Aladdin & Co.: A Romance of Yankee Magic
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Title: Aladdin & Co.: A Romance of Yankee Magic
Author: Herbert Quick
Release date: December 5, 2007 [eBook #23745]
Most recently updated: December 17, 2012
Language: English
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
ALADDIN & CO.
A ROMANCE OF YANKEE MAGIC
BY
HERBERT QUICK
Author of
"Virginia of the Air Lanes," "Double Trouble," etc.
GROSSET & DUNLAP
Publishers--New York
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 1904
Henry Holt and Company
Copyright 1907
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contents.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
Which is of an Introductory Character 1
CHAPTER II.
Still Introductory 13
CHAPTER III.
Reminiscentially Autobiographical 20
CHAPTER IV.
Jim Discovers his Coral Island 39
CHAPTER V.
We Reach the Atoll 46
CHAPTER VI.
I am Inducted into the Cave, and Enlist 55
CHAPTER VII.
We Make our Landing 67
CHAPTER VIII.
A Welcome to Wall Street and Us 77
CHAPTER IX.
I Go Abroad and We Unfurl the Jolly Roger 86
CHAPTER X.
We Dedicate Lynhurst Park 96
CHAPTER XI.
The Empress and Sir John Meet Again 112
CHAPTER XII.
In which the Burdens of Wealth Begin to Fall upon Us 120
CHAPTER XIII.
A Sitting or Two in the Game with the World and Destiny 137
CHAPTER XIV.
In which we Learn Something of Railroads, and Attend
Some Remarkable Christenings 152
CHAPTER XV.
Some Affairs of the Heart Considered in their Relation
to Dollars and Cents 169
CHAPTER XVI.
Some Things which Happened in our Halcyon Days 185
CHAPTER XVII.
Relating to the Disposition of the Captives 201
CHAPTER XVIII.
The Going Away of Laura and Clifford, and the
Departure of Mr. Trescott 214
CHAPTER XIX.
In which Events Resume their Usual Course--at a
Somewhat Accelerated Pace 231
CHAPTER XX.
I Twice Explain the Condition of the Trescott Estate 248
CHAPTER XXI.
Of Conflicts, Within and Without 260
CHAPTER XXII.
In which I Win my Great Victory 270
CHAPTER XXIII.
The "Dutchman's Mill" and What it Ground 281
CHAPTER XXIV.
The Beginning of the End 291
CHAPTER XXV.
That Last Weird Battle in the West 306
CHAPTER XXVI.
The End--and a Beginning 320
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ALADDIN & CO
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE PERSONS OF THE STORY.
James Elkins, the "man who made Lattimore," known as "Jim."
Albert Barslow, who tells the tale; the friend and partner of Jim.
Alice Barslow, his wife; at first, his sweetheart.
William Trescott, known as "Bill," a farmer and capitalist.
Josephine Trescott, his daughter.
Mrs. Trescott, his wife.
Mr. Hinckley, a banker of Lattimore.
Mrs. Hinckley, his wife; devoted to the emancipation of woman.
Antonia, their daughter.
Aleck Macdonald, pioneer and capitalist.
General Lattimore, pioneer, soldier, and godfather of Lattimore.
Miss Addison, the general's niece.
Captain Marion Tolliver, Confederate veteran and Lattimore boomer.
Mrs. Tolliver, his wife.
Will Lattimore, a lawyer.
Mr. Ballard, a banker.
J. Bedford Cornish, a speculator, who with Elkins, Barslow,
and Hinckley make up the great Lattimore "Syndicate."
Clifford Giddings, editor and proprietor of the Lattimore Herald.
De Forest Barr-Smith, an Englishman "representing capital."
Cecil Barr-Smith, his brother.
Avery Pendleton, of New York, a railway magnate; head
of the "Pendleton System."
Allen G. Wade, of New York; head of the Allen G. Wade Trust Co.
Halliday, a railway magnate; head of the "Halliday System."
Watson, a reporter.
Schwartz, a locomotive engineer on the Lattimore & Great Western.
Hegvold, a fireman.
Citizens of Lattimore, Politicians, Live-stock Merchants,
Railway Clerks and Officials, etc.
Scene: Principally in the Western town of Lattimore,
but partly in New York and Chicago.
Time: Not so very long ago.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ALADDIN & CO
CHAPTER I.
Which is of Introductory Character.
Our National Convention met in Chicago that year, and I was one of the
delegates. I had looked forward to it with keen expectancy. I was now,
at five o'clock of the first day, admitting to myself that it was a
bore.
The special train, with its crowd of overstimulated enthusiasts, the
throngs at the stations, the brass bands, bunting, and buncombe all
jarred upon me. After a while my treason was betrayed to the boys by the
fact that I was not hoarse. They punished me by making me sing as a solo
the air of each stanza of "Marching Through Georgia," "Tenting To-night
on the Old Camp-ground," and other patriotic songs, until my voice was
assimilated to theirs. But my gorge rose at it all, and now, at five
o'clock of the first day, I was seeking a place of retirement where I
could be alone and think over the marvelous event which had suddenly
raised me from yesterday's parity with the fellows on the train to my
present state of exaltation.
I should have preferred a grotto in Vau Vau or some south-looking
mountain glen; but in the absence of any such retreat in Chicago, I
turned into the old art-gallery in Michigan Avenue. As I went floating
in space past its door, my eye caught through the window the gleam of
the white limbs of statues, and my being responded to the soul
vibrations they sent out. So I paid my fee, entered, and found the
tender solitude for which my heart longed. I sat down and luxuriated in
thoughts of the so recent marvelous experience. Need I explain that I
was young and the experience was one of the heart?
I was so young that my delegateship was regarded as a matter to excite
wonder. I saw my picture in the papers next morning as a youth of
twenty-three who had become his party's leader in an important
agricultural county. Some, in the shameless laudation of a sensational
press, compared me to the younger Pitt. As a matter of fact, I had some
talent for organization, and in any gathering of men, I somehow never
lacked a following. I was young enough to be an honest partisan,
enthusiastic enough to be useful, strong enough to be respected,
ignorant enough to believe my party my country's safeguard, and I was
prominent in my county before I was old enough to vote. At twenty-one I
conducted a convention fight which made a member of Congress. It was
quite natural, therefore, that I should be delegate to this convention,
and that I had looked forward to it with keen expectancy. The remarkable
thing was my falling off from its work now by virtue of that recent
marvelous experience which as I have admitted was one of the heart. Do
not smile. At three-and-twenty even delegates have hearts.
My mental and sentimental state is of importance in this history, I
think, or I should not make so much of it. I feel sure that I should not
have behaved just as I did had I not been at that moment in the
iridescent cloudland of newly-reciprocated love. Alice had accepted me
not an hour before my departure for Chicago. Hence my loathing for such
things as nominating speeches and the report of the Committee on
Credentials, and my yearning for the Vau Vau grotto. She had yielded
herself up to me with such manifold sweetnesses, uttered and unutterable
(all of which had to be gone over in my mind constantly to make sure of
their reality), that the contest in Indiana, and the cause of our own
State's Favorite Son, became sickening burdens to me, which rolled away
as I gazed upon the canvases in the gallery. I lay back upon a seat,
half closed my eyes, and looked at the pictures. When one comes to
consider the matter, an art gallery is a wonderfully different thing
from a national convention!
As I looked on them, the still paintings became instinct with life.
Yonder shepherdess shielding from the thorns the little white lamb was
Alice, and back behind the clump of elms was myself, responding to her
silvery call. The cottage on the mountain-side was ours. That lady
waving her handkerchief from the promontory was Alice, too; and I was
the dim figure on the deck of the passing ship. I was the knight and
she the wood-nymph; I the gladiator in the circus, she the Roman lady
who agonized for me in the audience; I the troubadour who twanged the
guitar, she the princess whose fair shoulder shone through the lace at
the balcony window. They lived and moved before my very eyes. I knew the
unseen places beyond the painted mountains, and saw the secret things
the artists only dreamed of. Doves cooed for me from the clumps of
thorn; the clouds sailed in pearly serenity across the skies, their
shadows mottling mountain, hill, and plain; and out from behind every
bole, and through every leafy screen, glimpsed white dryads and fleeing
fays.
Clearly the convention hall was no place for me. "Hang the speech of the
temporary chairman, anyhow!" thought I; "and as for the platform, let it
point with pride, and view with apprehension, to its heart's content; it
is sure to omit all reference to the overshadowing issue of the
day--Alice!"
All the world loves a lover, and a true lover loves all the
world,--especially that portion of it similarly blessed. So, when I
heard a girl's voice alternating in intimate converse with that of a
man, my sympathies went out to them, and I turned silently to look. They
must have come in during my reverie; for I had passed the place where
they were sitting and had not seen them. There was a piece of grillwork
between my station and theirs, through which I could see them plainly.
The gallery had seemed deserted when I went in, and still seemed so,
save for the two voices.
Hers was low and calm, but very earnest; and there was in it some
inflection or intonation which reminded me of the country girls I had
known on the farm and at school. His was of a peculiarly sonorous and
vibrant quality, its every tone so clear and distinct that it would have
been worth a fortune to a public speaker. Such a voice and enunciation
are never associated with any mind not strong in the qualities of
resolution and decision.
On looking at her, I saw nothing countrified corresponding to the voice.
She was dressed in something summery and cool, and wore a sort of
flowered blouse, the presence of which was explained by the easel before
which she sat, and the palette through which her thumb protruded. She
had laid down her brush, and the young man was using her mahlstick in a
badly-directed effort to smear into a design some splotches of paint on
the unused portion of her canvas.
He was by some years her senior, but both were young--she, very young.
He was swarthy of complexion, and his smoothly-shaven, square-set jaw
and full red lips were bluish with the subcutaneous blackness of his
beard. His dress was so distinctly late in style as to seem almost
foppish; but there was nothing of the exquisite in his erect and
athletic form, or in his piercing eye.
She was ruddily fair, with that luxuriant auburn-brown hair which goes
with eyes of amberish-brown and freckles. These latter she had, I
observed with a renewal of the thought of the country girls and the old
district school. She was slender of waist, full of bust, and, after a
lissome, sylph-like fashion, altogether charming in form. With all her
roundness, she was slight and a little undersized.
So much of her as there was, the young fellow seemed ready to absorb,
regarding her with avid eyes--a gaze which she seldom met. But whenever
he gave his attention to the mahlstick, her eyes sought his countenance
with a look which was almost scrutiny. It was as if some extrinsic force
drew her glance to his face, until the stronger compulsion of her
modesty drove it away at the return of his black orbs. My heart
recognized with a throb the freemasonry into which I had lately been
initiated, and, all unknown to them, I hailed them as members of the
order.
Their conversation came to me in shreds and fragments, which I did not
at all care to hear. I recognized in it those inanities with which youth
busies the lips, leaving the mind at rest, that the interplay of
magnetic discharges from heart to heart may go on uninterruptedly. It is
a beautiful provision of nature, but I did not at that time admire it. I
pitied them. Alice and I had passed through that stage, and into the
phase marked by long and eloquent silences.
"I was brought up to think," I remember to have heard the fair stranger
say, following out, apparently, some subject under discussion between
them, "that the surest way to make a child steal jam is to spy upon him.
I should feel ashamed."
"Quite right," said he, "but in Europe and in the East, and even here in
Chicago, in some circles, it is looked upon as indispensable, you
know."
"In art, at least," she went on, "there is no sex. Whoever can help me
in my work is a companion that I don't need any chaperon to protect me
from. If I wasn't perfectly sure of that, I should give up and go back
home."
"Now, don't draw the line so as to shut me out," he protested. "How can
I help you with your work?"
She looked him steadily in the face now, her intent and questioning
regard shading off into a somewhat arch smile.
"I can't think of any way," said she, "unless it would be by posing for
me."
"There's another way," he answered, "and the only one I'd care about."
She suddenly became absorbed in the contemplation of the paints on her
palette, at which she made little thrusts with a brush; and at last she
queried, doubtfully, "How?"
"I've heard or read," he answered, "that no artist ever rises to the
highest, you know, until after experiencing some great love. I--can't
you think of any other way besides the posing?"
She brought the brush close to her eyes, minutely inspecting its point
for a moment, then seemed to take in his expression with a swift
sweeping glance, resumed the examination of the brush, and finally
looked him in the face again, a little red spot glowing in her cheek,
and a glint of fire in her eye. I was too dense to understand it, but I
felt that there was a trace of resentment in her mien.
"Oh, I don't know about that!" she said. "There may be some other way. I
haven't met all your friends, and you may be the means of introducing me
to the very man."
I did not hear his reply, though I confess I tried to catch it. She
resumed her work of copying one of the paintings. This she did in a
mechanical sort of way, slowly, and with crabbed touches, but with some
success. I thought her lacking in anything like control over the medium
in which she worked; but the results promised rather well. He seemed
annoyed at her sudden accession of industry, and looked sometimes
quizzically at her work, often hungrily at her. Once or twice he touched
her hand as she stepped near him; but she neither reproved him nor
allowed him to retain it.
I felt that I had taken her measure by this time. She was some Western
country girl, well supplied with money, blindly groping toward the
career of an artist. Her accent, her dress, and her occupation told of
her origin and station in life, and of her ambitions. The blindness I
guessed,--partly from the manner of her work, partly from the inherent
probabilities of the case. If the young man had been eliminated from
this problem with which my love-sick imagination was busying itself, I
could have followed her back confidently to some rural neighborhood, and
to a year or two of painting portraits from photographs, and landscapes
from "studies," and exhibiting them at the county fair; the teaching of
some pupils, in an unnecessary but conscientiously thrifty effort to get
back some of the money invested in an "art education" in Chicago; and a
final reversion to type after her marriage with the village lawyer,
doctor or banker, or the owner of the adjoining farm. I was young; but I
had studied people, and had already seen such things happen.
But the young man could not be eliminated. He sat there idly, his every
word and look surcharged with passion. As I wondered how long it would
be until they were as happy as Alice and I, the thought grew upon me
that, however familiar might be the type to which she belonged, he was
unclassified. His accent was Eastern--of New York, I judged. He looked
like the young men in the magazine illustrations--interesting, but
outside my field of observation. And I could not fail to see that girl
must find herself similarly at odds with him. "But," thought I, "love
levels all!" And I freshly interrogated the pictures and statues for
transportation to my own private Elysium, forgetful of my unconscious
neighbors.
My attention was recalled to them, however, by their arrangements for
departure, and a concomitant slightly louder tone in their conversation.
"It's just a spectacular show," said he; "no plot or anything of that
sort, you know, but good music and dancing; and when we get tired of it
we can go. We'll have a little supper at Auriccio's afterward, if you'll
be so kind. It's only a step from McVicker's."
"Won't it be pretty late?" she queried.
"Not for Chicago," said he, "and you'll find material for a picture at
Auriccio's about midnight. It's quite like the Latin Quarter,
sometimes."
"I want to see the real Latin Quarter, and no imitation," she answered.
"Oh, I guess I'll go. It'll furnish me with material for a letter to
mamma, however the picture may turn out."
"I'll order supper for the Empress," said he, "and--"
"And for the illustrious Sir John," she added. "But you mustn't call me
that any more. I've been reading her history, and I don't like it. I'm
glad he died on St. Helena, now: I used to feel sorry for him."
"Transfer your pity to the downtrodden Sir John," he replied, "and make
a real living man happy."
They passed out and left me to my dreams. But visions did not return. My
idyl was spoiled. Old-fashioned ideas emerged, and took form in the
plain light of every-day common-sense. I knew the wonderfully gorgeous
spectacle these two young people were going to see at the play that
night, with its lights, its music, its splendidly meretricious
Orientalism. And I knew Auriccio's,--not a disreputable place at all,
perhaps; but free-and-easy, and distinctly Bohemian. I wished that this
little girl, so arrogantly and ignorantly disdainful (as Alice would
have been under the same circumstances) of such European conventions as
the chaperon, so fresh, so young, so full of allurement, so under the
influence of this smooth, dark, and passionate wooer with the vibrant
voice, could be otherwise accompanied on this night of pleasure than by
himself alone.
"It's none of your business," said the voice of that cold-hearted and
slothful spirit which keeps us in our groove, "and you couldn't do
anything, anyhow. Besides, he's abjectly in love with her: would there
be any danger if it were you and your Alice?"
"I'm not at all sure about him or his abjectness," replied my uneasy
conscience. "He knows better than to do this."
"What do you know of either of them?" answered this same Spirit of
Routine. "What signify a few sentences casually overheard? She may be
something quite different; there are strange things in Chicago."
"I'll wager anything," said I hotly, "that she's a good American girl of
the sort I live among and was brought up with! And she may be in
danger."
"If she's that sort of girl," said the Voice, "you may rely upon her to
take care of herself."
"That's pretty nearly true," I admitted.
"Besides," said the Voice illogically, "such things happen every night
in such a city. It's a part of the great tragedy. Don't be Quixotic!"
Here was where the Voice lost its case: for my conscience was stirred
afresh; and I went back to the convention-hall carrying on a joint
debate with myself. Once in the hall, however, I was conscripted into a
war which was raging all through our delegation over the succession in
our membership in the National Committee. I thought no more of the idyl
of the art-gallery until the adjournment for the night.
CHAPTER II.
Still Introductory.
The great throng from the hall surged along the streets in an Amazonian
network of streams, gathering in boiling lakes in the great hotels,
dribbling off into the boarding-house districts in the suburbs, seeping
down into the slimy fens of vice. Again I found myself out of touch with
it all. I gave my companions the slip, and started for my hotel.
All at once it occurred to me that I had not dined, and with the thought
came the remembrance of my pair of lovers, and their supper together.
With a return of the feeling that these were the only people in Chicago
possessing spirits akin to mine, I shaped my course for Auriccio's. My
country dazedness led me astray once or twice, but I found the place,
retreated into the farthest corner, sat down, and ordered supper.
It was not one of the places where the out-of-town visitors were likely
to resort, and it was in fact rather quieter than usual. The few who
were at the tables went out before my meal was served, and for a few
minutes I was alone. Then the Empress and Sir John entered, followed by
half a dozen other playgoers. The two on whom my sentimental interest
was fixed came far down toward my position, attracted by the quietude
which had lured me, and seated themselves at a table in a sort of
alcove, cut off from the main room by columns and palms, secluded enough
for privacy, public enough, perhaps, for propriety. So far as I was
concerned I could see them quite plainly, looking, as I did, from my
gloomy corner toward the light of the restaurant; and I was sufficiently
close to be within easy earshot. I began to have the sensation of
shadowing them, until I recalled the fact that, so far, it had been a
case of their following me.
I thought his manner toward her had changed since the afternoon. There
was now an openness of wooing, an abandonment of reserve in glance and
attitude, which should have admonished her of an approaching crisis in
their affairs. Yet she seemed cooler and more self-possessed than
before. Save for a little flutter in her low laugh, I should have
pronounced her entirely at ease. She looked very sweet and girlish in
her high-necked dress, which helped make up a costume that she seemed to
have selected to subdue and conceal, rather than to display, her charms.
If such was her plan, it went pitifully wrong: his advances went on from
approach to approach, like the last manoeuvres of a successful siege.
"No," I heard her say, as I became conscious that we three were alone
again; "not here! Not at all! Stop!"
When I looked at them they were quietly sitting at the table; but her
face was pale, his flushed. Pretty soon the waiter came and served
champagne. I felt sure that she had never seen any before.
"How funny it looks," said she, "with the bubbles coming up in the
middle like a little fountain; and how pretty! Why, the stem is hollow,
isn't it?"
He laughed and made some foolish remark about love bubbling up in his
heart. When he set his glass down, I could see that his hands were
trembling as with palsy,--so much so that it was tipped over and broken.
"I'll fill another," said he. "Aren't you sorry you broke it?"
"I?" she queried. "You're not going to lay that to me, are you?"
"You're the only one to blame!" he replied. "You must hold it till it's
steady. I'll hold your glass with the other. Why, you don't take any at
all! Don't you like it, dear?"
She shrank back, looked toward the door, and then took the hand in both
of hers, holding it close to her side, and drank the wine like a child
taking medicine. His arm, his hand still holding the glass, slipped
about her waist, but she turned swiftly and silently freed herself and
sat down by the chair in which he had meant that both should sit,
holding his hands. Then in a moment I saw her sitting on the other side
of the table, and he was filling the glasses again. The guests had all
departed. The well-disciplined waiters had effaced themselves. Only we
three were there. I wondered if I ought to do anything.
They sat and talked in low tones. He was drinking a good deal of the
champagne; she, little; and neither seemed to be eating anything. He sat
opposite to her, leaning over as if to consume her with his eyes. She
returned his gaze often now, and often smiled; but her smile was drawn
and tremulous, and, to my mind, pitifully appealing. I no longer
wondered if I ought to do anything; for, once, when I partly rose to go
and speak to them, the impossibility of the thing overcame my half
resolve, and I sat down. The anti-quixotic spirit won, after all.
At last a waiter, returning with the change for the bill with which I
had paid my score, was hailed by Sir John, and was paid for their
supper. I looked to see them as they started for home. The girl rose and
made a movement toward her wrap. He reached it first and placed it about
her shoulders. In so doing, he drew her to him, and began speaking
softly and passionately to her in words I could not hear. Her face was
turned upward and backward toward him, and all her resistance seemed
gone. I should have been glad to believe this the safe and triumphant
surrender to an honest love; but here, after the dances and Stamboul
spectacles, hidden by the palms, beside the table with its empty bottles
and its broken glass, how could I believe it such? I turned away, as if
to avoid the sight of the crushing of some innocent thing which I was
powerless to aid, and strode toward the door.
Then I heard a little cry, and saw her come flying down the great hall,
leaving him standing amazedly in the archway of the palm alcove.
She passed me at the door, her face vividly white, went out into the
street, like a dove from the trap at a shooting tournament, and sprang
lightly upon a passing street-car. I could act now, and I would see her
to a place of safety; so I, too, swung on by the rail of the rear car.
She never once turned her face; but I saw Sir John come to the door of
the restaurant and look both ways for her, and as he stood perplexed and
alarmed, our train turned the curve at the next corner, we were swept
off toward the South Side, and the dark young man passed, as I supposed,
"into my dreams forever." I made my way forward a few seats and saw her
sitting there with her head bowed upon the back of the seat in front of
her. I bitterly wished that he, if he had a heart, might see her there,
bruised in spirit, her little ignorant white soul, searching itself for
smutches of the uncleanness it feared. I wished that Alice might be
there to go to her and comfort her without a word. I paid her fare, and
the conductor seemed to understand that she was not to be disturbed. A
drunken man in rough clothes came into the car, walked forward and
looked at her a moment, and as I was about to go to him and make him sit
elsewhere, he turned away and came back to the rear, as if he had some
sort of maudlin realization that the front of the train was sacred
ground.
At last she looked about, signalled for the car to stop, and alighted. I
followed, rather suspecting that she did not know her way. She walked
steadily on, however, to a big, dark house with a vine-covered porch,
close to the sidewalk. A stout man, coatless, and in a white shirt,
stood at the gate. He wore a slouch hat, and I knew him, even in that
dim light, for a farmer. She stopped for a moment, and without a word,
sprang into his arms.
"Wal, little gal, ain't yeh out purty late?" I heard him say, as I
walked past. "Didn't expect yer dad to see yeh, did yeh? Why, yeh ain't
a-cryin', be yeh?"
"O pa! O pa!" was all I heard her say; but it was enough. I walked to
the corner, and sat down on the curbstone, dead tired, but happy. In a
little while I went back toward the street-car line, and as I passed the
vine-clad porch, heard the farmer's bass voice, and stopped to listen,
frankly an eavesdropper, and feeling, somehow, that I had earned the
right to hear.
"Why, o' course, I'll take yeh away, ef yeh don't like it here, little
gal," he was saying. "Yes, we'll go right in an' pack up now, if yeh say
so. Only it's a little suddent, and may hurt the Madame's feelin's, y'
know--"
* * * * *
At the hotel I was forced by the crowded state of the city to share the
bed of one of my fellow delegates. He was a judge from down the state,
and awoke as I lay down.
"That you, Barslow?" said he. "Do you know a fellow by the name of
Elkins, of Cleveland?"
"No," said I, "why?"
"He was here to see you, or rather to inquire if you were Al Barslow who
used to live in Pleasant Valley Township," the Judge went on. "He's the
fellow who organized the Ohio flambeau brigade. Seems smart."
"Pleasant Valley Township, did he say? Yes, I know him. It's Jimmie
Elkins."
And I sank to sleep and to dreams, in which Jimmie Elkins, the Empress,
Sir John, Alice, and myself acted in a spectacular drama, like that at
McVicker's. And yet there are those who say there is nothing in dreams!
CHAPTER III.
Reminiscentially Autobiographical.
This Jimmie Elkins was several years older than I; but that did not
prevent us, as boys, from being fast friends. At seventeen he had a
coterie of followers among the smaller fry of ten and twelve, his tastes
clinging long to the things of boyhood. He and I played together, after
the darkening of his lip suggested the razor, and when the youths of his
age were most of them acquiring top buggies, and thinking of the long
Sunday-night drives with their girls. Jim preferred the boys, and the
trade of the fisher and huntsman.
Why, in spite of parental opposition, I loved Jimmie, is not hard to
guess. He had an odd and freakish humor, and talked more of
Indian-fighting, filibustering in gold-bearing regions, and of moving
accidents by flood and field, than of crops, live-stock, or bowery
dances. He liked me just as did the older men who sent me to the
National Convention,--in spite of my youth. He was a ne'er-do-weel, said
my father, but I snared gophers and hunted and fished with him, and we
loved each other as brothers seldom do.
At last, I began teaching school, and working my way to a better
education than our local standard accepted as either useful or
necessary, and Jim and I drifted apart. He had always kept up a
voluminous correspondence with that class of advertisers whose
black-letter "Agents Wanted" is so attractive to the farmer-boy; and he
was usually agent for some of their wares. Finally, I heard of him as a
canvasser for a book sold by subscription,--a "Veterinarians' Guide," I
believe it was,--and report said that he was "making money." Again I
learned that he had established a publishing business of some kind; and,
later, that reverses had forced him to discontinue it,--the old farmer
who told me said he had "failed up." Then I heard no more of him until
that night of the convention, when I had the adventure with the Empress
and Sir John, all unknown to them; and Jim made the ineffectual attempt
to find me. His family had left the old neighborhood, and so had mine;
and the chances of our ever meeting seemed very slight. In fact it was
some years later and after many of the brave dreams of the youthful
publicist had passed away, that I casually stumbled upon him in the
smoking-room of a parlor-car, coming out of Chicago.
I did not know him at first. He came forward, and, extending his hand,
said, "How are you, Al?" and paused, holding the hand I gave him,
evidently expecting to enjoy a period of perplexity on my part. But with
one good look in his eyes I knew him. I made him sit down by me, and for
half an hour we were too much engrossed in reminiscences to ask after
such small matters as business, residence, and general welfare.
"Where all have you been, Jim, and what have you been doing, since you
followed off the 'Veterinarians' Guide,' and I lost you?" I inquired at
last.
"I've been everywhere, and I've done everything, almost," said he. "Put
it in the 'negative case,' and my history'll be briefer."
"I should regard organizing a flambeau brigade," said I, "as about the
last thing you would engage in."
"Ah!" he replied, "His Whiskers at the hotel told you I called that
time, did he? Well, I didn't think he had the sense. And I doubted the
memory on your part, and I wasn't at all sure you were the real Barslow.
But about the flambeaux. The fact is, I had some stock in the flambeau
factory, and I was a rabid partisan of flambeaux. They seemed so
patriotic, you know, so sort of ennobling, and so convincing, as to the
merits of the tariff controversy!"
It was the same old Jim, I thought.
"We used to have a scheme," I remarked, "our favorite one, of occupying
an island in the Pacific,--or was it somewhere in the vicinity of the
Spanish Main--"
"If it was the place where we were to make slaves of all the natives,
and I was to be king, and you Grand Vizier," he answered, as if it were
a weighty matter, and he on the witness-stand, "it was in the
Pacific--the South Pacific, where the whale-oil comes from. A coral
atoll, with a crystal lagoon in the middle for our ships, and a fringe
of palms along the margin--coco-palms, you remember; and the lagoon was
green, sometimes, and sometimes blue; and the sharks never came over the
bar, but the porpoises came in and played for us, and made fireworks in
the phosphorescent waves...."
His eyes grew almost tender, as he gazed out of the window, and ceased
to speak without finishing the sentence,--which it took me some minutes
to follow out to the end, in my mind. I was delighted and touched to
find these foolish things so green in his memory.
"The plan involved," said I soberly, "capturing a Spanish galleon filled
with treasure, finding two lovely ladies in the cabin, and offering them
their liberty. And we sailed with them for a port; and, as I remember
it, their tears at parting conquered us, and we married them; and lived
richer than oil magnates, and grander than Monte Cristos forever after:
do you remember?"
"Remember! Well, I should smile!"--he had been laughing like a boy, with
his old frank laugh. "Them's the things we don't forget.... Did you ever
gather any information as to what a galleon really was? I never did."
"I had no more idea than I now have of the Rosicrucian Mysteries; and I
must confess," said I, "that I'm a little hazy on the galleon question
yet. As to piracy, now, and robbers and robbery, actual life fills out
the gaps in the imagination of boyhood, doesn't it, Jim?"
"Apt to," he assented, "but specifically? As to which, you know?"
"Well, I've had my share of experience with them," I answered, "though
not so much in the line of rob-or, as we planned, but more as rob-ee."
Jim looked at me quizzically.
"Board of Trade, faro, or ... what?" he ventured.
"General business," I responded, "and ... politics."
"Local, state, or national?" he went on, craftily ignoring the general
business.
"A little national, some state, but the bulk of it local. I've been
elected County Treasurer, down where I live, for four successive terms."
"Good for you!" he responded. "But I don't see how that can be made to
harmonize with your remark about rob-or and rob-ee. It's been your own
fault, if you haven't been on the profitable side of the game, with the
dear people on the other. And I judge from your looks that you eat three
meals a day, right along, anyhow. Come, now, b'lay this rob-ee business
(as Sir Henry Morgan used to say) till you get back to Buncombe County.
As a former partner in crime, I won't squeal; and the next election is
some ways off, anyhow. No concealment among pals, now, Al, it's no fair,
you know, and it destroys confidence and breeds discord. Many a good,
honest, piratical enterprise has been busted up by concealment and lack
of confidence. Always trust your fellow pirates,--especially in things
they know all about by extrinsic evidence,--and keep concealment for the
great world of the unsophisticated and gullible, and to catch the
sucker vote with. But among ourselves, my beloved, fidelity to truth,
and openness of heart is the first rule, right out of Hoyle. With dry
powder, mutual confidence, and sharp cutlasses, we are invincible; and
as the poet saith,
"'Far as the tum-te-tum the billows foam
Survey our empire and behold our home,'
or words to that effect. And to think of your trying to deceive me, your
former chieftain, who doesn't even vote in your county or state, and
moreover always forgets election! Rob-ee indeed! rats! Al, I'm ashamed
of you, by George, I am!"
This speech he delivered with a ridiculous imitation of the tricks of
the elocutionist. It was worthy of the burlesque stage. The conductor,
passing through, was attracted by it, and notified us that the solitude
of the smoking-room had been invaded, by a slight burst of applause at
Jim's peroration, followed by the vanishing of the audience.
"No need for any further concealment on my part, so far as elections are
concerned," said I, when we had finished our laugh, "for I go out of
office January first, next."
"Oh, well, that accounts for it, then," said he. "I notice, say, three
kinds of retirement from office: voluntary (very rare), post-convention,
and post-election. Which is yours?"
"Post-convention, I'm sorry to say. I wish it had been voluntary."
"It _is_ the cheapest; but you're in great luck not to get licked at the
polls. Altogether, you're in great luck. You've been betting on a game
in which the percentage is mighty big in favor of the house, and you've
won three or four consecutive turns out of the box. You've got no kick
coming: you're in big luck. Don't you know you are?"
I did not feel called upon to commit myself; and we smoked on for some
time in silence.
"It strikes me, Jim," said I, at last, "that you've done all the
cross-examination, and that it is time to listen to your report. How
about you and your conduct?"
"As for my conduct," was the prompt answer, "it's away up in the
neighborhood of G. I've managed to hold the confounded world up for a
living, ever since I left Pleasant Valley Township. Some of the time the
picking has been better than at others; but my periods of starvation
have been brief. By practicing on the 'Veterinarians' Guide' and other
similar fakes, I learned how to talk to people so as to make them
believe what I said about things, with the result, usually, of wooing
the shrinking and cloistered dollar from its lair. When a fellow gets
this trick down fine, he can always find a market for his services. I
handled hotel registers, city directories, and like literature,
including county histories--"
"Sh-h-h!" said I, "somebody might hear you."
"--and at last, after a conference with my present employers, the error
of my way presented itself to me, and I felt called to a higher and
holier profession. I yielded to my good angel, turned my better nature
loose, and became a missionary."
"A what!" I exclaimed.
"A missionary," he responded soberly. "That is, you understand, not one
of these theological, India's-coral-strand guys; but one who goes about
the United States of America in a modest and unassuming way, doing good
so far as in him lies."
"I see," said I, punning horribly, "'in him lies.'"
"Eh?... Yes. Have another cigar. Well, now, you can't defend this
foreign-mission business to me for a minute. The hills, right in this
vicinity, are even now white to the harvest. Folks here want the light
just as bad as the foreign heathen; and so I took up my burden, and went
out to disseminate truth, as the soliciting agent of the Frugality and
Indemnity Life Association, which presented itself to me as the capacity
in which I could best combine repentance with its fruits."
"I perceive," said I.
"Perfectly plain, isn't it, to the seeing eye?" he went on. "You see it
was like this: Charley Harper and I had been together in the Garden City
Land Company, years ago, during the boom--by the way, I didn't mention
that in my report, did I? Well, of course, that company went up just as
they all did, and neither Charley nor I got to be receiver, as we'd sort
of laid out to do, and we separated. I went back to my literature--hotel
registers, with an advertising scheme, with headquarters at Cleveland.
That's how I happened to be an Ohio man at that national convention.
Charley always had a leaning toward insurance, and went down into
Illinois, and started a mutual-benefit organization, which he kept
going a few years down on the farm--Springfield, or Jacksonville, or
somewhere down there; and when I ketched up with him again, he was just
changing it to the old-line plan, and bringing it to the metropolis.
Well, I helped him some to enlist capital, and he offered me the
position of Superintendent of Agents. I accepted, and after serving
awhile in the ranks to sort of get onto the ropes, here I am, just
starting out on a trip which will take me through a number of states."
"How does it agree with you?" I inquired.
"Not well," said he, "but the good I accomplish is a great comfort to
me. On this trip, now, I expect to do much in the way of stimulating the
boys up to their great work of spreading the light of the gospel of true
insurance. Sometimes, in these days of apathy and error, I find my
burden a heavy one; and notwithstanding the quiet of conscience I gain,
if it weren't for the salary, I'd quit to-morrow, Al, danged if I
wouldn't. It makes me tired to have even you sort of hint that I'm
actuated by some selfish motive, when, in truth and in fact, I live but
to gather widows and orphans under my wing, so to speak, and give second
husbands a good start, by means of policies written on the only true
plan, combining participation in profits with pure mutuality, and--"
"Never mind!" said I with a silence-commanding gesture. "I've heard all
that before. You're onto the ropes thoroughly; but don't practice your
infernal arts on me! I hope the salary is satisfactory?"
"Fairish; but not high, considering what they get for it."
"You used to be more modest," said I. "I remember that you once nearly
broke your heart because you couldn't summon up courage to ask Creeshy
Hammond to go to the 'Fourth' with you; d'ye remember?"
"Well, I guess, yes!" he replied. "Wasn't I a miserable wretch for a few
days! And I've never been able to ask any woman I cared about, the
fateful question, yet."
We went into the parlor-car, and talked over old times and new for an
hour. I told him of my marriage and my home, and I studied him. I saw
that he still preserved his humorous, mock-serious style of
conversation, and that his hand-to-hand battle with the world had made
him good-humoredly cynical. He evinced a knowledge of more things than I
should have expected; and had somehow acquired an imposing manner, in
spite of his rather slangy, if expressive, vocabulary. He had the power
of making statements of mere opinion, which, from some vibration of
voice or trick of expression, struck the hearer as solid facts, thrice
buttressed by evidence. He bore no marks of dissipation, unless the
occasional use of terms traceable to the turf or the gaming-table might
be considered such; but these expressions, I considered, are so
constantly before every reader of the newspapers that the language of
the pulpit, even, is infected by them. Their evidential value being thus
destroyed, they ought not to be weighed at all, as against firm,
wholesome flesh, a good complexion, and a clear eye, all of which Mr.
Elkins possessed.
"It's funny," said I, "how seldom I meet any of the old neighbor-boys.
Do you see any of them in your travels?"
"Not often," he answered, "but you remember little Ed Smith, who lived
on the Hayes place for a while, and brought the streaked snake into the
schoolhouse while Julia Fanning was teaching? Well, he was an architect
at Garden City, and lives in Chicago now. We sort of chum together: saw
him yesterday. He left Garden City when the land company went up. I tell
you, that was a hot town for a while! Railroads, and factories, and
irrigation schemes, and prices scooting toward the zenith, till you
couldn't rest. If I'd got into that push soon enough, I shouldn't have
made a thing but money; as it was, I didn't lose only what I had. A good
many of the boys lost a lot more. But I tell you, Al, a boom properly
boomed is a sure thing."
"You're a constant source of surprise to me, Jim," said I. "I should
have thought them sure to lose."
"They're sure to win," said he earnestly.
I demurred. "I don't see how that can possibly be," said I, "for of all
things, booms seem to me the most fickle and incalculable."
"They seem so," said he, smiling, but still in earnest, "to your rustic
and untaught mind, and to most others, because they haven't been
studied. The comet, likewise, doesn't seem very stable or dependable;
but to the eye of the astronomer its orbit is plain, and the time of its
return engagement pretty certain. It's the same with seventeen-year
locusts--and booms; their visits are so far apart that the masses forget
their birthmarks and the W's on their backs. But if you'll follow their
appearances from place to place, as I've done, putting up my ante right
along for the privilege, you'll become an accomplished boomist; and from
the first gentle stirrings of boom-sprouts in the soil, so to speak, you
can forecast their growth, maturity, and collapse."
"I must be permitted to doubt it," said I.
"It's easy, my son," he resumed, "dead easy, and it's psychology on the
hugest scale; and among the results of its study is constant improvement
of the mind, going on coincidentally with the preparation of the way to
the ownership of steam-yachts and racing-stables, or any other similar
trifles you hanker for."
"Great brain, Jim! Massive intellect!" said I, laughing at the fantastic
absurdity of his assertion. "Why, such knowledge as you possess is
better than straight tips on all the races ever to be run. It's better
than our tropical island and Spanish galleons. You get richer, and you
don't have to look out for men-of-war. Do I hold my job as Grand
Vizier?"
"You hold any job you'll take: I'll make out the appointment with the
position and salary blank, and you can fill it up. And if you get
dissatisfied with that, the old grand hailing-sign of distress will
catch the speaker's eye, any old time. But, I tell you, Al, in all
seriousness, I'm right about this boom business. They're all alike, and
they all have the same history. With the conditions right, one can be
started anywhere in a growing country. I've had my ear to the ground for
a while back, and I've heard things. I'm sure I detect some of the
premonitory symptoms: money piling up in the financial centers; property
away down, but strengthening, in the newer regions; and, lately, a
little tendency to take chances in investments, forgetting the scorching
of ten or twelve years ago. A new generation of suckers is gettin' ready
to bite. Look into this thing, Al, and don't be a chump."
"The same old Jim," said I; "you were manipulating a corner in
tobacco-tags while I was learning my letters."
"Do you ever forget anything?" he inquired. "I have about forgotten that
myself. How was that tobacco-tag business, Al?"
Then with the painstaking circumstantiality of two old schoolmates
luxuriating in memories, we talked over the tobacco-tag craze which
swept through our school one winter. Everything in life takes place in
school, and the "tobacco-tag craze" has quite often recurred to me as
showing boys acting just as men act, and Jimmie Elkins as the born
stormy petrel of financial seas.
It all came back to our minds, and we reconstructed this story. The
manufacturers of "Tomahawk Plug" had offered a dozen photographs of
actresses and dancers to any one sending in a certain number of the tin
hatchets concealed in their tobacco. The makers of "Broad-axe Navy"
offered something equally cheap and alluring for consignments of their
brass broad-axes. The older boys began collecting photographs, and a
market for tobacco-tags of certain kinds was established. We little
fellows, though without knowledge of the mysterious forces which had
given value to these bits of metal, began to pick up stray tags from
sidewalk, foot-path, and floor. A marked upward tendency soon manifested
itself. Boys found their "Broad-axe" or "Door-key" tags, picked up at
night, doubled in value by morning. The primary object in collecting
tags was forgotten in the speculative mania which set in. Who would
exchange "Tomahawk" tags for the counterfeit presentment of decollete
dancers, when by holding them he could make cent-per-cent on his
investment of hazel-nuts and slate-pencils?
The playground became a Board of Trade. We learned nothing but mental
arithmetic applied to deals in "Door-keys," "Arrow-heads," and other tag
properties. We went about with pockets full of tags.
Jim, not yet old enough to admire the beauties of the photographs, came
forward in a week as the Napoleon of tobacco-tag finance. He acquired
tags in the slumps, and sold them in the bulges. He raided particular
brands with rumors of the vast supply with which the village boys were
preparing to flood us. He converted his holdings into marbles and tops.
Finally, he planned his master-stroke. He dropped mysterious hints
regarding some tag considered worthless. He asked us in whispers if we
had any. Others followed his example, and "Door-key" tags went above all
others and were scarce at any price. Then Jimmie Elkins brought out the
supply which he had "cornered," threw it on the market, and before it
had time to drop took in a large part of the playground currency. I lost
to him a good drawing-slate and a figure-4 trap.
Jimmie pocketed his winnings, but the trouble attracted the attention of
the teacher, and under adverse legislation a period of liquidation set
in. The distress was great. Many found themselves with property which
was not convertible into photographs or anything else. To make matters
worse, the discovery was made that the big boys had left school to begin
the spring's work, and no one wanted the photographs. Bankrupt and
disillusioned, we returned to the realities of kites, marbles, and
knives, most of which we had to obtain from Jimmie Elkins.
"Yes," said he, "it's a good deal the same with booms. But if you
understand 'em ... eh, Al?"
"Well," said I, really impressed now, "I'll look into it. And when you
get ready to sow your boom-seed, let me know. I change cars in a few
minutes, and you go on. Come down and see me sometimes, can't you? We
haven't had our talk half out yet. Doesn't your business ever bring you
down our way?"
"It hasn't yet, but I'm coming down into that neck of the woods within
six weeks, and I guess I can fix it so's to stop off,--mingling pleasure
and business. It's the only way the hustling philanthropist of my style
ever gets any recreation."
"Do it," said I; "I'll have plenty of time at my disposal; for I go out
of office before that time; and I may want to go into your
boom-hatchery."
"On the theory that the great adversary of mankind runs an employment
agency for ex's? There's the whistle for your junction. By George, Al, I
can't tell you how glad I am to have ketched up with you again! I've
wondered about you a million times. Don't let's lose track of each other
again."
"No, no, Jim, we won't!" The train was coming to a stop. "Don't allow
anything to side-track you and prevent that visit."
"Well, I should say not," he answered, following me out upon the
platform of the station. "We'll have a regular piratical reunion--a sort
of buccaneers' camp-fire. I've a curiosity to see some of the fellows
who acted the part of rob-or to your rob-ee. I want to hear their side
of the story. Good-by, Al. Confound it, I wish you were going on with
me!"
He wrung my hand at parting, reminding me of the old Jim who studied
from the same geography with me, more than at any time since we met. He
stayed with me until after his train had started, caught hold of the
hand-rail as the rear car went by, and passed out of view, waving his
hand to me.
I sat down on a baggage-truck waiting for my train, thinking of my
encounter with Jim. All the way home I was busy pondering over a
thousand things thus suddenly recalled to me. I could see every
fence-corner and barn, every hill and stream of our old haunts; and
after I got home I told Alice all about it.
"He seems quite a remarkable fellow," said I, "and a perfect specimen of
the pusher and hustler--a quick-witted man of affairs. If he is ever
put down, he can't be kept down."
"I think I prefer a more refined type of man," said Alice.
"In the sixteenth century," I went on with that excessive perspicacity
which our wives have to put up with, "he'd have been a Drake or a
Dampier; in the seventeenth, the commander of a privateer or slaver; in
this age, I shall not be at all surprised if he turns out a great
railway or financial magnate. It's like a whiff of boyhood to talk with
him; though he's a greatly different sort of man from what I should have
expected to find him. I think you'll like him."
She seemed dubious about this. Our wives instinctively disapprove of
people we used to know prior to that happy meeting which led to
marriage. This prejudice, for some reason, is stronger against our
feminine acquaintances than the others. I am not analytical enough to do
more than point out this feeling, which will, I think, be admitted by
all husbands to exist.
"That sort of man," said she, "lacks the qualities of bravery and
intrepidity which make up a Drake or a Dampier. They are so a-scheming
and calculating!"
"The last time I saw Jim until to-day," said I, "he did something which
seems to show that he had those more admirable qualities."
Then I told her that story of Jim and the mad dog, which is remembered
in Pleasant Valley to this day. Some say the dog was not mad; but I, who
saw his terrible, insane look as he came snapping and frothing down the
road, believe that he was. Jim had left the school for a year or so, and
I was a "big boy" ready to leave it. It was at four one afternoon, and
as the children filed into the road, there met them the shouts of men
and cries of "Run! Run! Mad dog!"
The children scattered like a covey of quail; but a pair of little
five-year-olds, forgotten by the others, walked on hand in hand, looking
into each other's faces, right toward the poor crazed, hunted brute,
which trotted slowly toward the children, gnashing its frothing jaws at
sticks and weeds, at everything it met, ready to bury its teeth in the
first baby to come within reach.
A young man with a canvasser's portfolio stood behind a fence over which
he had jumped to avoid the dog. Suddenly he saw the children, knew their
danger, and leaped back into the road. It was like a bull-fighter
vaulting the barriers into the perils of the arena,--only it was to
save, not to destroy. The dog had passed him and was nearer the children
than he was. I wondered what he expected to do as I saw him running
lightly, swiftly, and yet quietly behind the terrible beast. As he
neared the animal, he stooped, and my blood froze as I saw him seize the
dog with both hands by the hinder legs. The head curled sidewise and
under, and the teeth almost grazed the young man's hands with a vicious,
metallic snap. Then we saw what the contest was. The young man, with a
powerful circling sweep of his arms, whirled the dog so swiftly about
his head that the lank frame swung out in a straight line, and the snap
could not be repeated. But what of the end? No muscles could long stand
such a strain, and when they yielded, then what?
Then we saw that as he swung his loathsome foe, the young man was
gradually approaching the schoolhouse. We saw the horrible snapping head
whirl nearer and nearer at every turn to the corner of the building.
Then we saw the young man strike a terrible blow at the stone wall,
using the dog as a club; and in a moment I saw the stones splashed with
red, and the young man lying on the ground, where the violence of his
effort had thrown him, and by him lay the quivering form of what we had
fled from. And the young man was James Elkins.
Alice breathed hard as I finished, and stood straight with her chin held
high.
"That was fine!" said she. "I want to see that man!"
CHAPTER IV.
Jim discovers his Coral Island.
There has long been abroad in the world a belief that events which bear
some controlling relation to one's destiny are announced by premonition,
some spiritual trepidation, some movement of that curtain which cuts off
our view of the future. I believe this notion to be false, but feel that
it is true; and the manner in which that adventure of mine in the old
art gallery and at Auriccio's impressed my mind, and the way in which my
memory clung to it, seem to justify my feeling rather than my belief.
Whenever I visited Chicago, I went to the gallery, more in the hope of
seeing the girl whose only name to me was "the Empress" than to gratify
my cravings for art. I felt a boundless pity for her--and laughed at
myself for taking so seriously an incident which, in all likelihood, she
herself dismissed with a few tears, a few retrospective burnings of
heart and cheek. But I never saw her. Once I loitered for an hour about
the boarding-house with the vine-clad porch, while the boarders (mostly
students, I judged) came and went; but though I saw many young girls,
the Empress was not among them. And all this time the years were rolling
on, and I was permitting my once bright political career to blight and
wither by my own neglect, as a growth not worth caring for.
I became a private citizen in due time, but found no comfort in leisure.
I was in those doldrums which beset the politician when rivals justle
him from his little eminence. One who, for years, is annually or
biennially complimented by the suffrages of even a few thousands of his
fellow citizens, and is invited into the penetralia of a great political
party, is apt to regard himself, after a while, as peculiarly deserving
of the plaudits of the humble and the consideration of the powerful.
Then comes the inevitable hour when pussy finds himself without a
corner. The deep disgust for party and politics which then takes
possession of him demands change of scene and new surroundings. Any
flagging in partisan enthusiasm is sure to be attributed to
sore-headedness, and leads to charges of perfidy and thanklessness. Yet,
for him, the choice lies between abated zeal and hypocrisy, inasmuch as
no man can normally be as zealous for his party as the fanatic into
which the candidate or incumbent converts himself.
Underlying my whole frame of mind was the knowledge that, so far as
making a career was concerned, I had wasted several years of my life,
and had now to begin anew. Add to this a slight sense of having played
an unworthy part in life (although here I was unable to particularize),
and a new sense of aloofness from the people with whom I had been for
so long on terms of hearty and back-slapping familiarity, and no further
reason need be sought for a desire which came mightily upon me to go
away and begin life over again in a new _milieu_. In spite of the mild
opposition of my wife, this desire grew to a resolve; and I came to look
upon myself as a temporary sojourner in my own home.
Such was the state of our affairs, when a letter came from Mr. Elkins
(in lieu of the promised visit) urging me to remove to the then obscure
but since celebrated town of Lattimore.
"I got to be too rich for Charley Harper's blood," said the letter,
among other things. "I wanted as much in the way of salary as I could
earn, working for myself, and Charley kicked--said the directors
wouldn't consent, and that such a salary list would be a black eye for
the Frugality and Indemnity if it showed up in its statements. So I
quit. I am loan agent for the company here, which gives me a visible
means of support, and keeps me from being vagged. But, in confidence, I
want to tell you that my main graft here is the putting in operation of
my boom-hatching scheme. Come out, and I'll enroll you as a member of
the band once more; for this is the coral atoll for me. You ought to get
out of that stagnant pond of yours, and come where the natatory medium
is fresh, clean, and thickly peopled with suckers, and a new run of 'em
coming on right soon. In other words, get into the swim."
After reading this letter and considering it as a whole, I was so much
impressed by it that Lattimore was added to the list of places I meant
to visit, on a tour I had planned for myself.
In the West, all roads run to or from Chicago. It is nearer to almost
any place by the way of Chicago than by any other route: so Alice and I
went to the city by the lake, as the beginning of our prospecting tour.
I took her to the art gallery and showed her just where my two lovers
had stood,--telling her the story for the first time. Then she wanted to
eat a supper at Auriccio's; and after the play we went there, and I was
forced to describe the whole scene over again.
"Didn't she see you at all?" she asked.
"Not at all," said I.
"You are a good boy," said my wife, judging me by one act which she
approved. "Kiss me."
This occurred after we reached our lodgings. I suggested as a change of
subject that my next day's engagements took me to the Stock Yards, and I
assumed that she would scarcely wish to accompany me.
"I think I prefer the stores," said she, "and the pictures. Maybe _I_
shall have an adventure."
At the big Exchange Building, I found that the acquaintance whom I
sought was absent from his office, and I roamed up and down the
corridors in search of him. As usual the gathering here was intensely
Western. There were bronzed cattlemen from every range from Amarillo to
the Belle Fourche, sturdy buyers of swine from Iowa and Illinois,
sombreroed sheepmen from New Mexico, and vikingesque Swedes from North
Dakota. Men there were wearing thousand-dollar diamonds in red flannel
shirts, solid gold watch-chains made to imitate bridle-bits, and heavy
golden bullocks sliding on horse-hair guards. It pleased me, as such a
crowd always does. The laughter was loud but it was free, and the hunted
look one sees on State Street and Michigan Avenue was absent.
"I wish Alice had come," said I, noting the flutter of skirts in a group
of people in the corridor; and then, as I came near, the press divided,
and I saw something which drew my eyes as to a sight in which lay
mystery to be unraveled.
Facing me stood a stout farmer in a dark suit of common cut and texture.
He seemed, somehow, not entirely strange; but the petite figure of the
girl whose back was turned to me was what fixed my attention.
She wore a smart traveling-gown of some pretty gray fabric, and bore
herself gracefully and with the air of dominating the group of
commission men among whom she stood. I noted the incurved spine, the
deep curves of the waist, and the liberal slope of the hips belonging to
a shapely little woman in whom slimness was mitigated in adorable ways,
which in some remote future bade fair to convert it into matronliness.
Under a broad hat there showed a wealth of red-brown hair, drawn up like
a sunburst from a slender little neck.
"I have provided a box at Hooley's," said the head of a great commission
firm. "Mrs. Johnson will be with us. We may count upon you?"
"I think so," said the girl, "if papa hasn't made any engagements."
The stout farmer blushed as he looked down at his daughter.
"Engagements, eh? No, sir!" he replied. "She runs things after the
steers is unloaded. Whatever the little gal says goes with me."
They turned, and as they came on down the hall, still chatting, I saw
her face, and knew it. It was the Empress! But even in that glimpse I
saw the change which years had brought. Now she ruled instead of
submitting; her voice, still soft and low, had lost its rustic
inflections; and in spite of the change in the surroundings,--the leap
from the art gallery to the Stock Yards,--there was more of the artist
now, and less of the farmer's lass. They turned into a suite of offices
and disappeared.
"Well, Mr. Barslow," said my friend, coming up. "Glad to see you. I've
been hunting for you."
"Who is that girl and her father?" I asked.
"One of the Johnson Commission Company's Shippers," said he, "Prescott,
from Lattimore; I wish I could get his shipments."
"No!" said I, "Not Lattimore!"
"Prescott of Lattimore," he repeated. "Know anything of him?"
"N-no," said I. "I have friends in that town."
"I wish I had," was the reply; "I'd try to get old Prescott's business."
* * * * *
"There's destiny in this," said Alice, when I told her of my encounter
with the Empress and her father. "Her living in Lattimore is not an
accident."
"I doubt," said I, "if anybody's is."
"She looked nice, did she?" Alice went on, "and dressed well?" and
without waiting for an answer added: "Let's leave Chicago. I'm anxious
to get to Lattimore!"
CHAPTER V.
We Reach the Atoll.
So we journeyed on to Duluth, to St. Paul and Minneapolis, and to the
cities on the Missouri. It was at one of those recurrent periods when
the fever of material and industrial change and development breaks out
over the whole continent. The very earth seemed to send out tingling
shocks of some occult stimulus; the air was charged with the ozone of
hope; and subtle suggestions seemed to pass from mind to mind, impelling
men to dare all, to risk all, to achieve all. In every one of these
young cities we were astonished at the changes going on under our very
eyes. Streets were torn up for the building of railways, viaducts, and
tunnels. Buildings were everywhere in course of demolition, to make room
for larger edifices. Excavations yawned like craters at street-corners.
Steel pillars, girders, and trusses towered skyward,--skeletons to be
clothed in flesh of brick and stone.
Suburbs were sprouting, almost daily, from the mould of the
market-gardens in the purlieus. Corporations were contending for the
possession of the natural highway approaches to each growing city.
Street-railway companies pushed their charters to passage at midnight
sessions of boards of aldermen, seized streets in the night-time, and
extended their metallic tentacles out into the fields of dazed farmers.
On the frontiers, counties were organized and populated in a season.
Every one of them had its two or three villages, which aped in puny
fashion the achievements of the cities. New pine houses dotted prairies,
unbroken save for the mile-long score of the delimiting plow. Long
trains of emigrant-cars moved continually westward. The world seemed
drunk with hope and enthusiasm. The fulfillment of Jim's careless
prophecy had burst suddenly upon us.
Such things as these were fresh in our memories when we reached
Lattimore. I had wired Elkins of our coming, and he met us at the
station with a carriage. It was one sunny September afternoon when he
drove us through the streets of our future home to the principal hotel.
"We have supper at six, dinner at twelve-thirty, breakfast from seven to
ten," said Jim, as we alighted at the hotel. "That's the sort of bucolic
municipality you've struck here; we'll shove all these meals several
hours down, when we get to doubling our population. You'll have an hour
to get freshened up for supper. Afterwards, if Mrs. Barslow feels equal
to the exertion, we'll take a drive about the town."
Lattimore was a pretty place then. Low, rounded hills topped with green
surrounded it. The river flowed in a broad, straight reach along its
southern margin. A clear stream, Brushy Creek, ran in a miniature
canyon of limestone, through the eastern edge of the town. On each side
of this brook, in lawns of vivid green, amid natural groves of oak and
elm, interspersed with cultivated greenery, stood the houses of the
well-to-do. Trees made early twilight in most of the streets.
People were out in numbers, driving in the cool autumnal evening. As a
handsome girl, a splendid blonde, drove past us, my wife spoke of the
excellent quality of the horseflesh we saw. Jim answered that Lattimore
was a center of equine culture, and its citizens wise in breeders' lore.
The appearance of things impressed us favorably. There was an air of
quiet prosperity about the place, which is unusual in Western towns,
where quietude and progress are apt to be thought incompatible. Jim
pointed out the town's natural advantages as we drove along.
"What do you think of that, now?" said he, waving his whip toward the
winding gorge of Brushy Creek.
"It's simply lovely!" said Alice, "a little jewel of a place."
"A bit of mountain scenery on the prairie," said Jim. "And more than
that, or less than that, just as you look at it, it's the source from
which inexhaustible supplies of stone will be quarried when we begin to
build things."
"But won't that spoil it?" said Alice.
"Well, yes; and down on that bottom we've found as good clay for
pottery, sewer-pipes, and paving-brick as exists anywhere. Back there
where you saw that bluff along the river--looks as if it's sliding down
into the water--remember it? Well, there's probably the only place in
the world where there's just the juxtaposition of sand and clay and
chalk to make Portland cement. Supply absolutely unlimited! Why, there
ought to be a thousand men employed right now in those cement works. Oh,
I tell you, things'll hum here when we get these schemes working!"
We laughed at him: his visualization of the cement works was so
complete.
"I suppose you know where all the capital is coming from," said I, "to
do all these things? For my part, I see no way of getting it except our
old plan of buccaneering."
"Exactly my idea!" said he. "Didn't I write you that I'd enroll you as a
member of the band? Has Al ever told you, Mrs. Barslow, of our old
times, when we, as individuals, were passing through our
sixteenth-century stage?"
"Often," Alice replied. "He looks back upon his pirate days as a time of
Arcadian simplicity, 'Untouched by sorrow, and unsoiled by sin.'"
"I can easily understand," said Jim reflectively, "how piracy might
appear in that roseate light after a few years of practical politics.
Now from the moral heights of a life-insurance man's point of view it's
different."
So we rode on chatting and chaffing, now of the old time, now of the
new; and all the time I felt more and more impressed by the dissolving
views which Jim gave us of different parts of his program for making
Lattimore the metropolis of "the world's granary," as he called the
surrounding country. As we topped a low hill on our way back, he pulled
up, to give us a general view of the town and suburbs, and of the great
expanse of farming country beyond. Between us and Lattimore was a mile
stretch of gently descending road, with grain-fields and farm-houses on
each side.
"By the way," said he, "do you see that white house and red barn in the
maple grove off to the right? Well, you remember Bill Trescott?"
Neither of us could call such a person to mind.
"Well, it's all right, I suppose," he went on in a tone implying injury
forgiven, "but you mustn't let Bill know you've forgotten him. The
Trescotts used to live over by the Whitney schoolhouse in Greenwood
Township,--right on the Pleasant Valley line, you know. He remembers you
folks, Al. I'll drive over that way."
There were beds of petunias and four-o'clocks to be seen dimly
glimmering in the dusk, as we drove through the broad gate. Men and
women were gathered in a group about the base of the windmill, as Jim's
loud "whoa" announced our arrival. The women melted away in the
direction of the house. The men stood at gaze.
"Hello, Bill!" shouted Jim. "Come out here!"
"Oh, it's you, is it, Mr. Elkins," said a deep voice. "I didn't know
yeh."
"Thought it was the sheriff with a summons, eh? Well, I guess hardly!"
said Jim. "Mr. Trescott, I want you to shake hands with our old friend
Mr. Barslow."
A heavy figure detached itself from the group, and, as it approached,
developed indistinctly the features of a brawny farmer, with a short,
heavy, dark beard.
"Wal, I declare, I'm glad to see yeh!" said he, as he grasped my hand.
"I'd a'most forgot yeh, till Mr. Elkins told me you remembered my
whalin' them Dutch boys at a scale onct."
I had had no recollection of him; yet form and voice seemed vaguely
familiar. I assured him that my memory for names and faces was
excellent. After being duly presented to Mrs. Barslow, he urged us to
alight and come in. We offered as an excuse the lateness of the hour.
"Why, you hain't seen my family yet, Mr. Barslow," said he. "They'll be
disappointed if yeh don't come in."
I suggested that we were staying for a few days at the Centropolis; and
Alice added that we should be glad to see himself and Mrs. Trescott
there at any time during our stay. Elkins promised that we should all
drive out again.
"Wal, now, you must," said Mr. Trescott. "We must talk over ol' times
and--"
"Fight over old battles," replied Jim. "All the battles were yours,
though, eh, Bill?"
"Huh, huh!" chuckled Bill; "fightin's no credit to any man; but I 'spose
I fit my sheer when I was a boy--when I was a boy, y' know, Mrs.
Barslow, and had more sand than sense. Here, Josie, here's Mr. Elkins
and some old friends of mine. Mr. and Mrs. Barslow, my daughter."
She was a little slim slip of a thing, in white, and emerged from the
shrubbery at Mr. Trescott's call. She bowed to us, and said she was
sorry that we could not stop. Her voice was sweet, and there was
something unexpectedly cool and self-possessed in her intonation. It was
not in the least the speech of the ordinary neat-handed Phyllis or
Neaera; nor was her attitude at all countrified as she stood with her
hand on her father's arm. The increasing darkness kept us from seeing
her features.
"Josie's my right-hand man," said her father. "Half the business of the
farm stops when Josie goes away."
My wife expressed her admiration for Lattimore and its environs, and
especially for so much of the Trescott farm as could be seen in the
deepening gloaming. The flowers, she said, took her back to her
childhood's home.
"Let me give you these," said the girl, handing Alice a great bunch of
blossoms which she had been cutting when her father called, and had held
in her hands as we talked. My wife thanked her, and buried her face in
them, as we bade the Trescotts good-night and drove home.
"That girl," said Jim, as we spun along the road in the light of the
rising moon, "is a crackerjack. Bill thinks the world of her, and she
certainly gives him a mother's care!"
"She seems nice," said Alice, "and so refined, apparently."
"Been well educated," said Jim, "and got a head, besides. You'll like
her; she knows Europe better than some folks know their own front
yard."
"I was surprised at the vividness of my memory of Bill's youthful
combats," said I.
Jim's laugh rang out heartily through the Brushy Creek gorge.
"Well, I supposed you remembered those things, of course," said he, "and
so I insinuated some impression of the delight with which you dwell upon
the stories of his prowess. It made him feel good.... I'm spoiling Bill,
I guess, with these tales. He'll claim to have a private graveyard next.
As harmless a fellow as you ever saw, and the best cattle-feeder
hereabouts. Got a good farm out there, Bill has; we may need it for
stock yards or something, later on."
"Why not hire a corps of landscape-gardeners, and make a park of it?" I
inquired sarcastically. "We'll certainly need breathing-spaces for the
populace."
"Good idea!" he returned gravely. And as he halted the equipage at the
hotel, he repeated meditatively: "A mighty good idea, Al; we must figure
on that a little."
We were tired to silence when we reached our rooms; so much so that
nothing seemed to make a defined and sharp impression upon my mind. I
kept thinking all the time that I must have been mistaken in my first
thought that I had never known the Trescotts.
"Their voices seem familiar to me," said I, "and yet I can't associate
them with the old home at all. It's very odd!"
As Alice stood before the mirror shaking down and brushing her hair, she
said: "Do you suppose he thought you in earnest about that absurd park?"
"No," I answered, "he understood me well enough; but what puzzles me is
the question, was _he_ in earnest?"
* * * * *
In the middle of the night I woke with a perfectly clear idea as to the
identity of the Trescotts! Prescott, Trescott! Josie, Josephine the
"Empress"! And then the voice and figure!
"Why are you sitting up in bed?" inquired Alice.
"I have made a discovery," said I. "That man at the Stock Yards meant
Trescott, not Prescott."
"I don't understand," said she sleepily.
"In a word," said I, "the girl who gave you the flowers is the Empress!"
"Albert Barslow!" said Alice. "Why--"
My wife was silent for a long time.
"I knew we'd meet her," she said at last. "It is fate."
CHAPTER VI.
I am Inducted into the Cave, and Enlist.
"Here's the cave," said Jim, at the door of his office, next morning.
"As prospective joint-proprietor and co-malefactor, I bid you welcome."
The smiles with which the employees resumed their work indicated that
the extraordinary character of this welcome was not lost upon them. The
office was on the ground-floor of one of the more pretentious buildings
of Lattimore's main street. The post-office was on one side of it, and
the First National Bank on the other. Over it were the offices of
lawyers and physicians. It was quite expensively fitted up; and the
plate-glass front glittered with gold-and-black sign-lettering. The
chairs and sofas were upholstered in black leather. On the walls hung
several decorative advertisements of fire-insurance companies, and maps
of the town, county, and state. Rolls of tracing-paper and blueprints
lay on the flat-topped tables, reminding one of the office of an
architect or civil engineer. A thin young man worked at books, standing
at a high desk; and a plump young woman busily clicked off typewritten
matter with an up-to-date machine.
"You'll find some books and papers on the table in the next room," said
Jim, as I finished my first look about. "I'll ask you to amuse yourself
with 'em for a little while, until I can dispose of my morning's mail;
after which we'll resume our hunt for resources. We haven't any morning
paper yet, and the evening _Herald_ is shipped in by freight and edited
with a saw. But it's the best we've got--yet."
He read his letters, ran his eyes over his newspapers and a magazine or
two, and dictated some correspondence, interrupted occasionally by
callers, some of whom he brought into the room where I was whiling away
the time, examining maps, and looking over out-of-date copies of the
local papers. One of these callers was Mr. Hinckley, the cashier of the
bank, who came to see about some insurance matters. He was spare,
aquiline, and white-mustached; and very courteously wished Lattimore the
good fortune of securing so valuable an acquisition as ourselves. It
would place Lattimore under additional obligations to Mr. Elkins, who
was proving himself such an effective worker in all public matters.
"Mr. Elkins," said he, "has to a wonderful degree identified himself
with the material progress of the city. He is constantly bringing here
enterprising and energetic business men; and we could better afford to
lose many an older citizen."
I asked Mr. Hinckley as to the length of his own residence in Lattimore.
"I helped to plat the town, sir," said he. "I carried the chain when
these streets were surveyed,--a boy just out of Bowdoin College. That
was in '55. I staged it for four hundred miles to get here. Aleck
Macdonald and I came together, and we've both staid from that day. The
Indians were camped at the mouth of Brushy Creek; and except for old
Pierre Lacroix, a squaw-man, we were for a month the only white men in
these parts. Then General Lattimore came with a party of surveyors, and
by the fall there was quite a village here."
Jim came in with another gentleman, whom he introduced as Captain
Tolliver. The Captain shook my hand with profuse politeness.
"I am delighted to see you, suh," said he. "Any friend of Mr. Elkins I
shall be proud to know. I heah that Mrs. Barslow is with you. I trust,
suh, that she is well?"
I informed him that my wife was in excellent health, being completely
recovered from the fatigue of her journey.
"Ah! this aiah, this aiah, Mr. Barslow! It is like wine in its
invigorating qualities, like wine, suh. Look at Mr. Hinckley, hyah,
doing the work of two men fo' a lifetime; and younge' now than any of
us. Come, suh, and make yo' home with us. You nevah can regret it.
Delighted to have you call at my office, suh. I am proud to have met
you, and hope to become better acquainted with you. I hope Mrs. Tulliver
and Mrs. Barslow may soon meet. Good-morning, gentlemen." And he hurried
out, only to reappear as soon as Mr. Hinckley was gone.
"By the way, Mr. Barslow," he whispered, "should you come to Lattimore,
as I have no doubt you will, I have some of the choicest residence
property in the city, which I shall be mo' than glad to show you. Title
perfect, no commissions to pay, city water, gas, and electric light in
prospect. Cain't yo' come and look it ovah now, suh?"
"Who is this Captain Tolliver, Jim," I asked as we went out of the
office together, "and what is he?"
"In other words, 'Who and what art thou, execrable shape?' Well, now,
don't ask me. I've known him for years; in fact, he suggested to me the
possibilities of this burg. In a way, the city is indebted to him for my
presence here. But don't ask me about him--study him. And don't buy lots
from him. The Captain has his failings, but he has also his strong
points and his uses; and I'll be mistaken if he isn't cast for a fairly
prominent part in the drama we're about to put on here. But don't spoil
your enjoyment by having him described to you. Let him dawn on you by
degrees."
That day I met most of the prominent men of the town. Jim took me into
the banks, the shops, and the offices of the leading professional
gentlemen. He informed them that I was considering the matter of coming
to live among them; and I found them very friendly, and much interested
in our proposed change of residence. They all treated Jim with respect,
and his manner toward them had a dignity which I had not looked for.
Evidently he was making himself felt in the community.
When we returned to the Centropolis at noon, we found Mrs. Trescott and
her daughter chatting with my wife. The elder woman was ill-groomed, as
are all women of her class in comparison with their town sisters, and
angular. I knew the type so well that I could read the traces of farm
cares in her face and form. The serving of gangs of harvesters and
threshers, the ever-recurring problems of butter, eggs, and berries, the
unflagging fight, without much domestic help, for neatness and order
about the house, had impressed their stamp upon Mrs. Trescott. But she
was chatting vivaciously, and assuring Mrs. Barslow that such a thing as
staying longer in town that morning was impossible.
"I can feel in my bones," said she, "that there's something wrong at the
farm."
"You always have that feeling," said her daughter, "as soon as you pass
outside the gate."
"And I'm usually right about it," said Mrs. Trescott. "It isn't any use.
My system has got into that condition in which I'm in misery if I'm off
that farm. Josie drags me away from it sometimes; and I do enjoy meeting
people! But I like to meet 'em out there the best; and I want to urge
you to come often, Mrs. Barslow, while you're here. And in case you move
here, I hope you'll like us and the farm well enough so that we'll see a
good deal of you."
I was presented to Mrs. Trescott, and reintroduced to the young lady,
with whom Alice seemed already on friendly terms. I was surprised at
this, for she was not prone to sudden friendships. There was something
so attractive in the girl, however, that it went far to explain the
phenomenon. For one thing, there was in her manner that same steadiness
and calm which I had noticed in her voice in the dusk last night. It
gave one the impression that she could not be surprised or startled,
that she had seen or thought out all possible combinations of events,
and knew of their sequences, or adjusted herself to things by some
all-embracing rule, by which she attained that repose of hers. The
surprising thing about it, to my mind, was to find this exterior in Bill
Trescott's daughter. I had seen the same thing once or twice in people
to whom I thought it had come as the fruit of wide experience in the
world.
While Miss Trescott was slim, and rather below the medium in height, she
was not at all thin; and had the great mass of ruddy dark hair and fine
brown eyes which I remembered so well, and a face which would have been
pale had it not been for the tan--the only thing about her which
suggested those occupations by which she became her father's "right-hand
man." There was intelligence in her face, and a grave smile in her eyes,
which rarely extended to her handsome mouth. If mature in face, form,
and manner, she was young in years--some years younger than Alice. I
hoped that she might stay to dinner; but she went away with her mother.
In her absence, I devoted some time to praising her. Jim failed to join
in my paeans further than to give a general assent; but he grew
unaccountably mirthful, as if something good had happened to him of
which he had not yet told us.
"I have invited a few people to my parlors this evening," said he, "and,
of course, you will be the guests of honor."
My wife demurred. She had nothing to wear, and even if she had, I was
without evening dress. The thing seemed out of the question.
"Oh, we can't let that stand in the way," said he. "So far as your own
toilet is concerned, I have nothing to say except that you are known to
be making a hurried visit, and I have an abiding faith, based on your
manner of stating your trouble, that it can be remedied. I saw your eye
take on a far-away look as you planned your costume, even while you were
declaring that you couldn't do it. Didn't I, now?"
"You certainly did not," said Alice; and then I noticed the absorbed
look myself. "But even if I can manage it, how about Albert?"
"I'll tell you about Albert. I'll bet two to one there won't be a suit
of evening clothes worn. The dress suit may come in here with street
cars and passenger elevators, but it lacks a good deal of being here
yet, except in the most sporadic and infrequent way. And this thing is
to be so absolutely informal that it would make the natives stare. You
wouldn't wear it if you had it, Al."
"Who will come?" said Mrs. Barslow.
"Oh, a couple of dozen ladies and gentlemen, business men and doctors
and lawyers and their women-folks. They'll stray in from eight to ten
and find something to eat on the sideboard. They'll have the happiness
of meeting you, and you can see what the people you are thinking of
living among and doing business with are like. It's a necessary part of
your visit; and you can't get out of it now, for I've taken the liberty
of making all the arrangements. And, as a matter of fact, you don't
want to do so, do you, now?"
Thus appealed to, Alice consented. Nothing was said to me about it, my
willingness being presumed.
The guests that evening were almost exclusively men whom I had met
during the day, and members of their families. In the absence of any
more engaging topic, we discussed Lattimore as our possible future home.
"I have always felt," said Mr. Hinckley, who was one of the guests,
"that this is the natural site of a great city. These valleys, centering
here like the spokes of a wheel, are ready-made railway-routes. In the
East there is a city of from fifty thousand to three times that, every
hundred miles or so. Why shouldn't it be so here?"
"Suh," said Captain Tolliver, "the thing is inevitable. Somewhah in this
region will grow up a metropolis. Shall it be hyah, o' at Fairchild, o'
Angus Falls? If the people of Lattimore sit supinely, suh, and let these
country villages steal from huh the queenship which God o'dained fo' huh
when He placed huh in this commandin' site, then, suh, they ah too base
to be wo'thy of the suhvices of gentlemen."
"I've always been taught," said Mrs. Trescott, "that the credit of
placing her in this site belonged to either Mr. Hinckley or General
Lattimore."
"Really," said Miss Addison to me, "I don't see how they can laugh at
such irreverence!"
"I think," said Miss Hinckley in my other ear, "that Mr. Elkins
expressed the whole truth in the matter of the rivalry of these three
towns, when he said that when two ride on a horse, one must ride behind.
Aren't his quotations so--so--illuminating?"
I looked about at the company. There were Mr. Hinckley, Mrs. Hinckley,
their daughter, whom I recognized as the splendid blonde whose pacers
had passed us when we were out driving, Mrs. Trescott and her daughter,
and Captain and Mrs. Tolliver. Those present were plainly of several
different sets and cliques. Mrs. Hinckley hoped that my wife would join
the Equal Rights Club, and labor for the enfranchisement of women. She
referred, too, to the eloquence and piety of her pastor, the
Presbyterian minister, while Mrs. Tolliver quoted Emerson, and invited
Alice to join, as soon as we removed, the Monday Club of the Unitarian
Church, devoted to the study of his works. Mr. Macdonald, red-whiskered,
weather-beaten, and gigantic, fidgeted about the punch-bowl a good deal;
and replying to some chance remark made by Alice, ventured the opinion
that the grass was gettin' mighty short on the ranges. Miss Addison, who
came with her cousins the Lattimores, looked with disapproval upon the
punch, and disclosed her devotion to the W. C. T. U. and the Ladies' Aid
Society of the Methodist Church. The Lattimores were Will Lattimore and
his wife. I learned that he was the son of the General, and Jim's
lawyer; and that they went rarely into society, being very exclusive.
This was communicated to me by Mrs. Ballard, who brought Miss Ballard
with her. She asked in tones of the intensest interest if we played
whist; while Miss Ballard suggested that about the only way we could
find to enjoy ourselves in such a little place would be to identify
ourselves with the dancing-party and card-club set. I began to suspect
that life in Lattimore would not be without its complexities.
Mr. Trescott came in for a moment only, for his wife and daughter. Miss
Trescott was not to be found at first, but was discovered in the
bay-window with Jim and Miss Hinckley, looking over some engravings. Mr.
Elkins took her down to her carriage, and I thought him a long time
gone, for the host. As soon as he returned, however, the conversation
again turned to the dominant thought of the gathering, municipal
expansion. And I noted that the points made were Jim's. He had already
imbued the town with his thoughts, and filled the mouths of its citizens
with his arguments.
After they left, we sat with Jim and talked.
"Well, how do you like 'em?" said he.
"Why," said Alice, "they're very cordial."
"Heterogeneous, eh?" he queried.
"Yes," said she, "but very cordial. I am surprised to feel how little I
dislike them."
As for me, I began to look upon Lattimore with more favor. I began to
catch Jim's enthusiasm and share his confidence. As we smoked together
in his rooms that evening, he made me the definite proposal that I go
into partnership with him. We talked about the business, and discussed
its possibilities.
"I don't ask you to believe all my prophecies," said he; "but isn't the
situation fairly good, just as it is?"
"I think well of it," I answered, "and it's mighty kind of you to ask me
to come. I'll go as far as to say that if it depends solely on me, we
shall come. As for these prophecies of yours, I am in candor bound to
say that I half believe them."
"Now you _are_ shouting," said he. "Never better prophecies anywhere.
But consider the matter aside from them. Then all we clean up in the
prophecy department will be velvet, absolute velvet!"
"I can add something to the output of the prophecy department," said
Alice, when I repeated the phrase; "and that is that there will be some
affairs of the heart mingled with the real estate and insurance before
long. I can see them in embryo now."
"If it's Jim and Miss Trescott you mean, I wish the affair well," said
I. "I'm quite charmed with her."
"Well," said Alice, "from the standpoint of most men, Miss Hinckley
isn't to be left out of the reckoning in such matters. What a face and
figure she has! Miss Addison is too prudish and churchified; but I like
Miss Hinckley."
"Yes," said I; "but Miss Trescott seems, somehow, to have been known to
one, in some tender and touching relation. There's that about her which
appeals to one, like some embodiment of the abstract idea of woman.
That's why one feels as if he had risked his life for her, and protected
her, and seen her suffer wrong, and all that--"
"That's only because of that affair you told me of," said my wife.
"Since I've seen her, I've made up my mind that you misconstrued the
matter utterly. There was really nothing to it."
In a week I wrote to Mr. Elkins, accepting his proposal, and promising
to close up my affairs, remove to Lattimore, and join with him.
"I do not feel myself equal to playing the part of either Romulus or
Remus in founding your new Rome," I wrote; "but I think as a writer of
fire-insurance policies, and keeping the office work up, I may prove
myself not entirely a deadhead. My wife asks how the breathing-spaces
for the populace are coming on?"
And the die was cast!
CHAPTER VII.
We make our Landing.
Had I known how cordially our neighbors would greet our return, or how
many of them would view our departure with apparently sincere regret, I
might have been slower in giving Jim my promise. I proceeded, however,
to carry it out; but it was nearly six months before I could pull myself
and my little fortune out of the place into which we had grown.
Mr. Elkins kept me well informed regarding Lattimore affairs; and the
_Herald_ followed me home. Jim's letters were long typewritten
communications, dictated at speed, and mailed, sometimes one a day, at
other times at intervals of weeks.
"This is a sure-enough 'winter of our discontent,'" one of these letters
runs, "but the scope of our operations will widen as the frost comes out
of the ground. We're now confined to the psychical field. Subjectively
speaking, though, the plot thickens. Captain Tolliver is in the
secondary stages of real-estate dementia, and spreads the contagion
daily. There's no quarantine regulation to cover the case, and Lattimore
seems doomed to the acme of prosperity. This is the age of great cities,
saith the Captain, and that Lattimore is not already a town of 150,000
people is one of the strangest, one of the most inexplicable things in
the world, in view of the distance we are lag of the country about us,
so far as development is concerned. And as our beginning has been tardy,
so will our progress be rapid, even as waters long dammed up rush out to
devour the plains, etc., etc.
"In this we are all agreed. We want a good, steady, natural growth--and
no boom.
"When a boom recognizes itself as such, it's all over, and the stuff
off. The time for letting go of a great wheel is when it starts down
hill. But our wheels are all going up--even if they are all in our
heads, as yet.
"You will remember the railway connection of which I spoke to you? Well,
that thing has assumed, all of a sudden, a concreteness as welcome as it
is unexpected. Ballard showed me a telegram yesterday from lower
Broadway (the heart of Darkest N. Y.) which tends to prove that people
there are ready to finance the deal. It would have amused you to see the
horizontality of the coat-tails of the management of the Lattimore &
Great Western, as they flaxed round getting up a directors' meeting, so
as to have a real, live directorate of this great transcontinental line
for the wolves of Wall Street to do business with! Things like this are
what you miss by hibernating there, instead of dropping everything and
applying here for your pro rata share of the gayety of nations and the
concomitant scads.
"I was elected president of the road, and as soon as we get a little
track, and an engine, I expect to obtain an exchange of passes with all
my fellow monopolists in North America. I at once fired back an answer
to Ballard's telegram, which must have produced an impression upon the
Gould and Vanderbilt interests--if they got wind of it. If the L. & G.
W. should pass the paper stage next summer, it will do a whole lot
towards carrying this burg beyond the hypnotic period of development.
"The Angus Falls branch is going to build in next summer, I am
confident, and that means another division headquarters and, probably,
machine-shops. I'm working with some of the trilobites here to form a
pool, and offer the company grounds for additional yards and a
roundhouse and shops. Captain Tolliver interviewed General Lattimore
about it, and got turned down.
"'He told me, suh,' reported the Captain, in a fine white passion, 'that
if any railway system desiahs to come to Lattimore, it has his
puhmission! That the Injuns didn't give him any bonus when he came; and
that he had to build his own houses and yahds, by gad, at his own
expense, and defend 'em, too, and that if any railroad was thinkin' of
comin' hyah, it was doubtless because it was good business fo' 'em to
come; and that if they wanted any of his land, were willing to pay him
his price, there wouldn't be any difficulty about theiah getting it. And
that if there should arise any difference, which he should deeply
regret, but would try to live through, the powah of eminent domain with
which railways ah clothed will enable the company to get what land is
necessary by legal means.
"'I could take these observations,' said the Captain, 'as nothing except
a gratuitous insult to one who approached him, suh, in a spirit of pure
benevolence and civic patriotism. It shows the kind of tyrants who
commanded the oppressors of the South, suh! Only his gray hairs
protected him, suh, only his gray hairs!'"
"It's a little hard to separate the General from the Captain, in this
report of the committee on railway extensions," said my wife.
"The only thing that's clear about it," said I, "is that Jim is having a
good deal of fun with the Captain."
This became clearer as the correspondence went on.
"Tolliver thinks," said he, in another letter, "that the Angus Falls
extension can be pulled through. However, I recall that only yesterday
the Captain, in private, denounced the citizens of Lattimore as beneath
the contempt of gentlemen of breadth of view. 'I shall dispose of my
holdin's hyah,' said he, with a stately sweep indicative of their
extent, 'at any sacrifice, and depaht, cuhsin' the day I devoted myself
to the redemption of such cattle.'
"But, at that particular moment, he had just failed in an attempt to
sell Bill Trescott a bunch of choice outlying gold bricks, and was
somewhat heated with wine. This to the haughty Southron was ample
excuse for confiding to me the round, unvarnished truth about us
mudsills.
"Josie and I often talk of you and your wife. I don't know what I'd do
out here if it weren't for Josie. She refuses to enthuse over our
'natural, healthy growth,' which we look for; but I guess that's because
she doesn't care for the things that the rest of us are striving for.
But she's the only person here with whom one can really converse. You'd
be astonished to see how pretty she is in her furs, and set like a jewel
in my new sleigh; but I'm becoming keenly aware of the fact."
We were afterwards told that the trilobites had shaken off their
fossilhood, and that the Angus Falls extension, with the engine-house
and machine-shops, had been "landed."
"This," he wrote, "means enough new families to make a noticeable
increase in our population. Things will be popping here soon. Come on
and help shake the popper; hurry up with your moving, or it will all be
over, including the shouting."
We were not entirely dependent upon Jim's letters for Lattimore news.
Mrs. Barslow kept up a desultory correspondence with Miss Trescott,
begun upon some pretext and continued upon none at all. In one of these
letters Josie (for so we soon learned to call her) wrote:
"Our little town is changing so that it no longer seems familiar. Not
that the change is visible. Beyond an unusual number of strangers or
recent comers, there is nothing new to strike the eye. But the talk
everywhere is of a new railroad and other improvements. One needs only
to shut one's eyes and listen, to imagine that the town is already a
real city. Mr. Elkins seems to be the center of this new civic
self-esteem. The air is full of it, and I admit that I am affected by
it. I have
"'A feeling, as when eager crowds await,
Before a palace gate,
Some wondrous pageant.'
"You are indebted to Captain Tolliver for the quotation, and to Mr.
Elkins for the idea. The Captain induced me to read the book in which I
found the lines. He stigmatizes the preference given to the Northern
poets--Longfellow, for instance--over Timrod as 'the crowning infamy of
American letters.' He has taken the trouble to lay out a course of study
for me, the object of which is to place me right in my appreciation of
the literary men of the South. It includes Pollard's 'Lost Cause' and
the works of W. G. Simms. I have not fully promised to follow it to the
end. Timrod, however, is a treat."
That last quiet winter will always be set apart in my memory, as a time
like no other. It was a sitting down on a milestone to rest. Back of us
lay the busy past--busy with trivial things, it seemed to me, but full
of varied activity nevertheless. A boy will desire mightily to finish a
cob-house; and when it is done he will smilingly knock it about the barn
floor. So I was tearing down and leaving the fabric of relationship
which I had once prized so highly.
The life upon which I expected to enter promised well. In fact, to a man
of medium ability, only, and no training in large affairs, it promised
exceedingly well. I knew that Jim was strong, and that his old regard
for me had taken new life and a firm hold upon him. But when, removed
from his immediate influence, I looked the situation in the face, the
future loomed so mysteriously bizarre that I shrank from it. All his
skimble-skamble talk about psychology and hypnotism, and that other
rambling discourse of pirate caves and buccaneering cruises, made me
feel sometimes as if I were about to form a partnership with Aladdin, or
the King of the Golden Mountain. If he had asked me, merely, to come to
Lattimore and go into the real estate and insurance business with him, I
am sure I should have had none of this mental vertigo. Yet what more had
he done?
As to the boom, I had, as yet, not a particle of objective confidence in
it; but, subconsciously, I felt, as did the town "doomed to prosperity,"
a sense of impending events. In spite of some presentiments and doubts,
it was, on the whole, with high hopes that we, on an aguish spring day,
reached Lattimore with our stuff (as the Scriptures term it), and knew
that, for weal or woe, it was our home.
Jim was again at the station to meet us, and seemed delighted at our
arrival. I thought I saw some sort of absent-mindedness or absorbedness
in his manner, so that he seemed hardly like himself. Josie was there
with him, and while she and Alice were greeting each other, I saw Jim
scanning the little crowd at the station as if for some other arrival.
At last, his eye told me that whatever it was for which he was looking,
he had found it; and I followed his glance. It rested on the last person
to alight from the train--a tall, sinewy, soldierly-built youngish man,
who wore an overcoat of black, falling away in front, so as to reveal a
black frock coat tightly buttoned up and a snowy shirt-front with a
glittering gem sparkling from the center of it. On his head was a
shining silk hat--a thing so rare in that community as to be noticeable,
and to stamp the wearer as an outsider. His beard was clipped close, and
at the chin ran out into a pronounced Vandyke point. His mustaches were
black, heavy, and waxed. His whole external appearance betokened wealth,
and he exuded mystery. He had not taken two steps from the car before
the people on the platform were standing on tiptoe to see him.
"Bus to the Centropolis?" queried the driver of the omnibus.
The stranger looked at the conveyance, filled as it was with a load of
traveling men and casuals; and, frowning darkly, turned to the negro who
accompanied him, saying, "Haven't you any carriage here, Pearson?"
"Yes, sah," responded the servant, pointing to a closed vehicle. "Right
hyah, sah."
My wife stood looking, with a little amused smile, at the picturesque
group, so out of the ordinary at the time and place. Miss Trescott was
gazing intently at the stranger, and at the moment when he spoke she
clutched my wife's arm so tightly as to startle her. I heard Alice make
some inquiry as to the cause of her agitation, and as I looked at her,
I could see in the one glance her face, gone suddenly white as death,
and the dark visage of the tall stranger. And it seemed to me as if I
had seen the same thing before.
Then, the negro pointing the way to the closed carriage, the group
separated to left and right, the stranger passed through to the
carriage, and the picture, and with it my odd mental impression,
dissolved. The negro lifted two or three heavy bags to the coachman,
gave the transfer man some baggage-checks, and the equipage moved away
toward the hotel. All this took place in a moment, during which the
usual transactions on the platform were suspended. The conductor failed
to give the usual signal for the departure of the train. The engineer
leaned from the cab and gazed.
Jim's eye rested on the stranger and his servant for an instant only;
but during that time he seemed to take an observation, come to a
conclusion, and dismiss the whole matter.
"Here, John," said he to the drayman, "take these trunks to the
Centropolis. We'd like 'em this week, too. None of that old trick of
yours of dumping 'em in the crick, you know!"
"They'll be up there in five minutes all right, Mr. Elkins," said John,
grinning at Jim's allusion to some accident, the knowledge of which
appeared to be confined to himself and Mr. Elkins, and to constitute a
bond of sympathy between them. Jim turned to us with redoubled
heartiness, all his absent-mindedness gone.
"I'll drive you to the hotel," said Jim. "You'll--"
"Miss Trescott is ill--" said Alice.
"Not at all," said Josie; "it has passed entirely! Only, when you have
taken Mr. and Mrs. Barslow to the hotel, will you please take me home?
Our little supper-party--I don't feel quite equal to it, if you will
excuse me!"
CHAPTER VIII.
A Welcome to Wall Street and Us.
"Welcome!" intoned Captain Tolliver, with his hat in his hand, bowing
low to Mrs. Barslow. "Welcome, Madam and suh, in the capacity of
Lattimoreans! That we shall be the bettah fo' yo' residence among us
the' can be no doubt. That you will be prospahed beyond yo' wildest
dreams I believe equally cehtain. Welcome!"
This address was delivered within thirty seconds of the time of our
arrival at our old rooms in the Centropolis. The Captain saluted us in a
manner extravagantly polite, mysteriously enthusiastic. The air of
mystery was deepened when he called again to see Mr. Elkins in the
evening and was invited in.
"Did you-all notice that distinguished and opulent-looking gentleman who
got off the train this evening?" said he in a stage whisper. "Mahk my
words, the coming of such men, _his_ coming, is fraught with the deepest
significance to us all. All my holdin's ah withdrawn from mahket until
fu'the' developments!"
"Seems to travel in style," said Jim; "all sorts of good clothes,
colored body-servant, closed carriage ordered by wire--it does look
juicy, don't it, now?"
"He has the entiah second flo' front suite. The niggah has already sent
out fo' a bahbah," said the Captain. "Lattimore has at last attracted
the notice of adequate capital, and will now assume huh true place in
the bright galaxy of American cities. Mr. Barslow, I shall ask
puhmission to call upon you in the mo'nin' with reference to a project
which will make the fo'tunes of a dozen men, and that within the next
ninety days. Good evenin', suh; good evenin', Madam. I feel that you
have come among us at a propitious moment!"
"The Captain merely hints at the truth which struggles in him for
utterance," said Jim. "I prove this by informing you that I couldn't get
you a house. This shows, too, that the census returns are a calumny upon
Lattimore. You'll have to stay at the Centropolis until something turns
up or you can build."
"Oh, dear!" said Alice. "Hotel life isn't living at all. I hope it won't
be long."
"It will have its advantages for Al," said Mr. Elkins. "This financial
maelstrom, which will draw everything to Lattimore, will have its core
right in this hotel--a mighty good place to be. Things of all kinds have
been floating about in the air for months; the precipitation is
beginning now. The psychological moment has arrived--you have brought it
with you, Mrs. Barslow. The moon-flower of Lattimore's 'gradual, healthy
growth' is going to burst, and that right soon."
"Has Captain Tolliver infected you?" inquired Alice. "He told us the
same thing, with less of tropes and figures."
"On any still morning," said Jim, "you can hear the wheels go round in
the Captain's head; but his instinct for real-estate conditions is as
accurate as a pocket-gopher's. The Captain, in a hysterical sort of way,
is right: I consider that a cinch. Good-night, friends, and pleasant
dreams. I expect to see you at breakfast; but if I shouldn't, Al, you'll
come aboard at nine, won't you, and help run up the Jolly Roger? I think
I smell pieces-of-eight in the air! And, by the way, Miss Trescott says
for me to assure you that her vertigo, which she had for the first time
in her life, is gone, and she never felt better."
As Mr. Elkins passed from our parlor, he let in a bell-boy with the card
of Mr. Clifford Giddings, representing the Lattimore Morning _Herald_.
"See him down in the lobby," said Alice.
"I want a story," said he as we met, "on the city and its future. The
_Herald_ readers will be glad of anything from Mr. Barslow, whose coming
they have so long looked forward to, as intimately connected with the
city's development."
"My dear sir," I replied, somewhat astonished at the importance which he
was pleased to attach to my arrival, "abstractly, my removal to
Lattimore is my best testimony on that; concretely, I ought to ask
information of you."
We sat down in a corner of the lobby, our chairs side by side, facing
opposite ways. He lighted a cigar, and gave me one. In looks he was
young; in behavior he had the self-possession and poise of maturity. He
wore a long mackintosh which sparkled with mist. His slouch hat looked
new and was carefully dinted. His dress was almost natty in an
unconventional way, and his manners accorded with his garb. He acted as
if for years we had casually met daily. His tone and attitude evinced
respect, was entirely free from presumption, equally devoid of reserve,
carried with it no hint of familiarity, but assumed a perfect
understanding. The barrier which usually keeps strangers apart he
neither broke down, which must have been offensive, nor overleaped,
which would have been presumptuous. He covered it with that demeanor of
his, and together we sat down upon it.
"I thought the _Herald_ was an evening paper," said I.
"It was, in the days of yore," he replied; "but Mr. Elkins happened to
see me in Chicago one day, and advised me to come out and look the old
thing over with a view to purchasing the plant. You observe the result.
As fellow immigrants, I hope there will be a bond of sympathy between
us. You think, of course, that Lattimore is a coming city?"
"Yes."
"Its geographical situation seems to render its development inevitable,
doesn't it? And," he went on, "the railway conditions seem peculiarly
promising just now?"
"Yes," said I, "but the natural resources of the city and the
surrounding country appeal most strongly to me."
"They are certainly very exceptional, aren't they?" said he, as if the
matter had never occurred to him before. Then he went on telling me
things, more than asking questions, about the jobbing trades, the brick
and tile and associated industries, the cement factory, which he spoke
of as if actually _in esse_, the projected elevators, the
flouring-mills, and finally returned to railway matters.
"What is your opinion of the Lattimore & Great Western, Mr. Barslow?" he
asked.
"I cannot say that I have any," I answered, "except that its
construction would bring great good to Lattimore."
"It could scarcely fail," said he, "to bring in two or three systems
which we now lack, could it?"
I very sincerely said that I did not know. After a few more questions
concerning our plans for the future, Mr. Giddings vanished into the
night, silently, as an autumn leaf parting from its bough. I thought of
him no more until I unfolded the _Herald_ in the morning as we sat at
breakfast, and saw that my interview was made a feature of the day's
news.
"Mr. Albert F. Barslow," it read, "of the firm of Elkins & Barslow, is
stopping at the Centropolis. He arrived by the 6:15 train last evening,
and with his family has taken a suite of rooms pending the erection of a
residence. They have not definitely decided as to the location of their
new home; but it may confidently be stated that they will build
something which will be a notable addition to the architectural beauties
of Lattimore--already proud of her title, the City of Homes."
"I am very glad to know about this," said Alice.
"Your man Giddings has nerve, whatever else he may lack," said I to the
smiling Elkins across the table. "Am I obliged to make good all these
representations? I ask, that I may know the rules of the game, merely."
"One rule is that you mustn't deny any accusations of future
magnificence, for two reasons: they may come true, and they help things
on. You are supposed to have left your modesty in cold storage
somewhere. Read on."
"Mr. Barslow," I read, "has long been a most potent political factor in
his native state, but is, first of all, a business man. He brings his
charming young wife--"
"Really, a most discriminating journalist," interjected Alice.
"--and social circles, as well as the business world, will find them a
most desirable accession to Lattimore's population."
"Why this is absolute, slavish devotion to facts," said Jim; "where does
the word-painting come in?"
"Here it is," said I.
"Mr. Barslow is some years under middle age, and looks the intense
modern business man in every feature. His mind seems to have already
become saturated with the conception of the enormous possibilities of
Lattimore. He impresses those who have met him as one of the few men
capable of pulling his share in double harness with James R. Elkins."
"The fellow piles it on a little strong at times, doesn't he, Mrs.
Barslow?" said Jim.
"He brings to our city," I read on, "his vigorous mind, his fortune, and
a determination never to rest until the city passes the 100,000 mark. To
a _Herald_ representative, last night, he spoke strongly and eloquently
of our great natural resources."
Then followed a skillfully handled expansion of our _tete-a-tete_ talk
in the lobby.
"Mr. Barslow," the report went on, "very courteously declined to discuss
the L. & G. W. situation. It seems evident, however, from remarks
dropped by him, that he regards the construction of this road as
inevitable, and as a project which, successfully carried out, cannot
fail to make Lattimore the point to which all the Western and
Southwestern systems of railways must converge."
"You're doing it like a veteran!" cried Jim. "Admirable! Just the proper
infusion of mystery; I couldn't have done better myself."
"Credit it all to Giddings," I protested. "And note that the center of
the stage is reserved to our mysterious fellow lodger and co-arrival."
"Yes, I saw that," said Jim. "Isn't Giddings a peach? Let Mrs. Barslow
hear it."
"She ought to be able to hear these headlines," said I, "without any
reading: 'J. Bedford Cornish arrives! Wall Street's Millions On the
Ground in the Person of One of Her Great Financiers! Bull Movement in
Real Estate Noted Last Night! Does He Represent the Great Railway
Interests?'"
"Real estate and financial circles," ran the article under these
headlines, "are thrown into something of a fever by the arrival, on the
6:15 express last evening, of a gentleman of distinguished appearance,
who took five rooms _en suite_ on the second floor of the Centropolis,
and registered in a bold hand as J. Bedford Cornish, of New York. Mr.
Cornish consented to see a _Herald_ representative last night, but was
very reticent as to his plans and the objects of his visit. He simply
says that he represents capital seeking investment. He would not admit
that he is connected with any of the great railway interests, or that
his visit has any relation to the building of the Lattimore & Great
Western. The _Herald_ is able to say, however, that its New York
correspondent informs it that Mr. Cornish is a member of the firm of
Lusch, Carskaddan & Mayer, of Wall Street. This firm is well known as
one of the concerns handling large amounts of European capital, and said
to be intimately associated with the Rothschilds. Financial journals
have recently noted the fact that these concerns are becoming
embarrassed by the plethora of funds seeking investment, and are turning
their attention to the development of railway systems and cities in the
United States. Their South American and Australian investments have not
proven satisfactory, especially the former, owing to the character of
the people of Latin America. It has been pointed out that no real-estate
investment can be more than moderately profitable in climates which
render the people content with a mere living, and that the restless and
unsatisfied vigor of the Anglo-Saxon alone can make lands and railways
permanently remunerative. Mr. Cornish admitted these facts when they
were pointed out to him, and immediately changed the subject.
"Mr. Cornish is a very handsome and opulent-looking gentleman, and seems
to live in a style somewhat luxurious for the Occident. He has a colored
body-servant, who seems to reflect the mystery of his master; but if he
has any other reflections, the _Herald_ is none the wiser for them.
Admittance to the suite of rooms was obtained by sending in the
reporter's card, which vanished into a sybaritic gloom, borne on a
golden salver. Mr. Cornish seems to be very exclusive, his meals being
served in his rooms; and even his barber has instructions to call upon
him each morning. One wonders why the barber is called in so frequently,
until one marks the smooth-shaven cheeks above the close-clipped,
pointed, black, Vandyke beard. He is withal very cordial and courtly in
his manners.
"James R. Elkins, when seen last evening, refused to talk, except to say
that, in financial circles, it has been known for some days that
important developments may be now momently expected, and that some such
thing as the visit of Mr. Cornish was imminent. Captain Marion Tolliver
expressed himself freely, and to the effect that this mysterious visit
is of the utmost importance to Lattimore, and a thing of national if not
world-wide importance."
"Now, that justifies my confidence in Giddings," said Mr. Elkins,
"fulfilling at the same time the requirements of journalism and
hypnotism. Come, Al, our bark is on the sea, our boat is on the shore.
The Spanish galleons are even now hiding in the tall grass, in
expectation of our cruise. Let us hence to the office!"
CHAPTER IX.
I Go Aboard and We Unfurl the Jolly Roger.
"We must act, and act at once!" said the Captain, his voice thrilling
with intensity. "This piece of property will be gone befo' night! All it
takes is a paltry three thousand dolla's, and within ninety days--no man
can say what its value will be. We can plat it, and within ten days we
may have ouah money back. Allow me to draw on you fo' three thou--"
"But," said I, "I can make no move in such a matter at this time without
conference with Mr.--"
"Very well, suh, very well!" said the Captain, regarding me with a look
that showed how much better things he had expected of me. "Opportunity,
suh, knocks once--By the way, excuse me, suh!"
And he darted from the office, took the trail of Mr. Macdonald, whom he
had seen passing, brought him to bay in front of the post-office, and
dragged him away to some doom, the nature of which I could only surmise.
This took place on the morning of my first day with Elkins & Barslow. I
was to take up the office work.
"That will be easy for you from the first," said Jim. "Your experience
as rob-ee down there in Posey County makes you a sort of specialist in
that sort of thing; and pretty soon all other things shall be added unto
it."
The Captain's onslaught in the first half-hour admonished me that a good
deal was already added to it. On that very day, too, we had our first
conference with Mr. Hinckley. We wanted to handle securities, said Mr.
Elkins, and should have a great many of them, and that was quite in Mr.
Hinckley's line. To carry them ourselves would soon absorb all our
capital. We must liberate it by floating the commercial paper which we
took in. Mr. Hinckley's bank was known to be strong, his standing was of
the highest, and a trust company in alliance with him could not fail to
find a good market for its paper. With an old banker's timidity,
Hinckley seemed to hesitate; yet the prospects seemed so good that I
felt that this consent was sure to be given. Jim courted him
assiduously, and the intimacy between him and the Hinckley family became
noticeable.
"Jim," said I, one day, "you have an unerring eye for the pleasant
things of life. I couldn't help thinking of this to-day when I saw you
for the twentieth time spinning along the street in Miss Hinckley's
carriage, beside its owner. She's one of the handsomest girls, in her
flaxen-haired way, that I know of."
"Isn't she a study in curves and pink and white?" said Jim. "And she
understands this trust company business as well as her father."
The trust company's stock, he went on to explain, ignoring Antonia,
seemed to be already oversubscribed. Our firm, Hinckley, and Jim's
Chicago and New York friends, including Harper, all stood ready to take
blocks of it, and there was no reason for requiring Hinckley to put much
actual money in for this. He could pay for it out of his profits soon,
and make a fortune without any outlay. Good credit was the prime
necessity, and that Mr. Hinckley certainly had. So the celebrated Grain
Belt Trust Company was begun--a name about which such mighty interests
were to cluster, that I know I should have shrunk from the
responsibility had I known what a gigantic thing we were creating.
As the days wore on, Captain Tolliver's dementia spread and raged
virulently. The dark-visaged Cornish, with his air of mystery, his
habits so at odds with the society of Lattimore, was in the very focus
of attention.
For a day or so, the effect which Mr. Giddings's report attributed to
his invasion failed to disclose itself to me. Then the delirium became
manifest, and swept over the town like a were-wolf delusion through a
medieval village.
Its immediate occasion seemed to be a group of real-estate conveyances,
announced in the _Herald_ one morning, surpassing in importance anything
in the history of the town. Some of the lands transferred were acreage;
some were waste and vacant tracts along Brushy Creek and the river; one
piece was a suburban farm; but the mass of it was along Main Street and
in the business district. The grantees were for the most part strange
names in Lattimore, some individuals, some corporations. All the sales
were at prices hitherto unknown. It was to be remarked, too, that in
most cases the property had been purchased not long before, by some of
the group of newer comers and at the old modest prices. Our firm seemed
to have profited heavily in these transactions, as had Captain Tolliver
also. We of the "new crowd" had begun our mock-trading to "establish the
market." Prices were going up, up; and all one had to do was to buy
to-day and sell to-morrow. Real values, for actual use, seemed to be
forgotten.
The most memorable moment in this first, acutest stage in our
development was one bright day, within a week or so of our coming. The
lawns were taking on their summer emerald, robins were piping in the
maples, and down in the cottonwoods and lindens on the river front crows
and jays were jargoning their immemorial and cheery lingo. Surveyors
were running lines and making plats in the suburbs, peeped at by
gophers, and greeted by the roundelays of meadow-larks. But on the
street-corners, in the offices of lawyers and real-estate agents, and in
the lobbies of the hotels, the trading was lively.
Then for the first time the influx of real buyers from the outside
became noticeable. The landlord of the Centropolis could scarcely care
for his guests. They talked of blocks, quarter-blocks, and the choice
acreage they had bought, and of the profits they had made in this and
other cities and towns (where this same speculative fever was epidemic),
until Alice fled to the Trescott farm--as she said, to avoid the
mixture of real estate with her meals. The telegraph offices were gorged
with messages to non-resident property owners, begging for prices on
good inside lots. Staid, slow-going lot-owners, who had grown old in
patiently paying taxes on patches of dog-fennel and sand-burrs, dazedly
vacillated between acceptance and rejection of tempting propositions,
dreading the missing of the chance so long awaited, fearing misjudgment
as to the height of the wave, dreading a future of regret at having sold
too low.
One of these, an old woman, toothless and bent, hobbled to our office
and asked for Mr. Elkins. He was busy, and so I received her.
"It's about that quarter-block with the Donegal ruin on it," said Jim;
"the one I showed you yesterday. Offer her five thousand, one-fourth
down, balance in one, two, and three years, eight per cent."
"I wanted to ask Mr. Elkins about me home," said she. "I tuk in washin'
to buy it, an' me son, poor Patsy, God rist 'is soul, he helped wid th'
bit of money from the Brotherhood, whin he was kilt betune the cars. It
was sivin hundred an' fifty dollars, an' now Thronson offers me four
thousan'. I told him I'd sell, fer it's a fortune for a workin' woman;
but befure I signed papers, I wanted to ask Mr. Elkins; he's such a
fair-spoken man, an' knowin' to me min-folks in Peoria."
"If you want to sell, Mrs. Collins," said I, "we will take your property
at five thousand dollars."
She started, and regarded me, first in amazement, then with distrust,
shading off into hostility.
"Thank ye kindly, sir," said she; "I'll be goin' now. I've med up me
moind, if that bit of land is wort all that money t' yees, it's wort
more to me. Thank ye kindly!" and she fled from the presence of the
tempter.
"The town is full of Biddy Collinses," commented Jim. "Well, we can't
land everything, and couldn't handle the catch if we did. In fact, for
present purposes, isn't it better to have her refuse?"
This incident was the hint upon which our "Syndicate," as it came to be
called, acted from time to time, in making fabulous offers to every
Biddy Collins in town. "Offer twenty thousand," Jim would say. "The more
you bid the less apt is he to accept; he's a Biddy Collins." And
whatever Mr. Elkins advised was done.
There were eight or ten of us in the "Syndicate," dubbed by Jim "The
Crew," among whom were Tolliver, Macdonald, and Will Lattimore. But the
inner circle, now drawing closer and closer together, were Elkins, our
ruling spirit; Hinckley, our great force in the banking world; and
myself. Soon, I was given to understand, Mr. Cornish was to take his
place as one of us. He and Jim had long known each other, and Mr. Elkins
had the utmost confidence in Mr. Cornish's usefulness in what he called
"the thought-transference department."
Elkins & Barslow kept their offices open night and day, almost, and the
number of typewriters and bookkeepers grew astoundingly. I became almost
a stranger to my wife. I got hurried glimpses of Miss Trescott and her
mother at the hotel, and knew that she and Alice were becoming fast
friends; but so far the social prominence which the _Herald_ had
predicted for us had failed to arrive.
This, to be sure, was our own fault. Miss Addison soon gave us up as not
available for the church and Sunday-school functions to which she
devoted herself. Her family connections would have made her _the_ social
leader had it not been for the severity of her views and her assumption
of the character of the devotee--in spite of which she protestingly went
almost everywhere. Antonia Hinckley, however, was frankly fond of a good
time, and with her dashing and almost hoydenish character easily took
the leadership from Miss Addison; and Miss Hinckley sought diligently
for means by which we could be properly launched. As I left the office
one day, a voice from the curb called my name. It was Miss Hinckley in a
smart trap, to which was harnessed a beautiful horse, standard bred, one
could see at a glance. I obeyed the summons, and stepped beside the
equipage.
"I want to scold you," said she. "Society is being defrauded of the good
things which your coming promised. Have you taken a vow of seclusion, or
what?"
"I've been spinning about in the maelstrom of business," I replied. "But
do not be uneasy; some time we shall take up the matter of inflicting
ourselves, and pursue it as vigorously as we now follow our vocation."
"Wouldn't you like to get into the trap, and take a spin of another
sort?" said she. "I'll deposit you safely with Mrs. Barslow in time for
tea."
I got in, glad of the drive, and for ten minutes her horse was sent at
such a pace that conversation was difficult. Then he was slowed down to
a walk, his head toward home. We chatted of casual things--the scenery,
the horse, the splendid color of the sunset. I was becoming interested
in her.
"I had almost forgotten that there were such things in Lattimore," said
I, referring to the topics of our talk. "I have become so saturated with
lands and lots."
"I don't know much about business," said she, "and I think I'll improve
my opportunity by learning something. And, first, aren't men sometimes
losers by the dishonesty of those who act for them--agents, they are
called, aren't they?"
Such, I admitted, was unfortunately the case.
"I should be sorry for--any one I liked--to be injured in such a way....
Now you must understand how the things you men are interested in
permeate the society of us women. Why, mamma has almost forgotten the
enslavement of our sex, in these new things which have changed our old
town so much; so you mustn't wonder if I have heard something of a
purely business nature. I heard that Captain Tolliver was about to sell
Mr. Elkins the land where the old foundry is, over there, for twenty
thousand dollars. Now, papa says it isn't worth it; and I know--Sadie
Allen and I were in school together, and she comes over from Fairchild
several times a year to see me, and I go there, you know; and that land
is in her father's estate--I know that the executor has told Captain
Tolliver to sell it for ever so much less than that. And it seemed so
funny, as the Captain was doing the business for both sides--isn't it
odd, now?"
"It does seem so," said I, "and it is very kind of you. I'll talk with
Mr. Elkins about it. Please be careful, Miss Hinckley, or you'll drop
the wheel in that washout!"
She reined up her horse and began speeding him again. I could see that
this conversation had embarrassed her somehow. Her color was high, and
her grip of the reins not so steady as at starting. This attempt to do
Jim a favor was something she considered as of a good deal of
consequence. I began to note more and more what a really splendid woman
she was--tall, fair, her tailor-made gown rounding to the full, firm
curves of her figure, her fearless horsemanship hinting at the
possession of large and positive traits of character.
"We women," said she, "might as well abandon all the things commonly
known as feminine. What good do they do us?"
"They gratify your sense of the beautiful," suggested I.
"You know, Mr. Barslow," said she, "that it's not our own sense of the
beautiful, mainly, that we seek to gratify; and if the eyes for which
they are intended are looking into ledgers and blind to everything
except dollar-signs, what's the use?"
"Go down to the seashore," said I, "where the people congregate who have
nothing to do."
"Not I," said she; "I'll go into real estate, and become as blind as the
rest!"
Jim paid no attention to my chaffing when I spoke of his conquest, as I
called Antonia. In fact, he seemed annoyed, and for a long time said
nothing.
"You can see how the Allen estate proposition stands," said he, at last.
"To let that sell for less than twenty thousand might cost us ten times
that amount in lowering the prevailing standard of values. The old rule
that we should buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest is
suspended. Base is the slave who pays--less than the necessary and
proper increase."
CHAPTER X.
We Dedicate Lynhurst Park.
The Hindu adept sometimes suspends before the eyes of his subject a
bright ball of carnelian or crystal, in the steady contemplation of
which the sensitive swims off into the realms of subjectivity--that
mysterious bourn from whence no traveler brings anything back. J.
Bedford Cornish was Mr. Elkins's glittering ball; his psychic subject
was the world in general and Lattimore in particular. Scientific
principles, confirmed by experience, led us to the conclusion that the
attitude of fixed contemplation carried with it some nervous strain,
ought to be of limited duration, and hence that Mr. Cornish should
remove from our midst the glittering mystery of his presence, lest
familiarity should breed contempt. So in about ten days he went away,
giving to the _Herald_ a parting interview, in which he expressed
unbounded delight with Lattimore, and hinted that he might return for a
longer stay. Editorially, the _Herald_ expressed the hope that this
characteristically veiled allusion to a longer sojourn might mean that
Mr. Cornish had some idea of becoming a citizen of Lattimore. This would
denote, the editorial continued, that men like Mr. Cornish, accustomed
to the mighty world-pulse of New York, could find objects of pursuit
equally worthy in Lattimore.
"Which is mixed metaphor," Mr. Giddings admitted in confidence; "but,"
he continued, "if metaphors, like drinks, happen to be more potent
mixed, the _Herald_ proposes to mix 'em."
All these things consumed time, and still our life was one devoted to
business exclusively. At last Mr. Elkins himself, urged, I feel sure, by
Antonia Hinckley, gave evidence of weariness.
"Al," said he one day, "don't you think it's about time to go ashore for
a carouse?"
"Unless something in the way of a let-up comes soon," said I, "the
position of lieutenant, or first mate, or whatever my job is piratically
termed, will become vacant. The pace is pretty rapid. Last night I
dreamed that the new Hotel Elkins was founded on my chest; and I have
had troubles enough of the same kind before to show me that my nervous
system is slowly ravelling out."
"I have arrangements made, in my mind, for a sort of al fresco function,
to come off about the time Cornish gets back with our London visitor,"
he replied, "which ought to knit up the ravelled sleeve better than new.
I'm going to dedicate Lynhurst Park to the nymphs and deities of
sport--which wrinkled care derides."
"I hadn't heard of Lynhurst Park," I was forced to say. "I'm curious to
know, first, who named it, and, second, where it is."
"Didn't I show you those blueprints?" he asked. "An oversight I assure
you. As for the scheme, you suggested it yourself that night we first
drove out to Trescott's. Don't you remember saying something about
'breathing space for the populace'? Well, I had the surveys made at
once; contracted for the land, all but what Bill owns of it, which we'll
have to get later; and had a landscapist out from Chicago to direct us
as to what we ought to admire in improving the place. As for the name,
I'm indebted to kind nature, which planted the valley in basswood, and
to Josie, who contributed the philological knowledge and the taste.
That's the street-car line," said he, unrolling an elaborate plat and
pointing. "We may throw it over to the west to develop section seven, if
we close for it. Otherwise, that line is the very thing."
Our street-railway franchise had been granted by the Lattimore city
council--they would have granted the public square, had we asked for it
in the potent name of "progress"--and Cornish was even now making
arrangements for placing our bonds. The impossible of less than a year
ago was now included in the next season's program, as an inconsiderable
feature of a great project for a street-railway system, and the
"development" of hundreds of acres of land.
The place so to be named Lynhurst Park was most agreeably reached by a
walk up Brushy Creek from Lattimore. Such a stroll took one into the
gorge, where the rocks shelved toward each other, until their crowning
fringes of cedar almost interlocked, like the eyelashes of drowsiness.
Down there in the twilight one felt a sense of being defrauded, in
contemplation of the fact that the stream was troutless: it was such an
ideal place for trout. The quiet and mellow gloom made the gorge a
favorite trysting-place, and perhaps the cool-blooded stream-folk had
fled from the presence of the more fervid dwellers on the banks. In the
crevices of the rocks were the nests of the village pigeons. The
combined effects of all these causes was to make this a spot devoted to
billing and cooing.
Farther up the stream the rock walls grew lower and parted wider,
islanding a rich bottom of lush grass-plot, alternating with groves of
walnut, linden, and elm. This was the Lynhurst Park of the blueprints
and plats. Trescott's farm lay on the right bank, and others on either
side; but the houses were none of them near the stream, and the entire
walk was wild and woodsy-looking. None but nature-lovers came that way.
Others drove out by the road past Trescott's, seeing more of corn and
barn, but less of rock, moss, and fern.
Mr. Cornish was to return on Friday with the Honorable De Forest
Barr-Smith, who lived in London and "represented English capital." To us
Westerners the very hyphen of his name spoke eloquently of L s. d.
Through him we hoped to get the money to build that street railway.
Cornish had written that Mr. Barr-Smith wanted to look the thing over
personally; and that, given the element of safety, his people would much
prefer an investment of a million to one of ten thousand. Cornish
further hinted that the London gentleman acted like a man who wanted a
side interest in the construction company; as to which he would sound
him further by the way.
"He'll expect something in the way of birds and bottles," observed
Elkins; "but they won't mix with the general society of this town, where
the worm of the still is popularly supposed to be the original Edenic
tempter. And he'll want to inspect Lynhurst Park. I want him to see our
beauty and our chivalry,--meaning the ladies and Captain Tolliver,--and
the rest of our best people. I guess we'll have to make it a temperate
sort of orgy, making up in the spectacular what it lacks in
spirituousness."
Mr. Cornish came, gradually moulting his mystery; but still far above
the Lattimore standard in dress and style of living. In truth, he always
had a good deal of the swell in his make-up, and can almost be acquitted
of deceit in the impressions conveyed at his coming. The Honorable De
Forest Barr-Smith fraternized with Cornish, as he could with no one
else. No one looking at Mr. Cornish could harbor a doubt as to his
morning tub; and his evening dress was always correct. With Jim, Mr.
Barr-Smith went into the discussion of business propositions freely and
confidentially. I feel sure that had he greatly desired a candid
statement of the very truth as to local views, or the exact judgment of
one on the spot, he would have come to me. But between him and Cornish
there was the stronger sympathy of a common understanding of the occult
intricacies of clothes, and a view-point as to the surface of things,
embracing manifold points of agreement. Cornish's unerring conformity
of vogue in the manner and as to the occasion of wearing the tuxedo or
the claw-hammer coat was clearly restful to Mr. Barr-Smith, in this new
and strange country, where, if danger was to be avoided, things had to
be approached with distended nostril and many preliminary snuffings of
the wind.
There came with these two a younger brother of Mr. Barr-Smith, Cecil--a
big young civil engineer, just out of college, and as like his brother
in accent and dress as could be expected of one of his years; but
national characteristics are matters of growth, and college boys all
over the world are a good deal alike. Cecil Barr-Smith, with his red
mustache, his dark eyes, and his six feet of British brawn, was nearer
in touch with our younger people that first day than his honorable
brother ever became. To Antonia, especially, he took kindly, and
respectfully devoted himself.
"At this distance," said Mr. Barr-Smith, as he saw his brother sitting
on the grass at Miss Hinckley's feet, "I'd think them brother and
sister. She resembles sister Gritty remarkably; the same complexion and
the same style, you know. Quite so!"
The Lynhurst function was the real introduction of these three gentlemen
to Lattimore society. I knew nothing of the arrangements, except what I
could deduce from Jim's volume of business with caterers and other
handicraftsmen; and I looked forward to the fete with much curiosity.
The weather, that afternoon, made an outing quite the natural thing; for
it was hot. The ladies in their most summery gowns fluttered like white
dryads from shade to shade, uttering bird-like pipings of surprise at
the preparations made for their entertainment.
The ravine had been transformed. At an available point in its bed Jim
had thrown a dam across the stream, and a beautiful little lake rippled
in the breeze, bearing on its bosom a bright-colored boat, which in our
ignorance of things Venetian we mistakenly dubbed a gondola. At the
upper end of this water the canvas of a large pavilion gleamed whitely
through the greenery, displaying from its top the British and American
flags, their color reflected in a particolored streak on the wimpling
face of the lake. The groves, in the tops of which the woodpeckers,
warblers, and vireos disturbedly carried on the imperatively necessary
work of rearing their broods, were gay with festoons of Chinese lanterns
in readiness for the evening. Hammocks were slung from tree to tree,
cushions and seats were arranged in cosy nooks; and when my wife and I
stepped from our carriage, all these appliances for the utilization of
shade and leisure were in full use. The "gondola" was making, trips from
the cascade (as the dam was already called) to the pavilion, carrying
loads of young people from whom came to our ears those peals of
merriment which have everywhere but one meaning, and that a part of the
world-old mystery of the way of a man with a maid.
Jim was on the ground early, to receive the guests and keep the
management in hand. Josie Trescott and her mother walked down through
the Trescott pasture, and joined Alice and me under one of the splendid
lindens, where, as we lounged in the shade, the sound of the little
waterfall filled the spaces in our talk. Long before any one else had
seen them coming through the trees, Mr. Elkins had spied them, and went
forward to meet them with something more than the hospitable solicitude
with which he had met the others. In fact, the principal guests of the
day had alighted from their carriage before Jim, ensconced in a hammock
with Josie, was made aware of their arrival. I am not quick to see such
things; but to my eyes, even, the affair had assumed interest as a sort
of public flirtation. I had not thought that Josie would so easily fall
into deportment so distinctly encouraging. She was altogether in a
surprising mood,--her eyes shining as with some stimulant, her cheeks a
little flushed, her lips scarlet, her whole appearance suggesting
suppressed excitement. And when Jim rose to meet his guests, she
dismissed him with one of those charmingly inviting glances and gestures
with which such an adorable woman spins the thread by which the banished
one is drawn back,--and then she disappeared until the dinner was
served.
The green crown of the western hill was throwing its shadow across the
valley, when Mr. Hinckley came with Mr. Cornish and Mr. Barr-Smith in a
barouche; followed by Antonia, who brought Mr. Cecil in her trap--and a
concomitant thrill to the company. Mr. Cornish, in his dress, had struck
a happy medium between the habiliments of business and those of sylvan
recreation. Mr. Barr-Smith on the other hand, was garbed cap-a-pie for
an outing, presenting an appearance with which the racket, the bat, or
even the alpenstock might have been conjoined in perfect harmony. As for
the men of Lattimore, any one of them would as soon have been seen in
the war-dress of a Sioux chief as in this entirely correct costume of
our British visitor. We walked about in the every-day vestments of the
shops, banks, and offices, illustrating the difference between a state
of society in which apparel is regarded as an incident in life, and one
rising to the height of realizing its true significance as a religion.
Mr. Barr-Smith bowed not the knee to the Baal of western
clothes-monotone, but daily sent out his sartorial orisons, keeping his
windows open toward the Jerusalem of his London tailor, in a manner
which would have delighted a Teufelsdroeckh.
He was a short man, with protruding cheeks, and a nose ending in an
amorphous flare of purple and scarlet. His mustache, red like that of
his brother, and constituting the only point of physical resemblance
between them, grew down over a receding chin, being forced thereto by
the bulbous overhang of the nose. He had rufous side-whiskers, clipped
moderately close, and carroty hair mixed with gray. His erect shoulders
and straight back were a little out of keeping with the rotundity of his
figure in other respects; but the combination, hinting, as it did, of
affairs both gastronomic and martial, taken with a manner at once
dignified, formal, and suave, constituted the most intensely respectable
appearance I ever saw. To the imagination of Lattimore he represented
everything of which, Cornish fell short, piling Lombard upon Wall
Street.
The arrival of these gentlemen was the signal for gathering in the
pavilion where dinner was served. The tables were arranged in a great L,
at the apex of which sat Jim and the distinguished guests. On one side
of him sat Mr. Barr-Smith, who listened absorbedly to the conversation
of Mrs. Hinckley, filling every pause with a husky "Quite so!" On the
other sat Josie Trescott, who was smiling upon a very tall and spare old
man who wore a beautiful white mustache and imperial. I had never met
him, but I knew him for General Lattimore. His fondness for Josie was
well known; and to him Jim attributed that young lady's lack of
enthusiasm over our schemes for city-building. His presence at this
gathering was somewhat of a surprise to me.
Antonia and Cecil Barr-Smith, the Tollivers, Mr. Hinckley and Alice,
myself, Mr. Giddings, and Miss Addison sat across the table from the
host. Mrs. Trescott, after expressing wonder at the changes wrought in
the ravine, and confiding to me her disapproval of the useless expense,
had returned to the farm, impelled by that habitual feeling that
something was wrong there. Mr. Giddings was exceedingly attentive to
Miss Addison.
"I know why you're trying to look severe," said he to her, as the
consomme was served; "and it's the only thing I can imagine you making a
failure of, unless it would be looking anything but pretty. But you are
trying it, and I know why. You think they ought to have had some one say
grace before pulling this thing off."
"I'm not trying to look--anyhow," she answered. "But you are right in
thinking that I believe such duties should not be transgressed, for fear
that the world may call us provincial or old-fashioned."
And she shot a glance at Cornish and Barr-Smith as the visible
representatives of the "world."
"Don't listen to that age-old clash between fervor and unregeneracy,"
said Josie across the narrow table, her remarks made possible by the
music of the orchestra, "but tell us about Mr. Barr-Smith and--the other
gentlemen."
"I wanted to ask you about the Britons," said I; "are they good
specimens of the men you saw in England?"
"An art-student, with a consciousness of guilt in slowly eating up the
year's shipment of steers, isn't likely to know much more of the
Barr-Smiths' London than she can see from the street. But I think them
fine examples of not very rare types. I should like to try drawing the
elder brother!"
"Before he goes away, I predict--" I began, when my villainous pun was
arrested in mid-utterance by the voice of Captain Tolliver, suddenly
becoming the culminating peak in the table-talk.
"The Anglo-Saxon, suh," he was saying, "is found in his greatest purity
of blood in ouah Southe'n states. It is thah, suh, that those qualities
of virility and capacity fo' rulership which make the race what is ah
found in theiah highest development--on this side of the watah, suh, on
this side!"
"Quite so! I dare say, quite so!" responded Mr. Barr-Smith. "I hope to
know the people of the South better. In fact, I may say, really, you
know, an occasion like this gives one the desire to become acquainted
with the whole American people."
General Lattimore, whose nostrils flared as he leaned forward listening,
like an opponent in a debate, to the remarks of Captain Tolliver,
subsided as he heard the Englishman's diplomatic reply.
"What's the use?" said he to Josie. "He may be nearer right than I can
understand."
"We hope," said Mr. Elkins, "that this desire may be focalized locally,
and grow to anything short of a disease. I assure you, Lattimore will
congratulate herself."
Mr. Barr-Smith's fingers sought his glass, as if the impulse were on him
to propose a toast; but the liquid facilities being absent, he relapsed
into a conversation with Mrs. Hinckley.
"I'd say those things, too, if I were in his place," came the words of
Giddings, overshooting their mark, the ear of Miss Addison; "but it's
all rot. He's disgusted with the whole barbarous outfit of us."
"I am becoming curious," was the _sotto voce_ reply, "to know upon what
model you found your conduct, Mr. Giddings."
"I know what you mean," said Mr. Giddings. "But I have adopted Iago."
"Why, Mr. Giddings! How shocking! Iago--"
"Now, don't be horrified," said Giddings, with an air of candor, "but
look at it from a practical standpoint. If Othello hadn't been such a
fool, Iago would have made his point all right. He had a right to be
sore at Othello for promoting Cassio over his head, and his scheme was a
good one, if Othello hadn't gone crazy. Iago is dominated by reason and
the principle of the survival of the fittest. He is an agreeable
fellow--"
Miss Addison, with a charming mixture of tragedy and archness,
suppressed this blasphemy by a gesture suggestive of placing her hand
over the editor's mouth.
"Ah, Mrs. Hinckley, you shouldn't do us such an injustice!" It was Mr.
Cornish, who took the center of the stage now. "You seem to fail to
realize the fact that, in any given gathering, the influence of woman is
dominant; and as the entire life of the nation is the sum total of such
gatherings, woman is already in control. Now how can you fail to admit
this?"
I missed the rather extended reply of Mrs. Hinckley, in noting the
evident impression made upon the company by this first utterance of the
mysterious Cornish. It was not what he said: that was not important. It
was the dark, bearded face, the jetty eyes, and above all, I think, the
voice, with its clear, carrying quality, combining penetrativeness with
a repression of force which gave one the feeling of being addressed in
confidence. Every man, and especially every woman, in the company,
looked fixedly upon him, until he ceased to speak--all except Josie.
She darted at him one look, a mere momentary scrutiny, and as he
discoursed of woman and her power, she seemed to lose herself in
contemplation of her plate. The blush upon her cheek became more rosy,
and a little smile, with something in it which was not of pleasure,
played about the corners of her mouth. I was about to offer her the
traditional bargain-counter price for her thoughts, when my attention
was commanded by Jim's voice, answering some remark of Antonia's.
"This is the merest curtain-riser, just a sort of kick-off," he was
saying. "In a year or two this valley will be _the_ pleasure-ground of
all the countryside, a hundred miles around. This tent will be replaced
by a restaurant and auditorium. The conventions and public gatherings of
the state will be held here--there is no other place for 'em; and our
railway will bring the folks out from town. There will be baseball
grounds, and facilities for all sorts of sports; and outings and games
will center here. I promise you the next regatta of the State Rowing
Association, and a street-car line landing passengers where we now sit."
"Hear, hear!" said Mr. Barr-Smith, and the company clapped hands in
applause.
Mr. Hinckley was introduced by Jim as "one who had seen Lynhurst Park
when it was Indian hunting-ground"; and made a speech in which he
welcomed Mr. Cornish as a new citizen who was already prominent. Dining
in this valley, he said, reminded him of the time when he and two other
guests now present had, on almost the identical spot, dined on venison
dressed and cooked where it fell. Then Lattimore was a trading-post on
the frontier, surrounded by the tepees of Indians, and uncertain as to
its lease of life. General Lattimore, who shot the deer, or Mr.
Macdonald, who helped eat it, could either of them tell more about it.
Mr. Barr-Smith and our other British guest might judge of the rapidity
of development in this country, where a man may see in his lifetime
progress which in the older states and countries could be discerned by
the student of history only.
Mr. Cornish very briefly thanked Mr. Hinckley for his words of welcome;
but begged to be excused from making any extended remarks. Deeds were
rather more in his line than words.
"Title-deeds," said Giddings under his breath, "as the real-estate
transfers show!"
General Lattimore verified Mr. Hinckley's statement concerning the meal
of venison; and, politely expressing pleasure at being present at a
function which seemed to be regarded as of so much importance to the
welfare of the town in which he had always taken the pride of a
godfather, resumed his seat without adding anything to the oratory of
the boom.
"In fact," said Captain Tolliver to me, "I wahned Mr. Elkins against
having him hyah. In any mattah of progress he's a wet blanket, and has
proved himself such by these remahks."
Mr. Barr-Smith, in response to the allusions to him, assured us that the
presence of people such as he had had the pleasure of meeting in
Lattimore was sufficient in itself to account for the forward movement
in the community, which the visitor could not fail to observe.
"In a state of society where people are not averse to changing their
abodes," he said, "and where the social atom, if I may so express
myself, is in a state of mobility, the presence of such magnets as our
toastmaster, and the other gentlemen to whose courteous remarks I am
responding, must draw 'em to themselves, you may be jolly well assured
of that! And if the gentlemen should fail, the thing which should resist
the attractive power of the American ladies must be more fixed in its
habits than even the conservative English gentleman, who prides himself
upon his stability, er--ah--his taking a position and sticking by it, in
spite of the--of anything, you know."
As his only contribution to the speechmaking, Mr. Cecil Barr-Smith
greeted this sentiment with a hearty "Hear, hear!" He fell into step
with Antonia as we left the pavilion. Then he went back as if to look
for something; and I saw Antonia summon Mr. Elkins to her side so that
she might congratulate him on the success of this "carouse."
Everything seemed going well. There was, however, in that gathering, as
in the day, material for a storm, and I, of all those in attendance,
ought to have seen it, had my memory been as unerring as I thought it.
CHAPTER XI.
The Empress and Sir John Meet Again.
The company emerged from the tent into the enchanted outdoors of the
star-dotted valley. The moon rode high, and flooded the glades with
silvery effulgency. The heat of the day had bred a summer storm-cloud,
which, all quivery with lightning, seemed sweeping around from the
northwest to the north, giving us the delicious experience of enjoying
calm, in view of storm.
The music of the orchestra soon told that the pavilion had been cleared
for dancing. I heard Giddings urging upon Miss Addison that it would be
much better for them to walk in the moonlight than to encourage by their
presence such a worldly amusement, and one in which he had never been
able to do anything better than fail, anyhow. Sighing her pain at the
frivolity of the world, she took his arm and strolled away. I noticed
that she clung closely to him, frightened, I suppose, at the mysterious
rustlings in the trees, or something.
They made up the dances in such a way as to leave me out. I rather
wanted to dance with Antonia; but Mr. Cecil was just leaving her in
disappointment, in the possession of Mr. Elkins, when I went for her. I
decided that a cigar and solitude were rather to be chosen than anything
else which presented itself, and accordingly I took possession of one of
the hammocks, in which I lay and smoked, and watched the towering
thunder-head, as it stood like a mighty and marvelous mountain in the
northern sky, its rounded and convoluted summits serenely white in the
moonlight, its mysterious caves palpitant with incessant lightning. The
soothing of the cigar; the new-made lake reflecting the gleam of
hundreds of lanterns; the illuminated pavilion, its whirling company of
dancers seen under the uprolled walls; the night, with its strange
contrast of a calm southern sky on the one hand pouring down its flood
of moonlight, and in the north the great mother-of-pearl dome with its
core of vibrant fire; the dance-music throbbing through the lindens; and
all this growing out of the unwonted and curious life of the past few
months, bore to me again that feeling of being yoked with some
thaumaturge of wondrous power for the working of enchantments. Again I
seemed in a partnership with Aladdin; and fairy pavilions, sylvan
paradises, bevies of dancing girls, and princes bearing gifts of gold
and jewels, had all obeyed our conjuration. I could have walked down to
the naphtha pleasure-boat and bidden the engineer put me down at
Khorassan, or some dreamful port of far Cathay, with no sense of
incongruity.
Two figures came from the tent and walked toward me. As I looked at
them, myself in darkness, they in the light, I had again that feeling of
having seen them in some similar way before. That same old sensation,
thought I, that the analytic novelist made trite ages ago. Then I saw
that it was Mr. Cornish and Miss Trescott. I could hear them talking;
but lay still, because I was loth to have my reveries disturbed. And
besides, to speak would seem an unwarranted assumption of confidential
relations on their part. They stopped near me.
"Your memory is not so good as mine," said he. "I knew you at once. Knew
you! Why--"
"I'm not very good at keeping names and faces in mind," she replied,
"unless they belong to people I have known very well."
"Indeed!" his voice dropped to the 'cello-like undertone now; "isn't
that a little unkind? I fancied that _we_ knew each other very well! My
conceit is not to be pandered to, I perceive."
"Ye-e-s--does it seem that way?" said she, ignoring the last remark.
"Well, you know it was only for a few days, and you kept calling
yourself by some ridiculous alias, and scarcely used your surname at
all, and I believe they called you Johnny--and you can't think what a
disguise such a beard is! But I remember you now perfectly. It quite
brings back those short months, when I was so young--and was finding
things out! I can see the vine-covered porch, and Madame Lamoreaux's
boarding-house on the South Side--"
"And the old art gallery?"
"Why, there was one, wasn't there?" said she, "somewhere along the lake
front, wasn't it?... Such a pleasant meeting, and so odd!"
I sat up in the hammock, and stared at them as they went on their
promenade. The old art gallery, the vine-covered porch, the young man
with the smooth-shaven dark face and the thrilling, vibrant voice, and
the young, young girl with the ruddy hair, and the little, round form!
She seemed taller now, and there was more of maturity in the figure; but
it was the same lissome waist and petite gracefulness which had so fully
explained to me the avid eyes of her lover on that day when I had fled
from the report of the Committee on Permanent Organization. It was the
Empress Josephine, I had known that--and her Sir John!
Then I thought of her flying from him into the street, and the little
bowed head on the street-car; and the old pity for her, the old
bitterness toward him, returned upon me. I wondered how he could speak
to her in this nonchalant way; what they were saying to each other;
whether they would ever refer to that night at Auriccio's; what Alice
would think of him if she ever found it out; whether he was a villain,
or only erred passionately; what was actually said in that palm alcove
that night so long ago; whether this man, with the eyes and voice so
fascinating to women, would renew his suit in this new life of ours;
what Jim would think about it; and, more than all, how Josie herself
would regard him.
"She ought never to have spoken to him again!" I hear some one say.
Ah, Madam, very true. But do you remember any authentic case of a woman
who failed to forgive the man whose error or offense had for its excuse
the irresistible attraction of her own charms?
They were coming back now, still talking.
"You dropped out of sight, like a partridge into a thicket," said he.
"Some of them said you had gone back to--to--"
"To the farm," she prompted.
"Well, yes," he conceded; "and others said you had left Chicago for New
York; and some, even Paris."
"I fail to see the warrant," said Josie, as they approached the limit of
earshot, "for any of the people at Madame Lamoreux's giving themselves
the trouble to investigate."
"So far as that is concerned," said he, "I should think that I--" and
his voice quite lost intelligibility.
My cigar had gone out, and the cessation of the music ought to have
apprised me of the breaking up of the dance, and still I lay looking at
the sky and filled with my thoughts.
"Here he is," said Alice, "asleep in the hammock! For shame, Albert!
This would not have occurred, once!"
"I am free to admit that," said I, "but why am I now disturbed?"
"We're going on a cruise in the gondola," said Antonia, "and Mr. Elkins
says you are lieutenant, and we can't sail without you. Come, it's
perfectly beautiful out there."
"We're going to the head of navigation and back," said Jim, "and then
our revels will be ended. --Hang it!" to me, "they left the skull and
crossbones off all the flags!"
Mr. Barr-Smith at once engaged the engineer in conversation, and seemed
worming from him all his knowledge of the construction of the boat. The
rest of us lounged on cushions and seats. We threaded our way up the new
pond, winding between clumps of trees, now in broad moonlight, now in
deepest shade. The shower had swept over to the northeast, just one dark
flounce of its skirt reaching to the zenith. A cool breeze suddenly
sprang up from the west, stirred by the suction of the receding storm,
and a roar came from the trees on the hilltops.
"Better run for port," said Jim; "I'd hate to have Mr. Barr-Smith suffer
shipwreck where the charts don't show any water!"
As we ran down the open way, the remark seemed less and less of a joke.
The gale poured over the hills, and struck the boat like the buffet of a
great hand. She heeled over alarmingly, bumped upon a submerged stump,
righted, heeled again, this time shipping a little sea, and then the
sharp end of a hidden oak-limb thrust up through the bottom, and ripped
its way out again, leaving us afloat in the deepest part of the lake,
with a spouting fountain in the middle of the vessel, and the chopping
waves breaking over the gunwale. All at once, I noticed Cecil
Barr-Smith, with his coat off, standing near Antonia, who sat as cool as
if she had been out on some quiet road driving her pacers. The boat sank
lower in the water, and I had no doubt that she was sinking. Antonia
rose, and stretched her hands towards Jim. I do not see how he could
avoid seeing this; but he did, and, as if abandoning her to her fate, he
leaped to Josie's side. Cornish had seized _her_ by the arm, and seemed
about to devote himself to her safety, when Jim, without a word, lifted
her in his arms, and leaped lightly upon the forward deck, the highest
and driest place on the sinking craft. Then, as everything pointed to a
speedy baptism in the lake for all of us, we saw that the very speed of
the wind had saved us, and felt the gondola bump broadside upon the dam.
Jim sprang to the abutment with Josie, and Cecil Barr-Smith half carried
and half led Antonia to the shore. Alice and I sat calmly on the
windward rail; and Barr-Smith, laughing with delight, helped us across,
one at a time, to the masonry.
"I'm glad it turned out no worse," said Jim. "I hope you will all excuse
me if I leave you now. I must see Miss Trescott to a safe and dry place.
Here's the carriage, Josie!"
"Are you quite uninjured?" said Cecil to Antonia, as Mr. Elkins and
Josie drove away.
"Oh, quite so!" said Antonia, unwittingly adopting Barr-Smith's phrase.
"But for a moment I was awfully frightened!"
"It looked a little damp, at one time, for farce-comedy," said Cornish.
"I wonder how deep it was out there!"
"Miss Trescott was quite drenched," said Mr. Barr-Smith, as we got into
the carriages. "Too bad, by Jove!"
"You may write home," said Antonia, "an account of being shipwrecked in
the top of a tree!"
"Good, good!" said Cecil, and we all joined in the laugh, until we were
suddenly sobered by the fact that Antonia had bowed her head on Alice's
lap, and was sobbing as if her heart was broken.
CHAPTER XII.
In which the Burdens of wealth begin to fall upon Us.
If the town be considered as a quiescent body pursuing its unluminous
way in space, Mr. Elkins may stand for the impinging planet which
shocked it into vibrant life. I suggested this nebular-hypothesis simile
to Mr. Giddings, one day, as the germ of an editorial.
"It's rather seductive," said he, "but it won't do. Carry your
interplanetary collision business to its logical end, and what do you
come to? Gaseousness. And that's just what the Angus Falls _Times_, the
Fairchild Star, and the other loathsome sheets printed in prairie-dog
towns around here accuse us of, now. No; much obliged; but as a field
for comparisons the tried old solar system is good enough for the
_Herald_."
I couldn't help thinking, however, that the thing had some illustrative
merit. There was Jim's first impact, felt locally, and jarring things
loose. Then came the atomic vivification, the heat and motion, which
appeared in the developments which we have seen taking form. After the
visit of the Barr-Smiths, and the immigration of Cornish, the new star
Lattimore began to blaze in the commercial firmament, the focus of
innumerable monetary telescopes, pointed from the observatories of
counting-rooms, banks, and offices, far and wide.
There was a shifting of the investment and speculative equilibrium, and
things began coming to us spontaneously. The Angus Falls railway
extension was won only by strenuous endeavor. Captain Tolliver's
interviews with General Lattimore, in which he was so ruthlessly "turned
down," he always regarded as a sort of creative agony, marking the
origin of the roundhouse and machine-shops, and our connection with the
great Halliday railway system of which it made us a part. The street-car
project went more easily; and, during the autumn, the geological and
manufacturing experts sent out to report on the cement-works enterprise,
pronounced favorably, and gangs of men, during the winter, were to be
seen at work on the foundations of the great buildings by the scarped
chalk-hill.
The tension of my mind just after the Lynhurst Park affair was such as
to attune it to no impulses but the financial vibrations which pulsated
through our atmosphere. True, I sometimes felt the wonder return upon me
at the finding of the lovers of the art-gallery together once more, in
Josie and Cornish; and at other times Antonia's agitation after our
escape from shipwreck recurred to me in contrast with her smiling
self-possession while the boat was drifting and filling; but mostly I
thought of nothing, dreamed of nothing, but trust companies, additions,
bonds and mortgages.
Mr. Barr-Smith returned to London soon, giving a parting luncheon in his
rooms, where wine flowed freely, and toasts of many colors were pushed
into the atmosphere. There was one to the President and the Queen,
proposed by the host and drunk in bumpers, and others to Mr. Barr-Smith,
his brother, and the members of the "Syndicate." The enthusiasm grew
steadily in intensity as the affair progressed. Finally Mr. Cecil
solemnly proposed "The American Woman." In offering this toast, he said,
he was taking long odds, as it was a sport for which he hadn't had the
least training; but he couldn't forego the pleasure of paying a tribute
where tribute was due. The ladies of America needed no encomiums from
him, and yet he was sure that he should give no offense by saying that
they were of a type unknown in history. They were up to anything, you
know, in the way of intellectuality, and he was sure that in a certain
queenly, blonde way they were--
"Hear, hear!" said his brother, and burst into a laugh in which we all
joined, while Cecil went on talking, in an uproar which drowned his
words, though one could see that he was trying to explain something, and
growing very hot in the process.
Pearson announced that their train would soon arrive, and we all went
down to see them off. Barr-Smith assured us at parting that the
tram-road transaction might be considered settled. He believed, too,
that his clients might come into the cement project. We were all the
more hopeful of this, for the knowledge that he carried somewhere in
his luggage a bond for a deed to a considerable interest in the cement
lands. Things were coming on beautifully; and it seemed as if Elkins and
Cornish, working together, were invincible.
We still lived at the hotel, but our architect, "little Ed. Smith, who
lived over on the Hayes place" when we were boys, and who was once at
Garden City with Jim, was busy with plans for a mansion which we were to
build in the new Lynhurst Park Addition the next spring. Mr. Elkins was
preparing to erect a splendid house in the same neighborhood.
"Can I afford it?" said I, in discussing estimates.
"Afford it!" he replied, turning on me in astonishment. "My dear boy,
don't you see we are up against a situation that calls on us to bluff to
the limit, or lay down? In such a case, luxury becomes a duty, and
lavishness the truest economy. Not to spend is to go broke. Lay your
Poor Richard on the shelf, and put a weight on him. Stimulate the outgo,
and the income'll take care of itself. A thousand spent is five figures
to the good. No, while we've as many boom-irons in the fire as we're
heating now, to be modest is to be lost."
"Perhaps," said I, "you may be right, and no doubt are. We'll talk it
over again some time. And your remark about irons in the fire brings up
another matter which bothers me. It's something unusual when we don't
open up a set of books for some new corporation, during the working day.
Aren't we getting too many?"
"Do you remember Mule Jones, who lived down near Hickory Grove?" said
he, after a long pause. "Well, you know, in our old neighborhood, the
mule was regarded with a mixture of contempt, suspicion, and fear, the
folks not understanding him very well, and being especially uninformed
as to his merits. Therefore, Mule Jones, who dealt in mules, bought,
sold, and broke 'em, was a man of mark, and identified in name with his
trade, as most people used to be before our time. I was down there one
Sunday, and asked him how he managed to break the brutes. 'It's easy,'
said he, 'when you know how. I never hook up less'n six of 'em at a
time. Then they sort o' neutralize one another. Some on 'em'll be
r'arin' an' pitchin', an' some tryin' to run; but they'll be enough of
'em down an' a-draggin' all the time, to keep the enthusiastic ones kind
o' suppressed, and give me the castin' vote. It's the only right way to
git the bulge on mules.' Whenever you get to worrying about our various
companies, think of the Mule Jones system and be calm."
"I'm a little shy of being ruled by one case, even though so exactly in
point," said I.
"Well, it's all right," he continued, "and about these houses. Why, we'd
have to build them, even if we preferred to live in tents. Put the cost
in the advertising account of Lynhurst Park Addition, if it worries you.
Let me ask you, now, as a reasonable man, how can we expect the rest of
the world to come out here and spring themselves for humble dwellings
with stationary washtubs, conservatories, and _porte cocheres_, if we
ourselves haven't any more confidence in the deal than to put up Jim
Crow wickiups costing not more than ten or fifteen thousand dollars
apiece? That addition has got to be the Nob Hill of Lattimore. Nothing
in the 'poor but honest' line will do for Lynhurst; and we've got to set
the pace. When you see my modest bachelor quarters going up, you'll
cease to think of yours in the light of an extravagance. By next fall
you'll be infested with money, anyhow, and that house will be the least
of your troubles."
Alice and I made up our minds that Jim was right, and went on with our
plans on a scale which sometimes brought back the Aladdin idea to my
mind, accustomed as I was to rural simplicity. But Alice,
notwithstanding that she was the daughter of a country physician of not
very lucrative practice, rose to the occasion, and spent money with a
spontaneous largeness of execution which revealed a genius hitherto
unsuspected by either of us. Jim was thoroughly delighted with it.
"The Republic," he argued, "cannot be in any real danger when the modest
middle classes produce characters of such strength in meeting great
emergencies!"
Jim was at his best this summer. He revelled in the work of filling the
morning paper with scare-heads detailing our operations. He enjoyed
being It, he said. Cornish, after the first few days, during which, in
spite of inside information as to his history, I felt that he would make
good the predictions of the _Herald_, ceased to be, in my mind, anything
more than I was--a trusted aide of Jim, the general. Both men went
rather frequently out to the Trescott farm--Jim with the bluff freedom
of a brother, Cornish with his rather ceremonious deference. I
distrusted the dark Sir John where women were concerned, noting how they
seemed charmed by him; but I could not see that he had made any headway
in regaining Josie's regard, though I had a lurking feeling that he
meant to do so. I saw at times in his eyes the old look which I
remembered so well.
Josie, more than ever this season, was earning her father's commendation
as his "right-hand man." She insisted on driving the four horses which
drew the binder in the harvest. In the haying she operated the
horse-rake, and helped man the hay-fork in filling the barns. She grew
as tanned as if she had spent the time at the seashore or on the links;
and with every month she added to her charm. The scarlet of her lips,
the ruddy luxuriance of her hair, the arrowy straightness of her
carriage, the pulsing health which beamed from her eye, and dyed cheek
and neck, made their appeal to the women, even.
"How sweet she is!" said Alice, as she came to greet us one day when we
drove to the farm, and waited for her to come to us. "How sweet she is,
Albert!"
Her father came up, and explained to us that he didn't ask any of his
women folks to do any work except what there was in the house. He was
able to hire the outdoors work done, but Josie he couldn't keep out of
the fields.
"Why, pa," said she, "don't you see you would spoil my chances of
marrying a fairy prince? They absolutely never come into the house; and
my straw hat is the only really becoming thing I've got to wear!"
"Don't give a dum if yeh never marry," said Bill. "Hain't seen the man
yit that was good enough fer yeh, from my standpoint."
Bill's reputation was pretty well known to me by this time. He had been
for years a successful breeder and shipper of live-stock, in which
vocation he had become well-to-do. On his farm he was forceful and
efficient, treading his fields like an admiral his quarter-deck. About
town he was given to talking horses and cattle with the groups which
frequented the stables and blacksmith-shops, and sometimes grew a little
noisy and boisterous with them. Whenever her father went with a shipment
of cattle to Chicago or other market, Josie went too, taking a regular
passenger train in time to be waiting when Bill's stock train arrived;
and after the beeves were disposed of, Bill became her escort to opera
and art-gallery; on such a visit I had seen her at the Stock Yards. She
was fond of her father; but this alone did not explain her constant
attendance upon him. I soon came to understand that his prompt return
from the city, in good condition, was apt to be dependent upon her
influence. It was one of those cases of weakness, associated with
strength, the real mystery of which does not often occur to us because
they are so common.
He came into our office one day with a tremor in his hand and a hunted
look in his eye. He took a chair at my invitation, but rose at once,
went to the door, and looked up and down the street, as if for pursuers.
I saw Captain Tolliver across the street, and Bill's air of excitement
was explained. I was relieved, for at first I had thought him
intoxicated.
"What's the matter, Bill?" said I, after he had looked at me earnestly,
almost pantingly, for a few moments. "You look nervous."
"They're after me," he answered in repressed tones, "to sell; and I'll
be blasted if I know what to do! Wha' d'ye' 'spose they're offerin' me
for my land?"
"The fact is, Bill," said I, "that I know all about it. I'm interested
in the deal, somewhat."
"Then you know they've bid right around a thousand dollars an acre?"
"Yes," said I, "or at least that they intended to offer that."
"An' you're one o' the company," he queried, "that's doin' it?"
"Yes," I admitted.
"Wal," said he, "I'm kinder sorry you're in it, becuz I've about
concluded to sell; an' it seems to me that any concern that buys at that
figger is a-goin' to bust, sure. W'y, I bought that land fer two dollars
and a haff an acre. But, see here, now; I 'xpect you know your business,
an' see some way of gittin' out in the deal, 'r you wouldn't pay that.
But if I sell, I've got to have help with my folks."
"Ah," said I, scenting the usual obstacle in such cases, "Mrs. Trescott
a little unwilling to sign the deeds?"
"No," answered he, "strange as it may seem, ma's kinder stuck on comin'
to town to live. How she'll feel after she's tried it fer a month 'r so,
with no chickens 'r turkeys 'r milk to look after, I'm dubious; but jest
now she seems to be all right."
"Well, what's the matter then?" said I.
"Wal, it's Josie, to tell the truth," said he. "She's sort o' hangin'
back. An' it's for her sake that I want to make the deal! I've told her
an' told her that there's no dum sense in raisin' corn on
thousand-dollar land; but it's no use, so fur; an' here's the only
chanst I'll ever hev, mebbe, a-slippin' by. She ortn't to live her life
out on a farm, educated as she is. W'y, did you ever hear how she's been
educated?"
I told him that in a general way I knew, but not in detail.
"W'l, I want yeh to know all about it, so's yeh c'n see this movin'
business as it is," said he. "You know I was allus a rough cuss. Herded
cattle over there by yer father's south place, an' never went to school.
Ma, Josie's ma, y' know, kep' the Greenwood school, an' crossed the
prairie there where I was a-herdin', an' I used to look at her mighty
longin' as she went by, when the cattle happened to be clost along the
track, which they right often done. You know how them things go. An'
fin'ly one morning a blue racer chased her, as the little whelps will,
an' got his dummed little teeth fastened in her dress, an' she
a-hyperin' around haff crazy, and a-screamin' every jump, so's't I hed
to just grab her, an' hold her till I could get the blasted snake
off,--harmless, y' know, but got hooked teeth, an' not a lick o'
sense,--an' he kinder quirled around my arm, an' I nacherally tore him
to ribbins a-gittin' of him off. An' then she sort o' dropped off, an'
when she come to, I was a-rubbin' her hands an' temples. Wa'n't that a
funny interduction?"
"It's very interesting," said I; "go on."
"W'l you remember ol' Doc Maxfield?" said Bill, well started on a
reminiscence. "Wal, he come along, an' said it was the worst case of
collapse, whatever that means, that he ever see--her lips an' hands an'
chin all a-tremblin', an' flighty as a loon. Wal, after that I used to
take her around some, an' her folks objected becuz I was ignorant, an'
she learnt me some things, an' bein' strong an' a good dancer an' purty
good-lookin' she kind o' forgot about my failin's, an' we was married.
Her folks said she'd throwed herself away; but I could buy an' sell the
hull set of 'em now!"
This seemed conclusive as to the merits of the case, and I told him as
much.
"W'l Josie was born an' growed up," continued Bill, "an' it's her I
started to tell about, wa'n't it? She was allus a cute little thing, an'
early she got this art business in her head. She'd read about fellers
that had got to be great by paintin' an' carvin', an' it made her wild
to do the same thing. Wa'n't there a feller that pulled hair outer the
cat to paint Injuns with? Yes, I thought they was; I allus thought they
could paint theirselves good enough; but that story an' some others she
read an' read when she was a little gal, an' she was allus a-paintin'
an' makin' things with clay. She took a prize at the county fair when
she was fourteen, with a picter of Washin'ton crossin' the
Delaware--three dollars, by gum! An' then we hed to give her lessons;
an' they wasn't any one thet knew anything around here, she said, an'
she went to Chicago. An' I went in to visit her when she hedn't ben
there more'n six weeks, on an excursion one convention time, an' I found
her all tore up, a good deal as her ma was with the blue racer,--I don't
think she's ever ben the same light-hearted little gal sence,--an' from
there I took her to New York; an' there she fell in with a nice woman
that was awful good to her, an' they went to Europe, an' it cost a heap.
An' you may've noticed thet Josie knows a pile more'n the other women
here?"
I admitted that this had occurred to me.
"W'l, she was allus apt to take her head with her," said Bill, "but this
travelin' has fixed her like a hoss thet's ben druv in Chicago: nothin'
feazes her, street-cars, brass bands, circuses, overhead trains--it's
all the same to her, she's seen 'em all. Sometimes I git the notion that
she'd enjoy things more if she hadn't seen so dum many of 'em an' so
much better ones, y' know! Wal, after she'd ben over there a long time,
she wrote she was a-comin' home; an' we was tickled to death. Only I was
surprised by her writin' that she wanted us to take all them old picters
of hern, and put 'em out of sight! An' if you'll b'lieve it, she won't
talk picters nor make any sence she got back--only, jest after she got
back, she said she didn't see any use o' her goin' on dobbin' good
canvas up with good paint, an' makin' nothin' but poor picters; an' she
cried some.... I thought it was sing'lar that this art business that she
thought was the only thing thet'd ever make her happy was the only thing
I ever see her cry about."
"It's the way," said I, "with a great many of our cherished hopes."
"W'l, anyhow, you can see thet it's the wrong thing to put as much time
an' money into fixin' a child up f'r a different kind o' life as we hev,
an' then keep her on a farm out here. An' thet's why I want you to help
this sale through, an' bring influence to bear on her. I give up; I'm
all in."
To me Bill seemed entirely in the right. The new era made it absurd for
the Trescotts to use their land longer as a farm. Lattimore was changing
daily. The streets were gashed with trenches for gas- and water-mains;
piled-up materials for curbing, paving, office buildings, new hotels,
and all sorts of erections made locomotion a peril; but we were happy.
The water company was organized in our office, the gas and
electric-light company in Cornish's; but every spout led into the same
bin.
Mr. Hinckley had induced some country dealers who owned a line of local
grain-houses to remove to Lattimore and put up a huge terminal elevator
for the handling of their trade. Captain Tolliver had been for a long
time working upon a project for developing a great water-power, by
tunneling across a bend in the river, and utilizing the fall. The
building of the elevator attracted the attention of a company of
Rochester millers, and almost before we knew it their forces had been
added to ours, and the tunnel was begun, with the certainty that a
two-thousand-barrel mill would be ready to grind the wheat from the
elevator as soon as the flume began carrying water. This tunnel cut
through an isthmus between the Brushy Creek valley and the river, and
brought to bear on our turbines the head from a ten-mile loop of shoals
and riffles. It opened into the gorge near the southern edge of Lynhurst
Park, and crossed the Trescott farm. So it was that Bill awoke one day
to the fact that his farm was coveted by divers people, who saw in his
fields and feed-yards desirable sites for railway tracks, mills,
factories, and the cottages of a manufacturing suburb. This it was that
had put the Captain, like a blood-hound, on his trial, to the end that
he was run to earth in my office, and made his appeal for help in
managing Josie.
"There she comes now," said he. "Labor with her, won't yeh?"
"Bring her with us to the hotel," said I, "to take dinner. If my wife
and Elkins can't fix the thing, no one can."
So we five dined together, and after dinner discussed the Trescott
crisis. Bill put the case, with all a veteran dealer's logic, in its
financial aspects.
"But we don't want to be rich," said Josie.
"What've we ben actin' all these years like we have for, then?" inquired
Bill. "Seem's if I'd been lab'rin' under a mistake f'r some time past.
When your ma an' me was a-roughin' it out there in the old log-house,
an' she a-lookin' out at the Feb'uary stars through the holes in the
roof, a-holdin' you, a little baby in bed, we reckoned we was a-doin' of
it to sort o' better ourselves in a property way. Wouldn't you
'a'thought so, Jim?"
"Well," said Mr. Elkins, with an air of judicial perpension, "if you had
asked me about it, I should have said that, if you wanted to stay poor,
you could have held your own better by staying in Pleasant Valley
Township as a renter. This was no place to come to if you wanted to
conserve your poverty."
"But, pa, we're not adapted to town life and towns," urged Josie. "I'm
not, and you are not, and as for mamma, she'll never be contented. Oh,
Mr. Elkins, why did you come out here, making us all fortunes which we
haven't earned, and upsetting everything?"
"Now, don't blame me, Josie," Jim protested. "You ought to consider the
fallacy of the _post hoc, propter hoc_ argument. But to return to the
point under discussion. If you could stay there, a rural Amaryllis,
sporting in Arcadian shades, having seen you doing it once or twice, I
couldn't argue against it, it's so charmingly becoming."
"If that were all the argument--" began Josie.
"It's the most important one--to my mind," said Jim, resuming the
discussion, "and you fail on that point; for you can't live in that way
long. If you don't sell, the Development Company will condemn grounds
for railway tracks and switch-yards; you'll find your fields and
meadows all shot to pieces; and your house will be surrounded by
warehouses, elevators, and factories. Your larks and bobolinks will be
scared off by engines and smokestacks, and your flowers spoiled with
soot. Don't parley with fate, but cash in and put your winnings in some
safe investment."
"Once I thought I couldn't stay on the old farm a day longer; but I feel
otherwise now! What business has this 'progress' of yours to interfere?"
"It pushes you out of the nest," answered Jim. "It gives you the chance
of your lives. You can come out into Lynhurst Park Addition, and build
your house near the Barslow and Elkins dwellings. We've got about
everything there--city water, gas, electric light, sewers, steam heat
from the traction plant, beautiful view, lots on an established grade--"
"Don't, don't!" said Josie. "It sounds like the advertisements in the
_Herald_."
"Well, I was just leading up to a statement of what we lack," continued
Jim. "It's the artistic atmosphere. We need a dash of the culture of
Paris and Dresden and the place where they have the dinky little
windmills which look so nice on cream-pitchers, but wouldn't do for one
of our farmers a minute. Come out and supply our lack. You owe it to the
great cause of the amelioration of local savagery; and in view of my
declaration of discipleship, and the effective way in which I have
always upheld the standard of our barbarism, I claim that you owe it to
me."
"I've abandoned the brush."
"Take it up again."
"I have made a vow."
"Break it!"
She refused to yield, but was clearly yielding. Alice and I showed
Trescott, on a plat, the place for his new home. He was quite taken with
the idea, and said that ma would certainly be tickled with it.
Josie sat apart with Mr. Elkins, in earnest converse, for a long time.
She looked frequently at her father, Jim constantly at her. Mr. Cornish
dropped in for a little while, and joined us in presenting the case for
removal. While he was there the girl seemed constrained, and not quite
so fully at her ease; and I could detect, I thought, the old tendency to
scrutinize his face furtively. When he went away, she turned to Jim more
intimately than before, and almost promised that she would become his
neighbor in Lynhurst. After the Trescotts' carriage had come and taken
them away, Jim told us that it was for her father, and the temptations
of idleness in the town, that Miss Trescott feared.
"This fairy-godmother business," said he, "ain't what the prospectus
might lead one to expect. It has its drawbacks. Bill is going to cash in
all right, and I think it's for the best; but, Al, we've got to take
care of the old man, and see that he doesn't go up in the air."
CHAPTER XIII.
A Sitting or Two in the Game with the World and Destiny.
Our game at Lattimore was one of those absorbing ones in which the
sunlight of next morning sifts through the blinds before the players are
aware that midnight is past. Day by day, deal by deal, it went on, card
followed card in fateful fall upon the table, and we who sat in, and
played the World and Destiny with so pitifully small a pile of chips at
the outset, saw the World and Destiny losing to us, until our hands
could scarcely hold, our eyes hardly estimate, the high-piled stacks of
counters which were ours.
We saw the yellowing groves and brown fields of our first autumn; we
heard the long-drawn, wavering, mounting, falling, persistent howl of
the thresher among the settings of hive-shaped stacks; we saw the loads
of red and yellow corn at the corn-cribs,--as men at the board of the
green cloth hear the striking of the hours. And we heeded them as
little. The cries of southing wild-fowl heralded the snow; winter came
for an hour or so, and melted into spring; and some of us looked up from
our hands for a moment, to note the fact that it was the anniversary of
that aguish day when three of us had first taken our seats at the table:
and before we knew it, the dust and heat and summer clouds, like that
which lightened over the fete in the park, admonished us that we were
far into our second year. And still shuffle, cut, deal, trick, and hand
followed each other, and with draw and bluff and showdown we played the
World and Destiny, and playing won, and saw our stacks of chips grow
higher and higher, as our great and absorbing game went on.
Moreover, while we won and won, nobody seemed to lose. Josie spoke that
night of fortunes which people had not earned; but surely they were
created somehow; and as the universe, when the divine fiat had formed
the world, was richer, rather than poorer, so, we felt, must these
values so magically growing into our fortunes be good, rather than evil,
and honestly ours, so far as we might be able to secure them to
ourselves. I said as much to Jim one day, at which he smiled, and
remarked that if we got to monkeying with the ethics of the trade,
piracy would soon be a ruined business.
"Better, far better keep the lookout sweeping the horizon for sails,"
said he, "and when one appears, serve out the rum and gunpowder to the
crew, and stand by to lower away the boats for a boarding-party!"
I am afraid I have given the impression that our life at this time was
solely given over to cupidity and sordidness; and that idea I may not be
able to remove. Yet I must try to do so. We were in the game to win; but
our winnings, present and prospective, were not in wealth only. To
surmount obstacles; to drive difficulties before us like scattering
sparrows; to see a town marching before us into cityhood; to feel
ourselves the forces working through human masses so mightily that, for
hundreds of miles about us, social and industrial factors were compelled
to readjust themselves with reference to us; to be masters; to
create--all these things went into our beings in thrilling and dizzying
pulsations of a pleasure which was not ignoble.
For instance, let us take the building of the Lattimore & Great Western
Railway. Before Mr. Elkins went to Lattimore this line had been surveyed
by the cooeperation of Mr. Hinckley, Mr. Ballard, the president of the
opposition bank, and some others. It was felt that there was little real
competition among the railways centering there, and the L. & G.W. was
designed as a hint to them of a Lattimore-built connection with the
Halliday system, then a free-lance in the transportation field, and
ready to make rates in an independent and competitive way. The Angus
Falls extension brought this system in, but too late to do the good
expected; for Mr. Halliday, in his dealings with us, convinced us of the
truth of the rumors that he had brought the other roads to terms, and
was a free-lance no longer. Month by month the need of real competition
in our carrying trade grew upon us. Rates accorded to other cities on
our commercial fighting line we could not get, in spite of the most
persistent efforts. In the offices of presidents and general managers,
in St. Louis, Chicago, St. Paul and Minneapolis, Kansas City, Omaha and
New York we were received by suave princes of the highways, who each
blandly assured us that his road looked with especial favor upon our
town, and that our representations should receive the most solicitous
attention. But the word of promise was ever broken to the hope.
After one of these embassies the syndicate held a meeting in Cornish's
elegant offices on the ground-floor of the new "Hotel Elkins" building.
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