One day Mr. Billpen got a letter on very crisp paper… paper as white and slick as the tablecloths in the Big Express dining cars… and they said the Billpen house was on railroad land and he would have to get off… which puzzled Mr. Billpen, who had never met a lawyer in his life or understood legal writing. He asked me, but I was not bright either…
When I got home, Mama was sitting in the big sofa in her room weeping softly to herself, and I went up to her and she took me in her arms and said… “Oh, Stevie, you have a dreadful mother.”
“No, I haven't. You don't keep goats like Mike's mother.”
“Does she?”
“Phew!” I said.
“Oh, Stevie, I've done something dreadful to the Billpens.”
“Have you?”
“I had the railroad send them a notice.”
“The one to get off the land?”
“That one… I didn't mean to. I just met Mr. Marble, their lawyer, and he said the railroad was clearing off its land claims, and Papa was thinking of buying up the land for small factories… we're going to be rich soon. Papa has a wonderful idea.”
“Yes, Mama… Papa always has… but about the Billpens.”
“Oh… I said maybe Papa could use that spot and Mr. Marble… he's a Republican and has no heart, you know.”
“No?”
“No… he sent them notice… and now I'm sick about it. How many little Billpens are there?”
“Nobody really knows, Mama. Except maybe Mrs. Billpen.”
“I must do something.”
“How about Fran and Jed getting married and they could all live with us?”
Mama looked at me, and reached for her cold cream. “Sometimes I think you take after Gramp and his love of gypsies… You just haven't any brains and are too artistic at times.”
I went to see Mr. Billpen and tried to explain lawyers, dividends, stockholders, and management of big property. All he knew was that the Billpens had lived on that land for two hundred years… and it seemed unfair that the railroad lobbies should pass a law saying any wild land lying along their right-of-way should belong, after a period of time, to them. That is neither here nor there… as the Billpens didn't think their land was wild.
Mr. Billpen found a lawyer… but when he heard he would have to fight in court for years and help pay for the lawyer's new house and son in college, he just got himself some shotgun shells and built a heavy door, and said let them come, and Mrs. Billpen kept hot water always boiling on the stove…
“Quick! How does it go again— feed a cold and starve a fever?”
Nothing happened except more letters… and a great wire fence that ran for miles along the right of way, so that Mr. Billpen couldn't cross over the rails to go to the stove factory to help load cars, but had to walk five miles out of his way.
So the Billpens just looked at the fence and went on living as usual, and the letters from the railroad got a little harder to understand. Once we threw stones at the Big Express, but Mr. Billpen explained to us that trains are sacred, that they carry and hurry and take things to market, and we mustn't think that because some Johnny-in-an-office made mistakes the trains were to blame.
The Big Express used to pass at 8:02, and on a dark night it was a grand sight. First, five miles down the line, there would be a shrill whistle, then a roar of steam, then a humming that would shake the poles and the copper wires blue-green overhead, then one great yellow yolk of an eye would peep up out of the India ink darkness and the Express would roar past us like a bit of hell…
Mama made one more play to keep Fran and Jed Billpen apart. Papa was sitting up late with his new land plan. And Mama came in from a hard day at the strawberry festivals.
“Henry… we're going to hear some opera.”
“Uncle Tom's Cabin coming?” I asked.
“We're going to New York,” said Mama. “Dinner at the Waldorf… have your tail pressed, Mr. L. (Mama never learned that evening clothes were called by the full set: tails). And Stevie, get your hair cut… and don't save the fifteen cents by having the fire department use the horse clippers on you.”
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