunts it in our faces. Look there!” and he pointed to a huge signboard that had been erected overnight just opposite the entrance to Burnit Avenue. In huge, bold letters, surmounted by a giant hand that pointed the way, it told prospective investors to buy property in the high and dry Trimmer Addition, the words “High and Dry” being twice as large as any other lettering upon the board.

“It is surely a lot of nerve,” admitted Platt, “but it is rank nonsense to say that the man had anything to do with this catastrophe. It would have been impossible. Let’s look this thing over. Drive past the club-house to the extreme west side.”

Once more they traversed the mud of Burnit Avenue, and upon the dry, sloping ground the young engineer, cursing his inexperience, alighted and walked along the edge of the property, seeking a solution to the mystery. Still perplexed, he ascended the rising ground and looked musingly across at the yet swollen and clay-red river. Suddenly an exclamation escaped his lips.

“There’s your enemy,” he said to Bobby who had climbed up beside him, and pointed to the river. “The river bank, I am sure, must edge upon a tilted shale formation which dips just below this basin. Probably at all times some of the water from the river seeps down between two sand-separated layers of this formation to find its outlet in the marsh, and it is this water which, through a geological freak, has supplied that swamp for ages. In the spring, however, and in extraordinary flood times, it probably finds a higher and looser stratum, and rushes down here with all the force of a hydraulic stream. This spring it took it a long time to wet thoroughly all our made ground from the bottom upward. The frost, sinking deeper in this loose, wet soil than elsewhere, held it back, too, for a time, but as soon as this was thoroughly out of the ground the river overflow came up like a geyser.

“Mr. Burnit, your Applerod Addition is ruined, and it can never be saved, unless by some extraordinary means. Nature picked out this spot, centuries and centuries ago, for a swamp, and she’s going to have one here in spite of all that we can do. In five years this basin won’t be a thing but black water and weeds, with only that club-house as a decaying monument to your enterprise.”

Bobby controlled himself with an effort. His face was drawn and white; but part of that was from the anxiety of the past two days, and he took the blow stiff and erect, as a good soldier stands up to be disciplined. His eye roved over the work in which he had taken such pride, and already he could see in fancy the dank weeds growing up, and the croaking frogs diving into the oily surface, and the clouds of mosquitoes hovering over it again. Over the top of his retaining wall still poured the foul water which was to leaven all this, and he gazed upon it with a sharp intake of the breath.