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Roads of Destiny

by O. Henry · English · Gutenberg #1646 · 565,116 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Roads of Destiny

Author: O. Henry


        
Release date: February 1, 1999 [eBook #1646]
                Most recently updated: December 31, 2020

Language: English

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ROADS OF DESTINY

by

O. HENRY

Author of "The Voice of the City," "The Trimmed Lamp,"
"Strictly Business," "Whirligigs," "Sixes and Sevens," Etc.

1919







[Illustration: "The old medical outrage . . . had a nigger along."
(Frontispiece)]




CONTENTS

       I. Roads of Destiny
      II. The Guardian of the Accolade
     III. The Discounters of Money
      IV. The Enchanted Profile
       V. "Next to Reading Matter"
      VI. Art and the Bronco
     VII. Phoebe
    VIII. A Double-dyed Deceiver
      IX. The Passing of Black Eagle
       X. A Retrieved Reformation
      XI. Cherchez la Femme
     XII. Friends in San Rosario
    XIII. The Fourth in Salvador
     XIV. The Emancipation of Billy
      XV. The Enchanted Kiss
     XVI. A Departmental Case
    XVII. The Renaissance at Charleroi
   XVIII. On Behalf of the Management
     XIX. Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking
      XX. The Halberdier of the Little Rheinschloss
     XXI. Two Renegades
    XXII. The Lonesome Road





I

ROADS OF DESTINY


   I go to seek on many roads
      What is to be.
   True heart and strong, with love to light--
   Will they not bear me in the fight
   To order, shun or wield or mould
      My Destiny?

         Unpublished Poems of David Mignot.


The song was over. The words were David's; the air, one of the
countryside. The company about the inn table applauded heartily,
for the young poet paid for the wine. Only the notary, M. Papineau,
shook his head a little at the lines, for he was a man of books, and
he had not drunk with the rest.

David went out into the village street, where the night air drove
the wine vapour from his head. And then he remembered that he and
Yvonne had quarrelled that day, and that he had resolved to leave
his home that night to seek fame and honour in the great world
outside.

"When my poems are on every man's tongue," he told himself, in a
fine exhilaration, "she will, perhaps, think of the hard words she
spoke this day."

Except the roisterers in the tavern, the village folk were abed.
David crept softly into his room in the shed of his father's cottage
and made a bundle of his small store of clothing. With this upon a
staff, he set his face outward upon the road that ran from Vernoy.

He passed his father's herd of sheep, huddled in their nightly
pen--the sheep he herded daily, leaving them to scatter while he
wrote verses on scraps of paper. He saw a light yet shining in
Yvonne's window, and a weakness shook his purpose of a sudden.
Perhaps that light meant that she rued, sleepless, her anger, and
that morning might--But, no! His decision was made. Vernoy was no
place for him. Not one soul there could share his thoughts. Out
along that road lay his fate and his future.

Three leagues across the dim, moonlit champaign ran the road,
straight as a ploughman's furrow. It was believed in the village
that the road ran to Paris, at least; and this name the poet
whispered often to himself as he walked. Never so far from Vernoy
had David travelled before.



THE LEFT BRANCH

   _Three leagues, then, the road ran, and turned into a puzzle.
   It joined with another and a larger road at right angles. David
   stood, uncertain, for a while, and then took the road to the
   left._

Upon this more important highway were, imprinted in the dust, wheel
tracks left by the recent passage of some vehicle. Some half an
hour later these traces were verified by the sight of a ponderous
carriage mired in a little brook at the bottom of a steep hill.
The driver and postilions were shouting and tugging at the horses'
bridles. On the road at one side stood a huge, black-clothed man and
a slender lady wrapped in a long, light cloak.

David saw the lack of skill in the efforts of the servants. He
quietly assumed control of the work. He directed the outriders to
cease their clamour at the horses and to exercise their strength
upon the wheels. The driver alone urged the animals with his
familiar voice; David himself heaved a powerful shoulder at the
rear of the carriage, and with one harmonious tug the great vehicle
rolled up on solid ground. The outriders climbed to their places.

David stood for a moment upon one foot. The huge gentleman waved a
hand. "You will enter the carriage," he said, in a voice large, like
himself, but smoothed by art and habit. Obedience belonged in the
path of such a voice. Brief as was the young poet's hesitation, it
was cut shorter still by a renewal of the command. David's foot went
to the step. In the darkness he perceived dimly the form of the lady
upon the rear seat. He was about to seat himself opposite, when the
voice again swayed him to its will. "You will sit at the lady's
side."

The gentleman swung his great weight to the forward seat. The
carriage proceeded up the hill. The lady was shrunk, silent, into
her corner. David could not estimate whether she was old or young,
but a delicate, mild perfume from her clothes stirred his poet's
fancy to the belief that there was loveliness beneath the mystery.
Here was an adventure such as he had often imagined. But as yet he
held no key to it, for no word was spoken while he sat with his
impenetrable companions.

In an hour's time David perceived through the window that the
vehicle traversed the street of some town. Then it stopped in front
of a closed and darkened house, and a postilion alighted to hammer
impatiently upon the door. A latticed window above flew wide and a
nightcapped head popped out.

"Who are ye that disturb honest folk at this time of night? My house
is closed. 'Tis too late for profitable travellers to be abroad.
Cease knocking at my door, and be off."

"Open!" spluttered the postilion, loudly; "open for Monsiegneur the
Marquis de Beaupertuys."

"Ah!" cried the voice above. "Ten thousand pardons, my lord. I did
not know--the hour is so late--at once shall the door be opened, and
the house placed at my lord's disposal."

Inside was heard the clink of chain and bar, and the door was flung
open. Shivering with chill and apprehension, the landlord of the
Silver Flagon stood, half clad, candle in hand, upon the threshold.

David followed the Marquis out of the carriage. "Assist the lady,"
he was ordered. The poet obeyed. He felt her small hand tremble as
he guided her descent. "Into the house," was the next command.

The room was the long dining-hall of the tavern. A great oak table
ran down its length. The huge gentleman seated himself in a chair at
the nearer end. The lady sank into another against the wall, with an
air of great weariness. David stood, considering how best he might
now take his leave and continue upon his way.

"My lord," said the landlord, bowing to the floor, "h-had I
ex-expected this honour, entertainment would have been ready.
T-t-there is wine and cold fowl and m-m-maybe--"

"Candles," said the marquis, spreading the fingers of one plump
white hand in a gesture he had.

"Y-yes, my lord." He fetched half a dozen candles, lighted them, and
set them upon the table.

"If monsieur would, perhaps, deign to taste a certain
Burgundy--there is a cask--"

"Candles," said monsieur, spreading his fingers.

"Assuredly--quickly--I fly, my lord."

A dozen more lighted candles shone in the hall. The great bulk of
the marquis overflowed his chair. He was dressed in fine black from
head to foot save for the snowy ruffles at his wrist and throat.
Even the hilt and scabbard of his sword were black. His expression
was one of sneering pride. The ends of an upturned moustache reached
nearly to his mocking eyes.

The lady sat motionless, and now David perceived that she was young,
and possessed of pathetic and appealing beauty. He was startled from
the contemplation of her forlorn loveliness by the booming voice of
the marquis.

"What is your name and pursuit?"

"David Mignot. I am a poet."

The moustache of the marquis curled nearer to his eyes.

"How do you live?"

"I am also a shepherd; I guarded my father's flock," David answered,
with his head high, but a flush upon his cheek.

"Then listen, master shepherd and poet, to the fortune you have
blundered upon to-night. This lady is my niece, Mademoiselle Lucie
de Varennes. She is of noble descent and is possessed of ten
thousand francs a year in her own right. As to her charms, you
have but to observe for yourself. If the inventory pleases your
shepherd's heart, she becomes your wife at a word. Do not interrupt
me. To-night I conveyed her to the _château_ of the Comte de
Villemaur, to whom her hand had been promised. Guests were present;
the priest was waiting; her marriage to one eligible in rank and
fortune was ready to be accomplished. At the alter this demoiselle,
so meek and dutiful, turned upon me like a leopardess, charged
me with cruelty and crimes, and broke, before the gaping priest,
the troth I had plighted for her. I swore there and then, by ten
thousand devils, that she should marry the first man we met after
leaving the _château_, be he prince, charcoal-burner, or thief. You,
shepherd, are the first. Mademoiselle must be wed this night. If
not you, then another. You have ten minutes in which to make your
decision. Do not vex me with words or questions. Ten minutes,
shepherd; and they are speeding."

The marquis drummed loudly with his white fingers upon the table.
He sank into a veiled attitude of waiting. It was as if some great
house had shut its doors and windows against approach. David would
have spoken, but the huge man's bearing stopped his tongue. Instead,
he stood by the lady's chair and bowed.

"Mademoiselle," he said, and he marvelled to find his words flowing
easily before so much elegance and beauty. "You have heard me say
I was a shepherd. I have also had the fancy, at times, that I
am a poet. If it be the test of a poet to adore and cherish the
beautiful, that fancy is now strengthened. Can I serve you in any
way, mademoiselle?"

The young woman looked up at him with eyes dry and mournful. His
frank, glowing face, made serious by the gravity of the adventure,
his strong, straight figure and the liquid sympathy in his blue
eyes, perhaps, also, her imminent need of long-denied help and
kindness, thawed her to sudden tears.

"Monsieur," she said, in low tones, "you look to be true and kind.
He is my uncle, the brother of my father, and my only relative. He
loved my mother, and he hates me because I am like her. He has made
my life one long terror. I am afraid of his very looks, and never
before dared to disobey him. But to-night he would have married me
to a man three times my age. You will forgive me for bringing this
vexation upon you, monsieur. You will, of course, decline this
mad act he tries to force upon you. But let me thank you for your
generous words, at least. I have had none spoken to me in so long."

There was now something more than generosity in the poet's eyes.
Poet he must have been, for Yvonne was forgotten; this fine, new
loveliness held him with its freshness and grace. The subtle perfume
from her filled him with strange emotions. His tender look fell
warmly upon her. She leaned to it, thirstily.

"Ten minutes," said David, "is given me in which to do what I would
devote years to achieve. I will not say I pity you, mademoiselle; it
would not be true--I love you. I cannot ask love from you yet, but
let me rescue you from this cruel man, and, in time, love may come.
I think I have a future; I will not always be a shepherd. For the
present I will cherish you with all my heart and make your life less
sad. Will you trust your fate to me, mademoiselle?"

"Ah, you would sacrifice yourself from pity!"

"From love. The time is almost up, mademoiselle."

"You will regret it, and despise me."

"I will live only to make you happy, and myself worthy of you."

Her fine small hand crept into his from beneath her cloak.

"I will trust you," she breathed, "with my life. And--and love--may
not be so far off as you think. Tell him. Once away from the power
of his eyes I may forget."

David went and stood before the marquis. The black figure stirred,
and the mocking eyes glanced at the great hall clock.

"Two minutes to spare. A shepherd requires eight minutes to decide
whether he will accept a bride of beauty and income! Speak up,
shepherd, do you consent to become mademoiselle's husband?"

"Mademoiselle," said David, standing proudly, "has done me the
honour to yield to my request that she become my wife."

"Well said!" said the marquis. "You have yet the making of a
courtier in you, master shepherd. Mademoiselle could have drawn a
worse prize, after all. And now to be done with the affair as quick
as the Church and the devil will allow!"

He struck the table soundly with his sword hilt. The landlord came,
knee-shaking, bringing more candles in the hope of anticipating the
great lord's whims. "Fetch a priest," said the marquis, "a priest;
do you understand? In ten minutes have a priest here, or--"

The landlord dropped his candles and flew.

The priest came, heavy-eyed and ruffled. He made David Mignot and
Lucie de Verennes man and wife, pocketed a gold piece that the
marquis tossed him, and shuffled out again into the night.

"Wine," ordered the marquis, spreading his ominous fingers at the
host.

"Fill glasses," he said, when it was brought. He stood up at the
head of the table in the candlelight, a black mountain of venom and
conceit, with something like the memory of an old love turned to
poison in his eyes, as it fell upon his niece.

"Monsieur Mignot," he said, raising his wineglass, "drink after
I say this to you: You have taken to be your wife one who will
make your life a foul and wretched thing. The blood in her is an
inheritance running black lies and red ruin. She will bring you
shame and anxiety. The devil that descended to her is there in her
eyes and skin and mouth that stoop even to beguile a peasant. There
is your promise, monsieur poet, for a happy life. Drink your wine.
At last, mademoiselle, I am rid of you."

The marquis drank. A little grievous cry, as if from a sudden wound,
came from the girl's lips. David, with his glass in his hand,
stepped forward three paces and faced the marquis. There was little
of a shepherd in his bearing.

"Just now," he said, calmly, "you did me the honor to call me
'monsieur.' May I hope, therefore that my marriage to mademoiselle
has placed me somewhat nearer to you in--let us say, reflected
rank--has given me the right to stand more as an equal to
monseigneur in a certain little piece of business I have in my
mind?"

"You may hope, shepherd," sneered the marquis.

"Then," said David, dashing his glass of wine into the contemptuous
eyes that mocked him, "perhaps you will condescend to fight me."

The fury of the great lord outbroke in one sudden curse like a blast
from a horn. He tore his sword from its black sheath; he called to
the hovering landlord: "A sword there, for this lout!" He turned to
the lady, with a laugh that chilled her heart, and said: "You put
much labour upon me, madame. It seems I must find you a husband and
make you a widow in the same night."

"I know not sword-play," said David. He flushed to make the
confession before his lady.

"'I know not sword-play,'" mimicked the marquis. "Shall we fight
like peasants with oaken cudgels? _Hola!_ François, my pistols!"

A postilion brought two shining great pistols ornamented with carven
silver, from the carriage holsters. The marquis tossed one upon the
table near David's hand. "To the other end of the table," he cried;
"even a shepherd may pull a trigger. Few of them attain the honour
to die by the weapon of a De Beaupertuys."

The shepherd and the marquis faced each other from the ends of the
long table. The landlord, in an ague of terror, clutched the air
and stammered: "M-M-Monseigneur, for the love of Christ! not in my
house!--do not spill blood--it will ruin my custom--" The look of
the marquis, threatening him, paralyzed his tongue.

"Coward," cried the lord of Beaupertuys, "cease chattering your
teeth long enough to give the word for us, if you can."

Mine host's knees smote the floor. He was without a vocabulary. Even
sounds were beyond him. Still, by gestures he seemed to beseech
peace in the name of his house and custom.

"I will give the word," said the lady, in a clear voice. She went up
to David and kissed him sweetly. Her eyes were sparkling bright, and
colour had come to her cheek. She stood against the wall, and the
two men levelled their pistols for her count.

"_Un--deux--trois!_"

The two reports came so nearly together that the candles flickered
but once. The marquis stood, smiling, the fingers of his left hand
resting, outspread, upon the end of the table. David remained erect,
and turned his head very slowly, searching for his wife with his
eyes. Then, as a garment falls from where it is hung, he sank,
crumpled, upon the floor.

With a little cry of terror and despair, the widowed maid ran and
stooped above him. She found his wound, and then looked up with her
old look of pale melancholy. "Through his heart," she whispered.
"Oh, his heart!"

"Come," boomed the great voice of the marquis, "out with you to the
carriage! Daybreak shall not find you on my hands. Wed you shall be
again, and to a living husband, this night. The next we come upon,
my lady, highwayman or peasant. If the road yields no other, then
the churl that opens my gates. Out with you into the carriage!"

The marquis, implacable and huge, the lady wrapped again in the
mystery of her cloak, the postilion bearing the weapons--all moved
out to the waiting carriage. The sound of its ponderous wheels
rolling away echoed through the slumbering village. In the hall of
the Silver Flagon the distracted landlord wrung his hands above the
slain poet's body, while the flames of the four and twenty candles
danced and flickered on the table.



THE RIGHT BRANCH

   _Three leagues, then, the road ran, and turned into a puzzle.
   It joined with another and a larger road at right angles. David
   stood, uncertain, for a while, and then took the road to the
   right._

Whither it led he knew not, but he was resolved to leave Vernoy far
behind that night. He travelled a league and then passed a large
_château_ which showed testimony of recent entertainment. Lights
shone from every window; from the great stone gateway ran a tracery
of wheel tracks drawn in the dust by the vehicles of the guests.

Three leagues farther and David was weary. He rested and slept for a
while on a bed of pine boughs at the roadside. Then up and on again
along the unknown way.

Thus for five days he travelled the great road, sleeping upon
Nature's balsamic beds or in peasants' ricks, eating of their black,
hospitable bread, drinking from streams or the willing cup of the
goatherd.

At length he crossed a great bridge and set his foot within the
smiling city that has crushed or crowned more poets than all the
rest of the world. His breath came quickly as Paris sang to him in a
little undertone her vital chant of greeting--the hum of voice and
foot and wheel.

High up under the eaves of an old house in the Rue Conti, David paid
for lodging, and set himself, in a wooden chair, to his poems. The
street, once sheltering citizens of import and consequence, was now
given over to those who ever follow in the wake of decline.

The houses were tall and still possessed of a ruined dignity, but
many of them were empty save for dust and the spider. By night there
was the clash of steel and the cries of brawlers straying restlessly
from inn to inn. Where once gentility abode was now but a rancid and
rude incontinence. But here David found housing commensurate to his
scant purse. Daylight and candlelight found him at pen and paper.

One afternoon he was returning from a foraging trip to the lower
world, with bread and curds and a bottle of thin wine. Halfway up
his dark stairway he met--or rather came upon, for she rested on the
stair--a young woman of a beauty that should balk even the justice
of a poet's imagination. A loose, dark cloak, flung open, showed a
rich gown beneath. Her eyes changed swiftly with every little shade
of thought. Within one moment they would be round and artless like
a child's, and long and cozening like a gypsy's. One hand raised
her gown, undraping a little shoe, high-heeled, with its ribbons
dangling, untied. So heavenly she was, so unfitted to stoop, so
qualified to charm and command! Perhaps she had seen David coming,
and had waited for his help there.

Ah, would monsieur pardon that she occupied the stairway, but the
shoe!--the naughty shoe! Alas! it would not remain tied. Ah! if
monsieur _would_ be so gracious!

The poet's fingers trembled as he tied the contrary ribbons. Then he
would have fled from the danger of her presence, but the eyes grew
long and cozening, like a gypsy's, and held him. He leaned against
the balustrade, clutching his bottle of sour wine.

"You have been so good," she said, smiling. "Does monsieur, perhaps,
live in the house?"

"Yes, madame. I--I think so, madame."

"Perhaps in the third story, then?"

"No, madame; higher up."

The lady fluttered her fingers with the least possible gesture of
impatience.

"Pardon. Certainly I am not discreet in asking. Monsieur will
forgive me? It is surely not becoming that I should inquire where he
lodges."

"Madame, do not say so. I live in the--"

"No, no, no; do not tell me. Now I see that I erred. But I cannot
lose the interest I feel in this house and all that is in it. Once
it was my home. Often I come here but to dream of those happy days
again. Will you let that be my excuse?"

"Let me tell you, then, for you need no excuse," stammered the poet.
"I live in the top floor--the small room where the stairs turn."

"In the front room?" asked the lady, turning her head sidewise.

"The rear, madame."

The lady sighed, as if with relief.

"I will detain you no longer then, monsieur," she said, employing
the round and artless eye. "Take good care of my house. Alas! only
the memories of it are mine now. Adieu, and accept my thanks for
your courtesy."

She was gone, leaving but a smile and a trace of sweet perfume.
David climbed the stairs as one in slumber. But he awoke from it,
and the smile and the perfume lingered with him and never afterward
did either seem quite to leave him. This lady of whom he knew
nothing drove him to lyrics of eyes, chansons of swiftly conceived
love, odes to curling hair, and sonnets to slippers on slender feet.

Poet he must have been, for Yvonne was forgotten; this fine, new
loveliness held him with its freshness and grace. The subtle perfume
about her filled him with strange emotions.



On a certain night three persons were gathered about a table in a
room on the third floor of the same house. Three chairs and the
table and a lighted candle upon it was all the furniture. One of the
persons was a huge man, dressed in black. His expression was one of
sneering pride. The ends of his upturned moustache reached nearly to
his mocking eyes. Another was a lady, young and beautiful, with eyes
that could be round and artless, as a child's, or long and cozening,
like a gypsy's, but were now keen and ambitious, like any other
conspirator's. The third was a man of action, a combatant, a bold
and impatient executive, breathing fire and steel. He was addressed
by the others as Captain Desrolles.

This man struck the table with his fist, and said, with controlled
violence:

"To-night. To-night as he goes to midnight mass. I am tired of the
plotting that gets nowhere. I am sick of signals and ciphers and
secret meetings and such _baragouin_. Let us be honest traitors. If
France is to be rid of him, let us kill in the open, and not hunt
with snares and traps. To-night, I say. I back my words. My hand
will do the deed. To-night, as he goes to mass."

The lady turned upon him a cordial look. Woman, however wedded to
plots, must ever thus bow to rash courage. The big man stroked his
upturned moustache.

"Dear captain," he said, in a great voice, softened by habit, "this
time I agree with you. Nothing is to be gained by waiting. Enough of
the palace guards belong to us to make the endeavour a safe one."

"To-night," repeated Captain Desrolles, again striking the table.
"You have heard me, marquis; my hand will do the deed."

"But now," said the huge man, softly, "comes a question. Word must
be sent to our partisans in the palace, and a signal agreed upon.
Our stanchest men must accompany the royal carriage. At this hour
what messenger can penetrate so far as the south doorway? Ribouet is
stationed there; once a message is placed in his hands, all will go
well."

"I will send the message," said the lady.

"You, countess?" said the marquis, raising his eyebrows. "Your
devotion is great, we know, but--"

"Listen!" exclaimed the lady, rising and resting her hands upon the
table; "in a garret of this house lives a youth from the provinces
as guileless and tender as the lambs he tended there. I have met him
twice or thrice upon the stairs. I questioned him, fearing that he
might dwell too near the room in which we are accustomed to meet. He
is mine, if I will. He writes poems in his garret, and I think he
dreams of me. He will do what I say. He shall take the message to
the palace."

The marquis rose from his chair and bowed. "You did not permit me to
finish my sentence, countess," he said. "I would have said: 'Your
devotion is great, but your wit and charm are infinitely greater.'"

While the conspirators were thus engaged, David was polishing some
lines addressed to his _amorette d'escalier_. He heard a timorous
knock at his door, and opened it, with a great throb, to behold her
there, panting as one in straits, with eyes wide open and artless,
like a child's.

"Monsieur," she breathed, "I come to you in distress. I believe you
to be good and true, and I know of no other help. How I flew through
the streets among the swaggering men! Monsieur, my mother is dying.
My uncle is a captain of guards in the palace of the king. Some one
must fly to bring him. May I hope--"

"Mademoiselle," interrupted David, his eyes shining with the desire
to do her service, "your hopes shall be my wings. Tell me how I may
reach him."

The lady thrust a sealed paper into his hand.

"Go to the south gate--the south gate, mind--and say to the guards
there, 'The falcon has left his nest.' They will pass you, and you
will go to the south entrance to the palace. Repeat the words, and
give this letter to the man who will reply 'Let him strike when he
will.' This is the password, monsieur, entrusted to me by my uncle,
for now when the country is disturbed and men plot against the
king's life, no one without it can gain entrance to the palace
grounds after nightfall. If you will, monsieur, take him this letter
so that my mother may see him before she closes her eyes."

"Give it me," said David, eagerly. "But shall I let you return home
through the streets alone so late? I--"

"No, no--fly. Each moment is like a precious jewel. Some time," said
the lady, with eyes long and cozening, like a gypsy's, "I will try
to thank you for your goodness."

The poet thrust the letter into his breast, and bounded down the
stairway. The lady, when he was gone, returned to the room below.

The eloquent eyebrows of the marquis interrogated her.

"He is gone," she said, "as fleet and stupid as one of his own
sheep, to deliver it."

The table shook again from the batter of Captain Desrolles's fist.

"Sacred name!" he cried; "I have left my pistols behind! I can trust
no others."

"Take this," said the marquis, drawing from beneath his cloak a
shining, great weapon, ornamented with carven silver. "There are
none truer. But guard it closely, for it bears my arms and crest,
and already I am suspected. Me, I must put many leagues between
myself and Paris this night. To-morrow must find me in my _château_.
After you, dear countess."

The marquis puffed out the candle. The lady, well cloaked, and the
two gentlemen softly descended the stairway and flowed into the
crowd that roamed along the narrow pavements of the Rue Conti.

David sped. At the south gate of the king's residence a halberd was
laid to his breast, but he turned its point with the words; "The
falcon has left his nest."

"Pass, brother," said the guard, "and go quickly."

On the south steps of the palace they moved to seize him, but again
the _mot de passe_ charmed the watchers. One among them stepped
forward and began: "Let him strike--" but a flurry among the guards
told of a surprise. A man of keen look and soldierly stride suddenly
pressed through them and seized the letter which David held in his
hand. "Come with me," he said, and led him inside the great hall.
Then he tore open the letter and read it. He beckoned to a man
uniformed as an officer of musketeers, who was passing. "Captain
Tetreau, you will have the guards at the south entrance and the
south gate arrested and confined. Place men known to be loyal in
their places." To David he said: "Come with me."

He conducted him through a corridor and an anteroom into a spacious
chamber, where a melancholy man, sombrely dressed, sat brooding in a
great, leather-covered chair. To that man he said:

"Sire, I have told you that the palace is as full of traitors and
spies as a sewer is of rats. You have thought, sire, that it was my
fancy. This man penetrated to your very door by their connivance. He
bore a letter which I have intercepted. I have brought him here that
your majesty may no longer think my zeal excessive."

"I will question him," said the king, stirring in his chair. He
looked at David with heavy eyes dulled by an opaque film. The poet
bent his knee.

"From where do you come?" asked the king.

"From the village of Vernoy, in the province of Eure-et-Loir, sire."

"What do you follow in Paris?"

"I--I would be a poet, sire."

"What did you in Vernoy?"

"I minded my father's flock of sheep."

The king stirred again, and the film lifted from his eyes.

"Ah! in the fields!"

"Yes, sire."

"You lived in the fields; you went out in the cool of the morning
and lay among the hedges in the grass. The flock distributed itself
upon the hillside; you drank of the living stream; you ate your
sweet, brown bread in the shade, and you listened, doubtless, to
blackbirds piping in the grove. Is not that so, shepherd?"

"It is, sire," answered David, with a sigh; "and to the bees at the
flowers, and, maybe, to the grape gatherers singing on the hill."

"Yes, yes," said the king, impatiently; "maybe to them; but surely
to the blackbirds. They whistled often, in the grove, did they not?"

"Nowhere, sire, so sweetly as in Eure-et-Loir. I have endeavored to
express their song in some verses that I have written."

"Can you repeat those verses?" asked the king, eagerly. "A long time
ago I listened to the blackbirds. It would be something better than
a kingdom if one could rightly construe their song. And at night you
drove the sheep to the fold and then sat, in peace and tranquillity,
to your pleasant bread. Can you repeat those verses, shepherd?"

"They run this way, sire," said David, with respectful ardour:


   "'Lazy shepherd, see your lambkins
        Skip, ecstatic, on the mead;
     See the firs dance in the breezes,
        Hear Pan blowing at his reed.

    "Hear us calling from the tree-tops,
        See us swoop upon your flock;
     Yield us wool to make our nests warm
        In the branches of the--'"


"If it please your majesty," interrupted a harsh voice, "I will ask
a question or two of this rhymester. There is little time to spare.
I crave pardon, sire, if my anxiety for your safety offends."

"The loyalty," said the king, "of the Duke d'Aumale is too well
proven to give offence." He sank into his chair, and the film came
again over his eyes.

"First," said the duke, "I will read you the letter he brought:


   "'To-night is the anniversary of the dauphin's death. If he
   goes, as is his custom, to midnight mass to pray for the soul
   of his son, the falcon will strike, at the corner of the Rue
   Esplanade. If this be his intention, set a red light in the
   upper room at the southwest corner of the palace, that the
   falcon may take heed.'


"Peasant," said the duke, sternly, "you have heard these words. Who
gave you this message to bring?"

"My lord duke," said David, sincerely, "I will tell you. A lady gave
it me. She said her mother was ill, and that this writing would
fetch her uncle to her bedside. I do not know the meaning of the
letter, but I will swear that she is beautiful and good."

"Describe the woman," commanded the duke, "and how you came to be
her dupe."

"Describe her!" said David with a tender smile. "You would command
words to perform miracles. Well, she is made of sunshine and deep
shade. She is slender, like the alders, and moves with their grace.
Her eyes change while you gaze into them; now round, and then half
shut as the sun peeps between two clouds. When she comes, heaven
is all about her; when she leaves, there is chaos and a scent of
hawthorn blossoms. She came to see me in the Rue Conti, number
twenty-nine."

"It is the house," said the duke, turning to the king, "that we have
been watching. Thanks to the poet's tongue, we have a picture of the
infamous Countess Quebedaux."

"Sire and my lord duke," said David, earnestly, "I hope my poor
words have done no injustice. I have looked into that lady's eyes.
I will stake my life that she is an angel, letter or no letter."

The duke looked at him steadily. "I will put you to the proof," he
said, slowly. "Dressed as the king, you shall, yourself, attend mass
in his carriage at midnight. Do you accept the test?"

David smiled. "I have looked into her eyes," he said. "I had my
proof there. Take yours how you will."

Half an hour before twelve the Duke d'Aumale, with his own hands,
set a red lamp in a southwest window of the palace. At ten minutes
to the hour, David, leaning on his arm, dressed as the king, from
top to toe, with his head bowed in his cloak, walked slowly from
the royal apartments to the waiting carriage. The duke assisted him
inside and closed the door. The carriage whirled away along its
route to the cathedral.

On the _qui vive_ in a house at the corner of the Rue Esplanade was
Captain Tetreau with twenty men, ready to pounce upon the
conspirators when they should appear.

But it seemed that, for some reason, the plotters had slightly
altered their plans. When the royal carriage had reached the Rue
Christopher, one square nearer than the Rue Esplanade, forth from
it burst Captain Desrolles, with his band of would-be regicides,
and assailed the equipage. The guards upon the carriage, though
surprised at the premature attack, descended and fought valiantly.
The noise of conflict attracted the force of Captain Tetreau,
and they came pelting down the street to the rescue. But, in the
meantime, the desperate Desrolles had torn open the door of the
king's carriage, thrust his weapon against the body of the dark
figure inside, and fired.

Now, with loyal reinforcements at hand, the street rang with cries
and the rasp of steel, but the frightened horses had dashed away.
Upon the cushions lay the dead body of the poor mock king and poet,
slain by a ball from the pistol of Monseigneur, the Marquis de
Beaupertuys.



THE MAIN ROAD

   _Three leagues, then, the road ran, and turned into a puzzle.
   It joined with another and a larger road at right angles. David
   stood, uncertain, for a while, and then sat himself to rest upon
   its side._

Whither these roads led he knew not. Either way there seemed to lie
a great world full of chance and peril. And then, sitting there, his
eye fell upon a bright star, one that he and Yvonne had named for
theirs. That set him thinking of Yvonne, and he wondered if he had
not been too hasty. Why should he leave her and his home because a
few hot words had come between them? Was love so brittle a thing
that jealousy, the very proof of it, could break it? Mornings always
brought a cure for the little heartaches of evening. There was yet
time for him to return home without any one in the sweetly sleeping
village of Vernoy being the wiser. His heart was Yvonne's; there
where he had lived always he could write his poems and find his
happiness.

David rose, and shook off his unrest and the wild mood that had
tempted him. He set his face steadfastly back along the road he had
come. By the time he had retravelled the road to Vernoy, his desire
to rove was gone. He passed the sheepfold, and the sheep scurried,
with a drumming flutter, at his late footsteps, warming his heart by
the homely sound. He crept without noise into his little room and
lay there, thankful that his feet had escaped the distress of new
roads that night.

How well he knew woman's heart! The next evening Yvonne was at the
well in the road where the young congregated in order that the
_curé_ might have business. The corner of her eye was engaged in a
search for David, albeit her set mouth seemed unrelenting. He saw
the look; braved the mouth, drew from it a recantation and, later,
a kiss as they walked homeward together.

Three months afterwards they were married. David's father was shrewd
and prosperous. He gave them a wedding that was heard of three
leagues away. Both the young people were favourites in the village.
There was a procession in the streets, a dance on the green; they
had the marionettes and a tumbler out from Dreux to delight the
guests.

Then a year, and David's father died. The sheep and the cottage
descended to him. He already had the seemliest wife in the village.
Yvonne's milk pails and her brass kettles were bright--_ouf!_ they
blinded you in the sun when you passed that way. But you must keep
your eyes upon her yard, for her flower beds were so neat and gay
they restored to you your sight. And you might hear her sing, aye,
as far as the double chestnut tree above Père Gruneau's blacksmith
forge.

But a day came when David drew out paper from a long-shut drawer,
and began to bite the end of a pencil. Spring had come again and
touched his heart. Poet he must have been, for now Yvonne was
well-nigh forgotten. This fine new loveliness of earth held him
with its witchery and grace. The perfume from her woods and meadows
stirred him strangely. Daily had he gone forth with his flock, and
brought it safe at night. But now he stretched himself under the
hedge and pieced words together on his bits of paper. The sheep
strayed, and the wolves, perceiving that difficult poems make easy
mutton, ventured from the woods and stole his lambs.

David's stock of poems grew larger and his flock smaller. Yvonne's
nose and temper waxed sharp and her talk blunt. Her pans and kettles
grew dull, but her eyes had caught their flash. She pointed out to
the poet that his neglect was reducing the flock and bringing woe
upon the household. David hired a boy to guard the sheep, locked
himself in the little room at the top of the cottage, and wrote more
poems. The boy, being a poet by nature, but not furnished with an
outlet in the way of writing, spent his time in slumber. The wolves
lost no time in discovering that poetry and sleep are practically
the same; so the flock steadily grew smaller. Yvonne's ill temper
increased at an equal rate. Sometimes she would stand in the yard
and rail at David through his high window. Then you could hear her
as far as the double chestnut tree above Père Gruneau's blacksmith
forge.

M. Papineau, the kind, wise, meddling old notary, saw this, as
he saw everything at which his nose pointed. He went to David,
fortified himself with a great pinch of snuff, and said:

"Friend Mignot, I affixed the seal upon the marriage certificate of
your father. It would distress me to be obliged to attest a paper
signifying the bankruptcy of his son. But that is what you are
coming to. I speak as an old friend. Now, listen to what I have to
say. You have your heart set, I perceive, upon poetry. At Dreux, I
have a friend, one Monsieur Bril--Georges Bril. He lives in a little
cleared space in a houseful of books. He is a learned man; he visits
Paris each year; he himself has written books. He will tell you when
the catacombs were made, how they found out the names of the stars,
and why the plover has a long bill. The meaning and the form of
poetry is to him as intelligent as the baa of a sheep is to you. I
will give you a letter to him, and you shall take him your poems and
let him read them. Then you will know if you shall write more, or
give your attention to your wife and business."

"Write the letter," said David, "I am sorry you did not speak of
this sooner."

At sunrise the next morning he was on the road to Dreux with the
precious roll of poems under his arm. At noon he wiped the dust from
his feet at the door of Monsieur Bril. That learned man broke the
seal of M. Papineau's letter, and sucked up its contents through his
gleaming spectacles as the sun draws water. He took David inside to
his study and sat him down upon a little island beat upon by a sea
of books.

Monsieur Bril had a conscience. He flinched not even at a mass
of manuscript the thickness of a finger length and rolled to an
incorrigible curve. He broke the back of the roll against his knee
and began to read. He slighted nothing; he bored into the lump as a
worm into a nut, seeking for a kernel.

Meanwhile, David sat, marooned, trembling in the spray of so much
literature. It roared in his ears. He held no chart or compass for
voyaging in that sea. Half the world, he thought, must be writing
books.

Monsieur Bril bored to the last page of the poems. Then he took off
his spectacles, and wiped them with his handkerchief.

"My old friend, Papineau, is well?" he asked.

"In the best of health," said David.

"How many sheep have you, Monsieur Mignot?"

"Three hundred and nine, when I counted them yesterday. The flock
has had ill fortune. To that number it has decreased from eight
hundred and fifty."

"You have a wife and home, and lived in comfort. The sheep brought
you plenty. You went into the fields with them and lived in the
keen air and ate the sweet bread of contentment. You had but to be
vigilant and recline there upon nature's breast, listening to the
whistle of the blackbirds in the grove. Am I right thus far?"

"It was so," said David.

"I have read all your verses," continued Monsieur Bril, his eyes
wandering about his sea of books as if he conned the horizon for a
sail. "Look yonder, through that window, Monsieur Mignot; tell me
what you see in that tree."

"I see a crow," said David, looking.

"There is a bird," said Monsieur Bril, "that shall assist me where I
am disposed to shirk a duty. You know that bird, Monsieur Mignot; he
is the philosopher of the air. He is happy through submission to his
lot. None so merry or full-crawed as he with his whimsical eye and
rollicking step. The fields yield him what he desires. He never
grieves that his plumage is not gay, like the oriole's. And you have
heard, Monsieur Mignot, the notes that nature has given him? Is the
nightingale any happier, do you think?"

David rose to his feet. The crow cawed harshly from his tree.

"I thank you, Monsieur Bril," he said, slowly. "There was not, then,
one nightingale among all those croaks?"

"I could not have missed it," said Monsieur Bril, with a sigh. "I
read every word. Live your poetry, man; do not try to write it any
more."

"I thank you," said David, again. "And now I will be going back to
my sheep."

"If you would dine with me," said the man of books, "and overlook
the smart of it, I will give you reasons at length."

"No," said the poet, "I must be back in the fields cawing at my
sheep."

Back along the road to Vernoy he trudged with his poems under his
arm. When he reached his village he turned into the shop of one
Zeigler, a Jew out of Armenia, who sold anything that came to his
hand.

"Friend," said David, "wolves from the forest harass my sheep on the
hills. I must purchase firearms to protect them. What have you?"

"A bad day, this, for me, friend Mignot," said Zeigler, spreading
his hands, "for I perceive that I must sell you a weapon that will
not fetch a tenth of its value. Only last I week I bought from
a peddlar a wagon full of goods that he procured at a sale by a
_commissionaire_ of the crown. The sale was of the _château_ and
belongings of a great lord--I know not his title--who has been
banished for conspiracy against the king. There are some choice
firearms in the lot. This pistol--oh, a weapon fit for a prince!--it
shall be only forty francs to you, friend Mignot--if I lose ten by
the sale. But perhaps an arquebuse--"

"This will do," said David, throwing the money on the counter. "Is
it charged?"

"I will charge it," said Zeigler. "And, for ten francs more, add a
store of powder and ball."

David laid his pistol under his coat and walked to his cottage.
Yvonne was not there. Of late she had taken to gadding much among
the neighbours. But a fire was glowing in the kitchen stove. David
opened the door of it and thrust his poems in upon the coals. As
they blazed up they made a singing, harsh sound in the flue.

"The song of the crow!" said the poet.

He went up to his attic room and closed the door. So quiet was the
village that a score of people heard the roar of the great pistol.
They flocked thither, and up the stairs where the smoke, issuing,
drew their notice.

The men laid the body of the poet upon his bed, awkwardly arranging
it to conceal the torn plumage of the poor black crow. The women
chattered in a luxury of zealous pity. Some of them ran to tell
Yvonne.

M. Papineau, whose nose had brought him there among the first,
picked up the weapon and ran his eye over its silver mountings with
a mingled air of connoisseurship and grief.

"The arms," he explained, aside, to the _curé_, "and crest of
Monseigneur, the Marquis de Beaupertuys."




II

THE GUARDIAN OF THE ACCOLADE


Not the least important of the force of the Weymouth Bank was Uncle
Bushrod. Sixty years had Uncle Bushrod given of faithful service
to the house of Weymouth as chattel, servitor, and friend. Of the
colour of the mahogany bank furniture was Uncle Bushrod--thus dark
was he externally; white as the uninked pages of the bank ledgers
was his soul. Eminently pleasing to Uncle Bushrod would the
comparison have been; for to him the only institution in existence
worth considering was the Weymouth Bank, of which he was something
between porter and generalissimo-in-charge.

Weymouth lay, dreamy and umbrageous, among the low foothills
along the brow of a Southern valley. Three banks there were in
Weymouthville. Two were hopeless, misguided enterprises, lacking the
presence and prestige of a Weymouth to give them glory. The third
was The Bank, managed by the Weymouths--and Uncle Bushrod. In the
old Weymouth homestead--the red brick, white-porticoed mansion,
the first to your right as you crossed Elder Creek, coming into
town--lived Mr. Robert Weymouth (the president of the bank), his
widowed daughter, Mrs. Vesey--called "Miss Letty" by every one--and
her two children, Nan and Guy. There, also in a cottage on the
grounds, resided Uncle Bushrod and Aunt Malindy, his wife. Mr.
William Weymouth (the cashier of the bank) lived in a modern, fine
house on the principal avenue.

Mr. Robert was a large, stout man, sixty-two years of age, with
a smooth, plump face, long iron-gray hair and fiery blue eyes.
He was high-tempered, kind, and generous, with a youthful smile
and a formidable, stern voice that did not always mean what it
sounded like. Mr. William was a milder man, correct in deportment
and absorbed in business. The Weymouths formed The Family of
Weymouthville, and were looked up to, as was their right of
heritage.

Uncle Bushrod was the bank's trusted porter, messenger, vassal, and
guardian. He carried a key to the vault, just as Mr. Robert and Mr.
William did. Sometimes there was ten, fifteen, or twenty thousand
dollars in sacked silver stacked on the vault floor. It was safe
with Uncle Bushrod. He was a Weymouth in heart, honesty, and pride.

Of late Uncle Bushrod had not been without worry. It was on account
of Marse Robert. For nearly a year Mr. Robert had been known to
indulge in too much drink. Not enough, understand, to become tipsy,
but the habit was getting a hold upon him, and every one was
beginning to notice it. Half a dozen times a day he would leave the
bank and step around to the Merchants and Planters' Hotel to take a
drink. Mr. Robert's usual keen judgment and business capacity became
a little impaired. Mr. William, a Weymouth, but not so rich in
experience, tried to dam the inevitable backflow of the tide, but
with incomplete success. The deposits in the Weymouth Bank dropped
from six figures to five. Past-due paper began to accumulate, owing
to injudicious loans. No one cared to address Mr. Robert on the
subject of temperance. Many of his friends said that the cause of
it had been the death of his wife some two years before. Others
hesitated on account of Mr. Robert's quick temper, which was
extremely apt to resent personal interference of such a nature. Miss
Letty and the children noticed the change and grieved about it.
Uncle Bushrod also worried, but he was one of those who would not
have dared to remonstrate, although he and Marse Robert had been
raised almost as companions. But there was a heavier shock coming to
Uncle Bushrod than that caused by the bank president's toddies and
juleps.

Mr. Robert had a passion for fishing, which he usually indulged
whenever the season and business permitted. One day, when reports
had been coming in relating to the bass and perch, he announced his
intention of making a two or three days' visit to the lakes. He was
going down, he said, to Reedy Lake with Judge Archinard, an old
friend.

Now, Uncle Bushrod was treasurer of the Sons and Daughters of the
Burning Bush. Every association he belonged to made him treasurer
without hesitation. He stood AA1 in coloured circles. He was
understood among them to be Mr. Bushrod Weymouth, of the Weymouth
Bank.

The night following the day on which Mr. Robert mentioned his
intended fishing-trip the old man woke up and rose from his bed at
twelve o'clock, declaring he must go down to the bank and fetch the
pass-book of the Sons and Daughters, which he had forgotten to bring
home. The bookkeeper had balanced it for him that day, put the
cancelled checks in it, and snapped two elastic bands around it. He
put but one band around other pass-books.

Aunt Malindy objected to the mission at so late an hour, denouncing
it as foolish and unnecessary, but Uncle Bushrod was not to be
deflected from duty.

"I done told Sister Adaline Hoskins," he said, "to come by here for
dat book to-morrer mawnin' at sebin o'clock, for to kyar' it to de
meetin' of de bo'd of 'rangements, and dat book gwine to be here
when she come."

So, Uncle Bushrod put on his old brown suit, got his thick hickory
stick, and meandered through the almost deserted streets of
Weymouthville. He entered the bank, unlocking the side door, and
found the pass-book where he had left it, in the little back room
used for consultations, where he always hung his coat. Looking about
casually, he saw that everything was as he had left it, and was
about to start for home when he was brought to a standstill by the
sudden rattle of a key in the front door. Some one came quickly in,
closed the door softly, and entered the counting-room through the
door in the iron railing.

That division of the bank's space was connected with the back room
by a narrow passageway, now in deep darkness.

Uncle Bushrod, firmly gripping his hickory stick, tiptoed gently
up this passage until he could see the midnight intruder into the
sacred precincts of the Weymouth Bank. One dim gas-jet burned there,
but even in its nebulous light he perceived at once that the prowler
was the bank's president.

Wondering, fearful, undecided what to do, the old coloured man stood
motionless in the gloomy strip of hallway, and waited developments.

The vault, with its big iron door, was opposite him. Inside that
was the safe, holding the papers of value, the gold and currency of
the bank. On the floor of the vault was, perhaps, eighteen thousand
dollars in silver.

The president took his key from his pocket, opened the vault and
went inside, nearly closing the door behind him. Uncle Bushrod saw,
through the narrow aperture, the flicker of a candle. In a minute or
two--it seemed an hour to the watcher--Mr. Robert came out, bringing
with him a large hand-satchel, handling it in a careful but hurried
manner, as if fearful that he might be observed. With one hand he
closed and locked the vault door.

With a reluctant theory forming itself beneath his wool, Uncle
Bushrod waited and watched, shaking in his concealing shadow.

Mr. Robert set the satchel softly upon a desk, and turned his coat
collar up about his neck and ears. He was dressed in a rough suit
of gray, as if for travelling. He glanced with frowning intentness
at the big office clock above the burning gas-jet, and then looked
lingeringly about the bank--lingeringly and fondly, Uncle Bushrod
thought, as one who bids farewell to dear and familiar scenes.

Now he caught up his burden again and moved promptly and softly out
of the bank by the way he had come locking the front door behind
him.

For a minute or longer Uncle Bushrod was as stone in his tracks. Had
that midnight rifler of safes and vaults been any other on earth
than the man he was, the old retainer would have rushed upon him and
struck to save the Weymouth property. But now the watcher's soul was
tortured by the poignant dread of something worse than mere robbery.
He was seized by an accusing terror that said the Weymouth name and
the Weymouth honour were about to be lost. Marse Robert robbing the
bank! What else could it mean? The hour of the night, the stealthy
visit to the vault, the satchel brought forth full and with
expedition and silence, the prowler's rough dress, his solicitous
reading of the clock, and noiseless departure--what else could it
mean?

And then to the turmoil of Uncle Bushrod's thoughts came the
corroborating recollection of preceding events--Mr. Robert's
increasing intemperance and consequent many moods of royal high
spirits and stern tempers; the casual talk he had heard in the bank
of the decrease in business and difficulty in collecting loans.
What else could it all mean but that Mr. Robert Weymouth was an
absconder--was about to fly with the bank's remaining funds, leaving
Mr. William, Miss Letty, little Nan, Guy, and Uncle Bushrod to bear
the disgrace?

During one minute Uncle Bushrod considered these things, and then he
awoke to sudden determination and action.

"Lawd! Lawd!" he moaned aloud, as he hobbled hastily toward the side
door. "Sech a come-off after all dese here years of big doin's and
fine doin's. Scan'lous sights upon de yearth when de Weymouth fambly
done turn out robbers and 'bezzlers! Time for Uncle Bushrod to clean
out somebody's chicken-coop and eben matters up. Oh, Lawd! Marse
Robert, you ain't gwine do dat. 'N Miss Letty an' dem chillun so
proud and talkin' 'Weymouth, Weymouth,' all de time! I'm gwine to
stop you ef I can. 'Spec you shoot Mr. Nigger's head off ef he fool
wid you, but I'm gwine stop you ef I can."

Uncle Bushrod, aided by his hickory stick, impeded by his
rheumatism, hurried down the street toward the railroad station,
where the two lines touching Weymouthville met. As he had expected
and feared, he saw there Mr. Robert, standing in the shadow of the
building, waiting for the train. He held the satchel in his hand.

When Uncle Bushrod came within twenty yards of the bank president,
standing like a huge, gray ghost by the station wall, sudden
perturbation seized him. The rashness and audacity of the thing he
had come to do struck him fully. He would have been happy could he
have turned and fled from the possibilities of the famous Weymouth
wrath. But again he saw, in his fancy, the white reproachful face of
Miss Letty, and the distressed looks of Nan and Guy, should he fail
in his duty and they question him as to his stewardship.

Braced by the thought, he approached in a straight line, clearing
his throat and pounding with his stick so that he might be early
recognized. Thus he might avoid the likely danger of too suddenly
surprising the sometimes hasty Mr. Robert.

"Is that you, Bushrod?" called the clamant, clear voice of the gray
ghost.

"Yes, suh, Marse Robert."

"What the devil are you doing out at this time of night?"

For the first time in his life, Uncle Bushrod told Marse Robert a
falsehood. He could not repress it. He would have to circumlocute a
little. His nerve was not equal to a direct attack.

"I done been down, suh, to see ol' Aunt M'ria Patterson. She taken
sick in de night, and I kyar'ed her a bottle of M'lindy's medercine.
Yes, suh."

"Humph!" said Robert. "You better get home out of the night air.
It's damp. You'll hardly be worth killing to-morrow on account of
your rheumatism. Think it'll be a clear day, Bushrod?"

"I 'low it will, suh. De sun sot red las' night."

Mr. Robert lit a cigar in the shadow, and the smoke looked like his
gray ghost expanding and escaping into the night air. Somehow, Uncle
Bushrod could barely force his reluctant tongue to the dreadful
subject. He stood, awkward, shambling, with his feet upon the gravel
and fumbling with his stick. But then, afar off--three miles away,
at the Jimtown switch--he heard the faint whistle of the coming
train, the one that was to transport the Weymouth name into the
regions of dishonour and shame. All fear left him. He took off his
hat and faced the chief of the clan he served, the great, royal,
kind, lofty, terrible Weymouth--he bearded him there at the brink of
the awful thing that was about to happen.

"Marse Robert," he began, his voice quivering a little with the
stress of his feelings, "you 'member de day dey-all rode de
tunnament at Oak Lawn? De day, suh, dat you win in de ridin', and
you crown Miss Lucy de queen?"

"Tournament?" said Mr. Robert, taking his cigar from his mouth.
"Yes, I remember very well the--but what the deuce are you talking
about tournaments here at midnight for? Go 'long home, Bushrod. I
believe you're sleep-walking."

"Miss Lucy tetch you on de shoulder," continued the old man,
never heeding, "wid a s'ord, and say: 'I mek you a knight, Suh
Robert--rise up, pure and fearless and widout reproach.' Dat what
Miss Lucy say. Dat's been a long time ago, but me nor you ain't
forgot it. And den dar's another time we ain't forgot--de time when
Miss Lucy lay on her las' bed. She sent for Uncle Bushrod, and she
say: 'Uncle Bushrod, when I die, I want you to take good care of Mr.
Robert. Seem like'--so Miss Lucy say--'he listen to you mo' dan to
anybody else. He apt to be mighty fractious sometimes, and maybe
he cuss you when you try to 'suade him but he need somebody what
understand him to be 'round wid him. He am like a little child
sometimes'--so Miss Lucy say, wid her eyes shinin' in her po', thin
face--'but he always been'--dem was her words--'my knight, pure and
fearless and widout reproach.'"

Mr. Robert began to mask, as was his habit, a tendency to
soft-heartedness with a spurious anger.

"You--you old windbag!" he growled through a cloud of swirling cigar
smoke. "I believe you are crazy. I told you to go home, Bushrod.
Miss Lucy said that, did she? Well, we haven't kept the scutcheon
very clear. Two years ago last week, wasn't it, Bushrod, when she
died? Confound it! Are you going to stand there all night gabbing
like a coffee-coloured gander?"

The train whistled again. Now it was at the water tank, a mile away.

"Marse Robert," said Uncle Bushrod, laying his hand on the satchel
that the banker held. "For Gawd's sake, don' take dis wid you. I
knows what's in it. I knows where you got it in de bank. Don' kyar'
it wid you. Dey's big trouble in dat valise for Miss Lucy and Miss
Lucy's child's chillun. Hit's bound to destroy de name of Weymouth
and bow down dem dat own it wid shame and triberlation. Marse
Robert, you can kill dis ole nigger ef you will, but don't take away
dis 'er' valise. If I ever crosses over de Jordan, what I gwine to
say to Miss Lucy when she ax me: 'Uncle Bushrod, wharfo' didn' you
take good care of Mr. Robert?'"

Mr. Robert Weymouth threw away his cigar and shook free one arm
with that peculiar gesture that always preceded his outbursts of
irascibility. Uncle Bushrod bowed his head to the expected storm,
but he did not flinch. If the house of Weymouth was to fall, he
would fall with it. The banker spoke, and Uncle Bushrod blinked with
surprise. The storm was there, but it was suppressed to the
quietness of a summer breeze.

"Bushrod," said Mr. Robert, in a lower voice than he usually
employed, "you have overstepped all bounds. You have presumed
upon the leniency with which you have been treated to meddle
unpardonably. So you know what is in this satchel! Your long and
faithful service is some excuse, but--go home, Bushrod--not another
word!"

But Bushrod grasped the satchel with a firmer hand. The headlight of
the train was now lightening the shadows about the station. The roar
was increasing, and folks were stirring about at the track side.

"Marse Robert, gimme dis 'er' valise. I got a right, suh, to talk to
you dis 'er' way. I slaved for you and 'tended to you from a child
up. I went th'ough de war as yo' body-servant tell we whipped de
Yankees and sent 'em back to de No'th. I was at yo' weddin', and
I was n' fur away when yo' Miss Letty was bawn. And Miss Letty's
chillun, dey watches to-day for Uncle Bushrod when he come
home ever' evenin'. I been a Weymouth, all 'cept in colour and
entitlements. Both of us is old, Marse Robert. 'Tain't goin' to be
long till we gwine to see Miss Lucy and has to give an account of
our doin's. De ole nigger man won't be 'spected to say much mo' dan
he done all he could by de fambly dat owned him. But de Weymouths,
dey must say dey been livin' pure and fearless and widout reproach.
Gimme dis valise, Marse Robert--I'm gwine to hab it. I'm gwine to
take it back to the bank and lock it up in de vault. I'm gwine to do
Miss Lucy's biddin'. Turn 'er loose, Marse Robert."

The train was standing at the station. Some men were pushing trucks
along the side. Two or three sleepy passengers got off and wandered
away into the night. The conductor stepped to the gravel, swung his
lantern and called: "Hello, Frank!" at some one invisible. The bell
clanged, the brakes hissed, the conductor drawled: "All aboard!"

Mr. Robert released his hold on the satchel. Uncle Bushrod hugged it
to his breast with both arms, as a lover clasps his first beloved.

"Take it back with you, Bushrod," said Mr. Robert, thrusting his
hands into his pockets. "And let the subject drop--now mind! You've
said quite enough. I'm going to take the train. Tell Mr. William I
will be back on Saturday. Good night."

The banker climbed the steps of the moving train and disappeared
in a coach. Uncle Bushrod stood motionless, still embracing the
precious satchel. His eyes were closed and his lips were moving in
thanks to the Master above for the salvation of the Weymouth honour.
He knew Mr. Robert would return when he said he would. The Weymouths
never lied. Nor now, thank the Lord! could it be said that they
embezzled the money in banks.

Then awake to the necessity for further guardianship of Weymouth
trust funds, the old man started for the bank with the redeemed
satchel.



Three hours from Weymouthville, in the gray dawn, Mr. Robert
alighted from the train at a lonely flag-station. Dimly he could
see the figure of a man waiting on the platform, and the shape
of a spring-waggon, team and driver. Half a dozen lengthy bamboo
fishing-poles projected from the waggon's rear.

"You're here, Bob," said Judge Archinard, Mr. Robert's old friend
and schoolmate. "It's going to be a royal day for fishing. I thought
you said--why, didn't you bring along the stuff?"

The president of the Weymouth Bank took off his hat and rumpled his
gray locks.

"Well, Ben, to tell you the truth, there's an infernally
presumptuous old nigger belonging in my family that broke up
the arrangement. He came down to the depot and vetoed the whole
proceeding. He means all right, and--well, I reckon he _is_ right.
Somehow, he had found out what I had along--though I hid it in the
bank vault and sneaked it out at midnight. I reckon he has noticed
that I've been indulging a little more than a gentleman should, and
he laid for me with some reaching arguments.

"I'm going to quit drinking," Mr. Robert concluded. "I've come to
the conclusion that a man can't keep it up and be quite what he'd
like to be--'pure and fearless and without reproach'--that's the way
old Bushrod quoted it."

"Well, I'll have to admit," said the judge, thoughtfully, as they
climbed into the waggon, "that the old darkey's argument can't
conscientiously be overruled."

"Still," said Mr. Robert, with a ghost of a sigh, "there was two
quarts of the finest old silk-velvet Bourbon in that satchel you
ever wet your lips with."




III

THE DISCOUNTERS OF MONEY


The spectacle of the money-caliphs of the present day going about
Bagdad-on-the-Subway trying to relieve the wants of the people is
enough to make the great Al Raschid turn Haroun in his grave. If not
so, then the assertion should do so, the real caliph having been a
wit and a scholar and therefore a hater of puns.

How properly to alleviate the troubles of the poor is one of the
greatest troubles of the rich. But one thing agreed upon by all
professional philanthropists is that you must never hand over any
cash to your subject. The poor are notoriously temperamental; and
when they get money they exhibit a strong tendency to spend it for
stuffed olives and enlarged crayon portraits instead of giving it to
the instalment man.

And still, old Haroun had some advantages as an eleemosynarian.
He took around with him on his rambles his vizier, Giafar (a
vizier is a composite of a chauffeur, a secretary of state, and a
night-and-day bank), and old Uncle Mesrour, his executioner, who
toted a snickersnee. With this entourage a caliphing tour could
hardly fail to be successful. Have you noticed lately any newspaper
articles headed, "What Shall We Do With Our Ex-Presidents?" Well,
now, suppose that Mr. Carnegie could engage _him_ and Joe Gans to
go about assisting in the distribution of free libraries? Do you
suppose any town would have had the hardihood to refuse one? That
caliphalous combination would cause two libraries to grow where
there had been only one set of E. P. Roe's works before.

But, as I said, the money-caliphs are handicapped. They have the
idea that earth has no sorrow that dough cannot heal; and they rely
upon it solely. Al Raschid administered justice, rewarding the
deserving, and punished whomsoever he disliked on the spot. He was
the originator of the short-story contest. Whenever he succoured any
chance pick-up in the bazaars he always made the succouree tell the
sad story of his life. If the narrative lacked construction, style,
and _esprit_ he commanded his vizier to dole him out a couple
of thousand ten-dollar notes of the First National Bank of the
Bosphorus, or else gave him a soft job as Keeper of the Bird
Seed for the Bulbuls in the Imperial Gardens. If the story was a
cracker-jack, he had Mesrour, the executioner, whack off his head.
The report that Haroun Al Raschid is yet alive and is editing
the magazine that your grandmother used to subscribe for lacks
confirmation.

And now follows the Story of the Millionaire, the Inefficacious
Increment, and the Babes Drawn from the Wood.

Young Howard Pilkins, the millionaire, got his money
ornithologically. He was a shrewd judge of storks, and got in on
the ground floor at the residence of his immediate ancestors,
the Pilkins Brewing Company. For his mother was a partner in
the business. Finally old man Pilkins died from a torpid liver,
and then Mrs. Pilkins died from worry on account of torpid
delivery-waggons--and there you have young Howard Pilkins with
4,000,000; and a good fellow at that. He was an agreeable, modestly
arrogant young man, who implicitly believed that money could buy
anything that the world had to offer. And Bagdad-on-the-Subway for
a long time did everything possible to encourage his belief.

But the Rat-trap caught him at last; he heard the spring snap, and
found his heart in a wire cage regarding a piece of cheese whose
other name was Alice von der Ruysling.

The Von der Ruyslings still live in that little square about which
so much has been said, and in which so little has been done. To-day
you hear of Mr. Tilden's underground passage, and you hear Mr.
Gould's elevated passage, and that about ends the noise in the world
made by Gramercy Square. But once it was different. The Von der
Ruyslings live there yet, and they received _the first key ever made
to Gramercy Park_.

You shall have no description of Alice v. d. R. Just call up in your
mind the picture of your own Maggie or Vera or Beatrice, straighten
her nose, soften her voice, tone her down and then tone her up,
make her beautiful and unattainable--and you have a faint dry-point
etching of Alice. The family owned a crumbly brick house and a
coachman named Joseph in a coat of many colours, and a horse so old
that he claimed to belong to the order of the Perissodactyla, and
had toes instead of hoofs. In the year 1898 the family had to buy
a new set of harness for the Perissodactyl. Before using it they
made Joseph smear it over with a mixture of ashes and soot. It
was the Von der Ruysling family that bought the territory between
the Bowery and East River and Rivington Street and the Statue of
Liberty, in the year 1649, from an Indian chief for a quart of
passementerie and a pair of Turkey-red portières designed for a
Harlem flat. I have always admired that Indian's perspicacity and
good taste. All this is merely to convince you that the Von der
Ruyslings were exactly the kind of poor aristocrats that turn down
their noses at people who have money. Oh, well, I don't mean that; I
mean people who have _just_ money.

One evening Pilkins went down to the red brick house in Gramercy
Square, and made what he thought was a proposal to Alice v. d. R.
Alice, with her nose turned down, and thinking of his money,
considered it a proposition, and refused it and him. Pilkins,
summoning all his resources as any good general would have done,
made an indiscreet references to the advantages that his money
would provide. That settled it. The lady turned so cold that Walter
Wellman himself would have waited until spring to make a dash for
her in a dog-sled.

But Pilkins was something of a sport himself. You can't fool all the
millionaires every time the ball drops on the Western Union
Building.

"If, at any time," he said to A. v. d. R., "you feel that you would
like to reconsider your answer, send me a rose like that."

Pilkins audaciously touched a Jacque rose that she wore loosely in
her hair.

"Very well," said she. "And when I do, you will understand by it
that either you or I have learned something new about the purchasing
power of money. You've been spoiled, my friend. No, I don't think
I could marry you. To-morrow I will send you back the presents you
have given me."

"Presents!" said Pilkins in surprise. "I never gave you a present in
my life. I would like to see a full-length portrait of the man that
you would take a present from. Why, you never would let me send you
flowers or candy or even art calendars."

"You've forgotten," said Alice v. d. R., with a little smile. "It
was a long time ago when our families were neighbours. You were
seven, and I was trundling my doll on the sidewalk. You have me a
little gray, hairy kitten, with shoe-buttony eyes. Its head came
off and it was full of candy. You paid five cents for it--you told
me so. I haven't the candy to return to you--I hadn't developed a
conscience at three, so I ate it. But I have the kitten yet, and I
will wrap it up neatly to-night and send it to you to-morrow."

Beneath the lightness of Alice v. d. R.'s talk the steadfastness of
her rejection showed firm and plain. So there was nothing left for
him but to leave the crumbly red brick house, and be off with his
abhorred millions.

On his way back, Pilkins walked through Madison Square. The hour
hand of the clock hung about eight; the air was stingingly cool,
but not at the freezing point. The dim little square seemed like a
great, cold, unroofed room, with its four walls of houses, spangled
with thousands of insufficient lights. Only a few loiterers were
huddled here and there on the benches.

But suddenly Pilkins came upon a youth sitting brave and, as
if conflicting with summer sultriness, coatless, his white
shirt-sleeves conspicuous in the light from the globe of an
electric. Close to his side was a girl, smiling, dreamy, happy.
Around her shoulders was, palpably, the missing coat of the
cold-defying youth. It appeared to be a modern panorama of the Babes
in the Wood, revised and brought up to date, with the exception that
the robins hadn't turned up yet with the protecting leaves.

With delight the money-caliphs view a situation that they think is
relievable while you wait.

Pilkins sat on the bench, one seat removed from the youth. He
glanced cautiously and saw (as men do see; and women--oh! never can)
that they were of the same order.

Pilkins leaned over after a short time and spoke to the youth,
who answered smilingly, and courteously. From general topics the
conversation concentrated to the bed-rock of grim personalities.
But Pilkins did it as delicately and heartily as any caliph could
have done. And when it came to the point, the youth turned to him,
soft-voiced and with his undiminished smile.

"I don't want to seem unappreciative, old man," he said, with a
youth's somewhat too-early spontaneity of address, "but, you see, I
can't accept anything from a stranger. I know you're all right, and
I'm tremendously obliged, but I couldn't think of borrowing from
anybody. You see, I'm Marcus Clayton--the Claytons of Roanoke
County, Virginia, you know. The young lady is Miss Eva Bedford--I
reckon you've heard of the Bedfords. She's seventeen and one of the
Bedfords of Bedford County. We've eloped from home to get married,
and we wanted to see New York. We got in this afternoon. Somebody
got my pocketbook on the ferry-boat, and I had only three cents in
change outside of it. I'll get some work somewhere to-morrow, and
we'll get married."

"But, I say, old man," said Pilkins, in confidential low tones,
"you can't keep the lady out here in the cold all night. Now, as for
hotels--"

"I told you," said the youth, with a broader smile, "that I didn't
have but three cents. Besides, if I had a thousand, we'd have to
wait here until morning. You can understand that, of course. I'm
much obliged, but I can't take any of your money. Miss Bedford and
I have lived an outdoor life, and we don't mind a little cold. I'll
get work of some kind to-morrow. We've got a paper bag of cakes and
chocolates, and we'll get along all right."

"Listen," said the millionaire, impressively. "My name is Pilkins,
and I'm worth several million dollars. I happen to have in my
pockets about $800 or $900 in cash. Don't you think you are drawing
it rather fine when you decline to accept as much of it as will make
you and the young lady comfortable at least for the night?"

"I can't say, sir, that I do think so," said Clayton of Roanoke
County. "I've been raised to look at such things differently. But
I'm mightily obliged to you, just the same."

"Then you force me to say good night," said the millionaire.

Twice that day had his money been scorned by simple ones to whom his
dollars had appeared as but tin tobacco-tags. He was no worshipper
of the actual minted coin or stamped paper, but he had always
believed in its almost unlimited power to purchase.

Pilkins walked away rapidly, and then turned abruptly and returned
to the bench where the young couple sat. He took off his hat and
began to speak. The girl looked at him with the same sprightly,
glowing interest that she had been giving to the lights and statuary
and sky-reaching buildings that made the old square seem so far away
from Bedford County.

"Mr.--er--Roanoke," said Pilkins, "I admire your--your indepen--your
idiocy so much that I'm going to appeal to your chivalry. I believe
that's what you Southerners call it when you keep a lady sitting
outdoors on a bench on a cold night just to keep your old,
out-of-date pride going. Now, I've a friend--a lady--whom I have
known all my life--who lives a few blocks from here--with her
parents and sisters and aunts, and all that kind of endorsement,
of course. I am sure this lady would be happy and pleased to put
up--that is, to have Miss--er--Bedford give her the pleasure of
having her as a guest for the night. Don't you think, Mr. Roanoke,
of--er--Virginia, that you could unbend your prejudices that far?"

Clayton of Roanoke rose and held out his hand.

"Old man," he said, "Miss Bedford will be much pleased to accept the
hospitality of the lady you refer to."

He formally introduced Mr. Pilkins to Miss Bedford. The girl
looked at him sweetly and comfortably. "It's a lovely evening, Mr.
Pilkins--don't you think so?" she said slowly.

Pilkins conducted them to the crumbly red brick house of the Von der
Ruyslings. His card brought Alice downstairs wondering. The runaways
were sent into the drawing-room, while Pilkins told Alice all about
it in the hall.

"Of course, I will take her in," said Alice. "Haven't those Southern
girls a thoroughbred air? Of course, she will stay here. You will
look after Mr. Clayton, of course."

"Will I?" said Pilkins, delightedly. "Oh yes, I'll look after him!
As a citizen of New York, and therefore a part owner of its public
parks, I'm going to extend to him the hospitality of Madison Square
to-night. He's going to sit there on a bench till morning. There's
no use arguing with him. Isn't he wonderful? I'm glad you'll look
after the little lady, Alice. I tell you those Babes in the Wood
made my--that is, er--made Wall Street and the Bank of England look
like penny arcades."

Miss Von der Ruysling whisked Miss Bedford of Bedford County up to
restful regions upstairs. When she came down, she put an oblong
small pasteboard box into Pilkins' hands.

"Your present," she said, "that I am returning to you."

"Oh, yes, I remember," said Pilkins, with a sigh, "the woolly
kitten."

He left Clayton on a park bench, and shook hands with him heartily.

"After I get work," said the youth, "I'll look you up. Your address
is on your card, isn't it? Thanks. Well, good night. I'm awfully
obliged to you for your kindness. No, thanks, I don't smoke. Good
night."

In his room, Pilkins opened the box and took out the staring, funny
kitten, long ago ravaged of his candy and minus one shoe-button eye.
Pilkins looked at it sorrowfully.

"After all," he said, "I don't believe that just money alone will--"

And then he gave a shout and dug into the bottom of the box for
something else that had been the kitten's resting-place--a crushed
but red, red, fragrant, glorious, promising Jacqueminot rose.




IV

THE ENCHANTED PROFILE


There are few Caliphesses. Women are Scheherazades by birth,
predilection, instinct, and arrangement of the vocal cords. The
thousand and one stories are being told every day by hundreds of
thousands of viziers' daughters to their respective sultans. But
the bowstring will get some of 'em yet if they don't watch out.

I heard a story, though, of one lady Caliph. It isn't precisely
an Arabian Nights story, because it brings in Cinderella, who
flourished her dishrag in another epoch and country. So, if you
don't mind the mixed dates (which seem to give it an Eastern
flavour, after all), we'll get along.

In New York there is an old, old hotel. You have seen woodcuts of
it in the magazines. It was built--let's see--at a time when there
was nothing above Fourteenth Street except the old Indian trail
to Boston and Hammerstein's office. Soon the old hostelry will be
torn down. And, as the stout walls are riven apart and the bricks
go roaring down the chutes, crowds of citizens will gather at
the nearest corners and weep over the destruction of a dear old
landmark. Civic pride is strongest in New Bagdad; and the wettest
weeper and the loudest howler against the iconoclasts will be the
man (originally from Terre Haute) whose fond memories of the old
hotel are limited to his having been kicked out from its free-lunch
counter in 1873.

At this hotel always stopped Mrs. Maggie Brown. Mrs. Brown was a
bony woman of sixty, dressed in the rustiest black, and carrying a
handbag made, apparently, from the hide of the original animal that
Adam decided to call an alligator. She always occupied a small
parlour and bedroom at the top of the hotel at a rental of two
dollars per day. And always, while she was there, each day came
hurrying to see her many men, sharp-faced, anxious-looking, with
only seconds to spare. For Maggie Brown was said to be the third
richest woman in the world; and these solicitous gentlemen were only
the city's wealthiest brokers and business men seeking trifling
loans of half a dozen millions or so from the dingy old lady with
the prehistoric handbag.

The stenographer and typewriter of the Acropolis Hotel (there! I've
let the name of it out!) was Miss Ida Bates. She was a hold-over
from the Greek classics. There wasn't a flaw in her looks. Some
old-timer paying his regards to a lady said: "To have loved her was
a liberal education." Well, even to have looked over the black hair
and neat white shirtwaist of Miss Bates was equal to a full course
in any correspondence school in the country. She sometimes did a
little typewriting for me, and, as she refused to take the money
in advance, she came to look upon me as something of a friend and
protégé. She had unfailing kindliness and a good nature; and not
even a white-lead drummer or a fur importer had ever dared to cross
the dead line of good behaviour in her presence. The entire force of
the Acropolis, from the owner, who lived in Vienna, down to the head
porter, who had been bedridden for sixteen years, would have sprung
to her defence in a moment.

One day I walked past Miss Bates's little sanctum Remingtorium,
and saw in her place a black-haired unit--unmistakably a
person--pounding with each of her forefingers upon the keys. Musing
on the mutability of temporal affairs, I passed on. The next day I
went on a two weeks' vacation. Returning, I strolled through the
lobby of the Acropolis, and saw, with a little warm glow of auld
lang syne, Miss Bates, as Grecian and kind and flawless as ever,
just putting the cover on her machine. The hour for closing had
come; but she asked me in to sit for a few minutes in the dictation
chair. Miss Bates explained her absence from and return to the
Acropolis Hotel in words identical with or similar to these
following:

"Well, Man, how are the stories coming?"

"Pretty regularly," said I. "About equal to their going."

"I'm sorry," said she. "Good typewriting is the main thing in a
story. You've missed me, haven't you?"

"No one," said I, "whom I have ever known knows as well as you do
how to space properly belt buckles, semi-colons, hotel guests,
and hairpins. But you've been away, too. I saw a package of
peppermint-pepsin in your place the other day."

"I was going to tell you all about it," said Miss Bates, "if you
hadn't interrupted me.

"Of course, you know about Maggie Brown, who stops here. Well, she's
worth $40,000,000. She lives in Jersey in a ten-dollar flat. She's
always got more cash on hand than half a dozen business candidates
for vice-president. I don't know whether she carries it in her
stocking or not, but I know she's mighty popular down in the part of
town where they worship the golden calf.

"Well, about two weeks ago, Mrs. Brown stops at the door and rubbers
at me for ten minutes. I'm sitting with my side to her, striking off
some manifold copies of a copper-mine proposition for a nice old man
from Tonopah. But I always see everything all around me. When I'm
hard at work I can see things through my side-combs; and I can leave
one button unbuttoned in the back of my shirtwaist and see who's
behind me. I didn't look around, because I make from eighteen to
twenty dollars a week, and I didn't have to.

"That evening at knocking-off time she sends for me to come up to
her apartment. I expected to have to typewrite about two thousand
words of notes-of-hand, liens, and contracts, with a ten-cent tip in
sight; but I went. Well, Man, I was certainly surprised. Old Maggie
Brown had turned human.

"'Child,' says she, 'you're the most beautiful creature I ever saw
in my life. I want you to quit your work and come and live with me.
I've no kith or kin,' says she, 'except a husband and a son or two,
and I hold no communication with any of 'em. They're extravagant
burdens on a hard-working woman. I want you to be a daughter to me.
They say I'm stingy and mean, and the papers print lies about my
doing my own cooking and washing. It's a lie,' she goes on. 'I
put my washing out, except the handkerchiefs and stockings and
petticoats and collars, and light stuff like that. I've got forty
million dollars in cash and stocks and bonds that are as negotiable
as Standard Oil, preferred, at a church fair. I'm a lonely old woman
and I need companionship. You're the most beautiful human being I
ever saw,' says she. 'Will you come and live with me? I'll show 'em
whether I can spend money or not,' she says.

"Well, Man, what would you have done? Of course, I fell to it. And,
to tell you the truth, I began to like old Maggie. It wasn't all on
account of the forty millions and what she could do for me. I was
kind of lonesome in the world too. Everybody's got to have somebody
they can explain to about the pain in their left shoulder and how
fast patent-leather shoes wear out when they begin to crack. And
you can't talk about such things to men you meet in hotels--they're
looking for just such openings.

"So I gave up my job in the hotel and went with Mrs. Brown. I
certainly seemed to have a mash on her. She'd look at me for half
an hour at a time when I was sitting, reading, or looking at the
magazines.

"One time I says to her: 'Do I remind you of some deceased relative
or friend of your childhood, Mrs. Brown? I've noticed you give me a
pretty good optical inspection from time to time.'

"'You have a face,' she says, 'exactly like a dear friend of
mine--the best friend I ever had. But I like you for yourself,
child, too,' she says.

"And say, Man, what do you suppose she did? Loosened up like a
Marcel wave in the surf at Coney. She took me to a swell dressmaker
and gave her _a la carte_ to fit me out--money no object. They were
rush orders, and madame locked the front door and put the whole
force to work.

"Then we moved to--where do you think?--no; guess again--that's
right--the Hotel Bonton. We had a six-room apartment; and it cost
$100 a day. I saw the bill. I began to love that old lady.

"And then, Man, when my dresses began to come in--oh, I won't tell
you about 'em! you couldn't understand. And I began to call her
Aunt Maggie. You've read about Cinderella, of course. Well, what
Cinderella said when the prince fitted that 3½ A on her foot was a
hard-luck story compared to the things I told myself.

"Then Aunt Maggie says she is going to give me a coming-out banquet
in the Bonton that'll make moving Vans of all the old Dutch families
on Fifth Avenue.

"'I've been out before, Aunt Maggie,' says I. 'But I'll come out
again. But you know,' says I, 'that this is one of the swellest
hotels in the city. And you know--pardon me--that it's hard to get
a bunch of notables together unless you've trained for it.'

"'Don't fret about that, child,' says Aunt Maggie. 'I don't send
out invitations--I issue orders. I'll have fifty guests here that
couldn't be brought together again at any reception unless it were
given by King Edward or William Travers Jerome. They are men, of
course, and all of 'em either owe me money or intend to. Some of
their wives won't come, but a good many will.'

"Well, I wish you could have been at that banquet. The dinner
service was all gold and cut glass. There were about forty men and
eight ladies present besides Aunt Maggie and I. You'd never have
known the third richest woman in the world. She had on a new black
silk dress with so much passementerie on it that it sounded exactly
like a hailstorm I heard once when I was staying all night with a
girl that lived in a top-floor studio.

"And my dress!--say, Man, I can't waste the words on you. It was all
hand-made lace--where there was any of it at all--and it cost $300.
I saw the bill. The men were all bald-headed or white-whiskered, and
they kept up a running fire of light repartee about 3-per cents. and
Bryan and the cotton crop.

"On the left of me was something that talked like a banker, and on
my right was a young fellow who said he was a newspaper artist. He
was the only--well, I was going to tell you.

"After the dinner was over Mrs. Brown and I went up to the
apartment. We had to squeeze our way through a mob of reporters all
the way through the halls. That's one of the things money does for
you. Say, do you happen to know a newspaper artist named Lathrop--a
tall man with nice eyes and an easy way of talking? No, I don't
remember what paper he works on. Well, all right.

"When we got upstairs Mrs. Brown telephones for the bill right away.
It came, and it was $600. I saw the bill. Aunt Maggie fainted. I got
her on a lounge and opened the bead-work.

"'Child,' says she, when she got back to the world, 'what was it? A
raise of rent or an income-tax?'

"'Just a little dinner,' says I. 'Nothing to worry about--hardly a
drop in the bucket-shop. Sit up and take notice--a dispossess
notice, if there's no other kind.'

"But say, Man, do you know what Aunt Maggie did? She got cold feet!
She hustled me out of that Hotel Bonton at nine the next morning. We
went to a rooming-house on the lower West Side. She rented one room
that had water on the floor below and light on the floor above.
After we got moved all you could see in the room was about $1,500
worth of new swell dresses and a one-burner gas-stove.

"Aunt Maggie had had a sudden attack of the hedges. I guess
everybody has got to go on a spree once in their life. A man spends
his on highballs, and a woman gets woozy on clothes. But with forty
million dollars--say, I'd like to have a picture of--but, speaking
of pictures, did you ever run across a newspaper artist named
Lathrop--a tall--oh, I asked you that before, didn't I? He was
mighty nice to me at the dinner. His voice just suited me. I guess
he must have thought I was to inherit some of Aunt Maggie's money.

"Well, Mr. Man, three days of that light-housekeeping was plenty
for me. Aunt Maggie was affectionate as ever. She'd hardly let me
get out of her sight. But let me tell you. She was a hedger from
Hedgersville, Hedger County. Seventy-five cents a day was the limit
she set. We cooked our own meals in the room. There I was, with
a thousand dollars' worth of the latest things in clothes, doing
stunts over a one-burner gas-stove.

"As I say, on the third day I flew the coop. I couldn't stand for
throwing together a fifteen-cent kidney stew while wearing, at the
same time, a $150 house-dress, with Valenciennes lace insertion. So
I goes into the closet and puts on the cheapest dress Mrs. Brown had
bought for me--it's the one I've got on now--not so bad for $75, is
it? I'd left all my own clothes in my sister's flat in Brooklyn.

"'Mrs. Brown, formerly "Aunt Maggie,"' says I to her, 'I'm going to
extend my feet alternately, one after the other, in such a manner
and direction that this tenement will recede from me in the quickest
possible time. I am no worshipper of money,' says I, 'but there are
some things I can't stand. I can stand the fabulous monster that
I've read about that blows hot birds and cold bottles with the same
breath. But I can't stand a quitter,' says I. 'They say you've got
forty million dollars--well, you'll never have any less. And I was
beginning to like you, too,' says I.

"Well, the late Aunt Maggie kicks till the tears flow. She offers to
move into a swell room with a two-burner stove and running water.

"'I've spent an awful lot of money, child,' says she. 'We'll have
to economize for a while. You're the most beautiful creature I ever
laid eyes on,' she says, 'and I don't want you to leave me.'

"Well, you see me, don't you? I walked straight to the Acropolis and
asked for my job back, and I got it. How did you say your writings
were getting along? I know you've lost out some by not having me to
type 'em. Do you ever have 'em illustrated? And, by the way, did you
ever happen to know a newspaper artist--oh, shut up! I know I asked
you before. I wonder what paper he works on? It's funny, but I
couldn't help thinking that he wasn't thinking about the money he
might have been thinking I was thinking I'd get from old Maggie
Brown. If I only knew some of the newspaper editors I'd--"

The sound of an easy footstep came from the doorway. Ida Bates saw
who it was with her back-hair comb. I saw her turn pink, perfect
statue that she was--a miracle that I share with Pygmalion only.

"Am I excusable?" she said to me--adorable petitioner that she
became. "It's--it's Mr. Lathrop. I wonder if it really wasn't the
money--I wonder, if after all, he--"

Of course, I was invited to the wedding. After the ceremony I
dragged Lathrop aside.

"You are an artist," said I, "and haven't figured out why Maggie
Brown conceived such a strong liking for Miss Bates--that was? Let
me show you."

The bride wore a simple white dress as beautifully draped as the
costumes of the ancient Greeks. I took some leaves from one of the
decorative wreaths in the little parlour, and made a chaplet of
them, and placed them on née Bates' shining chestnut hair, and made
her turn her profile to her husband.

"By jingo!" said he. "Isn't Ida's a dead ringer for the lady's head
on the silver dollar?"




V

"NEXT TO READING MATTER"


He compelled my interest as he stepped from the ferry at Desbrosses
Street. He had the air of being familiar with hemispheres and
worlds, and of entering New York as the lord of a demesne who
revisited it in after years of absence. But I thought that, with all
his air, he had never before set foot on the slippery cobblestones
of the City of Too Many Caliphs.

He wore loose clothes of a strange bluish drab colour, and a
conservative, round Panama hat without the cock-a-loop indentations
and cants with which Northern fanciers disfigure the tropic
head-gear. Moreover, he was the homeliest man I have ever seen. His
ugliness was less repellent than startling--arising from a sort of
Lincolnian ruggedness and irregularity of feature that spellbound
you with wonder and dismay. So may have looked afrites or the
shapes metamorphosed from the vapour of the fisherman's vase. As he
afterward told me, his name was Judson Tate; and he may as well be
called so at once. He wore his green silk tie through a topaz ring;
and he carried a cane made of the vertebræ of a shark.

Judson Tate accosted me with some large and casual inquiries about
the city's streets and hotels, in the manner of one who had but
for the moment forgotten the trifling details. I could think of no
reason for disparaging my own quiet hotel in the downtown district;
so the mid-morning of the night found us already victualed and
drinked (at my expense), and ready to be chaired and tobaccoed in a
quiet corner of the lobby.

There was something on Judson Tate's mind, and, such as it was, he
tried to convey it to me. Already he had accepted me as his friend;
and when I looked at his great, snuff-brown first-mate's hand, with
which he brought emphasis to his periods, within six inches of my
nose, I wondered if, by any chance, he was as sudden in conceiving
enmity against strangers.

When this man began to talk I perceived in him a certain power.
His voice was a persuasive instrument, upon which he played with
a somewhat specious but effective art. He did not try to make you
forget his ugliness; he flaunted it in your face and made it part of
the charm of his speech. Shutting your eyes, you would have trailed
after this rat-catcher's pipes at least to the walls of Hamelin.
Beyond that you would have had to be more childish to follow. But
let him play his own tune to the words set down, so that if all is
too dull, the art of music may bear the blame.

"Women," said Judson Tate, "are mysterious creatures."

My spirits sank. I was not there to listen to such a world-old
hypothesis--to such a time-worn, long-ago-refuted, bald, feeble,
illogical, vicious, patent sophistry--to an ancient, baseless,
wearisome, ragged, unfounded, insidious, falsehood originated by
women themselves, and by them insinuated, foisted, thrust, spread,
and ingeniously promulgated into the ears of mankind by underhanded,
secret and deceptive methods, for the purpose of augmenting,
furthering, and reinforcing their own charms and designs.

"Oh, I don't know!" said I, vernacularly.

"Have you ever heard of Oratama?" he asked.

"Possibly," I answered. "I seem to recall a toe dancer--or a
suburban addition--or was it a perfume?--of some such name."

"It is a town," said Judson Tate, "on the coast of a foreign
country of which you know nothing and could understand less. It is
a country governed by a dictator and controlled by revolutions and
insubordination. It was there that a great life-drama was played,
with Judson Tate, the homeliest man in America, and Fergus McMahan,
the handsomest adventurer in history or fiction, and Señorita
Anabela Zamora, the beautiful daughter of the alcalde of Oratama, as
chief actors. And, another thing--nowhere else on the globe except
in the department of Trienta y tres in Uruguay does the _chuchula_
plant grow. The products of the country I speak of are valuable
woods, dyestuffs, gold, rubber, ivory, and cocoa."

"I was not aware," said I, "that South America produced any ivory."

"There you are twice mistaken," said Judson Tate, distributing the
words over at least an octave of his wonderful voice. "I did not say
that the country I spoke of was in South America--I must be careful,
my dear man; I have been in politics there, you know. But, even
so--I have played chess against its president with a set carved
from the nasal bones of the tapir--one of our native specimens
of the order of _perissodactyle ungulates_ inhabiting the
Cordilleras--which was as pretty ivory as you would care to see.

"But is was of romance and adventure and the ways of women that was
I going to tell you, and not of zoölogical animals.

"For fifteen years I was the ruling power behind old Sancho
Benavides, the Royal High Thumbscrew of the republic. You've seen
his picture in the papers--a mushy black man with whiskers like the
notes on a Swiss music-box cylinder, and a scroll in his right hand
like the ones they write births on in the family Bible. Well, that
chocolate potentate used to be the biggest item of interest anywhere
between the colour line and the parallels of latitude. It was three
throws, horses, whether he was to wind up in the Hall of Fame or the
Bureau of Combustibles. He'd have been sure called the Roosevelt of
the Southern Continent if it hadn't been that Grover Cleveland was
President at the time. He'd hold office a couple of terms, then he'd
sit out for a hand--always after appointing his own successor for
the interims.

"But it was not Benavides, the Liberator, who was making all this
fame for himself. Not him. It was Judson Tate. Benavides was only
the chip over the bug. I gave him the tip when to declare war and
increase import duties and wear his state trousers. But that wasn't
what I wanted to tell you. How did I get to be It? I'll tell you.
Because I'm the most gifted talker that ever made vocal sounds since
Adam first opened his eyes, pushed aside the smelling-salts, and
asked: 'Where am I?'

"As you observe, I am about the ugliest man you ever saw outside
the gallery of photographs of the New England early Christian
Scientists. So, at an early age, I perceived that what I lacked
in looks I must make up in eloquence. That I've done. I get what I
go after. As the back-stop and still small voice of old Benavides
I made all the great historical powers-behind-the-throne, such
as Talleyrand, Mrs. de Pompadour, and Loeb, look as small as the
minority report of a Duma. I could talk nations into or out of debt,
harangue armies to sleep on the battlefield, reduce insurrections,
inflammations, taxes, appropriations or surpluses with a few words,
and call up the dogs of war or the dove of peace with the same
bird-like whistle. Beauty and epaulettes and curly moustaches and
Grecian profiles in other men were never in my way. When people
first look at me they shudder. Unless they are in the last stages
of _angina pectoris_ they are mine in ten minutes after I begin to
talk. Women and men--I win 'em as they come. Now, you wouldn't think
women would fancy a man with a face like mine, would you?"

"Oh, yes, Mr. Tate," said I. "History is bright and fiction dull
with homely men who have charmed women. There seems--"

"Pardon me," interrupted Judson Tate, "but you don't quite
understand. You have yet to hear my story.

"Fergus McMahan was a friend of mine in the capital. For a handsome
man I'll admit he was the duty-free merchandise. He had blond curls
and laughing blue eyes and was featured regular. They said he was a
ringer for the statue they call Herr Mees, the god of speech and
eloquence resting in some museum at Rome. Some German anarchist, I
suppose. They are always resting and talking.

"But Fergus was no talker. He was brought up with the idea that
to be beautiful was to make good. His conversation was about as
edifying as listening to a leak dropping in a tin dish-pan at the
head of the bed when you want to go to sleep. But he and me got
to be friends--maybe because we was so opposite, don't you think?
Looking at the Hallowe'en mask that I call my face when I'm shaving
seemed to give Fergus pleasure; and I'm sure that whenever I heard
the feeble output of throat noises that he called conversation I
felt contented to be a gargoyle with a silver tongue.

"One time I found it necessary to go down to this coast town of
Oratama to straighten out a lot of political unrest and chop off a
few heads in the customs and military departments. Fergus, who owned
the ice and sulphur-match concessions of the republic, says he'll
keep me company.

"So, in a jangle of mule-train bells, we gallops into Oratama, and
the town belonged to us as much as Long Island Sound doesn't belong
to Japan when T. R. is at Oyster Bay. I say us; but I mean me.
Everybody for four nations, two oceans, one bay and isthmus, and
five archipelagoes around had heard of Judson Tate. Gentleman
adventurer, they called me. I had been written up in five columns of
the yellow journals, 40,000 words (with marginal decorations) in a
monthly magazine, and a stickful on the twelfth page of the New York
_Times_. If the beauty of Fergus McMahan gained any part of our
reception in Oratama, I'll eat the price-tag in my Panama. It was me
that they hung out paper flowers and palm branches for. I am not a
jealous man; I am stating facts. The people were Nebuchadnezzars;
they bit the grass before me; there was no dust in the town for them
to bite. They bowed down to Judson Tate. They knew that I was the
power behind Sancho Benavides. A word from me was more to them than
a whole deckle-edged library from East Aurora in sectional bookcases
was from anybody else. And yet there are people who spend hours
fixing their faces--rubbing in cold cream and massaging the muscles
(always toward the eyes) and taking in the slack with tincture of
benzoin and electrolyzing moles--to what end? Looking handsome.
Oh, what a mistake! It's the larynx that the beauty doctors ought
to work on. It's words more than warts, talk more than talcum,
palaver more than powder, blarney more than bloom that counts--the
phonograph instead of the photograph. But I was going to tell you.

"The local Astors put me and Fergus up at the Centipede Club, a
frame building built on posts sunk in the surf. The tide's only nine
inches. The Little Big High Low Jack-in-the-game of the town came
around and kowtowed. Oh, it wasn't to Herr Mees. They had heard
about Judson Tate.

"One afternoon me and Fergus McMahan was sitting on the seaward
gallery of the Centipede, drinking iced rum and talking.

"'Judson,' says Fergus, 'there's an angel in Oratama.'

"'So long,' says I, 'as it ain't Gabriel, why talk as if you had
heard a trump blow?'

"'It's the Señorita Anabela Zamora,' says Fergus.
'She's--she's--she's as lovely as--as hell!'

"'Bravo!' says I, laughing heartily. 'You have a true lover's
eloquence to paint the beauties of your inamorata. You remind me,'
says I, 'of Faust's wooing of Marguerite--that is, if he wooed her
after he went down the trap-door of the stage.'

"'Judson,' says Fergus, 'you know you are as beautiless as a
rhinoceros. You can't have any interest in women. I'm awfully gone
in Miss Anabela. And that's why I'm telling you.'

"'Oh, _seguramente_,' says I. 'I know I have a front elevation like
an Aztec god that guards a buried treasure that never did exist
in Jefferson County, Yucatan. But there are compensations. For
instance, I am It in this country as far as the eye can reach, and
then a few perches and poles. And again,' says I, 'when I engage
people in a set-to of oral, vocal, and laryngeal utterances, I do
not usually confine my side of the argument to what may be likened
to a cheap phonographic reproduction of the ravings of a jellyfish.'

"'Oh, I know,' says Fergus, amiable, 'that I'm not handy at small
talk. Or large, either. That's why I'm telling you. I want you to
help me.'

"'How can I do it?' I asked.

"'I have subsidized,' says Fergus, 'the services of Señorita
Anabela's duenna, whose name is Francesca. You have a reputation
in this country, Judson,' says Fergus, 'of being a great man and a
hero.'

"'I have,' says I. 'And I deserve it.'

"'And I,' says Fergus, 'am the best-looking man between the arctic
circle and antarctic ice pack.'

"'With limitations,' says I, 'as to physiognomy and geography, I
freely concede you to be.'

"'Between the two of us,' says Fergus, 'we ought to land the
Señorita Anabela Zamora. The lady, as you know, is of an old Spanish
family, and further than looking at her driving in the family
_carruaje_ of afternoons around the plaza, or catching a glimpse of
her through a barred window of evenings, she is as unapproachable as
a star.'

"'Land her for which one of us?' says I.

"'For me, of course,' says Fergus. 'You've never seen her. Now, I've
had Francesca point me out to her as being you on several occasions.
When she sees me on the plaza, she thinks she's looking at Don
Judson Tate, the greatest hero, statesman, and romantic figure in
the country. With your reputation and my looks combined in one
man, how can she resist him? She's heard all about your thrilling
history, of course. And she's seen me. Can any woman want more?'
asks Fergus McMahan.

"'Can she do with less?' I ask. 'How can we separate our mutual
attractions, and how shall we apportion the proceeds?'

"Then Fergus tells me his scheme.

"The house of the alcalde, Don Luis Zamora, he says, has a _patio_,
of course--a kind of inner courtyard opening from the street. In an
angle of it is his daughter's window--as dark a place as you could
find. And what do you think he wants me to do? Why, knowing my
freedom, charm, and skilfulness of tongue, he proposes that I go
into the _patio_ at midnight, when the hobgoblin face of me cannot
be seen, and make love to her for him--for the pretty man that she
has seen on the plaza, thinking him to be Don Judson Tate.

"Why shouldn't I do it for him--for my friend, Fergus McMahan?
For him to ask me was a compliment--an acknowledgment of his own
shortcomings.

"'You little, lily white, fine-haired, highly polished piece of dumb
sculpture,' says I, 'I'll help you. Make your arrangements and get
me in the dark outside her window and my stream of conversation
opened up with the moonlight tremolo stop turned on, and she's
yours.'

"'Keep your face hid, Jud,' says Fergus. 'For heaven's sake, keep
your face hid. I'm a friend of yours in all kinds of sentiment, but
this is a business deal. If I could talk I wouldn't ask you. But
seeing me and listening to you I don't see why she can't be landed.'

"'By you?' says I.

"'By me,' says Fergus.

"Well, Fergus and the duenna, Francesca, attended to the details.
And one night they fetched me a long black cloak with a high collar,
and led me to the house at midnight. I stood by the window in the
_patio_ until I heard a voice as soft and sweet as an angel's
whisper on the other side of the bars. I could see only a faint,
white clad shape inside; and, true to Fergus, I pulled the collar of
my cloak high up, for it was July in the wet seasons, and the nights
were chilly. And, smothering a laugh as I thought of the tongue-tied
Fergus, I began to talk.

"Well, sir, I talked an hour at the Señorita Anabela. I say 'at'
because it was not 'with.' Now and then she would say: 'Oh, Señor,'
or 'Now, ain't you foolin'?' or 'I know you don't mean that,' and
such things as women will when they are being rightly courted. Both
of us knew English and Spanish; so in two languages I tried to win
the heart of the lady for my friend Fergus. But for the bars to
the window I could have done it in one. At the end of the hour she
dismissed me and gave me a big, red rose. I handed it over to Fergus
when I got home.

"For three weeks every third or fourth night I impersonated my
friend in the _patio_ at the window of Señorita Anabela. At last she
admitted that her heart was mine, and spoke of having seen me every
afternoon when she drove in the plaza. It was Fergus she had seen,
of course. But it was my talk that won her. Suppose Fergus had gone
there, and tried to make a hit in the dark with his beauty all
invisible, and not a word to say for himself!

"On the last night she promised to be mine--that is, Fergus's. And
she put her hand between the bars for me to kiss. I bestowed the
kiss and took the news to Fergus.

"'You might have left that for me to do,' says he.

"'That'll be your job hereafter,' says I. 'Keep on doing that and
don't try to talk. Maybe after she thinks she's in love she won't
notice the difference between real conversation and the inarticulate
sort of droning that you give forth.'

"Now, I had never seen Señorita Anabela. So, the next day Fergus
asks me to walk with him through the plaza and view the daily
promenade and exhibition of Oratama society, a sight that had no
interest for me. But I went; and children and dogs took to the
banana groves and mangrove swamps as soon as they had a look at my
face.

"'Here she comes,' said Fergus, twirling his moustache--'the one
in white, in the open carriage with the black horse.'

"I looked and felt the ground rock under my feet. For Señorita
Anabela Zamora was the most beautiful woman in the world, and the
only one from that moment on, so far as Judson Tate was concerned. I
saw at a glance that I must be hers and she mine forever. I thought
of my face and nearly fainted; and then I thought of my other
talents and stood upright again. And I had been wooing her for three
weeks for another man!

"As Señorita Anabela's carriage rolled slowly past, she gave Fergus
a long, soft glance from the corners of her night-black eyes,
a glance that would have sent Judson Tate up into heaven in a
rubber-tired chariot. But she never looked at me. And that handsome
man only ruffles his curls and smirks and prances like a lady-killer
at my side.

"'What do you think of her, Judson?' asks Fergus, with an air.

"'This much,' says I. 'She is to be Mrs. Judson Tate. I am no man to
play tricks on a friend. So take your warning.'

"I thought Fergus would die laughing.

"'Well, well, well,' said he, 'you old doughface! Struck too, are
you? That's great! But you're too late. Francesca tells me that
Anabela talks of nothing but me, day and night. Of course, I'm
awfully obliged to you for making that chin-music to her of
evenings. But, do you know, I've an idea that I could have done it
as well myself.'

"'Mrs. Judson Tate,' says I. 'Don't forget the name. You've had the
use of my tongue to go with your good looks, my boy. You can't lend
me your looks; but hereafter my tongue is my own. Keep your mind on
the name that's to be on the visiting cards two inches by three and
a half--"Mrs. Judson Tate." That's all.'

"'All right,' says Fergus, laughing again. 'I've talked with her
father, the alcalde, and he's willing. He's to give a _baile_
to-morrow evening in his new warehouse. If you were a dancing man,
Jud, I'd expect you around to meet the future Mrs. McMahan.'

"But on the next evening, when the music was playing loudest at
the Alcade Zamora's _baile_, into the room steps Judson Tate in
new white linen clothes as if he were the biggest man in the whole
nation, which he was.

"Some of the musicians jumped off the key when they saw my face, and
one or two of the timidest señoritas let out a screech or two. But
up prances the alcalde and almost wipes the dust off my shoes with
his forehead. No mere good looks could have won me that sensational
entrance.

"'I hear much, Señor Zamora,' says I, 'of the charm of your
daughter. It would give me great pleasure to be presented to her.'

"There were about six dozen willow rocking-chairs, with pink tidies
tied on to them, arranged against the walls. In one of them sat
Señorita Anabela in white Swiss and red slippers, with pearls and
fireflies in her hair. Fergus was at the other end of the room
trying to break away from two maroons and a claybank girl.

"The alcalde leads me up to Anabela and presents me. When she took
the first look at my face she dropped her fan and nearly turned her
chair over from the shock. But I'm used to that.

"I sat down by her, and began to talk. When she heard me speak she
jumped, and her eyes got as big as alligator pears. She couldn't
strike a balance between the tones of my voice and face I carried.
But I kept on talking in the key of C, which is the ladies' key; and
presently she sat still in her chair and a dreamy look came into her
eyes. She was coming my way. She knew of Judson Tate, and what a
big man he was, and the big things he had done; and that was in my
favour. But, of course, it was some shock to her to find out that I
was not the pretty man that had been pointed out to her as the great
Judson. And then I took the Spanish language, which is better than
English for certain purposes, and played on it like a harp of a
thousand strings. I ranged from the second G below the staff up to
F-sharp above it. I set my voice to poetry, art, romance, flowers,
and moonlight. I repeated some of the verses that I had murmured to
her in the dark at her window; and I knew from a sudden soft sparkle
in her eye that she recognized in my voice the tones of her midnight
mysterious wooer.

"Anyhow, I had Fergus McMahan going. Oh, the vocal is the true
art--no doubt about that. Handsome is as handsome palavers. That's
the renovated proverb.

"I took Señorita Anabela for a walk in the lemon grove while Fergus,
disfiguring himself with an ugly frown, was waltzing with the
claybank girl. Before we returned I had permission to come to her
window in the _patio_ the next evening at midnight and talk some
more.

"Oh, it was easy enough. In two weeks Anabela was engaged to me, and
Fergus was out. He took it calm, for a handsome man, and told me he
wasn't going to give in.

"'Talk may be all right in its place, Judson,' he says to me,
'although I've never thought it worth cultivating. But,' says he,
'to expect mere words to back up successfully a face like yours in a
lady's good graces is like expecting a man to make a square meal on
the ringing of a dinner-bell.'

"But I haven't begun on the story I was going to tell you yet.

"One day I took a long ride in the hot sunshine, and then took a
bath in the cold waters of a lagoon on the edge of the town before
I'd cooled off.

"That evening after dark I called at the alcalde's to see Anabela. I
was calling regular every evening then, and we were to be married in
a month. She was looking like a bulbul, a gazelle, and a tea-rose,
and her eyes were as soft and bright as two quarts of cream skimmed
off from the Milky Way. She looked at my rugged features without
any expression of fear or repugnance. Indeed, I fancied that I saw
a look of deep admiration and affection, such as she had cast at
Fergus on the plaza.

"I sat down, and opened my mouth to tell Anabela what she loved
to hear--that she was a trust, monopolizing all the loveliness of
earth. I opened my mouth, and instead of the usual vibrating words
of love and compliment, there came forth a faint wheeze such as
a baby with croup might emit. Not a word--not a syllable--not an
intelligible sound. I had caught cold in my laryngeal regions when
I took my injudicious bath.

"For two hours I sat trying to entertain Anabela. She talked a
certain amount, but it was perfunctory and diluted. The nearest
approach I made to speech was to formulate a sound like a clam
trying to sing 'A Life on the Ocean Wave' at low tide. It seemed
that Anabela's eyes did not rest upon me as often as usual. I had
nothing with which to charm her ears. We looked at pictures and she
played the guitar occasionally, very badly. When I left, her parting
manner seemed cool--or at least thoughtful.

"This happened for five evenings consecutively.

"On the sixth day she ran away with Fergus McMahan.

"It was known that they fled in a sailing yacht bound for Belize. I
was only eight hours behind them in a small steam launch belonging
to the Revenue Department.

"Before I sailed, I rushed into the _botica_ of old Manuel Iquito, a
half-breed Indian druggist. I could not speak, but I pointed to my
throat and made a sound like escaping steam. He began to yawn. In
an hour, according to the customs of the country, I would have been
waited on. I reached across the counter, seized him by the throat,
and pointed again to my own. He yawned once more, and thrust into my
hand a small bottle containing a black liquid.

"'Take one small spoonful every two hours,' says he.

"I threw him a dollar and skinned for the steamer.

"I steamed into the harbour at Belize thirteen seconds behind the
yacht that Anabela and Fergus were on. They started for the shore in
a dory just as my skiff was lowered over the side. I tried to order
my sailormen to row faster, but the sounds died in my larynx before
they came to the light. Then I thought of old Iquito's medicine, and
I got out his bottle and took a swallow of it.

"The two boats landed at the same moment. I walked straight up to
Anabela and Fergus. Her eyes rested upon me for an instant; then she
turned them, full of feeling and confidence, upon Fergus. I knew I
could not speak, but I was desperate. In speech lay my only hope. I
could not stand beside Fergus and challenge comparison in the way of
beauty. Purely involuntarily, my larynx and epiglottis attempted to
reproduce the sounds that my mind was calling upon my vocal organs
to send forth.

"To my intense surprise and delight the words rolled forth
beautifully clear, resonant, exquisitely modulated, full of power,
expression, and long-repressed emotion.

"'Señorita Anabela,' says I, 'may I speak with you aside for a
moment?'

"You don't want details about that, do you? Thanks. The old
eloquence had come back all right. I led her under a cocoanut palm
and put my old verbal spell on her again.

"'Judson,' says she, 'when you are talking to me I can hear nothing
else--I can see nothing else--there is nothing and nobody else in
the world for me.'

"Well, that's about all of the story. Anabela went back to Oratama
in the steamer with me. I never heard what became of Fergus. I never
saw him any more. Anabela is now Mrs. Judson Tate. Has my story
bored you much?"

"No," said I. "I am always interested in psychological studies.
A human heart--and especially a woman's--is a wonderful thing to
contemplate."

"It is," said Judson Tate. "And so are the trachea and bronchial
tubes of man. And the larynx too. Did you ever make a study of the
windpipe?"

"Never," said I. "But I have taken much pleasure in your story.
May I ask after Mrs. Tate, and inquire of her present health and
whereabouts?"

"Oh, sure," said Judson Tate. "We are living in Bergen Avenue,
Jersey City. The climate down in Oratama didn't suit Mrs. T. I
don't suppose you ever dissected the arytenoid cartilages of the
epiglottis, did you?"

"Why, no," said I, "I am no surgeon."

"Pardon me," said Judson Tate, "but every man should know enough of
anatomy and therapeutics to safeguard his own health. A sudden cold
may set up capillary bronchitis or inflammation of the pulmonary
vesicles, which may result in a serious affection of the vocal
organs."

"Perhaps so," said I, with some impatience; "but that is neither
here nor there. Speaking of the strange manifestations of the
affection of women, I--"

"Yes, yes," interrupted Judson Tate; "they have peculiar ways. But,
as I was going to tell you: when I went back to Oratama I found out
from Manuel Iquito what was in that mixture he gave me for my lost
voice. I told you how quick it cured me. He made that stuff from the
_chuchula_ plant. Now, look here."

Judson Tate drew an oblong, white pasteboard box from his pocket.

"For any cough," he said, "or cold, or hoarseness, or bronchial
affection whatsoever, I have here the greatest remedy in the world.
You see the formula, printed on the box. Each tablet contains
licorice, 2 grains; balsam tolu, 1/10 grain; oil of anise, 1/20
minim; oil of tar, 1/60 minim; oleo-resin of cubebs, 1/60 minim;
fluid extract of _chuchula_, 1/10 minim.

"I am in New York," went on Judson Tate, "for the purpose of
organizing a company to market the greatest remedy for throat
affections ever discovered. At present I am introducing the lozenges
in a small way. I have here a box containing four dozen, which I am
selling for the small sum of fifty cents. If you are suffering--"



I got up and went away without a word. I walked slowly up to the
little park near my hotel, leaving Judson Tate alone with his
conscience. My feelings were lacerated. He had poured gently upon me
a story that I might have used. There was a little of the breath of
life in it, and some of the synthetic atmosphere that passes, when
cunningly tinkered, in the marts. And, at the last it had proven to
be a commercial pill, deftly coated with the sugar of fiction. The
worst of it was that I could not offer it for sale. Advertising
departments and counting-rooms look down upon me. And it would
never do for the literary. Therefore I sat upon a bench with other
disappointed ones until my eyelids drooped.

I went to my room, and, as my custom is, read for an hour stories in
my favourite magazines. This was to get my mind back to art again.

And as I read each story, I threw the magazines sadly and
hopelessly, one by one, upon the floor. Each author, without one
exception to bring balm to my heart, wrote liltingly and sprightly
a story of some particular make of motor-car that seemed to control
the sparking plug of his genius.

And when the last one was hurled from me I took heart.

"If readers can swallow so many proprietary automobiles," I said to
myself, "they ought not to strain at one of Tate's Compound Magic
Chuchula Bronchial Lozenges."

And so if you see this story in print you will understand that
business is business, and that if Art gets very far ahead of
Commerce, she will have to get up and hustle.

I may as well add, to make a clean job of it, that you can't buy the
_chuchula_ plant in the drug stores.




VI

ART AND THE BRONCO


Out of the wilderness had come a painter. Genius, whose coronations
alone are democratic, had woven a chaplet of chaparral for the brow
of Lonny Briscoe. Art, whose divine expression flows impartially
from the fingertips of a cowboy or a dilettante emperor, had chosen
for a medium the Boy Artist of the San Saba. The outcome, seven feet
by twelve of besmeared canvas, stood, gilt-framed, in the lobby of
the Capitol.

The legislature was in session; the capital city of that great
Western state was enjoying the season of activity and profit that
the congregation of the solons bestowed. The boarding-houses were
corralling the easy dollars of the gamesome lawmakers. The greatest
state in the West, an empire in area and resources, had arisen and
repudiated the old libel or barbarism, lawbreaking, and bloodshed.
Order reigned within her borders. Life and property were as safe
there, sir, as anywhere among the corrupt cities of the effete
East. Pillow-shams, churches, strawberry feasts and _habeas corpus_
flourished. With impunity might the tenderfoot ventilate his
"stovepipe" or his theories of culture. The arts and sciences
received nurture and subsidy. And, therefore, it behooved the
legislature of this great state to make appropriation for the
purchase of Lonny Briscoe's immortal painting.

Rarely has the San Saba country contributed to the spread of the
fine arts. Its sons have excelled in the solider graces, in the
throw of the lariat, the manipulation of the esteemed .45, the
intrepidity of the one-card draw, and the nocturnal stimulation of
towns from undue lethargy; but, hitherto, it had not been famed as
a stronghold of æsthetics. Lonny Briscoe's brush had removed that
disability. Here, among the limestone rocks, the succulent cactus,
and the drought-parched grass of that arid valley, had been born the
Boy Artist. Why he came to woo art is beyond postulation. Beyond
doubt, some spore of the afflatus must have sprung up within him in
spite of the desert soil of San Saba. The tricksy spirit of creation
must have incited him to attempted expression and then have sat
hilarious among the white-hot sands of the valley, watching its
mischievous work. For Lonny's picture, viewed as a thing of art,
was something to have driven away dull care from the bosoms of the
critics.

The painting--one might almost say panorama--was designed to portray
a typical Western scene, interest culminating in a central animal
figure, that of a stampeding steer, life-size, wild-eyed, fiery,
breaking away in a mad rush from the herd that, close-ridden by
a typical cowpuncher, occupied a position somewhat in the right
background of the picture. The landscape presented fitting and
faithful accessories. Chaparral, mesquit, and pear were distributed
in just proportions. A Spanish dagger-plant, with its waxen blossoms
in a creamy aggregation as large as a water-bucket, contributed
floral beauty and variety. The distance was undulating prairie,
bisected by stretches of the intermittent streams peculiar to the
region lined with the rich green of live-oak and water-elm. A richly
mottled rattlesnake lay coiled beneath a pale green clump of prickly
pear in the foreground. A third of the canvas was ultramarine and
lake white--the typical Western sky and the flying clouds, rainless
and feathery.

Between two plastered pillars in the commodious hallway near the
door of the chamber of representatives stood the painting. Citizens
and lawmakers passed there by twos and groups and sometimes crowds
to gaze upon it. Many--perhaps a majority of them--had lived the
prairie life and recalled easily the familiar scene. Old cattlemen
stood, reminiscent and candidly pleased, chatting with brothers of
former camps and trails of the days it brought back to mind. Art
critics were few in the town, and there was heard none of that
jargon of colour, perspective, and feeling such as the East loves to
use as a curb and a rod to the pretensions of the artist. 'Twas a
great picture, most of them agreed, admiring the gilt frame--larger
than any they had ever seen.

Senator Kinney was the picture's champion and sponsor. It was
he who so often stepped forward and asserted, with the voice of
a bronco-buster, that it would be a lasting blot, sir, upon the
name of this great state if it should decline to recognize in a
proper manner the genius that had so brilliantly transferred to
imperishable canvas a scene so typical of the great sources of our
state's wealth and prosperity, land--and--er--live-stock.

Senator Kinney represented a section of the state in the extreme
West--400 miles from the San Saba country--but the true lover of
art is not limited by metes and bounds. Nor was Senator Mullens,
representing the San Saba country, lukewarm in his belief that
the state should purchase the painting of his constituent. He was
advised that the San Saba country was unanimous in its admiration
of the great painting by one of its own denizens. Hundreds of
connoisseurs had straddled their broncos and ridden miles to view
it before its removal to the capital. Senator Mullens desired
reëlection, and he knew the importance of the San Saba vote. He also
knew that with the help of Senator Kinney--who was a power in the
legislature--the thing could be put through. Now, Senator Kinney had
an irrigation bill that he wanted passed for the benefit of his own
section, and he knew Senator Mullens could render him valuable aid
and information, the San Saba country already enjoying the benefits
of similar legislation. With these interests happily dovetailed,
wonder at the sudden interest in art at the state capital must,
necessarily, be small. Few artists have uncovered their first
picture to the world under happier auspices than did Lonny Briscoe.

Senators Kinney and Mullens came to an understanding in the matter
of irrigation and art while partaking of long drinks in the café of
the Empire Hotel.

"H'm!" said Senator Kinney, "I don't know. I'm no art critic, but it
seems to me the thing won't work. It looks like the worst kind of a
chromo to me. I don't want to cast any reflections upon the artistic
talent of your constituent, Senator, but I, myself, wouldn't give
six bits for the picture--without the frame. How are you going
to cram a thing like that down the throat of a legislature that
kicks about a little item in the expense bill of six hundred and
eighty-one dollars for rubber erasers for only one term? It's
wasting time. I'd like to help you, Mullens, but they'd laugh us out
of the Senate chamber if we were to try it."

"But you don't get the point," said Senator Mullens, in his
deliberate tones, tapping Kinney's glass with his long forefinger.
"I have my own doubts as to what the picture is intended to
represent, a bullfight or a Japanese allegory, but I want this
legislature to make an appropriation to purchase. Of course, the
subject of the picture should have been in the state historical
line, but it's too late to have the paint scraped off and changed.
The state won't miss the money and the picture can be stowed away in
a lumber-room where it won't annoy any one. Now, here's the point to
work on, leaving art to look after itself--the chap that painted the
picture is the grandson of Lucien Briscoe."

"Say it again," said Kinney, leaning his head thoughtfully. "Of the
old, original Lucien Briscoe?"

"Of him. 'The man who,' you know. The man who carved the state out
of the wilderness. The man who settled the Indians. The man who
cleaned out the horse thieves. The man who refused the crown. The
state's favourite son. Do you see the point now?"

"Wrap up the picture," said Kinney. "It's as good as sold. Why
didn't you say that at first, instead of philandering along about
art. I'll resign my seat in the Senate and go back to chain-carrying
for the county surveyor the day I can't make this state buy a
picture calcimined by a grandson of Lucien Briscoe. Did you ever
hear of a special appropriation for the purchase of a home for the
daughter of One-Eyed Smothers? Well, that went through like a motion
to adjourn, and old One-Eyed never killed half as many Indians as
Briscoe did. About what figure had you and the calciminer agreed
upon to sandbag the treasury for?"

"I thought," said Mullens, "that maybe five hundred--"

"Five hundred!" interrupted Kinney, as he hammered on his glass for
a lead pencil and looked around for a waiter. "Only five hundred for
a red steer on the hoof delivered by a grandson of Lucien Briscoe!
Where's your state pride, man? Two thousand is what it'll be. You'll
introduce the bill and I'll get up on the floor of the Senate and
wave the scalp of every Indian old Lucien ever murdered. Let's see,
there was something else proud and foolish he did, wasn't there? Oh,
yes; he declined all emoluments and benefits he was entitled to.
Refused his head-right and veteran donation certificates. Could have
been governor, but wouldn't. Declined a pension. Now's the state's
chance to pay up. It'll have to take the picture, but then it
deserves some punishment for keeping the Briscoe family waiting so
long. We'll bring this thing up about the middle of the month, after
the tax bill is settled. Now, Mullens, you send over, as soon as you
can, and get me the figures on the cost of those irrigation ditches
and the statistics about the increased production per acre. I'm
going to need you when that bill of mine comes up. I reckon we'll
be able to pull along pretty well together this session and maybe
others to come, eh, Senator?"

Thus did fortune elect to smile upon the Boy Artist of the San Saba.
Fate had already done her share when she arranged his atoms in the
cosmogony of creation as the grandson of Lucien Briscoe.

The original Briscoe had been a pioneer both as to territorial
occupation and in certain acts prompted by a great and simple heart.
He had been one of the first settlers and crusaders against the wild
forces of nature, the savage and the shallow politician. His name
and memory were revered, equally with any upon the list comprising
Houston, Boone, Crockett, Clark, and Green. He had lived simply,
independently, and unvexed by ambition. Even a less shrewd man than
Senator Kinney could have prophesied that his state would hasten to
honour and reward his grandson, come out of the chaparral at even so
late a day.

And so, before the great picture by the door of the chamber of
representatives at frequent times for many days could be found the
breezy, robust form of Senator Kinney and be heard his clarion voice
reciting the past deeds of Lucien Briscoe in connection with the
handiwork of his grandson. Senator Mullens's work was more subdued
in sight and sound, but directed along identical lines.

Then, as the day for the introduction of the bill for appropriation
draws nigh, up from the San Saba country rides Lonny Briscoe and a
loyal lobby of cowpunchers, bronco-back, to boost the cause of art
and glorify the name of friendship, for Lonny is one of them, a
knight of stirrup and chaparreras, as handy with the lariat and .45
as he is with brush and palette.

On a March afternoon the lobby dashed, with a whoop, into town. The
cowpunchers had adjusted their garb suitably from that prescribed
for the range to the more conventional requirements of town. They
had conceded their leather chaparreras and transferred their
six-shooters and belts from their persons to the horns of their
saddles. Among them rode Lonny, a youth of twenty-three, brown,
solemn-faced, ingenuous, bowlegged, reticent, bestriding Hot
Tamales, the most sagacious cow pony west of the Mississippi.
Senator Mullens had informed him of the bright prospects of the
situation; had even mentioned--so great was his confidence in the
capable Kinney--the price that the state would, in all likelihood,
pay. It seemed to Lonny that fame and fortune were in his hands.
Certainly, a spark of the divine fire was in the little brown
centaur's breast, for he was counting the two thousand dollars as
but a means to future development of his talent. Some day he would
paint a picture even greater than this--one, say, twelve feet by
twenty, full of scope and atmosphere and action.

During the three days that yet intervened before the coming of the
date fixed for the introduction of the bill, the centaur lobby
did valiant service. Coatless, spurred, weather-tanned, full of
enthusiasm expressed in bizarre terms, they loafed in front of
the painting with tireless zeal. Reasoning not unshrewdly, they
estimated that their comments upon its fidelity to nature would be
received as expert evidence. Loudly they praised the skill of the
painter whenever there were ears near to which such evidence might
be profitably addressed. Lem Perry, the leader of the claque, had a
somewhat set speech, being uninventive in the construction of new
phrases.

"Look at that two-year-old, now," he would say, waving a
cinnamon-brown hand toward the salient point of the picture.
"Why, dang my hide, the critter's alive. I can jest hear him,
'lumpety-lump,' a-cuttin' away from the herd, pretendin' he's
skeered. He's a mean scamp, that there steer. Look at his eyes
a-wallin' and his tail a-wavin'. He's true and nat'ral to life. He's
jest hankerin' fur a cow pony to round him up and send him scootin'
back to the bunch. Dang my hide! jest look at that tail of his'n
a-wavin'. Never knowed a steer to wave his tail any other way, dang
my hide ef I did."

Jud Shelby, while admitting the excellence of the steer, resolutely
confined himself to open admiration of the landscape, to the end
that the entire picture receive its meed of praise.

"That piece of range," he declared, "is a dead ringer for Dead Hoss
Valley. Same grass, same lay of land, same old Whipperwill Creek
skallyhootin' in and out of them motts of timber. Them buzzards on
the left is circlin' 'round over Sam Kildrake's old paint hoss that
killed hisself over-drinkin' on a hot day. You can't see the hoss
for that mott of ellums on the creek, but he's thar. Anybody that
was goin' to look for Dead Hoss Valley and come across this picture,
why, he'd just light off'n his bronco and hunt a place to camp."

Skinny Rogers, wedded to comedy, conceived a complimentary little
piece of acting that never failed to make an impression. Edging
quite near to the picture, he would suddenly, at favourable moments
emit a piercing and awful "Yi-yi!" leap high and away, coming
down with a great stamp of heels and whirring of rowels upon the
stone-flagged floor.

"Jeeming Cristopher!"--so ran his lines--"thought that rattler was a
gin-u-ine one. Ding baste my skin if I didn't. Seemed to me I heard
him rattle. Look at the blamed, unconverted insect a-layin' under
that pear. Little more, and somebody would a-been snake-bit."

With these artful dodges, contributed by Lonney's faithful coterie,
with the sonorous Kinney perpetually sounding the picture's merits,
and with the solvent prestige of the pioneer Briscoe covering it
like a precious varnish, it seemed that the San Saba country could
not fail to add a reputation as an art centre to its well-known
superiority in steer-roping contests and achievements with the
precarious busted flush. Thus was created for the picture an
atmosphere, due rather to externals than to the artist's brush, but
through it the people seemed to gaze with more of admiration. There
was a magic in the name of Briscoe that counted high against faulty
technique and crude colouring. The old Indian fighter and wolf
slayer would have smiled grimly in his happy hunting grounds had he
known that his dilettante ghost was thus figuring as an art patron
two generations after his uninspired existence.

Came the day when the Senate was expected to pass the bill of
Senator Mullens appropriating two thousand dollars for the purchase
of the picture. The gallery of the Senate chamber was early
preempted by Lonny and the San Saba lobby. In the front row of
chairs they sat, wild-haired, self-conscious, jingling, creaking,
and rattling, subdued by the majesty of the council hall.

The bill was introduced, went to the second reading, and then
Senator Mullens spoke for it dryly, tediously, and at length.
Senator Kinney then arose, and the welkin seized the bellrope
preparatory to ringing. Oratory was at that time a living thing; the
world had not quite come to measure its questions by geometry and
the multiplication table. It was the day of the silver tongue, the
sweeping gesture, the decorative apostrophe, the moving peroration.

The Senator spoke. The San Saba contingent sat, breathing hard,
in the gallery, its disordered hair hanging down to its eyes, its
sixteen-ounce hats shifted restlessly from knee to knee. Below,
the distinguished Senators either lounged at their desks with the
abandon of proven statesmanship or maintained correct attitudes
indicative of a first term.

Senator Kinney spoke for an hour. History was his theme--history
mitigated by patriotism and sentiment. He referred casually to the
picture in the outer hall--it was unnecessary, he said, to dilate
upon its merits--the Senators had seen for themselves. The painter
of the picture was the grandson of Lucien Briscoe. Then came the
word-pictures of Briscoe's life set forth in thrilling colours.
His rude and venturesome life, his simple-minded love for the
commonwealth he helped to upbuild, his contempt for rewards and
praise, his extreme and sturdy independence, and the great services
he had rendered the state. The subject of the oration was Lucien
Briscoe; the painting stood in the background serving simply as a
means, now happily brought forward, through which the state might
bestow a tardy recompense upon the descendent of its favourite son.
Frequent enthusiastic applause from the Senators testified to the
well reception of the sentiment.

The bill passed without an opening vote. To-morrow it would be taken
up by the House. Already was it fixed to glide through that body on
rubber tires. Blandford, Grayson, and Plummer, all wheel-horses and
orators, and provided with plentiful memoranda concerning the deeds
of pioneer Briscoe, had agreed to furnish the motive power.

The San Saba lobby and its _protégé_ stumbled awkwardly down the
stairs and out into the Capitol yard. Then they herded closely and
gave one yell of triumph. But one of them--Buck-Kneed Summers it
was--hit the key with the thoughtful remark:

"She cut the mustard," he said, "all right. I reckon they're goin'
to buy Lon's steer. I ain't right much on the parlyment'ry, but I
gather that's what the signs added up. But she seems to me, Lonny,
the argyment ran principal to grandfather, instead of paint. It's
reasonable calculatin' that you want to be glad you got the Briscoe
brand on you, my son."

That remarked clinched in Lonny's mind an unpleasant, vague
suspicion to the same effect. His reticence increased, and he
gathered grass from the ground, chewing it pensively. The picture
as a picture had been humiliatingly absent from the Senator's
arguments. The painter had been held up as a grandson, pure and
simple. While this was gratifying on certain lines, it made art
look little and slab-sided. The Boy Artist was thinking.

The hotel Lonny stopped at was near the Capitol. It was near to the
one o'clock dinner hour when the appropriation had been passed by
the Senate. The hotel clerk told Lonny that a famous artist from New
York had arrived in town that day and was in the hotel. He was on
his way westward to New Mexico to study the effect of sunlight upon
the ancient walls of the Zuñis. Modern stones reflect light. Those
ancient building materials absorb it. The artist wanted this effect
in a picture he was painting, and was traveling two thousand miles
to get it.

Lonny sought this man out after dinner and told his story. The
artist was an unhealthy man, kept alive by genius and indifference
to life. He went with Lonny to the Capitol and stood there before
the picture. The artist pulled his beard and looked unhappy.

"Should like to have your sentiments," said Lonny, "just as they run
out of the pen."

"It's the way they'll come," said the painter man. "I took three
different kinds of medicine before dinner--by the tablespoonful. The
taste still lingers. I am primed for telling the truth. You want to
know if the picture is, or if it isn't?"

"Right," said Lonny. "Is it wool or cotton? Should I paint some more
or cut it out and ride herd a-plenty?"

"I heard a rumour during pie," said the artist, "that the state is
about to pay you two thousand dollars for this picture."

"It's passed the Senate," said Lonny, "and the House rounds it up
to-morrow."

"That's lucky," said the pale man. "Do you carry a rabbit's foot?"

"No," said Lonny, "but it seems I had a grandfather. He's
considerable mixed up in the colour scheme. It took me a year
to paint that picture. Is she entirely awful or not? Some says,
now, that the steer's tail ain't badly drawed. They think it's
proportioned nice. Tell me."

The artist glanced at Lonny's wiry figure and nut-brown skin.
Something stirred him to a passing irritation.

"For Art's sake, son," he said, fractiously, "don't spend any more
money for paint. It isn't a picture at all. It's a gun. You hold up
the state with it, if you like, and get your two thousand, but don't
get in front of any more canvas. Live under it. Buy a couple of
hundred ponies with the money--I'm told they're that cheap--and
ride, ride, ride. Fill your lungs and eat and sleep and be happy. No
more pictures. You look healthy. That's genius. Cultivate it." He
looked at his watch. "Twenty minutes to three. Four capsules and one
tablet at three. That's all you wanted to know, isn't it?"

At three o'clock the cowpunchers rode up for Lonny, bringing Hot
Tamales, saddled. Traditions must be observed. To celebrate the
passage of the bill by the Senate the gang must ride wildly through
the town, creating uproar and excitement. Liquor must be partaken
of, the suburbs shot up, and the glory of the San Saba country
vociferously proclaimed. A part of the programme had been carried
out in the saloons on the way up.

Lonny mounted Hot Tamales, the accomplished little beast prancing
with fire and intelligence. He was glad to feel Lonny's bowlegged
grip against his ribs again. Lonny was his friend, and he was
willing to do things for him.

"Come on, boys," said Lonny, urging Hot Tomales into a gallop with
his knees. With a whoop, the inspired lobby tore after him through
the dust. Lonny led his cohorts straight for the Capitol. With a
wild yell, the gang endorsed his now evident intention of riding
into it. Hooray for San Saba!

Up the six broad, limestone steps clattered the broncos of the
cowpunchers. Into the resounding hallway they pattered, scattering
in dismay those passing on foot. Lonny, in the lead, shoved Hot
Tamales direct for the great picture. At that hour a downpouring,
soft light from the second-story windows bathed the big canvas.
Against the darker background of the hall the painting stood out
with valuable effect. In spite of the defects of the art you could
almost fancy that you gazed out upon a landscape. You might well
flinch a step from the convincing figure of the life-size steer
stampeding across the grass. Perhaps it seemed thus to Hot Tamales.
The scene was in his line. Perhaps he only obeyed the will of his
rider. His ears pricked up; he snorted. Lonny leaned forward in
the saddle and elevated his elbows, wing-like. Thus signals the
cowpuncher to his steed to launch himself full speed ahead. Did Hot
Tamales fancy he saw a steer, red and cavorting, that should be
headed off and driven back to the herd? There was a fierce clatter
of hoofs, a rush, a gathering of steely flank muscles, a leap to the
jerk of the bridle rein, and Hot Tamales, with Lonny bending low in
the saddle to dodge the top of the frame, ripped through the great
canvas like a shell from a mortar, leaving the cloth hanging in
ragged shreds about a monstrous hole.

Quickly Lonny pulled up his pony, and rounded the pillars.
Spectators came running, too astounded to add speech to the
commotion. The sergeant-at-arms of the House came forth, frowned,
looked ominous, and then grinned. Many of the legislators crowded
out to observe the tumult. Lonny's cowpunchers were stricken to
silent horror by his mad deed.

Senator Kinney happened to be among the earliest to emerge. Before
he could speak Lonny leaned in his saddle as Hot Tamales pranced,
pointed his quirt at the Senator, and said, calmly:

"That was a fine speech you made to-day, mister, but you might as
well let up on that 'propriation business. I ain't askin' the state
to give me nothin'. I thought I had a picture to sell to it, but it
wasn't one. You said a heap of things about Grandfather Briscoe that
makes me kind of proud I'm his grandson. Well, the Briscoes ain't
takin' presents from the state yet. Anybody can have the frame that
wants it. Hit her up, boys."

Away scuttled the San Saba delegation out of the hall, down the
steps, along the dusty street.

Halfway to the San Saba country they camped that night. At bedtime
Lonny stole away from the campfire and sought Hot Tamales, placidly
eating grass at the end of his stake rope. Lonny hung upon his neck,
and his art aspirations went forth forever in one long, regretful
sigh. But as he thus made renunciation his breath formed a word or
two.

"You was the only one, Tamales, what seen anything in it. It _did_
look like a steer, didn't it, old hoss?"




VII

PHOEBE


"You are a man of many novel adventures and varied enterprises," I
said to Captain Patricio Maloné. "Do you believe that the possible
element of good luck or bad luck--if there is such a thing as
luck--has influenced your career or persisted for or against you
to such an extent that you were forced to attribute results to the
operation of the aforesaid good luck or bad luck?"

This question (of almost the dull insolence of legal phraseology)
was put while we sat in Rousselin's little red-tiled café near Congo
Square in New Orleans.

Brown-faced, white-hatted, finger-ringed captains of adventure came
often to Rousselin's for the cognac. They came from sea and land,
and were chary of relating the things they had seen--not because
they were more wonderful than the fantasies of the Ananiases of
print, but because they were so different. And I was a perpetual
wedding-guest, always striving to cast my buttonhole over the finger
of one of these mariners of fortune. This Captain Maloné was a
Hiberno-Iberian creole who had gone to and fro in the earth and
walked up and down in it. He looked like any other well-dressed man
of thirty-five whom you might meet, except that he was hopelessly
weather-tanned, and wore on his chain an ancient ivory-and-gold
Peruvian charm against evil, which has nothing at all to do with
this story.

"My answer to your question," said the captain, smiling, "will be to
tell you the story of Bad-Luck Kearny. That is, if you don't mind
hearing it."

My reply was to pound on the table for Rousselin.

"Strolling along Tchoupitoulas Street one night," began Captain
Maloné, "I noticed, without especially taxing my interest, a small
man walking rapidly toward me. He stepped upon a wooden cellar door,
crashed through it, and disappeared. I rescued him from a heap of
soft coal below. He dusted himself briskly, swearing fluently in a
mechanical tone, as an underpaid actor recites the gypsy's curse.
Gratitude and the dust in his throat seemed to call for fluids
to clear them away. His desire for liquidation was expressed so
heartily that I went with him to a café down the street where we had
some vile vermouth and bitters.

"Looking across that little table I had my first clear sight of
Francis Kearny. He was about five feet seven, but as tough as a
cypress knee. His hair was darkest red, his mouth such a mere slit
that you wondered how the flood of his words came rushing from it.
His eyes were the brightest and lightest blue and the hopefulest
that I ever saw. He gave the double impression that he was at bay
and that you had better not crowd him further.

"'Just in from a gold-hunting expedition on the coast of Costa
Rica,' he explained. 'Second mate of a banana steamer told me the
natives were panning out enough from the beach sands to buy all
the rum, red calico, and parlour melodeons in the world. The day I
got there a syndicate named Incorporated Jones gets a government
concession to all minerals from a given point. For a next choice I
take coast fever and count green and blue lizards for six weeks in
a grass hut. I had to be notified when I was well, for the reptiles
were actually there. Then I shipped back as third cook on a
Norwegian tramp that blew up her boiler two miles below Quarantine.
I was due to bust through that cellar door here to-night, so I
hurried the rest of the way up the river, roustabouting on a lower
coast packet that made up a landing for every fisherman that wanted
a plug of tobacco. And now I'm here for what comes next. And it'll
be along, it'll be along,' said this queer Mr. Kearny; 'it'll be
along on the beams of my bright but not very particular star.'

"From the first the personality of Kearny charmed me. I saw in him
the bold heart, the restless nature, and the valiant front against
the buffets of fate that make his countrymen such valuable comrades
in risk and adventure. And just then I was wanting such men. Moored
at a fruit company's pier I had a 500-ton steamer ready to sail the
next day with a cargo of sugar, lumber, and corrugated iron for a
port in--well, let us call the country Esperando--it has not been
long ago, and the name of Patricio Maloné is still spoken there
when its unsettled politics are discussed. Beneath the sugar and
iron were packed a thousand Winchester rifles. In Aguas Frias,
the capital, Don Rafael Valdevia, Minister of War, Esperando's
greatest-hearted and most able patriot, awaited my coming. No
doubt you have heard, with a smile, of the insignificant wars and
uprisings in those little tropic republics. They make but a faint
clamour against the din of great nations' battles; but down there,
under all the ridiculous uniforms and petty diplomacy and senseless
countermarching and intrigue, are to be found statesmen and
patriots. Don Rafael Valdevia was one. His great ambition was to
raise Esperando into peace and honest prosperity and the respect of
the serious nations. So he waited for my rifles in Aguas Frias. But
one would think I am trying to win a recruit in you! No; it was
Francis Kearny I wanted. And so I told him, speaking long over our
execrable vermouth, breathing the stifling odour from garlic and
tarpaulins, which, as you know, is the distinctive flavour of cafés
in the lower slant of our city. I spoke of the tyrant President
Cruz and the burdens that his greed and insolent cruelty laid upon
the people. And at that Kearny's tears flowed. And then I dried
them with a picture of the fat rewards that would be ours when the
oppressor should be overthrown and the wise and generous Valdevia
in his seat. Then Kearny leaped to his feet and wrung my hand with
the strength of a roustabout. He was mine, he said, till the last
minion of the hated despot was hurled from the highest peaks of the
Cordilleras into the sea.

"I paid the score, and we went out. Near the door Kearny's elbow
overturned an upright glass showcase, smashing it into little bits.
I paid the storekeeper the price he asked.

"'Come to my hotel for the night,' I said to Kearny. 'We sail
to-morrow at noon.'

"He agreed; but on the sidewalk he fell to cursing again in the dull
monotonous way that he had done when I pulled him out of the coal
cellar.

"'Captain,' said he, 'before we go any further, it's no more than
fair to tell you that I'm known from Baffin's Bay to Terra del Fuego
as "Bad-Luck" Kearny. And I'm It. Everything I get into goes up in
the air except a balloon. Every bet I ever made I lost except when I
coppered it. Every boat I ever sailed on sank except the submarines.
Everything I was ever interested in went to pieces except a patent
bombshell that I invented. Everything I ever took hold of and tried
to run I ran into the ground except when I tried to plough. And
that's why they call me Bad-Luck Kearny. I thought I'd tell you.'

"'Bad luck,' said I, 'or what goes by that name, may now and then
tangle the affairs of any man. But if it persists beyond the
estimate of what we may call the "averages" there must be a cause
for it.'

"'There is,' said Kearny emphatically, 'and when we walk another
square I will show it to you.'

"Surprised, I kept by his side until we came to Canal Street and out
into the middle of its great width.

"Kearny seized me by an arm and pointed a tragic forefinger at a
rather brilliant star that shone steadily about thirty degrees above
the horizon.

"'That's Saturn,' said he, 'the star that presides over bad luck and
evil and disappointment and nothing doing and trouble. I was born
under that star. Every move I make, up bobs Saturn and blocks it.
He's the hoodoo planet of the heavens. They say he's 73,000 miles in
diameter and no solider of body than split-pea soup, and he's got as
many disreputable and malignant rings as Chicago. Now, what kind of
a star is that to be born under?'

"I asked Kearny where he had obtained all this astonishing
knowledge.

"'From Azrath, the great astrologer of Cleveland, Ohio,' said he.
'That man looked at a glass ball and told me my name before I'd
taken a chair. He prophesied the date of my birth and death before
I'd said a word. And then he cast my horoscope, and the sidereal
system socked me in the solar plexus. It was bad luck for Francis
Kearny from A to Izard and for his friends that were implicated with
him. For that I gave up ten dollars. This Azrath was sorry, but he
respected his profession too much to read the heavens wrong for any
man. It was night time, and he took me out on a balcony and gave me
a free view of the sky. And he showed me which Saturn was, and how
to find it in different balconies and longitudes.

"'But Saturn wasn't all. He was only the man higher up. He furnishes
so much bad luck that they allow him a gang of deputy sparklers to
help hand it out. They're circulating and revolving and hanging
around the main supply all the time, each one throwing the hoodoo on
his own particular district.

"'You see that ugly little red star about eight inches above and to
the right of Saturn?' Kearny asked me. 'Well, that's her. That's
Phoebe. She's got me in charge. "By the day of your birth," says
Azrath to me, "your life is subjected to the influence of Saturn. By
the hour and minute of it you must dwell under the sway and direct
authority of Phoebe, the ninth satellite." So said this Azrath.'
Kearny shook his fist violently skyward. 'Curse her, she's done
her work well,' said he. 'Ever since I was astrologized, bad luck
has followed me like my shadow, as I told you. And for many years
before. Now, Captain, I've told you my handicap as a man should. If
you're afraid this evil star of mine might cripple your scheme,
leave me out of it.'

"I reassured Kearny as well as I could. I told him that for the time
we would banish both astrology and astronomy from our heads. The
manifest valour and enthusiasm of the man drew me. 'Let us see what
a little courage and diligence will do against bad luck,' I said.
'We will sail to-morrow for Esperando.'

"Fifty miles down the Mississippi our steamer broke her rudder. We
sent for a tug to tow us back and lost three days. When we struck
the blue waters of the Gulf, all the storm clouds of the Atlantic
seemed to have concentrated above us. We thought surely to sweeten
those leaping waves with our sugar, and to stack our arms and lumber
on the floor of the Mexican Gulf.

"Kearny did not seek to cast off one iota of the burden of our
danger from the shoulders of his fatal horoscope. He weathered every
storm on deck, smoking a black pipe, to keep which alight rain and
sea-water seemed but as oil. And he shook his fist at the black
clouds behind which his baleful star winked its unseen eye. When the
skies cleared one evening, he reviled his malignant guardian with
grim humour.

"'On watch, aren't you, you red-headed vixen? Out making it hot for
little Francis Kearny and his friends, according to Hoyle. Twinkle,
twinkle, little devil! You're a lady, aren't you?--dogging a man
with your bad luck just because he happened to be born while your
boss was floorwalker. Get busy and sink the ship, you one-eyed
banshee. Phoebe! H'm! Sounds as mild as a milkmaid. You can't judge
a woman by her name. Why couldn't I have had a man star? I can't
make the remarks to Phoebe that I could to a man. Oh, Phoebe, you
be--blasted!'

"For eight days gales and squalls and waterspouts beat us from our
course. Five days only should have landed us in Esperando. Our Jonah
swallowed the bad credit of it with appealing frankness; but that
scarcely lessened the hardships our cause was made to suffer.

"At last one afternoon we steamed into the calm estuary of the
little Rio Escondido. Three miles up this we crept, feeling for the
shallow channel between the low banks that were crowded to the edge
with gigantic trees and riotous vegetation. Then our whistle gave a
little toot, and in five minutes we heard a shout, and Carlos--my
brave Carlos Quintana--crashed through the tangled vines waving his
cap madly for joy.

"A hundred yards away was his camp, where three hundred chosen
patriots of Esperando were awaiting our coming. For a month Carlos
had been drilling them there in the tactics of war, and filling them
with the spirit of revolution and liberty.

"'My Captain--_compadre mio!_' shouted Carlos, while yet my boat was
being lowered. 'You should see them in the drill by _companies_--in
the column wheel--in the march by fours--they are superb! Also in
the manual of arms--but, alas! performed only with sticks of bamboo.
The guns, _capitan_--say that you have brought the guns!'

"'A thousand Winchesters, Carlos,' I called to him. 'And two
Gatlings.'

"'_Valgame Dios!_' he cried, throwing his cap in the air. 'We shall
sweep the world!'

"At that moment Kearny tumbled from the steamer's side into the
river. He could not swim, so the crew threw him a rope and drew him
back aboard. I caught his eye and his look of pathetic but still
bright and undaunted consciousness of his guilty luck. I told myself
that although he might be a man to shun, he was also one to be
admired.

"I gave orders to the sailing-master that the arms, ammunition, and
provisions were to be landed at once. That was easy in the steamer's
boats, except for the two Gatling guns. For their transportation
ashore we carried a stout flatboat, brought for the purpose in the
steamer's hold.

"In the meantime I walked with Carlos to the camp and made the
soldiers a little speech in Spanish, which they received with
enthusiasm; and then I had some wine and a cigarette in Carlos's
tent. Later we walked back to the river to see how the unloading
was being conducted.

"The small arms and provisions were already ashore, and the petty
officers and squads of men conveying them to camp. One Gatling had
been safely landed; the other was just being hoisted over the side
of the vessel as we arrived. I noticed Kearny darting about on
board, seeming to have the ambition of ten men, and doing the work
of five. I think his zeal bubbled over when he saw Carlos and me. A
rope's end was swinging loose from some part of the tackle. Kearny
leaped impetuously and caught it. There was a crackle and a hiss
and a smoke of scorching hemp, and the Gatling dropped straight as
a plummet through the bottom of the flatboat and buried itself in
twenty feet of water and five feet of river mud.

"I turned my back on the scene. I heard Carlos's loud cries as
if from some extreme grief too poignant for words. I heard the
complaining murmur of the crew and the maledictions of Torres, the
sailing master--I could not bear to look.

"By night some degree of order had been restored in camp. Military
rules were not drawn strictly, and the men were grouped about the
fires of their several messes, playing games of chance, singing
their native songs, or discussing with voluble animation the
contingencies of our march upon the capital.

"To my tent, which had been pitched for me close to that of my chief
lieutenant, came Kearny, indomitable, smiling, bright-eyed, bearing
no traces of the buffets of his evil star. Rather was his aspect
that of a heroic martyr whose tribulations were so high-sourced and
glorious that he even took a splendour and a prestige from them.

"'Well, Captain,' said he, 'I guess you realize that Bad-Luck Kearny
is still on deck. It was a shame, now, about that gun. She only
needed to be slewed two inches to clear the rail; and that's why I
grabbed that rope's end. Who'd have thought that a sailor--even a
Sicilian lubber on a banana coaster--would have fastened a line in a
bow-knot? Don't think I'm trying to dodge the responsibility,
Captain. It's my luck.'

"'There are men, Kearny,' said I gravely, 'who pass through life
blaming upon luck and chance the mistakes that result from their own
faults and incompetency. I do not say that you are such a man. But
if all your mishaps are traceable to that tiny star, the sooner we
endow our colleges with chairs of moral astronomy, the better.'

"'It isn't the size of the star that counts,' said Kearny; 'it's
the quality. Just the way it is with women. That's why they give
the biggest planets masculine names, and the little stars feminine
ones--to even things up when it comes to getting their work in.
Suppose they had called my star Agamemnon or Bill McCarty or
something like that instead of Phoebe. Every time one of those old
boys touched their calamity button and sent me down one of their
wireless pieces of bad luck, I could talk back and tell 'em what I
thought of 'em in suitable terms. But you can't address such remarks
to a Phoebe.'

"'It pleases you to make a joke of it, Kearny,' said I, without
smiling. 'But it is no joke to me to think of my Gatling mired in
the river ooze.'

"'As to that,' said Kearny, abandoning his light mood at once,
'I have already done what I could. I have had some experience in
hoisting stone in quarries. Torres and I have already spliced three
hawsers and stretched them from the steamer's stern to a tree on
shore. We will rig a tackle and have the gun on terra firma before
noon to-morrow.'

"One could not remain long at outs with Bad-Luck Kearny.

"'Once more,' said I to him, 'we will waive this question of luck.
Have you ever had experience in drilling raw troops?'

"'I was first sergeant and drill-master,' said Kearny, 'in the
Chilean army for one year. And captain of artillery for another.'

"'What became of your command?' I asked.

"'Shot down to a man,' said Kearny, 'during the revolutions against
Balmaceda.'

"Somehow the misfortunes of the evil-starred one seemed to turn to
me their comedy side. I lay back upon my goat's-hide cot and laughed
until the woods echoed. Kearny grinned. 'I told you how it was,' he
said.

"'To-morrow,' I said, 'I shall detail one hundred men under your
command for manual-of-arms drill and company evolutions. You will
rank as lieutenant. Now, for God's sake, Kearny,' I urged him, 'try
to combat this superstition if it is one. Bad luck may be like any
other visitor--preferring to stop where it is expected. Get your
mind off stars. Look upon Esperando as your planet of good fortune.'

"'I thank you, Captain,' said Kearny quietly. 'I will try to make it
the best handicap I ever ran.'

"By noon the next day the submerged Gatling was rescued, as
Kearny had promised. Then Carlos and Manuel Ortiz and Kearny (my
lieutenants) distributed Winchesters among the troops and put them
through an incessant rifle drill. We fired no shots, blank or solid,
for of all coasts Esperando is the stillest; and we had no desire to
sound any warnings in the ear of that corrupt government until they
should carry with them the message of Liberty and the downfall of
Oppression.

"In the afternoon came a mule-rider bearing a written message to me
from Don Rafael Valdevia in the capital, Aguas Frias.

"Whenever that man's name comes to my lips, words of tribute to
his greatness, his noble simplicity, and his conspicuous genius
follow irrepressibly. He was a traveller, a student of peoples and
governments, a master of sciences, a poet, an orator, a leader,
a soldier, a critic of the world's campaigns and the idol of the
people in Esperando. I had been honoured by his friendship for
years. It was I who first turned his mind to the thought that he
should leave for his monument a new Esperando--a country freed
from the rule of unscrupulous tyrants, and a people made happy and
prosperous by wise and impartial legislation. When he had consented
he threw himself into the cause with the undivided zeal with which
he endowed all of his acts. The coffers of his great fortune were
opened to those of us to whom were entrusted the secret moves of the
game. His popularity was already so great that he had practically
forced President Cruz to offer him the portfolio of Minister of War.

"The time, Don Rafael said in his letter, was ripe. Success, he
prophesied, was certain. The people were beginning to clamour
publicly against Cruz's misrule. Bands of citizens in the capital
were even going about of nights hurling stones at public buildings
and expressing their dissatisfaction. A bronze statue of President
Cruz in the Botanical Gardens had been lassoed about the neck and
overthrown. It only remained for me to arrive with my force and
my thousand rifles, and for himself to come forward and proclaim
himself the people's saviour, to overthrow Cruz in a single day.
There would be but a half-hearted resistance from the six hundred
government troops stationed in the capital. The country was ours.
He presumed that by this time my steamer had arrived at Quintana's
camp. He proposed the eighteenth of July for the attack. That would
give us six days in which to strike camp and march to Aguas Frias.
In the meantime Don Rafael remained my good friend and _compadre en
la causa de la libertad_.

"On the morning of the 14th we began our march toward the
sea-following range of mountains, over the sixty-mile trail to the
capital. Our small arms and provisions were laden on pack mules.
Twenty men harnessed to each Gatling gun rolled them smoothly along
the flat, alluvial lowlands. Our troops, well-shod and well-fed,
moved with alacrity and heartiness. I and my three lieutenants were
mounted on the tough mountain ponies of the country.

"A mile out of camp one of the pack mules, becoming stubborn, broke
away from the train and plunged from the path into the thicket. The
alert Kearny spurred quickly after it and intercepted its flight.
Rising in his stirrups, he released one foot and bestowed upon the
mutinous animal a hearty kick. The mule tottered and fell with a
crash broadside upon the ground. As we gathered around it, it walled
its great eyes almost humanly towards Kearny and expired. That was
bad; but worse, to our minds, was the concomitant disaster. Part of
the mule's burden had been one hundred pounds of the finest coffee
to be had in the tropics. The bag burst and spilled the priceless
brown mass of the ground berries among the dense vines and weeds
of the swampy land. _Mala suerte!_ When you take away from an
Esperandan his coffee, you abstract his patriotism and 50 per cent.
of his value as a soldier. The men began to rake up the precious
stuff; but I beckoned Kearny back along the trail where they would
not hear. The limit had been reached.

"I took from my pocket a wallet of money and drew out some bills.

"'Mr. Kearny,' said I, 'here are some funds belonging to Don Rafael
Valdevia, which I am expending in his cause. I know of no better
service it can buy for him than this. Here is one hundred dollars.
Luck or no luck, we part company here. Star or no star, calamity
seems to travel by your side. You will return to the steamer. She
touches at Amotapa to discharge her lumber and iron, and then puts
back to New Orleans. Hand this note to the sailing-master, who will
give you passage.' I wrote on a leaf torn from my book, and placed
it and the money in Kearny's hand.

"'Good-bye,' I said, extending my own. 'It is not that I am
displeased with you; but there is no place in this expedition
for--let us say, the Señorita Phoebe.' I said this with a smile,
trying to smooth the thing for him. 'May you have better luck,
_companero_.'

"Kearny took the money and the paper.

"'It was just a little touch,' said he, 'just a little lift with the
toe of my boot--but what's the odds?--that blamed mule would have
died if I had only dusted his ribs with a powder puff. It was my
luck. Well, Captain, I would have liked to be in that little fight
with you over in Aguas Frias. Success to the cause. _Adios!_'

"He turned around and set off down the trail without looking back.
The unfortunate mule's pack-saddle was transferred to Kearny's pony,
and we again took up the march.

"Four days we journeyed over the foot-hills and mountains, fording
icy torrents, winding around the crumbling brows of ragged peaks,
creeping along the rocky flanges that overlooked awful precipices,
crawling breathlessly over tottering bridges that crossed bottomless
chasms.

"On the evening of the seventeenth we camped by a little stream on
the bare hills five miles from Aguas Frias. At daybreak we were to
take up the march again.

"At midnight I was standing outside my tent inhaling the fresh cold
air. The stars were shining bright in the cloudless sky, giving the
heavens their proper aspect of illimitable depth and distance when
viewed from the vague darkness of the blotted earth. Almost at its
zenith was the planet Saturn; and with a half-smile I observed the
sinister red sparkle of his malignant attendant--the demon star of
Kearny's ill luck. And then my thoughts strayed across the hills
to the scene of our coming triumph where the heroic and noble Don
Rafael awaited our coming to set a new and shining star in the
firmament of nations.

"I heard a slight rustling in the deep grass to my right. I turned
and saw Kearny coming toward me. He was ragged and dew-drenched and
limping. His hat and one boot were gone. About one foot he had tied
some makeshift of cloth and grass. But his manner as he approached
was that of a man who knows his own virtues well enough to be
superior to rebuffs.

"'Well, sir,' I said, staring at him coldly, 'if there is anything
in persistence, I see no reason why you should not succeed in
wrecking and ruining us yet.'

"'I kept half a day's journey behind,' said Kearny, fishing out a
stone from the covering of his lame foot, 'so the bad luck wouldn't
touch you. I couldn't help it, Captain; I wanted to be in on this
game. It was a pretty tough trip, especially in the department of
the commissary. In the low grounds there were always bananas and
oranges. Higher up it was worse; but your men left a good deal of
goat meat hanging on the bushes in the camps. Here's your hundred
dollars. You're nearly there now, captain. Let me in on the
scrapping to-morrow.'

"'Not for a hundred times a hundred would I have the tiniest thing
go wrong with my plans now,' I said, 'whether caused by evil planets
or the blunders of mere man. But yonder is Aguas Frias, five miles
away, and a clear road. I am of the mind to defy Saturn and all his
satellites to spoil our success now. At any rate, I will not turn
away to-night as weary a traveller and as good a soldier as you are,
Lieutenant Kearny. Manuel Ortiz's tent is there by the brightest
fire. Rout him out and tell him to supply you with food and blankets
and clothes. We march again at daybreak.'

"Kearny thanked me briefly but feelingly and moved away.

"He had gone scarcely a dozen steps when a sudden flash of bright
light illumined the surrounding hills; a sinister, growing, hissing
sound like escaping steam filled my ears. Then followed a roar as of
distant thunder, which grew louder every instant. This terrifying
noise culminated in a tremendous explosion, which seemed to rock
the hills as an earthquake would; the illumination waxed to a glare
so fierce that I clapped my hands over my eyes to save them. I
thought the end of the world had come. I could think of no natural
phenomenon that would explain it. My wits were staggering. The
deafening explosion trailed off into the rumbling roar that had
preceded it; and through this I heard the frightened shouts of my
troops as they stumbled from their resting-places and rushed wildly
about. Also I heard the harsh tones of Kearny's voice crying:
'They'll blame it on me, of course, and what the devil it is, it's
not Francis Kearny that can give you an answer.'

"I opened my eyes. The hills were still there, dark and solid. It
had not been, then, a volcano or an earthquake. I looked up at the
sky and saw a comet-like trail crossing the zenith and extending
westward--a fiery trail waning fainter and narrower each moment.

"'A meteor!' I called aloud. 'A meteor has fallen. There is no
danger.'

"And then all other sounds were drowned by a great shout from
Kearny's throat. He had raised both hands above his head and was
standing tiptoe.

"'PHOEBE'S GONE!' he cried, with all his lungs. 'She's busted and
gone to hell. Look, Captain, the little red-headed hoodoo has blown
herself to smithereens. She found Kearny too tough to handle, and
she puffed up with spite and meanness till her boiler blew up. It's
be Bad-Luck Kearny no more. Oh, let us be joyful!


   "'Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall;
     Humpty busted, and that'll be all!'


"I looked up, wondering, and picked out Saturn in his place. But
the small red twinkling luminary in his vicinity, which Kearny
had pointed out to me as his evil star, had vanished. I had seen
it there but half an hour before; there was no doubt that one of
those awful and mysterious spasms of nature had hurled it from the
heavens.

"I clapped Kearny on the shoulder.

"'Little man,' said I, 'let this clear the way for you. It appears
that astrology has failed to subdue you. Your horoscope must be cast
anew with pluck and loyalty for controlling stars. I play you to
win. Now, get to your tent, and sleep. Daybreak is the word.'

"At nine o'clock on the morning of the eighteenth of July I rode
into Aguas Frias with Kearny at my side. In his clean linen suit and
with his military poise and keen eye he was a model of a fighting
adventurer. I had visions of him riding as commander of President
Valdevia's body-guard when the plums of the new republic should
begin to fall.

"Carlos followed with the troops and supplies. He was to halt in a
wood outside the town and remain concealed there until he received
the word to advance.

"Kearny and I rode down the Calle Ancha toward the _residencia_ of
Don Rafael at the other side of the town. As we passed the superb
white buildings of the University of Esperando, I saw at an open
window the gleaming spectacles and bald head of Herr Bergowitz,
professor of the natural sciences and friend of Don Rafael and of
me and of the cause. He waved his hand to me, with his broad, bland
smile.

"There was no excitement apparent in Aguas Frias. The people went
about leisurely as at all times; the market was thronged with
bare-headed women buying fruit and _carne_; we heard the twang and
tinkle of string bands in the patios of the _cantinas_. We could see
that it was a waiting game that Don Rafael was playing.

"His _residencia_ was a large but low building around a great
courtyard in grounds crowed with ornamental trees and tropic shrubs.
At his door an old woman who came informed us that Don Rafael had
not yet arisen.

"'Tell him,' said I, 'that Captain Maloné and a friend wish to see
him at once. Perhaps he has overslept.'

"She came back looking frightened.

"'I have called,' she said, 'and rung his bell many times, but he
does not answer.'

"I knew where his sleeping-room was. Kearny and I pushed by her and
went to it. I put my shoulder against the thin door and forced it
open.

"In an armchair by a great table covered with maps and books sat Don
Rafael with his eyes closed. I touched his hand. He had been dead
many hours. On his head above one ear was a wound caused by a heavy
blow. It had ceased to bleed long before.

"I made the old woman call a _mozo_, and dispatched him in haste to
fetch Herr Bergowitz.

"He came, and we stood about as if we were half stunned by the awful
shock. Thus can the letting of a few drops of blood from one man's
veins drain the life of a nation.

"Presently Herr Bergowitz stooped and picked up a darkish stone the
size of an orange which he saw under the table. He examined it
closely through his great glasses with the eye of science.

"'A fragment,' said he, 'of a detonating meteor. The most remarkable
one in twenty years exploded above this city a little after midnight
this morning.'

"The professor looked quickly up at the ceiling. We saw the blue sky
through a hole the size of an orange nearly above Don Rafael's
chair.

"I heard a familiar sound, and turned. Kearny had thrown himself on
the floor and was babbling his compendium of bitter, blood-freezing
curses against the star of his evil luck.

"Undoubtedly Phoebe had been feminine. Even when hurtling on her way
to fiery dissolution and everlasting doom, the last word had been
hers."



Captain Maloné was not unskilled in narrative. He knew the point
where a story should end. I sat reveling in his effective conclusion
when he aroused me by continuing:

"Of course," said he, "our schemes were at an end. There was no one
to take Don Rafael's place. Our little army melted away like dew
before the sun.

"One day after I had returned to New Orleans I related this story to
a friend who holds a professorship in Tulane University.

"When I had finished he laughed and asked whether I had any
knowledge of Kearny's luck afterward. I told him no, that I had seen
him no more; but that when he left me, he had expressed confidence
that his future would be successful now that his unlucky star had
been overthrown.

"'No doubt,' said the professor, 'he is happier not to know one
fact. If he derives his bad luck from Phoebe, the ninth satellite
of Saturn, that malicious lady is still engaged in overlooking his
career. The star close to Saturn that he imagined to be her was near
that planet simply by the chance of its orbit--probably at different
times he has regarded many other stars that happened to be in
Saturn's neighbourhood as his evil one. The real Phoebe is visible
only through a very good telescope.'

"About a year afterward," continued Captain Maloné, "I was walking
down a street that crossed the Poydras Market. An immensely stout,
pink-faced lacy in black satin crowded me from the narrow sidewalk
with a frown. Behind her trailed a little man laden to the gunwales
with bundles and bags of goods and vegetables.

"It was Kearny--but changed. I stopped and shook one of his hands,
which still clung to a bag of garlic and red peppers.

"'How is the luck, old _companero_?' I asked him. I had not the
heart to tell him the truth about his star.

"'Well,' said he, 'I am married, as you may guess.'

"'Francis!' called the big lady, in deep tones, 'are you going to
stop in the street talking all day?'

"'I am coming, Phoebe dear,' said Kearny, hastening after her."

Captain Maloné ceased again.

"After all, do you believe in luck?" I asked.

"Do you?" answered the captain, with his ambiguous smile shaded by
the brim of his soft straw hat.




VIII

A DOUBLE-DYED DECEIVER


The trouble began in Laredo. It was the Llano Kid's fault, for he
should have confined his habit of manslaughter to Mexicans. But the
Kid was past twenty; and to have only Mexicans to one's credit at
twenty is to blush unseen on the Rio Grande border.

It happened in old Justo Valdos's gambling house. There was a poker
game at which sat players who were not all friends, as happens often
where men ride in from afar to shoot Folly as she gallops. There
was a row over so small a matter as a pair of queens; and when the
smoke had cleared away it was found that the Kid had committed
an indiscretion, and his adversary had been guilty of a blunder.
For, the unfortunate combatant, instead of being a Greaser, was a
high-blooded youth from the cow ranches, of about the Kid's own age
and possessed of friends and champions. His blunder in missing the
Kid's right ear only a sixteenth of an inch when he pulled his gun
did not lessen the indiscretion of the better marksman.

The Kid, not being equipped with a retinue, nor bountifully supplied
with personal admirers and supporters--on account of a rather
umbrageous reputation, even for the border--considered it not
incompatible with his indisputable gameness to perform that
judicious tractional act known as "pulling his freight."

Quickly the avengers gathered and sought him. Three of them overtook
him within a rod of the station. The Kid turned and showed his teeth
in that brilliant but mirthless smile that usually preceded his
deeds of insolence and violence, and his pursuers fell back without
making it necessary for him even to reach for his weapon.

But in this affair the Kid had not felt the grim thirst for
encounter that usually urged him on to battle. It had been a purely
chance row, born of the cards and certain epithets impossible for
a gentleman to brook that had passed between the two. The Kid had
rather liked the slim, haughty, brown-faced young chap whom his
bullet had cut off in the first pride of manhood. And now he wanted
no more blood. He wanted to get away and have a good long sleep
somewhere in the sun on the mesquit grass with his handkerchief over
his face. Even a Mexican might have crossed his path in safety while
he was in this mood.

The Kid openly boarded the north-bound passenger train that departed
five minutes later. But at Webb, a few miles out, where it was
flagged to take on a traveller, he abandoned that manner of escape.
There were telegraph stations ahead; and the Kid looked askance at
electricity and steam. Saddle and spur were his rocks of safety.

The man whom he had shot was a stranger to him. But the Kid knew
that he was of the Coralitos outfit from Hidalgo; and that the
punchers from that ranch were more relentless and vengeful than
Kentucky feudists when wrong or harm was done to one of them. So,
with the wisdom that has characterized many great fighters, the Kid
decided to pile up as many leagues as possible of chaparral and pear
between himself and the retaliation of the Coralitos bunch.

Near the station was a store; and near the store, scattered among
the mesquits and elms, stood the saddled horses of the customers.
Most of them waited, half asleep, with sagging limbs and drooping
heads. But one, a long-legged roan with a curved neck, snorted and
pawed the turf. Him the Kid mounted, gripped with his knees, and
slapped gently with the owner's own quirt.

If the slaying of the temerarious card-player had cast a cloud over
the Kid's standing as a good and true citizen, this last act of his
veiled his figure in the darkest shadows of disrepute. On the Rio
Grande border if you take a man's life you sometimes take trash; but
if you take his horse, you take a thing the loss of which renders
him poor, indeed, and which enriches you not--if you are caught. For
the Kid there was no turning back now.

With the springing roan under him he felt little care or uneasiness.
After a five-mile gallop he drew in to the plainsman's jogging trot,
and rode northeastward toward the Nueces River bottoms. He knew the
country well--its most tortuous and obscure trails through the great
wilderness of brush and pear, and its camps and lonesome ranches
where one might find safe entertainment. Always he bore to the east;
for the Kid had never seen the ocean, and he had a fancy to lay
his hand upon the mane of the great Gulf, the gamesome colt of the
greater waters.

So after three days he stood on the shore at Corpus Christi, and
looked out across the gentle ripples of a quiet sea.

Captain Boone, of the schooner _Flyaway_, stood near his skiff,
which one of his crew was guarding in the surf. When ready to sail
he had discovered that one of the necessaries of life, in the
parallelogrammatic shape of plug tobacco, had been forgotten. A
sailor had been dispatched for the missing cargo. Meanwhile the
captain paced the sands, chewing profanely at his pocket store.

A slim, wiry youth in high-heeled boots came down to the water's
edge. His face was boyish, but with a premature severity that hinted
at a man's experience. His complexion was naturally dark; and the
sun and wind of an outdoor life had burned it to a coffee brown. His
hair was as black and straight as an Indian's; his face had not yet
been upturned to the humiliation of a razor; his eyes were a cold
and steady blue. He carried his left arm somewhat away from his
body, for pearl-handled .45s are frowned upon by town marshals, and
are a little bulky when placed in the left armhole of one's vest.
He looked beyond Captain Boone at the gulf with the impersonal and
expressionless dignity of a Chinese emperor.

"Thinkin' of buyin' that'ar gulf, buddy?" asked the captain, made
sarcastic by his narrow escape from a tobaccoless voyage.

"Why, no," said the Kid gently, "I reckon not. I never saw it
before. I was just looking at it. Not thinking of selling it, are
you?"

"Not this trip," said the captain. "I'll send it to you C.O.D. when
I get back to Buenas Tierras. Here comes that capstanfooted lubber
with the chewin'. I ought to've weighed anchor an hour ago."

"Is that your ship out there?" asked the Kid.

"Why, yes," answered the captain, "if you want to call a schooner
a ship, and I don't mind lyin'. But you better say Miller and
Gonzales, owners, and ordinary plain, Billy-be-damned old Samuel K.
Boone, skipper."

"Where are you going to?" asked the refugee.

"Buenas Tierras, coast of South America--I forgot what they called
the country the last time I was there. Cargo--lumber, corrugated
iron, and machetes."

"What kind of a country is it?" asked the Kid--"hot or cold?"

"Warmish, buddy," said the captain. "But a regular Paradise Lost
for elegance of scenery and be-yooty of geography. Ye're wakened
every morning by the sweet singin' of red birds with seven purple
tails, and the sighin' of breezes in the posies and roses. And the
inhabitants never work, for they can reach out and pick steamer
baskets of the choicest hothouse fruit without gettin' out of bed.
And there's no Sunday and no ice and no rent and no troubles and no
use and no nothin'. It's a great country for a man to go to sleep
with, and wait for somethin' to turn up. The bananys and oranges and
hurricanes and pineapples that ye eat comes from there."

"That sounds to me!" said the Kid, at last betraying interest.
"What'll the expressage be to take me out there with you?"

"Twenty-four dollars," said Captain Boone; "grub and transportation.
Second cabin. I haven't got a first cabin."

"You've got my company," said the Kid, pulling out a buckskin bag.

With three hundred dollars he had gone to Laredo for his regular
"blowout." The duel in Valdos's had cut short his season of
hilarity, but it had left him with nearly $200 for aid in the flight
that it had made necessary.

"All right, buddy," said the captain. "I hope your ma won't blame me
for this little childish escapade of yours." He beckoned to one of
the boat's crew. "Let Sanchez lift you out to the skiff so you won't
get your feet wet."



Thacker, the United States consul at Buenas Tierras, was not yet
drunk. It was only eleven o'clock; and he never arrived at his
desired state of beatitude--a state wherein he sang ancient maudlin
vaudeville songs and pelted his screaming parrot with banana
peels--until the middle of the afternoon. So, when he looked up from
his hammock at the sound of a slight cough, and saw the Kid standing
in the door of the consulate, he was still in a condition to extend
the hospitality and courtesy due from the representative of a great
nation. "Don't disturb yourself," said the Kid, easily. "I just
dropped in. They told me it was customary to light at your camp
before starting in to round up the town. I just came in on a ship
from Texas."

"Glad to see you, Mr.--" said the consul.

The Kid laughed.

"Sprague Dalton," he said. "It sounds funny to me to hear it. I'm
called the Llano Kid in the Rio Grande country."

"I'm Thacker," said the consul. "Take that cane-bottom chair. Now
if you've come to invest, you want somebody to advise you. These
dingies will cheat you out of the gold in your teeth if you don't
understand their ways. Try a cigar?"

"Much obliged," said the Kid, "but if it wasn't for my corn shucks
and the little bag in my back pocket I couldn't live a minute." He
took out his "makings," and rolled a cigarette.

"They speak Spanish here," said the consul. "You'll need an
interpreter. If there's anything I can do, why, I'd be delighted. If
you're buying fruit lands or looking for a concession of any sort,
you'll want somebody who knows the ropes to look out for you."

"I speak Spanish," said the Kid, "about nine times better than I do
English. Everybody speaks it on the range where I come from. And I'm
not in the market for anything."

"You speak Spanish?" said Thacker thoughtfully. He regarded the kid
absorbedly.

"You look like a Spaniard, too," he continued. "And you're from
Texas. And you can't be more than twenty or twenty-one. I wonder if
you've got any nerve."

"You got a deal of some kind to put through?" asked the Texan, with
unexpected shrewdness.

"Are you open to a proposition?" said Thacker.

"What's the use to deny it?" said the Kid. "I got into a little gun
frolic down in Laredo and plugged a white man. There wasn't any
Mexican handy. And I come down to your parrot-and-monkey range just
for to smell the morning-glories and marigolds. Now, do you _sabe_?"

Thacker got up and closed the door.

"Let me see your hand," he said.

He took the Kid's left hand, and examined the back of it closely.

"I can do it," he said excitedly. "Your flesh is as hard as wood and
as healthy as a baby's. It will heal in a week."

"If it's a fist fight you want to back me for," said the Kid, "don't
put your money up yet. Make it gun work, and I'll keep you company.
But no barehanded scrapping, like ladies at a tea-party, for me."

"It's easier than that," said Thacker. "Just step here, will you?"

Through the window he pointed to a two-story white-stuccoed house
with wide galleries rising amid the deep-green tropical foliage on a
wooded hill that sloped gently from the sea.

"In that house," said Thacker, "a fine old Castilian gentleman and
his wife are yearning to gather you into their arms and fill your
pockets with money. Old Santos Urique lives there. He owns half the
gold-mines in the country."

"You haven't been eating loco weed, have you?" asked the Kid.

"Sit down again," said Thacker, "and I'll tell you. Twelve years ago
they lost a kid. No, he didn't die--although most of 'em here do
from drinking the surface water. He was a wild little devil, even
if he wasn't but eight years old. Everybody knows about it. Some
Americans who were through here prospecting for gold had letters to
Señor Urique, and the boy was a favorite with them. They filled his
head with big stories about the States; and about a month after
they left, the kid disappeared, too. He was supposed to have stowed
himself away among the banana bunches on a fruit steamer, and gone
to New Orleans. He was seen once afterward in Texas, it was thought,
but they never heard anything more of him. Old Urique has spent
thousands of dollars having him looked for. The madam was broken up
worst of all. The kid was her life. She wears mourning yet. But they
say she believes he'll come back to her some day, and never gives up
hope. On the back of the boy's left hand was tattooed a flying eagle
carrying a spear in his claws. That's old Urique's coat of arms or
something that he inherited in Spain."

The Kid raised his left hand slowly and gazed at it curiously.

"That's it," said Thacker, reaching behind the official desk for his
bottle of smuggled brandy. "You're not so slow. I can do it. What
was I consul at Sandakan for? I never knew till now. In a week I'll
have the eagle bird with the frog-sticker blended in so you'd think
you were born with it. I brought a set of the needles and ink just
because I was sure you'd drop in some day, Mr. Dalton."

"Oh, hell," said the Kid. "I thought I told you my name!"

"All right, 'Kid,' then. It won't be that long. How does Señorito
Urique sound, for a change?"

"I never played son any that I remember of," said the Kid. "If I had
any parents to mention they went over the divide about the time I
gave my first bleat. What is the plan of your round-up?"

Thacker leaned back against the wall and held his glass up to the
light.

"We've come now," said he, "to the question of how far you're
willing to go in a little matter of the sort."

"I told you why I came down here," said the Kid simply.

"A good answer," said the consul. "But you won't have to go that
far. Here's the scheme. After I get the trademark tattooed on your
hand I'll notify old Urique. In the meantime I'll furnish you with
all of the family history I can find out, so you can be studying up
points to talk about. You've got the looks, you speak the Spanish,
you know the facts, you can tell about Texas, you've got the tattoo
mark. When I notify them that the rightful heir has returned and is
waiting to know whether he will be received and pardoned, what will
happen? They'll simply rush down here and fall on your neck, and the
curtain goes down for refreshments and a stroll in the lobby."

"I'm waiting," said the Kid. "I haven't had my s

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